THE TYPE-WRITER GIRL
By Olive Pratt Rayner

Contents

I. Introduces a Latter-day Heroine
II. The Struggle for Life
III. Environment Wins
IV. The Choice of a Patron
V. Vive l'Anarchie!
VI. The Inner Brotherhood
VII. A Mutinous Mutineer
VIII. Called "Of Accidents"
IX. I Play Carmen
X. Sic me Servavit Apollo!
XI. A Sail on the Horizon
XII. A Cavalier makes Advances
XIII. Concerning Romeo
XIV. "Now Barabbas was a Publisher"
XV. Fresh Light on Romeo
XVI. I try Literature
XVII. A Drawn Battle
XVIII. An Autumn Holiday
XIX. "O Romeo, Romeo!"
XX. "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
XXI. Envoy Plenipotentiary
XXII. I Cling to the Rigging

Chapter 1 Excerpt

I WAS twenty-two; and without employment. I would not say by this that I was without occupation. In the world in which we live, set with daisies and kingfishers and undeciphered faces of men and women, I doubt I could be at a loss for something to occupy me. A swallow's back, as he turns in the sunshine, is so full of meaning. If you dwell in the country, you need but pin on a hat and slip out into a meadow, and there, in some bight of the hedgerow, you shall see spring buds untwisting, sulphur butterflies coquetting; hear nightingales sing as they sang to Keats, and streamlets make madrigal as they wimpled for Marlowe. Nay, even here in London, where life is rarer, how can I cruise down the Strand without encountering Strange barks - mysterious argosies that attract and intrigue me? That living stream is so marvellous! Whence come they, these shadows, and whither do they go? - innumerable, silent, each wrapped in his own thought, yet each real to himself as I to my heart. To me, they are shooting stars, phantoms that flash athwart the orbit of my life one second, and then vanish. But to themselves they are the centre of a world - of the world; and I am but one of the meteors that dart across their horizon.

I cannot choose but wonder who each is, and why he is here. For one after another I invent a story. It may not be the true story, but at least it amuses me. Every morning I see them stream in from the Unknown, by the early trains, and disperse like sparks that twinkle on the thin soot of the chimney-back - men with small black bags, bound for mysterious offices. What happens in those offices I have no idea: they may lend money, or buy shares, or promote Christian knowledge. I only know I see them come in the morning and flit again at night, sometimes the same figures, recognisably identical. They rush back, absorbed, to catch the train to the Unknown, as they rushed up from it earlier.

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