Many Furrows

Alfred George Gardiner's reflective essays move effortlessly from dream, season, and home to manners, appetite, and the comic rituals of ordinary life. In "Dream Journeys," a playful vision of Robinson Crusoe's island opens into a wistful meditation on youth's grand intentions and the later discovery that time, like travel, cannot be postponed forever. Elsewhere, a couple at a Scottish station, content simply to watch trains, reveal that holidays often deepen rather than replace love of home. Gardiner lingers over November's fading beauty, then yields to the spell of a wood fire, where comfort becomes reverie. His wit sharpens in essays on civility, where a lift-man's fury over the missing "Please" leads to a defense of courtesy as the foundation of humane society, and a kindly bus conductor shows how good manners can transform public life. The collection also turns delightfully comic in a family debate over baby names, ending with Michael and second thoughts, and in "The Cult of the Knife and Fork," which satirizes appetite while celebrating food as part of memory, travel, and cultivated enjoyment. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.