You are here

قراءة كتاب Over the Fireside with Silent Friends

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
Over the Fireside with Silent Friends

Over the Fireside with Silent Friends

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 1


Project Gutenberg's Over the Fireside with Silent Friends, by Richard King

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Over the Fireside with Silent Friends

Author: Richard King

Release Date: April 20, 2008 [EBook #25111]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE FIRESIDE ***

Produced by Al Haines

OVER THE FIRESIDE

WITH SILENT FRIENDS

BY RICHARD KING

WITH A "FOREWORD" BY

SIR ARTHUR PEARSON, BART., G.B.E.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

WITH SILENT FRIENDS THE SECOND BOOK OF SILENT FRIENDS PASSION AND POT-POURRI

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
MCMXXI

Many of the following Essays appear by kind permission of the Editor of "The Tatler."

Fifty per cent. of the author's profit on the sale of this book will be handed over to the National Library of the Blind, Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W.

I DEDICATE,

THIS LITTLE BOOK TO THOSE V.A.D.'S WHO, THOUGH THE WAR IS OVER, STILL "CARRY ON" AND TO THOSE OTHER MEN AND WOMEN WHO, LIVING IN FREEDOM, HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE MEN WHO FOUGHT OR DIED FOR IT

FOREWORD

BY SIR ARTHUR PEARSON, BART., G.B.E.

Those who buy "Over the Fireside" will purchase for themselves the real joy of mentally absorbing the delightful thoughts which Mr. Richard King so charmingly clothes in words. And they will purchase, too, a large share of an even greater pleasure—the pleasure of giving pleasure to others—for the author tells me that he has arranged to give half of the profits arising from the sale of this book to the National Library for the Blind, thus enabling that beneficent Institution to widen and extend its sphere of usefulness.

You will never, perhaps, have heard of the National Library for the Blind, and even if it so happens that you are vaguely aware of its existence, you will in no true degree realise all that it means to those who are compelled to lead lives, which however full and interesting, must inevitably be far more limited in scope than your own. Let me try to make you understand what reading means to the intelligent blind man or woman.

Our lives are necessarily narrow. Blind people, however keen their understanding, and however clearly and sympathetically those around them may by description make up for their lack of perception, must, perforce, lead lives which lack the vivid actuality of the lives of others. To those of them who have always been blind the world, outside the reach of their hands, is a mystery which can only be solved by description. And where shall they turn for more potent description than to the pages in which those gifted with the mastery of language have set down their impressions of the world around them?

And for people whose sight has left them after the world and much that is in it has become familiar to them, reading must mean more than it does to any but the most studious of those who can see. Some are so fortunate as to be able to enlist or command the services of an intelligent reader, but this is not given to any but a small minority, and even to these the ability to read at will, without the necessity of calling in the aid of another, is a matter of real moment, helping as it does to do away with that feeling of dependence which is the greatest disadvantage of blindness.

All this Mr. Richard King knows nearly as well as I do, for he has been a splendidly helpful friend to the men who were blinded in the War, and none know better than he how greatly they have gained by learning to read anew, making the fingers as they travel over the dotted characters replace the eyes of which they have been despoilt.

Disaster sometimes leads to good fortune, and the disaster which befell the blinded soldier has given to the service of the blind world generally the affection and sympathy which Mr. Richard King so abundantly possesses. Your reading of this book—and if you have only borrowed it I hope that these words may induce you to buy a copy—will help to enable more blind folk to read than would otherwise have been the case, and thus you will have added to the happiness of the world, just as the perusal of "Over the Fireside" will have added to your own happiness.

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Draw your chair up nearer to the fireside.

It is the hour of twilight. Soon, so very soon, another of Life's little days will have silently crept behind us into the long dim limbo of half-forgotten years.

We are alone—you and I. Yet between us—unseen, but very real—are Memories linking us to one another and to the generation who, like ourselves, is growing old. How still the world outside seems to have grown! The shadows are lengthening, minute by minute, and presently, the garden, so brightly beautiful such a little time ago in all the colour of its September beauty, will be lost to us in the magic mystery of Night. Who knows? if in the darkest shadows Angels are not standing, and God, returning in this twilight hour, will stay with us until the coming of the Dawn!

Inside the room the fire burns brightly, for the September evenings are very chilly. Its dancing flames illumine us as if pixies were shaking their tiny lanterns in our faces.

DON'T you love the Twilight Hour, when heart seems to speak to heart, and Time seems as if it had ceased for a moment to pursue its Deathless course, lingering in the shadows for a while!

It is the hour when old friends meet to talk of "cabbages and kings," and Life and Love and all those unimportant things which happened long ago in the Dead Yesterdays. Or perhaps, we both sit silent for a space. We do not speak, yet each seems to divine the other's thought. That is the wonder of real Friendship, even the silence speaks, telling to those who understand the thoughts we have never dared to utter.

So we sit quietly, dreaming over the dying embers. We make no effort, we do not strive to "entertain." We simply speak of Men and Matters and how they influenced us and were woven unconsciously into the pattern of our inner lives.

So the long hour of twilight passes—passes. . . . . .

And each hour is no less precious because there will be so many hours "over the fireside" for both of us, now that we are growing old.

But we would not become young again, merely to grow old again.

No! NO!

Age, after all, has MEMORIES, and each Memory is as a story that is told.

Do you know those lovely lines by John Masefield—

  "I take the bank and gather to the fire,
    Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
  The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
    Moves a thin ghost of

Pages