The quotations for this week (March 4th to 10th) are as follows:
1. '…I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then a noise of machinery falling
down, lke fire-irons - and then two most awful yells. The're more like
hoots, and I know - I know while I listen - that it means that two men have
died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them - in most
awful pain. Do you understand ?'
'I ought to. Go on.'
'That's the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway.
One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly,"My
friend! All is lost!" Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop
down dead'…
2. '…the magic - the manifestations - the Hertzian waves - are all revealed
by this . The coherer, we call it.'
He picked up a glass tube, not much thicker than a thermometer, in which,
almost touching, were two tiny silver plugs, and between them an
infinitesimal pinch of metallic dust. 'That's all', he said proudly …'That
is the thing that will reveal to us the Powers - whatever the Powers may
be - at work - through space - a long distance away.' ...
3. …'I'm not committing myself to anything…but every dam' tissue up to now
seems to have its own time for its own tides. Samples from the same source
have the same tides in strength and time. But, as I showed you just now,
there are minute constant variations - reactions to something or other - in
each tide, as individual as finger-prints…'
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The sources of last week's quotations (Feb 25th to March 3rd) were as
follows:
1. …inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the Jungle,
turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides
of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the
hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last least footmark on
their edges as if it had been cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell
away from the trees they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos
withered, clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the
rocks…
This is from 'How Fear Came' in 'The Second Jungle Book'.
2. . …Then came the Rains with a roar, and the rukh was blotted out in fetch
after fetch of warm mist, and the broad leaves drummed the night through
under the big drops; and there was a noise of running water, and of juicy
green stuff crackling where the wind struck it, and the lightning wove
patterns behind the dense matting of the foliage, till the sun broke loose
again …Then the heat and the dry cold subdued everything to tiger-colour
again…
This is from 'In the Rukh' in 'Many Inventions'.
3. …(he) could see the tops of the trees lying all speckled and furry under
the moonlight for miles and miles, and the blue-white mist over the river in
the hollow…(he) leaned forward and looked, and he felt that the forest was
awake below him, awake and alive and crowded. A big brown fruit-eating bat
brushed past his ear; a porcupine's quills rattled in the thicket, and in
the darkness between the tree-stems he heard a hog-bear digging hard in the
moist warm earth, and snuffing as it digged. Then the branches closed over
his head again…
This is from 'Toomai of the Elephants' in 'The Jungle Book'.
Best regards to all, John R
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