

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler




BY THE SAME AUTHOR


                                 _Prose_

                    THE GHOST SHIP, AND OTHER STORIES

                                                      [ _Third Impression_

                                 _Verse_

                       POEMS AND SONGS (1ST SERIES)

                                                     [ _Second Impression_

                       POEMS AND SONGS (2ND SERIES)

                                * * * * *

                         LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN

                          [Picture: Book cover]





                              THE DAY BEFORE
                              YESTERDAY • BY
                            RICHARD MIDDLETON


                                * * * * *

                             T. FISHER UNWIN
                         LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
                         LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
                                   1912

                                * * * * *

                         (_All rights reserved_)

                                * * * * *

             Thanks are due to the Editors of _The Academy_,
              _Vanity Fair_, and _The Pall Mall Gazette_ for
                permission to reprint the greater part of
                         the work in this volume.




CONTENTS

                                     PAGE
AN ENCHANTED PLACE                      1
A RAILWAY JOURNEY                       8
THE MAGIC POOL                         16
THE STORY-TELLER                       25
ADMIRALS ALL                           33
A REPERTORY THEATRE                    41
CHILDREN AND THE SPRING                49
ON NURSERY CUPBOARDS                   56
THE FAT MAN                            63
CAROL SINGERS                          70
THE MAGIC CARPET                       77
STAGE CHILDREN                         84
OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE                   92
HAROLD                                 99
ON DIGGING HOLES                      105
REAL CRICKET                          112
THE BOY IN THE GARDEN                 119
CHILDREN AND THE SEA                  130
ON GOING TO BED                       137
STREET ORGANS                         144
A SECRET SOCIETY                      152
THE PRICE OF PEACE                    161
ON CHILDREN’S GARDENS                 167
A DISTINGUISHED GUEST                 174
ON PIRATES                            182
THE FLUTE PLAYER                      189
THE WOOL-GATHERER                     197
THE PERIL OF THE FAIRIES              205
DRURY LANE AND THE CHILDREN           212
CHILDREN’S DRAMA                      217
CHILDHOOD IN RETROSPECT               225
THE FOLLY OF EDUCATION                231
ON COMMON SENSE                       239




AN ENCHANTED PLACE


WHEN elder brothers insisted on their rights with undue harshness, or
when the grown-up people descended from Olympus with a tiresome tale of
broken furniture and torn clothes, the groundlings of the schoolroom went
into retreat.  In summer-time this was an easy matter; once fairly
escaped into the garden, any climbable tree or shady shrub provided us
with a hermitage.  There was a hollow tree-stump full of exciting insects
and pleasant earthy smells that never failed us, or, for wet days, the
tool-shed, with its armoury of weapons with which, in imagination, we
would repel the attacks of hostile forces.  But in the game that was our
childhood, the garden was out of bounds in winter-time, and we had to
seek other lairs.  Behind the schoolroom piano there was a three-cornered
refuge that served very well for momentary sulks or sudden alarms.  It
was possible to lie in ambush there, at peace with our grievances, until
life took a turn for the better and tempted us forth again into the
active world.

But when the hour was tragic and we felt the need for a hiding-place more
remote, we took our troubles, not without a recurring thrill, to that
enchanted place which our elders contemptuously called the
“mouse-cupboard.”  This was a low cupboard that ran the whole length of
the big attic under the <DW72> of the roof, and here the aggrieved spirit
of childhood could find solitude and darkness in which to scheme deeds of
revenge and actions of a wonderful magnanimity turn by turn.  Luckily our
shelter did not appeal to the utilitarian minds of the grown-up folk or
to those members of the younger generation who were beginning to trouble
about their clothes.  You had to enter it on your hands and knees; it was
dusty, and the mice obstinately disputed our possession.  On the inner
walls the plaster seemed to be oozing between the rough laths, and
through little chinks and crannies in the tiles overhead our eyes could
see the sky.  But our imaginations soon altered these trivial blemishes.
As a cave the mouse-cupboard had a very interesting history.  As soon as
the smugglers had left it, it passed successively through the hands of
Aladdin, Robinson Crusoe, Ben Gunn, and Tom Sawyer, and gave satisfaction
to them all, and it would no doubt have had many other tenants if some
one had not discovered that it was like the cabin of a ship.  From that
hour its position in our world was assured.

For sooner or later our dreams always returned to the sea—not, be it
said, to the polite and civilised sea of the summer holidays, but to that
sea on whose foam there open magic casements, and by whose crimson tide
the ships of Captain Avery and Captain Bartholomew Roberts keep faithful
tryst with the _Flying Dutchman_.  It needed no very solid vessel to
carry our hearts to those enchanted waters—a paper boat floating in a
saucer served well enough if the wind was propitious—so the fact that our
cabin lacked portholes and was of an unusual shape did not trouble us.
We could hear the water bubbling against the ship’s side in a
neighbouring cistern, and often enough the wind moaned and whistled
overhead.  We had our lockers, our sleeping-berths, and our cabin-table,
and at one end of the cabin was hung a rusty old cutlass full of notches;
we would have hated any one who had sought to disturb our illusion that
these notches had been made in battle.  When we were stowaways even the
mice were of service to us, for we gave them a full roving commission as
savage rats, and trembled when we heard them scampering among the cargo.

But though we cut the figure of an old admiral out of a Christmas number,
and chased slavers with Kingston very happily for a while, the vessel did
not really come into her own until we turned pirates and hoisted the
“Jolly Roger” off the coast of Malabar.  Then, by the light of guttering
candles, the mice witnessed some strange sights.  If any of us had any
money we would carouse terribly, drinking ginger-beer like water, and
afterwards water out of the ginger-beer bottles, which still retained a
faint magic.  Jam has been eaten without bread on board the _Black
Margaret