tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65671990535713930902024-03-05T04:13:32.616+00:00The Reading RoomJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-70692976504492383732014-07-11T18:29:00.000+01:002014-07-11T18:30:37.530+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
NEW - now online - NEW</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
MY VIRTUAL ART COLLECTION</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://myvirtualartcollection.blogspot.com/">http://myvirtualartcollection.blogspot.com</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>-o0o-</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<div style="text-align: left;">
THE DIARY OF A NOBODY</div>
</div>
<br />
This famous English comic novel was the creation of two brothers George and Weedon Grossmith. It first appeared as a serial in the magazine <i>Punch</i> during 1888/9 and then in 1892 an extended form was published as a book.<br />
<br />
The whole diary can be read online at -<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1026/1026-h/1026-h.htm">www.gutenberg.org/files/1026/1026-h/1026-h.htm</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The following is Chapter One</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new house, “The Laurels,” Brickfield Terrace, Holloway—a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour. We have a little front garden; and there is a flight of ten steps up to the front door, which, by-the-by, we keep locked with the chain up. Cummings, Gowing, and our other intimate friends always come to the little side entrance, which saves the servant the trouble of going up to the front door, thereby taking her from her work. We have a nice little back garden which runs down to the railway. We were rather afraid of the noise of the trains at first, but the landlord said we should not notice them after a bit, and took £2 off the rent. He was certainly right; and beyond the cracking of the garden wall at the bottom, we have suffered no inconvenience.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What’s the good of a home, if you are never in it? “Home, Sweet Home,” that’s my motto. I am always in of an evening. Our old friend Gowing may drop in without ceremony; so may Cummings, who lives opposite. My dear wife Caroline and I are pleased to see them, if they like to drop in on us. But Carrie and I can manage to pass our evenings together without friends. There is always something to be done: a tin-tack here, a Venetian blind to put straight, a fan to nail up, or part of a carpet to nail down—all of which I can do with my pipe in my mouth; while Carrie is not above putting a button on a shirt, mending a pillow-case, or practising the “Sylvia Gavotte” on our new cottage piano (on the three years’ system), manufactured by W. Bilkson (in small letters), from Collard and Collard (in very large letters). It is also a great comfort to us to know that our boy Willie is getting on so well in the Bank at Oldham. We should like to see more of him. Now for my diary:—</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
April 3.—Tradesmen called for custom, and I promised Farmerson, the ironmonger, to give him a turn if I wanted any nails or tools. By-the-by, that reminds me there is no key to our bedroom door, and the bells must be seen to. The parlour bell is broken, and the front door rings up in the servant’s bedroom, which is ridiculous. Dear friend Gowing dropped in, but wouldn’t stay, saying there was an infernal smell of paint.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
April 4. Tradesmen still calling; Carrie being out, I arranged to deal with Horwin, who seemed a civil butcher with a nice clean shop. Ordered a shoulder of mutton for to-morrow, to give him a trial. Carrie arranged with Borset, the butterman, and ordered a pound of fresh butter, and a pound and a half of salt ditto for kitchen, and a shilling’s worth of eggs. In the evening, Cummings unexpectedly dropped in to show me a meerschaum pipe he had won in a raffle in the City, and told me to handle it carefully, as it would spoil the colouring if the hand was moist. He said he wouldn’t stay, as he didn’t care much for the smell of the paint, and fell over the scraper as he went out. Must get the scraper removed, or else I shall get into a scrape. I don’t often make jokes.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
April 5.—Two shoulders of mutton arrived, Carrie having arranged with another butcher without consulting me. Gowing called, and fell over scraper coming in. Must get that scraper removed.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
April 6.—Eggs for breakfast simply shocking; sent them back to Borset with my compliments, and he needn’t call any more for orders. Couldn’t find umbrella, and though it was pouring with rain, had to go without it. Sarah said Mr. Gowing must have took it by mistake last night, as there was a stick in the ‘all that didn’t belong to nobody. In the evening, hearing someone talking in a loud voice to the servant in the downstairs hall, I went out to see who it was, and was surprised to find it was Borset, the butterman, who was both drunk and offensive. Borset, on seeing me, said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City clerks any more—the game wasn’t worth the candle. I restrained my feelings, and quietly remarked that I thought it was possible for a city clerk to be a gentleman. He replied he was very glad to hear it, and wanted to know whether I had ever come across one, for he hadn’t. He left the house, slamming the door after him, which nearly broke the fanlight; and I heard him fall over the scraper, which made me feel glad I hadn’t removed it. When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to have given him. However, I will keep it for another occasion.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
April 7.—Being Saturday, I looked forward to being home early, and putting a few things straight; but two of our principals at the office were absent through illness, and I did not get home till seven. Found Borset waiting. He had been three times during the day to apologise for his conduct last night. He said he was unable to take his Bank Holiday last Monday, and took it last night instead. He begged me to accept his apology, and a pound of fresh butter. He seems, after all, a decent sort of fellow; so I gave him an order for some fresh eggs, with a request that on this occasion they should be fresh. I am afraid we shall have to get some new stair-carpets after all; our old ones are not quite wide enough to meet the paint on either side. Carrie suggests that we might ourselves broaden the paint. I will see if we can match the colour (dark chocolate) on Monday.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
April 8, Sunday.—After Church, the Curate came back with us. I sent Carrie in to open front door, which we do not use except on special occasions. She could not get it open, and after all my display, I had to take the Curate (whose name, by-the-by, I did not catch,) round the side entrance. He caught his foot in the scraper, and tore the bottom of his trousers. Most annoying, as Carrie could not well offer to repair them on a Sunday. After dinner, went to sleep. Took a walk round the garden, and discovered a beautiful spot for sowing mustard-and-cress and radishes. Went to Church again in the evening: walked back with the Curate. Carrie noticed he had got on the same pair of trousers, only repaired. He wants me to take round the plate, which I think a great compliment.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o=0=o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<br />Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-67556970042110638202014-07-05T08:30:00.000+01:002014-07-05T08:30:00.517+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-S6OLmfXl_KDaFpqRlrhmck_008_UH0oDcMovbD-fM4B7eLCU13jC2Z8rZyt67sWE1mID-EIGpf9ByKOZVtu29foEqgdFM9FLIPnWM75wQt6d5-OdNvHKrKNHBOa3Ulr91u5_bHc6dyE/s1600/Robert_Benchley_photographed_in_Vanity_Fair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-S6OLmfXl_KDaFpqRlrhmck_008_UH0oDcMovbD-fM4B7eLCU13jC2Z8rZyt67sWE1mID-EIGpf9ByKOZVtu29foEqgdFM9FLIPnWM75wQt6d5-OdNvHKrKNHBOa3Ulr91u5_bHc6dyE/s1600/Robert_Benchley_photographed_in_Vanity_Fair.jpg" height="200" width="155" /></a></div>
<br />
ROBERT BENCHLEY 1889-1945<br />
was an American humorist, newspaper columnist and film actor.<br />
His articles in <i>Vanity Fair</i> and <i>The New Yorker</i> along with his screen appearances made him famous.<br />
<br />
The following is an extract from "Coffee, Megg and Ilk, Please" Chapter Two in "OF ALL THINGS."<br />
<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
The complete article can be read online at<br />
<i><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37660/37660-h/37660-h.htm#OF_ALL_THINGS">www.gutenberg.org/files/37660/37660-h/37660-h.htm#OF_ALL_THINGS</a></i><br />
<br />
My timidity when dealing with minor officials strikes me first in my voice. I have any number of witnesses who will sign statements to the effect that my voice changed about twelve years ago, and that in ordinary conversation my tone, if not especially virile, is at least consistent and even. But when, for instance, I give an order at a soda fountain, if the clerk overawes me at all, my voice breaks into a yodel that makes the phrase "Coffee, egg and milk" a pretty snatch of song, but practically worthless as an order.<br />
<br />
If the soda counter is lined with customers and the clerks so busy tearing up checks and dropping them into the toy banks that they seem to resent any call on their drink-mixing abilities, I might just as well save time and go home and shake up an egg and milk for myself, for I shall not be waited on until every one else has left the counter and they are putting the nets over the caramels for the night. I know that. I've gone through it too many times to be deceived.<br />
<br />
For there is something about the realization that I must shout out my order ahead of some one else that absolutely inhibits my shouting powers. I will stand against the counter, fingering my ten-cent check and waiting for the clerk to come near enough for me to tell him what I want, while, in the meantime, ten or a dozen people have edged up next to me and given their orders, received their drinks and gone away. Every once in a while I catch a clerk's eye and lean forward murmuring, "Coffee"—but that is as far as I get. Some one else has shoved his way in and shouted, "Coca-Cola," and I draw back to get out of the way of the vichy spray. (Incidentally, the men who push their way in and footfault on their orders always ask for "Coca-Cola." Somehow it seems like painting the lily for them to order a nerve tonic.)<br />
<br />
I then decide that the thing for me to do is to speak up loud and act brazenly. So I clear my throat, and, placing both hands on the counter, emit what promises to be a perfect bellow: "COFFEE, MEGG AND ILK." This makes just about the impression you'd think it would, both on my neighbours and the clerk, especially as it is delivered in a tone which ranges from a rich baritone to a rather rasping tenor. At this I withdraw and go to the other end of the counter, where I can begin life over again with a clean slate.<br />
<br />
Here, perhaps, I am suddenly confronted by an impatient clerk who is in a perfect frenzy to grab my check and tear it into bits to drop in his box. "What's yours?" he flings at me. I immediately lose my memory and forget what it was that I wanted. But here is a man who has a lot of people to wait on and who doubtless gets paid according to the volume of business he brings in. I have no right to interfere with his work. There is a big man edging his way beside me who is undoubtedly going to shout "Coca-Cola" in half a second. So I beat him to it and say, "Coca-Cola," which is probably the last drink in the store that I want to buy. But it is the only thing that I can remember at the moment, in spite of the fact that I have been thinking all morning how good a coffee, egg and milk would taste. I suppose that one of the psychological principles of advertising is to so hammer the name of your product into the mind of the timid buyer that when he is confronted by a brusque demand for an order be can't think of anything else to say, whether he wants it or not.<br />
<br />
This dread of offending the minor official or appearing to a disadvantage before a clerk extends even to my taking nourishment. I don't think that I have ever yet gone into a restaurant and ordered exactly what I wanted. If only the waiter would give me the card and let me alone for, say, fifteen minutes, as he does when I want to get him to bring me my check, I could work out a meal along the lines of what I like. But when he stands over me, with disgust clearly registered on his face, I order the thing I like least and consider myself lucky to get out of it with so little disgrace.<br />
<br />
And yet I have no doubt that if one could see him in his family life the Workingman is just an ordinary person like the rest of us. He is probably not at all as we think of him in our dealings with him—a harsh, dictatorial, intolerant autocrat, but rather a kindly soul who likes nothing better than to sit by the fire with his children and read.<br />
<br />
And he would probably be the first person to scoff at the idea that he could frighten me.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
PIANO PLAYTIME</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
great recordings of great music by great composers played by great pianists</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
begins tomorrow Sunday 6th July</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://pianoplaytime.blogspot.com/">http://pianoplaytime.blogspot.com</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-16517837688523655352014-06-28T08:30:00.000+01:002014-06-28T08:30:00.507+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfI_JhDeuWifPB6bAoyBGzizjvUKKqFJjZm9laPv65E2g1gu0Sg0QetsqLddzCTKxvDbDJMm_Y8nIJ60Z-QIbFyZ6UNX1XtEaKM5xKO5l0vW__EXKBNynByfDwUPVwtE8El7InwkXiQRk/s1600/220px-James_Matthew_Barrie00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfI_JhDeuWifPB6bAoyBGzizjvUKKqFJjZm9laPv65E2g1gu0Sg0QetsqLddzCTKxvDbDJMm_Y8nIJ60Z-QIbFyZ6UNX1XtEaKM5xKO5l0vW__EXKBNynByfDwUPVwtE8El7InwkXiQRk/s1600/220px-James_Matthew_Barrie00.jpg" height="200" width="115" /></a></div>
<br />
James Matthew Barrie (J.M. BARRIE) 1860-1937 was the Scottish author and playwright who created the boy who wouldn't grow up - Peter Pan. Before his death, Barrie gave the rights of the Peter Pan works to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital which still benefits from them today.<br />
<br />
The following is part of the opening chapter of the famous story.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<br />
<br />
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.<br />
<br />
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.<br />
<br />
Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.<br />
<br />
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.<br />
<br />
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.<br />
<br />
"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her.<br />
<br />
"I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven -- who is that moving? -- eight nine seven, dot and carry seven -- don't speak, my own -- and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door -- quiet, child -- dot and carry child -- there, you've done it! -- did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?"<br />
<br />
"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.<br />
<br />
"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings -- don't speak -- measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six -- don't waggle your finger -- whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings" -- and so on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.<br />
<br />
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John's footer [in England soccer was called football, "footer for short] days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling's friends, but if they did come she first whipped off Michael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The complete story can be read at -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://www.literatureproject.com/peter-pan/">www.literatureproject.com/peter-pan/</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-66305030076929088052014-06-21T08:30:00.000+01:002014-06-21T08:30:00.787+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVbXoJjtRvrG1Qi9YhcR3N-HQDrFAPNeim_cwjUshJMZS58zuvECgsOJjZH2WYVfa9959HL5XohO021wRGjeylDXgoSQhgNQIFNj5GZHRETqxVWIa-mf3yq_K12tcYqT99E-OTCZfDXOs/s1600/250px-Jack_London_young.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVbXoJjtRvrG1Qi9YhcR3N-HQDrFAPNeim_cwjUshJMZS58zuvECgsOJjZH2WYVfa9959HL5XohO021wRGjeylDXgoSQhgNQIFNj5GZHRETqxVWIa-mf3yq_K12tcYqT99E-OTCZfDXOs/s1600/250px-Jack_London_young.jpg" height="200" width="151" /></a></div>
John Griffith Chaney 1876-1916, better known as JACK LONDON, was an American author, journalist and social activist who was a pioneer in commercial magazine fiction. His most popular works are probably <i>The Call of the Wild </i>and <i>White Fang.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The following excerpt comes from the first chapter of <i>John Barleycorn. </i>The complete essay can be read online at<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://www.classicreader.com/book/74/1/">www.classicreader.com/book/74/1/</a></i></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
It all came to me one election day. It was on a warm California afternoon, and I had ridden down into the Valley of the Moon from the ranch to the little village to vote Yes and No to a host of proposed amendments to the Constitution of the State of California. Because of the warmth of the day I had had several drinks before casting my ballot, and divers drinks after casting it. Then I had ridden up through the vine-clad hills and rolling pastures of the ranch, and arrived at the farm-house in time for another drink and supper.<br />
<br />
"How did you vote on the suffrage amendment?" Charmian asked.<br />
<br />
"I voted for it."<br />
<br />
She uttered an exclamation of surprise. For, be it known, in my younger days, despite my ardent democracy, I had been opposed to woman suffrage. In my later and more tolerant years I had been unenthusiastic in my acceptance of it as an inevitable social phenomenon.<br />
<br />
"Now just why did you vote for it?" Charmian asked.<br />
<br />
I answered. I answered at length. I answered indignantly. The more I answered, the more indignant I became. (No; I was not drunk. The horse I had ridden was well named "The Outlaw." I'd like to see any drunken man ride her.)<br />
<br />
And yet--how shall I say?--I was lighted up, I was feeling "good," I was pleasantly jingled.<br />
<br />
"When the women get the ballot, they will vote for prohibition," I said. "It is the wives, and sisters, and mothers, and they only, who will drive the nails into the coffin of John Barleycorn----"<br />
<br />
"But I thought you were a friend to John Barleycorn," Charmian interpolated.<br />
<br />
"I am. I was. I am not. I never am. I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most his friend. He is the king of liars. He is the frankest truthsayer. He is the august companion with whom one walks with the gods. He is also in league with the Noseless One. His way leads to truth naked, and to death. He gives clear vision, and muddy dreams. He is the enemy of life, and the teacher of wisdom beyond life's wisdom. He is a red-handed killer, and he slays youth."<br />
<br />
And Charmian looked at me, and I knew she wondered where I had got it.<br />
<br />
I continued to talk. As I say, I was lighted up. In my brain every thought was at home. Every thought, in its little cell, crouched ready-dressed at the door, like prisoners at midnight a jail-break. And every thought was a vision, bright-imaged, sharp- cut, unmistakable. My brain was illuminated by the clear, white light of alcohol. John Barleycorn was on a truth-telling rampage, giving away the choicest secrets on himself. And I was his spokesman. There moved the multitudes of memories of my past life, all orderly arranged like soldiers in some vast review. It was mine to pick and choose. I was a lord of thought, the master of my vocabulary and of the totality of my experience, unerringly capable of selecting my data and building my exposition. For so John Barleycorn tricks and lures, setting the maggots of intelligence gnawing, whispering his fatal intuitions of truth, flinging purple passages into the monotony of one's days.<br />
<br />
I outlined my life to Charmian, and expounded the make-up of my constitution. I was no hereditary alcoholic. I had been born with no organic, chemical predisposition toward alcohol. In this matter I was normal in my generation. Alcohol was an acquired taste. It had been painfully acquired. Alcohol had been a dreadfully repugnant thing--more nauseous than any physic. Even now I did not like the taste of it. I drank it only for its "kick." And from the age of five to that of twenty-five I had not learned to care for its kick. Twenty years of unwilling apprenticeship had been required to make my system rebelliously tolerant of alcohol, to make me, in the heart and the deeps of me, desirous of alcohol.<br />
<br />
I sketched my first contacts with alcohol, told of my first intoxications and revulsions, and pointed out always the one thing that in the end had won me over--namely, the accessibility of alcohol. Not only had it always been accessible, but every interest of my developing life had drawn me to it. A newsboy on the streets, a sailor, a miner, a wanderer in far lands, always where men came together to exchange ideas, to laugh and boast and dare, to relax, to forget the dull toil of tiresome nights and days, always they came together over alcohol. The saloon was the place of congregation. Men gathered to it as primitive men gathered about the fire of the squatting place or the fire at the mouth of the cave.<br />
<br />
I reminded Charmian of the canoe houses from which she had been barred in the South Pacific, where the kinky-haired cannibals escaped from their womenkind and feasted and drank by themselves, the sacred precincts taboo to women under pain of death. As a youth, by way of the saloon I had escaped from the narrowness of woman's influence into the wide free world of men. All ways led to the saloon. The thousand roads of romance and adventure drew together in the saloon, and thence led out and on over the world.<br />
<br />
"The point is," I concluded my sermon, "that it is the accessibility of alcohol that has given me my taste for alcohol. I did not care for it. I used to laugh at it. Yet here I am, at the last, possessed with the drinker's desire. It took twenty years to implant that desire; and for ten years more that desire has grown. And the effect of satisfying that desire is anything but good. Temperamentally I am wholesome-hearted and merry. Yet when I walk with John Barleycorn I suffer all the damnation of intellectual pessimism.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<br />
"Why not write all this up for the sake of the men and women coming?" Charmian asked. "Why not write it so as to help the wives and sisters and mothers to the way they should vote?"<br />
<br />
"The 'Memoirs of an Alcoholic,'" I sneered--or, rather, John Barleycorn sneered; for he sat with me there at table in my pleasant, philanthropic jingle, and it is a trick of John Barleycorn to turn the smile to a sneer without an instant's warning.<br />
<br />
"No," said Charmian, ignoring John Barleycorn's roughness, as so many women have learned to do. "You have shown yourself no alcoholic, no dipsomaniac, but merely an habitual drinker, one who has made John Barleycorn's acquaintance through long years of rubbing shoulders with him. Write it up and call it 'Alcoholic Memoirs.'"<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-72587675175801911172014-06-14T08:30:00.000+01:002014-06-14T08:30:01.774+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxnRX4JVPo4xKNG5oVPptSXBOfjQ8gLX73CcJgYTau9DXYgAI_JH5QbPm6f9ocu8Ves6srjw1GxOrOW7b-Fm9zkB91DHdyvU9mzDfE5mO5vF06kVJDjhEhb_cm-kGM6pYLeJWtI_9UYI/s1600/220px-Stephen_Leacock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxnRX4JVPo4xKNG5oVPptSXBOfjQ8gLX73CcJgYTau9DXYgAI_JH5QbPm6f9ocu8Ves6srjw1GxOrOW7b-Fm9zkB91DHdyvU9mzDfE5mO5vF06kVJDjhEhb_cm-kGM6pYLeJWtI_9UYI/s1600/220px-Stephen_Leacock.jpg" height="200" width="161" /></a></div>
<br />
STEPHEN LEACOCK 1869-1944 was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer and humorist.<br />
<br />
What follows here is chapter one and part of chapter two of WINSOME WINNIE or Trial and Temptation.<br />
<br />
The complete tale can be read online at -<br />
<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20633/20633-h/20633-h.htm#I_I"><i>www.gutenberg.org/files/20633/20633-h/20633-h.htm#I_I</i></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
"Miss Winnifred," said the Old Lawyer, looking keenly over and through his shaggy eyebrows at the fair young creature seated before him, "you are this morning twenty-one."<br />
<br />
Winnifred Clair raised her deep mourning veil, lowered her eyes and folded her hands.<br />
<br />
"This morning," continued Mr. Bonehead, "my guardianship is at an end."<br />
<br />
There was a tone of something like emotion in the voice of the stern old lawyer, while for a moment his eye glistened with something like a tear which he hastened to remove with something like a handkerchief. "I have therefore sent for you," he went on, "to render you an account of my trust."<br />
<br />
He heaved a sigh at her, and then, reaching out his hand, he pulled the woollen bell-rope up and down several times.<br />
<br />
An aged clerk appeared.<br />
<br />
"Did the bell ring?" he asked.<br />
<br />
"I think it did," said the Lawyer. "Be good enough, Atkinson, to fetch me the papers of the estate of the late Major Clair defunct."<br />
<br />
"I have them here," said the clerk, and he laid upon the table a bundle of faded blue papers, and withdrew.<br />
<br />
"Miss Winnifred," resumed the Old Lawyer, "I will now proceed to give you an account of the disposition that has been made of your property. This first document refers to the sum of two thousand pounds left to you by your great uncle. It is lost."<br />
<br />
Winnifred bowed.<br />
<br />
"Pray give me your best attention and I will endeavour to explain to you how I lost it."<br />
<br />
"Oh, sir," cried Winnifred, "I am only a poor girl unskilled in the ways of the world, and knowing nothing but music and French; I fear that the details of business are beyond my grasp. But if it is lost, I gather that it is gone."<br />
<br />
"It is," said Mr. Bonehead. "I lost it in a marginal option in an undeveloped oil company. I suppose that means nothing to you."<br />
<br />
"Alas," sighed Winnifred, "nothing."<br />
<br />
"Very good," resumed the Lawyer. "Here next we have a statement in regard to the thousand pounds left you under the will of your maternal grandmother. I lost it at Monte Carlo. But I need not fatigue you with the details."<br />
<br />
"Pray spare them," cried the girl.<br />
<br />
"This final item relates to the sum of fifteen hundred pounds placed in trust for you by your uncle. I lost it on a horse race. That horse," added the Old Lawyer with rising excitement, "ought to have won. He was coming down the stretch like blue—but there, there, my dear, you must forgive me if the recollection of it still stirs me to anger. Suffice it to say the horse fell. I have kept for your inspection the score card of the race, and the betting tickets. You will find everything in order."<br />
<br />
"Sir," said Winnifred, as Mr. Bonehead proceeded to fold up his papers, "I am but a poor inadequate girl, a mere child in business, but tell me, I pray, what is left to me of the money that you have managed?"<br />
<br />
"Nothing," said the Lawyer. "Everything is gone. And I regret to say, Miss Clair, that it is my painful duty to convey to you a further disclosure of a distressing nature. It concerns your birth."<br />
<br />
"Just Heaven!" cried Winnifred, with a woman's quick intuition. "Does it concern my father?"<br />
<br />
"It does, Miss Clair. Your father was not your father."<br />
<br />
"Oh, sir," exclaimed Winnifred. "My poor mother! How she must have suffered!"<br />
<br />
"Your mother was not your mother," said the Old Lawyer gravely. "Nay, nay, do not question me. There is a dark secret about your birth."<br />
<br />
"Alas," said Winnifred, wringing her hands, "I am, then, alone in the world and penniless."<br />
<br />
"You are," said Mr. Bonehead, deeply moved. "You are, unfortunately, thrown upon the world. But, if you ever find yourself in a position where you need help and advice, do not scruple to come to me. Especially," he added, "for advice. And meantime let me ask you in what way do you propose to earn your livelihood?"<br />
<br />
"I have my needle," said Winnifred.<br />
<br />
"Let me see it," said the Lawyer.<br />
<br />
Winnifred showed it to him.<br />
<br />
"I fear," said Mr. Bonehead, shaking his head, "you will not do much with that."<br />
<br />
Then he rang the bell again.<br />
<br />
"Atkinson," he said, "take Miss Clair out and throw her on the world."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
As Winnifred Clair passed down the stairway leading from the Lawyer's office, a figure appeared before her in the corridor, blocking the way. It was that of a tall, aristocratic-looking man, whose features wore that peculiarly saturnine appearance seen only in the English nobility. The face, while entirely gentlemanly in its general aspect, was stamped with all the worst passions of mankind.<br />
<br />
Had the innocent girl but known it, the face was that of Lord Wynchgate, one of the most contemptible of the greater nobility of Britain, and the figure was his too.<br />
<br />
"Ha!" exclaimed the dissolute Aristocrat, "whom have we here? Stay, pretty one, and let me see the fair countenance that I divine behind your veil."<br />
<br />
"Sir," said Winnifred, drawing herself up proudly, "let me pass, I pray."<br />
<br />
"Not so," cried Wynchgate, reaching out and seizing his intended victim by the wrist, "not till I have at least seen the colour of those eyes and imprinted a kiss upon those fair lips."<br />
<br />
With a brutal laugh, he drew the struggling girl towards him.<br />
<br />
In another moment the aristocratic villain would have succeeded in lifting the veil of the unhappy girl, when suddenly a ringing voice cried, "Hold! stop! desist! begone! lay to! cut it out!"<br />
<br />
With these words a tall, athletic young man, attracted doubtless by the girl's cries, leapt into the corridor from the street without. His figure was that, more or less, of a Greek god, while his face, although at the moment inflamed with anger, was of an entirely moral and permissible configuration.<br />
<br />
"Save me! save me!" cried Winnifred.<br />
<br />
"I will," cried the Stranger, rushing towards Lord Wynchgate with uplifted cane.<br />
<br />
But the cowardly Aristocrat did not await the onslaught of the unknown.<br />
<br />
"You shall yet be mine!" he hissed in Winnifred's ear, and, releasing his grasp, he rushed with a bound past the rescuer into the street.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<br />Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-41189174945707679392014-06-07T08:30:00.000+01:002014-06-07T11:19:13.837+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZIP3xt3G6enD-a1iMDUfw669-UUG09tA0U7Kv2Ys03piMWZSiTkowbq7wb7fM6taIPI2C97TdxSeE0Cg9X_dPQsvB50CuMkNiNksxKeQjigv8Bj4lg_jQHKcRjKeRc0EkNyO-tJp046g/s1600/220px-Barbellion2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZIP3xt3G6enD-a1iMDUfw669-UUG09tA0U7Kv2Ys03piMWZSiTkowbq7wb7fM6taIPI2C97TdxSeE0Cg9X_dPQsvB50CuMkNiNksxKeQjigv8Bj4lg_jQHKcRjKeRc0EkNyO-tJp046g/s1600/220px-Barbellion2.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
W.N.P. BARBELLION was the nom-de-plume of Bruce Frederick Cummings 1889-1919 an English diarist who worked in the Natural History department of the British Museum.<br />
<br />
His diaries were published under the title <i>The Journal of a Disappointed Man.</i> Ronald Blythe called it "among the most moving diaries created."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
AN AVERAGE DAY</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
January 19th 1915</div>
<br />
After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance … at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R——-. We began by quoting verse at one another in open competition. Of course neither of us listened to the other’s verses. We merely enjoyed the pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore’s “Row gently here, my Gondolier.” R——- guessed the author rightly at once and fidgeted until he burst out with, “The Breaths of kissing night and day”—to me an easy one. I gave, “The Moon more indolently sleeps tonight” (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting some of the old French of François Villon which entirely flummuxed me.<br />
<br />
I don’t believe we really love each other, but we cling to each other out of ennui and discover in each other a certain cold intellectual sympathy.<br />
<br />
At the pay desk (Lyons’ is our rendezvous) we joked with the cashier—a cheerful, fat little girl, who said to R——- (indicating me),—<br />
<br />
“He’s a funny boy, isn’t he?”<br />
<br />
“Dangerous,” chirped R——-, and we laughed. In the street we met an aged, decrepit newsvendor—very dirty and ragged—but his voice was unexpectedly fruity.<br />
<br />
“British Success,” he called, and we stopped for the sake of the voice.<br />
<br />
“I’m not interested,” I said—as an appetizer.<br />
<br />
“What! Not … Just one, sir: I haven’t sold a single copy yet and I’ve a wife and four children.”<br />
<br />
“That’s nothing to me—I’ve three wives and forty children,” I remarked.<br />
<br />
“What!” in affected surprise, turning to R——-, “he’s Brigham Young from Salt Lake City. Yes I know it—I’ve been there myself and been dry ever since. Give us a drink, sir — just one.”<br />
<br />
In consideration of his voice we gave him 2d. and passed on… .<br />
<br />
After giving a light to a Belgian soldier whose cigarette had gone out, farther along we entered a queer old music shop where they sell flageolets, serpents, clavichords, and harps. We had previously made an appointment with the man to have Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony played to us, so as to recall one or two of the melodies which we can’t recall and it drives us crazy. “What is that one in the second movement which goes like this?” and R——- whistled a fragment. “I don’t know,” I said, “but let’s go in here and ask.” In the shop, a youth was kind enough to say that if we cared to call next day, Madame A——-, the harp player would be home and would be ready to play us the symphony.<br />
<br />
So this morning, before Madame’s appearance, this kind and obliging youth put a gramophone record of it on, to which we listened like two intelligent parrots with heads sideways. Presently, the fat lady harpist appeared and asked us just what we wanted to find out—a rather awkward question for us, as we did not want to “find out” anything excepting how the tunes went.<br />
<br />
I therefore explained that as neither of us had sisters or wives, and we both wanted, etc… . so would she …? In response, she smiled pleasantly and played us the second movement on a shop piano. Meanwhile, Henry the boy, hid himself behind the instruments at the rear of the shop and as we signed to her she would say,—<br />
<br />
“What’s that, Henry?”<br />
<br />
And Henry would duly answer from his obscurity, “Wood wind,” or “Solo oboe,” or whatever it was, and the lad really spoke with authority. In this way, I began to find out something about the work. Before I left, I presented her with a copy of the score, which she did not possess and because she would not accept any sort of remuneration.<br />
<br />
“Won’t you put your name on it?” she inquired.<br />
<br />
I pointed gaily to the words “Ecce homo,” which I had scribbled across Schubert’s name and said, “There you are.” Madame smiled incredulously and we said, “Good-bye.”<br />
<br />
It was a beautifully clement almost springlike day, and at the street corner, in a burst of joyousness, we each bought a bunch of violets off an old woman, stuck them on the ends of our walking-sticks, and marched off with them in triumphant protest to the B. M. Carried over our shoulders, our flowers amused the police and ——-, who scarcely realised the significance of the ritual. “This is my protest,” said R——-, “against the war. It’s like Oscar Wilde’s Sunflower.”<br />
<br />
On the way, we were both bitterly disappointed at a dramatic meeting between a man and woman of the artizan class which instead of beginning with a stormy, “Robert, where’s the rent, may I ask?” fizzled out into, “Hullo, Charlie, why you are a stranger.”<br />
<br />
At tea in the A.B.C. shop, we had a violent discussion on Socialism, and on the station platform, going home, I said that before marriage I intended saving up against the possibility of divorce—a domestic divorce fund.<br />
<br />
“Very dreadful,” said R——- with mock gravity, “to hear a recently affianced young man talk like that.”<br />
<br />
… What should I do then? Marry? I suppose so. Shadows of the prison-house. At first I said I ought not to marry for two years. Then when I am wildly excited with her I say “next week.” We could. There are no arrangements to be made. All her furniture—flat, etc. But I feel we ought to wait until the War is over.<br />
<br />
At dinner-time tonight I was feverish to do three things at once: write out my day’s Journal, eat my food, and read the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. Did all three—but unfortunately not at once, so that when I was occupied with one I would surreptitiously cast a glance sideways at the other—and repined.<br />
<br />
After dinner, paid a visit to the ——- and found Mrs——- playing Patience. I told her that 12,000 lives had been lost in the great Italian earthquake. Still going on dealing out the cards, she said in her gentle voice that that was dreadful and still absorbed in her cards inquired if earthquakes had aught to do with the weather.<br />
<br />
“An earthquake must be a dreadful thing,” she gently piped, as she abstractedly dealt out the cards for a new game in a pretty Morris-papered room in Kensington.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
A PERSONAL SCRAPBLOG has a new look and a new name, and is now online.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
BLOGGING IS SUCH FUN</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://bloggingissuchfun.blogspot.com/">http://bloggingissuchfun.blogspot.com</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<br />Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-63905232545741015402014-05-31T08:30:00.000+01:002014-05-31T08:30:01.092+01:00<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMzWdHsAOCnjPhctL7fn6AN6jpmh4qwcG6IKB59ZvYFrP8mibnTVaS51gG1XqbTew7MDGW_eQ-hrr7FVpHHr9xkKE_QlfhptuQKulZf3OvWAWMg-FexX03UZD9pq9pwy2Fw1FpQfv6v4w/s1600/410px-Dickens_Gurney_head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMzWdHsAOCnjPhctL7fn6AN6jpmh4qwcG6IKB59ZvYFrP8mibnTVaS51gG1XqbTew7MDGW_eQ-hrr7FVpHHr9xkKE_QlfhptuQKulZf3OvWAWMg-FexX03UZD9pq9pwy2Fw1FpQfv6v4w/s1600/410px-Dickens_Gurney_head.jpg" height="200" width="136" /></a></div>
CHARLES DICKENS 1812-70 the English writer and social critic is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>David Copperfield - </i>its full title was <i>The Personal History, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) </i>was probably the most autobiographical of his works.<br />
<br />
The following is an extract from the novel.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out to ascertain for what, I saw to MY amazement Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me to her stays until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though I never thought of that till afterwards when I found it very tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief is, and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I picked up one of several that were rolling about, and treasured it as a keepsake for a long time.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. I shook my head, and said I thought not.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither Roderick Random nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy had ever cried, that I could remember, in trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this resolution, proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon the horse's back to dry. I thanked him, and assented; and particularly small it looked, under those circumstances.</div>
<br />
I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening for my greater delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper on which was written in my mother's hand, “For Davy, with my love.”<br />
<br />
I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good as to reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stopped myself.<br />
<br />
For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
After we had jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.<br />
<br />
“All the way where?” inquired the carrier.<br />
<br />
“There,” I said.<br />
<br />
“Where's there?” inquired the carrier.<br />
<br />
“Near London,” I said.<br />
<br />
“Why that horse,” said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out, “would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.”<br />
<br />
“Are you only going to Yarmouth then?” I asked.<br />
<br />
“That's about it,” said the carrier. “And there I shall take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that'll take you to - wherever it is.”<br />
<br />
As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say - he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational - I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant's.<br />
<br />
“Did SHE make 'em, now?” said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.<br />
<br />
“Peggotty, do you mean, sir?”<br />
<br />
“Ah!” said Mr. Barkis. “Her.”<br />
<br />
“Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.”<br />
<br />
“Do she though?” said Mr. Barkis.<br />
<br />
He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn't whistle. He sat looking at the horse's ears, as if he saw something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time.<br />
<br />
By and by, he said: “No sweethearts, I b'lieve?”<br />
<br />
“Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?” For I thought he wanted something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of refreshment.<br />
<br />
“Hearts,” said Mr. Barkis. “Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!”<br />
<br />
“With Peggotty?”<br />
<br />
“Ah!” he said. “Her.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.”<br />
<br />
“Didn't she, though!” said Mr. Barkis.<br />
<br />
Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn't whistle, but sat looking at the horse's ears.<br />
<br />
“So she makes,” said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, “all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?”<br />
<br />
I replied that such was the fact.<br />
<br />
“Well. I'll tell you what,” said Mr. Barkis. “P'raps you might be writin' to her?”<br />
<br />
“I shall certainly write to her,” I rejoined.<br />
<br />
“Ah!” he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. “Well! If you was writin' to her, p'raps you'd recollect to say that Barkis was willin', would you?”<br />
<br />
“That Barkis is willing,” I repeated innocently. “Is that all the message?”<br />
<br />
“Ye-es,” he said, considering. “Ye-es. Barkis is willin'.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest. - CHARLES DICKENS</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-28928161983447206072014-05-24T08:30:00.000+01:002014-05-24T08:30:00.997+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzLLL_s_j6dWXPl3e8SfbsC4cmbYNlfGgu6Winb8inhFqVgyBwXHjlyC24cfdnGL-bEfPd8oRhVxS1EujyeIu4AKVCUCsnTUVOxWbJO7IOBaGi2-KeqQ8E3WHtrNbQXNHSDJgNJiLz7KA/s1600/350px-Yoshida_Kenko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzLLL_s_j6dWXPl3e8SfbsC4cmbYNlfGgu6Winb8inhFqVgyBwXHjlyC24cfdnGL-bEfPd8oRhVxS1EujyeIu4AKVCUCsnTUVOxWbJO7IOBaGi2-KeqQ8E3WHtrNbQXNHSDJgNJiLz7KA/s1600/350px-Yoshida_Kenko.jpg" height="146" width="200" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i>
YOSHIDA KENKO 1283-1350<br />
was a Japanese author and Buddhist monk.<br />
<br />
His most famous work <i>Essays on Idleness </i>has become one of the most studied works of medieval Japanese literature<br />
<br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Extracted from SELECTIONS</div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>Reading and Writing</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
To while away the idle hours, seated the livelong day before the ink slab, by jotting down without order or purpose whatever trifling thoughts pass through my mind, truly this is a queer and crazy thing to do!<br />
<br />
It is desirable to have a knowledge of true literature, of composition and versifying, of wind and string instruments; and it is well, moreover, to be learned in precedent and court ceremonies, so as to be a model for others. One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when it is pressed upon him.<br />
<br />
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.<br />
<br />
<i>Fondness for Women</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
However gifted and accomplished a young man may be, if he has no fondness for women, one has a feeling of something lacking, as of a precious wine cup without a bottom. Admire the condition of a lover! Drenched with dews and frosts and aimlessly wandering; ever concerned to shun the world’s reproof and escape his parents’ reproaches; hither and thither pursued by doubt and distress; and spending his nights withal sleepless upon a solitary couch.<br />
<br />
But it is well that a man do not become addicted to lewdness, a constant and familiar companion of women.<br />
<br />
Of all things that lead astray the heart of man there is nothing like fleshly lust. What a weakly thing is this heart of ours. Though a perfume, for example, is but a transient thing, and though he knows full well that incense is burned to give an odor to garments, yet a man’s heart will always be stirred by a vague perfume.<br />
<br />
The Magician of Kume, the legend runs, lost his magic power through looking at a maiden washing clothes. This may well have been, for here was no charm from without, but the real beauty of plump and glistening limbs.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Frugality</i><br />
<br />
It is well for a man to be frugal, to abstain from luxury, to possess no treasure nor to covet this world’s goods. Since olden times there has rarely been a sage who was wealthy.<br />
<br />
In China there was once a man called Hsu Yu. He had not a single possession in the world. He even scooped up water with his hands, until a friend gave him a gourd. But one day, when he had hung it from a branch, it rattled in the wind; whereupon, disturbed by the noise, he threw it away and once more took to drinking from his clasped hands. How pure and free the heart of such a man.<br />
<br />
A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky.<br />
<br />
<i>Dwellings</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
A house should be built with the summer in view. In winter one can live anywhere, but a poor dwelling in summer is unbearable. Deep water does not give a cool sensation. Far cooler is a shallow running stream. A room with sliding doors is lighter than one with doors on hinges. When the ceiling is high the room is cold in winter and difficult to light. As for construction, people agree in admiring a place with plenty of spare room, as being pleasing to the eye and at the same time useful for all sorts of purposes.<br />
<br />
There is a charm about a neat and proper dwelling house, although this world, it is true, is but a temporary abode. Even the moonshine, when it strikes into the house where a good man lives in peaceful ease, seems to gain in friendly brilliancy.<br />
<br />
The man is to be envied who lives in a house, not of the modern, garish kind, but set among venerable trees, with a garden where plants grow wild and yet seem to have been disposed with care, verandas and fences tastefully arranged, and all its furnishings simple but antique.<br />
<br />
<i>Travel</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It wakes one up to go away from home for a time, no matter where. Exploring and rambling about the countryside you come upon a host of unusual sights in rustic spots and mountain hamlets. You get a messenger to take letters to the capital, and you write and say “Do not forget to send me so-and-so at the next opportunity.” All this is in its way amusing. Of course you have a thousand things to think of in such a place. Pleasant also to slip away and go into retreat in some mountain temple.<br />
<br />
<i>The Past</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In hours of quiet thought one cannot but be overcome by longing for the past. When, to while away the long nights after folk have gone to rest, we go through our old belongings, sometimes, as we throw away such scraps of paper as we do not want to keep, the handwriting of one who is no more, or an idle sketch maybe, will catch the eye and vividly recall the moment it was made. It is affecting, too, after the lapse of many years, to come across the letters even of one who is still living, and to call to mind the year and the occasion when they were written. The things they were wont to use have no heart, yet remain unchanged throughout the long, long years. A melancholy reflection.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<br />
<br />Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-66355551690148337172014-05-17T08:30:00.000+01:002014-05-17T08:30:00.661+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
This Scottish story was taken from</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Folklore and Legends"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Anonymous)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
CANOBIE DICK AND THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN</div>
<br />
Now it chanced that there lived on the Borders a jolly rattling horse-cowper called Canobie Dick who was remarkable for a reckless and fearless temper, which made him much admired and a little dreaded amongst his neighbours.<br />
<br />
One moonlight night, as he rode over Bowden Moor, on the west side of the Eildon Hills, the scene of Thomas the Rhymer’s prophecies and often mentioned in his history, having a brace of horses along with him, which he had not been able to dispose of, he met a man of venerable appearance and singularly antique dress, who, to his great surprise, asked the price of his horses, and began to chaffer <i>[haggle]</i> with him on the subject. To Dick, a chap was a chap, and he would have sold a horse to the devil himself, without minding his cloven hoof, and would have probably cheated Old Nick into the bargain. The stranger paid the price they agreed on, and all that puzzled Dick in the transaction was, that the gold which he received was in unicorns, bonnet-pieces, and other ancient coins, which would have been invaluable to collectors, but were rather troublesome in modern currency. It was gold, however, and therefore Dick contrived to get better value for the coin than he perhaps gave to his customer.<br />
<br />
By the command of so good a merchant, he brought horses to the same spot more than once; the purchaser only stipulating that he should always come by night and alone. I do not know whether it was from mere curiosity, or whether some hope of gain mixed with it, but after Dick had sold several horses in this way, he began to complain that dry bargains were unlucky, and to hint, that since his chap must live in the neighbourhood, he ought, in the courtesy of dealing, to treat him to half a mutchkin. <i>[mutchkin - a unit of capacity = a quarter of the old Scottish pint]</i><br />
<br />
“You may see my dwelling if you will,” said the stranger; “but if you lose courage at what you see there, you will rue it all your life.”<br />
<br />
Dick however laughed the warning to scorn, and having alighted to secure his horse, he followed the stranger up a narrow footpath, which led them up the hills to the singular eminence stuck betwixt the most southern and the centre peaks, and called, from its resemblance to such an animal in its form, the Lucken Hare. At the foot of this eminence, which is almost as famous for witch-meetings as the neighbouring windmill of Kippilaw, Dick was somewhat startled to observe that his conductor entered the hillside by a passage or cavern, of which he himself, though well acquainted with the spot, had never seen nor heard.<br />
<br />
“You may still return,” said his guide, looking ominously back upon him; but Dick scorned to show the white feather, and on they went. They entered a very long range of stables; in every stall stood a coal-black horse; by every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword in his hand; but all were as silent, hoof and limb, as if they had been cut out of marble. A great number of torches lent a gloomy lustre to the hall, which was of large dimensions. At the upper end, however, they at length arrived, where a sword and horn lay on an antique table.<br />
<br />
“He that shall sound that horn and draw that sword,” said the stranger, who now intimated that he was the famous Thomas of Ercildoun, <i>[13th century Scottish laird and prophet known as Thomas the Rhymer] </i>“shall, if his heart fail him not, be king over all broad Britain. So speaks the tongue that cannot lie. But all depends on courage, and much on your taking the sword or horn first.”<br />
<br />
Dick was much disposed to take the sword, but his bold spirit was quailed by the supernatural terrors of the hall, and he thought to unsheathe the sword first might be construed into defiance, and give offence to the powers of the mountain. He took the bugle with a trembling hand, and blew feeble note, but loud enough to produce a terrible answer. Thunder rolled in stunning peals through the immense hall; horses and men started to life; the steeds snorted, stamped, ground their bits, and tossed their heads; the warriors sprang to their feet, clashed their armour, and brandished their swords. Dick’s terror was extreme at seeing the whole army, which had been so lately silent as the grave, in uproar, and about to rush on him. He dropped the horn, and made a feeble attempt to seize the enchanted sword; but at the same moment a voice pronounced aloud the mysterious words—<br />
<br />
“Woe to the coward, that ever he was born,<br />
Who did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!”<br />
<br />
At the same time a whirlwind of irresistible fury howled through the long hall, bore the unfortunate horse-jockey clear out of the mouth of the cavern, and precipitated him over a steep bank of loose stones, where the shepherds found him the next morning, with just breath sufficient to tell his fearful tale, after concluding which he expired.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-89376516138882195492014-05-10T08:30:00.000+01:002014-05-10T08:30:00.187+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECwlrTq65Q-244Fs34Ywa_fT2LOAlXCHLyVTqxCSmecSamEXdMIUkmXd_Tv_ow6UAs4S1L4PqwgJ4h7FIvNFTq5F4DPjTZcCl5_M9zpY0exDR_cNZvGL8nyMNs4Uk279UNx-GR0t6sGE/s1600/220px-Zitkala-Sa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECwlrTq65Q-244Fs34Ywa_fT2LOAlXCHLyVTqxCSmecSamEXdMIUkmXd_Tv_ow6UAs4S1L4PqwgJ4h7FIvNFTq5F4DPjTZcCl5_M9zpY0exDR_cNZvGL8nyMNs4Uk279UNx-GR0t6sGE/s1600/220px-Zitkala-Sa.jpg" height="200" width="144" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
ZITKALA-SA 1876-1938<br />
was a Sioux writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. In 1926 she founded the National Council of American Indians to lobby for the rights of Native Americans to American citizenship.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The following is one of her short essays</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
THE GREAT SPIRIT</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
When the spirit swells my breast I love to roam leisurely among the green hills; or sometimes, sitting on the brink of the murmuring Missouri, I marvel at the great blue overhead. With half-closed eyes I watch the huge cloud shadows in their noiseless play upon the high bluffs opposite me, while into my ear ripple the sweet, soft cadences of the river’s song. Folded hands lie in my lap, for the time forgot. My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand. Drifting clouds and tinkling waters, together with the warmth of a genial summer day, bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us. During the idle while I sat upon the sunny river brink, I grew somewhat, though my response be not so clearly manifest as in the green grass fringing the edge of the high bluff back of me.<br />
<br />
At length retracing the uncertain footpath scaling the precipitous embankment, I seek the level lands where grow the wild prairie flowers. And they, the lovely little folk, soothe my soul with their perfumed breath.<br />
<br />
Their quaint round faces of varied hue convince the heart which leaps with glad surprise that they, too, are living symbols of omnipotent thought. With a child’s eager eye I drink in the myriad star shapes wrought in luxuriant colour upon the green. Beautiful is the spiritual essence they embody.<br />
<br />
I leave them nodding in the breeze, but take along with me their impress upon my heart. I pause to rest me upon a rock embedded on the side of a foothill facing the low river bottom. Here the Stone-Boy, of whom the American aborigine tells, frolics about, shooting his baby arrows and shouting aloud with glee at the tiny shafts of lightning that flash from the flying arrow-beaks. What an ideal warrior he became, baffling the siege of the pests of all the land till he triumphed over their united attack. And here he lay,—Inyan our great-great-grandfather, older than the hill he rested on, older than the race of men who love to tell of his wonderful career.<br />
<br />
Interwoven with the thread of this Indian legend of the rock, I fain would trace a subtle knowledge of the native folk which enabled them to recognize a kinship to any and all parts of this vast universe. By the leading of an ancient trail I move toward the Indian village.<br />
<br />
With the strong, happy sense that both great and small are so surely enfolded in His magnitude that, without a miss, each has his allotted individual ground of opportunities, I am buoyant with good nature.<br />
<br />
Yellow Breast, swaying upon the slender stem of a wild sunflower, warbles a sweet assurance of this as I pass near by. Breaking off the clear crystal song, he turns his wee head from side to side eyeing me wisely as slowly I plod with moccasined feet. Then again he yields himself to his song of joy. Flit, flit hither and yon, he fills the summer sky with his swift, sweet melody. And truly does it seem his vigorous freedom lies more in his little spirit than in his wing.<br />
<br />
With these thoughts I reach the log cabin whither I am strongly drawn by the tie of a child to an aged mother. Out bounds my four-footed friend to meet me, frisking about my path with unmistakable delight. Chän is a black shaggy dog, “a thoroughbred little mongrel” of whom I am very fond. Chän seems to understand many words in Sioux, and will go to her mat even when I whisper the word, though generally I think she is guided by the tone of the voice. Often she tries to imitate the sliding inflection and long-drawn-out voice to the amusement of our guests, but her articulation is quite beyond my ear. In both my hands I hold her shaggy head and gaze into her large brown eyes. At once the dilated pupils contract into tiny black dots, as if the roguish spirit within would evade my questioning.<br />
<br />
Finally resuming the chair at my desk I feel in keen sympathy with my fellow-creatures, for I seem to see clearly again that all are akin. The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings. And even here men of the same colour are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice. And those creatures who are for a time mere echoes of another’s note are not unlike the fable of the thin sick man whose distorted shadow, dressed like a real creature, came to the old master to make him follow as a shadow.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-42675039570083493722014-05-03T08:30:00.000+01:002014-05-03T08:30:00.999+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
ANN PLATO a mixed-race (African-American and Native American) educator and author was the second coloured woman to publish a book in America and the first to publish a book of essays and poems. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut sometime between 1820 and 1824; the year of her death is not known and there is no photograph of her.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In 1841 she published her only known book <i>Essays including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Poetry. </i>I have published here one of her essays and a short poem.</div>
<br />
DESCRIPTION OF A DESERT </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. Thirsty, their souls fainted in them. - Psalms</i></div>
<br />
It is difficult to form a correct idea of a desert, without having seen one. It is a vast plain of sands and stones, interspersed with mountains of various sizes and heights, without roads or shelters. They sometimes have springs of water, which burst forth, and create verdant spots.<br />
<br />
The most remarkable of deserts is the Sahara. This is a vast plain, but little elevated above the level of the ocean, and covered with sand and gravel, with a mixture of sea shells, and appears like the basin of an evaporated sea.<br />
<br />
Amid the desert there are springs of water, which burst forth and create verdant spots, called Oases. There are thirty-two of these which contain fountains, and Date and Palm trees; twenty of them are inhabited. They serve as stopping places for the caravans, and often contain villages.<br />
<br />
Were it not for these no human being could cross this waste of burning sand. So violent, sometimes, is the burning wind that the scorching heat dries up the water of these springs, and then frequently, the most disastrous consequences follow.<br />
<br />
In 1805, a caravan, consisting of 2,000 persons and 1,800 camels, not finding water at the usual resting place, died of thirst, both men and animals. Storms of wind are more terrible on this desert than on the ocean. Vast surges and clouds of red sand are raised and rolled forward, burying every thing in its way, and it is said that whole tribes have thus been swallowed up.<br />
<br />
The situation of such is dreadful, and admits of no resource. Many perish, victims of the most horrible thirst. It is then that the value of a cup of water is really felt.<br />
<br />
In such a case there is no distinction. If the master has not, the servant will not give it to him; for very few are the instances where a man will voluntarily lose his life to save that of another. What a situation for a man, though a rich one, perhaps the owner of all the caravan! He is dying for a cup of water - no one gives it to him; he offers all he possesses - no one hears him; they are all dying, though by walking a few hours further, they might be saved.<br />
<br />
In short, to be thirsty in a desert, without water, exposed to the burning sun, without shelter, is the most terrible situation that a man can be placed in, and one of the greatest sufferings that a human being can sustain; the tongue and lips swell; a hollow sound is heard in the ears, which brings on deafness, and the brain appears to grow thick and inflamed.<br />
<br />
If, unfortunately, any one falls sick on the road, he must either endure the fatigue of travelling on a camel, (which is troublesome even to healthy people,) or he must be left behind on the sand, without any assistance, and remain so till a slow death comes to relieve him. No one remains with him, not even his old and faithful servant; no one will stay and die with him; all pity his fate, but no one will be his companion.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
MY INFANT CLASS</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
This, my youngest class in school,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Is what I do admire;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Their sweetest, ever perfect praise,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Their eyes as sparkling fire.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
How oft I've blessed them in my heart,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Besought that every grace</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And consolation, might there dwell,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To cheer each youthful face.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I love them all as children each,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
How happy they appear:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
O, may no dull unclouded path,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Make happiness to fear.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When out of school, how oft I think</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Of these, my little ones,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But when in school, how glances all,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
They shine like many suns.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-48148474954850131572014-04-26T08:22:00.000+01:002014-04-26T08:22:25.744+01:00LEWIS CARROLL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLEpbivP1Ucm0r8lV0dM2OxbQo4JbK67Qs76zaNsU9msE6pucYgQEj64FZfzWi4fmywm8wDr0PuUwHpBRnS8pIFHB63bCDCyzT7Xafz9LVh2GD0psu5NLT3nagrMyKuDHrWxgL_RDkuMI/s1600/220px-LewisCarrollSelfPhoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLEpbivP1Ucm0r8lV0dM2OxbQo4JbK67Qs76zaNsU9msE6pucYgQEj64FZfzWi4fmywm8wDr0PuUwHpBRnS8pIFHB63bCDCyzT7Xafz9LVh2GD0psu5NLT3nagrMyKuDHrWxgL_RDkuMI/s1600/220px-LewisCarrollSelfPhoto.jpg" height="200" width="134" /></a></div>
<br />
Rev. CHARLES LUTRIDGE DODGSON 1832-98, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was the British writer who created Alice in <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland </i>and T<i>hrough the Looking-Glass</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The following is an extract from </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Through the Looking-Glass</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 2</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
"I should see the garden far better," said Alice to herself, "if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it - at least, no, it doesn't do that - "' (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), "but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, THIS turn goes to the hill, I suppose - no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"It's no use talking about it," Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. "I'm NOT going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again - back into the old room - and there'd be an end of all my adventures!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just saying, "I really SHALL do it this time" when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the door.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Oh, it's too bad!" she cried. "I never saw such a house for getting in the way! Never!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"O Tiger-lily," said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, "I WISH you could talk!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"We CAN talk," said the Tiger-lily: "when there's anybody worth talking to."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice - almost in a whisper. "And can ALL the flowers talk?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"As well as YOU can," said the Tiger-lily. "And a great deal louder."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"It isn't manners for us to begin, you know," said the Rose, "and I really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself, Her face has got SOME sense in it, though it's not a clever one! Still, you're the right colour, and that goes a long way."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I don't care about the colour," the Tiger-lily remarked. "If only her petals curled up a little more, she'd be all right."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. "Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"There's the tree in the middle," said the Rose: "what else is it good for?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"But what could it do, if any danger came?" Alice asked.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"It says "Bough-wough!" cried a Daisy: "that's why its branches are called boughs!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Didn't you know THAT?" cried another Daisy, and here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices. "Silence, every one of you!" cried the Tiger- lily, waving itself passionately from side to side, and trembling with excitement. "They know I can't get at them!" it panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, "or they wouldn't dare to do it!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Never mind!" Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered, "If you don't hold your tongues, I'll pick you!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned white.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"That's right!" said the Tiger-lily. "The daisies are worst of all. When one speaks, they all begin together, and it's enough to make one wither to hear the way they go on!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"How is it you can all talk so nicely?" Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. "I've been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Put your hand down, and feel the ground," said the Tiger-lily. "Then you'll know why."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Alice did so. "It's very hard," she said, "but I don't see what that has to do with it."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"In most gardens," the Tiger-lily said, "they make the beds too soft - so that the flowers are always asleep."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it. "I never thought of that before!" she said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"It's MY opinion that you never think AT ALL," the Rose said in a rather severe tone.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I never saw anybody that looked stupider," a Violet said, so suddenly, that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken before.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Hold YOUR tongue!" cried the Tiger-lily. "As if YOU ever saw anybody! You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know no more what's going on in the world, than if you were a bud!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Are there any more people in the garden besides me?" Alice said, not choosing to notice the Rose's last remark.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like you," said the Rose. "I wonder how you do it" ("You're always wondering," said the Tiger-lily), "but she's more bushy than you are."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Is she like me?" Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, "There's another little girl in the garden, somewhere!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Well, she has the same awkward shape as you," the Rose said, "but she's redder - and her petals are shorter, I think."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia," the Tiger-lily interrupted: "not tumbled about anyhow, like yours."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"But that's not YOUR fault," the Rose added kindly: "you're beginning to fade, you know - and then one can't help one's petals getting a little untidy."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked "Does she ever come out here?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I daresay you'll see her soon," said the Rose. "She's one of the thorny kind."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Where does she wear the thorns?" Alice asked with some curiosity.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Why all round her head, of course," the Rose replied. "I was wondering YOU hadn't got some too. I thought it was the regular rule."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"She's coming!" cried the Larkspur. "I hear her footstep, thump, thump, thump, along the gravel-walk!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz9V5a1H8Ya3ahG73XjX1CBeIPKN_G3vKRUcrAg4PdpxeBm3R_INO8m6T7UzVFZKocgFGoYCsz6jlJZROpG7mW2iTrM-pzeVMCtqwCwWUNXwn0c-v-SdA6sOZ4hJJqUkKL4yDwgjItJaA/s1600/Alice_Liddell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz9V5a1H8Ya3ahG73XjX1CBeIPKN_G3vKRUcrAg4PdpxeBm3R_INO8m6T7UzVFZKocgFGoYCsz6jlJZROpG7mW2iTrM-pzeVMCtqwCwWUNXwn0c-v-SdA6sOZ4hJJqUkKL4yDwgjItJaA/s1600/Alice_Liddell.jpg" height="200" width="160" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<br />
This is the original "Alice" - Alice Liddell whose father was the Dean of Christ Church in Oxford. Lewis Carroll had been in the habit of telling stories to Alice and two of her friends, and so the crazy worlds of Wonderland and the Looking Glass were born.<br />
<br />
The photograph was taken in 1860</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;">Lewis Carroll wrote this poem, an acrostic in which the first letter of each line spells out Alice's name</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;">A BOAT BENEATH A SUNNY SKY</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A boat beneath a sunny sky,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Lingering onward dreamily</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In an evening of July -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Children three that nestle near,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Eager eye and willing ear,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Pleased a simple tale to hear -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Long has paled that sunny sky:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Echoes fade and memories die.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Autumn frosts have slain July.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Alice moving under skies</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Never seen by waking eyes.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Children yet, the tale to hear,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Eager eye and willing ear,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Lovingly shall nestle near.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In a Wonderland they lie,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dreaming as the days go by,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dreaming as the summers die:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Ever drifting down the stream -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Lingering in the golden gleam -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Life, what is it but a dream?</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-90373182785315766082014-04-19T08:30:00.000+01:002014-04-19T21:35:20.166+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijem5os-ojs4mnKhK-Hk0xqi3wBaA0KJOdAGWjC9o9c6d6SeDV9LegrLidK8nlcW-1JzamaCdBe3RDaWdLmye1XzyuX-oG0j51spI5Hu1yoMSwwsrNZyGnGci6QfvLwP60g9ByXfmfKvo/s1600/220px-Rdblackmore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijem5os-ojs4mnKhK-Hk0xqi3wBaA0KJOdAGWjC9o9c6d6SeDV9LegrLidK8nlcW-1JzamaCdBe3RDaWdLmye1XzyuX-oG0j51spI5Hu1yoMSwwsrNZyGnGci6QfvLwP60g9ByXfmfKvo/s1600/220px-Rdblackmore.jpg" height="200" width="161" /></a></div>
<br />
R.D. (Richard Doddridge) BLACKMORE 1825-1900<br />
was the famous British novelist who is remembered as a pioneer of the romantic fiction movement. It is claimed that he did for Devon what Sir Walter Scott did for the Highlands and Thomas Hardy did for Wessex.<br />
<br />
<i>Lorna Doone </i>(1869) is a romance set in the late 17th century around the East Lyn Valley of Exmoor. The following excerpt is from Chapter 42.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
THE GREAT WINTER</div>
<br />
It must have snowed most wonderfully to have made that depth of covering in about eight hours. For one of Master Stickles' men, who had been out all the night, said that no snow began to fall until nearly midnight. And here it was, blocking up the doors, stopping the ways, and the water courses, and making it very much worse to walk than in a saw-pit newly used. However, we trudged along in a line; I first, and the other men after me; trying to keep my track, but finding legs and strength not up to it. Most of all, John Fry was groaning; certain that his time was come, and sending messages to his wife, and blessings to his children. For all this time it was snowing harder than it ever had snowed before, so far as a man might guess at it; and the leaden depth of the sky came down, like a mine turned upside down on us. Not that the flakes were so very large; for I have seen much larger flakes in a shower of March, while sowing peas; but that there was no room between them, neither any relaxing, nor any change of direction.<br />
<br />
Watch, like a good and faithful dog, followed us very cheerfully, leaping out of the depth, which took him over his back and ears already, even in the level places; while in the drifts he might have sunk to any distance out of sight, and never found his way up again. However, we helped him now and then, especially through the gaps and gateways; and so after a deal of floundering, some laughter, and a little swearing, we came all safe to the lower meadow, where most of our flock was hurdled.<br />
<br />
But behold, there was no flock at all! None, I mean, to be seen anywhere; only at one corner of the field, by the eastern end, where the snow drove in, a great white billow, as high as a barn, and as broad as a house. This great drift was rolling and curling beneath the violent blast, tufting and combing with rustling swirls, and carved (as in patterns of cornice) where the grooving chisel of the wind swept round. Ever and again the tempest snatched little whiffs from the channelled edges, twirled them round and made them dance over the chime of the monster pile, then let them lie like herring-bones, or the seams of sand where the tide has been. And all the while from the smothering sky, more and more fiercely at every blast, came the pelting, pitiless arrows, winged with murky white, and pointed with the barbs of frost.<br />
<br />
But although for people who had no sheep, the sight was a very fine one (so far at least as the weather permitted any sight at all); yet for us, with our flock beneath it, this great mount had but little charm. Watch began to scratch at once, and to howl along the sides of it; he knew that his charge was buried there, and his business taken from him. But we four men set to in earnest, digging with all our might and main, shovelling away at the great white pile, and fetching it into the meadow. Each man made for himself a cave, scooping at the soft, cold flux, which slid upon him at every stroke, and throwing it out behind him, in piles of castled fancy. At last we drove our tunnels in (for we worked indeed for the lives of us), and all converging towards the middle, held our tools and listened.<br />
<br />
The other men heard nothing at all; or declared that they heard nothing, being anxious now to abandon the matter, because of the chill in their feet and knees. But I said, "Go, if you choose all of you. I will work it out by myself, you pie-crusts," and upon that they gripped their shovels, being more or less of Englishmen; and the least drop of English blood is worth the best of any other when it comes to lasting out.<br />
<br />
But before we began again, I laid my head well into the chamber; and there I hears a faint "ma-a-ah," coming through some ells of snow, like a plaintive, buried hope, or a last appeal. I shouted aloud to cheer him up, for I knew what sheep it was, to wit, the most valiant of all the wethers, who had met me when I came home from London, and been so glad to see me. And then we all fell to again; and very soon we hauled him out. Watch took charge of him at once, with an air of the noblest patronage, lying on his frozen fleece, and licking all his face and feet, to restore his warmth to him. Then fighting Tom jumped up at once, and made a little butt at Watch, as if nothing had ever ailed him, and then set off to a shallow place, and looked for something to nibble at.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-<br />
<br />
THE AGEING HOUSE<br />
<i>Thomas Hardy</i><br />
<br />
When the walls were red<br />
That now are seen<br />
To be overspread<br />
With a mouldy green,<br />
A fresh fair head<br />
Would often lean<br />
From the sunny casement<br />
And scan the scene,<br />
While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.<br />
<br />
But storms have raged<br />
Those walls about,<br />
And the head has aged<br />
That once looked out;<br />
And zest is suaged<br />
And trust is doubt,<br />
And slow effacement<br />
Is rife throughout,<br />
While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!<br />
<br />
-o=0=o-<br />
<br />
Please note - from next Saturday The Thomas Hardy Poem will be included on THE POETRY PATH blog, instead of THE READING ROOM<br />
<br />
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-18878032605125443192014-04-12T08:30:00.000+01:002014-04-12T08:30:00.761+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiScEzqn_kDCOVI6cgF49NJ4zHv-AK_-bJxdp4qsIi7a-2LPZGsAGeFq3FgcJaa1sDTGtC0R3p6lj0G6dRy595-KvM_3cZUuO0f2HTNKeq-7y1PBKI_0-whXNOi-bKO5HLDV3AL3jmhfyY/s1600/220px-Oliver_Goldsmith_sephia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiScEzqn_kDCOVI6cgF49NJ4zHv-AK_-bJxdp4qsIi7a-2LPZGsAGeFq3FgcJaa1sDTGtC0R3p6lj0G6dRy595-KvM_3cZUuO0f2HTNKeq-7y1PBKI_0-whXNOi-bKO5HLDV3AL3jmhfyY/s1600/220px-Oliver_Goldsmith_sephia.jpg" height="200" width="143" /></a></div>
<br />
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 1730-74<br />
<br />
Irish novelist, playwright and poet, author of <i>The Vicar of Wakefield, The Deserted Village </i>and <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
This is an edited extract from </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
SIGHTS AND MONSTERS</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Though the frequent invitations I receive from men of distinction here might excite the vanity of some, I am quite mortified, however, when I consider the motives that inspire their civility. I am sent for, not to be treated as a friend, but to satisfy curiosity; not to be entertained so much as wondered at; the same earnestness which excites them to see a Chinese, would have made them equally proud of a visit from the rhinoceros.<br />
<br />
From the highest to the lowest, this people seem fond of sights and monsters. I am told of a person here who gets a very comfortable livelihood by making wonders, and then selling or showing them to the people for money; no matter how insignificant they were in the beginning, by locking them up close, and showing for money, they soon became prodigies! His first essay in this way was to exhibit himself as a wax-work figure behind a glass door at a puppet show. Thus, keeping the spectators at a proper distance and having his head adorned with a copper crown, he looked extremely natural, and very like the life itself. He continued this exhibition with success, till an involuntary fit of sneezing brought him to life before all the spectators, and consequently rendered him for that time as entirely useless as the peaceable inhabitant of a catacomb.<br />
<br />
Determined to act the statue no more, he next levied contributions under the figure of an Indian king; and by painting his face, and counterfeiting the savage howl, he frighted several ladies and children with amazing success: in this manner, therefore, he might have lived very comfortably, had he not been arrested for a debt that was contracted when he was the figure in wax-work: thus his face underwent an involuntary ablution, and he found himself reduced to his primitive complexion and indigence.<br />
<br />
After some time, being freed from jail, he was now grown wiser, and instead of making himself a wonder, was resolved only to make wonders. He learned the art of pasting up of mummies; was never at a loss for an artificial lusus naturae; nay, it has been reported, that he has sold seven petrified lobsters of his own manufacture to a noted collector of rarities.<br />
<br />
His last wonder was nothing more than a halter, yet by this halter he gained more than by all his former exhibitions. The people, it seems, had got in their heads, that a certain noble criminal was to be hanged with a silken rope. Now there was nothing they so much wished to see as this very rope; and he was resolved to gratify their curiosity: he therefore got one made, not only of silk, but to render it more striking, several threads of gold were intermixed. The people paid their money only to see silk, but were, highly satisfied when they found it was mixed with gold into the bargain. It is scarcely necessary to mention, that the projector sold his silken rope as soon as the criminal was known to be hanged in hempen materials.<br />
<br />
By their fondness of sights, one would be apt to imagine, that instead of desiring to see things as they should be, they are rather solicitous of seeing them as they ought not to be. A cat with four legs is disregarded, though never so useful; but, if it has but two, and is consequently incapable of catching mice, it is reckoned inestimable. A man, though in his person faultless, might starve; but if stuck over with hideous warts like a porcupine, his fortune is made for ever, and he may show himself with impunity and applause.<br />
<br />
A good woman in my neighbourhood, who was bred a habit-maker, though she handled her needle tolerably well, could scarcely get employment. But being obliged, by an accident, to have both her hands cut off from the elbows, what would in another country have been her ruin, made her fortune here: she was now thought more fit for her trade than before; business flowed in apace, and all people paid for seeing the mantua-maker who wrought without hands.<br />
<br />
A gentleman showing me his collection of pictures, stopped at one with peculiar admiration: there, cries he, is an inestimable piece. I gazed at the picture for some time, but could see none of those graces with which he seemed enraptured: it appeared to me the most paltry piece of the whole collection: I therefore demanded where those beauties lay, of which I was yet insensible. Sir, cries he, the merit does not consist in the piece, but in the manner in which it was done. The painter drew the whole with his foot, and held the pencil between his toes.<br />
<br />
I have frequently regretted that none of our Eastern posture-masters, or showmen, have ventured to England. Of all the wonders of the East, the most useful, and I should fancy the most pleasing, would be the looking-glass of Lao, which reflects the mind as well as the body. It is said, that the Emperor Chusi used to make his ladies dress their heads and their hearts in one of these glasses every morning; while the lady was at her toilet, he would frequently look over her shoulder; and it is recorded that not one was found whose mind was not even more beautiful than her person.<br />
<br />
I make no doubt but a glass in this country would have the very same effect. The English ladies would undoubtedly cut very pretty figures in so faithful a monitor. There, should we happen to peep over a lady’s shoulder while dressing, we might be able to see neither gaming nor ill-nature; neither pride, debauchery, nor a love of gadding. We should find her, if any sensible defect appeared in the mind, more careful in rectifying it, than plastering up the irreparable decays of the person; nay, I am even apt to fancy, that ladies would find more real pleasure in this utensil in private, than in any other bauble imported from China, though ever so expensive or amusing.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
BEENY CLIFF</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thomas Hardy</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by? </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The woman now is-elsewhere-whom the ambling pony bore, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-46108986880059227912014-04-05T08:30:00.000+01:002014-04-05T08:30:01.431+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD0gVcJ30thlQoRJ76PFOtWcopNPE2JPnIwMq8GkG8YxXy8aji9Tma6xPJ9bWJlh5pjY1o1kiclJoWLj12GG8AyVs0ATIy6z63nRWIB-nEY1DhCA0DsqzVlr-5ZuVN9nune18uzq6p52Y/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD0gVcJ30thlQoRJ76PFOtWcopNPE2JPnIwMq8GkG8YxXy8aji9Tma6xPJ9bWJlh5pjY1o1kiclJoWLj12GG8AyVs0ATIy6z63nRWIB-nEY1DhCA0DsqzVlr-5ZuVN9nune18uzq6p52Y/s1600/download.jpg" height="200" width="135" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
A.A. MILNE 1882-1996<br />
<br />
The British author who wrote the famous Winnie the Pooh books<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
This is an extract from his essay</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
THE CHARM OF GOLF</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
When he reads of the notable doings of famous golfers, the eighteen-handicap man has no envy in his heart. For by this time he has discovered the great secret of golf. Before he began to play he wondered wherein lay the fascination of it; now he knows. Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.<br />
<br />
Consider what it is to be bad at cricket. You have bought a new bat, perfect in balance; a new pair of pads, white as driven snow; gloves of the very latest design. Do they let you use them? No. After one ball, in the negotiation of which neither your bat, nor your pads, nor your gloves came into play, they send you back into the pavilion to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to fatuous stories of some old gentleman who knew Fuller Pilch. And when your side takes the field, where are you? Probably at long leg both ends, exposed to the public gaze as the worst fieldsman in London. How devastating are your emotions. Remorse, anger, mortification, fill your heart; above all, envy—envy of the lucky immortals who disport themselves on the green level of Lord’s.<br />
<br />
Consider what it is to be bad at lawn tennis. True, you are allowed to hold on to your new racket all through the game, but how often are you allowed to employ it usefully? How often does your partner cry “Mine!” and bundle you out of the way? Is there pleasure in playing football badly? You may spend the full eighty minutes in your new boots, but your relations with the ball will be distant. They do not give you a ball to yourself at football.<br />
<br />
But how different a game is golf. At golf it is the bad player who gets the most strokes. However good his opponent, the bad player has the right to play out each hole to the end; he will get more than his share of the game. He need have no fears that his new driver will not be employed. He will have as many swings with it as the scratch man; more, if he misses the ball altogether upon one or two tees. If he buys a new niblick he is certain to get fun out of it on the very first day.<br />
<br />
And, above all, there is this to be said for golfing mediocrity—the bad player can make the strokes of the good player. The poor cricketer has perhaps never made fifty in his life; as soon as he stands at the wickets he knows that he is not going to make fifty today. But the eighteen-handicap man has some time or other played every hole on the course to perfection. He has driven a ball 250 yards; he has made superb approaches; he has run down the long putt. Any of these things may suddenly happen to him again. And therefore it is not his fate to have to sit in the club smoking-room after his second round and listen to the wonderful deeds of others. He can join in too. He can say with perfect truth, “I once carried the ditch at the fourth with my second,” or “I remember when I drove into the bunker guarding the eighth green,” or even “I did a three at the eleventh this afternoon”—bogey being five. But if the bad cricketer says, “I remember when I took a century in forty minutes off Lockwood and Richardson,” he is nothing but a liar.<br />
<br />
For these and other reasons golf is the best game in the world for the bad player. And sometimes I am tempted to go further and say that it is a better game for the bad player than for the good player. The joy of driving a ball straight after a week of slicing, the joy of putting a mashie shot dead, the joy of even a moderate stroke with a brassie; best of all, the joy of the perfect cleek shot—these things the good player will never know. Every stroke we bad players make we make in hope. It is never so bad but it might have been worse; it is never so bad but we are confident of doing better next time. And if the next stroke is good, what happiness fills our soul. How eagerly we tell ourselves that in a little while all our strokes will be as good.<br />
<br />
And so, perfectly happy in our present badness and perfectly confident of our future goodness, we long-handicap men remain. Perhaps it would be pleasanter to be a little more certain of getting the ball safely off the first tee; perhaps at the fourteenth hole, where there is a right of way and the public encroach, we should like to feel that we have done with topping; perhaps—<br />
<br />
Well, perhaps we might get our handicap down to fifteen this summer. But no lower; certainly no lower.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
FETCHING HER</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thomas Hardy</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
An hour before the dawn,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My friend,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Your breakfast-fire anon,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And outing into the dark and damp</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
You saddled, and set on.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Thuswise, before the day,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My friend,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
You sought her on her surfy shore,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To fetch her thence away</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Unto your own new-builded door</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For a staunch lifelong stay.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
You said: "It seems to be,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My friend,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That I were bringing to my place</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The pure brine breeze, the sea,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The mews - all her old sky and space,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In bringing her with me!"</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
- But time is prompt to expugn,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My friend,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Such magic-minted conjurings:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The brought breeze fainted soon,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And then the sense of seamews' wings,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the shore's sibilant tune.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So, it had been more due,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My friend,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
From the craggy nook it knew,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And set it in an alien bower;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But left it where it grew!</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-76026713191448620202014-03-29T08:30:00.000+00:002014-03-29T08:30:01.018+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmfc_LugLmwuy_PHAZZLO4107yE0yCx44KGDPahyphenhyphenFUbxaw22ohx3BNbls_As9e6yboaiSJt8TyCVy92L77CNwwAGgOs0pJT2QJ6E7o_X0cR4PGA088Ynz6JET0k2Smm_Ms76k3H0T12U/s1600/220px-Dickens_Gurney_head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmfc_LugLmwuy_PHAZZLO4107yE0yCx44KGDPahyphenhyphenFUbxaw22ohx3BNbls_As9e6yboaiSJt8TyCVy92L77CNwwAGgOs0pJT2QJ6E7o_X0cR4PGA088Ynz6JET0k2Smm_Ms76k3H0T12U/s1600/220px-Dickens_Gurney_head.jpg" height="200" width="136" /></a></div>
<br />
CHARLES DICKENS 1812-70 <br />
<br />
The British writer generally considered the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
In this extract from</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
DAVID COPPERFIELD</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
David entertains Mr. and Mrs. Micawber</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together. Mr. Micawber with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his eye-glass; Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel; Traddles carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were all delighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micawber to my dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it was prepared for her, she was in such raptures, that she called Mr. Micawber to come in and look.<br />
<br />
'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'this is luxurious. This is a way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her faith at the Hymeneal altar.'<br />
<br />
'He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, archly. 'He cannot answer for others.'<br />
<br />
'My dear,' returned Mr. Micawber with sudden seriousness, 'I have no desire to answer for others. I am too well aware that when, in the inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is possible you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a protracted struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a complicated nature. I understand your allusion, my love. I regret it, but I can bear it.'<br />
<br />
'Micawber!' exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. 'Have I deserved this! I, who never have deserted you; who never WILL desert you, Micawber!' 'My love,' said Mr. Micawber, much affected, 'you will forgive, and our old and tried friend Copperfield will, I am sure, forgive, the momentary laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a recent collision with the Minion of Power - in other words, with a ribald Turncock attached to the water-works - and will pity, not condemn, its excesses.'<br />
<br />
Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed my hand; leaving me to infer from this broken allusion that his domestic supply of water had been cut off that afternoon, in consequence of default in the payment of the company's rates.<br />
<br />
To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr. Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon.<br />
<br />
I suppose - I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose - that Mrs. Crupp, after frying the soles, was taken ill. Because we broke down at that point. The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without: besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over it, as if it had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen fireplace. But we were not in condition to judge of this fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the 'young gal' had dropped it all upon the stairs - where it remained, by the by, in a long train, until it was worn out. The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath. In short, the banquet was such a failure.<br />
<br />
'My dear friend Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the - a - I would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of remarking that there are few comestibles better, in their way, than a Devil, and that I believe, with a little division of labour, we could accomplish a good one if the young person in attendance could produce a gridiron, I would put it to you, that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.'<br />
<br />
There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber's idea into effect. The division of labour to which he had referred was this: - Traddles cut the mutton into slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr. Micawber's direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan.<br />
<br />
When we had slices enough done to begin upon, we fell-to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the wrist, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then preparing.<br />
<br />
What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a tempting noise and savour, we reduced the leg of mutton to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the feast more, if they had sold a bed to provide it. Traddles laughed as heartily, almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all did, all at once; and I dare say there was never a greater success.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
JOYS OF MEMORY</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thomas Hardy</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When the spring comes round, and a certain day</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And says, Remember,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I begin again, as if it were new,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A day of like date I once lived through,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Whiling it hour by hour away;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So shall I do till my December,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When spring comes round.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I take my holiday then and my rest</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Away from the dun life here about me,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Old hours re-greeting</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With the quiet sense that bring they must</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And in the numbness my heartsome zest</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For things that were, be past repeating</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When spring comes round.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567199053571393090.post-40154383010601026132014-03-27T20:24:00.000+00:002014-03-29T22:43:08.437+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgasHa63RxW_EL4UNReSBUX7ZqHSBdl7qiHWO_BomWmhcsjBg63NU55_K7VF8U5Z49ofXCrifBT0fJXRVlILJwUiOMtH7B5Ni7SxFDfwf2cp-t4y1fgXdPHQcMC6ykwZlZFipExEYNWrRs/s1600/Jerome_K._Jerome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgasHa63RxW_EL4UNReSBUX7ZqHSBdl7qiHWO_BomWmhcsjBg63NU55_K7VF8U5Z49ofXCrifBT0fJXRVlILJwUiOMtH7B5Ni7SxFDfwf2cp-t4y1fgXdPHQcMC6ykwZlZFipExEYNWrRs/s1600/Jerome_K._Jerome.jpg" height="200" width="141" /></a></div>
<br />
JEROME K. JEROME 1859-1927 was an British writer and humorist who is especially remembered for Three men in a Boat, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Three men on the Bummel.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
This is an extract from his essay</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
ON BEING IDLE</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill - I never could see myself that much was the matter with me, except that I had a beastly cold. But I suppose it was something very serious, for the doctor said that I ought to have come to him a month before, and that if it (whatever it was) had gone on for another week he would not have answered for the consequences.<br />
<br />
It is an extraordinary thing, but I never knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired that another day’s delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama - he always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It is Providence, that is what it is.<br />
<br />
Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton for a month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while that I was there. “Rest is what you require,” said the doctor, “perfect rest.”<br />
<br />
It seemed a delightful prospect. “This man evidently understands my complaint,” said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time - a four weeks’ dolce far niente with a dash of illness in it. Not too much illness, but just illness enough - just sufficient to give it the flavour of suffering and make it poetical.<br />
<br />
I should get up late, sip chocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. I should lie out in the garden in a hammock and read sentimental novels with a melancholy ending, until the books should fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds floating like white-sailed ships across its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds and the low rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming too weak to go out of doors, I should sit propped up with pillows at the open window of the ground-floor front, and look wasted and interesting, so that all the pretty girls would sigh as they passed by.<br />
<br />
And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade to drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then, and was rather taken with the idea. “Drinking the waters” sounded fashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them. But, ugh! after the first three or four mornings!<br />
<br />
I drank them neat for six consecutive days, and they nearly killed me; but after then I adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass of brandy and water immediately on the top of them, and found much relief thereby. I have been informed since, by various eminent medical gentlemen, that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted the effects of the chalybeate properties contained in the water. I am glad I was lucky enough to hit upon the right thing.<br />
<br />
But “drinking the waters” was only a small portion of the torture I experienced during that memorable month - a month which was, without exception, the most miserable I have ever spent. During the best part of it I religiously followed the doctor’s mandate and did nothing whatever, except moon about the house and garden and go out for two hours a day in a Bath chair.<br />
<br />
That did break the monotony to a certain extent. There is more excitement about Bath-chairing - especially if you are not used to the exhilarating exercise - than might appear to the casual observer. A sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamised road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himself ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to speculate upon his chances, supposing - as seems extremely probable - that the weak-kneed controller of his destiny should let go.<br />
<br />
But even this diversion failed to enliven after awhile, and the ennui became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way under it. It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax it too far. So somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early, had a good breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, at the foot of the Kinder Scout - a pleasant, busy little town, reached through a lovely valley, and with two sweetly pretty women in it.<br />
<br />
At least they were sweetly pretty then; one passed me on the bridge and, I think, smiled; and the other was standing at an open door, making an unremunerative investment of kisses upon a red-faced baby. But it is years ago, and I dare say they have both grown stout and snappish since that time.<br />
<br />
Having taken the plunge, I went further and further into dissipation, going out for a long walk every morning and listening to the band in the pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowly notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came and I was being whirled away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London with its stern work and life.<br />
<br />
I looked out of the carriage as we rushed through Hendon in the evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty city seemed to warm my heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled out of St. Pancras’ station, the old familiar roar that came swelling up around me sounded the sweetest music I had heard for many a long day.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
UNREALISED</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thomas Hardy</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Down comes the winter rain -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Spoils my hat and bow -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Runs into the poll of me;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But mother won't know.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
We've been out and caught a cold,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Knee-deep in snow;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Such a lucky thing it is</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That mother won't know!</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Rosy lost herself last night -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Couldn't tell where to go.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Yes - it rather frightened her,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But mother didn't know.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Somebody made Willy drunk</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
At the Christmas show:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
O 'twas fun! It's well for him</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That mother won't know!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Howsoever wild we are,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Late at school or slow,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Mother won't be cross with us,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Mother won't know.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
How we cried the day she died!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Neighbours whispering low . . .</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But we now do what we will -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Mother won't know.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
THE READING ROOM IS UPDATED EVERY SATURDAY</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<br />
<br />
Saturday, March 15, 2014<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWl_baURYhGrNjgI9qYlT_keuGEoeLIZpBrxYNqcQl5B9EieY7jxIi9lnmAvgwcoEVur-qEOe_GAoeGpP4qZlLP7ike4T5oGAh9XxpwbSasopuXp2yiBbTZOYHUZRwVnHBj8HZvjktfsk/s1600/220px-A_a_milne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWl_baURYhGrNjgI9qYlT_keuGEoeLIZpBrxYNqcQl5B9EieY7jxIi9lnmAvgwcoEVur-qEOe_GAoeGpP4qZlLP7ike4T5oGAh9XxpwbSasopuXp2yiBbTZOYHUZRwVnHBj8HZvjktfsk/s1600/220px-A_a_milne.jpg" height="200" width="161" /></a></div>
<br />
Alan Alexander Milne (A.A. MILNE) 1882-1956 was an English author and playwright, best known for his children's books about Winnie the Pooh.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
This is one of his short essays -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
ON GOING IN TO A HOUSE</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
published in 1920</div>
<br />
<br />
It is nineteen years since I lived in a house; nineteen years since I went upstairs to bed and came downstairs to breakfast. Of course I have done these things in other people’s houses from time to time, but what we do in other people’s houses does not count. We are holiday-making then. We play cricket and golf and croquet, and run up and down stairs, and amuse ourselves in a hundred different ways, but all this is no fixed part of our life.<br />
<br />
Now, however, for the first time for nineteen years, I am actually living in a house. I have (imagine my excitement) a staircase of my own.<br />
<br />
Flats may be convenient (I thought so myself when I lived in one some days ago), but they have their disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that you are never in complete possession of the flat. You may think that the drawing-room floor (to take a case) is your very own, but it isn’t; you share it with a man below who uses it as a ceiling. If you want to dance a step-dance, you have to consider his plaster.<br />
<br />
I was always ready enough to accommodate myself in this matter to his prejudices, but I could not put up with his old-fashioned ideas about bathroom ceilings. It is very cramping to one’s style in the bath to reflect that the slightest splash may call attention to itself on the ceiling of the gentleman below. This is to share a bathroom with a stranger - an intolerable position for a proud man. Today I have a bathroom of my own for the first time in my life.<br />
<br />
I can see already that living in a house is going to be extraordinarily healthy both for mind and body. At present I go upstairs to my bedroom (and downstairs again) about once in every half-hour; not simply from pride of ownership, to make sure that the bedroom is still there, and that the staircase is continuing to perform its functions, but in order to fetch something, a letter or a key, which as likely as not I have forgotten about again as soon as I have climbed to the top of the house. No such exercise as this was possible in a flat, and even after two or three days I feel the better for it.<br />
<br />
But obviously I cannot go on like this, if I am to have leisure for anything else. With practice I shall so train my mind that, when I leave my bedroom in the morning, I leave it with everything that I can possibly require until nightfall. This, I imagine, will not happen for some years yet; meanwhile physical training has precedence.<br />
<br />
Getting up to breakfast means something different now; it means coming down to breakfast. To come down to breakfast brings one immediately in contact with the morning. The world flows past the window, that small and (as it seems to me) particularly select portion of the world which finds itself in our quiet street; I can see it as I drink my tea.<br />
<br />
When I lived in a flat (days and days ago) anything might have happened to London, and I should never have known it until the afternoon. Everybody else could have perished in the night, and I should settle down as complacently as ever to my essay on making the world safe for democracy. Not so now. As soon as I have reached the bottom of my delightful staircase I am one with the outside world.<br />
<br />
Also one with the weather, which is rather convenient. On the third floor it is almost impossible to know what sort of weather they are having in London. A day which looks cold from a third- floor window may be very sultry down below, but by that time one is committed to an overcoat. How much better to live in a house, and to step from one’s front door and inhale a sample of whatever day the gods have sent. Then one can step back again and dress accordingly.<br />
<br />
But the best of a house is that it has an outside personality as well as an inside one. Nobody, not even himself, could admire a man’s flat from the street; nobody could look up and say, “What very delightful people must live behind those third-floor windows.”<br />
<br />
Here it is different. Any of you may find himself some day in our quiet street, and stop a moment to look at our house; at the blue door with its jolly knocker, at the little trees in their blue tubs standing within a ring of blue posts linked by chains, at the bright-coloured curtains. You may not like it, but we shall be watching you from one of the windows, and telling each other that you do.<br />
<br />
In any case, we have the pleasure of looking at it ourselves, and feeling that we are contributing something to London, whether for better or for worse. It is a solemn thought that I have got this house for (apparently) eighty-seven years. One never knows, and it may be that by the end of that time I shall be meditating an article on the advantages of living in a flat. A flat, I shall say, is so convenient.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A Memory of Christiana C.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thomas Hardy</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Where Blackmoor was, the road that led</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To Bath, she could not show,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Nor point the sky that overspread</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Towns ten miles off or so.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But that Calcutta stood this way,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Cape Horn there figured fell,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That here was Boston, here Bombay,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
She could declare full well.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Less known to her the track athwart</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Froom Mead or Yell'ham Wood</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Than how to make some Austral port</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In seas of surly mood.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
She saw the glint of Guinea's shore</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Behind the plum-tree nigh,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Heard old unruly Biscay's roar</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In the weir's purl hard by . . .</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"My son's a sailor, and he knows</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
All seas and many lands,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And when he's home he points and shows</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Each country where it stands.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"He's now just there - by Gib's high rock -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And when he gets, you see,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To Portsmouth here, behind the clock,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Then he'll come back to me!"</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<br />
<br />
Saturday, March 8, 2014<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLkjJfVWIaEqtIkoavK6v2Spsd5QWKi9r7uYUfNXdiTiDmMEN4f_zkZ4nQOPGC9VBGnk_xchR4qh91VZ6y85DwsAs-AkCqhhDrTgGDXVaytE2mYxSC6UBke6C7jo7jglqSFTheRgtlmiM/s1600/220px-Gilbert_Chesterton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLkjJfVWIaEqtIkoavK6v2Spsd5QWKi9r7uYUfNXdiTiDmMEN4f_zkZ4nQOPGC9VBGnk_xchR4qh91VZ6y85DwsAs-AkCqhhDrTgGDXVaytE2mYxSC6UBke6C7jo7jglqSFTheRgtlmiM/s1600/220px-Gilbert_Chesterton.jpg" height="200" width="162" /></a></div>
<br />
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (G.K. CHESTERTON) 1874-1936 was an English writer, poet, journalist and lay theologian, the creator of the fictional priest-detective Father Brown.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The following is an extract from his essay -</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
ON LYING IN BED</div>
<br />
<br />
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom.<br />
<br />
Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the colour in great washes, it might drip down again on one’s face in floods of rich and mingled colour like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to.<br />
<br />
But for the beautiful experiment of lying in bed I might never have discovered it. Nowhere did I find a really clear space for sketching until this occasion when I prolonged beyond the proper limit the process of lying on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom.<br />
<br />
But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged - never mind by whom; and even my minor proposal to put the other end of the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it to charcoal has not been conceded.<br />
<br />
Yet I am certain that it was from persons in my position that all the original inspiration came for covering the ceilings of palaces and cathedrals with a riot of fallen angels or victorious gods. I am sure that it was only because Michaelangelo was engaged in the ancient and honourable occupation of lying in bed that he ever realized how the roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made into an awful imitation of a divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.<br />
<br />
The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy. Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality.<br />
<br />
If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Especially this is so in matters of hygiene; notably such matters as lying in bed. Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to be regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up early in the morning.<br />
<br />
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals.<br />
<br />
But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes at the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.<br />
<br />
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
JULIE-JANE</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thomas Hardy</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Sing; how 'a would sing!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
How 'a would raise the tune</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When we rode in the wagon from harvesting</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
By the light o' the moon!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dance; how 'a would dance!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
If a fiddlestring did but sound</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And go round and round.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Laugh; how 'a would laugh!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Her peony lips would part</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
As if none such a place for a lover to quaff</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
At the deeps of a heart.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Julie, O girl of joy,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Soon, soon that lover he came.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Ah, yes; and gave thee a baby-boy,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But never his name . . .</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
- Tolling for her, as you guess;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the baby too . . . 'Tis well.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
You knew her in maidhood likewise? - Yes,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That's her burial bell.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"I suppose," with a laugh, she said,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"I should blush that I'm not a wife;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But how can it matter, so soon to be dead,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
What one does in life!"</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
When we sat making the mourning</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
By her death-bed side, said she,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Dears, how can you keep from your lovers, adorning</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In honour of me!"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Bubbling and brightsome eyed!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But now - O never again.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
She chose her bearers before she died</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
From her fancy-men.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<br />
Saturday, March 1, 2014<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrHy_gf6QzYjFh3MDGc4OGyNpnDHCIl7rrkc10p6yWX8IQlRDQIUIZtjp4VU_JZ_D3oimbka81kTs8FB6lK9LnGFE_mMTXqHJJQTom8qWZTnvzIuim8MTZG3Mcc2TuwzVUEDuAwNFlrXs/s1600/far.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrHy_gf6QzYjFh3MDGc4OGyNpnDHCIl7rrkc10p6yWX8IQlRDQIUIZtjp4VU_JZ_D3oimbka81kTs8FB6lK9LnGFE_mMTXqHJJQTom8qWZTnvzIuim8MTZG3Mcc2TuwzVUEDuAwNFlrXs/s1600/far.jpg" height="200" width="172" /></a></div>
SUI-SIN FAR , the Cantonese word for narcissus flower, was the pen name of British-born Edith Maude Eaton 1865-1914. In the early 1870s her family moved to the USA and then to Canada.<br />
As a young girl she wrote articles about the Chinese people and those were published by newspapers in Montreal.<br />
After moving back to the USA she became known for her short stories and newspaper articles; the subject of many of them concerned the problems faced by Chinese people living in a country which had introduced legislation banning Chinese immigration.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
This is an extract from</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
which was published in 1909</div>
<br />
When I look back over the years I see myself, a little child of scarcely four years of age, walking in front of my nurse, in a green English lane, and listening to her tell another of her kind that my mother is Chinese.<br />
<br />
“Oh Lord!” exclaims the informed. She turns around and scans me curiously from head to foot. Then the two women whisper together.<br />
<br />
Though the word “Chinese” conveys very little meaning to my mind, I feel that they are talking about my father and mother and my heart swells with indignation.<br />
<br />
When we reach home I rush to my mother and try to tell her what I have heard. I am a young child. I fail to make myself intelligible. My mother does not understand, and when the nurse declares to her, “Little Miss Sui is a story-teller,” my mother slaps me.<br />
<br />
Many a long year has past over my head since that day - the day on which I first learned I was something different and apart from other children, but though my mother has forgotten it, I have not.<br />
<br />
I see myself again, a few years older. I am playing with another child in a garden. A girl passes by outside the gate. “Mamie,” she cries to my companion. “I wouldn’t speak to Sui if I were you. Her mamma is Chinese.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t care,” answers the little one beside me. And then to me, “Even if your mamma is Chinese, I like you better than I like Annie.”<br />
<br />
“But I don’t like you,” I answer, turning my back on her. It is my first conscious lie.<br />
<br />
I am at a children’s party, given by the wife of an Indian officer whose children were schoolfellows of mine. I am only six years of age, but have attended a private school for over a year, and have already learned that China is a heathen country, being civilized by England. However, for the time being, I am a merry romping child.<br />
<br />
There are quite a number of grown people present. One, a white haired old man, has his attention called to me by the hostess. He adjusts his eyeglasses and surveys me critically.<br />
<br />
“Ah, indeed!” he exclaims. “Who would have thought it at first glance? Yet now I see the difference between her and other children. What a peculiar colouring! Her mother’s eyes and hair and her father’s features, I presume. Very interesting little creature!”<br />
<br />
I had been called from play for the purpose of inspection. I do not return to it. For the rest of the evening I hide myself behind a hall door and refuse to show myself until it is time to go home.<br />
<br />
My parents have come to America. We are in Hudson City, N.Y., and we are very poor. I am out with my brother, who is ten months older than myself. We pass a Chinese store, the door of which is open.<br />
<br />
“Look!” says Charlie. “Those men in there are Chinese!”<br />
<br />
Eagerly I gaze into the long low room. With the exception of my mother, who is English bred with English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a Chinese person. The two men within the store are uncouth specimens of their race, dresssed in working blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging down their backs. I recoil with a sense of shock.<br />
<br />
“Oh, Charlie,” I cry. “Are we like that?”<br />
<br />
“Well, we’re Chinese, and they’re Chinese, too, so we must be!” returns my seven year old brother.<br />
<br />
“Of course you are,” puts in a boy who has followed us down the street, and who lives near us and has seen my mother: “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater.” A number of other boys and several little girls join in with him.<br />
<br />
“Better than you,” shouts my brother, facing the crowd. He is younger and smaller than any there, and I am even more insignificant than he; but my spirit revives.<br />
<br />
“I’d rather be Chinese than anything else in the world,” I scream.<br />
<br />
They pull my hair, they tear my clothes, they scratch my face, and all but lame my brother; but the white blood in our veins fights valiantly for the Chinese half of us. When it is all over, exhausted and bedraggled, we crawl home, and report to our mother that we have “won the battle”.<br />
<br />
“Are you sure?” asks my mother doubtfully.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o0o-</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
THE OLD GOWN<br />
<i>Thomas Hardy</i><br />
<br />
I have seen her in gowns the brightest,<br />
Of azure, green, and red,<br />
And in the simplest, whitest,<br />
Muslined from heel to head;<br />
I have watched her walking, riding,<br />
Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,<br />
Or in fixed thought abiding<br />
By the foam-fingered sea.<br />
<br />
In woodlands I have known her,<br />
When boughs were mourning loud,<br />
In the rain-reek she has shown her<br />
Wild-haired and water-browed.<br />
And once or twice she has cast me<br />
As she pomped along the street<br />
Court-clad, ere quite she has passed me,<br />
A glance from her chariot seat.<br />
<br />
But in my memoried passion<br />
For evermore stands she<br />
In the gown of fading fashion<br />
She wore that night when we,<br />
Doomed long to part, assembled<br />
In the snug, small room; yea, when<br />
She sang with lips that trembled,<br />
"Shall I see his face again?"<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o=0=o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"THE READING ROOM" WILL NORMALLY BE UPDATED EVERY WEEKEND</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02902634877966762520noreply@blogger.com0