Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 4, by Winston Churchill

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 4

Author: Winston Churchill

Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5377]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 4 ***

Produced by David Widger

A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

Volume 4.

CHAPTER VII

OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS

In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm at
Quicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of all
festivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club
--Quicksands's greatest rival. Rival for more reasons than one, reasons
too delicate to tell. Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon of
Lord Beaconsfield executing that most difficult of performances, an egg
dance. We shall be fortunate indeed if we get to the end of this chapter
without breaking an egg!

Our pen fails us in a description of that festival of festivals, the
Banbury one, which took place early in September. We should have to go
back to Babylon and the days of King Nebuchadnezzar. (Who turns out to
have been only a regent, by the way, and his name is now said to be
spelled rezzar). How give an idea of the libations poured out to Gad and
the shekels laid aside for Meni in the Quicksands Temple?

Honora privately thought that building ugly, and it reminded her of a
collection of huge yellow fungi sprawling over the ground. A few of the
inevitable tortured cedars were around it. Between two of the larger
buildings was wedged a room dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-day
like a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks--some of
them, let us say, water-logged--and all grinding together with an
intolerable noise like a battle. If you happened to be passing the
windows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separate
themselves from the bedlam.

"Four to five on Quicksands!"

"That stock isn't worth a d--n!"

"She's gone to South Dakota."

Honora, however, is an heretic, as we know. Without going definitely into
her reasons, these festivals had gradually become di