John Richard Greene 
Stray Studies from England and Italy 

pub One.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. There are few stiller things than the stillness of a summer’s noon such as this, a summer’s noon in a broken woodland, with the deer asleep in the bracken, and the twitter of birds silent in the coppice, and hardly a leaf astir in the huge beeches that fling their cool shade over the grass. Afar off a gilded vane flares out above the grey Jacobean gables of Knoll, the chime of a village clock falls faintly on the ear, but there is no voice or footfall of living thing to break the silence as I turn over leaf after leaf of the little book I have brought with me from the bustle of town to this still retreat, a book that is the record of a broken life, of a life broken off, as he who lived it says of another, with a ragged edge.