Here
are the quotations for the coming week (Oct 30th to Nov 5th)
1. ... I hear a thud in
the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down—like fire-irons—and
then two most awful yells. They’re more like hoots, and I know—I know while I
listen—that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath
hooting out of them—in most awful pain. Do you understand?’
2. ‘Now, you wouldn’t think, would you’—he glanced off the book toward
my wildly swaying dressing-gown on the door—‘that I’ve been seeing things for
the last half-hour? ’Fact is, I’m just on the edge of ’em, skating on thin ice
round the corner—nor’east as near as nothing—where that dog’s looking at me.’
3. " An’ then I saw—I tell you I saw—Auntie Armine herself standin’
by the old dressin’station door where first I’d thought I’d seen her. He was
lookin’ at ’er an’ she was lookin’ at him. I saw it, an’ me soul turned over
inside me because—because it knocked out everything I’d believed in.
The
sources of the last set of extracts are as follows:
1. (My
first penitent was all head-bandages—escaped from an Officers’ Hospital,
Pentonville way...) This is from "In the Interests of the Brethren" in Debits
and Credits.
2. (“What’s
all this?” she says. “What do you want?” “Nothing,” I says, “only make Miss
Bates, there, stop talkin’ or I’ll die...”) This is from "The Janeites"
in Debits and Credits
3. (He
pushed himself forward over a last pit of terror, and touched her. There was no
wire, but a tough, thumb-shaped root, sticking out of the sand-wall, had hooked
itself into her collar...) This is from "The Woman in his Life", in Limits
and Renewals.
In the New Readers’ Guide we have just published
notes by Philip Holberton on “A Recantatin” and “Mary’s Son”.
Good Hallowe'en wishes to all
John R
