December 10th to 16th
Format:
Acccording to the custom of Vermont, Sunday afternoon is salting-time on the farm, and, unless something very important happens, we attend to the salting ourselves |
The opening lines of “”A Walkimg Delegate””. Collected in The Day’s Work. One of the horses, like a socialist agitator, tries to stir up his fellows to resist their servitude. The others, who are contented with their lot, deal with him summarily. |
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‘B00k—Book—Domesday Book!’ They were letting in the water for the evening stint at Robert’s Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived. the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine-hundred-year-old song: ‘Here rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety. |
The opening lines of “Below the Mill Dan”, collected in Traffics and Discoveries. The grey cat and the black rat reminisce about the long story of the mill. It is a fable warning against the complacent country-house conservatism of the late Victorians, resistant to change and modernity, personified by the cat, which bears a striking resemblance to the elegant indolent figure of Arthur Balfour, the conservative Prime Minister. |
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If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. |
These are the opening lines of “The Mother Hive“, collected in Actions and Reactions. Drawing on Kipling’s own knowledge as a bee-keeper this is another of his parables, warning against self-indulgent ‘progressive’ ideas, , sapping discipline and needed effort at a dangerous time |
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