from Farmer Boy, chapter 15, Cold Snap (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

 The air was still and cold that night, and the stars had a wintry look.  After supper Father went to the barns again.  He shut the doors and the little wooden windows of the horses' stalls, and he put the ewes with their lambs into the fold.

When he came in, Mother asked if it was any warmer.  Father shook his head.

'I do believe it is going to freeze,' he said.

'Pshaw! surely not!' Mother replied. But she looked worried.

Sometime in the night Almanzo felt cold, but he was too sleepy to do anything about it. Then he heard Mother calling:

'Royal! Almanzo!' He was too sleepy to open his eyes.

'Boys, get up! Hurry!' Mother called. 'The corn's frozen!'

He tumbled out of bed and pulled on his trousers. He couldn't keep his eyes open, his hands were clumsy, and big yawns almost dislocated his jaw. He staggered downstairs behind Royal.

Mother and Eliza Jane and Alice were putting on their hoods and shawls.  The kitchen was cold; the fire had not been lighted.  Outdoors everything looked strange.  The grass was white with frost, and a cold green streak was in the eastern sky, but the air was dark.

Father hitched Bess and Beauty to the wagon.  Royal pumped the watering-trough full.  Almanzo helped Mother and the girls bring tubs and pails, and Father set barrels in the wagon.  They filled the tubs and barrels full of water, and then they walked behind the wagon to the cornfield.

All the corn was frozen.  The little leaves were stiff, and broke if you touched them.  Only cold water would save the life of the corn.  Every hill must be watered before the sunshine touched it, or the little plants would die.  There would be no corn-crop that year.

The wagon stopped at the edge of the field.  Father and Mother and Royal and Eliza Jane and Alice and Almanzo filled their pails with water, and they all went to work, as fast as they could.

Almanzo tried to hurry, but the pail was heavy and his legs were short.  His wet fingers were cold, the water slopped against his legs, and he was terribly sleepy.  He stumbled along the rows, and at every hill of corn he poured a little water over the frozen leaves.

The field seemed enormous.  There were thousands and thousands of hills of corn.  Almanzo began to be hungry.  But he couldn't stop to complain.  He must hurry, hurry, hurry, to save the corn.

The green in the east turned pink.  Every moment the light brightened.  At first the dark had been like a mist over the endless field, now Almanzo could see to the end of the long rows.  He tried to work faster.

In an instant the earth turned from black to grey.  The sun was coming to kill the corn.

Almanzo ran to fill his pail; he ran back.  He ran down the rows, splashing water on the hills of corn.  His shoulders ached and his arm ached and there was a pain in his side.  The soft earth hung on to his feet.  He was terribly hungry.  But every splash of water saved a hill of corn.

In the grey light the corn had faint shadows now.  All at once pale sunshine came over the field.

'Keep on!' Father shouted.  So they all kept on; they didn't stop.

But in a little while Father gave up.  'No use!' he called.  Nothing would save the corn after the sunshine touched it.

Almanzo set down his pail and straightened up against the ache in his back.  He stood and looked at the cornfield.  All the others stood and looked, too, and did not say anything.  They had watered almost three acres.  A quarter of an acre had not been watered.  It was lost.

Almanzo trudged back to the wagon and climbed in.  Father said:

'Let's be thankful we saved most of it.'

They rode sleepily down to the barns.  Almanzo was not quite awake yet, and he was tired and cold and hungry.  His hands were clumsy, doing the chores.  But most of the corn was saved.

Autumn Journal IX (Louis MacNeice)

Now we are back to normal, now the mind is

    Back to the even tenor of the usual day

Skidding no longer across the uneasy cambers

    Of the nightmare way.

We are safe though others have crashed the railings

    Over the river ravine; their wheel-tracks carve the bank

But after the event all we can do is argue

    And count the widening ripples where they sank.

October comes with rain whipping around the ankles

    In waves of white at night:

And filling the raw clay trenches (the parks of London

    Are a nasty sight).

In a week I return to work, lecturing, coaching,

    As impresario of the Ancient Greeks

Who wore the chiton and lived on fish and olives

    And talked philosophy or smut in cliques;

Who believed in youth and did not gloze the unpleasant

    Consequences of age;

What is life, one said, or what is pleasant

    Once you have turned the page

Of love?  The days grow worse, the dice are loaded

    Against the living man who pays in tears for breath;

Never to be born was the best, call no man happy

    This side death.

Conscious - long before Engels - of necessity

    And therein free

They plotted out their life with truism and humour

    Between the jealous heaven and the callous sea.

And Pindar sang the garland of wild olive

    And Alcibiades lived from hand to mouth

Double-crossing Athens, Persia, Sparta,

    And many died in the city of plague, and many of drouth

In Sicilian quarries, and many by the spear and arrow

    And many more who told their lies too late

Caught in the eternal factions and reactions

    Of the city-state.

And free speech shivered on the pikes of Macedonia

    And later on the swords of Rome

And Athens became a mere university city

    And the goddess born of the foam

Became the kept hetaera, heroine of Menander,

    And the philosopher narrowed his focus, confined

His efforts to putting his own soul in order

    And keeping a quiet mind.

And for a thousand years they went on talking,

    Making such apt remarks,

A race no longer of heroes but of professors

    And crooked business men and secretaries and clerks;

Who turned out dapper little elegiac verses

    On the ironies of fate, the transience of all

Affections, carefully shunning an over-statement

    But working the dying fall.

The Glory that was Greece: put it in a syllabus, grade it

    Page by page

To train the mind or even to point a moral

    For the present age:

Models of logic and lucidity, dignity, sanity,

    The golden mean between opposing ills

Though there were exceptions of course but only exceptions - 

    The bloody Bacchanals on the Thracian hills.

So the humanist in his room with Jacobean panels

    Chewing his pipe and looking on a lazy quad

Chops the Ancient World to turn a sermon

    To the greater glory of God.

But I can do nothing so useful or so simple;

    These dead are dead

And when I should remember the paragons of Hellas

    I think instead

Of the crooks, the adventurers, the opportunists

    The careless athletes and the fancy boys,

The hair-splitters, the pedants, the hard-boiled sceptics

    And the Agora and the noise

Of the demagogues and the quacks; and the women pouring

    Libations over graves

And the trimmers at Delphi and the dummies at Sparta and lastly

    I think of the slaves.

And how one can imagine oneself among them

    I do not know;

It was all so unimaginably different

    And all so long ago.

Introduction from Delia Smith's Christmas (Delia Smith)

If there's one person in the world who probably needs this book more than anyone else, it's me.  For years my own Christmas preparations have been, to say the least, fragmented and fraught: recipes here, notes there, and fading memories of what I might have done last year if only I could be sure!  What I needed, it seemed to me, was a sort of personal Christmas organiser, something I could reach for in October and keep by me as a guide all the way through to the point where the last of the Christmas leftovers have been dealt with.

Then I began to think: if that's what I need, how many other people might need the same?  It would be nice of course to be able to say at this point that the contents of this book can zip you through all that Christmas catering without a worry or a care.  Unfortunately that is not the case, because unless you are superhuman, believe me, there will still be some hectic days ahead of you.  But what I have set out to do here is to be a sort of friend in the background, providing practical information, offering new and different recipes (as well as the more traditional ones), and if not entirely removing the pressure of Christmas cooking then going some way to ensuring its success.

Christmas has its critics and, if we were honest, I'm sure each one of us has, at some time, wished we could quietly quit the planet and come back when it was over.  On the other hand, at what other time of the year can we turn our minds to the sheer joy of feasting?  The sharing of fine food and wines with family and friends is a deeply ingrained human (as well as religious) activity, without which our lives would surely be diminished.

As a veteran of many a Christmas campaign, my final message to you is not to worry.  You will be pressured, you will get grumpy, but it will all be worth it.  Just set your mind on that glorious moment on Christmas Day when the last of the washing-up has been done.  By then you will probably have enough food in the house to last for several days, so fill your glass, put your feet up and forget all about it for another year!

from Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

 The kitchen was full of hoopskirts, balancing and swirling ...

... Almanzo tried to fill more baskets than Alice, but he couldn't.  She worked so fast that she was turning back to the bin while her hoopskirts were still whirling the other way.

from The Lord of the Rings, book 3, chapter 10, The Voice of Saruman (J.R.R. Tolkien)

'Do you indeed?' said Gandalf.  'Well, I do not.  I have now a last task to do before I go: I must pay Saruman a farewell visit.  Dangerous, and probably useless; but it must be done.  Those of you who wish may come with me - but beware!  And do not jest!  This is not the time for it.'

from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter thirty-eight, The Second War Begins (J.K. Rowling)

 'Yes, it was rather horrible,' said Luna conversationally.  'I still feel very sad about it sometimes.'

I Stop Writing the Poem (Tess Gallagher)

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

from Still Life, chapter 12, Behold the Child (A.S. Byatt)

It was agreed that Stephanie should have some time to herself, to work.  It was agreed, largely by Daniel, that Daniel's Mum and Marcus would mind William whilst she did an hour or two in Blesford public library ... Stephanie felt that she was being accused of desertion by some powerful representative of motherhood ...

Stephanie found it physically hard to pedal her bicycle away from the house.  She felt held as by a long linen binder, such as mill children had worn to work machinery, to the shape of her son in his woven basket, one fist in his small ear.  She seemed to hear, to feel, to smell powerful calling sounds, rufflings of the air, odours, which wanted her back, insisted that she must return.  She put down rational foot after rational foot, with difficulty.

-

In the library, Stephanie laid out her books.  Never before had she attempted to work without the outside sanction of an essay to write, an exam to pass, a class to prepare ...

She decided to read the 'Immortality Ode', just to read, clearly ... She felt panic.  She had with some pain cleared this small space and time to think in and now thought seemed impossible.  She remembered from what now seemed the astonishing free and spacious days of her education the phenomenon of the first day's work on a task.  One had to peel one's mind from its run of preoccupations: coffee to buy, am I in love, the yellow dress needs cleaning, Tim is unhappy, what is wrong with Marcus, how shall I live my life?  It took time before the task in hand seemed possible, and more before it came to life, and more still before it became imperative and obsessive.  There had to be a time before thought, a wool-gathering time when nothing happened, a time of yawning, of wandering eyes and feet, of reluctance to do what would finally become delightful and energetic.  Threads of thought had to rise and be gathered and catch on other threads of old thought, from some unused memory store.  She had snatched from Marcus and Daniel's Mum, worse, from William whose physical being filled her inner eye and almost all her immediate memory, barely time for this vacancy, let alone for the subsequent concentration.  She told herself she must learn to do without the vacancy if she was to survive.  She must be cunning.  She must learn to think in bus queues, in buses, in lavatories, between table and sink.  It was hard.  She was tired.  She yawned.  Time moved on.

-

... And yet her mind lifted: she had thought, she had seen clearly the relation between the parts played by the child-player and the confinement and depth.  She felt a moment of freedom, looked at her watch, saw that there was no more time to write this down or work it out ...

-

Stephanie, her mind on the platonic aspects of the 'Immortality Ode', her body extremely anxious about William, came through the front door.

There was a terrible silence and then Stephanie, books flung down, had scooped up her still son, who, simply winded, began to scream ...

-

Stephanie kissed the graze and wept.  There is something peculiarly distressing about the first wound on new skin.

from Gaudy Night, chapter 11 (Dorothy L. Sayers)

The only member missing from the Senior Common Room was Mrs Goodwin, whose small son (a most unfortunate child) had come out with measles immediately upon his return to school and again required his mother's nursing.

'Of course she can't help it,' said the Dean, 'but it's a very great nuisance, just at the beginning of the Summer Term.  If I'd only known, I could have come back earlier.'

'I don't see,' observed Miss Hillyard, grimly, 'what else you can expect, if you give jobs to widows with children.  You have to be prepared for these perpetual interruptions.  And for some reason, these domestic pre-occupations always have to be put before the work.'

'Well,' said the Dean, 'one must put work aside in a case of serious illness.'

'But all children get measles.'

'Yes; but he's not a very strong child, you know.  His father was tubercular, poor man - in fact, that's what he died of - and if measles should turn to pneumonia, as it so often does, the consequences might be serious.'

'But has it turned to pneumonia?'

'They're afraid it may.  He's got it very badly.  And, as he's a nervous little creature, he naturally likes to have his mother with him.  And in any case, she'd be in quarantine.'

'The longer she stays with him, the longer she'll be in quarantine.'

'It's very tiresome, of course,' put in Miss Lydgate, mildly.  'But if Mrs Goodwin had isolated herself and come back at the earliest possible moment - as she very bravely offered to do - she would have been suffering a great deal of anxiety.'

'A great many of us have to suffer anxiety in one way or another,' said Miss Hillyard, sharply.  'I have been very anxious about my sister.  It is always an anxious business to have a first baby at thirty-five.  But if the event had happened to occur in term-time, it would have had to take place without my assistance.'

'It is always difficult to say which duty one should put first,' said Miss Pyke.  'Each case must be decided individually.  I presume that, in bringing children into the world, one accepts a certain responsibility towards them.'

'I'm not denying it,' said Miss Hillyard.  'But if the domestic responsibility is to take precedence of the public responsibility, then the work should be handed over to someone else to do.'

'But the children must be fed and clothed,' said Miss Edwards.

'Quite so.  But the mother should not take a resident post.'

'Mrs Goodwin is an excellent secretary,' said the Dean.  'I should be very sorry to lose her.  And it's nice to think that we are able to help her in her very difficult position.'

Miss Hillyard lost patience.

'The fact is, though you will never admit it, that everybody in this place has an inferiority complex about married women and children.  For all your talk about careers and independence, you all believe in your hearts that we ought to abase ourselves before any woman who has fulfilled her animal functions.'

'That is absolute nonsense,' said the Bursar.

'It is natural, I suppose, to feel that married women lead a fuller life,' began Miss Lydgate.

'And a more useful one,' retorted Miss Hillyard.  'Look at the fuss that's made over "Shrewsbury grandchildren"!  Look how delighted you all are when old members get married!  As if you were saying "Aha! education doesn't unfit us for real life after all!  And when a really brilliant scholar throws away all her prospects to marry a curate, you say perfunctorily, "What a pity!  But of course her own life must come first."'

'I've never said such a thing,' cried the Dean indignantly.  'I always say they're perfect fools to marry.'

'I shouldn't mind,' said Miss Hillyard, unheeding, 'if you said openly that intellectual interests were only a second-best; but you pretend to put them first in theory and are ashamed of them in practice.'

'There's no need to get so heated about it,' said Miss Barton, breaking in upon the angry protest of Miss Pyke.  'After all, some of us may have deliberately chosen not to marry.  And, if you will forgive my saying so -'

At this ominous phrase, always the prelude to something quite unforgiveable, Harriet and the Dean broke hastily into the discussion.

'Considering that we are devoting our whole lives -'

'Even for a man, it is not always easy to say -'

Their common readiness confronted their good intention.  Each broke off and begged the other's pardon, and Miss Barton went on unchecked:

'It is not altogether wise - or convincing - to show so much animus against married women.  It was the same unreasonable prejudice that made you get that scout removed from your staircase -'

'I object,' said Miss Hillyard, with a heightened colour, 'to preferential treatment.  I do not see why we should put up with slackness on duty because a servant or a secretary happens to be a widow with children.   I do not see why Annie should be given a room to herself in the Scouts' Wing, and charge over a corridor, when servants who have been here for longer than she has have to be content to share a room.  I do not -'

'Well,' said Miss Stevens, 'I think she is entitled to a little consideration.  A woman who has been accustomed to a nice home of her own -'

'Very likely,' said Miss Hillyard.  'At any rate, it was not my lack of consideration that led to her precious children being placed in the charge of a common thief.'

'I was always against that,' said the Dean.

'And why did you give in?  Because poor Mrs Jukes was such a nice woman and had a family to keep.  She must be considered and rewarded for being fool enough to marry a scoundrel.  What's the good of pretending that you put the interests of the College first, when you hesitate for two whole terms about getting rid of a dishonest porter, because you're so sorry for his family?'

'There,' said Miss Allison, 'I entirely agree with you.  The College ought to come first in a case like that.'

'It ought always to come first.  Mrs Goodwin ought to see it, and resign her post if she can't carry out her duties properly.'  She stood up.  'Perhaps, however, it is as well that she should be away and stay away.  You may remember that, last time she was away, we had no trouble from anonymous letters or monkey-tricks.'

Miss Hillyard put down her coffee-cup and stalked out of the room.  Everybody looked uncomfortable.

'Bless my heart!' said the Dean.

'Something very wrong there,' said Miss Edwards, bluntly.

'She's so prejudiced,' said Miss Lydgate.  'I always think it's a very great pity she never married.' 

Miss Lydgate had a way of putting into language that a child could understand things which other people did not say, or said otherwise.

'I should be sorry for the man, I must say,' observed Miss Shaw; 'but perhaps I am showing an undue consideration for the male sex.  One is almost afraid to open one's mouth.'

'Poor Mrs Goodwin!' exclaimed the Bursar.  'The very last person!'

She got up angrily and went out.  Miss Lydgate followed her.  Miss Chilperic, who had said nothing, but looked quite alarmed, murmured that she must get along to work.  The Common Room slowly cleared, and Harriet was left with the Dean.

'Miss Lydgate has the most terrifying way of hitting the nail on the head,' said Miss Martin; 'because it is obviously much more likely that -'

'A great deal more likely,' said Harriet.

As the Team's Head-Brass (Edward Thomas)

As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.
                The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole,
The ploughman said. 'When will they take it away? '
'When the war's over.' So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten,
A minute more and the same interval.
'Have you been out? ' 'No.' 'And don't want to, perhaps? '
'If I could only come back again, I should.
I could spare an arm, I shouldn't want to lose
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
I should want nothing more ... Have many gone
From here? ' 'Yes.' 'Many lost? ' 'Yes, a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him. It was back in March,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.'
'And I should not have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. For it would have been
Another world.' 'Ay, and a better, though
If we could see all all might seem good.' Then
The lovers came out of the wood again:
The horses started and for the last time
I watched the clods crumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

from the Spiritual Letters (Abbot Chapman OSB)

Palazzo S. Calisto,

Roma, 14.

Dec. 23, 1920.

Dear Miss . . .

It is quite right for us to throw our heart into our work and do it with all our might; but be quite detached from results.  It does not matter whether we are praised and appreciated by human beings.  All our work is for God, and through Him for our neighbours.  The more disappointments and failures there are, the more we are thrown upon Him.  Until we have had plenty of them, we never have a pure intention.

We have a right intention quite easily, but we have all sorts of other, minor intentions mixed up with it, until God has purified us.  It is most important in all our pleasures and successes to have the habit of saying, "I am glad, I am immensely grateful; but I don't want it, I only want Thee."

Never carry out any resolution made in prayer, without first testing it in a dry light outside prayer; to see whether it is reasonable or really the best.   You must have plenty of time for prayer.  Recollection is usually impossible otherwise, and you will be driven to reading Novels!  But when you have time to be alone with God and at peace, the temporal worries cease to be worries and become almost pleasures.  But when you can't get time, then you have to try and be cheerful, and offer all you suffer to God without feeling even that you mean it.  And then, later on, when you get some time again, you find that you have made progress in prayer without knowing how.

If one felt one was suffering patiently and for God, one wouldn't suffer so much.  It is the feeling of impatience and division from God which is suffering, and it is most meritorious.  So don't mind it.  I think it is an excellent thing to laugh at one's self a little whenever one feels a martyr!

Ever yours sincerely in Dno,

H. John Chapman, O.S.B.

from Coot Club, chapter XVII, Port and Starboard Miss Their Ship (Arthur Ransome)

'A letter?' said Port, looking at the pile by her father's plate.  'But he's had lots.'

'Well, he's ta'en this yin to the telephone,' said Mrs McGinty, and then they heard their father's voice through the open door of the study.

'Never mind about keeping things hot, Mrs McGinty.  I'll have to be gone in a minute ... Hallo!  Hallo!  Hallo!  Is that Norwich Ten-sixty-six?  Norwich ... One-owe-double-six ... Hallo!  Yes.  I said so.  Engaged?  Can't be engaged.  Private exchange.  Please ring them again.  Give them another ring.  A long one.  Hallo!  Hallo!  Is that Norwich One-owe-double-six?  Oh.  Wrong number.  Ring off please ... Hallo!  Exchange?  Oh, please ring off.  Exchange? ... Hallo!  Hallo! ... Bring me a cup of coffee out here, somebody ... Hallo!  Exchange!  Gave me a wrong number.  No.  No.  Not one-double-six.  One-owe-double-six.  Thank you, Bessie.  Take care, Nell.  Don't make me take too big a mouthful.  I've got to be able to talk to these dunderheaded nincompoops.  Hallo!  Oh, is that you, Walters?  Thank goodness for that.  Nip round to the office and get me all the papers in that Bollington business.  Consultations on it this week.  Yes ... All in the folder.  And the deeds ... Yes, yes.  Bring the whole lot down to the station.  Coming in by car.  You'll get it garaged after I've gone.  I've got to catch the nine-one.  Right.  Good man.  Everything on the case ...'  He hung up the receiver, took another mouthful of buttered egg from Starboard, washed it down with a drink of coffee offered him by Port, and hurried back to the dining-room.

'What is it, A.P.?' asked Starboard.

Mr Farland looked at his watch and compared it with the clock on the mantelpiece, a clock won by the Flash at Wroxham Regatta the year before.

'Seven minutes for breakfast ... Yes, Mrs McGinty, if you will be so good.  The small suitcase.  Everything for a week ...'

'You aren't going away?' said Port.

'These things will happen,' said Mr Farland.  'I didn't expect this business to come on for another two months at least ...'

from 'Are Women Human?' (Dorothy L. Sayers)

Let me give one simple illustration of the difference between the right and the wrong kind of feminism. Let us take this terrible business - so distressing to the minds of bishops - of the women who go about in trousers. We are asked: 'Why do you want to go about in trousers? They are extremely unbecoming to most of you. You only do it to copy the men.' To this we may very properly reply: 'It is true that they are unbecoming. Even on men they are remarkably unattractive. But, as you men have discovered for yourselves, they are comfortable, they do not get in the way of one's activities like skirts and they protect the wearer from draughts about the ankles. As a human being, I like comfort and dislike draughts. If the trousers do not attract you, so much the worse; for the moment I do not want to attract you. I want to enjoy myself as a human being, and why not? As for copying you, certainly you thought of trousers first and to that extent we must copy you. But we are not such abandoned copy-cats as to attach these useful garments to our bodies with braces. There we draw the line. These machines of leather and elastic are unnecessary and unsuited to the female form. They are, moreover, hideous beyond description. And as for indecency - of which you sometimes accuse the trousers - we at least can take our coats off without becoming the half-undressed, bedroom spectacle that a man presents in his shirt and braces.'

So that when we hear that women have once more laid hands upon something which was previously a man's sole privilege, I think we have to ask ourselves: is this trousers or is it braces? Is it something useful, convenient and suitable to a human being as such? Or is it merely something unnecessary to us, ugly, and adopted merely for the sake of collaring the other fellow's property? These jobs and professions, now. It is ridiculous to take on a man's job just in order to be able to say that 'a woman has done it - yah!' The only decent reason for tackling any job is that it is your job, and you want to do it.