A wonderful man for his age

Nothing to do with the previous post, but a few quotes from novels of the early 1920s by writers Headon Hill and Freeman Wills Crofts. A casual collection of contrasts between life as it was and life as it is now.

Phones - by Headon Hill
Mr. Thorpe ought to be warned. It would take hours to get him on a trunk ’phone call.

Why should an isolated farm-house, if it depended on the legitimate industry of raising corn, grazing cattle, growing apples and brewing cider, be on the telephone?

Thorpe, standing at the telephone in the Mucklepath parlour, wondered if the most inefficient of the public services was to maintain its reputation that day.


Roads - by Headon Hill
When they reached the main road the going was a little better on the tar-spray, though the whole world was blotted out in the damp white blanket.


Dismounting from a car - by Freeman Wills Crofts
‘Abbey Lane,’ the sergeant explained, and having arranged for the car to wait, the two men dismounted and passed down the path.


Speed - by Freeman Wills Crofts
They were running well. Tanner watched the whirling hedges, lit up by the strong headlights, and blurred by the speed into quivering smudges, and judged they must be doing well on to forty miles an hour.

Then on again through Valladolid to Medina, where the Madrid portion of the train branched off; through Salamanca of legendary fame, but now, for Spain, a considerable railway centre, then into Portugal, where the train hurtled along at considerably over thirty miles an hour.


Old Age - by Freeman Wills Crofts
Old Mr Clayton is well over seventy, but still remains hale and hearty—a wonderful man for his age.