Henry Masterman Mist Diaries and Prisoners Pie Magazine
Diaries of Heny Masterman Mist and a copy of Prisoners’ Pie, the Ruhleben Camp magazine. Learn more.
*All transcriptions are provided by volunteers, and the accuracy of the transcriptions is not guaranteed. Please be sure to verify the information by viewing the image record, or visiting the BC Archives in person.
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One night, at every aeon's birth, Joy reigns through all the starry deeps, That night no dew falls on the Earth -- The moon beside his loved one sweeps!
"And that's a true story," said the Starling, "for as you can see from my name, I was once a little star myself and knew all that happened in the sky."
But the Baby had heard nothing. The Little Man had thrown out some of the dust from his poppy-blossom, and the Baby as fast asleep. C.H.B.
The Naughty Book.
She was a modest young Englishwoman, modest in her dress, in her desires; and her pretty face concealed but a modest amount of that highly useful commodity known as brains.
For the three weeks that followed her marriage she was perfectly happy; almost perfectly happy, that is, for one thing troubled her. It was a book which her husband was fond, too fond of reading. And it was not a nice book to read at all. She herself had never read it, had long since determined she never would read it, but she knew it by repute. She even knew friends who had started it, though none of them ever confessed to having finished it. They had, as they all said, laid it down with horror and disgust the moment they had found out what kind of book it was. It was called "Decameron" or some such name, and indeed in her eyes the title in itself was sufficient to show its disgracefulness.
It is no wonder then that she did not like her husband to read it, and that one of the first things she did when the honeymoon was over and they were settled comfortably in their new home, was to ask him to give up reading such nasty stuff.
Her husband was at first inclined to be disagreeable about it.
"I think," he said, "that I am quite capable of judging what I ought to read and what I ought not to read."
"Of course you are," she pouted. "But all I want is that you shall not read this particular book. It is surely a little thing for you to do for me."
"You don't understand", he argued.
"I don't want to, if it means reading nasty books --"
And in the end, seeing that she had promised to obey him in all things just three weeks previously, he did what she wanted, and they went together to Charing Cross Rd. and sold the book to a secondhand bookseller, who, to her astonishment, did not even blush when he saw the title.
BC Archives, MS-2570 Box 1 File 6 MIST, Henry Masterman Ruhleben magazine, Prisoners’ Pie, 1916