The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mushrooms on the Moor, by Frank Boreham

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Title: Mushrooms on the Moor

Author: Frank Boreham

Release Date: January 3, 2008 [eBook #24134]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR

by

F. W. BOREHAM

Author of
  'Mountains in the Mist,'
  'The Other Side of the Hill,'
  'The Golden Milestone,'
  'The Silver Shadow,'
  'The Luggage of Life,'
  'Faces in the Fire,' etc., etc.

The Abingdon Press
New York ——— Cincinnati

First American Edition Printed May, 1919
Reprinted August, 1919; May, 1920; July 1921

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAP.

I. A SLICE OF INFINITY II. READY-MADE CLOTHES III. THE HIDDEN GOLD IV. 'SUCH A LOVELY BITE!' V. LANDLORD AND TENANT VI. THE CORNER CUPBOARD VII. WITH THE WOLVES IN THE WILD VIII. DICK SUNSHINE IX. FORTY! X. A WOMAN'S REASON

PART II

I. THE HANDICAP II. GOG AND MAGOG III. MY WARDROBE IV. 'PITY MY SIMPLICITY!' V. TUNING FROM THE BASS VI. A FRUITLESS DEPUTATION VII. TRAMP! TRAMP! TRAMP! VIII. THE FIRST MATE

PART III

CHAP.

I. WHEN THE COWS COME HOME II. MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR III. ONIONS IV. ON GETTING OVER THINGS V. NAMING THE BABY VI. THE MISTRESS OF THE MARGIN VII. LILY

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

I have allowed the Mushrooms on the Moor to throw the glamour of their name over the entire volume because, in some respects, they are the most typical and representative things in it. They express so little but suggest so much! What fun we had, in the days of auld lang syne, when we scoured the dewy fields in search of them! And yet how small a proportion of our enjoyment the mushrooms themselves represented! Our flushed cheeks, our prodigious appetites, and our boisterous merriment told of gains immensely greater than any that our baskets could have held. What a contrast, for example, between mushrooms from the moor on the one hand and mushrooms from the market on the other! What memories of the soft summer mornings; the fresh and fragrant air; the diffused and misty sunshine; the sparkle of the dew on the tall wisps of speargrass; the beaded and shining cobwebs; the scamper, barefooted, across the glittering green! It was part of childhood's wild romance. And, in the sterner days that have followed those tremendous frolics, we have learned that life is full of just such suggestive things. As I glance back upon the years that lie behind me, I find that they have been almost equally divided between two hemispheres. But I have discovered that, under any stars,

  There's part o' the sun in an apple;
    There's part o' the moon in a rose;
  There's part o' the flaming Pleiades
    In every leaf that grows.

And I shall reckon this book no failure if some of the ideas that I have tried to suggest are found to point at all steadily to that conclusion.

FRANK W. BOREHAM.

HOBART, TASMANIA, JUNE, 1915.

PART I

I

A SLICE OF INFINITY

I

Really, as I sit here in this quiet study, and glance round at the books upon the shelves, I can scarcely refrain from laughing at the fun we have had together. And to think of the way in which they came into my possession! It seems like a fairy story or a chapter from romance. If a man wants to spend an hour or so as delightfully as it is possible to spend it, let him invite to his fireside some old and valued friend, the companion of many a frolic and the sharer of many a sorrow; let him seat his old comrade there in the place of honour on the opposite side of the hearth, and then let them talk. 'Do you remember, Tom, the way we met for the first time?' 'My word, I do! Shall I ever forget it?' And Tom slaps his knee at the memory of it, and they enjoy a long and hearty laugh together. It is not that the circumstances under which they met were so ludicrous or dramatic; it is that they were so commonplace. It seems, on looking back, the oddest chance in the world that first brought them together, the merest whim of chance, the veriest freak of circumstance; and yet how all life has taken its colour and drawn its enrichment from that casual meeting! They happened to enter the same compartment of a railway train; or they sat next each other on the tramcar; or they walked home together from a political meeting; or they caught each other admiring the same rose at a flower show. Neither sought the other; neither felt the slightest desire for the other; neither knew, until that moment, of the existence of the other; and yet there it is! They met; and out of that apparently accidental meeting there has sprung up a friendship that many changes cannot change, and a love that many waters cannot quench. Either would cross all the continents and oceans of the world to-day to find the other; but as they remember how they met for the first time it seems too queer to be credible. And they lie back in their easy chairs and laugh again.

II

That is why I laugh at my books. Some day I intend to draw up a list of them and divide them into classes. In one class I shall put the books that I bought, once upon a time, because I was given to understand that they were the right sort of books to have. Everybody else had them; and my shelves would therefore be scarcely decent without them. I purchased them, accordingly, and they have stood on the shelves there ever since. As far as I know they have done nobody the slightest harm in all their long untroubled lives. Indeed, they have imparted such an air of gravity, and such an odour of sanctity, to the establishment as must have had a steadying effect on their less sombre companions. But it is not at these formidable volumes that I am laughing. I would not dare. I glance at them with reverential awe, and am more than half afraid of them. Then, again, there are other books that I bought because I felt that I needed them. And so I did, more than perhaps I guessed when I bore them proudly home. Glorious times I have had with them. I look up at them gratefully and lovingly. It is not at these that I am laughing. But there are others, old and trusted friends, that came into my life in the oddest possible way. I do not mean that I stole them. I mean rather that they stole me. They seemed to pounce out at me, and before I knew what had happened I belonged to them: I certainly did not seek them. In some cases I never heard of their existence until after they became my own. They have since proved invaluable to me, and I can scarcely review our long companionship without emotion. Yet when I glance up at them, and remember the whimsical way in which we met