Creator:
Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow), 1879-1968
clambered up to wave these tired men out of sight. The servant at the
upper window let her work go and waved; the mother of the family and the
girls in the sitting-room downstairs came to the window and waved; the
woman washing in the tub in the back-yard straightened herself up and
waved; the little grocer out with his wife and the perambulator waved,
and the wife waved, and the infant in the perambulator waved; the boys
playing pitch-and-toss on the pavement ran towards the railway bridge
and waved; the young lady out for a walk with her young man waved--not
at all a suppressed welcome, quite the reverse of half-hearted; the
young man waved, much more demurely, but still he did wave. The flapper
on the lawn threw down her tennis-racket and simply flung kisses; and
her two young brothers expressed themselves quite as emphatically in
their own manner; the old man at the corner and the grocer-boy from his
cart waved. For a quarter of an hour, while that train wound in through
the London suburbs, every human being that was near dropped his work and
gave it a welcome.
I have seen many great ceremonies in England, and they have left me as
cold as ice. There have been big set pieces even in this war, with brass
bands and lines of policemen and cheering crowds and long accounts of it
afterwards in the newspapers. But I have never seen any demonstration
that could compare with this simple spontaneous welcome by the families
of London. It was quite unrehearsed and quite unreported. No one had
arranged it, and no one was going to write big headlines about it next
day. The people in one garden did not even know what the people in the
The Hated Son
Produced by John Bickers and Dagny
THE HATED SON
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
next garden were doing--or want to know. The servant at the upper
window did not know that the mistress was at the lower window doing
exactly as she was, and vice versa. For the first time in one's
experience one had experienced a genuine, whole-hearted, common feeling
running through all the English people--every man, woman and child,
without distinction, bound in one common interest which, for the time
being, was moving the whole nation. And I shall never forget it.
It was the most wonderful welcome--I am not exaggerating when I say that
it was one of the most wonderful and most inspiriting sights that I have
ever seen. I do not know whether the rulers of the country are aware of
it. But I do not believe for a moment that this people can go back after
the war to the attitude by which each of those families was to all the
others only so much prospective monetary gain or loss.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE NEW ENTRY
_France, November 13th._
Last week an Australian force made its attack in quite a different area