ABRACADABRA & OTHER SATIRES _The Works of John Galsworthy_ Cloth, 5_s._ net; Leather, 7_s._ 6_d._ _NOVELS_ VILLA RUBEIN THE ISLAND PHARISEES THE MAN OF PROPERTY THE COUNTRY HOUSE FRATERNITY THE PATRICIAN THE DARK FLOWER THE FREELANDS BEYOND FIVE TALES SAINT’S PROGRESS IN CHANCERY TO LET _STORIES AND STUDIES_ A COMMENTARY A MOTLEY THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY TATTERDEMALION ABRACADABRA & OTHER SATIRES LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD. _THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY_ ABRACADABRA & OTHER SATIRES [Illustration: 1924] LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD. _Printed in Great Britain._ CONTENTS PAGE ABRACADABRA 1 THE VOICE OF ----! 11 A SIMPLE TALE 18 ULTIMA THULE 29 STUDIES OF EXTRAVAGANCE 47 FOR LOVE OF BEASTS 121 REVERIE OF A SPORTSMAN 144 GROTESQUES 156 ABRACADABRA Our families occupied neighbouring houses in the country, and Minna used to hide in the bathroom whenever our governess took us round. She was to us but a symbol of shyness for months before she became a body--a very thin body, with dark, straggly hair, and dark eyes, and very long legs and arms for an eight-year-old. Looking back on her hardihoods from eight to fifteen, I find difficulty in assigning to the bathroom period its full significance, to realise that she actually used to make herself invisible because she could not face strange people even of her own age. She faced us so beautifully afterward, would steal up behind and pull our hairs, and bag our caps and throw them up on to the tops of wardrobes, and then, as likely as not, climb up, throw them down, and follow with a jump. Few were the tops of our trees that did not know her in her blue jersey and red cap, and stockings green at the knees and showing little white portions of her. She had a neck long as a turkey’s and feet narrow as canoes. She was certainly going to be tall. Though quite normal about sticking pins into a body, making the lives of calves and dogs burdensome, giving fizzy magnesia to cats, fetching stray souls down with a booby-trap, and other salutary pastimes, she would dissolve into tears and rush away if anybody played Chopin, or caught and killed a butterfly; and, if one merely shot a little bird with a catapult, would dash up and thump him. When she fought she was like a tiger-cat, but afterward would sit and shake uncontrollably with most dreadful dry sobs. So there was no relying on her. She could not have been called pretty in those days.