nfall as the open
towards Chingford station was approached at last, after devious winding
in the Forest. Then, coming upon the edge of the wood and seeing the
lone station against the grey sky, we broke into a shout and began
running. But it is dismal running on imperfectly frozen clay, in rain
and a gusty wind. We slipped and floundered, and one of us wept sore
that she should never see her home again. And worse, the only train
sleeping in the station was awakened by our cries, and, with an eldritch
shriek at the unseasonable presence of trippers, fled incontinently
Londonward.

Smeared with clay and dead leaves almost beyond human likeness, we
staggered into the derelict station, and found from an outcast porter
that perhaps another train might after the lapse of two hours accumulate
sufficiently to take us back to Gospel Oak and a warm world again. So we
speered if there were amusements to be got in this place, and he told us
"some very nice walks." To refrain from homicide we left the station,
and sought a vast red hotel that loomed through the drift on a steep
hill, and in the side of this a door that had not been locked. Happily
one had been forgotten, and, entering at last, we roused a hibernating
waiter, and he exhumed us some of his winter victual. In this way we
were presently to some degree comforted, and could play chess until a
train had been sent for our relief. And this did at last happen, and
towards the hour of dinner we rejoined our anxious friends, and all the
evening time we boasted of a pleasant day and urged them to go even as
we had gone.

THE THEORY OF QUOTATION

The nobler method of quotation is not to quote at all. For why should
one repeat good things that are already written? Are not the words in
their fittest context in the original? Clearly, then, your new setting
cannot be quite so congruous, which is, forthwith, an admission of
incongruity. Your quotation is evidently a plug in a leak, an apology
for a gap in your own words. But your vulgar author will even go out of
his way to make the clothing of his thoughts thus heterogeneous. He
counts every stolen scrap he can work in an improvement--a literary
caddis worm. Yet would he consider it improvement to put a piece of even
the richest of old tapestry or gold embroidery into his new pair of
breeks?

The passion for quotation is peculiar to literature. We do not glory to
quote our costume, dress in cast-off court robes, or furni