A Tramp's Sketches

Stephen Graham

32 chapters · about 4 h

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The opening

FAREWELL TO THE TOWN

THE town is one large house of which all the little houses are rooms. The streets are the stairs. Those who live always in the town are never out of doors even if they do take the air in the streets.

When I came into the town I found that in my soul were reflected its blank walls, its interminable stairways, and the shadows of hurrying traffic.

A thousand sights and impressions, unbidden, unwelcome, flooded through the eye-gate of my soul, and a thousand harsh sounds and noises came to me through my ears and echoed within me. I became aware of confused influences of all kinds striving to find some habitation in the temple of my being.

What had been my delight in the country, my receptivity and hospitality of consciousness, became in the town my misery and my despair.

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About this edition

The words
The author's text, copied word for word.
Left out
  • Page numbers and running heads from the printed pages, in 327 places
  • Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 3 places
  • The title page and opening pages before chapter 1, in 5 places
  • A speck at the top of the scan's first page, read as “• 1”
  • Other material that isn't the author's
  • The printed half-title (“A TRAMP'S SKETCHES”)
  • The closing line “THE END.”
  • The printer's line “PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN”