Messing about in boats!

mariner · Post by **mariner** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 7:21 am

THE RIVER BANK

http://www.online-literature.com/grahame/windwillows/1/

`--about in boats--or WITH boats,' the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. `In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?'

EmergencyExit · Post by **EmergencyExit** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 9:24 am

Mariner, WITW was a favorite read of mine as a child, and as an adult I picked it up again online to read on a PDA while flying. After remembering how special it was to me I gave my youngest a copy that year when she was about 9, and I noting some of my favorite parts in the margins.

This year, seven years later, for Christmas she gave me a beautifully illustrated hardcover version, which I'm reading on nasty rainy winter days..

and just before that passage is

`Do you know, I`ve never been in a boat before in all my life.'

`What?' cried the Rat, open-mouthed: `Never been in a--you never--well I--what have you been doing, then?'

Thanks for sharing !!

CaptainScott · Post by **CaptainScott** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 11:21 am

OK, I'm not familiar with it so I found a podcast of it and will be familiar very soon!

Thanks for the heads up on a good read!

Scott

sauerleigh · Post by **sauerleigh** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:43 pm

I vaguely remember my mother reading this to me.
One I like, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-_W18CWypE

Alanhod · Post by **Alanhod** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:36 pm

EmergencyExit · Post by **EmergencyExit** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:53 pm

And for those of us who can't wait to make home port after an adventure however grand, here one of the ones marked in my margins - -

"As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedge- row, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.
"