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Pagan Papers - Kenneth Grahame · Classic Humorous Short Stories from America

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  Speaker 1: Section one of Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Will Cooper. The Romance of the Road by
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  Speaker 1: Kenneth Graham. Among the many places of magic visited by
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  Speaker 1: Pantagruel and his company during the progress of their famous voyage,
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  Speaker 1: few surpassed that island whose roads did literally go to
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  Speaker 1: places ulischemin cheminee com animaux, and would be travelers, having
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  Speaker 1: inquired of the road as to its destination, and received
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  Speaker 1: satisfactory reply se guignon as the old book hath it,
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  Speaker 1: hoisting themselves upon ou chemin oppotune, saints utromind sir puena
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  Speaker 1: ou fetiguher sir trouvoillen oleu de'stinay. The best example I
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  Speaker 1: know of an approach to this excellent sort of vitality
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  Speaker 1: in Rhades is the ridgeway of the North Berkshire Downs.
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  Speaker 1: Join it at Streatley, the point where it crosses the
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  Speaker 1: twes Ems at once. It strikes you out and away
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  Speaker 1: from the habitable world in a splendid, purposeful manner running
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  Speaker 1: along the highest ridge of the downs, a broad green
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  Speaker 1: ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference from
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  Speaker 1: the neighboring grass, yet distinct for all that no villages
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  Speaker 1: nor homesteads tempt to decide or modify its course for
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  Speaker 1: a yard. Should you lose the track where it is
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  Speaker 1: blent with the bordering turf, or merged and obliterated by
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  Speaker 1: criss cross paths, you have only to walk straight on,
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  Speaker 1: taking heed of no alternative to right or left, and
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  Speaker 1: in a minute tis with you again, arisen out of
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  Speaker 1: the earth, as it were, or if still not quite assured,
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  Speaker 1: lift your eyes, and there it runs over the brow
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  Speaker 1: of the fronting hill, where a railway crosses it. It disappears, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: hiding Alpheus like from the ignominy of rubble and brickwork.
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  Speaker 1: But a little way on it takes up the running again,
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  Speaker 1: with the same quiet persistence, out on that almost trackless
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  Speaker 1: expanse of billowy Downs. Such a track is in some
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  Speaker 1: sort humanly companionable. It really seems to lead you by
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  Speaker 1: the hand. The rudge is of course an exceptional instance.
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  Speaker 1: But indeed this pleasant personality in roads is not entirely fanciful.
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  Speaker 1: It exists as a characteristic of the old country road,
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  Speaker 1: evolved out of the primitive prehistoric track, developing according to
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  Speaker 1: the needs of the land. It passes through and serves
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  Speaker 1: with a language accordingly and a meaning of its own.
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  Speaker 1: Its special services are often told clearly enough, but much
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  Speaker 1: else too, of the quiet story of the country side,
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  Speaker 1: something of the old tale, whereof you learn so little
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  Speaker 1: from the printed page. Each is instinct, perhaps with a
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  Speaker 1: separate suggestion. Some are marshal and historic, and by your
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  Speaker 1: side the hurrying feet of the dead raise a ghostly dust.
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  Speaker 1: The name of Yon town, with its Roman or Saxon
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  Speaker 1: suffix to British route, hints at much many a strong man,
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  Speaker 1: wanting his vatz sacaire, passed silently to Hades for that
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  Speaker 1: suffix to obtain The little rise up yonder on the
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  Speaker 1: downs that breaks their straight green line against the sky,
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  Speaker 1: showed another sight when the sea of battles surged and
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  Speaker 1: beat on its trampled sides, and the Romans, sore beset,
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  Speaker 1: may have gazed down this very road for relief, praying
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  Speaker 1: for night or the succoring legion. This child that swings
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  Speaker 1: on a gate and peepsitude from under her sunbonnet, so
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  Speaker 1: may some girl ancestress of hers have watched with beating
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  Speaker 1: heart the Wessex levees hurry along to clash with the
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  Speaker 1: heathen and break them on the down where the ash
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  Speaker 1: trees grew, and yonder where the road swings round, and
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  Speaker 1: a gloomy overgrowth of drooping boughs. Is that gleam of
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  Speaker 1: water or glitter of lurking spears. Some sing leu pastorals
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  Speaker 1: fluting low in the hot sun, between dusty hedges, overlooked
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  Speaker 1: by contented cows, past farmsteads, where man and beast, living
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  Speaker 1: in frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceable lessons each of
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  Speaker 1: the other. Over the full fed river, lipping the meadow sweet,
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  Speaker 1: and thence on either side, through leagues of hay, or
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  Speaker 1: through bending corn. They chant the mystical wonderful song of
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  Speaker 1: the reaper when the harvest is white to the sickle.
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  Speaker 1: But most of them, avoiding classification, keep each his several
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  Speaker 1: tender significance, as with one I know, not so far
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  Speaker 1: from town, which woos you from the valley by gentle
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  Speaker 1: ascent between nut laden hedges, and ever by some touch
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  Speaker 1: of keen fragrance in the air, by some mystery of
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  Speaker 1: added softness under foot, ever a promise of something to come, unguessed, delighting,
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  Speaker 1: till suddenly you are among the pines. Their keen scent
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  Speaker 1: strikes you through and through their needles, carpet the ground,
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  Speaker 1: and in their swaying tops moans. The unappeasable wind sad
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  Speaker 1: ceaseless as the cry of warped humanity. Some paces more
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  Speaker 1: and the promise is fulfilled, the hints and whisperings becoming fruition.
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  Speaker 1: The ground breaks steeply away, and you look over a
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  Speaker 1: great inland sea of fields, homesteads, rolling woodland, and bounding,
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  Speaker 1: all blent with the horizon a grain, a gleam, the
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  Speaker 1: English Channel, a road of promises, of hinted surprises, following
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  Speaker 1: each other with the inevitable sequence in a melody. But
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  Speaker 1: we are now in another and stricter sense, an island
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  Speaker 1: of chaman qui cheminon, dominated indeed by them. But these
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  Speaker 1: the traveler veritably segwindon may reach his destination sans se
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  Speaker 1: puana usefatigui, with large qualifications, but some very much else
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  Speaker 1: whereof he were none the worse, the gain seem so
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  Speaker 1: obvious that you forget to miss all that lay between
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  Speaker 1: the springing strides of the early start and the pleasant
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  Speaker 1: weariness of the end approached, when the limbs lag a little,
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  Speaker 1: as the lights of your destination begin to glimmer through
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  Speaker 1: the dusk. All that lay between a day's ride a
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  Speaker 1: life's romance was the excellent title of an unsuccessful book.
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  Speaker 1: And indeed the journey should march with the day, beginning
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  Speaker 1: and ending with its son, to be the complete thing
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  Speaker 1: the golden round required of it. This may makes that
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  Speaker 1: mind and body fare together hand in hand, sharing the hope,
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  Speaker 1: the action, the fruition, finding equal sweetness in the languor
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  Speaker 1: of aching limbs at eve and in the first godlike
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  Speaker 1: intoxication of motion with braced muscle in the sun. For
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  Speaker 1: walk or ride, take mind over greater distances than a
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  Speaker 1: throbbing world with stiffening joints and cramped limbs through a
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  Speaker 1: dozen counties. Surely you seem to cover vaster spaces with
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  Speaker 1: levengro footing it with gypsies, or driving his tinker's cart
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  Speaker 1: across lonely commons than with many a globe trotter or
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  Speaker 1: steam yachtsman with diary or log. And even that dividing
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  Speaker 1: line strictly marked and rarely overstepped. Between the man who
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  Speaker 1: bicycles and the man who walks is less due to
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  Speaker 1: a prudent regard for personal safety of the one part
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  Speaker 1: than to an essential difference in minds. There is a
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  Speaker 1: certain supernal, a daafixed state of mind, which may indeed
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  Speaker 1: be experienced in minor degree by anyone in the siesta
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  Speaker 1: part of a Turkish bath. But this particular golden glow
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  Speaker 1: of the faculty is only felt at its fullness after
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  Speaker 1: severe and prolonged exertion in the open air. A man
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  Speaker 1: ought to be seen by the gods, says Marcus Aurelius,
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  Speaker 1: neither dissatisfied with anything, nor complaining. Though this does not
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  Speaker 1: sound at first hearing an excessive demand to make of humanity.
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  Speaker 1: Yet the gods I fancy look long and often for
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  Speaker 1: such a sight in these unblessed days of hurry, if
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  Speaker 1: ever seen at all, tis when, after many a mile
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  Speaker 1: in sun and wind may be rain, you reach at last,
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  Speaker 1: with the folding star, your destined rustic inn. There, in
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  Speaker 1: its homely comfortable strangeness, after unnumbered chops with country ale,
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  Speaker 1: the hard facts of life begin to swim in a
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  Speaker 1: golden mist. You are iled from accustomed cares and worries.
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  Speaker 1: You are set in a peculiar nook of rest. Then
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  Speaker 1: old failures seem partial successes. Then old loves come back
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  Speaker 1: in their fairest form, but this time with never a
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  Speaker 1: shadow of regret. Then old jokes renew their youth and flavor.
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  Speaker 1: You ask nothing of the gods above, nothing of men below,
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  Speaker 1: not even their company. Tomorrow you shall begin life again,
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  Speaker 1: shall write your book, make your fortune, do anything. Meanwhile
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  Speaker 1: you sit, and the jolly world swings round, and you
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  Speaker 1: seem to hear its circle to the music of the spheres.
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  Speaker 1: What pipe was ever thus beatifying? In effect, you are
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  Speaker 1: aching all over and enjoying it, and the scent of
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  Speaker 1: limes drifts in through the window. This is undoubtedly the
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  Speaker 1: best and greatest country in the world, and none but
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  Speaker 1: good fellows abide in it. Lord we the gods, and
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  Speaker 1: let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils from our
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  Speaker 1: blessed altars. End of the Romance of the Road. Section
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  Speaker 1: two The Romance of the Rail of Pagan Papers. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All liberyvox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot Org. Read by Will Cooper The Romance of
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  Speaker 1: the Rail by Kenneth Grahame. In these iron days of
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  Speaker 1: the dominance of steam, the crowning wrong that is wrought
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  Speaker 1: us of furnace and piston rod lies in their annihilation
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  Speaker 1: of the steadfast mystery of the horizon, so that the
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  Speaker 1: imagination no longer begins to work at the point where
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  Speaker 1: vision ceases. In happier times, three hundred years ago, the
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  Speaker 1: seafarers from Bristol City looked out from the prows of
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  Speaker 1: their vessels in the gray of the morning, and what
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  Speaker 1: not rightly whether the land they saw might be Jerusalem
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  Speaker 1: or Madagascar, or if it were not North and South America.
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  Speaker 1: And there be certain flitting islands, says one, which have
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  Speaker 1: been oftentimes seen, and when men approached near them, they vanished.
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  Speaker 1: It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
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  Speaker 1: said Ulysses, thinking of what Americans call the getting off place.
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  Speaker 1: It may be we shall touch the happy ales, and
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  Speaker 1: so on and so on. Each with his special hope
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  Speaker 1: or wild surmise, there was always a chance of touching
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  Speaker 1: the happy isles. And in that first fair world, whose
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  Speaker 1: men and manners we knew through story books before experience
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  Speaker 1: taught us far other The prince mounts his horse one
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  Speaker 1: fine morning and rides all day and sleeps in a forest,
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  Speaker 1: And next morning lo a new country, and he rides
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  Speaker 1: by fields and granges never visited before, through faces strange
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  Speaker 1: to him, to where an unknown king steps down to
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  Speaker 1: welcome the mysterious stranger. And he marries the princess and
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  Speaker 1: dwells content for many a year, till one day he thinks,
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  Speaker 1: I will look upon my father's face again, though the
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  Speaker 1: leagues may belong to my own land. And he rides
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  Speaker 1: all day and sleeps in a forest, and next morning
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  Speaker 1: he is made welcome at home, where his name has
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  Speaker 1: become a dim memory. Which is all as it should be.
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  Speaker 1: For annihilate time and space as you may. A man's
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  Speaker 1: stride remains the true standard of distance, an eternal and
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  Speaker 1: unalterable scale. The severe horizon, too repels the thoughts as
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  Speaker 1: you gaze to the infare a, considerations that lie about within,
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  Speaker 1: touch and hail, and the night cometh. When no man
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  Speaker 1: can work to all these natural bounds and limitations, it
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  Speaker 1: is good to get back now and again from a
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  Speaker 1: life assisted and smoothed by artificialities. Where iron has superseded muscle,
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  Speaker 1: the kindly life blood is apt to throb dull as
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  Speaker 1: the measured beat of the steam engine. But the getting
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  Speaker 1: back to them is now a matter of effort, of
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  Speaker 1: set purpose, a stepping aside out of our ordinary course.
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  Speaker 1: They are no longer unsought influences towards the making of character.
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  Speaker 1: So perhaps the time of them has gone by. Here
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  Speaker 1: in this second generation of steam periont etimputanto, they pass
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  Speaker 1: away and are scored against not us, but our guilty fathers,
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  Speaker 1: for ourselves. Our peculiar slate is probably filling fast. The
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  Speaker 1: romance of the steam engine is yet to be captured
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  Speaker 1: and expressed, not fully nor worthily, perhaps until it too
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  Speaker 1: is a vanished regret. Though Emerson one for one, will
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  Speaker 1: not have it so, and maintains and justifies its right
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  Speaker 1: to immediate recognition as poetic material, for as it is
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  Speaker 1: dislocation and detachment from the life of God that makes
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  Speaker 1: things ugly, the poet who reattaches things to nature, and
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  Speaker 1: the whole reattaching even artificial things and violations of nature
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  Speaker 1: to nature by a deeper insight, disposes very easily of
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  Speaker 1: the most disagreeable facts, so that he looks upon the factory,
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  Speaker 1: village and the railway and sees them fall within the
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  Speaker 1: great order, not less than the beehive or the spider's
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  Speaker 1: geometrical web. The poet, however, seems hard to convince hireof Emerson,
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  Speaker 1: will have it that nature loves the gilding train of cars,
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  Speaker 1: instead of which the poet still goes about the country
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  Speaker 1: singing purling Brooks. Painters have been more flexible and liberal.
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  Speaker 1: Turner saw and did his best to seize the spirit
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  Speaker 1: of the thing, its kinship, with the elements, and to
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  Speaker 1: blend furnace, glare and rush of iron with the storm shower,
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  Speaker 1: the wind, and the thwart flashing sun rays, and to
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  Speaker 1: make the whole a single expression of irresoluble force. And
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  Speaker 1: even in a certain work by another and a very
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  Speaker 1: different painter, though I will willingly acquit, mister Frith, of
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  Speaker 1: any deliberate romantic intention, you shall find the element of
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  Speaker 1: romance in the vestiges of the old order still lingering
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  Speaker 1: in the first Transition period, the coat shaped railway carriages
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  Speaker 1: with luggage piled and corded on top, the red coated guard,
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  Speaker 1: the little engine tethered well ahead, as if between traces
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  Speaker 1: to those bred within sight of the sea. Steamers will
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  Speaker 1: always partake in somewhat of the beauty and mystery of
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  Speaker 1: the ships above all, if their happy childhood have lain
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  Speaker 1: among the gleaming locks and sinuous firths of the Western Highlands,
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  Speaker 1: where twice a week may be the strange visitant crept
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  Speaker 1: by Headland and Bay, a piece of the busy, mysterious
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  Speaker 1: outer world. For myself, I probably stand alone in owning
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  Speaker 1: to a sentimental weakness for the night piercing whistle, judiciously remote,
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  Speaker 1: as some men love the skirl of the pipes. In
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  Speaker 1: the days where streets were less wearily familiar than now,
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  Speaker 1: or even the the golden cord was quite loose that
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  Speaker 1: led back to relinquished fields and wider skies. I have
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  Speaker 1: lain awake on stifling summer nights, thinking of luckier friends
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  Speaker 1: by moor and stream, and listening for the whistles from
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  Speaker 1: certain railway stations, veritable horns of Elfland, faintly blowing. Then
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  Speaker 1: a ghostly passenger, I have taken my seat in a
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  Speaker 1: phantom train and sped up up through the map, rehearsing
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  Speaker 1: the journey bit by bit through the furnace lit midlands,
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  Speaker 1: and on till the gray glimmer of dawn showed stone
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  Speaker 1: walls in place of hedges, and masses looming up on
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  Speaker 1: either side, till the bright sun shone upon brown leaping
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  Speaker 1: streams and purple heather, and the clear, sharp northern air
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  Speaker 1: streamed in through the windows. Return, indeed, was bitter and
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  Speaker 1: demion like. My first touch of the earth went nigh
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  Speaker 1: to kill, But it was only to hurry northwards again,
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  Speaker 1: on the wings of imagination, from dust and heat to
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  Speaker 1: the deer mountain air. We are only the children who
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  Speaker 1: might have been murmured lambs, dream babes to him, and
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  Speaker 1: for the sake of those dream journeys, the journeys that
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  Speaker 1: might have been, I still hail with a certain affection
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  Speaker 1: the call of the engine in the night, even as
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  Speaker 1: I love sometimes to turn the enchanted pages of the
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  Speaker 1: railway ABC and pass from one to the other. Name
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  Speaker 1: reminiscent or suggestive of joy and freedom, Devonian maybe, or
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  Speaker 1: savoring of Wessex, or bearing me away to some sequestered
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  Speaker 1: reach of the quiet Thames. End of the Romance of the.
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  Speaker 2: Rail Section three of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Read by Judy Derby Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham, Section
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: three Nonlibrey said libery, it will never be clear to
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  Speaker 2: the lay mind why the book buyer buys books that
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  Speaker 2: it is not to read them. Is certain the closest
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  Speaker 2: inspection always fails to find him thus engaged. He will
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  Speaker 2: talk about them all night if you let him, wave
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  Speaker 2: his hand to them, shake his fist to them, shed
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  Speaker 2: tears over them in the small hours of the morning.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: But he will not read them. Yet, it would be
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  Speaker 2: rash to infer that he buys his books without a
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  Speaker 2: remote intention of ever reading them. Most book lovers start
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: with the honest resolution that some day they will shut
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: down on this fatal practice. Then they purpose to themselves
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  Speaker 2: to enter into their charmed circle and close the gates
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  Speaker 2: of paradise behind them. Then will they read out of
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  Speaker 2: nothing but first editions. Every day shall be a debauch
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: in large paper and tall copies, and crushed moroccos shall
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  Speaker 2: be familiar to their touch as buckram. Meanwhile, though books
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  Speaker 2: continue to flaunt their venal charms, it would be cowardice
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  Speaker 2: to shun the fray. In fine, one buys and continues
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  Speaker 2: to buy, and the promised sabbath never comes. The process
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  Speaker 2: of the purchase is always much the same. Therein, resembling
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: the familiar but inferior passion of love, there is the
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  Speaker 2: first sight of the object, accompanied of a catching of
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  Speaker 2: the breath, a trembling in the limbs, loss of appetite,
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  Speaker 2: ungovernable desire, and a habit of melancholy in secret places.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: But once possessed, once toyed with amorously for an hour
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  Speaker 2: or two, the object, as in the inferior passion aforesaid,
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  Speaker 2: takes its destined place on the shelf for its days.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: And this saith the scoffer is all. But even he
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  Speaker 2: does not fail to remark with a certain awe, that
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  Speaker 2: the owner goeth thereafter as one possessing a happy secret
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  Speaker 2: and radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he is insufferably conceited,
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  Speaker 2: and his conceit waxeth, as his coat, now condemned to
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  Speaker 2: a fresh term of servitude, groweth shabbier and shabby though
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  Speaker 2: his coat may be, Yet will he never stoop to
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  Speaker 2: renew its pristine youth? And gloss by the price of
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  Speaker 2: any book. No man, no human, masculine, natural man, ever
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  Speaker 2: sells a book. Men have been known, in moments of thoughtlessness,
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  Speaker 2: or compelled by temporary necessity, to rob, to equivocate, to
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  Speaker 2: do murder, to commit what they should not, to WinCE
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: and relent and refrain from what they should. These things,
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  Speaker 2: howbeit regrettable, are common to humanity, and may happen to
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  Speaker 2: any of us. But amateur book selling is foul and unnatural.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: And it is noteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity,
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  Speaker 2: contains no distinctive name for the crime. Fortunately, it is
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  Speaker 2: hardly known to exist, the face of the public being
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  Speaker 2: set against it as a flint, and the trade giving
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  Speaker 2: such wretched prices. In book buying, you not infrequently condone
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  Speaker 2: and extravagance by the reflection that this particular purchase will
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  Speaker 2: be a good investment, sordidly considered that you are not
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  Speaker 2: squandering income but sinking capital. But you know all the
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: time that you are lying. Once possessed, books develop a personality.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: They take on a touch of warm human life that
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: links them in a manner with our kith and kin.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Non angly said Angelie was the comment of a missionary
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: old style on the small human duodessimos exposed for sale
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: in the Roman market place, And many a buyer, when
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: some fair haired little chattel passed into his position, must
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: have felt that here was something vendable. No more so
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: of these you may well affirm, nonlibri sed liberi. Children
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: now adopted into the circle, they shall be trafficked in
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: never again. There is one exception which has sadly to
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: be made. One class of men of whom I would fagin,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: if possible, have avoided mention. Who are strangers to any
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: such scruples. These be executors, a word to be strongly
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: accented on the penultimate, For indeed they are the common
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: headsmen of collections, and most of all do whet their
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: bloody edge for harmless books. Hoary, famous old collections, budding
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: young collections, fair virgin collections of a single author, all
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: go down before the executor's remorseless acts. He careth not,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: and he spareth not. The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: her poppy. And it is chiefly by the hand of
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the executor that she doth love to scatter it. May
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: oblivion be his portion forever of a truth. The foes
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: of the book lover are not few, one of the
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: most insidious. Because he cometh at first and friendly, helpful guys.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Is the bookbinder, not in that he bindeth books, for
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: the fair binding is the final crown and flower of
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: painful achievement. But because he bindeth not, because the weary
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: weeks lapse by and turn to months, and the months
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: to years, and still the binder bindeth not, and the
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: heart grows sick with hope deferred. Each morn the maiden
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: binds her hair each spring, the honeysuckle binds the cottage
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: porch each autumn. The harvester binds his sheaves each winter.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: The iron frost binds lake and stream. And still the
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: bookbinder he bindeth not. Then a secret voice whispereth arise
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: be a man and slay him, Take him grossly full
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: of bread, with all his crimes broad blown as flush
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: is may at gaming, swearing, or about some act that
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: hath no relish of salvation in it. But when the
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: deed is done, and the floor strown with fragments of binder,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: still the books remain unbound. You have made all that
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: horrid mess for nothing, and the weary path has to
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: be trodden over again. As a general rule, the man
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: in the habit of murdering bookbinders, though he performs a
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: distinct service to society, only wastes his own time and
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: takes no personal advantage. And even supposing that after many
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: days your books return to you in leathern surcoats bravely
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: tricked with gold, you have scarce yet weathered the cape
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: and sailed into halcyon seas. For these books, well, you
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: kept them many weeks before binding them, that the olaginous
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: printer's inc might fully dry, before the necessary hammering, fore
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: to open the pages, that the autocratic binder might refold
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the sheets if he pleased. And now that all is over,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: consummatum as, still you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: a quiet mind. For these purple emperors are not to
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: be read in bed, nor during meals, nor on the
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: grass with a pipe on Sundays. And these brief periods
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: are all the whirling times allow you for solid, serious reading. Still,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: after all you have them, you can at least pulverize
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: your friends with the sight. And what have they to
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: show against them? Probably some miserable score or so of
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: half bindings such as lead you scornfully to quote the
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: hackneyed couplet concerning the poor Indian whose untutored mind clothes
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: him before, but leaves him bear behind. Let us thank
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the Gods that such things are that to some of
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: us they give not poverty nor riches, but a few
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: good books and whole bindings. With these, and if it
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: be vouchsafed a cup of Burgundy that is sound, even
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: if it be not old, we can lead to others
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: the foaming grape of eastern France that was vintaged in
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: seventy four, and with it the whole range of shilling shockers,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the barmecidal feast of the purposeful novelist, yea, even the
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: countless series that tell of eminent women and successful men,
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: and uh Nonlibrey, said Libery Section four of Pagan Papers.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Judy Derby Pagan Papers
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: by Kenneth Graham. Section four loafing when the golden summer
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: has rounded languidly to his clothes. When autumn has been
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: carried forth in russet winding sheet, then all good fellows
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: who look upon holidays as a chief end of life,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: return from more and stream and begin to take stock
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: of gains and losses. And the wisest, realizing that the
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: time of action is over while that of reminiscence has begun,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: realize too that the one is pregnant with greater pleasures
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: than the other, that action, indeed, is only the means
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: to an end of reflection and appreciation. Wisest of all
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the loafer stands apart supreme, for he of one mind
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: with the philosopher, as to the end, goes straight to
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: it at once, and his happy summer has accordingly been
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: spent in those subjective pleasures of the mind, whereof the others,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the men of muscle and peeled faces are only just
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: beginning to taste. And yet though he may a little
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: despise or rather pity them, the loafer does not dislike
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: nor altogether shun them. Far from it, they are very
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: necessary to him. For suave mari magno is the motto
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: of your true loafer, and it is chiefly by keeping
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: ever in view the struggles and the clamorous jostlings of
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: the unenlightened, making holiday that he is able to realize
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: the bliss of his own condition and maintain his self
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: satisfaction at boiling point. And so is he never very
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: far away from the track beaten by the hurrying philistine hoof,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: but hovers more or less on the edge of it,
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: where the soul fixed star as its twirling constellations, he
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: may watch the mad world glance and nod and hurry by.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: There are many such centers of contemplation along the west
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: coast of Scotland. Few places are better loafing ground than appear,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: with its tranquil, lucid interval between steamers, the ever recurrent
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: throb of paddle wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: among the piles, splash of ropes, and rumble of gangways,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: and all the attendant hurry and scurry of the human morase.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Here tanquam in specula. The loafer as he lounges, may
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: by attorney as it were, touched gently every stop in
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: the great organ of the emotions of mortality, rapture of meeting, departing, woe,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: love at first sight, disdain, laughter, indifference, He may experience
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: them all but attenuated, and as if he saw them
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: in a dream, as if indeed he were Heinah's God
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: in dream on a mountainside. Let the drowsy deity awake,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: and all these puppets emanations of his dream will vanish
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: into the nothing whence they came. And these emotions may
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: be renewed each morning. If a fair one sail today,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: be sure that one is fair will land tomorrow. The
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: supply is inexhaustible. But in the South perhaps the happiest
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: loafing ground is the gift of Father Thames. For there
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: again the contrast of violent action, with its blisters, perspiration
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: and the light, throws into fine relief the bliss of quietism.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: I know one little village in the upper reaches where
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: loafing may be pushed to high perfection. Here the early
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: hours of the morning are vexed by the voices of
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: boaters making their way down the little street to the river.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: The most of them go staggering under hampers, bundles of waterproofs,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: and so forth. Their voices are climent of feats to
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: be accomplished. They will row, they will punt, they will
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: paddle till they weary out the sun. All this the
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: loafer hears through the open door of his cottage, where
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: in his shirt sleeves he is dallying with his bacon
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: as a gentleman should. He is the only one who
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: has had a comfortable breakfast, and he knows it. Later
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: he will issue forth and stroll down in their track
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: to the bridge. The last of these argonauts is pulling
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: lustily forth. The river is dotted with evanishing blazers. Upon
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: all these lunatics. A pitiless phoebus shines triumphant. The loafer
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: sees the last of them off the stage, turns his
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: back on it, and seeks the shady side of the street.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: A holy calm possesses the village. Now the foreign element
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: has passed away with shouting and waving of banners, and
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: its natural life of somnolency is in evidence at last
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: and first, as a true loafer should let him respectfully
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: greet each several village dog arcady's ambo loafers. Likewise, they
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: lie there in the warm dust, each outside his own door,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: ready to return the smallest courtesy. Their own lords and
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: masters are not given to the exchange of compliments, nor
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: to greetings in the market place. The dog is generally
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: the better gentleman, and he is aware of it, and
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: he duly appreciates the loafer, who is not too proud
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: to pause a moment, change the news, and pass the
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: time of day. He will mark his sense of this
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: attention by rising from his dust divan and accompanying his
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: collar some steps on his way, but he will stop
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: short of his neighbour's dust patch, for the morning is
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: really too hot for a shindy. So by easy stages
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the street is not a long one. Six dogs will
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: see it out. The loafer quits the village, and now
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: the world is before him. Shall he sit on a
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: gate and smoke, or lie on the grass and smoke,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: or smoke aimlessly and at large along the road. Such
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: a choice of happiness is distracting, but perhaps the last
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: course is the best, as needing the least mental effort
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: of selection. Hardly, however, has he fairly started his first
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: day dream when the snappished ting of a balkan recalls
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: him to realities. By comes the bicyclist, dusty sweating, a
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: piteous thing to look upon, But the irritation of the
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: stripatent metal has jarred the loafer's always exquisite nerves, he
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: is fain to climb a gate and make his way
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: towards solitude and the breezy downs. Up Here, all vestiges
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: of as sordid humanity disappear. The loafer is alone with
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: the southwest wind and the blue sky. Only a caroling
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: of larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: brooding noonday stillness. Above the wind, hover hangs motionless, a
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: black dot on the blue prone, on his back on
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the springy turf, gazing up into the sky. His this
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: at will among the tranquil clouds. This way, Nirvana nearest
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: lies Earth no longer obtrudes herself, possibly somewhere a thousand
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: miles or so below him. The thing still spins like
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: a fretful midge. The loafer knows not nor cares. His
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: is now an astral body, and through golden spaces of imagination,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: his soul is winging her untrammeled flight. And there he
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: really might remain forever, but that his vagroom spirit is
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: called back to Earth by a gentle but resistless, very
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: human summons a gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian god like thirst, a
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: thirst to thank heaven on. So with a sigh half
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: of regret, half of anticipation, he bends his soul military
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: steps towards the nearest inn. Toback over one is good
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: to commune with oneself and be still is truest wisdom.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: But beer is a thing of deity. Beer is divine. Later,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: the loafer may decently make some concession to popular taste
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: by strolling down to the river and getting out his boat.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: With one paddle out, he will drift down the stream,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: just brushing the flowering rush and the meadow sweet, and
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: taking in as peculiar gifts. The varied sweets of even
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: the loose strife is his, and the arrow head his,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: the distant moan of the weir His are the glories
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: amber and scarlet and silver of the sunset, haunted surface
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: by and by. The boaters will pass him homeward bound.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: All are blistered and sore, His withers are unwrung. Most
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: are too tired and hungry to see the sunset glories.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: No corporeal pang's clog, his aesthesis, his perceptive faculty. Some
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: have quarreled in the day, and are no longer on
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: speaking terms. He is at peace with himself and with
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the whole world of all that lay them down in
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: the little village. That night his sleep will be the
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: surest and the sweetest, For not even the blacksmith himself
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: will have better claim to have earned a knight's repose.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: End of loafing, Section five of Pagum Papers. This is
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Recording by Thompson. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham. Section five
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Cheap Knowledge. When at times it happens to me that
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I gin to be a weary of the sun, and
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: to find a fair apple of life dust and ashes
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: at the core, just because perhaps I can't afford Malampus
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Brown's last volume of poems in large paper, but must
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: perforce condescend upon the two and six be edition for
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: the million. Then I bring myself to a right temper
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: by recalling to memory a sight which now and again
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: in old days would touch the heart of me to
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: a happier pulsation in the long dark winter evenings, outside
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: some shop window whose gaslight flared brightest into the chilly street,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: I would see some lad, sometimes even a girl, book
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: in hand, heedless of cold and wet, of aching limbs
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: and straining eyes, careless of jostling passers by, of rattle
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: and turmoil behind them, and about their happy spirit far
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: in an enchanted world, till the ruthless shopmen turned out
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the gas and brought them rudely back to the bitter
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: reality of cramped legs and numbed fingers. My brother or
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: my sister, I would cry inwardly, feeling the link that
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: bound us together. They possessed for the hour the two
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: gifts most precious to the student. Light and solitude, the
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: true solitude of the roaring street. Somehow this vision rarely
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: greets me. Now, probably the Free Library have supplanted the
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: flickering shop lights, and every lad and lass can enter
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: and call for Miss Braddon and Batten thereon in luxury
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: sofa lap of leather. And of course this boon is
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: appreciated and profited by, and we shall see the divine
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: results in a year or two. And yet, sometimes, like
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: the dear old Baron in the red lamp, I wonder
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: for my public libraries possess a special horror as of
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: lonely waists and dragon haunted fens. The stillness and the
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: heavy air, the feeling of restriction and surveillance, the mute
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: presence of these other readers, all silent and all damned,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: combined to set up a nervous irritation fatal to quiet study.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Had I to choose, I would prefer the windy street.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: And possibly others have found that the removal of checks
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: and obstacles make the path which leads to the divine
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: mountain tops less tempting now that it is less rugged.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: So full of human nature are we all still? Despite
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: the radical missionaries that labor in the vineyard. Before the
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: National Gallery was extended and rearranged, there was a little
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: Saint Catharine by Pinturicio that possessed my undivided affections. In
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: those days. She hung near the floor, so that those
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: who would worship must govel, and I grudged it. Whenever
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: I found myself near Trafalgar Square with five minutes to spare,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: I used to turn in and sit on the floor
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: before the object of my love, till gently but firmly
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: replaced on my legs by the attendant. She hangs on
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: the line now in the grand new room, but I
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: never go to see her. Somehow she is not my
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: saint Catherine of Old. Doubtless, free libraries affect many students
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: in the same way, on the same principle as that
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: now generally accepted, that it is the restrictions placed on
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: vice by our social code which make its pursuit so
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: peculiarly agreeable. But even when the element of human nature
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: has been fully allowed for, it remains a question whether
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: the type or mind that a generation or two of
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: three libraries will evolve is or is not the one
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: that the world most desiderates, and whether the spare reading
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: and consequent fertile thinking necessitated by the old or gas
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: style is not productive of sounder results. The cloyd and
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: congested mind resulting from the free run of these grocer's
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: shops to omnivorous appetites, and all young readers are omnivorous
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: bids fair to produce a race of literary resurrection men,
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: a result from which we may well pray to be
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: spared of all forms of lettered effusiveness that which exploits
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: the original work of others, and professes to supply us
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: with right opinions. There an end is the least wanted.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: And whether he take to literary expression by pen or
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: only wag the tongue of him, the grocer's boy of
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: letters is sure to prove a prodigious ball. The free library,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: if it be fulfilling the program of its advocates, is
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: breeding such as he by scores. But after all there
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: is balming gilead. A much joy and consolation may be
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: drawn from the sorrowful official report, by which it would
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: appear that the patrons of these libraries are confining their
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: reading with a charming unanimity, exclusively to novels, And indeed
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: they cannot do better. There is no more blessed thing
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: on earth than a good novel, not the least merit
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: of which is that it induces a state of passive,
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: unconscious enjoyment, and never frienzes the reader to go out
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: and put the world right. Next to fairy tales, the
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: original world fiction, our modern novels may be ranked as
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: our most precious possessions. And so it has come to
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: pass that I shall now cheerfully pay my five shillings
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: or ten shillings or whatever it may shortly be in
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: the pound towards the free library, convinced at last that
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: the money is not wasted in training exponents of the
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: subjectivity of this writer and the objectivity of that nor
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: in developing fresh imitators of dead discredited styles, but is
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: righteously devoted to the port of wholesome, honest, unpretending novel
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: reading and as cheap knowledge.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: Section six of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: by Steve Britton. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham. Section six
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: through shady Throckmorton Street, and about the vale of Cheapside,
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: the restless Mercury is flitting with furtive eye and voice
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: a little hoarse from bidding in the market. Further west
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: down classic Piccadilly moves the young Apollo, the lord of
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: the unerring satin Beau, and nothing meaner than a frock
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: coat shall, in these latter years float round his perfect limbs,
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: but remote in other haunts than these, the rural pan
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: is hiding and piping the low sweet strain that reaches
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: only the ears of a chosen few. And now that
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: the year wearily turns and stretches herself before the perfect waking,
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: the God emboldened begins to blow a clearer note. When
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: the waking comes at last and summer is abroad, these
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: deities will abroad too, each as his several attributes move him.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: Who is this that flieth up the reaches of the
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: Thames and steam launch hired for the day, Mercury is out,
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: some dozen or fifteen strong. The flower gemmed banks crumble
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: and slide down under the wash of his rampant screw.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: His wake is marked by a line of lobster claws,
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: gold necked bottles, and fragments of veal pie resplendent and blazer.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: He may even even be seen to embrace the slim
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: wasted nymph haunter of green room shades in the full
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: gaze of the shocked and scandalized sun. Apollo, meantime, reposeth
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: passively beautiful on the lawn of the Guard's Club at Maidenhead. Here, O, Apollo,
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: are haunts meet for thee a deity subjectively inclined, he
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: is neither objective, nor, it must be said, for him
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: at all objectionable, like them of mercury. Meanwhile, nor launches
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: nor lawns tempt him that pursueth the rural pan in
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: the hushed recesses of hurly backwater, where the canoe may
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: be paddled almost under the tumbling comb of the weir,
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: he is to be looked for. There the God pipes
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: with freest abandonment, or under the great shadow of Streetly hill,
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: annihilating all that's made to a green thought and a
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: green shade. Or better yet, pushing and explorers p of
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: the remote, untraveled thame till Dorchester stately roof broods over
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: the quiet fields in solitudes such as these pan sits
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: and dabbles, and all the air is full of the
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: music of his piping. Southwards again, on the pleasant Surrey downs,
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: there is shouting and jostling, dust that is draftsy, and
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: language that is sultry. Thither comes the young Apollo, calmly,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: confident as ever, and he meeteth certain mercuries of the
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: baser sort, who do him abeissance, call him captain and lord,
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: and then proceed to skin him from head to foot
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: as thoroughly as the God himself. Late Marcius in Days
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: of yore at a certain spring meeting in Phrygia, a
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: good instance of time's revenges. And yet Apollo returns to
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: town and swears he has had a grand day. He
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: does so every year, out of hearing of all the clamor.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: The Pan may be found stretched on ranmore common loitering
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: under aubringer pines, or prone by the secluded stream of
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: the sinuous mole, abounding in friendly greetings for his foster brothers,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: the dab chick and water rats for a holiday. Mercury
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: loveth the pullman express in a short hour, with a
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: Society paper, Anon brown boots on the pier, and the
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: pleasant combination of Metropole and Monopole. Apollo, for his part,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: will urge the horses of the sun. And if he
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: leaveth the Society Weekly to Mercury, yet he loveth well
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: the magazine from which Onfhalos or hub of the universe,
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: he will direct his shining team, even to the far
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: hesperities of Richmond, or of Windsor. Both Iron Road and
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: level Highway are shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: rather to foot it along the sheep track on the
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: limitless downs, or the thwart leading footpath through copse and spinney,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: not without pleasant fellowship with feather and fur. Nor does
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: it follow from all this that the God is unsocial,
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: albeit shy of the company of his more showy brother deities.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: He loveth the more unpretentious human kind, especially them that
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: are at SCRIPTI glebe addicted to the kindly soil and
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: to the working thereof perfect in no way only simple
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: cheery sinners. For he is only half a god after all,
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: and the red earth in him is strong when the
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: pelting storm drives the wayfarers to the sheltering inn among
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: the little group on bench and settle, and has been
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: known to appear at times in homely guise of hedger
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: and ditcher or weather beaten shepherd from the downs, strange
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: lore and quaint fancy. He will then impart in the
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: musical Wessex or Mercian. He has learned to speak so natural,
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: though it may not be till many a mile away
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: that you begin to suspect that you have unwittingly talked
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: with him who chased the flying shrinks in Argady and
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: turned the tide of fight at Marathon. Yes, today the
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: iron horse has searched the country through east and west,
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: north and south, bringing with it commercialism, whose god is Jerry,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: and who studs the hills with stucco and garrets, the
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: streams with the girder, bringing two into every nook and corner,
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: fashion and chatter, the tailor made gown, and the eyeglass.
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: Happily a great part is still spared. How great these
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: others fortunately do not know, in which the rural Pan
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: and his following may hide their heads for yet a
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: little longer, until the growing tyranny has invaded the last Carmen,
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: Spinney and sheep down, and driven the kindly God, the
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: well wisher to man whither End of the Rural Pan
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: An April essay recording by Steve Britton.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: Section seven of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: by Lisa Rickert. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham, Section seven Marginalia.
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: American Hunt, in his suggestive talks about art, demands that
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: the child shall be encouraged, or rather permitted, for the
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: natural child needs little encouragement to draw when and where
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: onsoever he can. For says he, the child's scribbling on
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: the margin of his school books is really worth more
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: to him than all he gets out of them. And
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: indeed to him the margin is the best part of
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: all books, and he finds in it the soothing influence
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: of a clear sky in a landscape. Doubtless, Sir Benjamin Backbite,
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: though his was not an artist's soul, had some dim
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: feeling of this mighty truth when he spoke of that
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: new quarto of his, in which a neat rivulet of
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: text shall meander through a meadow of margin, boldly granting
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: the margin to be of superior importance to the print.
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: This metaphor is pleasantly expanded in Burton's book Hunter, wherein
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: you read of certain folios with their majestic stream of
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: central print overflowing into rivulets of marginal notes, sedgy with citations.
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: But the good Doctor leaves the main stream for a
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: backwater of error in inferring that the chief use of
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: margins is to be a parading ground for notes, and
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: in snass as if they had not absolute value in themselves,
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: nor served a finer end in truth haunt's child was
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: vastly the wiser man for myself. My own early margins
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: chiefly served to note, cite, and illustrate the habits of crocodiles.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: Along the lower or tail edge. The saurian, splendidly serrated
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: as to his back, arose out of old nile up
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: one side. Negroes swart as sucked lead pencil would limn
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: them let fall their nerveless spears up. The other monkeys,
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: gibbering with terror, swarmed hastily up palm trees, a plant
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: to the untutored hand of easier outline than say your
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: British oak. Meanwhile, all over the unregarded text Balbisleucius on
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: the most inadequate provocation or Hannibal, pursued his victorious, while
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: Roman generals delivered ornate set speeches prior to receiving the
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: usual satisfactory licking. Fabius Hasdrubal all alike were pallid shades
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: with faint, thin voices, powerless to pierce the distance. The
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: margins of Cocitus, doubtless knew them. Mine were dedicated to
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: the more attractive flesh and blood of animal life. The
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: varied phases of the tropical forest, or in more practical mood,
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: I would stoop to render certain facts recorded in the
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: text to these digressions I probably owe what little education
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: I possess. For example, there was one sentence in our
• 52:40
  Speaker 5: Roman history. By this single battle of Magnesia, Antiochus the
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: Great lost all his conquests in Asia Minor. Serious historians
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: really should not thus forget themselves. Twas so easy, by
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: a touch of the pen to transform battle into bottle
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: for conquests. One could substitute a word for which not
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: even mc cauley's schoolboy were at a loss, and the
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: result depicted with rude vigor in his margin, fixed the
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: name of at least one ancient fight on the illustrator's memory.
• 53:17
  Speaker 5: But this plodding and material art had small charm for me,
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: to whom the happy margin was a clear sky, Ever,
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: through which I could sail away at will to more
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: gracious worlds. I was duly qualified by a painfully acquired
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: ignorance of dead languages cautiously to approach my own, And
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: twas no better along Milton's margins. The Gryffin must needs
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: pursue the Aramasbion. What a chance that Aramasbian for the
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: imaginative pencil. And so it has come about that, while
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: Milton periods are mostly effaced from memory by the sponge
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: of time, I can still see that vengeful griffin cousin
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: German to the gentle beast that dance the lobster quadrille
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: by a certain shore. It is by no means insisted
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: upon that the chief end and use of margins is
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: for pictorial illustration, nor yet for furtive games of aughts
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: and crosses, nor in the case of hymn books, for
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: amorous missives scrawled against the canticle, for the day to
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: be passed over into an adjacent pew, as used alast
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: to happen in days when one was young and godless
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: and went to church. Nor again, are the margins of
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: certain poets entrusted to man for the composing thereon of
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: infinitely superior rhymes. On the subjects themselves have maltreated, a
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: depraved habit akin to scalping. What has never been properly
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: recognized is the absolute value of the margin itself, a
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: value frequently superior to its enclosure. In poetry, the popular
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: taste demands its margin and takes care to get it
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: in the little verses what they puts inside the crackers.
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: The special popularity, indeed, of lyrics as opposed to epic verse,
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: is due to this habit of feeling. A good example
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: may be found in the work of mister Swinburne. The
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: latter is the better poetry, the earlier remains the more
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: popular because of its eloquence of margin. Mister Tupper might
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: long ago have sat with laureate Brow, but for his
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: neglect of this first principle. The Song of sigurd Our,
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: one epic of the century, is pitiably unmargined, and so
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: has never won the full meed of glory it deserves.
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: While the ingenious gentleman who wrote Beowulf our other English epic,
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: grasped the great fact from the first, so that his
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: work is much the more popular of the two. The
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: moral is evident. An authority on practical book making has
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: stated that margin is a matter to be studied, also
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: that to place the print in the center of the
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: paper is wrong in principle and to be deprecated. Now,
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: if it be wrong in principle, let us push that
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: principle to its legitimate conclusion and deprecate the placing of
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: print on any part of the paper at all, without
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: actually suggesting this course to any of our living bards.
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: When I may ask, when shall that true poet arise, who,
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: disdaining the trivialities of text, shall give the world a
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: book of verse consisting entirely of margin. How we shall
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: shove and jostle for large paper copies? End of Marginalia.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: Section eight of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: information or to volunteer, please visit librivos dot org. Recording
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: by Steve Britton. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham. Section eight.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: There was once an old cashier in some ancient city establishment,
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: whose practice was to spend his yearly holiday in relieving
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: some turnpike man at his post, and performing all the
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: duties appertaining therein. Too, this was vulgarly taken to be
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: an instance of mere mill horse enslavement to his groove
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: the reception of payments, And it was spoken of both
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: in mockery of all mill horses and for the due
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: admonishment of others. And yet that clerk had discovered for
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: himself and unique method of seeing life at its best
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: the flowing, hurrying, traveling marketing life of the highway, the
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: life of bagman and cart, of tinker and pig dealer,
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: and all cheery creatures that drink and chaffer together in
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: the sun. He belonged above all to the scanty class
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: of clear seeing persons who know both what they are
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: good for and what they really want to know. What
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: you would like to do is one thing to go
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: out boldly and do it as another and a rarer.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: And the sterile fields about Hellgate are strewn with the
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: corpses of those who would and if they could, to
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: be sure, being bent upon the relaxation most congenial to
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: one's soul, it is possible to push one's disregard for
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: convention too far, as is seen in the case of another,
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: though of an earlier generation, in the same establishment. In
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: his office there was the customary attendance book, wherein the
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: clerks were expected to sign each day. Here his name
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: one morning ceases abruptly from appearing. He signs, indeed no
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: more instead of signature, you find a little later writ
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: in careful commercial hand the sentry. Mister Wilson did not
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: attend at his office to day, having been hanged at
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: eight o'clock in the morning for horse stealing. Through the
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: faded ink of this record, do you not seem to
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: catch across the gulf of years some waft of the
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: jolly humanity which breathed in this prince among Clark's a
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: formal precision, doubtless during business hours, but with just this
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: honest love of horseflesh lurking deep down there in him,
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: unsuspected sweetening the whole lump. Can you not behold him,
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: freed from his desk, turning to pursue his natural bent
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: as a city bred dog still striveth to bury his
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: bone deep in the hearth rug for no filthy lucre,
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: you may be sure, but from sheer love of the
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: pursuit itself. All the same he aired aired, if not
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: in taste, at least in judgment, For we can cannot
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: entirely acquit him of blame for letting himself be caught.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: In these tame and tedious days of the policemen rampant.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: Our melancholy cells are debarred from many a sport, joyous
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: and debonair, whereof our happier fathers were free. Book stealing,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: to be sure, remains to us. But every one is
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: not a collector, And besides, tis a diversion you can
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: follow with equal success all the year round. Still the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: instances may happily be pregnant with suggestion to many who
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: wearily ask each year what new place or pursuit exhausted
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: earth still keeps for the holiday maker. Tis a sad
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: but sober fact that the most of men lead flat
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: and virtuous lives, departing annually with their family to some
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: flat and virtuous place, there to disport themselves in a
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: manner that is decent, orderly, wholly uninteresting, vacant of every
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: buxom stimulus. To such as these a suggestion in all friendliness,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: why not try crime. We shall not attempt to specify
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: the particular branch, for every one must himself seek out
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: and find the path his nature best fits him to follow.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: But the general.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: Charm of the prospect must be evident to all. The
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: freshness and novelty of secrecy, the artistic satisfaction in doing
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: the act of self expression as well as it can
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: possibly be done, the experience of being not the hunter
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: but the hunted, not the sportsman but the game, the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: delight of comparing and discussing crimes with your mates over
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: a quiet pipe on your return to town. These new pleasures,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: these and their like, would furnish just that gentle stimulant,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: that peaceful sense of change so necessary to the tired worker.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: And then the fact that you would naturally have to
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: select and plan out your particular line of diversion with
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: advice or assistance has its own advantage. For the moment
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: a man takes to dinning in your ears that you ought,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: you really ought to go to Norway, you would once
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: begin to hate Norway with the hate that ever will be.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: And to have Neulan Chromer or Dawlish Corinthia or the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: Austrian tyrol jammed down your throat is enough to initiate
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: the discovery that your own individual weakness is a joyous
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: and persistent liking for manslaughter. Some few seem to be
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: born without much innate tendency to crime. After all, it
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: is mostly a matter of heredity. These unfortunates are less
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: culpable than their neglectful ancestors, and it is a fault
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: that none need really blush for in the present, for
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: such as they. There still remains the example of the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: turnpike loving Clark, with all its golden possibilities denied. The
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: great delight of driving a locomotive or a fire engine
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: world along in a glorious nimbus of smoke, pant spark,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: shower and horse warning roar. What bliss to be the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: pale faced quill driver to command a penny steamboat between
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: London Bridge and Chelsea, To drive a four horsed Jersey
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: car to queue at sixpence ahead. Though turnpikes be things
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: of the past, there are still tolls to be taken
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: on many a pleasant reach of Thames. What happiness in
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: quiet moments, to tend the lock keeper's flower beds, perhaps
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: make love to his daughter Anon in busier times, To
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: let the old gates swing, work the groaning winches, and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: hear the water lap and suck and gurgle as it
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: slowly sinks or rises with its swaying freight, To dangle
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: legs over the side. And great old acquaintances here and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: there among the party colored wayfarers passing up or down,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: while tobacco pallleth not on the longest day, and beer
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: is ever within easy reach. The iron tetter that scurfs
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: the face of our island has killed out the pleasant
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: life of the road, but many of its best conditions
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: still linger round these old toll gates, free from dust
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: and clatter, on the silent liquid highway to the west.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: These were the weaker brethren. But for him who is
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: conscious of the gift, the path is plain. End of
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: the eternal with her. Recording by Steve Britton.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 6: Section nine of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 6: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 6: by Brian Darby, March twenty sixteen, San Jose, California. Pagan
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 6: Papers by Kenneth Graham, Section nine. Deus Terminus, the practical
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 6: Roman stern constructor of roads and codes. When he needs
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: must worship loved a deity practical as himself, and in
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: his parceling of the known world into plots, saying, unto
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 6: this man, bide here, and to that sit you down there,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 6: he could scarce fail to evolve the God Terminus, visible
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: witness of possession and dominion, type of solid facts not
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: to be quibbled away. We Romans of this latter day
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 6: so hailed by others or complacently christened by ourselves are
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: roman in nothing more than in this, and as much
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: in the less tangible realms of thought as in our
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: solid acres. We are fain to set up the statue
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 6: which shall proclaim that so much country is explored, marked out, allotted,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 6: and done with, and that such and such ramblings and
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: excursions are practicable and permissible, and all else is exploded,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: illegal or absurd. And in this way we are left
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 6: with not but a vague, lingering tradition of the happier
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: days before the advent of the ruthless deity. The Sylvan
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 6: glories of yonder stretch of woodland renew themselves each autumn regal.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: As ever, it is only the old enchantment that is
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: gone banished by the matter of fact deity, who has
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: stolidly settled exactly where Lord A's shooting ends and squire
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 6: bees begins. Once no such petty limitations fettered the mind.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: A step into the woodland was a step over the border,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 6: the margin of the material, and then goodbye to the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: modern world of the land agent and the field advertisement.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 6: A chiming of little bells over your head, and lo,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 6: the peregrine with eyes like jewels, fluttered through the trees,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: her jesses catching in the boughs. Twas the favorite of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: the princess. The windows of whose father's castle already gleamed
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 6: through the trees, where honors and favors awaited the adventuress.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 6: The white dough sprang away through the thicket, her snowy
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 6: flank stained with blood. She made for the enchanted cot,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: and for entrance, you too had the password? Did you
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 6: fail on her traces? Nor fox nor mole was too
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 6: busy to spare a moment for friendly advice or information.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 6: Little hands were stretched to trip you. Fairy gibe and
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: mockery pelted you from every rabbit hole. And oh, what
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 6: dryads you have kissed among the leaves in that brief
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: blissful moment ere they hardened into tree. Tis pity, indeed,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: that this sort of thing should have been made to
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 6: share the suspicion attaching to the poacher, that the stony
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 6: stare of the boundary God should confront you at the
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 6: end of every green ride and rabbit run, while the
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 6: very rabbits themselves are too disgusted with the altered circumstances
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 6: to tarry a moment for so much as to exchange,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 6: change the time of day. Truly, this age is born
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 6: like Falstaff, with a white head and something around belly,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 6: and will none of your jigs and fantasies. The golden
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 6: era of princesses is past. For your really virtuous prentices.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 6: There still remain a merchant's daughter or two, and a
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 6: bottle of Port of Sundays on the Clapham Mahogany. For
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 6: the rest of us, one or two decent clubs, and
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 6: plenty of nice, roomy lunatic asylums. Go spin, you, jade,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 6: Go Spin is the one greeting for imagination. And yet
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: what a lip the slut has? What an ankle?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 7: Go to?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 6: There's nobody looking. Let us lock the door, pull down
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 6: the blinds, and ride us. A merry ballad tis ungracious,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 6: perhaps to regret what has gone forever when so much
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 6: is given in return a humor we have that is
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 6: entirely new, and allot months that shall win back astraea.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 6: Our labor program stands for evidence that the board school
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 6: at least has done enduring work, and the useless race
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 6: of poets is fast dying out, though we no longer
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 6: conjecture what song the sirens sang or what name Achilles
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 6: assumed when he hid himself among women. Yet many a
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: prize of Guinea's galore awaits the competitor who will stoop
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 6: week by week to more practical research. LeMond marche as
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 6: raynon hath it vers unsought Damericanese potatre la vulgarta general
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 6: seraatel jurla comdcion de Bernard Deslieu navon par la duatre
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 6: fort dificiu. We will be very facile, then, since needs
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 6: must remembering the good old proverb that scornful dogs eat
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 6: dirty puddings. But ere we show Terminus the door. At
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 6: least let us fling one stone at the shrieking soulf
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 6: furious houses of damnation, erected as temples in his honor
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 6: and dignified with his name. There mid clangor, dirt and
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 6: pestilence of crowding humanity, the very spirit of worry and
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: unrest sits embodied. The old Roman was not such a
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 6: bad fellow. His deity of demarcation at least breathed open
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 6: air and knew the kindly touch of sun and wind.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 6: His simple rites were performed amid flowers and under blue
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: sky by sunny roads or tranquil waters, and on this
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 6: particular altar the sacrifice was ordained to be free from
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 6: any stain of gore. Our hour of sacrifice, alas has
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 6: not yet come. When it does, a oud procure absite.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: Let the offering be no bloodless one, but let for
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: choice a fat and succulent station master's smoke and crackle
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 6: on the altar of expiation. End of daous Terminus. Recording
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 6: by Brian Darby.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 8: Section ten of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 8: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 8: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Pagan
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 8: Papers by Kenneth Graham, Section ten of Smoking. Concerning cigarette smoking,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 8: it hath been well observed by a certain philosopher that
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 8: this is a practice commendable enough and pleasant to indulge
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 8: in when you're not smoking, wherein the whole criticism of
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 8: the cigarette is found in a little room of the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 8: same manner of thinking was one that I knew who
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 8: kept by him an ample case bulging with cigarettes to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 8: smoke while he was filling his pipe toys. They be
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: verily new guy, and shadows of the substance serviceable, nevertheless,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 8: as shadows sometimes be when the substance is temporarily unattainable,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 8: as between the acts of a play in the park
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 8: or while dressing for dinner, that such moments may not
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: be entirely wasted. That cigarette, however, which is so prompt
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 8: to appear after dinner, I would reprehend and ban and
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 8: totally abolish as enemy to that diviner thing before which
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 8: it should pale its ineffectual fires in shame to wit
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 8: good drink la d've botilieux. Except indeed, when the liquor
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 8: be bad, as is sometimes known to happen, then it
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 8: may serve in some sort as a sorry consolation. But
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 8: to leave these airy substitutes and come to smoking it
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 8: hath been ofttimes debated whether the morning pipe be the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 8: sweeter or that first pipe in the evening, which has
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 8: spur us, who bringeth all good things, brings to the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 8: weary with home and rest. The first is smoked on
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 8: a clearer palate, and comes to unjaded senses like the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 8: kiss of one's first love, but lacks that feeling of
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 8: perfect fruition of merit recompensed and the goal and the
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 8: garland I which clings to the vesper bowl. Whence it
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: comes that the majority give the palm to the latter,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 8: to which I intend no slight when I find the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 8: incense that arises at Matta sweeter even than that of
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 8: even song. For although with most of us who are
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 8: laborers in the vineyard, toilers and swinkers, the morning pipe
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: is smoked in hurry and fear, and a sense of
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 8: alarms and excursions and fleeting trains. Yet with all this
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 8: there are certain halcyon periods sure to arrive, Sundays, holidays
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 8: and the like, the whole joy and peace of which
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 8: are summed up in that one beatific pipe after breakfast,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 8: smoked in a careless majesty, like that of the gods
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 8: when they lie beside their nectar and the clouds are
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 8: lightly curled. Then only can we be said really to smoke.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 8: And so this particular pipe of the day always carries
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 8: with it festal reminiscences, memories of holidays past, hopes for
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 8: holidays to come, a suggestion of sunny lawns and flannels,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 8: and the ungirt loin as sends with all of something
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 8: free and stately, as of faint march music in the air,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 8: or the old Roman cry of liberty, freedom and enfranchisement.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 8: If there be any fly in the pipe smoker's ointment,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 8: it may be said to lurk in the matter of rings.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 8: Only the exceptionally gifted smoker can recline in his chair
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 8: and omit at will the perfect smoke ring in consummate
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 8: eddying succession. He of the meaner sort must be content
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: with at rare heaven sent intervals, while thinking perhaps of
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 8: nothing less there escape from his lips the unpremeditated, flawless circle.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 8: Then deus fio. He is moved to cry at that
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 8: breathless moment when his creation hangs solid and complete ere
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 8: the particles break away and blend with the baser atmosphere. Nay,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 8: some will deny to any of us ten smokers the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 8: gift of fullest achievement. For what saith the poet of
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 8: the century on the earth? The broken arcs in the heaven,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 8: the perfect round. It was well observed by a certain
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 8: character in one of Wilkie Collins's novels. If an imperfect
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 8: memory serveth me rightly that women will take pleasure in
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 8: scents derived from animal emanations, clarified fats and the like,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 8: Yet do illogically abhor the clean, dry, vegetable smell of tobacco.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 8: Herein the true base of the feminine objection is reached,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 8: being as usual inherent want of logic, rather than any
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 8: distaste in the absolute for the thing in question. Thinking
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 8: that they ought to dislike, they do painfully cast about
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 8: for reasons to justify their dislike, when none really exist
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 8: as a specimen of their so called arguments. I remember
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 8: how a certain fair one triumphantly pointed out to me
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 8: that my dog, though loving me well, could yet never
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 8: be brought to like the smell of tobacco, to whom
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 8: I who respected my dog as ben saith of Master Shakespeare.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 8: On this side idolatry, as much as anything, was yet
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 8: fain to point out, more in sorrow than in anger,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 8: that a dog, being an animal who delights to pass
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 8: his whole day from early morn to dewy eve, in
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 8: shoving his nose into every carrion beastliness that he can
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 8: come across, could hardly be considered arbiter elegant tiarum in
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 8: the matter of smeuse. But indeed I did wrong to
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 8: take such foolish quibbling seriously, nor would I have done
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 8: so if she hadn't dragged my poor innocent dog into
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 8: the discussion of smoking in bed. There be who consider
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 8: this a depravity, an instance of that excess in the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: practice of a virtue which passes into vice, and couple
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 8: it with dram drinking, who yet fail to justify themselves
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 8: by argument. For if bed be, by common consent the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 8: greatest bliss, the divinest spot on earth, I let terrarum
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 8: qui praeteromnez angolus read it. And if tobacco be the
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 8: true herb of grace and a joy and healing balm,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 8: and respite and nepenthe if all this be admitted, why
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 8: are two things super excellent separately noxious in conjunction? And
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: is not the bed smoker rather an epicure in pleasure?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 8: Self indulgent perhaps, but still the triumph and creator of
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 8: a new blend, reminding one of a certain traveler's account
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 8: of an intoxicant patronized in the south Sea Islands, which
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 8: combines the blissful effect of getting drunk and remaining sober
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 8: to enjoy it. Yet I shall not insist too much
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: on this point, but would only ask, so long as
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 8: a smoker be unwedded, for some tolerance in the matter,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 8: and a little logic in the discussion thereof concerning cigars,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 8: that there be large sums given for these is within
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 8: common knowledge. One penny, two pennies, nay even four pennies,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 8: is not too great a price, if a man will
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 8: have of the finest leaf, reckless of expense. In this
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 8: sort of smoking, however, I find more vainglory and ostentation
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 8: than solid satisfaction, And its votaries would seem to display
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 8: less a calm, healthy affection for tobacco than, as Sir T.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 8: Browne hath it a prodigality. And besides grievous wasting of
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 8: the pocket, atmospheric changes varying in the crops and the
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 8: like cause uncertainty to cling about each individual weed, so
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 8: that man is always more or less at the mercy
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 8: of nature and the elements, an unsatisfactory and undignified position
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 8: in these latter days of the triumphant democracy, but worse
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 8: and fatalist of all to every cigar smoker. It is
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 8: certain to happen that once in his life, by some
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 8: happy combination of time, place, temperament, and nature, by some
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 8: starry influence maybe or freak of the gods in mocking sport.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 8: Once and once only he will taste the aroma of
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 8: the perfect leaf at just the perfect point, the ideal cigar. Henceforth,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 8: his life is saddened, as one kissed by a goddess
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 8: in a dream. He goes thereafter, as one might say,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 8: in a sort of love sickness seeking. He scarce knows
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 8: what his existence becomes a dissatisfied yearning. The world is
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 8: spoiled for him. Its joys are tasteless, so he wonders
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 8: vision haunted down dreary days to some miserable end. Yet
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 8: if one will walk this path and take the risks,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 8: the thing may be done at comparatively small expense. To
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 8: such I would command the Roman motto slightly altered alieni
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 8: appentes sui avarus. There be always good fellows with good
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 8: cigars for their friends. Nay too, the boxes of these
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 8: lie open, and the good cigar belongs rather to him
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 8: that can appreciate it aright, than to the capitalist, who,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 8: owing to a false social system, happens to be its
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 8: temporary guardian and trustee. Again, there is a saying bread first.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 8: I think among the schoolmen at Oxford that it is
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 8: the duty you have a son to live up to
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 8: his father's income. Should any young man have found this
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 8: task too hard for him, after the most strenuous and
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 8: single minded efforts, at least he can resolutely smoke his
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 8: father's cigars in the path of duty. Complete success is
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: not always to be looked for, but an improving conscience.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 8: The sure reward of honest endeavor is within reach of all.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 8: End of smoking.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 7: Section eleven of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 7: All libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 7: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Pagan
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 7: Papers by Kenneth Graham. An autumn, and count for yet
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 7: another mile or two. The hot, dusty road runs through
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 7: level fields till it reaches yonder shoulder of the downs,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 7: already golden three parts up with ripening corn. Thither wards
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 7: lies my inevitable way. And now that home is almost
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 7: in sight, it seems hard that the last part of
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 7: the long day's sweltering and delightful tramp must needs be
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 7: haunted by that hateful speck black on the effulgence of
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 7: the slope. Did I not know he was only a scarecrow?
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 7: The thing might be in a way companionable, a pleasant
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 7: suggestive surmise, peeking curiosity, gilding this last weary stage with
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 7: some magic of expectancy. But I passed close by him
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 7: him on my way out early as I was, he
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 7: was already up and doing eager to introduce himself. He
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 7: leered after me as I swung down the road, mimicked
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 7: my gait, as it seemed, in a most uncalled for way,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 7: and when I looked back he was blowing the risive
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 7: kisses of farewell with his empty sleeve. I had succeeded, however,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 7: in shaking off the recollection between the morning start and now.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 7: So it was annoying that he should force himself on me,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 7: just when there was no getting rid of him at
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 7: this distance. However, he might be anything an indeterminate blot.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 7: It seems to waiver to falter, to come and vanish
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 7: again in the quivering, heated air, And so in the
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 7: old time, leaning on that familiar gait are the telltale
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 7: in woven initials still decipherable. I used to watch her
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 7: pacing demurely towards me through the corn. It was ridiculous,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 7: It was fatuous under all the circumstances. It was monstrous,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 7: and yet we were both under twenty. So she was she,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 7: and I was I, and there were only we three
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 7: the wide world over, She and I and the unbetraying
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 7: gait porter Ibernia. False visions alone sped through you, though
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 7: Cupid was wont to light on your topmost bar and
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 7: pre in his glowing plumes, and to think that I
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 7: should see her once more coming down and the path
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 7: as if not a day had passed, hesitating as of old,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 7: and then but surely her ankle seam confound that scarecrow.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 7: His sex is by this time painfully evident, also his
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 7: condition in life, which is as of one looking back
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 7: on better days. And now he is upon a new tack.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 7: Though here on the level it is still sultry and airless.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 7: An evening breeze is playing briskly along the slope where
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 7: he stands, and one's sleeve soars the air violently, the
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 7: other is pointed stiffly heavenwards. It is all plain enough,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 7: my poor friend. The sins of the world are a
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 7: heavy burden and a grievous unto you. You have a
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 7: mission you must testify. It will fourth in season and
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 7: out of season for man. He wakes and sleeps, and
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 7: sins betimes, but crows sin steadily without any cessation. And
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 7: this unhappy state of things is your own particular business.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 7: Even at this distance, I seem to hear you rasping it. Salvation, damnation, damnation, salvation,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 7: And the jolly earth smiles in the perfect even glow,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 7: and the corn ripples and laughs allround you. And one
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 7: young rook only fledged this year too. After an excellent
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 7: simulation of prostrate heartbroken, Penitence sows joyously away to make
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 7: love to his neighbour's wife. Salvation, damnation, damn. A shifty
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 7: riggle of the road, and he is transformed once more,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 7: flung back in an ecstasy of laughter, holding his lean sides,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 7: his whole form writhes with the chuckle and gurgle of merriment.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 7: Ho Ho, what a joke it was, how I took
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 7: you all in, even the rooks. What a joke is everything?
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 7: To be sure? Truly, I shall be glad to get
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 7: quit of this heartless mumma. Fortunately I shall soon be
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 7: past him. And now behold the old dog waxes amorous, mincing, mowing,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 7: empty sleeve on hollow breast. He would fain pose as
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 7: the most irresistible old hypocrite that ever paced a metropolitan curb.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 7: Love you, young dogs, he seems to croak. Love is
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 7: the one thing worth living for. Enjoy your present, Rooks
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 7: and awe as I do. Why indeed, should he alone
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 7: be insensible to the golden influence of the hour? More
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 7: than one supple waste alas or universal masculine frailty has
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 7: been circled by that tattered sleeve in days gone by,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 7: a throbbing heart once beat, where sodden straw now fails
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 7: to give a manly curve to the chest. Why should
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 7: the coat survive and not a particle of the passion
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 7: that inspired it long ago? At last I confront him
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 7: face to face, and the villain Grin's recognition completely unabashed. Nay,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 7: he cocks his eye with a significant glanceunder the slouch
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 7: of his shapeless hats, and his arm points persistently and
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 7: with intelligence, up the road, My good fellow, I know
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 7: the way to the dog and duck as well as
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 7: you do. I was going there anyhow without your officious interference.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 7: And the beer, as you justly remark, is unimpeachable. But
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 7: was this really all you've been trying to say to
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 7: me this last half hour. Well Well, end of an
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 7: autumn en counter.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: Section twelve of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: information or a volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: by Lynn Thompson. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham. Section twelve.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: The white Poppy, a riot of scarlet on gold. The
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: red poppy of our native fields tosses heavy tresses with
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: gipsy abandon, A sister of the seashore, is golden, a
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 3: yellow blossom that loves the keen salt savor of the
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: spray of another hue. Is the poppy of history, of romance,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: of the Muse, White as a stark death shroud, pallid
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: as the cheeks of that queen of a silent plant,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: whose temple she languorously crowns, ghost like. Beside her fuller
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: blooded kin, she droops dream laden Papreve's Omniferum, the poppy
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: of the magic juice of oblivion. In the royal plenitude
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: of summer, the scarlet blooms will sometimes seem but a
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: red cry from earth in memory of the many jews
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: of battle that have drenched these acres in years gone
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: by for little end. But these came bubbles of blood
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: might glow to the yellow flower. Does but hint of
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: the gold that has dashed a thousand wrecks at her
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: feet around these shores. For happier suggestion, we must turn
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: to her of the pallid petals, our white lady of consolation,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: fitting Hugh to typify the crowning blessing of forgetfulness. Too
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: often the sable robes of night dissemble sleeplessness, remorse, regret,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: self questioning. Let black thin rather stand for hideous memory,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: white for blessed, blank oblivion, happiest gift of the gods.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: For who indeed can say that the record of his
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: life is not crowded with failure and mistake, stained with
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: its petty cruelties of youth, its meannesses and follies of
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: later years, all of which storm and clamour incessantly at
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: the gates of memory, refusing to be shut out. Leave
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: us alone, o gods, to remember our felicities, our successes.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: Only aid us ye who recall no gifts aptly and
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: is squeakly to forget discreetly, we say, for it is
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: a tactful forgetfulness that makes for happiness in the minor matter,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: for instance, of small money obligations. That shortness of memory,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: which the school of professors panurge and false rashly praises,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: may often betray into some unfortunate allusion or reference to
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: the subject, which shall pain the delicate feelings of the obliger, or,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: if he be of coarser clay, shall lead him in
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: his anger, to express himself with unseemliness, and thereby to
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: do violence to his mental tranquility, in which, alone, as
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: Marcus Aurelius teacheth, lie the perfection of moral character. This
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: is to be a stumbling block and an offense against
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: the brethren. It is better to keep just memory enough
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: to avoid such hidden rocks and shoals, in which thing.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: Mister Swiveller is our great exemplar, whose mental mine up
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: of London was a chart wherein every creditor was carefully
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: buoyed the wise man praise we are told for good digestion.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: Let us add to the prayer and a bad memory. Truly,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: we are sometimes tempted to think that we are the
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: only ones cursed with this corroding canker. Our friends, we
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: can swear, have all, without exception atrocious memories. Why is
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: ours alone so hideously vital? Yet this isolation must be imaginary,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: for even as we engage in a selfish moan for
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: help in our own petty case, we are moved to
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: add a word for certain others who, meaning no ill
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: unthinkingly go about to add to humanity's already heavy load
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: of suffering. How much needless misery is caused in this
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: world by the reckless recollections of dramatic and other celebrities. You, gods,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: in lending ear to our prayer, remember too, above all
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: other sorts and conditions of men. These are poor erring
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: brothers and sisters, and sometimes sommites of mummadon moments there are.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: It is true when this traitor spirit tricks you, when
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: some subtle scent, some broken notes of an old song,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: nay even some touch of a fresher air on your
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: cheeks at night, a breath of Lavon Quivierre a Frabert's
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: La Montaine, have power to ravish, to catch you back
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: to the blissful days when you trod the one authentic
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 3: paradise moments only alas then the evil crowd rushes in again,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: howls in the sacred grove, tramples down, and defiles the
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: happy garden. And once more you cry to our lady
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: of sleep, crowned of the white poppy, and you envy
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: your dog, who, for full discharge of a present benefaction,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: having wabbed you a hearty, expressive tail, will then pursue
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: it gently round the hearth rug till in rest coil
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: he reaches it at last, and oblivion with it every
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: one of his half dozen diurnal sleeps, being in truth
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: a royal amnesty. But who's the hand that shall reach?
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: As the herb of healing, Perditor blesses every guest at
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: the shearing with a handful of blossom. But this gift
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: is not to be asked of her, whose best wish
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: to her friends is grace and remembrance. The fair Ophelia
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: rather nay, for as a nursling she hugs her grief,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: and for her the memory of the past is a
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: sorrow's crown of sorrow. What flowers are these? Her pale
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: hand offers, there's Pansy's that's for thoughts for me, Rather,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: o dear Ophelia, the White Poppy of Forgetfulness.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: End of the White Poppy, Section thirteen of Pagan Papers.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 4: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 4: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Steve Britton. Pagan Papers
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: by Kenneth Graham. A Bohemian in exile. A reminiscence when
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 4: many years ago now the once potent and extensive Kingdom
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 4: of Bohemia gradually dissolved and passed away. Not a few
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: historians were found to chronicle its past glories, and some
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 4: have gone on to tell the fate of this or
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 4: that once powerful chieftain who either donned the swallow tale
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 4: and conformed, or proudly self exiled, sought some quiet retreat
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: and died as he had lived a Bohemian. But these
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 4: were of the princes of the land. To the people,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: the villane, the common rank and file, does no interest attach.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 4: Did they waste and pine anemic in thin strange, unwonted air,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 4: Or sit at the table of the scornful and learn
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: with Dante how salt was alien bread. It is of
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 4: one of those faithful commons, I would speak narrating only
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: the short and simple annals of the poor. It is
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 4: to be noted that the kingdom aforesaid was not so
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 4: much a kingdom as a United States, a collection of
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: self ruling guilds, municipalities, or republics bound together by a
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: common method of viewing life. There once was a king
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: of Bohemia, but that was a long time ago, and
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 4: even Corporal Trim was not certain in whose reign it was.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: These small free states then broke up gradually from various
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 4: causes and with varying speed, and I think ours was
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 4: one of the last.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 9: To go.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: With us.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 4: As with many others, it was a case of lost leaders.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 4: Just for a handful of silver he left us, though
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 4: it was not exactly that, but rather that having got
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: the handful of silver, they wanted a wider horizon to
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 4: fling it about under than Bloomsbury afforded. So they left
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 4: us for their pleasure, and in due time, one by one.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: But I will not be morose about them. They had
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: honestly earned their success, and we all honestly rejoiced at it,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 4: and do so still. When Old Pan was dead and
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 4: Apollo's bow broken, there were many faithful pagans who would
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: worship at no new shrines, but went out to the
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: hills and caves, truer to the old gods in their
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 4: discrowned desolation than in their pomp and power. Even so
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 4: were we left behind a remnant of the faithful. We
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 4: had never expect to become great in art or song.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 4: It was the life itself that we loved that was
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 4: our end, not as with them, the means to an end.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 4: We aimed at. No glory, no lovers of glory. We
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: give us the glory of going on and still to be. Unfortunately,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 4: going on was no longer possible. The old order had changed,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: and we could only patch up our broken lives as
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 4: best might be. Fothergill said that he, for one, would
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 4: have no more of it. The past was dead, and
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 4: he wasn't going to try and revive it. Henceforth, he
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: too would be dead. To Bloomsbury, our forefathers, speaking of
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: a man's death, said he changed his life. This is
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 4: how father Gill changed his life and died to Bloomsbury.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: One morning he made his way to the Whitechapel Road,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 4: and there he bought a barrow. The White Chapel barrows
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 4: are of all sizes, from the barrow wheeled about by
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: a boy with half a dozen heads of cabbages, to
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 4: barrows drawn by a tall pony, such as on Sundays
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 4: take the members of a club to Epping Forest. They
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 4: are all precisely the same in plan and construction. Only
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 4: in the larger sizes the handles develop or evolve into shafts,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 4: and they are equally suitable according to size for the
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 4: vending of whelks, for a hot potato can, a piano organ,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 4: or for the conveyance of a cheery and numerous party
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 4: to the derby. Fathergill bought a medium size developed one,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 4: and also a donkey to fit. He had it painted white,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 4: picked out with green, the barrow not the donkey, and
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 4: when his arrangements were complete, stabled the whole for the
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 4: night in Bloomsbury. The following morning, before the early red
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 4: had quite faded from the sky, the exodus took place.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 4: Those of us who were left being assembled to drink
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 4: a parting whisky and milk in sad and solemn silence.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 4: Fothergill turned down Oxford Street, sitting on the shaft with
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 4: a short clay in his mouth and disappeared from our sight,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: heading west at a leisurely pace, So he passed out
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: of our lives by way of the Bayswater Road. They
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 4: must have wandered far and seen many things, he and
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 4: his donkey from the fitful fragments of news that now
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 4: and again reached us. It seems that eventually, his style
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 4: of living being economical, he was enabled to put down
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 4: his donkey and barrow and set up a cart and
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 4: a mare. No fashionable gipsy cart, a sort of house
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 4: boat on wheels, but a light and serviceable cart with
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 4: a movable tilt, constructed on his own designs. This allowed
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: him to take along with him a few canvasses and
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 4: other artist's materials soda, water, whisky and such like necessaries,
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 4: and even to ask a friend from town for a
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 4: day or two if he wanted to. He was in
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 4: this state of comparative luxury when at last, by the
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 4: merest accident, I foregathered with him once more. I had
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 4: pulled up to Streetley one afternoon, and, leaving my boat,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 4: had gone for a long ramble on the glorious North
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 4: Berkshire Downs to stretch my legs before dinner. Somewhere over
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 4: on Cuckhamsley Hill, by the side of the ridgeway, remote
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 4: from the habitable world, I found him, smoking his vesper
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 4: pipe on the shaft of his cart, the mare cropping
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 4: the short grass beside him. He greeted me without surprise
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 4: or refusion, as if we had only parted yesterday, and
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: without a hint of an illusion to pass times, but
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 4: drifted quietly into rambling talk of his last three years,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 4: and without ever telling his story. Right out left a
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 4: strange picturesque impression of a nomadic life which, as separated
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 4: by fifty years from modern conventional existence, the old road
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 4: life still lingered on in places, it seemed, whence one
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 4: got well away from the railway, there were two Englands
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 4: existing together, the one fringing the great iron highways wherever
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 4: they might go, the England under the eyes of most
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 4: of us, the other unguessed at by many in whatever
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 4: places were still vacant of shriek and rattle, drowsed on
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 4: as of old, the England of heath and common and
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 4: windy sheep down, of bye lanes and village greens, the
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 4: England of parts and Adams and lavengro, the spell of
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 4: the free, untrammeled life came over me as I listened
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 4: till I was fain to accept of his hospitality and
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 4: a horse blanket for the night. Oblivious of civilized comforts.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: Down at the bowl on the Downs where Alfred fought,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 4: we lay and smoked, gazing up at the quiet stone
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 4: that had shone on many a dane, lying stark and
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 4: still a thousand years ago, and in the silence of
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 4: the lone tract that enfolded us, we seemed nearer to
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 4: those old times than to these. I had left that
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 4: afternoon in the now hushed and sleeping valley of the Thames.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 4: When the news reached me some time later that father
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 4: Gil's aunt had died and left him her house near
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 4: town and the little all she had possessed. I heard
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 4: it with misgivings, not to say forebodings, for the house
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 4: had been his grandfather's, and he had spent much of
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 4: his boyhood there. It had been a dream of his
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 4: early days to possess it in some happy future, and
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 4: I knew he could never bear to sell it or
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 4: let it. On the other hand, can you stall the
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 4: wild ass of the desert and will not decaged? Eagle,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 4: mope and pine? However, possession was entered into, and all
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 4: seemed to go well. For the the cart was honorably
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 4: installed in the coach house, the mayor turned out to grass.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 4: Father Gil lived idly and happily to all seeming, with
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 4: the Book of Verses underneath the bow, and a bottle
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 4: of old claret for the friend who might chance to
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 4: drop in. But as the year wore on, small signs
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 4: began to appear that he who had always rather hear
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: the lark sing than the mouth's squeak, was beginning to
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 4: feel himself caged. Though his bars were gilded. I was
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 4: talking one day to his coachman. He now kept three
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 4: men servants, and he told me that of a Sunday morning,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 4: when the household had gone to church and everything was quiet,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 4: mister Father Gill would go into the coach house and
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 4: light his pipe and sit on the step of the
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 4: brome he had a brom now, and gaze at the
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 4: old cart, and smoke and say nothing, and smoke and
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 4: say nothing again. He didn't like it, the coach and confessed,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 4: and to me it seemed ominous. One morning, late in March,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 4: at the end of a long hard winter, I was
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 4: wakened by a flood of sunshine. The early air came
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 4: warm and soft through the open window. The first magic
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 4: suggestion of spring was abroad, with its whispered hints of
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 4: daffodils and budding hawthorns. And once blood danced to imagined
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 4: pipings of pan from happy fields far distant. At once
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 4: I thought of Father Gill, and with a certain foreboding
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 4: of ill, made my way down to Holly Lodge as
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 4: soon as possible. It was with no surprise at all
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 4: that I heard that the Master was missing in the
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 4: very first of the morning. It seemed, or ever the
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: earliest under housemaid had begun to set man traps on
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 4: the stairs and along the passages. He must have quietly
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 4: left the house. The servants were cheerful enough, nevertheless, and
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 4: thought the Master must only have gone for a nice
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 4: long walk, and so on, after the manner of their kind.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 4: Without a word, I turned my steps to the coach house.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 4: Sure enough, the old cart was missing, the mare was
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 4: gone from the paddock. It was no good my saying
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 4: anything pursuit of this wild haunter of tracks and bypaths
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 4: would have been futile. Indeed, so I kept my own
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 4: counsel Fothergill never returned to Holly Lodge, and has been
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 4: more secret and evasive since his last flight, rarely venturing
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 4: on old camping grounds near home, like to a bird
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 4: scared by the fowler's gun once indeed, since then, while
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 4: engaged in pursuit of the shy quarry known as the
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 4: early perp Late deck e Ng and the like specimens
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 4: of which I was tracking down in the West, I
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 4: hit upon him by accident, hearing in an old village
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 4: rumors concerning a strange man in a cart who neither
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 4: carried samples nor pushed the brewing interest by other means
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 4: than average personal consumption, tail already beginning to be distorted
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 4: into material for the myth of the future. I found
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 4: him friendly, as ever, equally ready to spin his yarns.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 4: As the evening wore on, I ventured upon an allusion
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 4: to past times and Holly Lodge, but his air of
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 4: puzzled politeness convinced me that the whole thing had passed
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 4: out of his mind as a slight but disagreeable incident
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 4: in the even tenor of his nomadic existence. After all,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 4: his gains may have outbalanced his losses. Had he cared
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 4: he might, with his conversational gifts, have been a social success,
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 4: certainly I think an artistic one. He had great powers,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 4: had any impulse been present to urge him to execution
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: and achievement. But he was for none of these things. Contemplative, receptive,
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 4: with a keen sense of certain sub tones and side
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 4: aspects of life unseen by most. Utlass chose wisely to
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 4: enjoy life his own way, and to gather from the
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 4: fleeting days what bliss they had to give, Nor spend
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 4: them in toiling for a harvest to be reaped when
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 4: he was dust, some for the glories of this life,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 4: and some sigh for the prophet's paradise to come. Ah,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 4: take the cash and let the credit go, Nor heed
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 4: The Rumble of a Distant Drone. End of a Bohemian
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 4: in Exile. A reminiscence recording by Steve Britton.
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 10: Section fourteen of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 10: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 10: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 10: by Ali May. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham, Section fourteen
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 10: Justifiable Homicide. This is a remedial age, an age of
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 10: keys for all manner of locks. So he cannot be
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 10: said to ask too much who seeks for exact information
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 10: as to how a young man ought, in justice to
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 10: himself and to society to deal with his relations. During
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 10: his minority, he has lain entirely at their mercy, has
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 10: been their butt, their martyr, their drudge, their corpus villets.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 10: Possessing all the sinews of war, this stiff necked tribe
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 10: has consistently refused to part even for the provision of
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 10: those luxuries so much more necessary than necessities. Its members
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 10: have crammed their victim full of precepts, rules of conduct,
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 10: moral maxims, and most miscellaneous counsel, all which he intuitively
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 10: suspected at the time, and has ascertained by subsequent experience
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 10: to be utterly worthless. Now, when their hour has come,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 10: when the tossin has sound did at last, and the
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 10: gall is at the gate, they still appear to think
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 10: that the old condition of things is to go on unconscious,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 10: apparently of atonement, due of retribution to be exacted, of
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 10: wrongs to be avenged, and of insults to be wiped away.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 10: Over the Northwest frontier, where the writ of the English
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 10: raj runs not. The artless Afghan is happy in a
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 10: code that fully provides for relatives who neglect or misunderstand
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 10: their obligations. An Afghan it was, who found himself compelled
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 10: to reprove an uncle with an unfortunate habit of squandering
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 10: the family estate. An excellent relative, this uncle in all
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 10: other respects. As a liar, he had few equals. He
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 10: robbed with taste and discretion, and his murders were all
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 10: imbued with true artistic feeling. He might have lived to
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 10: a green old age of spotless respectability, but for his
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 10: one little failing. As it was just as had to
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 10: be done ruat Caelum. And so it came about that
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 10: one day the nephew issued forth to correct him with
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 10: a matchlock. The innocent old man was cultivating his paternal acres.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 10: So the nephew was able, unperceived, to get a steady
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 10: sight on him. His finger was on the trigger, when
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 10: suddenly there slipped into his mind the divine precept Allah
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 10: is merciful. He lowered his piece and remained for a
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 10: little plunged in thought. Meanwhile, the unconscious uncle hoed his paddy. Then,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 10: with a happy smile, he took aim once more, for
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 10: there also occurred to him the precept equally divine, but
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 10: Allah is also just. With an easy conscience, he let
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 10: fly and behold there was an uncle. The more in paradise.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 10: It was probably some little affair of a similar quality
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 10: that constrained a recruit in a regiment stationed at Peshawur
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 10: to apply for a leave of absence in order to
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 10: attend to family matters of importance. The colonel knew it
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 10: was small use refusing to leave, as in that case
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 10: his recruit would promptly desert, so he could only ask
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 10: how long was the transaction likely to take? It was
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 10: told him after consideration that allowing for all possible difficulties
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 10: and delays, a month would meet the necessities of the case,
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 10: and on that understanding he allowed his man to depart.
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 10: At the end of the month. He reappeared on duty,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 10: a subdued but mellow cheer shining through his wonted impassiveness.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 10: His colonel ventured to inquire of him in a general
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 10: way if the business in question were satisfactorily concluded, and
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 10: he replied, I got him from behind a rock. There
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 10: are practical difficulties in the way of the adoption of
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 10: such methods at home. We must be content to envy
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 10: without imitating these free and happy sons of the Hills.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 10: And yet a few of the old school are left
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 10: us still a verse from change, mistrustful of progress, sticking
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 10: steadily to the good old fashioned dagger and ball. I
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 10: had a friend who disposed their relative every spring. Uncles
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 10: were his special line. He had suffered much from their tribe,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 10: having been early left an orphan. Though he had dabbled
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 10: in aunts and in his hot youth when he was
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 10: getting his hand in he had even dallied with a
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 10: grand parent or two, but it was in uncles he excelled.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 10: He possessed at the beginning of his career a large
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 10: number of these connections, and pursuit of them from the
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 10: mere sordid point of view of pounds and pence, proved lucrative.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 10: But he always protested, and I believe him that gain
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 10: with him was a secondary consideration. It would hardly be
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 10: in the public interest to disclose his modus operandi. I
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 10: shall only remark that he was one of the first
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 10: to realize the security and immunity afforded the artist by
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 10: the conditions of modern London. Hence it happened that he
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 10: usually practiced in town, but spent his vacations at the
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 10: country houses of such relations as were still spared him.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 10: Where he was on always the life and soul of
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 10: the place. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us to
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 10: assist in the revision of this article, nor was it
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 10: permitted me to soothe his last moments. The presiding Sheriff
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 10: was one of those new fangled officials who insist on
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 10: the exclusion of the public, and he declined to admit me,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 10: either in the capacity of a personal connection, or though
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 10: I tried my hardest as a representative of the National Observer.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 10: It only remains to be said of my much tried
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 10: and still lamented friend that he left few relatives to
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 10: mourn his untimely end. But our reluctant feet must needs
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 10: keep step with the imperious march of time, and my
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 10: poor friend's art, as himself in later years would sorrowfully admit,
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 10: is now almost as extinct as the glass staining of
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 10: old or Robia's craft, so apt and strange, while our
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 10: thin blooded youth, too nice for the joyous old methods,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 10: are content to find sweetest revenge in severely dropping their relations.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 10: This is indeed a most effective position. It exasperates while
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 10: it is unassailable, And yet there remains a higher course,
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 10: a nobler task, not mere forgiveness. It is simple duty
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 10: to forgive even one's guardians. No young man of earnest
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 10: aspirations will be content to stop here, Nay, lead them
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 10: on these lost ones by the hand, conduct them generously
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 10: and gently, and with linking of the arm, educate them,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 10: eradicate their false ideals, dispel their foolish prejudices, Be to
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 10: their faults a little blind, and to their virtues very kind.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 10: In fine realize that you have a mission, that these
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 10: wretches are not here for nothing. The task will seem
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 10: hard at first, but only those who have tried can
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 10: know how much may be done by assiduous and kindly
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 10: effort toward the chastening I the final redemption even of
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 10: the most hopeless and pig headed of uncles. End of
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 10: Justifiable Homicide.
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 11: Section fifteen of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 11: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 11: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 11: by Joseph Tabler Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham, Section fifteen.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 11: The fairy wicket from digging in the sandy over triturated
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 11: soil of times historical, all dotted with date and number
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 11: and sign. How exquisite the relief in turning to the
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 11: dear days outside history. Yet not so very far neither
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 11: for us nurslings of the northern sun, when kindly beasts
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 11: would loiter to give counsel by the wayside, and a
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 11: fortunate encounter with one of the good people was a
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 11: surer path to fortune and the bride than the best
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 11: worn stool that ever proved step ladder to aspiring youth.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 11: For then the fairy wicket stood everywhere, ajar everywhere, and
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 11: to each and all open open green hill. You needed
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 11: no more recondite sesame than that, And whoever you were,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 11: you might have a glimpse of the elfin dancers in
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 11: the hall that is litten within by neither sun nor
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 11: moon or catch at the white Horse's bridle, as the
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 11: fairy Prince rode through. It has been closed now this
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 11: many a year. The fairies, always strong in the field,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 11: are excellent wicket keepers. And if it open at all,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 11: tis but for a moment's month lockery of the material
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 11: generation that so deliberately turned its back on the gap
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 11: into Elfland, that first stage to the beyond. It was
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 11: a wanton trick, though, that these folk of malice used
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 11: to play on. A small schoolboy knew, kicked out of
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 11: his nest into the drafty, uncomfortable outer world, his unfledged
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 11: skin still craving the feathers whereunto he was wont to nestle.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 11: The barrack like school, the arid, cheerless class rooms drove
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 11: him to nature for redress, and under an alien sky,
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 11: he would go forth and wander along the iron road,
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 11: by impassive fields, so like yet so unlike those hitherto
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 11: a part of him, and responding to his every mood,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 11: and to him thus loitering with overladen heart, there would
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 11: come suddenly a touch of warmth, of strange surprise. The
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 11: turn of the road just ahead, that sure is not
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 11: all unfamiliar, that row of elms. It cannot entirely be accident,
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 11: that they range just so. And if not accident, then
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 11: round the bend will come the old duck pond. The
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 11: shoulder of the barn will top it. A few yards
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 11: on will be the gate. It swings too, with its
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 11: familiar click. The dogs race down the avenue, and then,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 11: and then it is all wildly fanciful. And yet, though
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 11: knowing not Tertullian, a cradle quia impulsibile is on his
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 11: tongue as he quickens his pace, for what else can
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 11: he do? A step, and the spell is shattered. All
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 11: is cruel an alien once more, while every copse and
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 11: hedgerow seems a tinkle with faint elvish laughter. The fairies
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 11: have had their joke. They have opened the wicket one
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 11: of their own hands breadths and shut it in their
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 11: victim's face. When next that victim catches a fairy, he
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 11: purposes to tie up the brat in sight of his
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 11: own green hill and set him to draw up a
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 11: practical scheme for village councils. One of the many women
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 11: I ever really loved, fair in the fearless old fashion,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 11: was used to sing in the blithe, unfettered accent of
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 11: the people, I'd like to be a fairy and dance
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 11: upon my toes. I'd like to be a fairy and
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 11: wear short clothes. And in later life it is to
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 11: her sex that the wee but very wise folk sometimes
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 11: delegate their power of torment. Such understudies are found to
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 11: play the part exceedingly well. And many a time the
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 11: infatuated youth believes he sees in the depth of one
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 11: sole pair of eyes blue brown or green, the fairy color,
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 11: the authentic fairy wicket standing ajar. Many a time he
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 11: must hear the quaint old formula. I'm sure if I've
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 11: ever done anything to lead you to think et cetera,
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 11: runs it not so ere he shall realize that here
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 11: is the gait upon no magic pleasance, but on a
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 11: cheap suburban villa, banging behind the wrathful rate collector, or
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 11: hurled open to speed the pallid householder to the registrar's office.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 11: In still grosser habitations, too, they lurk to the people
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 11: of mischief, ready to frolic out on the unsuspecting one,
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 11: as in the case which still haunts my memory, of
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 11: a certain bottle of an historic chateau ecam hued like
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 11: Venetian glass, odorous as a garden in June. Forth, from
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 11: out the faint perfume of this haunted drink, there danced
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 11: a bevy from old France, clad in the fashion of
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 11: louis Quin say peach colored knots of ribbon bedizening apple
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 11: green velvets, as they moved in stately wise among the
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 11: roses of the old garden to the quaint music. Rameau
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 11: was it of a fairy corn of muse, while fairy
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 11: watteaus Fragonards Lancre sat and painted them a last too
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 11: shallow the bottle to brief the brawls not to be
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 11: recalled by any quantity of Greenshaw truths.
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 5: End of the Fairy Wicket, Section sixteen of Pagan Papers.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 5: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 5: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 5: visit LibriVox dot org. Recorded by Lisa Reichert. Pagan Papers
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 5: by Kenneth Graham, Section sixteen. Aboard the galley he was
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 5: cruising in the Southern Seas, was the Ulysses who told
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 5: me this tale when there bore down upon him a marvelous,
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 5: strange fleet whose like he had not before seen. For
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 5: each little craft was a corpse, stiffly marlin, or bound
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 5: about with tarred rope, as mariners do use to treat
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 5: plug tobacco, also ballasted and with a fair mast and
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 5: sail stepped through his midriff. These self sufficing ships knew
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 5: no divided authority. No pilot ever took the helm from
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 5: the captain's hands, no mutines lay in bilbows, no passengers
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 5: complained of the provisions in a certain island to windward,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 5: the native pilot explained it was the practice when a
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 5: man died, to bury him for the time being in dry,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 5: desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from his people.
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 5: When the waiting bodies were brought out, calked and rigged,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 5: secundum artum were launched with the first fair breeze, the
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 5: admiral at their head on their voyage to the blessed islands.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 5: And if a chief should die and the sand should
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 5: hold no store of corpses for his escort, this simple
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 5: practical oak would solve the little difficulty by knocking some
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 5: dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head, that the
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 5: notable might have voyage like a gentleman. Whence this gallant
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 5: little company running before the breeze, stark, happy and extinct,
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 5: all bound for the isles of light. Twas a sight
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 5: to shame us sitters at home, who believe in those islands.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 5: Most of us, even as they yet, are content to
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 5: trundle city words or to margate, so long as the
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 5: sorry breath is in us, and breathless at last, to
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 5: bow or kensal green without one effort, dead or alive,
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 5: to reach the far shining Hesperides don la gailaire capitaine
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 5: nous ettien catrval Ramier, sang the oarsmen in the ballad,
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 5: And they, though indeed they toiled on the galley bench,
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 5: were free and happy pirates, members of an honored and
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 5: liberal profession. But all we pirates, parsons, stockbrokers, whatever our calling,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 5: are but galley slaves of the basest sort, fettered to
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 5: the oar, each for his little spell. A common misery
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 5: links us all, like the chain that runs the length
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 5: of the thwarts. Can nothing make it worth our while
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 5: not to quarrel with our fellows. The menace of the
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 5: storms is for each one and for all. The master's
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 5: whip has a fine impartiality crack. The lash that scored
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 5: my comrade's back has flicked my withers too. Yet neither
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 5: of us was shirking. It was that grinning ruffian in front.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 5: Well tomorrow, God willing the invasion shall be ours, while
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 5: he writhes howling, But why do we never once combine,
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 5: seize on the ship, fling our masters into the sea,
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 5: and steer for some pleasant isle far down under the line,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 5: beyond the still vexed bermooths, when ho for easting, hey
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 5: for tobacco and free quarters. But no, the days pass
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 5: and are reckoned up and done with, and evermore pressing
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 5: cares engage those fellows on the leeward benches are having
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 5: an easier time than we poor dogs on the weather side.
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 5: Then let us abuse, pelt, vilify. Then let us steal
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 5: their grub and have at them generally for a set
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 5: of shirking, malingering brutes. What matter that tomorrow they may
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 5: be windward we to lee. We never can look ahead,
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 5: And they know this well. The gods are masters pliers
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 5: of the whip, and mayhap we like them none the
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 5: worse for it. Indeed, there is a traitor sort among
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 5: ourselves that spins facile phrases in the honor of these
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 5: whip masters of ours, as Omni's eudim codumer and the rest,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 5: which is all very pretty and mighty consoling. The fact
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 5: is the poets are the only people who score by
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 5: the present arrangement, which it is therefore their interest to maintain.
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 5: While we are doing all the work, these incorrigible skulkers
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 5: lounge about and make ribaled remarks. They write Greek tragedies
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 5: on fate, on the sublimity of suffering, on the petty span,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 5: and so on, and act in a generally offensive way.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 5: And we are even weak enough to buy their books,
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 5: offer them drinks, peerages, and things, and say what superlative
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 5: fellows they are. And when the long looked for combination comes,
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 5: and we poor devils have risen and abolished Fate, Destiny,
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 5: the Olympian Council, early Baldness, and the like, these poets
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 5: will really have to go. And when every rhymester has
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 5: walked the plank, shall we still put up with our relations,
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 5: true members of the stupid party, who never believe in us,
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 5: who know and never forget the follies of our adolescents,
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 5: who are always wanting us not to do things, who
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 5: are lavish of advice, yet angered by the faintest suggestion
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 5: of a small advance in cash. Shall the idle singers perish?
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 5: And these endure no as soon as the last poet
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 5: has splashed over the side to the sharks. With our relations,
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 5: the old barquie is lightning famously. Who shall be next
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 5: to go? The sportsmen of intolerable yarns, who slays twice over,
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 5: first his game and then the miserable being he buttonholes
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 5: for the tedious recital? Shall we suffer him longer? Who else?
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 5: Who is that cowering under the bulwarks? Yonder the man
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 5: who thinks he can imitate the Scottish accent splash? And
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 5: the next one? What a crowd is here? How they
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 5: block the hatchways, lumber the deck, and get between you
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 5: and the purser's room. These fadmongers, teetotalers, missionaries of divers
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 5: isums overboard with them, And hey for the fortunate isles.
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 5: Then for to tobacco in a hammock TwixT the palms,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 5: Then for wine cooled in a brooklet losing itself in
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 5: silver sands. Then for but o these bilbows on our ankles,
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 5: how mercilessly they grip the vertical sun blisters, The bare back,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 5: faint echoes of Olympian laughter seemed to flicker like northern
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 5: lights across the stark and pitiless sky. One earnest effort
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 5: would do it, my brothers, a little modesty, a short
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 5: sinking of private differences, and then we should all be
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 5: free and equal gentlemen of fortune. And I would be
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 5: your captain. Who you you would make a pretty captain
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 5: better than you, you scurvy skulking little galley slave galley,
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 5: slave yourself. And be pull together, boys, and lie low.
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 5: Here's the master coming with his whip end of aboard
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 5: the galley. Recorded by Lisa Richert.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 9: Section seventeen of Pagan Papers. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 9: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 9: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 9: by Diana Schmidt. Pagan Papers by Kenneth Graham. The Lost
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 9: Centaur It is somewhere set down? Or does the legend
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 9: only exist? In the great volume of Ought to Be?
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 9: Writ that the young Achilles, nurtured from babyhood by the
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 9: wise and kindly Cairn, accustomed to reverence, an ideal of
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 9: human skill and wisdom, blent with all that was best
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 9: and noblest of animal instinct, strength and swiftness, found poor
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 9: humanity sadly to miss when at last he was sent
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 9: forth among his pottering little tis two legged peers. Himself alone,
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 9: he had hitherto fancied to be the maimed one, the incomplete.
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 9: He looked to find the lords of Earth, even such
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 9: as these Centaurs, wise and magnanimous atop below, shod with
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 9: the lightning, winged with the wind, terrible in the potentiality
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 9: of the armed heel, instead of which, how fallen, was
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 9: his first fair hope of the world. And even when
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 9: reconciled at last to the dynasty of the forked Radish,
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 9: after he had seen its quality tested round the clangorous
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 9: walls of Troy, some touch of an imperial disdain ever
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 9: lingered in his mind for these feeble folk who could
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 9: contentedly hail him. Him who had known Cairn as hero
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 9: and Lord Achilles, has passed with the Centaurs and Troy.
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 9: But the feeling lingers of strange and diverse strands is twisted.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 9: The mysterious cord that, reaching back through spaces, out of
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 9: space and timeless time, somewhere joins us to the brute
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 9: a twine of mingled yarn, not utterly base. As we
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 9: grow from our animal infancy, and the threads snap one
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 9: by one at each gallant wing stroke of a soul
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 9: poisoning for flight into emperion. We are yet conscious of
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 9: a loss for every gain. We have some forlorn sense
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 9: of a vanished heritage. Willing enough are we to let
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 9: the ape and tiger die. But the pleasant cousins, dissembled
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 9: in hide and fur and feather, are not all tigers
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 9: and apes, which last vile folk indeed exist for us
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 9: only in picture books, and chiefly offend by always carrying
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 9: the Sunday School ensign of a moral at their tails. Others, happily,
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 9: of less didactic dispositions, there be, And it is to
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 9: these unaffected, careless companions that the sensible child is wont
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 9: to devote himself, leaving severely alone the stiff, tame creatures
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 9: claiming to be of closer kin. And yet these playmates,
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 9: while cheerfully admitting him of their fellowship, make him feel
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 9: his inferiority at every point. Vainly, his snub nose projected earthwards,
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 9: he essays to sniffet with the terrier, who, as becomes
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 9: the nobler animal, is leading in the chase, and he
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 9: is ready to weep as he realizes his loss, And
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 9: the rest of the free company. The pony, the cows,
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 9: the great cart horses are ever shaming him by their
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 9: unboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 9: friendly pig, who did but parents permit, should eat of
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 9: his bread and drink of his cup, and be unto
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 9: him as a brother. Which among all these unhappy bifurcations,
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 9: so cheery, so unambitious, so purely contented, so apt to
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 9: be the guide, philosopher and friend of boyhood as he?
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 9: What wonder that, at times when the neophyte in life
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 9: begins to realize that all these desirable accomplishments have had
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 9: to be surrendered one by one in the process of
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 9: developing a mind, the course of fitting out a lord
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 9: of creation, he is wont not knowing the extent of
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 9: the kingdom to which he is heir, to feel a
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 9: little discontented er. Now, this ill humor taking root in
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 9: a nature wherein the animal is already ascendant, has led
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 9: by downward paths to the goat foot, in whom the
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 9: submerged human system peeps out, but fitfully at exalted moments.
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 9: He the peevish and irascible, shy of trodden ways, and
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 9: pretty domesticities, is linked to us by little but his
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 9: love of melody, but for which saving grace, the hair
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 9: would soon creep up from thigh to horn of him.
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 9: At times he will still do us a friendly turn,
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 9: will lend a helping hand to poor little Psyche, wilfully
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 9: seeking her own salvation, will stand shoulder to shoulder with
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 9: us on marathon plane. But in the main his sympathies
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 9: are first for the beast, to which his horns are
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 9: never horrific, but with his hairy pelt, ever natural and familiar,
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 9: and his voice, with its talk of help and healing,
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 9: not harsh nor dissonant, but voice of every brother as
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 9: well as every God. And this declension for declension, it is,
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 9: though we achieve all the confidences of Malempus, and even
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 9: master with him him. The pleasant argo of the woods
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 9: may still be ours if we suffer what lives in us,
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 9: of our primal cousins to draw us down. On the
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 9: other hand, let soul inform and irradiate body as it may.
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 9: The threads are utterly shorn asunder. Never nor is man
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 9: the complete, the self contained, permitted to cut himself wholly
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 9: adrift from these his poor relations. The mute and stunted
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 9: human embryo that gazes appealingly from out the depths of
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 9: their eyes must ever remind him of a kinship once
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 9: possibly closer. Nay, at times it must even seem to
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 9: whelm him in reproach. As thus was it really necessary,
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 9: after all, that we too should part company so early?
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 9: May you not have taken a wrong turn somewhere in
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 9: your long race, after your so called progress, after the
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 9: perfection of this belauded species of yours, a turning whose
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 9: due avoidance might perhaps have resulted in no such lamentable
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 9: cleavage as is here, but in some perfect embodiment of
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 9: the dual nature, as who should say, a being with
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 9: the nobilities of both of us the basenesses of neither.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 9: So might you, more fortunately guided have been led at
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 9: last up the green sides of Pelion to the ancestral
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 9: the primeval Centaur, still waiting majestic on the summit. It
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 9: is even so perhaps this might once have been o cousin,
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 9: outcast and estranged, but the opportunity was long since lost. Henceforth,
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 9: two ways for us forever.
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 2: End of the Laws Centaur, Section eighteen of Pagan Papers.
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 2: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 2: visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Judy Derby. Pagan Papers
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 2: by Kenneth Graham Orian. The moonless night has a touch
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 2: of frost, and is steely, clear, high and dominant. Amidst
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 2: the populations of the sky, the restless and the steadfast
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 2: alike hangs the great plow, lit with a hard radiance,
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: as of the polished and shining chare, and yonder low
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 2: on the horizon, but half resurgeon as yet crouches the
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 2: magnificent hunter, watchful, seemingly and expectant, with some hint of
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 2: menace in his port. Yet should his game be up?
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 2: You would think by now many a century has passed
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 2: since the plow first sped a conqueror east and west,
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 2: clearing forest and draining fen, policing the valleys with barbed wires,
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 2: and Sunday schools with the chains that are forged of peace,
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 2: the irking fetters of plenty, driving also the whole lot
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 2: of us, these to sweat at its tail, those to
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 2: plod with the patient team, but all to march in
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: a great chain gang the convicts of peace and order
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 2: and law. While the happy nomad, with his woodlands, his
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 2: wild cattle, his pleasing nuptialities, has long since disappeared, dropping
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 2: only in his flight some store of flint heads, a
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: legacy of confusion. Truly, we children of the plow, But
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: for yon tremendous monitor in the sky, were in right
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 2: case to forget that the hunter is still a quantity
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 2: to reckon with all. Where then does he hide the
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 2: shaker of the spear? Why here, my brother, and here
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 2: deep in the breasts of each and all of us.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 2: And for this drop of primal quicksilver in the blood,
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: what poppy or mandragora shall purge it? Hence away of
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 2: pulpiteers and parents. It is called original sin, a term
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 2: wherewith they brand whatever frisks and butts with rude goatish
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: horns against accepted maxims and trim theories of education. In
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: the abstract, of course, this fitful stirring of the old
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 2: yeast is no more sin than a natural craving for
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 2: a seat on a high stool. For the inscription, now
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: horizontal and now vertical of figures is sin. But the
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: desk men command a temporary majority for the short. While
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 2: they shall hold the cards, they have the right to
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: call the game. And so since we must bow to
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 2: the storm, let the one thing be labeled sin, and
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 2: the other salvation for a season ourselves forgetting. Never that
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 2: it is all a matter of nomenclature. What we have
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 2: now first to note is that this original waft from
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: the garden asserts itself most vigorously in the child. This
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: it is that thrust the small boy out under the
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 2: naked heavens to enact a sorry and shivering crusoe on
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 2: an islet in the duck pond. This it is that
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 2: sends the little girl footing it after the gypsy's van,
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: oblivious of lessons, puddings, the embrace maternal, the paternal smack
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 2: hearing nought save the faint far bugle summons to the
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 2: prehistoric little savage that thrills and answers in the tingling
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 2: blood of her. Seeing only a troop of dusky, dull
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 2: eyed guides along that shining highway to the dim land
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 2: east of the sun and west of the moon, where
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: freedom is, and you can wander and breathe, and at
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 2: night tame street lamps. There are none, only the hunter's fires.
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 2: And the eyes of lions and the mysterious stars. In
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 2: later years, it is stifled and gagged, buried deep a
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 2: green turf at the head of it, and on its
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: heart a stone. But it lives, It breathes, it lurks,
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 2: It will up and out when tis looked for least
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 2: that stockbroker, some brief summon's gone, who was missed from
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 2: his wonted place one settling day, a goodly portly man
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 2: if fate and had a villa and a steam launch
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 2: at Surbiton, and was versed in the esoteric humors of
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 2: the house. Who could have thought that the hunter lay
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 2: hid in him? Yet after many weeks they found him
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 2: in a wild nook of Hampshire, ragged, sunburnt, the nocturnal haystack,
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 2: calling aloud from his frayed and weather stained duds, his
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 2: trousers tucked. He was tickling trout with godless native urchins.
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 2: And when they would have won him to himself with
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: honeyed whispers of American rails, he answered, But with babble
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 2: of green fields. He is back in his Wonted corner,
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 2: now white, cured apparently, and tractable. And yet let the
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 2: sun shine too wantonly in Throgmorton Street. Let an errant
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 2: zephyr quick with the warm south fan, but his cheek
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 2: too wooingly on his way to the station. And will
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 2: he not once more snap his chain and away? Aye, truly,
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 2: and next time he will not be caught. Deans have
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 2: danced to the same wild piping, though their chapters have
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 2: hushed the matter up. Even duchesses, they say, have come
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 2: tripping doon the stair, wrapped by the climbing passion from
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: their strawberry leaved surroundings into starlit spaces. Nay ourselves too,
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 2: the deuce, respectable mediocrites that we are, which of us
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 2: but might recall some fearful outbreak whose details are mercifully
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 2: unknown to the household that calls us breadwinner and chief?
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: What marvel that up yonder? The hunter smiles when he
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 2: knows that every one in his ken the tinker with
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 2: the statesman, has caught his bugle blast and gone forth
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 2: on its ears resistible appeal. Not that they are so
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 2: easily followed as of yore. Those flying echoes of the
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 2: horn joints are stiffer, maybe certainly the desolate suburbs creep ever,
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 2: farther into the retreating fields, And when you reach the
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 2: windy moorland lo it is all staked out into building lots.
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 2: Mud is muddier now than heretofore, and ruts are ruddier.
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 2: And what friendless old beast comes limping down the dreary lane.
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 2: He seems sorely shrunk and shoulder shotten. But by the
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: something of divinity in his look still more than by
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 2: the wings despondent along his mighty sides, tis ever the
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 2: old Pegasus, not yet the knacker's one. Hard times I've
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 2: been having, he murmurs as you rub his nose. These
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 2: fellows have really no seat except for a park hack.
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 2: As for this laurel, we were wont to await it trembling,
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 2: and in taking it we were afraid your English way
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 2: of hunting it down with yelpings and hallooings. Well I
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 2: may be out of date, but we wouldn't have stood
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: that sort of thing on helicon. So he hobbles down
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 2: the road. Good night, old fellow. Out of date. Well
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 2: it may be so, and alas the blame is ours.
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 2: But for the hunter there he rises couchant, no more,
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 2: nay flung full stretch on the blue He blazes, he dominates,
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 2: he appalls. Will his turn then really come? At last,
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 2: after some armageddon of cataclysmal ruin, all leveling, whelming the
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: county councilor with the music hall artiste, obliterating the very
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 2: furrows of the plow, shall the skin clad nomad string
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 2: his bow once more, and once more loose the whistling shaft.
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 2: Wildly incredible, it seems. And yet look up, look up,
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 2: and behold him, confident, erect, majestic, there on the threshold
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 2: of the sky. End of Orion, End of Pagan Papers
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 2: by Kenneth Graham,