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Page 27
Soon we were hurrying through England to a place unknown. Most of my
comrades were merry and a little sentimental; they sang music-hall
songs that told of home. There were seven with me in my compartment,
the Jersey youth, whom I saw kissing a weeping sweetheart in the cold
hours of the early day; Mervin, my cot-mate, who always cleaned the
rifles while I cooked breakfast in the morning; Bill, the Cockney
youth who never is so happy as when getting the best of an argument
in the coffee-shop of which I have already spoken, and the Oxford man.
The other three were almost complete strangers to me, they have just
been drafted into our regiment; one was very fat and reminded me of a
Dickens character in _Pickwick Papers_; another who soon fell asleep,
his head warm in a Balaclava helmet, was a tall, strapping youth with
large muscular hands, which betoken manual labour, and the last was a
slightly-built boy with a budding moustache which seemed to have been
waxed at one end. We noticed this, and the fat soldier said that the
wax had melted from the few lonely hairs on the other side of the lip.
Stations whirled by, Mervin leant out of the window to read their
names, but was never successful. Cigarettes were smoked, the carriage
was full of tobacco fumes and the floor littered with "fag-ends."
Rifles were lying on the racks, four in each side, and caps, papers
and equipment piled on top of them. The Jersey youth made a remark:
"Where are we going to?" he asked. "France I suppose, isn't it?"
"Maybe Egypt," someone answered.
"With two pairs of socks to one boot!" Mervin muttered in sarcastic
tones; and almost immediately fell asleep. He had been a great
traveller and knows many countries. His age is about forty, but he
owns to twenty-seven, and in his youth he was educated for the church.
"But the job was not one for me," he says, "and I threw it up." He
looks forward to the life of a soldier in the field.
Our train journey neared the end. Bill was at the window and said that
we were in sight of our destination. All were up and fumbling with
their equipment; and one, the University man, hoped that the night
would be a good one for sailing to France.
If we are bound for France we shall be there to-morrow.
THE END.
* * * * *
JUST PUBLISHED
THE RAT-PIT
BY PATRICK MACGILL, AUTHOR OF "CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END." CROWN 8VO.
PRICE 6/-. INLAND POSTAGE 5D. EXTRA.
"Children of the Dead End" came upon the literary world as something
of a surprise; it dealt with a phase of life about which nothing
was known. It was compared with the work of Borrow and Kipling.
Incidentally three editions, aggregating 10,000 copies, were called
for within fifteen days. In his new book Mr. MacGill still deals with
the underworld he knows so well. He tells of a life woven of darkest
threads, full of pity and pathos, lighted up by that rare and quaint
humour that made his first book so attractive. "The Rat-Pit" tells the
story of an Irish peasant girl brought up in an atmosphere of poverty,
where the purity of the poor and the innocence of maidenhood stand
out in simple relief against a grim and sombre background. Norah Ryan
leaves her home at an early age, and is plunged into a new world where
dissolute and heedless men drag her down to their own miry level. Mr.
MacGill's lot has been cast in strange places, and every incident of
his book is pregnant with a vivid realism that carries the conviction
that it is a literal transcript from life, as in fact it is. Only
last summer, just before he enlisted, Mr. MacGill spent some time in
Glasgow reviving old memories of its underworld. His characters are
mostly real persons, and their sufferings, the sufferings of women
burdened and oppressed with wrongs which women alone bear, are a
strong indictment against a dubious civilisation.
HERBERT JENKINS LD., 12 ARUNDEL PLACE, LONDON, S.W.
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