Here are the quotations for the coming week (March 7th to 13th):

 

1. ‘ …Thanks to the khaki everywhere, the scene was not unlike that which one might have seen on earth every evening of the old days outside the refreshment room by the Arch at Victoria Station, when the Army trains started…

2. …The passengers filed out - they and the waiting crowd devouring each other with their eyes. Some. Misled by a likeness or a half-heard voice, hurried forward crying a name or even stretching out their arms. To cover their error, they would pretend they had made no sign and bury themselves among their uninterested neighbours. As the last passenger came away, a little moan rose from the assembly…

3. … "They are my own. The old women dream of me, turning in their sleep; the maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs by the river. I walk by the young men waiting within the gates at dusk, and I call over my shoulder to the white-beards. Ye know, heavenly ones, that I alone of us walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure in our heavens as long as a green blade springs here, or there are two voices at twilight in the standing crops. Wise are ye, but ye live far off, forgetting whence ye came …"

 

The sources of this week's extracts (Feb 28th to March 6th) are as follows:

 

1.  (...‘Get a purchase on her,’ I shouted, and he spun round, lapping that good copper wire about him.)  This is from "Brugglesmith" in Many Inventions.

 

2.  (...The stuff was getting in its work. Blue, white, and blue again, rolled over the navvy’s face...)  This is from "My Sunday at Home" in The Day's Work.

 

3.  ( ... he answered, and I have never seen a man foam at the mouth before. ‘If you don’t stop, I shall come into your house—in this car—and drive upstairs and—kill you!’...)  This is from "The Vortex" in A Diversity of Creatures.

 

In the New Readers' Guide we have just published notes bt Roger Ayers on another Barrack Room Ballad - "The 'eathen".

 

Good wishes to all, John R