ABSTRACT
Never have I felt happier and prouder to be from a city than when I returned from the countryside as a child one autumn evening and saw the lights glowing round the quays. Now, I thought, now those poor devils back there in the country will have to stay indoors or trudge about in the dark and the dirt.
— But it's true, he added, they do have a quite different firmament in the countryside to what we have here. Here, the stars are eclipsed in competition with the street lighting. And that is a pity.
— The stars, said Markel, are no good to light us on our nightly wanderings. It's sad how much they have lost all practical meaning. Earlier, they regulated our entire lives; and if you open a cheap almanac, you'd think they still do. It would be hard to find a more striking example of the persistence of tradition than that; something which is still the most popular piece of folk literature, filled with precise information on things no-one bothers about any more. 1
