1
/
of
1
OGB
Six Common Things
Six Common Things
Regular price
$2.99 USD
Regular price
Sale price
$2.99 USD
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Quantity
Couldn't load pickup availability
Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)
***
Contents:
ONCE
AUTUMN AND LOVE
TWO DAYS AFTER
CARRINGTON
JACK AND POLL
AT KING'S CROSS STATION
THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING
BLUE STRIPE
A WINTER MORNING
THE ZOO
THE THREE OLD LADIES
LIKE A GRAMMARIAN
POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD
THE DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM
THE TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM
THE DEATH WARRANT
****
An excerpt from the beginning of the first story:
ONCE
CERTAIN early years of childhood have to most of us, though we have perhaps become since then middle-aged and quite prosaic, an air of mystery, of romance, of a vague vastness, that remains to us long after we have decided once and for all that we are average and commonplace individuals. It is a difficult question to decide whether we were happier as children than we are now; and we are apt to be biased by the obvious palpable happiness that all children, who are real children, can find in simple ordinary things, which are no longer sufficient to produce in us any absorbing bliss. But if the joys of childhood are entirely absorbing, it is equally true that its troubles are productive of the same fine order of emotion, and the bliss of the first half-crown is quite counterbalanced by the blind misery of the dentist. Though now a half-crown does not convert the whole of life into a garden of Sharon, we have our compensation in the power to look beyond that hour in the dentist's chair, and to realise that though our immediate horizon is black with clouds, tea-time will come as usual at five o'clock, and that the visit to the dentist will be numbered with the dead joys and sorrows of this uncertain world.
The explanation is simple enough; a child lives wholly in the present moment, whether it is sweet or bitter, while the ordinary adult can conceive a future, and can dwell in the past. Moreover, by whatever names we may call ourselves, whether we are pessimists or the " morbid fin de Steele outcome of a disillusioned and over cultivated civilisation "—it is easy enough to find sufficiently bad names for the most modern of our race—the fact remains, that however flat and stale the present appears to us, however uninteresting the future, we still look with something of longing and regret on our own past years. We forget all that was unpleasant, pessimists though we be, and to us now, childhood was a long sunny day, without any lessons to do, and full of strange lovely mysteries. I remember being promised by an elder brother in return for some small service, a purple box with stars upon it, that was in a wood. I do not think that the purple box ever existed; certainly I never got it, yet I used to lie awake at night thinking of it, and wondering when it would come; whereas what I do not remember is the period when the advent of the purple box passed in my mind from being imminent to being remote, and the first moment when I realised that it was not going to come at all. That the moment was bitter I do not doubt, but that I have forgotten; what does remain with me, is the mystery and the joy that hung round the purple box which I have never yet set eyes on.
When I was eight years old, we moved from a midland county town into a house near Truro, deep in the rural heart of Cornwall. I think I shall never forget the first sight of primroses growing wild in the lanes. We had arrived at the house late one night, and after the long journey, we children were put to bed at once. But I awoke early the next morning, and saw in my room a light that was altogether unfamiliar to me, and which I thought then and think still, is one of the most lovely things in the world. It is the light which comes from the level rays of the sun, when they shine through fresh green leaves. You may see it on most days of the year, if you care to look for it; whether you seek it at morning or evening in some little hollow fringed by tender beech trees, or loveliest of all, where young elms and ashes lean and listen together over a brook which makes its valley melodious, or whether you see it, as I saw it now for the first time, reflected on to the whitewashed ceiling of a small bedroom. It is an aqueous quivering light, full of tender shifting shadows and dim tranquillity, too delicate for words. Child as I was, I felt something of its spell, and dressed quickly and went out, and at that moment realised consciously for the first time something of what a spring morning is always ready to tell us, if we will only stand quiet and listen to its message.
It was just half-past six, and from where I stood at the front door, I looked over a long deep Cornish valley stretching away to the east and lost in morning. Thin skeins of fine cloud still lingered on the lower slopes of the hills...
***
Contents:
ONCE
AUTUMN AND LOVE
TWO DAYS AFTER
CARRINGTON
JACK AND POLL
AT KING'S CROSS STATION
THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING
BLUE STRIPE
A WINTER MORNING
THE ZOO
THE THREE OLD LADIES
LIKE A GRAMMARIAN
POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD
THE DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM
THE TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM
THE DEATH WARRANT
****
An excerpt from the beginning of the first story:
ONCE
CERTAIN early years of childhood have to most of us, though we have perhaps become since then middle-aged and quite prosaic, an air of mystery, of romance, of a vague vastness, that remains to us long after we have decided once and for all that we are average and commonplace individuals. It is a difficult question to decide whether we were happier as children than we are now; and we are apt to be biased by the obvious palpable happiness that all children, who are real children, can find in simple ordinary things, which are no longer sufficient to produce in us any absorbing bliss. But if the joys of childhood are entirely absorbing, it is equally true that its troubles are productive of the same fine order of emotion, and the bliss of the first half-crown is quite counterbalanced by the blind misery of the dentist. Though now a half-crown does not convert the whole of life into a garden of Sharon, we have our compensation in the power to look beyond that hour in the dentist's chair, and to realise that though our immediate horizon is black with clouds, tea-time will come as usual at five o'clock, and that the visit to the dentist will be numbered with the dead joys and sorrows of this uncertain world.
The explanation is simple enough; a child lives wholly in the present moment, whether it is sweet or bitter, while the ordinary adult can conceive a future, and can dwell in the past. Moreover, by whatever names we may call ourselves, whether we are pessimists or the " morbid fin de Steele outcome of a disillusioned and over cultivated civilisation "—it is easy enough to find sufficiently bad names for the most modern of our race—the fact remains, that however flat and stale the present appears to us, however uninteresting the future, we still look with something of longing and regret on our own past years. We forget all that was unpleasant, pessimists though we be, and to us now, childhood was a long sunny day, without any lessons to do, and full of strange lovely mysteries. I remember being promised by an elder brother in return for some small service, a purple box with stars upon it, that was in a wood. I do not think that the purple box ever existed; certainly I never got it, yet I used to lie awake at night thinking of it, and wondering when it would come; whereas what I do not remember is the period when the advent of the purple box passed in my mind from being imminent to being remote, and the first moment when I realised that it was not going to come at all. That the moment was bitter I do not doubt, but that I have forgotten; what does remain with me, is the mystery and the joy that hung round the purple box which I have never yet set eyes on.
When I was eight years old, we moved from a midland county town into a house near Truro, deep in the rural heart of Cornwall. I think I shall never forget the first sight of primroses growing wild in the lanes. We had arrived at the house late one night, and after the long journey, we children were put to bed at once. But I awoke early the next morning, and saw in my room a light that was altogether unfamiliar to me, and which I thought then and think still, is one of the most lovely things in the world. It is the light which comes from the level rays of the sun, when they shine through fresh green leaves. You may see it on most days of the year, if you care to look for it; whether you seek it at morning or evening in some little hollow fringed by tender beech trees, or loveliest of all, where young elms and ashes lean and listen together over a brook which makes its valley melodious, or whether you see it, as I saw it now for the first time, reflected on to the whitewashed ceiling of a small bedroom. It is an aqueous quivering light, full of tender shifting shadows and dim tranquillity, too delicate for words. Child as I was, I felt something of its spell, and dressed quickly and went out, and at that moment realised consciously for the first time something of what a spring morning is always ready to tell us, if we will only stand quiet and listen to its message.
It was just half-past six, and from where I stood at the front door, I looked over a long deep Cornish valley stretching away to the east and lost in morning. Thin skeins of fine cloud still lingered on the lower slopes of the hills...
Share
