Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:16 — davidchen
In them days Commandments were mostly done in gilt letters on a black ground, and that's how they were out where I say, before the owld church was rebuilded. It must have been somewhere about a hundred years ago that them Commandments wanted doing up just as ours do here, and they had to get men from Aldbrickham to do 'em. Now they wished to get the job finished by a particular Sunday, so the men had to work late Saturday night, against their will, for overtime was not paid then as 'tis now. There was no true religion in the country at that date, neither among pa'sons, clerks, nor people, and to keep the men up to their work the vicar had to let 'em have plenty of drink during the afternoon. As evening drawed on they sent for some more themselves; rum, by all account.
Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:16 — davidchen
Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:15 — davidchen
"It is not a very artistic job," continued the messenger. "The clergyman is a very old-fashioned chap, and he has refused to let anything more be done to the church than cleaning and repairing."
"Excellent old man!" said Sue to herself, who was sentimentally opposed to the horrors of over-restoration.
"The Ten Commandments are fixed to the east end," the messenger went on, "and they want doing up with the rest of the wall there, since he won't have them carted off as old materials belonging to the contractor in the usual way of the trade."
A bargain as to terms was struck, and Jude came indoors. "There, you see," he said cheerfully. "One more job yet, at any rate, and you can help in it--at least you can try.
Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:15 — davidchen
Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:15 — davidchen
The curious facts of a child coming to them unexpectedly, who called Jude "Father," and Sue "Mother," and a hitch in a marriage ceremony intended for quietness to be performed at a registrar's office, together with rumours of the undefended cases in the law-courts, bore only one translation to plain minds.
Little Time--for though he was formally turned into "Jude," the apt nickname stuck to him--would come home from school in the evening, and repeat inquiries and remarks that had been made to him by the other boys; and cause Sue, and Jude when he heard them, a great deal of pain and sadness.
The result was that shortly after the attempt at the registrar's the pair went off--to London it was believed--for several days, hiring somebody to look to the boy.
Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:14 — davidchen
Wed, 07/04/2012 - 14:14 — davidchen
You use the liquid by contriving that the desired man shall take about ten drops of it in his drink. But remember, all this is told you because I gather from your questions that you mean to be a purchaser. You must keep faith with me?"
"Very well--I don't mind a bottle--to give some friend or other to try it on her young man." She produced five shillings, the price asked, and slipped the phial in her capacious bosom.
Tue, 07/03/2012 - 20:29 — davidchen
Tue, 07/03/2012 - 20:29 — davidchen
We were driving westbound toward the Karteh-Seh district on what I remembered as a major thoroughfare in the seventies:
Jadeh Maywand. Just north of us was the bone-dry Kabul River. On the hills to the south stood the broken old city wall. Just east of it was the Bala Hissar Fort--the ancient citadel that the warlord Dostum had occupied in 1992--on the Shirdarwaza mountain range, the same mountains from which Mujahedin forces had showered Kabul with rockets between 1992 and 1996, inflicting much of the damage I was witnessing now. The Shirdarwaza range stretched all the way west.
Tue, 07/03/2012 - 20:28 — davidchen