Here are the quotations for the coming week (March 4th to
10th):
1. ..They clawed, they slapped, they
fled, leaving behind them a trophy of banners and brasses crudely arranged round
the big drum. Then that end of the street also shut its windows, and the
village, stripped of life, lay round me like a reef at low tide...
2. ...he heard a sound as though all the earth were humming. Then
he ran as he had never run in his life before, spurned aside one - two - three
of the piles of stones into the dark sweet-smelling gullies; heard a roar like
the roar of the sea in a cave, saw with the tail of his eye the air grow dark
behind him ...
3. ...the old Queen cried the swarming cry, which
to a bee of good blood should be what the trumpet was to Job's war-horse. In
spite of her immense age it rang between the canyon-like frames as a pibroch
rings in a mountain pass ... and the broad-winged drones, burly and eager, ended
it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles: 'La Reine le veult ! Swarm !
Swar-rm ! Swar-r-rm !'...
The sources of last week's extracts (Feb 25th to March
3rd), are as follows:
1. (...With a mallet and a set
of tweezers he knocked out mysterious wedges of wood that released the
forme...) This is from "The Last Term" in Stalky
& Co.
2.
(...To these things are added in
time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that neither man nor
woman can resist...) This is from th second chapter of
The Light that Failed.
3. (...Then came, in the
intervals of steady card play, more personal histories of adventure and things
seen and suffered...) This is from "A Matter of Fact"
in Many Inventions.
Good wishes to all, John
R
In the
New Readers' Guide we have just published notes by David Page on the final story
from Abaft the Funnel, "The Last of the Stories;
also notes by John McGivering on a further story from Land and Sea Tales for
Scouts and Guides, "His Gift" together with
notes on the linked poem "Prologue to the Master-Cook's Tale" and the text of the poem. Also Geoffrey Annis's
Introduction to The Light that
Failed.