"Two years before the war began, the bell rope broke. It snapped near the top; the stairs were rotten; the bell ringer was an old man, and he was afraid to climb up there and put in a new rope. So after he announced the time by shooting a hunting rifle into the air; one shot, or two or three or four, That went on till the Germans came. They took his gun away from him, and the village was left without any time."
"With little wisdom, no experience and a decided tendency, to live in an unrealistic world of my own, a world inhabited by civilized Cartesian phantoms."
