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Beerbohm, Max, Sir, 1872-1956

"A Christmas Garland"

Passengers through cushioned space,
flying top-speed or dallying with obscure stations not alighted at
apparently, have had it pointed out to them as beheld dimly for a
privileged instant before they sink back behind crackling barrier of
instructive paper with a "Thank you, Sir," or "Madam," as the case
may be. Guide-books praise it. I conceive they shall be studied for
a cock-shy of rainbow epithets slashed in at the target of Landed
Gentry, premonitorily. The tintinnabulation's enough. Periodical
footings of Clashthoughts into Mayfair or the Tyrol, signalled by the
slide from its mast of a crested index of Aeolian caprice, blazon of
their presence, give the curious a right to spin through the halls
and galleries under a cackle of housekeeper guideship--scramble for a
chuck of the dainties, dog fashion. There is something to be said for
the rope's twist. Wisdom skips.
It is recorded that the goblins of this same Lady Wisdom were all agog
one Christmas morning between the doors of the house and the village
church, which crouches on the outskirt of the park, with something of
a lodge in its look, you might say, more than of celestial twinkles,
even with Christmas hoar-frost bleaching the grey of it in sunlight,
as one sees imaged on seasonable missives for amity in the trays
marked "sixpence and upwards," here and there, on the counters of
barter.


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