Here are the quotations for this week (December 2nd to 8th):

 

1. ...a spritsail broke out forward and a handy driver aft; and she threaded her way through the shipping to her berth at the quay as quietly as a veiled woman slips through a bazaar.

 

2. Imagine a respectable charwoman in the tights of a ballet dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come to some notion of the appearance of that nine-hundred-ton well-decked once schooner-rigged cargo boat...

 

3. The low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. They saw little of the horizon, save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coaxing her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows, laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam.

 

The sources of last week's extracts (Nov 25th to Dec 1st) are as follows:

 

1.  ('...I made haste, the river aiding me, but ere I had touched the shoal, the pulse of the stream beat, as it were, within me and around...')  This is from "In Floodtime", from Soldiers Three - In Black and White.

 

2.  (...the river was marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment...)  This is from "The Bridge Builders", in The Day's Work.

 

3.  (...'The brook’s got up a piece since morning,’ said Jabez. ‘Sounds like’s if she was over Wickenden’s door-stones.’)  This is from "Friendly Brook" in A Diversity of Creatures.

 

In the New Readers' Guide we have just published notes on "Carmen Simlaense", together with the text of the poem.

 

Good wishes to all

 

John R