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The S's sizzled in his mouth as if they were frying.
Emily Carr, The Book of Small, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1951 (c. 1942), p. 7.
PLACE: A Presbyterian Church in Victoria, B.C.
TIME: Late 1800's.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Listening to the minister preach a sermon.
In the woody swamps of the Park millions and millions of frogs croaked all through the Spring nights. They sounded as if all the world was made of stiff paper and was crackling up.
Emily Carr, The Book of Small, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1951 (c. 1942), p. 117.
PLACE: Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, B.C.
TIME: Late 1800's.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Listening to frogs as a child.
The water of the Straits were icy. Occasionally we were allowed to put on white cotton nightgowns and go bathing in the sea. Your body went down, your nightgown stayed up, icy cold bit through your skin. At the first plunge you had no breath left; when it came back it was in screeches that out-screamed the seagulls.
Emily Carr, The Book of Small, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1951 (c. 1942), p. 116.
PLACE: Victoria, B.C.
TIME: Late 1800's.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Swimming in the ocean as a child.
The silence of our Western forests was so profound that our ears could scarcely comprehend it. If you spoke your voice came back to you as your face is thrown back to you in a mirror. It seemed as if the forest were so full of silence that there was no room for sounds. The birds who lived there were birds of prey -- eagles, hawks, owls. Had a song bird loosed his throat the others would have pounced. Sober-coloured, silent little birds were the first to follow settlers into the West. Gulls there had always been; they began with the sea and had always cried over it. The vast sky spaces above, hungry for noise, steadily lapped up their cries. The forest was different --she brooded over silence and secrecy.
Emily Carr, The Book of Small, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1951 (c. 1942), p. 119.
PLACE: Vancouver Island.
TIME: Late 1800's.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Opening paragraph of her chapter, "Silence and Pioneers."
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