English journalist & scholar (1868-1939)
An epitaph should speak the truth.
OSWALD BARRON
"The Most Popular Poetry", Day In and Day Out
Of my gardener I would say that he moves meditatively in the garden. He labours continually but without cruel haste; if he make changes, it is as the seasons make them. Like every good gardener, there is something priestly in his manner.
OSWALD BARRON
"A Jobbing Gardener", Day In and Day Out
There are no new tales, but we shall always be ready to listen to a new telling of the old ones.
OSWALD BARRON
"Immortal Mrs. Pish", Day In and Day Out
Time was when I could come home from my travels with many pretty old things stowed away among my shirts and socks. But that was long ago, before the German troubled the world, before we fell to turning every penny twice over, before the tax collector claimed the third rasher of bacon on the dish. Also it seems that the pretty old things grow rare as eggs of the great auk and hard to find.
OSWALD BARRON
"The Proud Craftsmen", Day In and Day Out
Sitting alone and apart, anybody has the right to talk with contempt of the mob and the crowd and the witless many. For everybody with his wits about him knows well enough that, once the crowd takes him again, he will do very silly things, things unworthy of so intelligent a person.
OSWALD BARRON
"Balneology", Day In and Day Out
There is always with us that odd little sect of heretics which believes that the stars are busy with the little business of our lives.
OSWALD BARRON
"The Stars in Their Courses", Day In and Day Out
Rather than get our astronomy with the help of a comic primer of astronomy, it were better to be ignorant with the children whose knowledge went no further than the nursery rhyme, whose hymn to the star was on the note of "how I wonder what you are."
OSWALD BARRON
"The Stars in Their Courses", Day In and Day Out
If the cat waits for long hours, silent beside the crack of the wainscot, it is for pure pleasure. Cats do not keep the mice away; it is my belief that they preserve them for the chase.
OSWALD BARRON
"Nine Lives", Day In and Day Out
Care, says the proverb, once killed a cat. It may be so, but it has killed never another.
OSWALD BARRON
"Nine Lives", Day In and Day Out
I envy most my cat. Of all my friends she is the wisest. She is sixty miles away from where I sit here writing. Yet I know well how it is with her. That little half-hour of sun has found her stretched out upon a wicker-work seat under the old vine that is southward of my house. Her fur was warm in it and keeps yet the warmth. She is content.
OSWALD BARRON
"Nine Lives", Day In and Day Out
The book of magic is very like the cookery book; the unpracticed student of either can make a terrible hash of things.
OSWALD BARRON
"Sarah Baker's Ghost", Day In and Day Out
I am so ignorant that I cannot remember much from the list of the lesser stars. It may be that they have suffered indignities.
OSWALD BARRON
"The Stars in Their Courses", Day In and Day Out
I look upward ignorantly but reverently at the white host of heaven. Even the astronomer who peers through the magic glasses must go in peril of losing his mysterious awe in a tangle of mathematical calculations.
OSWALD BARRON
"The Stars in Their Courses", Day In and Day Out
But sometimes, when the heat of the day is over, if I see flowers and grasses athirst, I am taken with pity for them. If no other be there to minister to them I will take a great watering-can in my own hands and give them water in their need. That is no gardening; it is a godlike charity, a sacramental act of mercy.
OSWALD BARRON
"A Jobbing Gardener", Day In and Day Out