Certain Personal MattersWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
Certain Personal Matters
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946
So our Cockney Jefferies proceeds, presently coming upon a cinder path.
They use cinders a lot about Sutton, to make country paths with; it
gives you an unexpected surprise the first time it occurs. You drop
suddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a veritable bit of the Black
Country, and go on with loathing in your soul for your fellow-creatures.
There is also an abundance of that last product of civilisation, barbed
wire. Oh that I were Gideon! with thorns and briers of the wilderness
would I teach these elders of Sutton! But a truce to dark thoughts!
We take our last look at the country from the open down above Sutton.
Blue hills beyond blue hills recede into the remote distance; from
Banstead Down one can see into Oxfordshire. Windsor Castle is in minute
blue silhouette to the left, and to the right and nearer is the Crystal
Palace. And closer, clusters red-roofed Sutton and its tower, then
Cheam, with its white spire, and further is Ewell, set in a variegated
texture of autumn foliage. Water gleams--a silver thread--at Ewell, and
the sinking sun behind us catches a window here and there, and turns it
into an eye of flame. And so to Sutton station and home to Cockneydom
once more.
FROM AN OBSERVATORY
It will be some time yet before the rising of the moon. Looking down
from the observatory one can see the pathways across the park dotted out
in yellow lamps, each with a fringe of dim green; and further off, hot
and bright, is the tracery of the illuminated streets, through which the
people go to and fro. Save for an occasional stirring, or a passing
voice speaking out of the dimness beneath me, the night is very still.
Not a cloud is to be seen in the dark midwinter sky to hide one speck of
its broad smears of star dust and its shining constellations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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