Here are the quotations for this week (22-28th April)
1. .It was a perfect white night, as they call it. All green things seemed
to have made a month's growth since the morning. The branch that was
yellow-leaved the day before dripped sap . The mosses curled deep and warm
over his feet, the young grass had no cutting edge, and all the voices of
the jungle boomed like one deep harp-string touched by the moon - the Moon
of New Talk, who splashed her light full on rock and pool, slipped it
between trunk and creeper, and sifted it through a million leaves.
2. His back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six feet
high, and looked rather like a very proper bald-headed parson. In front it
was different, for his Alley Sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to
them, and there was a horrible raw-skin pouch on his neck under his chin - a
hold-all for the things his pick-axe beak might steal.
3. The length of the gorge was hung, as it were, with black shimmery velvet
curtains . the clotted millions of the sleeping bees.As he listened, he
heard more than once the rustle and slide of a honey-loaded comb turning
over or falling away somewhere in the dark galleries; then a booming of
angry wings and the sullen drip, drip, drip, of the wasted honey, guttering
along till it lipped over some ledge in the open air .
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The sources of last week's quotations (15th to 21st April), as several
people have pointed out, were:
1. The White Man's Burden
2. A Pict Song
3. 'The Head of the District' in 'Life's Handicap'
If anyone is contemplating staying in or near Bateman's this summer, you may
be interested in the details of Church House, which are to be found on the
web-site under 'Staying in Burwash'.
Good wishes to all, John R
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