Here are the quotations for this week (October 5th to 11th):
1. The brown and red tobacco- and snuff-jars, with Crowns,
Garters, and names of forgotten mixtures in gold leaf; the polished ‘Oronoque’
tobacco-barrels on which favoured customers sat ; the cherry-black mahogany
counter, the delicately moulded shelves, the reeded cigar-cabinets, the
German-silver-mounted scales, and the Dutch brass roll- and cake-cutter, were
things to covet.
2. Our electric lights, set low down in the
windows before the tun-bellied Rosamond jars, flung inward three monstrous daubs
of red, blue, and green, that broke into kaleidoscopic lights on the faceted
knobs of the drug-drawers, the cut-glass scent flagons, and the bulbs of the
sparklet bottles. They flushed the white-tiled floor in gorgeous patches;
splashed along the nickel-silver counter-rails, and turned the polished mahogany
counter-panels to the likeness of intricate grained marbles—slabs of porphyry
and malachite.
3. There were still, hot hollows surrounded by wet
rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy scents of the night flowers
and the bloom along the creeper buds; dark avenues where the moonlight lay in
belts as regular as checkered marbles in a church aisle; thickets where the wet
young growth stood breast-high about him and threw its arms round his waist; and
hilltops crowned with broken rock, where he leaped from stone to stone above the
lairs of the frightened little foxes.
The sources of last week's extracts (September 28th to October 4th) are as
follows:
1. (......they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones, and
flavoured with wild garlic and wild pepper...) This is from "The Cat that
Walked by Himself" in Just-so Stories.
2. (... Mahbub stuffed himself with great boluses of spiced mutton
fried in fat with cabbage and golden-brown onions...) This is from
Kim
3. (...with buckwheat and Indian corn, and rice and red pepper, and
little fish out of the stream in the valley, and honey from the flue-like hives
built in the stone walls...a devout woman can make good things... ) This
is from "The Miracle of Purun Baghat" in The Second Jungle Book.
Good wishes to all, John R