The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
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| Dawn on the River Thames, St Marys, Ontario (detail) Anyès Kadowaki Busby 2016 |
Where beautiful St. Mary’s
Lies nestling ’mongst the hills,
The pleasing prospect rare is,
Its grandeur me enthrills.
From flow’ry gardens nigh me
The balmy breezes blow;
The classic Thames runs by me
With peaceful, gentle flow.
What kindly, friendly greetings
Have cheered me on its shore;
And O! such temperance meetings
I’ve never seen before.
Good Affleck, Pierce and Manning,
Carswell and Watson too,
With famous Ross were planning
What temperance men should do.
(For here, in Grand Division,
The Sons of Temperance met,
To work for Prohibition,
The law that we must get.)
Thou town of peerless beauty;
Ye friends so kind to me;
It is my pleasant duty
To sing this eulogy.
Such scenery nowhere is
For many leagues around;
And in this fair St. Mary’s
Let peace and wealth abound.
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| Collected Verse Archibald McKillop Winnipeg: [n.p.], [c. 1913] |
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
"The Fenian Brotherhood "! the phrase sounds well,
But what's your right to such a title, tell?
Strangers alike to honour, truth, and shame—
Conspirators to aim at Fenian fame!
If truly sang the bard of Selma old,
The Fenian race were of no cut-throat mould;
Though sometimes they in Erin loved to roam,
A land more north was their heroic home;
The "Cothrom Féine," was their pride and boast;
Of all base things they scorned a braggart most;
Besides 'twas not a custom in their day,
Assassin-like, one's victim to way-lay
And shoot unseen contented if, cash down,
The price of blood were only half-a crown!
Fenians, indeed! all true men of that race
Fraternity with you would deem disgrace;
Fenians, forsooth! renounce that honour'd name;
"Thugs" would more fitly suit your claim to fame!
Poor souls, I pity your demented state;
You will be vicious if you can't be great.
Better for Erin any fate would be,
Than to be ruled by bedlamites like ye:
The war of the Kilkenny cats renewed,
She'd find, I think, a very doubtful good.
O wondrous-valiant, treason-hatching crew,
If words were deeds, what great things might ye do?
Ye, who have left your country for her good—
Ye talk of righting all her wrongs in blood!
'Tis laughable — the more so, that we feel
Your necks were made for hemp, and not for steel.
At Britain's lion you may spare your howls,—
That noble beast is never scared by owls;
Tis well for you, with all your vapouring frantic,
You have 'tween him and you the broad Atlantic.
Let no one think that he who now cries shame
On your misdeeds, your Celtic blood would blame;
A Celt himself, his great grief is to see
The land that nursed you cursed by such as ye.
So bright the record of her better days—
So much to love she still to us displays—
So rich her heritage of wit and song—
So warm her heart, so eloquent her tongue,
He honours Erin. 'Tis to fools like you
Alone the tribute of his scorn is due.
Union is strength. Joy to the nations three
As now united! May they ever be
The first and foremost in fair freedom's van—
An empire built upon the Shamrock plan—
A seeming THREE and yet a perfect ONE.
Wives who wish their husbands to fall asleep at a reasonable hour should not allow them to take this title to bed; it is one of the 'to be read at a sitting' variety, and liable to bring about marital crisis.Started in bed, moved to an armchair and ended up on the living room couch. I fell asleep several times. All in all it was very disappointing. I'm ashamed to say I paid for it.
– Bruce Graeme, jacket copy for The House in Brook Street
"What'll you do now? Go back to England, I suppose?"George isn't what you'd call a man of action, which may explain why he's never responded to G-Gal Norma Jean Travers' flirtations. A week after V-J Day she tries one last time, sitting on the corner of his desk, "one nylon leg crossed over the other," before giving up and seeing George off on the train that will take him to New York, the Queen Mary and, eventually, dear old London.
"I suppose."
"The Place Piguelle!" I said."That's a hell of a place to meet anybody."After that particular ambush, George forgets to retrieve the gun that was knocked from his hand.
"I know," she said, "but we've got go to a house near there. I'll explain when I meet you."
"All right," I said. "I'll take your word for it. See you at eight."
I once read in a book that one of the chief requirements of a novel was that it should have Dramatic Unity. Well, I suppose that in a piece of fiction you can organize things so that the action is smooth-flowing and that the bits and pieces all fuse together in a nice, complete whole.
My trouble is that I've got to set the facts down just as they happened (and anyway I'm a policeman, not a writer). So I've got to ruin the Dramatic Unity of the story by skipping three weeks or so. Why? Well, simply because the whole case came to a complete standstill.
It was so obvious that the only excuse which I can make for not seeing it before is that I had a lot of things on my mind.Trivia: The House in Brook Street follows Jane Layhew's Rx for Murder as the second novel read in five months to feature "nigger in the woodpile", an expression I swear I'd never before encountered.
"We is pullin' out ob dis bay in two minutes, sah." He was looking at me curiously.Object and Access: A compact 224 pages in rose-coloured boards. The cover illustration is uncredited. Excited by the opening scenes of Cocking's Die With Me, Lady, in 2012 I purchased my copy for £35 from a bookseller in Winterton, Lincolnshire. The pages were uncut.
I looked around. Miraculously, my bags were packed and ready.
"That's fine," I said, "thanks a lot." I gave him five dollars and his shining black face split in a huge grin.
