The joys of horse and rattling, rich reward for boyhood toil, bucking cart, riding high on the hay, your father pacing at the rein; a tiny returning champion, skin like leather; all now squared into an oil fairytale to perch in maidenless parlours and picturesque postcards who know nothing of you.
A comet is a ‘faxed’ star, that is, a hairy, a tailed star. But ‘faxed’ got corrupted into ‘fixed’ star during the seventeenth century.
[I was] thankful for the pain, which helped to numb my terror.
With a good blinding snowfall, or a pelting downpour of cats and dogs, I might have hoped for a respite. What a Christmas offering for my mother! I say!
