HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE.

 

It’s almost Christmas, so I thought I’d test your knowledge, (or your guessing ability perhaps?).  Below are some quotes from the books, poems or short stories of famous writers through the ages.  It’s probably too much to expect you to be able to guess which story these quotes come from, but have a guess about the authors without Googling these to see if you can recognise the style of the writing.  Some of them may surprize you.  The answers are further down the page.

 

1)       1)  I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what is particularly dead about a door nail.  I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest bit of ironmongery in the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done.

 

2)       2)  There has been some talk lately of the standardization of golf balls, but a more urgent reform is the standardization of Christmas presents. It is no good putting this matter off; let us take it in hand now, so that we shall be in time for next Christmas.

 

My crusade is on behalf of those who spend their Christmas away from home. Last year I returned (with great difficulty) from such an adventure and I am more convinced than ever that Christmas presents should conform to a certain standard of size. My own little offerings were thoughtfully chosen. A match-box, a lace handkerchief or two, a cigarette-holder, a pencil and note-book, Gems from Wilcox, and so on; such gifts not only bring pleasure (let us hope) to the recipient, but take up a negligible amount of room in one’s bag, and add hardly anything to the weight of it. Of course, if your fellow-visitor says to you, “How sweet of you to give me such a darling little handkerchief--it’s just what I wanted--how ever did you think of it?” you do not reply, “Well, it was a choice between that and a hundredweight of coal, and I’ll give you two guesses why I chose the handkerchief.” No; you smile modestly and say, “As soon as I saw it, I felt somehow that it was yours”; after which you are almost in a position to ask your host casually where he keeps the mistletoe.

 

 

 

3)       3)  High noon behind the tamarisks, the sun is hot above us,

        As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.

        They will drink our healths at dinner, those who tell us how they love us,

        And forget us till another year be gone!

        Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!

        Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!

        Youth was cheap, wherefore we sold it.

        Gold was good, we hoped to hold it,

        And to-day we know the fulness of our gain!

 

4)     4)   My dear children, I am more shaky than usual this year. The North Polar Bear’s fault. It was the biggest bang in the world, and the most monstrous firework there has ever been. It turned the North Pole black!

 

5)      5)  It is a beautiful arrangement, also derived from days of yore, that this festival, which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love, has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 

Answers.

1)       1)  Charles Dickens.  A Christmas Carol.  1843

2)      2)  A. A. Milne. (The author of Winnie the Pooh).  A Hint for Next Christmas.  1920

3)      3)  Rudyard Kipling.  Christmas in India.  1886

4)     4)  J. R. R. Tolkien.  Letters from Father Christmas.  194?

5)      5)  Washington Irving.  Old Christmas.  1876




HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE.

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