DOI Artikel:
Grahame, Kenneth: Long odds
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0087
By Kenneth Grahame 83
dating from Henry the Seventh. His week, as I have said, was a
busy one, and hinged on a Board day ; and as time went on these
Board days raced up and disappeared with an ever-increasing
rapidity, till at last his life seemed to consist of but fifty-two days
in the year—all Board days. And eternally he seemed to be tick-
ing off names with a feverish blue pencil. These names, too, that
he ticked—they flashed into sight and vanished with the same
nightmare gallop ; the whole business was a great humming
Zoetrope. Anon the Board would consist of Smith, Brown,
Jackson, &c., Life Members all ; in the briefest of spaces Smith
would drop out, and on would come Price, a neophyte—a mere
youngling, this Price. A few more Board days flash by, and out
would go Brown and maybe Jackson—on would come Cattermole,
Fraser, Davidson—beardless juniors every one. Round spun the un-
ceasing wheel ; in a twinkling Davidson, the fledgling, sat reverend
in the chair,'while as for those others-! And all the time his blue
pencil, with him, its slave, fastened to one end of it, ticked steadily
on. To me, the hearer, it was evident that he must have been
gradually getting into the same state of mind as Rudyard Kipling’s
delightful lighthouse keeper, whom solitude and the ceaseless tides
caused to see streaks and lines in all things, till at last he barred a
waterway of the world against the ships that persisted in making the
water streaky. And this may account for an experience of his in
the Underground Railway one evening, when hewas travelling home
after a painful Board day on which he had ticked up three new boys
into vacant places which seemed to have been hardly filled an hour.
He was alone, he said, and rather sleepy, and he hardly looked at
the stranger who got in at one of the stations, until he saw him
deposit in the hat-rack—where ordinary people put their umbrellas
—what might have been an umbrella, but looked, in the dim light
of the Underground, far more like a scythe. Then he sat up and
began
dating from Henry the Seventh. His week, as I have said, was a
busy one, and hinged on a Board day ; and as time went on these
Board days raced up and disappeared with an ever-increasing
rapidity, till at last his life seemed to consist of but fifty-two days
in the year—all Board days. And eternally he seemed to be tick-
ing off names with a feverish blue pencil. These names, too, that
he ticked—they flashed into sight and vanished with the same
nightmare gallop ; the whole business was a great humming
Zoetrope. Anon the Board would consist of Smith, Brown,
Jackson, &c., Life Members all ; in the briefest of spaces Smith
would drop out, and on would come Price, a neophyte—a mere
youngling, this Price. A few more Board days flash by, and out
would go Brown and maybe Jackson—on would come Cattermole,
Fraser, Davidson—beardless juniors every one. Round spun the un-
ceasing wheel ; in a twinkling Davidson, the fledgling, sat reverend
in the chair,'while as for those others-! And all the time his blue
pencil, with him, its slave, fastened to one end of it, ticked steadily
on. To me, the hearer, it was evident that he must have been
gradually getting into the same state of mind as Rudyard Kipling’s
delightful lighthouse keeper, whom solitude and the ceaseless tides
caused to see streaks and lines in all things, till at last he barred a
waterway of the world against the ships that persisted in making the
water streaky. And this may account for an experience of his in
the Underground Railway one evening, when hewas travelling home
after a painful Board day on which he had ticked up three new boys
into vacant places which seemed to have been hardly filled an hour.
He was alone, he said, and rather sleepy, and he hardly looked at
the stranger who got in at one of the stations, until he saw him
deposit in the hat-rack—where ordinary people put their umbrellas
—what might have been an umbrella, but looked, in the dim light
of the Underground, far more like a scythe. Then he sat up and
began