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+chapter sixteen i might have told you of the beginning of this liaison in a few lines but i wanted you to see every step by which we came i to agree to whatever marguerite wished
+marguerite to be unable to live apart from me it was the day after the evening when she came to see me that i sent her manon lescaut from that time seeing that i could not change my mistress's life i changed my own
+i wished above all not to leave myself time to think over the position i had accepted for in spite of myself it was a great distress to me thus my life generally so calm
+assumed all at once an appearance of noise and disorder never believe however disinterested the love of a kept woman may be that it will cost one nothing
+nothing is so expensive as their caprices flowers boxes at the theatre suppers days in the country which one can never refuse to one's mistress as i have told you i had little money
+my father was and still is receveur general at c he has a great reputation there for loyalty thanks to which he was able to find the security which he needed in order to attain this position
+i came to paris studied law was called to the bar and like many other young men put my diploma in my pocket and let myself drift as one so easily does in paris
+my expenses were very moderate only i used up my year's income in eight months and spent the four summer months with my father which practically gave me twelve thousand francs a year and in addition the reputation of a good son
+for the rest not a penny of debt this then was my position when i made the acquaintance of marguerite you can well understand that in spite of myself my expenses soon increased
+marguerite's nature was very capricious and like so many women she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and one distractions which made up her life so wishing to spend as much time with me as possible
+she would write to me in the morning that she would dine with me not at home but at some restaurant in paris or in the country i would call for her and we would dine and go on to the theatre often having supper as well
+forgive me if i give you all these details but you will see that they were the cause of what was to follow what i tell you is a true and simple story and i leave to it all the naivete of its details
+and all the simplicity of its developments i realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget my mistress it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the expenses into which she drew me then too
+my love for her had so disturbing an influence upon me that every moment i spent away from marguerite was like a year and that i felt the need of consuming these moments in the fire of some sort of passion
+as not to know that i was living them i began by borrowing five or six thousand francs on my little capital and with this i took to gambling since gambling houses were destroyed gambling goes on everywhere
+formerly when one went to frascati one had the chance of making a fortune one played against money and if one lost there was always the consolation of saying that one might have gained whereas now except in the clubs
+where there is still a certain rigour in regard to payments one is almost certain the moment one gains a considerable sum not to receive it you will readily understand why gambling is only likely to be carried on by young people
+very much in need of money and not possessing the fortune necessary for supporting the life they lead they gamble then and with this result or else they gain and then those who lose serve to pay for their horses and mistresses
+which is very disagreeable debts are contracted acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels in which life or honour comes to grief and though one may be an honest man one finds oneself ruined by very honest men
+whose only defect is that they have not two hundred thousand francs a year i need not tell you of those who cheat at play
+i flung myself into this rapid noisy and volcanic life which had formerly terrified me when i thought of it and which had become for me the necessary complement of my love for marguerite what else could i have done
+the nights that i did not spend in the rue d'antin if i had spent them alone in my own room i could not have slept jealousy would have kept me awake and inflamed my blood and my thoughts
+while gambling gave a new turn to the fever which would otherwise have preyed upon my heart and fixed it upon a passion which laid hold on me in spite of myself until the hour struck when i might go to my mistress then
+and by this i knew the violence of my love i left the table without a moment's hesitation whether i was winning or losing pitying those whom i left behind because they would not like me find their real happiness in leaving it
+for the most of them gambling was a necessity for me it was a remedy free of marguerite i should have been free of gambling thus in the midst of all that i preserved a considerable amount of self possession
+i lost only what i was able to pay and gained only what i should have been able to lose for the rest chance was on my side i made no debts and i spent three times as much money as when i did not gamble
+it was impossible to resist an existence
+as for her she continued to love me as much or even more than ever as i told you i began by being allowed to stay only from midnight to six o'clock then i was asked sometimes to a box in the theatre
+then she sometimes came to dine with me one morning i did not go till eight and there came a day when i did not go till twelve but sooner than the moral metamorphosis a physical metamorphosis came about in marguerite
+i had taken her cure in hand and the poor girl seeing my aim obeyed me in order to prove her gratitude i had succeeded without effort or trouble in almost isolating her from her former habits my doctor
+whom i had made her meet had told me that only rest and calm could preserve her health so that in place of supper and sleepless nights i succeeded in substituting a hygienic regime and regular sleep in spite of herself
+marguerite got accustomed to this new existence whose salutary effects she already realized she began to spend some of her evenings at home or if the weather was fine she wrapped herself in a shawl put on a veil and we went on foot
+like two children in the dim alleys of the champs elysees she would come in tired take a light supper and go to bed after a little music or reading which she had never been used to do the cough
+had almost completely disappeared at the end of six weeks the count was entirely given up and only the duke obliged me to conceal my liaison with marguerite and even he was sent away when i was there
+under the pretext that she was asleep and had given orders that she was not to be awakened the habit or the need of seeing me which marguerite had now contracted had this good result that it forced me to leave the gaming table just at the moment
+when an adroit gambler would have left it settling one thing against another i found myself in possession of some ten thousand francs
+the time of the year when i was accustomed to join my father and sister had now arrived and i did not go both of them wrote to me frequently begging me to come to these letters i replied as best i could
+always repeating that i was quite well and that i was not in need of money two things which i thought would console my father for my delay in paying him my annual visit just then one fine day in summer
+marguerite was awakened by the sunlight pouring into her room and jumping out of bed asked me if i would take her into the country for the whole day
+we sent for prudence and all three set off after marguerite had given nanine orders to tell the duke that she had taken advantage of the fine day
+prudence was one of those women who seem made on purpose for days in the country with her unchanging good humour and her eternal appetite she never left a dull moment to those whom she was with and was perfectly happy in ordering eggs cherries milk
+stewed rabbit and all the rest of the traditional lunch in the country we had now only to decide where we should go it was once more prudence who settled the difficulty do you want to go to the real country she asked yes
+armand order an open carriage an hour and a half later we were at widow arnould's perhaps you know the inn which is a hotel on week days and a tea garden on sundays
+there is a magnificent view from the garden which is at the height of an ordinary first floor on the left the aqueduct of marly closes in the horizon
+beyond distinct in the sunlight rise little white houses with red roofs and manufactories which at that distance put an admirable finish to the landscape beyond that paris in the mist
+as prudence had told us it was the real country and i must add it was a real lunch it is not only out of gratitude for the happiness i owe it
+i have travelled a good deal and seen much grander things
+the breeze the shining solitude of fields or woods however much one loves a woman whatever confidence one may have in her whatever certainty her past may offer us as to her future one is always more or less jealous
+if you have been in love you must have felt the need of isolating from this world the being in whom you would live wholly it seems as if however indifferent she may be to her surroundings the woman whom one loves loses something of her perfume
+and of her unity at the contact of men and things as for me i experienced that more than most mine was not an ordinary love i was as much in love as an ordinary creature could be
+and who had no concern with us alone with nature in the spring time of the year that annual pardon and shut off from the noise of the city i could hide my love and love without shame or fear
+the courtesan disappeared little by little i had by me a young and beautiful woman whom i loved and who loved me and who was called marguerite the past had no more reality and the future no more clouds
+the sun shone upon my mistress as it might have shone upon the purest bride we walked together in those charming spots which seemed to have been made on purpose to recall the verses of lamartine or to sing the melodies of scudo
+marguerite was dressed in white she leaned on my arm saying over to me again under the starry sky the words she had said to me the day before and far off the world went on its way
+add to this that from the place where i was i could see on the shore a charming little house of two stories with a semicircular railing through the railing in front of the house a green lawn smooth as velvet
+and behind the house a little wood full of mysterious retreats where the moss must efface each morning the pathway that had been made the day before climbing flowers clung about the doorway of this uninhabited house
+mounting as high as the first story i looked at the house so long that i began by thinking of it as mine so perfectly did it embody the dream that i was dreaming i saw marguerite and myself there
+by day in the little wood that covered the hillside in the evening seated on the grass and i asked myself if earthly creatures had ever been so happy as we should be what a pretty house marguerite said to me
+where asked prudence yonder and marguerite pointed to the house in question ah delicious replied prudence do you like it very much
+well tell the duke to take it for you he would do so i am sure i'll see about it if you like marguerite looked at me
+my dream vanished at the last words of prudence and brought me back to reality so brutally that i was still stunned with the fall
+yes an excellent idea i stammered not knowing what i was saying well i will arrange that said marguerite freeing my hand and interpreting my words according to her own desire
+let us go and see if it is to let the house was empty and to let for two thousand francs would you be happy here she said to me am i sure of coming here
+and for whom else should i bury myself here if not for you well then marguerite let me take it myself you are mad not only is it unnecessary but it would be dangerous
+you know perfectly well that i have no right to accept it save from one man let me alone big baby and say nothing that means said prudence that when i have two days free i will come and spend them with you
+we left the house and started on our return to paris talking over the new plan
+chapter seventeen next day marguerite sent me away very early saying that the duke was coming at an early hour and promising to write to me the moment he went and to make an appointment for the evening
+in the course of the day i received this note
+be at prudence's to night at eight
+well it is all settled she said as she entered the house is taken asked prudence yes he agreed at once i did not know the duke but i felt ashamed of deceiving him
+but that is not all continued marguerite what else is there i have been seeing about a place for armand to stay in the same house asked prudence laughing
+no at point du jour where we had dinner the duke and i
+i took it was i right i flung my arms around her neck and kissed her it will be charming she continued you have the key of the little door and i have promised the duke the key of the front door
+he has asked me how i loving paris as i do could make up my mind to bury myself in the country i told him that i was ill and that i wanted rest he seemed to have some difficulty in believing me
+and we shall have everything perfect the duke is going to look after every single thing ah my dear she added kissing me you're in luck it's a millionaire who makes your bed for you
+and when shall you move into the house inquired prudence as soon as possible will you take your horses and carriage i shall take the whole house and you can look after my place while i am away
+a week later marguerite was settled in her country house and i was installed at point du jour then began an existence which i shall have some difficulty in describing to you
+prudence on her side brought down all the people she knew and did the honours of the house as if the house belonged to her the duke's money paid for all that as you may imagine but from time to time prudence came to me
+asking for a note for a thousand francs professedly on behalf of marguerite you know i had won some money at gambling i therefore immediately handed over to prudence what she asked for marguerite
+and fearing lest she should require more than i possessed i borrowed at paris a sum equal to that which i had already borrowed and paid back i was then once more in possession of some ten thousand francs without reckoning my allowance
+however marguerite's pleasure in seeing her friends was a little moderated when she saw the expense which that pleasure entailed and especially the necessity she was sometimes in of asking me for money the duke
+and having fallen upon a party of fifteen who were still at lunch at an hour when he was prepared to sit down to dinner he had unsuspectingly opened the dining room door and had been greeted by a burst of laughter
+marguerite rose from table and joined the duke in the next room where she tried as far as possible to induce him to forget the incident but the old man wounded in his dignity bore her a grudge for it
+and could not forgive her he said to her somewhat cruelly that he was tired of paying for the follies of a woman who could not even have him treated with respect under his own roof and he went away in great indignation
+since that day he had never been heard of in vain marguerite dismissed her guests changed her way of life the duke was not to be heard of i was the gainer in so
+far that my mistress now belonged to me more completely and my dream was at length realized marguerite could not be without me not caring what the result might be she publicly proclaimed our liaison
+and i had come to live entirely at her house the servants addressed me officially as their master prudence had strictly sermonized marguerite in regard to her new manner of life but she had replied that she loved me that she could not live without me
+and that happen what might she would not sacrifice the pleasure of having me constantly with her adding that those who were not satisfied with this arrangement were free to stay away so much i had heard one day when prudence had said to marguerite
+that she had something very important to tell her and i had listened at the door of the room into which they had shut themselves not long after prudence returned again i was at the other end of the garden when she arrived and she did not see me
+well said marguerite well i have seen the duke what did he say that he would gladly forgive you in regard to the scene which took place
+and that he will never forgive that let marguerite leave the young man he said to me and as in the past i will give her all that she requires if not let her ask nothing more from me
+and you replied that i would report his decision to you and i promised him that i would bring you into a more reasonable frame of mind only think my dear child of the position that you are losing
+and that armand can never give you he loves you with all his soul but he has no fortune capable of supplying your needs and he will be bound to leave you one day when it will be too late and when the duke will refuse to do any more for you
+would you like me to speak to armand marguerite seemed to be thinking for she answered nothing my heart beat violently while i waited for her reply no she answered i will not leave armand
+and i will not conceal the fact that i am living with him it is folly no doubt but i love him what would you have me do and then now that he has got accustomed to be always with me
+i will do without it but what will you do i don't in the least know prudence was no doubt going to make some reply but i entered suddenly and flung myself at marguerite's feet
+covering her hands with tears in my joy at being thus loved my life is yours marguerite you need this man no longer am i not here shall i ever leave you and can i ever repay you for the happiness that you give me
+no more barriers my marguerite we love what matters all the rest oh yes i love you my armand she murmured putting her two arms around my neck i love you as i never thought i should ever love
+and i will say good bye forever to the life for which i now blush you won't ever reproach me for the past tell me tears choked my voice i could only reply by clasping marguerite to my heart well
+said she turning to prudence and speaking in a broken voice you can report this scene to the duke and you can add that we have no longer need of him from that day forth the duke was never referred to
+marguerite was no longer the same woman that i had known she avoided everything that might recall to me the life which she had been leading when i first met her never did wife or sister surround husband or brother with such loving care as she had for me
+any one who had seen us leaving the house to go on the river in the charming little boat which i had bought would never have believed that the woman dressed in white wearing a straw hat
+was that marguerite gautier who only four months ago had been the talk of the town for the luxury and scandal of her existence alas we made haste to be happy as if we knew that we were not to be happy long
+for two months we had not even been to paris no one came to see us except prudence and julie duprat of whom i have spoken to you
+i passed whole days at the feet of my mistress we opened the windows upon the garden and as we watched the summer ripening in its flowers
+we breathed together that true life which neither marguerite nor i had ever known before her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child there were days when she ran in the garden like a child of ten
+after a butterfly or a dragon fly this courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour examining the simple flower whose name she bore
+it was at this time that she read manon lescaut over and over again i found her several times making notes in the book and she always declared that when a woman loves she can not do as manon did
+the duke wrote to her two or three times she recognised the writing and gave me the letters without reading them sometimes the terms of these letters brought tears to my eyes he had imagined that by closing his purse to marguerite
+he would bring her back to him but when he had perceived the uselessness of these means he could hold out no longer
+as before no matter on what conditions i read these urgent and repeated letters and tore them in pieces without telling marguerite what they contained and without advising her to see the old man again
+though i was half inclined to so much did i pity him but i was afraid lest if i so advised her she should think that i wished the duke not merely to come and see her again but to take over the expenses of the house
+i feared above all that she might think me capable of shirking the responsibilities of every consequence to which her love for me might lead her it thus came about that the duke receiving no reply ceased to write
+as the front door was flung open and an excited man hurried down the steps toward the spot where the four chums stood breathing hard after their recent exertions it's old isaac chase the meanest man in centerville exclaimed jerry in dismay
+but we didn't break his old window you know expostulated will milton here are lots of witnesses to prove it came from the other side little he'll care about that bluff told him he must have seen us in the fight and that settles it
+frank you talk with him i'd be apt to get sassy if he scolded too hard so it usually came about upon frank's shoulders was laid the burden of extricating them from numerous mishaps but frank rather liked being made the scapegoat
+he held up something he had in his hand so that every one could see it was a stone there could be no doubt about that with some of the snow still adhering to its sides bluff rubbed the side of his head at seeing this
+as though wondering whether the missile that had struck him there had also been loaded in that way we're sorry mister chase that your window was broken said frank steadily it was an accident i give you my word about that
+i happened to dodge a ball fired from the other side and it went through the glass what
+exclaimed the other as though more than surprised i shall have to see your father and make complaint if the chief of police declines to back me up and arrest a few of you as to that mister chase i will tell my father all about it as soon as he comes home from the bank
+my father was a boy himself once not like some people who forget that they once used to play themselves don't be impudent to me boy snapped the old miser angrily i don't mean to be so mister chase frank continued
+i'm sure that is all you could expect from us that's a measly shame frank objected bluff impetuously when it was andy lasher who broke the window added jerry filled with righteous indignation you only ducked frank when you saw it headed your way
+it isn't fair for you to pay the bill let him go after andy no i prefer settling the account myself and not having any trouble about it frank told his objecting chums besides we've had enough fun out of the business to stand a little expense like that
+the innocent often have to suffer for the guilty some of the bystanders at this point tried to convince mister chase that frank was entirely innocent of the whole transaction but the miser acting on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
+he insisted stubbornly and these boys admit they were connected with the rowdy crew that made themselves a disgrace to the town in front of my door i shall expect him to fulfill his offer which you heard him make mister jenkins and mister mole
+the sooner that window pane is replaced the better i shall be pleased that's enough with that he turned his back upon the group and hurried to reenter his house as though fearful lest some of the spectators might endeavor to shame him out of accepting pay from an innocent party
+frank and his three comrades stood talking with some of those who had gathered when the crash of broken glass followed by angry words in the high pitched voice of the miser drew attention to the scene of action come let's be moving along fellows bluff finally remarked
+it galled him to think they had been made the scapegoats by andy lasher and his set though he knew only too well that once frank's mind was made up to pay for the broken window nothing could change him true to his promise frank first of all visited the hardware store
+and engaged the owner to send a man around at once to the home of the miser so as to replace a twelve by twenty pane of glass i expect to have a good many orders like that frank before the day is over remarked the dealer laughingly
+even if they did have to foot the bill andy lasher hid a stone in his last ball and expected to do frank damage for he shied it straight at his head but frank dodged and bang went the glass andy and his cowardly bunch pulled out like fun
+who was an innocent party should suffer from our fun so i reckon we'll have to put our hands in our pockets and pay your bill mister benchley the hardware man nodded his head there was a twinkle in his eye as he observed frank langdon he knew the sort of reputation frank had in centerville
+although the latter had not been a resident there much more than three years
+believe me i'll let you boys off as lightly as i can and not lose by it was what he told them
+as the four chums went away jerry chuckled
+frank smiled but he did not look displeased i'm glad mister benchley has such a good opinion of the outdoor chums he remarked for he meant every one of you as well as me when he said that
+we try to do the right thing most times and yet there never were four boys more fond of having a jolly time than this bunch that's so bluff declared sturdily and we've had lots of dandy vacations in the past too
+what's bothering me is where we ought to go to spend this unexpected time that's been given to us through the fire at the college we'll figure all that out in a day or so never fear will observed yes added jerry leave it to frank and he'll arrange the details
+chances are we'll be dropping in to see how old jesse wilcox is getting on with his muskrat trapping i think i'd enjoy another turn up there in the woods one thing sure said frank we must arrange to go away somewhere and do a little hunting again
+just the thought of it gives me a warm feeling around my heart same here bluff told him cheerfully i never feel happier than when i smell the woods and get on the trail of game
+they talked it over as they sauntered in the direction of their homes it happened that will milton's house was the first they came to i saw the postman come out of our gate will commented i wonder if he brought uncle felix the letter he's been expecting for some days
+you see he's got a bad attack of rheumatism yet he says he must try to get away down east on some very important business between you and me he never will be able to do it for days or weeks he's that doubled up run in if you feel like it will frank told him we'll wait out here for you
+yes added jerry as if it might be an afterthought and while you're about it will just mention to uncle felix that there are four husky boys around with considerable time to burn just now and if he wants anybody to take that trip for him we might be coaxed into doing it
+if we're going to get in many affairs like the one we just had with andy lasher and his crowd the latter remarked it stands to reason we want to tune up some in our heaving my baseball arm is out of practice and i'm ashamed to say that three out of four balls i fired missed their mark
+oh well i noticed a lot of dodging being done commented frank and only for that all of us might have made more bull's eyes chances are that andy will have a circle around his left eye after that smash he got observed jerry a hard snowball can sting like fun when it catches you there
+i got caught there and it keeps on burning like a hot iron i wouldn't be surprised if there was a piece of coal or a stone in that ball they must have fixed up a lot of ammunition that way before they tackled us seems to me will's a long time coming out again complained jerry
+he's always so much taken up with that photography of his that any old time he's liable to remember something and go to work at it forgetting all about his chums who may be kicking their heels in the back yard waiting for him oh i don't think he's quite that forgetful laughed frank
+perhaps he's held will up to tell him about something you know uncle felix thinks heaps of our chum yes and of all the rest of us in the bargain there he comes exclaimed bluff and say he seems to be in a terrible hurry added jerry
+now what d'ye reckon can have happened oh uncle felix don't i love you muttered bluff as if a sudden brilliant idea had come into his mind what's uncle felix got to do with it demanded jerry
+chapter sixteen did teddy know well wouldn't that jar you remarked bluff as he heard what was contained in the brief communication from the lumberman tried to burn down the camp at lumber run did they burst out jerry
+well if you asked me my opinion i'd have to admit that i didn't like the looks of a few of those lumberjacks but nobody has accused any of the loggers of the crime remarked frank and at that the head projecting from the opening at the door came a little further into view
+which was pretty good evidence frank thought that the wounded boy must take considerable interest in the discussion why who else would try to turn on mister darrel that way and burn his shanties down just when winter is setting in asked bluff
+we can only give a guess at that frank told him whew exclaimed bluff as he grasped the meaning back of those few words after all i wouldn't put it past him frank
+and not able to understand what all these strange hints portended we had a specimen of his nasty temper you know continued bluff yes twice now we've heard him tear around like a bull in a china shop
+oh now i tumble to what you mean cried will who did not often use any sort of slang and must therefore have been unusually excited to fall into the habit it's bill bill nackerson frank nodded his head
+he's the only party around that we know of who would be mean enough to try to set buildings on fire just to get even with a man he disliked he observed
+yes and didn't we hear him threaten to do something before long so as to hit back at mister darrel jerry wanted to know as if he had all along been suspicious of the big sportsman
+why he might have been the death of some of them whoever started the fire didn't care a hoot whether it hurt or not i think bluff gave as his opinion frank noticed that the head had disappeared from alongside the open door
+evidently teddy had heard enough he must have limped from his chair to the doorway upon hearing strange voices outside perhaps he had suspected that the others brought news of some startling character frank did not tell all of his chums about what he had seen
+at the same time it gave him food for much serious thought i wouldn't be at all surprised if teddy knew something about that fire business he mentioned to bluff a short time later when they walked together down to the spot where the mink tracks had been seen
+i saw his head though after a bit when we had talked matters over he went back to the fire again
+oh no it isn't so bad as that he was assured
+the big coward muttered bluff clenching his fists and shaking his head as though he would like nothing better than to get in a blow at the bully my opinion as far as i have any is about like this frank continued
+after nackerson struck teddy the boy happened to overhear him boasting about what he meant to do to the camp at lumber run oh i see now what you mean frank
+you've got it about straight bluff frank admitted of course i'm only guessing all this remember
+he'll understand that there's no reason why he should keep a still tongue in his head to shield a rascal who didn't hesitate to strike him a cowardly blow bluff was not slow of comprehension
+just as you say teddy couldn't have been the one to put the match to the camp over at lumber run when nackerson had gone away perhaps with one of his pals who agreed to stand back of him that's the time teddy lit out
+he struck it pretty hard at first getting caught in that trap frank mused but when you come right down to facts i guess it was just as well that it happened to him huh that's a queer thing to say remonstrated bluff
+bluff admitted as teddy didn't know where we hung out and couldn't find his way to lumber run camp you can see that he would have had to choose between going back to nackerson or losing himself in the big woods
+whew it does take you to see through things bluff declared with a laugh i can understand now that it was a big streak of luck for ted when he met with that bear trap we never know when we're well off do we
+frank was always accommodating especially when anything connected with his knowledge of nature was concerned he loved to watch the small woods folk when they did not suspect his presence and learn more and more of their interesting habits
+so that day passed another and yet a third found the boys enjoying themselves to the limit teddy was showing decided signs of improvement he could get around fairly well by now jerry having cut him a walking stick with a crook at the end
+he was beginning to get over the nervousness that had shown itself for a whole day following his advent in the new camp
+to go back to that other drudgery would have been torture as soon as he was able to get around he insisted on taking charge of the cooking and the boys soon learned that teddy could manage splendidly
+he had to be shown very little so as to suit their tastes and none of them regretted in the least that they had extended a helping hand toward one in distress a new life was opening up to teddy
+he had never before come in contact with such an agreeable lot of companions and every hour of the day he tried to prove himself grateful still he did not mention a word about what he might possibly know of the dastardly deed
+when some one attempted to fire the logging camp frank often saw a worried expression come over the boy's face and at such times he suspected that teddy was puzzling his brain as to just what his duty might be
+and if he does it will not be the reward of a hundred dollars for information that will make him tell on the second day about noon some of the boys were busy near the cabin laying in an extra supply of firewood
+frank had an idea they would be visited by a big snowfall before twenty four hours had passed of course that's only a hazard fellows he told bluff and jerry who were helping him add to the handy heap close to the door of the cabin
+but there does seem to be a feeling of dampness in the air for all it's so cold and the sun you notice shines through a sort of hazy curtain i think just the same way you do frank jerry remarked and if you asked me to say when
+i'd guess it was going to strike us before night we've got off pretty fortunately so far about storms bluff went on as he threw another armful of fuel on the already huge pile
+and to think it happened so near our camp that we managed to tote the whole carcass to the cabin and bluff looked with pride in his eyes toward a deer that was hanging in real sportsman style from a limb head downward
+if we don't get another while we're up here in the big woods said jerry suppressing the natural twinge of jealousy he felt we ought to be satisfied with our bag and will is just wild over the bully pictures he's accumulating every day and night
+it does seem as though he had met with nothing but success so far frank admitted i hope he gets that prize the railroads are offering so far as i can tell he has a dandy collection already and we've got some time ahead of us still by the way where is will now asked bluff
+about half an hour ago he told me he was going off to the place where we discovered that comical colony of squirrels that amused us yesterday frank explained he hoped by keeping as still as a mouse to get a snap at them when they were carrying on that way
+i think myself it would be a fine woods picture and add to his collection speaking of angels and you're most sure to hear their wings chuckled jerry for there's will coming this way now and on the run too added frank
+he looks excited fellows i wonder what he's run across now will was almost out of breath they could see that his face was red from his exertions but filled with excitement as well while his eyes were as bluff expressed it
+sticking out of his head oh what a whopper he gasped as he drew near the spot where they stood what's that demanded frank wondering what was coming now and such tre mendous horns too continued will
+involuntarily stretching out both hands until he had them wide apart horns will bluff fired at him cows have horns deer carry antlers i said horns didn't i asserted the other with determination
+but i snapped him before he turned and trotted off what trotted off shrilled bluff
+the big moose a bull moose you say will echoed bluff his face lighting up with sudden energy that's what i mean replied the other i know what you're thinking bluff and that i wouldn't know a bull moose if i saw one
+but you're away off in your guess i've so longed to meet up with one when i had my camera with me that i've been picturing how he'd look and frank believe me it was a beaut a regular monster how did it happen will asked frank
+i was sitting as still as anything the other related after i'd got two dandy snaps at that funny squirrel family playing around the tree where they have their home and was hoping for another whack at them to complete the set when all at once i heard a whiffing sound
+but go on will what happened next oh i looked up to see what had made that queer sound and there he was just standing and looking straight at me i was nearly scared to death at first for he looked nearly as big as a barn
+then i knew it must be a bull moose and the next thing i found myself taking his picture did he run away then asked frank turned and trotted off as if he didn't care whether school kept or not will continued i even had the nerve to shoot him again as he was going
+and don't i hope that first picture turns out good it was a remarkable pose if only the focus was right he started toward the cabin door as though anxious to develop his roll of film and discover what success his labor had resulted in
+bluff caught him by the arm wait just a minute or two will he pleaded tell us some more where did all this happen frank knows where that squirrel colony have their nest in the tree that's got a hole in the trunk about thirty feet up the other replied
+that near the camp if only you'll hold your horses until i can develop this film you shall see for yourself whether i know a stag from a bull moose he was told by the indignant photographer as the latter broke away and vanished inside the cabin
+he did not feel that they could entirely depend on the evidence of will who may have been so startled by the sudden coming of some animal that his imagination worked overtime i hope it wasn't just a mule that strayed away from some lumber camp he told the others
+as they hurried off but not before bluff and jerry had darted inside the cabin and reappeared carrying their guns
+bluff admitted but then will vows it had horns terribly big horns which no mule i ever saw could boast of owning well chances are it was a bull moose frank admitted but we'll soon know
+that light snow falling last night was in our favor for the tracks will show up well suggested jerry here's the place frank told them a short time afterward you can see the tree with the hole in it over there
+and i think i even saw a squirrel frisk out of sight as we came up yes and here's where will made himself a seat added bluff he fixed it so he could sit comfortably and not have to frighten the family of bushy tails by moving
+yes said jerry which would make it over there that the thing showed up let's take a look at the ground and see if will was dreaming or not before half a minute had passed frank was pointing to certain marks plainly seen in the inch and more of snow that had fallen on the previous night
+perhaps as a sort of forerunner of the coming storm there you are fellows he announced all stared hard at the monstrous tracks bluff even got down on hands and knees in order to see better it was a moose all right frank said jerry
+i'm beginning to believe will was not so far out of the way after all when he said it might be the giant of all maine moose bluff got up again shaking his head oh the meanest luck that ever was he lamented
+why couldn't i have taken a notion to step out here with will to watch the way he took the pictures of that squirrel family i'd have had my gun across my knees with buckshot in every shell of course think how
+easy i could have dropped him with such a short distance between it's cruel that's what it is jerry clapped him on the shoulder tell me what's to hinder a couple of us going after the old chap bluff he asked in an eager voice
+you'll have to count me out of that deal frank told them you remember that i sprained my ankle yesterday and a long walk would lay me up if anybody goes it will have to be you two jerry looked at bluff i dare you he said
+no need of that came the reply because i'd be willing to start after that moose alone and follow him for a week if i thought i could get a fair crack at him in the end then it's a go bluff
+for up to now he had not been given much of a chance to bring down any big game on this trip and was secretly chafing
+the sooner the better so as to keep his lead cut down as much as we can he was told by bluff after which they both turned toward frank for after all it would be from this quarter that the signal to start must eventually come
+no need of rushing off as though you were crazy frank told them will says the moose didn't act as though it was badly frightened by seeing him
+lunch must be nearly ready you must stop long enough to eat a lot because there's no telling when you may get another square meal bluff glanced quickly at frank oh we won't get lost he said loftily
+i wasn't thinking so much of that as the chance of a blizzard coming down on you frank continued be sure to take along an extra supply of matches i'll see to it that each of you has something to help make out a meal or so
+it won't weigh heavy but if you do need it you'll thank me for it bluff and jerry may have considered frank a bit too old womanish making all that fuss over just going off on a little chase after a wandering moose
+frank however understood what a blizzard meant up there in maine he had been in one or two himself and would not care to repeat certain experiences that had come his way unless well provided against hunger and bitter cold
+the three soon reached the cabin it chanced that just then the call to the midday meal came will was too busy working at his developing tank to sit down with the rest plenty of time when i get through with this he told them
+give me five minutes more to get this film in fresh water and then i'll come bluff and jerry were hurrying as fast as they could frank had redeemed his promise to see that there was something put up in small shape that would help out for supper in case they were delayed
+he also thrust several small boxes of safety matches into each of their coats and made sure bluff had his compass well said will stepping forward and holding up a dripping film take a peep at this will you and tell me if i know what i'm talking about or not
+we take it all back jerry vowed after this we'll own up that you know a bull moose from a mule or a buck deer every time that's going to be a prize picture all right those last words from frank made will very proud
+i'm done eating announced bluff couldn't cram another bite down after seeing that picture jerry proclaimed as he darted over to the corner where his rifle stood and began to buckle on the webbed belt filled with cartridges
+wear your sweaters and be sure your woolen gloves are in your pockets cautioned weather wise frank he hovered about the pair and constantly warned them against carelessness i hope you get that big moose he told them as they all pushed outdoors
+we would feel pretty sorry if anything happened to mar our holiday up here frank you can depend on us to be careful bluff told him earnestly but for goodness sake don't worry about us
+we're not the babes in the woods you know if i do say it myself we've had our eyeteeth cut for some time there never was such a bully chance to get a big moose and we want to do our level best look for us when we come
+if we don't show up by night why chances are we found ourselves so far away that we concluded to make camp bluff and jerry shook hands gravely all around even with teddy good luck and i hope you get him said that individual meaning every word
+for he had already come to care a great deal for these jolly boys who had been the means of helping him over a very rough place in the road got everything now asked bluff i should hope so grunted jerry
+we'd be pack horses if we tried to carry any more truck along of course frank told them laughingly
+well so long boys and we all wish you success
+he received from missus lowder on the morning after his visit to kate the telegraphic expression of a hope that he might be free to dine with them that evening and his freedom affected him as fortunate even though in some degree qualified by her missive
+expecting american friends whom i'm so glad to find you know his knowledge of american friends was clearly an accident of which he was to taste the fruit to the last bitterness this apprehension however we hasten to add
+enjoyed for him in the immediate event a certain merciful shrinkage the immediate event being that at lancaster gate five minutes after his due arrival prescribed him for eight thirty missus stringham came in alone
+the long daylight the postponed lamps the habit of the hour made dinners late and guests still later so that punctual as he was he had found missus lowder alone with kate herself not yet in the field
+he had thus had with her several bewildering moments bewildering by reason fairly of their tacit invitation to him to be supernaturally simple this was exactly goodness knew what he wanted to be
+but he had never had it so largely and freely so supernaturally simply for that matter imputed to him as of easy achievement it was a particular in which aunt maud appeared to offer herself as an example appeared to say quite agreeably
+what i want of you don't you see is to be just exactly as i am the quantity of the article required was what might especially have caused him to stagger he liked so in general the quantities in which missus lowder dealt
+he would have liked as well to ask her how feasible she supposed it for a poor young man to resemble her at any point but he had after all soon enough perceived that he was doing as she wished by letting his wonder show
+just a little as silly he was conscious moreover of a small strange dread of the results of discussion with her strange truly because it was her good nature not her asperity that he feared asperity might have made him angry
+in which there was always a comfort good nature in his conditions had a tendency to make him ashamed which aunt maud indeed wonderfully liking him for himself quite struck him as having guessed to spare him therefore she also avoided discussion
+she kept him down by refusing to quarrel with him this was what she now proposed to him to enjoy and his secret discomfort was his sense that on the whole it was what would best suit him being kept down was a bore but
+his great dread verily was of being ashamed which was a thing distinct and it mattered but little that he was ashamed of that too it was of the essence of his position that in such a house as this the tables could always be turned on him
+the place however muffled in convenience and decorum constantly hummed for him with that thick irony
+and he had already seen how little aid came to him from denouncing the bribes as ugly in form that was what the precious metals they alone could afford to be it was vain enough for him accordingly to try to impart a gloss to his own comparative brummagem
+the humiliation of this impotence was precisely what aunt maud sought to mitigate for him by keeping him down and as her effort to that end had doubtless never yet been so visible he had probably never felt so definitely placed in the world
+as while he waited with her for her half dozen other guests she welcomed him genially back from the states as to his view of which her few questions though not coherent were comprehensive
+and he had the amusement of seeing in her as through a clear glass the outbreak of a plan and the sudden consciousness of a curiosity she became aware of america under his eyes as a possible scene for social operations
+the idea of a visit to the wonderful country had clearly but just occurred to her yet she was talking of it at the end of a minute as her favourite dream he didn't believe in it but he pretended to this helped her as well as anything else
+to treat him as harmless and blameless she was so engaged with the further aid of a complete absence of allusions when the highest effect was given her method by the beautiful entrance of kate the method therefore received support all round
+for no young man could have been less formidable than the person to the relief of whose shyness her niece ostensibly came the ostensible in kate struck him altogether on this occasion as prodigious
+while scarcely less prodigious for that matter was his own reading on the spot of the relation between his companions a relation lighted for him by the straight look not exactly loving nor lingering yet searching and soft
+that on the part of their hostess the girl had to reckon with as she advanced it took her in from head to foot and in doing so it told a story that made poor densher again the least bit sick it marked so something with which kate habitually
+and consummately reckoned that was the story that she was always for her beneficent dragon under arms living up every hour but especially at festal hours to the value missus lowder had attached to her
+high and fixed this estimate ruled on each occasion at lancaster gate the social scene so that he now recognised in it something like the artistic idea the plastic substance imposed by tradition by genius by criticism
+in respect to a given character on a distinguished actress as such a person was to dress the part to walk to look to speak in every way to express the part so all this was what kate was to do for the character she had undertaken
+things all perfectly ponderable to criticism and the way for her to meet criticism was evidently at the start to be sure her make up had had the last touch and that she looked at least no worse than usual
+aunt maud's appreciation of that to night was indeed managerial and the performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier on parade densher saw himself for the moment as in his purchased stall at the play
+the watchful manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of the footlights but she passed the poor performer he could see how she always passed her wig her paint her jewels every mark of her expression impeccable
+and her entrance accordingly greeted with the proper round of applause such impressions as we thus note for densher come and go it must be granted in very much less time than notation demands but we may none the less make the point that there was still further
+time among them for him to feel almost too scared to take part in the ovation he struck himself as having lost for the minute his presence of mind so that in any case he only stared in silence at the older woman's technical challenge
+it was as if the drama it thus came to him for the fact of a drama there was no blinking was between them them quite preponderantly with merton densher relegated to mere spectatorship a paying place in front and one of the most expensive
+this was why his appreciation had turned for the instant to fear had just turned as we have said to sickness
+that the disciplined face did offer him over the footlights as he believed the small gleam fine faint but exquisite of a special intelligence so might a practised performer even when raked by double barrelled glasses seem to be all in her part
+and yet convey a sign to the person in the house she loved best the drama at all events as densher saw it meanwhile went on amplified soon enough by the advent of two other guests stray gentlemen both stragglers in the rout of the season
+who visibly presented themselves to kate during the next moments as subjects for a like impersonal treatment and sharers in a like usual mercy at opposite ends of the social course they displayed in respect to the figure
+that each in his way made one the expansive the other the contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat a scratch company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to missus stringham
+her companion at the last moment had been indisposed positively not well enough and so had packed her off insistently with excuses with wild regrets
+this circumstance of their charming friend's illness was the first thing kate took up with densher on their being able after dinner
+naturally as she called it which wasn't what he did together but it was already as if the young man had by an odd impression throughout the meal
+missus lowder had made dear milly the topic and it proved on the spot a topic as familiar to the enthusiastic younger as to the sagacious older man any knowledge they might lack missus lowder's niece was moreover alert to supply
+while densher himself was freely appealed to as the most privileged after all of the group wasn't it he who had in a manner invented the wonderful creature through having seen her first caught her in her native jungle hadn't he more or less paved the way
+for her by his prompt recognition of her rarity by preceding her in a friendly spirit as he had the ear of society with a sharp flashlight or two he met poor densher these enquiries as he could
+listening with interest yet with discomfort wincing in particular dry journalist as he was to find it seemingly supposed of him that he had put his pen oh his pen at the service of private distinction the ear of society
+they were talking or almost as if he had publicly paragraphed a modest young lady they dreamt dreams in truth he appeared to perceive that fairly waked him up and he settled himself in his place
+both to resist his embarrassment and to catch the full revelation his embarrassment came naturally from the fact that if he could claim no credit for miss theale's success so neither could he gracefully insist on his not having been concerned with her
+missus lowder had wonders to tell of it the two wearers of the waistcoat either with sincerity or with hypocrisy professed in the matter an equal expertness and densher at last seemed to know himself in presence of a social case
+it was missus stringham obviously whose testimony would have been most invoked hadn't she been as her friend's representative rather confined to the function of inhaling the incense so that kate
+who treated her beautifully smiling at her cheering and consoling her across the table appeared benevolently both to speak and to interpret for her kate spoke as if she wouldn't perhaps understand their way of appreciating milly
+but would let them none the less in justice to their good will express it in their coarser fashion densher himself wasn't unconscious in respect to this of a certain broad brotherhood with missus stringham wondering indeed while he followed the talk how
+it might move american nerves he had only heard of them before but in his recent tour he had caught them in the remarkable fact and there was now a moment or two when it came to him that he had perhaps and not in the way of an escape
+taken a lesson from them they quivered clearly they hummed and drummed they leaped and bounded in missus stringham's typical organism this lady striking him as before all things excited as in the native phrase keyed up
+to a perception of more elements in the occasion than he was himself able to count she was accessible to sides of it he imagined that were as yet obscure to him for though she unmistakeably rejoiced and soared
+her little dry new england brightness he had sampled all the shades of the american complexity if complexity it were had its actual reasons for finding relief most in silence
+so that before the subject was changed he perceived with surprise at the others that they had given her enough of it
+had really not made in her own country the mark she had chalked so large in london
+while he scarce knew if he were the more impressed with her launching it under missus stringham's nose or with her hope that he would allow to london the honour of discovery the less expansive of the white waistcoats propounded the theory that they saw in london
+for all that was said much further than in the states it wouldn't be the first time he urged that they had taught the americans to appreciate especially when it was funny some native product
+but it might very well be that new york in having her to show hadn't been aware of its luck there were plenty of people who were nothing over there and yet were awfully taken up in england just as to make the balance right thank goodness
+they sometimes sent out beauties and celebrities who left the briton cold the briton's temperature in truth wasn't to be calculated a formulation of the matter that was not reached
+she announced that if the point of view for a proper admiration of her young friend had seemed to fail a little in new york there was no manner of doubt of her having carried boston by storm
+it pointed the moral that boston for the finer taste left new york nowhere and the good lady as the exponent of this doctrine which she set forth at a certain length made obviously to densher's mind her nearest approach to supplying
+the weirdness in which milly's absence had left them deficient she made it indeed effective for him by suddenly addressing him you know nothing sir but not the least little bit about my friend
+he hadn't pretended he did but there was a purity of reproach in missus stringham's face and tone a purity charged apparently with solemn meanings so that for a little small as had been his claim he couldn't but feel that she exaggerated
+but while doing so he defended himself i certainly don't know enormously much beyond her having been most kind to me in new york as a poor bewildered and newly landed alien
+and my having tremendously appreciated it to which he added he scarce knew why what had an immediate success remember missus stringham that you weren't then present ah there you are said kate with much gay expression
+though what it expressed he failed at the time to make out you weren't present then dearest missus lowder richly concurred you don't know she continued with mellow gaiety how far things may have gone
+it made the little woman he could see really lose her head she had more things in that head than any of them in any other unless perhaps it were kate whom he felt as indirectly watching him during this foolish passage
+and because of the foolishness not to meet her eyes he met missus stringham's which affected him with her he could on occasion clear it up a sense produced by the mute communion between them and
+really the beginning as the event was to show of something extraordinary it was even already a little the effect of this communion that missus stringham perceptibly faltered in her retort to missus lowder's joke
+oh it's precisely my point that mister densher can't have had vast opportunities and then she smiled at him i wasn't away you know long it made everything in the oddest way in the world immediately right for him
+and i wasn't there long either he positively saw with it that nothing for him so far as she was concerned would again be wrong she's beautiful but i don't say she's easy to know
+as if now to keep well with him he asked nothing better she was off with you to these parts before i knew it i myself was off too away off to wonderful parts where i had endlessly more to see
+but you didn't forget her aunt maud interposed with almost menacing archness
+she'll thank you for that sir said missus stringham with a flushed firmness yet doesn't silence in such a case aunt maud blandly enquired very often quite prove the depth of the impression
+he would have been amused hadn't he been slightly displeased at all they seemed desirous to fasten on him well the impression was as deep as you like but i really want miss theale to know he pursued for missus stringham that i don't figure by any consent of my own
+kate came to his assistance if assistance it was before their friend had had time to meet this charge you're right about her not being easy to know one sees her with intensity sees her more than one sees almost any one but then one discovers
+that that isn't knowing her and that one may know better a person whom one doesn't see as i say half so much the discrimination was interesting but it brought them back to the fact of her success and it was at that comparatively gross circumstance
+now so fully placed before them that milly's anxious companion sat and looked looked very much as some spectator in an old time circus might have watched the oddity of a christian maiden in the arena mildly caressingly martyred
+it was the nosing and fumbling not of lions and tigers but of domestic animals let loose as for the joke even the joke made missus stringham uneasy and her mute communion with densher to which we have alluded
+he wondered afterwards if kate had made this out though it was not indeed till much later on that he found himself in thought dividing the things she might have been conscious of from the things she must have missed
+if she actually missed at any rate missus stringham's discomfort that but showed how her own idea held her her own idea was by insisting on the fact of the girl's prominence as a feature of the season's end
+to keep densher in relation for the rest of them both to present and to past it's everything that has happened since that makes you naturally a little shy about her you don't know what has happened since but we do we've seen it and followed it
+we've a little been of it the great thing for him at this as kate gave it was in fact quite irresistibly that the case was a real one the kind of thing that when one's patience was shorter than one's curiosity
+one had vaguely taken for possible in london but in which one had never been even to this small extent concerned the little american's sudden social adventure her happy and no doubt harmless flourish
+had probably been favoured by several accidents but it had been favoured above all by the simple spring board of the scene by one of those common caprices of the numberless foolish flock gregarious movements as inscrutable
+as ocean currents the huddled herd had drifted to her blindly it might as blindly have drifted away
+but the great reason was probably the absence at the moment of a larger lion the bigger beast would come and the smaller would then incontinently vanish it was at all events characteristic
+and what was of the essence of it was grist to his scribbling mill matter for his journalising hand that hand already in intention played over it the motive as a sign of the season a feature of the time of the purely expeditious
+and rough and tumble nature of the social boom the boom as in itself required that would be the note the subject of the process a comparatively minor question anything was boomable enough when nothing else was more so
+the author of the rotten book the beauty who was no beauty the heiress who was only that the stranger who was for the most part saved from being inconveniently strange but by being inconveniently familiar
+the creature in fine as to whom spangles or spots of any sufficiently marked and exhibited sort could be loudly enough predicated
+and the tone of society went so far as to make him take up again his sense of independence he had supposed himself civilised but if this was civilisation one could smoke one's pipe outside when twaddle was within
+he had rather avoided as we have remarked kate's eyes but there came a moment when he would fairly have liked to put it across the table to her i say light of my life is this the great world
+there came another it must be added and doubtless as a result of something that over the cloth did hang between them when she struck him as having quite answered dear no for what do you take me
+not the least little bit only a poor silly though quite harmless imitation what she might have passed for saying however was practically merged in what she did say for she came overtly to his aid very much as if guessing some of his thoughts
+she enunciated to relieve his bewilderment the obvious truth that you couldn't leave london for three months at that time of the year and come back to find your friends just where they were as they had of course been jigging away
+they might well be so red in the face that you wouldn't know them she reconciled in fine his disclaimer about milly with that honour of having discovered her which it was vain for him modestly to shirk he had unearthed her
+but it was they all of them together who had developed her she was always a charmer one of the greatest ever seen but she wasn't the person he had backed
+densher was to feel sure afterwards that kate had had in these pleasantries no conscious above all no insolent purpose of making light of poor susan shepherd's property in their young friend which property by such remarks
+was very much pushed to the wall but he was also to know that missus stringham had secretly resented them missus stringham holding the opinion of which he was ultimately to have a glimpse that all the kate croys in christendom were but dust for the feet of her milly
+that it was true would be what she must reveal only when driven to her last entrenchments and well cornered in her passion the rare passion of friendship the sole passion of her little life save the one other more imperturbably cerebral
+she slipped in the observation that her milly was incapable of change was just exactly on the contrary
+she was perfectly kind to susie it was as if she positively knew her as handicapped for any disagreement by feeling that she kate had type and by being committed to admiration of type
+kate had occasion subsequently she found it somehow to mention to our young man milly's having spoken to her of this view on the good lady's part she would like milly had had it from her to put kate croy in a book and see what she could so do with her
+chop me up fine or serve me whole it was a way of being got at that kate professed she dreaded it would be missus stringham's however she understood because missus stringham oddly felt
+that with such stuff as the strange english girl was made of stuff that in spite of maud manningham who was full of sentiment she had never known there was none other to be employed these things were of later evidence
+yet densher might even then have felt them in the air they were practically in it already when kate waiving the question of her friend's chemical change wound up with the comparatively unobjectionable proposition that he must now having missed so much
+take them all up on trust further on he met it peacefully a little perhaps as an example to missus stringham oh as far on as you like this even had its effect missus stringham appropriated as much of it as might be meant for herself
+attempts to preserve the system that small frogs and toads for instance never have fallen from the sky but were on the ground in the first place or that there have been such falls up from one place in a whirlwind and down in another
+were there some especially froggy place near europe as there is an especially sandy place the scientific explanation would of course be that all small frogs falling from the sky in europe come from that center of frogeity to start with
+i'd like to emphasize something that i am permitted to see because i am still primitive or intelligent or in a state of maladjustment
+of a fall of tadpoles from the sky as to there in the first place
+the writer says that all observers were mistaken that the frogs or toads must have fallen from trees or other places overhead tremendous number of little toads one or two months old
+that were seen to fall from a great thick cloud that appeared suddenly in a sky that had been cloudless august eighteen o four near toulouse france according to a letter from professor pontus to m arago
+many instances of frogs that were seen to fall from the sky
+as to having been there in the first place
+july thirtieth eighteen thirty eight
+little toads found in a desert after a rainfall notes and queries
+to start with i do not deny positively the conventional explanation of up and down i think that there may have been such occurrences i omit many notes that i have upon indistinguishables
+in the london times july fourth eighteen eighty three there is an account of a shower of twigs and leaves and tiny toads in a storm upon the slopes of the apennines these may have been the ejectamenta of a whirlwind i add however
+that i have notes upon two other falls of tiny toads in eighteen eighty three one in france and one in tahiti also of fish in scotland but in the phenomenon of the apennines the mixture seems to me to be typical of the products of a whirlwind
+the other instances seem to me to be typical of something like migration their great numbers and their homogeneity over and over in these annals of the damned occurs the datum of segregation
+but a whirlwind is thought of as a condition of chaos quasi chaos
+monthly weather review july eighteen eighty one a small pond in the track of the cloud was sucked dry the water being carried over the adjoining fields together with a large quantity of soft mud which was scattered over the ground for half a mile around
+but here are the circumstances of a scoop in the exclusionist imagination there is no regard for mud debris from the bottom of a pond floating vegetation loose things from the shores but a precise picking out of frogs only
+of all instances i have that attribute the fall of small frogs or toads to whirlwinds only one definitely identifies or places the whirlwind also as has been said before a pond going up would be quite as interesting as frogs coming down
+whirlwinds we read of over and over but where and what whirlwind it seems to me that anybody who had lost a pond would be heard from in symons meteorological magazine
+a fall of small frogs near birmingham england june thirtieth eighteen ninety two is attributed to a specific whirlwind but not a word as to any special pond that had contributed
+and something that strikes my attention here is that these frogs are described as almost white i'm afraid there is no escape for us we shall have to give to civilization upon this earth some new worlds places with white frogs in them
+in spite of all we think we know of the accelerative velocity of falling bodies and have propagated why the exotic becomes the indigenous or from the strangest of places we'd expect the familiar or
+if hosts of living frogs have come here from somewhere else every living thing upon this earth may ancestrally have come from somewhere else i find that i have another note upon a specific hurricane
+after one of the greatest hurricanes in the history of ireland some fish were found as far as fifteen yards from the edge of a lake have another this is a good one for the exclusionists fall of fish in paris said that a neighboring pond had been blown dry
+date not given but i have seen it recorded somewhere else the best known fall of fishes from the sky is that which occurred at mountain ash
+february eleventh eighteen fifty nine the editor of the zoologist
+having published a report of a fall of fishes writes i am continually receiving similar accounts of frogs and fishes but in all the volumes of the zoologist i can find only two reports of such falls there is nothing to conclude
+other than that hosts of data have been lost because orthodoxy does not look favorably upon such reports the monthly weather review records several falls of fishes in the united states
+nevertheless the treatment by the zoologist of the fall reported from mountain ash is fair first appears
+vicar of abedare asserting that the fall had occurred chiefly upon the property of mister nixon of mountain ash
+of the british museum bristling with exclusionism writes that some of these fishes which had been sent to him alive were very young minnows he says on reading the evidence it seems to me most probably only a practical joke
+the editor says that one was a minnow and that the rest were sticklebacks he says that doctor gray's explanation is no doubt right but
+he publishes a letter from another correspondent who apologizes for opposing so high an authority as doctor gray but says that he had obtained some of these fishes from persons who lived at a considerable distance apart
+or considerably out of range of the playful pail of water according to the annual register
+the fishes themselves had fallen by pailfuls if these fishes were not upon the ground in the first place we base our objections to the whirlwind explanation upon two data that they fell in no such distribution as one could attribute to the discharge of a whirlwind
+that ten minutes later another fall of fishes occurred upon this same narrow strip of land even arguing that a whirlwind may stand still axially it discharges tangentially wherever the fishes came from it does not seem thinkable
+that some could have fallen and that others could have whirled even a tenth of a minute then falling directly after the first to fall because of these evil circumstances the best adaptation was to laugh the whole thing off
+very young minnows had been caught up in the london times march second eighteen fifty nine is a letter from mister aaron roberts curate of saint peter's carmathon in this letter
+but there is some question of species i think myself that they were minnows and sticklebacks some persons thinking them to be sea fishes placed them in salt water according to mister roberts
+some were placed in fresh water these seemed to thrive well as to narrow distribution we are told that the fishes fell in and about the premises of mister nixon it was not observed at the time that any fish fell in any other part of the neighborhood
+save in the particular spot mentioned in the london times march tenth eighteen fifty nine vicar griffith writes an account the roofs of some houses were covered with them
+in this letter it is said that the largest fishes were five inches long and that these did not survive the fall report of the british association
+the evidence of the fall of fish on this occasion was very conclusive a specimen of the fish was exhibited
+leirus gasterosteus is the stickleback altogether i think we have not a sense of total perdition
+in which were thousands of fishes four or five inches long some of which covered roofs of houses and some of which remained ten minutes in the air by way of contrast we offer our own acceptance that the bottom of a super geographical pond had dropped out
+i have a great many notes upon the fall of fishes despite the difficulty these records have in getting themselves published but i pick out the instances that especially relate to our super geographical acceptances
+that have fallen with a distribution narrower than is attributable to a whirlwind that have fallen for a considerable length of time upon the same narrow area of land these three factors indicate somewhere not far aloft
+a region of inertness to this earth's gravitation of course however a region that by the flux and variation of all things must at times be susceptible but afterward our heresy will bifurcate
+in amiable accommodation to the crucifixion it'll get i think but so impressed are we with the datum that though there have been many reports of small frogs that have fallen from the sky
+that to these circumstances another adjustment must be made apart from our three factors of indication an extraordinary observation is the fall of living things without injury to them
+something else apart from our three main interests is a phenomenon that looks like what one might call an alternating series of falls of fishes whatever the significance may be
+july eighteen twenty four living age
+fifeshire scotland summer of eighteen twenty four
+moradabad india july eighteen twenty six living age
+ross shire scotland eighteen twenty eight
+moradabad india july twentieth eighteen twenty nine
+feridpoor india february nineteenth eighteen thirty
+disregarding serial significance or mechanical unintelligent repulsive reflex is that the fishes of india did not fall from the sky that they were found upon the ground after torrential rains because streams had overflowed and had then receded
+in the region of inertness that we think we can conceive of or a zone that is to this earth's gravitation very much like the neutral zone of a magnet's attraction we accept that there are bodies of water and also clear spaces bottoms of ponds dropping out
+remain and dry or even putrefy then sometimes falling by atmospheric dislodgment after a tremendous deluge of rain one of the heaviest falls on record
+july twenty fifth eighteen fifty
+the word found is agreeable to the repulsions of the conventionalists and their concept of an overflowing stream but according to doctor buist some of these fishes were found on the tops of haystacks ferrel
+tells of a fall of living fishes some of them having been placed in a tank where they survived that occurred in india about twenty miles south of calcutta september twentieth eighteen thirty nine a witness of this fall says
+the most strange thing which ever struck me was that the fish did not fall helter skelter or here and there but they fell in a straight line not more than a cubit in breadth
+that according to testimony taken before a magistrate a fall occurred february nineteenth eighteen thirty near feridpoor india of many fishes of various sizes some whole and fresh and others mutilated and putrefying
+or to those who hold out for segregation in a whirlwind or that objects say twice as heavy as others would be separated from the lighter we point out that some of these fishes were twice as heavy as others in the journal of the asiatic society of bengal
+some of the fish were fresh but others were rotten and without heads among the number which i got five were fresh and the rest stinking and headless they remind us of his grace's observation of some pages back
+according to doctor buist some of these fishes weighed one and a half pounds each and others three pounds a fall of fishes at futtepoor india may sixteenth eighteen thirty three they were all dead and dry
+a correspondent writes from the dove marine laboratory cuttercoats england that at hindon a suburb of sunderland august twenty fourth nineteen eighteen hundreds of small fishes identified as sand eels had fallen
+again the small area about sixty by thirty yards the fall occurred during a heavy rain that was accompanied by thunder
+but by no visible lightning the sea is close to hindon but if you try to think of these fishes having described a trajectory in a whirlwind from the ocean consider this remarkable datum that
+according to witnesses the fall upon this small area occupied ten minutes i cannot think of a clearer indication of a direct fall from a stationary source and
+the fish were all dead and indeed stiff and hard when picked up immediately after the occurrence by all of which i mean that we have only begun to pile up our data of things that fall from a stationary source overhead
+we'll have to take up the subject from many approaches before our acceptance which seems quite as rigorously arrived at as ever has been a belief can emerge from the accursed i don't know how much the horse and the barn will help us to emerge
+but if ever anything did go up from this earth's surface and stay up those damned things may have monthly weather review may eighteen seventy eight in a tornado in wisconsin may twenty third eighteen seventy eight
+a barn and a horse were carried completely away and neither horse nor barn nor any portion of either have since been found after that which would be a little strong were it not for a steady improvement in our digestions that i note as we go along
+there is little of the bizarre or the unassimilable in the turtle that hovered six months or so over a small town in mississippi monthly weather review may eighteen ninety four
+fell a small piece of alabaster that at bovina eight miles from vicksburg fell a gopher turtle they fell in a hailstorm this item was widely copied at the time for instance nature
+as to discussion not a word or science and its continuity with presbyterianism data like this are damned at birth the weather review does sprinkle or baptize or attempt to save this infant
+but in all the meteorological literature that i have gone through after that date not a word except mention once or twice the editor of the review says
+an examination of the weather map shows that these hailstorms occur on the south side of a region of cold northerly winds and were but a small part of a series of similar storms
+of all incredibilities that we have to choose from i give first place to a notion of a whirlwind pouncing upon a region
+this time the other mechanical thing there in the first place cannot rise in response to its stimulus it is resisted in that these objects were coated with ice month of may in a southern state if a whirlwind at all
+there must have been very limited selection there is no record of the fall of other objects but there is no attempt in the review to specify a whirlwind these strangely associated things were remarkably separated they fell eight miles apart
+then as if there were real reasoning they must have been high to fall with such divergence or one of them must have been carried partly horizontally eight miles farther than the other but either supposition argues for power more than that of a local whirl or gust
+or argues for a great specific disturbance of which there is no record for the month of may eighteen ninety four
+then i think of a hurricane that occurred in the state of mississippi weeks or months before may eleventh eighteen ninety four no i don't look for it and inevitably find it or that things can go up so high in hurricanes that they stay up indefinitely
+but may after a while be shaken down by storms
+so then that the turtle and the piece of alabaster may have had far different origins from different worlds perhaps have entered a region of suspension over this earth wafting near each other long duration
+final precipitation by atmospheric disturbance with hail or that hailstones too when large are phenomena of suspension of long duration that it is highly unacceptable that the very large ones could become so great only in falling from the clouds
+long duration other indications of long duration i think of a region somewhere above this earth's surface in which gravitation is inoperative and is not governed by the square of the distance
+quite as magnetism is negligible at a very short distance from a magnet theoretically the attraction of a magnet should decrease with the square of the distance but the falling off is found to be almost abrupt at a short distance
+horses and barns and elephants and flies and dodoes moas and pterodactyls leaves from modern trees and leaves of the carboniferous era all however tending to disintegrate into homogeneous looking muds or dusts
+red or black or yellow treasure troves for the palaeontologists and for the archaeologists accumulations of centuries cyclones of egypt greece and assyria fishes dried and hard there a short time others there long enough to putrefy
+but the omnipresence of heterogeneity or living fishes also ponds of fresh water oceans of salt water as to the law of gravitation i prefer to take one simple stand
+orthodoxy accepts the correlation and equivalence of forces gravitation is one of these forces all other forces have phenomena of repulsion and of inertness irrespective of distance as well as of attraction
+but newtonian gravitation admits attraction only then newtonian gravitation can be only one third acceptable even to the orthodox or there is denial of the correlation and equivalence of forces or still simpler here are the data
+though it harmonizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary source and of course with other data too is inadequate to account for two peculiarities of the falls of frogs that never has a fall of tadpoles been reported
+that never has a fall of full grown frogs been reported always frogs a few months old it sounds positive but if there be such reports they are somewhere out of my range of reading but tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky than would frogs
+little or big if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds and more likely to fall from the super sargasso sea if though very tentatively and provisionally we accept the super sargasso sea
+before we take up an especial expression upon the fall of immature and larval forms of life to this earth and the necessity then of conceiving of some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension or stagnation
+there are other data that are similar to data of falls of fishes science gossip
+that small snails of a land species had fallen near redruth cornwall july eighth eighteen eighty six during a heavy thunderstorm roads and fields strewn with them so that they were gathered up by the hatful
+none seen to fall by the writer of this account snails said to be quite different to any previously known in this district
+of great and deserved repute i thought i should for once like to trace the origin of one of these fabulous tales our own acceptance is that justice cannot be in an intermediate existence
+in which there can be approximation only to justice or to injustice that to be fair is to have no opinion at all that to be honest is to be uninterested that to investigate is to admit prejudice that nobody has ever really investigated anything
+but has always sought positively to prove or to disprove something that was conceived of or suspected in advance as i suspected says this correspondent i found that the snails were of a familiar land species that they had been upon the ground
+in the first place he found that the snails had appeared after the rain that astonished rustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen he met one person who said that he had seen the snails fall this was his error says the investigator
+in such quantities that they were shoveled up it is said that the snails may be considered as a local species
+and that in his opinion they had been upon the ground in the first place but that there had been some unusual condition aloft comes out in his observation upon the curious azure blue appearance of the sun at the time
+that according to das wetter december eighteen ninety two upon august ninth eighteen ninety two a yellow cloud appeared over paderborn germany from this cloud fell a torrential rain in which were hundreds of mussels
+there is no mention of whatever may have been upon the ground in the first place nor of a whirlwind lizards
+that during a heavy shower july third eighteen sixty he heard a peculiar sound at his feet and looking down saw a snake lying as if stunned by a fall it then came to life gray snake about a foot long
+these data have any meaning or lack of meaning or degree of damnation you please but in the matter of the fall that occurred at memphis tennessee occur some strong significances
+our quasi reasoning upon this subject applies to all segregations so far considered monthly weather review january fifteenth eighteen seventy seven that
+rather strictly localized or in a space of two blocks and after a violent storm in which the rain fell in torrents snakes were found they were crawling on sidewalks in yards and in streets and in masses
+but none were found on roofs or any other elevation above ground and none were seen to fall if you prefer to believe that the snakes had always been there or had been upon the ground in the first place and that it was only that something occurred to call special attention to them
+in the streets of memphis january fifteenth eighteen seventy seven why that's sensible that's the common sense that has been against us from the first it is not said whether the snakes were of a known species or not
+and had not been in the streets crawling loose or in thick tangled masses in the first place if we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some other part of this earth's surface in a whirlwind if we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them
+stones fence rails limbs of trees say that the snakes occupied the next gradation and would be the next to fall
+again ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirlwind conceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernating snakes with stones and earth and an infinitude of other debris snatching up dozens of snakes
+i don't know how many to a den hundreds maybe but according to the account of this occurrence in the new york times there were thousands of them alive from one foot to eighteen inches in length
+records the fall and says that there were thousands of them the usual whirlwind explanation is given but in what locality snakes exist in such abundance is yet a mystery this matter of enormousness of numbers
+suggests to me something of a migratory nature but that snakes in the united states do not migrate in the month of january if ever as to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky prevailing notions of swarming would seem explanatory enough
+fall of fishes june thirteenth eighteen eighty nine in holland ants august first eighteen eighty nine strasbourg little toads august second eighteen eighty nine savoy
+fall of ants cambridge england summer of eighteen seventy four some were wingless
+enormous fall of ants nancy france july twenty first eighteen eighty seven most of them were wingless
+every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments each of its joys ripens into a new want nature uncontainable flowing forelooking
+in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which shall lose all particular regards in its general light the introduction to this felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to one which is the enchantment of human life
+unites him to his race pledges him to the domestic and civic relations carries him with new sympathy into nature enhances the power of the senses opens the imagination adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes
+establishes marriage and gives permanence to human society the natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the blood seems to require that in order to portray it in vivid tints which every youth and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing experience
+one must not be too old the delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of a mature philosophy as chilling with age and pedantry their purple bloom
+and therefore i know i incur the imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who compose the court and parliament of love but from these formidable censors i shall appeal to my seniors
+for it is to be considered that this passion of which we speak though it begin with the young yet forsakes not the old or rather suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow old
+glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women upon the universal heart of all and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames
+only it is to be hoped that by patience and the muses aid we may attain to that inward view of the law which shall describe a truth ever young and beautiful so central that it shall commend itself to the eye at whatever angle beholden
+and the first condition is that we must leave a too close and lingering adherence to facts and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope and not in history for each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured
+which have given him sincerest instruction and nourishment he will shrink and moan alas i know not why but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the remembrances of budding joy and cover every beloved name
+dwell care and canker and fear with thought with the ideal is immortal hilarity the rose of joy round it all the muses sing but grief cleaves to names and persons and the partial interests of to day and yesterday
+the strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which this topic of personal relations usurps in the conversation of society what do we wish to know of any worthy person so much as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment
+and what fastens attention in the intercourse of life like any passage betraying affection between two parties perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again but we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion and we are no longer strangers
+it is the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic the rude village boy teases the girls about the school house door but to day he comes running into the entry and meets one fair child disposing her satchel
+he holds her books to help her and instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely and was a sacred precinct among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough but one alone distances him
+for persons are love's world and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love without being tempted to unsay as treasonable to nature aught derogatory to the social instincts
+yet the remembrance of these visions outlasts all other remembrances and is a wreath of flowers on the oldest brows but here is a strange fact it may seem to many men in revising their experience
+that they have no fairer page in their life's book than the delicious memory of some passages wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft surpassing the deep attraction of its own truth to a parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances
+no man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain which created all things anew which was the dawn in him of music poetry and art which made the face of nature radiant with purple light
+the morning and the night varied enchantments when a single tone of one voice could make the heart bound and the most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in the amber of memory
+when no place is too solitary and none too silent for him who has richer company and sweeter conversation in his new thoughts than any old friends though best and purest can give him for the figures the motions
+the words of the beloved object are not like other images written in water but as plutarch said enamelled in fire and make the study of midnight thou art not gone being gone where'er thou art
+thy loving heart in the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear for he touched the secret of the matter who said of love
+all other pleasures are not worth its pains and when the day was not long enough but the night too must be consumed in keen recollections when the head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on
+the clouds have faces as he looks on them the trees of the forest the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite yet nature soothes and sympathizes
+a midnight bell a passing groan these are the sounds we feed upon behold there in the wood the fine madman he is a palace of sweet sounds and sights he dilates he is twice a man
+he walks with arms akimbo he soliloquizes he accosts the grass and the trees he feels the blood of the violet the clover and the lily in his veins and he talks with the brook that wets his foot
+the heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made him love music and verse it is a fact often observed that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion who cannot write well under any other circumstances
+the like force has the passion over all his nature it expands the sentiment it makes the clown gentle and gives the coward heart
+into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world so only it have the countenance of the beloved object in giving him to another it still more gives him to himself
+chapter twelve kara lay back on his down pillows with a sneer on his face and his brain very busy what started the train of thought he did not know but at that moment his mind was very far away
+it carried him back a dozen years to a dirty little peasant's cabin on the hillside outside durazzo to the livid face of a young albanian chief who had lost at kara's whim all that life held for a man
+to the hateful eyes of the girl's father who stood with folded arms glaring down at the bound and manacled figure on the floor to the smoke stained rafters of this peasant cottage and the dancing shadows on the roof
+to that terrible hour of waiting when he sat bound to a post with a candle flickering and spluttering lower and lower to the little heap of gunpowder that would start the trail toward the clumsy infernal machine under his chair
+he remembered the day well because it was candlemas day and this was the anniversary he remembered other things more pleasant
+he remembered with a savage joy the spectacle of his would be assassins twitching and struggling on the gallows at pezara and
+had t x returned he slipped from the bed and went to the door opened it slightly and listened t x with a search warrant might be a source of panic especially if he shrugged his shoulders he had satisfied t x and allayed his suspicions
+kara breathed a sigh of relief and his face was wreathed in smiles why of course tell him to come up ask him if he minds seeing me in my room i told him you were in bed sir and he used shocking language said fisher kara laughed send him up he said
+yes sir said the servant such an instruction was remarkably pleasing to him there was much that he had to do and that night's freedom would assist him materially perhaps kara hesitated perhaps you had better wait until eleven o'clock
+bring me up some sandwiches and a large glass of milk or better still place them on a plate in the hall very good sir said the man and withdrew down below that grotesque figure with his shiny hat and his ragged beard was walking up and down the tesselated hallway
+muttering to himself and staring at the various objects in the hall with a certain amused antagonism mister kara will see you sir said fisher oh said the other glaring at the unoffending fisher that's very good of him
+yes sir said fisher look here the man thrust out his face do you see those grey hairs in my beard the embarrassed fisher grinned is it grey challenged the visitor with a roar
+yes sir said the valet hastily is it real grey insisted the visitor pull one out and see the startled fisher drew back with an apologetic smile i couldn't think of doing a thing like that sir oh you couldn't sneered the visitor
+then lead on fisher showed the way up the stairs this time the traveller carried no books his left arm hung limply by his side and fisher privately gathered that the hand had got loose from the detaining pocket without its owner being aware of the fact
+he pushed open the door and announced mister gathercole and kara came forward with a smile to meet his agent who with top hat still on the top of his head and his overcoat dangling about his heels must have made a remarkable picture
+fisher closed the door behind them and returned to his duties in the hall below ten minutes later he heard the door opened and the booming voice of the stranger came down to him fisher went up the stairs to meet him and found him addressing the occupant of the room in his own eccentric fashion
+no more patagonia he roared no more tierra del fuego he paused certainly he replied to some question but not patagonia he paused again
+and fisher standing at the foot of the stairs wondered what had occurred to make the visitor so genial i suppose your cheque will be honoured all right asked the visitor sardonically and then burst into a little chuckle of laughter as he carefully closed the door
+damn all greeks he said jovially and fisher could do no more than smile reproachfully the smile being his very own the reproach being on behalf of the master who paid him the traveller touched the other on the chest with his right hand never trust a greek he said
+always get your money in advance is that clear to you yes sir said fisher but i think you will always find that mister kara is always most generous about money don't you believe it don't you believe it my poor man said the other you
+at that moment there came from kara's room a faint clang what's that asked the visitor a little startled mister kara's put down his steel latch said fisher with a smile which means that he is not to be disturbed until he looked at his watch
+until eleven o'clock at any rate he's a funk snapped the other a beastly funk he stamped down the stairs as though testing the weight of every tread opened the front door without assistance slammed it behind him and disappeared into the night
+as you know and as i have given you proof i have the greatest admiration in the world for one whose work for humanity has won such universal recognition i hope that we shall both forget this unhappy morning and that you will give me an opportunity of rendering to you in person
+the apologies which are due to you i feel that anything less will neither rehabilitate me in your esteem nor secure for me the remnants of my shattered self respect i am hoping you will dine with me next week and meet a most interesting man george gathercole
+to disturb a relationship which i have always hoped would be mutually pleasant if you will allow gathercole who will be unconscious of the part he is playing to act as peacemaker between yourself and myself
+i shall feel that his trip which has cost me a large sum of money will not have been wasted i am dear mister meredith yours very sincerely remington kara
+kara folded the letter and inserted it in its envelope he rang a bell on his table and the girl who had so filled t x with a sense of awe came from an adjoining room you will see that this is delivered miss holland
+a man against whom my favourite weapon would fail she looked at him with interest in her eyes what is your favourite weapon mister kara she asked fear he said
+if he expected her to give him any encouragement to proceed he was disappointed probably he required no such encouragement for in the presence of his social inferiors he was somewhat monopolizing cut a man's flesh and it heals he said
+whip a man and the memory of it passes frighten him fill him with a sense of foreboding and apprehension and let him believe that something dreadful is going to happen either to himself or to someone he loves better the latter
+and you will hurt him beyond forgetfulness fear is a tyrant and a despot more terrible than the rack more potent than the stake fear is many eyed and sees horrors where normal vision only sees the ridiculous
+is that your creed she asked quietly part of it miss holland he smiled she played idly with the letter she held in her hand balancing it on the edge of the desk her eyes downcast
+what would justify the use of such an awful weapon she asked it is amply justified to secure an end he said blandly for example i want something i cannot obtain that something through the ordinary channel or by the employment of ordinary means
+if i can buy it well and good if i can buy those who can use their influence to secure this thing for me so much the better if i can obtain it by any merit i possess i utilize that merit
+providing always that i can secure my object in the time otherwise he shrugged his shoulders i see she said nodding her head quickly i suppose that is how blackmailers feel he frowned
+that is a word i never use nor do i like to hear it employed he said blackmail suggests to me a vulgar attempt to obtain money
+and according to your argument they are also justified it is a matter of plane he said airily viewed from my standpoint they are sordid criminals the sort of person that t x meets i presume in the course of his daily work
+t x he went on somewhat oracularly is a man for whom i have a great deal of respect you will probably meet him again for he will find an opportunity of asking you a few questions about myself i need hardly tell you
+he lifted his shoulders with a deprecating smile i shall certainly not discuss your business with any person said the girl coldly i am paying you three pounds a week i think he said
+i intend increasing that to five pounds because you suit me most admirably thank you said the girl quietly but i am already being paid quite sufficient she left him a little astonished and not a little ruffled
+to refuse the favours of remington kara was by him regarded as something of an affront
+he rang the bell this time for his valet fisher he said i am expecting a visit from a gentleman named gathercole a one armed gentleman whom you must look after if he comes
+detain him on some pretext or other because he is rather difficult to get hold of and i want to see him
+he will probably be interested if you take him into the library very good sir said the urbane fisher will you change before you go out kara shook his head i think i will go as i am he said get me my fur coat this beastly cold kills me
+he shivered as he glanced into the bleak street keep my fire going put all my private letters in my bedroom and see that miss holland has her lunch fisher followed him to his car wrapped the fur rug about his legs
+closed the door carefully and returned to the house
+that he should return to kara's study and set the papers in order was natural and proper that he should conduct a rapid examination of all the drawers in kara's desk might be excused on the score of diligence since he was to some extent in the confidence of his employer
+kara was given to making friends of his servants up to a point in his more generous moments he would address his bodyguard as fred and on more occasions than one and for no apparent reason had tipped his servant over and above his salary
+mister fred fisher found little to reward him for his search until he came upon kara's cheque book which told him that on the previous day the greek had drawn six thousand pounds in cash from the bank
+this interested him mightily and he replaced the cheque book with the tightened lips and the fixed gaze of a man who was thinking rapidly he paid a visit to the library where the secretary was engaged in making copies of kara's correspondence
+answering letters appealing for charitable donations and in the hack words which fall to the secretaries of the great he replenished the fire asked deferentially for any instructions and returned again to his quest
+this time he made the bedroom the scene of his investigations the safe he did not attempt to touch but there was a small bureau in which kara would have placed his private correspondence of the morning this however yielded no result
+rum cove said fisher he paused for a moment before the closed door of the room and smilingly surveyed the great steel latch which spanned the door and fitted into an iron socket securely screwed to the framework he lifted it gingerly
+there was a little knob for the purpose and let it fall gently into the socket which had been made to receive it on the door itself rum cove he said again and lifting the latch to the hook which held it up left the room closing the door softly behind him
+he walked down the corridor with a meditative frown and began to descend the stairs to the hall he was less than half way down when the one maid of kara's household came up to meet him there's a gentleman who wants to see mister kara she said here is his card
+fisher took the card from the salver and read mister george gathercole junior travellers club i'll see this gentleman he said with a sudden brisk interest he found the visitor standing in the hall
+he was a man who would have attracted attention if only from the somewhat eccentric nature of his dress and his unkempt appearance he was dressed in a well worn overcoat of a somewhat pronounced check he had a top hat glossy and obviously new at the back of his head
+a pair of pince nez sat crookedly on his nose and two fat volumes under his arm completed the picture fisher who was an observer of some discernment noticed under the overcoat a creased blue suit large black boots
+and a pair of pearl studs the newcomer glared round at the valet take these he ordered peremptorily pointing to the books under his arm fisher hastened to obey and noted with some wonder that the visitor did not attempt to assist him
+either by loosening his hold of the volumes or raising his hand accidentally the valet's hand pressed against the other's sleeve and he received a shock for the forearm was clearly an artificial one it was against a wooden surface beneath the sleeve that his knuckles struck
+and this view of the stranger's infirmity was confirmed when the other reached round with his right hand took hold of the gloved left hand and thrust it into the pocket of his overcoat where is kara growled the stranger
+he told me he would be in at six o'clock at the latest six o'clock ye gods stormed the man impatiently what dog am i that i should wait till six
+six o'clock eh you will tell mister kara that i called give me those books but i assure you sir stammered fisher give me those books roared the other
+deftly he lifted his left hand from the pocket crooked the elbow by some quick manipulation and thrust the books which the valet most reluctantly handed to him back to the place from whence he had taken them tell mister kara i will call at my own time
+good morning to you if you would only wait sir pleaded the agonized fisher wait be hanged snarled the other i've waited three years i tell you tell mister kara to expect me when he sees me he went out and most unnecessarily banged the door behind him
+fisher went back to the library the girl was sealing up some letters as he entered and looked up i am afraid miss holland i've got myself into very serious trouble what is that fisher asked the girl
+mister gathercole said the girl quickly fisher nodded yes miss i couldn't get him to stay though she pursed her lips thoughtfully mister kara will be very cross but i don't see how you can help it i wish you had called me
+at six o'clock miss the man replied there is rather an important letter here which has to be delivered shall i ring up for a messenger no i don't think that would be advisable you had better take it yourself
+she handed him the letter and he read without a droop of eyelid the superscription
+special service department scotland yard whitehall he put it carefully in his pocket and went from the room to change large as the house was kara did not employ a regular staff of servants a maid and a valet comprised the whole of the indoor staff
+the only other person in the house beside the girl was the middle aged domestic who was parlour maid serving maid and housekeeper in one miss holland sat at her desk to all appearance reading over the letters she had typed that afternoon
+but her mind was very far from the correspondence before her she heard the soft thud of the front door closing and rising she crossed the room rapidly and looked down through the window to the street she watched fisher until he was out of sight
+the maid who was also cook arose up as the girl entered it's a sight for sore eyes to see you in my kitchen miss she smiled i'm afraid you're rather lonely missus beale said the girl sympathetically lonely miss cried the maid
+i fairly get the creeps sitting here hour after hour it's that door that gives me the hump she pointed to the far end of the kitchen to a soiled looking door of unpainted wood that's mister kara's wine cellar nobody's been in it but him
+i know he goes in sometimes because i tried a dodge that my brother who's a policeman taught me i stretched a bit of white cotton across it an it was broke the next morning mister kara keeps some of his private papers in there said the girl quietly he has told me so himself
+said the woman doubtfully i wish he'd brick it up the same as he has the lower cellar i get the horrors sittin here at night expectin the door to open an the ghost of the mad lord to come out him that was killed in africa miss holland laughed i want you to go out now she said
+the girl ascended to the upper floor again she watched from the window the disappearing figure once out of sight miss holland went to work with a remarkable deliberation and thoroughness from her bag she produced a small purse and opened it
+in that case was a new steel key
+in two seconds it was open and she was examining its contents it was a large safe of the usual type there were four steel drawers fitted at the back and at the bottom of the strong box
+an examination of the first drawer did not produce all that she had expected she returned the papers to the drawer pushed it to and locked it she gave her attention to the second drawer her hand shook a little as she pulled it open
+it was a square case covered in red morocco leather she inserted her shaking hand and took it out with a triumphant little cry at last she said aloud and then a hand grasped her wrist and in a panic she turned to meet the smiling face
+the diamond wedding by edmund clarence stedman o love love love what times were those long ere the age of belles and beaux and brussels lace and silken hose when in the green arcadian close
+you married psyche under the rose with only the grass for bedding heart to heart and hand to hand you followed nature's sweet command roaming lovingly through the land nor sighed for a diamond wedding
+so have we read in classic ovid how hero watched for her beloved impassioned youth leander she was the fairest of the fair
+for love was love and better than money the slyer the theft the sweeter the honey and kissing was clover all the world over wherever cupid might wander so thousands of years have come and gone and still the moon is shining on still hymen's torch is lighted
+and hitherto in this land of the west most couples in love have thought it best to follow the ancient way of the rest
+in a style i can not hope to attain and covered himself with glory how it befell one summer's day the king of the cubans strolled this way king january's his name they say and fell in love with the princess may the reigning belle of manhattan
+nor how he began to smirk and sue and dress as lovers who come to woo or as max maretzek and julien do when they sit full bloomed in the ladies view and flourish the wondrous baton he wasn't one of your polish nobles
+whose presence their country somehow troubles and so our cities receive them nor one of your make believe spanish grandees who ply our daughters with lies and candies until the poor girls believe them no he was no such charlatan count de hoboken flash in the pan
+full of gasconade and bravado but a regular rich don rataplan santa claus de la muscovado senor grandissimo bastinado
+his was the rental of half havana and all matanzas and santa anna rich as he was could hardly hold a candle to light the mines of gold our cuban owned choke full of diggers and broad plantations that in round figures were stocked with at least five thousand niggers
+gather ye rosebuds while ye may the senor swore to carry the day to capture the beautiful princess may with his battery of treasure velvet and lace she should not lack
+and come and go at her pleasure jet and lava silver and gold garnets emeralds rare to behold diamonds sapphires wealth untold
+kept bidding a little higher and every time he made his bid and what she said and all they did twas written down for the good of the town by jeems of the daily flyer a coach and horses you'd think would buy for the don an easy victory
+but slowly our princess yielded a diamond necklace caught her eye
+she stood such a fire of silks and laces jewels and gold dressing cases and ruby brooches and jets and pearls that every one of her dainty curls brought the price of a hundred common girls folks thought the lass demented
+an infant kohinoor did the thing and sighing with love or something the same what's in a name the princess may consented
+let the gaunt and hungry and ragged poor throng round the great cathedral door to wonder what all the hubbub's for and sometimes stupidly wonder at so much sunshine and brightness which fall from the church upon the rich while the poor get all the thunder
+ring ring merry bells ring o fortunate few with letters blue good for a seat and a nearer view fortunate few whom i dare not name dilettanti creme de la creme
+we commoners stood by the street facade and caught a glimpse of the cavalcade
+six lustrous maidens in tarletan she led the van of the caravan
+that told as plainly as words could speak she was more antique than the other leaned on the arm of don rataplan santa claus de la muscovado senor grandissimo bastinado happy mortal fortunate man and marquis of el dorado
+in they swept all riches and grace silks and satins jewels and lace in they swept from the dazzled sun and soon in the church the deed was done three prelates stood on the chancel high
+a knot that gold and silver can buy gold and silver may yet untie unless it is tightly fastened what's worth doing at all's worth doing well and the sale of a young manhattan belle is not to be pushed or hastened
+so two very reverends graced the scene and the tall archbishop stood between by prayer and fasting chastened the pope himself would have come from rome but garibaldi kept him at home haply those robed prelates thought their words were the power that tied the knot
+but another power that love knot tied and i saw the chain round the neck of the bride a glistening priceless marvelous chain coiled with diamonds again and again as befits a diamond wedding yet still twas a chain and i thought she knew it
+and half way longed for the will to undo it by the secret tears she was shedding but isn't it odd to think whenever we all go through that terrible river whose sluggish tide alone can sever the archbishop says
+the church decree by floating one into eternity and leaving the other alive as ever as each wades through that ghastly stream the satins that rustle and gems that gleam will grow pale and heavy and sink away to the noisome river's bottom clay
+will shiver upon the banks of the styx quite as helpless as they were born naked souls and very forlorn the princess then must shift for herself and lay her royalty on the shelf she and the beautiful empress yonder whose robes are now the wide world's wonder
+who calico wear each morn of their lives and the sewing girls and les chiffonniers in rags and hunger a gaunt array and all the grooms of the caravan
+a bully boat and a brag captain a story of steamboat life on the mississippi by sol smith does any one remember the caravan she was what would now be considered a slow boat then eighteen twenty seven
+she was regularly advertised as the fast running et cetera her regular trips from new orleans to natchez were usually made in from six to eight days a trip made by her in five days was considered remarkable
+a voyage from new orleans to vicksburg and back including stoppages generally entitled the officers and crew to a month's wages whether the caravan ever achieved the feat of a voyage to the falls louisville i have never learned if she did
+she must have had a time of it it was my fate to take passage in this boat the captain was a good natured easy going man careful of the comfort of his passengers and exceedingly fond of the game of brag we had been out a little more than five days
+and we were in hopes of seeing the bluffs of natchez on the next day our wood was getting low and night coming on the pilot on duty above the other pilot held three aces at the time and was just calling out the captain who went it strong on three kings
+sent down word that the mate had reported the stock of wood reduced to half a cord the worthy captain excused himself to the pilot whose watch was below and the two passengers who made up the party and hurried to the deck
+which he said was situated right round yonder point but muttered the captain i don't much like to take wood of the yellow faced old scoundrel who owns it he always charges a quarter of a dollar more than any one else however there's no other chance
+and in a little less than an hour when our fuel was about giving out we made the point and our cables were out and fastened to trees alongside of a good sized wood pile hallo colonel how d'ye sell your wood this time a yellow faced old gentleman
+with a two weeks beard strings over his shoulders holding up to his armpits a pair of copperas colored linsey woolsey pants the legs of which reached a very little below the knee shoes without stockings a faded broad brimmed hat which had once been black
+and a pipe in his mouth casting a glance at the empty guards of our boat and uttering a grunt as he rose from fastening our spring line answered why capting we must charge you three and a quarter this time the d l replied the captain
+what's the odd quarter for i should like to know you only charged me three as i went down why captaing drawled out the wood merchant with a sort of leer on his yellow countenance which clearly indicated that his wood was as good as sold
+wood's riz since you went down two weeks ago besides you are awar that you very seldom stop going down
+and there's no other woodyard for nine miles ahead and if you happen to be nearly out of fooel why well well interrupted the captain we'll take a few cords under the circumstances and he returned to his game of brag
+in about half an hour we felt the caravan commence paddling again supper was over
+situated alongside and overlooking the brag table where the captain was deeply engaged having now the other pilot as his principal opponent we jogged on quietly and seemed to be going at a good rate
+how does that wood burn inquired the captain of the mate who was looking on at the game tisn't of much account i reckon answered the mate it's cottonwood and most of it green at that well thompson three aces again stranger
+thompson i say we'd better take three or four cords at the next woodyard it can't be more than six miles from here two aces and a bragger with the age
+the game went on and the paddles kept moving at eleven o'clock it was reported to the captain that we were nearing the woodyard the light being distinctly seen by the pilot on duty head her in shore then and take in six cords if it's good see to it thompson
+i can't very well leave the game now it's getting right warm this pilot's beating us all to smash the wooding completed we paddled on again the captain seemed somewhat vexed when the mate informed him that the price was the same as at the last woodyard
+three and a quarter but soon again became interested in the game from my upper berth there were no state rooms then i could observe the movements of the players
+the latter personages took it turn and turn about steering and playing brag one of them almost invariably winning while the two passengers merely went through the ceremony of dealing cutting and paying up their anties they were anxious to learn the game
+and they did learn it once in a while indeed seeing they had two aces and a bragger they would venture a bet of five or ten dollars but they were always compelled to back out before the tremendous bragging of the captain or pilot
+or if they did venture to call out on two bullits and a bragger they had the mortification to find one of the officers had the same kind of a hand and were more venerable still with all these disadvantages they continued playing
+they wanted to learn the game at two o'clock the captain asked the mate how we were getting on oh pretty glibly sir replied the mate we can scarcely tell what headway we are making for we are obliged to keep the middle of the river and there is the shadow of a fog rising
+this wood seems rather better than that we took in at yellow face's but we're nearly out again and must be looking out for more i saw a light just ahead on the right shall we hail yes yes replied the captain ring the bell and ask em what's the price of wood up here i've got you again
+i heard the bell and the pilot's hail what's your price for wood a youthful voice on the shore answered three and a quarter d net ejaculated the captain
+the strangers suffering some at the same time three and a quarter again are we never to get to a cheaper country deal sir if you please better luck next time the other pilot's voice was again heard on deck how much have you only about ten cords sir
+was the reply of the youthful salesman the captain here told thompson to take six cords which would last till daylight and again turned his attention to the game the pilots here changed places when did they sleep wood taken in
+the caravan again took her place in the middle of the stream paddling on as usual day at length dawned the brag party broke up and settlements were being made during which operation
+the captain's bragging propensities were exercised in cracking up the speed of his boat which by his reckoning
+it appears the two passengers in their first lesson had incidentally lost one hundred and twenty dollars the captain as he rose to see about taking in some good wood which he felt sure of obtaining now that he had got above the level country winked at his opponent
+the pilot with whom he had been on very bad terms during the progress of the game and said in an undertone forty apiece for you and i and james the other pilot is not bad for one night i had risen and went out with the captain to enjoy a view of the bluffs
+there was just fog enough to prevent the vision taking in more than sixty yards so i was disappointed in my expectation we were nearing the shore for the purpose of looking for wood the banks being invisible from the middle of the river there it is exclaimed the captain stop her
+and the captain hailed hallo the woodyard hallo yourself answered a squeaking female voice which came from a woman with a petticoat over her shoulders in place of a shawl what's the price of wood
+i think you ought to know the price by this time answered the old lady in the petticoat
+and now you know it three and the d l broke in the captain what have you raised on your wood too i'll give you three and not a cent more well replied the petticoat here comes the old man he'll talk to you and sure enough
+out crept from the cottage the veritable faded hat copperas colored pants yellow countenance and two weeks beard we had seen the night before
+accompanied by the same leer of the same yellow countenance why darn it all capting there is but three or four cords left and since it's you i don't care if i do let you have it for three as you're a good customer
+and turned in to take some rest the fact became apparent the reader will probably have discovered it some time since
+the idea of every mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies
+proof all the modes in which any given body is affected
+wherefore their idea also necessarily
+therefore the idea of every mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies involves the nature of the human body and of the external body
+hence it follows first that the human mind perceives the nature of a variety of bodies together with the nature of its own
+it will have the idea of the mode as actually existing
+in other words it will have the idea which does not exclude but postulates the existence or presence of the nature of the external body
+will regard the external body as actually existing
+corollary the mind is able to regard as present external bodies by which the human body has once been affected even though they be no longer in existence or present
+by which the human body has once been affected be no longer in existence the mind will nevertheless regard them as present as often as this action of the body is repeated
+note we thus see how it comes about
+the latter indicates rather the disposition of paul's body than the nature of peter and therefore while this disposition of paul's body lasts paul's mind will regard peter as present to itself even though he no longer exists further to retain the usual phraseology
+the modifications of the human body of which the ideas represent external bodies as present to us we will call the images of things though they do not recall the figure of things when the mind regards bodies in this fashion we say that it imagines
+looked at in themselves do not contain error the mind does not err in the mere act of imagining but only in so far as it is regarded as being without the idea
+which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications affectiones of the human body i say first it is an association of those ideas only
+ideas of the modifications of the human body are strictly speaking
+those which involve the nature both of the human body and of external bodies i say secondly
+in order to distinguish it from that association of ideas
+whereby the mind perceives things through their primary causes
+and hence we can further clearly understand why the mind from the thought of one thing should straightway arrive at the thought of another thing which has no similarity with the first for instance from the thought of the word pomum an apple
+a roman would straightway arrive at the thought of the fruit apple which has no similitude with the articulate sound in question nor anything in common with it
+that is that the man has often heard the word pomum while he was looking at the fruit
+or the human mind perceives those modifications
+the human body itself and as actually existing therefore the mind perceives thus far only the human body
+following in god in the same manner and being referred to god in the same manner as the idea or knowledge of the human body proof
+the woman who married an owl by anne virginia culbertson when the children got home from the nutting expedition and had eaten supper they sat around discontentedly wishing every few minutes that their mother had returned i wish mamma would come back
+said ned i never know what to do in the evening when she isn't home i low bout de bes you all kin do is ter lemme putt you ter baid said aunt phrony don't want to go to bed i'm not sleepy want to stay up came in chorus from three pairs of lips
+you chillen is wusser dan night owls said the old woman ef you keeps on wid dis settin' up all night bizness
+an dat mines me a owl whar turnt hisse'f inter a man an ef a owl kin do dat
+dey all made der bre'kfus offen roas'in' years er de new cawn an den de darnse begun an lasted fo days an fo nights
+dat shuk an rattled wid ev'y step
+wuz on her way home on de fo'th night an she wuz pow'ful tired kase dem rattles is monst'ous haivy an she bin keepin hit up fo nights han runnin
+dar ain gwine be no trouble bout dat kase i kin do talkin nuff fer two
+so de nex night de gal went off an comed back late wid de young man her mammy ax him in an gin him a seat by de fire an dar he sot all wrop up in his blinkit wid his haid turnt way f'um de light
+an de fire died down an de wind blewed mo'nful outside
+an i spec he done come f'um dat wo'm kyountry whar we year tell bout way off yonner
+i reckon he git so tired huntin all day no wunner he hatter blink his eyes ter keep em open but her mammy wan't sassified
+here the old woman rose and threw on a handful of lightwood which blazed up with a great sputtering and in the strong light she stood before the fire enacting the part of the scared owl for the delighted yet half startled children
+de fire blaze an spit an sputter jes lak dis do an de ooman she fotched a yell an cried out she did lan er de mussiful
+an de wimmins dey let out a turr'ble screech kase dey seed twa'n't nuttin but a big owl settin dar blinkin
+o o goo coo o o goo coo ez he flewed off inter de darkness here aunt phrony spread her arms like wings and made a swoop half way across the room to the bedside of the startled children an she continued
+de wind howl mo'nful all night long an seem ter de gal an her mammy
+and didn't he ever come back said ned naw suh dat he didn he wuz too shame ter come back an he bin so shame er de trick uver sence dat he hide hisse'f way in de daytime an nuver come out twel de dusk
+he teck dat time too
+after a long and tedious discourse of these six non natural things and their several rectifications
+or that kind of physic which cureth by medicines which apothecaries most part make mingle or sell in their shops many cavil at this kind of physic and hold it unnecessary unprofitable to this or any other disease
+because those countries which use it least live longest
+relates of the isles of orcades the people are still sound of body and mind without any use of physic
+damianus a goes saxo grammaticus aubanus bohemus say the like of them that live in norway lapland finmark biarmia corelia all over scandia and those northern countries they are most healthful
+and very long lived in which places there is no use at all of physic the name of it is not once heard dithmarus bleskenius in his accurate description of iceland sixteen o seven
+most part they drink water and whey
+i find the same relation by lerius and some other writers of indians in america paulus jovius in his description of britain and levinus lemnius observe as much of this our island
+and but little at this day except it be for a few nice idle citizens surfeiting courtiers and stall fed gentlemen lubbers the country people use kitchen physic
+many that did ill under physicians hands have happily escaped
+left to god and nature and themselves
+juridicis medicis fisco fas vivere rapto tis a corrupt trade no science art no profession the beginning practice and progress of it all is naught full of imposture uncertainty and doth generally more harm than good
+the devil himself was the first inventor of it
+and what was apollo but the devil the greeks first made an art of it and they were all deluded by apollo's sons priests oracles if we may believe varro pliny columella most of their best medicines were derived from his oracles
+aesculapius his son had his temples erected to his deity and did many famous cures but as lactantius holds he was a magician a mere impostor
+performed most of their cures the first that ever wrote in physic to any purpose was hippocrates and his disciple and commentator galen whom scaliger calls fimbriam hippocratis
+their precepts confused their medicines obsolete and now most part rejected those cures which they did paracelsus holds
+they themselves idiots and infants as are all their academical followers the arabians received it from the greeks and so the latins adding new precepts and medicines of their own but so imperfect still that through ignorance of professors impostors mountebanks empirics
+disagreeing of sectaries which are as many almost as there be diseases envy covetousness and the like they do much harm amongst us
+as he said of adrian multitudo medicorum principem interfecit a multitude of physicians hath killed the emperor plus a medico quam a morbo periculi more danger there is from the physician than from the disease
+doth appropriate it to herself and tells a story of one curtius a physician in venice because he was a stranger and practised amongst them the rest of the physicians did still cross him in all his precepts if he prescribed hot medicines they would prescribe cold
+miscentes pro calidis frigida pro frigidis humida pro purgantibus astringentia binders for purgatives omnia perturbabant if the party miscarried curtium damnabant curtius killed him that disagreed from them
+sometimes stumbles them all they cannot so much as ease they know not how to judge of it if by pulses that doctrine some hold is wholly superstitious
+is neither observed nor understood of any and for urine that is meretrix medicorum the most deceitful thing of all as forestus and some other physicians have proved at large
+i had rather believe and commit myself to a mere empiric than to a mere doctor and i cannot sufficiently commend that custom of the babylonians that have no professed physicians but bring all their patients to the market to be cured
+which herodotus relates of the egyptians strabo sardus and aubanus bohemus of many other nations and those that prescribed physic
+a second the teeth a third the head
+i acknowledge it a most noble and divine science
+and those other gods were confined and adored alone in some peculiar places aesculapius and his temple and altars everywhere
+with all virtuous and wise men therefore i honour the name and calling as i am enjoined to honour the physician for necessity's sake the knowledge of the physician lifteth up his head and in the sight of great men he shall be admired
+but of this noble subject how many panegyrics are worthily written
+i have said yet one thing i will add that this kind of physic is very moderately and advisedly to be used
+is to be understood of such purges as are unseasonably or immoderately taken they have their excellent use in this as well as most other infirmities of alteratives and cordials no man doubts be they simples or compounds
+the contrary is true what we need is not less education but more more trained leaders to uphold the standards of civilization before both races among indian college and university graduates a failure is very rare
+i am sure i have not met one and really do not know of one the press is responsible for many popular errors whenever an indian indulges in any notorious misbehavior he is widely heralded as a carlisle graduate
+although because of the wonderful athletic prowess of its students they have met and defeated the athletes of many a white university on the football field
+giving a fair knowledge of some trade together with the essentials of an english education but no latin or other foreign language consequently its graduates must attend a higher preparatory school for several years before they can enter college
+it will be seen then that the college educated men and women of my race have accomplished quite a feat considering their antecedents and wholly foreign point of view they have had to adjust themselves to a new way of thinking
+furthermore they are almost always hampered by lack of means nevertheless an increasing number have succeeded in the undertaking trials of the educated indian
+i wish to contradict the popular misconception that an educated indian will necessarily meet with strong prejudice among his own people or will be educated out of sympathy with them from their point of view
+a particularly able or well equipped man of their race is a public blessing and all but public property that was the old rule among us up to a very recent period an educated indian could not succeed materially
+he could not better himself because the people required him to give unlimited free service according to the old regime i have even known one to be killed by the continual demands upon him there was a time not so long ago either
+when the educated indian stood in a very uncomfortable position between his people and the government officials and shady politicians every complaint was brought to him as a matter of course and he was expected to expose and redress every wrong
+as i have said elsewhere such efforts are generally useless and resulted only in damage to his financial position and his reputation no doubt he often invited attacks upon himself by a rashness born of his ardent sympathy
+for his fellow tribesmen in this matter i speak from personal experience as well as long observation even in the old wild days an education was appreciated by the indians
+but it was a hard life for the educated man they made him carry too heavy a burden without much recompense save honor and respect but we have pretty well passed through that period and the native graduates of our higher institutions
+have begun to show their strength and enlarge their views they have not only done well for themselves and their race but they stand before the world as living illustrations of its capacity disproving many theories concerning untutored races
+no inferior race it was declared without qualification by the universal races congress at london in nineteen eleven that there is no inherently superior race
+therefore no inferior race from every race some individuals have mastered the same curriculum and passed the same tests and in some instances members of so called uncivilized races
+because of the racial environment change the environment and the race is transformed certainly the american indian has clearly demonstrated the truth of this assertion
+the very mention of the name indian in earlier days would make the average white man's blood creep with thoughts of the war whoop and the scalping knife
+a little later it suggested chiefly feathers and paint and buffalo bill's wild west to day the association is rather with the carlisle school and its famous athletes
+it is a fact that the intelligent and educated indian has no social prejudice to contend with his color is not counted against him he is received cordially and upon equal terms in school college and society
+doctor booker washington is in the habit of saying jocosely that the negro blood is the strongest in the world for one drop of it makes a nigger of a white man i would argue that the indian blood is even stronger
+for a half blood negro and indian may pass for an indian and so be admitted to first class hotels and even to high society
+is to get an education and hold up his head as a member of the oldest american aristocracy many of our leading men have married into excellent families and are prominent in cultivated white communities
+we want the best in two races and civilizations in exchange for what we have lost some of us have entered upon every known professional career such as medicine law the ministry education and the sciences
+politics and higher business management art and literature it may be well to mention some of our best known professional men and women
+at first to be sure as indian herb doctors or quacks of one sort or another but later as competent graduated physicians the government has utilized several in the indian service and others have established themselves in private practice
+some noted indians of to day perhaps the foremost of these is doctor carlos montezuma of chicago a full blooded apache
+who were enemies of his people he was brought to chicago by the man who ransomed him a reporter and photographer and when his benefactor died the boy became the protege of the chicago press club
+and from there to the northwestern university where he was graduated from the medical department all this time although receiving some aid from various sources he largely supported himself
+after graduation doctor montezuma was sent by the government as physician to an indian agency in montana and later transferred to the carlisle school in a few years he returned to chicago and opened an office
+he has been a prominent physician there for a number of years and was recently married to a lady of german descent he stands uncompromisingly for the total abolition of the reservation system and of the indian bureau
+holding that the red man must be allowed to work out his own salvation one of the earliest practitioners of our race was doctor susan la flesche picotte of the omaha tribe
+she has since taken up private practice and also had charge of a mission hospital doctor picotte is a sister of bright eyes susette la flesche and also of francis la flesche of washington d c
+there is another indian doctor not of full blood who is president of the city club of chicago and active in civic reform in several middle western cities there are successful doctors and dentists of my race
+was a successful lawyer in topeka when he was elected to the house of representatives and later to the united states senate his mother is a kaw indian mister curtis was and is a leader of the republican party in his state
+senator owen of oklahoma is part cherokee the whole country has come to realize his ability and influence representative carter of oklahoma is also an indian
+during my student days in new hampshire i was often told that daniel webster was part indian on his mother's side certainly his physiognomy as well as his unequalled logic corroborated the story
+we all know that governors and other men of mark have proclaimed themselves descendants of pocahontas i have met several in the west and south
+but have never verified it their wonderful aggressiveness and dauntless public service in my mind point to native descent and if they can truthfully claim it
+as late as eighteen seventy six doctor washington mathews a surgeon in the united states army
+and left him with the missionary teacher doctor alfred l riggs to rear and educate this military surgeon and scientist not only attained the rank of major general but he became one of our foremost archaeologists
+i will not pretend to claim for the indian all the credit of their talents and energy in the ministry we have many able and devoted men more than in any other profession
+is well known as an evangelistic preacher and singer
+a full blood arapahoe he has had an unusual career having been taken prisoner as a boy by an officer of the army he was sent to school and eventually graduated from bishop whipple's seabury divinity school at faribault minnesota
+since that time doctor coolidge has devoted himself to the christianization of his race
+he had unusual eloquence and personal charm and became at once one of bishop hare's ablest helpers in his great work among the sioux stationed at pine ridge at the time of the wounded knee massacre
+he opened his church to the wounded indian prisoners as an emergency hospital his much regretted death occurred a few months later he was a tireless worker and much loved by his people
+graduated from yale and oberlin
+has done good work as field secretary among the indians for a number of years i should add that there are many ministers of my race who have no college degree nor much education in the english language yet who are among our most able and influential leaders
+who passed but a short time in school has not only been a successful preacher among the sioux but for many years their trusted adviser and representative to look after their interests at the national capital
+most of them in the united states indian service it is the express policy of the government to use the educated indians whenever possible in promoting the advancement of their race indeed some of the treaties include this stipulation
+and although they must pass a civil service examination to prove their fitness such examination in their case is non competitive they have been prepared in the larger government schools in many instances with the addition of normal and college courses
+at least two are superintendents of schools a number of young women carlisle graduates have taken up trained nursing as a profession and are practising successfully both among whites and indians
+in the sciences especially in ethnology and archaeology we have several who have rendered material service william jones a sac and fox quarter blood was a graduate of hampton and of harvard university
+doctor putnam and doctor boas the latter has called him one of our ablest archaeologists doctor jones travelled among the various tribes even to the coast of labrador and labored assiduously in the cause of science for harvard
+and the marshall field museum of chicago as well as other institutions it was the chicago museum which sent him to the philippine islands where he was murdered by the natives a few years ago
+in literature several writers of indian blood have appeared during the past few years and have won a measure of recognition francis la flesche an omaha has collaborated with miss alice c fetcher
+in ethnological work and is also the author of a pleasing story of life in an indian school called the middle five zitkalasa a sioux now missus bonney
+attended a western college where she distinguished herself in an intercollegiate oratorical contest soon afterward she appeared in the atlantic monthly as the writer of several papers of an autobiographical nature
+which attracted favorable attention and were followed by a little volume of indian legends and several short stories missus bonney has more recently written the book of an indian opera called the sun dance which has been produced in salt lake city
+by university students john oskinson a cherokee was first heard of as the winner in an intercollegiate literary contest and he is now on the staff of collier's weekly the five civilized nations of oklahoma
+can show many other writers and journalists in higher business lines a number have shown special ability general pleasant porter who died recently was president of a short railroad line in oklahoma
+mister hill of texas is reputed to be a millionaire howard gansworth a graduate of carlisle and princeton
+in the athletic world this little race has no peer as is sufficiently proven by their remarkable record in football baseball and track athletics
+why he did not introduce football in his school why said he if i did that half the press of the country would attack me for developing the original war instincts and savagery of the indian the public would be afraid to come to our games
+at least not in public not long afterward the game was introduced at carlisle and i was asked by the general to visit montana and the dakotas to secure pupils for the school and incidentally recruits for his football warriors
+the indians victory was complete these boys always fight the battle on its own merits they play a clean game and lose very few games during the season although they meet all our leading universities each on its own home grounds
+from the fleet deerfoot to this day we boast the noted names of longboat sockalexis bemus pierce frank hudson tewanima metoxen myers bender and jim thorpe
+thorpe is a graduate of the carlisle school and at the olympic games in sweden in nineteen twelve he won the title of the greatest all round athlete in the world problems of race leadership
+and with old tribal jealousies and antagonisms yet to be overcome another and a more serious obstacle is the dependent position of the indian and the almost arbitrary power in the hands of the indian bureau
+about fifteen years ago the idea of a national organization of progressive indians was discussed at some length
+my brother john eastman and myself at that time we concluded that the movement would not be understood either by our own race or the american people in general and that there was grave danger of arousing the antagonism of the bureau
+if such a society were formed it would necessarily take many problems of the race under consideration and the officials at washington and in the field are sensitive to criticism
+nor are they accustomed to allowing the indian a voice in his own affairs furthermore many of the most progressive red men are enlisted in the government service which would make their position a very difficult one in case of any friction with the authorities
+very few indians are sufficiently independent of the bureau to speak and act with absolute freedom some ten years later i was called to columbus ohio to lecture for the ohio state university
+on the same course with doctor coolidge and doctor montezuma professor f a mc kenzie of the university arranged the course and soon afterward he wrote me that he believed the time was now ripe to organize our society
+we corresponded with leading indians and arranged a meeting at columbus for the following april at this meeting five were present besides myself doctor montezuma thomas sloan charles e dagenett henry standingbear
+and miss laura cornelius we organized as a committee and issued a general call for a conference in october at the university upon the cordial invitation of doctor mc kenzie and president thompson
+four annual conferences have now been held and the fifth is announced for next october at oklahoma city the society has five hundred active and about the same number of associate members
+the latter are white friends of the race who are in sympathy with our objects
+and arthur c parker is secretary and treasurer the society of american indians issues a quarterly journal devoted to the proceedings of the conferences and the interests of the indian race
+and there are others as well our people have not been trained to work together harmoniously it is a serious question what principles we should stand for and what line of work we ought to undertake
+should we devote ourselves largely to exposing the numerous frauds committed upon indians or should we keep clear of these matters avoid discussion of official methods and action
+and simply aim at arousing racial pride and ambition along new lines holding up a modern ideal for the support and encouragement of our youth should we petition congress and in general continue along the lines of the older indian associations
+or should we rather do intensive work among our people looking especially toward their moral and social welfare i stand for the latter plan others think differently and as a matter of fact a washington office has been opened
+objects of the society of american indians first to promote and cooperate with all efforts looking to the advancement of the indian in enlightenment which leave him free as a man
+to develop according to the natural laws of social evolution second to provide through our open conferences the means for a free discussion on all subjects bearing on the welfare of the race third
+to present in a just light the true history of the race to preserve its records and emulate its distinguishing virtues fourth to promote citizenship and to obtain the rights thereof fifth
+seventh to direct its energies exclusively to general principles and universal interests and not allow itself to be used for any personal or private interest
+chapter thirty five she tried to be content which was a contradiction in terms she fanatically cleaned house all april she knitted a sweater for hugh she was diligent at red cross work
+she was silent when vida raved that though america hated war as much as ever we must invade germany and wipe out every man because it was now proven that there was no soldier in the german army who was not crucifying prisoners
+very old and weak who a few decades ago had been boys and girls of the frontier riding broncos through the rank windy grass of this prairie they hobbled behind a band made up of business men and high school boys
+champ was broken his rheumatism was worse the rooms over the store were silent he could not do his work as buyer at the elevator farmers coming in with sled loads of wheat complained that champ could not read the scale
+that he seemed always to be watching some one back in the darkness of the bins he was seen slipping through alleys talking to himself trying to avoid observation creeping at last to the cemetery once carol followed him
+and found the coarse tobacco stained unimaginative old man lying on the snow of the grave his thick arms spread out across the raw mound as if to protect her from the cold her
+who was alone there now uncared for the elevator company ezra stowbody president let him go the company ezra explained to carol had no funds for giving pensions she tried to have him appointed to the postmastership
+which since all the work was done by assistants was the one sinecure in town the one reward for political purity but it proved that mister bert tybee the former bartender desired the postmastership at her solicitation
+lyman cass gave champ a warm berth as night watchman
+he was well but still weak from having been gassed he had been discharged and he came home as the first of the war veterans it was rumored that he surprised vida by coming unannounced that vida fainted when she saw him and for a night and day
+would not share him with the town when carol saw them vida was hazy about everything except raymie and never went so far from him that she could not slip her hand under his without understanding why carol was troubled by this intensity
+and raymie surely this was not raymie but a sterner brother of his this man with the tight blouse the shoulder emblems the trim legs in boots his face seemed different his lips more tight he was not raymie
+he was major wutherspoon and kennicott and carol were grateful when he divulged that paris wasn't half as pretty as minneapolis that all of the american soldiers had been distinguished by their morality when on leave kennicott was respectful
+to the half dozen branch stores which he was establishing at crossroads hamlets harry would be the town's rich man in the coming generation and major wutherspoon would rise with him and vida was jubilant though she was regretful at having to give up
+most of her red cross work ray still needed nursing she explained when carol saw him with his uniform off in a pepper and salt suit and a new gray felt hat she was disappointed he was not major wutherspoon he was raymie
+for a month small boys followed him down the street and everybody called him major
+the wheat money did not remain in the pockets of the farmers the towns existed to take care of all that iowa farmers were selling their land at four hundred dollars an acre and coming into minnesota but whoever bought or sold or mortgaged
+the townsmen invited themselves to the feast millers real estate men lawyers merchants and doctor will kennicott they bought land at a hundred and fifty sold it next day at a hundred and seventy and bought again
+in three months kennicott made seven thousand dollars which was rather more than four times as much as society paid him for healing the sick in early summer began a campaign of boosting
+but also the perfect site for factories summer cottages and state institutions in charge of the campaign was mister james blausser who had recently come to town to speculate in land mister blausser was known as a hustler
+he liked to be called honest jim
+nice lil wifey i'll say doc and when she answered not warmly thank you very much for the imprimatur he blew on her neck and did not know that he had been insulted
+he was a layer on of hands he never came to the house without trying to paw her he touched her arm let his fist brush her side she hated the man and she was afraid of him she wondered if he had heard of erik and was taking advantage
+she spoke ill of him at home and in public places but kennicott and the other powers insisted maybe he is kind of a roughneck
+chucked him in the ribs and said say boy
+wait ll i get time and i'll move the mountains here any mountain will be tickled to death to locate here once we get the white way in the town welcomed mister blausser as fully as carol snubbed him
+he was the guest of honor at the commercial club banquet at the minniemashie house an occasion for menus printed in gold but injudiciously proof read for free cigars soft damp slabs of lake superior whitefish served as fillet of sole
+drenched cigar ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffee cups and oratorical references to pep punch go vigor enterprise red blood he men fair women god's country james j hill
+the bountiful harvest increasing population fair return on investments alien agitators who threaten the security of our institutions the hearthstone the foundation of the state senator knute nelson one hundred per cent americanism and
+pointing with pride harry haydock as chairman introduced honest jim blausser and i am proud to say my fellow citizens that in his brief stay here mister blausser has become my warm personal friend as well as my fellow booster
+and i advise you all to very carefully attend to the hints of a man who knows how to achieve mister blausser reared up like an elephant with a camel's neck red faced red eyed heavy fisted slightly belching a born leader
+there's a lot of folks even right here in this fair state fairest and richest of all the glorious union that stand up on their hind legs and claim that the east and europe put it all over the golden northwestland now let me nail that lie right here and now
+ah ha says they so jim blausser is claiming that gopher prairie is as good a place to live in as london and rome and and all the rest of the big burgs is he how does the poor fish know says they well
+i'll tell you how i know i've seen em i've done europe from soup to nuts they can't spring that stuff on jim blausser and get away with it and let me tell you that the only live thing in europe is our boys that are fighting there now london
+and the same thing goes for that crowd of crabs and snobs down east and next time you hear some zob from yahooville on the hudson chewing the rag and bulling and trying to get your goat you tell him that no two fisted enterprising westerner would have new york for a gift
+now the point of this is i'm not only insisting that gopher prairie is going to be minnesota's pride the brightest ray in the glory of the north star state
+and bring up the little ones in and it's got as much refinement and culture as any burg on the whole bloomin expanse of god's green footstool and that goes get me that goes
+half an hour later chairman haydock moved a vote of thanks to mister blausser the boosters campaign was on the town sought that efficient and modern variety of fame which is known as publicity
+the band was reorganized and provided by the commercial club with uniforms of purple and gold the amateur baseball team hired a semi professional pitcher from des moines
+boost boys and boost together put gopher prairie on the map brilliant record of our matchless team then glory of glories the town put in a white way white ways were in fashion in the middlewest
+they were composed of ornamented posts with clusters of high powered electric lights along two or three blocks on main street the dauntless confessed white way is installed town lit up like broadway speech by hon james blausser
+come on you twin cities our hat is in the ring
+a red headed young man who smoked cigarettes in a long amber holder carol read the booklet with a certain wonder
+she learned that plover and minniemashie lakes were world famed for their beauteous wooded shores and gamey pike and bass not to be equalled elsewhere in the entire country that the residences of gopher prairie were models
+of dignity comfort and culture with lawns and gardens known far and wide that the gopher prairie schools and public library in its neat and commodious building were celebrated throughout the state that the gopher prairie mills made the
+best flour in the country that the surrounding farm lands were renowned
+and that the stores in gopher prairie compared favorably with minneapolis and chicago in their abundance of luxuries and necessities and the ever courteous attention of the skilled clerks she learned in brief
+that this was the one logical location for factories and wholesale houses
+kennicott was triumphant when the commercial club did capture one small shy factory which planned to make wooden automobile wheels but when carol saw the promoter
+she could not feel that his coming much mattered and a year after when he failed she could not be very sorrowful
+but carol could discover no more pictures nor interesting food nor gracious voices nor amusing conversation nor questing minds she could she asserted endure a shabby but modest town
+the town shabby and egomaniac she could not endure she could nurse champ perry and warm to the neighborliness of sam clark but she could not sit applauding honest jim blausser
+chapter seven johnny chuck joins the class
+peter rabbit delivered mother nature's message to johnny chuck johnny didn't seem at all pleased he grumbled and growled to himself he didn't want to go to school he didn't want to learn anything about his relatives
+he was perfectly satisfied with things as they were the truth is johnny chuck was already beginning to get fat with good living and he is naturally lazy as a rule he can find plenty to eat very near his home
+so he seldom goes far from his own doorstep peter left him grumbling and growling and chuckled to himself all the way back to the dear old briar patch he knew that johnny chuck would not dare disobey old mother nature
+sure enough the next morning johnny chuck came waddling through the green forest just as old mother nature was about to open school he didn't look at all happy and he didn't reply at all to the greetings of the others
+it wasn't for your benefit that i sent word for you to be here this morning it was for the benefit of your friends and neighbors now sit up so that all can get a good look at you
+one should call them this is more than i can understand belong to the marmot branch of the squirrel family and wherever found they look much alike as you will notice johnny chuck's coat is brownish yellow
+his feet are very dark brown almost black his head is dark brown with light gray on his cheeks beneath he is reddish orange including his throat his tail is short for a member of the squirrel family
+he has a number of whiskers and they are black some woodchucks are quite gray and occasionally there is one who is almost or wholly black just as there are black gray squirrels
+johnny here is not fond of the green forest but loves the old orchard and the green meadows in some parts of the country there are members of his family who prefer to live just on the edge of the green forest you will notice that johnny has stout claws
+i can climb if i have to retorted johnny chuck indignantly i've climbed up bushes and low trees lots of times and if i can get a good run first i can climb up the straight trunk of a tree with rough bark to the first branches if they are not too far above ground
+johnny chuck certainly is right at home when it comes to digging you ought to be thankful that he is said old mother nature for the holes he has dug have saved your life more than once by the way peter since you are so well acquainted with those holes
+peter was delighted to air his knowledge the last one i was in said he was a long tunnel slanting down for quite a distance and then straightening out the entrance was quite large with a big heap of sand out in front of it
+down a little way the tunnel grew smaller and then remained the same size all the rest of the way way down at the farther end was a nice little bedroom with some grass in it there were one or two other little rooms
+and there were two branch tunnels leading up to the surface of the ground making side or back doorways there was no sand around either of these and they were quite hidden by the long grass hanging over them
+those back doorways are very handy in time of danger do you always have three doorways asked happy jack
+and once in a while only one but that isn't really safe
+sometimes however if we cannot find a place that just suits us we go quite a distance are your babies born down in that little bedroom in the ground asked jumper the hare of course replied johnny chuck
+no replied johnny chuck give me green food every time there is nothing so good as tender sweet clover and young grass unless it be some of those fine vegetables farmer brown grows in his garden
+i am as thin as i was fat in the fall this is because i have used up the fat waiting for the first green things to appear do you have many enemies asked peter rabbit who has so many himself that he is constantly thinking of them
+i am afraid of shadow the weasel reddy fox has tried to dig me out more than once but i can dig faster than he can if he ever gets me cornered he'll find that i can fight
+time is up interrupted old mother nature
+and on the prairies of the great west he has a smaller cousin named
+and to morrow i'll tell you about them if you want me to
+johnny chuck hung his head for he was a little ashamed that he had been so unwilling to come that morning if you please mother nature said he i think i'll come i didn't know i had any close relatives and i want to know about them
+though the armistice with germany was signed a few weeks after her coming to washington the work of the bureau continued she filed correspondence all day then she dictated answers to letters of inquiry it was an endurance of monotonous details
+yet she asserted that she had found real work disillusions she did have she discovered that in the afternoon office routine stretches to the grave she discovered that an office is as full of cliques and scandals as a gopher prairie
+a free sunday it did not appear that the great world needed her inspiration but she felt that her letters her contact with the anxieties of men and women all over the country were a part of vast affairs
+not confined to main street and a kitchen but linked with paris bangkok madrid she perceived that she could do office work without losing any of the putative feminine virtue of domesticity that cooking and cleaning
+not to have to report to kennicott at the end of the day all that she had done or might do was a relief which made up for the office weariness she felt that she was no longer one half of a marriage
+white columns seen across leafy parks spacious avenues twisty alleys daily she passed a dark square house with a hint of magnolias and a courtyard behind it and a tall curtained second story window through which a woman was always peering
+the woman was mystery romance a story which told itself differently every day now she was a murderess now the neglected wife of an ambassador it was mystery which carol had most lacked in gopher prairie
+where every house was open to view where every person was but too easy to meet where there were no secret gates opening upon moors over which one might walk by moss deadened paths to strange high adventures in an ancient garden
+as she flitted up sixteenth street after a kreisler recital given late in the afternoon for the government clerks as the lamps kindled in spheres of soft fire as the breeze flowed into the street fresh as prairie winds and kindlier
+as she glanced up the elm alley of massachusetts avenue as she was rested by the integrity of the scottish rite temple she loved the city as she loved no one save hugh she encountered negro shanties turned into studios
+with orange curtains and pots of mignonette marble houses on new hampshire avenue with butlers and limousines and men who looked like fictional explorers and aviators her days were swift and she knew that in her folly of running away
+were the members of the tincomb methodist church a vast red brick tabernacle vida sherwin had given her a letter to an earnest woman with eye glasses plaid silk waist and a belief in bible classes who introduced her to the pastor and the
+they went to sunday service sunday school christian endeavor missionary lectures church suppers precisely as they had at home they agreed that ambassadors and flippant newspapermen and infidel scientists of the bureaus
+were equally wicked and to be avoided and by cleaving to tincomb church they kept their ideals from all contamination they welcomed carol asked about her husband gave her advice regarding colic in babies
+passed her the gingerbread and scalloped potatoes at church suppers and in general made her very unhappy and lonely so that she wondered if she might not enlist in the militant suffrage organization and be allowed to go to jail
+always she was to perceive in washington as doubtless she would have perceived in new york or london a thick streak of main street the cautious dullness of a gopher prairie appeared in boarding houses where ladylike bureau clerks
+about nothing in particular the captain introduced her to the secretary of a congressman a cynical young widow with many acquaintances in the navy through her carol met commanders and majors newspapermen
+chemists and geographers and fiscal experts from the bureaus and a teacher who was a familiar of the militant suffrage headquarters the teacher took her to headquarters carol never became a prominent suffragist
+indeed her only recognized position was as an able addresser of envelopes but she was casually adopted by this family of friendly women who when they were not being mobbed or arrested took dancing lessons or went picnicking up the chesapeake canal
+though it absorbed most of her salary an excellent nurse for hugh she herself put him to bed and played with him on holidays there were walks with him there were motionless evenings of reading but chiefly washington was associated with people
+scores of them sitting about the flat talking talking talking not always wisely but always excitedly it was not at all the artist's studio of which because of its persistence in fiction she had dreamed
+but they played very simply and they saw no reason why anything which exists cannot also be acknowledged she was sometimes shocked quite as she had shocked gopher prairie by these girls with their cigarettes and elfish knowledge
+the presence of hugh made her feel temporary some day oh she'd have to take him back to open fields and the right to climb about hay lofts but the fact that she could never be eminent among these scoffing enthusiasts
+did not keep her from being proud of them from defending them in imaginary conversations with kennicott who grunted she could hear his voice they're simply a bunch of wild impractical theorists sittin round chewing the rag and
+the acceptance of women without embarrassed banter for which she had longed in gopher prairie yet they seemed to be as efficient as the sam clarks she concluded that it was because they were of secure reputation not hemmed in by the fire of provincial jealousies
+kennicott had asserted that the villager's lack of courtesy is due to his poverty we're no millionaire dudes he boasted yet these army and navy men these bureau experts and organizers of multitudinous leagues
+that institution is reserved for men like kennicott who after devoting fifty years to putting aside a stake incontinently invest the stake in spurious oil stocks
+she found the same faith not only in girls escaped from domesticity but also in demure old ladies who tragically deprived of esteemed husbands and huge old houses
+yet managed to make a very comfortable thing of it by living in small flats and having time to read but she also learned that by comparison gopher prairie was a model of daring color clever planning and frenzied intellectuality
+from her teacher housemate she had a sardonic description of a middlewestern railroad division town of the same size as gopher prairie but devoid of lawns and trees a town where the tracks sprawled along the cinder scabbed main street and the railroad shops
+dripping soot from eaves and doorway rolled out smoke in greasy coils other towns she came to know by anecdote a prairie village where the wind blew all day long and the mud was two feet thick in spring and in summer
+new england mill towns with the hands living in rows of cottages like blocks of lava a rich farming center in new jersey off the railroad furiously pious ruled by old men unbelievably ignorant old men
+sitting about the grocery talking of james g blaine a southern town full of the magnolias and white columns which carol had accepted as proof of romance but hating the negroes obsequious to the old families
+a western mining settlement like a tumor a booming semi city with parks and clever architects visited by famous pianists and unctuous lecturers but irritable from a struggle between union labor and the manufacturers association
+the lines are broken and uncertain of direction often instead of rising they sink in wavering scrawls and the colors are watery blue and pink and the dim gray of rubbed pencil marks a few lines are traceable
+unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip by whining by high church and new thought religions or by a fog of vagueness carol had hidden in none of these refuges from reality
+but she who was tender and merry had been made timorous by gopher prairie even her flight had been but the temporary courage of panic the thing she gained in washington was not information about office systems and labor unions but renewed courage
+that amiable contempt called poise her glimpse of tasks involving millions of people and a score of nations reduced main street from bloated importance to its actual pettiness she could never again be quite so awed by the power
+she caught something of an impersonal attitude saw that she had been as touchily personal as maud dyer and why she began to ask did she rage at individuals not individuals but institutions are the enemies
+and they most afflict the disciples who the most generously serve them
+introduction the humorous ghost is distinctly a modern character in early literature wraiths took themselves very seriously
+and insisted on a proper show of respectful fear on the part of those whom they honored by haunting a mortal was expected to rise when a ghost entered the room and in case he was slow about it
+his spine gave notice of what etiquette demanded in the event of outdoor apparition if a man failed to bare his head in awe the roots of his hair reminded him of his remissness
+in that her locks being long and pinned up are less easily moved which may explain the fact if it be a fact that in fiction women have shown themselves more self possessed
+while the feminine can be seen through by another woman and thus disarmed the majority of the comic apparitions curiously enough are masculine you don't often find women wraithed in smiles
+and have chivalrously spared the gentler shades and there are very few funny child ghosts you might almost say none in comparison with the number of grown ups
+the number of ghost children of any or all types is small proportionately perhaps because it seems an unnatural thing for a child to die under any circumstances
+there are a few instances as in the case of the ghost baby mentioned later but very few ancient ghosts were a long faced lot
+since any living person however senile would be thought juvenile compared with a timeless spook but in these days of individualism and radical liberalism spooks as well as mortals are expanding their personalities
+and indulging in greater freedom a ghost can call his shade his own now and exhibit any mood he pleases even young female wraiths demanding latchkeys refuse to obey the frowning face of the clock
+to make the ghost of missus grundy turn a shade paler in horror nowadays haunters have more fun and freedom than the haunted in fact it's money in one's pocket these days to be dead for ghosts have no rent problems
+manifestly death has compensations not connected with the consolations of religion the marvel is that apparitions were so long in realizing their possibilities in improving their advantages
+the specters in classic and medieval literature were malarial vaporous beings without energy to do anything but threaten
+at best a revenant could only rattle a rusty skeleton or shake a moldy shroud or clank a chain but as mortals cowered before his demonstrations he didn't worry
+the up to date ghost keeps his skeleton in a garage or some place where it is cleaned and oiled and kept in good working order the modern wraith has sold his sheet to the old clo'es man and dresses as in life
+he knows that there's no weapon no threat in horror to be compared with ridicule think what a solemn creature the gothic ghost was
+how little originality and initiative he showed and how dependent he was on his own atmosphere for thrills his sole appeal was to the spinal column the ghost of to day touches the funny bone as well
+many americans there are to day who would court being haunted by the captain and crew of richard middleton's ghost ship that landed in a turnip field and dispensed drink till they demoralized the denizens of village and graveyard alike
+after that show of spirits the turnips in that field tasted of rum long after the ghost ship had sailed away into the blue the modern spook is possessed not only of humor but of a caustic satire as well
+his jest is likely to have more than one point to it and he can haunt so insidiously can make himself so at home in his host's study or bedroom that a man actually welcomes a chat with him
+a ghost moreover that towered and swelled at every hackneyed phrase till finally he filled the room and burst after the young man proposed to his admired one and made subsequent remarks
+ghosts not only have appallingly long memories but they possess a mean advantage over the living in that they have once been mortal
+the modern humorous ghost satirizes everything from the old fashioned specter he's very fond of taking pot shots at him to the latest psychic manifestations
+he laughs at ghosts that aren't experts in efficiency haunting and he has a lot of fun out of mortals for being scared of specters he loves to shake the lugubrious terrors of the past before you
+and uses the old thrills only to show what dead batteries they come from his really electrical effects are his own inventions he needs no dungeon keeps and monkish cells to play about in not he
+he demands no rag nor bone nor clank of chain of his old equipment to start on his career he can start up a moving picture show of his own as in ruth mc enery stuart's the haunted photograph
+and demonstrate a new kind of apparition the ghost story of to day gives you spinal sensations with a difference as in the immortal transferred ghost by frank r stockton
+where the suitor on the moonlit porch attempting to tell his fair one that he dotes on her sees the ghost of her ferocious uncle who isn't dead
+kicking his heels against the railing and hears his admonition that he'd better hurry up as the live uncle is coming in sight
+has never been a ghost nor used a wooden leg but a terrifying leg acy while you do believe in it the new ghost has a more nimble and versatile tongue as well as wit
+in the older fiction and drama apparitions spoke seldom
+and ghosts like kings in drama were of a dignity and must preserve it in their speech or perhaps the authors were doubtful as to the dialogue of shades
+and compromised on a few stately ejaculations as being safely phantasmal speaking parts but compare that usage with the rude freedom of some modern spooks
+think of having always and always to speak a dead language the humorous ghost is not only modern but he is distinctively american there are ghosts of all nationalities naturally
+but the spook that provides a joke on his host or on himself is yankee in origin and development the dry humor the comic sense of the incongruous the willingness to laugh at himself as at others
+and are preserved in their true flavor i don't assert of course
+the french and english selections in this volume are sufficient to prove the contrary
+there are various english stories of whimsical haunting some of actual spooks and some of the hoax type hoax ghosts are fairly numerous in british as in american literature
+of the early specimens of the really amusing ghost that is an actual revenant is the ghost baby in blackwood's which shows originality and humor yet is too diffuse for printing here
+in that we have a conventional young bachelor engaged to a charming girl who is entangled in social complications and made to suffer mental torment because without his consent
+till the phantom couple take a liking to each other and decide to let the living bury their dead this is suggestive of brander matthews's earlier and cleverer story of a spectral courtship in the rival ghosts
+medieval and later literature gave us many instances of a love affair or marriage between one spirit and one mortal
+show the diversity of the english humor as associated with apparitions and are entertaining in themselves the canterville ghost by oscar wilde is one of his best short stories
+this travesty on the conventional traditions of the wraith is preposterously delightful one of the cleverest ghost stories in our language zangwill has written engagingly of spooks
+frank r stockton gave his to funny spooks with a riotous and laughing pen the spirit in his transferred ghost is impudently deathless and has called up a train of subsequent haunters
+john kendrick bangs has made the darker regions seem comfortable and homelike for us and has created ghosts so human and so funny that we look forward to being one or more
+we feel downright neighborly toward such specters as the futile last ghost nelson lloyd evokes for us as we appreciate the satire of rose o'neill's sophisticated wraith
+the field is still comparatively limited but a number of americans have done distinctive work in it the specter now wears motley instead of a shroud
+i'll have none o them ned knowles the baron ritzner von jung was a noble hungarian family every member of which at least as far back into antiquity as any certain records extend
+was more or less remarkable for talent of some description the majority for that species of grotesquerie in conception of which tieck a scion of the house has given a vivid
+threw a place in his regard and here with somewhat more difficulty a partial insight into his mental conformation in later days this insight grew more clear
+which his advent excited within the college precincts on the night of the twenty fifth of june i remember still more distinctly that while he was pronounced by all parties at first sight the most remarkable man in the world
+no person made any attempt at accounting for his opinion that he was unique appeared so undeniable that it was deemed impertinent to inquire wherein the uniquity consisted
+but letting this matter pass for the present i will merely observe that from the first moment of his setting foot within the limits of the university he began to exercise over the habits
+manners persons purses and propensities of the whole community which surrounded him an influence the most extensive and despotic yet at the same time the most indefinite and altogether unaccountable
+that very extraordinary epoch forming the domination of the baron ritzner von jung then of no particular age by which i mean that it was impossible to form a guess respecting his age by any data personally afforded
+he might have been fifteen or fifty
+he was by no means a handsome man perhaps the reverse the contour of his face was somewhat angular and harsh his forehead was lofty and very fair his nose a snub
+after such a fashion that it is impossible to conceive any even the most complex combination of human features conveying so entirely and so singly the idea of unmitigated gravity
+solemnity and repose it will be perceived no doubt from what i have already said that the baron was one of those human anomalies now and then to be found who make the science of mystification
+the study and the business of their lives for this science a peculiar turn of mind gave him instinctively the cue
+i quaintly termed the domination of the baron ritzner von jung ever rightly entered into the mystery which overshadowed his character i truly think that no person at the university with the exception of myself
+ever suspected him to be capable of a joke verbal or practical the old bull dog at the garden gate would sooner have been accused the ghost of heraclitus or the wig of the emeritus professor of theology
+this too when it was evident that the most egregious and unpardonable of all conceivable tricks whimsicalities and buffooneries were brought about if not directly by him
+lay in that consummate ability resulting from an almost intuitive knowledge of human nature and a most wonderful self possession
+in consequence of the laudable efforts he was making for their prevention and for the preservation of the good order and dignity of alma mater
+which upon each such failure of his praise worthy endeavors would suffuse every lineament of his countenance left not the slightest room for doubt of his sincerity in the bosoms of even his most skeptical companions
+the adroitness too was no less worthy of observation by which he contrived to shift the sense of the grotesque from the creator to the created
+from his own person to the absurdities to which he had given rise in no instance before that of which i speak have i known the habitual mystific escape
+my friend appeared to live only for the severities of society and not even his own household
+with the memory of the baron ritzner von jung
+lay like an incubus upon the university
+during the greater part of the night had run wild upon the all engrossing topic of the times the baron who had been unusually silent and abstracted in the earlier portion of the evening
+and dwelt upon the benefits and more especially upon the beauties of the received code of etiquette in passages of arms with an ardor an eloquence
+an impressiveness and an affectionateness of manner which elicited the warmest enthusiasm from his hearers in general and absolutely staggered even myself who well knew him to be at heart
+a ridiculer of those very points for which he contended and especially to hold the entire fanfaronade of duelling etiquette in the sovereign contempt which it deserves
+looking around me during a pause in the baron's discourse of which my readers may gather some faint idea when i say that it bore resemblance to the fervid chanting monotonous yet musical sermonic manner of coleridge
+except perhaps in the single particular that he was a very great fool he contrived to bear however among a particular set at the university a reputation for deep metaphysical thinking
+and i believe for some logical talent as a duellist he had acquired who had fallen at his hands but they were many he was a man of courage undoubtedly
+but it was upon his minute acquaintance with the etiquette of the duello and the nicety of his sense of honor that he most especially prided himself these things were a hobby which he rode to the death to ritzner
+ever upon the lookout for the grotesque his peculiarities had for a long time past afforded food for mystification of this however i was not aware
+i perceived the excitement of the latter momently increasing at length he spoke offering some objection to a point insisted upon by r and giving his reasons in detail
+to these the baron replied at length still maintaining his exaggerated tone of sentiment and concluding in what i thought very bad taste with a sarcasm and a sneer
+your opinions allow me to say baron von jung although in the main correct are in many nice points discreditable to yourself and to the university of which you are a member
+i would say sir that your opinions are not the opinions to be expected from a gentleman as hermann completed this equivocal sentence all eyes were turned upon the baron
+then excessively red then dropping his pocket handkerchief stooped to recover it when i caught a glimpse of his countenance while it could be seen by no one else at the table
+it was radiant with the quizzical expression which was its natural character but which i had never seen it assume except when we were alone together and when he unbent himself freely in an instant afterward he stood erect
+for a moment i even fancied that i had misconceived him and that he was in sober earnest he appeared to be stifling with passion and his face was cadaverously white
+for a short time he remained silent apparently striving to master his emotion having at length seemingly succeeded he reached a decanter which stood near him saying as he held it firmly clenched
+the language you have thought proper to employ
+in addressing yourself to me is objectionable in so many particulars that i have neither temper nor time for specification that my opinions however are not the opinions to be expected from a gentleman
+is an observation so directly offensive as to allow me but one line of conduct
+you will forgive me for the moderate tax i shall make upon your imagination and endeavor to consider for an instant
+this being done there will be no difficulty whatever i shall discharge this decanter of wine at your image in yonder mirror and thus fulfil all the spirit if not the exact letter of resentment for your insult
+while the necessity of physical violence to your real person will be obviated with these words he hurled the decanter full of wine against the mirror which hung directly opposite hermann
+striking the reflection of his person with great precision and of course shattering the glass into fragments the whole company at once started to their feet and with the exception of myself and ritzner took their departure
+as hermann went out the baron whispered me that i should follow him and make an offer of my services to this i agreed not knowing precisely what to make of so ridiculous a piece of business
+and taking my arm led me to his apartment i could hardly forbear laughing in his face while he proceeded to discuss with the profoundest gravity what he termed the refinedly peculiar character
+after a tiresome harangue in his ordinary style he took down from his book shelves a number of musty volumes on the subject of the duello and entertained me for a long time
+the theatre of honor by favyn
+brantome's memoirs of duels published at cologne sixteen sixty six
+with a fine margin and bound by derome
+and having the quaint title duelli lex scripta et non
+from this he read me one of the drollest chapters in the world
+per constructionem
+although not one syllable of the whole matter could i understand for the life of me having finished the chapter he closed the book and demanded what i thought necessary to be done i replied that i had entire confidence in his superior delicacy of feeling
+will hand you this note i find it incumbent upon me to request at your earliest convenience an explanation of this evening's occurrences at your chambers in the event of your declining this request
+having perused the cartel he wrote the following reply which i carried to hermann sir through our common friend mister p i have received your note of this evening
+upon due reflection i frankly admit the propriety of the explanation you suggest this being admitted i still find great difficulty owing to the refinedly peculiar nature of our disagreement
+i have great reliance however on that extreme delicacy of discrimination in matters appertaining to the rules of etiquette
+the nicety of your discernment in all the matters here treated will be sufficient i am assured
+to convince you that the mere circumstance of me referring you to this admirable passage ought to satisfy your request as a man of honor for explanation with sentiments of profound respect your most obedient servant von jung
+hermann commenced the perusal of this epistle with a scowl which however was converted into a smile of the most ludicrous self complacency
+et per se having finished reading he begged me with the blandest of all possible smiles to be seated while he made reference to the treatise in question turning to the passage specified he read it with great care to himself
+to assure him that the explanation offered was of the fullest the most honorable and the most unequivocally satisfactory nature somewhat amazed at all this i made my retreat to the baron
+he seemed to receive hermann's amicable letter as a matter of course and after a few words of general conversation went to an inner room and brought out the everlasting treatise duelli lex scripta et non
+he handed me the volume and asked me to look over some portion of it i did so but to little purpose not being able to gather the least particle of meaning he then took the book himself and read me a chapter aloud to my surprise
+he now explained the mystery
+and even of profundity while in fact not a shadow of meaning existed the key to the whole was found in leaving out every second and third word alternately
+when there appeared a series of ludicrous quizzes upon a single combat as practised in modern times the baron afterwards informed me that he had purposely thrown the treatise in hermann's way
+two or three weeks before the adventure and that he was satisfied from the general tenor of his conversation
+and firmly believed it to be a work of unusual merit upon this hint he proceeded
+hermann would have died a thousand deaths rather than acknowledge his inability to understand anything and everything in the universe that had ever been written about the duello
+sustains the shortest lived human beings of our universe it is seldom that any of the creatures reach more than four years of age according to our standards of time
+they are nearly as large as we and relatively much lighter in weight all the periods of physical growth are correspondingly decreased children walk four or five weeks after birth
+and are capable of receiving regular instruction at the age of five months strange as it may seem this sphere which for convenience we will call brief
+revolves very slowly on its axis so that our world makes fifteen times as many revolutions as this planet it requires but little arithmetic to figure out that the people of brief do not see the sun rise very often
+on this world of brief all vegetables mature in periods so short that one marvels when he hears it think of cereals reaching maturity in seven or eight of our days or during one day of brief
+early in the morning certain crops are planted and are harvested at night two or more days are required for maturing other crops actually the people of brief raise their crops with less labor than is required amongst us
+if you were permitted to look upon the public and private life of this incredible world your first sensation would be dizziness not to mention the weirdness of all sights that would confront you at every turn
+and if by lease of strength they pass on toward an age of four years it is but an evidence of their exceptional vitality it seems to be true that the experiences of a long life of sixty or eighty years is crowded into a narrow compass of four years
+there being no competition no time or space is required for sensational trash thus if nothing of importance occurs nothing need be transmitted the official news censors decide as to the relative importance of occurrences
+there need not be a certain amount of news telegraphed each hour the government verifies as much as possible all reports before they are transmitted there are indeed some advantages in the government being in constant touch with each home under its care
+the advertising department pays nearly all expenses of this whole system of journalism announcements for private gain are paid at a regular rate it costs more to advertise at certain periods than at other times
+they never think of covering the feet under any change of climate if one of the briefites were to step upon the shores of our rugged earth and see the cotton or wool and leather that lies around our feet it would appear to him as the most ridiculous thing imaginable
+neither the men women nor children seem to seek this means for self beautifying they seem to think that beauty of character has a radiance more to be desired than the flash of opals or the luster of silks their garments partake of the loose flowing order
+for instance a strong fabric of chosen shade is fastened at the neck hip knee and ankle and lies carelessly over the parts between the females never graduated to the corset degree and while they do not cut a scientific figure
+transportation the methods of traveling are so contrary to our conceptions and practices that i almost forbear to attempt any description
+when an exchange of seats is necessary it is all done so easily and so quickly that you would wonder why we tolerate trolley cars in traveling from city to city a system is in use that i will call the toboggan slide system
+although the cars run on wheels the car is raised in a shaft about one hundred feet and then by gravity it dashes two or more miles according to the lay of the land traversed then another rise more or less than one hundred feet is experienced
+and then another wild dash i have no words of praise for this system although the briefites can cover considerable territory in an hour they look upon this gravity system as a wonderful achievement for it has not been in operation for more than three hundred years
+the power of steam has never been utilized no genius of all this active world of brief ever conceived the idea that almost unlimited power lies wrapped up in thin vapory water but they have discovered what we would call gaseous oil
+and have learned to put it to work so that it is the main force employed in hoisting and all other purposes where power is required nothing like a traveling locomotive has ever been made although i learned that a bright wizard was experimenting
+and that he prophesied great changes when his gas propelled vehicle was perfected think of how much value an ordinary citizen of our world would be to these briefites if he could step upon their world and communicate with them concerning the magic wonders of steam
+and the manner of constructing stationary and movable engines to say nothing of the hidden wonders of electricity quadrupeds that take the place of our horses are used for drayage although nothing except the two wheeled class of vehicles was ever used until some eighty seven years ago
+public highways these interesting people excel us in their style and manner of home building fencing and making public highways we are heathenish in our progress along the line of road making especially
+in all my vast journey among the worlds i found only a few comparatively whereon the roads were inferior to ours in the world of brief the state prescribes the manner of public highways and each citizen must contribute his share to their creation and maintenance
+very intricate and elaborate problems are solved by these people of a few years they are inferior to us in a hundred ways in the broad fields of manufacture and invention they lag a long distance in the rear this is principally due to their lack of time
+religious life the religious life of the people of brief is on an average of a higher type than is found in our world their belief in immortality has run parallel with their existence as a people
+the most faithful translation of this word into our language would be god affluence kerm cher or god breath appeared upon brief full grown
+similar to christ he confirmed his identity by unanswerable miracles many however disbelieved in kerm cher and held to the old axiomatic truths thus creeds were prevalent and they remain until now
+only there is much less variety than is found amongst us kerm cher set up a new reign and accepted a temporal throne for a season he finally announced that his ambassadorship would soon cease
+and that his followers would lose the throne of civil power that they would be tested for a season in the valley of humiliation and by the fires of terrible persecution and that they who would endure unto the end would be glorified
+moisture from the night's rain hung on the tree leaves clung in globules to rynch's sweating body he lay on a wide branch trying to control the heavy panting which supplied his laboring lungs
+and he could still hear the echoes of the startled cries which had come from the men who had threaded through the woods to the up pointed tail fins of the l b now he tried to reason why he had run they were his own kind
+they would take him out of the loneliness of a world heretofore empty of his species but that tall man the one who had led the party into the irregular clearing about the life boat rynch shivered
+dug his nails into the wood on which he lay at the sight of that man dream and reality had crashed together sending him into panic stricken flight that was the man from the room
+the man with the cup as his heart quieted he began to think more coherently first he had not been able to find the strong jaws's den
+then the marks on the ground at the point from which he had fallen and the l b were here just as he remembered but not far from the small ship he had discovered something more a campsite with a shelter fashioned out of spalls and vines
+to go back to the ship clearing was to risk capture but he had to know rynch looked with more attention at his present surroundings deep mold under the trees here would hold tracks there might just be another way to move
+though it was balled in upon itself he was sure the creature was fully as large as he and the menacing claws suggested it was a formidable opponent when it made no move to follow him
+rynch began to hope it had only been defending its own hiding place for its present attitude suggested concealment still facing that featureless blob in the tree the man retreated alert for the first sign of advance on the part of the creature above
+none came and he dared to slip around the bole of the tree under which he stood listening intently for any corresponding movement overhead now he was facing that survivor's camp
+another object crouched in the dark of the lean to shelter just as its fellow was on sentry duty in the tree only this one did not have the self color of the foliage to disguise it four limbed its long forearms curved about its bent knees
+and the sense organs of eyes and nose squeezed together on the lower quarter of the rounded portion with a line of wide mouth to split the blunt round of the muzzle dark pits for eyes showed no pupil iris or cornea
+the nose was a black perfectly rounded tube jutting an inch or so beyond the cheek surface grotesque alien and terrifying it made no hostile move and since it had not turned its head he could not be sure it had even sighted him
+but it knew he was there he was certain of that and was waiting for what as the long seconds crawled by rynch began to believe that it was not waiting for him heartened he pulled at the vine loop
+climbed back into the tree minutes later he discovered that there were more than two of the beasts waiting quietly about the camp and that their sentry line ran between him and the clearing of the l b he withdrew farther into the wood
+intent upon finding a detour which would bring him out into the open lands now he wanted to join forces with his own kind whether those men were potential enemies or not as time passed the beasts closed about the clearing of the camp
+afternoon was fading into evening when he reached a point several miles downstream near the river since he had come into the open he had not sighted any of the watchers he hoped they did not willingly venture out of the trees where the leaves were their protection
+rynch went flat on the stream bank made a worm's progress up the slope to crouch behind a bush and survey the land immediately ahead there stood an off world spacer fins down nose skyward
+and grouped not too far from its landing ramp a collection of bubble tents a fire burned in their midst and men were moving about it now that he was free from the wood and its watchers and had come so near to his goal
+rynch was curiously reluctant to do the sensible thing to rise out of concealment and walk up to that fire to claim rescue by his own kind the man he sought stood by the fire
+shrugging his arms into a webbing harness which brought a box against his chest having made that fast he picked up a needler by its sling by their gestures the others were arguing with him but he shook his head came on
+that idea made sense and in the meantime he would let the other past him follow along behind until he was far enough from the camp so that his friends could not interfere then they would have a meeting
+in spite of his caution rynch was close to betrayal as he edged around a clump of vegetation growing half in half out of the stream only a timely rustle told him that the other had sat down on a drift log waiting for him rynch froze
+so startled that he could not think clearly for a second then he noted that the outline of the other's body was visible growing brighter by the moment minute particles of pale greenish radiance were gathering about the other the dark shadow of an arm flapped the radiance swirled
+but they no longer gathered in strength enough to light his presence now he could see they drifted about the vegetation about the log where the man sat about rocks and reeds only they were thicker about the stranger as if his body were a magnet
+he continued to keep them whirling by means of waving hand and arm but there was enough light to show rynch the fingers of his other hand busy on the front panel of the box he wore that fingering stopped then rynch's head came up as he heard a very faint sound
+not a beast's cry or was it again those fingers moved on the panel was the other sending a message by that means rynch watched him check the webbing count the equipment at his belt settle the needler in the crook of his arm
+however the other was as wary of that dark as if he suspected what might lie in wait there he angled along northward avoiding clumps of scattered brush keeping in the open where rynch dared not tail him too closely
+their course parallel to the woods brought them at last to a second stream the size of a river into which the first creek emptied here the other settled down between two rocks with every indication of remaining there for a period
+thankfully rynch found his own lurking place from which he could keep the other in sight the light points gathered hung in a small luminous cloud over the rocks but rynch had prudently withdrawn under a bush
+and the scent of its aromatic leaves must have discouraged the sparks for no such crown came to his sentry post drugged with fatigue the younger man slept awaking to full day a fog of bewilderment
+what was the purpose of the other's expedition was he going to use the open cut through which the river ran as a way of penetrating the wooded country now rynch considered the problem from his own angle the man from the spacer had made no effort to conceal his trail
+in fact it would almost seem that he had deliberately gone out of his way to leave boot prints on favorable stretches of ground did he guess that rynch lurked behind was now leading him on for some purpose of his own
+or were those traces left to guide another party from the camp to advance openly up the stream bed was to invite discovery rynch surveyed the nearer bank clumps of small trees and high growing bushes dotted that expanse an ideal cover
+that sound of snarling spitting hate ended in mid cry as rynch crawled to the river bank the man from the spacer camp had been the focus of a three prong attack from a female and her cubs
+three red bodies were flat and still on the gravel as the off worlder leaned back against a rock breathing heavily as rynch sighted him he stooped to recover the needler he had dropped lurched away from the rock towards the water
+clawed at the ground about him already he was buried to his knees then his mid thighs in the artificial quicksand but he had not lost his head and was jerking from side to side in an effort to pull free rynch got to his feet
+walked with slow deliberation down to the river's brink the trapped prisoner had shied halfway around stretching out his arms to find a firmer grip on some rock large and heavy enough to anchor him after his first startled cry he had made no sound
+but now as he sighted rynch his eyes widened and his lips parted the box on his chest caught on a stone he had dragged to him in a desperate try for support
+there was a spitting of sparks and the stranger worked frantically at the buckle of the webbing harness to loosen it and toss the whole thing from him the box struck one of the dead water cats flashed as fur and flesh were singed
+rynch watched dispassionately before he caught the needler jerking it away from the prisoner the man eyed him steadily and his expression did not alter even when rynch swung the off world weapon to center its sights on the late owner
+suppose rynch's voice was rusty sounding in his own ears we talk now the man nodded
+and a crane let them down to the conical top of the projectile there an opening made for the purpose gave them access to the aluminum car the tackle belonging to the crane being hauled from outside
+nicholl once introduced with his companions inside the projectile began to close the opening by means of a strong plate held in position by powerful screws other plates closely fitted
+covered the lenticular glasses and the travelers hermetically enclosed in their metal prison were plunged in profound darkness and now my dear companions said michel ardan
+gas was not invented for moles so saying the thoughtless fellow lit a match by striking it on the sole of his boot and approached the burner fixed to the receptacle in which the carbonized hydrogen
+stored at high pressure sufficed for the lighting and warming of the projectile for a hundred and forty four hours or six days and six nights the gas caught fire
+and thus lighted the projectile looked like a comfortable room with thickly padded walls furnished with a circular divan and a roof rounded in the shape of a dome michel ardan examined everything
+you smile barbicane
+do you say to yourself this prison may be our tomb tomb perhaps still i would not change it for mahomet's which floats in space but never advances an inch
+while michel ardan was speaking barbicane and nicholl were making their last preparations nicholl's chronometer marked twenty minutes past ten p m when the three travelers were finally enclosed in their projectile
+this chronometer was set within the tenth of a second by that of murchison the engineer barbicane consulted it my friends said he it is twenty minutes past ten at forty seven minutes past ten
+murchison will launch the electric spark on the wire which communicates with the charge of the columbiad at that precise moment we shall leave our spheroid thus we still have twenty seven minutes to remain on the earth
+well exclaimed michel ardan in a good humored tone much may be done in twenty six minutes
+well twenty four if you like my noble captain said ardan twenty four minutes in which to investigate michel said barbicane during the passage we shall have plenty of time to investigate the most difficult questions
+for the present we must occupy ourselves with our departure are we not ready doubtless but there are still some precautions to be taken to deaden as much as possible the first shock
+have we not the water cushions placed between the partition breaks whose elasticity will sufficiently protect us i hope so michel replied barbicane gently but i am not sure
+asked barbicane humph said michel ardan it is not easy we are in the train and the guard's whistle will sound before twenty four minutes are over twenty said nicholl
+for some moments the three travelers looked at each other then they began to examine the objects imprisoned with them everything is in its place said barbicane
+we have now to decide how we can best place ourselves to resist the shock position cannot be an indifferent matter and we must as much as possible prevent the rush of blood to the head
+no said barbicane let us stretch ourselves on our sides we shall resist the shock better that way remember that when the projectile starts it matters little whether we are in it or before it
+replied the captain we've still thirteen minutes and a half that nicholl is not a man exclaimed michel he is a chronometer with seconds an escape and eight holes
+we might well ask ourselves of what materials are the hearts of these americans made to whom the approach of the most frightful danger added no pulsation
+three thick and solidly made couches had been placed in the projectile nicholl and barbicane placed them in the center of the disc forming the floor
+there the three travelers were to stretch themselves some moments before their departure during this time ardan not being able to keep still turned in his narrow prison like a wild beast in a cage
+chatting with his friends speaking to the dogs diana and satellite to whom as may be seen he had given significant names ah diana ah satellite
+he exclaimed teasing them so you are going to show the moon dogs the good habits of the dogs of the earth that will do honor to the canine race if ever we do come down again
+i will bring a cross type of moon dogs which will make a stir if there are dogs in the moon said barbicane there are said michel ardan just as there are horses cows
+donkeys and chickens i bet that we shall find chickens a hundred dollars we shall find none said nicholl done my captain replied ardan clasping nicholl's hand but by the bye
+thirty seven minutes six seconds past ten it is understood captain well before another quarter of an hour you will have to count nine thousand dollars to the president
+four thousand because the columbiad will not burst and five thousand because the projectile will rise more than six miles in the air
+i only ask to be allowed to pay come nicholl i see that you are a man of method which i could never be but indeed you have made a series of bets of very little advantage to yourself allow me to tell you
+and why asked nicholl because if you gain the first the columbiad will have burst and the projectile with it and barbicane will no longer be there to reimburse your dollars my stake is deposited at the bank in baltimore
+replied barbicane simply and if nicholl is not there it will go to his heirs ah you practical men exclaimed michel ardan i admire you the more for not being able to understand you
+at the bottom of a gun nine hundred feet long and under this projectile are rammed four hundred thousand pounds of gun cotton which is equal to one million six hundred thousand pounds of ordinary powder and friend murchison
+his eye fixed on the needle his finger on the electric apparatus is counting the seconds preparatory to launching us into interplanetary space enough michel enough
+said barbicane in a serious voice let us prepare
+one clasp of the hand my friends yes exclaimed michel ardan more moved than he wished to appear and the three bold companions were united in a last embrace god preserve us
+barbicane quickly put out the gas and lay down by his companions and the profound silence was only broken by the ticking of the chronometer marking the seconds
+their culture myth which he has recorded
+the blood gushed from him at every step and as it fell turned into flint stones the victor returned to his grandmother and established his lodge in the far east on the borders of the great ocean whence the sun comes in time he became the father of mankind
+of the early native traditions so strong is the resemblance ioskeha bears to michabo that what has been said in explanation of the latter will be sufficient for both
+yet i do not imagine that the one was copied or borrowed from the other we cannot be too cautious in adopting such a conclusion the two nations were remote in everything but geographical position
+i call to mind another similar myth in it a mother is also said to have brought forth twins or a pair of twins and to have paid for them with her life again the one is described as the bright
+scholars likewise have interpreted the mother to mean the dawn the twins either light and darkness or the four winds yet this is not algonkin theology nor is it at all related to that of the iroquois
+it is the story of sarama in the rig veda and was written in sanscrit under the shadow of the himalayas centuries before homer such uniformity points not to a common source in history
+but in psychology man chiefly cognizant of his soul through his senses thought with an awful horror of the night which deprived him of the use of one and foreshadowed the loss of all therefore
+light and life were to him synonymous therefore all religions promise to lead from night to light from night to heavenly light therefore he who rescues is ever the light of the world
+a messiah fairer than the children of men fulfilled in that day when he appeared in garments so white as no fuller on earth could white them
+language itself is proof of it many algonkin words for east morning dawn day light
+are derived from a radical signifying white
+but pachacama attacked and drove him to the north irritated at his defeat he took with him the rain and consequently to this day the sea coast of peru is largely an arid desert now when we are informed that the south wind
+for asked the incas
+for he was attacked with murderous intent by the beings whom he had created when however scorning such unequal combat he had manifested his power by hurling the lightning on the hill sides and consuming the forests
+they recognized their maker and humbled themselves before him he was reconciled and taught them arts and agriculture institutions and religion meriting the title they gave him of pachayachachic
+teacher of all things at last he disappeared in the western ocean four personages companions or sons were closely connected with him
+to a third the east to a fourth the west
+and that of michabo both precede and create the sun both journey to the west overcoming opposition with the thunderbolt both divide the world between the four winds both were the fathers gods and teachers of their nations
+nor does it cease here michabo i have shown is the white spirit of the dawn viracocha all authorities translate
+for his high priest always bore his name but he himself is a pure creation of the fancy and all his alleged history is nothing but a myth his emblematic name the bird serpent and his rebus and cross at
+i have already explained others of his titles were
+yolcuat the rattlesnake tohil the rumbler huemac the strong hand
+the same dualism reappears in him that has been noted in his analogues elsewhere he is both lord of the eastern light and the winds as the former he was born of a virgin in the land of tula or tlapallan in the distant orient
+he was figuratively said to sweep the road for him since in that country violent winds are the precursors of the wet seasons wherever he went all manner of singing birds bore him company emblems of the whistling breezes
+the hill of shouting with such a mighty voice that it could be heard a hundred leagues around the arrows which he shot transfixed great trees the stones he threw levelled forests
+and when he laid his hands on the rocks the mark was indelible yet as thus emblematic of the thunder storm he possessed in full measure
+he multiplies many others we have noted many kinds of depreciation destruction and wearing out of wealth but the normal thing in a healthy society is an increase on the whole of rent bearers
+the increase of rents is due to two causes changes in the agents by which they become more efficient technically or more numerous and changes taking place outside of the agents
+affecting the utility of the products the first of these will be considered in this section the increase of the efficiency of agents is usually the aim of the individual producer
+and thus is brought about an increase of the stock of wealth in some cases however improvements such as the dredging of harbors or as the protecting of forests are made by men collectively through the agency of governments
+somewhere however the desire for these changes must arise in the minds of individuals increase of most things involves cost or sacrifice in the psychological sense
+other tracts less fertile or for some reason less available are ditched tiled and diked and fertilizers are carried up steep hillsides to make a soil upon the very crags
+enabling them to carry a greater amount of freight within a year
+that make machines stronger quicker and better this proposition is not logically different from the preceding a machine is an arrangement of material things
+through which force may be indirectly applied to move matter no fast line divides machinery as regards form purpose or cause of value from the artificially improved natural agents
+that we have been discussing just as a field is drained plowed and cultivated to fit it better to yield a crop so is the iron ore shaped into a form
+if the quality or efficiency of looms is doubled it is as if their number had grown in like proportion in its economic function the beast of burden may not illogically be classed with inanimate machines
+and there was much comment on this evidence of a declining industry it was not at once recognized that there was embodied in horse flesh more horse power than ever before
+so as to make a more efficient agent and machines in turn may be adjusted as parts of a larger system of production the ideal of the modern factory system is so to arrange the machinery
+that no bit of material will make an unnecessary motion the log once started through the mill is carried automatically from one machine to another until it emerges as a roll of paper
+or as a box of tooth picks ready for use in an american watch factory one man tends twelve or fifteen automatic machines a small brass rod is fed automatically to the machine
+where it is ready for the assembling of the watch as the machinery improves factories making allied products are grouped to make a system still more efficient as the number of agents increases
+they are distributed so as to be where most useful to the owner a man having two umbrellas keeps one at his office and the other at home a student having two books of the same kind
+which capture the natural forces of the world put them into the right place at the right time and make them do the right thing or which group and relate the materials of the world in the right ways
+some of the groupings in the chemical and physical world that do not fit man's purposes may be made to do so
+but in doing that he affects the agents owned and controlled by others the ideal from a social standpoint is to increase not rent but the welfare of society
+and this is not always the ideal of individuals seeking their own interest however as the efficiency of some agents rises it becomes unnecessary and unprofitable to use the less fertile fields
+they cease to be rent bearers and the rent of the richer fields falls under the influence of the new supply of products some inventions suddenly increase the efficiency of free goods to such a degree
+that the less efficient rented agents are thrown out of use and the margin of utilization is moved to a higher plane than it was on before improved types of machinery more or less rapidly displace the older
+less efficient types which therefore more or less completely lose their rent bearing power long before they are physically worn out
+when improvements in agriculture that are applicable to a considerable area of land take place and the product thus is increased and cheapened the poorer land is abandoned
+agents of the same kind may diminish in number either absolutely or relatively
+such a lucky find has lifted the mortgage from a farm in eastern pennsylvania from which in two or three years has been taken feldspar exceeding in value the agricultural products
+of the same land in the last fifty years the discovery of building stone coal natural gas or oil land may make the annual rent or royalty
+of land tenfold its former total value fitness to produce nettles is not ordinarily a virtue in land
+but the discovery that certain fields produce a superior quality of the nettle used for heckling cloth causes them to take on a new value a mineral spring because of the
+may be as good as a mine to the owner peculiar fitness for the cultivation of celery may convert marsh land into a substantial source of income
+social changes are constantly causing agents to shift from lower to higher uses as population grows and groups about new industries farm land is used for residence lots
+and in turn for business purposes rents therefore rise and this rise is reflected in the higher selling value of the land if a new demand arises for the product of any machine
+its rent rises although it may continue to turn out the same product
+may be relatively permanent or temporary business conditions sometimes change quickly an urgent demand for special machinery raises quickly its rent and value
+it is said that lace machinery is sometimes thrown out of use for several years until a sudden renewal of the demand for lace causes the rental to equal in two years
+more than the original cost at such times the value of factories increases greatly but after a few years of prosperity business again collapses
+such prosperous periods are the opportunity of the business man and of the promoter to sell the factory at its highest price machinery adapted only for a special product
+will not sell as readily when less needed for its special use as that which like a turning lathe can be used for many purposes but the more special the appliances needed for a certain product the higher
+more abnormal will be their temporary value when they are suddenly needed land near the site of an exposition takes on a very
+puts a check or sets a limit to the rise in this search for new devices the man who can see most quickly and clearly has a key to wealth
+some kinds of agents as rare minerals or tools that can be produced only by highly skilled labor cannot be increased rapidly in number and remain high in price for a long period
+and favorably located building sites illustrate the same principle in some cases it is true the demand may be due to some temporary cause
+waterworks gas works street railways ferries and wharves this evidently is only a special illustration of the principle just stated where it is not easy to find a substitute for certain agents
+public franchises entitle the owners to special sometimes exclusive privileges and protect them legally from competition not all franchises are valuable
+many street railways are unfortunate ventures the earnings being insufficient to pay expenses to say nothing of interest on the investment but when they pay greatly
+their high value is due to the impossibility of competition the cars mules dynamos steam engines
+due to accidental and social causes raising the rents of wealth the term unearned increment may be defined as an increase in rents or value of agents
+due to something other than the efforts or merits of the owner in fact it is that of which we have been speaking in some cases powerful or wealthy men
+can bring about social changes in entirely legitimate ways the owner of a large factory moving it into the country may buy up surrounding land and found a city converting pasture lands and corn fields
+is powerless to affect the result he can only adapt his conduct in some measure so as to reap an advantage he can strive to increase the number and quality
+as well as of gain the term unearned increment has been frequently used in recent years
+satisfaction and gratification being only temporary conditions economic wants appear in more or less regularly recurring series impressions are short lived sensations are temporary
+wants that have been satisfied recur wants recur for the same reason that they first arose no impression on the nerves or on the senses is lasting
+the utility to that person of that thing or service for that particular moment falls it may be even to zero to keep wants satisfied is impossible we cannot do next year's reading or next week's eating now
+in its power to gratify wants the closer the correspondence between the two series that of wants and that of goods the greater will be the total of gratification
+or by society during the income period the term national or social income may be contrasted with individual or private income in the objective sense
+only when goods are produced individuals may acquire income by gift bequest theft or other modes of transfer from other individuals in many cases the two kinds of income however agree
+the objective income of society being the algebraic sum of the goods acquired or parted with by all the individuals we should not understand that either social or private objective incomes include only material goods
+for many utilities and labor services that never take on a material or money expression are included in either case indeed we are close here to the conception of psychic income
+must be a net addition but the term gross income is not without popular and practical meaning gross income is sometimes spoken of in the sense of total receipts
+as the total of goods secured net income is the remainder after deducting expenditures and after replacing the goods employed to secure the income in order to produce some goods technically
+men make use of other goods while they are storing up a supply of wood or coal it may be looked upon as the income but they may burn it to help grow hothouse plants
+while they gather flowers with one hand they destroy fuel with the other only the net increase in value can be accounted income in the second period
+the goods that come into a man's possession in any period are of many sorts to get some he has destroyed many previously existing goods
+while to get others he has not needed to use up the accumulations of the past or to mortgage the future the one kind is gross the other net income
+of a series of gratifications is a regular series of consumption goods but many things existing which could be used to secure a gratification are not in fact treated as consumption goods
+a crop of corn is not all income in a time of famine it could be used but seed corn was saved from last year
+it is true that everything called wealth is expected to contribute sooner or later in some way to the sum of gratifications it is for that reason it is called wealth it is however
+a mere figure of speech to say indirect want gratifiers become want gratifying goods for example the engine transporting a load of coal is indirectly gratifying wants
+between present and future incomes the value of the mass of wealth in possession and yielding income rests in large part upon its power of contributing to income in some future period thus
+such as lands railroad stocks government bonds et cetera the income is funded because it corresponds to an abiding fund of wealth the income arising from current labor is unfunded
+because there is no permanent fund of accumulated wealth corresponding to it the idea of regularity connected with funded income is not essential to the idea of income in general
+if it is part of the sum of goods that flows in that is newly available for the man's use it is income but funded income is the more abiding for income from wages stops
+the real income but certainly it is not income in the most essential sense things outside of men cannot be feelings they can only call out or occasion feeling
+and reducible to psychic income some portions at least of the objective incomes of goods are continually by use becoming subjective incomes of enjoyment
+men talk of material income as consisting of bushels of wheat head of cattle et cetera and of immaterial income as the uses that durable goods yield directly
+or that men perform for each other e g those of the singer physician teacher judge all services that do not take on material form
+there was a long standing dispute in economic literature regarding the difference between productive and unproductive labor productive labor was said to be that which embodied itself in abiding material form
+the distinction led to some peculiar puzzles and paradoxes the bartender mixing drinks adds to the value of those ingredients in a minute that value is dissipated
+according to the distinction in question he is a productive laborer because his services are embodied in material form whereas the lecturer is regarded as an unproductive laborer
+but whether or not the service has for a moment embodied itself in material form is of no essential economic import
+but a similar distinction is inconsistently preserved by many writers in the case of material things a building used as a factory is called productive
+but used by the owner as a dwelling it is called unproductive because the service it renders does not appear in material form but the use of the house or that of land for a school ground or campus
+and thus his felt dependence on goods extends over a series of future productive agents in order to simplify the problem we have spoken of the economic man as living only in and for the moment
+if he had no more knowledge memory or imagination than is necessary to compare goods here only present goods could have value to him even the higher animals and much more the savages
+to be used by a hungry man for food for a sheep to be kept for breeding or for wool to be made into cloth next year he may overlook the difference in the grade of wants compared in this case a gratification
+of the present moment is compared with a gratification of a very different kind at a future time the problem involved is complex because of differences in time in place and in the nature of the want gratifiers
+who made an entry on her pad and beckoned to the girl next to marian to come forward straight down the line he went sometimes stopping a girl at her third or fourth line rarely allowing them to read farther than the eleventh or twelfth
+nora was the second phi sigma tau to undergo the ordeal as she briskly delivered the opening lines the actor stopped her taking the book from her he turned to the part where touchstone quaintly humorous holds forth upon the lie seven times removed
+read this he said briefly holding out the book to nora nora began and read glibly on unconsciously emphasizing as she did so down one page she read and half way through the next before mister southard seemed satisfied
+then he again held conversation with miss tebbs who nodded and looked smilingly toward nora who stood scowling faintly rather ill pleased at attracting so much attention
+whispered jessica to grace who was about to reply when mister southard motioned to her grace who knew the scene by heart went fearlessly forward and read the lines with splendid emphasis marian and eva allen followed her
+and acquitted themselves with credit then eleanor's turn came handing her coat which she had taken off and carried upon her arm to edna wright she walked proudly over then without a trace of self consciousness
+began the reading of the designated lines her voice sounded unusually clear and sweet yet lacked something of the power of expression displayed by grace in her rendering of the same scene when she had finished
+she handed the book back with an air of studied indifference she was far from feeling she had decided in her own mind that rosalind was the part best suited to her and felt that the honor now lay between herself and grace
+no other girls with the exception of nora had been allowed to read as much of any scene as they two had been requested to read but eleanor had reckoned without her host for there was one girl who had not as yet come to the front
+the girl was anne pierson who in some mysterious manner had been all but overlooked until miss tebbs spied her standing between grace and nora can you spare us a moment more mister southard said miss tebbs to the actor who was preparing to leave
+just as that teacher had observed her as most of the girls present had heard anne recite
+they expected her to live up to her reputation and she had scarcely delivered the opening line before they realized that she would not disappoint them her musical voice vibrated with expression
+and the mock serious bantering tones in which she delivered rosalind's witty speeches caused mister southard to smile and nod approvingly as she gave full value to the immortal lines her change of voice from rosalind to orlando was wholly delightful
+and so charmingly did she depict both characters that when she ended with orlando's exit she received a little ovation from the listening girls in which mister southard and miss tebbs joined
+i wanted her to play rosalind and i knew she could do it look girls mister southard is shaking hands with her true enough anne was shyly shaking hands with the great actor who was congratulating her warmly upon her recent effort
+i am sure rosalind will be safe with you
+if i am anywhere near here when your play is enacted i shall make it a point to come and see it shaking hands warmly with miss tebbs and bowing to the admiring girls mister southard hurriedly departed leaving his audience devoured with curiosity as to the chosen ones
+anne stood perfectly still looking rather dazed the unexpected had happened she was to have not only a part but the best part at that the girls gathered eagerly about her congratulating her on her success
+but she was too overcome to thank them and smiled at them through a mist of tears look at eleanor whispered nora to grace she's so angry she can't see straight she must have wanted to play rosalind herself
+i told you she'd sulk if she couldn't be the leading lady grace glanced over toward eleanor who stood biting her lip her hands clenched and her face set in angry lines she looks like the vendetta or the camorra
+or some other italian vengeance agency doesn't she said nora with a giggle grace laughed in spite of herself at nora's remark but regretted it the next moment for eleanor saw the glances directed toward her and heard nora's giggle
+then stopped and turning her back upon the phi sigma tau began talking to edna wright just then miss tebbs who had been busy with her list announced that she would now name the cast and all conversation ceased as by magic
+miriam nesbit was intrusted with the duke while marian barber was to play frederick his brother jessica was in raptures over phebe while nora had captured touchstone eva allen audrey and to her great delight
+you will report for rehearsal next tuesday afternoon after school when typewritten copies of your parts will be handed you said miss tebbs as she was about to leave the room the moment miss tebbs ceased talking the girls began as they gathered in little groups around the lucky ones
+there goes eleanor after miss tebbs observed marian barber what do you suppose she's up to now oh never mind her said nora impatiently you'll see enough of her during rehearsal it will be so pleasant to rehearse with her
+considering that she isn't on speaking terms with any of us had the girl chums known then what eleanor was up to it would have been a matter of surprise and indignation to all of them after imperiously commanding her satellites to wait for her in the corridor
+eleanor overtook miss tebbs just outside miss thompson's office i want to speak to you miss tebbs said eleanor as the teacher paused her hand on the doorknob well what can i do for you miss savell i want to speak to you about the play
+and you can win plenty of applause playing it you must understand however that once having given out a part i should not attempt to take it from the girl i had given it to simply because some other girl desired it that would be both unfair and unjust
+stood awaiting her reply i should like to do that eleanor said slowly a curious light in her eyes thank you very much miss tebbs
+although the girls belonging to julia's party were silent concerning what happened at the omnibus house the story leaked out creating considerable discussion among the members of the two upper classes julia crosby had a shrewd suspicion
+that edna wright had been the original purveyor of the news and in this she was right edna had under pledge of secrecy told it to a sophomore who immediately told it to her dearest friend and so the tale traveled until it reached eleanor
+with numerous additions far from pleasing to her she was thoroughly angry and at once laid the matter at grace's door while her animosity toward grace grew daily but grace was not the only person that eleanor disliked
+from the day that miss thompson had taken her to task for absence she had entertained a supreme contempt for the principal of which miss thompson was wholly unaware until encountering eleanor one morning in the corridor
+a direct slap in the face could scarcely have conveyed greater insult than did that one insolent glance the principal was at a loss as to its import she wisely decided to ignore it but stored it up in her memory for future reference
+the sorority that eleanor had mentioned in her letter to the phi sigma tau was now in full flower the seven girls who had accompanied her to the omnibus house were the chosen members they wore pins in the shape of skulls and cross bones
+and went about making mysterious signs to each other whenever they met the very name of the society was shrouded in mystery though nora o'malley was heard to declare that she had no doubt it was a branch of the black hand
+eleanor was the acknowledged leader but edna wright became a close second and between them they managed to disseminate a spirit of mischief throughout the school that the teachers found hard to combat grace harlowe watched the trend that affairs were taking with considerable anxiety
+who would follow her about like sheep and it was over these girls that grace felt worried if eleanor were to organize and carry out any malicious piece of mischief and they were implicated they would all have to suffer for what she would be directly responsible
+grace's heart was with her class she wished it to be a class among classes and felt an almost motherly anxiety for its success what does ail some of our class she exclaimed to anne and nora one day as they left the school building
+they seem possessed with imps the phi sigma tau girls and a few of the grinds are really the only ones who behave lately it's largely due to eleanor i think replied anne she seems to have become quite a power among some of the girls in the class
+hardly a recitation passes in my class
+the juniors will get the reputation among the teachers this year that the junior class had last and it seems such a pity i overheard miss chester tell miss kane the other day
+that her junior classes were the most trying of the day because she had to work harder to maintain discipline than to teach her subject that's a nice reputation to carry around isn't it remarked nora indignantly but all we can do is to try harder than ever to make things go smoothly
+i don't believe their society will last long at any rate those girls are sure to quarrel among themselves and that will end the whole thing or they may go too far and have miss thompson to reckon with and that would probably cool their ardor o girls exclaimed grace
+there is talk of giving a shakespearian play with miss tebbs to engineer it and the cast to be chosen from the three lower classes the seniors of course will give their own play later how did you find out asked anne miss thompson herself told me about it replied grace
+i shall try awfully hard for a part even if it is only two lines said anne earnestly i wonder what play is to be chosen and if it is to be given for the school only
+the play hasn't been decided upon yet replied grace but the object of it is to get some money for new books for the school library the plan is to charge fifty cents a piece for the tickets and to give each girl a certain number of them to sell
+however i'm not going to bother much about the play now for the senior team has just sent me a challenge to play them saturday december twelfth so i'll have to get the team together and go to work we're awfully late this year about starting don't you think so asked nora
+yes admitted grace i am just as enthusiastic over basketball as ever only i haven't had the time to devote to it that i did last year never mind you'll make up for lost time after thanksgiving said anne soothingly as for me i'm going to dream about the play
+anne i believe you have more love for the stage than you will admit said grace laughing you are all taken up with the idea of this play if one could live in the same atmosphere as that of home then there could be no profession more delightful than that of the actor replied anne thoughtfully
+it is wonderful to feel that one is able to forget one's self and become some one else but it is more wonderful to make one's audience feel it too to have them forget that one is anything except the living breathing person whose character one is trying to portray
+i suppose it's the sense of power that one has over people's emotions that makes acting so fascinating it is the other side that i hate she added with a slight shudder i suppose theatrical people do undergo many hardships said grace
+who now that the subject had been opened wanted to hear more of anne's views of the stage unless any girl has remarkable talent i should advise her to keep off the stage said anne decidedly of course when a girl comes of a theatrical family for generations
+like maud adams or ethel barrymore then that is different she is practically born bred and brought up in the theatre she is as carefully guarded as though she lived in a little village simply because she knows from babyhood all the unpleasant features of the profession
+and how to avoid them there is some chance of her becoming great too of course real stars do appear once in a while who are too talented to be kept down however the really great ones are few and far between
+when i compare my life before i came here with the good times i have had since i met you girls i hate the very idea of the stage only she concluded with a shame faced air there are times when the desire to act is irresistible
+she certainly will said nora but to give the play a rest and come down to everyday affairs where shall we meet to go to the football game let me see said grace the game is to be called at three o'clock
+i suppose we shall all be through dinner by half past two you had better bring your girls to my house each of you is to have two and jessica has one besides mabel i am to have three i found another yesterday david promised to get me the tickets
+by the way girls do you think it would be of any use to invite eleanor eleanor exclaimed nora after what she has said to you you might as well throw your invitation into the fire for it's safe to say that she will do so when she receives it
+saw the trio approaching for a moment he did not recognize the gentleman in his summer attire when he did surprise then pleasure then a spirit of inquietude took possession of him he had been unexpectedly startled on ruth's birthnight
+by a vague something in kemp's eyes the feeling however had vanished gradually in the knowledge that the doctor always had a peculiarly intent gaze and moreover no one could have helped appreciating her loveliness that night
+this of itself will bring a softness into a man's manner and without doubt his fears had been groundless fears that he had not dared to put into words for old man as he was he realized that doctor kemp's strong personality
+was such as would prove dangerously seductive to any woman whom he cared to honor with his favor but with a get thee behind me satan desire he had put the question from him he could have taken his oath on ruth's heart wholeness
+yet now as he recognized her companion his misgivings returned threefold the courteous gentleman however was at his ease as they came up this is a surprise doctor he exclaimed cordially opening the gate and extending his hand
+kemp grasped his hand heartily i am a sort of surprise party he answered swinging ethel to the ground and watching her scamper off to the hotel and what is more he continued turning to him i have not brought a hamper which makes one of me
+this is a veritable land of milk and honey come up and listen to my wife rhapsodize how is she he asked turning with him and catching a glimpse of ruth's vanishing figure
+he protested at such a stupendous comparison and insisted that she make clear that the dummy was not included the short afternoon glided into evening and doctor kemp went over to the hotel and dined at the levices table
+ruth in a white wool gown sat opposite him it was the first time he had dined with them and he enjoyed a singular feeling over the situation
+she ate a hearty meal and that ruth who was unusually quiet tasted scarcely anything her father also observed it and resolved upon a course of strict surveillance he was glad to hear that the doctor had to leave on the early morning's train
+though of course he did not say so as they strolled about afterward he managed to keep his daughter with him and allowed kemp to appropriate his wife they finally drifted to the cottage steps
+and were enjoying the beauty of the night when will tyrrell presented himself before them good evening he said taking off his hat as he stood at the foot of the steps
+father says he has at last scared up two other gentlemen and will you please come over and play a rubber of whist mister levice felt himself a victim of circumstances he and mister tyrrell had been looking for a couple of opponents and had almost given up the search
+now when he decidedly objected to moving it would have been heartless not to go don't consider me said the doctor observing his hesitancy if it ill relieve you i assure you i shall not miss you in the least go right ahead jules urged his wife
+ruth and i will take care of the doctor if she had promised to take care of ruth it would have been more to his mind but since his wife was there what harm could accrue that his presence would prevent so with a sincere apology he went over to the hotel
+he hardly appreciated what an admirable aide he had left behind him in his wife kemp sat upon the top step and leaned his back against the railing
+who swayed to and fro in her rocker he was intently conscious of ruth's white figure perched on the window sill
+but she was rather startled when she perceived that kemp was addressing her i should like to show my prowess to you miss levice in what she asked somewhat dazed ruth ruth laughed her mother
+do you mean to say you have not heard a word of all my glowing compliments on your rowing and i was telling your mother that in all modesty i was considered a fine oar at my alma mater
+that as it is such a beautiful night there is nothing to prevent your taking a little row and then each can judge of the other's claim to superiority my claim has never been justly established said ruth i have never allowed any one to usurp my oars
+as yet corrected kemp then will you wrap something about you and come down to the river certainly she will answered her mother run in and get some wraps ruth you will come too mamma of course but considering doctor kemp's length
+a third in your little boat will be the proverbial trumpery still i suppose i can rely on you two crack oarsmen though you know the slightest tremble in the boat in the fairest weather is likely to create a squall on my part
+if doctor kemp wished to row he should row and since the jewish missus grundy was not on hand anything harmlessly enjoyable was permissible ruth went indoors this was certainly something she had not bargained for
+how could her mother be so blind as not to know or feel her desire to evade doctor kemp she felt a positive contempt for herself that his presence should affect her as it did she dared not look at him lest her heart should flutter to her eyes
+probably the display amused him what was she to him anyway but a girl with whom he could flirt in his idle moments well with a passionate fling of her arms she would extinguish her uncontrollable little beater for the nonce
+she would meet and answer every one of his long glances in kind she wound a black lace shawl around her head and with some wraps for her mother came out hadn't you better put something over your shoulders he asked deferentially as she appeared
+and disgust the night with lack of appreciation she turned to a corner of the porch and lifted a pair of oars to her shoulder why he said in surprise coming toward her you keep your oars at home on the principle of neither a borrower nor a lender be
+we find it saves both time and spleen she held them lightly in place on her shoulder allow me he said placing his hand upon the oars a spirit of contradiction took possession of her
+he gently lifted her resisting fingers one by one and raised the broad bone of contention to his shoulder
+the crickets chirped in the hedges now and then a firefly flashed before them
+others are enjoying themselves also he remarked as their feet touched the pebbly beach a faint crescent moon shone over the water ruth went straight to the little boat aground on the shore it looks like a cockle shell he said
+as he put one foot in after shoving it off
+in the bow i dislike to see dangers before we come to them he helped her carefully to her place she thanked him laughingly for his exceptionally strong arm and he turned to ruth i was waiting for you to move from my place she said in defiant mischief
+standing motionless beside the boat your place ah yes now he said holding out his hand to her will you step in she took his hand and stepped in they were both standing and as the little bark swayed he made a movement to catch hold of her
+you had better sit down he said motioning to the rower's seat and you she asked i shall sit beside you and use the other oar he answered nonchalantly smiling down at her with a half pleased feeling of discomfiture
+that is no hindrance to my volubility i am glad to say a back is not very inspiring or expressive but ruth can tell me when you look bored if i wax too discursive it was a tiny boat
+and seated thus kemp's knees were not half a foot from ruth's white gown will you direct me he said as he swept around i have not rowed on this river for two or three years you can keep straight ahead for some distance she said leaning back in her seat
+she could not fail to notice the easy motion of his figure as he rowed lightly down the river his flannel shirt low at the throat showed his strong white neck rising like a column from his broad shoulders
+and seemed striving to outdo the night in brilliancy for a while kemp maintained a sort of roland for an oliver conversation with her but with his eyes continually straying to the girl before him it became rather difficult
+some merry rowers down the river were singing college songs harmoniously
+the balmy summer freighted air made her feel drowsy she listened absently to ruth's occasional warnings to kemp and to the swift dip of the oars now we have clear sailing for a stretch said ruth as they came to a broad curve
+she leaned a little farther forward looking past kemp mamma then she straightened herself back in her seat
+her head was leaning against the flag staff
+doctor kemp moved quietly back to his former position far across the river a woman's silvery voice was singing the sweet old love song juanita overhead the golden crescent moon hung low from the floor of heaven pulsating with stars
+she scarcely seemed to breathe so still she sat her slender hands loosely clasped in her lap doctor kemp sat opposite her and missus levice slept slowly and more slowly sped the tiny boat
+long gentle strokes touched the water and presently the oars lay idle in their locks they were unconsciously drifting the water dipped and lapped about the sides the tender woman's voice across the water stole to them
+singing of love their eyes met
+ever in the after time when ruth heard that song she was again rocking in the frail row boat upon the lovely river and a man's deep grave eyes held hers as if they would never let them go
+till under his worshipping eyes her own filled with slow ecstatic tears doctor called a startled voice row out i am right under the trees they both started
+they had drifted into a cove and she was cowering from the over hanging boughs i do not care to be absalomed where were your eyes ruth she complained as kemp pushed out with a happy apologetic laugh
+no she answered a little breathlessly i believe i am growing far sighted it must be time to sight home now said her mother i am quite chilly
+when he turned for ruth she had already sprung ashore and had started up the slope for the first time the oars lay forgotten in the bottom of the boat
+and the slight white figure stood still till they came up you are so slow she said with a reckless little laugh i feel as if i could fly home are you light headed ruth asked her mother but the girl had fallen behind them
+she could not yet meet his eyes again come ruth either stay with us or just ahead of us
+there is nothing abroad here but the stars she answered flitting before them and they are stanch silent friends on such a night remarked kemp softly
+and stood inside of it as they drew near then you will not be home till monday he said taking missus levice's hand and raising his hat and i am off on the early morning train good by as she turned in at the gate he held out his hand to ruth
+his fingers closed softly tightly over hers she heard him say almost inaudibly till monday she raised her shy eyes for one brief second to his glowing ones and he passed a tall dark figure down the shadowy road
+sleep with this new crown upon her humble as the beautiful beggar maid must have felt when the king raised her she wondered why she had been thus chosen by one whom she had deemed so immeasurably above her
+chapter fourteen in deryck's safe control the white cliffs of dover gradually became more solid and distinct until at length they rose from the sea a strong white wall
+emblem of the undeniable purity of england the stainless honour and integrity of her throne her church her parliament her courts of justice and her dealings at home and abroad whether with friend or foe
+strength and whiteness thought jane as she paced the steamer's deck and after a two years absence her heart went out to her native land then dover castle caught her eye so beautiful in the pearly light of that spring afternoon
+an hour after she had read it she was driving down the long straight road to cairo embarked at alexandria the next day landed at brindisi
+and this night and day travelling had brought her at last within sight of the shores of england in a few minutes she would set foot upon them and then there would be but two more stages to her journey for from the moment she started
+jane never doubted her ultimate destination the room where pain and darkness and despair must be waging so terrible a conflict against the moral courage the mental sanity and the instinctive hold on life of the man she loved
+that she was going to him jane knew but she felt utterly unable to arrange how or in what way her going could be managed that it was a complicated problem her common sense told her
+and that her surest way to garth lay through the doctor's consulting room so she telegraphed to deryck from paris and at present her mind saw no further than wimpole street at dover she bought a paper
+and hastily scanned its pages as she walked along the platform in the wake of the capable porter who had taken possession of her rugs and hand baggage in the personal column she found the very paragraph she sought
+but the injured parts were progressing favourably and all fear of brain complications seemed over during the last few days however a serious reaction from shock has set in and it has been considered necessary to summon sir deryck brand
+the well known nerve specialist in consultation with the oculist and the local practitioner in charge of the case there is a feeling of wide spread regret and sympathy in those social and artistic circles where mister dalmain was so well known and so deservedly popular
+that jane's half crown was not a penny he had a sick young wife at home who had been ordered extra nourishment and just as the rush on board began he had put up a simple prayer to the heavenly father
+who knoweth that ye have need of these things asking that he might catch the eye of a generous traveller he felt he had indeed been led to this plain brown faced broad shouldered lady when he remembered how nearly
+after her curt nod from a distance had engaged him he had responded to the blandishments of a fussy little woman with many more bags and rugs and a parrot cage who was now doling french coppers out of the window of the next compartment
+seven pence apenny of this stuff ain't much for carrying all that along i don't think grumbled his mate and jane's young porter experienced the double joy of faith confirmed and willing service generously rewarded a telegraph boy walked along the train saying
+have coffee at dover deryck jane gave one hard tearless sob of thankfulness and relief she had been so lonely then she turned to the window here somebody fetch me a cup of coffee will you
+and just as the train began to move handed a cup of steaming coffee and a plate of bread and butter in at the window oh thank you my good fellow said jane putting the plate on the seat while she dived into her pocket
+here you have done very well for me no never mind the change coffee at a moment's notice should fetch a fancy price good bye the train moved on and the porter stood looking after it with tears in his eyes
+over the first half crown he had said to himself milk and new laid eggs now as he pocketed the second he added the other two things mentioned by the parish doctor soup and jelly and his heart glowed
+your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of these things and jane seated in a comfortable corner choked back the tears of relief which threatened to fall drank her coffee and was thereby more revived than she could have thought possible
+she read his telegram through once more and smiled how like him to think of the coffee and oh how like him to be coming to the station she took off her hat and leaned back against the cushions
+she had been travelling night and day in one feverish whirl of haste and at last she had brought herself within reach of deryck's hand and deryck's safe control the turmoil of her soul was stilled
+a great calm took its place and jane dropped quietly off to sleep your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of these things washed and brushed and greatly refreshed
+jane stood at the window of her compartment as the train steamed into charing cross the doctor was stationed exactly opposite the door when her carriage came to a standstill
+mere chance and yet to jane it seemed so like him to have taken up his position precisely at the right spot on that long platform an enthusiastic lady patient had once said of deryck brand with more accuracy of definition than of grammar
+you know he is always so very just there and this characteristic of the doctor had made him to many a very present help in time of trouble he was through the line of porters and had his hand upon the handle of jane's door in a moment
+standing at the window she took one look at the firm lean face now alight with welcome and read in the kind steadfast eyes of her childhood's friend a perfect sympathy and comprehension then she saw behind him her aunt's footman
+and her own maid who had been given a place in the duchess's household in another moment she was on the platform and her hand was in deryck's that is right dear he said all fit and well i can see now hand over your keys
+i suppose you have nothing contraband i telephoned the duchess to send some of her people to meet your luggage and not to expect you herself until dinner time as you were taking tea with us was that right this way come outside the barrier what a rabble
+all wanting to break every possible rule and regulation and each trying to be the first person in the front row really the patience and good temper of railway officials should teach the rest of mankind a lesson the doctor talking all the time
+piloted jane through the crowd opened the door of a neat electric brougham helped her in took his seat beside her and they glided swiftly out into the strand and turned towards trafalgar square
+well said the doctor niagara is a big thing isn't it when people say to me were you not disappointed in niagara we were i feel tempted to wish for one homicidal moment that the earth would open her mouth and swallow them up
+people who can be disappointed in niagara and talk about it should no longer be allowed to crawl on the face of the earth and how about the little mother isn't she worth knowing i hope she sent me her love and new york harbour
+he will always be blind dear but life holds other things beside sight we must never say no hope will he live there is no reason he should not live
+but how far life will be worth living largely depends upon what can be done for him poor chap during the next few months he is more shattered mentally than physically
+when all were gone i learnt that the vile slander had indeed been circulated throughout the company in the very presence of the victim rose however vowed she did not and would not believe it
+and my mother made the same declaration though not i fear with the same amount of real unwavering incredulity it seemed to dwell continually on her mind and she kept irritating me from time to time by such expressions as
+the foundation is in the wickedness and falsehood of the world said i and in the fact that mister lawrence has been seen to go that way once or twice of an evening and the village gossips say he goes to pay his addresses to the strange lady
+and the scandal mongers have greedily seized the rumour to make it the basis of their own infernal structure well but gilbert there must be something in her manner to countenance such reports did you see anything in her manner
+no certainly but then you know i always said there was something strange about her i believe it was on that very evening that i ventured on another invasion of wildfell hall from the time of our party
+which was upwards of a week ago i had been making daily efforts to meet its mistress in her walks and always disappointed she must have managed it so on purpose had nightly kept revolving in my mind some pretext for another call
+at length i concluded that the separation could be endured no longer by this time you will see i was pretty far gone and taking from the book case an old volume that i thought she might be interested in
+though from its unsightly and somewhat dilapidated condition i had not yet ventured to offer it for perusal i hastened away but not without sundry misgivings as to how she would receive me
+or how i could summon courage to present myself with so slight an excuse but perhaps i might see her in the field or the garden and then there would be no great difficulty it was the formal knocking at the door
+with the prospect of being gravely ushered in by rachel to the presence of a surprised uncordial mistress that so greatly disturbed me my wish however was not gratified
+missus graham herself was not to be seen but there was arthur playing with his frolicsome little dog in the garden i looked over the gate and called him to me he wanted me to come in but i told him i could not without his mother's leave
+he ran to perform my bidding and quickly returned with his mother how lovely she looked with her dark ringlets streaming in the light summer breeze her fair cheek slightly flushed and her countenance radiant with smiles
+there is no mediator like a merry simple hearted child ever ready to cement divided hearts to span the unfriendly gulf of custom to melt the ice of cold reserve and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride
+well mister markham what is it said the young mother accosting me with a pleasant smile i want you to look at this book and if you please to take it and peruse it at your leisure
+i make no apology for calling you out on such a lovely evening though it be for a matter of no greater importance tell him to come in mamma said arthur would you like to come in asked the lady yes
+i should like to see your improvements in the garden and how your sister's roots have prospered in my charge added she as she opened the gate and we sauntered through the garden and talked of the flowers the trees and the book
+and then of other things the evening was kind and genial and so was my companion by degrees i waxed more warm and tender than perhaps i had ever been before
+but still i said nothing tangible and she attempted no repulse until in passing a moss rose tree that i had brought her some weeks since in my sister's name
+and i saw a flash of ecstatic brilliance in her eye a glow of glad excitement on her face i thought my hour of victory was come but instantly a painful recollection seemed to flash upon her
+a cloud of anguish darkened her brow a marble paleness blanched her cheek and lip there seemed a moment of inward conflict and with a sudden effort she withdrew her hand and retreated a step or two back
+now mister markham said she with a kind of desperate calmness i must tell you plainly that i cannot do with this i like your company because i am alone here
+and let me alone hereafter in fact we must be strangers for the future i will then be your friend or brother or anything you wish if you will only let me continue to see you but tell me why i cannot be anything more
+there was a perplexed and thoughtful pause is it in consequence of some rash vow it is something of the kind she answered some day i may tell you but at present you had better leave me
+and never gilbert put me to the painful necessity of repeating what i have just now said to you she earnestly added giving me her hand in serious kindness how sweet how musical my own name sounded in her mouth
+i will not i replied but you pardon this offence on condition that you never repeat it and may i come to see you now and then perhaps occasionally
+provided you never abuse the privilege i make no empty promises but you shall see the moment you do our intimacy is at an end that's all and will you always call me gilbert
+but as i went the tramp of horses hoofs fell on my ear and broke the stillness of the dewy evening and looking towards the lane i saw a solitary equestrian coming up inclining to dusk as it was
+and seemed inclined to turn back but on second thought apparently judged it better to continue his course as before he accosted me with a slight bow and edging close to the wall endeavoured to pass on but i was not so minded
+you and your pony be what makes you so coarse and brutal markham i'm quite ashamed of you you answer my questions before you leave this spot i will know what you mean by this perfidious duplicity
+if you stand till morning now then said i unclosing my hand but still standing before him ask me some other time when you can speak like a gentleman returned he and he made an effort to pass me again
+but i quickly re captured the pony scarce less astonished than its master at such uncivil usage really mister markham this is too much said the latter can i not go to see my tenant on matters of business without being assaulted in this manner by
+and in truth the vicar was just behind me plodding homeward from some remote corner of his parish i immediately released the squire and he went on his way saluting mister millward as he passed
+what quarrelling markham cried the latter addressing himself to me
+but let me tell you young man here he put his face into mine with an important confidential air she's not worth it and he confirmed the assertion by a solemn nod
+with a look that plainly said what this to me
+you must suppose about three weeks passed over missus graham and i were now established friends or brother and sister as we rather chose to consider ourselves
+she called me gilbert by my express desire and i called her helen for i had seen that name written in her books i seldom attempted to see her above twice a week
+and still i made our meetings appear the result of accident as often as i could for i found it necessary to be extremely careful and altogether i behaved with such exceeding propriety that she never had occasion to reprove me once
+yet i could not but perceive that she was at times unhappy and dissatisfied with herself or her position and truly i myself was not quite contented with the latter this assumption of brotherly nonchalance was very hard to sustain
+and i often felt myself a most confounded hypocrite with it all i saw too or rather i felt that in spite of herself i was not indifferent to her as the novel heroes modestly express it
+and while i thankfully enjoyed my present good fortune i could not fail to wish and hope for something better in future but of course i kept such dreams entirely to myself
+you're going to wildfell hall aren't you what makes you think so because you look as if you were but i wish you wouldn't go so often nonsense child i don't go once in six weeks what do you mean
+well but if i were you i wouldn't have so much to do with missus graham why rose are you too giving in to the prevailing opinion no returned she hesitatingly
+both at the wilsons and the vicarage and besides mamma says if she were a proper person she would not be living there by herself and don't you remember last winter gilbert all that about the false name to the picture
+and how she explained it saying she had friends or acquaintances from whom she wished her present residence to be concealed and that she was afraid of their tracing her out and then how suddenly she started up and left the room when that person came
+whom she took good care not to let us catch a glimpse of and who arthur with such an air of mystery told us was his mamma's friend yes rose i remember it all and i can forgive your uncharitable conclusions
+for perhaps if i did not know her myself i should put all these things together and believe the same as you do but thank god i do know her and i should be unworthy the name of a man if i could believe anything that was said against her
+unless i heard it from her own lips i should as soon believe such things of you rose oh gilbert well
+you know nothing of her former life and last year at this time you did not know that such a person existed no matter there is such a thing as looking through a person's eyes into the heart and learning more of the height and breadth
+and depth of another's soul in one hour than it might take you a lifetime to discover if he or she were not disposed to reveal it or if you had not the sense to understand it then you are going to see her this evening
+missus graham and i are two friends and will be and no man breathing shall hinder it or has a right to interfere between us but if you knew how they talk you would be more careful for her sake as well as for your own
+jane wilson thinks your visits to the old hall but another proof of her depravity confound jane wilson and eliza millward is quite grieved about you i hope she is
+but i wouldn't if i were you wouldn't what how do they know that i go there there's nothing hid from them they spy out everything oh i never thought of this
+and so they dare to turn my friendship into food for further scandal against her that proves the falsehood of their other lies at all events if any proof were wanting mind you contradict them rose whenever you can
+but they don't speak openly to me about such things it is only by hints and innuendoes and by what i hear others say that i knew what they think well then i won't go to day as it's getting latish
+after his customary cheerful and fatherly greeting of rose who was rather a favourite with the old gentleman he turned somewhat sternly to me well sir said he you're quite a stranger it is
+as he deposited his ponderous bulk in the arm chair that rose officiously brought towards him it is just six weeks by my reckoning since you darkened my door he spoke it with emphasis and struck his stick on the floor
+is it sir said i ay it is so he added an affirmatory nod and continued to gaze upon me with a kind of irate solemnity holding his substantial stick between his knees
+with his hands clasped upon its head i have been busy i said for an apology was evidently demanded busy repeated he derisively yes you know i've been getting in my hay
+in time for tea but offered to have some immediately prepared if he would do her the favour to partake of it not any for me i thank you replied he i shall be at home in a few minutes oh but do stay and take a little
+it will be ready in five minutes but he rejected the offer with a majestic wave of the hand i'll tell you what i'll take missus markham said he i'll take a glass of your excellent ale
+with pleasure cried my mother proceeding with alacrity to pull the bell and order the favoured beverage i thought continued he i'd just look in upon you as i passed and taste your home brewed ale
+really ejaculated my mother why so mister millward asked i he looked at me with some severity and turning again to my mother repeated
+and struck his stick on the floor again my mother sat opposite an awe struck but admiring auditor missus graham said i he continued shaking his head as he spoke
+these are terrible reports what sir says she affecting to be ignorant of my meaning it is my duty as your pastor said i to tell you both everything that i myself see reprehensible in your conduct
+and all i have reason to suspect and what others tell me concerning you so i told her you did sir cried i starting from my seat and striking my fist on the table
+but she offered no extenuation or defence and with a kind of shameless calmness shocking indeed to witness in one so young as good as told me that my remonstrance was unavailing and my pastoral advice quite thrown away upon her
+nay that my very presence was displeasing while i spoke such things and i withdrew at length too plainly seeing that nothing could be done and sadly grieved to find her case so hopeless
+but i am fully determined missus markham that my daughters shall not consort with her do you adopt the same resolution with regard to yours as for your sons as for you young man he continued sternly turning to me
+slamming the door behind me with a bang that shook the house to its foundations and made my mother scream and gave a momentary relief to my excited feelings
+the next minute saw me hurrying with rapid strides in the direction of wildfell hall to what intent or purpose i could scarcely tell but i must be moving somewhere and no other goal would do
+i must see her too and speak to her that was certain but what to say or how to act i had no definite idea
+with this jenny wren disappeared inside her house and there was nothing for peter to do but once more start for the dear old briar patch on his way he couldn't resist the temptation to run over to the green forest which was just beyond the old orchard
+he just had to find out if there was anything new over there hardly had he reached it when he heard a plaintive voice crying pee wee pee wee pee wee peter chuckled happily
+he usually is one of the last of the flycatcher family to arrive i didn't expect to find him yet i wonder what has brought him up so early
+it didn't take peter long to find pewee he just followed the sound of that voice and presently saw pewee fly out and make the same kind of a little circle as the other members of the family make when they are hunting flies
+it ended just where it had started on a dead twig of a tree in a shady rather lonely part of the green forest almost at once he began to call his name in a rather sad plaintive tone pee wee pee wee pee wee
+but he wasn't sad as peter well knew it was his way of expressing how happy he felt he was a little bigger than his cousin chebec but looked very much like him there was a little notch in the end of his tail
+the upper half of his bill was black but the lower half was light peter could see on each wing two whitish bars and he noticed that pewee's wings were longer than his tail which wasn't the case with chebec
+but no one could ever mistake pewee for any of his relatives for the simple reason that he keeps repeating his own name over and over aren't you here early asked peter pewee nodded
+that is something i don't often do if you please peter inquired politely why do folks call you wood pewee pewee chuckled happily
+it is so quiet and restful that i love it missus pewee and i are very retiring we do not like too many near neighbors you won't mind if i come to see you once in a while will you asked peter as he prepared to start on again for the dear old briar patch
+come as often as you like replied pewee the oftener the better back in the old briar patch peter thought over all he had learned about the flycatcher family and as he recalled how they were forever catching all sorts of flying insects it suddenly struck him
+that they must be very useful little people in helping old mother nature take care of her trees and other growing things which insects so dearly love to destroy
+but most of all peter thought about that queer request of cresty's and a dozen times that day he found himself peeping under old logs in the hope of finding a cast off coat of mister black snake
+it was such a funny thing for cresty to ask for that peter's curiosity would allow him no peace and the next morning he was up in the old orchard before jolly mister sun had kicked his bedclothes off
+jenny wren was as good as her word while she flitted and hopped about this way and that way in that fussy way of hers getting her breakfast she talked jenny couldn't keep her tongue still if she wanted to did you find any old clothes of the snake family she demanded
+then as peter shook his head her tongue ran on without waiting for him to reply cresty and his wife always insist upon having a piece of snake skin in their nest said she why they want it goodness knows but
+perhaps they think it will scare robbers away as for me i should have a cold chill every time i got into my nest if i had to sit on anything like that i have to admit that cresty and his wife are a handsome couple
+and they certainly have good sense in choosing a house more sense than any other member of their family to my way of thinking but snake skins ugh by the way where does cresty build asked peter
+in a hole in a tree like the rest of us sensible people retorted jenny wren promptly peter looked quite as surprised as he felt does cresty make the hole he asked goodness gracious no exclaimed jenny wren
+where are your eyes peter did you ever see a flycatcher with a bill that looked as if it could cut wood she didn't wait for a reply but rattled on it is a good thing for a lot of us that the woodpecker family are so fond of new houses look
+there is downy the woodpecker hard at work on a new house this very minute that's good i like to see that it means that next year there will be one more house for some one here in the old orchard for myself i prefer old houses
+i've noticed there are a number of my neighbors who feel the same way about it there is something settled about an old house it doesn't attract attention the way a new one does so long as it has got reasonably good walls and the rain and the wind can't get in
+the older it is the better it suits me but the woodpeckers seem to like new houses best which as i said before is a very good thing for the rest of us
+winsome bluebird stupid snapped jenny wren peter grinned and looked foolish of course said he i forgot all about winsome and skimmer the tree swallow added jenny that's so i ought to have remembered him exclaimed peter
+i've noticed that he is very fond of the same house year after year is there anybody else again jenny wren nodded yank yank the nuthatch uses an old house i'm told but he usually goes up north for his nesting said she
+tommy tit the chickadee sometimes uses an old house then again he and missus chickadee get fussy and make a house for themselves yellow wing the flicker who really is a woodpecker often uses an old house but quite often makes a new one
+then there are killy the sparrow hawk and spooky the screech owl peter looked surprised i didn't suppose they nested in holes in trees he exclaimed they certainly do more's the pity snapped jenny
+it would be a good thing for the rest of us if they didn't nest at all but they do and an old house of yellow wing the flicker suits either of them killy always uses one that is high up and comes back to it year after year
+spooky isn't particular so long as the house is big enough to be comfortable he lives in it more or less the year around now i must get back to those eggs of mine i've talked quite enough for one morning oh jenny cried peter as a sudden thought struck him
+jenny paused and jerked her tail impatiently well what is it now she demanded have you got two homes asked peter goodness gracious no exclaimed jenny
+one is all i can take care of then why demanded peter triumphantly does mister wren work all day carrying sticks and straws into a hole in another tree it seems to me that he has carried enough in there to build two or three nests
+he wasn't ready to go back home to the dear old briar patch yet there seemed nothing else to do for everybody in the old orchard was too busy for idle gossip peter scratched a long ear with a long hind foot trying to think of some place to go
+i'll just run over and pay my respects to grandfather frog and to redwing the blackbird redwing was one of the first birds to arrive and i've neglected him shamefully when peter thinks of something to do he wastes no time
+off he started lipperty lipperty lip for the smiling pool he kept close to the edge of the green forest until he reached the place where the laughing brook comes out of the green forest on its way to the smiling pool in the green meadows
+bushes and young trees grow along the banks of the laughing brook at this point the ground was soft in places quite muddy peter doesn't mind getting his feet damp so he hopped along carelessly
+from right under his very nose something shot up into the air with a whistling sound it startled peter so that he stopped short with his eyes popping out of his head
+he had just a glimpse of a brown form disappearing over the tops of some tall bushes then peter chuckled
+he scared me for a second then you are even said a voice close at hand you scared him i saw you coming but longbill didn't peter turned quickly there was missus woodcock peeping at him from behind a tussock of grass
+i didn't mean to scare him apologized peter i really didn't mean to do you think he was really very much scared
+i recognized you just as i was disappearing over the tops of the bushes so i came right back i learned when i was very young that when startled it is best to fly first and find out afterwards whether or not there is real danger
+i am glad it is no one but you peter for i was having a splendid meal here and i should have hated to leave it you'll excuse me while i go on eating i hope we can talk between bites
+certainly i'll excuse you replied peter staring around very hard to see what it could be longbill was making such a good meal of but peter couldn't see a thing that looked good to eat there wasn't even a bug or a worm crawling on the ground
+longbill took two or three steps in rather a stately fashion peter had to hide a smile for longbill had such an air of importance yet at the same time was such an odd looking fellow
+he was quite a little bigger than welcome robin his tail was short his legs were short and his neck was short but his bill was long enough to make up
+his back was a mixture of gray brown black and buff while his breast and under parts were a beautiful reddish buff it was his head that made him look queer
+his eyes were very big and they were set so far back that peter wondered if it wasn't easier for him to look behind him than in front of him suddenly longbill plunged his bill into the ground he plunged it in for the whole length
+then he pulled it out and peter caught a glimpse of the tail end of a worm disappearing down longbill's throat where that long bill had gone into the ground was a neat little round hole
+for the first time peter noticed that there were many such little round holes all about did you make all those little round holes exclaimed peter
+and was there a worm in every one asked peter his eyes very wide with interest longbill nodded
+peter remembered how he had watched welcome robin listen and then suddenly plunge his bill into the ground and pull out a worm but the worms welcome robin got were always close to the surface
+while these worms were so deep in the earth that peter couldn't understand how it was possible for any one to know that they were there
+and how is it possible for you to open your bill down there to take him in asked peter longbill chuckled
+longbill suddenly thrust his bill straight out in front of him and to peter's astonishment he lifted the end of the upper half without opening the rest of his bill at all that's the way i get them said he
+i think there is one right under my feet now watch me get him longbill bored into the ground until his head was almost against it when he pulled his bill out sure enough there was a worm of course explained longbill it is only in soft ground that i can do this
+that is why i have to fly away south as soon as the ground freezes at all it's wonderful sighed peter i don't suppose any one else can find hidden worms that way my cousin jack snipe can replied longbill promptly
+he feeds the same way i do only he likes marshy meadows instead of brushy swamps perhaps you know him peter nodded i do said he now you speak of it there is a strong family resemblance although i hadn't thought of him as a relative of yours before
+now i must be running along i'm ever so glad to have seen you and i'm coming over to call again the first chance i get so peter said good by and kept on down the laughing brook to the smiling pool right where the laughing brook entered the smiling pool
+there was a little pebbly beach running along the very edge of the water was a slim trim little bird with fairly long legs a long slender bill brownish gray back with black spots and markings and a white waistcoat neatly spotted with black
+every few steps he would stop to pick up something then stand for a second bobbing up and down in the funniest way as if his body was so nicely balanced on his legs that it teetered back and forth like a seesaw
+it was teeter the spotted sandpiper an old friend of peter's peter greeted him joyously
+before peter could say another word teeter came running towards him and it was plain to see that teeter was very anxious about something don't move peter rabbit don't move he cried why not demanded peter for he could see no danger and could think of no reason why he shouldn't move
+just then missus teeter came hurrying up and squatted down in the sand right in front of peter thank goodness exclaimed teeter still bobbing and bowing if you had taken another step peter rabbit you would have stepped right on our eggs you gave me a dreadful start
+missus teeter stood up and stepped aside then peter saw right in a little hollow in the sand with just a few bits of grass for a lining four white eggs with big dark blotches on them
+they looked so much like the surrounding pebbles that he never would have seen them in the world but for missus teeter peter hastily backed away a few steps missus teeter slipped back on the eggs and settled herself comfortably
+it suddenly struck peter that if he hadn't seen her do it he wouldn't have known she was there
+my he exclaimed i certainly would have stepped on those eggs if you hadn't warned me said he i'm so thankful i didn't i don't see how you dare lay them in the open like this
+and now our family is very well represented in the old orchard said chebec proudly slowly peter reached over his back with his long left hind foot and thoughtfully scratched his long right ear
+he didn't like to admit that he couldn't recall those two cousins of chebec's did you say your fighting cousin he asked in a hesitating way that's what i said replied chebec he is scrapper the kingbird as of course you know
+the rest of us always feel safe when he is about of course i know him declared peter his face clearing where is he now
+at that very instant a great racket broke out on the other side of the old orchard and in no time at all the feathered folks were hurrying from every direction screaming at the top of their voices
+of course peter couldn't be left out of anything like that and he scampered for the scene of trouble as fast as his legs could take him
+and this way and that way as if trying to get away from something or somebody for a minute peter couldn't think what was the trouble with redtail and then he saw
+a white throated white breasted bird having a black cap and back and a broad white band across the end of his tail was darting at redtail as if he meant to pull out every feather in the latter's coat
+he was just a little smaller than welcome robin and in comparison with him redtail was a perfect giant but this seemed to make no difference to scrapper for that is who it was
+he wasn't afraid and he intended that everybody should know it especially redtail it is because of his fearlessness that he is called kingbird all the time he was screaming at the top of his lungs calling redtail a robber and every other bad name he could think of
+all the other birds joined him in calling redtail bad names but none not even bully the english sparrow was brave enough to join him in attacking big redtail when he had succeeded in driving redtail far enough from the old orchard to suit him
+scrapper flew back and perched on a dead branch of one of the trees where he received the congratulations of all his feathered neighbors he took them quite modestly assuring them that he had done nothing
+peter couldn't help but admire scrapper for his courage as peter looked up at scrapper he saw that like all the rest of the flycatchers there was just the tiniest of hooks on the end of his bill
+scrapper's slightly raised cap seemed all black but if peter could have gotten close enough he would have found that hidden in it was a patch of orange red while peter sat staring up at him scrapper suddenly darted out into the air
+and his bill snapped in quite the same way chebec's did when he caught a fly but it wasn't a fly that scrapper had it was a bee peter saw it very distinctly just as scrapper snapped it up
+it reminded peter that he had often heard scrapper called the bee martin and now he understood why do you live on bees altogether asked peter
+there wouldn't be any honey if i did
+those that i do catch are mostly drones and you know the drones are useless they do no work at all it is only by accident that i now and then catch a worker i eat all kinds of insects that fly and some that don't
+i'm one of farmer brown's best friends if he did but know it you can talk all you please about the wonderful eyesight of the members of the hawk family but if any one of them has better eyesight than i have i'd like to know who it is
+there's a fly way over there beyond that old apple tree watch me catch it peter knew better than to waste any effort trying to see that fly he knew that he couldn't have seen it had it been only one fourth that distance away
+but if he couldn't see the fly he could hear the sharp click of scrapper's bill and he knew by the way scrapper kept opening and shutting his mouth after his return that he had caught that fly and it had tasted good
+are you going to build in the old orchard this year asked peter of course i am declared scrapper i just then he spied blacky the crow and dashed out to meet him
+turning away toward the green meadows instead peter didn't wait for scrapper to return
+just as he was leaving the far corner of the old orchard some one called him peter oh peter rabbit called the voice peter stopped abruptly sat up very straight looked this way looked that way and looked the other way
+every way but the right way look up over your head cried the voice rather a harsh voice
+it was cresty the great crested flycatcher he was a wee bit bigger than scrapper the kingbird yet not quite so big as welcome robin and more slender
+his throat and breast were gray shading into bright yellow underneath his back and head were of a grayish brown with a tint of olive green a pointed cap was all that was needed to make him quite distinguished looking
+you seem to be in a hurry so don't let me detain you peter said cresty before peter could find his tongue i just want to ask one little favor of you what is it asked peter who
+if in your roaming about you run across an old cast off suit of mister black snake or of any other member of the snake family i wish you would remember me and let me know will you peter said cresty a a
+a what stammered peter a cast off suit of clothes from any member of the snake family replied cresty somewhat impatiently now don't forget peter i've got to go house hunting but you'll find me there or hereabouts if it happens that you find one of those
+cast off snake suits before peter could say another word cresty had flown away peter hesitated looking first towards the dear old briar patch and then towards jenny wren's house
+he just couldn't understand about those cast off suits of the snake family and he felt sure that jenny wren could tell him finally curiosity got the best of him and back he scampered lipperty lipperty lip to the foot of the tree in which jenny wren had her home
+jenny called peter jenny wren jenny wren no one answered him he could hear mister wren singing in another tree but he couldn't see him jenny jenny wren jenny wren called peter again
+this time jenny popped her head out and her little eyes fairly snapped didn't i tell you the other day peter rabbit that i'm not to be disturbed didn't i tell you that i've got seven eggs in here and that i can't spend any time gossiping
+didn't i peter rabbit didn't i didn't i you certainly did jenny you certainly did and i'm sorry to disturb you replied peter meekly i wouldn't have thought of doing such a thing but i just didn't know who else to go to
+go to for what snapped jenny wren what is it you've come to me for snake skins replied peter snake skins snake skins shrieked jenny wren
+you don't understand cried peter hurriedly what i want to know is why should cresty the flycatcher ask me to please let him know if i found any cast off suits of the snake family
+he flew away before i could ask him why he wants them and so i came to you because i know you know everything especially everything concerning your neighbors
+diana is invited to tea with tragic results october was a beautiful month at green gables
+when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths
+anne reveled in the world of color about her oh marilla she exclaimed one saturday morning coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs
+it would be terrible if we just skipped from september to november wouldn't it look at these maple branches don't they give you a thrill several thrills i'm going to decorate my room with them messy things said marilla whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably developed
+you clutter up your room entirely too much with out of doors stuff anne bedrooms were made to sleep in oh and dream in too marilla and you know one can dream so much better in a room where there are pretty things
+i'm going to put these boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table mind you don't drop leaves all over the stairs then i'm going on a meeting of the aid society at carmody this afternoon anne and i won't likely be home before dark
+it was dreadful of me to forget said anne apologetically but that was the afternoon i was trying to think of a name for violet vale
+so he didn't find the time long at all it was a beautiful fairy story marilla i forgot the end of it so i made up an end for it myself and matthew said he couldn't tell where the join came in matthew would think it all right anne if you took a notion to get up and have dinner in the middle of the night
+but you keep your wits about you this time and i don't really know if i'm doing right it may make you more addlepated than ever but you can ask diana to come over and spend the afternoon with you and have tea here oh marilla anne clasped her hands
+how perfectly lovely you are able to imagine things after all or else you'd never have understood how i've longed for that very thing it will seem so nice and grown uppish no fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when i have company oh marilla
+can i use the rosebud spray tea set no indeed the rosebud tea set well what next you know i never use that except for the minister or the aids
+you'll put down the old brown tea set but you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves it's time it was being used anyhow i believe it's beginning to work and you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps
+i can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea said anne shutting her eyes ecstatically and asking diana if she takes sugar i know she doesn't but of course i'll ask her just as if i didn't know
+and then pressing her to take another piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves oh marilla it's a wonderful sensation just to think of it can i take her into the spare room to lay off her hat when she comes and then into the parlor to sit no
+the sitting room will do for you and your company but there's a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church social the other night it's on the second shelf of the sitting room closet and you and diana can have it if you like
+anne flew down to the hollow past the dryad's bubble and up the spruce path to orchard slope to ask diana to tea as a result just after marilla had driven off to carmody diana came over dressed in her second best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea
+at other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking but now she knocked primly at the front door and when anne dressed in her second best as primly opened it both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before
+how is your mother inquired anne politely just as if she had not seen missus barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and spirits she is very well thank you
+yes our potato crop is very good this year i hope your father's crop is good too it is fairly good thank you have you picked many of your apples yet oh ever so many said anne forgetting to be dignified and jumping up quickly
+let's go out to the orchard and get some of the red sweetings diana marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree marilla is a very generous woman she said we could have fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea
+they taste twice as good as any other color the orchard with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the afternoon in it
+diana had much to tell anne of what went on in school she had to sit with gertie pye and she hated it
+ruby gillis had charmed all her warts away true's you live with a magic pebble that old mary joe from the creek gave her
+charlie sloane's name was written up with em white's on the porch wall and em white was awful mad about it sam boulter had sassed mister phillips in class and mister phillips whipped him and sam's father came down to the school and dared mister phillips to lay a hand on one of his children again
+and mattie andrews had a new red hood and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were perfectly sickening and lizzie wright didn't speak to mamie wilson because mamie wilson's grown up sister had cut out lizzie wright's grown up sister with her beau
+and everybody missed anne so and wished she's come to school again and gilbert blythe but anne didn't want to hear about gilbert blythe
+anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there search revealed it away back on the top shelf anne put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler
+now please help yourself diana she said politely i don't believe i'll have any just now i don't feel as if i wanted any after all those apples
+diana poured herself out a tumblerful looked at its bright red hue admiringly and then sipped it daintily that's awfully nice raspberry cordial anne she said i didn't know raspberry cordial was so nice
+there are so many responsibilities on a person's mind when they're keeping house isn't there
+the tumblerfuls were generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice the nicest i ever drank said diana it's ever so much nicer than missus lynde's although she brags of hers so much
+it doesn't taste a bit like hers i should think marilla's raspberry cordial would prob'ly be much nicer than missus lynde's said anne loyally marilla is a famous cook
+i was thinking the loveliest story about you and me diana i thought you were desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you but i went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life
+and then i took the smallpox and died and i was buried under those poplar trees in the graveyard and you planted a rosebush by my grave and watered it with your tears
+oh it was such a pathetic tale diana the tears just rained down over my cheeks while i mixed the cake but i forgot the flour and the cake was a dismal failure flour is so essential to cakes you know marilla was
+very cross and i don't wonder i'm a great trial to her she was terribly mortified about the pudding sauce last week we had a plum pudding for dinner on tuesday and there was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over
+marilla said there was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and cover it i meant to cover it just as much as could be diana but when i carried it in i was imagining i was a nun of course i'm a protestant but i imagined i was a catholic
+taking the veil to bury a broken heart in cloistered seclusion and i forgot all about covering the pudding sauce i thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry diana
+fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce i lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard and then i washed the spoon in three waters
+but when she did come in i was imagining that i was a frost fairy going through the woods turning the trees red and yellow whichever they wanted to be so i never thought about the pudding sauce again and marilla sent me out to pick apples
+you know they are very stylish people especially missus chester ross
+i tried to be as polite and dignified as i could be for i wanted missus chester ross to think i was a ladylike little girl even if i wasn't pretty everything went right until i saw marilla coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the pitcher of pudding sauce warmed up in the other
+diana that was a terrible moment i remembered everything and i just stood up in my place and shrieked out marilla you mustn't use that pudding sauce there was a mouse drowned in it i forgot to tell you before
+oh diana i shall never forget that awful moment if i live to be a hundred missus chester ross just looked at me and i thought i would sink through the floor with mortification
+she is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy what she must have thought of us marilla turned red as fire but she never said a word then she just carried that sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry preserves she even offered me some
+but i couldn't swallow a mouthful it was like heaping coals of fire on my head after missus chester ross went away marilla gave me a dreadful scolding why diana what is the matter diana had stood up very unsteadily then she sat down again putting her hands to her head
+i'm i'm awful sick she said a little thickly i i must go right home oh you mustn't dream of going home without your tea cried anne in distress i'll get it right off i'll go and put the tea down this very minute
+i must go home repeated diana stupidly but determinedly let me get you a lunch anyhow implored anne let me give you a bit of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves lie down on the sofa for a little while and you'll be better where do you feel bad
+i must go home said diana and that was all she would say in vain anne pleaded i never heard of company going home without tea she mourned oh diana do you suppose that it's possible you're really taking the smallpox
+if you are i'll go and nurse you you can depend on that i'll never forsake you but i do wish you'd stay till after tea where do you feel bad i'm awful dizzy said diana and indeed she walked very dizzily
+got diana's hat and went with her as far as the barry yard fence then she wept all the way back to green gables where she sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry and got tea ready for matthew and jerry with all the zest gone out of the performance
+and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn till dusk anne did not stir abroad from green gables monday afternoon marilla sent her down to missus lynde's on an errand in a very short space of time anne came flying back up the lane with tears rolling down her cheeks
+into the kitchen she dashed and flung herself face downward on the sofa in an agony whatever has gone wrong now anne queried marilla in doubt and dismay i do hope you haven't gone and been saucy to missus lynde again
+no answer from anne save more tears and stormier sobs anne shirley when i ask you a question i want to be answered sit right up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about anne sat up tragedy personified
+missus lynde was up to see missus barry today and missus barry was in an awful state she wailed she says that i set diana drunk saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition
+and she says i must be a thoroughly bad wicked little girl and she's never never going to let diana play with me again oh marilla i'm just overcome with woe marilla stared in blank amazement set diana drunk
+she said when she found her voice anne are you or missus barry crazy what on earth did you give her not a thing but raspberry cordial sobbed anne
+not even if they drank three big tumblerfuls as diana did oh it sounds so so like missus thomas's husband but i didn't mean to set her drunk drunk fiddlesticks said marilla marching to the sitting room pantry
+although certain of the stricter sort missus barry among them disapproved strongly of it and at the same time marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar
+she went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand her face was twitching in spite of herself anne you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble you went and gave diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial
+didn't you know the difference yourself i never tasted it said anne i thought it was the cordial i meant to be so so hospitable diana got awfully sick and had to go home missus barry told missus lynde she was simply dead drunk
+she just laughed silly like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to sleep and slept for hours her mother smelled her breath and knew she was drunk she had a fearful headache all day yesterday missus barry is so indignant
+she will never believe but what i did it on purpose i should think she would better punish diana for being so greedy as to drink three glassfuls of anything said marilla shortly why three of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been cordial
+well this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are so down on me for making currant wine although i haven't made any for three years ever since i found out that the minister didn't approve i just kept that bottle for sickness
+there there child don't cry i can't see as you were to blame although i'm sorry it happened so i must cry said anne my heart is broken the stars in their courses fight against me marilla diana and i are parted forever oh marilla
+missus barry will think better of it when she finds you're not to blame i suppose she thinks you've done it for a silly joke or something of that sort you'd best go up this evening and tell her how it was
+my courage fails me at the thought of facing diana's injured mother sighed anne i wish you'd go marilla you're so much more dignified than i am likely she'd listen to you quicker than to me well i will
+said marilla reflecting that it would probably be the wiser course don't cry any more anne it will be all right marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she got back from orchard slope anne was watching for her coming and flew to the porch door to meet her
+oh marilla i know by your face that it's been no use she said sorrowfully missus barry won't forgive me missus barry indeed snapped marilla of all the unreasonable women i ever saw she's the worst
+marilla whisked into the kitchen grievously disturbed leaving a very much distracted little soul in the porch behind her presently anne stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk
+very determinedly and steadily she took her way down through the sere clover field over the log bridge and up through the spruce grove lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western woods
+missus barry coming to the door in answer to a timid knock found a white lipped eager eyed suppliant on the doorstep her face hardened missus barry was a woman of strong prejudices and dislikes and her anger was of the cold sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome
+to do her justice she really believed anne had made diana drunk out of sheer malice prepense and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child what do you want she said stiffly
+anne clasped her hands oh missus barry please forgive me i did not mean to to intoxicate diana how could i just imagine if you were a poor little orphan girl that kind people had adopted
+and you had just one bosom friend in all the world do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose i thought it was only raspberry cordial i was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial oh please don't say that you won't let diana play with me any more
+if you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe this speech which would have softened good missus lynde's heart in a twinkling had no effect on missus barry except to irritate her still more she was suspicious of anne's big words and dramatic gestures
+and imagined that the child was making fun of her so she said coldly and cruelly i don't think you are a fit little girl for diana to associate with you'd better go home and behave yourself anne's lips quivered
+won't you let me see diana just once to say farewell she implored diana has gone over to carmody with her father said missus barry going in and shutting the door anne went back to green gables calm with despair
+my last hope is gone she told marilla i went up and saw missus barry myself and she treated me very insultingly marilla i do not think she is a well bred woman there is nothing more to do except to pray
+anne you shouldn't say such things rebuked marilla striving to overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to find growing upon her and indeed when she told the whole story to matthew that night she did laugh heartily over anne's tribulations
+but when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and found that anne had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed softness crept into her face poor little soul she murmured
+on that same wednesday reginald morton had called at the attorney's house had asked for miss masters and had found her alone missus masters at the time had been out
+picking up intelligence about the great case and the two younger girls had been at school reginald as he walked home from bragton all alone on that occasion when larry had returned with mary was quite sure
+that he would never willingly go into mary's presence again why should he disturb his mind about such a girl
+but on this wednesday he received a letter and as he told himself merely in consequence of that letter he called at the attorney's house and asked for miss masters
+she wants you to go to her at cheltenham for a month oh mister morton would you like to go how should i not like to go lady ushant is my dearest dearest friend it is so very good of her to think of me
+she talks of the first week in december and wants you to be there for christmas i don't at all know that i can go mister morton why not go i'm afraid mamma will not spare me
+there were many reasons she could hardly go on such a visit without some renewal of her scanty wardrobe which perhaps the family funds would not permit
+and as she knew very well missus masters was not at all favourable to lady ushant if the old lady had altogether kept mary it might have been very well but she had not done so
+and missus masters had more than once said that that kind of thing must be all over meaning that mary was to drop her intimacy with high born people that were of no real use and then there was mister twentyman and his suit
+that her only escape from home would be by becoming missus twentyman i don't think it will be possible mister morton my aunt will be very sorry oh how sorry shall i be
+it is like having another little bit of heaven before me then he said what he certainly should not have said i thought miss masters that your heaven was all here what do you mean by that mister morton
+she asked blushing up to her hair of course she knew what he meant and of course she was angry with him ever since that walk her mind had been troubled by ideas as to what he would think about her
+and now he was telling her what he thought i fancied that you were happy here without going to see an old woman who after all
+i don't want any amusement at any rate you will answer lady ushant of course i shall answer her perhaps you can let me know she wishes me to take you to cheltenham i shall go for a couple of days but i shall not stay longer
+if you are going perhaps you would allow me to travel with you of course it would be very kind but i don't suppose that i shall go i am sure lady ushant won't believe that i am kept away from her by any pleasure of my own here
+i can explain it all to her and she will understand me she hardly meant to reproach him she did not mean to assume an intimacy sufficient for reproach but he felt that she had reproached him
+at any rate i will write to lady ushant and will ask papa to let you know then it seemed as though there were nothing else for him but to go and yet he wanted to say some other word
+it does not signify in the least i only want lady ushant to understand that if i could possibly go to her i would rather do that than anything else in the world
+because lady ushant is kind to me i needn't expect other people to be so reginald morton was of course the other people then he paused a moment i did so long he said
+to walk round the old place with you the other day before these people came there and i was so disappointed when you would not come with me i was coming but you went back with that other man
+of course i did when you showed so plainly that you didn't want him to join you what was i to do i couldn't send him away mister twentyman is a very intimate friend of ours and very kind to dolly and kate
+i wished so much to talk to you about the old days and i wish to go to your aunt mister morton but we can't all of us have what we wish of course i saw that you were very angry but i couldn't help that
+a man may wish to have a little conversation with a very old friend without being interrupted and yet not be grand i dare say mister twentyman is just as good as i am
+i believe him to be a great deal better for he earns his bread and takes care of his mother and as far as i know does his duty thoroughly i know the difference mister morton and of course i know how you feel it
+he had come there ardently wishing that she might be allowed to go to his aunt and resolved that he would take her himself if it were possible but now he almost thought that she had better not go
+if she had made her election she must be allowed to abide by it if she meant to marry mister twentyman what good could she get by associating with his aunt or with him
+he was of course altogether unconscious what grand things his cousin john had intended to do by him had not the honourable old lady interfered but he had made up his mind that duty required him to call at the house
+so he walked by the path across the bridge and when he came out on the gravel road near the front door he found a gentleman smoking a cigar and looking around him
+the circumstances of which must be narrated in the next chapter the senator lifted his hat and remarked that it was a very fine afternoon reginald lifted his hat and assented
+mister morton sir i think is out with the ladies taking a drive i will leave a card then the old lady is at home sir if you wish to see her continued the senator following reginald up to the door
+you live in these parts sir asked the senator in the town yonder because mister morton's housekeeper seems to know you she knows me very well as i was brought up in this house good morning to you
+good afternoon to you sir perhaps you can tell me who lives in that country residence what you call a farm house on the other side of the road reginald said that he presumed the gentleman was alluding to mister twentyman's house
+ah yes i dare say that was the name i heard up there you are not mister twentyman sir my name is morton
+ah yes he didn't like to say uncle because reginald didn't look old enough and he knew he ought not to say brother because the elder brother in england would certainly have had the property i am mister john morton's cousin
+i asked whether you were the owner of that farm house because i intruded just now by passing through the yards and i would have apologized good afternoon to you sir then reginald having thus done his duty
+returned home mary masters when she was alone was again very angry with herself she knew thoroughly how perverse she had been when she declared that larry twentyman was a fit companion for herself
+and that she had said it on purpose to punish the man who was talking to her not a day passed or hardly an hour of a day in which she did not tell herself that the education she had received and the early associations of her life
+providence interferes the battle was carried on very fiercely in mister masters house in dillsborough to the misery of all within it
+the two girls had been intensely anxious for the marriage wishing to have larry for a brother looking forward with delight to their share in the unrestricted plenteousness of chowton farm
+they could quarrel with their elder sister while the assurance was still with them that she would be there to forgive them but now that she was going away and that it had come to be believed by both of them that poor lawrence had no chance
+they were sad and downhearted in all that misery the poor attorney had the worst of it mary was free from her stepmother's zeal and her stepmother's persecution at any rate at night
+but the poor father was hardly allowed to sleep for missus masters never gave up her game as altogether lost though she might be driven alternately into towering passion and prostrate hysterics
+she would still come again to the battle a word of encouragement would she said bring larry twentyman back to his courtship and that word might be spoken if mary's visit to cheltenham were forbidden
+let mary once be made to understand that she would not be allowed to be a fine lady and then she would marry mister twentyman quick enough but this ushanting this journeying to cheltenham in order that nothing might be done
+was the very way to promote the disease this missus masters said in season and out of season night and day till the poor husband longed for his daughter's departure
+in all these disputes he never quite yielded though his heart sank within him he was still firm he would turn his back to his wife and let her run on with her arguments without a word of answer
+but at last there came to her a gleam of hope most unexpectedly it had been settled that mary should make her journey on friday the twelfth february and that reginald morton was again to accompany her
+which was in itself of all things the most pernicious if mary must go to cheltenham why could she not go by herself second class like any other young woman
+nobody would eat her missus masters declared but reginald was firm in his purpose of accompanying her he had no objection whatever to the second class if mister masters preferred it
+then there came a sudden disruption to all these plans and a sudden renewal of her hopes to missus masters
+lady ushant wrote to postpone the visit because she herself had been summoned to bragton her letter to mary though affectionate was very short her grand nephew john the head of the family
+had expressed a desire to see her and with that wish she was bound to comply of course she said she would see mary at bragton or if that were not possible she herself would come into dillsborough
+she did not know what might be the length of her visit but when it was over she hoped that mary would return with her to cheltenham the old lady's letter to reginald was much longer because in that she had to speak of the state of john morton's health
+and of her surprise that she should be summoned to his bedside of course she would go though she could not look forward with satisfaction to a meeting with the honble missus morton
+then she could not refrain from alluding to the fact that if anything were to happen to john morton reginald himself would be the squire of bragton reginald when he received this at once went over to the attorney's house
+but he did not succeed in seeing mary he learned however that they were all aware that the journey had been postponed to missus masters it seemed that all this had been a dispensation of providence
+lady ushant's letter had been received on the thursday and missus masters at once found it expedient to communicate with larry twentyman she was not excellent herself at the writing of letters and therefore she got dolly to be the scribe
+when this was received the poor man was smoking his moody pipe in silence as he roamed about his own farmyard in the darkness of the night
+he had not as yet known any comfort and was still firm in his purpose of selling the farm he had been out hunting once or twice but fancied that people looked at him with peculiar eyes
+he did not care in the least whether they found or not and when captain glomax was held to have disgraced himself thoroughly by wasting an hour in digging out and then killing a vixen he had not a word to say about it
+but as he read dolly's note there came back something of life into his eyes he had forsworn the club but would certainly go when thus invited he wrote a scrawl to dolly i'll come
+and having sent it off by the messenger tried to trust that there might yet be ground for hope missus masters would not have allowed dolly to send such a message without good reason
+john morton might die and then who could tell whether lady ushant would ever return to cheltenham in this way the short lived peace soon came to an end especially as missus masters endeavoured to utilize for general family purposes
+on the saturday larry came to the astonishment of mister masters who was still in his office at half past seven missus masters at once got hold of him and conveyed him away into the sacred drawing room
+mary is not going she said not going to cheltenham it has all been put off she shan't go at all if i can help it but why has it been put off missus masters
+lady ushant is coming to bragton i suppose that poor man is dying he is very ill certainly
+i didn't know she was such friends with the squire as that well there it is lady ushant is coming to bragton and mary is not going to cheltenham
+this she said as though the news must be of vital importance to larry twentyman he stood for awhile scratching his head as he thought of it
+at last it appeared to him that mary's continual residence in dillsborough would of itself hardly assist him i don't see missus masters that that will make her a bit kinder to me
+larry don't you be a coward nor yet soft as for coward missus masters i don't know i suppose you really do love the girl i do i think i've shown that
+and you haven't changed your mind not a bit that's why i speak open to you don't you be afraid of her what's the letter which a girl like that writes
+when she gets tantrums into her head of course she'll write a letter but there's somebody else missus masters who says so i say there ain't nobody nobody
+if anybody tells you that it's only just to put you off
+come to morrow and have a gossip with the girls together and show that you can keep your pluck up that's the way to win her larry did go to the club and did think very much of it as he walked home
+he had promised to come on the sunday afternoon but he could not bring himself to believe in that theory of books and poetry put forward by missus masters
+chapter seven the inquest the coroner who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world had resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence
+he was a large man of jovial temper with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of his work and the news of manderson's mysterious death within his jurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in england
+the court was held in a long unfurnished room lately built onto the hotel and intended to serve as a ball room or concert hall a regiment of reporters was entrenched in the front seats
+and those who were to be called on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table behind which the coroner sat while the jury in double row with plastered hair and a spurious ease of manner flanked him on the other side
+an undistinguished public filled the rest of the space and listened in an awed silence to the opening solemnities the newspaper men well used to these
+the identity of the dead man was proved by his wife the first witness called from whom the coroner after some inquiry into the health and circumstances of the deceased
+proceeded to draw an account of the last occasion on which she had seen her husband alive missus manderson was taken through her evidence by the coroner
+with the sympathy which every man felt for that dark figure of grief she lifted her thick veil before beginning to speak and the extreme paleness and unbroken composure of the lady
+produced a singular impression this was not an impression of hardness interesting femininity was the first thing to be felt in her presence she was not even enigmatic
+but her voice was low and clear to the end her husband she said had come up to his bedroom about his usual hour for retiring on the sunday night
+his room was really a dressing room attached to her own bedroom communicating with it by a door which was usually kept open during the night both dressing room and bedroom were entered by other doors giving on the passage
+and liked to sleep in a small room she had not been awake when he came up but had been half aroused as usually happened when the light was switched on in her husband's room she had spoken to him
+she had no clear recollection of what she had said as she had been very drowsy at the time but she had remembered that he had been out for a moonlight run in the car
+and what time it was she had asked what the time was
+he did explain why i remember very well what he said because she stopped with a little appearance of confusion because the coroner insisted gently
+he said that mister marlowe could do it quite easily if he had no accident he said that he had started in the car and then walked back home a mile or so and felt all the better for it did he say any more
+and you heard nothing in the night no i never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven o'clock she closed the door leading to my husband's room as she always did
+and i supposed him to be still there he always needed a great deal of sleep he sometimes slept until quite late in the morning i had breakfast in my sitting room it was about ten when i heard that my husband's body had been found
+the witness dropped her head and silently waited for her dismissal but it was not to be yet missus manderson the coroner's voice was sympathetic but it had a hint of firmness in it now
+the question i am going to put to you must in these sad circumstances be a painful one
+is it the fact that your relations with your late husband had not been for some time past relations of mutual affection and confidence
+his attitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow he had changed towards me he had become very reserved and seemed mistrustful i saw much less of him than before
+he seemed to prefer to be alone i can give no explanation at all of the change i tried to work against it i did all i could with justice to my own dignity as i thought
+something was between us i did not know what and he never told me my own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in so many words
+i only made a point of being to him exactly as i had always been so far as he would allow me i suppose i shall never know now what it was the witness whose voice had trembled in spite of her self control
+then was there never anything of the nature of what they call words between you and your husband ma'am never
+the word was colorlessly spoken but everyone felt that a crass misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a person like missus manderson had been visited with some severity did she know the coroner asked
+of any other matter which might have been preying upon her husband's mind recently missus manderson knew of none whatever the coroner intimated that her ordeal was at an end and the veiled lady made her way to the door
+the general attention which followed her for a few moments was now eagerly directed upon martin whom the coroner had proceeded to call it was at this moment that trent appeared at the doorway and edged his way into the great room
+but he did not look at martin he was observing the well balanced figure that came quickly toward him along an opening path in the crowd and his eye was gloomy
+he started as he stood aside from the door with a slight bow to hear missus manderson address him by name in a low voice he followed her a pace or two into the hall i wanted to ask you
+she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house i could not see my uncle near the door and i suddenly felt rather faint i shall be better in the air
+she could drag him from the place then again she leaned heavily upon it and with that support and with bent head she walked slowly from the hotel and along the oak shaded path toward white gables
+rushed through his brain in a rout but the touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left his consciousness filling him with an exaltation that enraged and bewildered him
+he was still cursing himself furiously behind the mask of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he had attended her to the house and seen her sink upon a couch in the morning room
+with a look of sincere gratitude in her eyes she was much better now she said and a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her she hoped she had not taken him away from anything important she was ashamed of herself
+she thought she could go through with it but she had not expected those last questions i am glad you did not hear me she said when he explained but of course you will read it all in the reports
+marguerite's aching heart stood still she felt more than she heard the men on the watch preparing for the fight her senses told her that each with sword in hand was crouching ready for the spring
+the voice came nearer and nearer in the vast immensity of these lonely cliffs with the loud murmur of the sea below it was impossible to say how near or how far nor yet from which direction came that cheerful singer who sang to god to save his king whilst he himself was in such deadly danger
+felt that her very life was slipping away as if when that voice drew nearer when that singer became entrapped she distinctly heard the click of desgas gun close to her no no no no oh god in heaven this cannot be
+let armand's blood then be on her own head let her be branded as his murderer let even he whom she loved despise and loathe her for this but god oh god save him at any cost with a wild shriek she sprang to her feet and darted round the rock
+armand armand for god's sake fire your leader is near he is coming he is betrayed armand armand fire in heaven's name she was seized and thrown to the ground she lay there moaning bruised not caring but still half sobbing half shrieking
+percy my husband for god's sake fly armand armand why don't you fire
+something was thrown over her face she could not breathe and perforce she was silent the bold singer too had become silent warned no doubt of his impending danger by marguerite's frantic shrieks the men had sprung to their feet there was no need for further silence on their part
+the very cliffs echoed the poor heart broken woman's screams chauvelin with a muttered oath which boded no good to her who had dared to upset his most cherished plans had hastily shouted the word of command into it my men and let no one escape from that hut alive
+the moon had once more emerged from between the clouds the darkness on the cliffs had gone giving place once more to brilliant silvery light some of the soldiers had rushed to the rough wooden door of the hut whilst one of them kept guard over marguerite
+the door was partially open one of the soldiers pushed it further but within all was darkness the charcoal fire only lighting with a dim red light the furthest corner of the hut the soldiers paused automatically at the door like machines waiting for further orders
+was for the moment paralyzed with astonishment when he saw the soldiers standing there at attention like sentries on guard whilst not a sound proceeded from the hut filled with strange anxious foreboding he too went to the door of the hut and peering into the gloom he asked quickly
+what is the meaning of this i think citoyen that there is no one there now replied one of the soldiers imperturbably you have not let those four men go thundered chauvelin menacingly i ordered you to let no man escape alive quick after them all of you quick in every direction
+the men obedient as machines rushed down the rocky incline towards the beach some going off to right and left as fast as their feet could carry them you and your men will pay with your lives for this blunder citoyen sergeant said chauvelin viciously to the sergeant who had been in charge of the men
+and you too citoyen he added turning with a snarl to desgas for disobeying my orders you ordered us to wait citoyen until the tall englishman arrived and joined the four men in the hut no one came said the sergeant sullenly
+but i ordered you just now when the woman screamed to rush in and let no one escape but citoyen the four men who were there before had been gone some time i think you think you said chauvelin almost choking with fury and you let them go
+you ordered us to wait citoyen protested the sergeant and to implicitly obey your commands on pain of death we waited
+which way did they go asked chauvelin i could not tell citoyen said the sergeant they went straight down the cliff first then disappeared behind some boulders hush what was that all three men listened attentively
+in the far very far distance could be heard faintly echoing and already dying away the quick sharp splash of half a dozen oars chauvelin took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead the schooner's boat was all he gasped
+evidently armand saint just and his three companions had managed to creep along the side of the cliffs whilst the men like true soldiers of the well drilled republican army had with blind obedience and in fear of their own lives implicitly obeyed chauvelin's orders
+to wait for the tall englishman who was the important capture they had no doubt reached one of the creeks which jut far out to sea on this coast at intervals behind this the boat of the day dream must have been on the lookout for them
+it needed all chauvelin's nerve and presence of mind not to give way to a useless and undignified access of rage
+how he had contrived to reach the hut without being seen by one of the thirty soldiers who guarded the spot was more than chauvelin could conceive that he had done so before the thirty men had arrived on the cliff was of course fairly clear
+there were no fairies and hobgoblins about
+by that time the four fugitives must have reached the creek and got into the boat and the nearest creek was more than a mile from the hut where had that daring singer got to unless satan himself had lent him wings he could not have covered that mile on a rocky cliff in the space of two minutes
+one or two of the men who had run after the fugitives were now slowly working their way up the cliff one of them reached chauvelin's side at the very moment that this hope arose in the astute diplomatist's heart
+we were too late citoyen the soldier said we reached the beach just before the moon was hidden by that bank of clouds the boat had undoubtedly been on the look out behind that first creek a mile off but she had shoved off some time ago when we got to the beach and was already some way out to sea
+yes said chauvelin with eager impatience she had shoved off some time ago you said and the nearest creek is a mile further on yes citoyen i ran all the way straight to the beach though i guessed the boat would have waited somewhere near the creek as the tide would reach there earliest
+with a rapid glance chauvelin noted its contents the cauldron placed close under an aperture in the wall and containing the last few dying embers of burned charcoal a couple of stools overturned as if in the haste of sudden departure
+then the fisherman's tools and his nets lying in one corner and beside them something small and white pick that up said chauvelin to the sergeant pointing to this white scrap and bring it to me
+it was a crumpled piece of paper evidently forgotten there by the fugitives in their hurry to get away the sergeant much awed by the citoyen's obvious rage and impatience picked the paper up and handed it respectfully to chauvelin read it sergeant said the latter curtly
+it is almost illegible citoyen a fearful scrawl i ordered you to read it repeated chauvelin viciously the sergeant by the light of his lantern began deciphering the few hastily scrawled words
+i cannot quite reach you without risking your lives and endangering the success of your rescue when you receive this wait two minutes then creep out of the hut one by one turn to your left sharply and creep cautiously down the cliff
+i shall be there as soon as possible they must wait for me at a safe distance out at sea till they hear the usual signal do not delay and obey these instructions implicitly then there is the signature citoyen added the sergeant as he handed the paper back to chauvelin
+but the latter had not waited an instant one phrase of the momentous scrawl had caught his ear
+that phrase might yet mean victory for him which of you knows this coast well he shouted to his men who now one by one all returned from their fruitless run and were all assembled once more round the hut
+there is citoyen i know it well the englishman is hoping to reach that creek
+at any rate there is a chance to get him yet a thousand francs to each man who gets to that creek before that long legged englishman i know of a short cut across the cliffs said the soldier and with an enthusiastic shout he rushed forward followed closely by his comrades
+within a few minutes their running footsteps had died away in the distance
+his well laid plan had failed its sequel was problematical there was still a great chance now that the scarlet pimpernel might yet escape and chauvelin with that unreasoning fury which sometimes assails a strong nature was longing to vent his rage on somebody
+the soldiers were holding marguerite pinioned to the ground though she poor soul was not making the faintest struggle
+her eyes circled by deep purple lines that told of long sleepless nights her hair matted and damp round her forehead her lips parted in a sharp curve that spoke of physical pain
+but the hard vengeful heart of her baffled enemy
+obediently the soldiers rose to their feet you'd better try and find that footpath again for me and that broken down cart we left on the road then suddenly a bright idea seemed to strike him ah by the bye where is the jew
+i gagged him and tied his legs together as you commanded from the immediate vicinity a plaintive moan reached chauvelin's ears he followed his secretary who led the way to the other side of the hut
+where fallen into an absolute heap of dejection with his legs tightly pinioned together and his mouth gagged lay the unfortunate descendant of israel his face in the silvery light of the moon looked positively ghastly with terror
+while a piteous wail escaped his bloodless lips the rope which had originally been wound round his shoulders and arms had evidently given way for it lay in a tangle about his body
+like a terrified chicken which looks upon a line of white chalk drawn on a table as on a string which paralyzes its movements bring the cowardly brute here commanded chauvelin
+he certainly felt exceedingly vicious and since he had no reasonable grounds for venting his ill humour on the soldiers who had but too punctually obeyed his orders he felt that the son of the despised race would prove an excellent butt
+with true french contempt of the jew which has survived the lapse of centuries even to this day he would not go too near him but said with biting sarcasm as the wretched old man was brought in full light of the moon by the two soldiers
+i suppose now that being a jew you have a good memory for bargains answer he again commanded as the jew with trembling lips seemed too frightened to speak yes your honour stammered the poor wretch
+b but your honour there is no but i said do you remember
+your honour he ventured imploringly since your terror seems to have paralyzed your tongue said chauvelin sarcastically i must needs refresh your memory
+it was agreed between us that if we overtook my friend the tall stranger before he reached this place you were to have ten pieces of gold a low moan escaped from the jew's trembling lips
+but added chauvelin with slow emphasis if you deceived me in your promise you were to have a sound beating one that would teach you not to tell lies i did not your honour i swear it by abraham
+and by all the other patriarchs i know unfortunately they are still in hades i believe according to your creed and cannot help you much in your present trouble now you did not fulfil your share of the bargain but i am ready to fulfil mine here he added turning to the soldiers
+i think i can rely on you citoyen soldiers laughed chauvelin maliciously to give this old liar the best and soundest beating he has ever experienced but don't kill him he added drily we will obey citoyen replied the soldiers as imperturbably as ever
+he did not wait to see his orders carried out he knew that he could trust these soldiers who were still smarting under his rebuke not to mince matters when given a free hand to belabour a third party
+the jew and the woman can look after each other he added roughly until we can send somebody for them in the morning they can't run away very far in their present condition and we cannot be troubled with them just now chauvelin had not given up all hope his men he knew were spurred on by the hope of the reward
+but he felt less sure now the englishman's audacity had baffled him once whilst the wooden headed stupidity of the soldiers and the interference of a woman had turned his hand which held all the trumps into a losing one
+it was a long if and chauvelin stood for a moment quite still and enrolled thirty odd people in one long overwhelming anathema nature poetic silent balmy the bright moon the calm silvery sea spoke of beauty and of rest
+and chauvelin cursed nature cursed man and woman and above all he cursed all long legged meddlesome british enigmas with one gigantic curse the howls of the jew behind him undergoing his punishment sent a balm through his heart
+overburdened as it was with revengeful malice he smiled it eased his mind to think that some human being at least was like himself not altogether at peace with mankind he turned and took a last look at the lonely bit of coast where stood the wooden hut now bathed in moonlight
+the scene of the greatest discomfiture ever experienced by a leading member of the committee of public safety against a rock on a hard bed of stone lay the unconscious figure of marguerite blakeney
+while some few paces further on the unfortunate jew was receiving on his broad back the blows of two stout leather belts wielded by the stolid arms of two sturdy soldiers of the republic the howls of benjamin rosenbaum were fit to make the dead rise from their graves
+that will do commanded chauvelin as the jew's moans became more feeble and the poor wretch seemed to have fainted away we don't want to kill him
+leave him there said chauvelin and lead the way now quickly to the cart i'll follow he walked up to where marguerite lay and looked down into her face
+she had evidently recovered consciousness and was making feeble efforts to raise herself her large blue eyes were looking at the moonlit scene round her with a scared and terrified look they rested with a mixture of horror and pity on the jew
+with mock gallantry he stooped and raised her icy cold hand to his lips which sent a thrill of indescribable loathing through marguerite's weary frame
+i much regret fair lady he said in his most suave tones that circumstances over which i have no control compel me to leave you here for the moment but i go away secure in the knowledge that i do not leave you unprotected
+i have no doubt at dawn i will send an escort for you until then i feel sure that you will find him devoted though perhaps a trifle slow marguerite only had the strength to turn her head away her heart was broken with cruel anguish
+what had become of percy what of armand she knew nothing of what had happened after she heard the cheerful song god save the king which she believed to be the signal of death i myself concluded chauvelin must now very reluctantly leave you
+au revoir fair lady we meet i hope soon in london shall i see you at the prince of wales garden party no ah well au revoir remember me i pray to sir percy blakeney
+the persons employed in the finances armies fleets and magistracy are instances of this order of men it may naturally be thought at first sight that the ecclesiastics belong to the first class and that their encouragement as well as that of lawyers and physicians
+may safely be intrusted to the liberality of individuals who are attached to their doctrines and who find benefit or consolation from their spiritual ministry and assistance
+from their increasing practice study and attention but if we consider the matter more closely we shall find that this interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will study to prevent because in every religion except the true it is highly pernicious
+and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition folly and delusion each ghostly practitioner in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers
+will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects and continually endeavor by some novelty to excite the languid devotion of his audience no regard will be paid to truth morals or decency in the doctrines inculcated
+every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace
+and in the end the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid for his pretended frugality in saving a fixed establishment for the priests and that in reality the most decent and advantageous composition which he can make with the spiritual guides
+is to bribe their indolence by assigning stated salaries to their profession and rendering it superfluous for them to be further active than merely to prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastures
+and in this manner ecclesiastical establishments though commonly they arose at first from religious views prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of society
+but we may observe that few ecclesiastical establishments have been fixed upon a worse foundation than that of the church of rome or have been attended with circumstances more hurtful to the peace and happiness of mankind
+the large revenues privileges immunities and powers of the clergy rendered them formidable to the civil magistrate and armed with too extensive authority an order of men who always adhere closely together
+the higher dignities of the church served indeed to the support of gentry and nobility but by the establishment of monasteries many of the lowest vulgar were taken from the useful arts and maintained in those receptacles of sloth and ignorance
+the supreme head of the church was a foreign potentate guided by interests always different from those of the community sometimes contrary to them and as the hierarchy was necessarily solicitous to preserve a unity of faith rites and ceremonies
+all liberty of thought ran a manifest risk of being extinguished and violent persecutions or what was worse a stupid and abject credulity took place every where to increase these evils the church
+though she possessed large revenues was not contented with her acquisitions
+she even bestowed on each individual priest a power of enriching himself by the voluntary oblations of the faithful and left him still an urgent motive for diligence and industry in his calling
+and thus that church though an expensive and burdensome establishment was liable to many of the inconveniences which belong to an order of priests trusting entirely to their own art and invention for obtaining a subsistence
+the advantages attending the romish hierarchy were but a small compensation for its inconveniences the ecclesiastical privileges during barbarous times
+and the pomp and splendor of worship which belonged to so opulent an establishment contributed in some respect to the encouragement of the fine arts and began to diffuse a general elegance of taste by uniting it with religion
+it will easily be conceived that though the balance of evil prevailed in the romish church this was not the chief reason which produced the reformation a concurrence of incidents must have contributed to forward that great revolution
+in order to support his projects pleasures and liberalities the scheme of selling indulgences was suggested to him as an expedient which had often served in former times to draw money from the christian world
+and make devout people willing contributors to the grandeur and riches of the court of rome the church it was supposed was possessed of a great stock of merit as being entitled to all the good works of all the saints beyond what were employed in their own justification
+and even to the merits of christ himself which were infinite and unbounded and from this unexhausted treasury the pope might retail particular portions and by that traffic acquire money to be employed in pious purposes in resisting the infidels
+or subduing schismatics when the money came into his exchequer the greater part of it was usually diverted to other purposes it is commonly believed that leo from the penetration of his genius and his familiarity with ancient literature
+was fully acquainted with the ridicule and falsity of the doctrines which as supreme pontiff
+may justly in part be ascribed to the late invention of printing and revival of learning not that reason bore any considerable share in opening men's eyes with regard to the impostures of the romish church for of all branches of literature philosophy had
+as yet and till long afterwards made the most inconsiderable progress neither is there any instance that argument has ever been able to free the people from that enormous load of absurdity
+with which superstition has every where overwhelmed them not to mention that the rapid advance of the lutheran doctrine and the violence with which it was embraced prove sufficiently that it owed not its success to reason and reflection
+were propagated more quickly and in greater numbers the minds of men somewhat awakened from a profound sleep of so many centuries were prepared for every novelty and scrupled less to tread in any unusual path which was opened to them
+and as copies of the scriptures and other ancient monuments of the christian faith became more common
+many of the powers indeed assumed by the church of rome were very ancient and were prior to almost every political government established in europe
+which time might render valid but appealed still to a divine origin men were tempted to look into their primitive charter and they could without much difficulty perceive its defect in truth and authenticity
+in order to bestow on this topic the greater influence luther and his followers not satisfied with opposing the pretended divinity of the romish church and displaying the temporal inconveniences of that establishment
+carried matters much further and treated the religion of their ancestors as abominable detestable damnable foretold by sacred writ itself as the source of all wickedness and pollution they denominated the pope antichrist
+called his communion the scarlet whore and gave to rome the appellation of babylon expressions which however applied were to be found in scripture and which were better calculated to operate on the multitude than the most solid arguments
+excited by contest and persecution on the one hand by success and applause on the other many of the reformers carried to the greatest extremities their opposition to the church of rome
+and in contradiction to the multiplied superstitions with which that communion was loaded they adopted an enthusiastic strain of devotion which admitted of no observances rites or ceremonies but placed all merit
+in a mysterious species of faith in inward vision rapture and ecstasy the new sectaries seized with this spirit were indefatigable in the propagation of their doctrine
+against the ecclesiastical jurisdiction the lutherans advanced doctrines favorable in some respect to the temporal authority of sovereigns they inveighed against the abuses of the court of rome
+in those powers of which the encroaching spirit of the ecclesiastics especially of the sovereign pontiff had so long bereaved them they condemned celibacy and monastic vows and thereby opened the doors of the convents
+to those who were either tired of the obedience and chastity or disgusted with the license in which they had hitherto lived they blamed the excessive riches the idleness
+the libertinism of the clergy and pointed out their treasures and revenues as lawful spoil to the first invader and as the ecclesiastics had hitherto conducted a willing and a stupid audience and were totally unacquainted with controversy much more
+with every species of true literature they were unable to defend themselves against men armed with authorities quotations and popular topics and qualified to triumph in every altercation or debate
+died in the flower of his age a little after he received the king's book against luther and he was succeeded in the papal chair by adrian a fleming who had been tutor to the emperor charles this man was fitted to gain on the reformers by the integrity candor
+and simplicity of manners which distinguished his character but so violent were their prejudices against the church he rather hurt the cause by his imprudent exercise of those virtues he frankly confessed that many abominable and detestable practices prevailed in the court of rome
+and by this sincere avowal he gave occasion of much triumph to the lutherans this pontiff also whose penetration was not equal to his good intentions was seduced to concur in that league which charles and henry had formed against france
+and who dreaded the resentment of that haughty minister was solicitous to repair the breach made in their friendship by this incident
+he renewed to wolsey all the promises which he had made him of seconding his pretensions to the papal throne
+to the next election the emperor renewed the treaty made at bruges
+the more to ingratiate himself with henry and the english nation he gave to surrey admiral of england a commission for being admiral of his dominions and he himself was installed knight of the garter at london
+chapter seven louise scents a mystery louise merrick was the eldest of uncle john's nieces having just passed her eighteenth birthday
+led a mere butterfly existence her two cousins frankly agreed that louise was shallow insincere and inclined to be affected but of the three girls
+and men usually admired her graceful figure and her piquant pretty face with its crown of fluffy blonde hair and winning expression there was a rumor that she was engaged to be married to arthur weldon
+a young man of position in the city but uncle john ignored the possibility of losing one of his cherished nieces and declared that louise was still too young to think of marriage when away from her frivolous mother
+and the inconsequent home environments the girl was more unaffected and natural in her ways and her faults were doubtless more the result of education than of natural tendency one thing was indisputable however
+louise merrick was a clever girl possessing a quick intellect and a keen insight into the character of others her apparent shallowness was a blind of the same character as her assumed graciousness
+and while she would have been more lovable without any pretence or sham she could not have been louise merrick and allow others to read her as she actually was patsy and beth thought they knew her
+and admired or liked rather than loved their cousin uncle john thought he knew her too and was very proud of his eldest niece in spite of some discovered qualities that were not wholly admirable
+an extensive course of light literature not void of detective stories had at this moment primed louise with its influence to the extent of inducing her to scent a mystery in the history of captain wegg
+the plain folks around millville might speculate listlessly upon the queer doin's at the farm and never get anywhere near the truth indeed the strange occurrences she had just heard
+were nearly forgotten in the community and soon would be forgotten altogether unless the quick ear of a young girl had caught the clue so long ignored at first she scarcely appreciated the importance of the undertaking
+it occurred to her that an effort to read to the bottom of the sea captain's romance would be a charming diversion while she resided at millville and in undertaking the task she laughingly accused herself of becoming an amateur detective
+an occupation that promised to be thrilling and delightful warned however by the rebuff she had met with from uncle john the girl decided not to confide either her suspicions or her proposed investigation to anyone for the present
+louise set to work to tabulate the information she had received thus far noting the element of mystery each fact evolved first captain wegg must have been a rich man in order to build this house
+secondly the captain a surly and silent man had brought hither perhaps by force a young woman as his wife who was so unhappy that she pined away and died who was this woman
+what had rendered her so unhappy and despairing thirdly the captain's only friend had been a crazy man named will thompson was he crazy before the captain's death or had he become crazed at that time
+the boy fled and left his sweetheart without a word why unless something had occurred that rendered their marriage impossible in the fifth place there was old hucks and his blind wife to be considered
+what did they know about their old master's secret history what tragic memories lurked beneath the man's perpetual smile and the woman's composed and sightless face surely there was enough here to excite the curiosity
+and warrant an effort to untangle the mystery and as instruments to the end there were several people available who could be of use to her mc nutt the agent who evidently knew more than he had cared to tell old hucks and his wife
+and ethel thompson the school teacher there might be others but one or another of these four must know the truth and it would be her pleasant duty to obtain a full disclosure so she was anxious to begin her investigations at once
+when her uncle returned from his visit to the pigs louise said to him i've been thinking dear that we ought to call upon that young lady who arranged our rooms and thank her for her kindness that's true he replied
+can't we drive over to thompson's this morning uncle beth and patsy have planned a tramp to the lake and a row after water lilies then let us make our call together we can invite the girl to come here and spend a day with us
+when patsy and beth will be able to meet her that's a good idea louise i was wondering what i'd do this morning tell old hucks to get the nag harnessed the girl ran eagerly upon her errand
+but he turned without a word to harness the horse louise stood watching him your fingers are quite nimble thomas considering the fact that you were once a sailor she said but sailors have to be nimble miss he returned
+buckling a strap unmoved who tol ye i were once a sea farin man i guessed it as he appeared indisposed to say more on the subject she asked did you sail with captain wegg partly miss dan's already now
+don't jerk the bit fer his mouth's tender an it makes him balky ef he balks jest let him rest a time an then speak to him dan ain't vicious he's jest ornery she climbed into the dilapidated old buggy and took the reins
+dan groaned and ambled slowly around to where uncle john stood awaiting his niece
+i understand dan well i don't returned uncle john in his whimsical way as he mounted to the seat beside her i don't understand how he's happened to live since the landing of columbus or what he's good for
+or why someone don't knock him on the head dan turned his long lean face as if to give the speaker a reproachful look then he groaned again leaned forward and drew the buggy slowly into the stony lane
+do you know where the thompsons live inquired uncle john no whoa dan that was the best thing the nag did he knew how to whoa thomas called uncle john turning in his seat
+and at the summons old hucks came from the barn and approached them how do you get to miss thompson's place miss ethel's another fleeting expression of surprise yes we're going over to thank her for her kindness to us
+thompson's stammered hucks glancing up at them with his bright elusive smile well we're going anyhow growled mister merrick
+chapter one uncle john's farm how did i happen to own a farm asked uncle john interrupting his soup long enough to fix an inquiring glance upon major doyle who sat opposite
+replied the major composedly it's a part of my duty in attending to those affairs you won't look afther yourself to lend certain sums of your money to needy and ambitious young men who want a start in life oh uncle
+do you do that exclaimed miss patricia doyle who sat between her uncle and father and kept an active eye upon both so the major says answered uncle john dryly and it's true
+asserted the other he's assisted three or four score young men to start in business in the last year to my certain knowledge by lending them sums ranging from one to three thousand dollars
+and it's the most wasteful and extravagant charity i ever heard of but i'm so glad cried patsy clapping her hands with a delighted gesture it's a splendid way to do good
+without capital you know many a young fellow would never get his foot on the first round of the ladder and many will never get it there in any event declared the major with a shake of his grizzled head
+and how can i tell whether they're desarving or not retorted major doyle fiercely do ye want me to become a sleuth or engage detectives to track the objects of your erroneous philanthropy
+i just have to form a judgment an take me chances and whin a poor devil goes wrong
+but some of them must succeed ventured patsy in a conciliatory tone some do said john merrick and that repays me for all my trouble
+queried the major you mane all my throuble well and your money
+with one thing and another what of it retorted the little round faced millionaire leaning back in his chair and staring fixedly at the other that's what i employ you for now now gentlemen cried patsy earnestly
+of his falling down and worshiping him john merrick was a multi millionaire to be sure but there were palliating circumstances that almost excused him he had been so busily occupied in industry
+that he never noticed how his wealth was piling up until he discovered it by accident then he promptly retired to give the other fellows a chance and he now devoted his life to simple acts of charity
+and the welfare and entertainment of his three nieces he had rescued major doyle and his daughter from a lowly condition and placed the former in the great banking house of isham marvin and company
+simple in his tastes modest and retiring lacking the education and refinements of polite society but shrewd and experienced in the affairs of the world the little man found his greatest enjoyment in the family circle
+that he had been instrumental in founding being no longer absorbed in business he had come to detest its every detail and so allowed his bankers to care for his fortune and his brother in law to disburse his income
+while he himself strove to enjoy life in a shy and boyish fashion that was as unusual in a man of his wealth as it was admirable he had never married
+patricia was the apple of uncle john's eye and the one goddess enshrined in her doting father's heart glancing at her
+in her plain muslin gown a stranger would be tempted to wonder why she was red haired freckled as a robin's egg pug nosed and wide mouthed but her blue eyes were beautiful
+and they sparkled with a combination of saucy mischief and kindly consideration for others that lent her face an indescribable charm everyone loved patsy doyle
+and people would gaze longer at her smiling lips and dancing eyes than upon many a more handsome but less attractive face she was nearly seventeen years old not very tall and her form to speak charitably
+he wanted capital to patent the pump and put it on the market the thing looked pretty good john so i lent him a thousand of your money quite right returned uncle john nodding but pretty soon he came back with a sad tale
+he was in a bad fix another fellow was contesting his patent and fighting hard to head him off it would take a lot of money to fight back three thousand at least
+but he was decent about it after all his father had left him a little farm at millville he couldn't say what it was worth but there were sixty acres and some good buildings and he would deed it to you as security
+if you would let him have three thousand more so you took the farm and gave him the money i did sir perhaps i am to blame
+making five thousand in all well it's gone john and you've got the farm the other fellows were too clever for my young friend joseph wegg and knocked out his patent i'm so sorry said patsy sympathetically
+he replied what became of the young man asked the girl he's a competent chauffeur and so he went to work driving an automobile where is millville inquired uncle john thoughtfully somewhere at the north of the state i believe
+have you investigated the farm at all i looked up a real estate dealer living at millville and wrote him about the wegg farm he said if any one wanted the place very badly it might sell for three thousand dollars humph
+but his best information was to the effect that no one wanted it at all patsy laughed poor uncle john she said the little man however was serious
+for a time he ate with great deliberation and revolved an interesting thought in his mind years ago
+beth is still with louise you know and they must find the city deadly dull just now the farm's the thing and the major can run up to see us for a couple of weeks in the hot weather and we'll all have a glorious lazy time
+and we can take mary along to do the cooking suggested patsy entering into the idea enthusiastically and eat in our shirt sleeves said uncle john with a glowing face and have a cow and some pigs cried the girl
+you talk as if it were a real farm instead of a place no one would have as a gift uncle john looked sober again anyone live on the place major he inquired
+it's gone to ruin and decay the last few years
+for although the jewish family of the herods reigned over judea they only held their throne under the roman emperor this the jews could not endure they longed to be a free and independent nation once again
+when our messiah comes he will be a great warrior they said he will utterly destroy all our enemies he will make jerusalem the greatest and richest city
+had jesus of nazareth been willing to become their earthly king and to lead the nation against the romans the jews would probably have followed him to a man
+the saviour sought to heal it he called out the faith and gratitude of the roman centurion and his answer to the jewish leaders render to caesar the things that are caesar's
+showed them the right attitude in which to regard the roman rule
+the roman government had no quarrel with him thine own nation hath delivered thee unto me
+had not the jews prevented it if thou let this man go thou art not caesar's friend they cried
+to crucify jesus of nazareth and to free barabbas but in choosing the rebel barabbas
+as their hero the nation started on their downward road as the story of the forty years which followed the saviour's crucifixion clearly shows for the jews were determined at all costs to throw off the roman yoke
+and the history of those years is one long list of terrible risings and massacres while cities were ruined villages wrapped in flames and men women and children perished with hunger
+yet the keener the suffering the more desperate the jews became their whole souls were possessed with a wild and mad passion for revenge
+then if any man shall say unto you lo here is christ or there believe it not matthew
+yet no sooner did a daring rebel or murderer gather a band of robbers around him and begin to kill and plunder than multitudes of jews cried the christ or messiah has come
+where the roman soldiers were quartered and cried out to the garrison within that their lives should be spared if they would lay down their weapons the roman soldiers hesitated but the jews promised most faithfully to keep their word
+the romans believed them and opened their gates but no sooner were they in the power of the jewish mob than they were fallen upon and murdered to the last man as they died the roman soldiers whom not even death could terrify
+lifted up their hands to heaven as though calling upon god to witness that the jews had broken their solemn oath the roman emperor could not overlook such rebellion and treachery
+and he sent a great army against jerusalem the jews shut the gates of their city and so began the awful siege of jerusalem and when ye shall see jerusalem compassed with armies
+he was a prisoner in the roman camp during the siege of jerusalem and he watched with dismay the great battering rams and war engines crashing through the walls of the holy city his ears rang with the cries of rage and despair which broke from the jews within
+as one by one their defences fell and the end drew near then food failed in the city men fought like demons in the streets for a tiny loaf of barley bread so frantic were the people with hunger
+that mothers even snatched the bread from their own children's mouths look over the walls o people of jerusalem the roman soldiers are crucifying all the prisoners they have taken and the line of crosses is as long as our city is wide
+hard merciless as was the roman general even he grew sick with horror at last and he sent his jewish prisoner josephus to the jews promising them their lives if they would give up the city
+but a furious madness had possessed the people and they refused to yield josephus pleaded in vain he was not a christian but he could see plainly enough that god was no longer with his people
+ah my countrymen he cried we did nothing without god in the past but now you are fighting against him had god judged you worthy of freedom he would have punished the romans as he did the assyrians long ago
+even a jew who had no faith in jesus christ could see plainly that the ancient power and glory of his nation had gone at last the end came the first wall fell
+which still glittered like a hill of snow in the morning sunshine or sparkled as though wrapped in flame when the sunbeams struck full on its golden roof then redder flames than ever the sunshine made leapt above the golden roof
+pillars fell beams crumbled to ashes while round the altar of sacrifice the people of jerusalem lay heaped together slain in such numbers in the holy place that their blood flowed down the broad marble steps in a heavy crimson stream
+and the golden candlestick and the book of the law were carried away in triumph into heathen rome alas for the holy city over which the saviour of the world had stood and wept forty years before
+knowing the suffering that lay before her these jews are dangerous we must not allow them to rebuild their city or to become a separate people again as a nation they must cease to exist
+so the roman conquerors of jerusalem agreed and from that day onward the jewish people have had no country of their own they have indeed been led away captive into all nations
+exactly as the lord foretold there is scarcely a country in the world where jews may not be found but jerusalem lies still in the hands of strangers and is the property of the turkish nation
+the jews were now no longer a nation they had become merely a body of people led by their rabbis or teachers of the law but they were still the people of the book
+they allowed the jewish teachers to continue the synagogue services in other parts of palestine and to teach in their colleges the most famous jewish college of these days was at tiberius on the shores of the sea of galilee
+over whose clear depths the lord jesus christ had sailed so often and beside whose shores he had done so many wonderful deeds of love and mercy a great and beautiful college it was with broad terraced gardens
+so all day long they studied and copied the old hebrew bible as we have seen the jewish scribes had not been content with taking the word of god just as it stood they had begun even in our lord's day
+that they declared a man to be a blockhead if he knew only the scriptures and not the talmud explanation the law of moses is like salt but the talmud is balmy spice they would say
+yet although they heeded so little the true meaning of god's book they guarded its words more and more carefully and the rules for copying any portion of the holy books were strict indeed my son an old teacher would say to his pupil
+before you copy a single word you must wash your body all over and clothe yourself in full jewish dress preparing your mind with solemn thoughts the parchment you write upon must be made from the skins of clean animals only
+that is clean according to the law of moses the ink you write with must be of a pure black made only from a mixture of soot charcoal and honey
+though you know the whole book of the law by heart you must not write a single word from memory but raise your eyes to your copy and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen
+before writing any of the names of god you must wash your pen before writing his most sacred name you must wash your whole body if after your copy has itself been examined three corrections have to be made
+that copy must be destroyed not satisfied with all these directions the master taught his scholar to count the letters of every book
+is the middle letter of all the five books of moses
+is the middle of all the words
+is the very centre of all the verses the letter a that is the hebrew letter which stands for a occurs forty two thousand three hundred seventy seven times the letter b thirty five thousand two hundred eighteen
+and so on not only this but every scribe was required to know from memory exactly how many letters of each kind there should be in his sheet before he began to write every sheet of parchment must contain an equal number of lines
+and the breadth of each column had to be thirty letters wide there are eleven verses in the book of the law beginning and ending with n there are forty verses in which lo is read three times and so on and so on
+how tedious and meaningless such information appears of what value were all these details to spend all his days in learning such things as these could have no influence on a man's character nor make him a power for good in the world
+not for this purpose had god revealed his will to man some years ago in the coffin of an egyptian mummy a little jar of wheat was found for thousands of years it had lain there shut up in the dark
+while out in the fields the corn which had been sown had grown up and been reaped every year and men and women had been fed but this jar of corn was useless because it had been prevented from doing the work in the world for which it was created
+just so was it with the hebrew copies of god's word locked up in a dead language kept close away from the world they were like the jar of wheat which could not grow
+the council of buccaneers had lasted some time when one of them re entered the house and with a repetition of the same salute which had in my eyes an ironical air begged for a moment's loan of the torch silver briefly agreed
+and this emissary retired again leaving us together in the dark there's a breeze coming jim said silver who had by this time adopted quite a friendly and familiar tone i turned to the loophole nearest me and looked out
+the embers of the great fire had so far burned themselves out and now glowed so low and duskily that i understood why these conspirators desired a torch about half way down the slope to the stockade they were collected in a group
+one held the light another was on his knees in their midst and i saw the blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colours in the moon and torchlight
+i could just make out that he had a book as well as a knife in his hand and was still wondering how anything so incongruous had come in their possession when the kneeling figure rose once more to his feet
+and the whole party began to move together towards the house here they come said i and i returned to my former position for it seemed beneath my dignity that they should find me watching them well let em come lad let em come
+i've still a shot in my locker the door opened and the five men standing huddled together just inside pushed one of their number forward in any other circumstances it would have been comical to see his slow advance
+hesitating as he set down each foot but holding his closed right hand in front of him step up lad cried silver i won't eat you
+you'll all swing now i reckon what soft headed lubber had a bible it was dick said one dick was it then dick can get to prayers said silver
+he's seen his slice of luck has dick and you may lay to that but here the long man with the yellow eyes struck in
+well what is it anyway ah deposed' that's it is it very pretty wrote to be sure like print i swear your hand o write george
+you'll be cap'n next i shouldn't wonder just oblige me with that torch again will you this pipe don't draw
+you're a funny man by your account but you're over now and you'll maybe step down off that barrel and help vote i thought you said you knowed the rules returned silver contemptuously
+oh replied george you don't be under no kind of apprehension we're all square we are first you've made a hash of this cruise you'll be a bold man to say no to that second
+you let the enemy out o this here trap for nothing why did they want out
+third you wouldn't let us go at them upon the march
+you want to play booty that's what's wrong with you and then fourth there's this here boy is that all asked silver quietly enough too retorted george
+we'll all swing and sun dry for your bungling
+i made a hash o this cruise did i well now you all know what i wanted and you all know if that had been done that we'd a been aboard the hispaniola this night as ever was every man of us alive and fit and full of good plum duff
+and the treasure in the hold of her by thunder well who crossed me
+ah it's a fine dance i'm with you there and looks mighty like a hornpipe in a rope's end at execution dock by london town it does but who done it why it was anderson and hands and you george merry
+and you're the last above board of that same meddling crew and you have the davy jones's insolence to up and stand for cap'n over me you that sank the lot of us
+but this tops the stiffest yarn to nothing silver paused and i could see by the faces of george and his late comrades that these words had not been said in vain that's for number one
+cried the accused wiping the sweat from his brow for he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the house
+speak up to the others ah the others returned john they're a nice lot ain't they you say this cruise is bungled ah by gum if you could understand how bad it's bungled you would see
+we're that near the gibbet that my neck's stiff with thinking on it you've seen em maybe hanged in chains birds about em
+who's that says one that why that's john silver i knowed him well says another and you can hear the chains a jangle as you go about and reach for the other buoy
+now that's about where we are every mother's son of us thanks to him and hands and anderson and other ruination fools of you
+are we a going to waste a hostage no not us
+kill that boy not me mates and number three ah well there's a deal to say to number three maybe you don't count it nothing to have a real college doctor to see you every day you john with your head broke
+but that's a trifle you look there that's why and he cast down upon the floor a paper that i instantly recognized none other than the chart on yellow paper
+the appearance of the chart was incredible to the surviving mutineers they leaped upon it like cats upon a mouse it went from hand to hand one tearing it from another and by the oaths and the cries and the childish laughter with which they accompanied their examination
+but were at sea with it besides in safety yes said one that's flint sure enough j f and a score below with a clove hitch to it so he done ever
+mighty pretty said george but how are we to get away with it and us no ship silver suddenly sprang up and supporting himself with a hand against the wall
+now i give you warning george he cried one more word of your sauce and i'll call you down and fight you how why how do i know
+but civil you can speak and shall george merry you may lay to that
+so that's the toon is it cried the cook george i reckon you'll have to wait another turn friend and lucky for you as i'm not a revengeful man but
+and now shipmates this black spot tain't much good now is it dick's crossed his luck and spoiled his bible and that's about all it'll do to kiss the book on still won't it growled dick who was evidently
+a bible with a bit cut out returned silver derisively not it
+don't it though cried dick with a sort of joy well i reckon that's worth having too here jim here's a cur'osity for you said silver and he tossed me the paper
+one side was blank for it had been the last leaf the other contained a verse or two of revelation these words among the rest which struck sharply home upon my mind without are dogs and murderers
+the printed side had been blackened with wood ash which already began to come off and soil my fingers on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word depposed
+i have that curiosity beside me at this moment but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch such as a man might make with his thumb nail that was the end of the night's business
+it was long ere i could close an eye and heaven knows i had matter enough for thought in the man whom i had slain that afternoon
+and above all in the remarkable game that i saw silver now engaged upon keeping the mutineers together with one hand and grasping with the other after every means possible and impossible to make his peace and save his miserable life
+he himself slept peacefully and snored aloud yet
+the three fellows still abroad upon the island did not greatly trouble us a single sentry on the shoulder of the hill was sufficient to ensure us against any sudden onslaught and we thought besides they had had more than enough of fighting
+therefore the work was pushed on briskly gray and ben gunn came and went with the boat while the rest during their absences
+two of the bars slung in a rope's end made a good load for a grown man one that he was glad to walk slowly with for my part
+the pictures of all the kings of europe for the last hundred years strange oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web
+nearly every variety of money in the world must i think have found a place in that collection and for number i am sure they were like autumn leaves so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out
+at last i think it was on the third night the doctor and i were strolling on the shoulder of the hill where it overlooks the lowlands of the isle
+the wind brought us a noise between shrieking and singing it was only a snatch that reached our ears followed by the former silence heaven forgive them said the doctor tis the mutineers
+all drunk sir struck in the voice of silver from behind us silver i should say was allowed his entire liberty and in spite of daily rebuffs seemed to regard himself once more as quite a privileged and friendly dependent
+indeed it was remarkable how well he bore these slights and with what unwearying politeness he kept on trying to ingratiate himself with all yet i think none treated him better than a dog unless it was ben gunn
+who was still terribly afraid of his old quartermaster or myself who had really something to thank him for although for that matter i suppose i had reason to think even worse of him than anybody else
+for i had seen him meditating a fresh treachery upon the plateau accordingly it was pretty gruffly that the doctor answered him drunk or raving said he right you were sir replied silver
+and precious little odds which to you and me i suppose you would hardly ask me to call you a humane man returned the doctor with a sneer and so my feelings may surprise you master silver
+but if i were sure they were raving as i am morally certain one at least of them is down with fever i should leave this camp and at whatever risk to my own carcass take them the assistance of my skill
+no said the doctor you're the man to keep your word we know that well that was about the last news we had of the three pirates only once we heard a gunshot a great way off and supposed them to be hunting
+a council was held and it was decided that we must desert them on the island to the huge glee i must say of ben gunn and with the strong approval of gray we left a good stock of powder and shot the bulk of the salt goat
+a few medicines and some other necessaries tools clothing a spare sail a fathom or two of rope and by the particular desire of the doctor a handsome present of tobacco that was about our last doing on the island
+and there we saw all three of them kneeling together on a spit of sand with their arms raised in supplication it went to all our hearts i think to leave them in that wretched state but we could not risk another mutiny
+and to take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness the doctor hailed them and told them of the stores we had left and where they were to find them but they continued to call us by name and appeal to us for god's sake
+leapt to his feet with a hoarse cry whipped his musket to his shoulder and sent a shot whistling over silver's head
+after that we kept under cover of the bulwarks and when next i looked out they had disappeared from the spit and the spit itself had almost melted out of sight in the growing distance that was at least the end of that
+and before noon to my inexpressible joy the highest rock of treasure island had sunk into the blue round of sea we were so short of men that everyone on board had to bear a hand
+only the captain lying on a mattress in the stern and giving his orders for though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet we laid her head for the nearest port in spanish america for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands
+and as it was what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales we were all worn out before we reached it it was just at sundown when we cast anchor in a most beautiful land locked gulf
+the taste of the tropical fruits and above all the lights that began to shine in the town made a most charming contrast to our dark and bloody sojourn on the island and the doctor and the squire taking me along with them went ashore
+to pass the early part of the night here they met the captain of an english man of war fell in talk with him went on board his ship and in short had so agreeable a time that day was breaking when we came alongside the hispaniola
+silver was gone the maroon had connived at his escape in a shore boat some hours ago
+that man with the one leg had stayed aboard but this was not all the sea cook had not gone empty handed he had cut through a bulkhead unobserved and had removed one of the sacks of coin
+worth perhaps three or four hundred guineas to help him on his further wanderings i think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him
+well to make a long story short we got a few hands on board made a good cruise home and the hispaniola reached bristol just as mister blandly was beginning to think of fitting out her consort five men only of those who had sailed returned with her
+as that other ship they sang about with one man of her crew alive what put to sea with seventy five all of us had an ample share of the treasure and used it wisely or foolishly according to our natures
+captain smollett is now retired from the sea gray not only saved his money but being suddenly smit with the desire to rise also studied his profession and he is now mate and part owner of a fine full rigged ship
+married besides and the father of a family as for ben gunn he got a thousand pounds which he spent or lost in three weeks or to be more exact in nineteen days for he was back begging on the twentieth
+of silver we have heard no more that formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life
+and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and captain flint it is to be hoped so i suppose for his chances of comfort in another world are very small the bar silver
+and the arms still lie for all that i know where flint buried them and certainly they shall lie there for me
+and the worst dreams that ever i have are when i hear the surf booming about its coasts or start upright in bed with the sharp voice of captain flint still ringing in my ears
+there never was such an overturn in this world each of these six men was as though he had been struck
+every thought of his soul had been set full stretch like a racer on that money well he was brought up in a single second dead and he kept his head found his temper and changed his plan before the others had had time to realize the disappointment
+here is a narrow corner as
+his looks were not quite friendly and i was so revolted at these constant changes that i could not forbear whispering so you've changed sides again there was no time left for him to answer in
+and to dig with their fingers throwing the boards aside as they did so morgan found a piece of gold he held it up with a perfect spout of oaths it was a two guinea piece and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter of a minute
+two guineas roared merry shaking it at silver
+you're him that never bungled nothing you wooden headed lubber dig away boys said silver with the coolest insolence you'll find some pig nuts and i shouldn't wonder pig nuts repeated merry in a scream mates do you hear that
+ah merry remarked silver standing for cap'n again you're a pushing lad to be sure but this time everyone was entirely in merry's favour they began to scramble out of the excavation
+darting furious glances behind them one thing i observed which looked well for us they all got out upon the opposite side from silver well there we stood two on one side five on the other the pit between us
+and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow silver never moved he watched them very upright on his crutch and looked as cool as ever i saw him he was brave and no mistake
+at last merry seemed to think a speech might help matters
+one's the old cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this the other's that cub that i mean to have the heart of now mates
+and plainly meant to lead a charge but just then crack crack crack three musket shots flashed out of the thicket merry tumbled head foremost into the excavation
+the man with the bandage spun round like a teetotum and fell all his length upon his side where he lay dead but still twitching and the other three turned and ran for it with all their might
+before you could wink long john had fired two barrels of a pistol into the struggling merry and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony george said he
+sometimes plunging through the bushes to the chest i tell you but silver was anxious to keep up with us the work that man went through
+was work no sound man ever equalled and so thinks the doctor as it was he was already thirty yards behind us and on the verge of strangling when we reached the brow of the slope doctor he hailed see there
+no hurry sure enough there was no hurry in a more open part of the plateau we could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as they had started
+we were already between them and the boats
+came slowly up with us thank ye kindly doctor says he you came in in about the nick i guess for me and hawkins
+i'm ben gunn i am replied the maroon wriggling like an eel in his embarrassment and he added after a long pause how do mister silver pretty well i thank ye says you
+ben ben murmured silver to think as you've done me the doctor sent back gray for one of the pick axes deserted in their flight by the mutineers
+ben in his long lonely wanderings about the island had found the skeleton it was he that had rifled it he had found the treasure he had dug it up it was the haft of his pick axe that lay broken in the excavation
+he had carried it on his back in many weary journeys from the foot of the tall pine to a cave he had on the two pointed hill at the north east angle of the island and there it had lain stored in safety since two months
+given him the stores for ben gunn's cave was well supplied with goats meat salted by himself given anything and everything to get a chance of moving in safety from the stockade to the two pointed hill there to be clear of malaria
+and keep a guard upon the money as for you jim he said it went against my heart
+and leaving the squire to guard the captain had taken gray and the maroon and started making the diagonal across the island to be at hand beside the pine soon however he saw that our party had the start of him and ben gunn being fleet of foot
+had been dispatched in front to do his best alone then it had occurred to him to work upon the superstitions of his former shipmates
+not a thought replied doctor livesey cheerily and by this time we had reached the gigs
+this was a run of eight or nine miles silver though he was almost killed already with fatigue was set to an oar like the rest of us and we were soon skimming swiftly over a smooth sea
+and a figure standing by it leaning on a musket it was the squire and we waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers in which the voice of silver joined as heartily as any three miles farther just inside the mouth of north inlet
+what should we meet but the hispaniola cruising by herself the last flood had lifted her and had there been much wind or a strong tide current as in the southern anchorage we should never have found her more or found her stranded beyond help
+another anchor was got ready and dropped in a fathom and a half of water we all pulled round again to rum cove the nearest point for ben gunn's treasure house and then gray single handed returned with the gig to the hispaniola
+where he was to pass the night on guard a gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave at the top the squire met us
+to me he was cordial and kind saying nothing of my escapade either in the way of blame or praise at silver's polite salute he somewhat flushed john silver
+replied long john again saluting i dare you to thank me cried the squire it is a gross dereliction of my duty stand back and thereupon we all entered the cave
+it was a large airy place with a little spring and a pool of clear water overhung with ferns the floor was sand before a big fire lay captain smollett and in a far corner only duskily flickered over by the blaze
+i beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold that was flint's treasure that we had come so far to seek and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the hispaniola
+how many it had cost in the amassing what blood and sorrow what good ships scuttled on the deep what brave men walking the plank blindfold what shot of cannon what shame and lies and cruelty
+perhaps no man alive could tell yet there were still three upon that island silver and old morgan and ben gunn who had each taken his share in these crimes as each had hoped in vain to share in the reward
+come in jim said the captain you're a good boy in your line jim but i don't think you and me'll go to sea again you're too much of the born favourite for me
+and what a meal it was with ben gunn's salted goat and some delicacies and a bottle of old wine from the hispaniola never i am sure were people gayer or happier
+how soon keys were added to the monochord as this measuring instrument was named cannot positively be ascertained we may safely assume it was not slow in adopting the rude keyboard ascribed by tradition to pan pipes
+and applied to the portable organ of early christian communities after the tenth century the development of the monochord seems to have begun in earnest two or more strings of equal length are now divided
+and set in motion by flat metal wedges attached to the key levers and called tangents because they touched the strings in response to the demand for increased range as many as twenty keys
+were brought to act on a few strings commanding often three octaves
+the famous sight reading music teacher of the eleventh century advised his pupils to exercise the hand in the use of the monochord showing his knowledge of the keyboard the keyed monochord gained the name
+clavichord its box like case was first placed on a table later on its own stand and increased in elegance not until the eighteenth century was each key provided with a separate string
+or keyboard instruments that came into use dance music found in them a congenial field
+i answer that you cannot yet owing to your youth understand that playing is only suited for volatile frivolous women whereas i desire you to be the most lovable maiden in the world
+also it would bring you but little pleasure or renown if you should play badly
+consider a moment whether this would become you if your friends wish you to play in order to give them pleasure tell them you do not desire to make yourself ridiculous in their eyes and be content with your books and your domestic occupations
+a different view was entertained in england during queen elizabeth's reign where claviers were in vogue styled virginals because as an ancient chronicle explained virgins do most commonly play on them
+the virginal was usually of oblong shape often resembling a lady's workbox with the virgin queen it was a prime favorite although not named expressly for her as the flattering fashion of the time led many to assume
+if she actually did justice to some of the airs with variations in the queen elizabeth virginal book she must indeed have been proficient on the instrument quaint doctor charles burney
+seventeen twenty six eighteen fourteen declares in his history of music that no performer of his day could play them without at least a month's practice
+the clavier gave promise of its destined career in the elizabethan age shakespeare immortalized it and william byrd
+became the first clavier master he and doctor john bull
+represent the two types which run through the entire history of the clavier byrd was the more intimate delicate spiritual intellect bull the untamed genius the brilliant
+executant the less exquisitely refined artist it is significant that these two types stand together on the threshold of clavier art
+the founding of whose chair of music is popularly attributed to alfred the great as early as the year fourteen hundred claviers had appeared whose strings were plucked by quills
+attached to jacks at the end of the key levers to this group belonged the virginal or virginals the clavicembalo the harpsichord or clavecin and the spinet stops were added as in the organ
+that varied effects might be produced and a second keyboard was often placed above the first the case was either rectangular or followed the outlines of the harp a progenitor of this clavier type
+the secular music principle of the sixteenth century that called into active being the orchestra led also to a desire for richer musical expression in home and social life than the fashionable lute afforded
+and the clavier advanced in favor in france by fifteen thirty the dance that promoter of pure instrumental music was freely transcribed for the clavier little more than a century later jean baptiste lully
+extensively employed the instrument in the orchestration of his operas and wrote solo dances for it
+now well nigh forgotten although once mentioned in the same breath with moliere wrote the pioneer clavier instruction book in it he directs scholars how to avoid a harsh tone and how to form a legato style
+he advises parents to select teachers on whom implicit reliance may be placed and teachers to keep the claviers of beginners under lock and key that there may be no practicing without supervision his suggestions deserve consideration to day
+he was the first to encourage professional clavier playing among women his daughter marguerite was the first woman appointed official court clavier player he composed for the clavier little picture tunes
+designed to depict sentiments moods phases of character and scenes from life he fashioned many charming turns of expression introduced an occasional tempo rubato foreshadowed the intellectual
+element in music and laid the corner stone of modern piano playing jean philippe rameau
+continued couperin's work what is generally recognized as the first period of clavier virtuosity begins with the neapolitan domenico scarlatti
+and johann sebastian bach
+the german of germans the style of scarlatti is peculiarly the product of italian love of beautiful tone
+kept well in view the technical possibilities of the harpsichord his cat's fugue and his one movement sonatas still appear on concert programmes in a collection of thirty sonatas he explained his purpose in these words
+amateur or professor whoever thou art seek not in these compositions for any profound feeling they are only a frolic of art meant to increase thy confidence in the clavier
+in germany with grand old father bach the keyboard instrument was found capable of mirroring a mighty soul the germ of all modern musical design lies in his clavier writings
+it has been aptly said of this master of masters that he constructed a great university of music from which all must graduate who would accomplish anything of value in music men of genius from mozart to the present time
+have extolled him for the beauty of his melodies and harmonies the expressiveness of his modulations the wealth spontaneity and logical clearness of his ideas and the superb architecture of his productions
+students miss the soul of bach because of the soulless mechanical way in which they deface his legacy to them his twelve little preludes alone contain the materials for an entire system of music the inventions
+too often treated as dry as dust studies are laden with beautiful figures and devices that furnish inspiration for all time as indicated by their title which signifies a compound of appropriate expression
+and just disposition of the members they were designed to cultivate the elements of musical taste as well as freedom and equality of the fingers his well tempered clavichord has been called the pianist's sacred book
+its preludes and fugues illustrate every shade of human feeling and were especially designed to exemplify the mode of tuning known as equal temperament introduced into general use by bach
+and still employed by your piano tuner and mine forkel his biographer has finely said that bach considered the voices of his fugues a select company of persons conversing together
+each was allowed to speak only when there was something to say bearing on the subject in hand a highly characteristic motive or theme as significant as the noblest typical phrase
+developing into equally characteristic progressions and cadences is a striking feature of the bach fugue his suites exalted forever the familiar dance tunes of the german people his wonderful chromatic fantasia and fugue
+the piano bard the piano rhapsodist the piano mind the piano soul is chopin said rubinstein tragic romantic lyric heroic dramatic fantastic soulful
+sweet dreamy brilliant grand simple all possible expressions are found in his compositions and all are sung by him on his instrument
+in these few bold strokes one who knew him by virtue of close art and race kinship presents an incomparable outline sketch of the polish tone poet
+who explored the harmonic vastness of the pianoforte and made his own all its mystic secrets born and bred on poland's soil son of a french father and a polish mother frederic chopin
+combined within himself two natures each complementing the other both uniting to form a personality not understood by every casual observer he is described as kind courteous
+possessed of the most captivating grace and ease of manner now inclined to languorous melancholy now scintillating with a joyous vivacity that was contagious
+his sensitive nature like the most exquisitely constructed sounding board vibrated with the despairing sadness the suppressed wrath and the sublime fortitude of the brave haughty
+unhappy people he loved and with his own homesickness when afar from his cherished native land patriot and tone poet in every fibre of his being
+his genius inevitably claimed as its own the soul's divinest language pure music unfettered by words the profound reserve of his nature made it peculiarly
+agreeable to him to gratify the haunting demands of his lyric muse through the medium of the one musical instrument that lends itself in privacy to the exploitation of all the mysteries of harmony
+strong conviction in regard to his own calling and clear perception of the hidden powers and future mission of the piano early compelled him to consecrate to it his unfaltering devotion
+he evolved from its more intimate domain effects in sympathy with those of the orchestra yet purely individual he enriched it with new melodic harmonic and rhythmic devices adapted to itself alone
+and endowed it with a warmth of tone coloring that spiritualized it for all time to the piano he confided all the conflicts that raged within him all the courage and living hope that sustained him
+in giving tonal form to the deep things of the soul which are universal in their essence and application he embodied universal rather than merely individual emotional experiences
+and thus unbared what was most sacred to himself without jarring on the innate reticence which made purely personal confidences impossible
+although his mode of expression was peculiarly his own he had received a strong impulse from the popular music of poland
+they were his earliest models on them were builded his first themes
+so chopin glorified those of the poles the national tonality became to him a vehicle to be freighted with his own individual conceptions i should like to be to my people
+what uhland was to the germans he once said to a friend he addressed himself to the heart of this people and immortalized its joys sorrows and caprices by the force of his splendid art
+those who have attempted to interpret him as the sentimental hero of minor moods the tone poet in whom the weakness of despair predominates have missed the leaping flames the vivid intensity
+true art softens the harshest accents of suffering by placing superior to it some elevating idea so in the most melancholy strains of his music one who heeds well may detect the presence of a lofty ideal
+that uplifts and strengthens the travailing soul it has been said of him that he had a sad heart but a joyful mind the two teachers of chopin were
+zwyny a bohemian violinist who taught the piano and joseph elsner a violinist organist and theorist from zwyny and elsner even the greatest dunce must learn something he is quoted as saying
+neither of these men attempted to hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints their guidance left him master of his own genius at liberty to soar like the lark into the ethereal blue of the skies
+he respected them both a revering affection was cherished by him for elsner to whom he owed his sense of personal responsibility to his art his habits of serious study
+and his intimate acquaintance with bach there is food for thought in the fact that this prince charming of the piano whose magic touch awakened the sleeping beauty of the instrument of wood and wires never had a lesson in his life
+from a mere piano specialist liszt once said chopin was the only pianist he ever knew that could play the violin on the piano if he could do so it was because he had harkened to the voice of the violin
+and resolved to show that the piano too could produce thrilling effects in the same way he had listened to the human voice and determined that the song of his own instrument should be heard
+those who give ear to the piano alone will never learn the secret of calling forth its supreme eloquence we can see and hear this raphael of music at the piano
+so many and so eloquent have been the descriptions given of his playing it is easy to fancy him sweeping the ivory keys with his gossamer touch that enveloped with ethereal beauty
+the most unaccustomed of his complicated chromatic modulations we can feel his individuality pulsating through every tone evoked by those individualized fingers of his as they weave measures for sylphs
+we marvel at his softly whispered yet ever clearly distinct pianissimo at the full round tone of its relative fortissimo that was never harsh or noisy
+and at all the exquisitely graded nuances that lay between with those time fluctuations expressive of the ebb and flow of his poetic inner being
+no wonder balzac maintained that if chopin should but drum on the table his fingers would evoke subtle sounding music and what an example he has left for teachers delicately strung as he was
+he must often have endured tortures from the best of his pupils but so thoroughly was he consecrated to his art that he never faltered in his efforts to lift those who confided in him
+to the aerial heights he had found a vivid picture of his method of teaching is given in the lectures on frederic chopin's works and their proper interpretation by the pole jean kleczynski
+the basis of this method consisted in refinement of touch for the attainment of which a natural easy position of the hand was considered by chopin a prime requisite he prepared each hand with infinite care
+before permitting any attempt at the reproduction of musical ideas in order to place it to advantage he caused it to be thrown lightly on the keyboard so that the five fingers rested on the notes e f sharp g sharp a sharp and b
+and without change of position required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence the pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato effected by a free movement of the wrist
+an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness then legato staccato then accented legato then pure legato
+and the movement from andante to prestissimo he was exceedingly particular about arpeggio work and insisted upon the repetition of every note and passage until all harshness and roughness of tone were eliminated
+he never hesitated about placing it on a black key when convenient and had it passed by muscle action alone in scales and broken chords whose zealous practice in different forms of touch accent rhythm and tone
+were demanded by him individualization of the fingers was one of his strong points and he believed in assigning to each of them its appropriate part in a good mechanism he said
+the aim is not to play everything with an equal sound but to acquire beautiful quality of touch and perfect shading of prime importance in his eyes was a clear elastic singing tone
+one whose exquisite delicacy could never be confounded with feebleness
+and he knew how to augment the warmth and richness of tone coloring by setting in vibration sympathetic harmonics of the principal notes through judicious employment of the damper pedal
+by precept and example he advocated frequent playing of the preludes and fugues of bach as a means of cultivating musical intelligence muscular independence and touch and tone discrimination his musical heroes were bach and mozart
+for they represented to him nature strong individuality and poetry in music at one time he undertook to write a method or school of piano playing but never progressed beyond the opening sentences
+a message directly from him would have been invaluable to students and might have averted many unlucky misapprehensions of himself and his works those of his contemporaries who have harkened with rapture to his playing have declared that he alone
+could adequately interpret his tone creations or make perfectly intelligible his method pupils of his and their pupils have faithfully endeavored to transmit to the musical world the tradition of his individual style
+the elect few have come into touch with his vision of beauty but it has been mercilessly misinterpreted by thousands of ruthless aspirants to musical honors in the schoolroom the students recital and the concert hall
+whoever plays chopin with sledge hammer fingers will deaden all sense of his poetry charm and grace whoever approaches him with weak sentimentalism will miss altogether his dignity and strength
+it has been said of him that he was woman in his tenderness and realization of the beautiful and man in his energy and force of mind the highest type of artist and human being is thus represented
+to interpret him requires simplicity purity of style refined technique poetic imagination and genuine sentiment not fitful fictitious sentimentality
+serenely fancying they are heeding the master's design reckless out of time playing disfigures what is meant to express the fluctuation of thought the soul's agitation the rolling of the waves of time and eternity
+the rubato from rubare to rob represents a pliable movement that is certainly as old as the greek drama in declamation and was employed in intoning the gregorian chant
+indications of it in bach are too often neglected beethoven used it effectively chopin appropriated it as one of his most potent auxiliaries in playing he emphasized the saying of mozart
+its leaves tremble with every breath of the wind but the tree remains unshaken that is the rubato there are storms to which even the tree yields to realize them to divine the laws which regulate the undulating tempest tossed rubato
+requires highly matured artistic taste and absolute musical control too sensitive to enjoy playing before miscellaneous audiences whose unsympathetic curiosity he declared paralyzed him
+chopin was at his best when interpreting music in private for a choice circle of friends or pupils or when absorbed in composition it is not too much to say for him that he ushered in a new era for his chosen instrument
+spiritualizing its timbre liberating it from traditional orchestral and choral effects and elevating it to an independent power in the world of music besides enriching the technique of the piano he augmented the materials of musical expression
+harmony and rhythm new chord extensions passages of double notes arabesques and harmonic combinations were devised by him
+and he so systematized the use of the pedals that the most varied nuances could be produced by them in melody and general conception his tone poems sprang spontaneously from his glowing fancy
+but they were subjected to the most severe tests before they were permitted to go out into the world every ingenious device that gave character to his exquisite cantilena and softened his most startling chord progressions
+discussing the compositions of chopin in his delightful and inspiring book chopin the man and his music calls the studies titanic experiments
+the preludes moods in miniature the nocturnes night and its melancholy mysteries
+faery dramas the polonaises heroic hymns of battle the valses and mazurkas
+to write of the four impromptus in their own key of unrestrained feeling and pondered intention would not be as easy as recapturing the first careless rapture of the lark unquestionably
+the poetry of chopin is of the most exquisite lyric character his leadership is supreme so original was his conception so finished his workmanship so sublime his purpose
+that we may well exclaim with schumann he is the boldest proudest poetic spirit of the time his greatness is his aristocracy says oscar bie he stands among musicians in his faultless vesture
+a perilous night on shasta's summit toward the end of summer after a light open winter one may reach the summit of mount shasta without passing over much snow by keeping on the crest of a long narrow ridge
+mostly bare that extends from near the camp ground at the timberline but on my first excursion to the summit the whole mountain down to its low swelling base was smoothly laden with loose fresh snow
+presenting a most glorious mass of winter mountain scenery in the midst of which i scrambled and reveled or lay snugly snowbound enjoying the fertile clouds and the snow bloom in all their growing drifting grandeur
+the first rains had fallen on the lowlands and the first snows on the mountains and everything was fresh and bracing while an abundance of balmy sunshine filled all the noonday hours
+it was the calm afterglow that usually succeeds the first storm of the winter i met many of the birds that had reared their young and spent their summer in the shasta woods and chaparral they were then on their way south to their winter homes
+leading their young full fledged and about as large and strong as the parents squirrels dry and elastic after the storms were busy about their stores of pine nuts and the latest goldenrods were still in bloom though it was now past the middle of october
+the grand color glow the autumnal jubilee of ripe leaves was past prime but freshened by the rain was still making a fine show along the banks of the river and in the ravines and the dells of the smaller streams
+at the salmon hatching establishment on the mc cloud river i halted a week to examine the limestone belt grandly developed there to learn what i could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks
+and to give time for the fresh snow that i knew had fallen on the mountain to settle somewhat with a view to making the ascent a pedestrian on these mountain roads especially so late in the year is sure to excite curiosity
+and many were the interrogations concerning my ramble when i said that i was simply taking a walk and that icy shasta was my mark i was invariably admonished that i had come on a dangerous quest the time was far too late
+the snow was too loose and deep to climb and i should be lost in drifts and slides when i hinted that new snow was beautiful and storms not so bad as they were called my advisers shook their heads in token of superior knowledge
+and declared the ascent of shasta butte through loose snow impossible nevertheless before noon of the second of november i was in the frosty azure of the utmost summit when i arrived at sisson's everything was quiet
+and i was in haste to be off and get myself established somewhere in the midst of it whether the summit was to be attained or not sisson who is a mountaineer speedily fitted me out for storm or calm as only a mountaineer could
+and the frosts and the dangers of mountaineering so late in the year therefore i could not ask a guide to go with me even had one been willing all i wanted was to have blankets and provisions deposited as far up in the timber as the snow would permit a pack animal to go
+there i could build a storm nest and lie warm and make raids up and around the mountain in accordance with the weather setting out on the afternoon of november first with jerome fay mountaineer and guide in charge of the animals
+the snow of course growing steadily deeper and looser so that we had to break a trail the animals began to get discouraged and after night and darkness came on they became entangled in a bed of rough lava
+where breaking through four or five feet of mealy snow their feet were caught between angular boulders here they were in danger of being lost but after we had removed packs and saddles and assisted their efforts with ropes
+they all escaped to the side of a ridge about a thousand feet below the timberline to go farther was out of the question so we were compelled to camp as best we could a pitch pine fire speedily changed the temperature
+and shed a blaze of light on the wild lava slope and the straggling storm bent pines around us melted snow answered for coffee and we had plenty of venison to roast toward midnight i rolled myself in my blankets slept an hour and a half
+and indicated the way as well as he could in the darkness he seemed loath to leave me but being reassured that i was at home and required no care he bade me good bye and returned to camp ready to lead his animals down the mountain at daybreak
+alone in the solemn silence of the night half the sky was clouded in the other half the stars sparkled icily in the keen frosty air while everywhere the glorious wealth of snow
+fell away from the summit of the cone in flowing folds more extensive and continuous than any i had ever seen before when day dawned the clouds were crawling slowly and becoming more massive but gave no intimation of immediate danger
+in blank exposure to the deep upper currents of the sky and no labyrinth of peaks and canyons i had ever been in seemed to me so dangerous as these immense slopes bare against the sky
+the frost was intense and drifting snow dust made breathing at times rather difficult the snow was as dry as meal and the finer particles drifted freely rising high in the air while the larger portions of the crystals rolled like sand
+i frequently sank to my armpits between buried blocks of loose lava but generally only to my knees when tired with walking i still wallowed slowly upward on all fours the steepness of the slope
+thirty five degrees in some places made any kind of progress fatiguing while small avalanches were being constantly set in motion in the steepest places but the bracing air and the sublime beauty of the snowy expanse
+thrilled every nerve and made absolute exhaustion impossible i seemed to be walking and wallowing in a cloud but holding steadily onward by half past ten o'clock i had gained the highest summit
+i held my commanding foothold in the sky for two hours gazing on the glorious landscapes spread maplike around the immense horizon and tracing the outlines of the ancient lava streams extending far into the surrounding plains
+and the pathways of vanished glaciers of which shasta had been the center but as i had left my coat in camp for the sake of having my limbs free in climbing i soon was cold the wind increased in violence
+raising the snow in magnificent drifts that were drawn out in the form of wavering banners blowing in the sun toward the end of my stay a succession of small clouds struck against the summit rocks like drifting icebergs
+darkening the air as they passed and producing a chill as definite and sudden as if ice water had been dashed in my face this is the kind of cloud in which snow flowers grow and i turned and fled
+i reached camp about an hour before dusk hollowed a strip of loose ground in the lee of a large block of red lava where firewood was abundant rolled myself in my blankets and went to sleep next morning
+having slept little the night before the ascent and being weary with climbing after the excitement was over i slept late then awaking suddenly my eyes opened on one of the most beautiful and sublime scenes i ever enjoyed a boundless wilderness of storm clouds
+undulating hill and dale smooth purple plains and silvery mountains of cumuli range over range diversified with peak and dome and hollow fully brought out in light and shade i gazed enchanted
+but cold gray masses drifting like dust on a wind swept plain began to shut out the light forerunners of the coming storm i had been so anxiously watching i made haste to gather as much wood as possible
+the storm side of my blankets was fastened down with stakes to reduce as much as possible the sifting in of drift and the danger of being blown away the precious bread sack was placed safely as a pillow and when at length the first flakes fell
+i was exultingly ready to welcome them most of my firewood was more than half rosin and would blaze in the face of the fiercest drifting the winds could not demolish my bed and my bread could be made to last indefinitely
+while in case of need i had the means of making snowshoes and could retreat or hold my ground as i pleased presently the storm broke forth into full snowy bloom and the thronging crystals darkened the air
+the wind swept past in hissing floods grinding the snow into meal and sweeping down into the hollows in enormous drifts all the heavier particles while the finer dust was sifted through the sky increasing the icy gloom
+and the passionate uproar produced a glad excitement day after day the storm continued piling snow on snow in weariless abundance
+as if to know how the work was advancing during these calm intervals i replenished my fire sometimes without leaving the nest for fire and woodpile were so near this could easily be done or busied myself with my notebook
+watching the gestures of the trees in taking the snow examining separate crystals under a lens and learning the methods of their deposition as an enduring fountain for the streams several times when the storm ceased for a few minutes
+a douglas squirrel came frisking from the foot of a clump of dwarf pines moving in sudden interrupted spurts over the bossy snow then without any apparent guidance he would dig rapidly into the drift where were buried some grains of barley that the horses had left
+the douglas squirrel does not strictly belong to these upper woods and i was surprised to see him out in such weather the mountain sheep also quite a large flock of them came to my camp and took shelter beside a clump of matted dwarf pines
+and he must surely have perished and sisson was blamed for allowing any one to attempt climbing in such weather while i was as safe as anybody in the lowlands lying like a squirrel in a warm fluffy nest busied about my own affairs and wishing only to be let alone
+i saw and felt still more of the shasta snow for then it was my fortune to get into the very heart of a storm and to be held in it for a long time on the twenty eighth of april eighteen seventy five
+the day intervening between the two ascents being devoted to establishing a camp on the extreme edge of the timberline here on our red trachyte bed we obtained two hours of shallow sleep broken for occasional glimpses of the keen starry night
+at two o'clock we rose breakfasted on a warmed tin cupful of coffee and a piece of frozen venison broiled on the coals and started for the summit up to this time there was nothing in sight that betokened the approach of a storm
+but on gaining the summit we saw toward lassen's butte hundreds of square miles of white cumuli boiling dreamily in the sunshine far beneath us and causing no alarm the slight weariness of the ascent was soon rested away
+and our glorious morning in the sky promised nothing but enjoyment at nine a m the dry thermometer stood at thirty four degrees in the shade and rose steadily until at one p m it stood at fifty degrees
+probably influenced somewhat by radiation from the sun warmed cliffs a common bumblebee not at all benumbed zigzagged vigorously about our heads for a few moments as if unconscious of the fact that the nearest honey flower was a mile beneath him
+in the mean time clouds were growing down in shasta valley massive swelling cumuli displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in the hollows of their sun beaten bosses extending gradually southward around on both sides of shasta
+these at length united with the older field towards lassen's butte thus encircling mount shasta in one continuous cloud zone rhett and klamath lakes were eclipsed beneath clouds scarcely less brilliant than their own silvery disks
+the modoc lava beds many a snow laden peak far north in oregon the scott and trinity and siskiyou mountains the peaks of the sierra the blue coast range shasta valley the dark forests filling the valley of the sacramento
+the creative sun shone glorious on the vast expanse of cloudland hill and dale mountain and valley springing into existence responsive to his rays and steadily developing in beauty and individuality
+on the contrary they impressed one as being lasting additions to the landscape the weather of the springtime and summer throughout the sierra in general is usually varied by slight local rains and dustings of snow
+most of which are obviously far too joyous and life giving to be regarded as storms single clouds growing in the sunny sky ripening in an hour showering the heated landscape and passing away like a thought
+assuming a violence and energy of expression scarcely surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter such was the storm now gathering about us it began to declare itself shortly after noon
+suggesting to us the idea of at once seeking our safe camp in the timber and abandoning the purpose of making an observation of the barometer at three p m two having already been made
+while simultaneous observations were made at strawberry valley jerome peered at short intervals over the ridge contemplating the rising clouds with anxious gestures in the rough wind and at length declared that if we did not make a speedy escape
+we should be compelled to pass the rest of the day and night on the summit but anxiety to complete my observations stifled my own instinctive promptings to retreat and held me to my work no inexperienced person was depending on me
+and i told jerome that we two mountaineers should be able to make our way down through any storm likely to fall presently thin fibrous films of cloud began to blow directly over the summit from north to south
+drawn out in long fairy webs like carded wool forming and dissolving as if by magic the wind twisted them into ringlets and whirled them in a succession of graceful convolutions like the outside sprays of yosemite falls in flood time
+then sailing out into the thin azure over the precipitous brink of the ridge they were drifted together like wreaths of foam on a river these higher and finer cloud fabrics
+ill defined embankment from the icy meshes of which snow flowers began to fall alternating with hail the sky speedily darkened and just as i had completed my last observation and boxed my instruments ready for the descent
+the storm began in serious earnest at first the cliffs were beaten with hail every stone of which as far as i could see was regular in form six sided pyramids with rounded base rich and sumptuous looking and fashioned with loving care
+yet seemingly thrown away on those desolate crags down which they went rolling falling sliding in a network of curious streams after we had forced our way down the ridge and past the group of hissing fumaroles
+the storm became inconceivably violent the thermometer fell twenty two degrees in a few minutes and soon dropped below zero the hail gave place to snow and darkness came on like night the wind rising to the highest pitch of violence
+boomed and surged amid the desolate crags lightning flashes in quick succession cut the gloomy darkness and the thunders the most tremendously loud and appalling i ever heard made an almost continuous roar
+stroke following stroke in quick passionate succession as though the mountain were being rent to its foundations and the fires of the old volcano were breaking forth again could we at once have begun to descend the snow slopes leading to the timber
+we might have made good our escape however dark and wild the storm as it was we had first to make our way along a dangerous ridge nearly a mile and a half long flanked in many places by steep ice slopes at the head of the whitney glacier on one side
+to let jerome who had fallen a little behind come up here he opened a council in which under circumstances sufficiently exciting but without evincing any bewilderment he maintained in opposition to my views that it was impossible to proceed
+he firmly refused to make the venture to find the camp while i aware of the dangers that would necessarily attend our efforts and conscious of being the cause of his present peril decided not to leave him our discussions ended
+jerome made a dash from the shelter of the lava block and began forcing his way back against the wind to the hot springs wavering and struggling to resist being carried away as if he were fording a rapid stream
+after waiting and watching in vain for some flaw in the storm that might be urged as a new argument in favor of attempting the descent i was compelled to follow here said jerome as we shivered in the midst of the hissing sputtering fumaroles
+even after the storm is over we shall have to wait for sunshine and when will it come the tempered area to which we had committed ourselves extended over about one fourth of an acre
+but it was only about an eighth of an inch in thickness for the scalding gas jets were shorn off close to the ground by the oversweeping flood of frosty wind and how lavishly the snow fell only mountaineers may know the crisp crystal flowers
+seemed to touch one another and fairly to thicken the tremendous blast that carried them this was the bloom time the summer of the cloud and never before have i seen even a mountain cloud flowering so profusely
+when the bloom of the shasta chaparral is falling the ground is sometimes covered for hundreds of square miles to a depth of half an inch but the bloom of this fertile snow cloud grew and matured and fell to a depth of two feet in a few hours
+some crystals landed with their rays almost perfect but most of them were worn and broken by striking against one another or by rolling on the ground the touch of these snow flowers in calm weather is infinitely gentle glinting swaying
+settling silently in the dry mountain air or massed in flakes soft and downy to lie out alone in the mountains of a still night and be touched by the first of these small silent messengers from the sky is a memorable experience
+and the fineness of that touch none will forget but the storm blast laden with crisp sharp snow seems to crush and bruise and stupefy with its multitude of stings and compels the bravest to turn and flee
+a weaving of translucent tissue above then the roar of the wind and the thunder and the darkening flight of snow its subsidence was not less sudden the clouds broke and vanished not a crystal was left in the sky
+and in many places reached the skin we were glad at first to see the snow packing about us hoping it would deaden the force of the wind but it soon froze into a stiff crusty heap as the temperature fell rather augmenting our novel misery
+in our frozen and broiled condition seemed certain death the acrid incrustations sublimed from the escaping gases frequently gave way opening new vents to scald us and fearing that if at any time the wind should fall
+might collect in sufficient quantities to cause sleep and death
+even should his sufferings admit of such a thing accordingly when during the long dreary watches of the night we roused from a state of half consciousness we called each other by name in a frightened startled way
+each fearing the other might be benumbed or dead the ordinary sensations of cold give but a faint conception of that which comes on after hard climbing with want of food and sleep in such exposure as this life is then seen to be a fire
+that now smoulders now brightens and may be easily quenched the weary hours wore away like dim half forgotten years so long and eventful they seemed though we did nothing but suffer
+still the pain was not always of that bitter intense kind that precludes thought and takes away all capacity for enjoyment a sort of dreamy stupor came on at times
+in which we fancied we saw dry resinous logs suitable for campfires just as after going days without food men fancy they see bread frozen blistered famished benumbed our bodies seemed lost to us at times
+shining with marvelous brightness with long lance rays near looking and new looking as if never seen before again they would look familiar and remind us of stargazing at home oftentimes imagination coming into play
+the frost grew more and more intense and we became icy and covered over with a crust of frozen snow
+in about thirteen hours every hour like a year day began to dawn but it was long ere the summit's rocks were touched by the sun no clouds were visible from where we lay yet the morning was dull and blue and bitterly frosty
+and hour after hour passed by while we eagerly watched the pale light stealing down the ridge to the hollow where we lay but there was not a trace of that warm flushing sunrise splendor we so long had hoped for
+as the time drew near to make an effort to reach camp we became concerned to know what strength was left us and whether or no we could walk for we had lain flat all this time without once rising to our feet
+mountaineers however always find in themselves a reserve of power after great exhaustion it is a kind of second life available only in emergencies like this and having proved its existence i had no great fear that either of us would fail
+at length after the temperature was somewhat mitigated on this memorable first of may we arose and began to struggle homeward our frozen trousers could scarcely be made to bend at the knee and we waded the snow with difficulty
+the summit ridge was fortunately wind swept and nearly bare so we were not compelled to lift our feet high and on reaching the long home slopes laden with loose snow we made rapid progress sliding and shuffling and pitching headlong
+our feebleness accelerating rather than diminishing our speed when we had descended some three thousand feet the sunshine warmed our backs and we began to revive at ten a m we reached the timber and were safe
+half an hour later we heard sisson shouting down among the firs coming with horses to take us to the hotel after breaking a trail through the snow as far as possible he had tied his animals and walked up we had been so long without food
+that we cared but little about eating but we eagerly drank the coffee he prepared for us our feet were frozen and thawing them was painful and had to be done very slowly by keeping them buried in soft snow for several hours
+which avoided permanent damage five thousand feet below the summit we found only three inches of new snow and at the base of the mountain only a slight shower of rain had fallen showing how local our storm had been
+notwithstanding its terrific fury our feet were wrapped in sacking and we were soon mounted and on our way down into the thick sunshine god's country as sisson calls the chaparral zone
+how beautiful seemed the golden sunbeams streaming through the woods between the warm brown boles of the cedars and pines all my friends among the birds and plants seemed like old friends and we felt like speaking to every one of them as we passed
+as if we had been a long time away in some far strange country in the afternoon we reached strawberry valley and fell asleep next morning we seemed to have risen from the dead my bedroom was flooded with sunshine
+and from the window i saw the great white shasta cone clad in forests and clouds and bearing them loftily in the sky everything seemed full and radiant with the freshness and beauty and enthusiasm of youth
+so then all was explained by the submarine explosion of this torpedo cyrus harding could not be mistaken as during the war of the union he had had occasion to try these terrible engines of destruction
+or some other material of the same nature that the water of the channel had been raised like a dome the bottom of the brig crushed in and she had sunk instantly the damage done to her hull
+the speedy had not been able to withstand a torpedo that would have destroyed an ironclad as easily as a fishing boat yes all was explained everything except the presence of the torpedo in the waters of the channel
+and i say this in order that ayrton may be acquainted with all the strange events which have occurred during these two years who this beneficent stranger is whose intervention has so fortunately for us been manifested on many occasions i cannot imagine
+what his object can be in acting thus in concealing himself after rendering us so many services i cannot understand but his services are not the less real
+and are of such a nature that only a man possessed of prodigious power could render them ayrton is indebted to him as much as we are for if it was the stranger who saved me from the waves after the fall from the balloon
+that it was he who lighted that fire on the heights of the island which permitted you to land that it was he who fired that bullet found in the body of the peccary that it was he who plunged that torpedo into the channel which destroyed the brig
+in a word that all those inexplicable events for which we could not assign a reason are due to this mysterious being therefore whoever he may be whether shipwrecked or exiled on our island we shall be ungrateful if we think ourselves freed from gratitude towards him
+we have contracted a debt and i hope that we shall one day pay it you are right in speaking thus my dear cyrus replied gideon spilett yes there is an almost all powerful being hidden in some part of the island
+and whose influence has been singularly useful to our colony i will add that the unknown appears to possess means of action which border on the supernatural if in the events of practical life the supernatural were recognizable
+is it he who is in secret communication with us by the well in granite house and has he thus a knowledge of all our plans was it he who threw us that bottle when the vessel made her first cruise
+was it he who threw top out of the lake and killed the dugong was it he who as everything leads us to believe saved you from the waves and that under circumstances in which any one else would not have been able to act if it was he
+he possesses a power which renders him master of the elements the reporter's reasoning was just and every one felt it to be so yes rejoined cyrus harding
+if the intervention of a human being is not more questionable for us i agree that he has at his disposal means of action beyond those possessed by humanity there is a mystery still but if we discover the man the mystery will be discovered also the question then is
+what is your opinion on the matter my opinion said pencroft is that whoever he may be he is a brave man and he has my esteem be it so answered harding but that is not an answer pencroft
+master then said nebraska my idea is that we may search as long as we like for this gentleman whom you are talking about but that we shall not discover him till he pleases that's not bad what you say nebraska observed pencroft
+i am of neb's opinion said gideon spilett but that is no reason for not attempting the adventure whether we find this mysterious being or not we shall at least have fulfilled our duty towards him
+and you my boy give us your opinion said the engineer turning to herbert oh cried herbert his countenance full of animation how i should like to thank him he who saved you first and who has now saved us
+of course my boy replied pencroft so would i and all of us i am not inquisitive but i would give one of my eyes to see this individual face to face it seems to me that he must be handsome tall strong with a splendid beard radiant hair
+but pencroft answered spilett you are describing a picture of the creator possibly mister spilett replied the sailor but that is how i imagine him and you ayrton asked the engineer captain harding replied ayrton
+you are our companion you have already endangered your life several times for us and you as well as the rest ought to be consulted in the matter of any important decision speak therefore captain harding replied ayrton
+i too as you said have a debt of gratitude to pay him it was he it could be only he who must have come to tabor island who found there the wretch you knew and who made known to you that there was an unfortunate man there to be saved
+therefore it is thanks to him that i have become a man again no i will never forget him that is settled then said cyrus harding we will begin our researches as soon as possible we will not leave a corner of the island unexplored
+we will search into its most secret recesses and will hope that our unknown friend will pardon us in consideration of our intentions for several days the colonists were actively employed in haymaking and the harvest
+before putting their project of exploring the yet unknown parts of the island into execution they wished to get all possible work finished it was also the time for collecting the various vegetables from the tabor island plants all was stowed away
+and happily there was no want of room in granite house in which they might have housed all the treasures of the island the products of the colony were there methodically arranged and in a safe place as may be believed sheltered as much from animals as from man
+there was no fear of damp in the middle of that thick mass of granite many natural excavations situated in the upper passage were enlarged either by pick axe or mine and granite house thus became a general warehouse
+containing all the provisions arms tools and spare utensils in a word all the stores of the colony as to the guns obtained from the brig they were pretty pieces of ordnance which at pencroft's entreaty
+were hoisted by means of tackle and pulleys right up into granite house embrasures were made between the windows and the shining muzzles of the guns could soon be seen through the granite cliff from this height they commanded all union bay
+it would be a good thing if we tried the range of our guns do you think that is useful asked the engineer it is more than useful it is necessary without that how are we to know to what distance we can send one of those pretty shot with which we are provided
+try them pencroft replied the engineer however i think that in making the experiment we ought to employ
+but the pyroxyle which will never fail us can the cannon support the shock of the pyroxyle asked the reporter who was not less anxious than pencroft to try the artillery of granite house i believe so however added the engineer we will be prudent
+the transit described by the ball ought to be as extended as possible and this tension could only be obtained under the condition that the projectile should be impelled with a very great initial velocity now said harding to his companions
+the initial velocity is in proportion to the quantity of powder used in the fabrication of these pieces everything depends on employing a metal with the highest possible power of resistance and steel is incontestably that metal of all others which resists the best
+i have therefore reason to believe that our guns will bear without risk the expansion of the pyroxyle gas and will give excellent results we shall be a great deal more certain of that when we have tried them answered pencroft
+it is unnecessary to say that the four cannons were in perfect order since they had been taken from the water the sailor had bestowed great care upon them how many hours he had spent in rubbing greasing and polishing them and in cleaning the mechanism
+and now the pieces were as brilliant as if they had been on board a frigate of the united states navy on this day therefore in presence of all the members of the colony including master jup and top the four cannon were successively tried
+they were charged with pyroxyle taking into consideration its explosive power which as has been said is four times that of ordinary powder the projectile to be fired was cylindroconic pencroft holding the end of the quick match
+such a shot the honor of which belonged to his dear boy the third shot aimed this time at the downs forming the upper side of union bay struck the sand at a distance of four miles then having ricocheted was lost in the sea in a cloud of spray
+for the fourth piece cyrus harding slightly increased the charge so as to try its extreme range then all standing aside for fear of its bursting the match was lighted by means of a long cord
+a tremendous report was heard but the piece had held good and the colonists rushing to the windows saw the shot graze the rocks of mandible cape nearly five miles from granite house and disappear in shark gulf
+believe me pencroft replied the engineer it would be better not to have to make the experiment well said the sailor what ought to be done with regard to those six villains who are roaming about the island
+are we to leave them to overrun our forests our fields our plantations these pirates are regular jaguars and it seems to me we ought not to hesitate to treat them as such
+turning to his companion ayrton hesitated at first to reply and cyrus harding regretted that pencroft had so thoughtlessly put this question and he was much moved when ayrton replied in a humble tone
+he has as much right to speak here as any one yes said gideon spilett but his reserve does him honor and it is right to respect the feeling which he has about his sad past certainly mister spilett answered the sailor
+is that your opinion pencroft asked the engineer quite my opinion and before hunting them mercilessly you would not wait until they had committed some fresh act of hostility against us
+pencroft think of ayrton said herbert taking the sailor's hand he became an honest man again pencroft looked at his companions one after the other he had never thought of his proposal being met with any objection
+his rough nature could not allow that they ought to come to terms with the rascals who had landed on the island with bob harvey's accomplices the murderers of the crew of the speedy and he looked upon them as wild beasts which ought to be destroyed without delay and without remorse
+you wish to be generous to those villains very well i hope we mayn't repent it what danger shall we run said herbert if we take care to be always on our guard hum observed the reporter who had not given any decided opinion
+they are six and well armed if they each lay hid in a corner and each fired at one of us they would soon be masters of the colony why have they not done so said herbert no doubt because it was not their interest to do it besides we are six also
+well well replied pencroft whom no reasoning could have convinced let us leave these good people to do what they like and don't think anything more about them come pencroft said nebraska don't make yourself out so bad as all that
+suppose one of these unfortunate men were here before you within good range of your guns you would not fire i would fire on him as i would on a mad dog nebraska replied pencroft coldly pencroft said the engineer
+you have always shown much deference to my advice will you in this matter yield to me i will do as you please captain harding answered the sailor who was not at all convinced very well wait
+and we will not attack them unless we are attacked first thus their behavior towards the pirates was agreed upon although pencroft augured nothing good from it they were not to attack them but were to be on their guard
+after all the island was large and fertile if any sentiment of honesty yet remained in the bottom of their hearts these wretches might perhaps be reclaimed was it not their interest in the situation in which they found themselves to begin a new life
+at any rate for humanity's sake alone it would be right to wait the colonists would no longer as before be able to go and come without fear hitherto they had only wild beasts to guard against
+and now six convicts of the worst description perhaps were roaming over their island it was serious certainly and to less brave men it would have been security lost no matter
+at herbert's cry pencroft letting his gun fall rushed towards him they have killed him he cried my boy they have killed him cyrus harding and gideon spilett ran to herbert the reporter listened to ascertain if the poor lad's heart was still beating
+he lives said he but he must be carried to granite house that is impossible replied the engineer into the corral then said pencroft in a moment said harding and he ran round the left corner of the palisade
+there he found a convict who aiming at him sent a ball through his hat in a few seconds before he had even time to fire his second barrel he fell struck to the heart by harding's dagger more sure even than his gun during this time
+gideon spilett and the sailor hoisted themselves over the palisade leaped into the enclosure threw down the props which supported the inner door ran into the empty house and soon poor herbert was lying on ayrton's bed in a few moments harding was by his side
+on seeing herbert senseless the sailor's grief was terrible he sobbed he cried he tried to beat his head against the wall neither the engineer nor the reporter could calm him
+without acquiring some slight knowledge of medicine he knew a little of everything and several times he had been obliged to attend to wounds produced either by a sword bayonet or shot assisted by cyrus harding he proceeded to render the aid herbert required
+the reporter was immediately struck by the complete stupor in which herbert lay a stupor owing either to the hemorrhage or to the shock the ball having struck a bone with sufficient force to produce a violent concussion herbert was deadly pale and his pulse so feeble
+that spilett only felt it beat at long intervals as if it was on the point of stopping these symptoms were very serious herbert's chest was laid bare and the blood having been stanched with handkerchiefs it was bathed with cold water
+he uttered a moan so feeble that they almost thought it was his last sigh herberts back was covered with blood from another contused wound by which the ball had immediately escaped god be praised said the reporter the ball is not in the body and we shall not have to extract it
+but the heart asked harding the heart has not been touched if it had been herbert would be dead dead exclaimed pencroft with a groan the sailor had only heard the last words uttered by the reporter
+no pencroft replied cyrus harding no he is not dead his pulse still beats he has even uttered a moan but for your boy's sake calm yourself we have need of all our self possession do not make us lose it my friend
+pencroft was silent but a reaction set in and great tears rolled down his cheeks in the meanwhile gideon spilett endeavored to collect his ideas and proceed methodically after his examination he had no doubt that the ball
+entering in front between the seventh and eighth ribs had issued behind between the third and fourth but what mischief had the ball committed in its passage what important organs had been reached a professional surgeon would have had difficulty in determining this at once
+and still more so the reporter however he knew one thing this was that he would have to prevent the inflammatory strangulation of the injured parts then to contend with the local inflammation and fever which would result from the wound perhaps mortal
+now what styptics what antiphlogistics ought to be employed by what means could inflammation be prevented at any rate the most important thing was that the two wounds should be dressed without delay
+it did not appear necessary to gideon spilett that a fresh flow of blood should be caused by bathing them in tepid water and compressing their lips the hemorrhage had been very abundant and herbert was already too much enfeebled by the loss of blood
+the reporter therefore thought it best to simply bathe the two wounds with cold water herbert was placed on his left side and was maintained in that position he must not be moved said gideon spilett
+he is in the most favorable position for the wounds in his back and chest to suppurate easily and absolute rest is necessary what can't we carry him to granite house asked pencroft no pencroft replied the reporter
+cyrus said he i am not a surgeon i am in terrible perplexity you must aid me with your advice your experience take courage my friend answered the engineer pressing the reporter's hand judge coolly
+think only of this herbert must be saved these words restored to gideon spilett that self possession which he had lost in a moment of discouragement on feeling his great responsibility he seated himself close to the bed cyrus harding stood near
+pencroft had torn up his shirt and was mechanically making lint spilett then explained to cyrus harding that he thought he ought first of all to stop the hemorrhage but not close the two wounds or cause their immediate cicatrization for there had been internal perforation
+and the suppuration must not be allowed to accumulate in the chest harding approved entirely and it was decided that the two wounds should be dressed without attempting to close them by immediate coaptation and now
+did the colonists possess an efficacious agent to act against the inflammation which might occur yes they had one for nature had generously lavished it they had cold water that is to say the most powerful sedative that can be employed against inflammation of wounds
+the most efficacious therapeutic agent in grave cases and the one which is now adopted by all physicians cold water has moreover the advantage of leaving the wound in absolute rest and preserving it from all premature dressing a considerable advantage
+since it has been found by experience that contact with the air is dangerous during the first days gideon spilett and cyrus harding reasoned thus with their simple good sense and they acted as the best surgeon would have done
+compresses of linen were applied to poor herbert's two wounds and were kept constantly wet with cold water the sailor had at first lighted a fire in the hut which was not wanting in things necessary for life maple sugar medicinal plants
+the same which the lad had gathered on the banks of lake grant enabled them to make some refreshing drinks which they gave him without his taking any notice of it his fever was extremely high and all that day and night passed without his becoming conscious
+herbert's life hung on a thread and this thread might break at any moment the next day the twelfth of november the hopes of harding and his companions slightly revived herbert had come out of his long stupor he opened his eyes he recognized cyrus harding
+the reporter and pencroft he uttered two or three words he did not know what had happened they told him and spilett begged him to remain perfectly still telling him that his life was not in danger and that his wounds would heal in a few days
+however herbert scarcely suffered at all and the cold water with which they were constantly bathed prevented any inflammation of the wounds the suppuration was established in a regular way the fever did not increase
+and it might now be hoped that this terrible wound would not involve any catastrophe pencroft felt the swelling of his heart gradually subside he was like a sister of mercy like a mother by the bed of her child
+herbert dozed again but his sleep appeared more natural tell me again that you hope mister spilett said pencroft tell me again that you will save herbert yes we will save him replied the reporter the wound is serious and perhaps
+even the ball has traversed the lungs but the perforation of this organ is not fatal god bless you answered pencroft as may be believed during the four and twenty hours they had been in the corral the colonists had no other thought than that of nursing herbert
+they did not think either of the danger which threatened them should the convicts return or of the precautions to be taken for the future but on this day while pencroft watched by the sick bed cyrus harding and the reporter consulted as to what it would be best to do
+at the moment he scaled the palisade had clearly seen some one of the convicts running along the southern spur of mount franklin towards whom top had sprung it was one of those whose object had been so completely defeated by the rocks at the mouth of the mercy
+and as he was a man to defend himself he must have been overpowered yes that is to be feared said the reporter then doubtless the convicts installed themselves in the corral where they found plenty of everything and only fled when they saw us coming
+it is very evident too that at this moment ayrton whether living or dead is not here we shall have to beat the forest said the engineer and rid the island of these wretches pencroft's presentiments were not mistaken when he wished to hunt them as wild beasts
+that would have spared us all these misfortunes yes answered the reporter but now we have the right to be merciless at any rate said the engineer we are obliged to wait some time and to remain at the corral until we can carry herbert without danger to granite house
+he must not come returned cyrus harding quickly he would be murdered on the road it is very probable however that he will attempt to rejoin us ah if the telegraph still acted he might be warned but that is impossible now
+as to leaving pencroft and herbert here alone we could not do it well i will go alone to granite house no no cyrus answered the reporter you must not expose yourself your courage would be of no avail the villains are evidently watching the corral
+they are hidden in the thick woods which surround it and if you go we shall soon have to regret two misfortunes instead of one
+it is now four and twenty hours since he has had any news of us he will be sure to come and as he will be less on his guard than we should be ourselves added spilett he will be killed is there really no way of warning him
+who had understood the engineer top can go where we cannot he will carry to granite house the news of the corral and he will bring back to us that from granite house quick said harding quick spilett rapidly tore a leaf from his note book and wrote these words
+herbert wounded we are at the corral be on your guard do not leave granite house have the convicts appeared in the neighborhood reply by top
+go go top bounded at these words he understood he knew what was expected of him the road to the corral was familiar to him
+top running among the grass or in the wood would pass unperceived the engineer went to the gate of the corral and opened it
+top sprang forwards then almost immediately disappeared he will get there said the reporter yes and he will come back the faithful animal what o'clock is it asked gideon spilett ten
+in an hour he may be here we will watch for his return the gate of the corral was closed the engineer and the reporter re entered the house herbert was still in a sleep pencroft kept the compresses always wet spilett
+seeing there was nothing he could do at that moment busied himself in preparing some nourishment while attentively watching that part of the enclosure against the hill at which an attack might be expected the settlers awaited top's return with much anxiety
+a little before eleven o'clock cyrus harding and the reporter rifle in hand were behind the gate ready to open it at the first bark of their dog they did not doubt that if top had arrived safely at granite house
+the peace of righteousness
+there can be no nobler cause for which to work than the peace of righteousness and high honor is due those serene and lofty souls who with wisdom and courage
+with high idealism tempered by sane facing of the actual facts of life have striven to bring nearer the day when armed strife between nation and nation between class and class
+between man and man shall end throughout the world because all this is true it is also true that there are no men more ignoble or more foolish no men whose actions are fraught with greater possibility of mischief
+to their country and to mankind than those who exalt unrighteous peace as better than righteous war the men who have stood highest in our history as in the history of all countries are those who scorned injustice
+who were incapable of oppressing the weak or of permitting their country with their consent to oppress the weak but who did not hesitate to draw the sword when to leave it undrawn meant inability to arrest triumphant wrong
+yet every man in active affairs who also reads about the past grows by bitter experience to realize that there are plenty of men not only among those who mean ill but among those who mean well
+who are ready enough to praise what was done in the past and yet are incapable of profiting by it when faced by the needs of the present during our generation this seems to have been peculiarly the case among the men
+who have become obsessed with the idea of obtaining universal peace by some cheap patent panacea there has been a real and substantial growth
+in the feeling for international responsibility and justice among the great civilized nations during the past threescore or fourscore years there has been a real growth of recognition of the fact
+and that in most cases war is an evil method of settling international difficulties but as yet there has been only a rudimentary beginning of the development of international tribunals of justice
+and there has been no development at all of any international police power now as i have already said the whole fabric of municipal law of law within each nation
+rests ultimately upon the judge and the policeman and the complete absence of the policeman and the almost complete absence of the judge in international affairs prevents there being as yet any real homology
+between municipal and international law moreover the questions which sometimes involve nations in war are far more difficult and complex than any questions that affect merely individuals
+almost every great nation has inherited certain questions either with other nations or with sections of its own people which it is quite impossible in the present state of civilization to decide
+as matters between private individuals can be decided during the last century at least half of the wars that have been fought have been civil and not foreign wars there are big and powerful nations which habitually commit either upon other nations
+or upon sections of their own people wrongs so outrageous as to justify even the most peaceful persons in going to war there are also weak nations so utterly incompetent
+either to protect the rights of foreigners against their own citizens or to protect their own citizens against foreigners that it becomes a matter of sheer duty for some outside power to interfere in connection with them
+as yet in neither case is there any efficient method of getting international action and if joint action by several powers is secured the result is usually considerably worse than if only one power interfered
+the worst infamies of modern times such affairs as the massacres of the armenians by the turks for instance have been perpetrated in a time of nominally profound international peace
+when there has been a concert of big powers to prevent the breaking of this peace although only by breaking it could the outrages be stopped be it remembered that the peoples who suffered by these hideous massacres who saw their women violated
+otherwise they would not have been massacred for if the jews in russia and the armenians in turkey had been armed and had been efficient in the use of their arms no mob would have meddled with them
+yet amiable but fatuous persons with all these facts before their eyes pass resolutions demanding universal arbitration for everything
+and their abandonment of their armed forces or else they write well meaning solemn little books or pamphlets or editorials and articles in magazines or newspapers to show
+because it is expensive this is precisely like arguing that we should disband the police and devote our sole attention to persuading criminals
+suppose that burglary highway robbery and white slavery are profitable it is almost useless to attempt to argue with these well intentioned persons because they are suffering under an obsession and are not open to reason
+they go wrong at the outset for they lay all the emphasis on peace and none at all on righteousness they are not all of them physically timid men but they are usually men
+from insulting or wronging the people of other nations but they always ardently advocate that we in our turn shall tamely submit to wrong and insult from other nations
+as americans their folly is peculiarly scandalous because if the principles they now uphold are right it means that it would have been better that americans should never have achieved their independence and better that
+in eighteen sixty one they should have peacefully submitted to seeing their country split into half a dozen jangling confederacies and slavery made perpetual if unwilling to learn from their own history
+look at the difference between china and japan china has neither a fleet nor an efficient army it is a huge civilized empire one of the most populous on the globe and it has been the helpless prey
+of outsiders because it does not possess the power to fight japan stands on a footing of equality with european and american nations because it does possess this power china now sees japan
+russia germany england and france in possession of fragments of her empire and has twice within the lifetime of the present generation seen her capital in the hands of allied invaders because she in very fact
+realizes the ideals of the persons who wish the united states to disarm and then trust that our helplessness will secure us a contemptuous immunity from attack by outside nations
+the chief trouble comes from the entire inability of these worthy people to understand that they are demanding things that are mutually incompatible when they demand peace at any price and also justice and righteousness
+i remember one representative of their number who used to write little sonnets on behalf of the mahdi and the sudanese these sonnets setting forth the need that the sudan should be both independent and peaceful
+as a matter of fact the sudan valued independence only because it desired to war against all christians and to carry on an unlimited slave trade
+under the mahdi for a dozen years and during those dozen years the bigotry tyranny and cruel religious intolerance were such as flourished in the seventh century and in spite of systematic slave raids
+the population decreased by nearly two thirds and practically all the children died peace came well being came freedom from rape and murder and torture and highway robbery and every brutal gratification of lust and greed came
+only when the sudan lost its independence and passed under english rule yet this well meaning little sonneteer sincerely felt that his verses were issued in the cause of humanity
+looking back from the vantage point of a score of years probably every one will agree that he was an absurd person but he was not one whit more absurd than most of the more prominent persons who advocate disarmament by the united states
+the cessation of up building the navy and the promise to agree to arbitrate all matters including those affecting our national interests and honor with all foreign nations these persons would do no harm
+if they affected only themselves many of them are in the ordinary relations of life good citizens they are exactly like the other good citizens who believe that enforced universal vegetarianism or anti vaccination
+is the panacea for all ills but in their particular case they are able to do harm because they affect our relations with foreign powers so that other men pay the debt which they themselves have really incurred
+it is the foolish peace at any price persons who try to persuade our people to make unwise and improper treaties or to stop building up the navy but if trouble comes and the treaties are repudiated
+it is not these people who will pay anything they will stay at home in safety and leave brave men to pay in blood and honest men to pay in shame for their folly the trouble is that our policy is apt to go in zigzags
+because different sections of our people exercise at different times unequal pressure on our government one class of our citizens clamors for treaties impossible of fulfilment and improper to fulfil
+if you have lived in cities and have walked in the park on a summer afternoon you have perhaps seen blinking in a corner of his iron cage
+a huge grotesque kind of monkey a creature with ugly sagging hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple underbody this monkey is a true monster
+in the completeness of his ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty children stopping before the cage are fascinated men turn away with an air of disgust and women linger for a moment
+trying perhaps to remember which one of their male acquaintances the thing in some faint way resembles had you been in the earlier years of your life a citizen of the village of winesburg ohio
+there would have been for you no mystery in regard to the beast in his cage it is like wash williams you would have said as he sits in the corner there the beast is exactly like old wash
+sitting on the grass in the station yard on a summer evening after he has closed his office for the night wash williams the telegraph operator of winesburg was the ugliest thing in town his girth was immense
+his neck thin his legs feeble he was dirty everything about him was unclean even the whites of his eyes looked soiled i go too fast not everything about wash was unclean
+he took care of his hands his fingers were fat but there was something sensitive and shapely in the hand that lay on the table by the instrument in the telegraph office in his youth
+wash williams had been called the best telegraph operator in the state and in spite of his degradement to the obscure office at winesburg he was still proud of his ability
+wash williams did not associate with the men of the town in which he lived i'll have nothing to do with them he said looking with bleary eyes at the men who walked along the station platform
+past the telegraph office up along main street he went in the evening to ed griffith's saloon and after drinking unbelievable quantities of beer staggered off to his room in the new willard house and to his bed for the night
+wash williams was a man of courage a thing had happened to him that made him hate life and he hated it wholeheartedly with the abandon of a poet first of all he hated women
+bitches he called them his feeling toward men was somewhat different he pitied them does not every man let his life be managed for him by some bitch or another he asked
+in winesburg no attention was paid to wash williams and his hatred of his fellows once missus white the banker's wife complained to the telegraph company
+and smelled abominably but nothing came of her complaint here and there a man respected the operator instinctively the man felt in him a glowing resentment of something he had not the courage to resent
+when wash walked through the streets such a one had an instinct to pay him homage to raise his hat or to bow before him the superintendent who had supervision over the telegraph operators
+on the railroad that went through winesburg felt that way he had put wash into the obscure office at winesburg to avoid discharging him and he meant to keep him there when he received the letter of complaint from the banker's wife
+he tore it up and laughed unpleasantly for some reason he thought of his own wife as he tore up the letter wash williams once had a wife when he was still a young man he married a woman at dayton ohio
+the woman was tall and slender and had blue eyes and yellow hair wash was himself a comely youth he loved the woman with a love as absorbing as the hatred he later felt for all women
+in all of winesburg there was but one person who knew the story of the thing that had made ugly the person and the character of wash williams
+he once told the story to george willard and the telling of the tale came about in this way george willard went one evening to walk with belle carpenter a trimmer of women's hats
+who worked in a millinery shop kept by missus kate mc hugh the young man was not in love with the woman
+in ed griffith's saloon but as they walked about under the trees they occasionally embraced the night and their own thoughts had aroused something in them as they were returning to main street they passed the little lawn
+beside the railroad station and saw wash williams apparently asleep on the grass beneath a tree on the next evening the operator and george willard walked out together down the railroad they went
+and sat on a pile of decaying railroad ties beside the tracks it was then that the operator told the young reporter his story of hate perhaps a dozen times
+george willard and the strange shapeless man who lived at his father's hotel had been on the point of talking the young man looked at the hideous leering face
+something he saw lurking in the staring eyes told him that the man who had nothing to say to others had nevertheless something to say to him
+he waited expectantly when the operator remained silent and seemed to have changed his mind about talking he tried to make conversation were you ever married mister williams he began
+i suppose you were and your wife is dead is that it wash williams spat forth a succession of vile oaths yes she is dead he agreed she is dead as all women are dead
+she is a living dead thing walking in the sight of men and making the earth foul by her presence staring into the boy's eyes the man became purple with rage don't have fool notions in your head
+he commanded my wife she is dead yes surely i tell you all women are dead my mother your mother
+and with whom i saw you walking about yesterday all of them they are all dead i tell you there is something rotten about them i was married sure my wife was dead before she married me
+she was a foul thing come out a woman more foul she was a thing sent to make life unbearable to me i was a fool do you see as you are now and so i married this woman
+i would like to see men a little begin to understand women they are sent to prevent men making the world worth while it is a trick in nature ugh they are creeping crawling squirming things
+they with their soft hands and their blue eyes the sight of a woman sickens me why i don't kill every woman i see i don't know
+half frightened and yet fascinated by the light burning in the eyes of the hideous old man george willard listened afire with curiosity darkness came on and he leaned forward
+when in the gathering darkness he could no longer see the purple bloated face and the burning eyes a curious fancy came to him wash williams talked in low even tones
+that made his words seem the more terrible in the darkness the young reporter found himself imagining that he sat on the railroad ties beside a comely young man with black hair and black shining eyes
+there was something almost beautiful in the voice of wash williams the hideous telling his story of hate the telegraph operator of winesburg sitting in the darkness on the railroad ties had become a poet
+hatred had raised him to that elevation it is because i saw you kissing the lips of that belle carpenter that i tell you my story he said what happened to me may next happen to you
+already you may be having dreams in your head
+wash williams began telling the story of his married life with the tall blonde girl with the blue eyes whom he had met when he was a young operator at dayton ohio here and there his story was touched with moments of beauty
+intermingled with strings of vile curses the operator had married the daughter of a dentist who was the youngest of three sisters on his marriage day because of his ability he was promoted to a position as dispatcher
+at an increased salary and sent to an office at columbus ohio there he settled down with his young wife and began buying a house on the installment plan the young telegraph operator was madly in love
+with a kind of religious fervor he had managed to go through the pitfalls of his youth and to remain virginal until after his marriage he made for george willard a picture of his life in the house at columbus ohio with the young wife
+in the garden back of our house we planted vegetables he said you know peas and corn and such things we went to columbus in early march and as soon as the days became warm i went to work in the garden
+with a spade i turned up the black ground while she ran about
+late in april came the planting in the little paths among the seed beds she stood holding a paper bag in her hand the bag was filled with seeds a few at a time she handed me the seeds
+for a moment there was a catch in the voice of the man talking in the darkness i loved her he said i don't claim not to be a fool i love her yet there in the dusk in the spring evening
+i kissed her shoes and the ankles above her shoes when the hem of her garment touched my face i trembled when after two years of that life
+or her i just sent her home to her mother and said nothing there was nothing to say i had four hundred dollars in the bank and i gave her that i didn't ask her reasons
+i didn't say anything when she had gone i cried like a silly boy pretty soon i had a chance to sell the house and i sent that money to her wash williams and george willard
+arose from the pile of railroad ties and walked along the tracks toward town the operator finished his tale quickly breathlessly her mother sent for me he said
+she wrote me a letter and asked me to come to their house at dayton when i got there it was evening about this time wash williams voice rose to a half scream
+i sat in the parlor of that house two hours her mother took me in there and left me their house was stylish they were what is called respectable people there were plush chairs and a couch in the room
+i was trembling all over i hated the men i thought had wronged her i was sick of living alone and wanted her back the longer i waited the more raw and tender i became i thought that if she came in and just
+touched me with her hand i would perhaps faint away i ached to forgive and forget wash williams stopped and stood staring at george willard
+again the man's voice became soft and low she came into the room naked he went on her mother did that while i sat there she was taking the girl's clothes off perhaps coaxing her to do it
+first i heard voices at the door that led into a little hallway
+the girl was ashamed and stood perfectly still staring at the floor the mother didn't come into the room when she had pushed the girl in through the door she stood in the hallway waiting hoping we would well
+you see waiting george willard and the telegraph operator came into the main street of winesburg the lights from the store windows lay bright and shining on the sidewalks people moved about laughing and talking
+the young reporter felt ill and weak in imagination he also became old and shapeless i didn't get the mother killed said wash williams staring up and down the street i struck her once with a chair
+and then the neighbors came in and took it away
+mantelish excused himself and went off with the messenger the door closed quillan came back to his chair we're moving the outfit later tonight the commissioner explained
+eight tons of his lab equipment plus his special u league guards oh trigger picked up the puya glass she looked into it it was empty moving where she asked manon said the commissioner tell you about that later
+every last muscle in trigger's body seemed to go limp simultaneously she settled back slightly in the chair surprised by the force of the reaction she hadn't realized by now how keyed up she was she sighed a small sigh
+then she smiled at quillan major she said how about a tiny little refill on that puya about half quillan took care of the tiny little refill commissioner tate said by the way
+quillan does have a degree in subspace engineering and gets assigned to the engineers now and then but his real job's space scout intelligence trigger nodded i'd almost guessed it she gave quillan another smile
+and now said the commissioner we'll talk more freely we tell mantelish just as little as we can to tell you the truth trigger the professor is a terrible handicap on an operation like this i understand he was a great friend of your father's yes she said
+going over for visits to mantelish's garden with my father is one of the earliest things i remember i can imagine he's a problem she shifted her gaze curiously from one to the other of the two men what are you people doing
+looking for gess fayle and the key unit holati tate said that's about it we're one of a few thousand federation groups assigned to the same general job each group works at its specialties and the information gets correlated
+in what way trigger asked well suppose that key unit is lost and stays lost suppose all the other plasmoids put together don't contain enough information to show how the old galactics produced the things and got them to operate
+somebody would get that worked out pretty soon wouldn't they
+there seem to be too many basic factors missing it might be necessary to develop a whole new class of sciences first and that could take a few centuries well trigger admitted i could get along without the things indefinitely
+same here the plasmoid nabob agreed ungratefully weird beasties but let's see at present there are twelve hundred and fifty eight member worlds to the federation aren't there more or less
+and the number of planetary confederacies subplanetary governments industrial financial and commercial combines assorted power groups et cetera and so on is something i'd hate to have to calculate what are you driving at she asked
+they've all been told we're heading for a new golden age courtesy of the plasmoid science practically everybody has believed it now there's considerable doubt
+of course practically everybody is going to get very unhappy eh that said commissioner tate is only a little of it yes the thing isn't just lost somebody's got it very likely trigger nodded
+so any one of umpteen thousands of organizations in the hub might be the one that has that plasmoid now including said holati any one of the two hundred and fourteen restricted worlds
+their treaties of limitation wouldn't have let them get into the plasmoid pie until the others had been at it a decade or so they would have been quite eager there was a little pause then trigger said lordy
+the thing could even set off another string of wars that's a point the council is nervous about he said well it certainly is a mess you would have thought the federation might have had a security chief in on that first operation
+right there on harvest moon they did he said it was fayle
+holati could those things ever become as valuable as people keep saying it's all sounded a little exaggerated to me the commissioner said he'd wondered about it too
+i'm not enough of a biologist to make an educated guess what it seems to boil down to is that they might which would be enough to tempt a lot of people to gamble very high for a chance to get control of the plasmoid process
+and we know definitely that some people are gambling for it how do you know we've been working a couple of leads here pretty short leads so far but you work with what you can get he nodded at the table
+trigger glanced down the plasmoid lay there some inches from the side of her hand you know she said uncomfortably old repulsive moved again while we were talking towards my hand she drew the hand away
+i was watching it major quillan said reassuringly from the end of the table
+mantelish brought it back to maccadon with him
+he was curious because he couldn't even guess at what its function was it was just lying there in a cubicle so he did considerable experimenting with it while he waited for gess fayle to show up
+and league headquarters fidgeted around hoping to get the kind of report from mantelish and fayle that mantelish thought they'd already received they were wondering where fayle was too but they knew fayle was security so they didn't like to get too nosy
+trigger shook her head wonderful so
+mantelish began to get results with it the commissioner said one experiment was rather startling he'd been trying that electrical stimulation business nothing happened until he had finished then he touched the plasmoid and it fed the whole charge back to him
+she laughed delightedly good for repulsive stood up for his rights eh mantelish gained some such impression anyway he became more cautious with it after that and then he learned something that should be important
+he was visiting another lab where they had a couple of plasmoids which actually moved now and then
+the two lab plasmoids stopped moving while he was there they haven't moved since
+right he thought about that and then located another moving plasmoid
+the big one induces plasmoid activity the little one modifies it
+but his two lab guards and one of the raiders were killed the others got away gess fayle's defection was a certainty by then and everybody was very nervous the feds got there fast and dead brained the raider they learned just two things
+one he'd been mind blocked and couldn't have spilled any significant information even if they had got him alive the other item they drew from his brain was a clear impression of the target of the raid the professor's pal here uh huh trigger said lost in thought
+she poked repulsive lightly that would be fayle and his associates then or somebody who knew about them did they want to kill it or grab it the commissioner looked at her grab it was the dead brain report why
+so they need it in connection with the key unit trigger asked probably that makes everything look very much better doesn't it quite a little he said the unit may not work
+mantelish talks of something he calls proximity influence
+so trigger said they might have two thirds of what everybody wants and you might have one third right here on the table how many of the later raiders did you catch all of them said the commissioner around forty
+we got them dead we got them alive it didn't make much difference they were hired hands very expensive hired hands but still just that most of them didn't know a thing we could use the ones that did know something were mind blocked again
+i thought trigger said reflectively you could un block someone like that you can sometimes if you're very good at it and if you have time enough we couldn't afford to wait a year they died before they could tell us anything
+there was a pause then trigger asked how did you get involved in this personally more or less by accident the commissioner said it was in connection with our second lead that's me huh she said unhappily yes
+why would anyone want to grab me i don't know anything he shook his head we haven't found out yet we're hoping we will in a very few days is that one of the things you can't tell me about
+i can tell you most of what i know at the moment said the commissioner
+i never sell goods without knowing where i can find them when i want them and if these fellows try to put their forefeet in the trough or start any shoving and crowding they're going to find me forgetting my table manners too
+for when it comes to funny business i'm something of a humorist myself and while i'm too old to run i'm young enough to stand and fight first and last a good many men have gone gunning for me but they've always planned the obsequies before they caught the deceased
+i reckon there hasn't been a time in twenty years when there wasn't a nice gates ajar piece all made up and ready for me in some office near the board of trade but the first essential of a quiet funeral is a willing corpse and i'm still sitting up and taking nourishment
+abuse and flattery the first can't harm you and the second can't help you some men are like yellow dogs
+last year when i was bulling the market the longs all said that i was a kind hearted old philanthropist who was laying awake nights scheming to get the farmers a top price for their hogs
+and the shorts allowed that i was an infamous old robber who was stealing the pork out of the workingman's pot as long as you can't please both sides in this world there's nothing like pleasing your own side
+i remember once i had a vacant lot out on the avenue and a lady came in to my office and in a soothing syrupy way asked if i would lend it to her as she wanted to build a creche on it i hesitated a little because i had never heard of a creche before
+and someways it sounded sort of foreign and frisky though the woman looked like a good safe reliable old heifer but she explained that a creche was a baby farm where old maids went to wash and feed and stick pins in other people's children while their mothers were off at work
+of course there was nothing in that to get our pastor or the police after me so i told her to go ahead she went off happy but about a week later she dropped in again looking sort of dissatisfied to find out if i wouldn't build the creche itself
+it seemed like a worthy object so i sent some carpenters over to knock together a long frame pavilion she was mighty grateful you bet and i didn't see her again for a fortnight then she called by to say that so long as i was in the business and they didn't cost me anything special
+would i mind giving her a few cows she had a surprised and grieved expression on her face as she talked and the way she put it made me feel that i ought to be ashamed of myself for not having thought of the live stock myself so i threw in half a dozen cows to provide the refreshments
+to ask why i hadn't had it painted i was too busy that morning to quarrel so i sent word that i would fix it up and when i was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it
+graham's extract it makes the weak strong
+went all around town saying that i had given a five hundred dollar shed to charity and painted a thousand dollar ad on it allowed i ought to send my check for that amount to the creche fund kept at it till i began to think there might be something in it after all and sent her the money
+then i found a fellow who wanted to build in that neighborhood sold him the lot cheap and got out of the creche industry
+but the only thing i've ever put into it which didn't draw dividends in fun or dollars was worry that is a branch of the trade which you want to leave to our competitors i've always found worrying a blamed sight more uncertain than horse racing it's harder to pick a winner at it
+you go home worrying because you're afraid that your fool new clerk forgot to lock the safe after you and during the night the lard refinery burns down you spend a year fretting because you think bill jones is going to cut you out with your best girl and then you spend ten worrying because he didn't
+a busy man has no time to bother with it he can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying over their own troubles and to sit up nights waking his speaking of handing over your worries to others naturally calls to mind the widow williams and her son bud
+who was a playmate of mine when i was a boy bud was the youngest of the widow's troubles and she was a woman whose troubles seldom came singly had fourteen altogether and four pair of em were twins
+and then she'd shed all worry over them for the rest of the day allowed that if they got hurt the neighbors would bring them home
+and someways the whole drove always showed up safe and dirty about meal time
+and so when bud's clothes were found at the swimming hole one day and no bud inside them she didn't take on up to the expectations of the neighbors who had brought the news and who were standing around waiting for her to go off into something special in the way of high strikes
+hinted that there'd be no funeral or such like expensive goings on until some one produced the deceased take her by and large she was a pretty cool calm cucumber
+and every one just quit work to tell each other what a noble little fellow he was and how his mother hadn't deserved to have such a bright little sunbeam in her home and to drag the river between talks but they couldn't get a rise
+but finally at the end of a week when they'd strained the whole river through their drags and hadn't anything to show for it but a collection of tin cans and dead catfish
+and went down the street to the cabin of louisiana clytemnestra an old yellow woman who would go into a trance for four bits and find a fortune for you for a dollar i reckon she'd have called herself a clairvoyant nowadays but then she was just a voodoo woman
+well the widow said she reckoned that boys ought to be let out as well as in for half price and so she laid down two bits allowing that she wanted a few minutes private conversation with her bud
+clytie said she'd do her best but that spirits were mighty snifty and high toned even when they'd only been poor white trash on earth and it might make them mad to be called away from their high jinks if they were taking a little recreation or from their high priced new york customers if they were working
+but next day she came again and paid down four bits and clytie reckoned that that ought to fetch bud sure someways though she didn't have any luck and finally the widow suggested that she call up bud's father buck williams had been dead a matter of ten years
+and the old man responded promptly where's bud asked the widow
+no then he'd have to look downstairs for him clytie told the widow to call again and they'd get him sure so she came back next day and laid down a dollar that fetched old buck williams ghost on the jump you bet
+but they couldn't get a whisper even from bud i reckon clytie had been stringing the old lady along intending to produce bud's spook as a sort of red fire calcium light grand march of the amazons climax but she didn't get a chance
+for right there the old lady got up with a mighty set expression around her lips and marched out muttering that it was just as she had thought all along bud wasn't there and when the neighbors dropped in that afternoon to plan out a memorial service for her lost lamb
+she chased them off the lot with a broom
+and that they would just stand pat now and wait for him to make the next move
+but there wouldn't be till then altogether it looked as if there was a heap of trouble coming to bud if he had made any mistake and was still alive the widow found her lost lamb hiding behind a rain barrel when she opened up the house next morning
+and there was a mighty touching and affecting scene in fact the widow must have touched him at least a hundred times and every time he was affected to tears for she was using a bed slat which is a powerfully strong moral agent for making a boy see the error of his ways
+and it was a month after that before bud could go down main street without some man who had called him a noble little fellow or a bright manly little chap while he was drowned reaching out and fetching him a clip on the ear for having come back and put the laugh on him
+but it appeared that he left home to get a few indian scalps and that he came back for a little bacon and corn pone i simply mention the widow in passing as an example of the fact that the time to do your worrying is when a thing is all over and that the way to do it is to leave it to the neighbors
+i sail for home to morrow
+and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it there's a chance for everything you have learned from latin to poetry in the packing business though we don't use much poetry here except in our street car ads
+and about the only time our products are given latin names is when the state board of health condemns them so i think you'll find it safe to go short a little on the frills of education if you want them bad enough you'll find a way to pick them up later after business hours
+but i wanted you to form good mental habits just as i want you to have clean straight physical ones because i was run through a threshing machine when i was a boy and didn't begin to get the straw out of my hair till i was past thirty
+i haven't any sympathy with a lot of these old fellows who go around bragging of their ignorance and saying that boys don't need to know anything except addition and the best policy brand of honesty we started in a mighty different world and we were all ignorant together
+the lord let us in on the ground floor gave us corner lots and then started in to improve the adjacent property we didn't have to know fractions to figure out our profits now a merchant needs astronomy to see them and when he locates them they are out somewhere near the fifth decimal place
+and there're just as many chances for a fellow as ever but they're a little gun shy and you can't catch them by any such coarse method as putting salt on their tails thirty years ago you could take an old muzzle loader and knock over plenty of ducks in the city limits
+and chicago wasn't cook county then either you can get them still but you've got to go to kankakee and take a hammerless along and when i started in the packing business it was all straight sailing no frills just turning hogs into hog meat
+dry salt for the niggers down south and sugar cured for the white folks up north everything else was sausage or thrown away but when we get through with a hog nowadays he's scattered through a hundred different cans and packages and he's all accounted for what we used to throw away is our profit
+it takes doctors lawyers engineers poets and i don't know what to run the business and i reckon that improvements which call for parsons will be creeping in next naturally a young man who expects to hold his own when he is thrown in with a lot of men like these
+must be as clean and sharp as a hound's tooth or some other fellow's simply going to eat him up the first college man i ever hired was old john durham's son jim that was a good many years ago when the house was a much smaller affair
+but old durham found out what every one learns who gets his ambitions mixed up with number two red that there's a heap of it lying around loose in the country the bears did quick work and kept the cash wheat coming in so lively that one settling day
+and that he had better turn his attention to the stocks of mess pork
+he applied for every other position on the premises right down to office boy i told him i was sorry but i couldn't do anything for him then that we were letting men go but i'd keep him in mind and so on
+finally after about a month of this he wore me down so that i stopped him one day as he was passing me on the street i thought i'd find out if he really was so red hot to work as he pretended to be
+besides i felt that perhaps i hadn't treated the boy just right as i had delivered quite a jag of that wheat to his father myself hello jim i called do you still want that job yes sir he answered quick as lightning well
+i tell you how it is jim i said looking up at him he was one of those husky lazy moving six footers i don't see any chance in the office but i understand they can use another good strong man in one of the loading gangs
+i thought that would settle jim and let me out for it's no joke lugging beef or rolling barrels and tierces a hundred yards or so to the cars but jim came right back at me with done who'll i report to
+that sporty way of answering as if he was closing a bet made me surer than ever that he was not cut out for a butcher but i told him and off he started hot foot to find the foreman i sent word by another route to see that he got plenty to do
+he got to scheming around for a way to make the work easier and he hit on an idea for a sort of overhead railroad system by which the barrels could be swung out of the storerooms and run right along into the cars
+it was just as i thought jim was lazy but he had put the house in the way of saving so much money that i couldn't fire him so i raised his salary and made him an assistant timekeeper and checker
+jim kept at this for three or four months until his feet began to hurt him i guess and then he was out of a job again it seems he had heard something of a new machine for registering the men that did away with most of the timekeepers except the fellows who watched the machines
+of course he claimed a raise again for effecting such a saving
+i was beginning to take an interest in jim so i brought him up into the office and set him to copying circular letters we used to send out a raft of them to the trade that was just before the general adoption of typewriters when they were still in the experimental stage
+but jim hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month before he had the writer's cramp and began nosing around again the first thing i knew he was sicking the agents for the new typewriting machine on to me
+and he kept them pounding away until they had made me give them a trial then it was all up with mister jim's job again
+jim made two trips without selling enough to keep them working overtime at the factory and then he came into my office with a long story about how we were doing it all wrong said we ought to go for the consumer by advertising
+but jim just kept plugging away at me between trips until finally i took him off the road and told him to go ahead and try it in a small way jim pretty nearly scared me to death that first year
+at last he had got into something that he took an interest in spending money and he just fairly wallowed in it used to lay awake nights thinking up new ways of getting rid of the old man's profits
+i remember one picture he got out showing sixteen cows standing between something that looked like a letter press and telling how every pound or so of graham's extract contained the juice squeezed from a herd of steers if an explorer started for the north pole
+jim would send him a case of extract and then advertise that it was the great heat maker for cold climates and if some other fellow started across africa he sent him a case too and advertised what a bully drink it was served up with a little ice
+he broke out in a new place every day and every time he broke out it cost the house money finally i made up my mind to swallow the loss and mister jim was just about to lose his job sure enough
+when the orders for extract began to look up and he got a reprieve then he began to make expenses and he got a pardon and finally a rush came that left him high and dry in a permanent place
+jim was all right in his way but it was a new way and i hadn't been broad gauged enough to see that it was a better way that was where i caught the connection between a college education and business
+i've always made it a rule to buy brains and i've learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised the fellow who hasn't had the training may be just as smart but he's apt to paw the air when he's reaching for ideas
+i suppose you're asking why if i'm so hot for education i'm against this post graduate course
+i see you've been elected president of your class i'm glad the boys aren't down on you but while the most popular man in his class isn't always a failure in business being as popular as that takes up a heap of time
+i noticed too when you were home easter that you were running to sporty clothes and cigarettes there's nothing criminal about either but i don't hire sporty clerks at all and the only part of the premises on which cigarette smoking is allowed is the fertilizer factory
+i simply mention this in passing i have every confidence in your ultimate good sense and i guess you'll see the point without my elaborating with a meat ax my reasons for thinking that you've had enough college for the present
+peter sees rosebreast and finds redcoat
+who's that peter rabbit pricked up his long ears and stared up at the tops of the trees of the old orchard instantly jenny wren popped her head out of her doorway she cocked her head on one side to listen
+then looked down at peter and her sharp little eyes snapped i don't hear any strange voice said she the way you are staring peter rabbit one would think that you had really heard something new and worth while
+just then there were two or three rather sharp squeaky notes from the top of one of the trees there cried peter there didn't you hear that jenny wren
+for goodness sake peter rabbit you don't mean to say you don't know whose voice that is she cried that's rosebreast he and missus rosebreast have been here for quite a little while
+i didn't suppose there was any one who didn't know those sharp squeaky voices they rather get on my nerves what anybody wants to squeak like that for when they can sing as rosebreast can is more than i can understand
+at that very instant mister wren began to scold as only he and jenny can peter looked up at jenny and winked slyly and what anybody wants to scold like that for when they can sing as mister wren can is too much for me
+retorted peter but you haven't told me who rosebreast is the grosbeak of course stupid sputtered jenny if you don't know rosebreast the grosbeak peter rabbit you certainly must have been blind and deaf ever since you were born
+listen to that just listen to that song peter listened there were many songs for it was a very beautiful morning and all the singers of the old orchard were pouring out the joy that was within them
+one song was a little louder and clearer than the others because it came from a tree very close at hand the very tree from which those squeaky notes had come just a few minutes before peter suspected that that must be the song jenny wren meant he looked puzzled
+he was puzzled do you mean welcome robin's song he asked rather sheepishly for he had a feeling that he would be the victim of jenny wren's sharp tongue no i don't mean welcome robin's song snapped jenny
+what good are a pair of long ears if they can't tell one song from another that song may sound something like welcome robin's but if your ears were good for anything at all you'd know right away that that isn't welcome robin singing
+that's a better song than welcome robin's welcome robin's song is one of good cheer but this one is of pure happiness i wouldn't have a pair of ears like yours for anything in the world peter rabbit
+peter laughed right out as he tried to picture to himself jenny wren with a pair of long ears like his what are you laughing at demanded jenny crossly don't you dare laugh at me
+if there is any one thing i can't stand it is being laughed at i wasn't laughing at you replied peter very meekly i was just laughing at the thought of how funny you would look with a pair of long ears like mine
+now you speak of it jenny that song is quite different from welcome robin's of course it is retorted jenny that is rosebreast singing up there and there he is right in the top of that tree
+isn't he handsome peter looked up to see a bird a little smaller than welcome robin his head throat and back were black his wings were black with patches of white on them
+but it was his breast that made peter catch his breath with a little gasp of admiration for that breast was a beautiful rose red the rest of him underneath was white it was rosebreast the grosbeak isn't he lovely
+cried peter and added in the next breath who is that with him missus grosbeak of course who else would it be sputtered jenny rather crossly for she was still a little put out because she had been laughed at
+said peter she doesn't look the least bit like him this was quite true there was no beautiful rose color about missus grosbeak she was dressed chiefly in brown and grayish colors with a little buff here and there and with dark streaks on her breast
+over each eye was a whitish line altogether she looked more as if she might be a big member of the sparrow family than the wife of handsome rosebreast
+while rosebreast sang missus grosbeak was very busily picking buds and blossoms from the tree what is she doing that for inquired peter for the same reason that you bite off sweet clover blossoms and leaves
+replied jenny wren tartly do you mean to say that they live on buds and blossoms cried peter i never heard of such a thing tut tut tut tut tut you can ask more silly questions than anybody of my acquaintance retorted jenny wren
+of course they don't live on buds and blossoms if they did they would soon starve to death for buds and blossoms don't last long they eat a few just for variety but they live mostly on bugs and insects
+you ask farmer brown's boy who helps him most in his potato patch and he'll tell you it's the grosbeaks they certainly do love potato bugs they eat some fruit but on the whole they are about as useful around a garden as any one i know
+now run along peter rabbit and don't bother me any more seeing farmer brown's boy coming through the old orchard peter decided that it was high time for him to depart so he scampered for the green forest lipperty lipperty lip
+just within the edge of the green forest he caught sight of something which for the time being put all thought of farmer brown's boy out of his head fluttering on the ground was a bird than whom not even glory the cardinal was more beautiful
+it was about the size of redwing the blackbird wings and tail were pure black and all the rest was a beautiful scarlet it was redcoat the tanager at first peter had eyes only for the wonderful beauty of redcoat
+never before had he seen redcoat so close at hand then quite suddenly it came over peter that something was wrong with redcoat and he hurried forward to see what the trouble might be redcoat heard the rustle of peter's feet among the dry leaves
+but he could not get off the ground what is it redcoat has something happened to you it is just peter rabbit you don't have anything to fear from me cried peter the look of terror which had been in the eyes of redcoat died out
+and he stopped fluttering and simply lay panting oh peter he gasped you don't know how glad i am that it is only you i've had a terrible accident and i don't know what i am to do
+i can't fly and if i have to stay on the ground some enemy will be sure to get me what shall i do peter what shall i do right away peter was full of sympathy
+what kind of an accident was it redcoat and how did it happen he asked broadwing the hawk tried to catch me
+and did not see just where i was going i struck a sharp pointed dead twig and drove it right through my right wing redcoat held up his right wing and sure enough there was a little stick projecting from both sides close up to the shoulder
+the wing was bleeding a little oh dear whatever shall i do peter rabbit
+sobbed redcoat does it pain you dreadfully asked peter redcoat nodded but i don't mind the pain he hastened to say it is the thought of what may happen to me
+poor redcoat with the old look of terror in his eyes fluttered along trying to find something under which to hide but there was nothing under which he could crawl and there was no hiding that wonderful red coat
+peter heard the sound of heavy footsteps and looking back saw that farmer brown's boy was coming don't be afraid redcoat he whispered it's farmer brown's boy and i'm sure he won't hurt you perhaps he can help you
+then peter scampered off for a short distance and sat up to watch what would happen
+no one with any eyes at all could have helped seeing him because of that wonderful scarlet coat he saw too by the way redcoat was acting that he was in great trouble as farmer brown's boy drew near and redcoat saw that he was discovered
+he tried his hardest to flutter away farmer brown's boy understood instantly that something was wrong with one wing and running forward he caught redcoat you poor little thing
+said farmer brown's boy softly as he saw the cruel twig sticking through redcoats shoulder
+continued farmer brown's boy stroking redcoat ever so gently somehow at that gentle touch redcoat lost much of his fear and a little hope sprang in his heart
+farmer brown's boy took out his knife and carefully cut off the twig on the upper side of the wing then doing his best to be careful and to hurt as little as possible he worked the other part of the twig out from the under side
+carefully he examined the wing to see if any bones were broken none were and after holding redcoat a few minutes he carefully set him up in a tree and withdrew a short distance redcoat hopped from branch to branch
+until he was halfway up the tree then he sat there for some time as if fearful of trying that injured wing meanwhile missus tanager came and fussed about him and talked to him and coaxed him and made as much of him as if he were a baby
+from tree to tree he flew
+the moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple and considering it under all its aspects thenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday madame thenardier was approaching her forties which is equivalent to fifty in a woman
+so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife our readers have possibly preserved some recollection of this thenardier woman ever since her first appearance tall blond red fat angular square
+enormous and agile she belonged as we have said to the race of those colossal wild women who contort themselves at fairs with paving stones hanging from their hair she did everything about the house
+made the beds did the washing the cooking and everything else cosette was her only servant a mouse in the service of an elephant everything trembled at the sound of her voice window panes furniture and people
+her big face dotted with red blotches presented the appearance of a skimmer she had a beard she was an ideal market porter dressed in woman's clothes she swore splendidly
+she boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist except for the romances which she had read and which made the affected lady peep through the ogress at times in a very queer way the idea would never have occurred to any one to say of her
+that is a woman this thenardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a fishwife when one heard her speak one said that is a gendarme when one saw her drink one said that is a carter
+when one saw her handle cosette one said that is the hangman one of her teeth projected when her face was in repose thenardier was a small thin pale angular bony feeble man
+his cunning began here he smiled habitually by way of precaution and was almost polite to everybody even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing he had the glance of a pole cat and the bearing of a man of letters
+he greatly resembled the portraits of the abbe delille his coquetry consisted in drinking with the carters no one had ever succeeded in rendering him drunk he smoked a big pipe
+he wore a blouse and under his blouse an old black coat he made pretensions to literature and to materialism there were certain names which he often pronounced to support whatever things he might be saying voltaire
+he declared that he had a system in addition he was a great swindler
+the species does exist it will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the army he was in the habit of relating with exuberance how being a sergeant in the sixth or the ninth light something or other at waterloo
+he had alone and in the presence of a squadron of death dealing hussars covered with his body and saved from death in the midst of the grape shot a general who had been dangerously wounded
+thence arose for his wall the flaring sign and for his inn the name which it bore in the neighborhood of the cabaret of the sergeant of waterloo he was a liberal a classic and a bonapartist
+we believe that he had simply studied in holland for an inn keeper this rascal of composite order was in all probability some fleming from lille in flanders a frenchman in paris a belgian at brussels
+being comfortably astride of both frontiers as for his prowess at waterloo the reader is already acquainted with that it will be perceived that he exaggerated it a trifle ebb and flow
+a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary life and apparently at the stormy epoch of june eighteenth eighteen fifteen thenardier belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken
+beating about the country selling to some stealing from others and travelling like a family man with wife and children in a rickety cart in the rear of troops on the march with an instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious army
+this campaign ended and having as he said
+of gold rings and silver crosses gathered in harvest time in furrows sown with corpses did not amount to a large total and did not carry this sutler turned eating house keeper very far
+accompanied by an oath recalls the barracks and by a sign of the cross the seminary he was a fine talker he allowed it to be thought that he was an educated man
+but practised eyes sometimes spied out orthographical errors in it thenardier was cunning greedy slothful and clever he did not disdain his servants which caused his wife to dispense with them
+this giantess was jealous it seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must be an object coveted by all thenardier who was above all an astute and well balanced man was a scamp of a temperate sort
+this is the worst species hypocrisy enters into it it is not that thenardier was not on occasion capable of wrath to quite the same degree as his wife but this was very rare
+and at such times since he was enraged with the human race in general as he bore within him a deep furnace of hatred and since he was one of those people who are continually avenging their wrongs
+who accuse everything that passes before them of everything which has befallen them and who are always ready to cast upon the first person who comes to hand as a legitimate grievance the sum total of the deceptions the bankruptcies and the calamities of their lives
+when all this leaven was stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes he was terrible woe to the person who came under his wrath at such a time in addition to his other qualities thenardier was attentive and penetrating
+silent or talkative according to circumstances and always highly intelligent he had something of the look of sailors who are accustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses thenardier was a statesman
+every new comer who entered the tavern said on catching sight of madame thenardier there is the master of the house a mistake she was not even the mistress the husband was both master and mistress
+she worked he created he directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action a word was sufficient for him sometimes a sign the mastodon obeyed
+though she did not thoroughly realize it she was possessed of virtues after her own kind if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with
+which was an inadmissible hypothesis by the way she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever she would never have committed before strangers that
+exposing the crown although their concord had only evil as its result
+viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side this was that grand and universal thing the adoration of mind by matter for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty
+hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman at certain moments she beheld him like a lighted candle at others she felt him like a claw this woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except her children
+and who did not fear any one except her husband she was a mother because she was mammiferous but her maternity stopped short with her daughters and as we shall see did not extend to boys the man had but one thought how to enrich himself
+a theatre worthy of this great talent was lacking
+if ruin is possible to zero in switzerland or in the pyrenees this penniless scamp would have become a millionaire but an inn keeper must browse where fate has hitched him
+it will be understood that the word inn keeper is here employed in a restricted sense and does not extend to an entire class in this same year eighteen twenty three
+thenardier was burdened with about fifteen hundred francs worth of petty debts and this rendered him anxious whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case thenardier was one of those men who understand best
+with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples hospitality besides he was an admirable poacher
+and quoted for his skill in shooting he had a certain cold and tranquil laugh which was particularly dangerous his theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes
+he had professional aphorisms which he inserted into his wife's mind the duty of the inn keeper
+and a smile to stop passers by to empty small purses and to honestly lighten heavy ones to shelter travelling families respectfully
+to shave the man to pluck the woman to pick the child clean to quote the window open the window shut the chimney corner the arm chair the chair the ottoman the stool the feather bed the mattress and the truss of straw
+to know how much the shadow uses up the mirror and to put a price on it and by five hundred thousand devils to make the traveller pay for everything
+this man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded a hideous and terrible team while the husband pondered and combined madame thenardier thought not of absent creditors
+took no heed of yesterday nor of to morrow and lived in a fit of anger all in a minute such were these two beings cosette was between them subjected to their double pressure
+the man and the woman each had a different method cosette was overwhelmed with blows this was the woman's she went barefooted in winter that was the man's doing
+cosette ran up stairs and down washed swept rubbed dusted ran fluttered about panted moved heavy articles and weak as she was did the coarse work there was no mercy for her
+a fierce mistress and venomous master the thenardier hostelry was like a spider's web in which cosette had been caught and where she lay trembling the ideal of oppression was realized by this sinister household
+it was something like the fly serving the spiders the poor child passively held her peace what takes place within these souls when they have but just quitted god find themselves thus
+at the very dawn of life very small
+they were habitually indifferent to self exaltation and allowed themselves to be thrust into this or that unfitting role professing that the queen's government and the good of the country were their only considerations
+because it was felt on all sides that sir orlando could not join the new composite party without high place and the same grace was shown in regard to lord drummond who remained at the colonies keeping the office to which he had been lately transferred under mister daubeny
+for legal offices have a signification differing much from that which attaches itself to places simply political a lord chancellor becomes a peer and on going out of office enjoys a large pension when the woolsack has been reached there comes an end of doubt
+and a beginning of ease sir gregory was not a young man and this was a terrible blow but he bore it manfully saying not a word when the duke spoke to him but he became convinced from that moment that no more inefficient lawyer ever sat upon the english bench
+or a more presumptuous politician in the british parliament than lord ramsden the real struggle however lay in the appropriate distribution of the rattlers and the robys the fitzgibbons and the macphersons among the subordinate offices of state
+mister macpherson and mister roby with a host of others who had belonged to mister daubeny were prepared as they declared from the first to lend their assistance to the duke they had consulted mister daubeny on the subject and mister daubeny told them that their duty lay in that direction
+at the first blush of the matter the arrangement took the form of a gracious tender from themselves to a statesman called upon to act in very difficult circumstances and they were thanked accordingly by the duke with something of real cordial gratitude
+he was astounded not so much by the pretensions as by the unblushing assertion of these pretensions in reference to places which he had been innocent enough to think were always bestowed at any rate without direct application he had measured himself rightly when he told the older duke
+in one of those anxious conversations which had been held before the attempt was made that long as he had been in office himself he did not know what was the way of bestowing office two gentlemen have been here this morning he said one day to the duke of saint bungay
+one on the heels of the other each assuring me not only that the whole stability of the enterprise depends on my giving a certain office to him but actually telling me to my face that i had promised it to him the old statesman laughed
+to be told within the same half hour by two men that i had made promises to each of them inconsistent with each other who were the two men mister rattler and mister roby i am assured that they are inseparable since the work was begun
+they always had a leaning to each other and now i hear they pass their time between the steps of the carlton and reform clubs but what am i to do one must be patronage secretary no doubt they're both good men in their way you know
+but why do they come to me with their mouths open like dogs craving a bone it used not to be so of course men were always anxious for office as they are now well yes we've heard of that before to day i think
+but i don't think any man ever ventured to ask mister mildmay time had done much for him in consolidating his authority and perhaps the present world is less reticent in its eagerness than it was in his younger days i doubt however
+whether it is more dishonest and whether struggles were not made quite as disgraceful to the strugglers as anything that is done now you can't alter the men and you must use them the younger duke sat down and sighed over the degenerate patriotism of the age
+but at last even the rattlers and robys were fixed if not satisfied and a complete list of the ministry appeared in all the newspapers though the thing had been long a doing still it had come suddenly
+so that at the first proposition to form a coalition ministry the newspapers had hardly known whether to assist or to oppose the scheme there was no doubt in the minds of all these editors and contributors the teaching of a tradition that coalitions of this kind have been generally feeble
+sometimes disastrous and on occasions even disgraceful when a man perhaps through a long political life has bound himself to a certain code of opinions how can he change that code at a moment
+and when at the same moment together with the change he secures power patronage and pay how shall the public voice absolve him but then again men who have by the work of their lives grown into a certain position in the country
+and have unconsciously but not therefore less actually made themselves indispensable either to this side in politics or to that cannot free themselves altogether from the responsibility of managing them when a period comes such as that now reached
+this also the newspapers perceived and having since the commencement of the session been very loud in exposing the disgraceful collapse of government affairs could hardly refuse their support to any attempt at a feasible arrangement
+when it was first known that the duke of omnium had consented to make the attempt they had both on one side and the other been loud in his praise going so far as to say that he was the only man in england who could do the work
+but when the newspapers told him that he was the only man for the occasion how could he be justified in crediting himself in preference to them the work in parliament began under the new auspices with great tranquillity
+and further education questions all men knew who knew anything but for the moment for the month even perhaps for the session there was to be peace with full latitude for the performance of routine duties there was so to say no opposition
+and at first it seemed that one special bench in the house of commons would remain unoccupied but after a day or two on one of which mister daubeny had been seen sitting just below the gangway that gentleman returned to the place usually held by the prime minister's rival
+saying with a smile that it might be for the convenience of the house that the seat should be utilised mister gresham at this time had with declared purpose asked and obtained the speaker's leave of absence and was abroad who should lead the house
+that had been a great question caused by the fact that the prime minister was in the house of lords and what office should the leader hold mister monk had consented to take the exchequer
+was at last assigned to sir orlando drought it will never do said mister rattler to mister roby i don't mean to say anything against drought who has always been a very useful man to your party but he lacks something of the position
+the fact is said roby that we've trusted to two men so long that we don't know how to suppose any one else big enough to fill their places monk wouldn't have done the house doesn't care about monk i always thought it should be wilson
+and so i told the duke he had an idea that it should be one of your men i think he's right there said roby there ought to be something like a fair division individuals might be content but the party would be dissatisfied
+for myself i'd have sooner stayed out as an independent member but daubeny said that he thought i was bound to make myself useful i told the duke from the beginning said rattler that i didn't think that i could be of any service to him
+of course i would support him but i had been too thoroughly a party man for a new movement of this kind but he said just the same that he considered i was bound to join him i asked gresham and when gresham said so too of course i had no help for it
+a meaning to a man's words exactly opposite to that which another tone would convey or if he does lie in doing so he does not know that he lies mister rattler had gone back to his old office at the treasury
+and mister roby had been forced to content himself with the secretaryship at the admiralty but as the old duke had said they were close friends and prepared to fight together any battle which might keep them in their present position
+many of the cares of office the prime minister did succeed in shuffling off altogether on to the shoulders of his elder friend he would not concern himself with the appointment of ladies about whom he said he knew nothing
+and as to whose fitness and claims he professed himself to be as ignorant as the office messenger the offers were of course made in the usual form as though coming direct from the queen through the prime minister but the selections were in truth effected by the old duke in council with
+an illustrious personage the matter affected our duke only in so far that he could not get out of his mind that strange application from his own wife that she should have even dreamed of it he would say to himself
+the desire for ploughing had come upon the duchess but the duke could not understand it he perceived however in spite of the multiplicity of his official work that his refusal sat heavily on his wife's breast and that though she spoke no further word
+she brooded over her injury and his heart was sad within him when he thought that he had vexed her loving her as he did with all his heart but with a heart that was never demonstrative when she was unhappy he was miserable
+though he would hardly know the cause of his misery her ridicule and raillery he could bear
+or her sullenness if ever she were sullen upset him altogether he was in truth so soft of heart
+he had expressly asked her for her sympathy in the business he had on hand thereby going much beyond his usual coldness of manner
+had promised that she would slave for him if slavery were necessary then she had made her request had been refused and was now moody the duchess of
+is to be mistress of the robes he said to her one day he had gone to her up to her own room before he dressed for dinner having devoted much more time than as prime minister he ought to have done to a resolution that he would make things straight with her and to the best way of doing it
+so i am told she ought to know her way about the place as i remember she was at the same work when i was a girl of eleven that's not so very long ago cora silverbridge is older now than i was then
+and i think that makes it a very long time ago lord silverbridge was the duke's eldest son but what does it matter if she began her career in the time of george the fourth what is it to you
+it's a pity she should not remember hers in the way she dresses said the duchess this was marvellous to him that his wife
+that it won't come within the compass of my office to effect or even to propose any radical change in her grace's apparel but don't you think that you and i can afford to ignore all that i can certainly she may be an antiquated eve for me
+i hope cora you are not still disappointed because i did not agree with you when you spoke about the place for yourself not because you did not agree with me but because you did not think me fit to be trusted with any judgment of my own
+and free from bonds by which they are cramped and confined of course such a turn of character is subject to certain dangers of its own there is no doubt about the dangers the chances are that when i see her grace i shall tell her what i think about her
+you will i am sure say nothing unkind to a lady who is supposed to be in the place she now fills by my authority but do not let us quarrel about an old woman i won't quarrel with you even about a young one
+you do not know how constantly i carry you about with me you carry a very unnecessary burden then she said but he could tell at once from the altered tone of her voice and from the light of her eye as he glanced into her face
+that her anger about the robes was appeased i have done as you asked about a friend of yours he said this occurred just before the final and perfected list of the new men had appeared in all the newspapers what friend
+mister finn is to go to ireland go to ireland how do you mean it is looked upon as being very great promotion indeed i am told that he is considered to be the luckiest man in all the scramble you don't mean as chief secretary
+yes i do he certainly couldn't go as lord lieutenant but they said that barrington erle was going to ireland well yes i don't know that you'd be interested by all the ins and outs of it
+the one man in parliament modest enough not to consider himself to be fit for any place that can be offered to him poor barrington he does not like the idea of crossing the channel so often i quite sympathise with him and so phineas is to be secretary for ireland
+not in the cabinet no not in the cabinet it is not by any means usual that he should be that is promotion and i am glad poor phineas i hope they won't murder him or anything of that kind
+they do murder people you know sometimes he's an irishman himself that's just the reason why they should he must put up with that of course i wonder whether she'll like going they'll be able to spend money which they always like
+over there he comes backwards and forwards every week doesn't he not quite that i believe i shall miss her if she has to stay away long i know you don't like her i do like her
+she has always behaved well both to me and to my uncle she was an angel to him
+this she said with a smile as though not meaning it altogether but yet half meaning it i have asked him to undertake the office said the duke solemnly because i am told that he is fit for it
+but i did have some pleasure in proposing it to him because i thought that it would please you it does please me and i won't be cross any more and the duchess of
+but she is in truth the only woman in london to whom i can say what i think and it is a comfort you know to have some one in this way the domestic peace of the prime minister was readjusted
+and that sympathy and co operation for which he had first asked was accorded to him it may be a question whether on the whole the duchess did not work harder than he did
+in regard to magnificence and hospitality she said nothing of any extraordinary expenditure of money but she set herself to work after her own fashion making to him suggestions as to dinners and evening receptions
+to which he objected only on the score of time you must eat your dinner somewhere she said and you need only come in just before we sit down and go into your own room if you please without coming upstairs at all i can at any rate do that part of it for you
+neither at dinner on that evening at manchester square nor after dinner as long as missus roby remained in the house was a word said about lopez by mister wharton he remained longer than usual with his bottle of port wine in the dining room
+but as soon as missus roby was gone and missus roby went home round the corner somewhat earlier than usual then mister wharton woke up instantly and made inquiry of his daughter
+there had however been a few words spoken on the subject between missus roby and her niece which had served to prepare emily for what was coming lopez has been to your father
+if he did not mean you to choose for yourself why didn't he keep a closer look out i haven't chosen any one aunt harriet well to speak fairly i thought you had and i have nothing to say against your choice
+no doubt your papa will have it out with you just now so you had better make up your mind what you will say to him if you really like the man i don't see why you shouldn't say so and stick to it he has made a regular offer and girls in these days are not expected to be their father's slaves
+missus roby was pleased with little intrigues was addicted to the amusement of fostering love affairs was fond of being thought to be useful in such matters and was not averse to having presents given to her she had married a vulgar man
+and though she had not become like the man she had become vulgar she was not an eligible companion for mister wharton's daughter a matter as to which the father had not given himself proper opportunities of learning the facts an aunt in his close neighbourhood was so great a comfort to him
+so ready and so natural an assistance to him in his difficulties but emily wharton was not in the least like her aunt nor had missus wharton been at all like missus roby no doubt the contact was dangerous
+injury had perhaps already been done it may be that some slightest soil had already marred the pure white of the girl's natural character but if so the stain was as yet too impalpable to be visible to ordinary eyes
+rather exceeding the average proportions as well as height of women her features were regular and handsome and her form was perfect but it was by her manner and her voice that she conquered rather than by her beauty
+which strangers did not find on her face but as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasion for such shining had arisen
+to those who were allowed to love her no woman was more lovable there was innate in her an appreciation of her own position as a woman and with it a principle of self denial as a human being which it was beyond the power of any missus roby to destroy
+the young man may become lord chancellor or at any rate earn his bread comfortably as a county court judge but the girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband a good man
+or if her tastes lie in that direction a rich man emily wharton had doubtless thought about these things and she sincerely believed that she had found the good man in ferdinand lopez
+when going to mister wharton at his chambers he had not intended to cheat the lawyer into any erroneous idea about his family
+and mister wharton had felt himself bound to abstain from allusion to such matters from an assured feeling that he could not in that direction plant an enduring objection in this way lopez had carried his point with mister wharton
+and this he had done without ever having asked for her love and he had even taken the trouble to allure dick and had listened to and had talked whole pages out of bell's life on his own behalf it must be acknowledged
+that he did love the girl as well perhaps as he was capable of loving any one but he had found out many particulars as to mister wharton's money before he had allowed himself to love her as soon as missus roby had gathered up her knitting
+and declared as she always did on such occasions that she could go round the corner without having any one to look after her
+he came to me to day and asked for my permission to address you she sat perfectly quiet still looking at him but she did not say a word of course i did not give him permission why of course papa
+because he is a stranger and a foreigner would you have wished me to tell him that he might come yes papa he was sitting on a sofa and shrank back a little from her as she made this free avowal
+in that case i could have judged for myself i suppose every girl would like to do that but should you have accepted him i think i should have consulted you before i did that but i should have wished to accept him papa i do love him
+i have never said so before to any one i would not say so to you now if he had not spoken to you as he has done emily it must not be why not papa if you say it shall not be so it shall not
+i will do as you bid me then he put out his hand and caressed her stroking down her hair but i think you ought to tell me why it must not be
+he is a foreigner but is he and why should not a foreigner be as good as an englishman his name is foreign but he talks english and lives as an englishman he has no relatives no family no belongings
+he is what we call an adventurer marriage my dear is a most serious thing yes papa i know that one is bound to be very careful how can i give you to a man i know nothing about an adventurer
+what would they say in herefordshire i don't know why they should say anything but if they did i shouldn't much care i should my dear i should care very much one is bound to think of one's family suppose it should turn out afterwards that he was
+disreputable you may say that of any man papa but when a man has connexions a father and mother or uncles and aunts people that everybody knows about then there is some guarantee of security
+did you ever hear this man speak of his father i don't know that i ever did or his mother or his family don't you think that is suspicious
+i would not wish that there should be opportunity for such asking if there has been intimacy between you such information should have come naturally as a thing of course you have made him no promise oh no papa
+nor spoken to him of your regard for him never not a word nor he to me except in such words as one understands even though they say nothing i wish he had never seen you is he a bad man papa
+papa i wish you knew him better than you do i do not want to know him better is not that prejudice papa my dear emily said mister wharton striving to wax into anger
+that he might be firm against her i don't think that it becomes you to ask your father such a question as that you ought to believe that it is the chief object of my life to do the best i can for my children i am sure it is
+and you ought to feel that as i have had a long experience in the world my judgment about a young man might be trusted that was a statement which miss wharton was not prepared to admit
+she had already professed herself willing to submit to her father's judgment and did not now by any means contemplate rebellion against parental authority but she did feel that on a matter so vital to her
+she had a right to plead her cause before judgment should be given and she was not slow to assure herself even as this interview went on that her love for the man was strong enough to entitle her to assure her father that her happiness depended on his reversal of the sentence
+already pronounced you know papa that i trust you she said and i have promised you that i will not disobey you
+you are a good girl you were always a good girl but i think that you ought to hear me then he stood still with his hands in his trowsers pockets looking at her
+he did not want to hear a word but he felt that he would be a tyrant if he refused if you tell me that i am not to see him i shall not see him but i shall be very unhappy i do love him and i shall never love any one else in the same way
+if it is only because mister lopez has a foreign name it isn't only that no one knows anything about him or where to inquire even i think you should inquire papa and be quite certain before you pronounce such a sentence against me
+it will be a crushing blow he looked at her and saw that there was a fixed purpose in her countenance of which he had never before seen similar signs you claim a right to my obedience and i acknowledge it
+i am sure you believe me when i promise not to see him without your permission i do believe you of course i believe you but if i do that for you papa i think that you ought to be very sure on my account
+i will of course i will and he began the process of thinking about it immediately before the door was closed behind her but what was there to think about nothing that she had said altered in the least his idea about the man
+he was as convinced as ever that unless there was much to conceal there would not be so much concealment but a feeling began to grow upon him already that his daughter had a mode of pleading with him which he would not ultimately be able to resist
+he had the power he knew of putting an end to the thing altogether he had only to say resolutely and unchangeably that the thing shouldn't be and it wouldn't be
+pothier seems to think that property like royalty exists by divine right he traces back its origin to god himself
+principium he begins in this way god is the absolute ruler of the universe and all that it contains domini
+for the human race he has created the earth and all its creatures and has given it a control over them subordinate only to his own thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands
+thou hast put all things under his feet says the psalmist god accompanied this gift with these words addressed to our first parents after the creation be fruitful and multiply
+are fathers unnatural and children prodigal god gave the earth to the human race why then have i received none he has put all things under my feet
+and i have not where to lay my head multiply he tells us through his interpreter pothier ah learned pothier that is as easy to do as to say
+but you must give moss to the bird for its nest the human race having multiplied men divided among themselves the earth and most of the things upon it that which fell to each
+from that time exclusively belonged to him that was the origin of the right of property say rather the right of possession men lived in a state of communism
+whether positive or negative it matters little then there was no property not even private possession the genesis and growth of possession gradually forcing people to labor for their support
+they agreed either formally or tacitly it makes no difference which that the laborer should be sole proprietor of the fruit of his labor that is they simply declared the fact
+that thereafter none could live without working it necessarily followed that to obtain equality of products there must be equality of labor and that to obtain equality of labor
+there must be equality of facilities for labor whoever without labor got possession by force or by strategy of another's means of subsistence destroyed equality
+whoever violated it was unjust thus labor gives birth to private possession the right in a thing
+but in what thing evidently in the product not in the soil so the arabs have always understood it and so according to caesar and tacitus the germans formerly held the arabs
+who admit a man's property in the flocks which he has raised do not refuse the crop to him who planted the seed but they do not see why another his equal should not have a right to plant in his turn
+the inequality which results from the pretended right of the first occupant seems to them to be based on no principle of justice and when all the land falls into the hands of a certain number of inhabitants
+there results a monopoly in their favor against the rest of the nation to which they do not wish to submit well they have shared the land
+and that this method of distribution fixed and durable is advantageous to production but how could this division give to each a transferable right of property in a thing to which
+all had an inalienable right of possession
+this metamorphosis from possessor to proprietor is legally impossible it implies in the jurisdiction of the courts the union of possessoire and petitoire
+and the mutual concessions of those who share the land are nothing less than traffic in natural rights the original cultivators of the land who were also the original makers of the law were not as learned
+into the right of absolute property but why have not those who in later times have established the distinction between jus in re and jus ad rem
+applied it to the principle of property itself let me call the attention of the writers on jurisprudence to their own maxims the right of property provided it can have a cause can have but one
+dominium non potest nisi ex una causa
+i can possess by several titles i can become proprietor by only one
+to me as my share but none of these titles confer upon me the right of property for if i attempt to base it upon occupancy society can reply
+i am the original occupant if i appeal to my labor it will say it is only on that condition that you possess if i speak of agreements it will respond
+these agreements establish only your right of use such however are the only titles which proprietors advance they never have been able to discover any others indeed every right
+it is pothier who says it supposes a producing cause in the person who enjoys it
+in this son of earth who passes away like a shadow there exists with respect to external things only titles of possession not one title of property why then
+has society recognized a right injurious to itself where there is no producing cause why in according possession has it also conceded property why has the law sanctioned this abuse of power
+some philosophers pretend that man in employing his forces upon a natural object say a field or a tree acquires a right only to the improvements which he makes
+to the form which he gives to the object not to the object itself useless distinction if the form could be separated from the object perhaps there would be room for question
+but as this is almost always impossible the application of man's strength to the different parts of the visible world is the foundation of the right of property the primary origin of riches
+vain pretext if the form cannot be separated from the object nor property from possession possession must be shared in any case
+society reserves the right to fix the conditions of property let us suppose that an appropriated farm yields a gross income of ten thousand francs and as very seldom happens
+the possessor of this farm should be obliged to guard his reputation as a good father of a family by paying to society ten thousand francs less the total costs of cultivation
+and the three thousand francs required for the maintenance of his family this payment is not rent it is an indemnity what sort of justice is it then which makes such laws as this
+whereas since labor so changes the form of a thing that the form and substance cannot be separated without destroying the thing itself either society must be disinherited
+or the laborer must lose the fruit of his labor and whereas in every other case property in raw material would give a title to added improvements minus their cost
+and whereas in this instance property in improvements ought to give a title to the principal
+shall never be admitted against individuals but only against society in such a way do legislators always reason in regard to property
+the law is intended to protect men's mutual rights that is the rights of each against each and each against all
+the law makers always disregard the latter as long as man is opposed to man property offsets property and the two forces balance each other as soon as man is isolated
+that is opposed to the society which he himself represents jurisprudence is at fault themis has lost one scale of her balance listen to the professor of rennes the learned toullier
+possession agriculture was a natural consequence of the multiplication of the human race and agriculture in its turn favors population and necessitates the establishment of permanent property
+for who would take the trouble to plough and sow if he were not certain that he would reap to satisfy the husbandman it was sufficient to guarantee him possession of his crop admit even that he should have been
+protected in his right of occupation of land as long as he remained its cultivator that was all that he had a right to expect that was all that the advance of civilization demanded
+but property property the right of escheat over lands which one neither occupies nor cultivates
+who pretended to have it agriculture alone was not sufficient to establish permanent property positive laws were needed and magistrates to execute them in a word
+the civil state was needed the multiplication of the human race had rendered agriculture necessary the need of securing to the cultivator the fruit of his labor made permanent property necessary
+and also laws for its protection so we are indebted to property for the creation of the civil state
+a state which at first was despotism then monarchy then aristocracy today democracy and always tyranny without the ties of property it never would have been possible
+to subordinate men to the wholesome yoke of the law and without permanent property the earth would have remained a vast forest let us admit then
+it is the civil law which holds that when once acquired property can be lost only by the action of the proprietor and that it exists even after the proprietor has relinquished possession of the thing
+and it has fallen into the hands of a third party thus property and possession which originally were confounded became through the civil law two distinct and independent things two things which in the language of the law
+have nothing whatever in common in this we see what a wonderful change has been effected in property and to what an extent nature has been altered by the civil laws thus the law in establishing property
+the development of a natural law the application of a moral principle it has literally created a right outside of its own province it has realized an abstraction a metaphor
+it has indorsed monstrous pretensions it has received with favor impious vows as if it were able to fill up a bottomless pit
+blind law the law of the ignorant man a law which is not a law the voice of discord deceit and blood this it is which continually revived reinstated rejuvenated
+restored re enforced as the palladium of society has troubled the consciences of the people has obscured the minds of the masters and has induced all the catastrophes
+this it is which christianity has condemned but which its ignorant ministers deify who have as little desire to study nature and man as ability to read their scriptures
+but indeed what guide did the law follow in creating the domain of property what principle directed it what was its standard would you believe it it was equality
+unless the means of production were at the same time secured to him to fortify the weak against the invasion of the strong to suppress spoliation and fraud
+and the cupidity of the husbandman increase it was thought best to put a bridle on ambition by setting boundaries which ambition would in vain attempt to overstep
+a multitude of rights some founded in nature but wrongly interpreted and still more wrongly applied inheritance gift and exchange others like the privileges of birth and position
+for the barbarians instead of indulging in annual quarrels and fights instead of continually moving their houses furniture and families from spot to spot than to assign to each individual a fixed and inalienable estate
+it was not right that the soldier on returning from an expedition should find himself dispossessed on account of the services which he had just rendered to his country
+and by the action of the proprietor it was necessary that the equality in the division should be kept up from one generation to another without a new distribution of the land upon the death of each family
+the feudal and patriarchal custom of recognizing only one heir then by a quite contrary application of the principle of equality the admission of all the children to a share in their father's estate
+who never had the faintest idea of statistics valuation or political economy furnish us with principles of legislation the law says a modern writer on jurisprudence
+by which social wants must be satisfied the people do not vote it the legislator does not express it the savant discovers and formulates it but in fact the law
+was in the beginning only the expression of a want and the indication of the means of supplying it and up to this time it has been nothing else the legists with mechanical fidelity
+full of obstinacy enemies of philosophy buried in literalities
+to be sure were well meaning but wanting in foresight they did not foresee these old founders of the domain of property that the perpetual and absolute right to retain one's estate a right which seemed to them
+equitable because it was common involves the right to transfer sell give gain and lose it that it tends consequently to nothing less than the destruction of that equality
+they disregarded it the present want occupied their whole attention and as ordinarily happens in such cases the disadvantages were at first scarcely perceptible and they passed unnoticed
+they did not foresee these ingenuous legislators that if property is retainable by intent alone nudo animo
+it carries with it the right to let to lease to loan at interest to profit by exchange to settle annuities and to levy a tax on a field which intent reserves
+while the body is busy elsewhere they did not foresee these fathers of our jurisprudence that if the right of inheritance is any thing other than nature's method of preserving equality of wealth
+families will soon become victims of the most disastrous exclusions and society
+will come to its death through opulence
+that is that inheritance and succession will last for ever whoever may be the recognized heir but the saint simonians wish the heir to be designated by the magistrate
+others wish him to be chosen by the deceased or assumed by the law to be so chosen
+to day the real controller of inheritance is chance or caprice now in matters of legislation chance and caprice cannot be accepted as guides
+it is for the purpose of avoiding the manifold disturbances which follow in the wake of chance that nature after having created us equal suggests to us the principle of heredity
+which serves as a voice by which society asks us to choose from among all our brothers him whom we judge best fitted to complete our unfinished work they did not foresee
+but why need i go farther the consequences are plain enough and this is not the time to criticise the whole code the history of property among the ancient nations is then
+simply a matter of research and curiosity it is a rule of jurisprudence that the fact does not substantiate the right now property is no exception to this rule
+then the universal recognition of the right of property does not legitimate the right of property man is mistaken as to the constitution of society the nature of right
+of what consequence is it to us that the indian race was divided into four classes that on the banks of the nile and the ganges blood and position formerly determined
+the distribution of the land that the greeks and romans placed property under the protection of the gods that they accompanied with religious ceremonies the work of partitioning the land and appraising their goods
+the variety of the forms of privilege does not sanction injustice the faith of jupiter
+than do the mysteries of venus the wanton against conjugal chastity the authority of the human race is of no effect as evidence in favor of the right of property because this right
+resting of necessity upon equality contradicts its principle the decision of the religions which have sanctioned it is of no effect because in all ages the priest has submitted to the prince
+the social advantages attributed to property cannot be cited in its behalf because they all spring from the principle of equality of possession what means then this dithyramb upon property
+the shelter of his family in a word the corner stone of the domestic dwelling of communities and of the political state possession alone produced all that
+eternal principle property is eternal like every negation of all social and civil institutions for that reason
+every institution and every law based on property will perish it is a boon as precious as liberty for the rich proprietor in fact the cause of the cultivation
+of the habitable earth if the cultivator ceased to be a tenant would the land be worse cared for the guarantee and the morality of labor under the regime of property
+labor is not a condition but a privilege the application of justice what is justice without equality of fortunes a balance with false weights
+all morality a famished stomach knows no morality all public order certainly the preservation of property
+stumbling block of all which ought to be such is property to sum up and conclude not only does occupation lead to equality it prevents property
+for since every man from the fact of his existence has the right of occupation and in order to live must have material for cultivation on which he may labor and since
+on the other hand the number of occupants varies continually with the births and deaths it follows that the quantity
+of material which each laborer may claim varies with the number of occupants consequently that occupation is always subordinate to population finally that inasmuch as possession
+in right can never remain fixed it is impossible in fact that it can ever become property every occupant is then necessarily a possessor
+he is responsible for the thing entrusted to him he must use it in conformity with general utility with a view to its preservation and development he has no power to transform it
+to diminish it or to change its nature he cannot so divide the usufruct that another shall perform the labor while he receives the product in a word
+an immorality born of violence the most monstrous pretension that the civil laws ever sanctioned man receives his usufruct from the hands of society
+which alone is the permanent possessor the individual passes away society is deathless what a profound disgust fills my soul while discussing such simple truths
+the amount occupied being measured not by the will but by the variable conditions of space and number property cannot exist
+this no code has ever expressed this no constitution can admit these are axioms which the civil law and the law of nations deny
+but i hear the exclamations of the partisans of another system labor labor that is the basis of property reader do not be deceived
+the man halted on the crest of the hill and looked sombrely down into the long valley below it was evening and although the hills around him were still in the light the valley was already filled with kindly placid shadows
+it had been by these firs he had halted twenty years ago turning for one last glance at the valley below the home valley which he had never seen since but then
+the firs had been little more than vigorous young saplings they were tall gnarled trees now with lichened trunks and their lower boughs were dead but high up their tops were green and caught the saffron light of the west
+he remembered that when a boy he had thought there was nothing more beautiful than the evening sunshine falling athwart the dark green fir boughs on the hills as he listened to the swish and murmur of the wind
+the earth old tune with the power to carry the soul back to the dawn of time the years fell away from him and he forgot much remembering more
+he had called that longing by other names but he knew it now for what it was when hearing he was satisfied he was a tall man with iron grey hair and the face of a conqueror strong
+pitiless unswerving eagle eyes quick to discern and unfaltering to pursue jaw square and intrepid mouth formed to keep secrets and cajole men to his will
+a face that hid much and revealed little it told of power and intellect but the soul of the man was a hidden thing
+not in the arena where he had fought and triumphed giving fierce blow for blow was it to be shown but here looking down on the homeland with the strength of the hills about him it rose dominantly and claimed its own
+the old bond held yonder below him was home the old house that had sheltered him the graves of his kin the wide fields where his boyhood dreams had been dreamed
+the pitting of strength and craft against strength and craft the tireless struggle the exultation of victory then suddenly they had failed their worshipper they ceased to satisfy
+the sacrifices he had heaped on their altars availed him nothing in this new need and hunger of his being his gods mocked him and he wearied of their service were there not better things than these
+things he had once known and loved and forgotten where were the ideals of his youth the lofty aspirations that had upborne him then where was the eagerness and zest of new dawns
+the earnestness of well filled purposeful hours of labour the satisfaction of a good day worthily lived at eventide the unbroken rest of long starry nights where might he find them again
+were they yet to be had for the seeking in the old valley with the thought came a great yearning for home he had had many habitations but he realized now that he had never thought of any of these places as home
+that name had all unconsciously been kept sacred to the long green seaward looking glen where he had been born so he had come back to it drawn by a longing not to be resisted
+but at the last he felt afraid there had been many changes of that he felt sure would it still be home and if not would not the loss be most irreparable and bitter
+would it not be better to go away having looked at it from the hill and having heard the saga of the firs keeping his memory of it unblurred than risk the probable disillusion of a return to the places that had forgotten him
+and friends whom the varying years must certainly have changed as he had changed himself no he would not go down it had been a foolish whim to come at all
+foolish because the object of his quest was not to be found there or elsewhere he could not enter again into the heritage of boyhood and the heart of youth he could not find there the old dreams and hopes that had made life sweet
+he understood that he could not bring back to the old valley what he had taken from it he had lost that intangible all real wealth of faith and idealism and zest
+and he realized at last how much poorer he was than when he had left that home valley his was a name that stood for millions but he was beggared of hope and purpose no he would not go down
+there was no one left there unchanged and unchanging to welcome him he would be a stranger there even among his kin he would stay awhile on the hill until the night came down over it
+and then he would go back to his own place down below him on the crest of a little upland he saw his old home a weather grey house almost hidden among white birch and apple trees
+with a thick fir grove to the north of it he had been born in that old house his earliest memory was of standing on its threshold and looking afar up to the long green hills what is over the hills he had asked of his mother
+with a smile she had made answer many things laddie wonderful things beautiful things heart breaking things some day i shall go over the hills and find them all mother
+he had said stoutly she had laughed and sighed and caught him to her heart he had no recollection of his father who had died soon after his son's birth but how well he remembered his mother
+his little brown eyed girlish faced mother he had lived on the homestead until he was twenty he had tilled the broad fields and gone in and out among the people and their life had been his life but his heart was not in his work
+he wanted to go beyond the hills and seek what he knew must be there the valley was too narrow too placid he longed for conflict and accomplishment
+he sold the farm to his cousin stephen marshall he supposed it still belonged to him stephen had been a good sort of a fellow a bit slow and plodding perhaps bovinely content to dwell within the hills
+never hearkening or responding to the lure of the beyond yet it might be he had chosen the better part to dwell thus on the land of his fathers with a wife won in youth and children to grow up around him
+the childless wifeless man looking down from the hill wondered if it might have been so with him had he been content to stay in the valley perhaps so there had been joyce
+not so far from his own just across a green meadow by way of a footpath and stile and through the firs beyond it how often he had traversed that path in the old days knowing that joyce would be waiting at the end of it among the firs
+joyce the playmate of childhood the sweet confidante and companion of youth they had never been avowed lovers but he had loved her then as a boy loves although he had never said a word of love to her
+joyce alone knew of his longings and his ambitions and his dreams he had told them all to her freely sure of the understanding and sympathy no other soul in the valley could give him
+how true and strong and womanly and gentle she had always been when he left home he had meant to go back to her some day they had parted without pledge or kiss yet he knew she loved him and that he loved her
+at first they corresponded then the letters began to grow fewer it was his fault he had gradually forgotten the new fierce burning interests that came into his life crowded the old ones out
+boyhood's love was scorched up in that hot flame of ambition and contest he had not heard from or of joyce for many years now again he remembered as he looked down on the homeland fields
+the old places had changed little whatever he might fear of the people who lived in them there was the school he had attended a small low eaved white washed building set back from the main road among green spruces
+beyond it amid tall elms was the old church with its square tower hung with ivy he felt glad to see it he had expected to see a new church
+offensively spick and span and modern for this church had been old when he was a boy he recalled the many times he had walked to it on the peaceful sunday afternoons sometimes with his mother sometimes with joyce
+the sun set far out to sea and sucked down with it all the light out of the winnowed dome of sky the stars came out singly and crystal clear over the far purple curves of the hills
+suddenly glancing over his shoulder he saw through an arch of black fir boughs a young moon swung low in a lake of palely tinted saffron sky he smiled a little
+remembering that in boyhood it had been held a good omen to see the new moon over the right shoulder down in the valley the lights began to twinkle out here and there like earth stars
+he would wait until he saw the kitchen light from the window of his old home then he would go
+but no light glimmered out through his native trees why was it lacking that light he had so often hailed at dark coming home from boyish rambles on the hills
+he felt anxious and dissatisfied as if he could not go away until he had seen it when it was quite dark he descended the hill resolutely he must know why the homelight had failed him
+even in the dimness of the summer night to see that the old house was deserted and falling to decay the kitchen door swung open on rusty hinges the windows were broken and lifeless
+cuthbert marshall sat down on the old red sandstone step of the door and bowed his head in his hands this was what he had come back to this ghost and wreck of his past oh
+stephen came to it a stout grizzled farmer with a chubby boy on his shoulder he was not much changed cuthbert easily recognized him
+cuthbert was obliged to tell who he was he was made instantly and warmly welcome stephen was unfeignedly glad to see him and stephen's comely wife whom he remembered as a slim fresh cheeked valley girl
+he and stephen talked late that night and in the morning he yielded to their entreaties to stay another day with them he spent it wandering about the farm and the old haunts of wood and stream yet he could not find himself
+this valley had his past in its keeping but it could not give it back to him he had lost the master word that might have compelled it he asked stephen fully about all his old friends and neighbours with one exception
+by the old footpath which was still kept open he walked slowly and dreamily with his eyes on the far hills scarfed in the splendour of sunset so he had walked in the old days but he had no dreams now of what lay beyond the hills
+and joyce would not be waiting among the firs the stile he remembered was gone replaced by a little rustic gate as he passed through it he lifted his eyes and there before him
+and the soul of her looked out through them true to itself the staunch brave sweet soul of the maiden ripened to womanhood joyce he said stupidly unbelievingly
+but he took both and held her so looking hungrily down at her as a man looks at something he knows must be his salvation if salvation exists for him is it possible you are here still joyce
+he said slowly and you have not changed at all she coloured slightly and pulled away her hands laughing oh indeed i have i have grown old
+the twilight is so kind it hides that but it is true come into the house cuthbert father and mother will be glad to see you after a little he said imploringly let us stay here awhile first joyce
+last night i stood on those hills yonder and looked down but i meant to go away because i thought there would be no one left to welcome me if i had known you were here you have lived here in the old valley all these years
+all these years she said gently i suppose you think it must have been a very meagre life no i am much wiser now than i was once joyce i have learned wisdom beyond the hills one learns there
+in time but sometimes the lesson is learned too late shall i tell you what i have learned joyce the gist of the lesson is that i left happiness behind me in the old valley when i went away from it happiness and peace and the joy of living
+i did not miss these things for a long while i did not even know i had lost them but i have discovered my loss yet you have been a very successful man she said wonderingly
+as the world calls success he answered bitterly i have place and wealth and power but that is not success joyce i am tired of these things they are the toys of grown up children
+they do not satisfy the man's soul i have come back to the old valley seeking for what might satisfy but i have little hope of finding it unless unless he was silent
+remembering that he had forfeited all right to her help in the quest yet he realized clearly that only she could help him only she could guide him back to the path he had missed it seemed to him that she held in her keeping
+all the good of his life all the beauty of his past all the possibilities of his future hers was the master word but how should he dare ask her to utter it
+they walked among the firs until the stars came out and they talked of many things she had kept her freshness of soul and her ideals untarnished in the peace of the old valley she had lived a life narrow outwardly
+wondrously deep and wide in thought and aspiration her native hills bounded the vision of her eyes but the outlook of the soul was far and unhindered
+in the quiet places and the green ways she had found what he had failed to find the secret of happiness and content he knew that if this woman had walked hand in hand with him through the years
+life even in the glare and tumult of that world beyond the hills would never have lost its meaning for him oh fool and blind that he had been while he had sought and toiled afar
+the best that god had meant for him had been here in the home of youth when darkness came down through the firs he told her all this haltingly blunderingly yearningly joyce
+is it too late can you forgive my mistake my long blindness can you care for me again a little she turned her face upward to the sky between the swaying fir tops
+and he saw the reflection of a star in her eyes i have never ceased to care she said in a low tone i never really wanted to cease it would have left life too empty if my love means so much to you
+it is yours cuthbert it always has been yours he drew her close into his arms and as he felt her heart beating against his he understood that he had found the way back to simple happiness and true wisdom
+ruggles and i were down on the old fellow it doesn't matter why and since in a story of this kind we must tell the truth no matter what happens or else where is the use of writing a story at all
+he is principal of the frampton academy the old fellow not ruggles and his name is george osborne we have to call him mister osborne to his face but he is the old fellow everywhere else
+but when it comes to the point they like him too i heard emma white say once that he was so handsome i nearly whooped ruggles was mad because he's gone on em
+he is splendid big six footer with magnificent muscles red cheeks and curly yellow hair i can't see how he can be contented to sit down and teach mushy english literature and poetry and that sort of thing
+there was a rumour running at large in the academy that the old fellow wrote poetry but he ran the mathematics and didn't make such a foozle of it as you might suppose either
+at least we said so but if providence hadn't sent sylvia grant walking down the street past our boarding house that afternoon we should probably have cooled off before we thought of any working plan of revenge sylvia grant did go down the street however
+ruggles hanging halfway out of the window as usual saw her and called me to go and look of course i went sylvia grant was always worth looking at there was no girl in frampton who could hold a candle to her when it came to beauty
+my private opinion is that sylvia hadn't any or she would never have preferred but there i'm getting on too fast again ruggles should have written this story he can concentrate better sylvia was the latin professor's daughter
+she wasn't a cad girl of course she was over twenty and had graduated from it two years ago but she was in all the social things that went on in the academy and all the unmarried professors except the old fellow were in love with her
+micky had it the worst and we had all made up our minds that sylvia would marry micky he was so handsome we didn't see how she could help it i tell you they made a dandy looking couple when they were together well as i said before i toddled to the window to have a look at the fair sylvia
+they were brownish kind of and she'd a spanking hat on with feathers and things in it her hair was shining under it all purply black and she looked sweet enough to eat
+and her big blackish blue eyes sparkled but she hadn't been laughing before or sparkling either
+i rather suspected it for at the senior prom three nights before she had hardly looked at micky but had sat in a corner and talked to the old fellow he didn't do much talking he was too shy and he looked mighty uncomfortable
+but when i saw micky scowling at the corner i knew she was doing it to make him jealous girls won't stick at anything when they want to provoke a chap i know it to my cost for jennie price
+he caught sylvia doing the same thing so he wheeled and came on looking mighty foolish as he passed beneath our window ruggles chuckled fiendishly i've thought of something polly he said my name is paul
+let's write a letter to sylvia grant a love letter and sign the old fellow's name to it she'll give him a fearful snubbing and we'll be revenged but who'll write it i said doubtfully i can't
+you'll have to ruggles you've had more practice ruggles turned red i know he writes to em white in vacations i'll do my best he said quite meekly that is i'll compose it but you'll have to copy it
+you can imitate the old fellow's handwriting so well but look here i said an uncomfortable idea striking me what about sylvia won't she feel kind of flattish when she finds out he didn't write it for of course he'll tell her
+she doesn't like the old fellow a bit i know from the way she acts with him she's always so cool and stiff when he's about not a bit like she is with the other professors well ruggles wrote the letter at first he tried to pass it off on me as his own composition
+but i know a few little things and one of them is that ruggles couldn't have made up that letter any more than he could have written a sonnet i told him so and made him own up he had a copy of an old letter that had been written to his sister by her young man
+anyhow that letter just filled the bill it was beautifully expressed ruggles's sister's young man must have possessed lots of ability he was an english professor something like micky
+he started in by telling her how much he loved her and what an angel of beauty and goodness he had always thought her how unworthy he felt himself of her and how little hope he had that she could ever care for him
+and he wound up by imploring her to tell him if she could possibly love him a little bit and all that sort of thing i copied the letter out on heliotrope paper in my best imitation of the old fellow's handwriting and signed it yours devotedly and imploringly
+george osborne then we mailed it that very evening
+it was the smartest event of the term and everybody was there students and faculty and of course sylvia grant sylvia looked stunning
+and avoided poor micky so skilfully that it was really a pleasure to watch her the old fellow came in late with his tie all crooked as it always was i saw sylvia blush and nudged ruggles to look she's thinking of the letter he said
+ruggles and i never meant to listen upon my word we didn't it was pure accident we were in behind the flags and palms in the modern languages room fixing up a plan how to get em and jennie off for a moonlit stroll in the grounds
+sylvia still looked smiling and happy not a bit mad as we had expected but just kind of shy and radiant as for the old fellow he looked as em white would say as sphinx like as ever
+or said my letter or shown surprise in some way
+he looked sideways at sylvia for a moment and then he said kind of drily ah did you yes said sylvia not much above a whisper it it surprised me very much i never supposed that you
+his voice actually trembled i i don't think i would tell you if i knew said sylvia turning her head away you see i don't want you to help caring sylvia
+you never saw such a transformation as came over the old fellow his eyes just blazed but his face went white he bent forward and took her hand sylvia
+do you mean that you you actually care a little for me dearest oh sylvia do you mean that of course i do said sylvia right out
+i've always cared ever since i was a little girl coming here to school and breaking my heart over mathematics although i hated them just to be in your class why why
+i thought it quite useless to tell you of my love before will you can you be my wife darling at this point ruggles and i differ as to what came next
+he asserts that sylvia turned square around and kissed the old fellow but i'm sure she just turned her face and gave him a look and then he kissed her anyhow
+there they both were going on at the silliest rate about how much they loved each other and how the old fellow thought she loved micky and all that sort of thing it was awful i never thought the old fellow or sylvia either could be so spooney
+ruggles and i would have given anything on earth to be out of that we knew we'd no business to be there and we felt as foolish as flatfish it was a tremendous relief when the old fellow and sylvia got up at last and trailed away both of them looking idiotically happy
+ministrant ars et natura instillant they use cordials to keep the venom and malignity of the disease from the heart eleven meditation
+whence can we take a better argument a clearer demonstration that all the greatness of this world is built upon opinion of others and hath in itself no real being nor power of subsistence
+than from the heart of man it is always in action and motion still busy still pretending to do all to furnish all the powers and faculties with all that they have
+but if an enemy dare rise up against it it is the soonest endangered the soonest defeated of any part the brain will hold out longer than it and the liver longer than that they will endure a siege
+but an unnatural heat a rebellious heat will blow up the heart like a mine in a minute but howsoever since the heart hath the birthright and primogeniture and that it is nature's eldest son in us
+the part which is first born to life in man and that the other parts as younger brethren and servants in his family have a dependance upon it it is reason that the principal care be had of it
+though it be not the strongest part as the eldest is oftentimes not the strongest of the family and since the brain and liver and heart hold not a triumvirate in man a sovereignty equally shed upon them all
+must contribute to that as children to their parents as all persons to all kinds of superiors though oftentimes those parents or those superiors
+that serve and obey them that are weaker neither doth this obligation fall upon us by second dictates of nature by consequences and conclusions arising out of nature or derived from nature by discourse
+as all laws of propriety in that which we possess are of the law of nature which law is to give every one his own and yet in the primary law of nature there was no propriety
+no meum et tuum but an universal community overall
+which is in the first place to have care of our own preservation to look first to ourselves for therefore doth the physician intermit the present care of brain or liver
+because there is a possibility that they may subsist though there be not a present and a particular care had of them but there is no possibility that they can subsist if the heart perish
+and this is the reward of the pains of kings sometimes they need the power of law to be obeyed and when they seem to be obeyed voluntarily they who do it do it for their own sakes
+o how little a thing is all the greatness of man and through how false glasses doth he make shift to multiply it and magnify it to himself and yet this is also another misery of this king of man
+the heart which is also applicable to the kings of this world great men that the venom and poison of every pestilential disease directs itself to the heart affects that pernicious affection
+and the malignity of ill men is also directed upon the greatest and the best and not only greatness but goodness loses the vigour of being an antidote or cordial against it
+and as the noblest and most generous cordials that nature or art afford or can prepare if they be often taken and made familiar become no cordials nor have any extraordinary operation
+so the greatest cordial of the heart patience if it be much exercised exalts the venom and the malignity of the enemy and the more we suffer the more we are insulted upon when god had made this earth of nothing
+it was but a little help that he had to make other things of this earth nothing can be nearer nothing than this earth and yet how little of this earth is the greatest man he thinks he treads upon the earth
+that all is under his feet and the brain that thinks so is but earth his highest region the flesh that covers that is but earth and even the top of that
+is but a bush growing upon that turf of earth how little of the world is the earth and yet that is all that man hath or is how little of a man is the heart and yet it is all by which he is
+if before he had a being he could have sense of this misery would buy a being here upon these conditions eleven expostulation my god my god
+all that thou askest of me is my heart my son give me thy heart
+as long as i have but my heart wilt thou give me an inheritance a filiation any thing for my heart
+hast thou considered my servant job that there is none like him upon the earth
+shall my fear shall my zeal shall my jealousy have leave to say to thee hast thou considered my heart that there is not so perverse a heart upon earth
+and wouldst thou have that and shall i be thy son
+for giving that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it
+thou hast searched since and found all these gradations in the ill of our hearts that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually
+and wouldst thou have my heart o god of all light i know thou knowest all and it is thou
+without thee o sovereign goodness i could not know how ill my heart were thou hast declared unto me in thy word that for all this deluge of evil that hath surrounded all hearts
+yet thou soughtest and foundest a man after thine own heart
+and i can gather out of thy word so good testimony of the hearts of men as to find single hearts docile and apprehensive hearts hearts that can hearts that have learned
+wise hearts in one place and in another in a great degree wise perfect hearts straight hearts no perverseness without and clean hearts no foulness within
+a heaviness and dejection of spirit upon him i have found these hearts and a worse than these
+the last are not hearts to be given to thee what shall i do without that present i cannot be thy son and i have it not to those of the first kind thou givest joyfulness of heart
+and i have not that to those of the other kind thou givest faintness of heart
+if you return to the lord with all your hearts prepare your hearts unto the lord
+it is a returning heart and if thou see it upon the way thou wilt carry it home nay the preparation is thine too this melting this wounding this breaking
+this contrition which i have now is thy way to thy end and those discomforts are for all that the earnest of thy spirit in my heart
+and i have had some diffidence upon that and thou hast cleared a morning to me again and my heart is alive david's heart smote him when he cut off the skirt from saul
+and his heart smote him when he had numbered his people
+when i come to number my sins but that blow is not to death because those sins are not to death but my heart lives in thee but yet as long as i remain in this great hospital
+this sick this diseaseful world as long as i remain in this leprous house this flesh of mine this heart though thus prepared for thee prepared by thee
+will still be subject to the invasion of malign and pestilent vapours but i have my cordials in thy promise when i shall know the plague of my heart and pray unto thee in thy house
+and the peace of god which passeth all understandings shall keep my heart and mind through christ jesus
+though thou fillest all yet art otherwise in some rooms thereof than in others otherwise in thy church than in my chamber and otherwise in thy sacraments than in my prayers
+so though thou be always present and always working in every room of this thy house my body yet i humbly beseech thee to manifest always a more effectual presence in my heart
+than in the other offices into the house of thine anointed disloyal persons traitors will come into thy house the church hypocrites and idolators will come into some rooms of this thy house my body
+temptations will come infections will come but be my heart thy bedchamber o my god and thither let them not enter job made a covenant with his eyes but not his making of that covenant
+but thy dwelling in his heart enabled him to keep that covenant thy son himself had a sadness in his soul to death and he had a reluctation a deprecation of death in the approaches thereof
+but he had his cordial too yet not my will but thine be done and as thou hast not delivered us thine adopted sons from these infectious temptations
+so neither hast thou delivered us over to them nor withheld thy cordials from us i was baptized in thy cordial water against original sin and i have drunk of thy cordial blood
+for my recovery from actual and habitual sin in the other sacrament thou o lord who hast imprinted all medicinal virtues which are in all creatures and hast made even the flesh of vipers to assist in cordials
+art able to make this present sickness everlasting health this weakness everlasting strength and this very dejection and faintness of heart a powerful cordial
+my god my god why hast thou forsaken me thou didst reach out thy hand to him but not to deliver his sad soul but to receive his holy soul
+neither did he longer desire to hold it of thee but to recommend it to thee i see thine hand upon me now o lord and i ask not why it comes what it intends
+or bid it meet thee this day in paradise i ask not not in a wish not in a thought infirmity of nature curiosity of mind are temptations that offer
+but a silent and absolute obedience to thy will even before i know it is my cordial preserve that to me o my god and that will preserve me to thee
+that when thou hast catechised me with affliction here i may take a greater degree and serve thee in a higher place in thy kingdom of joy and glory
+chapter seventeen the death of joseph herod's brother which had been signified to herod in dreams how herod was preserved twice after a wonderful manner he cuts off the head of pappus
+who was the murderer of his brother and sends that head to his other brother pheroras
+one in the mean time herod's affairs in judea were in an ill state he had left his brother joseph with full power but had charged him to make no attempts against antigonus till his return
+for that machaerus would not be such an assistant as he could depend on as it appeared by what he had done already
+and marched towards jericho with five cohorts which machaerus sent with him
+for these cohorts were new raised men gathered out of syria and here was no mixture of those called veteran soldiers among them who might have supported those that were unskillful in war two
+and there drowned them there was a great change made also in idumea where machaerus was building a wall about one of the fortresses which was called gittha but herod had not yet been informed of these things
+to assist herod and followed himself soon after with the rest of his army three now when herod was at daphne by antioch he had some dreams which clearly foreboded his brother's death
+and as he leaped out of his bed in a disturbed manner there came messengers that acquainted him with that calamity so when he had lamented this misfortune for a while he put off the main part of his mourning and made haste to march against his enemies
+he made an irruption into galilee and met his enemies and drove them back to the place which they had left
+yet was he forced by a most terrible storm to pitch his camp in the neighboring villages before he could take it but when after a few days time the second legion that came from antony joined themselves to him
+he had the reputation of being very dear to god for that evening there feasted with him many of the principal men and after that feast was over and all the guests were gone out the house fell down immediately
+and began to fight with those in his forefront yet durst they not be so very bold as to engage the romans hand to hand but threw stones and darts at them at a distance by which means they wounded a considerable number
+in which action herod's own side was wounded with a dart five now as antigonus had a mind to appear to exceed herod not only in the courage but in the number of his men he sent pappus one of his companions with an army against samaria
+but herod overran the enemy's country and demolished five little cities and destroyed two thousand men that were in them and burned their houses and then returned to his camp but his head quarters were at the village called cana six
+now a great multitude of jews resorted to him every day both out of jericho and the other parts of the country some were moved so to do out of their hatred to antigonus and some out of regard to the glorious actions herod had done
+but others were led on by an unreasonable desire of change so he fell upon them immediately as for pappus and his party they were not terrified either at their number or at their zeal but marched out with great alacrity to fight them
+and it came to a close fight now other parts of their army made resistance for a while but herod running the utmost hazard out of the rage he was in at the murder of his brother that he might be avenged on those that had been the authors of it
+soon beat those that opposed him and after he had beaten them he always turned his force against those that stood to it still and pursued them all so that a great slaughter was made while some were forced back into that village whence they came out
+he also pressed hard upon the hindermost and slew a vast number of them he also fell into the village with the enemy where every house was filled with armed men and the upper rooms were crowded above with soldiers for their defense
+and when he had beaten those that were on the outside he pulled the houses to pieces and plucked out those that were within upon many he had the roofs shaken down whereby they perished by heaps and as for those that fled out of the ruins
+that the conquerors could not pass along the roads now the enemy could not bear this blow so that when the multitude of them which was gathered together saw that those in the village were slain they dispersed themselves and fled away
+upon the confidence of which victory herod had marched immediately to jerusalem
+now when at the evening herod had already dismissed his friends to refresh themselves after their fatigue and when he was gone himself while he was still hot in his armor like a common soldier to bathe himself
+one of the enemies met him in the face with a sword in his hand and then a second and then a third and after that more of them these were men who had run away out of the battle into the bath in their armor
+and they had lain there for some time in great terror and in privacy and when they saw the king they trembled for fear and ran by him in a flight although he was naked and endeavored to get off into the public road
+now there was by chance nobody else at hand that might seize upon these men and for herod he was contented to have come to no harm himself so that they all got away in safety eight
+but on the next day herod had pappus's head cut off who was the general for antigonus and was slain in the battle and sent it to his brother pheroras by way of punishment for their slain brother for he was the man that slew joseph
+and there it was that pompey took the city so he parted the work among the army and demolished the suburbs
+acquaintance at the works but he went himself to samaria to take the daughter of alexander the son of aristobulus to wife who had been betrothed to him before as we have already said
+and thus he accomplished this by the by during the siege of the city for he had his enemies in great contempt already nine when he had thus married mariamne he
+sosius also joined him with a large army both of horsemen and footmen which he sent before him through the midland parts while he marched himself along phoenicia and when the whole army was gotten together
+which were eleven regiments of footmen and six thousand horsemen besides the syrian auxiliaries which were no small part of the army they pitched their camp near to the north wall herod's dependence was upon the decree of the senate
+by which he was made king and sosius relied upon antony who sent the army that was under him to herod's assistance chapter eighteen how herod and sosius took jerusalem by force
+being the weaker part of them gave it out that as the times were he was the happiest and most religious man who should die first but as to the more bold and hardy men they got together in bodies and fell a robbing others after various manners
+and these particularly plundered the places that were about the city and this because there was no food left either for the horses or the men yet some of the warlike men who were used to fight regularly were appointed to defend the city during the siege
+now as for the robberies which were committed the king contrived that ambushes should be so laid that they might restrain their excursions and as for the want of provisions he provided that they should be brought to them from great distances
+he was also too hard for the jews by the romans skill in the art of war although they were bold to the utmost degree now they durst not come to a plain battle with the romans which was certain death
+but through their mines under ground they would appear in the midst of them on the sudden and before they could batter down one wall they built them another in its stead and to sum up all at once
+they bore a siege of five months till some of herod's chosen men ventured to get upon the wall and fell into the city as did sosius's centurions after them
+and now they first of all seized upon what was about the temple and upon the pouring in of the army there was slaughter of vast multitudes every where by reason of the rage the romans were in at the length of this siege
+and by reason that the jews who were about herod earnestly endeavored that none of their adversaries might remain so they were cut to pieces by great multitudes as they were crowded together in narrow streets and in houses or were running away to the temple
+nobody could be persuaded to withhold their right hand from slaughter but they slew people of all ages like madmen then it was that antigonus without any regard to his former or to his present fortune came down from the citadel
+or let him go free but put him into bonds and kept him in custody three but herod's concern at present now he had gotten his enemies under his power
+was to restrain the zeal of his foreign auxiliaries for the multitude of the strange people were very eager to see the temple and what was sacred in the holy house itself but the king endeavored to restrain them partly by his exhortations
+partly by his threatenings nay partly by force as thinking the victory worse than a defeat to him if any thing that ought not to be seen were seen by them
+he also forbade at the same time the spoiling of the city asking sosius in the most earnest manner whether the romans by thus emptying the city of money and men had a mind to leave him king of a desert
+and told him that he judged the dominion of the habitable earth too small a compensation for the slaughter of so many citizens
+herod made answer that he would give every one of the soldiers a reward out of his own money so he purchased the deliverance of his country and performed his promises to them and made presents after a magnificent manner to each soldier
+and proportionably to their commanders and with a most royal bounty to sosius himself whereby nobody went away but in a wealthy condition hereupon sosius dedicated a crown of gold to god and then went away from jerusalem
+leading antigonus away in bonds to antony then did the axe bring him to his end
+who still had a fond desire of life and some frigid hopes of it to the last but by his cowardly behavior well deserved to die by it four
+hereupon king herod distinguished the multitude that was in the city
+now cleopatra had put to death all her kindred till no one near her in blood remained alive and after that she fell a slaying those no way related to her so she calumniated the principal men among the syrians to antony
+and persuaded him to have them slain that so she might easily gain to be mistress of what they had nay she extended her avaricious humor to the jews and arabians
+and secretly labored to have herod and malichus the kings of both those nations slain by his order five now is to these her injunctions to antony he complied in part
+and had conducted antony in his expedition against the parthians as far as euphrates she came by apamia and damascus into judea and there did herod pacify her indignation at him by large presents
+now it was not long after this that antony was come back from parthia
+rubezahl over all the vast under world the mountain gnome rubezahl was lord and busy enough the care of his dominions kept him there were the endless treasure chambers to be gone through
+and the hosts of gnomes to be kept to their tasks some built strong barriers to hold back the fiery vapours to change dull stones to precious metal or were hard at work filling every cranny of the rocks with diamonds and rubies
+for rubezahl loved all pretty things sometimes the fancy would take him to leave those gloomy regions and come out upon the green earth for a while and bask in the sunshine and hear the birds sing
+and as gnomes live many hundreds of years he saw strange things for the first time he came up the great hills were covered with thick forests
+to hear the thunder of their fall echoing among the hills but the next time he ventured above ground what was his surprise to find everything changed the dark woods were hewn down
+and in their place appeared blossoming orchards surrounding cosy looking thatched cottages for every chimney the blue smoke curled peacefully into the air sheep and oxen fed in the flowery meadows
+came the music of the shepherd's pipe the strangeness and pleasantness of the sight so delighted the gnome that he never thought of resenting the intrusion of these unexpected guests who without saying by your leave or with your leave
+nor did he wish to interfere with their doings but left them in quiet possession of their homes as a good householder leaves in peace the swallows who have built their nests under his eaves
+he was indeed greatly minded to make friends with this being called man so taking the form of an old field labourer he entered the service of a farmer under his care all the crops flourished exceedingly
+but the master proved to be wasteful and ungrateful and rubezahl soon left him and went to be shepherd to his next neighbour
+and where among the hills to look for any who strayed away that they too prospered under his care and not one was lost or torn by wolves but this new master was a hard man and begrudged him his well earned wages
+so he ran away and went to serve the judge here he upheld the law with might and main and was a terror to thieves and evildoers but the judge was a bad man who took bribes and despised the law
+down to his underground palace very much disappointed by his first experience of mankind but as time went on he forgot the disagreeable things that had happened to him and thought he would take another look at the upper world
+where stood a charming maiden fresh as the spring and beautiful to look upon around her upon the grass lay her young companions as if they had thrown themselves down to rest after some merry game
+beyond them flowed a little brook into which a waterfall leapt from a high rock filling the air with its pleasant sound and making a coolness even in the sultry noontide
+the sight of the maiden so pleased the gnome that for the first time he wished himself a mortal and longing for a better view of the gay company he changed himself into a raven
+he could only see with a raven's eyes and feel as a raven feels and a nest of field mice at the foot of the tree interested him far more than the sport of the maidens
+when he understood this he flew down again in a great hurry into the thicket and took the form of a handsome young man that was the best way and he fell in love with the girl then and there
+the fair maiden was the daughter of the king of the country and she often wandered in the forest with her play fellows gathering the wild flowers and fruits till the midday heat drove the merry band to the shady lawn
+by the brook to rest or to bathe in the cool waters on this particular morning the fancy took them to wander off again into the wood this
+stepping out of his hiding place
+weaving his magic spells till slowly all about him changed and when the maidens returned at noon to their favourite resting place they stood lost in amazement and almost fancied that they must be dreaming
+the red rocks had become white marble and alabaster the stream that murmured and struggled before in its rocky bed flowed in silence now in its smooth channel from which a clear fountain leapt
+as the wandering breeze scattered it daisies and forget me nots fringed its brink while tall hedges of roses and jasmine ringed it round making the sweetest and daintiest bower imaginable
+were spread out strange fruits and sweetmeats the very sight of which made the princess long to taste them she hesitated a while however scarcely able to believe her eyes
+but at length curiosity prevailed and she and her companions explored to their heart's content
+running hither and thither in high glee and calling merrily to each other at last when they were quite weary the princess cried out suddenly that nothing would content her but to bathe in the marble pool
+which certainly did look very inviting and they all went gaily to this new amusement the princess was ready first but scarcely had she slipped over the rim of the pool when down down down she sank
+and vanished in its depths before her frightened playmates could seize her by so much as a lock of her floating golden hair loudly did they weep and wail running about the brink of the pool which looked so shallow and so clear
+but which had swallowed up their princess before their eyes they even sprang into the water and tried to dive after her but in vain they only floated like corks in the enchanted pool and could not keep under water for a second
+they saw at last that there was nothing for it but to carry to the king the sad tidings of his beloved daughter's disappearance and what great weeping and lamentation there was in the palace when the dreadful news was told
+the scene of this strange adventure thinking as people will in sorrow that there might be some mistake after all but when he reached the spot behold all was changed again
+the glittering grotto described to him by the maidens had completely vanished and so had the marble bath the bower of jasmine instead all was a tangle of flowers as it had been of old
+the king was so much perplexed that he threatened the princess's playfellows with all sorts of punishments if they would not confess something about her disappearance but as they only repeated the same story he presently put down the whole affair to the work of some
+sprite or goblin and tried to console himself for his loss by ordering a grand hunt for kings cannot bear to be troubled about anything long meanwhile the princess was not at all unhappy
+they swam with her quickly by strange underground ways to a palace so splendid that her father's seemed but a poor cottage in comparison with it and when she recovered from her astonishment she found herself seated upon a couch
+wrapped in a wonderful robe of satin fastened with a silken girdle while beside her knelt a young man who whispered the sweetest speeches imaginable in her ear the gnome for he it was told her all about himself
+and his great underground kingdom and presently led her through the many rooms and halls of the palace and showed her the rare and wonderful things displayed in them till she was fairly dazzled at the sight of so much splendour
+on three sides of the castle lay a lovely garden with masses of gay sweet flowers and velvet lawns all cool and shady which pleased the eye of the princess the fruit trees were hung with golden and rosy apples
+and nightingales sang in every bush as the gnome and the princess wandered in the leafy alleys sometimes gazing at the moon sometimes pausing to gather the rarest flowers for her adornment
+but the princess felt no such happiness in spite of all the magic delights around her she was sad though she tried to seem content for fear of displeasing the gnome however he soon perceived her melancholy
+and in a thousand ways strove to dispel the cloud but in vain at last he said to himself men are sociable creatures like bees or ants
+who is there i can find for her to talk to
+carrots turnips and radishes and laying them carefully in an elegant basket brought them to the princess who sat pensive in the shade of the rose bower loveliest daughter of earth said the gnome banish all sorrow
+no more shall you be lonely in my dwelling
+take this little many coloured wand and with a touch give to each root the form you desire to see with this he left her and the princess without an instant's delay opened the basket
+this sudden appearance was so delightful that the princess could hardly believe her own eyes and was quite beside herself with the joy of having her dear playfellow with her once more hand in hand they wandered about the enchanted garden
+and gathered the golden apples from the trees and when they were tired of this amusement the princess led her friend through all the wonderful rooms of the palace until at last they came to the one in which were kept all the marvellous dresses and ornaments
+the gnome had given to his hoped for bride there they found so much to amuse them that the hours passed like minutes veils girdles and necklaces were tried on and admired
+and showed so much taste that nobody
+the gnome who had secretly been keeping an eye upon them was very pleased with himself for having so well understood the heart of a woman and the princess seemed to him even more charming than before
+she did not forget to touch the rest of the roots with her magic wand and soon had all her maidens about her and even as she had two tiny radishes to spare
+whose name was beni and now all went cheerfully in the castle the princess gave to each of the maidens her task and never was mistress better served for a whole week she enjoyed the delight of her pleasant company undisturbed
+they played from morning to night only the princess noticed that day by day the fresh young faces of her maidens grew pale and wan and the mirror in the great marble hall showed her that she alone still kept her rosy bloom
+while brunhilda and the rest faded visibly they assured her that all was well with them but nevertheless they continued to waste away
+take part in the games of the princess till at last one fine morning when the princess started from bed and hastened out to join her gay playfellows she shuddered
+and started back at the sight of a group of shrivelled crones with bent backs and trembling limbs who supported their tottering steps with staves and crutches and coughed dismally a little nearer to the hearth
+lay the once frolicsome beni with all four feet stretched stiffly out while the sleek cat seemed too weak to raise his head from his velvet cushion the horrified princess fled to the door
+the greatest delight of my lonely hours isn't this solitary life in such a desert bad enough without your turning the castle into a hospital for the aged give my maidens back their youth and health this very minute or i will never love you
+sweetest and fairest of damsels cried the gnome do not be angry everything that is in my power i will do but do not ask the impossible so long as the sap was fresh in the roots
+the magic staff could keep them in the forms you desired but as the sap dried up they withered away but never trouble yourself about that dearest one a basket of fresh turnips will soon set matters right
+and you can speedily call up again every form you wish to see the great green patch in the garden will prove you with a more lively company so saying the gnome took himself off
+and the princess with her magic wand touched the wrinkled old women and left them the withered roots they really were to be thrown upon the rubbish heap and with light feet skipped off across to the meadow
+to take possession of the freshly filled basket but to her surprise she could not find it anywhere up and down the garden she searched spying into every corner but not a sign of it was to be found
+by the trellis of grape vines she met the gnome who was so much embarrassed at the sight of her that she became aware of his confusion while he was still quite a long way off
+dear queen of my heart answered he i pray you to forgive my carelessness i promised more than i could perform i have sought all over the land for the roots you desire but they are gathered in and lie drying in musty cellars
+and the fields are bare and desolate for below in the valley winter reigns only here in your presence spring is held fast and wherever your foot is set the gay flowers bloom have patience for a little
+and then without fail you shall have your puppets to play with almost before the gnome had finished the disappointed princess turned away and marched off to her own apartments without deigning to answer him the gnome however
+and disguising himself as a farmer bought an ass in the nearest market town and brought it back loaded with sacks of turnip carrot and radish seed with this he sowed a great field
+and sent a vast army of his goblins to watch and tend it and to bring up the fiery rivers from the heart of the earth near enough to warm and encourage the sprouting seeds thus fostered they grew and flourished marvellously
+he imagined that she was too young and inexperienced to care for him but that was a mistake for the truth was that another image already filled her heart the young prince ratibor whose lands joined her father's had won the heart of the princess
+looking forward to the coming of their wedding day when the bride's mysterious disappearance took place the sad news drove ratibor distracted and as the days went on and nothing could be heard of the princess he forsook his castle
+and the society of men and spent his days in the wild forests roaming about and crying her name aloud to the trees and rocks meanwhile the maiden in her gorgeous prison sighed in secret over her grief not wishing to arouse the gnome's suspicions
+in her own mind she was wondering if by any means she might escape from her captivity and at last she hit upon a plan by this time spring once more reigned in the valley and the gnome sent the fires back to their places in the deeps of the earth
+for the roots which they had kept warm through all the cruel winter hand now come to their full size day by day the princess pulled up some of them and made experiments with them conjuring up now this longed for person and now that
+just for the pleasure of seeing them as they appeared but she really had another purpose in view one day she changed a tiny turnip into a bee and sent him off to bring her some news of her lover fly
+so the bee spread his shining wings and flew away to do as he was bidden but before he was out of sight a greedy swallow made a snatch at him and to the great grief of the princess her messenger was eaten up
+then and there after that by the power of the wonderful wand she summoned a cricket and taught him this greeting hop little cricket to ratibor and chirp in his ear that i love him only
+but that i am held captive by the gnome in his palace under the mountains so the cricket hopped off gaily determined to do his best to deliver his message but alas a long legged stork who was prancing along the same road
+caught him in her cruel beak and before he could say a word he had disappeared down her throat these two unlucky ventures did not prevent the princess from trying once more
+this time she changed the turnip into a magpie flutter from tree to tree chattering bird said she till you come to ratibor my love
+and bid him come with horses and men the third day from this to the hill that rises from the thorny valley the magpie listened hopped awhile from branch to branch and then darted away
+now prince ratibor was still spending his life in wandering about the woods and not even the beauty of the spring could soothe his grief one day as he sat in the shade of an oak tree dreaming of his lost princess and sometimes crying her name aloud
+which belongs to an unlucky mortal who wishes the earth would open and swallow up him and his memory for ever thereupon he caught up a great stone
+but the magpie in the tree who like
+unless he could be for ever chattering
+all his gloom and misery vanished in a moment and he anxiously questioned the welcome messenger as to the fate of the princess but the magpie knew no more than the lesson he had learnt so he soon fluttered away
+while the prince hurried back to his castle to gather together a troop of horsemen full of courage for whatever might befall the princess meanwhile was craftily pursuing her plan of escape
+she left off treating the gnome with coldness and indifference indeed there was a look in her eyes which encouraged him to hope that she might some day return his love and the idea pleased him mightily the next day
+as soon as the sun rose she made her appearance decked as a bride in the wonderful robes and jewels which the fond gnome had prepared for her her golden hair was braided and crowned with myrtle blossoms
+and her flowing veil sparkled with gems in these magnificent garments she went to meet the gnome upon the great terrace loveliest of maidens he stammered bowing low before her let me gaze into your dear eyes
+your constancy has overcome me she said i can no longer oppose your wishes but believe my words and suffer this veil still to hide my blushes and tears why tears beloved one cried the gnome anxiously
+every tear of yours falls upon my heart like a drop of molten gold greatly as i desire your love i do not ask a sacrifice ah cried the false princess why do you misunderstand my tears
+and yet i am fearful a wife cannot always charm and though you will never alter the beauty of mortals is as a flower that fades how can i be sure that you will always be as loving and charming as you are now
+ask some proof sweetheart said he put my obedience and my patience to some test by which you can judge of my unalterable love be it so answered the crafty maiden then give me
+that shall be the test of your truth towards me unwilling as the gnome was to lose sight of his beautiful bride for a moment he obeyed her commands without delay and hurried off to begin his task
+he skipped along among the turnips as nimble as a grasshopper and had soon counted them all but to be quite certain that he had made no mistake he thought he would just run over them again
+this time to his great annoyance the number was different so he reckoned them for the third time but now the number was not the same as either of the previous ones and this was hardly to be wondered at as his mind was full of the princess's
+pretty looks and words as for the maiden no sooner was her deluded lover fairly out of sight than she began to prepare for flight she had a fine fresh turnip hidden close at hand
+which she changed into a spirited horse all saddled and bridled and springing upon its back she galloped away over hill and dale till she reached the thorny valley and flung herself
+into the arms of her beloved prince ratibor meanwhile the toiling gnome went through his task over and over again till his back ached and his head swam and he could no longer put two and two together
+but as he felt tolerably certain of the exact number of turnips in the field big and little together he hurried back eager to prove to his beloved one what a delightful and submissive husband he would be he felt very well satisfied with himself
+as he crossed the mossy lawn to the place where he had left her but alas she was no longer there he searched every thicket and path he looked behind every tree and gazed into every pond
+but without success then he hastened into the palace and rushed from room to room peering into every hole and corner and calling her by name but only
+echo answered in the marble halls there was neither voice nor footstep then he began to perceive that something was amiss and throwing off the mortal form that encumbered him he flew out of the palace
+and soared high into the air and saw the fugitive princess in the far distance just as the swift horse carried her across the boundary of his dominions furiously
+and hurl a thunderbolt after the flying maiden splintering the rocky barriers which had stood a thousand years but his fury was vain the thunderclouds melted away into a soft mist
+and the gnome after flying about for a while in despair bewailing to the four winds his unhappy fate went sorrowfully back to the palace and stole once more through every room with many sighs and lamentations
+he passed through the gardens which for him had lost their charm and the sight of the princess's footprints on the golden sand of the pathway renewed his grief all was lonely empty sorrowful
+and the forsaken gnome resolved that he would have no more dealings with such false creatures
+to the depths of his underground kingdom
+peter force one of the interesting sights of the city of washington used to be the library of old peter force as he was familiarly called colonel peter force as he was more properly styled
+he was one of the few colonels of that day who had actually held a colonel's command having been regularly commissioned by the president of the united states as a colonel of artillery in the district of columbia he might indeed have been called major general
+for in his old age he held that rank in the militia of the district and a very fine looking soldier he must have been in his prime judging from the portrait which used to hang in the library representing a full formed man tall and erect
+his handsome and benevolent countenance set off by an abundance of curly hair his library had about the roughest furniture ever seen in an apartment containing so much that was valuable as i remember it it was a long low room
+with streets and cross streets of pine book shelves unpainted all filled with books to their utmost capacity a wilderness of books in print and in manuscript mostly old and dingy
+and almost all of them relating in some way to american history the place had a very musty smell and as most of its treasures were in the original bindings or without bindings few persons would have suspected the priceless value of the collection
+i am acquainted with a certain library in new york of several thousand volumes most of which are bound resplendently in calf and gold and the room in which they are kept is as splendid as a steamboat
+but old peter force could show you single alcoves of his library which at a fair valuation would buy out all that mass of sumptuosity it was not always easy to find the old gentleman in his dusty dingy wilderness
+he would take pleasure in exhibiting his treasures he would take down his excellent copy of eliot's indian bible a book so faithfully made in every respect that i question if as a mere piece of book making
+it could now be matched in the united states he lived to see this rarity command in new york the price of fourteen hundred and fifty dollars he would show you forty one works in the original editions of increase and cotton mather
+the most recent of which was published in seventeen thirty five he possessed a large number of books printed and bound by benjamin franklin he had two hundred volumes of the records of colonial legislatures
+he could show you a newspaper of almost every month nay almost every week since newspapers were first published in america he had in all nine hundred and fifty bound volumes of newspapers of which two hundred and forty five volumes
+he would show you a collection of more than thirty nine thousand pamphlets of which eight thousand were printed before the year eighteen hundred his collection of maps relating to america was truly wonderful besides all the early atlases of any note
+he had over a thousand detached maps illustrative both of the geography and history of america for many of them were maps and plans drawn for military purposes he would show you perhaps
+a pen drawing of date seventeen seventy nine by a british officer upon which was written plan of the rebel works at west point he had also several plans by british officers of the rebel works around boston during the revolution
+besides such things and he had over three hundred plans and maps of which there was no other copy in existence he possessed a surprising number of books printed in the infancy of the printer's art among them
+specimens representing every year from fourteen sixty seven onward he had more than two hundred and fifty books printed before the year sixteen hundred so arranged that a student could trace the progress of the art of printing from the days of caxton
+he had also a vast collection of manuscripts numbering four hundred and twenty nine volumes
+the whole number of volumes in the library was twenty two thousand five hundred twenty nine and the number of pamphlets nearly forty thousand the reader perhaps imagines that the collector of such a library must have been a very rich man
+and that he traveled far and wide in search of these precious objects not at all he never was a rich man and i believe he rarely traveled beyond the sight of the dome of the capitol indeed the most wonderful thing about his collection was that he
+who began life a journeyman printer and was never in the receipt of a large income should have been able to get together so vast an amount of valuable material part of the secret was that when he began to make his collection these things were not valued
+and he obtained many of his most precious relics by merely taking the trouble to carry them away from the garrets in which they were mouldering into dust unprized and unknown a wise old new york merchant long ago himself mouldered into dust
+used to say men generally get in this world exactly what they want how can that be asked a youngster one day
+but very few of them ever will be i want a million or so myself ah boy the old man replied you want a million but you don't want it enough what you want at present is pleasure and you want it so much
+that you are willing to spend all your surplus force time and revenue to get it if you wanted your million as much as you want pleasure by and by when you have a bald head like mine you would have your million
+peter force was a very good illustration of the old merchant's doctrine he got all these precious things because he wanted them with a sustained passion of desire for half a century there never was a time when he would not have gladly got up in the middle of the night
+and walked ten miles in the face of a northeasterly storm to get a rare pamphlet of four pages he was a miser of such things but no that word does not describe him for one of the greatest pleasures of his life
+was to communicate his treasures to others and he communicated to the whole american people the best of his collections in massive volumes of american archives he was a miser only in the strength of his desire more than once he said to mister george w greene
+did i hesitate between a barrel of flour and a rare book but the book always got the upper hand to the same friend he made a remark which shows that his desire to communicate was quite as strong as his desire to obtain whenever said he
+i found a little more money in my purse than i absolutely needed i published a volume of historical tracts it was interesting to hear the old man relate how this taste for the treasures of history was formed in his mind his father
+who served during the revolution in a new jersey regiment retired after the war to the city of new york and at his house the jersey veterans liked to meet and talk over the incidents of the campaigns they had made together peter as a boy
+loved to hear them tell their stories and as he listened the thought occurred to him one evening why should all this be forgotten boy as he was he began to write them down under the title of the unwritten history of the war in new jersey
+he made considerable progress in it but unfortunately the manuscript was lost the taste then formed grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength at ten he left school forever and went into a printing office
+which has proved an excellent school to more than one valuable american mind he became an accomplished printer and at twenty two was elected president of the new york typographical society an organization which still exists
+then the war of eighteen twelve began like his father before him he served in the army first as private then as sergeant then as sergeant major then as ensign finally as lieutenant the war ended
+he went to washington as foreman of a printing office and at washington as printer editor publisher and collector he lived the rest of his long and honorable life never rich as i have before remarked
+though never without a share of reasonable prosperity the most important work of his life was the publication of the american archives in which he was aided by congress he furnishing the documents and the labor
+and congress paying the cost of publication through the nine volumes of this work a great number of the most curious and interesting records and memorials of american history are not only preserved but made accessible to all students who can get near a library
+he had all the state houses of the country ransacked for documents and a room was assigned him in the department of state in which his clerks could conveniently copy them all went well with the work until william marcy became secretary of state
+whose duty it was to examine and approve each volume before it went to the printer when peter force presented the manuscript of the tenth volume to secretary marcy he received a rebuff which threw a cloud over several years of his life
+i don't believe in your work sir said the secretary it is of no use to anybody i never read a page of it and never expect to but said mister force the work is published in virtue of a contract with the government
+here is the manuscript of the tenth volume if there is anything there which you think ought not to be there have the goodness to point it out to me you may leave the papers sir said the secretary he left the papers
+but neither marcy nor his successors ever found time to examine that tenth volume though on the first day of every official year the compiler called their attention to it for seven years he was a suitor on behalf of his beloved tenth volume
+and then the war occurred and all such matters were necessarily put aside he was now seventy one years of age and his great desire was to dispose of his library in such a way that its treasures would not be scattered abroad
+and perhaps lost forever to the country at length congress having sanctioned the enlargement of their own library their librarian mister spofford induced them to purchase the whole mass just as it stood
+for one hundred thousand dollars and the collection now forms part of the congressional library colonel force lived to the year eighteen sixty eight when he died at washington universally beloved and lamented
+in the seventy eighth year of his age enjoying almost to the last two of the things he loved best his books
+this imperial appreciation of what had been accomplished proved to be the turning point in the inventor's fortunes it stimulated financial support and the second airship was taken in hand but misfortune still pursued him
+accidents were of almost daily occurrence defects were revealed here and weaknesses somewhere else so soon as one trouble was overcome another made itself manifest the result was that the whole of the money collected by his hard work
+was expended before the ship could take to the air a further crash and blasting of cherished hopes appeared imminent but at this moment another royal personage came to the inventor's aid the king of wurtemberg
+took a personal interest in his subject's uphill struggle and the wurtemberg government granted him the proceeds of a lottery with this money and with what he succeeded in raising by hook and by crook and by mortgaging his remaining property
+and in nineteen o five it was launched it was a distinct improvement upon its predecessors the airship was four hundred fourteen feet in length by thirty eight feet in diameter was equipped with seventeen gas balloons
+having an aggregate capacity of three hundred sixty seven thousand cubic feet of hydrogen was equipped with two eighty five horse power motors driving four propellers and displaced nine tons all the imperfections incidental to the previous craft
+had been eliminated while the ship followed improved lines in its mechanical and structural details the trials with this vessel commenced on november thirtieth nineteen o five but ill luck had not been eluded
+the airship was moored upon a raft which was to be towed out into the lake to enable the dirigible to ascend but something went wrong with the arrangements a strong wind caught the ungainly airship she dipped her nose into the water and as the motor was set going
+she was driven deeper into the lake the vessel only being saved by hurried deflation six weeks were occupied in repairs but another ascent was made on january seventeenth nineteen o six the trials were fairly satisfactory
+but inconclusive one of the motors went wrong and the longitudinal stability was found to be indifferent the vessel was brought down and was to be anchored but the fates ruled otherwise a strong wind caught her during the night
+and she was speedily reduced to indistinguishable scrap despite catastrophe the inventor wrestled gamely with his project the lessons taught by one disaster were taken to heart
+and arrangements to prevent the recurrence thereof incorporated in the succeeding craft unfortunately however as soon as one defect was remedied another asserted itself it was this persistent revelation of the unexpected
+which caused another period of indifference towards his invention probably nothing more would have been heard of the zeppelin after this last accident had it not been for the intervention of the prussian government at the direct instigation of the kaiser
+who had now taken count zeppelin under his wing a state lottery was inaugurated the proceeds of which were handed over to the indefatigable inventor together with an assurance that if he could keep aloft twenty four hours without coming to earth in the meantime
+and could cover four hundred fifty miles within this period the government would repay the whole of the money he had lavished upon his idea and liquidate all the debts he had incurred in connection therewith another craft was built larger than its predecessors
+and equipped with two motors developing one hundred seventy horse power upon completion it was submitted to several preliminary flights which were so eminently successful that the inventor decided to make a trial trip under conditions closely analogous
+to those imposed for the government test on june twentieth nineteen o eight at eight twenty six a m the craft ascended and remained aloft for twelve hours during which time it made an encouraging circular tour flushed with this success
+the count considered that the official award was within reach and that all his previous disasters and misfortunes were on the eve of redemption the crucial test was essayed on august fifth nineteen o eight accompanied by twelve observers
+the vessel ascended and travelled without incident for eight hours then a slight mishap demanded attention but was speedily repaired and was ignored officially as being too trivial to influence the main issue victory appeared within
+measurable distance the arduous toil of many patient years was about to be rewarded the airship was within sight of home when it had to descend owing to the development of another motor fault but as it approached the ground nature
+as if infuriated at the conquest rose up in rebellion a sudden squall struck the unwieldy monster within a few moments it became unmanageable and through some inscrutable cause it caught fire with the result that within a few moments
+it was reduced to a tangled mass of metallic framework it was a catastrophe that would have completely vanquished many an inventor but the count was saved the gall of defeat his flight which was remarkable inasmuch as he had covered three hundred eighty miles
+within twenty four hours including two unavoidable descents struck the teuton imagination the seeds so carefully planted by the most high of prussia now bore fruit the german nation sympathised with the indomitable inventor
+appreciated his genius and promptly poured forth a stream of subscriptions to enable him to build another vessel the intimation that other powers had approached the count for the acquisition of his idea became known far and wide
+together with the circumstance that he had unequivocally refused all offers he was striving for the fatherland
+he could forge ahead untrammelled by anxiety and worry another zeppelin was built and it created a world's record it remained aloft for thirty eight hours during which time it covered six hundred ninety miles and although it came to grief upon alighting
+by colliding with a tree the final incident passed unnoticed
+it had an airship which could go anywhere irrespective of climatic conditions and in true teuton perspective the craft was viewed from the military standpoint here was a means of obtaining the mastery of the air
+a formidable engine of invasion and aerial attack had been perfected consequently the grand idea must be supported with unbounded enthusiasm the count was hailed by his august master as the greatest german of the twentieth century
+and in this appreciation the populace wholeheartedly concurred whether such a panegyric from such an auspicious quarter is praise indeed or the equivalent of complete condemnation history alone will be able to judge
+but when one reflects at this moment upon the achievements of this aircraft during the present conflagration the unprejudiced will be rather inclined to hazard the opinion that imperial teuton praise is a synonym for damnation
+although the zeppelin was accepted as a perfect machine it has never been possible to disperse the atmosphere of disaster with which it has been enveloped from the first vessel after vessel has gone up in smoke and flame few craft of this type
+have enjoyed more than an evanescent existence
+than its predecessor but the teutonic nation has been induced to pin its whole faith on this airship notwithstanding that the more levelheaded engineers of other countries have always maintained the craft to be a mechanical monstrosity condemned from its design
+and principles of construction to disaster unshaken by this adverse criticism germany rests assured that by means of its zeppelins it will achieve that universal supremacy which it is convinced is its destiny
+this blind child like faith has been responsible for the establishment and development of the zeppelin factories at friedrichshafen the facilities are adequate to produce two of these vessels per month while another factory of a similar capacity
+has been established at berlin unfortunately such big craft demand large docks to accommodate them and in turn a large structure of this character constitutes an easy mark for hostile attack as the raiding airmen of the allies have
+proved very convincingly but the zeppelin must not be under rated magnificent performances have been recorded by these vessels such as the round one thousand miles trip in nineteen o nine and several other
+equally brilliant feats since that date it is quite true that each astounding achievement has been attended by an equally stupendous accident but that is accepted as a mere incidental detail by the faithful teutonic nation
+many vivid prophecies of the forthcoming flights by zeppelin have been uttered and it is quite probable that more than one will be fulfilled but success will be attributable rather to accident than design
+although the zeppelin is the main stake of the german people in matters pertaining to aerial conquest other types of airships have not been ignored as related in another chapter they have been fostered upon a smaller but equally effective scale
+gross craft have met with whole hearted support since they have established their value as vessels of the air which is tantamount to the acceptance of their military value the parseval is pronounced by experts to be the finest expression of aeronautical engineering
+so far as teuton effort is concerned certainly it has placed many notable flights to its credit the gross airship is an equally serviceable craft
+closely following those of the early french supple airships there are several other craft which have become more or less recognised by the german nation as substantial units of war such as the ruthemberg siemens schukert and so forth
+all of which have proved their serviceability more or less conclusively
+public prosecutor and determined jury sat every day their lists went forth every evening
+come out and listen to the evening paper you inside there charles evremonde called darnay so at last began the evening paper at la force
+charles evremonde called darnay had reason to know the usage he had seen hundreds pass away so
+and two had already been guillotined and forgotten the list was read in the vaulted chamber where darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival every one of those had perished in the massacre
+every human creature he had since cared for and parted with had died on the scaffold there were hurried words of farewell and kindness but the parting was soon over it was the incident of every day
+and a little concert for that evening they crowded to the grates and shed tears there but twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled and the time was at best short to the lock up hour
+when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night the prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling their ways arose out of the condition of the time similarly
+but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind in seasons of pestilence some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease a terrible passing inclination to die of it
+and all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts only needing circumstances to evoke them the passage to the conciergerie was short and dark
+the night in its vermin haunted cells was long and cold next day fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before charles darnay's name was called all the fifteen were condemned
+some daggers some ate and drank as they looked on many knitted among these last was one with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked she was in a front row by the side of a man
+but what he most noticed in the two figures was that although they were posted as close to himself as they could be they never looked towards him they seemed to be waiting for something with a dogged determination
+and they looked at the jury but at nothing else under the president sat doctor manette in his usual quiet dress as well as the prisoner could see he and mister lorry were the only men there unconnected with the tribunal
+who wore their usual clothes and had not assumed the coarse garb
+whose life was forfeit to the republic under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of death it was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to france there he was and there was the decree
+he had been taken in france and his head was demanded take off his head cried the audience an enemy to the republic the president rang his bell to silence those cries
+undoubtedly it was was he not an emigrant then what did he call himself not an emigrant he hoped within the sense and spirit of the law why not the president desired to know
+because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful to him and a station that was distasteful to him and had left his country he submitted before the word emigrant in the present acceptation by the tribunal was in use
+to live by his own industry in england rather than on the industry of the overladen people of france what proof had he of this he handed in the names of two witnesses theophile gabelle and alexandre manette
+the president reminded him true but not an english woman a citizeness of france yes by birth her name and family
+lucie manette only daughter of doctor manette the good physician who sits there this answer had a happy effect upon the audience cries in exaltation of the well known good physician rent the hall
+on these few steps of his dangerous way charles darnay had set his foot according to doctor manette's reiterated instructions the same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him
+and had prepared every inch of his road the president asked why had he returned to france when he did and not sooner he had not returned sooner he replied simply because he had no means of living in france save those he had resigned
+whereas in england he lived by giving instruction in the french language and literature he had returned when he did on the pressing and written entreaty of a french citizen who represented that his life was endangered by his absence
+he had come back to save a citizen's life and to bear his testimony at whatever personal hazard to the truth was that criminal in the eyes of the republic the populace cried enthusiastically
+no and the president rang his bell to quiet them which it did not for they continued to cry no
+the president required the name of that citizen the accused explained that the citizen was his first witness he also referred with confidence to the citizen's letter which had been taken from him at the barrier
+but which he did not doubt would be found among the papers then before the president the doctor had taken care that it should be there had assured him that it would be there
+that in the pressure of business imposed on the tribunal by the multitude of enemies of the republic with which it had to deal he had been slightly overlooked in his prison of the abbaye in fact
+by the surrender of the citizen evremonde called darnay doctor manette was next questioned his high personal popularity and the clearness of his answers made a great impression
+but as he proceeded as he showed that the accused was his first friend on his release from his long imprisonment that the accused had remained in england always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in their exile that
+so far from being in favour with the aristocrat government there he had actually been tried for his life by it as the foe of england and friend of the united states as he brought these circumstances into view with the greatest discretion
+and with the straightforward force of truth and earnestness the jury and the populace became one at last when he appealed by name to monsieur lorry an english gentleman then and there present who like himself
+had been a witness on that english trial and could corroborate his account of it the jury declared that they had heard enough and that they were ready with their votes if the president were content to receive them at every vote
+the jurymen voted aloud and individually the populace set up a shout of applause all the voices were in the prisoner's favour and the president declared him free
+then began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace sometimes gratified their fickleness or their better impulses towards generosity and mercy
+or which they regarded as some set off against their swollen account of cruel rage no man can decide now to which of these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable it is probable to a blending of all the three
+with the second predominating no sooner was the acquittal pronounced than tears were shed as freely as blood at another time and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him
+that after his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion none the less because he knew very well that the very same people carried by another current would have rushed at him with the very same intensity
+to rend him to pieces and strew him over the streets his removal to make way for other accused persons who were to be tried rescued him from these caresses for the moment
+five were to be tried together next as enemies of the republic forasmuch as they had not assisted it by word or deed so quick was the tribunal to compensate itself and the nation for a chance lost
+that these five came down to him before he left the place condemned to die within twenty four hours the first of them told him so with the customary prison sign of death a raised finger and they all added in words
+long live the republic the five had had it is true no audience to lengthen their proceedings for when he and doctor manette emerged from the gate there was a great crowd about it
+in which there seemed to be every face he had seen in court except two for which he looked in vain on his coming out the concourse made at him anew weeping embracing and shouting all by turns and all together
+until the very tide of the river on the bank of which the mad scene was acted seemed to run mad like the people on the shore they put him into a great chair they had among them
+in winding and tramping through them as they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye they carried him thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived her father had gone on before to prepare her
+and when her husband stood upon his feet she dropped insensible in his arms as he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his face and the brawling crowd
+so that his tears and her lips might come together unseen a few of the people fell to dancing
+after grasping the doctor's hand as he stood victorious and proud before him after grasping the hand of mister lorry
+and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful pross who lifted her he took his wife in his arms and carried her up to their rooms lucie my own i am safe o dearest charles
+let me thank god for this on my knees as i have prayed to him they all reverently bowed their heads and hearts when she was again in his arms he said to her
+no other man in all this france could have done what he has done for me she laid her head upon her father's breast as she had laid his poor head on her own breast long long ago he was happy in the return he had made her
+he was proud of his strength
+a few days passed away and catherine though not allowing herself to suspect her friend could not help watching her closely the result of her observations was not agreeable
+it might have passed unnoticed a something of languid indifference or of that boasted absence of mind which catherine had never heard of before would occasionally come across her but had nothing worse appeared
+that might only have spread a new grace and inspired a warmer interest but when catherine saw her in public admitting captain tilney's attentions as readily as they were offered
+but it was a degree of wilful thoughtlessness which catherine could not but resent james was the sufferer she saw him grave and uneasy and however careless of his present comfort
+and she thought with sincere compassion of his approaching disappointment for in spite of what she had believed herself to overhear in the pump room his behaviour was so incompatible with a knowledge of isabella's engagement
+she wished by a gentle remonstrance to remind isabella of her situation and make her aware of this double unkindness but for remonstrance either opportunity or comprehension was always against her
+if able to suggest a hint isabella could never understand it in this distress the intended departure of the tilney family became her chief consolation their journey into gloucestershire was to take place within a few days
+and captain tilney's removal would at least restore peace to every heart but his own but captain tilney had at present no intention of removing he was not to be of the party to northanger he was to continue at bath
+when catherine knew this her resolution was directly made she spoke to henry tilney on the subject regretting his brother's evident partiality for miss thorpe and entreating him to make known her prior engagement
+my brother does know it was henry's answer does he then why does he stay here he made no reply and was beginning to talk of something else but she eagerly continued
+the longer he stays the worse it will be for him at last pray advise him for his own sake and for everybody's sake to leave bath directly absence will in time make him comfortable again but he can have no hope here
+henry smiled and said i am sure my brother would not wish to do that then you will persuade him to go away persuasion is not at command but pardon me
+i have myself told him that miss thorpe is engaged he knows what he is about and must be his own master no he does not know what he is about cried catherine he does not know the pain he is giving my brother
+not that james has ever told me so but i am sure he is very uncomfortable and are you sure it is my brother's doing yes very sure is it my brother's attentions to miss thorpe
+or miss thorpe's admission of them that gives the pain
+i think mister morland would acknowledge a difference no man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves it is the woman only who can make it a torment catherine blushed for her friend and said
+isabella is wrong but i am sure she cannot mean to torment for she is very much attached to my brother she has been in love with him ever since they first met and while my father's consent was uncertain she fretted herself almost into a fever
+you know she must be attached to him i understand
+after a short pause catherine resumed with then you do not believe isabella so very much attached to my brother i can have no opinion on that subject but what can your brother mean
+if he knows her engagement what can he mean by his behaviour you are a very close questioner am i i only ask what i want to be told
+yes i think so for you must know your brother's heart my brother's heart as you term it on the present occasion i assure you i can only guess at well
+well nay if it is to be guesswork let us all guess for ourselves to be guided by second hand conjecture is pitiful the premises are before you
+after some moments consideration you may be able to guess at your brother's intentions from all this but i am sure i cannot but is not your father uncomfortable about
+sure if your father were to speak to him he would go my dear miss morland said henry in this amiable solicitude for your brother's comfort may you not be a little mistaken
+are you not carried a little too far would he thank you either on his own account or miss thorpe's for supposing that her affection or at least her good behaviour is only to be secured by her seeing nothing of captain tilney
+is he safe only in solitude or is her heart constant to him only when unsolicited by anyone else he cannot think this and you may be sure
+perceiving her still to look doubtful and grave he added though frederick does not leave bath with us he will probably remain but a very short time perhaps only a few days behind us
+his leave of absence will soon expire and he must return to his regiment and what will then be their acquaintance
+the mess room will drink isabella thorpe for a fortnight and she will laugh with your brother over poor tilney's passion for a month catherine would contend no longer against comfort
+the seventh chapter
+the bridge of apes queen ermintrude had never in her life seen her husband so terrible as he got that night he gnashed his teeth with rage
+he called everybody a fool he threw his tooth brush at the palace cat he rushed round in his night shirt and woke up all his army and sent them into the jungle to catch the doctor
+then he made all his servants go too his cooks and his gardeners and his barber and prince bumpo's tutor even the queen who was tired from dancing in a pair of tight shoes
+was packed off to help the soldiers in their search all this time the doctor and his animals were running through the forest towards the land of the monkeys as fast as they could go gub gub
+with his short legs soon got tired and the doctor had to carry him which made it pretty hard when they had the trunk and the hand bag with them as well the king of the jolliginki
+thought it would be easy for his army to find them because the doctor was in a strange land and would not know his way but he was wrong because the monkey chee chee knew all the paths through the jungle better even than the king's men did
+and he led the doctor and his pets to the very thickest part of the forest a place where no man had ever been before and hid them all in a big hollow tree between high rocks
+so there they stayed the whole night through they often heard the king's men searching and talking in the jungle round about but they were quite safe for no one knew of that hiding place but chee chee not even the other monkeys
+at last when daylight began to come through the thick leaves overhead they heard queen ermintrude saying in a very tired voice that it was no use looking any more that they might as well go back and get some sleep
+and they set off for the land of the monkeys it was a long long way and they often got very tired especially gub gub but when he cried they gave him milk out of the cocoanuts
+chee chee and polynesia always seemed to be able to get it for them or something like it they even got the doctor some tobacco one day when he had finished what he had brought with him and wanted to smoke
+and enjoyed the life of travel very much but they were always glad when the night came and they stopped for their resting time then the doctor used to make a little fire of sticks
+they would sit round it in a ring listening to polynesia singing songs about the sea or to chee chee telling stories of the jungle and many of the tales that chee chee told were very interesting
+because although the monkeys had no history books of their own before doctor dolittle came to write them for them they remember everything that happens by telling stories to their children
+of the days when men dressed in bear skins and lived in holes in the rock and ate their mutton raw because they did not know what cooking was having never seen a fire
+and he told them of the great mammoths and lizards as long as a train that wandered over the mountains in those times nibbling from the tree tops and often they got so interested listening
+they were still being followed by the king's men if chee chee had known this he would most likely have hidden them again but he didn't know it one day chee chee climbed up a high rock and looked out over the tree tops
+these monkeys made a tremendous noise cheering and waving leaves and swinging out of the branches to greet him they wanted to carry his bag and his trunk and everything he had and one of the bigger ones even carried gub gub
+had heard the noise of the monkeys cheering and they at last knew where the doctor was and hastened on to catch him the big monkey carrying gub gub was coming along behind slowly
+and he saw the captain of the army sneaking through the trees so he hurried after the doctor and told him to run then they all ran harder than they had ever run in their lives and the king's men
+coming after them began to run too and the captain ran hardest of all then the doctor tripped over his medicine bag and fell down in the mud and the captain thought he would surely catch him this time
+but the captain had very long ears though his hair was very short and as he sprang forward to take hold of the doctor one of his ears caught fast in a tree
+by this time the doctor had picked himself up and on they went again running and running and chee chee shouted it's all right we haven't far to go now
+but before they could get into the land of the monkeys they came to a steep cliff with a river flowing below this was the end of the kingdom of jolliginki
+and the land of the monkeys was on the other side across the river and jip the dog looked down over the edge of the steep steep cliff and said golly how are we ever going to get across
+oh dear said gub gub the king's men are quite close now look at them i am afraid we are going to be taken back to prison again and he began to weep
+they've got the captain loose and he's coming on like a deer get lively
+was a bridge all ready for him made of living monkeys for while his back was turned the monkeys quick as a flash had made themselves into a bridge
+and the big one shouted to the doctor walk over walk over all of you hurry gub gub was a bit scared walking on such a narrow bridge at that dizzy height
+and so did all of them john dolittle was the last to cross and just as he was getting to the other side the king's men came rushing up to the edge of the cliff then they shook their fists and yelled with rage
+many great explorers and gray bearded naturalists have lain long weeks hidden in the jungle waiting to see the monkeys do that trick but we never let a white man get a glimpse of it before you are the first to see the famous bridge of apes
+he meant to have it one of the best in the world so he called an officer into his council chamber and said now take plenty of time to look about in the different countries have all the men you want to help you
+but find me somewhere an engineer that will lay out a perfect railroad line men appointed by this colonel traveled some months they visited many cities wrote letters and asked advice then the colonel went back to the emperor and said
+the man you need to do this piece of work lives in the united states of america what's his name asked nicolas he is major george washington whistler he is one of the founders of the city in which he lives lowell massachusetts
+he is a distinguished army officer and a fine engineer he is named for a great officer answered nicolas remembering our general washington and he dispatched a letter to the lowell engineer
+the major made haste to start for russia because the honor was great and the payment would be generous he left his boys and his wife behind because he did not know just how comfortable he could make them in the far off country
+but he told the boys to be good and to mind their mother these boys were named james mc neill william and charles their mother was a fine woman but sometimes they wished she would not be quite so strict
+she used to say on saturday afternoons come boys empty your pockets and gather up your toys we will put the knives and marbles away and get ready for sunday all day sunday they were not allowed to read any book but the bible
+but james liked the stories he found there and when he was only nine could say almost half the bible by heart james was the oldest in the family he was born in lowell and was such a cunning baby that everybody wanted his picture
+one of his uncles who loved him dearly used to say it's enough to make sir joshua reynolds this was a great english painter who had died years before come out of his grave to paint jimmie asleep
+jimmie had delicate features and long silky brown curls that hung about his face in among these was one white lock that dropped straight down over his forehead this looked like a tiny feather
+more than all his playthings he liked a pencil and paper from the time he could scribble at all he drew pictures of everybody and everything in sight
+these pictures were very good and when he was large enough to go to school the other children were apt to ask him to make animals and birds for them on the blackboard major whistler soon sent for his family to join him in russia
+it was a long hard voyage there and poor little charlie died on the way the two other boys were better sailors and were as well as could be when they met their father they did enjoy the strange sights in saint petersburg
+they were not long in getting acquainted with the little russian children or in learning the language they went skating dressed in handsome furs they learned the folk and fancy dances joined in the winter sports and voted russia a fine country
+still their parents did not let them forget they were little americans the climate did not agree with james and every time he caught cold he had touches of rheumatism so that often he had to stay in the house and have his feet put in hot water
+instead of making a fuss about this he used to call for pencil and paper and practise drawing feet until he could make very perfect ones major whistler sent him to the art academy in saint petersburg where he was praised by his teachers
+that old tiresome rheumatism kept bothering him and by and by he had a long rheumatic fever
+he was a dear patient boy however and afterwards declared he was almost glad he had it because some one who pitied the small invalid sent him a book of hogarth's engravings
+i want you to be sure and remember about this gentleness and patience because when he was older people often accused him of being cross and rude but at this time i am sure no one could have been nicer
+james was very careful of his mother too one evening she had taken the boys in a carriage to see a big illumination bands were playing and rockets flying
+the horses next their carriage were frightened and reared and plunged as if they would hit the whistler party james shoved his mother down on the seat behind him and standing in front of her beat the horses back from them
+he always was as polite to her as if she were the emperor's wife the major worked too hard on the great railway and died before james was fifteen
+the emperor was fond of the two boys and wanted them to stay on in russia and be trained in the school for pages of the court but their mother said they must grow up in america and hurried back to her own land
+she did not have much money to spend but thought james should go to west point to get the military training his father had had at this academy he found he did not like to draw maps and forts nearly as well as he did human figures and faces
+once when he had been sent to washington to draw maps for the coast survey he forgot what he was about and filled up the nice white margins with pert little dancing folks he was well scolded for this i can tell you
+james was a tall handsome young fellow at this time and liked to go about to dancing parties in the evening he earned very little making maps and could not afford to buy the real narrow tailed coat which was proper
+so he used to take his frock coat that he wore all day and pin it back to look like a dress coat and start off for big balls where nobody was much shocked because he was always doing droll things and was so lively that he was welcome in any dress
+and the map drawing had grown so tiresome that james had given up west point and settled down to painting and etching in paris he had decided that there was nothing in the world which suited him but the life of an artist
+he worked quite steadily and people began to say i think young whistler is going to do great things some day but suddenly he packed up and went to london
+in this city he was praised even more but he did not sell enough pictures to pay his bills and once when he had kept men waiting a long time for money that he owed them officers came and took everything away but his pictures
+the room looked so bare and homely that whistler painted a very good imitation of furniture round the walls of his room so good in fact that a rich man who came to look at the pictures sat down in one of the imitation chairs and found himself on the floor
+it was fortunate that james could go a long time without food for it took nearly all he could earn from his pictures to buy paint and canvas for others i dare say that quite often when it was said
+james mc neill whistler is growing rude and cross the real truth of the matter was that james mc neill whistler was hungry and worried
+however he began to make money at last and just as life seemed bright an art critic mister john ruskin declared that the whistler pictures which were being bought at big prices were poor very poor
+mister ruskin spoke and what was worse printed his opinion i never expected he wrote to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face
+well it did not look for a while as if there was any more good luck in the world for james whistler he did not lose any time in getting a lawyer to sue mister ruskin for spoiling the sale of his pictures
+there was a trial in london and the court room was crowded some were there because they already owned whistler pictures and wanted to find out if they had paid good money for bad pictures others because they were warm friends of the artist or the critic
+but even more men and women went to hear the sharp questions of the lawyers and the clever answers of ruskin and whistler whistler won the case when the judge awarded one farthing for damages this is only a quarter of a cent in our money
+whistler laughed and hung the english farthing on his watch chain for a charm mister ruskin had to pay the costs of the trial which had mounted up to nineteen hundred dollars some of his friends insisted on raising that sum for him
+one of them said it was worth nineteen hundred dollars to have heard the talk that went on in the court room later mister whistler received much more than two hundred guineas for a single picture
+two famous ones of which we often see prints are portrait of my mother and the scotch writer carlyle james whistler's mother lived to be an old woman as one can guess from the picture
+and her son loved her just as dearly as he did when he beat the prancing horses away from her in russia the french nation bought this portrait and it hangs in the luxembourg museum paris
+the scotch people wanted to own the portrait of carlyle and the city of glasgow was glad to pay five thousand dollars for it mister whistler married a woman who was herself an artist and she was very proud of him
+the duet one of his pictures shows his wife and her sister at the piano two portraits by this american artist hang in the boston museum of fine arts but most of them are owned in england
+james whistler was always kind to young artists and liked to have them sit by him while he worked they were very proud to be noticed by him for long before he died he had received all kinds of honors and medals from foreign academies
+and france germany and italy made him an officer of the legion of honor a commander and a chevalier
+he loved art so well that he made water colors pastels etchings and lithographs as well as oil paintings he did not get his fame without much hard work
+you remember how many times he copied his own foot when he was a child well he was just as patient and thorough when he was older for a long time he made a practice of drawing a picture of himself every night before he went to bed
+he traveled a great deal painting views in many countries and studying the pictures of other artists but hogarth was his favorite and it is interesting to know that james mc neill whistler lies buried very near hogarth in london
+continuation of fremont's account of the passage through the mountains we had hard and doubtful labor yet before us as the snow appeared to be heavier where the timber began further down with few open spots
+ascending a height we traced out the best line we could discover for the next day's march and had at least the consolation to see that the mountain descended rapidly the day had been one of april gusty with a few occasional flakes of snow
+which in the afternoon enveloped the upper mountains in clouds we watched them anxiously as now we dreaded a snow storm shortly afterwards we heard the roll of thunder and looking toward the valley found it all enveloped in a thunderstorm
+for us as connected with the idea of summer it had a singular charm and we watched its progress with excited feelings until nearly sunset
+when the sky cleared off brightly and we saw a shining line of water directing its course towards another a broader and larger sheet we knew that these could be no other than the sacramento and the bay of san francisco
+but after our long wandering in rugged mountains where so frequently we had met with disappointments and where the crossing of every ridge displayed some unknown lake or river
+we were yet almost afraid to believe that we were at last to escape into the genial country of which we have heard so many glowing descriptions and dreaded again to find some vast interior lake whose bitter waters would bring us disappointment
+on the southern shore of what appeared to be the bay could be traced the gleaming line where entered another large stream and again the buenaventura rose up in our mind
+carson had entered the valley along the southern side of the bay but the country then was so entirely covered with water from snow and rain that he had been able to form no correct impression of watercourses
+we had the satisfaction to know that at least there were people below fires were lit up in the valley just at night appearing to be in answer to ours and these signs of life renewed in some measure the gayety of the camp
+they appeared so near that we judged them to be among the timber of some of the neighboring ridges but having them constantly in view day after day and night after night we afterwards found them to be fires that had been kindled by the indians among the tulares
+on the shore of the bay eighty miles distant axes and mauls were necessary today to make a road through the snow going ahead with carson to reconnoitre the road we reached in the afternoon the river which made the outlet of the lake
+carson sprang over clear across a place where the stream was compressed among rocks but the parfleche sole of my moccasin glanced from the icy rock and precipitated me into the river
+it was some few seconds before i could recover myself in the current and carson thinking me hurt jumped in after me and we both had an icy bath we tried to search a while for my gun which had been lost in the fall
+but the cold drove us out and making a large fire on the bank after we had partially dried ourselves we went back to meet the camp we afterwards found that the gun had been slung under the ice which lined the banks of the creek
+the sky was clear and pure with a sharp wind from the northeast and the thermometer twenty below the freezing point we continued down the south face of the mountain our road leading over dry ground we were able to avoid the snow almost entirely
+in the course of the morning we struck a foot path which we were generally able to keep and the ground was soft to our animals feet being sandy or covered with mould green grass began to make its appearance
+and occasionally we passed a hill scatteringly covered with it the character of the forest continued the same and among the trees the pine with sharp leaves and very large cones was abundant some of them being noble trees
+we measured one that had ten feet diameter though the height was not more than one hundred and thirty feet all along the river was a roaring torrent its fall very great and descending with a rapidity to which we had long been strangers
+to our great pleasure oak trees appeared on the ridge and soon became very frequent on these i remarked unusually great quantities of mistletoe the opposite mountain side was very steep and continuous
+unbroken by ravines and covered with pines and snow while on the side we were travelling innumerable rivulets poured down from the ridge
+continuing on we halted a moment at one of these rivulets to admire some beautiful evergreen trees resembling live oak which shaded the little stream
+they were forty to fifty feet high and two in diameter with a uniform tufted top and the summer green of their beautiful foliage with the singing birds and the sweet summer wind which was whirling about the dry oak leaves
+nearly intoxicated us with delight and we hurried on filled with excitement to escape entirely from the horrid region of inhospitable snow to the perpetual spring of the sacramento
+i started ahead this morning with a party of eight consisting with myself
+and jacob we took with us some of the best animals and my intention was to proceed as rapidly as possible to the house of mister sutter and return to meet the party with a supply of provisions and fresh animals
+near night fall we descended into the steep ravine of a handsome creek thirty feet wide and i was engaged in getting the horses up the opposite hill when i heard a shout from carson who had gone ahead a few hundred yards
+life yet said he as he came up life yet i have found a hillside sprinkled with grass enough for the night
+we drove along our horses and encamped at the place about dark and there was just room enough to make a place for shelter on the edge of the stream three horses were lost today proveau
+a fine young horse from the columbia belonging to charles towns and another indian horse which carried our cooking utensils the two former gave out and the latter strayed off into the woods as we reached the camp
+carson and i climbed one of the nearest mountains the forest land still extended ahead and the valley appeared as far as ever
+we began to be uneasy at derosier's absence fearing he might have been bewildered in the woods charles towns who had not yet recovered his mind went to swim in the river as if it was summer and the stream placid
+when it was a cold mountain torrent foaming among the rocks
+he came in and sitting down by the fire began to tell us where he had been he imagined he had been gone several days and thought we were still at the camp where he had left us and we were pained to see that his mind was deranged
+it appeared that he had been lost in the mountain and hunger and fatigue joined to weakness of body and fear of perishing in the mountains had crazed him the times were severe when stout men lost their minds from extremity of suffering
+when horses died and when mules and horses ready to die of starvation were killed for food yet there was no murmuring or hesitation in the meantime mister preuss continued on down the river
+and unaware that we had encamped so early in the day was lost when night arrived and he did not come in we began to understand what had happened to him but it was too late to make any search
+we followed mister preuss's trail for a considerable distance along the river until we reached a place where he had descended to the stream below and encamped here we shouted and fired guns but received no answer
+and we concluded that he had pushed on down the stream i determined to keep out from the river along which it was nearly impracticable to travel with animals until it should form a valley
+and oaks became the principal trees of the forest among these the prevailing tree was the evergreen oak which by way of distinction we shall call the live oak
+and with these occurred frequently a new species of oak bearing a long slender acorn from an inch to an inch and a half in length which we now began to see formed the principal vegetable food of the inhabitants of this region
+in a short distance we crossed a little rivulet where were two old huts and near by were heaps of acorn hulls the ground round about was very rich covered with an exuberant sward of grass
+and we sat down for a while in the shade of the oaks to let the animals feed we repeated our shouts for mister preuss and this time we were gratified with an answer the voice grew rapidly nearer ascending from the river
+but when we expected to see him emerge it ceased entirely we had called up some straggling indian the first we had met although for two days back we had seen tracks
+who mistaking us for his fellows had been only undeceived by getting close up it would have been pleasant to witness his astonishment he would not have been more frightened had some of the old mountain spirits they are so much afraid of
+suddenly appeared in his path ignorant of the character of these people we had now additional cause of uneasiness in regard to mister preuss he had no arms with him and we began to think his chance doubtful
+at one of these orchard grounds we encamped about noon to make an effort for mister preuss one man took his way along a spur leading into the river in hope to cross his trail and another took our own back
+both were volunteers and to the successful man was promised a pair of pistols not as a reward but as a token of gratitude for a service which would free us all from much anxiety
+at the end of four days mister preuss surprised and delighted his friends by walking into camp he had lived on roots and acorns and was in the last stages of exhaustion
+shortly the advance party reached sutter's fort where they received the most hospitable treatment
+he did not speak about it at length but said that he had written me a letter not to be opened until after his death containing instructions for publication this letter was dated thirtieth april
+eighteen seventy six i will give here as much of it as concerns the public i wish you to accept as a gift from me given you now the accompanying pages which contain a memoir of my life
+my intention is that they shall be published after my death and be edited by you but i leave it altogether to your discretion whether to publish or to suppress the work and also to your discretion whether any part or what part shall be omitted
+but i would not wish that anything should be added to the memoir if you wish to say any word as from yourself let it be done in the shape of a preface or introductory chapter at the end there is a postscript
+the publication if made at all should be effected as soon as possible after my death my father died on the sixth of december eighteen eighty two it will be seen therefore
+that my duty has been merely to pass the book through the press conformably to the above instructions i have placed headings to the right hand pages throughout the book and i do not conceive that i was precluded from so doing
+that he had given up hunting but he still kept two horses for such riding as may be had in or about the immediate neighbourhood of london he continued to ride to the end of his life he liked the exercise and i think it would have distressed him not to have had a horse in his stable
+but he never spoke willingly on hunting matters he had at last resolved to give up his favourite amusement and that as far as he was concerned there should be an end of it in the spring of eighteen seventy seven he went to south africa
+the journey lasted altogether sixteen days and during that time mister and missus burns were the hospitable entertainers when my father returned he wrote a short account of how the mastiffs went to iceland
+the book was printed but was intended only for private circulation every day until his last illness my father continued his work he would not otherwise have been happy
+he demanded from himself less than he had done ten years previously but his daily task was always done i will mention now the titles of his books that were published after the last included in the list which he himself has given at the end of the second volume
+an eye for an eye eighteen seventy nine cousin henry eighteen seventy nine thackeray eighteen seventy nine the duke's children eighteen eighty life of cicero
+eighteen eighty ayala's angel eighteen eighty one doctor wortle's school eighteen eighty one frau frohmann and other stories eighteen eighty two
+at the time of his death he had written four fifths of an irish story called the landleaguers shortly about to be published and he left in manuscript a completed novel called an old man's love
+which will be published by messrs blackwood and sons in eighteen eighty four in the summer of eighteen eighty my father left london and went to live at harting a village in sussex but on the confines of hampshire
+i think he chose that spot because he found there a house that suited him and because of the prettiness of the neighbourhood his last long journey was a trip to italy in the late winter and spring of eighteen eighty one
+but he went to ireland twice in eighteen eighty two he went there in may of that year and was then absent nearly a month this journey did him much good for he found that the softer atmosphere relieved his asthma
+from which he had been suffering for nearly eighteen months in august following he made another trip to ireland but from this journey he derived less benefit he was much interested in and was very much distressed by the unhappy condition of the country
+few men knew ireland better than he did he had lived there for sixteen years and his post office work had taken him into every part of the island in the summer of eighteen eighty two he began his last novel
+the landleaguers which as stated above was unfinished when he died this book was a cause of anxiety to him he could not rid his mind of the fact that he had a story already in the course of publication but which he had not yet completed
+in no other case except framley parsonage did my father publish even the first number of any novel before he had fully completed the whole tale
+he was seized with paralysis on the right side accompanied by loss of speech
+nearly five weeks from the night of his attack i have been led to say these few words not at all from a desire to supplement my father's biography of himself but to mention the main incidents in his life after he had finished his own record
+in what i have here said i do not think i have exceeded his instructions
+chapter one my education
+of so insignificant a person as myself it will not be so much my intention to speak of the little details of my private life as of what i and perhaps others round me have done in literature
+of my failures and successes such as they have been and their causes and of the opening which a literary career offers to men and women for the earning of their bread
+and yet the garrulity of old age and the aptitude of a man's mind to recur to the passages of his own life will i know tempt me to say something of myself
+nor without doing so should i know how to throw my matter into any recognised and intelligible form that i or any man should tell everything of himself i hold to be impossible
+i will set down naught in malice nor will i give to myself or others honour which i do not believe to have been fairly won my boyhood was i think as unhappy as that of a young gentleman could well be
+my misfortunes arising from a mixture of poverty and gentle standing on the part of my father
+i was born in eighteen fifteen in keppel street russell square and while a baby was carried down to harrow where my father had built a house on a large farm
+and perhaps the director of her destiny and of ours my father had been a wykamist and a fellow of new college and winchester was the destination of my brothers and myself
+and sent three of us there one after the other at the age of seven my father at this time was a chancery barrister practising in london
+chambers which on one melancholy occasion did become absolutely suicidal
+in his early days he was a man of some small fortune and of higher hopes these stood so high at the time of my birth that he was felt to be entitled to a country house as well as to that in keppel street
+this place he called julians and the land runs up to the foot of the hill on which the school and church stand on the side towards london things there went much against him the farm was ruinous
+but at any rate as other day boarders i do not suppose that they were well treated but i doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy which i endured
+i was only seven and i think that boys at seven are now spared among their more considerate seniors i was never spared and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house and the school
+without a daily purgatory no doubt my appearance was against me i remember well when i was still the junior boy in the school doctor butler the head master stopping me in the street and asking me
+perhaps he did not recognise me by my face at this time i was three years at harrow and as far as i can remember i was the junior boy in the school when i left it
+then i was sent to a private school at sunbury kept by arthur drury this i think must have been done in accordance with the advice of henry drury who was my tutor at harrow school and my father's friend
+we were not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished mine was only done a day or two before the holidays missus drury when she saw us shook her head with pitying horror
+there were ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads it broke my heart knowing myself to be innocent and suffering also under the almost equally painful feeling that the other three no doubt wicked boys
+might be supposed to be the leader of wickedness on the first day of the next term he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong with all a stupid boy's slowness i said nothing
+and he had not the courage to carry reparation further all that was fifty years ago and it burns me now as though it were yesterday what lily livered curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth
+at any rate as far as i was concerned i remember their names well and almost wish to write them here when i was twelve there came the vacancy at winchester college which i was destined to fill
+my two elder brothers had gone there and the younger had been taken away being already supposed to have lost his chance of new college it had been one of the great ambitions of my father's life that his three sons who lived to go to winchester
+should all become fellows of new college but that suffering man was never destined to have an ambition gratified we all lost the prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our reach
+my eldest brother all but achieved it and afterwards went to oxford taking three exhibitions from the school though he lost the great glory of a wykamist he has since made himself well known to the public as a writer
+in connection with all italian subjects
+but my other brother died early while i was at winchester my father's affairs went from bad to worse he gave up his practice at the bar and unfortunate that he was took another farm
+it is odd that a man should conceive and in this case a highly educated and a very clever man that farming should be a business in which he might make money without any special education or apprenticeship
+perhaps of all trades it is the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be done and the best manner of doing them is most necessary and it is one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable
+he had no knowledge and when he took this second farm no capital this was the last step preparatory to his final ruin
+i have no clear knowledge of her object or of my father's but i believe that he had an idea that money might be made by sending goods little goods such as pin cushions pepper boxes and pocket knives out to the still unfurnished states
+i have seen it since in the town of cincinnati a sorry building but i have been told that in those days it was an imposing edifice my mother went first with my sisters and second brother
+then my father followed them taking my elder brother before he went to oxford
+there have been hot words between us for perfect friendship bears and allows hot words few brothers have had more of brotherhood but in those school days he was of all my foes the worst
+in accordance with the practice of the college which submits or did then submit much of the tuition of the younger boys from the elder he was my tutor and in his capacity of teacher and ruler
+he had studied the theories of draco
+hang a little boy for stealing apples he used to say and other little boys will not steal apples the doctrine was already exploded elsewhere but he stuck to it with conservative energy the result was that as
+a part of his daily exercise he thrashed me with a big stick that such thrashings should have been possible at a school as a continual part of one's daily life
+seems to me to argue a very ill condition of school discipline at this period i remember to have passed one set of holidays the midsummer holidays in my father's chambers in lincoln's inn
+there was often a difficulty about the holidays as to what should be done with me on this occasion my amusement consisted in wandering about among those old deserted buildings and in reading shakespeare out of a bi columned edition
+which is still among my books it was not that i had chosen shakespeare but that there was nothing else to read after a while my brother left winchester and accompanied my father to america
+then another and a different horror fell to my fate my college bills had not been paid and the school tradesmen who administered to the wants of the boys were told not to extend their credit to me
+boots waistcoats and pocket handkerchiefs which with some slight superveillance were at the command of other scholars were closed luxuries to me my schoolfellows of course knew that it was so and i became a pariah
+it is the nature of boys to be cruel i have sometimes doubted whether among each other they do usually suffer much one from the other's cruelty but i suffered horribly
+i could make no stand against it i had no friend to whom i could pour out my sorrows i was big and awkward and ugly and i have no doubt skulked about in a most unattractive manner
+of course i was ill dressed and dirty but ah how well i remember all the agonies of my young heart how i considered whether i should always be alone
+whether i could not find my way up to the top of that college tower and from thence put an end to everything and a worse thing came than the stoppage of the supplies from the shopkeepers every boy had a shilling a week pocket money which we called battels
+and which was advanced to us out of the pocket of the second master on one awful day the second master announced to me that my battels would be stopped he told me the reason
+the battels for the last half year had not been repaid and he urged his own unwillingness to advance the money the loss of a shilling a week would not have been much even though pocket money from other sources never reached me
+and now when it came to the turn of any servant he received sixty nine shillings instead of seventy and the cause of the defalcation was explained to him
+when i had been at winchester something over three years my father returned to england and took me away whether this was done because of the expense or because my chance of new college was supposed to have passed away
+my father at this time having left my mother and sisters with my younger brother in america took himself to live at a wretched tumble down farmhouse on the second farm he had hired and i was taken there with him it was nearly three miles from harrow
+at harrow weald but in the parish and from this house i was again sent to that school as a day boarder let those who know what is the usual appearance and what the usual appurtenances of a boy at such a school
+from barns to cowsheds and from cowsheds to dung heaps one could hardly tell where one began and the other ended there was a parlour in which my father lived shut up among big books
+but i passed my most jocund hours in the kitchen making innocent love to the bailiff's daughter the farm kitchen might be very well through the evening when the horrors of the school were over but it all added to the cruelty of the days
+a sizar at a cambridge college or a bible clerk at oxford has not pleasant days or used not to have them half a century ago but his position was recognised and the misery was measured
+the indignities i endured are not to be described as i look back it seems to me that all hands were turned against me those of masters as well as boys i was allowed to join in no plays
+the only expense except that of books to which a house boarder was then subject was the fee to a tutor amounting i think to ten guineas my tutor took me without the fee
+but when i heard him declare the fact in the pupil room before the boys i hardly felt grateful for the charity i was never a coward and cared for a thrashing as little as any boy
+but one cannot make a stand against the acerbities of three hundred tyrants without a moral courage of which at that time i possessed none i know that i skulked and was odious to the eyes of those i admired and envied
+at last i was driven to rebellion and there came a great fight at the end of which my opponent had to be taken home for a while if these words be ever printed
+i trust that some schoolfellow of those days may still be left alive who will be able to say that in claiming this solitary glory of my school days i am not making a false boast
+i wish i could give some adequate picture of the gloom of that farmhouse my elder brother tom as i must call him in my narrative though the world i think knows him best as adolphus was at oxford
+my father and i lived together he having no means of living except what came from the farm my memory tells me that he was always in debt to his landlord and to the tradesmen he employed
+of self indulgence no one could accuse him our table was poorer i think than that of the bailiff who still hung on to our shattered fortunes the furniture was mean and scanty
+into the hay field on holidays i was often compelled to go not i fear with much profit my father's health was very bad during the last ten years of his life he spent nearly the half of his time in bed
+it was his ambition to describe all ecclesiastical terms including the denominations of every fraternity of monks and every convent of nuns with all their orders and subdivisions
+under crushing disadvantages with few or no books of reference with immediate access to no library he worked at his most ungrateful task with unflagging industry when he died
+three numbers out of eight had been published by subscription and are now i fear unknown and buried in the midst of that huge pile of futile literature the building up of which has broken so many hearts
+and my father though he would try
+and say my early rules from the latin grammar or repeat the greek alphabet and was obliged at these early lessons to hold my head inclined towards him
+so that in the event of guilty fault he might be able to pull my hair without stopping his razor or dropping his shaving brush no father was ever more anxious for the education of his children
+though i think none ever knew less how to go about the work of amusement as far as i can remember he never recognised the need
+he could not give his time to teach me for every hour that he was not in the fields was devoted to his monks and nuns but he would require me to sit at a table with lexicon and gradus before me
+though i think i grieved him much by my idleness but in passion he knew not what he did and he has knocked me down with the great folio bible which he always used
+in the old house were the two first volumes of cooper's novel called the prairie a relic probably a dishonest relic of some subscription to hookham's library other books of the kind there was none
+i wonder how many dozen times i read those two first volumes
+it was the horror of those dreadful walks backwards and forwards which made my life so bad what so pleasant what so sweet as a walk along an english lane when the air is sweet and the weather fine
+and when there is a charm in walking but here were the same lanes four times a day in wet and dry in heat and summer with all the accompanying mud and dust and with disordered clothes
+but his successor lived to be archbishop of canterbury i think it was in the autumn of eighteen thirty one that my mother with the rest of the family returned from america
+she lived at first at the farmhouse but it was only for a short time she came back with a book written about the united states and the immediate pecuniary success which that work obtained enabled her to take us all back to the house at harrow
+not to the first house which would still have been beyond her means but to that which has since been called orley farm and which was an eden as compared to our abode at harrow weald
+here my schooling went on under somewhat improved circumstances the three miles became half a mile and probably some salutary changes were made in my wardrobe
+and a great element of happiness was added to us all in the affectionate and life enduring friendship of the family of our close neighbour colonel grant but i was never able to overcome or even to attempt to overcome the absolute isolation of my school position
+i have felt that i had no right to talk of things from most of which i was kept in estrangement through all my father's troubles he still desired to send me either to oxford or cambridge
+and very fortunate it was that i did not succeed for my career with such assistance only as a scholarship would have given me would have ended in debt and ignominy when i left harrow i was all but nineteen
+and i had at first gone there at seven during the whole of those twelve years no attempt had been made to teach me anything but latin and greek and very little attempt to teach me those languages
+at the school at sunbury there was certainly a writing master and a french master the latter was an extra and i never had extras
+i suppose i must have been in the writing master's class but though i can call to mind the man i cannot call to mind his ferule it was by their ferules that i always knew them and they me
+i feel convinced in my mind that i have been flogged oftener than any human being alive it was just possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at winchester
+and i have often boasted that i obtained them all looking back over half a century
+i am now a fair latin scholar that is to say i read and enjoy the latin classics and could probably make myself understood in latin prose but the knowledge which i have i have acquired since i left school
+i bear in mind well with how prodigal a hand prizes used to be showered about but i never got a prize from the first to the last there was nothing satisfactory in my school career
+may ten eighteen fifty one madame
+in compliance with your request i have the honor to state succinctly the circumstances connected with my acquaintance with the late madame ossoli your deceased sister during her residence in rome
+in the month of april eighteen forty nine rome as you are no doubt aware was placed in a state of siege by the approach of the french army it was filled at that time with exiles and fugitives
+who had been contending for years from milan in the north to palermo in the south for the republican cause and when the gates were closed it was computed that there were of italians alone thirteen thousand refugees within the walls of the city
+all of whom had been expelled from adjacent states till rome became their last rallying point and to many their final resting place among these was to be seen every variety of age sentiment and condition
+striplings and blanched heads wild visionary enthusiasts grave heroic men who in the struggle for freedom had ventured all and lost all nobles and beggars bandits felons and brigands great excitement naturally existed
+and in the general apprehension which pervaded all classes that acts of personal violence and outrage would soon be committed the foreign residents especially found themselves placed in an alarming situation
+on the thirtieth of april the first engagement took place between the french and roman troops and in a few days subsequently i visited several of my countrymen at their request to concert measures for their safety hearing on that occasion and for the first time
+and of her solitary mode of life i ventured to call upon her and offer my services in any manner that might conduce to her comfort and security she received me with much kindness and thus an acquaintance commenced
+her residence on the piazzi barberini being considered an insecure abode
+which was occupied by several american families in the engagements which succeeded between the roman and french troops the wounded of the former were brought into the city and disposed throughout the different hospitals which were under the superintendence of several ladies of high rank
+who had formed themselves into associations the better to ensure care and attention to those unfortunate men miss fuller took an active part in this noble work and the greater portion of her time during the entire siege
+which was placed under her direction in attendance upon its inmates the weather was intensely hot her health was feeble and delicate the dead and dying were around her in every stage of pain and horror but she never shrank from the duty she had assumed
+her heart and soul were in the cause for which those men had fought and all was done that woman could do to comfort them in their sufferings i have seen the eyes of the dying as she moved among them extended on opposite beds meet in commendation of her universal kindness
+and i have heard many of those who recovered speak with all the passionate fervor of the italian nature
+throughout their long illness fulfilled all the offices of love and affection mazzini the chief of the triumvirate who better than any man in rome knew her worth often expressed to me his admiration of her high character and the princess belgiojoso
+to whom was assigned the charge of the papal palace on the quirinal which was converted on this occasion into a hospital was enthusiastic in her praise and in a letter which i received not long since from this lady
+who was gaining the bread of an exile by teaching languages in constantinople she alludes with much feeling to the support afforded by miss fuller to the republican party in italy here in rome she is still spoken of in terms of regard and endearment
+and the announcement of her death was received with a degree of sorrow not often bestowed upon a foreigner especially one of a different faith on the twenty ninth of june
+shells and grenades falling in every part of the city in the afternoon of the thirtieth i received a brief note from miss fuller requesting me to call at her residence i did so without delay and found her lying on a sofa pale and trembling evidently much exhausted
+she informed me that she had sent for me to place in my hand a packet of important papers which she wished me to keep for the present and in the event of her death to transmit it to her friends in the united states she then stated that she was married to marquis ossoli
+who was in command of a battery on the pincian hill that being the highest and most exposed position in rome and directly in the line of bombs from the french camp it was not to be expected she said that he could escape the dangers of another night such as the last
+and therefore it was her intention to remain with him and share his fate at the ave maria she added he would come for her and they would proceed together to his post the packet which she placed in my possession contained she said the certificates of her marriage
+and of the birth and baptism of her child after a few words more i took my departure the hour she named having nearly arrived at the porter's lodge i met the marquis ossoli
+happily the cannonading was not renewed that night and at dawn of day she returned to her apartments with her husband by her side on that day the french army entered rome and the gates being opened madame ossoli accompanied by the marquis
+formerly in the service of the ossoli family she remained as you are no doubt aware some months at rieti whence she removed to florence where she resided until her ill fated departure for the united states
+chapter thirty three roman bandits
+what is the matter said albert entering no carriage to be had just so returned franz you have guessed it well your eternal city is a nice sort of place
+but from now till sunday you can have fifty if you please ah that is something said albert to day is thursday and who knows what may arrive between this and sunday ten or twelve thousand travellers will arrive replied franz
+which will make it still more difficult my friend said morcerf let us enjoy the present without gloomy forebodings for the future at least we can have a window where in the corso ah a window exclaimed signor pastrini
+utterly impossible there was only one left on the fifth floor of the doria palace and that has been let to a russian prince for twenty sequins a day the two young men looked at each other with an air of stupefaction well
+it is to pass the carnival at venice there we are sure of obtaining gondolas if we cannot have carriages ah the devil no cried albert i came to rome to see the carnival and i will though i see it on stilts
+bravo an excellent idea we will disguise ourselves as monster pulchinellos
+and we shall have complete success do your excellencies still wish for a carriage from now to sunday morning parbleu said albert
+i hasten to comply with your excellencies wishes only i tell you beforehand the carriage will cost you six piastres a day and as i am not a millionaire like the gentleman in the next apartments said franz i warn you
+that as i have been four times before at rome i know the prices of all the carriages we will give you twelve piastres for to day tomorrow and the day after and then you will make a good profit
+but excellency said pastrini still striving to gain his point now go returned franz or i shall go myself and bargain with your affettatore who is mine also he is an old friend of mine who has plundered me pretty well already and
+in the hope of making more out of me he will take a less price than the one i offer you you will lose the preference and that will be your fault do not give yourselves the trouble excellency
+returned signor pastrini with the smile peculiar to the italian speculator when he confesses defeat i will do all i can and i hope you will be satisfied and now we understand each other
+in an hour in an hour it will be at the door an hour after the vehicle was at the door it was a hack conveyance which was elevated to the rank of a private carriage in honor of the occasion but in spite of its humble exterior
+the young men would have thought themselves happy to have secured it for the last three days of the carnival excellency cried the cicerone seeing franz approach the window
+shall i bring the carriage nearer to the palace accustomed as franz was to the italian phraseology his first impulse was to look round him but these words were addressed to him franz was the excellency
+was the palace the genius for laudation characteristic of the race was in that phrase franz and albert descended the carriage approached the palace their excellencies stretched their legs along the seats
+where do your excellencies wish to go asked he to saint peter's first and then to the colosseum returned albert but albert did not know that it takes a day to see saint peter's and a month to study it the day was passed at saint peter's alone
+suddenly the daylight began to fade away franz took out his watch it was half past four they returned to the hotel at the door franz ordered the coachman to be ready at eight he wished to show albert the colosseum by moonlight
+as he had shown him saint peter's by daylight when we show a friend a city one has already visited we feel the same pride as when we point out a woman whose lover we have been
+the temple of antoninus and faustina and the via sacra they sat down to dinner signor pastrini had promised them a banquet he gave them a tolerable repast at the end of the dinner he entered in person
+but at the first words he was interrupted excellency said pastrini i am delighted to have your approbation but it was not for that i came
+when you are told anything cannot be done there is an end of it it is much more convenient at paris when anything cannot be done you pay double and it is done directly that is what all the french say returned signor pastrini somewhat piqued
+for that reason i do not understand why they travel but said albert emitting a volume of smoke and balancing his chair on its hind legs only madmen
+or blockheads like us ever do travel men in their senses do not quit their hotel in the rue du helder their walk on the boulevard de gand and the cafe de paris it
+signor pastrini remained silent a short time it was evident that he was musing over this answer which did not seem very clear but said franz in his turn interrupting his host's meditations
+you had some motive for coming here may i beg to know what it was ah yes you have ordered your carriage at eight o'clock precisely i have you intend visiting il colosseo you mean the colosseum it is the same thing
+what do you not know him i have not that honor you have never heard his name never well then he is a bandit compared to whom the decesaris and the gasparones were mere children
+now then albert cried franz here is a bandit for you at last i forewarn you signor pastrini that i shall not believe one word of what you are going to tell us having told you this begin
+once upon a time well go on signor pastrini turned toward franz who seemed to him the more reasonable of the two we must do him justice he had had a great many frenchmen in his house but had never been able to comprehend them
+excellency said he gravely addressing franz if you look upon me as a liar it is useless for me to say anything it was for your interest albert does not say you are a liar signor pastrini said franz
+but that he will not believe what you are going to tell us but i will believe all you say so proceed but if your excellency doubt my veracity signor pastrini returned franz
+you are more susceptible than cassandra who was a prophetess and yet no one believed her while you at least are sure of the credence of half your audience come sit down and tell us all about this signor vampa
+well what has this bandit to do with the order i have given the coachman to leave the city by the porta del popolo
+this replied signor pastrini that you will go out by one but i very much doubt your returning by the other why asked franz because after nightfall you are not safe fifty yards from the gates
+on your honor is that true cried albert count returned signor pastrini hurt at albert's repeated doubts of the truth of his assertions i do not say this to you but to your companion who knows rome
+and knows too that these things are not to be laughed at my dear fellow said albert turning to franz here is an admirable adventure we will fill our carriage with pistols blunderbusses and double barrelled guns
+luigi vampa comes to take us and we take him we bring him back to rome and present him to his holiness the pope who asks how he can repay so great a service then we merely ask for a carriage and a pair of horses and we see the carnival in the carriage
+and doubtless the roman people will crown us at the capitol and proclaim us like curtius and the veiled horatius the preservers of their country
+signor pastrini's face assumed an expression impossible to describe and pray asked franz where are these pistols blunderbusses and other deadly weapons with which you intend filling the carriage not out of my armory
+for at terracina i was plundered even of my hunting knife
+and level their pieces at you eh parbleu they should kill me the inn keeper turned to franz with an air that seemed to say your friend is decidedly mad my dear albert returned franz
+your answer is sublime and worthy the let him die of corneille only when horace made that answer the safety of rome was concerned
+albert poured himself out a glass of lacryma christi which he sipped at intervals muttering some unintelligible words well signor pastrini said franz now that my companion is quieted and you have seen how peaceful my intentions are
+tell me who is this luigi vampa is he a shepherd or a nobleman young or old tall or short describe him in order that if we meet him by chance like bugaboo john or lara we may recognize him
+you could not apply to any one better able to inform you on all these points for i knew him when he was a child and one day that i fell into his hands going from ferentino to alatri he fortunately for me
+recollected me and set me free not only without ransom but made me a present of a very splendid watch and related his history to me let us see the watch said albert
+bearing the name of its maker of parisian manufacture and a count's coronet here it is said he peste returned albert i compliment you on it i have its fellow he took his watch from his waistcoat pocket
+and it cost me three thousand francs let us hear the history said franz motioning signor pastrini to seat himself
+at the moment signor pastrini was about to open his mouth that you knew luigi vampa when he was a child
+a young man he is only two and twenty he will gain himself a reputation what do you think of that albert at two and twenty to be thus famous yes and at his age alexander caesar and napoleon
+he was born at pampinara and entered the count's service when he was five years old his father was also a shepherd who owned a small flock and lived by the wool and the milk which he sold at rome when quite a child the little vampa displayed a most extraordinary precocity
+one day when he was seven years old he came to the curate of palestrina and asked to be taught to read it was somewhat difficult for he could not quit his flock but the good curate went every day to say mass at a little hamlet too poor to pay a priest and which
+every day luigi led his flock to graze on the road that leads from palestrina to borgo every day at nine o'clock in the morning the priest and the boy sat down on a bank by the wayside
+at the end of a week he wrote as well with this pen as with the stylus the curate related the incident to the count of san felice who sent for the little shepherd made him read and write before him ordered his attendant to let him eat with the domestics and to give him two piastres a month
+with this luigi purchased books and pencils he applied his imitative powers to everything and like giotto when young he drew on his slate sheep houses and trees
+it was thus that pinelli the famous sculptor had commenced a girl of six or seven that is a little younger than vampa tended sheep on a farm near palestrina she was an orphan born at valmontone and was named teresa the two children met
+had been able to gain any influence over him or even to become his companion his disposition always inclined to exact concessions rather than to make them kept him aloof from all friendships teresa alone ruled by a look
+the two piastres that luigi received every month from the count of san felice's steward and the price of all the little carvings in wood he sold at rome were expended in ear rings necklaces and gold hairpins so that thanks to her friend's generosity
+teresa was the most beautiful and the best attired peasant near rome the two children grew up together passing all their time with each other and giving themselves up to the wild ideas of their different characters
+thus in all their dreams their wishes and their conversations vampa saw himself the captain of a vessel general of an army or governor of a province teresa saw herself rich superbly attired
+and attended by a train of liveried domestics then when they had thus passed the day in building castles in the air they separated their flocks and descended from the elevation of their dreams to the reality of their humble position
+and prowl around his flock the steward gave him a gun this was what vampa longed for this gun had an excellent barrel made at breschia and carrying a ball with the precision of an english rifle but one day the count broke the stock
+and had then cast the gun aside this however was nothing to a sculptor like vampa he examined the broken stock calculated what change it would require to adapt the gun to his shoulder and made a fresh stock
+so beautifully carved that it would have fetched fifteen or twenty piastres had he chosen to sell it but nothing could be farther from his thoughts for a long time a gun had been the young man's greatest ambition in every country where independence has taken the place of liberty
+the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack and by rendering its owner terrible often makes him feared from this moment vampa devoted all his leisure time to perfecting himself in the use of his precious weapon
+he purchased powder and ball and everything served him for a mark the trunk of some old and moss grown olivetree that grew on the sabine mountains the fox as he quitted his earth on some marauding excursion the eagle that soared above their heads
+and thus he soon became so expert that teresa overcame the terror she at first felt at the report and amused herself by watching him direct the ball wherever he pleased with as much accuracy as if he placed it by hand
+one evening a wolf emerged from a pine wood hear which they were usually stationed but the wolf had scarcely advanced ten yards ere he was dead proud of this exploit vampa took the dead animal on his shoulders and carried him to the farm
+these exploits had gained luigi considerable reputation the man of superior abilities always finds admirers go where he will he was spoken of as the most adroit the strongest and the most courageous contadino for ten leagues around
+and although teresa was universally allowed to be the most beautiful girl of the sabines no one had ever spoken to her of love because it was known that she was beloved by vampa and yet the two young people had never declared their affection
+they had grown together like two trees whose roots are mingled whose branches intertwined and whose intermingled perfume rises to the heavens only their wish to see each other had become a necessity and they would have preferred death to a day's separation
+teresa was sixteen and vampa seventeen
+the brigands have never been really extirpated from the neighborhood of rome sometimes a chief is wanted but when a chief presents himself he rarely has to wait long for a band of followers the celebrated cucumetto
+driven out of the kingdom of naples where he had carried on a regular war had crossed the garigliano like manfred and had taken refuge on the banks of the amasine between sonnino and juperno
+he strove to collect a band of followers and followed the footsteps of decesaris and gasperone whom he hoped to surpass many young men of palestrina frascati and pampinara had disappeared
+their disappearance at first caused much disquietude but it was soon known that they had joined cucumetto after some time cucumetto became the object of universal attention
+the most extraordinary traits of ferocious daring and brutality were related of him one day he carried off a young girl the daughter of a surveyor of frosinone the bandit's laws are positive a young girl belongs first to him who carries her off
+then the rest draw lots for her and she is abandoned to their brutality until death relieves her sufferings when their parents are sufficiently rich to pay a ransom a messenger is sent to negotiate the prisoner is hostage for the security of the messenger
+when she recognized her lover the poor girl extended her arms to him and believed herself safe but carlini felt his heart sink for he but too well knew the fate that awaited her however as he was a favorite with cucumetto
+as he had for three years faithfully served him and as he had saved his life by shooting a dragoon who was about to cut him down he hoped the chief would have pity on him he took cucumetto one side
+while the young girl seated at the foot of a huge pine that stood in the centre of the forest made a veil of her picturesque head dress to hide her face from the lascivious gaze of the bandits there he told the chief all his affection for the prisoner
+their promises of mutual fidelity and how every night since he had been near they had met in some neighboring ruins
+cucumetto seemed to yield to his friend's entreaties and bade him find a shepherd to send to rita's father at frosinone carlini flew joyfully to rita telling her she was saved and bidding her write to her father to inform him what had occurred
+and that her ransom was fixed at three hundred piastres twelve hours delay was all that was granted that is until nine the next morning the instant the letter was written carlini seized it and hastened to the plain to find a messenger
+he found a young shepherd watching his flock the natural messengers of the bandits are the shepherds who live between the city and the mountains between civilized and savage life the boy undertook the commission promising to be in frosinone in less than an hour
+carlini returned anxious to see his mistress and announce the joyful intelligence he found the troop in the glade supping off the provisions exacted as contributions from the peasants but his eye vainly sought rita and cucumetto among them
+saying to the health of the brave cucumetto and the fair rita at this moment carlini heard a woman's cry he divined the truth seized the glass broke it across the face of him who presented it and rushed towards the spot
+whence the cry came after a hundred yards he turned the corner of the thicket he found rita senseless in the arms of cucumetto at the sight of carlini cucumetto rose a pistol in each hand the two brigands looked at each other for a moment
+the one with a smile of lasciviousness on his lips the other with the pallor of death on his brow a terrible battle between the two men seemed imminent but by degrees carlini's features relaxed his hand which had grasped one of the pistols in his belt
+this young girl is charming and does credit to your taste now as i am not egotistical we will return to our comrades and draw lots for her have determined then to abandon her to the common law said carlini
+why should an exception be made in her favor i thought that my entreaties' what right have you any more than the rest to ask for an exception is true
+continued cucumetto laughing sooner or later your turn will come carlini's teeth clinched convulsively now then said cucumetto advancing towards the other bandits are you coming
+he continued to follow the path to the glade but to his great surprise carlini arrived almost as soon as himself let us draw lots let us draw lots cried all the brigands when they saw the chief
+their demand was fair and the chief inclined his head in sign of acquiescence the eyes of all shone fiercely as they made their demand and the red light of the fire made them look like demons the names of all including carlini were placed in a hat
+and the youngest of the band drew forth a ticket the ticket bore the name of diovolaccio he was the man who had proposed to carlini the health of their chief
+and to whom carlini replied by breaking the glass across his face a large wound extending from the temple to the mouth was bleeding profusely diovalaccio seeing himself thus favored by fortune burst into a loud laugh captain
+diavolaccio said he calmly and he drank it off without his hand trembling in the least then sitting down by the fire my supper said he my expedition has given me an appetite
+that is acting like a good fellow and they all formed a circle round the fire
+carlini ate and drank as if nothing had happened the bandits looked on with astonishment at this singular conduct until they heard footsteps they turned round
+that every one rose with the exception of carlini who remained seated and ate and drank calmly diavolaccio advanced amidst the most profound silence and laid rita at the captain's feet
+i now understand why carlini stayed behind all savage natures appreciate a desperate deed no other of the bandits would perhaps have done the same but they all understood what carlini had done now then cried carlini
+rising in his turn and approaching the corpse his hand on the butt of one of his pistols does any one dispute the possession of this woman with me
+returned the chief she is thine carlini raised her in his arms and carried her out of the circle of firelight cucumetto placed his sentinels for the night and the bandits wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down before the fire
+at midnight the sentinel gave the alarm and in an instant all were on the alert it was rita's father who brought his daughter's ransom in person here said he to cucumetto here are three hundred piastres give me back my child
+but the chief without taking the money
+the old man obeyed they both advanced beneath the trees through whose branches streamed the moonlight cucumetto stopped at last and pointed to two persons grouped at the foot of a tree there said he demand thy child of carlini
+he will tell thee what has become of her and he returned to his companions the old man remained motionless he felt that some great and unforeseen misfortune hung over his head at length he advanced toward the group the meaning of which he could not comprehend
+as he approached carlini raised his head and the forms of two persons became visible to the old man's eyes a woman lay on the ground her head resting on the knees of a man who was seated by her as he raised his head
+the woman's face became visible the old man recognized his child and carlini recognized the old man i expected thee said the bandit to rita's father
+i loved her therefore i slew her for she would have served as the sport of the whole band the old man spoke not and grew pale as death now continued carlini if i have done wrongly avenge her
+and withdrawing the knife from the wound in rita's bosom he held it out to the old man with one hand while with the other he tore open his vest
+returned the old man in a hoarse voice embrace me my son carlini threw himself sobbing like a child into the arms of his mistress's father these were the first tears the man of blood had ever wept now said the old man
+aid me to bury my child carlini fetched two pickaxes and the father and the lover began to dig at the foot of a huge oak beneath which the young girl was to repose when the grave was formed the father kissed her first and then the lover
+then extending his hand the old man said i thank you my son and now leave me alone
+i command you carlini obeyed rejoined his comrades folded himself in his cloak and soon appeared to sleep as soundly as the rest it had been resolved the night before to change their encampment
+an hour before daybreak cucumetto aroused his men and gave the word to march but carlini would not quit the forest without knowing what had become of rita's father he went toward the place where he had left him
+he found the old man suspended from one of the branches of the oak which shaded his daughter's grave he then took an oath of bitter vengeance over the dead body of the one and the tomb of the other
+he should have received a ball between his shoulders that astonishment ceased when one of the brigands remarked to his comrades that cucumetto was stationed ten paces in carlini's rear when he fell on the morning of the departure from the forest of frosinone
+woman's vanity often outruns her natural diffidence and the consciousness of her great beauty stifles the conscience of modesty visitors to the academy know the picture circe seated
+with her back to a great circular mirror presents a half draped figure of marvellous delicate colouring and beauty of outline one hand holds aloft a golden wine goblet and the other a tapering wand
+while upon the tesselated pavement before the dais purple grapes and yellow roses have been strewn the black hair of the daughter of perseis falls in profusion about her bare shoulders and strays over her breast
+but her features are hidden by a half mask of black silk the lips with their arc de cupidon are slightly parted disclosing an even row of pearly teeth
+of the thousands who have gazed upon it in admiration none knows the somewhat remarkable story connected with it as i have been closely associated with it from the day it was outlined in charcoal
+until the evening it was packed in a crate and sent for the inspection of the hanging committee it is perhaps apropos that i should relate the narrative the studio of my old friend dick carruthers the man who painted it
+is on campden hill kensington within a few hundred yards of where i reside and in the centre of an aesthetic artistic colony we have been chums for years for on many occasions he has displayed his talent as a black and white artist
+in illustrating my articles and stories in various magazines he is a popular painter and as handsome a man as ever had a picture on the line three years ago when the prologue of this secret drama was enacted
+he was in the habit of coming over when the light had faded to smoke a cigarette and discuss art and literature with me i was glad of a chat after a hard day's work at my writing table but his companionship had one drawback
+he drivelled over a girl he loved and was forever suggesting that i might take her as a character and drag her into the novel upon which i was engaged one day he drew a cabinet photograph carefully from his pocket
+and placed it upon the blotting pad before me the girl he loved bah i knew her though i did not tell him so she was a dark haired pink and white beauty that flitted through artistic bohemia like a butterfly in a hothouse
+the sight of the pictured face brought back to me the memory of days long past of a closed chapter in my life's history i remembered the first time i saw ethel broughton fully five years before she wore a soiled pink wrapper
+her satin slippers were trodden down at heel and she had a bottle of champagne at her elbow at that time her lover grandiloquent and impecunious mister harry oranmore a bad but handsome actor had been untrue to her
+and she a third rate actress who had an ingenue part at a strand theatre
+but she scarcely heeded me probably she was thinking of oranmore for she clasped her slim fingers round her suffering throat and offered up an occasional sob following it with a silent but protracted draught from her glass
+the result of this interview was but natural dazzled by her beauty i sympathised with her endeavoured to cheer her and concluded by falling violently in love with her at that time i was writing numbers of dramatic criticisms
+and i confess i used what weight my opinions possessed for the purpose of her advancement it is needless to refer to the smooth and uninterrupted course of our love suffice it to say that we were both bohemians
+and that within a year i had the satisfaction of sitting before the footlights watching her make her debut as leading lady at a west end theatre and a few days later of observing her photograph exhibited in shop windows among those of other stage beauties
+but alas those halcyon days were all too brief suddenly the scales fell from my eyes a scene occurred between us and we parted to think that sin should lie for years in the blood
+just as arsenic does in a corpse when i discovered that dick carruthers was wasting the very honest and ardent emotions of his heart at this feverish fairy's shrine i resolved to take him aside and without admitting that i knew her
+give him a verbal drubbing i did so but he bit his moustache fiercely and turned upon me she is charming he said and i love her ah i know the type
+you know nothing old fellow he exclaimed flushing angrily but he shrugged his shoulders
+you shall see her before long his gaze grew bright soft and vague as one who catches glimpses of the floating garments of supernatural mysteries ah she is lovely only an artist can appreciate her beauty
+heedless of everything under the spell she had cast about him one night not long after i had expressed my sentiments to him regarding his infatuation i entered his studio and found his goddess seated by the fire with her shapely feet upon the fender
+and holding a lighted cigarette between her dainty fingers dick flung down his palette and came forward to introduce me her dark eyes met mine and we tacitly agreed not to recognise each other therefore we bowed as perfect strangers
+i caught her glancing furtively at me under her long lashes she had grown even handsomer than when last i had seen her and was the picture of the romantic bohemienne her dress was of black gauze through which the milky whiteness of her figure seemed to shine
+yet as she turned her beautiful face towards me i was struck by the complete effect of physical and moral frailty that she presented she expressed pleasure at meeting me remarking that she had read my last novel and had been keenly interested in it
+when i had briefly acknowledged the compliment she paid me she said one thing always strikes me in reading your stories your women are inevitably false and fickle perhaps however you write from personal experience
+of the failings of my sex she laughed glancing sharply at her i saw that her eyes did not waver it is true i once knew a woman who proved false and infamous i replied with some emphasis
+and you avenge yourself by reviling all of us it is really too bad she said pouting like a spoiled child by jove old fellow dick chimed in do tell us about your romance it would be interesting to know the reason
+you set your face against all the fair ones but i succeeded in turning the conversation into another channel
+so making an excuse i bade them au revoir and returned to my own book lined den unlocking a drawer in my writing table i took out a packet of letters that still emitted a stale odour of violets
+then i lit my pipe and one by one read them through pausing and pondering over the declarations of passionate love they contained far into the night i sat reviewing the romance of bygone days until i came to the last letter
+it was a cold formal note merely a few lines of hurried scrawl and read you are right i have been false to you think no more of me by the time you receive this i shall be on my way to new york
+nevertheless you will be always remembered by yours unworthily ethel bitter memories of the past overwhelmed me but at last growing impatient and tossing the letters back into the drawer
+i strove to forget the clock had struck two and my reading lamp was burning low and sputtering when i rose to retire for the night i confess that my frame of mind surprised me inasmuch as i actually found myself
+still loving her good afternoon i hope i don't disturb you looking up from my work i saw ethel not at all pray sit down i said coldly
+motioning her to an armchair to what do i owe the honour of this visit she pulled off her long gloves and let her sealskin cape fall at her feet while i put down my pen and rising stood with my back to the fire
+with her she had brought the odour of violets the same that i remembered years ago the same perfume that always stirred sad memories within me you don't welcome me very warmly she said in a disappointed tone
+as she grasped my hand and looked steadily into my eyes no i said sternly last night i told you that a woman had embittered my life the woman i referred to was yourself ah
+she said striving to suppress a sob forgive me i i was mad then i loved you but i did not apprehend the consequence love what nonsense to speak of it when through your baseness
+i have been almost ruined think of your actions on the day before you left me how you took from that drawer a signed blank cheque with which you drew six hundred pounds nearly all the money i possessed and then fled with your lover
+is that the way a woman shows her affection her head was bowed in humiliation forgive me harold she said with intense earnestness i admit that i wronged you cruelly that i discarded the honest love you gave me
+but you you do not know how weak we women are when temptation is in our path cannot i now make amends i shook my head sadly
+she implored tearfully at least i am honest my object in coming this afternoon was to repay the money i i borrowed
+i asked hesitating to receive it i have earned it honestly every penny she replied since we parted i have become popular in america and played lead in nearly all the great cities
+during the years that have gone i have many many times wondered what had become of you for in your writings i read plainly how soured and embittered you had become and where is oranmore dead
+he contracted typhoid while we were playing in san francisco and it terminated fatally ethel i said gravely taking her hand in mine you have fascinated dick carruthers my friend
+and you will treat him as you treated me no no i love him she said in a fierce half whisper adding
+i will be true to him if he marries me he shall never have cause for regret never suppose i told him what would he think of you you will not she cried clinging to me you are too honourable for that
+promise to keep my secret for the present i will preserve silence i answered my heart softening towards her but i cannot promise that i will never tell him
+what character do you think would best suit me well
+the woman who broke men's hearts i replied mischievously excellent i shall be able to assume that character well she said with a grim smile i will tell him spring came and went
+but i saw very little of dick he had received a commission from one of the illustrated papers to make a series of sketches of scenery in scotland
+whenever he paid flying visits to london however he always looked me up but strangely enough never mentioned ethel nevertheless i ascertained that they frequently met
+at the close of a blue summer's day when the dreamy golden haze wrapped the city in a mystic charm i called at the studio having heard that he had returned and was settling down to work when i entered dick was standing before his easel
+pipe in mouth and crayon in hand busily sketching while on the raised throne before him sat ethel radiant and beautiful a tender smile played about her lips it seemed as though a happiness full complete
+perfectly satisfying had taken possession of her and lifted her out of herself out of the world even welcome old fellow dick cried
+ethel will not sit for any other subject it hardly does her justice does it it is a strange fancy of mine she explained when i had greeted her i'm sure the dress is very becoming isn't it
+and she waved the goblet she was holding above her head your pose is perfect dear please don't alter it urged the artist who advancing to his easel again continued the free rapid outline
+presently she reappeared and we went to dine together at a restaurant in piccadilly afterwards visiting a theatre and spending a very pleasant evening poor dick i was sorry that he was so infatuated
+he was such a large hearted honest fellow that i felt quite pained when i anticipated the awakening that must inevitably come sooner or later he knew absolutely nothing of her past and was quite ignorant that she had been a popular actress
+in the months that followed i visited the studio almost daily and watched the growth of the picture
+the delicate tints of the neck and arms were reproduced with a skill that betrayed the master hand
+i returned home from a stroll across kensington gardens
+heard some one playing upon my piano and a sweet soprano voice singing trotere's in old madrid i recognised the clear tones as those of ethel ah harold she cried jumping up as i entered the room
+i was amusing myself until your return i i have something to tell you well what is it i asked rather surprised cannot you guess dick has asked me to become his wife she said in a low tone
+the thing's impossible i cried warmly i will not allow it you may be friends but he shall never marry you how cruel you are she said with a touch of sadness but after all your apprehensions are groundless
+i have refused refused why for reasons of my own
+if if he speaks to you urge him to abandon thoughts of love and regard me as a friend only you are at least sensible ethel i said it is gratifying to know that you recognise the impossibility of such an union
+tears welled in her eyes she nodded but did not reply a dry grey day in march it was show sunday that institution in the art world when the painter opens his studio to his friends and the public
+to show them the picture he is about to send to the academy the exhibition is in many instances but the showing beforehand of the garlands of victory in a battle which is doomed to be lost for when the opening day comes
+has no such ordeal to face he never reads his new romance to his friends nor do his well wishers applaud in advance reviewers have first tilt at advance copies and very properly
+from morn till eve on show sunday campden hill is always blocked by the carriages of the curious and studios are besieged by fashionable crowds whose chatter and laughter mingles pleasantly with the clinking of tea cups
+on this occasion as on previous ones i assisted dick to receive his visitors but unfortunately ethel had been taken suddenly unwell and could not attend my anticipations proved correct
+the opinions of critics who dropped in were unanimous that it was the artist's masterpiece and that the expression and general conception were marvellous a verdict endorsed by gushing society women bored club men and the inane jeunesse doree
+a scrap of conversation i overheard in the course of the afternoon however caused me to ponder an elderly man evidently a foreigner wearing the violet ribbon of the french academy in his buttonhole
+was standing with a young girl in the crowd around the easel why look papa that face the girl cried when her eyes fell upon the canvas it is her portrait surely the signore cannot know dio
+exclaimed the old man evidently recognising the features the picture is indeed magnificent
+come away zelie let us go i heard no more for they turned and left having acted as eavesdropper i could hardly question them nevertheless i was sorely puzzled look read that
+in surprise i glanced up from my work of romance weaving on the following morning and saw dick pale and agitated standing at my elbow the letter he placed before me was in a woman's hand and emitted the faintest breath of violets
+a glance was sufficient to recognise that the sprawly writing was ethel's taking it up i eagerly read the following lines it contained dear dick i regret to tell you that circumstances preclude me from ever meeting you again
+i am going far away where you cannot find me it was foolish for us to have loved therefore forget me that you may meet some one far worthier than myself
+may bring you fame and fortune is the most sincere hope of your models ethel i warned you against your infatuation old fellow i said seriously but i couldn't help it i i loved her
+while his face assumed a hard determined expression
+and she had her foot upon my neck but it is all over he added bitterly i shall think no more of her then he wished me an abrupt farewell and left
+that evening i called at dick's house but was informed by his housekeeper that he had packed his bag and departed stating that he would not return for at least a month perhaps longer when i entered the studio gloomy in the twilight
+and that it was standing in a corner with its face to the wall
+and when i did so i discovered to my dismay that in his frenzy of mad despair
+and drawn it across the face making a great ugly disfiguring daub over the forehead and eyebrows utterly ruining the features and producing a curiously forbidding effect the colour was not dry
+therefore i was enabled to remove the greater portion of it with a silk handkerchief but i saw with regret that the tints of the forehead had been irretrievably ruined rendering the picture valueless the days went by
+the limit for sending in to the academy was approaching but dick did not write and i could only wonder vaguely where he was wandering it was a great pity i thought that such a fine work should not be exhibited
+yet the wilful obliteration had utterly spoiled it while sitting in his studio musing one day it suddenly occurred to me that if the flaw upon the forehead could be hidden it might after all be sent for the inspection of the hanging committee
+taking it up i examined it minutely in the light the idea of placing a half mask upon the face suggested itself and without delay i proceeded to carry it into effect
+enabled me to paint in the half lights upon the black silk and the laughing eyes being fortunately intact i allowed them to peer through the apertures the effect produced was startling
+the mask seemed to increase the reckless diablerie of its wearer and enhance the fairness of the complexion while it added an air of mystery not at all unpleasing to the eye a few days later i dispatched it to the academy
+and waited patiently for the opening day when i experienced the mingled surprise and satisfaction of seeing it hung upon the line
+was pronounced one of the pictures of the year thousands admired it the papers were full of laudatory notices but the man who painted it unaware of the fame he had suddenly achieved was hiding his sorrow somewhere in the vosges
+a stray copy of an english newspaper containing a notice of his work which dick picked up in a hotel however caused him to return he burst into my room unceremoniously one morning still attired in his travelling ulster
+i saw that he was haggard eyed and wild looking from his conversation i knew that time had not healed the wound in his heart i shall never be able to thank you sufficiently old chap for touching up my daub
+it seems that the public admire her as much as i have done i i shall find her some day then she will return to me still thinking of her i observed reproachfully yes always
+always he replied shaking his head sorrowfully i i cannot forget dick's popularity steadily increased lucrative commissions poured in upon him and he settled down to such hard
+methodical work that i began to think he had forgotten the woman who had enmeshed him with beaming face he came to me one summer's morning and announced that although the committee of the chantrey bequest had offered to purchase the masked circe he
+the well known anglo italian millionaire and art patron saying that he desired to buy it and asking him to go down to oxted park his seat in surrey to arrange the price i am going to day he said you masked her
+and congratulated dick warmly upon his masterpiece it was evident that he meant to secure it at any cost
+my companion had a cheque for four figures in his pocket we were about to make our adieux but the count would not hear of it dinner will be ready almost immediately he said you must stay
+ah here's the countess exclaimed the millionaire stepping forward to introduce us we turned and saw a pale beautiful woman attired in a handsome dinner gown ethel you
+we both cried in amazement dick she gasped you you have found me she reeled backwards and before we could save her fell senseless to the floor a few words of excuse
+and explanation and we left the count who kneeling beside his wife and endeavouring to resuscitate her was completely mystified at the strange recognition dick almost beside himself with grief
+at discovering his idol already married returned at once to london while i remained at an inn at oxted in order to glean some further information inquiries showed that the count had met her while travelling in america
+to inquire after the countess's health the footman looked pale and grave when i asked after her ladyship i much regret to inform you sir that my mistress is dead he said
+dead i cried impossible yes sir her maid discovered her in her boudoir late last night and found that she had taken an overdose of morphia we sent for the doctor
+but before his arrival life was extinct the count is insane with grief more especially because the maid discovered that her ladyship had left a letter to some man she calls dick telling him that she loved him
+and could live no longer dick rarely smiles and is invariably gloomy and sad poor fellow the count ignorant of the truth has hung his latest purchase
+in the private gallery of his great palace in rome little dreaming that
+after mister crow flew back to pleasant valley to gather news for him brownie beaver carefully counted each day that passed since mister crow had agreed to be his newspaper and come each saturday afternoon to tell him everything that had happened during the week
+brownie was in a great hurry for saturday to arrive in order to make no mistake he put aside a stick in which he gnawed a notch each day and in that way he knew exactly when saturday came
+that was probably the longest day in brownie beaver's life at least it seemed so to him whenever he saw a bird soaring above the tree tops he couldn't help hoping it was mister crow
+brownie beaver dropped whatever he happened to be doing expecting that mister crow would flap into sight at any moment brownie had many disappointments but mister crow really came at last
+he lighted right on top of brownie beaver's house and called paper down the chimney just like that brownie happened to be inside his house and in a wonderfully short time his head appeared
+above the water and he soon crawled up beside mister crow well i am glad to see you he told mister crow peter mink caught a monstrous eel in the duck pond on monday mister crow said
+being a newspaper he thought he ought to say nothing except what was news not even good afternoon mister rabbit of pine ridge with his wife and fourteen children is visiting his brother mister jeremiah rabbit
+mister crow continued to relate in a singsong voice goodness gracious brownie beaver exclaimed fatty coon mister crow said fatty coon was confined to his house by illness tuesday night
+he ate too many dried apples well well brownie beaver murmured and he started to ask mister crow a question but mister crow interrupted him with more news
+missus bear had a birthday on wednesday an enjoyable time was had by all except the pig pig brownie beaver asked what pig the pig they ate said mister crow
+and he went right on talking on thursday mister woodchuck went to visit his cousins in the west missus woodchuck is worried what's she worried about brownie inquired she's afraid he's coming back again
+mister crow explained i have heard he was lazy brownie said what happened on friday tommy fox made a visit but he didn't have a good time at all mister crow reported
+and he left faster than he came brownie beaver wanted to know where tommy fox made his visit at farmer green's hen house mister crow explained why did he hurry away brownie asked
+old dog spot chased him mister crow replied but you mustn't ask questions he complained you can't ask questions of a newspaper you know well what happened on saturday
+another question i declare i don't believe you ever took a newspaper before did you brownie beaver admitted that he never had then said mister crow then don't interrupt me again please
+i'll tell you all the news i've brought and when i've finished i'll stop being a newspaper and be myself for a while and then we can talk but not before he insisted brownie beaver nodded his head
+he was afraid that if he said another word mister crow would grow angry and fly away without telling him any more news
+jimmy rabbit almost cut off frisky squirrel's tail mister crow paused and looked at brownie beaver out of the corner of his eye he knew that brownie would want to know what prevented the accident but he was in no hurry to tell him
+for a few moments brownie waited to hear the rest but a few moments was more than he could endure why didn't jimmy cut off his tail brownie asked eagerly there said mister crow you've done just as i told you not to
+so i shall not tell you the rest until next saturday you see you have a few things to learn about taking a newspaper
+there was great rejoicing in the little village in the pond when brownie beaver returned with the good news that there would be no more hunting and fishing and when old grandaddy beaver said that everybody ought to take a holiday to celebrate the occasion
+all the villagers said it was a fine idea so they stopped working for once and began to plan the celebration they thought that there ought to be swimming races and tree felling contests
+and brownie beaver said that after the holiday was over he would suggest that someone be chosen to go down and thank farmer green for putting the notice on the tree the whole village agreed to brownie's proposal
+brownie beaver himself passed his hat around to take up the votes and it was quickly found that every vote was for brownie beaver he had even voted for himself but no one seemed to care about that
+and another in which each person who took part had to stay beneath the surface as long as he could that last race caused some trouble a young scamp called slippery sam won it and many people thought that he had swum up inside his house
+where he could get air without being seen but no one could prove it so he won the race just the same next came the tree felling contest there were six including brownie beaver that took part in it
+grandaddy beaver had picked out six trees of exactly the same size each person in the contest had to try to bring his tree to the ground first and that caused some trouble too because some claimed that their trees were of harder wood than others
+and more difficult to gnaw while others complained that the bark of their trees tasted very bitter and of course that made their task unpleasant those six trees falling one after another made such a racket
+that old mister crow heard the noise miles away and flew over to see what was happening after everybody crept out of his hiding place some time afterward everyone had to hide for a while you know
+there was mister crow sitting upon one of the fallen trees
+then they told him about the celebration and mister crow began to laugh what are you going to do next he asked we're a going to send brownie beaver over to pleasant valley
+to thank farmer green for his kindness in putting an end to hunting and fishing said old grandaddy beaver and he's a going to start right away mister crow looked around and there was brownie beaver
+with a lunch basket in his hand all ready to begin his long journey say good by to him then said mister crow for you'll never see him again what do you mean grandaddy beaver asked
+and as for brownie he was so frightened that he dropped his basket right in the water i mean said mister crow
+you don't seem to have understood that sign in the first place it was not farmer green but his son johnnie who nailed it to the tree
+that is why one of the words was misspelled no doubt mister crow remarked as a matter of fact not being able to read he hadn't known about the word that was spelled wrong in the second place he continued
+the sign doesn't mean that hunting and fishing are to be stopped it means that no one but johnnie green is going to hunt and fish in this neighborhood
+and instead of hunting and fishing being stopped
+he added that johnnie green had a new gun on this birthday brownie beaver said at once that he was not going on the errand of thanks i resign he said and anyone that wants to go in my place is welcome to do so
+but nobody cared to go and the whole village seemed greatly disappointed until grandaddy beaver made a short speech
+was not the only village to be seen from blue mountain there was another which farmer green seldom visited because it lay beyond the mountain and was a long distance from his house though he owned the land where it stood
+those that lived there thought they had every right to stay there as long as they pleased without being disturbed it was in this village that brownie beaver and his neighbors lived it was a different sort of town too
+from the one where farmer green went each week over beyond blue mountain all the houses were built in a pond and all their doors were under water but nobody minded that because like brownie beaver
+everybody that dwelt there was a fine swimmer years and years before brownie's time his forefathers had come there and finding that there were many trees in the neighborhood with the sort of bark they liked to eat
+such as poplars willows and box elders they had decided that it was a good place to live there was a small stream too which was really the beginning of swift river
+and by damming it those old settlers made a pond in which they could build their houses they had ideas of their own as to what a house should be like
+though you perhaps might not care for them at all they wanted their houses to be surrounded by water because they thought they were safer when built in that manner and they always insisted that a door leading into a house
+should be far beneath the surface of the water for they believed that that made a house safer too to you such an idea may seem very strange but if you were chased by an enemy you might be glad to be able to swim under water
+down to the bottom of a pond and slip inside a door which led to a winding hall
+of course your enemy might be able to swim as well as you but maybe he would think twice or even three times before he went prowling through your crooked hall for if you had enormous strong sharp teeth
+with which you could gnaw right through a tree he would not care to have you seize him as he poked his head around a corner in a dark passage of a strange house it was in a house of that kind that brownie beaver lived
+and he built it himself because he said he would rather have a neat new house than one of the big old dwellings that had been built many years before when his great great grandfather had helped throw the dam across the stream the dam was there still
+it was so old that trees were growing on it and there was an odd thing about it it was never finished though brownie beaver was a young chap he worked on the dam sometimes like all his neighbors
+you see the villagers kept making the dam wider and since it was built of sticks and mud the water sometimes washed bits of it away so it had to be kept in repair if brownie beaver and his friends had neglected their dam
+and without any water to hide their doorways they would have been safe no longer they would have had no place either to store their winter's food for they were in the habit of cutting down trees and saving the bark and branches too
+in order to have plenty to eat when cold weather came and the ice closed their pond some of their food they carried into their houses through a straight hall which was made for that very purpose
+and some of the branches they fastened under water near the dam it was just like putting green things into a refrigerator so they will keep now you see why brownie beaver would no more have thought of building his house on dry land
+than you would think of building one in a pond everybody likes his own way best and it never once occurred to brownie beaver that his way was the least bit strange
+chapter two going to the south my country shall thy honoured name be as a bye word through the world rouse for as if to blast thy fame this keen reproach is at thee hurled
+the banner that above the waves is floating o'er three million slaves dick walker the slave speculator who had purchased currer and althesa put them in prison until his gang was made up
+and then with his forty slaves started for the new orleans market as many of the slaves had been brought up in richmond and had relations residing there the slave trader determined to leave the city early in the morning
+so as not to witness any of those scenes so common where slaves are separated from their relatives and friends when about departing for the southern market this plan was successful for not even clotel who had been every day at the prison to see her mother and sister
+knew of their departure a march of eight days through the interior of the state and they arrived on the banks of the ohio river where they were all put on board a steamer and then speedily sailed for the place of their destination
+walker had already advertised in the new orleans papers that he would be there at a stated time with a prime lot of able bodied slaves ready for field service together with a few extra ones between the ages of fifteen and twenty five
+but like most who make a business of buying and selling slaves for gain he often bought some who were far advanced in years and would always try to sell them for five or ten years younger than they actually were
+few persons can arrive at anything like the age of a negro by mere observation unless they are well acquainted with the race therefore the slave trader very frequently carried out this deception with perfect impunity after the steamer had left the wharf
+and instructed him as to getting the negroes ready for market amongst the forty negroes were several whose appearance indicated that they had seen some years and had gone through some services
+their grey hair and whiskers at once pronounced them to be above the ages set down in the trader's advertisement
+and if he did not take delight in discharging his duty he did it with a degree of alacrity so that he might receive the approbation of his master pomp as walker usually called him was of real negro blood and would often say when alluding to himself
+dis nigger is no countefit he is de genewine artekil
+had a set of teeth which for whiteness and beauty could not be surpassed his eyes large lips thick and hair short and woolly
+that he appeared perfectly indifferent to the heartrending scenes which daily occurred in his presence it was on the second day of the steamer's voyage that pompey selected five of the old slaves took them in a room by themselves and commenced preparing them for the market
+well said pompey addressing himself to the company i is de gentman dat is to get you ready so dat you will bring marser a good price in de orleans market how old is you
+addressing himself to a man who from appearance was not less than forty if i live to see next corn planting time i will either be forty five or fifty five i don't know which
+but now you is only thirty years old dat is what marser says you is to be i know i is more den dat responded the man i knows nothing about dat
+but when you get in de market an anybody axe you how old you is an you tell em forty five marser will tie you up an gib you de whip like smoke
+well den i guess i will only be thirty when dey axe me replied the chattel
+answered the man oh uncle jim is it yes den you must have off dem dare whiskers of yours an when you get to orleans you must grease dat face an make it look shiney
+i was twenty nine last potato digging time said the man what's your name my name is tobias but dey call me toby well toby or mister tobias if dat will suit you better
+you is now twenty three years old an no more dus you hear dat yes responded toby
+and then reported to his master that the old boys were all right at eight o'clock on the evening of the third day the lights of another steamer were seen in the distance and apparently coming up very fast this was a signal for a general commotion on the patriot
+and everything indicated that a steamboat race was at hand nothing can exceed the excitement attendant upon a steamboat race on the mississippi river by the time the boats had reached memphis they were side by side
+and each exerting itself to keep the ascendancy in point of speed the night was clear the moon shining brightly and the boats so near to each other that the passengers were calling out from one boat to the other
+on board the patriot the firemen were using oil lard butter and even bacon with the wood for the purpose of raising the steam to its highest pitch the blaze mingled with the black smoke showed plainly that the other boat was burning more than wood
+the two boats soon locked so that the hands of the boats were passing from vessel to vessel and the wildest excitement prevailed throughout amongst both passengers and crew
+at this moment the engineer of the patriot was seen to fasten down the safety valve so that no steam should escape this was indeed a dangerous resort
+the patriot stopped to take in passengers and still no steam was permitted to escape
+and as might have been expected one of the boilers immediately exploded one dense fog of steam filled every part of the vessel while shrieks groans and cries were heard on every hand the saloons and cabins soon had the appearance of a hospital
+by this time the boat had landed and the columbia the other boat
+the killed and scalded nineteen in number
+thousands of dollars change hands during a passage from louisville or saint louis to new orleans on a mississippi steamer and many men and even ladies are completely ruined go call my boy steward
+said mister smith as he took his cards one by one from the table in a few moments a fine looking bright eyed mulatto boy apparently about fifteen years of age was standing by his master's side at the table
+i will see you and five hundred dollars better said smith as his servant jerry approached the table
+he will bring a thousand dollars any day in the new orleans market replied smith then you bet the whole of the boy do you yes i call you then said johnson at the same time spreading his cards out upon the table
+you have beat me said smith as soon as he saw the cards jerry who was standing on top of the table with the bank notes and silver dollars round his feet was now ordered to descend from the table
+you will not forget that you belong to me said johnson as the young slave was stepping from the table to a chair no sir replied the chattel
+yes sir responded jerry as he wiped the tears from his eyes smith took from his pocket the bill of sale and handed it to johnson at the same time saying
+i claim the right of redeeming that boy mister johnson my father gave him to me when i came of age and i promised not to part with him most certainly sir the boy shall be yours whenever you hand me over a cool thousand replied johnson
+the next morning as the passengers were assembling in the breakfast saloons and upon the guards of the vessel and the servants were seen running about waiting upon or looking for their masters poor jerry was entering his new master's stateroom with his boots
+who do you belong to said a gentleman to an old black man
+when i went to sleep last night i belonged to governor lucas but i understand dat he is bin gambling all night so i don't know who owns me dis morning such is the uncertainty of a slave's position
+he goes to bed at night the property of the man with whom he has lived for years and gets up in the morning the slave of some one whom he has never seen before
+to behold five or six tables in a steamboat's cabin with half a dozen men playing at cards and money pistols bowie knives all in confusion on the tables is what may be seen at almost any time on the mississippi river on the fourth day while at natchez
+taking in freight and passengers walker who had been on shore to see some of his old customers returned accompanied by a tall thin faced man dressed in black with a white neckcloth which immediately proclaimed him to be a clergyman
+i want a good trusty woman for house service said the stranger as they entered the cabin where walker's slaves were kept here she is and no mistake replied the trader stand up currer my gal here's a gentleman who wishes to see if you will suit him
+she is a rare cook a good washer and will suit you to a t i am sure if you buy me i hope you will buy my daughter too said the woman in rather an excited manner
+i only want one for my own use and would not need another said the man in black as he and the trader left the room walker and the parson went into the saloon talked over the matter the bill of sale was made out the money paid over
+and the clergyman left with the understanding that the woman should be delivered to him at his house it seemed as if poor althesa would have wept herself to death for the first two days after her mother had been torn from her side by the hand of the ruthless trafficker in human flesh
+on the arrival of the boat at baton rouge an additional number of passengers were taken on board and amongst them several persons who had been attending the races gambling and drinking were now the order of the day
+which caused great uneasiness to the ladies and took the gentlemen to that part of the cabin however nothing serious had occurred a man at one of the tables where they were gambling had been seen attempting to conceal a card in his sleeve
+and one of the party seized his pistol and fired but fortunately the barrel of the pistol was knocked up just as it was about to be discharged and the ball passed through the upper deck instead of the man's head as intended order was soon restored
+all went on well the remainder of the night and the next day at ten o'clock the boat arrived at new orleans
+our eyes are yet on afric's shores her thousand wrongs we still deplore we see the grim slave trader there we hear his fettered victim's prayer and hasten to the sufferer's aid
+forgetful of our own slave trade the ocean pirate's fiend like form shall sink beneath the vengeance storm his heart of steel shall quake before the battle din and havoc roar
+the knave shall die the law hath said while it protects our own slave trade what earthly eye presumes to scan the wily proteus heart of man what potent hand will e'er unroll
+the mantled treachery of his soul o where is he who hath surveyed the horrors of our own slave trade there is an eye that wakes in light there is a hand of peerless might which soon or late
+shall yet assail and rend dissimulation's veil
+suddenly it was as though the sun had shone into his soul he heard russian being spoken and also heard the rapid smooth flow of the terek and a few steps farther in front of him saw the brown moving surface of the river
+with the dim coloured wet sand of its banks and shallows the distant steppe the cordon watch tower outlined above the water a saddled and hobbled horse among the brambles and then the mountains opening out before him
+the red sun appeared for an instant from under a cloud and its last rays glittered brightly along the river over the reeds on the watch tower
+and on a group of cossacks among whom lukashka's vigorous figure attracted olenin's involuntary attention olenin felt that he was again without any apparent cause perfectly happy
+he had come upon the nizhni prototsk post on the terek opposite a pro russian tartar village on the other side of the river he accosted the cossacks but not finding as yet any excuse for doing anyone a kindness he entered the hut
+because they had something else to divert them that evening some hostile chechens relatives of the abrek who had been killed had come from the hills with a scout to ransom the body
+and the cossacks were waiting for their commanding officer's arrival from the village the dead man's brother tall and well shaped with a short cropped beard which was dyed red despite his very tattered coat and cap
+was calm and majestic as a king his face was very like that of the dead abrek he did not deign to look at anyone and never once glanced at the dead body but sitting on his heels in the shade he spat as he smoked his short pipe
+and occasionally uttered some few guttural sounds of command which were respectfully listened to by his companion he was evidently a brave who had met russians more than once before in quite other circumstances and nothing about them could astonish or even interest him
+olenin was about to approach the dead body and had begun to look at it when the brother looking up at him from under his brows with calm contempt said something sharply and angrily
+the scout hastened to cover the dead man's face with his coat olenin was struck
+he began to speak to him asking from what village he came but the chechen scarcely giving him a glance spat contemptuously and turned away
+olenin was so surprised at the chechen not being interested in him that he could only put it down to the man's stupidity or ignorance of russian so he turned to the scout who also acted as interpreter the scout was as ragged as the other
+but instead of being red haired he was black haired restless with extremely white gleaming teeth and sparkling black eyes the scout willingly entered into conversation and asked for a cigarette there were five brothers
+began the scout in his broken russian this is the third brother the russians have killed only two are left he is a brave a great brave he said pointing to the chechen
+this one was sitting on the opposite bank among the reeds he saw it all saw him laid in the skiff and brought to the bank he sat there till the night and wished to kill the old man but the others would not let him
+lukashka went up to the speaker and sat down of what village asked he from there in the hills replied the scout pointing to the misty bluish gorge beyond the terek do you know suuk su it is about eight miles beyond that
+evidently proud of the acquaintance he is my kunak he is my neighbour answered the scout he's a trump and lukashka evidently much interested began talking to the scout in tartar presently a cossack captain
+with the head of the village arrived on horseback with a suite of two cossacks the captain one of the new type of cossack officers wished the cossacks good health but no one shouted in reply hail good health to your honour
+as is customary in the russian army and only a few replied with a bow some and among them lukashka rose and stood erect the corporal replied that all was well at the outposts all this seemed ridiculous
+it was as if these cossacks were playing at being soldiers but these formalities soon gave place to ordinary ways of behaviour and the captain who was a smart cossack just like the others began speaking fluently in tartar to the interpreter
+they filled in some document gave it to the scout and received from him some money then they approached the body which of you is luke gavrilov
+i have reported your exploit to the commander i don't know what will come of it i have recommended you for a cross you're too young to be made a sergeant can you read i can't but what a fine fellow to look at said the captain
+again playing the commander put on your cap which of the gavrilovs does he come of the broad eh his nephew replied the corporal
+well lend a hand help them he said turning to the cossacks lukashka's face shone with joy and seemed handsomer than usual he moved away from the corporal and having put on his cap sat down beside olenin
+when the body had been carried to the skiff the brother chechen descended to the bank the cossacks involuntarily stepped aside to let him pass he jumped into the boat and pushed off from the bank with his powerful leg and now
+as olenin noticed for the first time threw a rapid glance at all the cossacks and then abruptly asked his companion a question the latter answered something and pointed to lukashka
+the chechen looked at him and turning slowly away gazed at the opposite bank that look expressed not hatred but cold contempt he again made some remark what is he saying olenin asked of the fidgety scout
+yours kill ours ours slay yours it's always the same replied the scout evidently inventing and he smiled showing his white teeth as he jumped into the skiff the dead man's brother sat motionless
+gazing at the opposite bank he was so full of hatred and contempt that there was nothing on this side of the river that moved his curiosity the scout standing up at one end of the skiff
+and dipping his paddle now on one side now on the other steered skilfully while talking incessantly the skiff became smaller and smaller as it moved obliquely across the stream the voices became scarcely audible
+and at last still within sight they landed on the opposite bank where their horses stood waiting there they lifted out the corpse and though the horse shied laid it across one of the saddles
+mounted and rode at a foot pace along the road past a tartar village from which a crowd came out to look at them the cossacks on the russian side of the river were highly satisfied and jovial laughter and jokes were heard on all sides
+the captain and the head of the village entered the mud hut to regale themselves lukashka vainly striving to impart a sedate expression to his merry face sat down with his elbows on his knees beside olenin and whittled away at a stick
+look there now the mountains are not far off continued lukashka yet you can't get there how will you get back alone it's getting dark i'll take you if you like you ask the corporal to give me leave what a fine fellow
+thought olenin looking at the cossack's bright face
+can it be that nothing tells him that it is not a reason for any rejoicing and that happiness lies not in killing but in sacrificing oneself well you had better not meet him again now mate
+said one of the cossacks who had seen the skiff off addressing lukashka did you hear him asking about you lukashka raised his head my godson said lukashka meaning by that word the dead chechen your godson won't rise
+but the red one is the godson's brother let him thank god that he got off whole himself replied lukashka
+and olenin to please lukashka as well as to avoid going back alone through the dark forest asked the corporal to give lukashka leave and the corporal did so
+olenin thought that lukashka wanted to see maryanka and he was also glad of the companionship of such a pleasant looking and sociable cossack lukashka and maryanka he involuntarily united in his mind and he found pleasure in thinking about them
+he loves maryanka thought olenin and i could love her and a new and powerful emotion of tenderness overcame him as they walked homewards together through the dark forest lukashka too felt happy
+something akin to love made itself felt between these two very different young men every time they glanced at one another they wanted to laugh by which gate do you enter asked olenin
+by the middle one but i'll see you as far as the marsh after that you have nothing to fear olenin laughed
+it's all right what have i to do and how can you help being afraid even we are afraid said lukashka to set olenin's self esteem at rest and he laughed too then come in with me we'll have a talk and a drink and in the morning you can go back
+couldn't i find a place to spend the night laughed lukashka but the corporal asked me to go back i heard you singing last night and also saw you every one and luke swayed his head is it true you are getting married asked olenin
+mother wants me to marry but i have not got a horse yet aren't you in the regular service oh dear no i've only just joined and have not got a horse yet and don't know how to get one that's why the marriage does not come off
+and what would a horse cost we were bargaining for one beyond the river the other day and they would not take sixty rubles for it
+will you come and be my drabant a drabant was a kind of orderly attached to an officer when campaigning i'll get it arranged and will give you a horse said olenin suddenly really now i have two and i don't want both
+how don't want it lukashka said laughing why should you make me a present we'll get on by ourselves by god's help no really or don't you want to be a drabant said olenin glad that it had entered his head to give a horse to lukashka
+though without knowing why he felt uncomfortable and confused and did not know what to say when he tried to speak lukashka was the first to break the silence have you a house of your own in russia he asked olenin could not refrain from replying
+that he had not only one but several houses a good house bigger than ours asked lukashka good naturedly much bigger ten times as big and three storeys high replied olenin and have you horses such as ours
+i have a hundred horses worth three or four hundred rubles each but they are not like yours they are trotters you know but still i like the horses here best well and did you come here of your own free will or were you sent said lukashka
+laughing at him look that's where you lost your way he added you should have turned to the right i came by my own wish replied olenin i wanted to see your parts and to join some expeditions i would go on an expedition any day said lukashka
+d'you hear the jackals howling he added listening i say don't you feel any horror at having killed a man asked olenin what's there to be frightened about but i should like to join an expedition lukashka repeated how i want to how i want to
+perhaps we may be going together our company is going before the holidays and your hundred too and what did you want to come here for you've a house and horses and serfs
+i am a cadet but have been recommended for a commission well if you're not bragging about your home
+the wind howled through the tree tops the jackals suddenly seemed to be crying close beside them howling chuckling and sobbing but ahead of them in the village the sounds of women's voices and the barking of dogs could already be heard
+the outlines of the huts were clearly to be seen lights gleamed and the air was filled with the peculiar smell of kisyak smoke olenin felt keenly that night especially that here in this village was his home his family
+all his happiness and that he never had and never would live so happily anywhere as he did in this cossack village he was so fond of everybody and especially of lukashka that night
+on reaching home to lukashka's great surprise olenin with his own hands led out of the shed a horse he had bought in groznoe it was not the one he usually rode but another not a bad horse though no longer young
+and gave it to lukashka why should you give me a present said lukashka i have not yet done anything for you really it is nothing answered olenin take it and you will give me a present and we'll go on an expedition against the enemy together lukashka became confused
+take it take it if you don't you will offend me vanyusha take the grey horse to his house lukashka took hold of the halter well then thank you this is something unexpected undreamt of
+olenin was as happy as a boy of twelve tie it up here it's a good horse i bought it in groznoe it gallops splendidly
+the wine was brought lukashka sat down and took the wine bowl god willing i'll find a way to repay you he said finishing his wine how are you called
+we will be kunaks now you must come to see us though we are not rich people still we can treat a kunak and i will tell mother in case you need anything clotted cream or grapes and if you come to the cordon
+i'm your servant to go hunting or to go across the river anywhere you like there now only the other day what a boar i killed and i divided it among the cossacks but if i had only known i'd have given it to you
+that's all right thank you but don't harness the horse it has never been in harness why harness the horse and there is something else i'll tell you if you like said lukashka bending his head i have a kunak
+he asked me to lie in ambush by the road where they come down from the mountains shall we go together i'll not betray you
+and it was late when lukashka not tipsy he never was tipsy but having drunk a good deal left olenin after shaking hands olenin looked out of the window to see what he would do
+lukashka went out hanging his head then having led the horse out of the gate he suddenly shook his head threw the reins of the halter over its head sprang onto its back like a cat gave a wild shout and galloped down the street
+but though he did not do so olenin still felt his soul more at ease than ever before in his life he was as delighted as a boy
+and could not refrain from telling vanyusha not only that he had given lukashka the horse but also why he had done it as well as his new theory of happiness vanyusha did not approve of his theory and announced that
+which had run on in front started two pheasants he had hardly stepped among the briers when the pheasants began to rise at every step the old man had not shown him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for shooting from behind the screen
+olenin fired twelve times and killed five pheasants but clambering after them through the briers he got so fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration he called off his dog uncocked his gun
+put in a bullet above the small shot and brushing away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his circassian coat he went slowly to the spot where they had been the day before it was however impossible to keep back the dog
+who found trails on the very path and olenin killed two more pheasants so that after being detained by this it was getting towards noon before he began to find the place he was looking for the day was perfectly clear
+calm and hot the morning moisture had dried up even in the forest and myriads of mosquitoes literally covered his face his back and his arms his dog had turned from black to grey
+its back being covered with mosquitoes and so had olenin's coat through which the insects thrust their stings olenin was ready to run away from them and it seemed to him that it was impossible to live in this country in the summer
+he was about to go home but remembering that other people managed to endure such pain he resolved to bear it and gave himself up to be devoured and strange to say by noontime the feeling became actually pleasant
+he even felt that without this mosquito filled atmosphere around him and that mosquito paste mingled with perspiration which his hand smeared over his face and that unceasing irritation all over his body
+the forest would lose for him some of its character and charm these myriads of insects were so well suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation these multitudes of birds and beasts which filled the forest
+this dark foliage this hot scented air
+these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere soaked through from the terek and gurgled here and there under the overhanging leaves that the very thing which had at first seemed to him dreadful and intolerable
+now seemed pleasant after going round the place where yesterday they had found the animal and not finding anything he felt inclined to rest
+having found the traces of yesterday's stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the stag had lain and lay down in its lair he examined the dark foliage around him
+the place marked by the stag's perspiration and yesterday's dung the imprint of the stag's knees the bit of black earth it had kicked up and his own footprints of the day before he felt cool and comfortable
+and did not think of or wish for anything
+suddenly with extraordinary clearness he thought here am i dmitri olenin a being quite distinct from every other being now lying all alone heaven only knows where where a stag used to live
+an old stag a beautiful stag who perhaps had never seen a man and in a place where no human being has ever sat or thought these thoughts here i sit and around me stand old and young trees
+one of them festooned with wild grape vines and pheasants are fluttering driving one another about and perhaps scenting their murdered brothers he felt his pheasants examined them
+and wiped the warm blood off his hand onto his coat perhaps the jackals scent them and with dissatisfied faces go off in another direction above me
+flying in among the leaves which to them seem enormous islands mosquitoes hang in the air and buzz one two three four
+a hundred a thousand a million mosquitoes and all of them buzz something or other and each one of them is separate from all else and is just such a separate dmitri olenin as i am myself
+he vividly imagined what the mosquitoes buzzed this way this way lads here's some one we can eat they buzzed and stuck to him and it was clear to him that he was not a russian nobleman a member of moscow society
+the friend and relation of so and so and so and so but just such a mosquito or pheasant or deer as those that were now living all around him just as they just as daddy eroshka
+grass will grow and nothing more but what though the grass does grow he continued thinking still i must live and be happy because happiness is all i desire
+never mind what i am an animal like all the rest above whom the grass will grow and nothing more or a frame in which a bit of the one god has been set still i must live in the very best way
+how then must i live to be happy and why was i not happy before and he began to recall his former life and he felt disgusted with himself
+though he now saw that all the while he really needed nothing for himself and he looked round at the foliage with the light shining through it at the setting sun and the clear sky and he felt just as happy as before why am i happy
+and what used i to live for thought he how much i exacted for myself how i schemed and did not manage to gain anything but shame and sorrow and there now i require nothing to be happy
+and suddenly a new light seemed to reveal itself to him happiness is this he said to himself happiness lies in living for others that is evident the desire for happiness is innate in every man
+it follows that it is these desires that are illegitimate but not the need for happiness but what desires can always be satisfied despite external circumstances what are they love self sacrifice
+he was so glad and excited when he had discovered this as it seemed to him new truth that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking some one to sacrifice himself for to do good to and to love
+when he had come out into the glade he looked around him the sun was no longer visible above the tree tops it had grown cooler and the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the country round the village everything seemed changed
+the weather and the character of the forest the sky was wrapped in clouds the wind was rustling in the tree tops and all around nothing was visible but reeds and dying broken down trees
+he called to his dog who had run away to follow some animal and his voice came back as in a desert and suddenly he was seized with a terrible sense of weirdness he grew frightened
+he remembered the abreks and the murders he had been told about and he expected every moment that an abrek would spring from behind every bush and he would have to defend his life and die or be a coward he thought of god
+and of the future life as for long he had not thought about them and all around was that same gloomy stern wild nature and is it worth while living for oneself thought he
+when at any moment you may die and die without having done any good and so that no one will know of it he went in the direction where he fancied the village lay of his shooting he had no further thought
+but he felt tired to death and peered round at every bush and tree with particular attention and almost with terror expecting every moment to be called to account for his life
+after having wandered about for a considerable time he came upon a ditch down which was flowing cold sandy water from the terek and not to go astray any longer he decided to follow it
+he went on without knowing where the ditch would lead him suddenly the reeds behind him crackled he shuddered and seized his gun and then felt ashamed of himself
+he saw that his hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought rostov glanced angrily at ilyin and without replying strode off with rapid steps to the village i'll show them i'll give it to them the brigands said he to himself
+what decision have you been pleased to come to said he rostov stopped
+decision what decision
+and you can't manage them you're a traitor yourself i know you i'll flay you all alive and as if afraid of wasting his store of anger he left alpatych and went rapidly forward alpatych mastering his offended feelings kept pace with rostov at a gliding gait
+and continued to impart his views he said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be imprudent to overresist them without an armed force and would it not be better first to send for the military i'll give them armed force
+without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick resolute steps toward the crowd
+the peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw rostov's rapid firm steps and resolute frowning face after the hussars had come to the village and rostov had gone to see the princess a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among the crowd
+some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained dron was of this opinion but as soon as he expressed it karp and others attacked their ex elder how many years have you been fattening on the commune
+what does it matter to you whether our homes are ruined or not we've been told to keep order and that no one is to leave their homes or take away a single grain and that's all about it cried another it was your son's turn to be conscripted but no fear
+you begrudged your lump of a son a little old man suddenly began attacking dron
+karp thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little walked to the front dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer together
+shouted rostov coming up to the crowd with quick steps the elder
+but before the words were well out of his mouth his cap flew off and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side caps off traitors shouted rostov in a wrathful voice where's the elder he cried furiously the elder he wants the elder
+meek and flustered voices here and there were heard calling
+we don't riot we're following the orders declared karp and at that moment several voices began speaking together it's as the old men have decided there's too many of you giving orders arguing mutiny brigands traitors cried rostov
+unmeaningly in a voice not his own gripping karp by the collar bind him bind him he shouted
+lavrushka however ran up to karp and seized him by the arms from behind shall i call up our men from beyond the hill he called out
+by name to come and bind karp the men obediently came out of the crowd and began taking off their belts where's the elder demanded rostov in a loud voice with a pale and frowning face dron stepped out of the crowd are you the elder bind him lavrushka
+shouted rostov as if that order too could not possibly meet with any opposition and in fact two more peasants began binding dron who took off his own belt and handed it to them as if to aid them and you all listen to me said rostov to the peasants
+be off to your houses at once and don't let one of your voices be heard why we've not done any harm we did it just out of foolishness it's all nonsense i said then that it was not in order voices were heard bickering with one another
+all our stupidity yakov alpatych came the answers and the crowd began at once to disperse through the village the two bound men were led off to the master's house the two drunken peasants followed them aye when i look at you said one of them to karp
+two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the bogucharovo house the peasants were briskly carrying out the proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts and dron liberated at princess mary's wish from the cupboard where he had been confined
+was standing in the yard directing the men don't put it in so carelessly said one of the peasants
+you know it has cost money how can you chuck it in like that or shove it under the cord where it'll get rubbed i don't like that way of doing things let it all be done properly according to rule
+look here put it under the bast matting and cover it with hay that's the way
+don't catch up against it it's heavy lads solid books yes they worked all day and didn't play remarked the tall round faced peasant gravely pointing with a significant wink at the dictionaries that were on the top
+unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess rostov did not go back to the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure when her carriage drove out of the house he mounted and accompanied her eight miles from bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our troops
+at the inn at yankovo he respectfully took leave of her for the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand how can you speak so he blushingly replied to princess mary's expressions of gratitude for her deliverance as she termed what had occurred
+said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject
+good bye princess i wish you happiness and consolation and hope to meet you again in happier circumstances if you don't want to make me blush please don't thank me but the princess if she did not again thank him in words
+thanked him with the whole expression of her face radiant with gratitude and tenderness she could not believe that there was nothing to thank him for on the contrary it seemed to her certain that had he not been there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers and of the french
+honest eyes with the tears rising in them when she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss did not leave her memory when she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt her eyes filling with tears
+more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow well supposing i do love him thought princess mary ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who
+would perhaps never love her she comforted herself with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she would not be to blame if without ever speaking of it to anyone she continued to the end of her life to love the man with whom she had fallen in love for the first and last time in her life
+sometimes when she recalled his looks his sympathy and his words happiness did not appear impossible to her it was at those moments that dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the carriage window was it not fate that brought him to bogucharovo and at that very moment thought princess mary
+and that caused his sister to refuse my brother and in all this princess mary saw the hand of providence the impression the princess made on rostov was a very agreeable one to remember her gave him pleasure
+rallied him on having gone to look for hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in russia he grew angry it made him angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle princess mary who was attractive to him
+and had an enormous fortune had against his will more than once entered his head for himself personally nicholas could not wish for a better wife by marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy would be able to put his father's affairs in order
+why and how were the battles of shevardino and borodino given and accepted why was the battle of borodino fought there was not the least sense in it for either the french or the russians its immediate result for the russians was and was bound to be
+that we were brought nearer to the destruction of moscow which we feared more than anything in the world and for the french its immediate result was that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their whole army which they feared more than anything in the world
+what the result must be was quite obvious and yet napoleon offered and kutuzov accepted that battle if the commanders had been guided by reason it would seem that it must have been obvious to napoleon
+that by advancing thirteen hundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army he was advancing to certain destruction and it must have been equally clear to kutuzov that by accepting battle
+and go on exchanging i shall certainly lose and therefore should not exchange when my opponent has sixteen men and i have fourteen i am only one eighth weaker than he but when i have exchanged thirteen more men
+he will be three times as strong as i am before the battle of borodino our strength in proportion to the french was about as five to six but after that battle it was little more than one to two previously
+we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and twenty thousand afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a hundred thousand yet the shrewd and experienced kutuzov accepted the battle while napoleon
+as he had ended a previous campaign by occupying vienna there is much evidence to the contrary napoleon's historians themselves tell us that from smolensk onwards he wished to stop
+to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate in giving and accepting battle at borodino kutuzov acted involuntarily and irrationally but later on to fit what had occurred
+the historians provided cunningly devised evidence
+of all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved and involuntary the ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish the whole interest of the story
+and we are still unable to accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are meaningless on the other question how the battle of borodino and the preceding battle of shevardino were fought
+there also exists a definite and well known but quite false conception all the historians describe the affair as follows the russian army they say in its retreat from smolensk sought out for itself the best position for a general engagement
+at the very place where the battle was fought in front of this position they say a fortified outpost was set up on the shevardino mound to observe the enemy on the twenty fourth we are told napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it
+and on the twenty sixth attacked the whole russian army which was in position on the field of borodino so the histories say and it is all quite wrong as anyone who cares to look into the matter can easily convince himself
+the russians did not seek out the best position but on the contrary during the retreat passed many positions better than borodino they did not stop at any one of these positions because kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position
+he had not himself chosen because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly enough and because miloradovich had not yet arrived with the militia and for many other reasons
+the fact is that other positions they had passed were stronger and that the position at borodino the one where the battle was fought far from being strong was no more a position than any other spot one might find in the russian empire
+by sticking a pin into the map at hazard not only did the russians not fortify the position on the field of borodino to the left of and at a right angle to the highroad
+that is the position on which the battle took place but never till the twenty fifth of august eighteen twelve did they think that a battle might be fought there this was shown first by the fact that there were no entrenchments there by the twenty fifth
+and that those begun on the twenty fifth and twenty sixth were not completed and secondly by the position of the shevardino redoubt that redoubt was quite senseless in front of the position where the battle was accepted
+strongly fortified than any other post and why were all efforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at night on the twenty fourth a cossack patrol would have sufficed to observe the enemy thirdly
+that the shevardino redoubt was an advanced post whereas in reality it was simply a fortified point on the left flank and that the battle of borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously selected where
+which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an acute angle so that the left flank was at shevardino
+and the center at borodino at the confluence of the rivers kolocha and voyna to anyone who looks at the field of borodino without thinking of how the battle was actually fought this position
+protected by the river kolocha presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to prevent an enemy from advancing along the smolensk road to moscow napoleon
+on the twenty fourth did not see as the history books say he did the position of the russians from utitsa to borodino he could not have seen that position because it did not exist nor did he see an advanced post of the russian army
+but while pursuing the russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the russian position at the shevardino redoubt and unexpectedly for the russians moved his army across the kolocha
+and the russians not having time to begin a general engagement withdrew their left wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position which had not been foreseen and was not fortified
+by crossing to the other side of the kolocha to the left of the highroad napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left looking from the russian side and transferred it to the plain between utitsa
+semenovsk and borodino a plain no more advantageous as a position than any other plain in russia and there the whole battle of the twenty sixth of august took place
+had napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty fourth to the kolocha and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt but had begun the attack next morning
+would have taken place where we expected it in that case we should probably have defended the shevardino redoubt our left flank still more obstinately we should have attacked napoleon in the center or on the right
+and the engagement would have taken place on the twenty fifth in the position we intended and had fortified but as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of our rear guard that is immediately after the fight
+at gridneva and as the russian commanders did not wish or were not in time to begin a general engagement then on the evening of the twenty fourth the first and chief action of the battle of borodino
+was already lost on the twenty fourth and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the twenty sixth after the loss of the shevardino redoubt
+not only was the russian army on the twenty sixth defended by weak unfinished entrenchments but the disadvantage of that position was increased by the fact that the russian commanders
+namely the loss of our position on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field of the forthcoming battle from right to left
+and consequently had to move their forces from right to left during the battle so it happened that throughout the whole battle the russians opposed the entire french army launched against our left flank with but half as many men
+poniatowski's action against utitsa and uvarov's on the right flank against the french were actions distinct from the main course of the battle so the battle of borodino did not take place at all as
+in an effort to conceal our commanders mistakes even at the cost of diminishing the glory due to the russian army and people it has been described
+when pierre returned home he was handed two of rostopchin's broadsheets that had been brought that day
+on the contrary he was glad that ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city there will be less panic and less gossip ran the broadsheet
+that the french would enter moscow the second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at vyazma that count wittgenstein had defeated the french but that as many of the inhabitants of moscow wished to be armed weapons were ready for them at the arsenal
+with the whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in him was drawing near shall i join the army and enter the service
+if this patience comes out he said to himself after shuffling the cards holding them in his hand and lifting his head if it comes out it means what does it mean he had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of the eldest princess
+at the door asking whether she might come in then it will mean that i must go to the army said pierre to himself come in come in he added to the princess only the eldest princess the one with the stony face and long waist was still living in pierre's house
+everyone has left moscow and the people are rioting how is it that we are staying on on the contrary things seem satisfactory ma cousine said pierre in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her always feeling uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor
+satisfactory indeed very satisfactory barbara ivanovna told me today how our troops are distinguishing themselves it certainly does them credit and the people too are quite mutinous
+they no longer obey even my maid has taken to being rude at this rate they will soon begin beating us one can't walk in the streets but above all the french will be here any day now so what are we waiting for i ask just one thing of you cousin she went on
+arrange for me to be taken to petersburg whatever i may be i can't live under bonaparte's rule oh come ma cousine where do you get your information from on the contrary
+i won't submit to your napoleon others may if they please if you don't want to do this but i will i'll give the order at once the princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry with muttering to herself she sat down on a chair
+but you have been misinformed said pierre everything is quiet in the city and there is not the slightest danger see i've just been reading he showed her the broadsheet
+oh that count of yours said the princess malevolently he is a hypocrite a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot didn't he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone whoever it might be should be dragged to the lockup by his hair how silly
+and honor and glory to whoever captures him he says this is what his cajolery has brought us to barbara ivanovna told me the mob near killed her because she said something in french oh but it's so you
+take everything so to heart said pierre and began laying out his cards for patience although that patience did come out pierre did not join the army but remained in deserted moscow ever in the same state of agitation
+irresolution and alarm yet at the same time joyfully expecting something terrible next day toward evening the princess set off and pierre's head steward came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment of his regiment
+could not be found without selling one of the estates in general the head steward made out to pierre that his project of raising a regiment would ruin him pierre listened to him scarcely able to repress a smile
+well then sell it said he what's to be done i can't draw back now the worse everything became especially his own affairs the better was pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the catastrophe he expected was approaching
+hardly anyone he knew was left in town julie had gone and so had princess mary of his intimate friends only the rostovs remained but he did not go to see them to distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of
+vorontsovo to see the great balloon leppich was constructing to destroy the foe and a trial balloon that was to go up next day the balloon was not yet ready but pierre learned that it was being constructed by the emperor's desire
+get together a crew of reliable and intelligent men for his car and send a courier to general kutuzov to let him know i have informed him of the matter please impress upon leppich to be very careful where he descends for the first time
+that he may not make a mistake and fall into the enemy's hands it is essential for him to combine his movements with those of the commander in chief on his way home from vorontsovo
+stopped and got out of his trap a french cook accused of being a spy was being flogged the flogging was only just over and the executioner was releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers in blue stockings and a green jacket
+who was moaning piteously another criminal thin and pale stood near judging by their faces they were both frenchmen with a frightened and suffering look resembling that on the thin frenchman's face pierre pushed his way in through the crowd
+what is it who is it what is it for he kept asking but the attention of the crowd officials burghers shopkeepers peasants and women in cloaks and in pelisses
+that no one answered him the stout man rose frowned shrugged his shoulders and evidently trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking about him but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry
+russian sauce seems to be sour to a frenchman sets his teeth on edge said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind pierre when the frenchman began to cry the clerk glanced round evidently hoping that his joke would be appreciated
+some people began to laugh others continued to watch in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man pierre choked his face puckered and he turned hastily away went back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went and took his seat
+as they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times so audibly that the coachman asked him what is your pleasure where are you going shouted pierre to the man who was driving to lubyanka street
+at the sight of the tortured frenchman and the crowd surrounding the lobnoe place pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no longer remain in moscow and would leave for the army that very day that it seemed to him that either
+he had told the coachman this or that the man ought to have known it for himself on reaching home pierre gave orders to evstafey his head coachman who knew everything could do anything and was known to all moscow
+and that his saddle horses should be sent there this could not all be arranged that day so on
+this was the battle of shevardino he was told that there in perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing but nobody could answer his questions as to who had won at dawn next day pierre was approaching mozhaysk
+every house in mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it and at the hostel where pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be had it was full of officers
+everywhere in mozhaysk and beyond it troops were stationed or on the march cossacks foot and horse soldiers wagons caissons and cannon were everywhere
+pierre pushed forward as fast as he could and the farther he left moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before
+the comforts of life wealth even life itself is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away compared with something with what pierre could not say and he did not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular delight in sacrificing everything
+chapter thirteen the boomerang the lawn fete was a tremendous success and every farmer's wife was proud of her satin badge bearing the monogram w p l and the words
+forbes for representative certain edibles such as charlotte russe spanish cream wine jellies and mousses to say nothing of the caviars and anchovies were wholly unknown to them
+but they ate the dainties with a wise disregard of their inexperience and enjoyed them immensely the old butler was a general in his way and in view of the fact that the staff of servants at elmhurst
+was insufficient to cope with such a throng he allowed louise to impress several farmers daughters into service and was able to feed everyone without delay and in an abundant and satisfactory manner
+after luncheon began the speech making interspersed with music by the band louise made the preliminary address and although her voice was not very strong
+the silent attention of her hearers permitted her to be generally understood she called attention to the fact that this campaign was important because it promised more beautiful and attractive houses for the farmers and townsmen alike
+we had all grown so accustomed to advertising signs she said that we failed to notice how thick they were becoming or how bold and overpowering from a few scattered announcements on fence boards
+they had crowded themselves into more prominent places until the barns and sheds and the very rocks were daubed with glaring letters asking us to buy the medicines soaps tobaccos and other wares the manufacturers were anxious to sell
+every country road became an advertising avenue scarcely a country house was free from signs of some sort yet the people tamely submitted to this imposition because they knew no way to avoid it
+when mister forbes began his campaign to restore the homesteads to their former beauty and dignity a cry was raised against him but this was because the farmers did not understand how much this reform meant to them
+so we gave them an object lesson we painted out all the signs in this section at our own expense that you might see how much more beautiful your homes are without them
+we believe that none of you will ever care to allow advertising signs on your property again and that the quiet refinement of this part of the country will induce many other places to follow our example
+until advertisers are forced to confine themselves to newspapers magazines and circulars their only legitimate channels this much mister forbes has already done for you and he will now tell you what else if he is elected
+he proposes to do kenneth then took the platform and was welcomed with a hearty cheer he modestly assured them that a representative in the state legislature could accomplish much good for his district
+if he honestly desired to do so that was what a representative was for to represent his people it was folly to elect any man who would forget that duty and promote only his own interests through the position of power to which the people had appointed him
+mister forbes admitted that he had undertaken this campaign because he was opposed to offensive advertising signs but now he had become interested in other issues and was anxious to be elected so that he could carry on the work of reform
+they needed more school houses for their children and many other things which he hoped to provide as their representative during this oration beth happened to glance up at the house and her sharp eyes detected the maid eliza
+standing shielded behind the half closed blind of an upper window and listening to as well as watching the proceedings below then she remembered how the girl had been laughing and talking with mister hopkins when she first saw her
+her first impulse was to denounce the maid at once and have her discharged but the time was not opportune so she waited until the festivities were ended
+it had been a great day for the families of the neighboring farmers and they drove homeward in the late afternoon full of enthusiasm over the royal manner in which they had been entertained and admiration for the girls who had provided the fun and feasting
+indeed there were more kindly thoughts expressed for the inhabitants of elmhurst than had ever before been heard in a single day in the history of the county and the great and the humble seemed more closely drawn together
+when the last guest had departed beth got her cousins and kenneth together and told them of her discovery of the spy kenneth was at first greatly annoyed and proposed to call martha and have the false maid ejected from the premises
+but patsy's wise little head counselled caution in handling the matter now that we know her secret she said the girl cannot cause us more real harm
+and there may be a way to circumvent this unscrupulous hopkins and turn the incident to our own advantage let's think it over carefully before we act there's another thing said beth supporting her cousin
+i'm interested in the mystery surrounding the girl i now think i was wrong in suspecting her to be the lost lucy rogers but there is surely some romance connected with her and she is not what she seems to be
+i'd like to study her a little it was absurd to connect her with lucy rogers observed kenneth for there is nothing in her character to remind one of the unhappy girl except her looks added beth she's the living image of missus rogers
+that isn't important replied louise it is probably a mere coincidence none of us have ever seen the real lucy and she may not resemble her mother at all missus rogers claims she does said beth but anyhow
+i have a wish to keep this girl at the house where i can study her character then keep her my dear decided kenneth i'll set a couple of men to watch the gates and if she goes out we'll know whom she meets
+the most she can do is to report our movements to mister hopkins and there's no great harm in that so the matter was left for the time and as if to verify beth's suspicions eliza was seen to leave the grounds after dusk
+and meet mister hopkins in the lane they conversed together a few moments and then the maid calmly returned and went to her room the next day mister hopkins scattered flaring hand bills over the district
+they read hopkins the man of the times is the champion of the signs of the times forbes who never earned a dollar in his life but inherited his money is trying to take the dollars out of the pockets of the farmers
+by depriving them of the income derived by selling spaces for advertising signs he is robbing the farmers while claiming he wants to beautify their homes
+therefore they are going to vote for the honorable erastus hopkins for representative then followed an estimate of the money paid the farmers of the district by the advertisers during the past five years
+amounting to several thousands of dollars in the aggregate the circular ended in this way hopkins challenges forbes to deny these facts hopkins is willing to meet forbes before the public at any time and place he may select
+to settle this argument in joint debate the girls accepted the challenge at once within two days every farmer had received a notice that mister forbes would meet mister hopkins
+at the fairview opera house on saturday afternoon to debate the question as to whether advertising signs brought good or evil to the community the campaign was now getting hot
+because of the activity of the opposing candidates every voter in the district had become more or less interested in the fight and people were taking one side or the other with unusual earnestness
+mister hopkins was not greatly pleased that his challenge had been accepted he had imagined that the forbes party would ignore it and leave him the prestige of crowing over his opponent's timidity
+but he remembered how easily he had subdued kenneth at the school house meeting before the nominations and had no doubt of his ability to repeat the operation he was much incensed against the girls who were working for kenneth forbes
+for he realized that they were proving an important factor in the campaign he even attributed to them more than they deserved for uncle john's telling activities were so quietly conducted
+that he was personally lost sight of entirely by mister hopkins mister hopkins had therefore become so enraged that against the advice of his friends he issued a circular sneering at women in politics
+the newspapers having been subsidized by the opposition so early in the game mister hopkins had driven to employ the circular method of communicating with the voters scarcely a day passed now that his corps of distributors
+did not leave some of his literature at every dwelling in the district his tirade against the girls was neither convincing nor in good taste he asked the voters if they were willing to submit to petticoat government and permit a
+lot of boarding school girls with more boldness than modesty to dictate the policies of the community these frizzle headed females continued the circular are trying to make your wives and daughters as rebellious and unreasonable as they are themselves
+but no man of sense will permit a woman to influence his vote it is a disgrace to this district that mister forbes allows his girlish campaign to be run by a lot of misses who should be at home darning stockings or if they were not able to do that
+if i'm not much mistaken mister hopkins has thrown a boomerang every woman who attended the fete is now linked with us as an ally and every one of them will resent this foolish circular
+i'm sorry said kenneth that you girls should be forced to endure this i feared something like it when you insisted on taking a hand in the game but they laughed at him
+and at mister hopkins and declared they were not at all offended one cannot touch pitch without being defiled said mister watson gravely
+as mister hopkins knows it is little more than pitch i cannot see that there is anything my girls have done to forfeit respect and admiration asserted uncle john stoutly to accuse them of boldness or immodesty is absurd
+they have merely gone to work in a business like manner and used their wits and common sense in educating the voters really my dears i'm more proud of you today than i've ever been before he concluded
+chapter fifteen the stranger at the door missus collingwood remained a long time up stairs
+so long indeed that the girls began to be rather uneasy fearing that she had fainted or perhaps was ill or overcome
+do you think we ought to go up asked cynthia anxiously perhaps she needs help no i think she just wants to be by herself it was fine of you cynthia to send her up alone
+i really don't believe i'd have thought of it at length they heard her coming slowly down and presently she reentered the drawing room they could see that she was much moved and had evidently been crying
+she did not speak to them at once but went and stood by the mantel looking up long and earnestly at the portrait of the twins my babies they heard her murmur unconsciously aloud
+at last however she came to them and sat down once more between them on the sofa they wondered nervously what she was going to say my little girls she began forgive me
+i suppose you consider yourselves almost young ladies but you see i am an old woman i was going to tell you a little about my life but i suppose you already know most of the important things
+she patted joyce's hand there are some things however that perhaps you do not know and after what you have done for me you deserve to i was married when i was a very young girl
+only seventeen i was a southerner but my husband came from the north and brought me up north here to live i always hated it this northern life and though i
+loved my husband dearly i hated his devotion to it we never agreed about those questions when my twin babies were born i secretly determined that they should be southerners
+in spirit and only southerners i planned that when they were both old enough they should marry in the south and live there and my husband and i with them
+but in this life things seldom turn out as we plan my little girl died before she was three and i had scarcely become reconciled to this grief
+when my husband was also taken from me so i centered all my hopes on my son on fairfax as he grew older however and as the civil war came nearer
+i noticed that he talked more and more in sympathy with the north and this distressed me terribly however i thought it best not to say much about it to him for he was a headstrong boy
+and had always resented opposition and i felt sure that he would see things differently when he was older i wished to send him to a southern college but he begged me to send him to harvard
+as his heart was so set on it i couldn't deny him thinking that even this would make little difference in the end then came the crisis in the country's affairs
+and the confederacy was declared i had already begun to correspond with southern authorities to arrange about raising a company for fairfax i never doubted that he would comply with my wishes but
+i little knew him i hardly need to tell you of the awful day that he came home you are already acquainted with the history of it that afternoon shortly after he arrived
+we had our interview i have always possessed the most violent temper a mortal had to struggle with and in those earlier years when i got into a rage it blinded me to everything else
+to every other earthly consideration and during that interview well need i say it fairfax was simply immovable gentle and loving always
+but i could no more impress him with my wishes than i could have moved the rock of gibraltar the galling part to me was that he kept insisting he was only doing what was right right
+how could he be right when it was all directly contrary but never mind that now i have learned differently with the passing sorrowful years but to go back
+i stood it as long as i could and then i turned from him disowned him bade him leave the house at once and never see my face again and informed him that i myself would abandon the place on the morrow
+and return to the south he left me without another word and went to his room i immediately summoned the servants and dismissed them on the spot giving them only time to get their things together and go
+then i locked myself in my room till he was gone he came several times knocked at my door and begged me to see him but i would not
+heaven forgive me i would not so he must have left me that note she covered her eyes with her hand a moment then she went on
+i never saw or knew of it till this day if i had just at this point they were all startled by a loud knock coming from the direction of the front door
+so unexpected was the sound that they could only stare at each other inquiringly without stirring in a moment it came again a thumping of the old knocker on the front inner door
+i guess i'd better go said joyce some one may have seen the little boarded up door open did you leave it open she asked turning to missus collingwood i think i did
+i was too hurried and nervous when i came in to think of it that's it then some one has seen it open and has stopped to inquire if everything is all right she hurried away to the front door
+and after an effort succeeded in pulling it open a man a complete stranger to her stood outside they regarded each other with mutual surprise pardon me he said
+but perhaps you can inform me is any one living in this house at present why no replied joyce rather confusedly that is no the house is empty except just just to day
+oh er i see the fact is the stranger went on i was passing here and noticed this outer door open which seemed a little queer i used to know the people who lived here very well indeed
+and i have been wondering whether the house was still in their possession it seemed to be untenanted at his mention of knowing the family joyce looked him over with considerably more interest he was tall straight and robust
+though rather verging on the elderly his iron gray hair was crisply curly and his dark eyes twinkled out from under bushy gray brows his smile was captivating
+joyce decided at once that she liked him oh did you know the family the the collingwoods he supplemented with his twinkling smile yes i knew them quite intimately
+might i perhaps if it would not be intruding come in just a moment to look once more at the old place that is he added hastily seeing her hesitate only if it would be entirely convenient
+i do not know of course why the house is open perhaps people are are about to purchase it joyce was for a moment tongue tied with perplexity she hated to refuse the simple wish of this pleasant stranger
+yet how was she to comply with it considering the presence of missus collingwood and the almost unexplainable position of herself and cynthia what would he think of it all while she was hesitating an idea came to her
+there is one of the family here to day on on business she said at last if you will give me your name i will ask if that person would like to see you oh that is hardly worth while
+my name is calthorpe but i'm sure they wouldn't remember me after all this time and i do not wish to trouble them but joyce had excused herself and turned away as soon as she heard the name leaving him standing there
+missus collingwood however shook her head when joyce announced who was outside i do not remember any one named calthorpe and i scarcely feel that i can see a stranger now
+but we must not be inhospitable miss cynthia and i will go and sit in the library and you can bring him into the drawing room a few moments there is no other part of the house that can very well be shown
+she took cynthia's arm walked into the library and partly closed the door while joyce went out to admit the stranger if you care to look around the drawing room you will be most welcome she announced politely
+he accepted the invitation gratefully and entered with her at the first glance however he started back slightly as with a shock of surprise why how strange how very singular he murmured
+these candles everything everything just the same as though it were yesterday did you often come here inquired joyce you must be very well acquainted with the house
+yes i came often i was almost like an inmate he began to wander slowly about the room examining the pictures in front of the baby twins he paused a long time
+then you must have known young mister fairfax very well suggested joyce that's he on the right in the picture the stranger eyed her curiously why yes i knew him well
+but you little lady seem quite intimate with the collingwood family history tell me are you a a relative this confused joyce anew
+but i have been told a good deal about them an unhappy family was his only comment and he continued his tour around the room
+in front of the old square open piano he paused again and fingered the silk scarf that had at some long ago date been thrown carelessly upon it then he ran his fingers lightly over the yellow keys
+the tones were unbelievably jangling and discordant yet joyce thought she caught the notes of a little tune and in another moment he broke into the air singing softly the opening line
+he had sung no more when the face of missus collingwood appeared in the doorway her eyes were wide and staring her features almost gray in color
+who who are you she demanded in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper the stranger gazed at her with a fixed look arthur
+arthur calthorpe he faltered no you are not they drew toward each other unconsciously as though moving in a dream no one
+missus collingwood came closer and uttered a sudden low cry my son mother the two girls who had been watching this scene with amazement unutterable
+then with a beautiful gesture the man held out his arms and the woman with a little gasp of happiness
+all of them took scarcely any notice of my entrance which was strange for i had not met them for years evidently they looked upon me as something on the level of a common fly i had not been treated like that even at school though they all hated me
+i knew of course that they must despise me now for my lack of success in the service and for my having let myself sink so low going about badly dressed and so on which seemed to them a sign of my incapacity and insignificance
+but i had not expected such contempt simonov was positively surprised at my turning up
+all this disconcerted me i sat down feeling rather miserable and began listening to what they were saying they were engaged in warm and earnest conversation about a farewell dinner which they wanted to arrange for the next day to a comrade of theirs called zverkov
+this zverkov had been all the time at school with me too i had begun to hate him particularly in the upper forms in the lower forms he had simply been a pretty playful boy whom everybody liked i had hated him however even in the lower forms
+just because he was a pretty and playful boy he was always bad at his lessons and got worse and worse as he went on however he left with a good certificate as he had powerful interests during his last year at school he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs
+and as almost all of us were poor he took up a swaggering tone among us he was vulgar in the extreme but at the same time he was a good natured fellow even in his swaggering
+in spite of superficial fantastic and sham notions of honour and dignity all but very few of us positively grovelled before zverkov and the more so the more he swaggered and it was not from any interested motive
+but simply because he had been favoured by the gifts of nature moreover it was as it were an accepted idea among us that zverkov was a specialist in regard to tact and the social graces this last fact particularly infuriated me
+i hated the abrupt self confident tone of his voice his admiration of his own witticisms
+though he was bold in his language i hated his handsome but stupid face for which i would however have gladly exchanged my intelligent one and the free and easy military manners in fashion in the forties
+i hated the way in which he used to talk of his future conquests of women he did not venture to begin his attack upon women until he had the epaulettes of an officer and was looking forward to them with impatience and boasted of the duels he would constantly be fighting
+i remember how i invariably so taciturn suddenly fastened upon zverkov when one day talking at a leisure moment with his schoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex and growing as sportive as a puppy in the sun
+he all at once declared that he would not leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed
+and that if the peasants dared to protest he would have them all flogged and double the tax on them the bearded rascals our servile rabble applauded but i attacked him not from compassion for the girls and their fathers
+but simply because they were applauding such an insect i got the better of him on that occasion but though zverkov was stupid he was lively and impudent and so laughed it off and in such a way that my victory was not really complete
+the laugh was on his side he got the better of me on several occasions afterwards but without malice jestingly casually i remained angrily and contemptuously silent and would not answer him when we left school he made advances to me
+i did not rebuff them for i was flattered but we soon parted and quite naturally afterwards i heard of his barrack room success as a lieutenant and of the fast life he was leading then there came other rumours
+by then he had taken to cutting me in the street and i suspected that he was afraid of compromising himself by greeting a personage as insignificant as me i saw him once in the theatre in the third tier of boxes
+by then he was wearing shoulder straps he was twisting and twirling about ingratiating himself with the daughters of an ancient general in three years he had gone off considerably though he was still rather handsome and adroit
+one could see that by the time he was thirty he would be corpulent
+they had kept up with him for those three years though privately they did not consider themselves on an equal footing with him i am convinced of that of simonov's two visitors one was ferfitchkin a russianised german
+a little fellow with the face of a monkey a blockhead who was always deriding everyone a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the lower forms a vulgar impudent swaggering fellow who affected a most sensitive feeling
+of personal honour though of course he was a wretched little coward at heart he was one of those worshippers of zverkov who made up to the latter from interested motives and often borrowed money from him simonov's other visitor trudolyubov was a person in no way remarkable
+a tall young fellow in the army with a cold face fairly honest though he worshipped success of every sort and was only capable of thinking of promotion he was some sort of distant relation of zverkov's and this
+gave him a certain importance among us he always thought me of no consequence whatever his behaviour to me though not quite courteous was tolerable well with seven roubles each said trudolyubov twenty one roubles between the three of us
+we ought to be able to get a good dinner zverkov of course won't pay of course not since we are inviting him simonov decided can you imagine ferfitchkin interrupted hotly and conceitedly
+like some insolent flunkey boasting of his master the general's decorations can you imagine that zverkov will let us pay alone he will accept from delicacy
+so the three of us with zverkov for the fourth
+simonov who had been asked to make the arrangements concluded finally how twenty one roubles i asked in some agitation with a show of being offended
+twenty eight roubles it seemed to me that to invite myself so suddenly and unexpectedly would be positively graceful and that they would all be conquered at once
+do you want to join too simonov observed with no appearance of pleasure seeming to avoid looking at me he knew me through and through it infuriated me that he knew me so thoroughly why not
+i am an old schoolfellow of his too i believe and i must own i feel hurt that you have left me out i said boiling over again and where were we to find you ferfitchkin put in roughly you never were on good terms with zverkov trudolyubov added frowning
+but i had already clutched at the idea and would not give it up it seems to me that no one has a right to form an opinion upon that i retorted in a shaking voice as though something tremendous had happened perhaps that is just my reason for wishing it now
+that i have not always been on good terms with him oh there's no making you out with these refinements trudolyubov jeered we'll put your name down simonov decided addressing me
+what about the money ferfitchkin began in an undertone indicating me to simonov but he broke off for even simonov was embarrassed that will do said trudolyubov getting up if he wants to come so much let him
+but it's a private thing between us friends ferfitchkin said crossly as he too picked up his hat it's not an official gathering we do not want at all perhaps they went away ferfitchkin did not greet me in any way as he went out
+trudolyubov barely nodded simonov with whom i was left tete a tete was in a state of vexation and perplexity and looked at me queerly
+will you pay your subscription now i just ask so as to know he muttered in embarrassment i flushed crimson as i did so i remembered that i had owed simonov fifteen roubles for ages
+which i had indeed never forgotten though i had not paid it
+vexed that i have forgotten all right all right that doesn't matter you can pay tomorrow after the dinner i simply wanted to know please don't he broke off and began pacing the room still more vexed as he walked he began to stamp with his heels
+am i keeping you i asked after two minutes of silence
+that is to be truthful yes i have to go and see someone not far from here
+my goodness why didn't you say so i cried
+it's close by not two paces away simonov repeated accompanying me to the front door with a fussy air which did not suit him at all
+he was very glad to get rid of me i was in a fury what possessed me what possessed me to force myself upon them i wondered grinding my teeth as i strode along the street for a scoundrel a pig like that zverkov of course
+i had better not go of course i must just snap my fingers at them
+but what made me furious was that i knew for certain that i should go that i should make a point of going and the more tactless the more unseemly my going would be the more certainly i would go and there was a positive obstacle to my going
+i had no money all i had was nine roubles i had to give seven of that to my servant apollon for his monthly wages that was all i paid him he had to keep himself
+not to pay him was impossible considering his character but i will talk about that fellow about that plague of mine another time however i knew i should go and should not pay him his wages that night i had the most hideous dreams
+i was sent to the school by distant relations upon whom i was dependent and of whom i have heard nothing since they sent me there a forlorn silent boy already crushed by their reproaches already troubled by doubt
+and looking with savage distrust at everyone my schoolfellows met me with spiteful and merciless jibes because i was not like any of them but i could not endure their taunts
+i could not give in to them with the ignoble readiness with which they gave in to one another i hated them from the first and shut myself away from everyone in timid wounded and disproportionate pride
+their coarseness revolted me they laughed cynically at my face at my clumsy figure and yet what stupid faces they had themselves in our school the boys faces seemed in a special way to degenerate and grow stupider
+how many fine looking boys came to us in a few years they became repulsive even at sixteen i wondered at them morosely even then i was struck by the pettiness of their thoughts the stupidity of their pursuits
+their games their conversations they had no understanding of such essential things they took no interest in such striking impressive subjects that i could not help considering them inferior to myself
+it was not wounded vanity that drove me to it and for god's sake do not thrust upon me your hackneyed remarks repeated to nausea that i was only a dreamer while they even then had an understanding of life
+they took rank for intelligence even at sixteen they were already talking about a snug berth of course a great deal of it was due to their stupidity to the bad examples with which they had always been surrounded in their childhood and boyhood
+they were monstrously depraved of course a great deal of that too was superficial and an assumption of cynicism of course there were glimpses of youth and freshness even in their depravity but even that freshness was not attractive
+and showed itself in a certain rakishness i hated them horribly though perhaps i was worse than any of them they repaid me in the same way and did not conceal their aversion for me but by then i did not desire their affection
+on the contrary i continually longed for their humiliation to escape from their derision i purposely began to make all the progress i could with my studies and forced my way to the very top this impressed them
+moreover they all began by degrees to grasp that i had already read books none of them could read and understood things not forming part of our school curriculum of which they had not even heard they took a savage and sarcastic view of it
+but were morally impressed especially as the teachers began to notice me on those grounds the mockery ceased but the hostility remained and cold and strained relations became permanent between us in the end i could not put up with it
+with years a craving for society for friends developed in me i attempted to get on friendly terms with some of my schoolfellows but somehow or other my intimacy with them was always strained and soon ended of itself
+once indeed i did have a friend
+and repulsed him as though all i needed him for was to win a victory over him to subjugate him and nothing else but i could not subjugate all of them my friend was not at all like them either he was in fact a rare exception
+the first thing i did on leaving school was to give up the special job for which i had been destined so as to break all ties
+and goodness knows why after all that i should go trudging off to simonov's early next morning i roused myself and jumped out of bed with excitement as though it were all about to happen at once
+but i believed that some radical change in my life was coming and would inevitably come that day owing to its rarity perhaps any external event however trivial always made me feel as though some radical change in my life were at hand
+i went to the office however as usual but sneaked away home two hours earlier to get ready the great thing i thought is not to be the first to arrive or they will think i am overjoyed at coming but there were thousands of such
+and they all agitated and overwhelmed me i polished my boots a second time with my own hands nothing in the world would have induced apollon to clean them twice a day as he considered that it was more than his duties required of him
+i stole the brushes to clean them from the passage being careful he should not detect it for fear of his contempt
+i had let myself get too slovenly my uniform perhaps was tidy but i could not go out to dinner in my uniform the worst of it was that on the knee of my trousers was a big yellow stain
+i had a foreboding that that stain would deprive me of nine tenths of my personal dignity i knew too that it was very poor to think so but this is no time for thinking now i am in for the real thing i thought and my heart sank
+i knew too perfectly well even then that i was monstrously exaggerating the facts but how could i help it
+with despair i pictured to myself how coldly and disdainfully that scoundrel zverkov would meet me
+with what impudent rudeness the insect ferfitchkin would snigger at me in order to curry favour with zverkov how completely simonov would take it all in and how he would despise me for the abjectness of my vanity and lack of spirit
+and worst of all how paltry unliterary commonplace it would all be
+but that was most impossible of all if i feel impelled to do anything i seem to be pitchforked into it i should have jeered at myself ever afterwards so you funked it you funked it you funked the real thing
+on the contrary i passionately longed to show all that rabble that i was by no means such a spiritless creature as i seemed to myself what is more even in the acutest paroxysm of this cowardly fever i dreamed of getting the upper hand
+of dominating them carrying them away making them like me if only for my elevation of thought and unmistakable wit they would abandon zverkov he would sit on one side silent and ashamed while i should crush him then perhaps
+we would be reconciled and drink to our everlasting friendship but what was most bitter and humiliating for me was that i knew even then knew fully and for certain that i needed nothing of all this really that i did not really want to crush
+to subdue to attract them
+oh how i prayed for the day to pass quickly
+opened the movable pane and looked out into the troubled darkness of the thickly falling wet snow at last my wretched little clock hissed out five i seized my hat and trying not to look at apollon
+who had been all day expecting his month's wages but in his foolishness was unwilling to be the first to speak about it i slipped between him and the door and jumping into a high class sledge on which i spent my last half rouble
+it was followed by remorse i tried to drive it away i felt too sick
+i grew used to everything or rather i voluntarily resigned myself to enduring it but i had a means of escape that reconciled everything that was to find refuge in the sublime and the beautiful in dreams of course
+i was a terrible dreamer i would dream for three months on end tucked away in my corner and you may believe me that at those moments i had no resemblance to the gentleman who in the perturbation of his chicken heart
+put a collar of german beaver on his great coat i suddenly became a hero i would not have admitted my six foot lieutenant even if he had called on me
+before me then what were my dreams
+though indeed even now i am to some extent satisfied with them dreams were particularly sweet and vivid after a spell of dissipation
+there were moments of such positive intoxication of such happiness that there was not the faintest trace of irony within me on my honour i had faith hope love i believed blindly at such times that by some miracle
+by some external circumstance all this would suddenly open out expand that suddenly a vista of suitable activity beneficent good and above all ready made what sort of activity i had no idea
+but the great thing was that it should be all ready for me would rise up before me and i should come out into the light of day almost riding a white horse and crowned with laurel anything but the foremost place i could not conceive for myself
+and for that very reason i quite contentedly occupied the lowest in reality either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud there was nothing between
+that was my ruin for when i was in the mud i comforted myself with the thought that at other times i was a hero and the hero was a cloak for the mud
+it is worth noting that these attacks of the sublime and the beautiful visited me even during the period of dissipation and just at the times when i was touching the bottom they came in separate spurts as though reminding me of themselves
+but did not banish the dissipation by their appearance on the contrary
+and were only sufficiently present to serve as an appetising sauce that sauce was made up of contradictions and sufferings of agonising inward analysis and all these pangs and pin pricks gave a certain piquancy
+even a significance to my dissipation in fact completely answered the purpose of an appetising sauce there was a certain depth of meaning in it and i could hardly have resigned myself to the simple vulgar direct debauchery of a clerk
+and have endured all the filthiness of it
+into the street no i had a lofty way of getting out of it all
+in those flights into the sublime and the beautiful though it was fantastic love though it was never applied to anything human in reality yet there was so much of this love that one did not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality
+everything however passed satisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating transition into the sphere of art that is into the beautiful forms of life lying ready
+i came in for countless millions and immediately devoted them to humanity and at the same time i confessed before all the people my shameful deeds which of course were not merely shameful but had in them
+much that was sublime and beautiful something in the manfred style everyone would kiss me and weep
+austerlitz against the obscurantists then the band would play a march an amnesty would be declared the pope would agree to retire from rome to brazil
+lake como being for that purpose transferred to the neighbourhood of rome then would come a scene in the bushes and so on and so on as though you did not know all about it you will say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public
+but why is it contemptible can you imagine that i am ashamed of it all and that it was stupider than anything in your life gentlemen and i can assure you that some of these fancies were by no means badly composed
+and yet you are right it really is vulgar and contemptible
+and even more contemptible than that is my making this remark now but that's enough
+i could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society to plunge into society meant
+to visit my superior at the office anton antonitch syetotchkin he was the only permanent acquaintance i have had in my life
+that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind and for that purpose i needed at least one human being actually existing i had to call on anton antonitch however on tuesday
+his at home day so i had always to time my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a tuesday this anton antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in five corners in four low pitched rooms
+one smaller than the other of a particularly frugal and sallow appearance he had two daughters and their aunt who used to pour out the tea of the daughters one was thirteen and another fourteen
+they both had snub noses and i was awfully shy of them because they were always whispering and giggling together the master of the house usually sat in his study on a leather couch in front of the table with some grey headed gentleman
+usually a colleague from our office or some other department i never saw more than two or three visitors there always the same they talked about the excise duty
+and the best means of pleasing him and so on i had the patience to sit like a fool beside these people
+listening to them without knowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word i became stupefied several times i felt myself perspiring i was overcome by a sort of paralysis but this was pleasant and good for me
+on returning home i deferred for a time my desire to embrace all mankind i had however one other acquaintance of a sort simonov who was an old schoolfellow i had a number of schoolfellows indeed in petersburg
+but i did not associate with them and had even given up nodding to them in the street i believe i had transferred into the department i was in simply to avoid their company and to cut off all connection with my hateful childhood
+curses on that school and all those terrible years of penal servitude in short i parted from my schoolfellows as soon as i got out into the world there were two or three left to whom i nodded in the street one of them was simonov
+who had in no way been distinguished at school was of a quiet and equable disposition but i discovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty i don't even suppose that he was particularly stupid
+but these had not lasted long and had somehow been suddenly clouded over he was evidently uncomfortable at these reminiscences and was i fancy always afraid that i might take up the same tone again
+not being quite certain of it
+but as it always happened that such reflections impelled me as though purposely to put myself into a false position i went in
+now eric had lived in greenland for fifteen years his sons thorstein and leif had grown up to be big strong men one spring leif said to his father i have never seen norway our mother land
+i long to go there and meet the great men and see the places that skalds sing about eric answered it is right that you should go no man has really lived until he has seen norway
+so he helped leif fit out a boat and sent him off leif sailed for months he passed iceland and the faroes and the shetlands he stopped at all of these places and feasted his mind on the new things
+and everywhere men received him gladly for he was handsome and wise but at last he came near norway then he stood up before the pilot's seat and sang loudly
+in the sky above i see fair asgard's shining roofs the flying hair of thor the wings of odin's birds the road that heroes tread i am here in the land of the gods the land of mighty men
+for a while he walked the land as though he were in a dream he looked at this and that and everything
+i will go to the king he said he had never seen a king there were no kings in iceland or in greenland so he went to the city where the king had his fine house the king's name was olaf
+he was a great grandson of harald hairfair for harald had been dead a hundred years now the king was going to hold a feast at night and leif put on his most beautiful clothes to go to it
+he put on long tights of blue wool and a short jacket of blue velvet he belted his jacket with a gold girdle he had shoes of scarlet with golden clasps he threw around himself a cape of scarlet velvet
+lined with seal fur his long sword stuck out from under his cloak on his head he put a knitted cap of bright colors then he walked to the king's feast hall and went through the door
+it was a great hall and it was full of richly dressed men the fires shone on so many golden head bands and bracelets and so many glittering swords and spears on the wall and there was so much noise of talking and laughing
+that at first leif did not know what to do but at last he went and sat on the very end seat of the bench near him as the feast went on king olaf sat in his high seat and looked about the hall and noticed this one and that one and spoke across the fire to many
+he was keen eyed and soon saw leif in his far seat yonder is some man of mark he said to himself he is surely worth knowing his face is not the face of a fool
+he carries his head like a lord of men he sent a thrall and asked leif to come to him so leif walked down the long hall and stood before the king i am glad to have you for a guest the king said
+what are your name and country i am leif ericsson and i have come all the way from greenland to see you and old norway from greenland said the king it is not often that i see a greenlander
+many come to norway to trade but they seldom come to the king's hall i shall be glad to hear about your land come up and speak with me so leif went up the steps of the high seat and sat down by the king and talked with him
+when the feast was over the king said you shall live at my court this winter leif ericsson you are a welcome guest so leif stayed there that winter when he started back in the spring
+the king gave him two thralls as a parting gift let this gift show my love leif ericsson he said for your sake i shall not forget greenland leif sailed back again and had good luck until he was past iceland
+then great winds came out of the north and tossed his ship about so that the men could do nothing they were blown south for days and days they did not know where they were then they saw land and leif said
+surely luck has brought us also to a new country
+so he steered for it as they came near the men said see the great trees and the soft green shore surely this is a better country than greenland or than iceland either
+when they landed they threw themselves upon the ground i never lay on a bed so soft as this grass one said taller trees do not grow in norway said another
+there is no stone here as in norway but only good black dirt leif said i never saw so fertile a land before the men were hungry and set about building a fire there is no lack of fuel here
+they said they stayed many days in this country and walked about to see what was there a german named tyrker was with leif he was a little man with a high forehead and a short nose his eyes were big and rolling
+he had lived with eric for many years and had taken care of leif when he was a little boy so leif loved him now one day they had been wandering about and all came back to camp at night except tyrker when leif looked around on his comrades he said
+where is tyrker no one knew then leif was angry is a man of so little value in this empty land that you would lose one he said why did you not keep together did you not see that he was gone
+why did you not set out to look for him who knows what terrible thing may have happened to him in these great forests then he turned and started out to hunt for him his men followed silent and ashamed
+again leif asked his question and put his hand on tyrker's shoulder as though he would shake him then tyrker answered in the language of iceland i have not been so very far but i have found something wonderful what is it
+cried the men i have found grapes growing wild answered tyrker and he laughed and his eyes shone it cannot be leif said grapes do not grow in greenland nor in iceland nor even in norway
+so it seemed a wonderful thing to these norsemen can i not tell grapes when i see them cried tyrker did i not grow up in germany where every hillside is covered with grapevines ah it seems like my old home
+it is wonderful leif said i have heard travelers tell of seeing grapes growing but i myself never saw it you shall take us to them early in the morning tyrker so in the morning they went back into the woods and saw the grapes
+they ate of them they are like food and drink they cried that day leif said we spent most of the summer on the ocean winter will soon be coming on and the sea about greenland will be frozen we must start back
+we will fill the rowboat with grapes and tow it behind us the ship we will load with logs from these great trees that will be a welcome shipload in greenland where we have neither trees nor vines
+now half of you shall gather grapes for the next few days and the other half shall cut timber so they did and after a week sailed off the ship was full of lumber and they towed the rowboat loaded with grapes
+as they looked back at the shore leif said i will call this country wineland for the grapes that grow there one of the men leaped upon the gunwale and leaned out clinging to the sail and sang
+wineland the green the great the fat our dragon fed and crawls away with belly stuffed and lazy feet how long her purple trailing tail she fed and grew to twice her size
+then all the men waved their hands to the shore and gave a great shout for that good land for all that voyage they had fair weather and sailed into eric's harbor before the winter came
+eric saw the ship and ran down to the shore he took leif into his arms and said oh my son my old eyes ached to see you i hunger to hear of all that you have seen and done
+luck has followed me all the way said leif see what i have brought home the greenlanders looked lumber lumber they cried oh it is better stuff than gold
+then they saw the grapes and tasted them surely you must have plundered asgard they said smacking their lips at the feast that night eric said leif shall sit in the place of honor
+so leif sat in the high seat opposite eric all men thought him a handsome and wise man he told them of the storm and of wineland no man would ever need a cloak there the soil is richer than the soil of norway
+grain grows wild and you yourselves saw the grapes that we got from there the forests are without end the sea is full of fish the greenlanders listened with open mouths to all this
+leif noticed two strangers an old man who sat at eric's side and a young woman on the cross bench he turned to his brother thorstein who sat next to him who are these strangers he asked
+thorbiorn and his daughter gudrid thorstein answered they landed here this spring i never saw our father more glad of anything than to see this thorbiorn they were friends before we left iceland
+when they saw each other again they could not talk enough of old times in the spring eric means to give him a farm up the fiord a way it seems that this thorbiorn comes of a good family that has been rich and great in iceland for years
+and thorbiorn himself was rich when our father knew him and was much honored by all men but ill luck came and he grew poor this hurt his pride i will not stay in iceland and be a beggar
+he said to himself i will not have men look at me and say he is not what his father was i will go to my friend eric the red in greenland then he got ready a great feast and invited all his friends
+it was such a feast as had not been in iceland for years thorbiorn spent on it all the wealth that he had left for he said to himself i will not leave in shame men shall remember my last feast
+after that he set out and came to greenland is not gudrid beautiful and she is wise i mean to marry her if her father will permit it
+now leif settled down in greenland and became a great man there he was so busy and he grew so rich that he did not think of going to wineland again but people could not forget his story
+all the freemen in the west of iceland had come to a meeting here they made laws and punished men for having done wrong the meeting was over now men were walking about the plain and talking everybody seemed much excited
+voices were loud arms were swinging it was an unjust decision some one cried eric killed the men in fair fight the judges outlawed him because they were afraid his foe thorgest has many rich and powerful men to back him
+no no said another eric is a bloody man i am glad he is out of iceland just then a big man with bushy red hair and beard stalked through the crowd he looked straight ahead and scowled
+there he goes people said and turned to look after him his hands are as red as his beard some said and frowned but others looked at him and smiled saying he walks like thor the fearless
+his story would make a fine song one said as strong and as brave and as red as thor always in a quarrel a man of many places norway the north of iceland the west of iceland
+those little islands off the shore of iceland outlawed from all of them on account of his quarrels where will he go now i wonder this eric strode down to the shore with his men following he is in a black temper they said
+we should best not talk to him so they made ready the boat in silence eric got into the pilot's seat and they sailed off soon they pulled the ship up on their own shore
+eric strolled into his house and called for supper when the drinking horns had been filled and emptied eric pulled himself up and smiled and shouted out so that the great room was full of his big voice
+and there is always a storm about me it is my sword's fault
+she has shut norway to me and now iceland where will you go next old comrade and he pulled out his sword and looked at it and smiled as the fire flashed on it
+there are some of us who will follow you wherever you go eric called a man from across the fire is it so eric cried leaping up oh then we shall have some merry times yet
+our swords are sisters in blood and we are brothers in adventure do you know what is in my heart to do he jumped to his feet and his face glowed then he laughed as he looked at his men
+i see the answer flashing from your eyes he said
+his men pounded on the tables and shouted yes yes anywhere behind eric
+eric laughed did you ever hear that story that gunnbiorn told
+while he drifted about he saw a strange land that rose up white and shining out of a blue sea huge ships of ice sailed out from it and met him i mean to sail to that land
+a great shout went up that shook the rafters then the men sat and talked over plans while they sat a stranger came into the hall i have no time to drink he said
+for he loves you hunted like a wolf from corner to corner of the world eric cried angrily will they not even let me finish one feast then he laughed
+but if i take my sport like a wolf i must be hunted like one
+well we have done it before and it is no bad place cried some of the men i always liked the stars better than a smoky house fire said one
+can no bad fortune spoil your good nature laughed eric but now we are off let every man carry what he can so they quickly loaded themselves with clothes and gold and swords and spears and kettles of food
+eric led his wife thorhild and his two young sons thorstein and leif
+for a week or more they stayed in his woods sometimes in a secret cave of his when they knew that thorgest was about
+thorgest is off come to my house for a feast all this time they were making ready for the voyage repairing the ship and filling it with stores word of what eric meant to do got out and men laughed and said is that not like eric
+what will he not do some men liked the sound of it and they came to eric and said we will go with you to this strange land so all were ready and they pushed off with eric's family aboard and those friends who had joined him
+they took horses and cattle with them and all kinds of tools and food i do not well know where this land is eric said gunnbiorn said only that he sailed east when he came home to iceland so i will steer straight west
+we shall surely find something i do not know either how long we must go so they sailed that strange ocean never dreaming what might be ahead of them they found no islands to rest on they met heavy fogs
+one day as eric sat in the pilot's seat he said i think that i see one of gunnbiorn's ships of ice shall we sail up to her and see what kind of a craft she is yes shouted his men
+it sends out a cold breath said one of the men they all wrapped their cloaks about them it is a bigger boat than i ever saw before said eric the white mast stands as high as a hill
+it must be giants that sail in it frost giants said another of the men but as they came nearer
+by thor that gunnbiorn was a foolish fellow why look it is only a piece of floating ice such as we sometimes see from iceland it is no ship and there is no one on it
+his men laughed and one called to another and said and you thought of frost giants then they sailed on for days and days they met many of these icebergs on one of them was a white bear
+yonder is a strange pilot eric laughed i have seen bears come floating so to the north shore of iceland an old man said perhaps they come from the land that we are going to find one day eric said
+it is carrying our ship away from this land i cannot make head against it out with the oars so with oars and sail and rudder they fought against the current but it took the boat along like a chip and after a while they put up their oars and drifted
+luck has taken us into its own hands eric laughed but this is as good a way as another sometimes they were near enough to see the land
+perhaps this river will carry us to a whirlpool and suck us under the men said but at last eric felt the current less strong under his hand to the oars again he called
+but when they reached the shore they found no place to go in steep black walls shot up from the sea nothing grew on them when the men looked above the cliffs they saw a long line of white cutting the sky it is a land of ice
+they said they sailed on south all the time looking for a place to go ashore i am sick of this endless sea thorhild complained but this land is worse
+after a while they began to see small bays cut into the shore with little flat patches of green at their sides they landed in these places and stretched and warmed themselves and ate but these spots are only big enough for graves
+the men said we can not live here so they went on again all the time the weather was growing colder eric's people kept themselves wrapped in their cloaks and put scarfs around their heads and it is still summer thorhild said
+what will it be in winter we must find a place to build a house now before the winter comes on said eric we must not freeze here so they chose a little spot with hills about it to keep off the wind
+they made a house out of stones for there were many in that place they lived there that winter the sea for a long way out from shore froze so that it looked like white land the men went out upon it to hunt white bear and seal
+they ate the meat and wore the skins to keep them warm the hardest thing was to get fuel for the fire no trees grew there the men found a little driftwood along the shore
+so they burned the bones and the fat of the animals they killed it is a sickening smell thorhild said i have not been out of this mean house for weeks i am tired of the darkness and the smoke and the cattle
+and all the time i hear great noises as though some giant were breaking this land into pieces ah cheer up good wife eric laughed i smell better luck ahead
+once eric and his men climbed the cliffs and went back into the middle of the land when they came home they had this to tell it is a country of ice shining white nothing grows on it but a few mosses
+far off it looks flat but when you walk upon it there are great holes and cracks we could see nothing beyond there seems to be only a fringe of land around the edge of an island of ice the winter nights were very long
+sometimes the sun showed for an hour sometimes for only a few minutes sometimes it did not show at all for a week the men hunted by the bright shining of the moon or by the northern lights as it grew warmer
+the ice in the sea began to crack and move and melt and float away eric waited only until there was a clear passage in the water then he launched his boat and they sailed southward again at last they found a place that eric liked
+here i will build my house he said so they did and lived there that summer and pastured their cattle and cut hay for the winter and fished and hunted the next spring eric said the land stretches far north
+i am hungry to know what is there then they all got into the boat again and sailed north we can leave no one here eric had said we cannot tell what might come between us perhaps giants or dragons
+or strange men might come out of this inland ice and kill our people we must stay together farther north they found only the same bare frozen country so after a while they sailed back to their home and lived there
+one spring after they had been in that land for four years eric said my eyes are hungry for the sight of men and green fields again my stomach is sick of seal and whale and bear my throat
+is dry for mead this is a bare and cold and hungry land i will visit my friends in iceland and our swords are rusty with long resting said his men perhaps we can find play for them in iceland
+now i have a plan eric suddenly said would it not be pleasant to see other feast halls as we sail along the coast oh it would be a beautiful sight his men said well said eric
+i am going to try to bring back some neighbors from iceland now we must have a name for our land how does greenland sound his men laughed and said it is a very white greenland but men will like the sound of it
+it is better than iceland so eric and all his people sailed back and spent the winter with his friends ah eric it is good to hear your laugh again they said eric was at many feasts and saw many men and he talked much of his greenland
+the sea is full of whale and seals and great fish he said the land has bear and reindeer there are no men there come back with me and choose your land
+some men went because they thought it would be a great frolic to go to a new country some went because they were poor in iceland and thought i can be no worse off in greenland and perhaps i shall grow rich there and some went because they loved eric
+and wanted to be his neighbors so the next summer thirty five ships full of men and women and goods followed eric for greenland but they met heavy storms and some ships were wrecked and the men drowned
+other men grew heartsick at the terrible storm and the long voyage and no sight of land and they turned back to iceland so of those thirty five ships only fifteen got to greenland
+only the bravest and the luckiest men come here eric said we shall have good neighbors soon other houses were built along the fiords
+part two some christian subjects
+outward forms and symbols must be used to convey intellectual conceptions
+and of others of which we are about to speak so that the essence of the problems may be understood is this that human knowledge is of two kinds one is the knowledge of things perceptible to the senses
+that is to say things which the eye or ear or smell or taste or touch can perceive which are called objective or sensible so the sun because it can be seen is said to be objective
+it is a reality of the intellect it has no outward form and no place and is not perceptible to the senses for example the power of intellect is not sensible none of the inner qualities of man is a sensible thing
+on the contrary they are intellectual realities so love is a mental reality and not sensible for this reality the ear does not hear the eye does not see the smell does not perceive
+the taste does not discern the touch does not feel even ethereal matter the forces of which are said in physics to be heat light electricity and magnetism
+is an intellectual reality and is not sensible in the same way nature also in its essence is an intellectual reality and is not sensible the human spirit is an intellectual not sensible reality
+in explaining these intellectual realities one is obliged to express them by sensible figures because in exterior existence there is nothing that is not material therefore to explain the reality of the spirit
+its condition its station one is obliged to give explanations under the forms of sensible things because in the external world all that exists is sensible for example grief and happiness are intellectual things
+this is an intellectual or spiritual state to explain which you are obliged to have recourse to sensible figures another example you say such an individual made great progress
+though he is remaining in the same place or again such a one's position was exalted although like everyone else he walks upon the earth this exaltation and this progress are spiritual states and intellectual realities
+but to explain them you are obliged to have recourse to sensible figures because in the exterior world there is nothing that is not sensible so the symbol of knowledge is light and of ignorance darkness but reflect
+is knowledge sensible light or ignorance sensible darkness no they are merely symbols these are only intellectual states
+but when you desire to express them outwardly you call knowledge light and ignorance darkness you say my heart was gloomy and it became enlightened
+now that light of knowledge and that darkness of ignorance are intellectual realities not sensible ones but when we seek for explanations in the external world we are obliged to give them a sensible form
+then it is evident that the dove which descended upon christ was not a material dove but it was a spiritual state which that it might be comprehensible was expressed by a sensible figure
+thus in the old testament it is said that god appeared as a pillar of fire this does not signify the material form it is an intellectual reality which is expressed by a sensible image
+a simile a metaphor and is not to be accepted literally it is not a state that can be comprehended by man sleeping and waking is passing from one state to another sleeping is the condition of repose
+and wakefulness is the condition of movement sleeping is the state of silence
+sleeping is the state of mystery wakefulness is the state of manifestation for example it is a persian and arabic expression to say that the earth was asleep and the spring came and it awoke
+or the earth was dead and the spring came and it revived these expressions are metaphors allegories mystic explanations in the world of signification briefly the holy manifestations have ever been
+and ever will be luminous realities no change or variation takes place in their essence before declaring their manifestation they are silent and quiet like a sleeper and after their manifestation they speak and are illuminated
+in regard to this question theologians and materialists disagree the theologians believe that christ was born of the holy spirit but the materialists think this is impossible and inadmissible
+and that without doubt he had a human father in the qur'an it is said and we sent our spirit unto her
+and he addressed mary the materialists believe that there must be marriage and say that a living body cannot be created from a lifeless body and without male and female there cannot be fecundation and they think that not only with man
+and of everything have we created two kinds that is to say we have created all the beings through pairing briefly they say a man without a human father cannot be imagined
+in answer the theologians say this thing is not impossible and unachievable but it has not been seen and there is a great difference between a thing which is impossible and one which is unknown for example
+in former times the telegraph which causes the east and the west to communicate was unknown but not impossible photography and phonography were unknown but not impossible
+the materialists insist upon this belief and the theologians reply is this globe eternal or phenomenal the materialists answer that according to science and important discoveries it is established that it is phenomenal
+in the beginning it was a flaming globe and gradually it became temperate a crust was formed around it and upon this crust plants came into existence then animals and finally man the theologians say
+is not the creation of man without father and mother even though gradually more difficult than if he had simply come into existence without a father as you admit that the first man came into existence without father or mother
+whether it be gradually or at once there can remain no doubt that a man without a human father is also possible and admissible you cannot consider this impossible otherwise you are illogical for example
+if you say that this lamp has once been lighted without wick and oil and then say that it is impossible to light it without the wick this is illogical christ had a mother the first man as the materialists believe
+the greatness of christ is due to his perfections a great man is a great man whether born of a human father or not if being without a father is a virtue
+which can be compared to father and mother and it is absolute perfection but the darkness has neither substance nor form neither father nor mother and it is absolute imperfection the substance of adam's physical life was earth
+but the substance of abraham was pure sperm it is certain that the pure and chaste sperm is superior to earth furthermore in the first chapter of the gospel of john verses twelve and thirteen it is said
+even to them that believed on his name which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man
+also is not created by physical power but by the spiritual reality the honor and greatness of christ is not due to the fact that he did not have a human father but to his perfections bounties and divine glory
+if the greatness of christ is his being fatherless then adam is greater than christ for he had neither father nor mother it is said in the old testament and the lord god formed man of the dust of the ground
+and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life
+moreover the expression which john uses in regard to the disciples proves that they also are from the heavenly father hence it is evident that the holy reality meaning the real existence of every great man comes from god
+and owes its being to the breath of the holy spirit
+for he had neither father nor mother is it better for a man to be created from a living substance or from earth certainly it is better if he be created from a living substance but christ was born and came into existence from the holy spirit
+chapter one a watch dog may be a guardian angel gwynplaine uttered a cry is that you wolf homo wagged his tail his eyes sparkled in the darkness he was looking earnestly at gwynplaine
+then he began to lick his hands again for a moment gwynplaine was like a drunken man so great is the shock of hope's mighty return homo
+or at least the light which leads to it regained the sudden intervention of some mysterious clemency possessed perhaps by destiny life saying behold me in the darkest recess of the grave
+the very moment in which all expectation has ceased bringing back health and deliverance a place of safety discovered at the most critical instant in the midst of crumbling ruins homo was all this to gwynplaine the wolf appeared to him
+in a halo of light meanwhile homo had turned round he advanced a few steps and then looked back to see if gwynplaine was following him gwynplaine was doing so homo wagged his tail and went on
+and gwynplaine guided by homo descended it homo turned his head now and then to make sure that gwynplaine was behind him in some situations of supreme importance nothing approaches so near an omniscient intelligence
+as the simple instinct of a faithful animal an animal is a lucid somnambulist there are cases in which the dog feels that he should follow his master others in which he should precede him then the animal takes the direction of sense
+his imperturbable scent is a confused power of vision in what is twilight to us he feels a vague obligation to become a guide does he know that there is a dangerous pass and that he can help his master to surmount it
+probably not perhaps he does in any case some one knows it for him as we have already said it often happens in life that some mighty help
+which we have held to have come from below has in reality come from above who knows all the mysterious forms assumed by god what was this animal providence having reached the river
+without noise or bark he pushed forward on his silent way homo always followed his instinct and did his duty but with the pensive reserve of an outlaw some fifty paces more and he stopped
+a wooden platform appeared on the right at the bottom of this platform which was a kind of wharf on piles
+a black mass could be made out which was a tolerably large vessel on the deck of the vessel near the prow was a glimmer like the last flicker of a night light
+was a dutch vessel of the japanese build with two decks fore and aft and between them an open hold reached by an upright ladder in which the cargo was laden
+there was thus a forecastle and an afterdeck as in our old river boats and a space between them ballasted by the freight the paper boats made by children are of a somewhat similar shape under the decks were the cabins
+the doors of which opened into the hold and were lighted by glazed portholes in stowing the cargo a passage was left between the packages of which it consisted these vessels had a mast on each deck the foremast was called paul
+both flaps of the gangway were lowered on the right and left on hinges thus making a roof over the hold so that the ship in heavy seas was hermetically closed these sloops being of very massive construction had a beam for a tiller
+the strength of the rudder being necessarily proportioned to the height of the vessel three men the skipper and two sailors with a cabin boy sufficed to navigate these ponderous sea going machines the decks fore and aft
+the great lumbering hull of this particular vessel was painted black and on it visible even in the night stood out in white letters the words vograat rotterdam
+about that time many events had occurred at sea and amongst others the defeat of the baron de pointi's eight ships off cape carnero which had driven the whole french fleet into refuge at gibraltar so that the channel was swept of every man of war
+and merchant vessels were able to sail backwards and forwards between london and rotterdam without a convoy the vessel on which was to be read the word vograat and which gwynplaine was now close to lay with her main deck almost level with the wharf
+but one step to descend and homo in a bound and gwynplaine in a stride were on board the deck was clear and no stir was perceptible the passengers if as was likely there were any were already on board
+the vessel being ready to sail and the cargo stowed as was apparent from the state of the hold which was full of bales and cases but they were doubtless lying asleep in the cabins below as the passage was to take place during the night
+in such cases the passengers do not appear on deck till they awake the following morning as for the crew they were probably having their supper in the men's cabin whilst awaiting the hour fixed for sailing which was now rapidly approaching hence
+the silence on the two decks connected by the gangway the wolf had almost run across the wharf once on board he slackened his pace into a discreet walk he still wagged his tail no longer joyfully however
+this poor wooden tenement cart and hut combined in which his childhood had rolled along was fastened to the bottom of the mast by thick ropes of which the knots were visible at the wheels having been so long out of service it had become dreadfully rickety
+it leant over feebly on one side it had become quite paralytic from disuse and moreover it was suffering from that incurable malady old age mouldy and out of shape it tottered in decay
+the iron was rusty the leather torn the wood work worm eaten there were lines of cracks across the window in front through which shone a ray from the lantern the wheels were warped the lining the floor
+and the axletrees seemed worn out with fatigue altogether it presented an indescribable appearance of beggary and prostration the shafts stuck up looked like two arms raised to heaven
+the whole thing was in a state of dislocation beneath it was hanging homo's chain
+does it not seem that the law and the will of nature would have dictated gwynplaine's headlong rush to throw himself upon life happiness love regained so they would
+hesitates lest he should bear the fatality of which he has been the victim to those whom he loves feels that some evil contagion may still hang about him and advances towards happiness with wary steps
+the gates of paradise reopen but before he enters he examines his ground
+the resemblance of a palace to a wood in palaces after the italian fashion and corleone lodge was one there were very few doors but abundance of tapestry screens and curtained doorways
+in every palace of that date there was a wonderful labyrinth of chambers and corridors where luxury ran riot gilding marble carved wainscoting
+eastern silks nooks and corners some secret and dark as night others light and pleasant as the day there were attics richly and brightly furnished burnished recesses shining with dutch tiles and portuguese azulejos
+the tops of the high windows were converted into small rooms and glass attics forming pretty habitable lanterns the thickness of the walls was such that there were rooms within them here and there were closets
+nominally wardrobes they were called the little rooms it was within them that evil deeds were hatched
+or the cries of little girls brought thither by lebel smothered such places were convenient for the purpose they were labyrinthine chambers impracticable to a stranger scenes of abductions unknown depths
+receptacles of mysterious disappearances in those elegant caverns princes and lords stored their plunder in such a place the count de charolais hid madame courchamp the wife of the clerk of the privy council
+the duke of buckingham poor pennywell et cetera the deeds done there were such as were designated by the roman law as committed vi clam et precario by force in secret and for a short time
+once in an occupant remained there till the master of the house decreed his or her release they were gilded oubliettes savouring both of the cloister and the harem their staircases twisted turned
+led back to the starting point
+perhaps the architects of the little rooms building for royalty and aristocracy took as models the ramifications of coral beds and the openings in a sponge the branches became a labyrinth pictures
+turning on false panels were exits and entrances they were full of stage contrivances and no wonder considering the dramas that were played there the floors of these hives reached from the cellars to the attics
+from versailles downwards like cells of pygmies in dwelling places of titans passages niches alcoves and secret recesses
+these winding and narrow passages recalled games blindfolded eyes hands feeling in the dark suppressed laughter blind man's buff hide and seek while at the same time they suggested memories
+the brutal knights of eltz of rizzio of monaldeschi of naked swords pursuing the fugitive flying from room to room the ancients too had mysterious retreats of the same kind in which luxury was adapted to enormities
+the maze of passages and alcoves with secret and bewildering doors checked and retarded his progress he strove to run he was obliged to wander he thought that he had but one door to thrust open while he had a skein of doors to unravel
+to one room succeeded another then a crossway with rooms on every side not a living creature was to be seen he listened not a sound
+at times he thought that he must be returning towards his starting point then that he saw some one approaching it was no one it was only the reflection of himself in a mirror dressed as a nobleman that he impossible
+then he recognized himself but not at once he explored every passage that he came to he examined the quaint arrangements of the rambling building and their yet quainter fittings here a cabinet
+painted and carved in a sentimental but vicious style there an equivocal looking chapel studded with enamels and mother of pearl with miniatures on ivory wrought out in relief like those on old fashioned snuff boxes there
+one of those pretty florentine retreats adapted to the hypochondriasis of women and even then called boudoirs everywhere on the ceilings on the walls and on the very floors were representations
+in velvet or in metal of birds of trees of luxuriant vegetation picked out in reliefs of lacework tables covered with jet carvings
+representing warriors queens and tritons armed with the scaly terminations of a hydra cut crystals combining prismatic effects with those of reflection mirrors repeated the light of precious stones and sparkles glittered in the darkest corners
+it was impossible to guess whether those many sided shining surfaces where emerald green mingled with the golden hues of the rising sun where floated a glimmer of ever varying colours like those on a pigeon's neck were miniature mirrors or enormous beryls
+everywhere was magnificence at once refined and stupendous if it was not the most diminutive of palaces it was the most gigantic of jewel cases a house for mab or a jewel for geo
+gwynplaine sought an exit he could not find one impossible to make out his way there is nothing so confusing as wealth seen for the first time moreover
+this was a labyrinth at each step he was stopped by some magnificent object which appeared to retard his exit and to be unwilling to let him pass he was encompassed by a net of wonders he felt himself bound and held back
+what a horrible palace he thought restless he wandered through the maze asking himself what it all meant
+and must be held unbroken to guide him out of it now and then he shouted ho any one there no one answered the rooms never came to an end all was deserted silent splendid sinister
+it realized the fables of enchanted castles hidden pipes of hot air maintained a summer temperature in the building it was as if some magician had caught up the month of june and imprisoned it in a labyrinth there were pleasant odours now and then
+and he crossed currents of perfume as though passing by invisible flowers it was warm carpets everywhere one might have walked about there unclothed gwynplaine looked out of the windows the view from each one was different
+from one he beheld gardens sparkling with the freshness of a spring morning from another a plot decked with statues from a third a patio in the spanish style a little square
+he stood still and listened oh i will get out of this place said he
+they shall not keep me here by force woe to him who bars my exit what is that great tower yonder if there was a giant a hell hound a minotaur to keep the gate of this enchanted palace i would annihilate him if an army i would exterminate it
+suddenly he heard a gentle noise very faint it was like dropping water he was in a dark narrow passage closed some few paces further on by a curtain he advanced to the curtain
+pushed it aside entered
+the fates who certainly all fore knew of these amours of widow wadman and my uncle toby had from the first creation of matter and motion and with more courtesy than they usually do things of this kind established such a chain of causes and effects hanging so fast to one another
+that it was scarce possible for my uncle toby to have dwelt in any other house in the world or to have occupied any other garden in christendom but the very house and garden which join'd and laid parallel to missus wadman's this with the advantage of a thickset
+arbour in missus wadman's garden but planted in the hedge row of my uncle toby's put all the occasions into her hands which love militancy wanted she could observe my uncle toby's motions
+quoth my uncle toby interrupting him as he mentioned the blind gut in a discourse with my father the night my mother was brought to bed of me i beseech you quoth my uncle toby to tell me which is the blind gut for old as i am i vow i do not know to this day where it lies
+the blind gut answered doctor slop lies betwixt the ilion and colon in a man said my father
+in a woman that's more than i know quoth my father
+neither at this end or that but like a prodigal's candle to light him if possible at both ends at once now through all the lumber rooms of military furniture including both of horse and foot
+and with bridget to help her she could not have found any one blind or mantelet so fit for her purpose as that which the expediency of my uncle toby's affairs had fix'd up ready to her hands i believe i have not told you but i don't know possibly i have be it as it will
+tis one of the number of those many things which a man had better do over again than dispute about it that whatever town or fortress the corporal was at work upon during the course of their campaign my uncle toby always took care on the inside of his sentry box
+which was towards his left hand to have a plan of the place fasten'd up with two or three pins at the top but loose at the bottom
+so that when an attack was resolved upon missus wadman had nothing more to do when she had got advanced to the door of the sentry box but to extend her right hand
+to take hold of the map or plan or upright or whatever it was and with out stretched neck meeting it half way to advance it towards her on which my uncle toby's passions were sure to catch fire for he would instantly take hold of the other corner of the map in his left hand
+and with the end of his pipe in the other begin an explanation when the attack was advanced to this point the world will naturally enter into the reasons of missus wadman's next stroke of generalship which was to take my uncle toby's tobacco pipe out of his hand as soon as she possibly could which
+under one pretence or other but generally that of pointing more distinctly at some redoubt or breastwork in the map she would effect before my uncle toby poor soul had well march'd above half a dozen toises with it it obliged my uncle toby to make use of his forefinger
+the difference it made in the attack was this that in going upon it as in the first case with the end of her fore finger against the end of my uncle toby's tobacco pipe she might have travelled with it along the lines from dan to beersheba had my uncle toby's lines reach'd so far
+without any effect for as there was no arterial or vital heat in the end of the tobacco pipe it could excite no sentiment it could neither give fire by pulsation or receive it by sympathy
+whereas in following my uncle toby's forefinger with hers close thro all the little turns and indentings of his works pressing sometimes against the side of it then treading upon its nail then tripping it up then touching it here then there and so on
+it set something at least in motion this tho slight skirmishing and at a distance from the main body yet drew on the rest for here the map usually falling with the back of it close to the side of the sentry box my uncle toby
+in the simplicity of his soul would lay his hand flat upon it in order to go on with his explanation and missus wadman by a manoeuvre as quick as thought would as certainly place her's close beside it this at once opened a communication
+large enough for any sentiment to pass or re pass which a person skill'd in the elementary and practical part of love making has occasion for by bringing up her forefinger parallel as before to my uncle toby's it unavoidably brought the thumb into action
+and the forefinger and thumb being once engaged as naturally brought in the whole hand thine dear uncle toby
+missus wadman had it ever to take up or with the gentlest pushings protrusions and equivocal compressions that a hand to be removed is capable of receiving to get it press'd a hair breadth of one side out of her way
+whilst this was doing how could she forget to make him sensible
+which slightly press'd against the calf of his
+was it a wonder if now and then it put his centre into disorder the duce take it said my uncle toby
+you will readily conceive to be of different kinds varying from each other like the attacks which history is full of and from the same reasons a general looker on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all or if he did would confound them all together but i write not to them
+it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them as i come up to them which will not be for some chapters having nothing more to add in this but that in a bundle of original papers and drawings which my father took care to roll up by themselves
+there is a plan of bouchain in perfect preservation and shall be kept so whilst i have power to preserve any thing upon the lower corner of which on the right hand side there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb
+which there is all the reason in the world to imagine were missus wadman's for the opposite side of the margin which i suppose to have been my uncle toby's is absolutely clean this seems an authenticated record of one of these attacks
+but still visible on the opposite corner of the map which are unquestionably the very holes through which it has been pricked up in the sentry box by all that is priestly i value this precious relick with its stigmata and pricks more than all the relicks of the romish church
+always excepting when i am writing upon these matters the pricks which entered the flesh of saint radagunda in the desert which in your road from fesse to cluny the nuns of that name will shew you for love
+the fortifications are quite destroyed
+i think so too replied my uncle toby with a sigh half suppress'd but step into the parlour trim for the stipulation it lies upon the table it has lain there these six weeks replied the corporal till this very morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it
+it was a thousand pities though i believe an please your honour
+a soldier cried my uncle toby interrupting the corporal is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing trim than a man of letters but not so often an please your honour replied the corporal my uncle toby gave a nod it was a thousand pities then said the corporal
+casting his eye upon dunkirk and the mole
+in returning out of asia when he sailed from aegina towards megara
+was a thousand pities an please your honour to destroy these works
+thou art right trim in both cases said my uncle toby this continued the corporal is the reason that from the beginning of their demolition to the end i have never once whistled or sung or laugh'd or cry'd or talk'd of past done deeds
+or told your honour one story good or bad thou hast many excellencies trim said my uncle toby and i hold it not the least of them as thou happenest to be a story teller that of the number thou hast told me either to amuse me in my painful hours
+or divert me in my grave ones thou hast seldom told me a bad one because an please your honour
+they are all true for they are about myself i do not like the subject the worse trim said my uncle toby on that score but prithee what is this story thou hast excited my curiosity
+i'll tell it your honour quoth the corporal directly provided said my uncle toby looking earnestly towards dunkirk and the mole again provided it is not a merry one to such trim a man should ever bring one half of the entertainment along with him
+and the disposition i am in at present would wrong both thee trim and thy story it is not a merry one by any means replied the corporal nor would i have it altogether a grave one added my uncle toby it is neither the one nor the other replied the corporal
+but will suit your honour exactly then i'll thank thee for it with all my heart cried my uncle toby so prithee begin it trim the corporal made his reverence and though it is not so easy a matter as the world imagines to pull off a lank montero cap
+with grace or a whit less difficult in my conceptions when a man is sitting squat upon the ground to make a bow so teeming with respect as the corporal was wont
+which was towards his master to slip backwards upon the grass a little beyond his body in order to allow it the greater sweep and by an unforced compression at the same time of his cap with the thumb and the two forefingers of his left by which the diameter
+of the cap became reduced so that it might be said rather to be insensibly squeez'd than pull'd off with a flatus the corporal acquitted himself of both in a better manner than the posture of his affairs promised and having hemmed twice
+to find in what key his story would best go and best suit his master's humour he exchanged a single look of kindness with him and set off thus the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles there was a certain king of bo
+he as the corporal was entering the confines of bohemia my uncle toby obliged him to halt for a single moment he had set out bare headed having since he pull'd off his montero cap in the latter end of the last chapter left it lying beside him on the ground
+so that before the corporal had well got through the first five words of his story had my uncle toby twice touch'd his montero cap with the end of his cane interrogatively as much as to say why don't you put it on trim trim took it up with the most respectful slowness
+and casting a glance of humiliation as he did it upon the embroidery of the fore part which being dismally tarnish'd and fray'd moreover in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern he lay'd it down again between his two feet in order to moralize upon the subject
+that thou art about to observe nothing in this world trim is made to last for ever but when tokens dear tom of thy love and remembrance wear out said trim what shall we say there is no occasion trim quoth my uncle toby
+to say any thing else and was a man to puzzle his brains till doom's day i believe trim it would be impossible the corporal perceiving my uncle toby was in the right and that it would be in vain for the wit of man to think of extracting a purer moral from his cap
+without further attempting it he put it on and passing his hand across his forehead to rub out a pensive wrinkle which the text and the doctrine between them had engender'd he return'd with the same look and tone of voice to his story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles
+the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles continued there was a certain king of bohemia but in whose reign except his own i am not able to inform your honour i do not desire it of thee trim by any means cried my uncle toby
+it was a little before the time an please your honour when giants were beginning to leave off breeding but in what year of our lord that was i would not give a halfpenny to know said my uncle toby only an please your honour it makes a story look the better in the face
+so ornament it after thy own fashion and take any date continued my uncle toby looking pleasantly upon him take any date in the whole world thou chusest and put it to thou art heartily welcome the corporal bowed for of every century
+and of every year of that century from the first creation of the world down to noah's flood and from noah's flood to the birth of abraham through all the pilgrimages of the patriarchs to the departure of the israelites out of egypt and throughout all the dynasties olympiads
+urbeconditas and other memorable epochas of the different nations of the world down to the coming of christ and from thence to the very moment in which the corporal was telling his story had my uncle toby subjected this vast empire of time
+and all its abysses at his feet but as modesty scarce touches with a finger what liberality offers her with both hands open the corporal contented himself with the very worst year of the whole bunch which to prevent your honours of the majority and minority
+from tearing the very flesh off your bones in contestation whether that year is not always the last cast year of the last cast almanack' i tell you plainly it was but from a different reason than you wot of it was the year next him
+which being the year of our lord seventeen hundred and twelve when the duke of ormond was playing the devil in flanders the corporal took it and set out with it afresh on his expedition to bohemia the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles continued
+there was an please your honour to tell thee truly trim quoth my uncle toby any other date would have pleased me much better not only on account of the sad stain upon our history that year
+though fagel was carrying on the works with such incredible vigour but likewise on the score trim of thy own story because if there are and which from what thou hast dropt i partly suspect to be the fact if there are giants in it
+there is but one an please your honour
+thou should'st have carried him back some seven or eight hundred years out of harm's way both of critics and other people and therefore i would advise thee if ever thou tellest it again if i live an please your honour
+but once to get through it i will never tell it again quoth trim either to man woman or child poo poo said my uncle toby but with accents of such sweet encouragement did he utter it that the corporal went on with his story with more alacrity than ever
+the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles continued there was an please your honour said the corporal raising his voice and rubbing the palms of his two hands cheerily together as he begun a certain king of bohemia
+leave out the date entirely trim quoth my uncle toby leaning forwards and laying his hand gently upon the corporal's shoulder to temper the interruption leave it out entirely trim a story passes very well without these niceties
+unless one is pretty sure of em sure of em said the corporal shaking his head right answered my uncle toby it is not easy trim for one bred up as thou and i have been to arms who seldom looks further forward than to the end of his musket or backwards beyond his knapsack
+to know much about this matter god bless your honour said the corporal won by the manner of my uncle toby's reasoning as much as by the reasoning itself he has something else to do
+he has his firelock an please your honour to furbish his accoutrements to take care of his regimentals to mend
+what business added the corporal triumphantly has a soldier an please your honour to know any thing at all of geography thou would'st have said chronology trim said my uncle toby for as for geography
+tis of absolute use to him he must be acquainted intimately with every country and its boundaries where his profession carries him he should know every town and city and village and hamlet with the canals the roads and hollow ways which lead up to them
+but he should be able at first sight to tell thee what is its name in what mountains it takes its rise what is its course
+where fordable where not he should know the fertility of every valley as well as the hind who ploughs it and be able to describe or if it is required to give thee an exact map of all the plains and defiles the forts the acclivities
+he should know their produce their plants their minerals their waters their animals their seasons their climates their heats and cold
+their policy and even their religion is it else to be conceived corporal continued my uncle toby rising up in his sentry box as he began to warm in this part of his discourse how marlborough could have marched his army from the banks of the maes to belburg from belburg to kerpenord
+here the corporal could sit no longer from kerpenord trim to kalsaken from kalsaken to newdorf from newdorf to landenbourg from landenbourg to mildenheim from mildenheim to elchingen from elchingen to gingen from gingen to balmerchoffen from balmerchoffen to skellenburg
+where he broke in upon the enemy's works forced his passage over the danube cross'd the lech push'd on his troops into the heart of the empire
+to the plains of blenheim and hochstet great as he was corporal he could not have advanced a step or made one single day's march without the aids of geography as for chronology i own trim continued my uncle toby
+that of all others it seems a science which the soldier might best spare was it not for the lights which that science must one day give him in determining the invention of powder the furious execution of which renversing every thing like thunder before it
+has become a new aera to us of military improvements changing so totally the nature of attacks and defences both by sea and land and awakening so much art and skill in doing it that the world cannot be too exact in ascertaining the precise time of its discovery
+or too inquisitive in knowing what great man was the discoverer and what occasions gave birth to it i am far from controverting continued my uncle toby what historians agree in that in the year of our lord thirteen eighty
+son of charles the fourth a certain priest whose name was schwartz
+because if we are to believe don pedro the bishop of leon how came priests and bishops an please your honour to trouble their heads so much about gun powder god knows said my uncle toby
+which was full thirty seven years before that time the secret of powder was well known and employed with success
+but in many of their most memorable sieges in spain and barbary and all the world knows that friar bacon had wrote expressly about it and had generously given the world a receipt to make it by above a hundred and fifty years before even schwartz was born
+and that the chinese added my uncle toby embarrass us and all accounts of it still more by boasting of the invention some hundreds of years even before him they are a pack of liars i believe cried trim they are somehow or other deceived said my uncle toby in this matter
+as is plain to me from the present miserable state of military architecture amongst them
+at each angle of it tis so barbarously constructed
+an please your honour quoth trim my uncle toby
+most courteously refused trim's offer till trim telling him he had half a dozen more in bohemia
+of the corporal that he discontinued his dissertation upon gun powder and begged the corporal forthwith to go on with his story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles
+this unfortunate king of bohemia said trim was he unfortunate then cried my uncle toby for he had been so wrapt up in his dissertation upon gun powder and other military affairs that tho he had desired the corporal to go on
+yet the many interruptions he had given dwelt not so strong upon his fancy as to account for the epithet was he unfortunate then trim said my uncle toby pathetically the corporal wishing first the word and all its synonimas at the devil
+forthwith began to run back in his mind the principal events in the king of bohemia's story from every one of which it appearing that he was the most fortunate man that ever existed in the world it put the corporal to a stand for not caring to retract his epithet
+and less to explain it and least of all to twist his tale like men of lore to serve a system he looked up in my uncle toby's face for assistance but seeing it was the very thing my uncle toby sat in expectation of himself after a hum and a haw he went on
+that taking great pleasure and delight in navigation and all sort of sea affairs and there happening throughout the whole kingdom of bohemia to be no sea port town whatever how the duce should there trim cried my uncle toby for bohemia being totally inland
+it could have happen'd no otherwise it might said trim if it had pleased god my uncle toby never spoke of the being and natural attributes of god but with diffidence and hesitation i believe not replied my uncle toby after some pause for being inland as i said
+lusatia and upper saxony to the north franconia to the west and bavaria to the south bohemia could not have been propell'd to the sea without ceasing to be bohemia nor could the sea on the other hand have come up to bohemia without overflowing a great part of germany
+and destroying millions of unfortunate inhabitants who could make no defence against it scandalous cried trim which would bespeak added my uncle toby mildly such a want of compassion in him who is the father of it that i think trim
+the thing could have happen'd no way the corporal made the bow of unfeign'd conviction and went on now the king of bohemia with his queen and courtiers happening one fine summer's evening to walk out aye
+there the word happening is right trim cried my uncle toby
+which might happen or not just as chance ordered it king william was of an opinion an please your honour quoth trim that every thing was predestined for us in this world
+that every ball had its billet he was a great man said my uncle toby and i believe continued trim to this day that the shot which disabled me at the battle of landen was pointed at my knee for no other purpose but to take me out of his service and place me in your honour's
+where i should be taken so much better care of in my old age it shall never trim be construed otherwise said my uncle toby the heart both of the master and the man were alike subject to sudden over flowings a short silence ensued
+besides said the corporal resuming the discourse but in a gayer accent if it had not been for that single shot i had never an please your honour been in love so thou wast once in love trim said my uncle toby smiling
+over head and ears an please your honour prithee when where and how came it to pass i never heard one word of it before quoth my uncle toby i dare say answered trim
+it's high time i should said my uncle toby your honour remembers with concern said the corporal the total rout and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of landen every one was left to shift for himself
+and if it had not been for the regiments of wyndham lumley and galway which covered the retreat over the bridge neerspeeken the king himself could scarce have gained it he was press'd hard as your honour knows on every side of him
+gallant mortal cried my uncle toby caught up with enthusiasm this moment now that all is lost i see him galloping across me corporal to the left to bring up the remains of the english horse along with him to support the right
+and tear the laurel from luxembourg's brows if yet tis possible i see him with the knot of his scarfe just shot off infusing fresh spirits into poor galway's regiment riding along the line
+then wheeling about and charging conti at the head of it brave brave by heaven cried my uncle toby he deserves a crown as richly as a thief a halter shouted trim my uncle toby knew the corporal's loyalty
+it did not altogether strike the corporal's fancy when he had made it but it could not be recall'd so he had nothing to do but proceed as the number of wounded was prodigious and no one had time to think of any thing but his own safety though talmash
+said my uncle toby brought off the foot with great prudence but i was left upon the field said the corporal
+so that it was noon the next day continued the corporal before i was exchanged and put into a cart with thirteen or fourteen more in order to be convey'd to our hospital
+except the groin said my uncle toby an please your honour replied the corporal the knee in my opinion
+every measure pursued by the commons
+besides numberless vexations and persecutions which the clergy underwent from the arbitrary power of the lower house the peers while the king was in scotland
+having passed an order for the observance of the laws with regard to public worship the commons assumed such authority that by a vote alone of their house they suspended those laws though enacted by the whole legislature
+they complained of the king's filling five vacant sees and considered it as an insult upon them
+they made a demand the most absurd in the world that the bishops being all of them parties should be refused a vote with regard to that question after the resolution was once formed by the commons
+of invading the established government of church and state it could not be expected that their proceedings in such a violent attempt would thenceforth be altogether regular and equitable but it must be confessed that
+in their attack on the hierarchy they still more openly passed all bounds of moderation as supposing no doubt
+had already risen to a great height and gave sufficient warning of their future attempts upon that order they muttered somewhat of their regret that they should be obliged to save the kingdom alone
+and that the house of peers would have no part in the honor nay they went so far as openly to tell the lords that they themselves were the representative body of the whole kingdom
+and that the peers were nothing but individuals who held their seats in a particular capacity and therefore if their lordships will not consent to the passing of acts necessary for the preservation of the people the commons
+together with such of the lords as are more sensible of the danger must join together and represent the matter to his majesty so violent was the democratical enthusiastic spirit diffused throughout the nation
+that a total confusion of all rank and order was justly to be apprehended and the wonder was not that the majority of the nobles should seek shelter under the throne
+but the tide of popularity seized many and carried them wide of the most established maxims of civil policy among the opponents of the king are ranked the earl of northumberland lord admiral a man of the first family and fortune
+and endowed with that dignified pride which so well became his rank and station the earl of essex who inherited all his father's popularity and having from his early youth sought renown in arms
+united to a middling capacity that rigid inflexibility of honor which forms the proper ornament of a nobleman and a soldier lord kimbolton soon after earl of manchester a person distinguished by humanity generosity
+affability and every amiable virtue these men finding that their credit ran high with the nation ventured to encourage those popular disorders which they vainly imagined
+they possessed authority sufficient to regulate and control in order to obtain a majority in the upper house the commons had recourse to the populace who on other occasions had done them such important service
+amidst the greatest security they affected continual fears of destruction to themselves and the nation and seemed to quake at every breath or rumor of danger
+however ridiculous were willingly attended to and were dispersed among the multitude to whose capacity they were well adapted beale a tailor informed the commons that walking in the fields
+he had hearkened to the discourse of certain persons unknown to him and had heard them talk of a most dangerous conspiracy a hundred and eight ruffians as he learned had been appointed to murder a hundred and eight lords and commoners
+and were promised rewards for these assassinations
+forty shillings for each commoner upon this notable intelligence orders were issued for seizing priests and jesuits a conference was desired with the lords
+and the deputy lieutenants of some suspected counties were ordered to put the people in a posture of defence the pulpits likewise were called in aid
+and resounded with the dangers which threatened religion from the desperate attempts of papists and malignants multitudes flocked towards westminster and insulted the prelates and such of the lords as adhered to the crown
+the peers voted a declaration against those tumults and sent it to the lower house but these refused their concurrence some seditious apprentices being seized and committed to prison immediately received their liberty
+during this time of disorder and danger offered their service to the king between them and the populace there passed frequent skirmishes which ended not without bloodshed by way of reproach
+these gentlemen gave the rabble the appellation of roundheads on account of the short cropped hair which they wore these called the others cavaliers and thus the nation
+which was before sufficiently provided with religious as well as civil causes of quarrel was also supplied with party names under which the factions might rendezvous and signalize their mutual hatred
+being distinguishable by their habit and being the object of violent hatred to all the sectaries were exposed to the most dangerous insults williams now created archbishop of york
+that though they had an undoubted right to sit and vote in parliament yet in coming thither they had been menaced assaulted affronted by the unruly multitude and could no longer with safety attend their duty in the house
+for this reason they protested against all laws votes and resolutions as null and invalid which should pass during the time of their constrained absence this protestation which
+that house desired a conference with the commons whom they informed of this unexpected protestation the opportunity was seized with joy and triumph
+the king was betrayed into another indiscretion much more fatal an indiscretion to which all the ensuing disorders and civil wars ought immediately and directly to be ascribed
+this was the impeachment of lord kimbolton and the five members when the commons employed in their remonstrance language so severe and indecent they had not been actuated entirely by insolence and passion
+their views were more solid and profound they considered that in a violent attempt such as an invasion of the ancient constitution the more leisure was afforded the people to reflect
+the less would they be inclined to second that rash and dangerous enterprise that the peers would certainly refuse their concurrence nor were there any hopes of prevailing on them but by instigating the populace to tumult and disorder
+that the employing of such odious means for so invidious an end would at long run lose them all their popularity and turn the tide of favor to the contrary party and that if the king only remained in tranquillity
+they were therefore resolved if possible to excite him to some violent passion
+it was not long before they succeeded beyond their fondest wishes charles was enraged to find that all his concessions but increased their demands
+were again roused to sedition and tumults that the blackest calumnies were propagated against him and even the irish massacre ascribed to his counsels and machinations
+he was apt to ascribe them in a great measure to his own indolence and facility the queen and the ladies of the court further stimulated his passion and represented that
+if he exerted the vigor and displayed the majesty of a monarch the daring usurpations of his subjects would shrink before him lord digby a man of fine parts but full of levity and hurried on by precipitate passions
+that they had traitorously endeavored to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom to deprive the king of his regal power and to impose on his subjects an arbitrary and tyrannical authority that they had endeavored
+by many foul aspersions on his majesty and his government to alienate the affections of his people and make him odious to them that they had attempted to draw his late army to disobedience of his royal commands
+and to side with them in their traitorous designs
+seem to be common between the impeached members and the parliament
+than so far as they concurred with the majority in their votes and speeches though proofs might perhaps be produced of their privately inviting the scots to invade england
+how could such an attempt be considered as treason after the act of oblivion which had passed and after that both houses with the king's concurrence had voted that nation three hundred thousand pounds for their brotherly assistance
+while the house of peers are scarcely able to maintain their independency or to reject the bills sent them by the commons will they ever be permitted by the populace supposing them inclined
+but surely was never before attempted in opposition to a faction during the full tide of its power and success but men had not leisure to wonder at the indiscretion of this measure
+messengers were employed to search for them and arrest them their trunks chambers and studies were sealed and locked the house voted all these acts of violence to be breaches of privilege
+and commanded every one to defend the liberty of the members the king irritated by all this opposition resolved next day to come in person to the house with an intention to demand perhaps seize in their presence
+the persons whom he had accused this resolution was discovered to the countess of carlisle sister to northumberland a lady of spirit wit and intrigue she privately sent intelligence to the five members
+and they had time to withdraw a moment before the king entered he was accompanied by his ordinary retinue to the number of above two hundred armed as usual some with halberts
+yesterday i sent a serjeant at arms to demand some who by my order were accused of high treason instead of obedience i received a message i must here declare to you
+that though no king that ever was in england could be more careful of your privileges than i shall be yet in cases of treason no person has privilege
+i never did intend any force but shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way for i never meant any other and now since i see i cannot do what i came for
+he asked the speaker who stood below whether any of these persons were in the house the speaker falling on his knee prudently replied i have sir
+neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the house is pleased to direct me whose servant i am and i humbly ask pardon
+who were appointed for that purpose or perhaps actuated by their own terrors ran from gate to gate crying out that the cavaliers were coming to burn the city and that the king himself was at their head
+next morning charles sent to the mayor and ordered him to call a common council immediately about ten o'clock he himself attended only by three or four lords went to guildhall
+he told the common council that he was sorry to hear of the apprehensions entertained of him that he was come to them without any guard in order to show how much he relied on their affections
+and that he had accused certain men of high treason against whom he would proceed in a legal way and therefore presumed that they would not meet with protection in the city after many other gracious expressions
+he heard the cry privilege of parliament privilege of parliament resounding from all quarters
+you speak of jealousies and fears lay your hands on your hearts and ask yourselves whether i may not likewise be disturbed with fears and jealousies and if so i assure you that this message has nothing lessened them
+what would you have have i violated your laws have i denied to pass any bill for the ease and security of my subjects i do not ask what you have done for me
+all this considered there is a judgment of heaven upon this nation if these distractions continue god so deal with me and mine as all my thoughts and intentions are upright for the maintenance of the true protestant profession
+and for the observance and preservation of the laws and i hope god will bless and assist those laws for my preservation no sooner did the commons despair of obtaining the king's consent to their bill than they instantly voted
+that those who advised his majesty's answer were enemies to the state and mischievous projectors against the safety of the nation that this denial is of such dangerous consequence that if his majesty persist in it
+it will hazard the peace and tranquillity of all his kingdoms unless some speedy remedy be applied by the wisdom and authority of both houses and that such of the subjects as have put themselves in a posture of defence against the common danger
+with the terrors of invasion with the dread of english and irish papists and the most unaccountable panics were spread throughout the nation lord digby having entered kingston in a coach and six
+attended by a few livery servants the intelligence was conveyed to london and it was immediately voted that he had appeared in a hostile manner to the terror and affright of his majesty's subjects
+had been sufficient to open the eyes of many and to recover them from the astonishment with which at first they had been seized
+and they proceeded to frame an ordinance in which by the authority of the two houses without the king's consent they named lieutenants for all the counties and conferred on them the command of the whole military force of all the guards
+garrisons and forts of the kingdom he issued proclamations against this manifest usurpation
+as he professed a resolution strictly to observe the law himself so was he determined he said to oblige every other person to pay it a like obedience the name of the king was so essential to all laws
+and so familiar in all acts of executive authority that the parliament was afraid had they totally omitted it that the innovation would be too sensible to the people in all commands therefore which they conferred
+they bound the persons to obey the orders of his majesty signified by both houses of parliament and inventing a distinction hitherto unheard of between the office and the person of the king
+those very forces which they employed against him they levied in his name and by his authority it is remarkable how much the topics of argument were now reversed between the parties the king
+while he acknowledged his former error of employing a plea of necessity in order to infringe the laws and constitution warned the parliament not to imitate an example on which they threw such violent blame and the parliament
+while they clothed their personal fears or ambition under the appearance of national and imminent danger made unknowingly an apology for the most exceptionable part of the king's conduct
+that the liberties of the people were no longer exposed to any peril from royal authority so narrowly circumscribed so exactly defined
+might be maintained upon very plausible topics but that the danger allowing it to have any existence was not of that kind great urgent inevitable which dissolves all law and levels all limitations
+were undoubtedly not of a civil but of a religious nature the distempered imaginations of men were agitated with a continual dread of popery with a horror against prelacy with an antipathy to ceremonies and the liturgy
+and more actuated by principle
+never were there individuals who possessed more capacity more courage more public spirit more disinterested zeal the infusion of one ingredient in too large a proportion had corrupted all these noble principles
+and converted them into the most virulent poison to determine his choice in the approaching contests every man hearkened with avidity to the reasons proposed on both sides the war of the pen preceded that of the sword
+lord falkland had accepted the office of secretary a man who adorned the purest virtue with the richest gifts of nature and the most valuable acquisitions of learning by him assisted by the king himself
+were the memorials of the royal party chiefly composed so sensible was charles of his superiority in this particular that he took care to disperse every where the papers of the parliament together with his own
+by comparison to form a judgment between them the parliament while they distributed copies of their own were anxious to suppress all the king's compositions
+to the ordinance of the parliament concerning the militia the king opposed his commissions of array the counties obeyed the one or the other according as they stood affected and in many counties where the people were divided
+mobbish combats and skirmishes ensued the parliament on this occasion went so far as to vote that when the lords and commons in parliament which is the supreme court of judicature
+upon the same principles they pretended by a verbal criticism on the tense of a latin verb to ravish from the king his negative voice in the legislature
+would admit him with his retinue after which he might easily render himself master of the place but the governor was on his guard he shut the gates and refused to receive the king
+who desired leave to enter with twenty persons only charles immediately proclaimed him traitor
+though they had already levied a guard for themselves had attempted to seize all the military power all the navy and all the forts of the kingdom and had openly employed their authority in every kind of warlike preparations yet immediately voted
+that the king seduced by wicked counsel intended to make war against his parliament who in all their consultations and actions had proposed no other end but the care of his kingdoms
+were traitors to the fundamental laws of the kingdom the armies which had been everywhere raised on pretence of the service in ireland were henceforth more openly enlisted by the parliament for their own purposes
+and the command of them was given to the earl of essex in london no less than four thousand men enlisted in one day and the parliament voted a declaration which they required every member to subscribe
+they issued orders for bringing in loans of money and plate in order to maintain forces which should defend the king and both houses of parliament for this style they still preserved within ten days
+and wait till the treasurers could find leisure to receive them such zeal animated the pious partisans of the parliament
+near the moiety too of the lower house absented themselves from counsels which they deemed so full of danger the commons sent up an impeachment against nine peers for deserting their duty in parliament
+their own members also who should return to them they voted not to admit till satisfied concerning the reason of their absence charles made a declaration to the peers who attended him
+that he expected from them no obedience to any commands which were not warranted by the laws of the land the peers answered this declaration by a protest
+in order to remove all jealousy he had resolved that their usurpations and illegal pretensions should be apparent to the whole world and thought that to recover the confidence of the people was a point much more material to his interest
+than the collecting of any magazines stores or armies which might breed apprehensions of violent or illegal counsels but the urgent necessity of his situation no longer admitted of delay
+he now prepared himself for defence with a spirit activity and address
+he employed all the advantages which remained to him and roused up his adherents to arms the resources of this prince's genius increased in proportion to his difficulties
+and he never appeared greater than when plunged into the deepest perils and distresses from the mixed character indeed of charles arose in part the misfortunes in which england was at this time involved
+that the king might despair of all composition
+their demands contained in nineteen propositions amounted to a total abolition of monarchical authority they required that no man should remain in the council who was not agreeable to parliament
+that none of the royal family should marry without consent of parliament or council
+that the votes of popish lords should be excluded that the reformation of the liturgy and church government should have place according to advice of parliament that the ordinance with regard to the militia be submitted to
+that the justice of parliament pass upon all delinquents that a general pardon be granted with such exceptions as should be advised by parliament that the forts and castles be disposed of by consent of parliament
+and that no peer be made but with consent of both houses should i grant these demands said the king in reply i may be waited on bareheaded i may have my hand kissed
+the title of majesty may be continued to me and the king's authority signified by both houses may still be the style of your commands i may have swords and maces carried before me
+but the picture but the sign of a king war on any terms was esteemed by the king and all the counsellors preferable to so ignominious a peace
+and the hearts of his loyal subjects which with god's blessing he doubted not would recover all the rest collecting therefore some forces he advanced southwards
+soon we came in sight of a fleet of seven vessels lying at anchor in a large bay several miles in extent the sight of those seven vessels lying in the offing made a profound impression upon our minds
+we had never before seen so many ships at one place curiously enough among them was the good bark mary melville with her gruff mate and big hearted master captain barston
+upon the eastern slope of the shores of this bay lay the two towns port steilacoom and steilacoom city both established in eighteen fifty one a far larger trade centered here than at any other point on puget sound
+and we decided on a halt to make ourselves acquainted with the surroundings a mile and a half from the shore we found also fort steilacoom it was simply the camp of a company of united states soldiers quartered in wooden shells of houses
+and log cabins intense rivalry ran between the two towns upper and lower steilacoom at this time as a result things were booming
+we were sorely tempted to accept the flattering offer of four dollars a day for common labor in a timber camp but concluded not to be swerved from the search for a new homesite during this visit we began seeing indians in considerable numbers
+they seemed to be a listless lot with no thought for the future or even for the immediate present the indians in those days seemed to work or play by spurts and spells here and there we saw a family
+but as a class they seemed to me the laziest set of people on earth that opinion was materially modified later as i became better acquainted with their habits i have found just as industrious people both men and women
+among the indians as among the whites the workers it may be said are less numerous among the men the women are all industrious should we camp here and spy out the land or should we go forward and see what lay before us
+after a sober second thought we realized that we had nothing to trade but labor and we had not come as far as this to be laborers for hire we had come to find a place to make a farm
+and a farm we were going to have again we set about searching for claims and the more we searched the less we liked the look of things finally on the fourth day after a long wearisome tramp we cast off at high tide
+and in a dead calm to continue our cruise oliver soon dropped into a comfortable afternoon nap leaving me in full command as the sun shone warm and the tide was taking us rapidly in the direction we wanted to go
+why shouldn't i doze a little too even if we did miss some of the sightseeing i was aroused from my nap by oliver's exclaiming what is that then half to himself as i live it's a deer swimming out here in the bay
+it surely can't be i responded three quarters asleep that's what it is he asserted we were wide awake now and gave chase very soon we caught up with the animal and succeeded in throwing a rope over its horns
+by this time we had drifted into the narrows and we soon found we had something more important to do than to tow a deer
+a perpendicular bluff rose from the highwater mark leaving no place for camp fire or bed
+and with contending forces of currents and counter currents yet all moving in a general direction it was our first introduction to a genuine tide rip the waters boiled as if in a veritable caldron swelling up here and there
+give me the salmon caught by trolling in early summer in the deep waters of puget sound the fish so fat that the excess of oil must be turned out of the pan while cooking
+the following day we could see mt rainier with its reflection in the placid waters of the bay theodore winthrop the observant traveler who came into these same waters a few months later and wrote of it as mt tacoma
+described it as a giant mountain dome of snow seeming to fill the aerial spaces as the image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water a wondrous sight it was and is whatever the name next day we entered the mouth of the puyallup
+and that the current was very strong we secured the services of an indian and his canoe to help us up the river and left our boat at the indians camp near the mouth it took a tugging of two days to go six miles
+and drag our canoe around the drifts it was a story of constant toil with consequent discouragement not ending until we camped
+an indian trail led up the river from
+but wagon roads there were none and whether a feasible route for one could be found only time and labor could determine we retraced our steps and in the evening landed again at the mouth of the river after a severe day's toil we were in no cheerful mood
+oliver did not sing as usual while preparing for camp neither did i have much to say but i fell to work mechanically preparing the much needed meal we ate in silence and then went to sleep
+over hundreds of miles of unoccupied prairie land as rich as anything that ever lay out of doors on our way from indiana to oregon in search of land on which to make a home here at what we might call the end of our rope
+we had found the land but with conditions that seemed almost too adverse to overcome it was a discouraging outlook even if there had been roads such timber it seemed an appalling undertaking to clear this land
+when we fell asleep that night it was without visions of new found wealth and yet later i did tackle a quarter section of that heaviest timber land and never let up until the last tree log stump and root had disappeared
+though of course not all cleared off by my own hands if we could have known what was coming four months later we would have remained in spite of our discouragement
+pass trail into washington they located in a body over nearly the whole valley and before the year was ended had made a rough wagon road out to the prairies
+lest some smart fellow should up and say i was drawing on my imagination i am not when we had broken camp and were sailing along we heard a dull sound like that often heard
+it extended as far as we could see in the direction we were going the sound increased and became like the roar of a heavy fall of rain or hail on water and we became aware that it was a vast school of fish moving south
+while millions were seemingly dancing on the surface of the water or leaping in the air we could feel the fish striking against the boat in such vast numbers that they fairly moved it the leap in the air was so high
+one would drop into the boat we soon discovered some indians following the school
+with an improvised net we too soon obtained all we wanted when we began to go on we were embarrassed by the mass of fish moving in the water as far as we could see there was no end to the school ahead of us but we finally got clear of the moving mass
+and reached the island shore in safety only to become weather bound in the wilds once more this camp did not prove so dreary as the last one although it was more exposed to the swell of the big waters
+and the sweep of the wind to the north we had a view of thirty miles or more to where horizon and water blended leaving it doubtful whether land was in sight or not as we afterwards ascertained we could see the famous san juan island
+later the bone of contention between our government and great britain when the northern boundary of the united states was settled port townsend lay
+the exact location of the town like the lost hunters we knew where we were but we didn't know where any place else was not lost ourselves the world was lost from us three ships passed us while we were at this camp
+a mere speck and growing to a full fledged deep sea vessel with all sails set scudding before the wind the other two were gracefully beating their way out
+with the beautiful open and comparatively level plateau in the background and two or three vessels at anchor in the foreground made a picture of a perfect city site
+many shacks and camps at first mistaken for the white men's houses were found to be occupied by natives they were a drunken rascally rabble spending their gains from the sale of fish and oil
+in a debauch that would last as long as their money held out this seemed to be a more stalwart race of indians than those to the south doubtless from the buffeting received in the larger waters they would often go out even to the open sea
+on their fishing excursions in canoes manned by thirty men or more after spending two or three days exploring the country we turned back to the bay where lay the seven ships we had seen near steilacoom we remembered the timber camps
+the bustle and stir of the little new village and the activity that we saw there greater than anywhere else on the waters of the sound most of all my thoughts would go on to the little cabin on the columbia river three days sufficed to land
+us back in the bay we sought but the ships were gone not a sailing craft of any kind was in sight of the little town
+can i get home tonight i asked myself it was an afternoon of the last week of june in eighteen fifty three and the sun was yet high i was well up the left bank of the cowlitz river how far i could not tell
+for there were no milestones on the crooked half obstructed trail leading downstream at best it would be a race with the sun but the days were long and the twilight was long
+i wore a heavy woolen shirt a slouch hat and worn shoes both hat and shoes gave ample ventilation socks i had none neither had i suspenders an improvised belt
+taking their place i was dressed for the race and was eager for the trial at olympia i had parted with my brother
+while i was to go home for the wife and baby to remove them to our new home i did not particularly mind the camping but i did not fancy the idea of lying out so near home if by extra exertion i could reach the cabin before night
+we never thought of catching cold from lying on the ground or on cedar boughs or from getting a good drenching after all the cabin could not be reached as the trail could not be followed at night
+slackening pace at nightfall to cool my system gradually i finally made my camp and slept as soundly as if on a bed of down my consolation was that the night was short and i could see to travel by three o'clock
+i do not look upon those years of camp and cabin life as years of hardship to be sure our food was plain as well as our dress our hours of labor were long and the labor itself was frequently severe the pioneers appeared rough and uncouth
+we never watched for the sun to go down
+or for the boss to quicken our steps the days were always too short and interest in our work was always unabated the cabin could not be seen until the trail came quite near it when i caught sight of a curl of smoke i knew i was almost there then i saw the cabin
+and a little lady in almost bloomer dress milking the cow she never finished milking that cow nor did she ever milk any cow when her husband was at home there were so many things to talk about that we could scarcely tell where to begin or when to stop
+much of the conversation naturally centered on the question of our moving to a new home why at olympia eggs were a dollar a dozen i saw them selling at that the butter you have there would bring you a dollar a pound as fast as you could weigh it out
+i saw stuff they called butter sell for that potatoes are selling for three dollars a bushel and onions at four everything the farmer raises sells high who buys oh almost everybody has to buy
+where do they get the money everybody seems to have money some take it there with them men working in the timber camps get four dollars a day and their board at one place they paid four dollars a cord for wood to ship to san francisco
+and a man can sell all the shingles he can make at four dollars a thousand i was offered five cents a foot for piles if we had buck and dandy over there we could make twenty dollars a day
+off the government land of course all help themselves to what they want then there are the fish and the clams and oysters and but what about the land for the claim that question was a stumper the little wife never lost sight of that bargain made before we were married
+now i found myself praising a country for the agricultural qualities of which i could not say much but if we could sell produce higher might we not well lower our standard of an ideal farm the claim i had taken was described with a touch of apology
+however we decided to move and began to prepare for the journey the wife baby bedding ox yoke and log chain were sent up the cowlitz in a canoe buck and dandy and i took the trail
+on this occasion i was ill prepared for a cool night camp having neither blanket nor coat i had expected to reach hard bread's hotel where the people in the canoe would stop overnight but i could not make it so again i lay out on the trail
+hard bread's an odd name for a hotel was so called because the old widower that kept the place fed his patrons on hardtack three times a day i found that my wife had not fared any better than i had on the trail and in fact
+not so well the floor of the cabin that is the hotel was a great deal harder than the sand spit where i had passed the night i had plenty of pure fresh air while she in a closed cabin
+and in the same room with many others had neither fresh air nor freedom from creeping things that make life miserable with her shoes for a pillow a shawl for covering small wonder that she reported i did not sleep a wink last night
+we soon arrived at the cowlitz landing the end of the canoe journey striking the tent that had served us so well on the plains and making a cheerful camp fire we speedily forgot the hard experiences of the trail
+fifty miles more of travel lay before us and such a road however we had one consolation it would be worse in winter than at that time
+our cows were gone given for provender to save the lives of the oxen during the deep december snow so when we took account of stock we had the baby buck and dandy a tent an ox yoke and chain enough clothing and bedding to keep us comfortable
+a very little food and no money the money had all been expended on the canoe passage should we pack the oxen and walk
+this last proposition was the most attractive and so next morning driving my oxen before me and leaving wife and baby to take care of the camp
+stranger though i was to say yes you can have two if you need them jackson had settled there eight years before
+the dread disease had terrors then that it does not now possess could it be possible my folks had been taken sick
+it appeared that i had scarcely got out of sight on my trip back with the oxen before one of those royal pioneer matrons had come to the camp she pleaded and insisted and finally almost frightened the little wife into going with her
+and sharing her house which was near by
+finding that the boat and provisions had been taken and seeing smoke in the bight
+a beautiful pebbly beach extended almost to the water's edge even at low tide there was a grassy level spit a background of evergreen giant fir timber
+and such fuel for the camp fire broken limbs with just enough pitch to make a cheerful blaze and yet body enough to last well
+glad the journey had been interrupted oliver was the carpenter of the party the tent builder wood getter and general roustabout while i the junior was chief cook and bottle washer
+an encampment of indians being near a party of them soon visited our camp and began making signs for trade
+said one of the matrons of the party what does she say oliver i'm blessed if i know but it looks as if she wanted to sell some clams after considerable dickering with signs and gestures and words many times repeated
+we were able to impart the information that we wanted
+chapter seventeen finding my people on leaving my newly found friends i faced a discouraging prospect the start for the high arid table lands bordering the yakima valley cut me loose from all communication
+no more immigrants were met until i reached the main traveled route beyond the columbia river the road lay through a forbidding sage plain or rather an undulating country covered by shifting sands
+as the sun rose the heat became intolerable the dust in places brought vivid memories of the trip across the plains
+to catch a glimpse of the expected train
+and compelled me to leave the road and descend into the valley for water
+that lasted until during the afternoon when i found water on the trail tethering my pony for his much needed dinner i opened my sack of hard bread to count the contents my store was half gone i lay down in the shade of a small tree
+near the spring to take an afternoon nap rousing before sundown refreshed bobby and i took the trail with new courage when night came i could not find it in my heart to camp the cool of the evening invigorated the pony and we pushed on
+finding that the road could be followed though but dimly seen i kept on the trail until a late hour when i unsaddled and hobbled the pony the saddle blanket was brought into use and i was soon off in dreamland forgetting all about the dust the trail or the morrow
+to make matters worse his hobbles had become loosened giving him free use of all his feet and he was in no mood to take the trail again coaxing was of no avail driving would do no good
+i followed him around about over the plain and through the sage brush at a rapid gait finally he slackened pace and i again became master
+all this roaming over the plain at bobby's heels but i happened to take the right course when the trail was found there was the saddle to look for and this was located with some difficulty
+a few hundred yards of travel brought uneasiness as it was evident that we were not on the regular trail not knowing but this was some cut off i went on until the columbia river bluff was reached and the great river was in sight
+half a mile distant and several hundred feet lower taking a trail down the bluff that seemed more promising than the wagon tracks i began to search for the road at the foot of the bluff
+only to find every semblance of a road gone i lost more than a half day's precious time and again was thrown into anxiety lest i had missed the long sought train the next incident that i remember vividly was my attempt to cross the columbia
+just below the mouth of the snake river i had seen but few indians on the whole trip and in fact the camp i found there on the bank of the great river was the first i distinctly remember coming upon i could not induce the indians to cross me over
+they seemed surly and unfriendly their behavior was so in contrast to that of the indians on the sound that i could not help wondering what it meant no one to my knowledge lost his life at the hands of the indians that season
+until i was hoarse from the violent effort finally while sitting there wondering what to do i spied a blue smoke arising from a cabin on the other side soon after i saw a man he immediately responded to my renewed efforts to attract attention
+the trouble had been that the people were all asleep while i was there in the early morning expending my breath for nothing the man was shirley ensign of olympia who had established a ferry across the columbia river and had lingered to set over belated immigrants if any should come along
+and had met my people they were camped some thirty miles away he thought
+but i could not wait there for them
+determined to reach camp that night if i could possibly do so
+dusk came on and still no signs then i spied some cattle grazing on the upland and soon came upon the camp in a ravine that had shut it from view rejoicing and outbursts of grief followed i inquired for my mother the first thing
+she was not there months before she had been buried in the sands of the platte valley my younger brother also lay buried on the plains near independence rock
+when we came to consider how the party should proceed i advised the over mountain trip but i cautioned them to expect some snow and much hard work how long will it take they asked about three weeks this brought disappointment
+they had thought they were about through with the journey you came to stay with us didn't you i want to but what about my wife and the two babies at the island father said some one must go and look after them so oliver was sent ahead
+while i was to take his place and help the immigrants through the natchess pass in our train were fifty or more head of stock seven wagons and seventeen people we made the trip across the divide in twenty two days without serious mishap or loss
+that beset our way at every step every man literally put his shoulder to the wheel we were compelled often to take hold of the wheels to boost the wagons over the logs or to ease them down steep places
+one man to each wagon to drive four to act as wheelmen father and the women on foot or horseback to drive the stock god bless the women folks of the plains nobler braver more uncomplaining souls were never known
+i have often thought that some one ought to write a just tribute to their valor and patience a book of their heroic deeds one day we encountered a newly fallen tree cocked up on its own upturned roots four feet from the ground go around it we could not
+to cut it out with our dulled flimsy saw seemed an endless task dig down boys said father and in short order every available shovel was out of the wagons very soon the way was open fully four feet deep and oxen and wagons passed under the obstruction
+do you say that we endured great hardships that depends upon the point of view as to this return trip i can truly say for myself that it was not one of hardship i enjoyed overcoming the difficulties and so did the greater number of the company
+but better food was obtainable and the goal was near at hand it was a positive pleasure therefore to pass over the miles one by one
+when our little train at last emerged from the forests and came out into the nisqually plains
+so marked was the contrast hundreds of cattle sheep and horses were quietly grazing scattered over the landscape as far as one could see
+chapter six of what took place between don quixote and his niece and housekeeper one of the most important chapters in the whole history
+but it was all preaching in the desert and hammering cold iron nevertheless among many other representations made to him the housekeeper said to him in truth master if you do not keep still and stay quiet at home
+what answer god will give to your complaints housekeeper i know not nor what his majesty will answer either i only know that if i were king i should decline to answer the numberless silly petitions they present every day
+and therefore i should be sorry that any affairs of mine should worry him whereupon the housekeeper said tell us senor at his majesty's court are there no knights there are replied don quixote and plenty of them and it is right there should be
+to set off the dignity of the prince and for the greater glory of the king's majesty then might not your worship said she be one of those that without stirring a step serve their king and lord in his court
+there must be all sorts in the world
+there is a great difference between one and another for the courtiers without quitting their chambers or the threshold of the court range the world over by looking at a map without its costing them a farthing and without suffering heat or cold hunger or thirst
+but we the true knights errant measure the whole earth with our own feet exposed to the sun to the cold to the air to the inclemencies of heaven by day and night on foot and on horseback
+nor do we only know enemies in pictures but in their own real shapes and at all risks and on all occasions we attack them without any regard to childish points or rules of single combat whether one has or has not a shorter lance or sword
+whether one carries relics or any secret contrivance about him whether or not the sun is to be divided and portioned out and other niceties of the sort that are observed in set combats of man to man that you know nothing about but i do
+and you must know besides that the true knight errant though he may see ten giants that not only touch the clouds with their heads but pierce them and that go each of them on two tall towers by way of legs and whose arms are like the masts of mighty ships and each eye like a great mill wheel
+and glowing brighter than a glass furnace must not on any account be dismayed by them on the contrary he must attack and fall upon them with a gallant bearing and a fearless heart and if possible vanquish and destroy them even though they have for armour the shells of a certain fish
+wield trenchant blades of damascus steel or clubs studded with spikes also of steel such as i have more than once seen
+and it would be well if there were no prince who did not set a higher value on this second or more properly speaking first kind of knights errant for as we read in their histories
+i would inflict a chastisement upon thee for the blasphemy thou hast uttered that all the world should ring with what can it be that a young hussy that hardly knows how to handle a dozen lace bobbins dares to wag her tongue and criticise the histories of knights errant
+for he was the most humble minded and courteous knight of his time
+but some there are that might have heard thee and it would not have been well for thee in that case for they are not all courteous or mannerly some are ill conditioned scoundrels nor is it everyone that calls himself a gentleman that is so in all respects some are gold others pinchbeck
+and one has need of experience and discernment to distinguish these two kinds of gentlemen
+god bless me said the niece that you should know so much uncle
+and yet that you should fall into a delusion so great and a folly so manifest as to try to make yourself out vigorous when you are old strong when you are sickly able to put straight what is crooked when you yourself are bent by age and above all a caballero when you are not one
+all the lineages in the world attend to what i am saying can be reduced to four sorts which are these those that had humble beginnings and went on spreading and extending themselves until they attained surpassing greatness those that had great beginnings and maintained them
+and still maintain and uphold the greatness of their origin those again that from a great beginning have ended in a point like a pyramid having reduced and lessened their original greatness
+those that had an humble origin and rose to the greatness they still preserve
+for examples of the second sort of lineage that began with greatness and maintains it still without adding to it
+of countless princes monarchs lords medes assyrians persians greeks and barbarians all these lineages and lordships have ended in a point and come to nothing
+for it would be impossible now to find one of their descendants and even should we find one it would be in some lowly and humble condition of plebeian lineages i have nothing to say save that they merely serve to swell the number of those that live
+and not by spending as he pleases but by knowing how to spend it well the poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by virtue by being affable well bred courteous gentle mannered and kindly not haughty arrogant or censorious
+but above all by being charitable for by two maravedis given with a cheerful heart to the poor he will show himself as generous as he who distributes alms with bell ringing and no one that perceives him to be endowed with the virtues i have named
+even though he know him not will fail to recognise and set him down as one of good blood and it would be strange were it not so praise has ever been the reward of virtue and those who are virtuous cannot fail to receive commendation
+there are two roads my daughters by which men may reach wealth and honours one is that of letters the other that of arms
+i am therefore in a measure constrained to follow that road
+and it will be labour in vain for you to urge me to resist what heaven wills fate ordains reason requires and above all my own inclination favours for knowing as i do the countless toils that are the accompaniments of knight errantry
+i know too the infinite blessings that are attained by it i know that the path of virtue is very narrow and the road of vice broad and spacious i know their ends and goals are different for the broad and easy road of vice ends in death
+i know as our great castilian poet says that it is by rugged paths like these they go that scale the heights of immortality unreached by those that falter here below
+i can tell you niece replied don quixote if these chivalrous thoughts did not engage all my faculties there would be nothing that i could not do nor any sort of knickknack that would not come from my hands particularly cages and tooth picks
+at this moment there came a knocking at the door
+nothing senor samson said she only that my master is breaking out plainly breaking out whereabouts is he breaking out senora asked samson has any part of his body burst he is only breaking out at the door of his madness she replied
+so that to bring him round again ever so little cost me more than six hundred eggs
+that i can well believe replied the bachelor for they are so good and so fat and so well bred that they would not say one thing for another though they were to burst for it in short then mistress housekeeper that is all
+say the prayer of santa apollonia that is if you know it for i will come presently and you will see miracles woe is me cried the housekeeper
+that would do if it was the toothache my master had
+i know what i am saying mistress housekeeper
+replied carrasco and with this the housekeeper retired
+and arrange with him what will be told in its proper place
+once or twice as well as i remember replied sancho
+for i know not what i am so focile means
+and submit to what i teach thee i would bet said sancho that from the very first you understood me and knew what i meant but you wanted to put me out that you might hear me make another couple of dozen blunders may be so replied don quixote
+but to come to the point what does teresa say teresa says
+and so say i said don quixote continue sancho my friend go on you talk pearls to day the fact is continued sancho
+and the lamb goes as soon as the sheep and nobody can promise himself more hours of life in this world than god may be pleased to give him
+and that the same he paid me out of your estate for i don't care to stand on rewards which either come late or ill or never at all god help me with my own
+and so long as one gains something there is nothing lost
+and so well understood returned don quixote that i have seen into the depths of thy thoughts and know the mark thou art shooting at with the countless shafts of thy proverbs
+please to return to my service well and good but to suppose that i am going to disturb or unhinge the ancient usage of knight errantry is all nonsense and so my sancho get you back to your house and explain my intentions to your teresa
+bene quidem if not we remain friends for if the pigeon house does not lack food it will not lack pigeons and bear in mind my son that a good hope is better than a bad holding and a good grievance better than a bad compensation
+and in short i mean to say and i do say that if you don't like to come on reward with me and run the same chance that i run god be with you
+the arch wag samson came forward and embracing him as he had done before said with a loud voice o flower of knight errantry o shining light of arms o honour and mirror of the spanish nation
+may god almighty in his infinite power grant that any person or persons who would impede or hinder thy third sally may find no way out of the labyrinth of their schemes nor ever accomplish what they most desire and then turning to the housekeeper he said
+for i know it is the positive determination of the spheres that senor don quixote shall proceed to put into execution his new and lofty designs and i should lay a heavy burden on my conscience did i not urge and persuade this knight not to keep the might of his strong arm and the virtue of his valiant spirit
+any longer curbed and checked for by his inactivity he is defrauding the world of the redress of wrongs
+of the honour of virgins of the aid of widows and of the support of wives and other matters of this kind appertaining belonging proper and peculiar
+on then my lord don quixote beautiful and brave let your worship and highness set out to day rather than to morrow and if anything be needed for the execution of your purpose
+with all the qualifications requisite to make a knight errant's squire but heaven forbid that to gratify my own inclination i should shake or shatter this pillar of letters and vessel of the sciences and cut down this towering palm of the fair and liberal arts
+let this new samson remain in his own country and bringing honour to it bring honour at the same time on the grey heads of his venerable parents for i will be content with any squire that comes to hand as sancho does not deign to accompany me
+the bread eaten and the company dispersed
+who the panzas from whom i am descended were and what is more i know and have learned
+no hammer drives the hoops of a cask as she drives one to do what she wants but after all a man must be a man and a woman a woman and as i am a man anyhow which i can't deny i will be one in my own house too let who will take it amiss
+and so there's nothing more to do but for your worship to make your will with its codicil in such a way that it can't be provoked
+so i offer again to serve your worship faithfully and loyally as well and better than all the squires that served knights errant in times past or present
+as he was there described but now hearing him talk of a will and codicil that could not be provoked instead of will and codicil that could not be revoked
+in fine don quixote and sancho embraced one another and made friends and by the advice and with the approval of the great carrasco who was now their oracle it was arranged that their departure should take place three days thence by which time they could have
+all that was requisite for the journey ready and procure a closed helmet which don quixote said he must by all means take samson offered him one as he knew a friend of his
+poured out on the bachelor were past counting they tore their hair they clawed their faces and in the style of the hired mourners that were once in fashion
+samson's intention in persuading him to sally forth once more was to do what the history relates farther on
+with whom he had previously discussed the subject
+his alforjas furnished with certain matters in the way of victuals and his purse with money that don quixote gave him to meet emergencies samson embraced him and entreated him to let him hear of his good or evil fortunes so that he might rejoice over the former
+in which is related the adventure of the enamoured shepherd together with other truly droll incidents don quixote had gone but a short distance beyond don diego's village when he fell in with a couple of either priests or students and a couple of peasants
+and both students and peasants were struck with the same amazement that everybody felt who saw don quixote for the first time and were dying to know who this man so different from ordinary men could be don quixote saluted them and after ascertaining that their road was the same as his
+made them an offer of his company and begged them to slacken their pace as their young asses travelled faster than his horse and then to gratify them he told them in a few words who he was and the calling and profession he followed
+which was that of a knight errant seeking adventures in all parts of the world he informed them that his own name was don quixote of la mancha and that he was called by way of surname the knight of the lions all this was greek or gibberish to the peasants
+for all that however they regarded him with admiration and respect and one of them said to him if you sir knight have no fixed road as it is the way with those who seek adventures not to have any let your worship come with us
+who is called par excellence
+as the bridegroom is called camacho the rich she is eighteen and he twenty two and they are fairly matched though some knowing ones who have all the pedigrees in the world by heart will have it that the family of the fair quiteria is better than camacho's
+but no one minds that now a days for wealth can solder a great many flaws at any rate camacho is free handed
+he has provided dancers too not only sword but also bell dancers for in his own town there are those who ring the changes and jingle the bells to perfection of shoe dancers i say nothing for of them he has engaged a host but none of these things
+nor of the many others i have omitted to mention
+and he lived in the house next door to that of her parents
+so that the loves of the two children basilio and quiteria
+he arranged a match for his daughter with the rich camacho
+who had not so large a share of the gifts of fortune as of nature for if the truth be told ungrudgingly he is the most agile youth we know a mighty thrower of the bar a first rate wrestler and a great ball player he runs like a deer and leaps better than a goat
+bowls over the nine pins as if by magic
+and above all handles a sword as well as the best
+say that to my wife said sancho who had until now listened in silence for she won't hear of anything but each one marrying his equal holding with the proverb each ewe to her like
+if all those who love one another were to marry said don quixote it would deprive parents of the right to choose and marry their children to the proper person and at the proper time and if it was left to daughters to choose husbands as they pleased
+one would be for choosing her father's servant and another some one she has seen passing in the street and fancies gallant and dashing though he may be a drunken bully
+and the matrimonial choice is very liable to error
+why then should not he do the same who has to make the whole journey of life down to the final halting place of death more especially when the companion has to be his companion in bed at board and everywhere as the wife is to her husband
+he has never been seen to smile or heard to utter rational word and he always goes about moody and dejected talking to himself in a way that shows plainly he is out of his senses he eats little and sleeps little and all he eats is fruit and when he sleeps
+if he sleeps at all it is in the field on the hard earth like a brute beast sometimes he gazes at the sky
+that he might be taken for a clothed statue with its drapery stirred by the wind in short he shows such signs of a heart crushed by suffering that all we who know him
+and any one of them or any moment the house may fall i have seen the rain coming down and the sun shining all at one time
+and tell me is there anyone who can boast of having driven a nail into the wheel of fortune no faith and between a woman's yes and no i wouldn't venture to put the point of a pin
+for love i have heard say
+poverty wealth and blear eyes pearls what art thou driving at sancho curses on thee said don quixote
+no one can understand thee but judas himself and i wish he had thee tell me thou animal what dost thou know about nails or wheels or anything else oh if you don't understand me replied sancho it is no wonder my words are taken for nonsense
+but no matter i understand myself and i know i have not said anything very foolish in what i have said only your worship senor is always gravelling at everything i say nay everything i do
+maybe there are toledans who do not hit it off when it comes to polished talk that is true said the licentiate for those who have been bred up in the tanneries
+and yet they are all toledans pure correct
+though they may have been born in majalahonda i say of discrimination because there are many who are not so and discrimination is the grammar of good language if it be accompanied by practice i sirs for my sins have studied canon law at salamanca
+where you are now tail look here bachelor corchuelo returned the licentiate you have the most mistaken idea in the world about skill with the sword if you think it useless it is no idea on my part but an established truth
+and these joined with my resolution which is not small will make you confess that i am not mistaken dismount and put in practice your positions and circles and angles and science for i hope to make you see stars at noonday with my rude raw swordsmanship
+who will make me turn my back and that there is not one in the world i will not compel to give ground as to whether you turn your back or not i do not concern myself replied the master of fence
+though it might be that your grave would be dug on the spot where you planted your foot the first time i mean that you would be stretched dead there for despising skill with the sword
+but he was met by a tap on the mouth from the button of the licentiate's sword that checked him in the midst of his furious onset and made him kiss it as if it were a relic though not as devoutly as relics are and ought to be kissed
+the end of it was that the licentiate reckoned up for him by thrusts every one of the buttons of the short cassock he wore tore the skirts into strips like the tails of a cuttlefish knocked off his hat twice and so completely tired him out
+that in vexation anger and rage he took the sword by the hilt and flung it away with such force that one of the peasants that were there who was a notary and who went for it made an affidavit afterwards that he sent it nearly three quarters of a league
+by my faith senor bachelor if your worship takes my advice you will never challenge anyone to fence again only to wrestle and throw the bar for you have the youth and strength for that but as for these fencers as they call them i have heard say
+they can put the point of a sword through the eye of a needle i am satisfied with having tumbled off my donkey said corchuelo and with having had the truth i was so ignorant of proved to me by experience and getting up he embraced the licentiate
+and they were better friends than ever and not caring to wait for the notary who had gone for the sword
+they resolved to push on so as to reach the village of quiteria to which they all belonged in good time during the remainder of the journey the licentiate held forth to them on the excellences of the sword with such conclusive arguments and such figures and mathematical proofs
+it grew dark but before they reached the town it seemed to them all as if there was a heaven full of countless glittering stars in front of it they heard too the pleasant mingled notes of a variety of instruments flutes drums
+psalteries pipes
+were filled with lights unaffected by the wind for the breeze at the time was so gentle that it had not power to stir the leaves on the trees the musicians were the life of the wedding wandering through the pleasant grounds in separate bands some dancing
+others singing others playing the various instruments already mentioned
+were frisking and gambolling all over the meadow
+even were it under gilded ceilings and so turned aside a little out of the road
+as the good quarters he had enjoyed in the castle or house of don diego came back to his mind
+wherein an account is given of the wedding of camacho the rich together with the incident of basilio the poor
+scarce had the fair aurora given bright phoebus time to dry the liquid pearls upon her golden locks with the heat of his fervent rays when don quixote shaking off sloth from his limbs
+sprang to his feet and called to his squire sancho who was still snoring
+that without envying or being envied sleepest
+to interfere with thy repose ambition breaks not thy rest nor doth this world's empty pomp disturb thee for the utmost reach of thy anxiety is to provide for thy ass
+since upon my shoulders thou hast laid the support of thyself the counterpoise and burden that nature and custom have imposed upon masters the servant sleeps and the master lies awake thinking how he is to feed him advance him and reward him
+he awoke at last drowsy and lazy and casting his eyes about in every direction observed there comes if i don't mistake
+a wedding that begins with smells like that by my faith ought to be plentiful and unstinting have done thou glutton said don quixote come let us go and witness this bridal and see what the rejected basilio does
+let him do what he likes returned sancho be he not poor he would marry quiteria to make a grand match for himself and he without a farthing is there nothing else faith
+senor it's my opinion the poor man should be content with what he can get
+and if that be so as no doubt it is
+but when such gifts fall to one that has hard cash i wish my condition of life was as becoming as they are
+for god's sake sancho said don quixote here
+one of them was that i was to be let say all i liked so long as it was not against my neighbour or your worship's authority and so far it seems to me i have not broken the said article
+and even if it were so i desire you to hold your tongue and come along for the instruments we heard last night are already beginning to enliven the valleys again and no doubt the marriage will take place in the cool of the morning and not in the heat of the afternoon
+and six stewpots that stood round the blaze had not been made in the ordinary mould of common pots for they were six half wine jars each fit to hold the contents of a slaughter house
+they swallowed up whole sheep and hid them away in their insides without showing any more sign of them than if they were pigeons
+of over six gallons each and all filled as it proved afterwards with generous wines there were besides piles of the whitest bread like the heaps of corn one sees on the threshing floors
+there was a wall made of cheeses arranged like open brick work and two cauldrons full of oil
+and plunged into another cauldron of prepared honey that stood close by of cooks and cook maids there were over fifty all clean brisk and blithe in the capacious belly of the ox were a dozen soft little sucking pigs which sewn up there
+the spices of different kinds did not seem to have been bought by the pound but by the quarter and all lay open to view in a great chest
+but abundant enough to feed an army
+contemplated all and everything won his heart the first to captivate and take his fancy were the pots
+get down and look about for a ladle and skim off a hen or two and much good may they do you i don't see one said sancho wait a bit said the cook sinner that i am how particular and bashful you are
+and so saying he seized a bucket and plunging it into one of the half jars took up three hens and a couple of geese
+fall to friend and take the edge off your appetite with these skimmings until dinner time comes
+well then said the cook take spoon and all for camacho's wealth and happiness furnish everything
+don quixote was watching the entrance at one end of the arcade of some twelve peasants all in holiday and gala dress
+one warm day in winter when some of the pussy willows made a mistake and began to grow because they thought spring had come a party of muskrats were visiting in the marsh beside the pond all around them were their winter houses built of mud and coarse grasses
+these homes looked like heaps of dried rushes unless one went close to them if one did that he could plainly see what they were and if one happened to be a muskrat and could dive and go into them through their watery doorways
+and are awake at night we wish it would always be warm weather said the young muskrats what's the use of winter hard to tell answered one muskrat
+who had lived in the marsh longer than the rest hard to tell i know it always gives me a good appetite though then all the muskrats laughed they were a jolly good natured company and easy to get along with
+the other pond people liked them much better than they did their neighbors the minks the wild ducks who nested in the sedges were quite willing that the young muskrats should play with their children and the mud hens were not afraid of them
+mud hens cannot bear minks they say that when a mud chicken is missing from the nest
+in spring and summer when they can find fresh grasses and young rushes or a few parsnips carrots and turnips from the farmers fields other animals are quite safe in the winter they live mostly on roots
+yes great pity chuckled the old muskrat how glad you would be to see them he smiled all around his little mouth and showed his gnawing teeth
+he knew that the frogs were better off asleep in the mud at the bottom of the pond than they would be sitting in the sunshine with a few hungry gulls above them the turtles were sleeping all winter too
+the eels were lying at the bottom stupid and drowsy and somewhere the water adders were hidden away dreaming of spring of all the birds who lived by the water only the gulls were there and they were not popular
+it is true that they helped keep the pond sweet and clean and picked up and carried away many things which made the shore untidy still they were rude and talked too loudly and wore their feathers in such a way that they looked like fine large birds
+the other pond people said that was just like them always pretending to be more than they really were fifteen young muskrats all brothers and sisters and all born the summer before started off to look at the old home
+where they were children together that is to say
+and when they were old enough to look out for themselves five more came to live in the old nest and when these were old enough to leave the nest another five were born it doesn't mean so much to muskrats to be brothers and sisters as it does to some people
+and to hear them slap their long scaly tails on the water when they dove they had short downy fur almost black on the back soft gray underneath and a reddish brown everywhere else
+there was very little fur on their tails or on their feet and those parts were black these fifteen children had been fairly well brought up but you can see that their mother had many cares
+so it is not strange if they sometimes behaved badly in some other families where there were only nine or ten babies all the season they had been brought up more strictly
+like all young muskrats they were full of fun and there were few pleasanter sights than to see them frolicking on a warm moonlight evening when they looked like brown balls rolling and bounding around on the shore or plunging into the water
+if they had all been exactly the same age it would have been even pleasanter for the oldest five would put on airs and call the others the children and the next five would call the youngest five
+babies although they were all well grown there was no chance for the youngest five to call other muskrats babies so when they were warm and well fed and good natured they laughed and said who cares
+when they were cold and hungry they slapped their tails on the ground or on the water and said don't you think you're smart
+she would say now children in such a way that they had to stop
+teasing is not so very bad you know although it is dreadfully silly but when people begin by teasing they sometimes get to saying things in earnest even really hateful mean things
+and that was what made the muskrat father and mother stop it whenever they could now the whole fifteen crowded around the old summer home and some of them went in one way and some of them went in another
+for every muskrat's summer house has several burrows leading to it when they reached the old nest at the end all of them tried to get in at once and they pushed each other around with their broad little heads
+scrambled and clutched and held on with their strong little feet five of them said it's our turn first we're the oldest and five more said well it's our turn next anyway cause we're next oldest
+the others said you might give up to us because we're the youngest they pushed and scrambled some more and one of the youngest children said to one of the oldest well i don't care i'm just as big as you are
+which was so and the older one answered back well you're not so good looking which was also true then part of the brothers and sisters
+took sides with one and part took sides with the other what had been a lovely frolic became an unpleasant disgraceful quarrel and they said such things as these
+you slapped your tail on my back
+or the half way between brothers and sisters should go first into the old nest and it didn't matter a bit who was oldest or who was youngest and it never would have happened had it not been for their dreadful habit of teasing
+but they were too much excited to mind and they did not stop until their father came and slapped them with his tail then they kept still and listened to their mother
+she told them that they should leave the place at once and not one of them should even set foot in the old nest suppose somebody had gotten hurt she said this made the young muskrats look very sober
+for they knew that the muskrat who is hurt in winter never gets well after she had let them think about this for a while she said i shall punish you all for this
+then there was no quarrel among her children to see who should have the first turn not at all one young muskrat said aren't you going to let us play any more yes
+but i shall choose the games the oldest five will play mud turtles in winter the next five will play frogs in winter and the youngest five will play snakes in winter
+the way to play these games is to lie perfectly still in some dark place and not say a word the young muskrats looked at each other sorrowfully
+they thought it sounded very much the same as being sent to bed for being naughty they did not dare say anything for they knew that although their mother was gentle as muskrats are most of the time she could be very severe
+so they went away quietly to play what she had told them they must but it was not much fun to play those games when all the others were having a fine time in the sunshine
+the lucky mink during the warm weather the minks did not come often to the pond then they had to stay nearer home and care for their babies in the winter when food was not so plentiful
+and their youngest children were old enough to come with them they visited there every day it was not far from their home the minks lived by a waterfall in the river and had burrows in the banks
+where the young minks stayed until they were large enough to go out into the world then the fathers and mothers were very busy for in each home there were four or five or six children hungry and restless and needing to be taught many things
+they were related to the weasels who lived up by the farmyard and had the same slender and elegant bodies and short legs as they like the weasels they sometimes climbed trees
+they did most of their hunting in the river swimming with their bodies almost all under water and diving and turning and twisting gracefully and quickly when they hunted on land they could tell by smelling just which way to go for their food
+the minks were a very dark brown and scattered through their close soft fur were long shining hairs of an even darker shade which made their coats very beautiful indeed the fur was darker on their backs than on the under part of their bodies
+and their tapering bushy tails were almost black their under jaws were white and they were very proud of them perhaps it was because they had so little white fur that they thought so much of it you know that is often the way
+we think most of those things which are scarce or hard to get there was one old mink by the river who had a white tip on his tail and that is something which many people have never seen it is even more uncommon
+than for minks to have white upper lips and that happens only once in a great while this mink was a bachelor and nobody knew why some people said it was because he was waiting to find a wife with a white tip on her tail
+yet that could not have been for he was too wise to wait for something which might never happen however it was he lived alone and fished and hunted just for himself he could dive more quickly
+stay under water longer and hunt by scent better than any other mink round there his fur was sleeker and more shining than that of his friends and it is no wonder that the sisters of his friends thought that he ought to marry
+when the minks visited together somebody was sure to speak of the bachelor's luck they said that whatever he did he was always lucky it is all because of a white tip on his tail they said
+that makes him lucky the young minks heard their fathers and mothers talking and wished that they had been born with white tips on their tails so that they could be lucky too once the bachelor heard them wishing this and he smiled and showed his beautiful teeth
+and told them that it was not the tip of his tail
+and the brothers were bigger than the sisters as mink brothers always are although they were all the same age one was very much larger than any of the rest and so they called him big brother
+he thought there was never such a fine mink as the bachelor and he used to follow him around
+he wished to be just like him in every way but one he did not want to be a bachelor the other young minks laughed at big brother and asked him if he thought his tail would turn white if he followed the bachelor long enough
+big brother stood it very patiently for a while then he snarled at them and showed his teeth without smiling and said he would fight anybody who spoke another word about it minks are very brave and very fierce
+and never know when to stop if they have begun to fight so after that nobody dared tease big brother by saying anything more about the bachelor sometimes they did look at his tail and smile but they never spoke
+and he pretended not to know what they meant by it a few days after this the bachelor was caught in a trap a common clumsy wooden trap put together with nails and twine
+it was not near the river and none of his friends would have found him if big brother had not happened along he could hardly believe what he saw was it possible that a trap had dared to catch a mink with a white tipped tail
+then he heard the bachelor groan and he knew that it was so he hurried up to where the trap was can't you get out said he no said the bachelor i can't the best way to get
+out is not to get in and i've gotten in can't you do something with your lucky tail to make the trap open asked big brother i could do something with my teeth answered the bachelor if they were only where the tip of my tail is
+why are minks always walking into traps he was trying hard not to be cross but his eyes showed how he felt and that was very cross indeed then big brother became much excited
+i have good teeth said he tell me what to do if you will help me out said the bachelor i will give you my luck and what shall i do with the tail i have asked the young mink
+who thought that the bachelor was to give him his white tipped tail never mind now answered the bachelor and he told the young mink just where to gnaw for a long time there was no sound but that of the young mink's teeth on the wood of the trap
+the bachelor was too brave to groan or make a fuss when he knew there was anybody around to hear big brother's mouth became very sore and his stomach became very empty but still he kept at work he was afraid somebody would
+come for the trap and the mink in it before he finished now try it said he after he had gnawed for quite a while the bachelor backed out as far as he could but his body stuck in the hole
+you are rumpling your beautiful fur cried the young mink never mind the fur answered the bachelor i can smooth that down afterward you will have to gnaw a little on this side
+and he raised one of his hind feet to show where he meant it was a beautiful hindfoot thickly padded and with short partly webbed toes and no hair at all growing between them the claws were short sharp and curved
+big brother gnawed away now try it said he the bachelor backed carefully out through the opening and stood there looking tired and hungry and very much rumpled you are a fine young mink said he
+we will get something to eat and then we will see about making you lucky they went to the river bank and had a good dinner the bachelor ate more than big brother for his mouth was not sore but big brother was very happy
+he thought how handsome he would look with a white tipped tail and how after he had that he could surely marry whoever he wished it was the custom among his people to want to marry the best looking and strongest
+indeed it is so among all the pond people and that is one reason why they care so much about being good looking it is very hard for a young mink to have the one he loves choose somebody else just because the other fellow
+has the bushiest tail or the longest fur or the thickest pads on his feet now said the bachelor we will talk about luck we will go to a place where nobody can hear what we say
+they found such a place and lay down the bachelor rolled over three times and smoothed his fur he was still so tired from being in the trap then he looked at the young mink very sharply so you want my tail
+said he you said you would give me your luck answered big brother and everybody knows that your luck is in your tail the bachelor smiled what will you do with the tail you have said he
+i don't know answered big brother you wouldn't want to wear two asked the bachelor oh no answered big brother
+well how will you put my tail in place of yours asked the bachelor i don't know answered the young mink but you are so wise that i thought you might know some way
+he began to feel discouraged and to think that the bachelor's offer didn't mean very much after all don't you think said the bachelor slowly don't you think that if you could have my luck
+you could get along pretty well with your own tail why yes said the young mink who had begun to fear he was not going to get anything yes but how could that be
+the bachelor smiled again i always tell people said he that my luck is not in my tail and they never believe it i will tell you the secret of my luck
+and you can have luck like it if you really care enough he looked all around to make sure that nobody was near and he listened very carefully with the two little round ears that were almost hidden in his head fur then he whispered to big brother
+this is the secret always do everything a little better than anybody else can is that all
+that is enough answered the bachelor keep trying and trying and trying until you can dive deeper stay under water longer run faster
+then you will have good luck when theirs is poor you will have plenty to eat when they are hungry you can beat in every fight you can have sleek shining fur
+said he when i have learned to do everything in the very best way it will be luck of my own of course answered the bachelor
+then it is a kind of luck that cannot be lost if i carried mine in the tip of my tail somebody might bite it off and leave me unlucky big brother kept the secret
+and worked until he had learned to be as lucky as the bachelor then he married the person he wanted and she was very very handsome it is said that one of their sons has a white tipped tail
+two little crayfishes quarrel the day after the eels left the pond people talked of nothing else it was not that they were so much missed for the eels you know do not swim around in the daytime
+the larger people had been sorry to have them go and some of them felt that without the eels awake and stirring the pond was hardly a safe place at night i think it is a good deal safer remarked a minnow who usually said what she thought
+of course i do not know why didn't you ask them said a stickleback why replied the minnow if i had gone to the eels and asked them that
+i have heard some queer things about the eels myself said the stickleback but i have never felt much afraid of them i suppose i am braver because i wear so many of my bones on the outside just then
+a wise old crayfish came along walking sidewise
+the crayfish stuck his tail into the mud he often did this when he was surprised it seemed to help him think when he had thought for a while he waved his big pinching claws and said
+it would be better for me not to tell what i think i used to live near them this showed that the wise old crayfish had been well brought up and knew he should not say unpleasant things about people if he could help it
+when there was need of it he could tell unpleasant truths and indeed that very evening he did say what he thought of the eels that was when he was teaching some young crayfishes his pupils
+their mother had brought up a large family and was not strong she had just cast the shell which she had worn for a year and now she was weak and helpless until the new one should harden on her it is such a bother she said
+but it is a comfort to think that the new one will last a year when i do get it while their mother was so weak the wise old crayfish amused the children and taught them things which all crayfishes should know every evening
+they gathered around him some of them swimming to him some walking forward some sidewise and some backward it made no difference to them which way they came they were restless pupils and their teacher could not keep them from looking behind them
+each one had so many eyes that he could look at the teacher with a few and at the other little crayfishes with a few more and still have a good many eyes left with which to watch the tadpoles these eyes were arranged in two big bunches
+and unless you looked very closely you might think that they had only two eyes apiece they had good ears and there were also fine smelling bristles growing from their heads
+that he had not slept so much as usual and now when he should have been wide awake he felt exceedingly dull and stupid when he tried to walk his eight legs stumbled over each other
+and the weak way in which he waved his pinching claw legs showed how tired he was after he had told his pupils the best way to hold their food with their pinching claws
+one mischievous little fellow called out i want to know about the eels my mother would never let me go near them and now they've moved away and i won't ever see them and i think it's just horrid eels my children said their teacher
+are long slender sharp nosed slippery people with a fringe of fins along their backs and another fringe along their bellies they breathe through very small gill openings in the backs of their heads
+they have large mouths and teeth in their mouths and they are always sticking out their lower jaws and how do began the biggest little crayfish ask me that to morrow said their teacher
+stretching his eight walking legs and his two pinching claw legs and his tail paddles but remember this one thing if you ever see an eel get out of his way don't stop
+said one little crayfish who thought it smart to be saucy we'll look
+all of which meant nothing at all and was only said to annoy his teacher they scrambled away over the pond bottom
+jiggling the young clams and racing with each other where the bottom was smooth beat you running backward cried the saucy crayfish to the biggest little crayfish and they scampered along backward in the moonlit water there was an old log on the bottom of the pond
+and they sat on that to rest the biggest little crayfish had beaten
+said the saucy one pooh said the biggest one that's all you know they don't run on land well i guess they do replied the saucy one
+that the eels had come back to live in the old pond again mother eel opened her big mouth very wide on land she said decidedly as she swallowed the biggest little crayfish eels wriggle
+chapter seven our virtues
+our virtues it is probable that we too have still our virtues although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem
+and also at a little distance from us we europeans of the day after tomorrow we firstlings of the twentieth century with all our dangerous curiosity our multifariousness and art of disguising
+with our most ardent requirements well then let us look for them in our labyrinths where as we know so many things lose themselves so many things get quite lost
+and is there anything finer than to search for one's own virtues is it not almost to believe in one's own virtues but this believing in one's own virtues
+it will be different two hundred fifteen as in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns which determine the path of one planet
+now with red light now with green
+so we modern men owing to the complicated mechanism of our firmament are determined by different moralities
+and are seldom unequivocal and there are often cases also in which our actions are motley coloured
+indeed at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place we learn to despise when we love and precisely when we love best all of it however unconsciously without noise
+is opposed to our taste nowadays this is also an advance as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste including the enmity
+and voltairean bitterness against religion and all that formerly belonged to freethinker pantomime it is the music in our conscience the dance in our spirit to which puritan litanies
+moral sermons and goody goodness won't chime
+let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment they never forgive us if they have once made a mistake before us
+for they get the better even of their blunders
+just as though in short they betray something thereby flaubert for instance
+i would now recommend for a change something else for a pleasure namely the unconscious astuteness with which good fat honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits
+subtler even than the understanding of its victims a repeated proof that instinct is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered
+two hundred nineteen the practice of judging and condemning morally is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so
+it is also a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature and finally it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and becoming subtle
+malice spiritualises they are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to which those who are over endowed with intellectual goods and privileges are equal to them
+i shall take care not to say so i would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities
+is precisely the spiritualising of justice
+gradations of rank in the world even among things and not only among men
+and what are the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men including the cultured even the learned and perhaps philosophers also if appearances do not deceive
+the fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher natures and more refined and fastidious tastes seems absolutely uninteresting to the average man if
+notwithstanding he perceive devotion to these interests he calls it desinteresse and wonders how it is possible to act disinterestedly there have been philosophers
+who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical other worldly expression perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience instead of stating
+even an action for love's sake shall be unegoistic but you fools and the praise of the self sacrificer but whoever has really offered sacrifice knows
+that he wanted and obtained something for it perhaps something from himself for something from himself that he relinquished here in order to have more there perhaps in general to be more
+that i honour and respect an unselfish man not however because he is unselfish but because i think he has a right to be useful to another man at his own expense in short the question is always
+and who the other is for instance in a person created and destined for command self denial and modest retirement instead of being virtues would be the waste of virtues
+so it seems to me every system of unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals to every one not only sins against good taste
+but is also an incentive to sins of omission an additional seduction under the mask of philanthropy and precisely a seduction and injury to the higher rarer and more privileged types of men
+moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the gradations of rank their presumption must be driven home to their conscience until they thoroughly understand at last
+that it is immoral to say that what is right for one is proper for another so said my moralistic pedant and bonhomme
+did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of morals to practise morality but one should not be too much in the right
+fellow suffering is preached nowadays and if i gather rightly no other religion is any longer preached let the psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity through all the noise which is natural to these preachers
+as to all preachers he will hear a hoarse groaning genuine note of self contempt it belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of europe which has been on the increase for a century
+the first symptoms of which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of galiani to madame d'epinay if it is not really the cause thereof the man of modern ideas
+the hybrid european a tolerably ugly plebeian taken all in all absolutely requires a costume he needs history as a storeroom of costumes
+to be sure he notices that none of the costumes fit him properly he changes and changes let us look at the nineteenth century with respect to these hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades of style
+and also with respect to its moments of desperation on account of nothing suiting us it is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic or classical or christian
+or florentine or barocco or national in moribus et artibus it does not clothe us but the spirit especially the
+historical spirit profits even by this desperation once and again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is tested put on taken off packed up and above all studied
+we are prepared as no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style for the most spiritual festival laughter and arrogance for the transcendental height of supreme folly
+and aristophanic ridicule of the world perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here the domain where even we can still be original
+probably as parodists of the world's history and as god's merry andrews perhaps though nothing else of the present have a future our laughter itself may have a future
+the historical sense or the capacity for divining quickly the order of rank of the valuations according to which a people a community or an individual has lived
+the divining instinct for the relationships of these valuations for the relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces this historical sense
+has come to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi barbarity into which europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races it is only the nineteenth century that has recognized this faculty
+as its sixth sense owing to this mingling the past of every form and mode of life and of cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another flows forth into us
+by means of our semi barbarity in body and in desire we have secret access everywhere such as a noble age never had we have access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations
+and to every form of semi barbarity that has at any time existed on earth and in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto has just been semi barbarity
+the historical sense implies almost the sense and instinct for everything the taste and tongue for everything whereby it immediately proves itself to be an ignoble sense for instance
+we enjoy homer once more it is perhaps our happiest acquisition that we know how to appreciate homer whom men of distinguished culture
+esprit vaste and even voltaire the last echo of the century cannot and could not so easily appropriate whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy the very decided yea
+a dissatisfaction with its own condition or an admiration of what is strange all this determines and disposes them unfavourably even towards the best things of the world which are not their property
+or could not become their prey and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this historical sense with its truckling plebeian curiosity
+the case is not different with shakespeare that marvelous spanish moorish saxon synthesis of taste over whom an ancient athenian
+with a secret confidence and cordiality we enjoy it as a refinement of art reserved expressly for us and allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the english populace
+in which shakespeare's art and taste lives as perhaps on the chiaja of naples where with all our senses awake we go our way enchanted and voluntarily
+let us finally confess it that what is most difficult for us men of the historical sense to grasp feel taste and love what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost hostile
+is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art the essentially noble in works and men their moment of smooth sea and halcyon self sufficiency
+the goldenness and coldness which all things show that have perfected themselves perhaps our great virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to good taste
+at least to the very bad taste and we can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly hesitatingly and with compulsion the small short and happy godsends and glorifications of human life
+as they shine here and there those moments and marvelous experiences when a great power has voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite when a super abundance of refined delight has been enjoyed
+our itching is really the itching for the infinite the immeasurable like the rider on his forward panting horse we let the reins fall before the infinite we modern men we semi barbarians
+whether it be hedonism pessimism utilitarianism or eudaemonism all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things according to pleasure and pain
+that is according to accompanying circumstances and secondary considerations are plausible modes of thought and naivetes which every one conscious of creative powers and an artist's conscience
+for society with its sick and misfortuned for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie on the ground around us still less is it sympathy for the grumbling
+who strive after power they call it freedom our sympathy is a loftier and further sighted sympathy we see how man dwarfs himself how you dwarf him
+and makes his destruction desirable the discipline of suffering of great suffering know ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto
+the tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy its shuddering in view of rack and ruin its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing enduring
+creature and creator are united in man there is not only matter shred excess clay mire folly chaos but there is also the creator
+the sculptor the hardness of the hammer the divinity of the spectator and the seventh day do ye understand this contrast and that your sympathy for the creature in man
+applies to that which has to be fashioned bruised forged stretched roasted annealed refined
+so it is sympathy against sympathy but to repeat it once more there are higher problems than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy
+and all systems of philosophy which deal only with these are naivetes two hundred twenty six
+in which we have to fear and love this almost invisible inaudible world of delicate command and delicate obedience a world of almost in every respect captious insidious sharp
+and tender yes it is well protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity we are woven into a strong net and garment of duties and cannot disengage ourselves
+precisely here we are men of duty even we occasionally it is true we dance in our chains and betwixt our swords
+these are men without duty we have always fools and appearances against us
+honesty granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid ourselves we free spirits well we will labour at it with all our perversity and love
+and not tire of perfecting ourselves in our virtue which alone remains may its glance some day overspread like a gilded blue mocking twilight
+let us go with all our devils to the help of our god it is probable that people will misunderstand and mistake us on that account what does it matter
+they will say their honesty' that is their devilry and nothing else what does it matter and even if they were right have not all gods hitherto been such sanctified
+our stupidity every virtue inclines to stupidity every stupidity to virtue stupid to the point of sanctity they say in russia let us be careful lest
+has been more injured by the tediousness of its advocates than by anything else at the same time however i would not wish to overlook their general usefulness
+it is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not some day become interesting
+but let us not be afraid things still remain today as they have always been i see no one in europe who has or discloses an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals
+inevitable english utilitarians how ponderously and respectably they stalk on stalk along a homeric metaphor expresses it better in the footsteps of bentham
+just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of the respectable helvetius no he was not a dangerous man helvetius c e senateur pococurante to use an expression of galiani
+no new thought nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought not even a proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject an impossible literature
+has insinuated itself also into these moralists whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives if one must read them concealed this time under the new form of the scientific spirit
+is not a moralist the opposite of a puritan that is to say as a thinker who regards morality as questionable as worthy of interrogation in short as a problem
+is moralizing not immoral in the end they all want english morality to be recognized as authoritative inasmuch as mankind or the general utility
+or the happiness of the greatest number no the happiness of england will be best served thereby they would like by all means to convince themselves that the striving after english happiness
+i mean after comfort and fashion
+she ceased and was about to pass on in her discourse to the exposition of other matters when i break in and say excellent is thine exhortation and such as well beseemeth thy high authority
+at all and if so what it is then she made answer i am anxious to fulfil my promise completely and open to thee a way of return to thy native land
+what place can be left for random action when god constraineth all things to order for ex nihilo nihil is sound doctrine which none of the ancients gainsaid
+although they used it of material substance not of the efficient principle this they laid down as a kind of basis for all their reasonings concerning nature now
+our good aristotle says she has defined it concisely in his physics and closely in accordance with the truth how pray said i
+for instance if a man is digging the earth for tillage and finds a mass of buried gold now such a find is regarded as accidental yet it is not
+ex nihilo for it has its proper causes the unforeseen and unexpected concurrence of which has brought the chance about for had not the cultivator been digging
+had not the man who hid the money buried it in that precise spot the gold would not have been found these then are the reasons why the find is a chance one in that it results from causes which met together and concurred
+not from any intention on the part of the discoverer since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in the field intended that the money should be found but as i said it happened
+by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the treasure we may then define chance as being an unexpected result flowing from a concurrence of causes where the several factors had some definite end
+but the meeting and concurrence of these causes arises from that inevitable chain of order which flowing from the fountain head of providence disposes all things in their due time and place
+soon to draw apart and plainward each its separate way to wend when once more their waters mingle in a channel
+deep and wide all the flotsam comes together that is borne upon the tide ships and trunks of trees uprooted in the torrent's wild career meet as mid the swirling waters
+but as sure as he found a princess he found some fault in her of course he could not marry a mere woman however beautiful and there was no princess to be found worthy of him
+whether the prince was so near perfection that he had a right to demand perfection itself i cannot pretend to say all i know is that he was a fine handsome
+brave generous well bred and well behaved youth as all princes are in his wanderings he had come across some reports about our princess
+he never dreamed that she could bewitch him for what indeed could a prince do with a princess that had lost her gravity who could tell what she might not lose next she might lose her visibility or her tangibility
+or in short the power of making impressions upon the radical sensorium so that he should never be able to tell whether she was dead or alive of course he made no further inquiries about her
+one day he lost sight of his retinue in a great forest these forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers like a sieve that keeps back the bran then the princes get away to follow their fortunes
+in this way they have the advantage of the princesses who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun i wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes one lovely evening after wandering about for many days
+he found that he was approaching the outskirts of this forest for the trees had got so thin that he could see the sunset through them and he soon came upon a kind of heath next he came upon signs of human neighbourhood
+at length he entered another wood not a wild forest but a civilized wood through which a footpath led him to the side of a lake along this path the prince pursued his way through the gathering darkness
+suddenly he paused and listened strange sounds came across the water it was in fact the princess laughing now there was something odd in her laugh as i have already hinted
+for the hatching of a real hearty laugh requires the incubation of gravity and perhaps this was how the prince mistook the laughter for screaming looking over the lake he saw something white in the water and in an instant he had torn off his tunic
+now i cannot tell how it came about whether she pretended to be drowning or whether he frightened her or caught her so as to embarrass her but certainly he brought her to shore in a fashion ignominious to a swimmer
+and more nearly drowned than she had ever expected to be for the water had got into her throat as often as she had tried to speak at the place to which he bore her the bank was only a foot or two above the water
+so he gave her a strong lift out of the water to lay her on the bank but her gravitation ceasing the moment she left the water away she went up into the air scolding and screaming
+you naughty naughty naughty naughty man she cried no one had ever succeeded in putting her into a passion before when the prince saw her ascend he thought he must have been bewitched
+the prince meantime stood in the water staring and forgetting to get out but the princess disappearing he scrambled on shore and went in the direction of the tree
+until reaching the ground and seeing him standing there she caught hold of him and said i'll tell papa oh no you won't returned the prince yes i will she persisted
+what business had you to pull me down out of the water and throw me to the bottom of the air i never did you any harm pardon me i did not mean to hurt you i don't believe you have any brains and that is a worse loss than your wretched gravity
+i pity you the prince now saw that he had come upon the bewitched princess and had already offended her but before he could think what to say next she burst out angrily giving a stamp with her foot
+that would have sent her aloft again but for the hold she had of his arm put me up directly put you up where you beauty asked the prince he had fallen in love with her almost already
+for her anger made her more charming than any one else had ever beheld her and as far as he could see which certainly was not far she had not a single fault about her except of course that she had not any gravity
+no prince however would judge of a princess by weight the loveliness of her foot he would hardly estimate by the depth of the impression it could make in mud put you up where you beauty asked the prince in the water you stupid
+answered the princess come then said the prince the condition of her dress increasing her usual difficulty in walking compelled her to cling to him and he could hardly persuade himself that he was not in a delightful dream
+he turned towards the princess and said how am i to put you in that is your business she answered quite snappishly
+very well said the prince and catching her up in his arms he sprang with her from the rock the princess had just time to give one delighted shriek of laughter before the water closed over them
+it seemed to me like going up rejoined she my feeling was certainly one of elevation too the prince conceded the princess did not appear to understand him for she retorted his question
+said the princess beyond everything answered he for i have fallen in with the only perfect creature i ever saw no more of that i am tired of it said the princess perhaps she shared her father's aversion to punning
+don't you like falling in then said the prince it is the most delightful fun i ever had in my life answered she i never fell before i wish i could learn
+to think i am the only person in my father's kingdom that can't fall here the poor princess looked almost sad i shall be most happy to fall in with you any time you like said the prince devotedly thank you
+i don't know perhaps it would not be proper but i don't care at all events as we have fallen in let us have a swim together with all my heart responded the prince
+and away they went swimming and diving and floating until at last they heard cries along the shore and saw lights glancing in all directions it was now quite late and there was no moon i must go home said the princess
+at least i don't exactly know where it is i wish i hadn't one either rejoined the princess it is so stupid i have a great mind she continued to play them all a trick why couldn't they leave me alone
+they won't trust me in the lake for a single night you see where that green light is burning that is the window of my room now if you would just swim there with me very quietly and when we are all but under the balcony
+as you did a little while ago i should be able to catch hold of the balcony and get in at the window and then they may look for me till to morrow morning with more obedience than pleasure said the prince gallantly and away they swam very gently
+will you be in the lake to morrow night the prince ventured to ask to be sure i will i don't think so perhaps was the princess's somewhat strange answer
+and merely whispered as he gave her the parting lift don't tell the only answer the princess returned was a roguish look she was already a yard above his head the look seemed to say never fear it is too good fun to spoil that way
+so perfectly like other people had she been in the water that even yet the prince could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw her ascend slowly grasp the balcony and disappear through the window
+he turned almost expecting to see her still by his side but he was alone in the water so he swam away quietly and watched the lights roving about the shore for hours after the princess was safe in her chamber
+as soon as they disappeared he landed in search of his tunic and sword and after some trouble found them again then he made the best of his way round the lake to the other side there the wood was wilder
+and the shore steeper rising more immediately towards the mountains which surrounded the lake on all sides and kept sending it messages of silvery streams from morning to night and all night long he soon found a spot whence he could see the green light in the princess's room
+and where even in the broad daylight he would be in no danger of being discovered from the opposite shore it was a sort of cave in the rock where he provided himself a bed of withered leaves and lay down too tired for hunger to keep him awake
+this is very kind of you the prince went to dress for the occasion for he was resolved to die like a prince when the princess heard that a man had offered to die for her
+she was so transported that she jumped off the bed feeble as she was and danced about the room for joy she did not care who the man was that was nothing to her the hole wanted stopping and if only a man would do why take one
+where they had already placed a little boat for her the water was not deep enough to float it but they hoped it would be before long they laid her on cushions placed in the boat wines and fruits and other nice things and stretched a canopy over all
+in a few minutes the prince appeared the princess recognized him at once but did not think it worth while to acknowledge him here i am said the prince put me in
+they told me it was a shoeblack said the princess so i am said the prince i blacked your little boots three times a day because they were all i could get of you put me in
+the courtiers did not resent his bluntness except by saying to each other that he was taking it out in impudence but how was he to be put in the golden plate contained no instructions on this point
+the prince looked at the hole and saw but one way he put both his legs into it sitting on the stone and stooping forward covered the corner that remained open with his two hands in this uncomfortable position
+he resolved to abide his fate and turning to the people said now you can go the king had already gone home to dinner now you can go repeated the princess after him like a parrot
+the people obeyed her and went presently a little wave flowed over the stone and wetted one of the prince's knees but he did not mind it much
+and a long pause followed this is very kind of you prince said the princess at last quite coolly as she lay in the boat with her eyes shut i am sorry i can't return the compliment
+thought the prince but you are worth dying for after all again a wavelet and another and another flowed over the stone and wetted both the prince's knees but he did not speak or move
+two three four hours passed in this way the princess apparently asleep and the prince very patient but he was much disappointed in his position for he had none of the consolation he had hoped for
+at last he could bear it no longer princess said he but at the moment up started the princess crying i'm afloat i'm afloat and the little boat bumped against the stone princess
+repeated the prince encouraged by seeing her wide awake and looking eagerly at the water well said she without looking round
+and you haven't looked at me once did he then i suppose i must but i am so sleepy sleep then darling and don't mind me said the poor prince
+replied the princess i think i will go to sleep again just give me a glass of wine and a biscuit first said the prince very humbly with all my heart said the princess and gaped as she said it
+feeling very faint indeed only i shall die before it is of any use to you unless i have something to eat there then said she holding out the wine to him ah you must feed me i dare not move my hands
+and she began at once to feed him with bits of biscuit and sips of wine as she fed him he contrived to kiss the tips of her fingers now and then she did not seem to mind it one way or the other but the prince felt better
+now for your own sake princess said he i cannot let you go to sleep you must sit and look at me else i shall not be able to keep up well i will do anything i can to oblige you
+answered she with condescension and sitting down she did look at him and kept looking at him with wonderful steadiness considering all things the sun went down and the moon rose
+and gush after gush the waters were rising up the prince's body they were up to his waist now why can't we go and have a swim said the princess
+i shall never swim more said the prince oh i forgot said the princess and was silent so the water grew and grew and rose up and up on the prince
+and the princess sat and looked at him she fed him now and then the night wore on the waters rose and rose the moon rose likewise higher and higher
+and shone full on the face of the dying prince the water was up to his neck will you kiss me princess said he feebly the nonchalance was all gone now
+yes i will answered the princess and kissed him with a long sweet cold kiss now said he with a sigh of content i die happy
+he did not speak again the princess gave him some wine for the last time he was past eating then she sat down again and looked at him the water rose and rose
+it touched his chin it touched his lower lip it touched between his lips he shut them hard to keep it out the princess began to feel strange it touched his upper lip
+he breathed through his nostrils the princess looked wild it covered his nostrils her eyes looked scared and shone strange in the moonlight his head fell back the water closed over it
+and the bubbles of his last breath bubbled up through the water the princess gave a shriek and sprang into the lake she laid hold first of one leg and then of the other and pulled and tugged but she could not move either she stopped to take breath
+and that made her think that he could not get any breath she was frantic she got hold of him and held his head above the water which was possible now his hands were no longer on the hole but it was of no use for he was past breathing
+love and water brought back all her strength she got under the water and pulled and pulled with her whole might till at last she got one leg out the other easily followed how she got him into the boat she never could tell
+but when she did she fainted away coming to herself she seized the oars kept herself steady as best she could and rowed and rowed though she had never rowed before round rocks and over shallows and through mud she rowed
+till she got to the landing stairs of the palace by this time her people were on the shore for they had heard her shriek she made them carry the prince to her own room and lay him in her bed and light a fire and send for the doctors
+but the lake your highness said the chamberlain who roused by the noise came in in his nightcap go and drown yourself in it she said this was the last rudeness of which the princess was ever guilty
+and one must allow that she had good cause to feel provoked with the lord chamberlain had it been the king himself he would have fared no better but both he and the queen were fast asleep and the chamberlain went back to his bed
+somehow the doctors never came so the princess and her old nurse were left with the prince but the old nurse was a wise woman and knew what to do they tried everything for a long time without success
+the princess was nearly distracted between hope and fear but she tried on and on one thing after another and everything over and over again at last when they had all but given it up just as the sun rose
+but the extreme impertinence of the baron determined him to conclude the match
+cacambo decided that it would be better to deliver him up again to the captain of the galley after which they thought to send him back to the general father of the order at rome by the first ship this advice was well received the old woman approved it
+they said not a word to his sister the thing was executed for a little money and they had the double pleasure of entrapping a jesuit and punishing the pride of a german baron
+it is natural to imagine that after so many disasters candide married and living with the philosopher pangloss the philosopher martin the prudent cacambo and the old woman
+having besides brought so many diamonds from the country of the ancient incas must have led a very happy life but he was so much imposed upon by the jews that he had nothing left except his small farm
+his wife became uglier every day more peevish and unsupportable the old woman was infirm and even more fretful than cunegonde cacambo who worked in the garden and took vegetables for sale to constantinople
+and they saw other cadis pashas and effendis coming to supply the place of the exiles and afterwards exiled in their turn they saw heads decently impaled for presentation to the sublime porte
+i want to know which is worse to be ravished a hundred times by negro pirates
+in short to go through all the miseries we have undergone or to stay here and have nothing to do
+this discourse gave rise to new reflections and martin especially concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust
+pangloss owned that he had always suffered horribly but as he had once asserted that everything went wonderfully well he asserted it still though he no longer believed it what helped to confirm martin in his detestable principles
+they had soon squandered their three thousand piastres parted were reconciled quarrelled again
+that your presents would soon be dissipated and only make them the more miserable you have rolled in millions of money you and cacambo
+ha said pangloss to paquette providence has then brought you amongst us again my poor child do you know that you cost me the tip of my nose an eye and an ear as you may see what a world is this
+and now this new adventure set them philosophising more than ever in the neighbourhood there lived a very famous dervish who was esteemed the best philosopher in all turkey and they went to consult him pangloss was the speaker
+master said he we come to beg you to tell why so strange an animal as man was made with what meddlest thou said the dervish is it thy business
+there is horrible evil in this world what signifies it said the dervish whether there be evil or good when his highness sends a ship to egypt does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not
+what then must we do said pangloss hold your tongue answered the dervish i was in hopes said pangloss that i should reason with you a little about causes and effects about the best of possible worlds the origin of evil the nature of the soul
+and the pre established harmony at these words the dervish shut the door in their faces during this conversation the news was spread that two viziers and the mufti had been strangled at constantinople and that several of their friends had been impaled
+asked the old man what was the name of the strangled mufti i do not know answered the worthy man and i have not known the name of any mufti nor of any vizier i am entirely ignorant of the event you mention
+i presume in general that they who meddle with the administration of public affairs die sometimes miserably and that they deserve it but i never trouble my head about what is transacting at constantinople
+i content myself with sending there for sale the fruits of the garden which i cultivate having said these words he invited the strangers into his house his two sons and two daughters presented them with several sorts of sherbet which they made themselves
+with kaimak enriched with the candied peel of citrons with oranges lemons pine apples pistachio nuts and mocha coffee unadulterated with the bad coffee of batavia or the american islands
+you must have a vast and magnificent estate said candide to the turk i have only twenty acres replied the old man i and my children cultivate them our labour preserves us from three great evils weariness vice and want
+made profound reflections on the old man's conversation this honest turk said he to pangloss and martin seems to be in a situation far preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the honour of supping
+grandeur said pangloss is extremely dangerous according to the testimony of philosophers for in short eglon king of moab was assassinated by ehud absalom was hung by his hair and pierced with three darts
+king nadab the son of jeroboam was killed by baasa
+athaliah by jehoiada the kings jehoiakim jeconiah and zedekiah were led into captivity
+dionysius of syracuse pyrrhus perseus hannibal jugurtha ariovistus caesar pompey nero otho vitellius domitian
+that we must cultivate our garden you are right said pangloss for when man was first placed in the garden of eden he was put there ut operaretur eum that he might cultivate it which shows that man was not born to be idle
+let us work said martin without disputing it is the only way to render life tolerable the whole little society entered into this laudable design according to their different abilities their little plot of land produced plentiful crops
+but she became an excellent pastry cook
+the old woman looked after the linen
+for he made a good joiner and became a very honest man
+there is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds
+if you had not been put into the inquisition if you had not walked over america if you had not stabbed the baron if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of el dorado you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio nuts
+but in the midst of gaiety his heart yearned all the while for his lost love and his merriment was but mourning in disguise at last the night wore on and as he was retiring along the corridor he saw a man of about forty years of age
+with long hair coming towards him who when he saw genzaburo cried out dear me why this must be my young lord genzaburo who has come out to enjoy himself genzaburo thought this rather strange but
+looking at the man attentively recognized him as a retainer whom he had had in his employ the year before and said this is a curious meeting pray what have you been about since you left my service at any rate
+i may congratulate you on being well and strong where are you living now well sir since i parted from you i have been earning a living as a fortune teller at kanda and have changed my name to kaji sazen
+i am living in a poor and humble house but if your lordship at your leisure would honour me with a visit well it's a lucky chance that has brought us together and i certainly will go and see you besides i want you to do something for me
+shall you be at home the day after to morrow certainly sir i shall make a point of being at home very well then the day after to morrow i will go to your house i shall be at your service sir and now as it is getting late
+i will take my leave for to night good night then we shall meet the day after to morrow and so the two parted and went their several ways to rest on the appointed day genzaburo made his preparations and went in disguise without any retainers
+to call upon sazen who met him at the porch of his house and said this is a great honour my lord genzaburo is indeed welcome my house is very mean but let me invite your lordship to come into an inner chamber
+pray replied genzaburo don't make any ceremony for me don't put yourself to any trouble on my account and so he passed in and sazen called to his wife to prepare wine and condiments and they began to feast
+at last genzaburo looking sazen in the face said there is a service which i want you to render me a very secret service but as if you were to refuse me i should be put to shame before i tell you what that service is
+well then said genzaburo greatly pleased and drawing ten riyos from his bosom this is but a small present to make to you on my first visit but pray accept it no indeed i don't know what your lordship wishes of me
+how he had first met her and fallen in love with her at the adzuma bridge how chokichi had introduced her to him at the tea house at oji and then when she fell ill and he wanted to see her again instead of bringing her to him had only given him good advice
+and so genzaburo drew a lamentable picture of his state of despair sazen listened patiently to his story and after reflecting for a while replied well sir it's not a difficult matter to set right
+when genzaburo heard this he felt greatly relieved and recommending sazen to do his best in the matter took his leave and returned home that very night sazen after thinking over all that genzaburo had told him
+laid his plans accordingly and went off to the house of kihachi the eta chief and told him the commission with which he had been entrusted kihachi was of course greatly astonished and said some time ago sir chokichi came here
+and said that my lord genzaburo having been rebuked by his family for his profligate behaviour had determined to break off his connection with my daughter of course i knew that the daughter of an eta was no fitting match for a nobleman
+so when chokichi came and told me the errand upon which he had been sent i had no alternative but to announce to my daughter that she must give up all thought of his lordship since that time she has been fretting and pining and starving for love
+but when i tell her what you have just said how glad and happy she will be let me go and talk to her at once
+well at any rate i have some news for you that will make you happy a messenger has come from my lord genzaburo for whom your heart yearns at this o koyo who had been crouching down like a drooping flower gave a great start and cried out is that really true
+it is chokichi who has been throwing obstacles in the way at last his lordship has secretly sent a man called kaji sazen a fortune teller to arrange an interview between you so now my child you may cheer up
+and go to meet your lover as soon as you please when o koyo heard this she was so happy that she thought it must all be a dream and doubted her own senses kihachi in the meanwhile rejoined sazen in the other room and
+after telling him of the joy with which his daughter had heard the news put before him wine and other delicacies i think said sazen that the best way would be for o koyo to live secretly in my lord genzaburo's house
+but as it will never do for all the world to know of it it must be managed very quietly and further when i get home i must think out some plan to lull the suspicions of that fellow chokichi and let you know my idea by letter
+meanwhile o koyo had better come home with me to night although she is so terribly out of spirits now she shall meet genzaburo the day after to morrow kihachi reported this to o koyo and as her pining for genzaburo was the only cause of her sickness
+she recovered her spirits at once and saying that she would go with sazen immediately joyfully made her preparations then sazen having once more warned kihachi to keep the matter secret from chokichi and to act upon the letter which he should send him
+returned home taking with him o koyo and after o koyo had bathed and dressed her hair and painted herself and put on beautiful clothes she came out looking so lovely that no princess in the land could vie with her and sazen when he saw her
+said to himself that it was no wonder that genzaburo had fallen in love with her then as it was getting late he advised her to go to rest and after showing her to her apartments went to his own room and wrote his letter to kihachi
+containing the scheme which he had devised when kihachi received his instructions he was filled with admiration at sazen's ingenuity and putting on an appearance of great alarm and agitation
+went off immediately to call on chokichi and said to him oh master chokichi such a terrible thing has happened pray let me tell you all about it indeed what can it be oh sir answered kihachi
+pretending to wipe away his tears my daughter o koyo mourning over her separation from my lord genzaburo at first refused all sustenance and remained nursing her sorrows until last night her woman's heart failing to bear up against her great grief
+she drowned herself in the river leaving behind her a paper on which she had written her intention when chokichi heard this he was thunderstruck and exclaimed can this really be true and when i think that it was i who first introduced her to my lord
+i am ashamed to look you in the face oh say not so misfortunes are the punishment due for our misdeeds in a former state of existence i bear you no ill will this money which i hold in my hand was my daughter's
+to you through whose intervention she became allied with a nobleman
+you amaze me replied the other how could i above all men
+at last chokichi after much persuasion and greatly to his own distress was obliged to accept the money and when kihachi had carried out all sazen's instructions he returned home
+and as luck would have it it was the very letter which contained sazen's instructions to kihachi and in which the whole story which had just affected him so much was made up when he perceived the trick that had been played upon him he was very angry and exclaimed
+and all in vain well they've gulled me once but i'll be even with them yet and hinder their game before it is played out
+and went off secretly to prowl about sazen's house to watch for o koyo determined to pay off genzaburo and sazen for their conduct to him in the meanwhile sazen who did not for a moment suspect what had happened
+when the day which had been fixed upon by him and genzaburo arrived made o koyo put on her best clothes smartened up his house and got ready a feast against genzaburo's arrival the latter came punctually to his time
+and going in at once said to the fortune teller
+lost heart entirely and made up his mind to go home again sazen however pressed him so eagerly that at last he went upstairs to see this vaunted beauty and sazen drawing aside a screen showed him o koyo who was sitting there
+pray don't mention it sir but as it is a long time since you have met the young lady you must have a great deal to say to one another so i will go downstairs and if you want anything pray call me and so he went downstairs and left them
+then genzaburo addressing o koyo said ah it is indeed a long time since we met how happy it makes me to see you again why your face has grown quite thin poor thing have you been unhappy
+and o koyo with the tears starting from her eyes for joy hid her face and her heart was so full that she could not speak but genzaburo passing his hand gently over her head and back and comforting her said
+come sweetheart there is no need to sob so talk to me a little and let me hear your voice at last o koyo raised her head and said ah
+and thought that i should never meet you again how tenderly i thought of you
+sazen came with a message from you i thought it was all a dream and as she spoke she bent her head and sobbed again and in genzaburo's eyes she seemed more beautiful than ever
+with her pale delicate face and he loved her better than before then she said
+i should never stop yes replied genzaburo i too have suffered much and so they told one another their mutual griefs and from that day forth they constantly met at sazen's house
+one day as they were feasting and enjoying themselves in an upper storey in sazen's house chokichi came to the house and said i beg pardon but does one master sazen live here certainly sir i am sazen at your service
+and my name is chokichi i beg to bespeak your goodwill for myself i hope we may be friends sazen was not a little taken aback at this however he put on an innocent face as though he had never heard of chokichi before and said
+i never heard of such a thing why i thought you were some respectable person and you have the impudence to tell me that your name is chokichi
+to think of such a shameless villain coming and asking to be friends with me forsooth get you gone the quicker the better
+why i thought you must be one of us insolent knave begone as fast as possible
+you had better get rid of o koyo as well i suppose she must equally be a pollution to it this put sazen rather in a dilemma however he made up his mind not to show any hesitation and said what are you talking about
+there is no o koyo here and i never saw such a person in my life chokichi quietly drew out of the bosom of his dress the letter from sazen to kihachi which he had picked up a few days before and showing it to sazen replied
+and as he pretended to leave the house sazen at his wits end cried out stop stop
+pray stop and listen quietly it is quite true as you said that o koyo is in my house and really your indignation is perfectly just come let us talk over matters a little
+in order that i may be revenged for the fraud that was put upon me won't you accept twenty five riyos twenty five riyos no indeed i will not take a fraction less than a hundred and if i cannot get them i will report the whole matter at once
+sazen after a moment's consideration hit upon a scheme and answered smiling
+you shall have the hundred riyos you ask for but as i have not so much money by me at present i will go to genzaburo's house and fetch it it's getting dark now but it's not very late
+so i'll trouble you to come with me and then i can give you the money to night chokichi consenting to this the pair left the house together now sazen who as a ronin wore a long dirk in his girdle
+kept looking out for a moment when chokichi should be off his guard in order to kill him but chokichi kept his eyes open and did not give sazen a chance at last chokichi as ill luck would have it stumbled against a stone and fell
+and sazen profiting by the chance drew his dirk and stabbed him in the side and as chokichi taken by surprise tried to get up he cut him severely over the head until at last he fell dead
+sazen then looking around him and seeing to his great delight that there was no one near returned home the following day chokichi's body was found by the police and when they examined it they found nothing upon it save a paper which they read
+and which proved to be the very letter which sazen had sent to kihachi and which chokichi had picked up the matter was immediately reported to the governor and sazen having been summoned an investigation was held
+sazen cunning and bold murderer as he was lost his self possession when he saw what a fool he had been not to get back from chokichi the letter which he had written and when he was put to a rigid examination under torture
+confessed that he had hidden o koyo at genzaburo's instigation and then killed chokichi who had found out the secret upon this the governor after consulting about genzaburo's case decided that
+as he had disgraced his position as a hatamoto by contracting an alliance with the daughter of an eta his property should be confiscated his family blotted out and himself banished as for kihachi the eta chief and his daughter o koyo
+and by him they too were banished while sazen against whom the murder of chokichi had been fully proved was executed according to law note at asakusa in yedo there lives a man called danzayemon
+this man traces his pedigree back to minamoto no yoritomo
+the thirty sixth law provides as follows all wandering mendicants such as male sorcerers female diviners hermits blind people beggars and tanners etas have had from of old their respective rulers
+be not disinclined however to punish any such who give rise to disputes or who overstep the boundaries of their own classes and are disobedient to existing laws
+and if they are very poor they wander from house to house working as cobblers mending old shoes and leather and so earn a scanty livelihood besides this their daughters and young married women gain a trifle as wandering minstrels called torioi
+playing on the shamisen a sort of banjo and singing ballads they never marry out of their own fraternity but remain apart a despised and shunned race at executions by crucifixion
+and besides this they have to perform all sorts of degrading offices about criminals such as carrying sick prisoners from their cells to the hall of justice and burying the bodies of those that have been executed
+thus their race is polluted and accursed and they are hated accordingly now this is how the etas came to be under the jurisdiction of danzayemon when minamoto no yoritomo was yet a child his father minamoto no yoshitomo
+but kiyomori desiring to destroy the family of yoshitomo root and branch ordered his retainers to divide themselves into bands and seek out the children at last they were found but tokiwa was so exceedingly beautiful
+that kiyomori was inflamed with love for her and desired her to become his own concubine then tokiwa told kiyomori that if he would spare her little ones she would share his couch
+but that if he killed her children she would destroy herself rather than yield to his desire when he heard this kiyomori bewildered by the beauty of tokiwa spared the lives of her children but banished them from the capital
+and when he grew up and became a man he married the daughter of a peasant after a while yoritomo left the province and went to the wars leaving his wife pregnant and in due time she was delivered of a male child
+to the delight of her parents who rejoiced that their daughter should bear seed to a nobleman but she soon fell sick and died and the old people took charge of the babe and when they also died the care of the child fell to his mother's kinsmen
+and he grew up to be a peasant now kiyomori the enemy of yoritomo had been gathered to his fathers and yoritomo had avenged the death of his father by slaying munemori the son of kiyomori and there was peace throughout the land
+and yoritomo became the chief of all the noble houses in japan and first established the government of the country when yoritomo had thus raised himself to power
+and his descendants after him lived as peasants in the same village increasing in prosperity and in good repute among their neighbours but the princely line of yoritomo came to an end in three generations
+so he summoned him and said it is a hard thing to see the son of an illustrious house live and die a peasant i will promote you to the rank of samurai then the peasant answered my lord
+if i become a samurai and the retainer of some noble i shall not be so happy as when i was my own master if i may not remain a husbandman let me be a chief over men however humble they may be
+and thinking to punish the peasant for his insolence said
+and their mother was leda who after the twin brothers had another child born to her helen for whose sake the sons of many of jason's friends were to wage war against the great city of troy
+in quest of the golden fleece and then there came one who had both welcome and reverence from jason this one came without spear or bow bearing in his hands a lyre only he was orpheus
+and he knew all the ways of the gods and all the stories of the gods when he sang to his lyre the trees would listen and the beasts would follow him
+chiron the centaur had met him as he was wandering through the forests on the mountain pelion and had sent him down into iolcus then there came two men well skilled in the handling of ships tiphys and nauplius
+tiphys knew all about the sun and winds and stars and all about the signs by which a ship might be steered and nauplius had the love of poseidon the god of the sea afterward there came one after the other
+two who were famous for their hunting no two could be more different than these two were the first was arcas he was dressed in the skin of a bear he had red hair and savage looking eyes
+and for arms he carried a mighty bow with bronze tipped arrows the folk were watching an eagle as he came into the city an eagle that was winging its way far far up in the sky arcas drew his bow and with one arrow he brought the eagle down
+and then he was the oldest of the heroes in the camp of agamemnon two brothers came who were to be special friends of jason's peleus and telamon both were still youthful and neither had yet achieved any notable deed
+another who came was admetus afterward he became a famous king the god apollo once made himself a shepherd and he kept the flocks of king admetus and there came two brothers twins who were a wonder to all who beheld them
+their mother was oreithyia the daughter of erechtheus king of athens and their father was boreas the north wind these two brothers had on their ankles wings that gleamed with golden scales their black hair was thick upon their shoulders
+whose name was theseus theseus's father was an unknown king he had bidden the mother show their son where his sword was hidden under a great stone the king had hidden it before theseus was born
+on the day that the messengers had set out to bring through greece the word of jason's going forth in quest of the golden fleece
+they began to fell trees for the timbers of the ship that was to make the voyage to far colchis
+the harbor of iolcus on the night of the day he had helped to bring them down jason had a dream he dreamt that she whom he had seen in the forest ways and afterward by the river anaurus appeared to him
+he went to the city's gate and he met such a man argus was his name he told jason that a dream had sent him to the city of iolcus jason welcomed him and lodged him in the king's palace
+jason had them take the beam from the roof of the palace
+and that day the building of the great ship was begun
+came the noise of hammering in the street where the metalworkers were came the noise of beating upon metals as the smiths fashioned out of bronze armor for the heroes and swords and spears every day
+under the eyes of argus the master the ship that had in it the beam from zeus's grove was built higher and wider and those who were building the ship often felt going through it tremors as of a living creature
+when the ship was built and made ready for the voyage a name was given to it the argo it was called
+all was ready for the voyage and now jason went with his friends to view the ship before she was brought into the water argus the master was on the ship seeing to it that the last things were being done before argo was launched
+very grave and wise looked argus argus the builder of the ship and wonderful to the heroes the ship looked now that argus for their viewing had set up the mast with the sails and had even put the oars in their places
+wonderful to the heroes argo looked with her long oars and her high sails with her timbers painted red and gold and blue and with a marvelous figure carved upon her prow all over the ship jason's eyes went
+he saw a figure standing by the mast for a moment he looked on it and then the figure became shadowy
+then mast and sails were taken down and the oars were left in the ship and the argo was launched into the water the heroes went back to the palace of king pelias to feast with the king's guests before they took their places on the ship
+setting out on the voyage to far colchis when they came into the palace they saw that another hero had arrived his shield was hung in the hall the heroes all gathered around amazed at the size and the beauty of it
+strife and pursuit and flight tumult and panic and slaughter the figure of fate was there dragging a dead man by the feet
+around these figures were heads of snakes heads with black jaws and glittering eyes twelve heads such as might affright any man
+there were men fighting and women watching from high towers the awful figure of the darkness of death was shown there too with mournful eyes and the dust of battles upon her shoulders the outer rim of the shield
+showed the stream of ocean the stream that encircles the world swans were soaring above and swimming on its surface all in wonder the heroes gazed on the great shield telling each other that only one man in all the world could carry it
+he took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words even when miss stackpole appeared to strike the personal note most strongly he bethought himself that persons in her view were simple and homogeneous organisms
+to deal with her in strict reciprocity he carried out his resolve with a great deal of tact and the young lady found in renewed contact with him no obstacle to the exercise of her genius for unshrinking enquiry
+the general application of her confidence her situation at gardencourt therefore appreciated as we have seen her to be by isabel and full of appreciation herself of that free play of intelligence
+she presently discovered in truth that this obligation was of the lightest and that missus touchett cared very little how miss stackpole behaved missus touchett had defined her to isabel
+as both an adventuress and a bore adventuresses usually giving one more of a thrill she had expressed some surprise at her niece's having selected such a friend
+yet had immediately added that she knew isabel's friends were her own affair and that she had never undertaken to like them all or to restrict the girl to those she liked
+my dear you'd have a very small society missus touchett frankly admitted and i don't think i like any man or woman well enough to recommend them to you when it comes to recommending it's a serious affair
+i don't like miss stackpole everything about her displeases me she talks so much too loud and looks at one as if one wanted to look at her which one doesn't
+i'm sure she has lived all her life in a boarding house and i detest the manners and the liberties of such places if you ask me if i prefer my own manners which you doubtless think very bad i'll tell you that i prefer them immensely
+and she detests me for detesting it
+missus touchett was right in guessing that henrietta disapproved of her but she had not quite put her finger on the reason a day or two after miss stackpole's arrival
+which excited a vein of counter argument on the part of the correspondent of the interviewer who in the exercise of her profession had acquainted herself in the western world with every form of caravansary
+ralph with his experimental geniality suggested by way of healing the breach that the truth lay between the two extremes and that the establishments in question ought to be described as fair middling
+this contribution to the discussion however miss stackpole rejected with scorn middling indeed if they were not the best in the world they were the worst but there was nothing middling about an american hotel
+i like to be treated as an american lady poor american ladies cried missus touchett with a laugh they're the slaves of slaves they're the companions of freemen henrietta retorted
+they're the companions of their servants the irish chambermaid and the negro waiter they share their work do you call the domestics in an american household slaves miss stackpole enquired
+if that's the way you desire to treat them no wonder you don't like america if you've not good servants you're miserable missus touchett serenely said they're very bad in america but i've five perfect ones in florence
+i don't see what you want with five henrietta couldn't help observing i don't think i should like to see five persons surrounding me in that menial position
+should you like me better if i were your butler dear her husband asked i don't think i should you wouldn't at all have the tenue the companions of freemen i like that miss stackpole said ralph
+it's a beautiful description when i said freemen i didn't mean you sir and this was the only reward that ralph got for his compliment miss stackpole was baffled
+which she privately judged to be a mysterious survival of feudalism it was perhaps because her mind was oppressed with this image that she suffered some days to elapse before she took occasion to say to isabel
+my dear friend i wonder if you're growing faithless faithless faithless to you henrietta no that would be a great pain but it's not that faithless to my country then
+that i hope will never be when i wrote to you from liverpool i said i had something particular to tell you you've never asked me what it is is it because you've suspected suspected what
+you don't ask that right as if you thought it important you're changed you're thinking of other things tell me what you mean and i'll think of that will you really think of it that's what i wish to be sure of
+i've not much control of my thoughts but i'll do my best said isabel henrietta gazed at her in silence for a period which tried isabel's patience so that our heroine added at last
+isabel responded you say that right i had a good deal of talk with him he has come after you did he tell you so no he told me nothing that's how i knew it said henrietta cleverly
+he said very little about you but i spoke of you a good deal isabel waited at the mention of mister goodwood's name she had turned a little pale i'm very sorry you did that she observed at last
+i could have talked a long time to such a listener he was so quiet so intense he drank it all in what did you say about me isabel asked i said you were on the whole the finest creature i know
+while i talked i never saw an ugly man look so handsome he's very simple minded said isabel and he's not so ugly there's nothing so simplifying as a grand passion
+it's not a grand passion i'm very sure it's not that you don't say that as if you were sure isabel gave rather a cold smile i shall say it better to mister goodwood himself
+isabel offered no answer to this assertion which her companion made with an air of great confidence he'll find you changed the latter pursued you've been affected by your new surroundings very likely i'm affected by everything
+by everything but mister goodwood miss stackpole exclaimed with a slightly harsh hilarity isabel failed even to smile back and in a moment she said did he ask you to speak to me not in so many words
+but his eyes asked it and his handshake when he bade me good bye thank you for doing so and isabel turned away yes you're changed you've got new ideas over here her friend continued i hope so said isabel
+one should get as many new ideas as possible yes but they shouldn't interfere with the old ones when the old ones have been the right ones isabel turned about again if you mean that i had any idea with regard to mister goodwood
+but she faltered before her friend's implacable glitter my dear child you certainly encouraged him isabel made for the moment as if to deny this charge instead of which however she presently answered
+it's very true i did encourage him and then she asked if her companion had learned from mister goodwood what he intended to do it was a concession to her curiosity for she disliked discussing the subject
+and found henrietta wanting in delicacy i asked him and he said he meant to do nothing miss stackpole answered but i don't believe that he's not a man to do nothing he is a man of high bold action
+and whatever he does will always be right i quite believe that henrietta might be wanting in delicacy but it touched the girl all the same to hear this declaration ah you do care for him her visitor rang out
+whatever he does will always be right isabel repeated when a man's of that infallible mould what does it matter to him what one feels it may not matter to him but it matters to one's self ah
+i hope he'll hate me then said isabel i believe you hope it about as much as i believe him capable of it to this observation our heroine made no return
+she was absorbed in the alarm given her by henrietta's intimation that caspar goodwood would present himself at gardencourt she pretended to herself however that she thought the event impossible and later
+she communicated her disbelief to her friend for the next forty eight hours nevertheless she stood prepared to hear the young man's name announced the feeling pressed upon her it made the air sultry
+and after strolling about for some time in a manner at once listless and restless had seated herself on a garden bench within sight of the house beneath a spreading beech where in a white dress ornamented with black ribbons
+she formed among the flickering shadows a graceful and harmonious image
+as to whom the proposal of an ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impartially as possible as impartially as bunchie's own somewhat fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow
+but she was notified for the first time on this occasion of the finite character of bunchie's intellect hitherto she had been mainly struck with its extent
+it seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book formerly when heavy hearted she had been able with the help of some well chosen volume to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason
+of late it was not to be denied literature had seemed a fading light and even after she had reminded herself that her uncle's library was provided with a complete set of those authors which no gentleman's collection should be without
+she sat motionless and empty handed her eyes bent on the cool green turf of the lawn her meditations were presently interrupted by the arrival of a servant who handed her a letter the letter bore the london postmark
+you will remember that when you gave me my dismissal at albany three months ago i did not accept it i protested against it you in fact appeared to accept my protest and to admit that i had the right on my side
+i had come to see you with the hope that you would let me bring you over to my conviction my reasons for entertaining this hope had been of the best but you disappointed it i found you changed
+arbitrary or capricious therefore it is that i believe you will let me see you again you told me that i'm not disagreeable to you and i believe it for i don't see why that should be i shall always think of you
+i shall never think of any one else i came to england simply because you are here i couldn't stay at home after you had gone i hated the country because you were not in it if i like this country at present
+it is only because it holds you i have been to england before but have never enjoyed it much may i not come and see you for half an hour this at present is the dearest wish of yours faithfully
+caspar goodwood isabel read this missive with such deep attention that she had not perceived an approaching tread on the soft grass
+had laid before her a pair of alternatives now of course you're completely your own mistress and are as free as the bird on the bough i don't mean you were not so before but you're at present on a different footing
+property erects a kind of barrier you can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely criticised if you were poor you can go and come you can travel alone you can have your own establishment
+i mean of course if you'll take a companion some decayed gentlewoman with a darned cashmere and dyed hair who paints on velvet you don't think you'd like that of course you can do as you please
+she'd keep people off very well i think
+that it's a great deal better you should remain with me in spite of there being no obligation it's better for several reasons quite apart from your liking it i shouldn't think you'd like it but i recommend you to make the sacrifice
+she had a great regard for what was usually deemed decent and a young gentlewoman without visible relations had always struck her as a flower without foliage
+when she sat in her damp waterproof and sketched the opportunities that europe would offer to a young person of taste this however was in a great measure the girl's own fault she had got a glimpse of her aunt's experience
+and her imagination constantly anticipated the judgements and emotions of a woman who had very little of the same faculty apart from this missus touchett had a great merit she was as honest as a pair of compasses
+but was never over inquisitive as regards the territory of her neighbour isabel came at last to have a kind of undemonstrable pity for her there seemed something so dreary in the condition of a person whose nature had as it were
+so little surface offered so limited a face to the accretions of human contact nothing tender nothing sympathetic had ever had a chance to fasten upon it
+no wind sown blossom no familiar softening moss her offered her passive extent in other words was about that of a knife edge isabel had reason to believe none the less
+she was learning to sacrifice consistency to considerations of that inferior order for which the excuse must be found in the particular case it was not to the credit of her absolute rectitude
+that she should have gone the longest way round to florence in order to spend a few weeks with her invalid son
+that when ralph wished to see her he was at liberty to remember that palazzo crescentini contained a large apartment known as the quarter of the signorino i want to ask you something
+isabel said to this young man the day after her arrival at san remo something i've thought more than once of asking you by letter but that i've hesitated on the whole to write about face to face nevertheless
+what does it matter my dear isabel whether i knew my father was very obstinate so said the girl you did know yes he told me we even talked it over a little
+asked isabel abruptly why as a kind of compliment a compliment on what on your so beautifully existing he liked me too much she presently declared that's a way we all have
+if i believed that i should be very unhappy fortunately i don't believe it i want to be treated with justice i want nothing but that very good but you must remember that justice to a lovely being
+is after all a florid sort of sentiment i'm not a lovely being how can you say that at the very moment when i'm asking such odious questions i must seem to you delicate
+you seem to me troubled said ralph i am troubled about what for a moment she answered nothing then she broke out do you think it good for me suddenly to be made so rich
+henrietta doesn't oh hang henrietta said ralph coarsely if you ask me i'm delighted at it is that why your father did it for your amusement i differ with miss stackpole
+ralph went on more gravely i think it very good for you to have means isabel looked at him with serious eyes i wonder whether you know what's good for me or whether you care if i know depend upon it i care
+don't question your conscience so much it will get out of tune like a strummed piano keep it for great occasions don't try so much to form your character it's like trying to pull open a tight tender young rose
+live as you like best and your character will take care of itself most things are good for you the exceptions are very rare and a comfortable income's not one of them ralph paused smiling
+isabel had listened quickly you've too much power of thought above all too much conscience ralph added it's out of all reason the number of things you think wrong put back your watch diet your fever
+it's never wrong to do that she had listened eagerly as i say and it was her nature to understand quickly i wonder if you appreciate what you say if you do you take a great responsibility you frighten me a little
+but i think i'm right said ralph persisting in cheer all the same what you say is very true isabel pursued you could say nothing more true i'm absorbed in myself i look at life too much as a doctor's prescription
+why indeed should we perpetually be thinking whether things are good for us as if we were patients lying in a hospital why should i be so afraid of not doing right as if it mattered to the world whether i do right or wrong
+you're a capital person to advise said ralph you take the wind out of my sails she looked at him as if she had not heard him though she was following out the train of reflexion which he himself had kindled
+a large fortune means freedom and i'm afraid of that it's such a fine thing and one should make such a good use of it if one shouldn't one would be ashamed and one must keep thinking it's a constant effort
+i'm not sure it's not a greater happiness to be powerless for weak people i've no doubt it's a greater happiness for weak people the effort not to be contemptible must be great and how do you know i'm not weak isabel asked
+the gate of admirations italy as yet imperfectly seen and felt stretched before her as a land of promise a land in which a love of the beautiful might be comforted by endless knowledge
+whenever she strolled upon the shore with her cousin and she was the companion of his daily walk she looked across the sea with longing eyes to where she knew that genoa lay
+she was glad to pause however on the edge of this larger adventure there was such a thrill even in the preliminary hovering it affected her moreover as a peaceful interlude as a hush of the drum and fife in a career which she had little warrant
+as yet for regarding as agitated but which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself by the light of her hopes her fears her fancies her ambitions her predilections
+madame merle had predicted to missus touchett that after their young friend had put her hand into her pocket half a dozen times she would be reconciled to the idea that it had been filled by a munificent uncle
+grown used to feeling rich the consciousness in question found a proper place in rather a dense little group of ideas that she had about herself and often it was by no means the least agreeable
+it took perpetually for granted a thousand good intentions she lost herself in a maze of visions the fine things to be done by a rich independent generous girl who took a large human view of occasions and obligations
+were sublime in the mass her fortune therefore became to her mind a part of her better self it gave her importance gave her even to her own imagination a certain ideal beauty
+which in spite of increasing distance were still sufficiently salient they were recognisable without difficulty
+she could summon back her faith in case of need with an effort but the effort was often painful even when the reality had been pleasant the past was apt to look dead and its revival rather to show the
+livid light of a judgement day the girl moreover was not prone to take for granted that she herself lived in the mind of others
+she was capable of being wounded by the discovery that she had been forgotten but of all liberties the one she herself found sweetest was the liberty to forget she had not given her last shilling sentimentally speaking
+either to caspar goodwood or to lord warburton and yet couldn't but feel them appreciably in debt to her she had of course reminded herself that she was to hear from mister goodwood again but this was not to be for another year and a half
+and in that time a great many things might happen she had indeed failed to say to herself that her american suitor might find some other girl more comfortable to woo because though it was certain many other girls would prove so
+she had not the smallest belief that this merit would attract him but she reflected that she herself might know the humiliation of change might really for that matter come to the end of the things that were not caspar
+a clear and quiet harbour enclosed by a brave granite breakwater but that day could only come in its order and she couldn't wait for it with folded hands that lord warburton should continue to cherish her image
+seemed to her more than a noble humility or an enlightened pride ought to wish to reckon with she had so definitely undertaken to preserve no record of what had passed between them that a corresponding effort on his own part
+would be eminently just this was not as it may seem merely a theory tinged with sarcasm isabel candidly believed that his lordship would in the usual phrase get over his disappointment
+he had been deeply affected this she believed and she was still capable of deriving pleasure from the belief but it was absurd that a man both so intelligent and so honourably dealt with
+should cultivate a scar out of proportion to any wound englishmen liked moreover to be comfortable said isabel and there could be little comfort for lord warburton in the long run in brooding over a self sufficient american girl
+who had been but a casual acquaintance she flattered herself that should she hear from one day to another that he had married some young woman of his own country who had done more to deserve him
+she should receive the news without a pang even of surprise it would have proved that he believed she was firm which was what she wished to seem to him
+in the centre of west lynne stood two houses adjoining each other one large the other much smaller the large one was the carlyle residence and the small one was devoted to the carlyle offices the name of carlyle bore a lofty standing in the county
+the first missus carlyle having been mister davidson's sister she had died and left one child the second missus carlyle died when her son was born archibald and his half sister reared him loved him and ruled him
+with an iron hand she liked to rule him now in great things as in small just as she had done in the days of his babyhood and archibald generally submitted for the force of habit is strong she was a woman of strong sense
+was left equally divided between cornelia and archibald archibald was no blood relation to him but he loved the open hearted boy better than his niece cornelia of mister carlyle's property a small portion only was bequeathed to his daughter
+the rest to his son and in this perhaps there was justice since the twenty thousand pounds brought to mister carlyle by his second wife had been chiefly instrumental in the accumulation of his large fortune miss carlyle or as she was called in town miss corny
+had never married it was pretty certain she never would people thought that her intense love of her young brother kept her single for it was not likely that the daughter of the rich mister carlyle had wanted for offers other maidens confess to soft and tender impressions
+not so miss carlyle all who had approached her with the lovelorn tale she sent quickly to the right about mister carlyle was seated in his own private room in his office the morning after his return from town his confidential clerk and manager stood near him
+it was mister dill a little meek looking man with a bald head he was on the rolls had been admitted years and years ago but he had never set up for himself perhaps he deemed the post of head manager in the office of carlyle and davidson
+with its substantial salary sufficient for his ambition and manager he had been to them when the present mister carlyle was in long petticoats he was a single man and occupied handsome apartments near
+here he saw clients when mister carlyle was out or engaged and here he issued private orders a little window not larger than a pane of glass looked out from the clerk's office they called it old dill's peep hole and wished it anywhere else
+for his spectacles might be discerned at it more frequently than was agreeable the old gentleman had a desk also in their office and there he frequently sat he was sitting there in state this same morning keeping a sharp lookout around him
+when the door timidly opened and the pretty face of barbara hare appeared at it rosy with blushes can i see mister carlyle mister dill rose from his seat and shook hands with her she drew him into the passage and he closed the door perhaps he felt surprised
+presently miss barbara he is engaged just now the justices are with him the justices uttered barbara in alarm and papa one whatever shall i do he must not see me i would not have him see me here for the world an ominous sound of talking
+the justices were evidently coming forth mister dill laid hold of barbara whisked her through the clerks room not daring to take her the other way lest he should encounter them and shut her in his own what the plague brought papa here at this moment thought barbara whose face was crimson
+who was not well enough to come herself it is a little private matter that she does not wish papa to know of child answered the manager a lawyer receives visits from many people and it is not the place of those about him to think he opened the door as he spoke
+ushered her into the presence of mister carlyle and left her the latter rose in astonishment you must regard me as a client and pardon my intrusion said barbara with a forced laugh to hide her agitation i am here on the part of mamma
+mister dill shut me into his room mister carlyle motioned to barbara to seat herself then resumed his own seat beside his table barbara could not help noticing how different his manners were in his office from his evening manners when he was off duty
+she broke off with a look of dread it would be it might be death it is quite impossible calmly replied mister carlyle the doors are double doors did you notice that they were nevertheless she left her chair and stood close to mister carlyle
+resting her hand upon the table he rose of course richard is here richard repeated mister carlyle at west lynne he appeared at the house last night in disguise and made signs to me from the grove of trees you may imagine my alarm
+he has been in london all this while half starving working i feel ashamed to mention it to you in a stable yard and oh archibald he says he is innocent mister carlyle made no reply to this he probably had no faith in the assertion
+sit down barbara he said drawing her chair closer barbara sat down again but her manner was hurried and nervous is it quite sure that no stranger will be coming in it would look so peculiar to see me here but mamma was too unwell to come herself
+this room is sacred from the intrusion of strangers what of richard he says that he was not in the cottage at the time the murder was committed that the person who really did it was a man of the name of thorn what thorn asked mister carlyle
+suppressing all signs of incredulity i don't know a friend of afy's he said archibald he swore to it in the most solemn manner and i believe as truly as that i am now repeating it to you that he was speaking the truth
+i want you to see richard if possible he is coming to the same place to night if he can tell his own tale to you perhaps you may find out a way by which his innocence may be made manifest you are so clever you can do anything mister carlyle smiled
+not quite anything barbara was this the purport of richard's visit to say this oh no he thinks it is of no use to say it for nobody would believe him against the evidence he came to ask for a hundred pounds
+if he can have that sum mamma has sent me to you she has not the money by her and she dare not ask papa for it as it is for richard she bade me say that if you will kindly oblige her with the money to day she will arrange with you about the repayment
+still if he is to be in the grove to night i may as well be there also what disguise is he in a farm laborer's the best he could adopt about here with large black whiskers he is stopping about three miles off he said
+in some obscure hiding place and now continued barbara i want you to advise me had i better inform mamma that richard is here or not
+i should have premised that i have not yet told mamma it is richard himself who is here but that he has sent a messenger to beg for this money would it be advisable to acquaint her why should you not i think you ought to do so then i will
+richard also wishes for an interview it is only natural missus hare must be thankful to hear so far that he is safe i never saw anything like it returned barbara the change is akin to magic she says it has put life into her anew and now for the last thing
+how can we secure papa's absence from home to night it must be accomplished in some way you know his temper were i or mamma to suggest to him to go and see some friend or to go to the club he would immediately stop at home can you devise any plan
+you see i appeal to you in all my troubles she added like i and anne used to do when we were children it may be questioned if mister carlyle heard the last remark he had dropped his eyelids in thought have you told me all he asked presently lifting them
+contrive to be in the street at four this afternoon stay that's your dinner hour be walking up the street at three three precisely i will meet you he rose shook hands and escorted barbara through the small hall along the passage to the house door
+a courtesy probably not yet shown to any client by mister carlyle the house door closed upon her and barbara had taken one step from it when something large loomed down upon her like a ship in full sail
+have you been with archibald for barbara hare wishing miss carlyle over in asia stammered out the excuse she had given mister dill your mamma sent you on business i never heard of such a thing twice i have been to see archibald
+and twice did dill answer that he was engaged and must not be interrupted i shall make old dill explain his meaning for observing a mystery over it to me there is no mystery answered barbara feeling quite sick lest miss carlyle should proclaim there was
+before the clerks or her father mamma wanted mister carlyle's opinion upon a little private business and not feeling well enough to come herself she sent me
+it is nothing that could interest you a trifling matter relating to a little money it's nothing indeed then if it's nothing why were you closeted so long with archibald he was asking the particulars replied barbara recovering her equanimity
+when dissenting from a problem she was sure there was some mystery astir she turned and walked down the street with barbara
+mister carlyle returned to his room deliberated a few moments and then rang his bell a clerk answered it go to the buck's head if mister hare and the other magistrates are there ask them to step over to me the young man did as he was bid
+and came back with the noted justices at his heels they obeyed the summons with alacrity for they believed they had got themselves into a judicial scrape and that mister carlyle alone could get them out of it i will not request you to sit down began mister carlyle
+for it is barely a moment i shall detain you the more i think about this man's having been put in prison the less i like it and i have been considering that you had better all five come and smoke your pipes at my house this evening when we shall have time to discuss what must be done
+come at seven not later and you will find my father's old jar replenished with the best broadcut and half a dozen churchwarden pipes shall it be so the whole five accepted the invitation eagerly
+sure and certain responded the gratified justice fire and water shouldn't keep me away soon after mister carlyle was left alone another clerk entered miss carlyle is asking to see you sir and colonel bethel's come again
+send in miss carlyle first was the answer what is it cornelia ah you may well ask what saying this morning that you could not dine at six as usual and then marching off and never fixing the hour
+i will talk to you at dinner time i have invited a party for to night a party echoed miss carlyle four or five of the justices are coming in to smoke their pipes you must put out your father's leaden tobacco box and
+dropping the point of the contest as to the pipes you are very clever archie but you can't do me i asked barbara what she came here for business for mamma touching money matters was her reply i ask you
+to hear your opinion about the scrape the bench have got into is yours now it's neither one nor the other and i tell you archibald i'll hear what it is i should like to know what you and barbara do with a secret between you mister carlyle knew her and her resolute expression well
+and he took his course to tell her the truth she was to borrow the words barbara had used to her brother with regard to him true as steel confide to miss carlyle a secret and she was trustworthy and impervious as he could be
+and she would set to work like a ferret and never stop until it was unearthed mister carlyle bent forward and spoke in a whisper i will tell you if you wish cornelia but it is not a pleasant thing to hear richard hare has returned
+miss carlyle looked perfectly aghast richard hare is he mad it is not a very sane proceeding he wants money from his mother and missus hare sent barbara to ask me to manage it for her
+no wonder poor barbara was flurried and nervous for there's danger on all sides is he at their house how could he be there and his father in it
+and will be at the grove to night to receive this money i have invited the justices to get mister hare safe away from his own house
+and putting graver considerations aside that would be pleasant for neither you nor for me to have a connection gibbeted for a willful murder would be an ugly blot on the carlyle escutcheon cornelia
+now miss corny in so speaking had certainly no thought of present and immediate punishment for the gentleman but it appeared that the mob around had the motion was commented by those stout shouldered laborers
+or whether their own feelings alone spurred them on was best known to the men themselves certain it is that the ominous sound of duck him was breathed forth by a voice and it was caught up and echoed around duck him
+duck him the pond be close at hand let's give him a taste of his deservings
+turn himself up at west lynne for bearding mister carlyle what have he done with lady isabel him put up for others at west lynne west lynne's respectable it don't want him it have got a better man it won't have a villain now lads
+his face turned white and he trembled in his shoes worthless men are frequently cowards lady isabel trembled in hers and well she might hearing that one allusion they set upon him twenty pairs of hands at least strong rough determined hands
+not to speak of the tagrag's help who went in with cuffs and kicks and pokes and taunts and cheers and a demoniac dance they dragged him through a gap in the hedge a gap that no baby could have got through in a cool moment but most of us know the difference between coolness and excitement
+was the promise held out in reply to their remonstrances and the lawyer who was short and fat and could not have knocked a man down had it been to save his life backed out of the melee and contented himself with issuing forth confused threatenings of the terrors of the law
+miss carlyle stood her ground majestically and looked on with a grim countenance had she interfered for his protection she could not have been heard and if she could have been there's no knowing whether she would have done it on to the brink of the pond
+a green dank dark slimy sour stinking pond his coat tails were gone by this time and sundry rents and damages appeared in in another useful garment one pulled him another pushed him a third shook him by the collar
+half a dozen buffeted him and all abused him in with him boys mercy mercy shrieked the victim his knees bending and his teeth chattering a little mercy for the love of heaven heaven much he knows of heaven
+going down his throat by bucketfuls a hoarse derisive laugh and a hip hip hurrah broke from the actors while the juvenile ragtag in wild delight joined their hands round the pool
+they had never had such a play acted for them before out of the pea soup before he was quite dead quite senseless of all drowned rats he looked the worst as he stood there with his white rueful face
+his shivery limbs and his dilapidated garments shaking the wet off him the laborers their duty done walked coolly away the tagrag withdrew to a safe distance waiting for what might come next and miss carlyle moved away also
+she sailed on with her head up though it was turned occasionally to look at the face of madame vine at the deep distressing blush which this gaze called into her cheeks it's very odd thought miss corny the likeness especially in the eyes is
+where are you going madame they were passing a spectacle shop and madame vine had halted at the door one foot on its step i must have my glasses to be mended if you please miss carlyle followed her in
+she pointed out what she wanted done to the old glasses and said she would buy a pair of new ones to wear while the job was about the man had no blue ones no green plenty of white one ugly old pair of green things he had
+with tortoise shell rims left by some stranger ages and ages ago to be mended and never called for again this very pair of ugly old green things was chosen by lady isabel she put them on there and then
+miss carlyle's eyes searching her face inquisitively all the time why do you wear glasses began miss corny abruptly as soon as they were indoors another deep flush and an imperceptible hesitation my eyes are not strong
+they look as strong as eyes can look but why wear colored glasses white ones would answer every purpose i should suppose
+miss corny paused what is your christian name madame began she again jane replied madame popping out an unflinching story in her alarm here here what's up what's this
+miss corny flew to the window lady isabel in her wake two crowds it may almost be said for from the opposite way the scarlet and purple party as mister carlyle's was called in allusion to his colors came in view
+quite a collection of gentlemen mister carlyle and lord mount severn heading them what could it mean the mob they were encountering
+who or what was that object in advance of it supported between drake and the lawyer and looking like a drowned rat hair hanging legs tottering cheeks shaking and clothes in tatters
+while the mob behind had swollen to the length of the street and was keeping up a perpetual fire of derisive shouts groans and hisses the scarlet and purple halted in consternation and lord mount severn whose sight was not as good as it had been twenty years back
+stuck his pendent eye glasses astride on the bridge of his nose sir francis levison could it be yes it actually was what on earth had put him into that state
+mister carlyle's lip curled he continued his way and drew the peer with him what the deuce is a gate now called out the followers of mister carlyle that's levison has he been in a railway smash and got drenched by the engine
+he has been ducked grinned the yellows in answer they have been and ducked him in the rush pool on mister justice hare's land the soaked and miserable man increased his speed as much as his cold and trembling legs would allow him
+he would have borne on without legs at all rather than remain under the enemy's gaze the enemy loftily continued their way their heads in the air and scorning further notice all save young lord vane he hovered round the ranks of the unwashed
+and looked vastly inclined to enter upon an indian jig on his own account what a thundering ass i was to try it on at west lynne was the enraged comment of the sufferer
+miss carlyle laid her hand upon the shrinking arm of her pale companion you see him my brother archibald i see him faltered lady isabel and you see him that pitiful outcast who is too contemptible to live
+you may wonder that the submerged gentleman should be walking through the streets on his way to his quarters the raven inn for he had been ejected from the buck's head but he could not help himself as he was dripping and swearing on the brink of the pond
+wondering how he should get to the raven an empty fly drove past and mister drake immediately stopped it but when the driver saw that he was expected to convey not only a passenger but a tolerable quantity of water as well and that the passenger moreover was sir francis levison
+and that the shortest way would be to hasten to the inn on foot he objected but his jaws were chattering his limbs were quaking so they seized him between them and made off but never bargained for the meeting of mister carlyle and his party
+francis levison would have stopped in the pond of his own accord head downward rather than face them miss carlyle went that day to dine at east lynne
+lord vane found them out and returned at the same time of course east lynne was the headquarters of himself and his father he was in the seventh heaven and had been ever since the encounter with the yellows
+you'd have gone into laughing convulsions lucy had you seen the drowned cur i'd give all my tin for six months to come to have a photograph of him as he looked then lucy laughed in glee
+when miss carlyle was in her dressing room taking her things off the room where once had slept richard hare she rang for joyce these two rooms were still kept for miss carlyle for she did sometimes visit them for a few days and were distinguished by her name
+miss carlyle's rooms a fine row we have had in the town joyce this afternoon i have heard of it ma'am served him right if they had let him drown bill white squire pinner's plowman called in here and told us the news he'd have burst with it if he hadn't i expect
+i never saw a chap so excited peter cried cried echoed miss carlyle well ma'am you know he was very fond of lady isabel was peter and somehow his feelings overcame him he said he had not heard anything to please him so much for many a day
+and with that he burst out crying and gave bill white half a crown out of his pocket
+afy saw it if you'll excuse me mentioning her name to you ma'am
+she was coming here with a message from missus latimer to the governess what did she go into hysterics for again snapped miss carlyle it upset her so she said returned joyce it wouldn't have done her harm had they ducked her too was the angry response
+joyce was silent to contradict miss corny brought triumph to nobody and she was conscious in her innermost heart that afy merited a little wholesome correction not perhaps to the extent of a ducking
+ma'am repeated joyce in some surprise as it appeared the governess do you mean madame vine do i mean you or do i mean me are we governesses irascibly cried miss corny who should i mean but madame vine
+she turned herself round from the looking glass and gazed full in joyce's face waiting for the answer joyce lowered her voice as she gave it
+and i can tell you joyce that i was confounded at the likeness it is an extraordinary likeness
+that evening after dinner miss carlyle and lord mount severn sat side by side on the same sofa coffee cups in hand miss carlyle turned to the earl was it a positively ascertained fact that lady isabel died the earl stared with all his might
+he thought it the strangest question that ever was asked him i scarcely understand you miss carlyle died certainly she died when the result of the accident was communicated to you you made inquiry yourself into its truth its details i believe
+it was my duty to do so there was no one else to undertake it did you ascertain positively beyond all doubt that she did die
+a pause miss carlyle was ruminating but she returned to the charge as if difficult to be convinced you deem that there could be no possibility of an error you are sure that she is dead
+i am as sure that she is dead as that we are living decisively replied the earl and he spoke but according to his belief wherefore should you be inquiring this a thought came over me only to day to wonder whether she was really dead
+had any error occurred at that time any false report of her death i should soon have found it out by her drawing the annuity i settled upon her it has never been drawn since besides she would have written to me as agreed upon
+no poor thing she is gone beyond all doubt and has taken her sins with her convincing proofs and miss carlyle lent her ear to them the following morning while madame vine was at breakfast mister carlyle entered
+do you admit intruders here madame vine cried he with his sweet smile and attractive manner she arose her face burning her heart throbbing keep your seat pray i have but a moment to stay said mister carlyle
+i have come to ask you how william seems there was no difference she murmured and then she took courage and spoke more openly i understood you to say the other night sir that he should have further advice ay i wish him to go over to lynneborough to doctor martin
+the drive i think will do him good replied mister carlyle and i would like you to accompany him if you do not mind the trouble you can have the pony carriage
+you can remind doctor martin that the child's constitution is precisely what his mother's was continued mister carlyle a tinge lightening his face it may be a guide to his treatment he said himself it was when he attended him for an illness a year or two ago
+yes sir he crossed the hall on his entrance to the breakfast room she tore upstairs to her chamber and sank down in an agony of tears and despair oh to love him as she did now to yearn after his affection with this passionate jealous longing
+and to know that they were separated for ever and ever that she was worse to him than nothing
+earnest now or you are fooling the first speaker answers by some formula or asseveration as
+true as i live or hope i'll die if it isn't so or simply hope i'll die
+hope to die if i don't the speaker drawing the forefinger across the throat from ear to ear
+first boy honor bright second boy hope to die first boy cut your throat second boy draws finger across throat
+certain true black and blue a variant of the first line certain and true
+or the statement would be made and after it had been taken in and believed the words over the left would be added
+it shall have a bit ohio challenge to stump another boy to do a thing is considered as putting a certain obligation on him to perform the action indicated
+sometimes it is to jump a certain distance sometimes to skate out on thin ice
+once in ohio several lads were collected together about a spring one of them drew a pail of fresh water and by chance brought up a small live fish
+the boys took the stump one quickly cut up the unfortunate little animal and each boy swallowed a bit often the dare is to eat some very untoothsome morsel
+when the paper is decayed you will find your wish in its place
+after all are collected the paper is secretly buried face downward and then dug up after two or three months when money is sometimes found under it
+and the one who calls first is to receive a gift from the other
+they will quarrel children avert this catastrophe by exclaiming bread and butter which is a counter charm on the other hand if they say pepper and salt the quarrel is made doubly certain
+in country towns when girls are walking with young men
+and as a token of indifference in such a case one girl will cast a meaning look on her companion as much as to say he does not care for you to use the local phrase it would be said so and so is mad with naming the girl
+i think however that i rather liked to suppose it true and firmly believed in the explanation
+thus in croquet no child in a town near boston would take the red ball because it was supposed to mean hate
+pink and blue he'll catch you
+prevent the stitch in the side which is liable to be induced by running by means of holding a pebble under the tongue
+the best physicians in america could do nothing for him after nine long years of awful suffering and after the cancer had totally eaten away his nose and portions of his face as shown in his picture here given his palate was entirely destroyed together with portions of his throat
+father fortunately discovered the great remedy that cured him he lived over forty years and no return of the disease the same discovery has now thousands who were threatened with operation and death and to prove that this is the truth we will give their sworn statement if you will write us
+doctors lawyers mechanics ministers laboring men bankers and all classes
+have you cancer tumors ulcers abscesses fever sores goitre catarrh salt rheum rheumatism piles eczema scald head or scrofula in any form ask your druggist for mixer's cancer and scrofula syrup
+it will cost you nothing to learn the truth about this wonderful home treatment without the knife or caustic and if you know anyone who is afflicted with any disease above mentioned you can do them a christian act of kindness by telling them of our great treatment and how to get it forty years experience guarantees success
+a convenient cake that insures beautiful teeth
+at your druggist twenty five cents strong's arnica jelly keeps your skin smooth no need to endure the discomfort of sunburn or winter chapping apply with finger tips rub gently into pores in collapsible metal tubes twenty five cents
+note if your druggist does not have these goods send price to us we will forward them prepaid guaranteed under the food and drug act june thirtieth nineteen o six
+delays are dangerous unexpected changes are apt to bring on coughs and colds mares cough balsam
+if you have children you ought to have a bottle of this medicine on the mantel
+mares cathartic capsules tone the stomach help the liver and clean the bowels for women orange blossom doctor j a mc gill's famous female suppositories are a famous remedy for all female diseases
+the orange blossom is simple and harmless every lady can treat herself suffering women call and get a free sample and book telling how at the store where you got this book one dollar grube's method after three minutes no pain
+for complete eradication of toe corns sole corns bunions callouses soft corns heel corns kills the seed leaves smooth skin one drop corn remover advise no cutting with knife use eraser to remove hard part
+debilitation stomach and bowel trouble of both infants and adults hysteria fainting spells insomnia sleeplessness and poor assimilation of food
+the master said though a man have conned three hundred poems if he stands helpless when put to govern
+what have they done for him six the master said the man of upright life is obeyed before he speaks commands even go unheeded when the life is crooked
+teaching said the master ten the master said
+much could be done in three years
+what the weights and measures men said the master are they worth reckoning
+twenty nine
+wright's rheumatic remedy wright's catarrhal balm two great medicines these well known canadian medicines are of a high order of excellence and of the greatest value prompt in action and relief try a bottle of wright's rheumatic remedy for your rheumatism
+very soon puts the patient on the road to ease and comfort a truly wonderful medicine one dose a day usually one bottle sufficient just one dollar
+it clears out the head stops the ringing noises heals the tender places keeps the germ away gives the clear voice clean throat and free air passages just a little on the finger tip inserted in the nostril during the day and upon retiring works wonders
+keep a box handy it saves the doctor bill fifty cents per box
+one of the things worth knowing is that doctor j d kellogg's asthma remedy does relieve asthma and hay fever twenty five cents and one dollar free sample on request
+the doctor d p ordway plasters a broad statement yet true better than filling the system up with drugs rheumatism weak lungs asthma backache lumbago strains bronchitis female weakness and all other transient aches and pains a strengthening support wherever applied
+we are headquarters for a p w brand toilet paper a light soft tissue of the finest quality made from absolutely clean pure stock we will deliver anywhere in the city ten thousand sheets and a handsome nickel plated holder for the sum of one dollar
+send us a trial order and be convinced that the a p w brand is not only the best but also the most economical toilet paper on the market central drug company chicago or detroit independent drug company chicago auditorium pharmacy company chicago ashland drug company chicago
+most economical and effective remedy
+test it yourself free a real hair restorative
+luxuriance and color better than any argument is the restorative itself for you to try we are only too glad to throw ourselves wholly on the merits of golden rule hair restorative so we years ago set aside thousands of dollars to spend on big free sample bottles
+this would be reckless extravagance
+we know the annoyance of having one's hair fall and turn gray perhaps while you are still young
+not so it is only a run down condition of the roots of the hair just as the body gets run down but you should not permit this it is not necessary and this needless look of age impairs your usefulness and popularity in society and business golden rule hair restorative simply invigorates the roots
+waking them up toning them up rejuvenating them until they are rendered lively and vigorous as in youth the obvious result is that the growth of the hair is promoted hair can starve and wither like any plant that gets its life from its roots if the roots are vigorous and healthy the hair is bound to be natural
+we want you to accept a large sample bottle with our compliments we want you to know what a remarkable remedy this is if you don't need it yourself get it for some friend the truth is however that everyone should use golden rule hair restorative as a dressing for the hair to keep it healthy
+just as you use a dentrifice to keep the teeth dainty and healthy get this bottle and try it remember its continued use tends to stop hair from falling by promoting a vigorous growth of healthy hair remember that it restores color to the hair
+and the bottle will come by first mail in a plain wrapper with full explanations
+have you piles why suffer longer when rossman's pile cure is at hand
+was operated upon for hemorrhoids and was all right for three months when itching developed went to the hospital where i was told i had itching piles
+invigorates the liver and kidneys unsurpassed for general debility nervous weakness stomach troubles kidney affections and general break down the quick beneficial results obtained from the use of root juice is surprising thousands of people throughout the country
+the compound is certainly a remarkable tonic stomachic and seems to benefit from the very start all who take it
+i de lite cleans dusts polishes all varnished or waxed woodwork floors pianos furniture white enamel automobile bodies with ease and satisfaction a spoonful on a dampened cheese cloth wiped over the varnish and polished with a dry cheese cloth
+will pick up all the dust remove the grease smoked or blued spots cover scratches and restore the original lustre or finish i de lite does not contain alcohol ether turpentine benzine vinegar common paraffine
+or coal oil anyone of which will in time ruin fine varnish easy to apply a pleasant and purifying odor
+that you may be able to see this matter of perfumes from our standpoint
+it looks big and important and it makes a great noise even people a long way up in the scale of civilization are in the habit of taking these attributes perhaps not as the essential ones of leadership but at all events as those by which a leader may be recognized
+the pointsman moves a handle and the foaming giant that would it may be have sped on to his destruction and that of the passive crew who follow in his rear is shunted to another line running in a different direction and to a more desirable goal
+the great intellectual pointsman of our age the man who has done more than any other of this generation to give direction to the thought of his contemporaries has passed away and we are left to measure the loss to humanity by the result of his labors
+mister mill's achievements in both branches of philosophy are such as to give him the foremost place in either whether we regard him as an expounder of the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of society he is
+the structure raised by adam smith malthus and ricardo but raised it at least one story higher his inestimable system of logic was a revolution it hardly needs of course to be said that he owed much to his predecessors
+that he borrowed from whewell much of his classification from brown the chief lines of his theory of causation from sir john herschel the main principles of the inductive methods those who think this a disparagement of his work must have very little conception
+of the mass of original thought that still remains to mister mill's credit the great critical power that could gather valuable truths from so many discordant sources and the wonderful synthetic ability required to weld these and his own contributions
+into one organic whole when mister mill commenced his labors the only logic recognized was the syllogistic
+in deducing from general propositions other propositions less general it was even asserted confidently that nothing more was to be expected that an inductive logic was impossible this conception of logical science necessitated
+some general propositions to start with and these general propositions being ex
+incapable of being proved from other propositions it followed that if they were known to us at all they must be original data of consciousness here was a perfect paradise of question begging the ultimate major premise in every argument being assumed
+it could of course be fashioned according to the particular conclusion it was called in to prove thus an artificial ignorance as locke calls it was produced which had the effect of sanctifying prejudice by recognizing so called necessities of thought
+as the only bases of reasoning it is true that outside of the logic of the schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific investigation but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves but their connection with the law of causation
+was but imperfectly realized and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of mister mill altered all this he demonstrated that the general type of reasoning is neither from generals to particulars nor from particulars to generals but from particulars to particulars
+but are now dead we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal we might surely without any logical inconsequence have concluded at once from those instances that the duke of wellington is mortal
+the mortality of john thomas and others is after all the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the duke of wellington not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition
+we not only may according to mister mill reason from some particular instances to others but we frequently do so as however the instances which are sufficient to prove one fresh instance
+the work of deduction is the interpretation of these formulas and therefore strictly speaking is not inferential at all the real inference was accomplished when the universal proposition was arrived at
+all reasoning is shown to be at bottom inductive inductions and their interpretation make up the whole of logic and to induction accordingly mister mill devoted his chief attention for the first time induction was treated as the opus magnum of logic
+and the fundamental principles of science traced to their inductive origin it was this taken with his theory of the syllogism which worked the great change both his system of logic and his examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy
+are for the most part devoted to fortifying this position and demolishing beliefs inconsistent with it as a systematic psychologist mister mill has not done so much as either professor bain or mister herbert spencer
+the perfection of his method its application and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its way this was the task to which mister mill applied himself with an ability and success rarely matched and never surpassed
+the biggest lion in the path was the doctrine of so called necessary truth this doctrine was especially obnoxious to him as it set up a purely subjective standard of truth and a standard as he was easily able to show
+varying according to the psychological history of the individual such thinkers as doctor whewell and mister herbert spencer had to be met in intellectual combat doctor whewell held not that the inconceivability
+of the contradictory of a proposition is a proof of its truth co equal with experience but that its value transcends experience experience may tell us what is but it is by the impossibility of conceiving it otherwise
+in his examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy mister mill gives battle to this mode of thought after reviewing in an opening chapter the various views which have been held respecting the relativity of human knowledge
+as mister mill says the name of god is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases infinite and the absolute so profound and friendly a thinker as the late mister grote held this raising of the veil inexpedient but he proved
+by a mistake he fell into the necessity of looking at the matter in the concrete he acknowledged the force of mister mill's argument that the infinite must include a farrago of contradictions
+in which these contradictory attributes inhere but it was against a corresponding being the infinite that mister mill was arguing it is this that he calls a
+and regarded as the reductio ad absurdissimum of the transcendental philosophy mister mill's religious tendencies may very well be gathered from a passage in his review of auguste comte a philosopher with whom he agreed on all points
+and prescribe to him a rule of life that person has a religion and though every one naturally prefers his own religion to any other all must admit that if the object of his attachment and of this feeling of duty is the aggregate of our fellow creatures
+this religion of the infidel cannot in honesty and conscience be called an intrinsically bad one many indeed may be unable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong
+and we join with him in contemning as equally irrational and mean the conception of human nature as incapable of giving its love and devoting its existence to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity of personal enjoyment
+never has the libel of humanity involved in the current theology been more forcibly pointed out with its constant appeal to low motives of personal gain
+and all his relations to his fellow creatures the very birds about his dwelling seemed to recognize it it is this noble sentiment which infuses a soul of life into his teachings and the enunciation and acting out of which constitute him
+mary's nettlesome brown pony was hard to quiet until jerry reached out a strong brown hand and patted its head mary lifted startled blue eyes jerry what do you make of that she asked
+we couldn't have imagined that gun shot and surely the horses heard it also jerry's smile was reassuring twas the story that frightened you girls i reckon he said glancing about and up and down the road as he spoke
+he must have been dead for years if he was old when jerry's father was a boy of course dora less inclined to be imaginative replied then to the cowboy she said in her practical matter of fact way
+hurry along home to your milking jerry and dick don't you bother to come with us now that you're working on the newcomb ranch you ought to be there it's only a few miles up over this sunshiny road to gleeson we aren't the least bit afraid to ride home alone are we
+she smiled at her friend mary not wishing to appear foolishly timid said in as courageous a voice as she could muster of course we're not afraid goodbye boys we'll see you tomorrow
+feeling assured that the girls were all right the boys went at a gallop down the road and across the desert valley to the newcomb ranch
+they're nice boys aren't they mary said i've always wished i had a brother and i do believe jerry is going to be just like one aloud dora replied i have noticed that sometimes he calls you little sister to herself she thought
+oh mary how blind you are dreamily the younger girl was saying that's because we were playmates when we were little so very long ago oh my how ancient we are dora said teasingly
+please remember that you are only one year younger than i am and i refuse to be called elderly mary smiled faintly but it was evident that she was still thinking of the past when she had been a little girl with golden curls that hung to her waist a wonderfully pretty wistful little girl
+when she spoke she said it's only natural that jerry should call me little sister our mothers were like sisters when they were girl brides i've told you how they both came from the east just as we have my mother met dad in bisbee where he was a mining engineer
+and jerry's mother taught a little desert school over near the newcomb ranch she didn't teach long though for that very first vacation she married jerry's cowboy father after that mother and missus newcomb were good friends naturally being brides and neighbors
+when jerry and i were little we were playmates i spent days at the ranch sometimes her sweet face was very sad as she ended with until mother died when i was eight then you came east to boarding school and became like a sister to me
+far below them the desert valley stretched many miles southward to the mexican border the girls could see a distant blue haze that was the smoke from the douglas copper smelters the late afternoon sun lay in floods of silver light on the sandy road ahead of them
+it was very still not a sound was to be heard now and then a rabbit darted past silently how peaceful this hour is on the desert mary began glancing at her friend who was riding so close at her side
+noticing that dora was deep in thought she asked lightly won't you say it out loud why of course i was just wondering why jerry hurried us away so fast from lucky loon's rock house because he had to do the milking mary replied simply
+dora nodded so he said then she hastened to add oh don't think i'm inferring that jerry told an untruth but you know that some evenings he has stayed with us for supper and mary glanced up startled dora bellman she said
+i don't believe he will tell us about that i acted so like a scare cat all the time we were there he won't ever take us there again and he probably won't tell us the story either then i'll find it out some other way dora declared
+i'm crazy about mysteries as you know and if there really is one about that rock house i want to try to solve it she said no more about it just then as they had reached the old ghost town of gleeson
+in the long ago days when the town had been teeming with life picturesque looking miners and ranchers had sat there tilted back smoking pipes and swapping yarns today the chairs were empty an old man shriveled
+gray bearded unkempt but with kind gray eyes deep sunken under shaggy brows stood in the open door he smiled out at them in a friendly way then beckoned with a bony finger
+i do believe mister harvey has a letter for us dora said the old man had shuffled into the dark well of his store a moment later he reappeared with several letters and a newspaper good
+dora exclaimed as she rode close to the porch thanks a lot she called brightly up to the old man who was handing the packet down over the sagging wooden rail his friendly toothless smile was directed at the smaller girl
+he said mis farley yer nurse woman came down ter mail some letters a spell back then before mary could reply he continued in his shrill wavering voice
+pale fellar wi specs on is her son ain't he yes mister harvey dick is missus farley's son mary took time in a friendly way to satisfy the old man's curiosity
+dick has been going to the arizona state university this winter to be near his mother she's a widow and he's her only son her husband was a doctor and they lived back in boston before he died dew tell the old man wagged his head sympathetically
+bustin broncs mary smiled in appreciation of the old man's joke no jerry won't expect dick to do that right at first he's official fence mender just at present dora defended the absent boy mister harvey
+you wait until dick has been on the desert long enough to get a coat of tan he may surprise you
+some with broken windows and doors others with sagging roofs and crumbling walls the only sign of life was in three small adobes where poor mexican families lived broken windows in two of the houses were stuffed with rags
+a bright black eyed mexican boy of about ten ran out to the road as the girls approached come on emanuel mary sang down to him you may put up our horses and earn a dime the small boy's white teeth flashed in a delighted grin
+his brown feet raced so fast that by the time the girls were dismounting before the big square two storied adobe near the mountains emanuel was there to lead their horses around back mary glanced affectionately at the old place with its flower edged walk
+its broad porch and adobe pillars here her mother had come as a bride here mary had been born eight happy years they had spent together before her mother died after mary had been taken east to school her father had returned
+then glancing up at the nurse who had appeared from her father's bedroom she asked eagerly may i tell dad an adventure we've had missus farley middle aged kind faced shook her head smiling down at the girl not tonight please won't tomorrow do
+we have recognized in representative government the ideal type of the most perfect polity for which in consequence any portion of mankind are better adapted in proportion to their degree of general improvement as they range lower and lower in development
+that form of government will be generally speaking less suitable to them though this is not true universally for the adaptation of a people to representative government does not depend so much upon the place they occupy in the general scale of humanity
+as upon the degree in which they possess certain special requisites requisites however so closely connected with their degree of general advancement that any variation between the two is rather the exception than the rule
+that they should be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them the willingness of the people to accept representative government only becomes a practical question when an enlightened ruler or a foreign nation or nations
+who have gained power over the country are disposed to offer it the boon to individual reformers the question is almost irrelevant since if no other objection can be made to their enterprise than that the opinion of the nation is not yet on their side
+they have the ready and proper answer that to bring it over to their side is the very end they aim at when opinion is really adverse its hostility is usually to the fact of change rather than to representative government in itself
+the contrary case is not indeed unexampled there has sometimes been a religious repugnance to any limitation of the power of a particular line of rulers but in general the doctrine of passive obedience meant only submission to the will of the powers that be
+whether monarchical or popular in any case in which the attempt to introduce representative government is at all likely to be made indifference to it
+rather than positive opposition are the obstacles to be expected these however are as fatal and may be as hard to be got rid of as actual aversion it being easier in most cases to change the direction of an active feeling than to create one
+in a state previously passive when a people have no sufficient value for and attachment to a representative constitution they have next to no chance of retaining it
+and is in direct contact with the public to it principally the hopes and fears of individuals are directed and by it both the benefits and the terrors and prestige of government are mainly represented to the public eye
+unless therefore the authorities whose office it is to check the executive are backed by an effective opinion and feeling in the country the executive has always the means of setting them aside or compelling them to subservience
+and is sure to be well supported in doing so representative institutions necessarily depend for permanence upon the readiness of the people to fight for them in case of their being endangered if too little valued for this
+they seldom obtain a footing at all and if they do are almost sure to be overthrown as soon as the head of the government or any party leader who can muster force for a coup de main is willing to run some small risk for absolute power
+these considerations relate to the first two causes of failure in a representative government the third is when the people want either the will or the capacity to fulfill the part which belongs to them in a representative constitution
+when nobody or only some small fraction feels the degree of interest in the general affairs of the state necessary to the formation of a public opinion the electors will seldom make any use of the right of suffrage but to serve their private interest or the interest of their locality
+or of some one with whom they are connected as adherents or dependents the small class who in this state of public feeling gain the command of the representative body for the most part use it solely as a means of seeking their fortune if the executive is weak
+the country is distracted by mere struggles for place if strong it makes itself despotic at the cheap price of appeasing the representatives or such of them as are capable of giving trouble by a share of the spoil
+and the only fruit produced by national representation is that in addition to those who really govern there is an assembly quartered on the public and no abuse in which a portion of the assembly are interested is at all likely to be removed
+when however the evil stops here the price may be worth paying for the publicity and discussion which though not an invariable are a natural accompaniment of any even nominal representation
+that the place hunters who chiefly compose the representative assembly though they contribute little or nothing directly to good government nor even much temper the arbitrary power of the executive
+which exists in that country this benefit however is entirely dependent on the coexistence with the popular body of an hereditary king if instead of struggling for the favors of the chief ruler these selfish and sordid factions struggled for the chief place itself
+they would certainly as in spanish america keep the country in a state of chronic revolution and civil war a despotism not even legal but of illegal violence would be alternately exercised by a succession of political adventurers
+and the name and forms of representation would have no effect but to prevent despotism from attaining the stability and security by which alone its evils can be mitigated or its few advantages realized
+there are others in which it possibly might exist but in which some other form of government would be preferable these are principally when the people in order to advance in civilization have some lesson to learn some habit not yet acquired
+to the acquisition of which representative government is likely to be an impediment the most obvious of these cases is the one already considered in which the people have still to learn the first lesson of civilization that of obedience
+a race who have been trained in energy and courage by struggles with nature and their neighbors but who have not yet settled down into permanent obedience to any common superior would be little likely to acquire this habit under the collective government of their own body
+a representative assembly drawn from among themselves would simply reflect their own turbulent insubordination it would refuse its authority to all proceedings which would impose on their savage independence any improving restraint
+a military leader is the only superior to whom they will submit except occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from above or conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power these may exercise a temporary ascendancy
+but as it is merely personal it rarely effects any change in the general habits of the people unless the prophet like mohammed is also a military chief and goes forth the armed apostle of a new religion
+or unless the military chiefs ally themselves with his influence and turn it into a prop for their own government a people are no less unfitted for representative government by the contrary fault to that last specified by extreme passiveness
+and ready submission to tyranny if a people thus prostrated by character and circumstances could obtain representative institutions they would inevitably choose their tyrants as their representatives and the yoke would be made heavier on them by the contrivance which
+might be expected to lighten it on the contrary many a people has gradually emerged from this condition by the aid of a central authority whose position has made it the rival and has ended by making it the master of the local despots
+even when the king was scarcely so powerful as many of his chief feudatories the great advantage which he derived from being but one has been recognized by french historians to him the eyes of all the locally oppressed were turned
+he was the object of hope and reliance throughout the kingdom while each local potentate was only powerful within a more or less confined space at his hands refuge and protection were sought from every part of the country against first one
+then another of the immediate oppressors his progress to ascendancy was slow but it resulted from successively taking advantage of opportunities which offered themselves only to him it was therefore sure and in proportion as it was accomplished
+it abated in the oppressed portion of the community the habit of submitting to oppression the king's interest lay in encouraging all partial attempts on the part of the serfs to emancipate themselves from their masters and place themselves in immediate subordination to himself
+under his protection numerous communities were formed which knew no one above them but the king
+and the monarch was long compelled by necessities of position to exert his authority as the ally rather than the master of the classes whom he had aided in affecting their liberation in this manner a central power despotic in principle
+though generally much restricted in practice was mainly instrumental in carrying the people through a necessary stage of improvement which representative government if real would most likely have prevented them from entering upon
+that old nuisance of a rachel lynde was here again today pestering me for a subscription towards buying a carpet for the vestry room said mister harrison wrathfully i detest that woman more than anybody i know she can put a whole sermon
+text comment and application into six words and throw it at you like a brick anne who was perched on the edge of the veranda enjoying the charm of a mild west wind blowing across a newly ploughed field on a gray november twilight
+and piping a quaint little melody among the twisted firs below the garden turned her dreamy face over her shoulder the trouble is you and missus lynde don't understand one another she explained that is always what is wrong when people don't like each other
+i didn't like missus lynde at first either but as soon as i came to understand her i learned to missus lynde may be an acquired taste with some folks
+i said some dreadful things to missus lynde long ago but it was when i had lost my temper i couldn't say them deliberately it was the truth and i believe in telling the truth to everybody
+you only tell the disagreeable part of the truth now you've told me a dozen times that my hair was red but you've never once told me that i had a nice nose
+i know i have red hair too although it's much darker than it used to be so there's no need of telling me that either well well i'll try and not mention it again since you're so sensitive
+you must excuse me anne i've got a habit of being outspoken and folks mustn't mind it but they can't help minding it and i don't think it's any help that it's your habit what would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying
+excuse me you mustn't mind it it's just a habit i've got you'd think he was crazy wouldn't you and as for missus lynde being a busybody perhaps she is but did you tell her she had a very kind heart and always helped the poor
+and never said a word when timothy cotton stole a crock of butter out of her dairy and told his wife he'd bought it from her missus cotton cast it up to her the next time they met that it tasted of turnips and missus lynde just said she was sorry it had turned out so poorly
+folks are everlasting begging for money here it seems to me how's your project of painting the hall coming on splendidly we had a meeting of the a v i s last friday night and found that we had plenty of money subscribed to paint the hall and shingle the roof too
+most people gave very liberally mister harrison anne was a sweet souled lass but she could instill some venom into innocent italics when occasion required what color are you going to have it we have decided on a very pretty green
+mister roger pye is going to get the paint in town today who's got the job mister joshua pye of carmody he has nearly finished the shingling we had to give him the contract for every one of the pyes and there are four families you know
+said they wouldn't give a cent unless joshua got it they had subscribed twelve dollars between them and we thought that was too much to lose although some people think we shouldn't have given in to the pyes missus lynde says they try to run everything
+the main question is will this joshua do his work well if he does i don't see that it matters whether his name is pye or pudding he has the reputation of being a good workman though they say he's a very peculiar man he hardly ever talks
+he's peculiar enough all right then said mister harrison drily
+i never was much of a talker till i came to avonlea and then i had to begin in self defense or missus lynde would have said i was dumb and started a subscription to have me taught sign language
+i must i have some sewing to do for dora this evening besides davy is probably breaking marilla's heart with some new mischief by this time this morning the first thing he said was where does the dark go anne i want to know
+the poor bird has been moping ever since those children must be a sight of trouble to you folks everything that's worth having is some trouble said anne secretly resolving to forgive davy's next offence whatever it might be since he had avenged her on ginger
+began painting the next day he was not disturbed in his task the hall was situated on what was called the lower road in late autumn this road was always muddy and wet and people going to carmody traveled by the longer upper road
+the hall was so closely surrounded by fir woods that it was invisible unless you were near it mister joshua pye painted away in the solitude and independence that were so dear to his unsociable heart friday afternoon he finished his job and went home to carmody
+the news flew like wildfire gilbert blythe poring over a text book at home heard it from his father's hired boy at sunset and rushed breathlessly to green gables joined on the way by fred wright
+arriving at this moment with a bandbox he had brought from town for marilla haven't you heard said jane wrathfully well its simply this joshua pye has gone and painted the hall blue instead of green a deep brilliant blue
+the shade they use for painting carts and wheelbarrows and missus lynde says it is the most hideous color for a building especially when combined with a red roof that she ever saw or imagined you could simply have knocked me down with a feather when i heard it
+it's heartbreaking after all the trouble we've had how on earth could such a mistake have happened wailed diana the blame of this unmerciful disaster was eventually narrowed down to the pyes the improvers had decided to use morton harris paints
+and the morton harris paint cans were numbered according to a color card a purchaser chose his shade on the card and ordered by the accompanying number
+and when mister roger pye sent word to the improvers by his son john andrew that he was going to town and would get their paint for them
+and there the matter stands to this day that night there was blank dismay in every avonlea house where an improver lived the gloom at green gables was so intense that it quenched even davy anne wept and would not be comforted
+and it sounds the death knell of our society we'll simply be laughed out of existence in life as in dreams however things often go by contraries the avonlea people did not laugh they were too angry
+their money had gone to paint the hall and consequently they felt themselves bitterly aggrieved by the mistake public indignation centered on the pyes roger pye and john andrew had bungled the matter between them
+and as for joshua pye he must be a born fool not to suspect there was something wrong when he opened the cans and saw the color of the paint joshua pye when thus animadverted upon retorted that the avonlea taste in colors was no business of his
+you can't hold him responsible for the mistake since he claims he was never told what the color was supposed to be but just given the cans and told to go ahead but it's a burning shame and that hall certainly does look awful
+the luckless improvers expected that avonlea would be more prejudiced than ever against them but instead public sympathy veered around in their favor
+had been badly used missus lynde told them to keep on and show the pyes that there really were people in the world who could do things without making a muddle of them mister major spencer sent them word that he would clean out all the stumps along the road front of his farm and seed it down with grass at his own expense
+to tell her that if the sassiety wanted to make a geranium bed at the crossroads in the spring they needn't be afraid of her cow for she would see that the marauding animal was kept within safe bounds even mister harrison chuckled if he chuckled at all in private
+and was all sympathy outwardly never mind anne most paints fade uglier every year but that blue is as ugly as it can be to begin with so it's bound to fade prettier and the roof is shingled and painted all right
+folks will be able to sit in the hall after this without being leaked on you've accomplished so much anyhow
+teaching is really very interesting work wrote anne to a queen's academy chum jane says she thinks it is monotonous but i don't find it so something funny is almost sure to happen every day and the children say such amusing things
+it was because jimmy called him saint clair that saint clair pounded him on the way home from school i heard of the pounding but not officially so i don't think i'll take any notice of it yesterday i was trying to teach lottie wright to do addition i said
+because it would rain the next day it's so hard not to laugh stella i have to save up all my amusement until i get home and marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent cause
+did you know that thomas a becket was canonized as a snake rose bell says he was also that william tyndale wrote the new testament claude white says a glacier is a man who puts in window frames
+hannah bell wanted to be good without having to take any trouble about it marjory white aged ten wanted to be a widow questioned why she gravely said that if you weren't married people called you an old maid and if you were your husband bossed you
+but if you were a widow there'd be no danger of either the most remarkable wish was sally bell's she wanted a honeymoon
+because her cousin in montreal went on a honeymoon when he was married and he had always had the very latest in bicycles another day i asked them all to tell me the naughtiest thing they had ever done i couldn't get the older ones to do so but the third class answered quite freely
+eliza bell had set fire to her aunt's carded rolls asked if she meant to do it she said not altogether
+i wish you could see some of their compositions so much do i wish it that i'll send you copies of some written recently last week i told the fourth class i wanted them to write me letters about anything they pleased adding by way of suggestion that they might tell me of some place they had visited
+or some interesting thing or person they had seen they were to write the letters on real note paper seal them in an envelope and address them to me all without any assistance from other people last friday morning i found a pile of letters on my desk and that evening i realized afresh
+p e island can birds dear teacher i think i will write you a composition about birds birds is very useful animals my cat catches birds his name is william but pa calls him tom
+he is oll striped and he got one of his ears froz of last winter only for that he would be a good looking cat my unkle has adopted a cat it come to his house one day and woudent go away and unkle says it has forgot more than most people ever knowed
+he lets it sleep on his rocking chare and my aunt says he thinks more of it than he does of his children that is not right we ought to be kind to cats and give them new milk but we ought not be better to them than to our children
+it is just that he has not a great deal of tact or imagination dear miss shirley you told us to describe something strange we have seen i will describe the avonlea hall it has two doors an inside one and an outside one
+it has six windows and a chimney it has two ends and two sides it is painted blue that is what makes it strange it is built on the lower carmody road it is the third most important building in avonlea the others are the church and the blacksmith shop
+and hers are generally as brief as saint clair's annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behavior but there isn't a shadow of orginality in her here is her letter dearest teacher i think i will write you a letter to tell you how much i love you
+i love you with my whole heart and soul and mind with all there is of me to love and i want to serve you for ever it would be my highest privilege that is why i try so hard to be good in school and learn my lessuns you are so beautiful my teacher
+when you had not come into my life to bless and hallow it i will always look back to this year as the most wonderful in my life because it brought you to me besides it's the year we moved to avonlea from newbridge my love for you has made my life very rich
+i owe this all to you my sweetest teacher i shall never forget how sweet you looked the last time i saw you in that black dress with flowers in your hair i shall see you like that for ever even when we are both old and gray you will always be young and fair to me dearest teacher
+i kiss your hands and face my sweet may god watch over you and protect you from all harm your afecksionate pupil annetta bell this extraordinary letter puzzled me not a little
+and asked her to tell me the truth about the letter annetta cried and fessed up freely she said she had never written a letter and she didn't know how to or what to say
+i put teacher where he put lady and i put in something of my own when i could think of it and i changed some words i put dress in place of mood
+here is barbara shaw's letter i can't reproduce the blots of the original dear teacher you said we might write about a visit i never visited but once it was at my aunt mary's last winter
+my aunt mary is a very particular woman and a great housekeeper the first night i was there we were at tea i knocked over a jug and broke it aunt mary said she had had that jug ever since she was married and nobody had ever broken it before
+when we got up i stepped on her dress and all the gathers tore out of the skirt the next morning when i got up i hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and i upset a cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast
+when i was helping aunt mary with the dinner dishes i dropped a china plate and it smashed that evening i fell downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week i heard aunt mary tell uncle joseph it was a mercy or i'd have broken everything in the house
+when i got better it was time to go home i don't like visiting very much i like going to school better especially since i came to avonlea yours respectfully barbara shaw willie white's began respected miss
+i want to tell you about my very brave aunt she lives in ontario and one day she went out to the barn and saw a dog in the yard the dog had no business there so she got a stick and whacked him hard and drove him into the barn and shut him up pretty soon a man came looking for an inaginary lion
+but she was very brave emerson gillis says if she thought it was a dog she wasn't any braver than if it really was a dog but emerson is jealous because he hasn't got a brave aunt himself nothing but uncles i have kept the best for the last
+you laugh at me because i think paul is a genius but i am sure his letter will convince you that he is a very uncommon child paul lives away down near the shore with his grandmother and he has no playmates no real playmates
+but i can't help loving paul irving the best of all mine i don't think it does any harm though for everybody loves paul even missus lynde who says she could never have believed she'd get so fond of a yankee the other boys in school like him too
+there is nothing weak or girlish about him in spite of his dreams and fancies he is very manly and can hold his own in all games he fought saint clair donnell recently because saint clair said the union jack was away ahead of the stars and stripes as a flag
+saint clair says he can hit the hardest but paul can hit the oftenest paul's letter my dear teacher you told us we might write you about some interesting people we knew i think the most interesting people i know are my rock people
+and i mean to tell you about them i have never told anybody about them except grandma and father but i would like to have you know about them because you understand things there are a great many people who do not understand things so there is no use in telling them
+nora was the first one of them i got acquainted with and so i think i love her the best she lives in andrews cove and she has black hair and black eyes and she knows all about the mermaids and the water kelpies you ought to hear the stories she can tell
+then there are the twin sailors they don't live anywhere they sail all the time but they often come ashore to talk to me they are a pair of jolly tars and they have seen everything in the world and more than what is in the world
+a moonglade is the track the full moon makes on the water when it is rising from the sea you know teacher well the youngest twin sailor sailed along the moonglade till he came right up to the moon
+he had some wonderful adventures in the moon but it would make this letter too long to tell them then there is the golden lady of the cave one day i found a big cave down on the shore and i went away in and after a while i found the golden lady
+she has golden hair right down to her feet and her dress is all glittering and glistening like gold that is alive and she has a golden harp and plays on it all day long you can hear the music any time along shore if you listen carefully
+but most people would think it was only the wind among the rocks i've never told nora about the golden lady i was afraid it might hurt her feelings it even hurt her feelings if i talked too long with the twin sailors i always met the twin sailors at the striped rocks
+because i'd promised grandmother i'd never associate with anybody that swore he was pretty well scared i can tell you and he said if i would forgive him he would take me to the sunset so the next evening when i was sitting on the striped rocks
+the oldest twin came sailing over the sea in an enchanted boat and i got in her the boat was all pearly and rainbowy like the inside of the mussel shells and her sail was like moonshine well we sailed right across to the sunset
+but the oldest twin says it was only a few minutes you see in the sunset land the time is ever so much longer than it is here your loving pupil paul irving
+a jonah day it really began the night before with a restless wakeful vigil of grumbling toothache when anne arose in the dull bitter winter morning she felt that life was flat stale and unprofitable
+she went to school in no angelic mood her cheek was swollen and her face ached the schoolroom was cold and smoky for the fire refused to burn and the children were huddled about it in shivering groups
+anthony pye strutted to his with his usual impertinent swagger and she saw him whisper something to his seat mate and then glance at her with a grin never so it seemed to anne had there been so many squeaky pencils as there were that morning
+and when barbara shaw came up to the desk with a sum she tripped over the coal scuttle with disastrous results the coal rolled to every part of the room her slate was broken into fragments and when she picked herself up her face stained with coal dust sent the boys into roars of laughter
+anne turned from the second reader class which she was hearing really barbara she said icily if you cannot move without falling over something you'd better remain in your seat it is positively disgraceful for a girl of your age to be so awkward
+please miss i had to help ma make a pudding for dinner cause we're expecting company and clarice almira's sick was saint clair's answer given in a perfectly respectful voice but nevertheless provocative of great mirth among his mates
+take your seat and work out the six problems on page eighty four of your arithmetic for punishment said anne saint clair looked rather amazed at her tone but he went meekly to his desk and took out his slate then he stealthily passed a small parcel to joe sloane across the aisle
+anne caught him in the act and jumped to a fatal conclusion about that parcel old missus hiram sloane had lately taken to making and selling nut cakes by way of adding to her scanty income the cakes were specially tempting to small boys
+anne had warned them that if they brought any more cakes to school they would be confiscated and yet here was saint clair donnell coolly passing a parcel of them wrapped up in the blue and white striped paper missus hiram used under her very eyes
+really held an assortment of firecrackers and pinwheels for which warren sloane had sent to town by saint clair donnell's father the day before intending to have a birthday celebration that evening
+joe sloane stood as one transfixed in the midst of the commotion and saint clair helpless with laughter rocked to and fro in the aisle prillie rogerson fainted and annetta bell went into hysterics
+anne recovering herself sprang to open doors and windows and let out the gas and smoke which filled the room then she helped the girls carry the unconscious prillie into the porch
+where barbara shaw in an agony of desire to be useful poured a pailful of half frozen water over prillie's face and shoulders before anyone could stop her it was a full hour before quiet was restored
+everybody realized that even the explosion had not cleared the teacher's mental atmosphere nobody except anthony pye dared whisper a word ned clay accidentally squeaked his pencil while working a sum caught anne's eye and wished the floor would open and swallow him up
+chester sloane spelling odoriferous with two f's was made to feel that he could never live down the disgrace of it either in this world or that which is to come
+but the knowledge only angered her further
+he peered across his book at anne his black eyes sparkling with curiosity and mockery anne twitched open the drawer of her desk in search of chalk and under her very hand a lively mouse sprang out of the drawer scampered over the desk and leaped to the floor
+especially as she didn't know just where the mouse had gone but she decided not to who could take any comfort out of hysterics with a teacher so white faced and so blazing eyed standing before one who put that mouse in my desk said anne
+her voice was quite low but it made a shiver go up and down paul irving's spine joe sloane caught her eye felt responsible from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet but stuttered out wildly
+anne paid no attention to the wretched joseph she looked at anthony pye and anthony pye looked back unabashed and unashamed anthony was it you yes it was said anthony insolently
+anne took her pointer from her desk it was a long heavy hardwood pointer come here anthony it was far from being the most severe punishment anthony pye had ever undergone anne
+even the stormy souled anne she was at that moment could not have punished any child cruelly but the pointer nipped keenly and finally anthony's bravado failed him he winced and the tears came to his eyes anne conscience stricken dropped the pointer and told anthony to go to his seat
+she sat down at her desk feeling ashamed repentant and bitterly mortified her quick anger was gone and she would have given much to have been able to seek relief in tears so all her boasts had come to this she had actually whipped one of her pupils
+kept back her tears until she got home that night then she shut herself in the east gable room and wept all her shame and remorse and disappointment into her pillows wept so long that marilla grew alarmed invaded the room and insisted on knowing what the trouble was
+the trouble is i've got things the matter with my conscience sobbed anne oh this has been such a jonah day marilla i'm so ashamed of myself i lost my temper and whipped anthony pye i'm glad to hear it said marilla with decision
+it's what you should have done long ago oh no no marilla and i don't see how i can ever look those children in the face again i feel that i have humiliated myself to the very dust you don't know how cross and hateful and horrid i was
+oh marilla i have tried so hard to be patient and to win anthony's liking and now it has all gone for nothing marilla passed her hard work worn hand over the girl's glossy tumbled hair with a wonderful tenderness
+when anne's sobs grew quieter she said very gently for her you take things too much to heart anne we all make mistakes but people forget them and jonah days come to everybody as for anthony pye why need you care if he does dislike you
+he is the only one i can't help it i want everybody to love me and it hurts me so when anybody doesn't and anthony never will now oh i just made an idiot of myself today marilla i'll tell you the whole story
+just come downstairs and have your supper you'll see if a good cup of tea and those plum puffs i made today won't hearten you up plum puffs won't minister to a mind diseased said anne disconsolately
+it had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours of darkness and the beautiful whiteness glittering in the frosty sunshine looked like a mantle of charity cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the past every morn is a fresh beginning
+every morn is the world made new sang anne as she dressed owing to the snow she had to go around by the road to school and she thought it was certainly an impish coincidence that anthony pye should come ploughing along just as she left the green gables lane
+anne surrendered her books and wondered if she could possibly be awake anthony walked on in silence to the school but when anne took her books she smiled down at him not the stereotyped kind smile she had so persistently assumed for his benefit
+but a sudden outflashing of good comradeship anthony smiled no if the truth must be told anthony grinned back a grin is not generally supposed to be a respectful thing
+missus rachel lynde came up the next saturday and confirmed this well anne i guess you've won over anthony pye that's what he says he believes you are some good after all even if you are a girl says that whipping you gave him was just as good as a man's
+no but the pyes are an exception to every known rule that's what declared missus rachel with conviction
+i would here willingly have proceeded to exhibit the whole chain of truths which i deduced from these primary but as with a view to this it would have been necessary now to treat of many questions
+i believe that it will be better for me to refrain from this exposition and only mention in general what these truths are that the more judicious may be able to determine whether a more special account of them would conduce to the public advantage
+i have ever remained firm in my original resolution to suppose no other principle than that of which i have recently availed myself in demonstrating the existence of god and of the soul
+and to accept as true nothing that did not appear to me more clear and certain than the demonstrations of the geometers had formerly appeared and yet i venture to state that not only have i found means
+to satisfy myself in a short time on all the principal difficulties which are usually treated of in philosophy but i have also observed certain laws established in nature by god in such a manner
+and of which he has impressed on our minds such notions that after we have reflected sufficiently upon these we cannot doubt that they are accurately observed in all that exists or takes place in the world and farther by considering
+but like the painters who finding themselves unable to represent equally well on a plain surface all the different faces of a solid body select one of the chief on which alone they make the light fall and throwing the rest into the shade
+fearing lest i should not be able to compense in my discourse all that was in my mind i resolved to expound singly though at considerable length my opinions regarding light then
+to take the opportunity of adding something on the sun and the fixed stars since light almost wholly proceeds from them on the heavens since they transmit it on the planets comets and earth since they reflect it and particularly
+on all the bodies that are upon the earth since they are either colored or transparent or luminous and finally on man since he is the spectator of these objects
+further to enable me to cast this variety of subjects somewhat into the shade and to express my judgment regarding them with greater freedom without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned
+i resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes and to speak only of what would happen in a new world if god were now to create somewhere in the imaginary spaces
+matter sufficient to compose one and were to agitate variously and confusedly the different parts of this matter so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned
+and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary concurrence to nature and allow her to act in accordance with the laws which he had established on this supposition i in the first place described this matter
+and essayed to represent it in such a manner that to my mind there can be nothing clearer and more intelligible except what has been recently said regarding god and the soul
+for i even expressly supposed that it possessed none of those forms or qualities which are so debated in the schools nor in general anything the knowledge of which is not so natural to our minds
+i endeavored to demonstrate all those about which there could be any room for doubt
+that even if god had created more worlds there could have been none in which these laws were not observed thereafter i showed how the greatest part of the matter of this chaos must in accordance with these laws dispose and arrange itself in such a way
+as to present the appearance of heavens how in the meantime some of its parts must compose an earth and some planets and comets and others a sun and fixed stars and making a digression at this stage on the subject of light
+i expounded at considerable length what the nature of that light must be
+and how thence in an instant of time it traverses the immense spaces of the heavens and how from the planets and comets it is reflected towards the earth to this i likewise added much respecting the substance the situation the motions
+and all the different qualities of these heavens and stars so that i thought i had said enough respecting them to show that there is nothing observable in the heavens or stars of our system that must not or at least may not appear precisely alike in those of the system which i described
+i came next to speak of the earth in particular and to show how even though i had expressly supposed that god had given no weight to the matter of which it is composed this should not prevent all its parts from tending exactly
+to that observed in our seas as also a certain current both of water and air from east to west such as is likewise observed between the tropics how the mountains seas fountains and rivers might naturally be formed in it
+and the metals produced in the mines and the plants grow in the fields and in general how all the bodies which are commonly denominated mixed or composite might be generated and among other things in the discoveries alluded to
+i knew nothing except fire which produces light i spared no pains to set forth all that pertains to its nature the manner of its production and support and to explain how heat is sometimes found without light and light without heat
+to show how it can induce various colors upon different bodies and other diverse qualities how it reduces some to a liquid state and hardens others how it can consume almost all bodies or convert them into ashes and smoke
+and finally how from these ashes
+for as this transmutation of ashes into glass appeared to me as wonderful as any other in nature i took a special pleasure in describing it i was not however disposed from these circumstances
+to conclude that this world had been created in the manner i described
+but this is certain and an opinion commonly received among theologians that the action by which he now sustains it is the same with that by which he originally created it
+so that even although he had from the beginning given it no other form than that of chaos provided only he had established certain laws of nature and had lent it his concurrence to enable it to act as it is wont to do
+it may be believed without discredit to the miracle of creation that in this way alone things purely material might in course of time
+from the description of inanimate bodies and plants i passed to animals and particularly to man
+but since i had not as yet sufficient knowledge to enable me to treat of these in the same manner as of the rest that is to say by deducing effects from their causes and by showing
+nature must produce them i remained satisfied with the supposition that god formed the body of man wholly like to one of ours as well in the external shape of the members as in the internal conformation of the organs
+of the same matter with that i had described and at first placed in it no rational soul nor any other principle in room of the vegetative or sensitive soul beyond kindling in the heart one of those fires without light
+and which i thought was not different from the heat in hay that has been heaped together before it is dry or that which causes fermentation in new wines before they are run clear of the fruit for when i examined the kind of functions which might
+as consequences of this supposition exist in this body i found precisely all those which may exist in us independently
+consists in thinking functions in which the animals void of reason may be said wholly to resemble us but among which i could not discover any of those that as dependent on thought alone belong to us as men
+while on the other hand i did afterwards discover these as soon as i supposed god to have created a rational soul and to have annexed it to this body in a particular manner which i described
+will afford the means of readily determining what should be thought of all the rest
+to take the trouble of getting dissected in their presence the heart of some large animal possessed of lungs
+and to have shown to them its two ventricles or cavities in the first place that in the right side with which correspond two very ample tubes viz the hollow vein vena cava
+which is the principal receptacle of the blood and the trunk of the tree as it were of which all the other veins in the body are branches and the arterial vein vena arteriosa inappropriately so denominated
+presently disperse themselves all over the lungs in the second place the cavity in the left side
+two canals in size equal to or larger than the preceding viz the venous artery arteria venosa likewise inappropriately thus designated because it is simply a vein which comes from the lungs
+where it is divided into many branches interlaced with those of the arterial vein and those of the tube called the windpipe through which the air we breathe enters and the great artery which issuing from the heart sends its branches all over the body
+i should wish also that such persons were carefully shown the eleven pellicles which like so many small valves open and shut the four orifices that are in these two cavities viz
+three at the entrance of the hollow veins where they are disposed in such a manner as by no means to prevent the blood which it contains from flowing into the right ventricle of the heart and yet exactly to prevent its flowing out three at the entrance to the arterial vein
+which arranged in a manner exactly the opposite of the former readily permit the blood contained in this cavity to pass into the lungs but hinder that contained in the lungs from returning to this cavity and in like manner
+two others at the mouth of the venous artery which allow the blood from the lungs to flow into the left cavity of the heart but preclude its return and three at the mouth of the great artery which suffer the blood to flow from the heart
+but prevent its reflux nor do we need to seek any other reason for the number of these pellicles beyond this that the orifice of the venous artery being of an oval shape from the nature of its situation can be adequately closed with two
+whereas the others being round are more conveniently closed with three besides i wish such persons to observe that the grand artery and the arterial vein are of much harder and firmer texture
+and there form as it were two pouches denominated the auricles of the heart which are composed of a substance similar to that of the heart itself and that there is always more warmth in the heart than in any other part of the body
+and finally that this heat is capable of causing any drop of blood that passes into the cavities rapidly to expand and dilate just as all liquors do when allowed to fall drop by drop into a highly heated vessel
+for after these things it is not necessary for me to say anything more with a view to explain the motion of the heart except that when its cavities are not full of blood
+into these the blood of necessity flows from the hollow vein into the right and from the venous artery into the left because these two vessels are always full of blood and their orifices which are turned towards the heart cannot then be closed
+because the orifices through which they pass are wide
+are immediately rarefied and dilated by the heat they meet with in this way they cause the whole heart to expand and at the same time press home and shut the five small valves that are at the entrances
+of the two vessels from which they flow and thus prevent any more blood from coming down into the heart and becoming more and more rarefied they push open the six small valves that are in the orifices of the other two vessels through which they pass out
+causing in this way all the branches of the arterial vein and of the grand artery to expand almost simultaneously with the heart which immediately thereafter begins to contract as do also the arteries
+and the six small valves close and the five of the hollow
+venous artery open anew and allow a passage
+which cause the heart and the arteries again to expand as before and because the blood which thus enters into the heart passes
+it thence happens that their motion is the contrary of that of the heart and that when it expands they contract but lest those who are ignorant of the force of mathematical demonstrations and who are not accustomed to distinguish
+true reasons from mere verisimilitudes should venture without examination to deny what has been said i wish it to be considered that the motion which i have now explained follows as necessarily
+from the very arrangement of the parts which may be observed in the heart by the eye alone and from the heat which may be felt with the fingers and from the nature of the blood as learned from experience as does the motion of a clock from the power
+the situation and shape of its counterweights and wheels but if it be asked how it happens that the blood in the veins flowing in this way continually into the heart is not exhausted
+and of having been the first to teach that there are many small passages at the extremities of the arteries through which the blood received by them from the heart passes into the small branches of the veins
+so that its course amounts precisely to a perpetual circulation of this we have abundant proof in the ordinary experience of surgeons who by binding the arm with a tie of moderate straitness above the part where they open the vein
+cause the blood to flow more copiously than it would have done without any ligature whereas quite the contrary would happen were they to bind it below that is between the hand and the opening or were to make the ligature above
+the opening very tight for it is manifest that the tie moderately straightened while adequate to hinder the blood already in the arm from returning towards the heart by the veins cannot on that account prevent new blood
+from coming forward through the arteries because these are situated below the veins and their coverings from their greater consistency are more difficult to compress and also that the blood which comes from the heart tends to pass through them
+to the hand with greater force than it does to return from the hand to the heart through the veins and since the latter current escapes from the arm by the opening made in one of the veins there must of necessity
+which is in the body may flow out of it in a very short time through a single artery that has been cut
+so as to prevent the supposition that the blood flowing out of it could come from any other quarter than the heart but there are many other circumstances which evince that what i have alleged
+is the true cause of the motion of the blood thus in the first place the difference that is observed between the blood which flows from the veins and that from the arteries can only arise from this
+and more vivid and warmer immediately after leaving the heart in other words when in the arteries than it was a short time before passing into either in other words when it was in the veins
+and if attention be given it will be found that this difference is very marked only in the neighborhood of the heart
+in parts more remote from it in the next place
+sufficiently shows that the blood is impelled against them with more force than against the veins and why should the left cavity of the heart
+and the arterial vein were it not that the blood of the venous artery having only been in the lungs after it has passed through the heart is thinner and rarefies more readily and in a higher degree
+whence it happens that if the blood be withdrawn from any part the heat is likewise withdrawn by the same means and although the heart were as hot as glowing iron it would not be capable of warming the feet and hands
+and that in children who cannot use them while in the womb
+when it is considered that it is distilled by passing and repassing through the heart perhaps more than one or two hundred times in a day
+and the production of the different humors of the body beyond saying that the force with which the blood in being rarefied passes from the heart towards the extremities of the arteries causes certain of its parts to remain in the members at which they arrive
+and there occupy the place of some others expelled by them and that according to the situation shape or smallness of the pores with which they meet some rather than others flow into certain parts
+which by being variously perforated serve to separate different species of grain and in the last place what above all is here worthy of observation
+is the generation of the animal spirits which are like a very subtle wind or rather a very pure and vivid flame which
+ascending in great abundance from the heart to the brain thence penetrates through the nerves into the muscles and gives motion to all the members so that to account for other parts of the blood which as most agitated and penetrating
+proceeding towards the brain it is not necessary to suppose any other cause than simply that the arteries which carry them thither proceed from the heart
+in the most direct lines and that according to the rules of mechanics which are the same with those of nature when many objects tend at once to the same point
+which flow forth from the left cavity of the heart and tend towards the brain the weaker and less agitated parts must necessarily be driven aside from that point by the stronger which alone in this way reach it
+i had expounded all these matters with sufficient minuteness in the treatise which i formerly thought of publishing and after these i had shown what must be the fabric of the nerves and muscles of the human body
+to give the animal spirits contained in it the power to move the members as when we see heads shortly after they have been struck off still move and bite the earth although no longer animated what changes must take place in the brain to produce
+waking sleep and dreams how light sounds odors tastes heat and all the other qualities of external objects impress it with different ideas by means of the senses how hunger
+thirst and the other internal affections can likewise impress upon it divers ideas what must be understood by the common sense sensus communis in which these ideas are received by the memory which retains them
+by the fantasy which can change them in various ways and out of them compose new ideas and which by the same means distributing the animal spirits through the muscles can cause the members of such a body to move in as many different ways
+to those who are acquainted with the variety of movements performed by the different automata or moving machines fabricated by human industry and that with help of but few pieces compared with the great multitude of bones
+muscles nerves arteries veins and other parts that are found in the body of each animal such persons will look upon this body as a machine made by the hands of god which is incomparably better arranged
+and adequate to movements more admirable than is any machine of human invention and here i specially stayed to show that were there such machines exactly resembling organs and outward form an ape or any other irrational animal
+we could have no means of knowing that they were in any respect of a different nature from these animals but if there were machines bearing the image of our bodies and capable of imitating our actions as far as it is morally possible
+our thoughts to others for we may easily conceive a machine to be so constructed that it emits vocables and even that it emits some correspondent to the action upon it of external objects which cause a change in its organs
+for example if touched in a particular place it may demand what we wish to say to it if in another it may cry out that it is hurt and such like
+appositely to reply to what is said in its presence as men of the lowest grade of intellect can do the second test is that although such machines might execute many things with equal or perhaps greater perfection than any of us
+these organs on the contrary need a particular arrangement for each particular action whence it must be morally impossible that there should exist in any machine a diversity of organs sufficient
+that there are no men so dull and stupid not even idiots as to be incapable of joining together different words and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood
+destitute of the organs which others use in speaking are in the habit of spontaneously inventing certain signs by which they discover their thoughts to those who being usually in their company have leisure to learn their language
+and this proves not only that the brutes have less reason than man but that they have none at all for we see that very little is required to enable a person to speak
+and since a certain inequality of capacity is observable among animals of the same species as well as among men and since some are more capable of being instructed than others it is incredible that the most perfect ape or parrot of its species
+should not in this be equal to the most stupid infant of its kind or at least to one that was crack brained unless the soul of brutes
+and we ought not to confound speech with the natural movements which indicate the passions and can be imitated by machines as well as manifested by animals nor must it be thought with certain of the ancients that the brutes speak although we do not understand their language
+since they are endowed with many organs analogous to ours they could as easily communicate their thoughts to us as to their fellows
+that though there are many animals which manifest more industry than we in certain of their actions the same animals are yet observed to show none at all in many others so that the circumstance that they do better
+and could surpass us in all things on the contrary it rather proves that they are destitute of reason and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs thus it is seen that a clock composed only of wheels and weights
+can number the hours and measure time more exactly than we with all our skin i had after this described the reasonable soul and shown that it could by no means be educed from the power of matter
+as the other things of which i had spoken but that it must be expressly created and that it is not sufficient that it be lodged in the human body exactly like a pilot in a ship unless perhaps to move its members
+but that it is necessary for it to be joined and united more closely to the body in order to have sensations and appetites similar to ours and thus constitute a real man
+there is none that is more powerful in leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue
+and consequently that after this life we have nothing to hope for or fear more than flies and ants in place of which when we know how far they differ we much better comprehend the reasons which establish
+because no other causes are observed capable of destroying it
+it ofttimes requires heroic courage to face fruitless effort to take up the broken strands of a life work to look bravely toward the future and proceed undaunted on our way
+but what to our eyes may seem hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a greater success it may contain in its debris the foundation material of a mighty purpose or the revelation of new and higher possibilities
+some years ago it was proposed to send logs from canada to new york by a new method the ingenious plan of mister joggins was to bind great logs together by cables and iron girders
+and the angry waters scattered the logs far and wide the chief of the hydrographic department at washington heard of the failure of the experiment and at once sent word to shipmasters the world over
+urging them to watch carefully for these logs which he described and to note the precise location of each in latitude and longitude and the time the observation was made hundreds of captains sailing over the waters of the earth
+noted the logs in the atlantic ocean in the mediterranean in the south seas for into all waters did these venturesome ones travel hundreds of reports were made covering a period of weeks and months
+these observations were then carefully collated systematized and tabulated and discoveries were made as to the course of ocean currents that otherwise would have been impossible the loss of the joggins raft was not a real failure
+for it led to one of the great discoveries in modern marine geography and navigation in our superior knowledge we are disposed to speak in a patronizing tone
+but their failure to transmute the baser metals into gold resulted in the birth of chemistry they did not succeed in what they attempted but they brought into vogue the natural processes of sublimation filtration
+distillation and crystallization they invented the alembic the retort the sand bath the water bath and other valuable instruments to them is due the discovery of antimony sulphuric ether and phosphorus
+and its use in gunpowder and the discovery of the distillation of essential oils this was the success of failure a wondrous process of nature for the highest growth a mighty lesson of comfort strength and encouragement
+in discovering america columbus failed absolutely his ingenious reasoning and experiment led him to believe that by sailing westward he would reach india every redman in america carries in his name indian
+the perpetuation of the memory of the failure of columbus the genoese navigator did not reach india the cargo of souvenirs he took back to spain to show to ferdinand and isabella as proofs of his success
+really attested his failure but the discovery of america was a greater success than was any finding of a back door to india when david livingstone had supplemented his theological education by a medical course
+opened a whole continent to light and truth his study proved an ideal preparation for his labors as physician explorer teacher and evangel in the wilds of africa
+business reverses and the failure of his partner threw upon the broad shoulders and the still broader honor and honesty of sir walter scott a burden of responsibility that forced him to write
+his brush strokes put on in the early morning hours before going to his menial duties as a railway porter in the dusk like that perpetuated on his canvas meant strength food and medicine for the dying wife he adored
+the art failure that cast him into the depths of poverty unified with marvellous intensity all the finer elements of his nature this rare spiritual unity
+this purging of all the dross of triviality as he passed through the furnace of poverty trial and sorrow gave eloquence to his brush and enabled him to paint as never before as no prosperity would have made possible
+failure is often the turning point the pivot of circumstance that swings us to higher levels it may not be financial success it may not be fame it may be new draughts of spiritual moral or mental inspiration
+there is but one question for him to answer to face boldly and honestly as an individual alone with his conscience and his destiny how will i let that poverty or wealth affect me if that trial or deprivation has left me better
+truer nobler then poverty has been riches failure has been a success if wealth has come to me and has made me vain arrogant contemptuous uncharitable cynical
+it has not been riches it has been dark treacherous poverty that stole from me even myself all things become for us then what we take from them failure is one of god's educators
+it is experience leading man to higher things it is the revelation of a way a path hitherto unknown to us the best men in the world those who have made the greatest real successes
+look back with serene happiness on their failures the turning of the face of time shows all things in a wondrously illuminated and satisfying perspective many a man is thankful to day that some petty success for which he once struggled
+melted into thin air as his hand sought to clutch it failure is often the rock bottom foundation of real success if man in a few instances of his life can say
+the death or destruction of the seed is the prelude to its resurrection as wheat it is at night in the darkest hours those preceding dawn that plants grow best that they most increase in size
+may this not be one of nature's gentle showings to man of the times when he grows best of the darkness of failure that is evolving into the sunlight of success let us fear only the failure of not living the right as we see it
+leaving the results to the guardianship of the infinite if we think of any supreme moment of our lives any great success any one who is dear to us and then consider how we reached that moment that success
+we will see how logical has been the course of our joy and success from sorrow and failure and that what gives us most happiness to day is inextricably connected with what once caused us sorrow
+have had their source and their trickling increase into volume among the dark gloomy recesses of our failure there is no honest and true work
+in continuous harmony with them
+no matter what statistics of failure a near sighted and half blind world of critics and commentators may lay at his door high ideals noble efforts will make seeming failures but trifles
+they need not dishearten us they should prove sources of new strength the rocky way may prove safer than the slippery path of smoothness birds cannot fly best with the wind but against it ships do not progress in calm
+when the sails flap idly against the unstrained masts
+supreme control of age youth is eternal nature never grows old the flowers that bloomed in eden are blooming to day just as lovely just as sweet
+just as fresh and unchanged the roses your life mate brings home to you have the same fragrance as the roses adam brought to eve if he thought of it
+warmed mother earth into vernal spring life are the same life giving rays that shall bring again the spring tide life never grows old it only changes form your life is perpetual
+then your youth may be perpetual the human race is ever young its units fall off you should be younger at sixty than at sixteen
+growing old is a habit people travel along the years up the hill of life till they reach a certain point where they begin to think they must be growing old think its time to sag think its time to droop
+think its time to begin the process of decay then begin to talk about it to write letters about it to feel around for it to look for it in others finally the habit they inherited from the race is on
+and they are old life is endless but you can think it short the power of an endless life is within you but by thinking you can turn it to the white ashes of old age think youth
+and you stay young youth is growth keep growing and you keep young a new idea will make you feel younger develop it and it will develop you quicken your mental throb with new ideas
+begin now stop talking about being too old to grow you pass by trees daily a hundred
+the rose bush on a wall in china is supposed to be over a thousand years old it bears more roses now than when it was a mere slip of a vine of only one hundred
+gladstone at eighty two was a growing statesman and elected prime minister of england for the fourth time cato at eighty began to study greek and renewed the youth of his mind donald davis
+is a growing hunter at one hundred and three goddard diamond was a growing teacher of health when he was one hundred and eleven i know a bright cheery lady
+who is just beginning a new study for decorating china along with her household cares and she is eighty eight also another woman who has taken up a new process of enlarging drawings into water colors
+and she is eighty one years young the fig tree withered when the master of life found it not growing producing creating when you stop growing you will wither by the same law grow something create something
+the law of production the law of expression the law of beauty the law of selflessness keep your bodily forces up rebuild destroyed tissue keep the system free of waste
+stop poisoning your body with anger hate jealousy fear keep your mind sweet think cheerfully avoid mental turmoil and excitement two great enemies of youth are worry and fear
+the next is selfishness think every morning when you rise this new day is new life it is fresh from the hand of god it is mine to use i will increase it unto the perfect day
+grow in each day and make each day grow check discord quit useless discussion for it weakens and withers stop quarreling check complainings root criticism out of your life
+you are bigger than these things get into harmony you are of the world upon worlds universe unto universe study your words to make them have beauty your walk to have grace
+your personality to make it magnetic your smile to give courage and comfort your presence to have it healing helping inspiring if there be any virtue in whatsoever things are lovely
+think on those things youth is loving work like what you do do what makes you and others happy enter your daily work with joy adjust it until you do like it
+learn to love work for the happiness it brings put joy into your work in the morning and you will find it multiplied into happiness at night work is a law of youth inaction is decay
+inertia is death men and women do not usually lose their positions they drive their positions away from them the law of work will not stand personal abuse
+any more than the law of beauty will endure brutality form an ideal of your work make a mental picture of it simplify it orderly it beautify it then glorify it
+and work with confident expectation put rules and system into your daily task exercise your self control your self possession self mastery march up to your task with efficiency
+put invincible determination i will into your complex problem put irresistible confidence i shall achieve into your ardent desires you will then love work
+love is the fulfilling of the law youth is supreme cheerfulness to be funless is to be lifeless good cheer is the tonic of youth if you are so sad you cannot laugh at something
+bathe in mirth frolic in some sunshine daily even if you live in pittsburgh and have to make your own sunshine make fun don't always buy it you can cure disease and kill the devil with laughter
+cultivate an infectious laugh mirth makes work easy read humor and learn to tell it practice telling a good funny story be a quick wit there is a bright side to everything in this world
+even to a dark lantern the end of the film is sure to be jolly good cheer attracts good luck cheer up if you haven't a smile get one of somebody and wear it as your own
+let thine heart cheer thee give it out let go to sleep with a smile on your face and you will awaken with a joy in your heart let your humor be rich humor laughter is the cipher key to a man
+it is one of the most delightful sounds of earth most utterly lost is the day you laugh not mirth clears the mirrors of the mind a person who does not laugh is not healthy
+like a medicine to forget your sorrow begin to cultivate joy keep away from sad people or you will be sad stop rehearsing your grief you only enlarge it if you suffer grief
+find someone in trouble and cheer them encourage them help them and you will deliver yourself you will comfort yourself when you comfort another you cannot lose a loved one tho absent from the earth plane
+they are nearer than ever life and love never change death is an unreality thought made
+that is glorified in life and spirit when you believe you were created in his image
+it is easier to believe you shall arise in his likeness some day we shall all believe we have not disfigured morally broken natures but divine natures supreme in limitless power
+traditions teachings education environment of generations of thinking have disfigured morally broken sin burdened humanity all are thought created conditions thought made limitations
+thought made original sins system cultivated human wrongs institutionalized teachings of error but you should know the universe is one undivided soul you are a yoke fellow with god
+you are a lobe of the infinite brain
+of absolute personality nothing that has life is god damned where love is only a dream the marriage is an alarm clock if you cannot endure your mother in law
+you can begin your plans at once to live alone when your children are married a quarrel between two people to settle things is a good deal like a dog fight in a flower bed the only things that get settled are the flowers
+nearly always when you hear the lusty wail of a boy with energy plus filling the air you can look in at the window and find a woman's hand at the seat of his trouble you can over work your notion of neatness
+is to explore various views which are held by leading authorities at present it can be said however that a majority of authorities agree that hypnosis ensues as a result of natural laws
+which have been incorporated in the human organism since the beginning of man as he is today the older theories show almost as much disparity as today but for the purposes of history
+both names loom large in the history of hypnosis mesmer an eighteenth century physician believed that hypnosis occurred as a result of vital fluids drawn from a magnet or lodestone
+and which drew their unique qualities from the sun moon and stars charcot
+was convinced that hypnosis was a form of hysteria and that only hysterics could be hypnotized the former mesmer thought further that metal became imbued by the solar qualities and his system is also known as metalogy
+notably doctor william s kroger a psychiatrically oriented obstetrician and gynecologist who limits his practice to hypnotherapy believe hypnosis is a conviction phenomenon which produces results that parallel the phenomena
+produced at lourdes and other religious healing shrines his formula is that faith hope belief and expectation all catalyzed by the imagination lead inevitably to hypnosis
+is convinced that you cannot will yourself to be hypnotized and that whenever the will and the imagination come into conflict
+this fits in perfectly of course with the author's already discussed visual imagery technique which requires a high degree of imagination doctor kroger like a few others has proved to his own satisfaction that all hypnotic phenomena
+can be produced at a non hypnotic level a large number of hypnotists including the author has come to believe that hypnosis is a semantic problem in which words are the building blocks to success not just any words
+but words which ring a bell or tap the experiential background of the subject
+the word is used because hypnosis superficially resembles sleep inasmuch as the eyes usually are closed the body in a posture of complete relaxation actually the mind is hyperacute
+on the other hand we know that a strong interpersonal relationship is necessary for hypnosis in the opening chapter of the book i explained that hypnosis was a state of heightened suggestion in which the subject adopted an uncritical attitude
+allowing him to accept suggestions and to take appropriate action this is excellent as far as it goes but it does not explain how suggestion works this is the crux of the hypnotic dilemma and the answer is far from solved
+hypnotists are much like those who use electricity every day of their lives but have no idea of the nature of electricity it is enough for them to know it has been harnessed for their use
+if there is one thing virtually certain about hypnosis it is that some parts of the brain are inhibited and other parts expanded by the process
+but why is this high order of concentration so easy under hypnosis when asians notably the chinese have been trying for centuries to concentrate on one subject for as long as four or five seconds
+we do not know the mechanics of this metamorphosis of an ordinary brain into an organ of concentrated power according to janet this is accomplished through the formation of a group of unconscious memories and activities
+which takes over the usual stream of consciousness type of thinking it is implied that the process may be atavistic one of the newer theories one held by doctor lewis r wolberg a psychoanalyst
+and a limitation of sensory channels such as takes place in sleep he also believes that the psychological process operates through transference others agree that it is a transference process
+but that it is more of an extension of the subject's own psychic processes which is enlarged to include the voice of the hypnotist or his own thoughts or voice incidentally an excellent book along these theoretical lines is hypnotism
+actually hypnotists today
+milton v kline professor of psychology at long island university postulates that hypnosis is primarily retrogressive he has written that the organism functions differently on various levels of behavior regression
+this is a legitimate use of regression although it is not used so much these days to uncover past traumatic incidents actually regression by duplicating the exact earlier age
+makes us once more as little children a condition to be desired for certain forms of therapy an atavistic theory held to some extent by doctor jerome m schneck clinical associate professor of psychiatry
+state university of new york college of medicine is that hypnosis should be equated with states of immobilization on the basis of his observation that some subjects equate hypnosis with death
+of animals to avoid danger others primarily europeans have pointed out the analogy between the hypnotic state of animals and man another widely held theory is that hypnosis is a state of dissociation
+meaning that it constitutes a group of unconscious memories and activities which may be dredged up to replace the stream of consciousness automaticism of course is inherently part of this view and is presumed to negate volition activity of the cerebrum
+which controls the conscious and voluntary system is rendered non operational my own thoughts on the matter are that hypnosis results from first of all a good transference secondly from a conditioned reflex
+thirdly from the person acting as a hypnotized person role playing and fourthly from a suspension of the critical faculties along the last named line i believe that hypnotic suggestions
+which supersede all else in the hypnotic situation there are many more theories i believe are partially correct but the ones named will do for the purposes of this volume incidentally
+are equally applicable to self hypnosis except where as in transference it is obvious a therapist is needed in conclusion the author would like to take issue with those
+where hypnotherapy is impossible like the man who cannot sleep because of an active mind sleep and myriad thoughts and suggestions are incompatible and i believe once a hypnotic state has been attained that the subject is kept awake
+unless definite sleep suggestions are given by the therapist's series of suggestions we have discussed the effect of the experiential background at length and surely nothing connotates sleep more than closing one's eyes
+and so in my view
+chapter one missus rachel lynde is surprised missus rachel lynde lived just where the avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow fringed with alders and ladies eardrops and traversed by a brook
+that had its source away back in the woods of the old cuthbert place it was reputed to be an intricate headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods with dark secrets of pool and cascade but by the time it reached lynde's hollow it was a quiet well conducted little stream
+for not even a brook could run past missus rachel lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum it probably was conscious that missus rachel was sitting at her window keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed from brooks and children up
+and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof there are plenty of people in avonlea and out of it who can attend closely to their neighbor's business by dint of neglecting their own
+but missus rachel lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain she was a notable housewife her work was always done and well done she ran the sewing circle
+helped run the sunday school and was the strongest prop of the church aid society and foreign missions auxiliary yet with all this missus rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window knitting cotton warp quilts she had knitted sixteen of them
+as avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond
+anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of missus rachel's all seeing eye she was sitting there one afternoon in early june the sun was coming in at the window warm and bright
+the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky white bloom hummed over by a myriad of bees thomas lynde a meek little man whom avonlea people called rachel lynde's husband was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn
+missus rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell peter morrison the evening before in william j blair's store over at carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon
+peter had asked him of course for matthew cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life and yet here was matthew cuthbert at half past three on the afternoon of a busy day placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill
+and his best suit of clothes which was plain proof that he was going out of avonlea and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare which betokened that he was going a considerable distance now where was matthew cuthbert going and why was he going there
+had it been any other man in avonlea missus rachel deftly putting this and that together might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions but matthew so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him
+he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where he might have to talk matthew dressed up with a white collar and driving in a buggy was something that didn't happen often missus rachel ponder as she might could make nothing of it
+and her afternoon's enjoyment was spoiled i'll just step over to green gables after tea and find out from marilla where he's gone and why the worthy woman finally concluded he doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he never visits
+if he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more
+yet something must have happened since last night to start him off i'm clean puzzled that's what and i won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until i know what has taken matthew cuthbert out of avonlea today accordingly after tea missus rachel set out she had not far to go
+the big rambling orchard embowered house where the cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from lynde's hollow to be sure the long lane made it a good deal further matthew cuthbert's father as shy and silent as his son after him
+had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead green gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day
+barely visible from the main road along which all the other avonlea houses were so sociably situated missus rachel lynde did not call living in such a place living at all it's just staying that's what she said as she stepped along the deep rutted grassy lane
+bordered with wild rose bushes it's no wonder matthew and marilla are both a little odd living away back here by themselves trees aren't much company though dear knows if they were there'd be enough of them i'd ruther look at people to be sure
+they seem contented enough but then i suppose they're used to it a body can get used to anything even to being hanged as the irishman said with this missus rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of green gables very green and neat and precise was that yard
+set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim lombardies not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen for missus rachel would have seen it if there had been privately she was of the opinion that marilla cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house
+one could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt missus rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when bidden to do so the kitchen at green gables was a cheerful apartment
+or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor its windows looked east and west through the west one looking out on the back yard came a flood of mellow june sunlight but the east one
+whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry trees in the left orchard and nodding slender birches down in the hollow by the brook was greened over by a tangle of vines here sat marilla cuthbert when she sat at all always slightly distrustful of sunshine
+and here she sat now knitting and the table behind her was laid for supper missus rachel before she had fairly closed the door
+there were three plates laid so that marilla must be expecting some one home with matthew to tea but the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab apple preserves and one kind of cake so that the expected company could not be any particular company
+yet what of matthew's white collar and the sorrel mare missus rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about quiet unmysterious green gables good evening rachel marilla said briskly this is a real fine evening isn't it won't you sit down
+how are all your folks something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship existed and always had existed between marilla cuthbert and missus rachel in spite of or perhaps because of their dissimilarity marilla was a tall
+thin woman with angles and without curves her dark hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it she looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience which she was
+but there was a saving something about her mouth which if it had been ever so slightly developed might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor we're all pretty well said missus rachel i was kind of afraid you weren't though when i saw matthew starting off today i thought maybe he was going to the doctor's
+marilla's lips twitched understandingly she had expected missus rachel up she had known that the sight of matthew jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor's curiosity oh no i'm quite well although i had a bad headache yesterday she said
+matthew went to bright river we're getting a little boy from an orphan asylum in nova scotia and he's coming on the train tonight if marilla had said that matthew had gone to bright river to meet a kangaroo from australia missus rachel could not have been more astonished
+she was actually stricken dumb for five seconds it was unsupposable that marilla was making fun of her but missus rachel was almost forced to suppose it are you in earnest marilla she demanded when voice returned to her yes of course
+said marilla as if getting boys from orphan asylums in nova scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well regulated avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation missus rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt she thought in exclamation points
+marilla and matthew cuthbert of all people adopting a boy from an orphan asylum well the world was certainly turning upside down she would be surprised at nothing after this nothing
+what on earth put such a notion into your head she demanded disapprovingly this had been done without her advice being asked and must perforce be disapproved well we've been thinking about it for some time all winter in fact returned marilla
+missus alexander spencer was up here one day before christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the asylum over in hopeton in the spring
+so matthew and i have talked it over off and on ever since we thought we'd get a boy matthew is getting up in years you know he's sixty and he isn't so spry as he once was his heart troubles him a good deal and you know how desperate hard it's got to be to get hired help
+there's never anybody to be had but those stupid half grown little french boys and as soon as you do get one broke into your ways and taught something he's up and off to the lobster canneries or the states at first matthew suggested getting a home boy but i said no flat to that
+they may be all right i'm not saying they're not but no london street arabs for me i said give me a native born at least there'll be a risk no matter who we get but i'll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born canadian
+so in the end we decided to ask missus spencer to pick us out one when she went over to get her little girl we heard last week she was going so we sent her word by richard spencer's folks at carmody to bring us a smart likely boy of about ten or eleven we decided that would be the best age
+old enough to be of some use in doing chores right off and young enough to be trained up proper we mean to give him a good home and schooling we had a telegram from missus alexander spencer today the mail man brought it from the station saying they were coming on the five thirty train tonight
+so matthew went to bright river to meet him missus spencer will drop him off there of course she goes on to white sands station herself missus rachel prided herself on always speaking her mind she proceeded to speak it now having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece of news
+well marilla i'll just tell you plain that i think you're doing a mighty foolish thing a risky thing that's what you don't know what you're getting you're bringing a strange child into your house and home and you don't know a single thing about him nor what his disposition is like nor what sort of parents he had
+nor how he's likely to turn out why it was only last week i read in the paper how a man and his wife up west of the island took a boy out of an orphan asylum and he set fire to the house at night set it on purpose marilla and nearly burnt them to a crisp in their beds
+and i know another case where an adopted boy used to suck the eggs they couldn't break him of it if you had asked my advice in the matter which you didn't do marilla i'd have said for mercy's sake not to think of such a thing that's what
+this job's comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm marilla she knitted steadily on i don't deny there's something in what you say rachel i've had some qualms myself but matthew was terrible set on it i could see that so i gave in
+it's so seldom matthew sets his mind on anything that when he does i always feel it's my duty to give in and as for the risk there's risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world there's risks in people's having children of their own if it comes to that they don't always turn out well
+and then nova scotia is right close to the island it isn't as if we were getting him from england or the states he can't be much different from ourselves well i hope it will turn out all right said missus rachel in a tone that plainly indicated her painful doubts
+only don't say i didn't warn you if he burns green gables down or puts strychnine in the well i heard of a case over in new brunswick where an orphan asylum child did that and the whole family died in fearful agonies only it was a girl in that instance well we're not getting a girl said marilla
+as if poisoning wells were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case of a boy i'd never dream of taking a girl to bring up i wonder at missus alexander spencer for doing it but there she wouldn't shrink from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into her head
+missus rachel would have liked to stay until matthew came home with his imported orphan but reflecting that it would be a good two hours at least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to robert bell's and tell the news it would certainly make a sensation second to none
+and missus rachel dearly loved to make a sensation so she took herself away somewhat to marilla's relief for the latter felt her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of missus rachel's pessimism well of all things that ever were or will be ejaculated missus rachel when she was safely out in the lane
+it does really seem as if i must be dreaming well i'm sorry for that poor young one and no mistake matthew and marilla don't know anything about children and they'll expect him to be wiser and steadier that his own grandfather
+it seems uncanny to think of a child at green gables somehow there's never been one there for matthew and marilla were grown up when the new house was built if they ever were children which is hard to believe when one looks at them i wouldn't be in that orphan's shoes for anything
+my but i pity him that's what so said missus rachel to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her heart
+chapter two matthew cuthbert is surprised matthew cuthbert and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to bright river it was a pretty road running along between snug farmsteads with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive through
+or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom the air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple while the little birds sang as if it were the one day of summer in all the year
+matthew enjoyed the drive after his own fashion except during the moments when he met women and had to nod to them for in prince edward island you are supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road whether you know them or not matthew dreaded all women except marilla and missus rachel
+he had an uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly laughing at him he may have been quite right in thinking so for he was an odd looking personage with an ungainly figure and long iron gray hair that touched his stooping shoulders
+and a full soft brown beard which he had worn ever since he was twenty in fact he had looked at twenty very much as he looked at sixty lacking a little of the grayness when he reached bright river there was no sign of any train
+he thought he was too early so he tied his horse in the yard of the small bright river hotel and went over to the station house the long platform was almost deserted the only living creature in sight being a girl who was sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end
+matthew barely noting that it was a girl sidled past her as quickly as possible without looking at her had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression she was sitting there waiting for something or somebody
+and since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then she sat and waited with all her might and main matthew encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office preparatory to going home for supper and asked him if the five thirty train would soon be along
+the five thirty train has been in and gone half an hour ago answered that brisk official but there was a passenger dropped off for you a little girl she's sitting out there on the shingles i asked her to go into the ladies waiting room but she informed me gravely that she preferred to stay outside
+she's a case i should say i'm not expecting a girl said matthew blankly it's a boy i've come for he should be here missus alexander spencer was to bring him over from nova scotia for me the stationmaster whistled
+guess there's some mistake he said missus spencer came off the train with that girl and gave her into my charge said you and your sister were adopting her from an orphan asylum and that you would be along for her presently that's all i know about it and i haven't got any more orphans concealed hereabouts
+i don't understand said matthew helplessly wishing that marilla was at hand to cope with the situation well you'd better question the girl said the station master carelessly i dare say she'll be able to explain she's got a tongue of her own that's certain
+maybe they were out of boys of the brand you wanted he walked jauntily away being hungry and the unfortunate matthew was left to do that which was harder for him than bearding a lion in its den walk up to a girl a strange girl an orphan girl
+and demand of her why she wasn't a boy matthew groaned in spirit as he turned about and shuffled gently down the platform towards her she had been watching him ever since he had passed her and she had her eyes on him now matthew was not looking at her
+a child of about eleven garbed in a very short very tight very ugly dress of yellowish gray wincey she wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat extending down her back were two braids of very thick decidedly red hair
+her face was small white and thin also much freckled her mouth was large and so were her eyes which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others so far the ordinary observer an extraordinary observer
+might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity that the mouth was sweet lipped and expressive that the forehead was broad and full in short our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded
+was so ludicrously afraid matthew however was spared the ordeal of speaking first for as soon as she concluded that he was coming to her she stood up grasping with one thin brown hand the handle of a shabby old fashioned carpet bag the other she held out to him
+i suppose you are mister matthew cuthbert of green gables she said in a peculiarly clear sweet voice i'm very glad to see you i was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming for me
+i had made up my mind that if you didn't come for me to night
+i wouldn't be a bit afraid and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry tree all white with bloom in the moonshine don't you think you could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls couldn't you
+matthew had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his then and there he decided what to do he could not tell this child with the glowing eyes that there had been a mistake he would take her home and let marilla do that she couldn't be left at bright river anyhow
+no matter what mistake had been made so all questions and explanations might as well be deferred until he was safely back at green gables i'm sorry i was late he said shyly come along the horse is over in the yard give me your bag oh i can carry it the child responded cheerfully
+it isn't heavy i've got all my worldly goods in it but it isn't heavy and if it isn't carried in just a certain way the handle pulls out so i'd better keep it because i know the exact knack of it it's an extremely old carpet bag oh i'm very glad you've come even if it would have been nice to sleep in a wild cherry tree
+we've got to drive a long piece haven't we missus spencer said it was eight miles i'm glad because i love driving oh it seems so wonderful that i'm going to live with you and belong to you i've never belonged to anybody not really but the asylum was the worst i've only been in it four months but that was enough
+it's worse than anything you could imagine missus spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like that
+they were good you know the asylum people but there is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum only just in the other orphans it was pretty interesting to imagine things about them
+who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess i used to lie awake at nights and imagine things like that because i didn't have time in the day i guess that's why i'm so thin i am dreadful thin ain't i there isn't a pick on my bones
+i do love to imagine i'm nice and plump with dimples in my elbows with this matthew's companion stopped talking partly because she was out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy not another word did she say until they had left the village and were driving down a steep little hill
+the road part of which had been cut so deeply into the soft soil that the banks fringed with blooming wild cherry trees and slim white birches were several feet above their heads the child put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that brushed against the side of the buggy
+isn't that beautiful what did that tree leaning out from the bank all white and lacy make you think of she asked well now i dunno said matthew why a bride of course a bride all in white with a lovely misty veil
+i've never seen one but i can imagine what she would look like i don't ever expect to be a bride myself i'm so homely nobody will ever want to marry me unless it might be a foreign missionary i suppose a foreign missionary mightn't be very particular
+but i do hope that some day i shall have a white dress that is my highest ideal of earthly bliss i just love pretty clothes and i've never had a pretty dress in my life that i can remember but of course it's all the more to look forward to isn't it and then
+i can imagine that i'm dressed gorgeously this morning when i left the asylum i felt so ashamed because i had to wear this horrid old wincey dress all the orphans had to wear them you know a merchant in hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the asylum some people said it was because he couldn't sell it
+but i'd rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart wouldn't you when we got on the train i felt as if everybody must be looking at me and pitying me but i just went to work and imagined that i had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worth while
+and a big hat all flowers and nodding plumes and a gold watch and kid gloves and boots i felt cheered up right away and i enjoyed my trip to the island with all my might i wasn't a bit sick coming over in the boat neither was missus spencer although she generally is
+she said she hadn't time to get sick watching to see that i didn't fall overboard she said she never saw the beat of me for prowling about but if it kept her from being seasick it's a mercy i did prowl isn't it and i wanted to see everything that was to be seen on that boat because i didn't know whether i'd ever have another opportunity
+oh there are a lot more cherry trees all in bloom this island is the bloomiest place i just love it already and i'm so glad i'm going to live here i've always heard that prince edward island was the prettiest place in the world
+and i used to imagine i was living here but i never really expected i would it's delightful when your imaginations come true isn't it but those red roads are so funny when we got into the train at charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past i asked missus spencer what made them red
+and she said she didn't know and for pity's sake not to ask her any more questions she said i must have asked her a thousand already i suppose i had too but how you going to find out about things if you don't ask questions and what does make the roads red well now i dunno said matthew
+there'd be no scope for imagination then would there but am i talking too much people are always telling me i do would you rather i didn't talk if you say so i'll stop i can stop when i make up my mind to it although it's difficult matthew
+was enjoying himself like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it but he had never expected to enjoy the society of a little girl women were bad enough in all conscience but little girls were worse
+he detested the way they had of sidling past him timidly with sidewise glances as if they expected him to gobble them up at a mouthful if they ventured to say a word that was the avonlea type of well bred little girl but this freckled witch was very different
+and although he found it rather difficult for his slower intelligence to keep up with her brisk mental processes
+chapter four a prisoner we had gone perhaps ten miles when the ground began to rise very rapidly we were as i was later to learn nearing the edge of one of mars long dead seas in the bottom of which
+my encounter with the martians had taken place in a short time we gained the foot of the mountains and after traversing a narrow gorge came to an open valley at the far extremity of which was a low table land upon which i beheld
+an enormous city toward this we galloped entering it by what appeared to be a ruined roadway leading out from the city but only to the edge of the table land where it ended abruptly in a flight of broad steps
+upon closer observation i saw as we passed them that the buildings were deserted and while not greatly decayed had the appearance of not having been tenanted for years possibly for ages
+toward the center of the city was a large plaza and upon this and in the buildings immediately surrounding it were camped some nine or ten hundred creatures of the same breed as my captors
+for such i now considered them despite the suave manner in which i had been trapped with the exception of their ornaments all were naked the women varied in appearance but little from the men except that their tusks were much larger in proportion to their height
+in some instances curving nearly to their high set ears their bodies were smaller and lighter in color and their fingers and toes bore the rudiments of nails which were entirely lacking among the males
+the adult females ranged in height from ten to twelve feet the children were light in color even lighter than the women and all looked precisely alike to me except that some were taller
+which leads no living martian knows whither and from whose bosom no martian has ever returned or would be allowed to live did he return after once embarking upon its cold dark waters
+only about one martian in a thousand dies of sickness or disease and possibly about twenty take the voluntary pilgrimage the other nine hundred and seventy nine die violent deaths in duels in hunting
+in aviation and in war but perhaps by far the greatest death loss comes during the age of childhood when vast numbers of the little martians fall victims to the great white apes of mars
+the average life expectancy of a martian after the age of maturity is about three hundred years but would be nearer the one thousand mark were it not for the various means leading to violent death
+owing to the waning resources of the planet it evidently became necessary to counteract the increasing longevity which their remarkable skill in therapeutics and surgery produced
+and so human life has come to be considered but lightly on mars as is evidenced by their dangerous sports and the almost continual warfare between the various communities
+without a weapon of destruction as we neared the plaza and my presence was discovered we were immediately surrounded by hundreds of the creatures who seemed anxious to pluck me from my seat behind my guard a word from the leader of the party
+stilled their clamor and we proceeded at a trot across the plaza to the entrance of as magnificent an edifice as mortal eye has rested upon the building was low but covered an enormous area
+it was constructed of gleaming white marble inlaid with gold and brilliant stones which sparkled and scintillated in the sunlight the main entrance was some hundred feet in width and projected from the building proper
+to form a huge canopy above the entrance hall there was no stairway but a gentle incline to the first floor of the building opened into an enormous chamber encircled by galleries on the floor of this chamber
+which was dotted with highly carved wooden desks and chairs were assembled about forty or fifty male martians around the steps of a rostrum on the platform proper
+gay colored feathers and beautifully wrought leather trappings ingeniously set with precious stones from his shoulders depended a short cape of white fur lined with brilliant scarlet silk what struck me as most remarkable
+about this assemblage and the hall in which they were congregated was the fact that the creatures were entirely out of proportion to the desks chairs and other furnishings these being of a size adapted to human beings such as i
+whereas the great bulks of the martians
+nor was there room beneath the desks for their long legs evidently then there were other denizens on mars than the wild and grotesque creatures into whose hands i had fallen but the evidences of extreme antiquity
+and at a sign from the leader i had been lowered to the ground again locking his arm in mine we had proceeded into the audience chamber there were few formalities observed in approaching the martian chieftain
+my captor merely strode up to the rostrum the others making way for him as he advanced the chieftain rose to his feet and uttered the name of my escort who in turn halted and repeated the name of the ruler followed by his title
+at the time this ceremony and the words they uttered meant nothing to me but later i came to know that this was the customary greeting between green martians had the men been strangers and therefore unable to exchange names
+had their missions been peaceful otherwise they would have exchanged shots or have fought out their introduction with some other of their various weapons my captor whose name was tars tarkas
+and when he had concluded the chieftain addressed me at some length i replied in our good old english tongue merely to convince him that neither of us could understand the other
+but i noticed that when i smiled slightly on concluding he did likewise this fact and the similar occurrence during my first talk with tars tarkas convinced me that we had at least something in common the ability to smile
+therefore to laugh denoting a sense of humor but i was to learn that the martian smile is merely perfunctory and that the martian laugh is a thing to cause strong men to blanch in horror the ideas
+of incitants to merriment the death agonies of a fellow being are to these strange creatures provocative of the wildest hilarity while their chief form of commonest amusement
+is to inflict death on their prisoners of war in various ingenious and horrible ways the assembled warriors and chieftains examined me closely feeling my muscles and the texture of my skin
+the principal chieftain then evidently signified a desire to see me perform and motioning me to follow he started with tars tarkas for the open plaza now i had made no attempt to walk since my first signal failure
+and so now i went skipping and flitting about among the desks and chairs like some monstrous grasshopper after bruising myself severely
+and i did the only thing a gentleman might do under the circumstances of brutality boorishness and lack of consideration for a stranger's rights i swung my fist squarely to his jaw and he went down like a felled ox
+as he sunk to the floor i wheeled around with my back toward the nearest desk expecting to be overwhelmed by the vengeance of his fellows but determined to give them as good a battle as the unequal odds would permit before i gave up my life
+my fears were groundless however as the other martians at first struck dumb with wonderment finally broke into wild peals of laughter and applause i did not recognize the applause as such but later
+when i had become acquainted with their customs i learned that i had won what they seldom accord a manifestation of approbation the fellow whom i had struck lay where he had fallen
+but i was not long in being enlightened they first repeated the word sak a number of times and then tars tarkas made several jumps repeating the same word before each leap then turning to me he said sak
+i saw what they were after and gathering myself together i sakked with such marvelous success that i cleared a good hundred and fifty feet nor did i this time lose my equilibrium but landed squarely upon my feet
+without falling i then returned by easy jumps of twenty five or thirty feet to the little group of warriors my exhibition had been witnessed by several hundred lesser martians and they immediately broke into demands for a repetition
+which the chieftain then ordered me to make but i was both hungry and thirsty and determined on the spot that my only method of salvation was to demand the consideration from these creatures
+which they evidently would not voluntarily accord i therefore ignored the repeated commands to sak and each time they were made i motioned to my mouth and rubbed my stomach
+tars tarkas and the chief exchanged a few words and the former calling to a young female among the throng gave her some instructions and motioned me to accompany her
+i grasped her proffered arm and together we crossed the plaza toward a large building on the far side my fair companion was about eight feet tall having just arrived at maturity but not yet to her full height
+she was of a light olive green color with a smooth glossy hide her name as i afterward learned was sola and she belonged to the retinue of tars tarkas she conducted me to a spacious chamber
+in one of the buildings fronting on the plaza and which from the litter of silks and furs upon the floor i took to be the sleeping quarters of several of the natives the room was well lighted by a number of large windows
+and was beautifully decorated with mural paintings and mosaics
+made a peculiar hissing sound as though signaling to someone in an adjoining room in response to her call i obtained my first sight of a new martian wonder it waddled in on its ten short legs and squatted down before the girl
+like an obedient puppy the thing was about the size of a shetland pony
+chapter three my advent on mars i opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape i knew that i was on mars not once did i question either my sanity or my wakefulness
+i was not asleep no need for pinching here my inner consciousness told me as plainly that i was upon mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon earth you do not question the fact
+neither did i i found myself lying prone upon a bed of yellowish mosslike vegetation which stretched around me in all directions for interminable miles i seemed to be lying in a deep
+the irregularities of low hills it was midday the sun was shining full upon me and the heat of it was rather intense upon my naked body yet no greater
+than would have been true under similar conditions on an arizona desert here and there were slight outcroppings of quartz bearing rock which glistened in the sunlight and a little to my left perhaps a hundred yards appeared a low walled enclosure
+about four feet in height no water and no other vegetation than the moss was in evidence and as i was somewhat thirsty i determined to do a little exploring springing to my feet i received my first martian surprise
+for the effort which on earth would have brought me standing upright carried me into the martian air to the height of about three yards i alighted softly upon the ground however without appreciable shock or jar
+now commenced a series of evolutions which even then seemed ludicrous in the extreme i found that i must learn to walk all over again
+as the muscular exertion which carried me easily and safely upon earth played strange antics with me upon mars instead of progressing in a sane and dignified manner
+my attempts to walk resulted in a variety of hops which took me clear of the ground a couple of feet at each step and landed me sprawling upon my face or back
+my muscles perfectly attuned and accustomed to the force of gravity on earth played the mischief with me in attempting for the first time to cope with the lesser gravitation and lower air pressure on mars
+i was determined however to explore the low structure which was the only evidence of habitation in sight
+it had ever been given me to see the roof of the enclosure was of solid glass
+and beneath this were several hundred large eggs perfectly round and snowy white the eggs were nearly uniform in size being about two and one half feet in diameter five or six had already hatched
+and the grotesque caricatures which sat blinking in the sunlight were enough to cause me to doubt my sanity they seemed mostly head with little scrawny bodies long necks and six legs or
+as i afterward learned two legs and two arms with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center
+without the necessity of turning the head the ears which were slightly above the eyes and closer together were small cup shaped antennae protruding not more than an inch on these young specimens
+their noses were but longitudinal slits in the center of their faces midway between their mouths and ears there was no hair on their bodies
+these latter add a most ferocious appearance to an otherwise fearsome and terrible countenance as the lower tusks curve upward to sharp points which end about where the eyes of earthly human beings are located
+the whiteness of the teeth is not that of ivory but of the snowiest and most gleaming of china against the dark background of their olive skins their tusks stand out in a most striking manner
+making these weapons present a singularly formidable appearance most of these details i noted later for i was given but little time to speculate on the wonders of my new discovery
+on such a little thing my life hung that i often marvel that i escaped so easily had not the rifle of the leader of the party swung from its fastenings beside his saddle in such a way
+as to strike against the butt of his great metal shod spear i should have snuffed out without ever knowing that death was near me but the little sound caused me to turn
+and there upon me not ten feet from my breast was the point of that huge spear a spear forty feet long tipped with gleaming metal and held low at the side of a mounted replica
+of the little devils i had been watching but how puny and harmless they now looked beside this huge and terrific incarnation of hate of vengeance and of death
+was fully fifteen feet in height
+he sat his mount as we sit a horse grasping the animal's barrel with his lower limbs while the hands of his two right arms held his immense spear low at the side of his mount
+his two left arms were outstretched laterally to help preserve his balance the thing he rode having neither bridle or reins of any description for guidance and his mount
+how can earthly words describe it it towered ten feet at the shoulder had four legs on either side a broad flat tail larger at the tip than at the root and which it held
+straight out behind while running a gaping mouth which split its head from its snout to its long massive neck like its master it was entirely devoid of hair
+its belly was white and its legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a vivid yellow at the feet the feet themselves were heavily padded and nailless
+which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness of their approach and in common with a multiplicity of legs is a characteristic feature of the fauna of mars the highest type of man
+and one other animal the only mammal existing on mars alone have well formed nails and there are absolutely no hoofed animals in existence there behind this first charging demon
+trailed nineteen others similar in all respects but as i learned later bearing individual characteristics peculiar to themselves precisely
+as no two of us are identical although we are all cast in a similar mold this picture or rather materialized nightmare which i have described at length
+as i turned to meet it unarmed and naked as i was the first law of nature manifested itself in the only possible solution of my immediate problem and that was to get out of the vicinity
+of the point of the charging spear consequently i gave a very earthly and at the same time superhuman leap to reach the top of the martian incubator for such i had determined it must be
+my effort was crowned with a success which appalled me no less than it seemed to surprise the martian warriors for it carried me fully thirty feet into the air and landed me a hundred feet
+from my pursuers and on the opposite side of the enclosure i alighted upon the soft moss easily and without mishap and turning saw my enemies lined up along the further wall
+some were surveying me with expressions which i afterward discovered marked extreme astonishment and the others were evidently satisfying themselves that i had not molested their young
+they were conversing together in low tones and gesticulating and pointing toward me their discovery that i had not harmed the little martians and that i was unarmed must have caused them
+to look upon me with less ferocity but as i was to learn later the thing which weighed most in my favor was my exhibition of hurdling while the martians are immense their bones are very large
+and i doubt that were one of them suddenly to be transported to earth he could lift his own weight from the ground in fact i am convinced that he could not do so my feat then was as marvelous upon mars
+as it would have been upon earth and from desiring to annihilate me they suddenly looked upon me as a wonderful discovery to be captured and exhibited among their fellows the respite
+with which we are familiar the weight of these rifles is comparatively little and with the small caliber explosive radium projectiles which they use and the great length of the barrel
+they are deadly in the extreme
+which would be unthinkable on earth the theoretic effective radius of this rifle is three hundred miles but the best they can do in actual service
+when equipped with their wireless finders and sighters is but a trifle over two hundred miles this is quite far enough to imbue me with great respect for the martian firearm
+and some telepathic force must have warned me against an attempt to escape in broad daylight from under the muzzles of twenty of these death dealing machines
+when they had covered perhaps two hundred yards they halted and turning their mounts toward us sat watching the warrior by the enclosure he was the one whose spear had so nearly transfixed me
+and came around the end of the incubator toward me entirely unarmed and as naked as i except for the ornaments strapped upon his head limbs and breast
+when he was within about fifty feet of me he unclasped an enormous metal armlet and holding it toward me in the open palm of his hand addressed me in a clear resonant voice
+he then stopped as though waiting for my reply pricking up his antennae like ears and cocking his strange looking eyes still further toward me as the silence became painful
+i concluded to hazard a little conversation on my own part as i had guessed that he was making overtures of peace the throwing down of his weapons and the withdrawing of his troop before his advance toward me
+so why not then on mars placing my hand over my heart i bowed low to the martian and explained to him that while i did not understand his language
+his actions spoke for the peace and friendship that at the present moment were most dear to my heart of course i might have been a babbling brook for all the intelligence my speech carried to him
+but he understood the action with which i immediately followed my words stretching my hand toward him i advanced and took the armlet from his open palm clasping it about my arm above the elbow
+smiled at him and stood waiting his wide mouth spread into an answering smile and locking one of his intermediary arms in mine we turned and walked back toward his mount
+at the same time he motioned his followers to advance they started toward us on a wild run
+evidently he feared that were i to be really frightened again i might jump entirely out of the landscape he exchanged a few words with his men motioned to me that i would ride behind one of them and then mounted his own animal
+the fellow designated reached down two or three hands and lifted me up behind him on the glossy back of his mount
+pope's iliad a single moment served to convince the youth that he was mistaken a hand was laid with a powerful pressure on his arm and the low voice of uncas muttered in his ear the hurons are dogs
+the sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble the gray head and the sagamore are safe
+go uncas and the open hand are now strangers it is enough
+but a gentle push from his friend urged him toward the door and admonished him of the danger that might attend the discovery of their intercourse slowly and reluctantly yielding to the necessity he quitted the place and mingled with the throng that hovered nigh
+the dying fires in the clearing cast a dim and uncertain light on the dusky figures that were silently stalking to and fro and occasionally a brighter gleam than common glanced into the lodge and exhibited the figure of uncas
+after this termination of the scene duncan wandered among the lodges unquestioned and unnoticed endeavoring to find some trace of her in whose behalf he incurred the risk he ran
+he retraced his steps to the council lodge resolved to seek and question david in order to put an end to his doubts on reaching the building which had proved alike the seat of judgment and the place of execution
+though the return of duncan was likely to remind them of his character and the suspicious circumstances of his visit it produced no visible sensation so far the terrible scene that had just occurred
+proved favorable to his views and he required no other prompter than his own feelings to convince him of the expediency of profiting by so unexpected an advantage without seeming to hesitate
+he walked into the lodge and took his seat with a gravity that accorded admirably with the deportment of his hosts a hasty but searching glance sufficed to tell him that though uncas still remained where he had left him
+david had not reappeared no other restraint was imposed on the former than the watchful looks of a young huron who had placed himself at hand though an armed warrior leaned against the post that formed one side of the narrow doorway
+in every other respect the captive seemed at liberty still he was excluded from all participation in the discourse and possessed much more of the air of some finely molded statue than a man having life and volition
+he would greatly have preferred silence and meditation to speech when a discovery of his real condition might prove so instantly fatal unfortunately for this prudent resolution his entertainers appeared otherwise disposed
+he had not long occupied the seat wisely taken a little in the shade when another of the elder warriors who spoke the french language addressed him my canada father does not forget his children said the chief
+i thank him an evil spirit lives in the wife of one of my young men can the cunning stranger frighten him away heyward possessed some knowledge of the mummery practised among the indians
+in the cases of such supposed visitations he saw at a glance that the circumstance might possibly be improved to further his own ends it would therefore have been difficult just then to have uttered a proposal
+that would have given him more satisfaction aware of the necessity of preserving the dignity of his imaginary character however he repressed his feelings and answered with suitable mystery spirits differ
+the huron was content with the assurance and resuming his pipe he awaited the proper moment to move the impatient heyward inwardly execrating the cold customs of the savages
+equal to that maintained by the chief who was in truth a near relative of the afflicted woman the minutes lingered and the delay had seemed an hour to the adventurer in empiricism when the huron laid aside his pipe
+and drew his robe across his breast as if about to lead the way to the lodge of the invalid just then a warrior of powerful frame darkened the door and stalking silently among the attentive group
+he seated himself on one end of the low pile of brush which sustained duncan the latter cast an impatient look at his neighbor and felt his flesh creep with uncontrollable horror when he found himself in actual contact with magua
+several pipes that had been extinguished were lighted again
+drew his tomahawk from his girdle and filling the bowl on its head began to inhale the vapors of the weed through the hollow handle
+ten minutes which appeared so many ages to duncan might have passed in this manner and the warriors were fairly enveloped in a cloud of white smoke before any of them spoke
+has my friend found the moose the young men stagger under their burdens returned magua let reed that bends go on the hunting path he will meet them a deep and awful silence succeeded the utterance of the forbidden name
+as though all had inhaled an impurity at the same instant the smoke wreathed above their heads in little eddies
+leaving the place beneath clear of its fumes
+the looks of most of the warriors were riveted on the earth
+suffered their wild and glaring eyeballs to roll in the direction of a white headed savage
+like most around him for more than a minute his look too was on the ground but trusting his eyes at length to steal a glance aside he perceived that he was becoming an object of general attention
+then he arose and lifted his voice in the general silence it was a lie he said i had no son he who was called by that name is forgotten
+the wicked chippewas cheated my squaw
+he is happy who knows that the evil of his race dies with himself i have done the speaker who was the father of the recreant young indian looked round and about him
+the expression of his eye contradicted his figurative and boastful language
+standing a single minute to enjoy his bitter triumph he turned away as if sickening at the gaze of men and veiling his face in his blanket he walked from the lodge with the noiseless step of an indian seeking
+in the privacy of his own abode the sympathy of one like himself aged forlorn and childless the indians who believe in the hereditary transmission of virtues and defects in character
+suffered him to depart in silence then with an elevation of breeding that many in a more cultivated state of society might profitably emulate one of the chiefs drew the attention of the young men
+but who has ever found a huron asleep the darkness of the impending cloud which precedes a burst of thunder was not blacker than the brow of magua as he exclaimed the delawares of the lakes
+not so they who wear the petticoats of squaws on their own river one of them has been passing the tribe did my young men take his scalp
+brief i pray for you for you see tis a busy time with me much ado about nothing the tribe or rather half tribe of delawares
+could assemble about an equal number of warriors with the latter people like their neighbors they had followed montcalm into the territories of the english crown and were making heavy and serious inroads on the hunting grounds of the mohawks
+though they had seen fit with the mysterious reserve so common among the natives to withhold their assistance at the moment when it was most required the french had accounted for this unexpected defection on the part of their ally
+in various ways it was the prevalent opinion however
+that had once made them dependent on the six nations for military protection and now rendered them reluctant to encounter their former masters as for the tribe itself it had been content to announce to montcalm through his emissaries with indian brevity
+that their hatchets were dull and time was necessary to sharpen them the politic captain of the canadas had deemed it wiser to submit to entertain a passive friend than by any acts of ill judged severity to convert him into an open enemy
+on that morning when magua led his silent party from the settlement of the beavers into the forests in the manner described the sun rose upon the delaware encampment as if it had suddenly burst upon a busy people
+the women ran from lodge to lodge
+a few earnestly bent on seeking the comforts necessary to their habits but more pausing to exchange hasty and whispered sentences with their friends the warriors were lounging in groups
+the instruments of the chase were to be seen in abundance among the lodges but none departed here and there a warrior was examining his arms with an attention that is rarely bestowed on the implements
+when no other enemy than the beasts of the forest is expected to be encountered and occasionally the eyes of a whole group were turned simultaneously
+as if it contained the subject of their common thoughts during the existence of this scene a man suddenly appeared at the furthest extremity of a platform of rock which formed the level of the village
+he was without arms and his paint tended rather to soften than increase the natural sternness of his austere countenance when in full view of the delawares he stopped and made a gesture of amity
+by throwing his arm upward toward heaven and then letting it fall impressively on his breast
+fortified by these assurances the dark figure left the brow of the natural rocky terrace
+he made as he advanced many courteous signs of greeting to the men he passed neglecting to notice the women however like one who deemed their favor in the present enterprise of no importance
+his reception was grave silent and wary the warriors in front stepped aside opening the way to their most approved orator by the action
+one who spoke all those languages that were cultivated among the northern aborigines the wise huron is welcome said the delaware
+composed of cracked corn and beans it is much used also by the whites by corn is meant maise
+he is come repeated magua bending his head with the dignity of an eastern prince the chief extended his arm and taking the other by the wrist they once more exchanged friendly salutations
+then the delaware invited his guest to enter his own lodge and share his morning meal the invitation was accepted and the two warriors attended by three or four of the old men walked calmly away
+leaving the rest of the tribe devoured by a desire to understand the reasons of so unusual a visit and yet not betraying the least impatience by sign or word during the short and frugal repast that followed
+and related entirely to the events of the hunt in which magua had so lately been engaged it would have been impossible for the most finished breeding to wear more of the appearance of considering the visit as a thing of course than did his hosts
+notwithstanding every individual present was perfectly aware
+is the face of my great canada father turned again toward his huron children
+when was it ever otherwise returned magua he calls my people most beloved the delaware gravely bowed his acquiescence to what he knew to be false and continued
+the tomahawks of your young men have been very red it is so but they are now bright and dull for the yengeese are dead and the delawares are our neighbors
+the other acknowledged the pacific compliment by a gesture of the hand and remained silent then magua as if recalled to such a recollection by the allusion to the massacre demanded
+does my prisoner give trouble to my brothers she is welcome the path between the hurons and the delawares is short and it is open let her be sent to my squaws if she gives trouble to my brother
+she is welcome returned the chief of the latter nation still more emphatically the baffled magua continued silent several minutes apparently indifferent however to the repulse he had received
+in this his opening effort to regain possession of cora do my young men leave the delawares room on the mountains for their hunts he at length continued
+it is well justice is the master of a red skin why should they brighten their tomahawks and sharpen their knives against each other are not the pale faces thicker than the swallows in the season of flowers
+good exclaimed two or three of his auditors at the same time
+to permit his words to soften the feelings of the delawares before he added have there not been strange moccasins in the woods have not my brothers scented the feet of white men
+let my canada father come returned the other evasively his children are ready to see him when the great chief comes it is to smoke with the indians in their wigwams the hurons say too he is welcome
+but the yengeese have long arms and legs that never tire
+it is well the warrior whose eye is open can see his enemy said magua once more shifting his ground
+and gravely spread his presents before the dazzled eyes of his hosts they consisted principally of trinkets of little value plundered from the slaughtered females of william henry
+in the division of the baubles the cunning huron discovered no less art than in their selection while he bestowed those of greater value on the two most distinguished warriors one of whom was his host he seasoned his offerings to their inferiors
+compliments as left them no ground of complaint in short the whole ceremony contained such a happy blending of the profitable with the flattering that it was not difficult for the donor immediately to read the effect of a generosity
+so aptly mingled with praise in the eyes of those he addressed this well judged and politic stroke on the part of magua was not without instantaneous results
+my brother is a wise chief he is welcome the hurons love their friends the delawares returned magua why should they not they are colored by the same sun and their just men will hunt in the same grounds after death
+the red skins should be friends and look with open eyes on the white men has not my brother scented spies in the woods the delaware whose name in english signified hard heart
+an appellation that the french had translated into le coeur dur forgot that obduracy of purpose
+would the yengeese send their women as spies did not the huron chief say he took women in the battle he told no lie the yengeese have sent out their scouts
+then they fled to the delawares for say they the delawares are our friends their minds are turned from their canada father this insinuation was a home thrust
+would have entitled magua to the reputation of a skillful diplomatist the recent defection of the tribe had as they well knew themselves subjected the delawares to much reproach among their french allies
+and they were now made to feel that their future actions were to be regarded with jealousy and distrust there was no deep insight into causes and effects necessary to foresee
+that such a situation of things was likely to prove highly prejudicial to their future movements their distant villages their hunting grounds
+together with a material part of their physical force were actually within the limits of the french territory accordingly this alarming annunciation was received as magua intended
+with manifest disapprobation if not with alarm
+he will see no change it is true my young men did not go out on the war path they had dreams for not doing so but they love and venerate the great white chief
+will he think so when he hears that his greatest enemy is fed in the camp of his children
+that the pale face who has slain so many of his friends goes in and out among the delawares go my great canada father is not a fool
+la longue carabine the delaware warriors started at the well known name betraying by their amazement that they now learned for the first time one so famous among the indian allies of france was within their power
+what does my brother mean demanded le coeur dur in a tone that by its wonder far exceeded the usual apathy of his race a huron never lies returned magua coldly
+a long and musing pause succeeded the chief consulted apart with his companions and messengers despatched to collect certain others of the most distinguished men of the tribe as warrior after warrior dropped in
+the news spread from mouth to mouth until the whole encampment became powerfully agitated the women suspended their labors to catch such syllables as unguardedly fell from the lips of the consulting warriors
+the boys deserted their sports and walking fearlessly among their fathers looked up in curious admiration as they heard the brief exclamations of wonder they so freely expressed the temerity of their hated foe
+in short every occupation was abandoned for the time and all other pursuits seemed discarded in order that the tribe might freely indulge after their own peculiar manner in an open expression of feeling
+the old men disposed themselves seriously to consider that which it became the honor and safety of their tribe to perform under circumstances of so much delicacy and embarrassment
+magua had not only maintained his seat but the very attitude he had originally taken against the side of the lodge
+and apparently as unconcerned as if he had no interest in the result
+escaped his vigilant eyes
+he anticipated every measure on which they decided and it might almost be said
+and formal assemblage of the nation as such meetings were rare and only called on occasions of the last importance the subtle huron who still sat apart
+now knew that all his projects must be brought to their final issue
+in front of the encampment whither the warriors were already beginning to collect it might have been half an hour before each individual including even the women and children was in his place
+the delay had been created by the grave preparations that were deemed necessary to so solemn and unusual a conference but when the sun was seen climbing above the tops of that mountain
+its number somewhat exceeded a thousand souls
+standing ready to move his auditors to some hasty and perhaps injudicious discussion
+until such a one chose to make some movement no deeds in arms no natural gifts nor any renown as an orator
+on the present occasion the aged warrior whose privilege it was to speak was silent seemingly oppressed with the magnitude of his subject the delay had already continued long beyond the usual deliberative pause
+that always preceded a conference but no sign of impatience or surprise escaped even the youngest boy occasionally an eye was raised from the earth where the looks of most were riveted
+and three men issuing from it slowly approached the place of consultation they were all aged even beyond that period to which the oldest present had reached but one in the center who leaned on his companions for support
+had numbered an amount of years to which the human race is seldom permitted to attain his frame which had once been tall and erect like the cedar was now bending under the pressure of more than a century
+the elastic light step of an indian was gone and in its place he was compelled to toil his tardy way over the ground
+his dark wrinkled countenance was in singular and wild contrast with the long white locks which floated on his shoulders
+since they had last been shorn the dress of this patriarch for such considering his vast age in conjunction with his affinity and influence with his people he might very properly be termed
+was rich and imposing though strictly after the simple fashions of the tribe his robe was of the finest skins which had been deprived of their fur
+of various deeds in arms done in former ages his bosom was loaded with medals some in massive silver and one or two even in gold
+he also wore armlets and cinctures above the ankles of the latter precious metal
+in touching contrast to the color of his snow white locks his tomahawk was nearly hid in silver and the handle of his knife shone like a horn of solid gold so soon as the first hum of emotion and pleasure
+which the sudden appearance of this venerated individual created had a little subsided
+was whispered from mouth to mouth magua had often heard the fame of this wise and just delaware
+with the great spirit and which has since transmitted his name with some slight alteration to the white usurpers of his ancient territory
+the huron chief therefore stepped eagerly out a little from the throng
+whose decision was likely to produce so deep an influence on his own fortunes
+the americans sometimes called their tutelar saint tamenay a corruption of the name of the renowned chief here introduced
+the eyes of the old man were closed as though the organs were wearied with having so long witnessed the selfish workings of the human passions
+with the dignity of a monarch and the air of a father
+who belongs rather to another world than to this was received by his people after a suitable and decent pause
+and approaching the patriarch they placed his hands reverently on their heads seeming to entreat a blessing the younger men were content with touching his robe or even drawing nigh his person
+so just and so valiant none but the most distinguished among the youthful warriors even presumed so far as to perform the latter ceremony the great mass of the multitude deeming it a sufficient happiness
+the chiefs drew back again to their several places and silence reigned in the whole encampment
+arose left the crowd and entered the lodge which has already been noted as the object of so much attention throughout that morning
+escorting the individuals who had caused all these solemn preparations toward the seat of judgment the crowd opened in a lane and when the party had re entered
+thirteenth lecture the dream archaic remnants and infantilism in the dream let us revert to our conclusion that the dream work under the influence of the dream censorship
+transforms the latent dream thoughts into some other form of expression the latent thoughts are no other than the conscious thoughts known to us in our waking hours the new mode of expression is incomprehensible to us because of its many sided features
+so we called the mode of expression of the dream work the archaic or regressive you may conclude that as a result of the deeper study of the dream work we gain valuable information about the rather unknown beginnings of our intellectual development i trust this will be true
+but this work has not up to the present time been undertaken the antiquity into which the dream work carries us back is of a double aspect firstly the individual antiquity childhood and secondly in so far as every individual in his childhood
+that we shall be able to differentiate which part of the latent psychic proceeding has its source in the individual
+in this connection it appears to me for example that the symbolic relations which the individual has never learned
+however this is not the only archaic characteristic of the dream you probably all know from your own experiences the peculiar amnesia that is loss of memory concerning childhood i mean the fact that the first years to the fifth
+that of a gap in the memory is far more frequent i believe we have not laid enough stress on this fact the child is able to speak well at the age of two it soon shows that it can become adjusted to the most complicated psychic situations
+and makes remarks which years later are retold to it but which it has itself entirely forgotten besides the memory in the early years is more facile because it is less burdened than in later years
+nor is there any reason for considering the memory function as a particularly high or difficult psychic performance in fact the contrary is true and you can find a good memory in persons who stand very low intellectually
+i must point out that certain well preserved memories for the most part formatively experienced stand forth in this memory void which surrounds the first years of childhood and do not justify this hypothesis
+our memory deals selectively with its later materials with impressions which come to us in later life it retains the important and discards the unimportant this is not true of the retained childhood memories
+they do not bespeak necessarily important experiences of childhood not even such as from the viewpoint of the child need appear of importance they are often so banal and intrinsically so meaningless that we ask ourselves in wonder why just these details
+have escaped being forgotten i once endeavored to approach the riddle of childhood amnesia and the interrupted memory remnants with the help of analysis and i arrived at the conclusion that in the case of the child too
+by means of careful analysis one is able to develop out of them everything that is forgotten
+and in so far as the cure is to any degree successful we are able again to bring to light the content of the childhood years thus clouded in forgetfulness these impressions have never really been forgotten they have only been inaccessible latent
+have belonged to the unconscious but sometimes they bob up out of the unconscious spontaneously and as a matter of fact this is what happens in dreams it is apparent that the dream life knows how to find the entrance to these latent
+beautiful examples of this occur in literature and i myself can present such an example i once dreamed in a certain connection of a person who must have performed some service for me and whom i clearly saw he was a one eyed man short in stature stout
+his head deeply sunk into his neck i concluded from the content that he was a physician luckily i was able to ask my mother who was still living how the physician in my birth place which i left when i was three years old looked
+and i learned from her that he had one eye was short and stout with his head sunk into his neck and also learned at what forgotten mishap he had been of service to me this control over the forgotten material of childhood years
+is then a further archaic tendency of the dream the same information may be made use of in another of the puzzles that have presented themselves to us you will recall how astonished people were
+when we came to the conclusion that the stimuli which gave rise to dreams were extremely bad and licentious sexual desires which have made dream censorship and dream distortion necessary after we have interpreted such a dream for the dreamer and he
+in the most favorable circumstances does not attack the interpretation itself he almost always asks the question whence such a wish comes
+we need not hesitate to point out this origin these evil wish impulses have their origin in the past often in a past which is not too far away
+the woman whose dream is interpreted to mean that she would like to see her seventeen year old daughter dead discovers under our guidance that she in fact at one time entertained this wish
+which early ended in a separation
+she beat her body with her fists in a fit of anger in order to kill the child how many mothers who to day love their children tenderly perhaps too tenderly received them unwillingly and at the time wished that the life within them would not develop further
+indeed translated this wish into various actions happily harmless the later death wish against some loved one which seems so strange also has its origin in early phases of the relationship to that person
+this wish was no stranger to him while the child was still a suckling this man who was unhappy in his choice of a wife often thought that if the little being that meant nothing to him would die he would again be free and would make better use of his freedom
+that such wishes and such dreams cannot occur
+only wish to warn you that you are to take into consideration not the exact terms of the dream but the meaning thereof according to its interpretation it may happen that the manifest dream of the death of some loved person has only made use of some frightful mask
+that it really means something entirely different or that the loved person serves as a concealing substitute for some other but the same circumstances will call forth another more difficult question you say granted this death wish was present at some time or other
+and is substantiated by memory yet this is no explanation it is long outlived to day it can be present only in the unconscious and as an empty emotionless memory but not as a strong impulse why should it be recalled by the dream at all this question is justified
+in one of the most important points of dream study but i must remain within the bounds of our discussion and practice restraint prepare yourselves for the temporary abstention let us be satisfied with the circumstantial proof
+that this outlived wish can be shown to act as a dream stimulator and let us continue the investigation to see whether or not other evil wishes admit of the same derivation out of the past let us continue with the removal or death wish
+which most frequently can be traced back to the unbounded egoism of the dreamer
+as often as someone has been in our way in life and how often must this happen in the complicated relationships of life the dream is ready to do away with him be he father mother brother sister spouse et cetera
+we have wondered sufficiently over this evil tendency of human nature and certainly were not predisposed to accept the authenticity of this result of dream interpretation without question after it has once been suggested to us to seek the origin of such wishes in the past
+or real remnants thereof show themselves for the child loves itself first and later learns to love others to sacrifice something of its ego for another
+even those persons whom the child seems to love from the very beginning it loves at the outset because it has need of them cannot do without them in others words out of egoistical motives
+not until later does the love impulse become independent of egoism in brief egoism has taught the child to love in this connection it is instructive to compare the child's regard
+for his brothers and sisters with that which he has for his parents
+often enough this attitude is superseded by a more tender feeling or rather let us say glossed over but the hostile feeling appears regularly to have been the earlier it is most noticeable in children of from two and one half
+to four or five years of age when a new little brother or sister arrives the latter is usually received in a far from friendly manner expressions such as i don't want him let the stork take him away again are very usual
+subsequently every opportunity is made use of to disparage the new arrival and even attempts to do him bodily harm direct attacks are not unheard of
+if the difference in age is less the child learns of the existence of the rival with intense psychic activity and accommodates himself to the new situation if the difference in age is greater the new child may awaken certain sympathies as an
+interesting object as a sort of living doll and if the difference is eight years or more motherly impulses especially in the case of girls may come into play but to be truthful when we disclose in a dream the wish for the death of a mother or sister
+we need seldom find it puzzling and may trace its origin easily to early childhood often enough also to the propinquity of later years probably no nurseries are free from mighty conflicts among the inhabitants
+the motives are rivalry for the love of the parents articles owned in common the room itself the hostile impulses are called forth by older as well as younger brothers and sisters
+if there is anyone who hates a young english lady more than does her mother it is her elder sister there is something about this saying however that arouses our antipathy we can at a pinch understand hatred of brothers and sisters
+and rivalry among them but how may feelings of hatred force their way into the relationship between daughter and mother parents and children this relationship is without doubt the more favorable even when looked at from the viewpoint of the child
+this is in accord with our expectation we find it much more offensive for love between parents and children to be lacking than for love between brothers and sisters we have so to speak made something holy in the first instance
+which in the other case we permitted to remain profane
+the feelings between parents and their grown children fail to come up to the ideal established by society how much enmity exists and would find expression did not accumulations of piety and of tender impulse hold them back the motives for this are everywhere known
+and disclose a tendency to separate those of the same sex daughter from mother father from son the daughter finds in her mother the authority that hems in her will and that is entrusted with the task of causing her to carry out
+the abstention from sexual liberty which society demands in certain cases also she is the rival who objects to being displaced the same type of thing occurs in a more glaring manner between father and son
+to the son the father is the embodiment of every social restriction borne with such great opposition the father bars the way to freedom of will to early sexual satisfaction
+to the enjoyment thereof impatient waiting for the death of the father grows to heights approximating tragedy in the case of a successor to the throne less strained is the relationship between father and daughter mother and son
+the latter affords the purest examples of an unalterable tenderness in no way disturbed by egoistical considerations why do i speak of these things so banal and so well known
+because there is an unmistakable disposition to deny their significance in life and to set forth the ideal demanded by society as a fulfilled thing much oftener than it really is fulfilled but it is preferable for psychology to speak the truth
+rather than that this task should be left to the cynic in any event this denial refers only to actual life the arts of narrative and dramatic poetry are still free to make use of the motives that result from a disturbance of this ideal
+it is not to be wondered at that in the case of a large number of people the dream discloses the wish for the removal of the parents especially the parent of the same sex we may conclude that it is also present during waking hours
+as in the case of the dreamer's sympathy for his father's unnecessary sufferings in example three it is seldom that the enmity alone controls the relationship much more often it recedes behind more tender impulses
+by which it is suppressed and must wait until a dream isolates it that which the dream shows us in enlarged form as a result of such isolation shrinks together again after it has been properly docketed in its relation to life as a result of our interpretation
+h sachs but we also find this dream wish in places where it has no connection with life and where the adult in his waking hours would never recognize it the reason for this is that the deepest and most uniform motive for becoming unfriendly
+especially between persons of the same sex has already made its influence felt in earliest childhood i mean the love rivalry with the especial emphasis of the sex character the son even as a small child
+who is a disturbing element in her tender relationship with her father and who occupies a position that she could very well fill herself one learns from these observations to what early years these ideas extend back
+ideas which we designate as the oedipus complex because this myth realizes with a very slightly weakened effect the two extreme wishes which grow out of the situation of the son to kill his father and take his mother to wife
+i do not wish to maintain that the oedipus complex covers entirely the relation of the child to its parents this relation can be much more complicated furthermore the oedipus complex is more or less well developed it may even experience a reversal
+but it is a customary and very important factor in the psychic life of the child and one tends rather to underestimate than to overestimate its influence and the developments which may follow from it in addition
+children frequently react to the oedipus idea through stimulation by the parents who in the placing of their affection are often led by sex differences so that the father prefers the daughter the mother the son
+and this love is substituted for the outworn love one cannot maintain that the world was very grateful to psychoanalytic research for its discovery of the oedipus complex on the contrary it called forth the strongest resistance on the part of adults
+and persons who had neglected to take part in denying this proscribed or tabooed feeling relationship later made good the omission by taking all value from the complex through false interpretations according to my unchanged conviction
+cast out of life was yielded up to poetry and given the freest play o rank has shown in a careful study how this very oedipus complex has supplied dramatic literature
+with a large number of motives in unending variations derivations and disguises also in distorted forms such as we recognize to be the work of a censor we may also ascribe this oedipus complex to those dreamers
+who were so fortunate as to escape in later life these conflicts with their parents and intimately associated therewith we find what we call the castration complex the reaction to sexual intimidation or restriction ascribed to the father
+by applying our former researches to the study of the psychic life of the child we may expect to find that the origin of other forbidden dream wishes of excessive sexual impulses may be explained in the same manner
+thus we are moved to study the development of sex life in the child also and we discover the following from a number of sources in the first place it is a mistake to deny that the child has a sexual life and to take it for granted
+that sexuality commences with the ripening of the genitals at the time of puberty on the contrary the child has from the very beginning a sexual life rich in content and differing in numerous respects
+what we call perverse in the life of the adult differs from the normal in the following respects first in disregard for the dividing line of species the gulf between man and animal second
+being insensible to the conventional feeling of disgust third the incest limitation being prohibited from seeking sexual satisfaction with near blood relations fourth homosexuality and fifth
+he knows no unbridgable chasm between man and animal the arrogance with which man distinguishes himself from the animal is a later acquisition in the beginning he is not disgusted at the sight of excrement but slowly learns to be so disgusted
+under the pressure of education he lays no special stress on the difference between the sexes rather accredits to both the same genital formation
+toward those persons closest to him and who are dear to him for various reasons his parents brothers and sisters nurses and finally you may observe in him that which later breaks through again raised now to a love attraction
+polymorphus perverse and if he makes but slight use of all these impulses it is on the one hand because of their lesser intensity as compared to later life and on the other hand
+and to disguise another part by misrepresenting its sexual nature until they can deny the whole business these are often the same persons who discourse violently against all the sexual faults of the child
+and then at the writing table defend the sexual purity of the same children where children are left to themselves or are under the influence of corruption
+of perverse sexual activity to be sure the grown ups are right in looking upon these things as childish performances as play for the child is not to be judged as mature and answerable either before the bar of custom or before the law
+but these things do exist they have their significance as indications of innate characteristics as well as causes and furtherances of later developments they give us an insight into childhood sex life and thereby into the sex life of man
+when we rediscover in the background of our distorted dreams all these perverse wish impulses it means only that the dream has in this field
+those directed towards sexual intercourse with parents and brothers and sisters you know what antipathy society feels toward such intercourse or at least pretends to feel and what weight is laid on the prohibitions directed against it
+the most monstrous efforts have been made to explain this fear of incest some have believed that it is due to evolutionary foresight on the part of nature which is psychically represented by this prohibition because inbreeding would deteriorate the race character
+others maintained that because of having lived together since early childhood the sexual desire is diverted from the persons under consideration in both cases furthermore the incest avoidance would be automatically assured
+and most customary choice and that not until later is there any resistance the source of which probably is to be found in the individual psychology
+toward the understanding of the dream we found not only that the materials of forgotten childhood experiences are accessible to the dream
+with all its peculiarities its egoism its incestuous love choice et cetera continues for the purposes of the dream in the unconscious
+infantile side of psychic life which we may find in action in children which we overlook partly because of the slightness of its dimensions partly because it is lightly considered since we demand no ethical heights of the child
+since the dream regresses to this stage it seems to have made apparent the evil that lies in us but it is only a deceptive appearance by which we have allowed ourselves to be frightened we are not so evil as we might suspect from the interpretation of dreams
+if the evil impulses of the dream are merely infantilism a return to the beginnings of our ethical development since the dream simply makes children of us again in thinking and in feeling we need not be ashamed of these evil dreams if we are reasonable
+but being reasonable is only a part of psychic life many things are taking place there that are not reasonable and so it happens that we are ashamed of such dreams and unreasonably we turn them over to the dream censorship
+are ashamed and angry if one of these dreams has in some unusual manner succeeded in penetrating into consciousness in an undistorted form
+as we would be if we understood it just think of the scandalized opinion of the fine old lady about her uninterpreted dream of services of love the problem is not yet solved
+and it is still possible that upon further study of the evil in the dream we shall come to some other decision and arrive at another valuation of human nature as a result of the whole investigation we grasp two facts
+which however disclose only the beginnings of new riddles new doubts first the regression of dream work is not only formal it is also of greater import it not only translates our thoughts into a primitive form of expression
+but it reawakens the peculiarities of our primitive psychic life the ancient predominance of the ego the earliest impulses of our sexual life even our old intellectual property
+unconscious is no longer a name for what is at that time latent the unconscious is an especial psychic realm with wish impulses of its own with its own method of expression and with a psychic mechanism peculiar to itself
+but the latent dream thoughts which we have solved by means of the dream interpretation are not of this realm they are much more nearly the same as any we may have thought in our waking hours still they are unconscious
+how does one solve this contradiction we begin to see that a distinction must be made something that originates in our conscious life and that shares its characteristics
+the day remnants combines in the dream fabrication
+between these two parts the dream work completes itself the influencing of the day remnants by the unconscious necessitates regression this is the deepest insight into the nature of the dream
+that we are able to attain without having searched through further psychic realms the time will soon come however when we shall clothe the unconscious character of the latent dream thought with another name
+which shall differentiate it from the unconscious out of the realm of the infantile we may to be sure propound the question what forces the psychological activity during sleep to such regression
+why do not the sleep disturbing psychic stimuli do the job without it and if they must because of the dream censorship disguise themselves through old forms of expression which are no longer comprehensible
+what is the use of giving new life to old long outgrown psychic stimuli wishes and character types that is why the material regression in addition to the formal the only satisfactory answer would be this
+that only in this manner can a dream be built up
+chapter nineteen the glory of gettysburg the battle
+if lee had been victorious there he might have destroyed philadelphia and new york by such a brilliant stroke he could have surrounded and captured baltimore and washington this would have changed the grand result of the war
+in point of numbers bravery and genius the battle of gettysburg was the greatest that had ever been fought up to that time glorious as this was
+the greatest glory of gettysburg lay in the experiences and utterances of one man abraham lincoln president of the united states of america it came at a terrible time in the progress of the war
+accounted victory enough for the president to issue his emancipation proclamation proved to be a drawn battle with terrific losses on both sides lee was driven back from maryland then it is true
+but he soon won the great battles of fredericksburg and chancellorsville and had made his way north into pennsylvania the night after the battle of chancellorsville
+was the darkest in the history of the civil war president lincoln walked the floor the whole night long crying out in his anguish o what will the country say
+after winning the battle of gettysburg which the president hoped would end the war general meade instead of announcing that he had captured the confederate army stated that he had driven the invaders from our soil
+believing he was on god's side he felt that the cause of right could not lose for the lord would save his own the next day july fourth eighteen sixty three came the surrender of vicksburg
+the stronghold of the great west
+calling on general sickles in a washington hospital for the general had lost a leg on the second day of the battle of gettysburg the president was asked why he believed that victory would be given the federal forces at gettysburg
+i will tell you how it was in the pinch of your campaign up there when everybody seemed panic stricken
+that if he would stand by our boys at gettysburg i would stand by him and he did and i will the president's call on general sickles was on the sunday after the three days battle of gettysburg
+before the arrival of the gunboat at cairo illinois with the glad tidings from vicksburg which added new luster to the patriotic joy of independence day the telegraph wires
+had been so generally cut on all sides of vicksburg that the news was sent to cairo and telegraphed to washington in proof that his faith even included the mississippi blockade he went on besides
+i have been praying over vicksburg also and believe our heavenly father is going to give us victory there too because we need it in order to bisect the confederacy
+prominent in national and educational affairs and the greatest living orator was invited to deliver the grand oration the president was asked if he could to come and make a few dedicatory remarks
+but mister everett was to be the chief speaker of the occasion the sunday before the nineteenth of november eighteen sixty three the date of the dedication the president went with his friend noah brooks
+to gardner's gallery in washington where he had promised to sit for his photograph while there he showed mister brooks a proof of everett's oration which had been sent to him as this printed address covered two newspaper pages
+when mister brooks asked about his speech for that occasion mister lincoln replied i've got it written but not licked into shape yet it's short short short
+during the forenoon of the eighteenth secretary john hay was anxious lest the president be late for the special presidential train which was to leave at noon for gettysburg don't worry john said mister lincoln
+don't hurry boys there won't be anything going on till i get there when the train stopped on the way to gettysburg a little girl on the platform held up a bouquet to mister lincoln lisping flowerth for the prethident
+he reached out took her up and kissed her saying you're a sweet little rosebud yourself i hope your life will open into perpetual beauty and goodness
+about noon on the nineteenth of november the distinguished party arrived in a procession and took seats on the platform erected for the exercises the president was seated in a rocking chair placed there for him
+there were fifteen thousand people waiting
+watching her while the president of the united states was fanning her tenderly this was too much for her she gasped i feel better now i want to go back to my husband
+the fact that the president was speaking was sufficient no matter what he said the people would have applauded abraham lincoln if he had merely recited the multiplication table
+which the president decided to attend taking secretary seward with him he called on an old cobbler named john burns of whose courage in the battle of gettysburg mister lincoln had just heard
+chapter eighteen how emancipation came to pass when abraham lincoln was a small boy he began to show the keenest sympathy for the helpless and oppressed the only time he betrayed anger as a child
+when he saw the other boys hurting a mud turtle in his first school composition on cruelty to animals his stepsister remembers this sentence an ant's life is as sweet to it
+as ours is to us as you have read on an earlier page when abe grew to be a big strong boy he saved a drunken man from freezing in the mud by carrying him to a cabin
+not only from mud and cold but also from a drunkard's grave for that tall lad's love and mercy revealed to the poor creature the terrible slavery of which he was the victim
+he delivered an address before the washingtonian temperance society in which he compared white slavery with black in which he said and when the victory shall be complete
+this is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of washington we are met to celebrate this day washington is the mightiest name of earth long since the mightiest in the cause of civil liberty
+still mightiest in moral reformation on that name no eulogy is expected it cannot be to add to the brightness of the sun or glory to the name of washington is alike impossible
+which did so much to bring about in time a double emancipation from white slavery and black once as president he said to a boy who had just signed the temperance pledge now sonny
+keep that pledge and it will be the best act of your life president lincoln was true and consistent in his temperance principles in march eighteen sixty four he went by steamboat with his wife
+and little tad to visit general grant at his headquarters at city point virginia when asked how he was during the reception which followed his arrival there the president said as related by general horace porter
+that's the best remedy i know of for sea sickness no no my young friend replied the president i've seen many a man in my time seasick ashore from drinking that very article
+and the bitterest name his enemies called him worse in their minds than fool clown imbecile or gorilla was a black republican
+the more they needed his sympathetic help the more certain they were to receive it my sympathies are with the under dog said mister lincoln one day though it is often that dog that starts the fuss
+did not make him forfeit abraham lincoln's sympathy that was only a good lesson to him to look out and do better next time the question of emancipation
+if the government could not back up such a declaration the other party did not wish the matter tampered with as cheap labor was necessary for raising cotton sugar and other products on which the living of millions of people depended
+the extreme abolitionists who wished slavery abolished whether or no sent men to tell the president that if he did not free the slaves he was a coward and a turncoat
+and they would withhold their support from the government and the army delegations of abolitionists from all over the north arrived almost daily from different cities to urge coax and threaten the president
+washington the national capital would have been surrounded and forced to surrender besides at this time the armies of the north were losing nearly all the battles
+it would be like the pope's bull or decree against the comet a delegation of chicago ministers came to beg mister lincoln to free the slaves he patiently explained to them
+compels me to say to you in reply that it is a message from our divine master through me commanding you sir to open the doors of bondage
+now isn't that strange the president replied instantly here i am studying this question day and night and god has placed it upon me too
+don't you think it's rather odd that he should send such a message by way of that awful wicked city of chicago the ministers were shocked at such an answer from the president of the united states
+they could not know for mister lincoln dared not tell them that he had the emancipation proclamation in his pocket waiting for a federal victory before he could issue it the proclamation
+then came the news of antietam a terrible battle but gained by the northern arms at last the time had come to announce the freeing of the slaves that they might help in winning their liberties
+the president had not held a meeting of his cabinet for some time he thought of the occasion when as a young man he went on a flatboat trip to new orleans and saw
+i'll hit it hard now the chance to hit that thing the inhuman monster of human slavery had come and he was going to hit it hard he called the cabinet together
+edwin m stanton the secretary of war has described the scene on the twenty second of september eighteen sixty two i had a sudden and peremptory call to a cabinet meeting at the white house
+i went immediately and found the historic war cabinet of abraham lincoln assembled every member being present the president hardly noticed me as i came in
+let me read you a chapter that is very funny not a member of the cabinet smiled as for myself i was angry and looked to see what the president meant it seemed to me like buffoonery
+he however concluded to read us a chapter from artemus ward which he did with great deliberation having finished he laughed heartily without a member of the cabinet joining in the laughter
+well he said let's have another chapter i was considering whether i should rise and leave the meeting abruptly when he threw the book down heaved a long sigh and said
+gentlemen why don't you laugh with the fearful strain that is upon me night and day if i did not laugh i should die and you need this medicine as much as i do
+he then put his hand in his tall hat that sat upon the table and pulled out a little paper turning to the members of the cabinet he said gentlemen i have called you here upon very important business
+it is due to my cabinet that you should be the first to hear and know of it and if any of you have any suggestions to make as to the form of this paper or its composition i shall be glad to hear them
+which was to take effect the first of january following secretary stanton continued i have always tried to be calm but i think i lost my calmness for a moment and with great enthusiasm i arose
+approached the president extended my hand and said mister president if the reading of chapters of artemus ward is a prelude to such a deed as this the book should be filed among the archives of the nation
+and the author should be canonized henceforth i see the light and the country is saved and all said amen and lincoln said to me in a droll way just as i was leaving
+that declaration young abe lincoln first read in the gentryville constable's copy of the statutes of indiana at noon on the first of january eighteen sixty three
+william h seward secretary of state with his son frederick called at the white house with the emancipation document to be signed by the president it was just after the regular new year's day reception
+mister lincoln seated himself at his table took up the pen dipped it in the ink held the pen a moment then laid it down after waiting a while he went through the same movements as before
+turning to his secretary of state he said to explain his hesitation
+looking up at the sewards father and son he smiled and said with a sigh of relief
+chapter twenty one lieutenant tad lincoln patriot there was no more sturdy little patriot in the whole country than lieutenant tad lincoln the child of the nation
+nor had the president of the united states a more devoted admirer and follower than his own small son a word from his father would melt the lad to tears and submission or bring him out of a nervous tantrum with his
+wreathed with smiles and a chuckling in his throat of papa day my papa day no one knew exactly what the boy meant by papa day it was his pet name for the dearest man on earth
+and it was his only way of expressing the greatest pleasure his boyish heart was able to hold it was the sweetest word ever heard by the war burdened crushed and sorrowing soul of the broken hearted president of the united states
+mister lincoln took his youngest son with him everywhere on his great mission to fortress monroe and they the long and the short of it the soldiers said marched hand in hand through the streets of fallen richmond
+became perfectly right and proper when certain unknown facts were taken into account waving the stars and bars out of a white house window for instance one night
+in a soldier's uniform if he don't know any better than that said one man he should be taught better it's an insult to the north and the president ought to stop it and apologize too
+but that his heart went out also to the boys in gray the soldiers were all boys to him they knew he loved them they said among themselves he cares for us he takes our part
+we will fight for him yes we will die for him and a large part of the common soldier's patriotism was this heart response of the boys to the great boy in the white house
+for the younger soldiers the real boys of the army going always with the president he had heard his papa day say of several youths condemned to be shot for sleeping at their post or some like offense
+that boy is worth more above ground than under or a live boy can serve his country better than a dead one give the boys a chance was abraham lincoln's motto
+and he wanted all other boys to have a fair show his own father had been too hard with him and he was going to make it up to all the other boys he could reach this passion for doing good to others
+began in the log cabin when he had no idea he could ever be exercising his loving kindness in the executive mansion the home of the nation with malice toward none with charity for all was the rule of his life
+in the backwoods as well as in the national capital and the boys in gray were his boys too but they didn't understand so they had wandered away they were a little wayward but he would win them back
+the great chivalrous south has learned since those bitter ruinous days that abraham lincoln was the best friend the south then had in the north tad had seen his father show great tenderness to all the boys
+he met in the gray uniform but the president had few opportunities to show his tenderness to the south though there was a secret pigeonhole in his desk stuffed full of threats of assassination he was not afraid of death
+and the country any good but it hurt him deep in his heart to know that some of his beloved children misunderstood him so that they were willing to kill him it was no one's bullet which made abraham lincoln a martyr
+all his life he had shown the spirit of love which was willing to give his very life if it could save or help others all these things little tad could not have explained
+but they were inbred into the deep understanding of the big father and the small son who were living in the white house as boys together
+mister lincoln had written a short address for the occasion the times were so out of joint and every word was so important that the president could not trust himself to speak off hand a friend stepped out on the northern portico with him
+to hold the candle by which mister lincoln was to read his speech little tad was with his father as usual and when the president had finished reading a page of his manuscript he let it flutter down like a leaf or a big white butterfly
+for tad to catch when the pages came too slowly the boy pulled his father's coat tail piping up in a muffled excited tone give me nother paper papa day
+it seemed ridiculous that the president of the united states should allow any child to behave like that and hamper him while delivering a great address which would wield a national if not world wide influence
+we meet this evening not in sorrow but gladness of heart the evacuation of petersburg and richmond and the surrender of the principal insurgent army at appomattox give hope of a righteous and speedy peace
+and will be duly promulgated give us dixie boys then he went on outlining a policy of peace and friendship toward the south showing a spirit far higher
+and more advanced than that of the listening crowd on concluding his address and bidding the assembled multitude good night he turned to the serenading band and shouted joyously give us dixie boys play dixie
+we have a right to that tune now there was a moment of silence some of the people gasped as they had done when they saw tad waving the confederate flag at the window
+as mister lincoln came in through the door after speaking to the crowd missus lincoln who had been with a group of friends looking on from within exclaimed to him you must not be so careless
+some one could easily have shot you while you were speaking there and you know they are threatening your life the president smiled at his wife through a look of inexpressible pain and sadness and shrugged his great shoulders
+but still he answered not a word the separation of the two boys at a late hour good friday night that same week little tad came in alone at a basement door of the white house from the national theater
+and some of the company had made a great pet of him
+like a wounded animal seeing thomas pendel the faithful doorkeeper he wailed from his breaking heart tom pen tom pen they have killed papa day they have killed my papa day
+and now his mother was desperately ill and his father had been killed tad of course could not comprehend why any one could be so cruel and wicked as to wish to murder his darling papa day
+who loved every one so he wandered through the empty rooms aching with loneliness murmuring softly to himself papa day where's my papa day i'm tired
+tired of playing alone i want to play together please papa day come back and play with your little tad young though he was he could not sleep long at night
+his sense of loneliness penetrated his dreams sometimes he would chuckle and gurgle in an ecstacy as he had done when riding on his father's back romping through the stately rooms
+tad opened his eyes wide with wonder is papa day happy in heaven he asked eagerly yes yes i'm sure he's happy there taddie dear now go to sleep
+papa day's happy i'm glad so glad sighed the little boy for papa day never was happy here then he fell into his first sweet sleep since that terrible night
+give the boys a chance the fond hearted little fellow went abroad with his mother a few years after the tragedy that broke both their lives by a surgical operation and by struggling manfully
+he had corrected the imperfection in his speech but the heart of little tad had been broken while still a lad he joined his fond father in the beyond give the boys a chance had amounted to a passion with abraham lincoln
+for this as for all the inequities the great heart of the white house was prepared his spirit had shone through his whole life as if in letters of living fire with malice toward none with charity for all
+the queen was receiv'd at babylon with all the transports of joy that could possibly be express'd for the safe return of so illustrious and so beautiful a personage that had run thro such a long series of misfortunes
+babylon at that time seem'd to be perfectly serene and quiet as for the young prince of hyrcania he was slain in battle the babylonians who were the victors
+who should gain it by a fair and impartial election they were determin'd that the most valuable post of honour in the world namely
+and the sovereign of babylon should be the result of merit only and not be procur'd by any party factions or court intrigues a solemn oath was voluntarily taken by all parties
+that he who should distinguish himself by his superior valour and wisdom should unanimously be acknowledg'd the sovereign elect a spacious list or circus was pitched upon surrounded with commodious seats
+erected in an amphitheatrical manner and richly embellish'd some few leagues from the city thither the combatants or champions were to repair compleatly accoutred each of them had a distinct apartment to himself behind the lists
+where no soul could either see them or know who they were they were to enter the lists four several times those who were so happy as to conquer four competitors were afterwards to engage each other in single combat
+in order that he who should remain master of the field should be proclaim'd the happy victor four days afterwards they were to meet again accoutred as before
+and to explain all such a enigmas or riddles as the magi should think proper to propose if their queries should prove too intricate and perplext for them to resolve they were to have recourse to the lists again and after that to fresh a enigmas
+before they could be entitled to the election so that the tournaments were to be continu'd till one of the candidates should be twice a victor and shine as conspicuous with respect to his internal qualities as to his dexterity and address in heroic atchievements
+the queen in the mean time was to be narrowly watch'd and allow'd only to be a spectator of both their amusements at some considerable distance and moreover to be cover'd with a vail
+nor was she indulg'd so far as to speak one single word to any candidate whomsoever in order to prevent the least jealousy or suspicion either of partiality or injustice
+to inform her lover of all the preliminary articles abovemention'd not doubting but that he would exert both his courage and understanding for her sake beyond any of the other competitors zadig accordingly set out for babylon and besought the goddess venus
+not only to fortify his courage but to illuminate his mind with wisdom on this important occasion the night before these martial atchievements were to commence zadig arrived upon the banks of the euphrates
+he inscrib'd his device amongst the list of combatants concealing at the same time both his person and name as the laws of the election required and accordingly withdrew to the apartment that was provided for him
+according to his lot cador who was just return'd to babylon having hunted all egypt over to no purpose in hopes to find his friend zadig brought a compleat set of armour into his lodge by express orders from the queen
+she sent him likewise one of the finest horses in all persia
+which redoubled his vigour and his hopes the next morning the queen being seated under a canopy of state enrich'd with precious stones and the amphitheatres being crowded with gentlemen and ladies of all ranks and conditions from babylon
+the competitors made their personal appearance in the circus each of them went up to the grand magus and laid down his particular device at his feet the devices were drawn by lot that of zadig was the last
+one itabod by name immensely rich indeed and very haughty
+exceedingly awkward and a man of no acquir'd parts the sycophants that hover'd round about him flatter'd him that a man of his merit couldn't fail of being king he imperiously replied one of my merit must be king
+his armour was made of pure gold enamell'd with green the housings of his saddle were green and his lance embellish'd with green ribbands every one was sensible at first sight
+by itobad's manner of managing his horse that he was not the man whom heav'n had pitch'd upon to sway the babylonish scepter the first combatant that tilted with him threw him out of the saddle the second flung him quite over the crupper
+and laid him sprawling on the ground with his heels quiv'ring in the air itobad tis true remounted but with so ill a grace
+the third disdaining to use his lance made only a feint at him then catch'd hold of his right leg and whirling him round threw him flat upon the sand the esquires who were the attendants ran to his assistance
+and with a sneer remounted him the fourth combatant catch'd hold of his left leg and unhors'd him again he was convey'd thro the hissing multitude to his lodge where according to the law in that case provided he was to pass the night
+and as he hobbled along said he to the esquires what a sad misfortune is this to one of my birth and character the other champions play'd their parts much better and all came off with credit
+some conquer'd two of their antagonists and others were so far successful as to get the better of three none of them however except prince hottam vanquish'd four zadig at last
+one after the other with the utmost ease and with such an air and grace as gain'd him universal applause as the case stood thus zadig and hottam were to close the day's entertainment in a single combat
+the armour of the latter was of a blue colour mixt with gold and the housings of his saddle were of the same those of the former white as snow the multitude were divided in their wishes the knight in blue was the favourite of some of the ladies
+the queen whose heart was in a perfect palpitation put up her secret prayers to venus to assist her darling hero the two champions making their passes and their volta's with the utmost dexterity and address
+and keeping firm in their saddles gave each other such rebuffs with their lances that all the spectators the queen only excepted wish'd for two kings of babylon at last their horses being tired and both their lances broke
+zadig made use of the following stratagem
+he got artfully behind him and shooting with a spring on his horses buttocks grasp'd him close threw him headlong on the sand then jump'd into his seat and wheel'd round prince hottam while he lay sprawling on the ground all the spectators in general
+with loud acclamations cried out victory victory in favour of the champion in white
+incens'd to the last degree got up and drew his sword zadig sprang from his horse with his sabre in his hand now behold the two chieftains upon their legs commencing a new trial of skill where they seem'd to get the better of each other alternately
+for both were strong and both were active the feathers of their helmets the studs of their bracelets their coats of mail flew about in pieces thro the dry blows which they a thousand times repeated they struck at each other sometimes with the edge of their swords
+at other times they push'd as occasion offer'd now on the right then on the left now on the head then at the breast they retreated they advanc'd they kept at a distance they clos'd again
+their swords struck fire almost at every blow at last zadig in order to recover his breath for a moment or two stood still and afterwards making a feint at the prince threw him on his back and disarm'd him hottam thereupon
+cried out o thou knight of the white armour tis you only are destin'd to be the king of babylon the queen was perfectly transported the two champions were reconducted to their separate lodges as the others had been before them in conformity to the laws prescrib'd
+several mutes were order'd to wait on the champions and carry them some proper refreshment we'll leave the reader to judge whether the queen's dwarf was not appointed to wait on zadig on this happy occasion after supper the mutes withdrew
+and left the combatants to rest their wearied limbs till the next morning at which time the victor was to produce his device before the grand magus in order to confer notes and discover the hero whoever he might be zadig slept very sound
+notwithstanding his amorous regard for the queen being perfectly fatigu'd itabod who lay in the lodge contiguous to his could not once close his eyes for vexation he got up therefore in the dead of the night stole imperceptibly into zadig's apartment
+took his white armour and device away with him and substituted his green one in its place as soon as the day began to dawn he repair'd with a seemingly undaunted courage to the grand magus to inform him that he was the mighty hero the happy victor
+and was proclaim'd victor before zadig was awake
+return'd with a heart overwhelm'd with despair to the court of babylon
+he was oblig'd tho sorely against his will to put it on having nothing else in his lodge to appear in confounded and big with resentment
+the populace that were left behind in the circus hiss'd him every step he took they made a ring about him and treated him with all the marks of ignominy and contempt the most cowardly wretch breathing was never sure so sweated or hunted down as poor zadig
+he grew quite out of patience at last and cut his way thro the insulting mob with his rival's sabre but he did not know what measures to pursue or how to rectify so gross a mistake it was not in his power to have a sight of the queen
+he could never recover the white armour again which she had sent him that was the compromise or the engagement to which the combatants had all unanimously agreed thus as he was on the one hand plung'd in an abyss of sorrow
+so on the other he was almost drove distracted with vexation and resentment he withdrew therefore in a solitary mood to the banks of the euphrates now fully persuaded
+that his impropitious star had shed its most baleful influence on him and that his misfortunes were irretrievable revolving in his mind all his disappointments from his first adventure with the court coquet
+down to his late loss of his white armour see said he the fatal consequence of being a sluggard
+all the knowledge of books or mankind all the personal valour that i can boast of has only prov'd an aggravation of my sorrows he carried the point so far at last as to murmur at the unequal dispensations of divine providence
+and was tempted to believe that all occurrences were govern'd by a malignant destiny which never fail'd to oppress the virtuous and always crown'd the actions of such villains as the green knight with uncommon success in one of his frantick fits
+he put on the green armour that had created him such a world of disgrace a merchant happening to pass by he sold it to him for a trifle and took in exchange nothing more than a mantle and a cap
+oliver told them the explanation of the whole affair that evening at home leaning back in his chair with one arm bandaged and in a sling they had not been able to get near him at the time the excitement in the square had been too fierce
+but a messenger had come to his wife with the news that her husband was only slightly wounded and was in the hands of the doctors he was a catholic explained the drawn faced oliver he must have come ready for his repeater was found loaded
+well there was no chance for a priest this time mabel nodded slowly she had read of the man's fate on the placards he was killed trampled and strangled instantly said oliver i did what i could you saw me
+but well i dare say it was more merciful but you did what you could my dear said the old lady anxiously from her corner i called out to them mother but they wouldn't hear me
+mabel leaned forward oliver i know this sounds stupid of me but but i wish they had not killed him oliver smiled at her he knew this tender trait in her it would have been more perfect if they had not
+she said then she broke off and sat back why did he shoot just then she asked oliver turned his eyes for an instant towards his mother but she was knitting tranquilly then he answered with a curious deliberateness
+i said that braithwaite had done more for the world by one speech than jesus and all his saints put together he was aware that the knitting needles stopped for a second then they went on again as before
+but he must have meant to do it anyhow continued oliver how do they know he was a catholic asked the girl again there was a rosary on him and then he just had time to call on his god and nothing more is known
+nothing more he was well dressed though oliver leaned back a little wearily and closed his eyes his arm still throbbed intolerably but he was very happy at heart it was true that he had been wounded by a fanatic
+but he was not sorry to bear pain in such a cause and it was obvious that the sympathy of england was with him mister phillips even now was busy in the next room answering the telegrams that poured in every moment
+caldecott the prime minister maxwell snowford and a dozen others had wired instantly their congratulations and from every part of england streamed in message after message it was an immense stroke for the communists
+speaking in defence of his principles it was an incalculable gain for them and loss for the individualists that confessors were not all on one side after all
+the huge electric placards over london had winked out the facts in esperanto as oliver stepped into the train at twilight oliver brand wounded catholic assailant indignation of the country
+well deserved fate of assassin he was pleased too that he honestly had done his best to save the man even in that moment of sudden and acute pain he had cried out for a fair trial but he had been too late
+he had seen the starting eyes roll up in the crimson face and the horrid grin come and go as the hands had clutched and torn at his throat then the face had vanished and a heavy trampling began where it had disappeared oh
+there was some passion and loyalty left in england his mother got up presently and went out still without a word and mabel turned to him laying a hand on his knee are you too tired to talk my dear he opened his eyes
+of course not my darling what is it what do you think will be the effect he raised himself a little looking out as usual through the darkening windows on to that astonishing view
+everywhere now lights were glowing a sea of mellow moons just above the houses and above the mysterious heavy blue of a summer evening the effect he said it can be nothing but good it was time that something happened
+my dear i feel very downcast sometimes as you know well i do not think i shall be again i have been afraid sometimes that we were losing all our spirit and that the old tories were partly right when they prophesied what communism would do
+but after this well well we have shown that we can shed our blood too it is in the nick of time too just at the crisis i don't want to exaggerate it is only a scratch but it was so deliberate and
+and so dramatic the poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment people won't forget it mabel's eyes shone with pleasure you poor dear she said are you in pain not much besides christ
+if only this infernal eastern affair would end he knew he was feverish and irritable and made a great effort to drive it down oh my dear he went on flushed a little
+if they would not be such heavy fools they don't understand they don't understand yes oliver they don't understand what a glorious thing it all is humanity life truth at last and the death of folly but haven't i told them a hundred times
+she loved to see him like this his confident flushed face the enthusiasm in his blue eyes and the knowledge of his pain pricked her feeling with passion she bent forward and kissed him suddenly my dear i am so proud of you oh oliver he said nothing
+but she could see what she loved to see that response to her own heart and so they sat in silence while the sky darkened yet more and the click of the writer in the next room told them that the world was alive and that they had a share in its affairs
+oliver stirred presently did you notice anything just now sweetheart when i said that about jesus christ she stopped knitting for a moment said the girl he nodded you saw that too then
+mabel do you think she is falling back oh she is getting old said the girl lightly of course she looks back a little but you don't think it would be too awful she shook her head no
+no my dear you're excited and tired it's just a little sentiment oliver i don't think i would say that kind of thing before her but she hears it everywhere now no she doesn't remember
+she can't get it out of her head even after fifty years well watch her won't you by the way yes there's a little more news from the east they say felsenburgh's running the whole thing now the empire is sending him everywhere
+tobolsk benares yakutsk everywhere and he's been to australia mabel sat up briskly isn't that very hopeful i suppose so there's no doubt that the sufis are winning but for how long is another question
+besides the troops don't disperse and europe europe is arming as fast as possible i hear we are to meet the powers next week at paris i must go your arm my dear my arm must get well it will have to go with me anyhow
+tell me some more there is no more but it is just as certain as it can be that this is the crisis if the east can be persuaded to hold its hand now it will never be likely to raise it again it will mean free trade all over the world i suppose
+and all that kind of thing but if not well if not there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even imagined
+these new benninschein explosives will make certain of that but is it absolutely certain that the east has got them absolutely benninschein sold them simultaneously to east and west then he died luckily for him mabel had heard this kind of talk before
+but her imagination simply refused to grasp it a duel of east and west under these new conditions was an unthinkable thing there had been no european war within living memory and the eastern wars of the last century had been under the old conditions
+now if tales were true entire towns would be destroyed with a single shell the new conditions were unimaginable military experts prophesied extravagantly contradicting one another on vital points
+the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory there were no precedents with which to compare it it was as if archers disputed as to the results of cordite only one thing was certain that the east had every modern engine and as regards male population
+half as much again as the rest of the world put together and the conclusion to be drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to england but imagination simply refused to speak the daily papers had a short careful leading article every day
+founded upon the scraps of news that stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world felsenburgh's name appeared more frequently than ever otherwise there seemed to be a kind of hush nothing suffered very much trade went on
+european stocks were not appreciably lower than usual men still built houses married wives begat sons and daughters did their business and went to the theatre for the mere reason that there was no good in anything else they could neither save nor precipitate the situation
+it was on too large a scale occasionally people went mad people who had succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of reality could be obtained and there was a diffused atmosphere of tenseness but that was all
+in his masonic insignia it was he who had given immense impetus to that secret movement by his declaration in the house that the key of future progress and brotherhood of nations was in the hands of the order
+it was through this alone that the false unity of the church with its fantastic spiritual fraternity could be counteracted saint paul had been right he declared in his desire to break down the partition walls between nations
+and wrong only in his exaltation of jesus christ thus he had preluded his speech on the poor law question pointing to the true charity that existed among masons apart from religious motive
+and looked out with considerable excitement at the huge throng gathered to hear her son speak a platform was erected round the bronze statue at such a height that the statesman appeared to be one of the speakers though at a slightly higher elevation
+and this platform was hung with roses surmounted by a sounding board and set with a chair and table the whole square round about was paved with heads and resonant with sound the murmurs of thousands of voices
+overpowered now and again by the crash of brass and thunder of drums as the benefit societies and democratic guilds each headed by a banner
+and converged towards the wide railed space about the platform where room was reserved for them the windows on every side were packed with faces tall stands were erected along the front of the national gallery and saint martin's church
+garden beds of colour behind the mute white statues that faced outwards round the square from braithwaite in front past the victorians john davidson john burns and the rest round to hampden and de montfort towards the north
+the old column was gone with its lions
+nor the lions to the new art and in their place stretched a wide pavement broken by slopes of steps that led up to the national gallery overhead the roofs showed crowded friezes of heads against the blue summer sky
+not less than one hundred thousand persons it was estimated in the evening papers were collected within sight and sound of the platform by noon as the clocks began to tell the hour two figures appeared from behind the statue and came forward and in an instant
+the murmurs of talk rose into cheering old lord pemberton came first a grey haired upright man whose father had been active in denouncing the house of which he was a member on the occasion of its fall over seventy years ago and his son had succeeded him worthily
+and it was he who was to be chairman on this auspicious occasion behind him came oliver bareheaded and spruce and even at that distance his mother and wife could see his brisk movement
+there was no doubt that these londoners could sing it was as if a giant voice hummed the sonorous melody rising to enthusiasm till the music of massed bands followed it as a flag follows a flag stick the hymn was one composed ten years before
+and all england was familiar with it old missus bland lifted the printed paper mechanically to her eyes and saw the words that she knew so well the lord that dwells in earth and sea
+had been composed with both skill and ardour they had a religious ring the unintelligent christian could sing them without a qualm yet their sense was plain enough the old human creed that man was all even christ's words themselves were quoted
+the kingdom of god it was said lay within the human heart and the greatest of all graces was charity she glanced at mabel and saw that the girl was singing with all her might with her eyes fixed on her husband's dark figure a hundred yards away
+and his thin metallic voice piped a sentence or two across the tinkling splash of the fountains behind him then he stepped back and oliver came forward it was too far for the two to hear what was said but mabel slipped a paper smiling tremulously
+into the old lady's hand and herself bent forward to listen old missus brand looked at that too knowing that it was an analysis of her son's speech and aware that she would not be able to hear his words
+of this great anniversary then there came a retrospect comparing the old state of england with the present fifty years ago the speaker said poverty was still a disgrace now it was so no longer
+it was in the causes that led to poverty that the disgrace or the merit lay who would not honour a man worn out in the service of his country or overcome at last by circumstances against which his efforts could not prevail
+he enumerated the reforms passed fifty years before on this very day by which the nation once and for all declared the glory of poverty and man's sympathy with the unfortunate so he had told them he was to sing the praise of patient poverty
+and its reward and that he supposed together with a few periods on the reform of the prison laws would form the first half of his speech the second part was to be a panegyric of braithwaite treating him as the precursor of a movement that even now had begun
+old missus brand leaned back in her seat and looked about her the window where they sat had been reserved for them two arm chairs filled the space but immediately behind there were others standing very silent now craning forward watching too with parted lips
+a couple of women with an old man directly behind and other faces visible again behind them their obvious absorption made the old lady a little ashamed of her distraction and she turned resolutely once more to the square ah he was working up now to his panegyric
+the tiny dark figure was back a yard nearer the statue and as she looked his hand went up and he wheeled pointing as a murmur of applause drowned for an instant the minute resonant voice then again he was forward half crouching for he was a born actor
+and a storm of laughter rippled round the throng of heads she heard an indrawn hiss behind her chair and the next instant an exclamation from mabel what was that there was a sharp crack and the tiny gesticulating figure staggered back a step
+the old man at the table was up in a moment and simultaneously a violent commotion bubbled and heaved like water about a rock at a point in the crowd immediately outside the railed space where the bands were massed and directly opposite the front of the platform
+mabel remembered her husband's advice to watch and for a few days did her best but there was nothing that alarmed her the old lady was a little quiet perhaps but went about her minute affairs as usual she asked the girl to read to her sometimes
+she packed his bag with her own hands set out his furs for the swift flight to paris and waved to him from the window as he went down the little path towards the junction he would be gone three days he said it was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill
+and mabel running upstairs in alarm at the message of the servant found her rather flushed and agitated in her chair it is nothing my dear said the old lady tremulously and she added the description of a symptom or two
+she was sincerely fond of the old lady and had always found her presence in the house a quiet sort of delight the effect of her upon the mind was as that of an easy chair upon the body the old lady was so tranquil and human
+so absorbed in small external matters so reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth so utterly without resentment or peevishness
+she found less difficulty in contemplating the end of a vigorous soul for in that case she imagined a kind of energetic rush of force back into the origin of things
+her whole point so to speak lay in the delicate little fabric of personality built out of fragile things into an entity far more significant than the sum of its component parts the death of a flower reflected mabel is sadder than the death of a lion
+the breaking of a piece of china more irreparable than the ruin of a palace it is syncope said the doctor when he came in she may die at any time she may live ten years there is no need to telegraph for mister brand
+he made a little deprecating movement with his hands it is not certain that she will die it
+she asked no no she may live ten years i said he added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector and went away the old lady was lying quietly in bed when the girl went up and put out a wrinkled hand
+well my dear she asked it is just a little weakness mother you must lie quiet and do nothing shall i read to you no my dear i will think a little it was no part of mabel's idea to duty to tell her that she was in danger
+for there was no past to set straight no judge to be confronted death was an ending not a beginning it was a peaceful gospel at least it became peaceful as soon as the end had come
+so the girl went downstairs once more with a quiet little ache at her heart that refused to be still what a strange and beautiful thing death was she told herself this resolution of a chord that had hung suspended for thirty fifty or seventy years
+back again into the stillness of the huge instrument that was all in all to itself those same notes would be struck again were being struck again even now all over the world though with an infinite delicacy of difference in the touch
+but that particular emotion was gone it was foolish to think that it was sounding eternally elsewhere for there was no elsewhere she too herself would cease one day let her see to it that the tone was pure and lovely
+mister phillips arrived the next morning as usual just as mabel had left the old lady's room and asked news of her she is a little better i think said mabel she must be very quiet all day the secretary bowed and turned aside into oliver's room
+where a heap of letters lay to be answered a couple of hours later as mabel went upstairs once more she met mister phillips coming down he looked a little flushed under his sallow skin missus brand sent for me he said she wished to know whether mister oliver would be back to night
+he will will he not you have not heard mister brand said he would be here for a late dinner he will reach london at nineteen and is there any other news he compressed his lips there are rumours he said mister brand wired to me an hour ago
+he seemed moved at something and mabel looked at him in astonishment it is not eastern news she asked his eyebrows wrinkled a little
+she was not offended for she trusted her husband too well but she went on into the sick room with her heart beating the old lady too seemed excited she lay in bed with a clear flush in her white cheeks and hardly smiled at all to the girl's greeting
+said mabel old missus brand looked at her sharply an instant but said nothing don't excite yourself mother oliver will be back to night the old lady drew a long breath don't trouble about me my dear she said i shall do very well now
+he will be back to dinner will he not if the volor is not late now mother are you ready for breakfast mabel passed an afternoon of considerable agitation it was certain that something had happened
+the secretary who breakfasted with her in the parlour looking on to the garden had appeared strangely excited he had told her that he would be away the rest of the day mister oliver had given him his instructions he had refrained from all discussion of the eastern question
+and he had given her no news of the paris convention he only repeated that mister oliver would be back that night then he had gone of in a hurry half an hour later the old lady seemed asleep when the girl went up afterwards and mabel did not like to disturb her
+neither did she like to leave the house so she walked by herself in the garden thinking and hoping and fearing till the long shadow lay across the path and the tumbled platform of roofs was bathed in a dusty green haze from the west
+as she came in she took up the evening paper but there was no news there except to the effect that the convention would close that afternoon twenty o'clock came but there was no sign of oliver the paris volor should have arrived an hour before
+but mabel staring out into the darkening heavens had seen the stars come out like jewels one by one
+of course she might have missed it there was no depending on its exact course but she had seen it a hundred times before and wondered unreasonably why she had not seen it now but she would not sit down to dinner and paced up and down in her white dress
+turning again and again to the window listening to the soft rush of the trains the faint hoots from the track and the musical chords from the junction a mile away the lights were up by now and the vast sweep of the towns looked like fairyland between the earthly light
+and the heavenly darkness why did not oliver come or at least let her know why he did not once she went upstairs miserably anxious herself to reassure the old lady and found her again very drowsy he is not come she said
+i dare say he may be kept in paris the old face on the pillow nodded and murmured and mabel went down again it was now an hour after dinner time oh there were a hundred things that might have kept him
+he had often been later than this he might have missed the volor he meant to catch the convention might have been prolonged he might be exhausted and think it better to sleep in paris after all and have forgotten to wire
+he might even have wired to mister phillips and the secretary have forgotten to pass on the message she went at last hopelessly to the telephone and looked at it there it was that round silent month that little row of labelled buttons
+she half decided to touch them one by one and inquire whether anything had been heard of her husband there was his club his office in whitehall mister phillips's house parliament house and the rest but she hesitated telling herself to be patient
+oliver hated interference and he would surely soon remember and relieve her anxiety then even as she turned away the bell rang sharply and a white label flashed into sight whitehall she pressed the corresponding button and her hand shaking so much
+that she could scarcely hold the receiver to her ear she listened who is there her heart leaped at the sound of her husband's voice tiny and minute across the miles of wire i mabel she said alone here
+i am back all is well now listen can you hear yes yes the best has happened it is all over in the east felsenburgh has done it now listen i cannot come home to night it will be announced in paul's house in two hours from now
+we are communicating with the press come up here to me at once you must be present can you hear oh yes come then at once it will be the greatest thing in history tell no one come before the rush begins in half an hour the way will be stopped oliver
+yes quick mother is ill shall i leave her how ill oh no immediate danger the doctor has seen her there was silence for a moment yes come then we will go back to night anyhow then
+an oval face broad above and narrow below golden hair fair skin white delicate and well formed hands with slender tapering fingers these were considered as marking the type of beauty and of high family descent
+they were the marks of aristocracy to these natural advantages the people added by the usual artificial means among the higher classes the finger nails were kept carefully cut and rounded
+it was considered shameful for a man of position to have rough unkempt nails crimson coloured finger nails were greatly admired
+i sleep no more and i shall not crimson my nails no joy shall ever again come upon my mind
+ladies often dyed the eyebrows black with the juice of some sort of berry
+that the irish missionary monks sometimes painted or dyed their eyelids black an entry in cormac's glossary plainly indicates that the blush of the cheeks was sometimes heightened by a colouring matter obtained from the alder tree
+and the sprigs and berries of the elder were applied to the same purpose among greek and roman ladies the practice was very general of painting the cheeks eyebrows and other parts of the face both men and women wore the hair long
+the hair was combed daily after a bath the heroes of the fena of erin before sitting down to their dinner after a hard day's hunting always took a bath and carefully combed their long hair among the higher classes in very early times
+great care was bestowed on the hair its regulation constituted quite an art and it was dressed up in several ways very often the long hair of men as well as of women was elaborately curled conall kernach's hair as described in the story of da derga
+flowed down his back and was done up in
+hooks and plaits and swordlets
+the accuracy of this and other similar descriptions is fully borne out by the most unquestionable authority of all namely the figures in the early illuminated manuscripts and on the shrines and high crosses of later ages
+in nearly all the figures of the book of kells for example seventh or eighth century the hair is combed and dressed with the utmost care so beautifully adjusted indeed that it could have been done only by skilled professional hairdressers
+and must have occupied much time whether in case of men or women
+and is commonly divided the whole way as well as all over the head into slender fillets or locks which sometimes hang down to the eyes in front i do not find mentioned anywhere that the irish dyed their hair as was the custom among the greeks and romans
+the men were as particular about the beard as about the hair the fashion of wearing the beard varied
+and gradually narrowed to two points below sometimes as shown in many ancient figures it falls down in a single mass while in a few it is cut straight across at bottom not unlike assyrian beards nearly all have a mustache
+in most cases curled up and pointed at the ends as we often see now in many the beard is carefully divided into slender twisted fillets as described above for the hair kings and chiefs had barbers in their service to attend to all this
+razors were used made of bronze as hard as steel as we know by finding them mentioned in irish documents as early as the eighth century and many old bronze razors are now preserved in museums
+from what precedes it will be understood that combs were in general use with men as well as with women and many specimens of combs are now found in the remains of ancient dwellings bathing was very usual at least among the upper classes
+and baths and the use of baths are constantly mentioned in the old tales and other writings in every public hostel in every monastery and in every high class house there was a bath with its accompaniments soap was used both in bathing and washing
+the modes of manufacturing them will be mentioned silk and satin which were of course imported were much worn among the higher classes the furs of animals such as seals otters badgers foxes et cetera were much used for capes and jackets
+and for the edgings of various garments so that skins of all the various kinds were valuable they formed too an important item of everyday traffic and they were also exported the ancient irish loved bright colours
+in this respect they resembled many other nations of antiquity as well indeed as of the present day and they illustrated ruskin's saying
+whenever men are noble they love bright colour
+in sky sea flowers
+and we know that they well understood the art of dyeing the several articles of dress on one person were usually coloured differently even the single outer cloak was often striped spotted or chequered in various colours king domnall in the seventh century
+on one occasion sent a many coloured tunic to his foster son prince congal like joseph's coat of many colours a very common article of dress was a large cloak generally without sleeves
+varying in length but commonly covering the whole person from the shoulders down the people also wore a tight fitting coat with sleeves
+but it was much shorter and without a collar
+a short cape was often worn on the shoulders sometimes carrying a hood to cover the head the outer covering of the general run of the peasantry was just one loose sleeved coat or mantle
+which covered them down to the ankles and which they wore winter and summer women commonly wore a long loose cloak with a hood a fashion which is common at the present day the over garments were fastened by brooches pins buttons
+girdles strings and loops many of them beautifully made and ornamented the ancient irish wore a trousers which was so tight fitting as to show perfectly the shape of the limbs when terminating below the ankles it was held down by a slender strap passing under the foot
+like other irish garments it was generally striped or speckled in various colours leggings of cloth or of thin soft leather were used and were laced on by strings tipped with white bronze
+a kilt was often worn in which case the legs were left bare at the knees with leggings below for the kilt is of irish origin and was brought like many other fashions by the early colonists to scotland
+and when not actually worn was usually carried among other small articles in a lady's ornamental hand bag shoes were often made of untanned hide stitched with thongs with several layers for a sole but there was a more shapely shoe made of fully tanned leather
+having serviceable sole and heel and often ornamented with patterns stamped in the irish were excessively fond of personal ornaments which among the higher classes were made of expensive materials such as gold silver gems white bronze et cetera
+they wore rings and bracelets of various shapes on the fingers including the thumb round the wrist and forearm and even round the leg above the ankle
+all of which materials were found native they had torques for the neck made of twisted gold bars and the elaborate and immensely expensive crescents or gorgets
+there was a gold ornament a kind of open ring with bosses or buttons on the ends
+worn on the breast suspended from an ornamented button thin circular gold plates were also worn fastened on the breast and as for brooches they were of all shapes and sizes some plain simple and cheap
+some of gold or other expensive material of elaborate workmanship
+one of the commissioners for the publication of the ancient laws of ireland president of the royal society of antiquaries ireland london longmans green and co dublin m h gill and son
+nineteen o seven printed by ponsonby and gibbs university press dublin preface
+this little book has been written and published with the main object of spreading as widely as possible among our people young and old a knowledge of the civilisation and general social condition of ireland from the fifth or sixth
+when it was wholly governed by native rulers the publication comes at an appropriate time when there is an awakening of interest in the irish language and in irish lore of every kind unparalleled in our history but the book has a further mission
+there are many english and many anglo irish people who think merely from ignorance that ireland was a barbarous and half savage country before the english came among the people and civilised them this book so far as it finds its way among the two classes above mentioned will
+i fancy open their eyes they will learn from it that the old irish so far from being barbarous were a bright intellectual and cultured people that they had professions trades and industries pervading the whole population
+with clearly defined ranks and grades of society all working under an elaborate system of native laws and that in the steadying and civilising arts and pursuits of everyday life they were as well advanced as orderly
+and as regular as any other european people of the same period they will find too that as regards education scholarship and general mental culture the irish of those early ages were in advance of all other countries of europe
+that they helped most materially to spread christianity and to revive learning all over the continent and that to irish missionaries and scholars the anglo saxons of the heptarchy were indebted for the greater part of their christianity
+and for the preservation and restoration of learning when it was threatened with extinction all over england by the ravages of the danes but there were and are englishmen better informed about our country
+more than three hundred years ago the great english poet edmund spenser lived for some time in ireland and made himself well acquainted with its history he knew what it was in past ages
+of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest
+but it is better not to pursue these observations farther here as it would be only anticipating what will be found in the body of the book this book is the last of a series of three of which the second is abridged from the first and the third from both
+the first a social history of ancient ireland
+contains a complete survey of the social life and institutions of ancient ireland all the important statements in it are proved home by references to authorities
+the second a smaller social history of ancient ireland
+five hundred ninety eight pages in twenty seven chapters with two hundred thirteen illustrations traverses the same ground as the larger work but besides condensation most of the illustrative quotations and nearly all the references to authorities are omitted
+this third book the story of ancient irish civilisation gives in simple plain language an account of the condition of the country in the olden time but as it is here to speak for itself i need not describe it further
+for all the statements it contains full and satisfactory authorities will be found in the two larger works i have done my best to make all three readable and interesting as well as instructive
+the ordinary history of our country has been written by many and the reader has a wide choice but in the matter of our social history he has no choice at all for these three books of mine have for the first and only time
+brought within the reach of the general public a knowledge of the whole social life of ancient ireland p w j lyre na grena february
+fled to lars porsenna king of clusium and besought him that he would help them suffer not they said that we who are tuscans by birth should remain any more in poverty and exile
+and take heed also to thyself and thine own kingdom if thou permit this new fashion of driving forth kings to go unpunished
+that in freedom which men greatly desire and if they that be kings defend not their dignity as stoutly as others seek to overthrow it then shall the highest be made even as the lowest and there shall be an end of kingship than which there is nothing more honorable under heaven
+with these words they persuaded king porsenna who judging it well for the etrurians that there should be a king at rome and that king an etrurian by birth gathered together a great army and came up against rome
+but when men heard of his coming so mighty a city was clusium in those days and so great the fame of king porsenna
+in the meanwhile i so far as one man may do will stay the enemy and as he spake he ran forward to the farther end of the bridge and made ready to keep the way against the enemy nevertheless there stood two with him
+lartius and herminius by name men of noble birth both of them and of great renown in arms so these three for a while stayed the first onset of the enemy and the men of rome meanwhile brake down the bridge and when there was but a small part remaining
+and they that brake it down called to the three that they should come back horatius bade lartius and herminius return but he himself remained on the farther side turning his eyes full of wrath in threatening fashion on the princes of the etrurians and crying
+king porsenna to rob others of the freedom that ye care not to have for yourselves
+looking each man to his neighbor who should first deal with this champion of the romans then for very shame they all ran forward and raising a great shout threw their javelins at him these all he took upon his shield nor stood the less firmly in his place on the bridge
+for the bridge was now altogether broken down
+and as the enemy stayed a while for fear horatius turned him to the river and said o father tiber i beseech thee this day with all reverence that thou kindly receive this soldier and his arms and as he spake he leapt with all his arms into the river
+and swam across to his own people and though many javelins of the enemy fell about him he was not one whit hurt nor did such valor fail to receive due honor from the city
+the summer passed away and the bleak fall came myles had long since accepted his position as one set apart from the others of his kind and had resigned himself to the evident fact that he was never to serve in the household in waiting upon the earl
+the other lads were sometimes occupied by their household duties when sports were afoot in which they would liked to have taken part myles was always free to enter into any matter of the kind after his daily exercise had been performed at the pels the butts or the tilting court
+the lady anne the daughter of the house a tall thin dark eyed dark haired handsome young dame of twenty or twenty one years of age hawk nosed like her father and silent proud and haughty myles heard the squires say
+lady alice the earl of mackworth's niece and ward a great heiress in her own right a strikingly pretty black eyed girl of fourteen or fifteen these composed the earl's personal family
+but besides them was lord george beaumont his earl's brother and him myles soon came to know better than any of the chief people of the castle excepting sir james lee for since myles's great battle in the armory lord george
+for the princely nobles of those days lived in state little less royal than royalty itself most of the knights and gentlemen myles soon came to know by sight meeting them in lord george's apartments in the south wing of the great house
+and some of them following the lead of lord george singled him out for friendly notice giving him a nod or a word in passing every season has its pleasures for boys and the constant change that they bring is one of the greatest delights of boyhood's days
+all of us as we grow older have in our memory pictures of by gone times that are somehow more than usually vivid the colors of some not blurring by time as others do
+one of which in remembering always filled myles's heart in after years with an indefinable pleasure was the recollection of standing with others of his fellow squires
+which when the east wind was straining flew low overhead to pitch to the lake in the forbidden precincts of the deer park beyond the brow of the hill
+shot in their southward flight by the lads and cooked by fat good natured mother joan graced the rude mess table of the squires in the long hall and even the toughest and fishiest drake so the fruit of their skill had a savor that somehow or other
+the daintiest fare lacked in after years then fall passed and winter came bleak cold and dreary not winter as we know it nowadays with warm fires and bright lights to make the long nights sweet and cheerful with comfort
+but winter with all its grimness and sternness in the great cold stone walled castles of those days the only fire and almost the only light were those from the huge blazing logs that roared and crackled in the great open stone fireplace
+around which the folks gathered sheltering their faces as best they could from the scorching heat and cloaking their shoulders from the biting cold for at the farther end of the room where giant shadows swayed and bowed and danced huge and black against the high walls
+but at the best only rude stories and jests recited by some strolling mummer or minstrel to the listening circle gathered around the blaze and welcoming the coarse gross jests and coarser grosser songs with roars of boisterous laughter
+yet bleak and dreary as was the winter in those days and cold and biting as was the frost in the cheerless windy halls and corridors of the castle it was not without its joys to the young lads for then as now boys could find pleasure even in slushy weather
+when the sodden snow is fit for nothing but to make snowballs of thrice that bitter winter the moat was frozen over and the lads making themselves skates of marrow bones which they bought from the hall cook at a groat a pair went skimming over the smooth surface
+while the crows and the jackdaws looked down at them from the top of the bleak gray walls then at yule tide which was somewhat of a rude semblance to the merry christmas season of our day a great feast was held in the hall
+and all the castle folk were fed in the presence of the earl and the countess oxen and sheep were roasted whole huge suet puddings made of barley meal sweetened with honey and stuffed with plums were boiled in great caldrons in the open courtyard
+whole barrels of ale and malmsey were broached and all the folk gentle and simple were bidden to the feast afterwards the minstrels danced and played a rude play and in the evening a miracle show was performed on a raised platform in the north hall
+for a week afterwards the castle was fed upon the remains of the good things left from that great feast until everyone grew to loathe fine victuals and longed for honest beef and mustard again then at last in that constant change the winter was gone
+and even the lads who had enjoyed its passing were glad when the winds blew warm once more and the grass showed green in sunny places and the leader of the wild fowl blew his horn as they who in the fall had flown to the south flew arrow like northward again
+when the buds swelled and the leaves burst forth once more and crocuses and then daffodils gleamed in the green grass like sparks and flames of gold with the spring came the out door sports of the season among others that of ball
+for boys were boys and played at ball even in those faraway days a game called trap ball even yet in some parts of england it is played just as it was in myles falworth's day and enjoyed just as myles and his friends enjoyed it
+so now that the sun was warm and the weather pleasant the game of trap ball was in full swing every afternoon the play ground being an open space between the wall that surrounded the castle grounds and that of the privy garden
+myles himself was at the trap barehanded and barearmed the wind was blowing from behind him and aided perhaps by it he had already struck three of four balls nearly the whole length of the court an unusual distance
+and several of the lads had gone back almost as far as the wall of the privy garden to catch any ball that might chance to fly as far as that then once more myles struck throwing all his strength into the blow the ball shot up into the air
+and when it fell it was to drop within the privy garden the shouts of the young players were instantly stilled and gascoyne who stood nearest myles thrust his hands into his belt giving a long shrill whistle
+there be no more play for us until we get another ball the outfielders came slowly trooping in until they had gathered in a little circle around myles i could not help it said myles in answer to their grumbling how knew i the ball would fly so far
+wouldst get thyself shot with a bolt betwixt the ribs like poor diccon cook of all places about the castle the privy garden was perhaps the most sacred it was a small plot of ground only a few rods long and wide
+and was kept absolutely private for the use of the countess and her family only a little while before myles had first come to devlen one of the cook's men had been found climbing the wall whereupon the soldier who saw him shot him with his cross bow
+the poor fellow dropped from the wall into the garden and when they found him he still held a bunch of flowers in his hand which he had perhaps been gathering for his sweetheart had myles seen him carried on a litter to the infirmary as gascoyne and some of the others had done
+he might have thought twice before venturing to enter the ladies private garden as it was he only shook his stubborn head and said again i will climb the wall and fetch it
+now at the lower extremity of the court and about twelve or fifteen feet distant from the garden wall there grew a pear tree some of the branches of which overhung into the garden beyond so first making sure that no one was looking that way
+and bidding the others keep a sharp lookout myles shinned up this tree and choosing one of the thicker limbs climbed out upon it for some little distance then lowering his body he hung at arm's length the branch bending with his weight and slowly let himself down
+hand under hand until at last he hung directly over the top of the wall and perhaps a foot above it below him he could see the leafy top of an arbor covered with a thick growth of clematis and even as he hung there
+he noticed the broad smooth walks the grassy terrace in front of the countess's apartments in the distance the quaint flower beds the yew trees trimmed into odd shapes and even the deaf old gardener working bare armed in the sunlight at a flower bed in the far corner by the tool house
+the top of the wall was pointed like a house roof and immediately below him was covered by a thick growth of green moss and it flashed through his mind as he hung there that maybe it would offer a very slippery foothold for one dropping upon the steep slopes of the top
+but it was too late to draw back now bracing himself for a moment he loosed his hold upon the limb above the branch flew back with a rush and he dropped striving to grasp the sloping angle with his feet
+flew through his brain like a cloud of flies and then a leafy greenness seemed to strike up against him a splintering crash sounded in his ears as the lattice top of the arbor broke under him and with one final clutch at the empty air he fell heavily upon the ground beneath
+but at least he understood after a few conversations with mister havisham that he could gratify all his nearest wishes and he proceeded to gratify them with a simplicity and delight which caused mister havisham much diversion
+in the week before they sailed for england he did many curious things the lawyer long after remembered the morning they went down town together to pay a visit to dick
+and the afternoon they so amazed the apple woman of ancient lineage by stopping before her stall and telling her she was to have a tent and a stove and a shawl and a sum of money which seemed to her quite wonderful
+so i think i don't know how painful a person's bones can be but i've sympathized with you a great deal and i hope you'll be better she's a very good apple woman he said to mister havisham as they walked away
+leaving the proprietress of the stall almost gasping for breath and not at all believing in her great fortune once when i fell down and cut my knee she gave me an apple for nothing i've always remembered her for it you know
+you always remember people who are kind to you it had never occurred to his honest simple little mind that there were people who could forget kindnesses the interview with dick was quite exciting
+dick had just been having a great deal of trouble with jake and was in low spirits when they saw him his amazement when cedric calmly announced that they had come to give him what seemed a very great thing to him and would set all his troubles right
+the statement that his old friend had become a lord and was in danger of being an earl if he lived long enough caused dick to so open his eyes and mouth and start that his cap fell off when he picked it up he uttered a rather singular exclamation
+mister hobbs thought i'd had a sunstroke i didn't think i was going to like it myself but i like it better now i'm used to it the one who is the earl now he's my grandpapa and he wants me to do anything i like
+he's very kind if he is an earl and he sent me a lot of money by mister havisham and i've brought some to you to buy jake out
+and found himself the possessor of the business and some new brushes and a most astonishing sign and outfit he could not believe in his good luck any more easily than the apple woman of ancient lineage could believe in hers
+he walked about like a boot black in a dream he stared at his young benefactor and felt as if he might wake up at any moment he scarcely seemed to realize anything until cedric put out his hand to shake hands with him before going away
+well good bye he said and though he tried to speak steadily there was a little tremble in his voice and he winked his big brown eyes and i hope trade'll be good i'm sorry i'm going away to leave you
+but perhaps i shall come back again when i'm an earl and i wish you'd write to me because we were always good friends and if you write to me here's where you must send your letter and he gave him a slip of paper
+and he would have found it difficult to tell what he felt just then if he had tried perhaps that was why he didn't try and only winked his eyes and swallowed a lump in his throat i wish ye wasn't goin away he said in a husky voice
+then he winked his eyes again then he looked at mister havisham and touched his cap thanky sir fur bringin him down here an fur wot ye've done he's he's a queer little feller he added i've allers thort a heap of him
+he's such a game little feller an' an such a queer little un and when they turned away he stood and looked after them in a dazed kind of way and there was still a mist in his eyes and a lump in his throat
+as he watched the gallant little figure marching gayly along by the side of its tall rigid escort until the day of his departure his lordship spent as much time as possible with mister hobbs in the store
+gloom had settled upon mister hobbs he was much depressed in spirits when his young friend brought to him in triumph the parting gift of a gold watch and chain mister hobbs found it difficult to acknowledge it properly
+he laid the case on his stout knee and blew his nose violently several times there's something written on it said cedric inside the case i told the man myself what to say
+from his oldest friend lord fauntleroy to mister hobbs when this you see remember me i don't want you to forget me mister hobbs blew his nose very loudly again
+i sha'n't forget you he said speaking a trifle huskily as dick had spoken nor don't you go and forget me when you get among the british arrystocracy
+i shouldn't forget you whoever i was among answered his lordship i've spent my happiest hours with you at least some of my happiest hours i hope you'll come to see me sometime
+i'd come to see you replied mister hobbs graciously so it seemed to be agreed that if he received a pressing invitation from the earl to come and spend a few months at dorincourt castle
+when the carriage stood at the door then a curious feeling of loneliness came upon the little boy his mamma had been shut up in her room for some time when she came down the stairs her eyes looked large and wet and her sweet mouth was trembling
+cedric went to her and she bent down to him and he put his arms around her and they kissed each other he knew something made them both sorry though he scarcely knew what it was but one tender little thought rose to his lips
+we liked this little house dearest didn't we he said we always will like it won't we yes yes she answered in a low sweet voice yes darling
+it seemed almost directly they were on the steamer in the midst of the wildest bustle and confusion carriages were driving down and leaving passengers passengers were getting into a state of excitement about baggage which had not arrived and threatened to be too late
+big trunks and cases were being bumped down and dragged about sailors were uncoiling ropes and hurrying to and fro officers were giving orders ladies and gentlemen and children and nurses were coming on board
+he looked at the piles of rope at the furled sails at the tall tall masts which seemed almost to touch the hot blue sky he began to make plans for conversing with the sailors and gaining some information on the subject of pirates
+it was just at the very last when he was standing leaning on the railing of the upper deck and watching the final preparations enjoying the excitement and the shouts of the sailors and wharfmen
+he came up to cedric quite breathless i've run all the way he said i've come down to see ye off trade's been prime
+ye kin wear it when ye get among the swells i lost the paper when i was tryin to get through them fellers downstairs
+it's a hankercher he poured it all forth as if in one sentence a bell rang and he made a leap away before cedric had time to speak good bye he panted wear it when ye get among the swells and he darted off and was gone
+a few seconds later they saw him struggle through the crowd on the lower deck and rush on shore just before the gang plank was drawn in he stood on the wharf and waved his cap cedric held the handkerchief in his hand
+it was of bright red silk ornamented with purple horseshoes and horses heads there was a great straining and creaking and confusion the people on the wharf began to shout to their friends and the people on the steamer shouted back
+every one seemed to be saying don't forget us write when you get to liverpool good bye good bye little lord fauntleroy leaned forward and waved the red handkerchief
+and he heard nothing but the hearty childish voice calling
+of course as soon as the story of lord fauntleroy and the difficulties of the earl of dorincourt were discussed in the english newspapers they were discussed in the american newspapers the story was too interesting to be passed over lightly
+one said he was engaged to a young lady of great beauty who was the daughter of a duke another said he had just been married the only thing in fact which was not said was that he was a little boy between seven and eight
+with handsome legs and curly hair one said he was no relation to the earl of dorincourt at all but was a small impostor who had sold newspapers and slept in the streets of new york before his mother imposed upon the family lawyer
+who came to america to look for the earl's heir then came the descriptions of the new lord fauntleroy and his mother sometimes she was a gypsy sometimes an actress sometimes a beautiful spaniard
+but it was always agreed that the earl of dorincourt was her deadly enemy and would not acknowledge her son as his heir if he could help it and as there seemed to be some slight flaw in the papers she had produced
+it was expected that there would be a long trial which would be far more interesting than anything ever carried into court before mister hobbs used to read the papers until his head was in a whirl and in the evening he and dick would talk it all over
+the more excited they became seems like somethin orter be done said mister hobbs things like them orter be held on to earls or no earls but there really was nothing they could do
+but each write a letter to cedric containing assurances of their friendship and sympathy they wrote those letters as soon as they could after receiving the news and after having written them they handed them over to each other to be read
+this is what mister hobbs read in dick's letter dere frend
+an we say hold on as longs u kin
+there is a lot of ole theves wil make al they kin of u
+an if there aint no better way cum over here an go in pardners with me
+an ile see no harm cums to u enny big feler that trise to cum it over u
+so no more at present dick
+i believe its a put up job and them thats done it ought to be looked after sharp and what i write to say is two things
+and if the worst happens and them earls is too many for us theres a partnership in the grocery business ready for you when yure old enough and a home and a friend in
+silas hobbs well said mister hobbs he's pervided for between us if he aint a earl so he is said dick i'd ha stood by him blest if i didn't like that little feller fust rate
+the very next morning one of dick's customers was rather surprised he was a young lawyer just beginning practice as poor as a very young lawyer can possibly be
+but a bright energetic young fellow with sharp wit and a good temper he had a shabby office near dick's stand and every morning dick blacked his boots for him and quite often they were not exactly water tight but he always had a friendly word or a joke for dick
+and dick was staring at one of them with his eyes and mouth open and his sharp face almost pale with excitement what's to pay dick said the young man what has paralyzed you dick really did look as if something tremendous had happened
+my i know her better n i know you the young man began to laugh where did you meet her dick he said at newport or when you ran over to paris the last time dick actually forgot to grin
+he began to gather his brushes and things together as if he had something to do which would put an end to his business for the present never mind he said i know her an i've struck work for this mornin
+mister hobbs could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses when he looked across the counter and saw dick rush in with the paper in his hand the boy was out of breath with running so much out of breath in fact that he could scarcely speak
+as he threw the paper down on the counter hello
+look at it panted dick
+that's what you look at she aint no ristocrat she aint with withering scorn she's no lord's wife
+that's who done it she was allers up to her tricks an i'll tell yer wot come to me the minnit i saw her pictur there was one o them papers we saw had a letter in it that said somethin bout her boy an it said he had a scar on his chin
+put them two together her n that there scar why that there boy o hers aint no more a lord than i am it's ben's boy the little chap she hit when she let fly that plate at me
+professor dick tipton had always been a sharp boy and earning his living in the streets of a big city had made him still sharper he had learned to keep his eyes open and his wits about him
+and it must be confessed he enjoyed immensely the excitement and impatience of that moment if little lord fauntleroy could only have looked into the store that morning he would certainly have been interested
+the feller that give me the paper he's a lawyer let's ax him what we'd better do lawyers knows it all mister hobbs was immensely impressed by this suggestion and dick's business capacity
+that's so he replied this here calls for lawyers and leaving the store in the care of a substitute he struggled into his coat and marched down town with dick and the two presented themselves with their romantic story in mister harrison's office
+much to that young man's astonishment if he had not been a very young lawyer with a very enterprising mind and a great deal of spare time on his hands he might not have been so readily interested in what they had to say
+for it all certainly sounded very wild and queer but he chanced to want something to do very much and he chanced to know dick and dick chanced to say his say in a very sharp telling sort of way
+it appears there has been some dubiousness about the child the woman contradicted herself in some of her statements about his age and aroused suspicion the first persons to be written to are dick's brother and the earl of dorincourt's family lawyer
+and actually before the sun went down two letters had been written and sent in two different directions one speeding out of new york harbor on a mail steamer on its way to england and the other on a train carrying letters and passengers bound for california
+and the second to benjamin tipton
+picked up on the sand at low water a flask covered with wicker which had been cast up by the tide this flask covered with mould was corked by a tarred bung the soldier carried the waif to the colonel of the castle
+and the colonel sent it to the high admiral of england the admiral meant the admiralty with waifs the admiralty meant barkilphedro barkilphedro having uncorked and emptied the bottle
+carried it to the queen the queen immediately took the matter into consideration two weighty counsellors were instructed and consulted namely the lord chancellor
+we must not confound this chancellor with his namesake and contemporary william cowper the anatomist and commentator on bidloo who published a treatise on muscles in england
+a surgeon is a very different thing from a lord lord william cowper is celebrated for having with reference to the affair of talbot yelverton viscount longueville propounded this opinion
+that in the english constitution the restoration of a peer is more important than the restoration of a king
+the author of a maxim delights in opportunities to which it may be applied here was a case of the restoration of a peer search was made gwynplaine by the inscription over his door
+was soon found neither was hardquanonne dead a prison rots a man but preserves him if to keep is to preserve
+hardquanonne was still in prison at chatham they had only to put their hands on him he was transferred from chatham to london in the meantime information was sought in switzerland
+the facts were found to be correct they obtained from the local archives at vevey at lausanne the certificate of lord linnaeus's marriage in exile the certificate of his child's birth the certificate of the decease of the father and mother
+and with that mole like silence recommended and practised by bacon and later on made law by blackstone for affairs connected with the chancellorship and the state and in matters termed parliamentary
+to those who have studied pathologically the cases of caprice called our good will and pleasure
+whose credit required the concealment of such acts have allowed that to be written which endangered their success the answer is cynicism haughty indifference oh
+you believe that effrontery is confined to abandoned women
+often when it would be to a man's greatest advantage to escape from the hands of the police or the records of history
+look at my arm observe the design i am lacenaire see a temple of love and a burning heart pierced through with an arrow
+james the second a man commits a bad action and places his mark upon it to fill up the measure of crime by effrontery to denounce himself to cling to his misdeeds is the insolent bravado of the criminal
+christina seized monaldeschi had him confessed and assassinated and said i am the queen of sweden in the palace of the king of france
+there is the tyrant who conceals himself like tiberius and the tyrant who displays himself
+he had we know a gay and open countenance differing so far from philip philip was sullen james jovial both were equally ferocious
+his crimes lay light upon his conscience he was a monster by the grace of god therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate and his assassinations were by divine right
+he too would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of simancas with all his misdeeds dated classified labelled and put in order each in its compartment like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist
+to set the sign manual to crimes is right royal every deed done is a draft drawn on the great invisible paymaster a bill had just come due with the ominous endorsement
+jussu regis queen anne in one particular unfeminine seeing that she could keep a secret demanded a confidential report of so grave a matter from the lord chancellor
+one of the kind specified as report to the royal ear reports of this kind have been common in all monarchies at vienna there was a counsellor of the ear an aulic dignitary
+it was an ancient carlovingian office the auricularius of the old palatine deeds he who whispers to the emperor william baron cowper chancellor of england
+whom the queen believed in because he was short sighted like herself or even more so had committed to writing a memorandum commencing thus two birds were subject to solomon a lapwing the hudbud
+the lord chancellor proved the fact that the heir to a peerage had been carried off mutilated and then restored
+the queen's father he even went so far as to justify him first there are ancient monarchical maxims e senioratu eripimus in roturagio cadat
+secondly there is a royal right of mutilation
+the eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked out for the good of the kingdom certain princes too near to the throne have been conveniently stifled between mattresses
+and his ambassadors have not been the less favourably received by the emperor hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the suppression of a state et cetera it is legal but one law does not destroy another
+if a drowned man is cast up by the water and is not dead it is an act of god readjusting one of the king if the heir be found let the coronet be given back to him
+thus should be done to gwynplaine who is also a king seeing that he is a peer
+under constraint of superior power does not tarnish the blazon as in the case of abdolmumen who was a king although he had been a gardener that of joseph who was a saint although he had been a carpenter
+that of apollo who was a god although he had been a shepherd in short the learned chancellor concluded by advising the reinstatement in all his estates and dignities of lord fermain clancharlie
+miscalled gwynplaine on the sole condition that he should be confronted with the criminal hardquanonne and identified by the same and on this point the chancellor as constitutional keeper of the royal conscience
+based the royal decision the lord chancellor added in a postscript
+for if the prisoner dies on the second or third day the confrontation becomes difficult still the law must be obeyed
+the durability of fragile things destiny sometimes proffers us a glass of madness to drink a hand is thrust out of the mist and suddenly hands us the mysterious cup in which is contained the latent intoxication
+gwynplaine did not understand he looked behind him to see who it was who had been addressed a sound may be too sharp to be perceptible to the ear
+an emotion too acute conveys no meaning to the mind there is a limit to comprehension as well as to hearing the wapentake and the justice of the quorum approached gwynplaine and took him by the arms
+he felt himself placed in the chair which the sheriff had just vacated he let it be done without seeking an explanation when gwynplaine was seated the justice of the quorum and the wapentake retired a few steps
+and stood upright and motionless behind the seat then the sheriff placed his bunch of roses on the stone table put on spectacles which the secretary gave him drew from the bundles of papers which covered the table a sheet of parchment
+yellow green torn and jagged in places which seemed to have been folded in very small folds and of which one side was covered with writing standing under the light of the lamp he held the sheet close to his eyes
+and in his most solemn tone read as follows in the name of the father the son and the holy ghost this present day the twenty ninth of january one thousand six hundred and ninetieth year of our lord
+has been wickedly deserted on the desert coast of portland with the intention of allowing him to perish of hunger of cold and of solitude a child ten years old
+that child was sold at the age of two years by order of his most gracious majesty king james the second that child is lord fermain clancharlie
+the only legitimate son of lord linnaeus clancharlie baron clancharlie and hunkerville marquis of corleone in sicily a peer of england and of ann bradshaw his wife both deceased
+that child is the inheritor of the estates and titles of his father for this reason he was sold mutilated disfigured and put out of the way by desire of his most gracious majesty
+that child was brought up and trained to be a mountebank at markets and fairs he was sold at the age of two after the death of the peer his father and ten pounds sterling were given to the king as his purchase money
+as well as for divers concessions tolerations and immunities lord fermain clancharlie at the age of two years was bought by me the undersigned who write these lines and mutilated
+and disfigured by a fleming of flanders called hardquanonne who alone is acquainted with the secrets and modes of treatment of doctor conquest the child was destined by us to be a laughing mask
+which stamps an everlasting laugh upon the face the child by means known only to hardquanonne was put to sleep and made insensible during its performance knowing nothing of the operation which he underwent
+he does not know that he is lord clancharlie he answers to the name of gwynplaine this fact is the result of his youth and the slight powers of memory he could have had when he was bought and sold
+being then barely two years old hardquanonne is the only person who knows how to perform the operation bucca fissa and the said child is the only living subject upon which it has been essayed
+the operation is so unique and singular that though after long years this child should have come to be an old man instead of a child and his black locks should have turned white
+at the time that i am writing this hardquanonne who has perfect knowledge of all the facts and participated as principal therein is detained in the prisons of his highness the prince of orange
+hardquanonne was apprehended and seized as being one of the band of comprachicos or cheylas he is imprisoned in the dungeon of chatham it was in switzerland near the lake of geneva
+between lausanne and vevey in the very house in which his father and mother died that the child was in obedience with the orders of the king sold and given up by the last servant of the deceased lord linnaeus
+the undersigned brought up and kept for eight years for professional purposes the little lord bought by us of the king to day flying from england to avoid hardquanonne's ill fortune
+our fear of the penal indictments prohibitions and fulminations of parliament has induced us to desert at night fall on the coast of portland the said child gwynplaine who is lord fermain clancharlie
+now we have sworn secrecy to the king but not to god to night at sea overtaken by a violent tempest by the will of providence
+full of despair and distress kneeling before him who could save our lives and may perhaps be willing to save our souls having nothing more to hope from men but everything to fear from god
+we make this declaration and confide and deliver it to the furious ocean to use as it best may according to the will of god and may the holy virgin aid us amen
+and we attach our signatures the sheriff interrupted saying here are the signatures all in different handwritings and he resumed
+in the hebrides gaizdorra captain
+jacques quartourze alias le narbonnais luc pierre capgaroupe
+the sheriff after a pause resumed
+and he read of the three men comprising the crew the skipper having been swept off by a wave there remain but two and we have signed galdeazun ave maria
+thief the sheriff interspersing his reading with his own observations continued at the bottom of the sheet is written at sea on board of the matutina biscay hooker
+added the sheriff is a legal document bearing the mark of king james the second on the margin of the declaration and in the same handwriting there is this note
+if the word blank can be applied to a thing so mouldy and in the middle of the page three words were written two latin words
+said the sheriff passing from a grave voice to a clear one gwynplaine was as a man on whose head a tile falls from the palace of dreams he began to speak like one who speaks unconsciously
+gernardus yes the doctor an old sad looking man i was afraid of him gaizdorra captain that means chief
+his name was capgaroupe he used to drink out of a flat bottle on which there was a name written in red behold it said the sheriff he placed on the table something which the secretary had just taken out of the bag
+it was a gourd with handles like ears covered with wicker this bottle had evidently seen service and had sojourned in the water shells and seaweed adhered to it
+there was a ring of tar round its neck showing that it had been hermetically sealed now it was unsealed and open they had however replaced in the flask a sort of bung made of tarred oakum
+which had been used to cork it it was in this bottle said the sheriff that the men about to perish placed the declaration which i have just read
+this message addressed to justice has been faithfully delivered by the sea the sheriff increased the majesty of his tones and continued in the same way that harrow hill produces excellent wheat
+your name malefactor is here such are the hidden channels by which truth swallowed up in the gulf of human actions floats to the surface the sheriff took the gourd
+hardquanonne then the sheriff resuming that monotonous tone of voice which resembles nothing else and which may be termed a judicial accent turned towards the sufferer
+hardquanonne when by us the sheriff this bottle on which is your name was for the first time shown exhibited and presented to you you at once and willingly
+and the second reading of the said parchment on which is written the declaration and confession of your accomplices was made to you but in vain this is the fourth day
+and that which is legally set apart for the confrontation and he who was deserted on the twenty ninth of january one thousand six hundred and ninety having been brought into your presence your devilish hope has vanished
+you have broken silence and recognized your victim the prisoner opened his eyes lifted his head and with a voice strangely resonant of agony but which had still
+he spoke i swore to keep the secret i have kept it as long as i could men of dark lives are faithful and hell has its honour now silence is useless
+so be it for this reason i speak well yes tis he we did it between us the king and i the king by his will i by my art
+and looking at gwynplaine now laugh for ever and he himself began to laugh this second laugh wilder yet than the first might have been taken
+for a sob the laughed ceased and the man lay back his eyelids closed the sheriff who had allowed the prisoner to speak resumed all which is placed on record
+since confirmed by your recognition and confession and after your renewed avowal you are about to be relieved from these irons and placed at the good pleasure of her majesty to be hung as plagiary
+hardquanonne thank her majesty by a sign the justice of the quorum set in motion the man dressed in leather this man who was the executioner's assistant
+the old charters call him went to the prisoner took off the stones one by one from his chest and lifted the plate of iron up exposing the wretch's crushed sides
+then he freed his wrists and ankle bones from the four chains that fastened him to the pillars the prisoner released alike from stones and chains lay flat on the ground his eyes closed
+his arms and legs apart like a crucified man taken down from a cross hardquanonne said the sheriff arise the prisoner did not move
+the groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go the hand fell back the other hand being raised fell back likewise the groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other
+the doctor approached and drawing from the pocket of his robe a little mirror of steel put it to the open mouth of hardquanonne then with his fingers he opened the eyelids they did not close again
+the glassy eyeballs remained fixed the doctor rose up and said he is dead and he added he laughed that killed him tis of little consequence
+said the sheriff after confession life or death is a mere formality then pointing to hardquanonne by a gesture with the nosegay of roses the sheriff gave the order to the wapentake
+the sheriff holding in his left hand the nosegay and in his right the white wand placed himself opposite gwynplaine who was still seated and made him a low bow then assuming another solemn attitude
+and looking gwynplaine in the face said to you here present we philip denzill parsons knight sheriff of the county of surrey
+our clerk and registrar and by our usual officers duly provided by the direct and special commands of her majesty in virtue of our commission and the rights and duties of our charge
+and with authority from the lord chancellor of england
+regard being had to the documents communicated by the admiralty after verification of attestations and signatures after declarations read and heard after confrontation made
+all the statements and legal information having been completed exhausted and brought to a good and just issue we signify and declare to you in order that right may be done
+that you are fermain clancharlie baron clancharlie and hunkerville marquis de corleone in sicily and a peer of england and god keep your lordship
+and he bowed to him the serjeant on the right the doctor the justice of the quorum the wapentake the secretary all the attendants except the executioner
+repeated his salutation still more respectfully and bowed to the ground before gwynplaine ah said gwynplaine awake me and he stood up pale as death
+it was clear that this man had been there in the shadow before gwynplaine had entered that he had a regular right of attendance
+the man was fat and pursy and wore a court wig and a travelling cloak he was rather old than young and very precise he saluted gwynplaine with ease and respect
+with the ease of a gentleman in waiting and without the awkwardness of a judge yes he said i have come to awaken you for twenty five years you have slept you have been dreaming
+it is time to awake you believe yourself to be gwynplaine you are clancharlie you believe yourself to be one of the people you belong to the peerage
+said the fat man that i am called barkilphedro that i am an officer of the admiralty that this waif the flask of hardquanonne was found on the beach and was brought to be unsealed by me
+and by order of the queen all necessary and legal formalities were carried out with the discretion necessary in a matter so delicate that the last form the confrontation has just been carried out
+a legislator and a judge a supreme judge a sovereign legislator dressed in purple and ermine equal to princes like unto emperors that you have on your brow the coronet of a peer
+happy and fortunate were the times when that most daring knight don quixote of la mancha was sent into the world
+but also of the tales and episodes contained in it which are in a measure no less pleasing ingenious and truthful than the history itself which resuming its thread carded spun and wound relates that just as the curate was going to offer consolation to cardenio
+all this was heard distinctly by the curate and those with him and as it seemed to them to be uttered close by as indeed it was they got up to look for the speaker and before they had gone twenty paces they discovered behind a rock seated at the foot of an ash tree
+a youth in the dress of a peasant whose face they were unable at the moment to see as he was leaning forward bathing his feet in the brook that flowed past they approached so silently that he did not perceive them being fully occupied in bathing his feet
+crush clods or to follow the plough and the oxen as their owner's dress suggested and so finding they had not been noticed the curate who was in front made a sign to the other two to conceal themselves behind some fragments of rock that lay there
+which they did observing closely what the youth was about he had on a loose double skirted dark brown jacket bound tight to his body with a white cloth he wore besides breeches and gaiters of brown cloth and on his head a brown montera and
+as this is not luscinda it is no human creature but a divine being the youth then took off the montera and shaking his head from side to side there broke loose and spread out a mass of hair that the beams of the sun might have envied
+by this they knew that what had seemed a peasant was a lovely woman nay the most beautiful the eyes of two of them had ever beheld or even cardenio's if they had not seen and known luscinda
+the long auburn tresses not only covered her shoulders but such was their length and abundance concealed her all round beneath their masses so that except the feet nothing of her form was visible she now used her hands as a comb
+and if her feet had seemed like bits of crystal in the water her hands looked like pieces of driven snow among her locks all which increased not only the admiration of the three beholders but their anxiety to learn who she was with this object they resolved to show themselves
+her delicate feet being unable to bear the roughness of the stones seeing which the three hastened towards her and the curate addressing her first said stay senora whoever you may be for those whom you see here only desire to be of service to you
+you have no need to attempt a flight so heedless for neither can your feet bear it nor we allow it taken by surprise and bewildered she made no reply to these words they however came towards her and the curate taking her hand went on to say
+what your dress would hide senora is made known to us by your hair a clear proof that it can be no trifling cause that has disguised your beauty in a garb so unworthy of it and sent it into solitudes like these where we have had the good fortune to find you
+if not to relieve your distress at least to offer you comfort for no distress so long as life lasts can be so oppressive or reach such a height as to make the sufferer refuse to listen to comfort offered with good intention and so senora
+but on the curate addressing some further words to the same effect to her sighing deeply she broke silence and said since the solitude of these mountains has been unable to conceal me and the escape of my dishevelled tresses will not allow my tongue to deal in falsehoods
+it would be idle for me now to make any further pretence of what if you were to believe me you would believe more out of courtesy than for any other reason
+this being so i say i thank you sirs for the offer you have made me which places me under the obligation of complying with the request you have made of me though i fear the account i shall give you of my misfortunes will excite in you as much concern as compassion
+for you will be unable to suggest anything to remedy them or any consolation to alleviate them however that my honour may not be left a matter of doubt in your minds now that you have discovered me to be a woman
+i feel bound to tell what i would willingly keep secret if i could all this she who was now seen to be a lovely woman delivered without any hesitation with so much ease and in so sweet a voice that they were not less charmed by her intelligence than by her beauty
+and as they again repeated their offers and entreaties to her to fulfil her promise she without further pressing first modestly covering her feet and gathering up her hair seated herself on a stone with the three placed around her and
+after an effort to restrain some tears that came to her eyes in a clear and steady voice began her story thus
+lowly in origin but so wealthy that if birth had conferred as much on them as fortune they would have had nothing left to desire nor should i have had reason to fear trouble like that in which i find myself now
+for it may be that my ill fortune came of theirs in not having been nobly born it is true they are not so low that they have any reason to be ashamed of their condition
+they are in short peasants
+and as the saying is old rusty christians but so rich that by their wealth and free handed way of life they are coming by degrees to be considered gentlefolk by birth and even by position
+and as they have no other child to make their heir and are affectionate parents i was one of the most indulged daughters that ever parents indulged
+all their wishes centred and mine were in accordance with theirs for i knew their worth and as i was mistress of their hearts so was i also of their possessions through me they engaged or dismissed their servants
+through my hands passed the accounts and returns of what was sown and reaped the oil mills the wine presses the count of the flocks and herds the beehives all in short that a rich farmer like my father has or can have i had under my care
+for experience taught me that music soothes the troubled mind and relieves weariness of spirit such was the life i led in my parents house and if i have depicted it thus minutely it is not out of ostentation or to let you know that i am rich but
+and unseen as i thought by any except the servants of the house for when i went to mass it was so early in the morning and i was so closely attended by my mother and the women of the household and
+for that is the name of the younger son of the duke i told of the moment the speaker mentioned the name of don fernando
+for he began to suspect who she was she however without noticing the excitement of cardenio continuing her story went on to say
+and i was not displeased at seeing my praises in his letters for however ugly we women may be it seems to me it always pleases us to hear ourselves called beautiful but that my own sense of right was opposed to all this
+as well as the repeated advice of my parents who now very plainly perceived don fernando's purpose for he cared very little if all the world knew it they told me they trusted and confided their honour and good name to my virtue
+and rectitude alone and bade me consider the disparity between don fernando and myself from which i might conclude that his intentions whatever he might say to the contrary had for their aim his own pleasure rather than my advantage
+and if i were at all desirous of opposing an obstacle to his unreasonable suit they were ready they said to marry me at once to anyone i preferred either among the leading people of our own town or
+and i never gave don fernando a word in reply that could hold out to him any hope of success however remote all this caution of mine which he must have taken for coyness had apparently the effect of increasing his wanton appetite for
+or at least to secure additional protectors to watch over me and this intelligence or suspicion made him act as you shall hear one night as i was in my chamber with no other companion than a damsel who waited on me with
+i had no power to utter a cry nor i think did he give me time to utter one as he immediately approached me and taking me in his arms for overwhelmed as i was i was powerless i say to help myself he began to make such
+professions to me that i know not how falsehood could have had the power of dressing them up to seem so like truth and the traitor contrived that his tears should vouch for his words and his sighs for his sincerity
+and i began in some degree to recover myself i said to him with more courage than i thought i could have possessed
+i have my self respect as much as you a lord and gentleman with me your violence will be to no purpose your wealth will have no weight your words will have no power to deceive me nor your sighs or tears to soften me
+were i to see any of the things i speak of in him whom my parents gave me as a husband his will should be mine and mine should be bounded by his and my honour being preserved even though my inclinations were not
+and this i say lest you should suppose that any but my lawful husband shall ever win anything of me if that
+be the only scruple you feel fairest dorothea for that is the name of this unhappy being see here i give you my hand to be yours and let heaven
+but he was unwilling to interrupt the story and wished to hear the end of what he already all but knew so he merely said what
+i have heard of another of the same name who can perhaps match your misfortunes but proceed by and by i may tell you something that will astonish you as much as it will excite your compassion dorothea was struck by cardenio's words as well as by his strange and miserable attire
+and begged him if he knew anything concerning her to tell it to her at once for if fortune had left her any blessing it was courage to bear whatever calamity might fall upon her as she felt sure that none could reach her capable of increasing in any degree what she endured already
+i would not let the occasion pass senora replied cardenio of telling you what i think
+and one of his vassals i told him not to let my beauty such as it was blind him
+for marriages so unequal never brought happiness nor did they continue long to afford the enjoyment they began with all this that i have now repeated i said to him and much more which i cannot recollect but it had no effect in inducing him to forego his purpose
+at the same time i argued the matter briefly in my own mind saying to myself i shall not be the first who has risen through marriage from a lowly to a lofty station nor will don fernando be the first whom beauty or as is more likely a blind attachment
+has led to mate himself below his rank then since i am introducing no new usage or practice
+passed through my mind in a moment but the oaths of don fernando the witnesses he appealed to the tears he shed and lastly the charms of his person and his high bred grace which accompanied by such signs of genuine love
+these were the things that more than all began to influence me and lead me unawares to my ruin i called my waiting maid to me that there might be a witness on earth besides those in heaven and again don fernando renewed and repeated his oaths
+called down upon himself a thousand curses hereafter should he fail to keep his promise shed more tears redoubled his sighs
+and so i was left by my maid and ceased to be one and he became a traitor and a perjured man the day which followed the night of my misfortune did not come so quickly i imagine as don fernando wished
+who was indeed the one who had admitted him gained the street before daybreak but on taking leave of me he told me though not with as much earnestness and fervour as when he came that i might rest assured of his faith and of the sanctity and sincerity of his oaths
+and to confirm his words he drew a rich ring off his finger and placed it upon mine he then took his departure and i was left i know not whether sorrowful or happy all i can say is i was left agitated and troubled in mind and almost bewildered by what had taken place
+and i had not the spirit or else it did not occur to me to chide my maid for the treachery she had been guilty of in concealing don fernando in my chamber for as yet i was unable to make up my mind whether what had befallen me was for good or evil
+i told don fernando at parting that as i was now his he might see me on other nights in the same way until it should be his pleasure to let the matter become known but except the following night he came no more nor for more than a month could i catch a glimpse of him in the street or in church
+while i wearied myself with watching for one
+i remember too how my maid heard those words in reproof of her audacity that she had not heard before and how i was forced to put a constraint on my tears and on the expression of my countenance not to give my parents cause to ask me why i was so melancholy
+and drive me to invent falsehoods in reply but all this was suddenly brought to an end for the time came when all such considerations were disregarded and there was no further question of honour when my patience gave way and the secret of my heart became known abroad
+it was said too that her name was luscinda and that at the betrothal some strange things had happened
+dorothea however did not interrupt her story but went on in these words this sad intelligence reached my ears
+and whom i entreated to accompany me to the city where i heard my enemy was
+an affair of such notoriety in the city that it was the talk of every knot of idlers in the street he said that on the night of don fernando's betrothal with luscinda as soon as she had consented to be his bride by saying yes she was taken with a sudden fainting fit
+and that on the bridegroom approaching to unlace the bosom of her dress to give her air
+on seeing this don fernando persuaded that luscinda had befooled slighted and trifled with him assailed her before she had recovered from her swoon and tried to stab her with the dagger that had been found and would have succeeded had not her parents and those who were present prevented him
+it was said moreover that don fernando went away at once and that luscinda did not recover from her prostration until the next day when she told her parents how she was really the bride of that cardenio i have mentioned i learned besides that cardenio
+according to report had been present at the betrothal and that upon seeing her betrothed contrary to his expectation he had quitted the city in despair leaving behind him a letter declaring the wrong luscinda had done him and his intention of going where no one should ever see him again
+all this was a matter of notoriety in the city and everyone spoke of it especially when it became known that luscinda was missing from her father's house and from the city for she was not to be found anywhere to the distraction of her parents who knew not what steps to take to recover her what i learned
+revived my hopes and i was better pleased not to have found don fernando than to find him married for it seemed to me that the door was not yet entirely shut upon relief in my case and i thought that perhaps heaven had put this impediment in the way of the second marriage
+to lead him to recognise his obligations under the former one and reflect that as a christian he was bound to consider his soul above all human objects all this passed through my mind and i strove to comfort myself without comfort
+indulging in faint and distant hopes of cherishing that life that i now abhor but while i was in the city uncertain what to do as i could not find don fernando i heard notice given by the public crier offering a great reward to anyone who should find me
+and giving the particulars of my age and of the very dress i wore and i heard it said that the lad who came with me had taken me away from my father's house a thing that cut me to the heart showing how low my good name had fallen since it was not enough that i should lose it by my flight
+but they must add with whom i had fled and that one so much beneath me and so unworthy of my consideration the instant i heard the notice i quitted the city with my servant who now began to show signs of wavering in his fidelity to me and the same night for fear of discovery
+he laid aside the entreaties which he had employed at first and began to use violence but just heaven that seldom fails to watch over and aid good intentions so aided mine that with my slight strength and with little exertion
+i pushed him over a precipice where i left him whether dead or alive i know not and then with greater speed than seemed possible in my terror and fatigue i made my way into the mountains without any other thought or purpose save that of hiding myself among them and escaping my father
+and those despatched in search of me by his orders it is now i know not how many months since with this object i came here where i met a herdsman who engaged me as his servant at a place in the heart of this sierra
+but all my care and pains were unavailing for my master made the discovery that i was not a man and harboured the same base designs as my servant
+then up got little john and taking the bag of gold which he thrust into his bosom
+and on the other as well little john knew to the merry blue boar inn here little john suddenly ceased whistling and stopped in the middle of the path first he looked up and then he looked down and then tilting his cap over one eye he slowly scratched the back part of his head for thus it was
+at the sight of these two roads two voices began to alarum within him the one crying there lies the road to the blue boar inn a can of brown october and a merry night with sweet companions such as thou mayst find there the other
+looking up into the blue sky across which bright clouds were sailing like silver boats and swallows skimming in circling flight quoth he
+for i know my good master would not have me wet to the skin so without more ado off he strode down the path that lay the way of his likings now there was no sign of any foul weather but
+fresh cans of ale were brought and with jest and song and merry tales the hours slipped away on fleeting wings none thought of time or tide till the night was so far gone that little john put by the thought of setting forth upon his journey again that night and so
+bided at the blue boar inn until the morrow now it was an ill piece of luck for little john that he left his duty for his pleasure and he paid a great score for it as we are all apt to do in the same case as you shall see
+and taking his stout pikestaff in his hand he set forth upon his journey once more as though he would make up for lost time in the good town of blyth there lived a stout tanner celebrated far and near for feats of strength and many tough bouts at wrestling and the quarterstaff
+besides all this he dearly loved the longbow
+so that the king's rangers kept a shrewd eye upon him and his doings for arthur a bland's house was apt to have aplenty of meat in it that was more like venison than the law allowed now arthur had been to nottingham town the day before little john set forth on his errand
+there to sell a halfscore of tanned cowhides at the dawn of the same day that little john left the inn he started from nottingham homeward for blyth his way led all in the dewy morn past the verge of sherwood forest where the birds were welcoming the lovely day with a great and merry jubilee
+across the tanner's shoulders was slung his stout quarterstaff ever near enough to him to be gripped quickly and on his head was a cap of doubled cowhide so tough that it could hardly be cloven even by a broadsword now quoth arthur a bland to himself
+mayhap i may chance to catch a sight of the dainty brown darlings thus early in the morn for there was nothing he loved better than to look upon a tripping herd of deer
+accordingly quitting the path he went peeping this way and that through the underbrush spying now here and now there with all the wiles of a master of woodcraft and of one who had more than once donned a doublet of lincoln green
+that springing from the dewy grass hung aloft on quivering wings in the yellow sunlight pouring forth its song that fell like a falling star from the sky his luck led him away from the highway not far from the spot where arthur a bland was peeping this way and that through the leaves of the thickets
+hearing a rustling of the branches little john stopped and presently caught sight of the brown cowhide cap of the tanner moving among the bushes i do much wonder
+quoth little john to himself what yon knave is after that he should go thus peeping and peering about i verily believe that yon scurvy varlet is no better than a thief and cometh here after our own and the good king's dun deer for
+by much roving in the forest little john had come to look upon all the deer in sherwood as belonging to robin hood and his band as much as to good king harry nay
+little john trod upon a stick which snapped under his foot whereupon hearing the noise the tanner turned quickly and caught sight of the yeoman seeing that the tanner had spied him out little john put a bold face upon the matter
+but an honest craftsman as for my countenance it is what it is and for the matter of that thine own is none too pretty thou saucy fellow ha quoth little john in a great loud voice wouldst thou give me backtalk
+i and my friends do take good care of our good sovereign's deer i care not who thou art answered the bold tanner and unless thou hast many more of thy kind by thee thou canst never make arthur a bland cry a mercy
+for i will give thee such a drubbing as ne'er hast thou had in all thy life before take thy staff in thy hand fellow for i will not smite an unarmed man
+for he too had talked himself into a fume big words ne'er killed so much as a mouse who art thou that talkest so freely of cracking the head of arthur a bland if i do not tan thy hide this day as ne'er i tanned a calf's hide in all my life before
+nay i pass not for length answered the tanner my staff is long enough to knock down a calf so look to thyself fellow i say again so without more ado each gripped his staff in the middle and with fell and angry looks they came slowly together
+now news had been brought to robin hood how that little john instead of doing his bidding had passed by duty for pleasure and so had stopped overnight with merry company at the blue boar inn instead of going straight to ancaster
+so being vexed to his heart by this he set forth at dawn of day to seek little john at the blue boar or at least to meet the yeoman on the way and ease his heart of what he thought of the matter
+as thus he strode along in anger putting together the words he would use to chide little john he heard of a sudden loud and angry voices
+at this robin hood stopped and listened surely quoth he to himself that is little john's voice and he is talking in anger also methinks the other is strange to my ears
+now heaven forfend that my good trusty little john should have fallen into the hands of the king's rangers i must see to this matter and that quickly thus spoke robin hood to himself all his anger passing away like a breath from the windowpane
+at the thought that perhaps his trusty right hand man was in some danger of his life so cautiously
+ha quoth robin to himself here is merry sport afoot now i would give three golden angels from my own pocket if yon stout fellow would give little john a right sound drubbing it would please me to see him well thumped for having failed in my bidding
+i fear me though there is but poor chance of my seeing such a pleasant sight so saying he stretched himself at length upon the ground that he might not only see the sport the better but that he might enjoy the merry sight at his ease
+each watching for a chance to take the other unaware and so get in the first blow at last little john struck like a flash and rap the tanner met the blow and turned it aside and then smote back at little john who also turned the blow and so this mighty battle began
+never had i thought to see little john so evenly matched in all my life belike though
+his cudgel flying from his hand as he fell then raising his staff stout arthur dealt him another blow upon the ribs hold roared little john
+hast thou had enough asked the tanner grimly holding his staff aloft ay marry and more than enough and thou dost own that i am the better man of the two yea truly and a murrain seize thee
+said little john sitting up and feeling his ribs where the tanner had cudgeled him i make my vow my ribs feel as though every one of them were broken in twain
+i did think there was never a man in all nottinghamshire could do to me what thou hast done this day and so thought i also cried robin hood bursting out of the thicket and shouting with laughter till the tears ran down his cheeks
+hand and foot to any man in all merry england i was seeking thee to chide thee for leaving my bidding undone but thou hast been paid all i owed thee
+marry a did reach out his arm full length while thou stood gaping at him and with a pretty rap tumbled thee over as never have i seen one tumbled before so spoke bold robin
+and now what may be thy name ha arthur a bland quoth robin i have heard thy name before good fellow thou didst break the crown of a friend of mine at the fair at ely last october the folk there call him jock o nottingham we call him will scathelock
+this poor fellow whom thou hast so belabored is counted the best hand at the quarterstaff in all merry england his name is little john and mine robin hood
+nay quoth little john testily at the same time rising carefully as though his bones had been made of glass i can help myself good fellow without thy aid and let me tell thee had it not been for that vile cowskin cap of thine
+i will follow thee to the ends of the earth good master and not a herd of dun deer in all the forest but shall know the sound of the twang of my bowstring as for thee little john said robin turning to him and laughing
+there are other inns that thou knowest yet hereabouts
+chapter ninety nine the law we have seen how quietly
+the fact being that every one was too much occupied in his or her own affairs to think of theirs we will leave the banker contemplating the enormous magnitude of his debt before the phantom of bankruptcy and follow the baroness
+who after being momentarily crushed under the weight of the blow which had struck her had gone to seek her usual adviser lucien debray the baroness had looked forward to this marriage as a means of ridding her of a guardianship which over a girl of eugenie's character
+for in the tacit relations which maintain the bond of family union the mother to maintain her ascendancy over her daughter must never fail to be a model of wisdom and a type of perfection now
+an expression which seemed to imply that she understood all her mother's amorous and pecuniary relationships with the intimate secretary moreover
+not only because he was a source of dissension and scandal under the paternal roof but because she had at once classed him in that catalogue of bipeds whom plato endeavors to withdraw from the appellation of men
+unfortunately in this world of ours each person views things through a certain medium and so is prevented from seeing in the same light as others and madame danglars therefore very much regretted that the marriage of eugenie had not taken place
+not only because the match was good and likely to insure the happiness of her child but because it would also set her at liberty she ran therefore to debray who after having like the rest of paris witnessed the contract scene and the scandal attending it
+had retired in haste to his club where he was chatting with some friends upon the events which served as a subject of conversation for three fourths of that city known as the capital of the world at the precise time when madame danglars dressed in black and concealed in a long veil
+was ascending the stairs leading to debray's apartments
+debray was occupied in repelling the insinuations of a friend who tried to persuade him
+still when he recollected the independent proud spirit of eugenie he positively rejected it as utterly impossible though the same thought again continually recurred and found a resting place in his heart tea play
+and the conversation which had become interesting during the discussion of such serious affairs
+awaited the return of debray in the little green room seated between two baskets of flowers which she had that morning sent and which it must be confessed
+with so much care that his absence was half excused in the eyes of the poor woman at twenty minutes of twelve madame danglars tired of waiting returned home women of a certain grade are like prosperous grisettes in one respect they seldom return home after twelve o'clock
+the baroness returned to the hotel with as much caution as eugenie used in leaving it she ran lightly up stairs and with an aching heart entered her apartment contiguous as we know to that of eugenie she was fearful of exciting any remark
+and believed firmly in her daughter's innocence and fidelity to the paternal roof she listened at eugenie's door and hearing no sound tried to enter but the bolts were in place madame danglars then concluded that the young girl had been overcome with the terrible excitement of the evening
+and had gone to bed and to sleep she called the maid and questioned her mademoiselle eugenie said the maid
+after which they desired me to leave saying that they needed me no longer
+madame danglars therefore went to bed without a shadow of suspicion and began to muse over the recent events in proportion as her memory became clearer the occurrences of the evening were revealed in their true light what she had taken for confusion was a tumult
+who had been afflicted with as severe a blow through her husband and son eugenie she said to herself is lost and so are we the affair as it will be reported will cover us with shame
+for in a society such as ours satire inflicts a painful and incurable wound
+and her glance was turned towards heaven
+and out of a fault nay even a vice sometimes produces a blessing and then her thoughts cleaving through space like a bird in the air rested on cavalcanti this andrea was a wretch a robber an assassin
+and yet his manners showed the effects of a sort of education if not a complete one
+supported by an honorable name how could she extricate herself from this labyrinth to whom would she apply to help her out of this painful situation debray to whom she had run with the first instinct of a woman towards the man she loves and who yet betrays her
+debray could but give her advice she must apply to some one more powerful than he
+but no on reflection the procureur was not a merciless man and it was not the magistrate slave to his duties but the friend the loyal friend who roughly but firmly cut into the very core of the corruption
+it was not the executioner but the surgeon who wished to withdraw the honor of danglars from ignominious association with the disgraced young man they had presented to the world as their son in law and since villefort the friend of danglars had acted in this way
+no one could suppose that he had been previously acquainted with or had lent himself to any of andrea's intrigues
+appeared to the baroness as if shaped for their mutual advantage but the inflexibility of the procureur should stop there she would see him the next day and if she could not make him fail in his duties as a magistrate she would at least
+obtain all the indulgence he could allow she would invoke the past recall old recollections she would supplicate him by the remembrance of guilty yet happy days
+he had only to turn his eyes on one side and allow andrea to fly and follow up the crime under that shadow of guilt called contempt of court and after this reasoning she slept easily
+at nine o'clock next morning she arose and without ringing for her maid or giving the least sign of her activity she dressed herself in the same simple style as on the previous night then running down stairs she left the hotel walked to the rue de provence
+for the last month this wretched house had presented the gloomy appearance of a lazaretto infected with the plague some of the apartments were closed within and without the shutters were only opened to admit a minute's air showing the scared face of a footman
+and the neighbors would say to each other in a low voice
+madame danglars involuntarily shuddered at the desolate aspect of the mansion
+three times did the bell ring with a dull heavy sound seeming to participate in the general sadness before the concierge appeared and peeped through the door which he opened just wide enough to allow his words to be heard
+he saw a lady a fashionable elegantly dressed lady
+first madame who are you who am i you know me well enough we no longer know any one madame
+where do you come from oh this is too much madame these are my orders excuse me your name the baroness danglars you have seen me twenty times
+possibly madame and now what do you want
+madame this is precaution not impertinence
+or without speaking to the procureur well i have business with the procureur is it pressing business you can imagine so since i have not even brought my carriage out yet but enough of this here is my card
+take it to your master madame will await my return yes go the concierge closed the door leaving madame danglars in the street she had not long to wait
+directly afterwards the door was opened wide enough to admit her and when she had passed through it was again shut without losing sight of her for an instant the concierge took a whistle from his pocket as soon as they entered the court and blew it
+you will excuse this poor fellow madame
+in the court showing his merchandise was a tradesman who had been admitted with the same precautions the baroness ascended the steps she felt herself strongly infected with the sadness which seemed to magnify her own
+preoccupied as madame danglars had been with the object of her visit the treatment she had received from these underlings appeared to her so insulting that she began by complaining of it
+raising his head bowed down by grief looked up at her with so sad a smile that her complaints died upon her lips forgive my servants he said for a terror i cannot blame them for from being suspected they have become suspicious
+you too then are unhappy she said yes madame replied the magistrate then you pity me sincerely madame and you understand what brings me here
+you wish to speak to me about the circumstance which has just happened yes sir a fearful misfortune you mean a mischance a mischance repeated the baroness alas madame
+said the procureur with his imperturbable calmness of manner i consider those alone misfortunes which are irreparable and do you suppose this will be forgotten everything will be forgotten madame said villefort
+your daughter will be married to morrow if not to day in a week if not to morrow and i do not think you can regret the intended husband of your daughter madame danglars gazed on villefort stupefied to find him so almost insultingly calm
+am i come to a friend she asked in a tone full of mournful dignity
+said villefort whose pale cheeks became slightly flushed as he gave her the assurance and truly this assurance carried him back to different events from those now occupying the baroness and him well then be more affectionate my dear villefort
+said the baroness speak to me not as a magistrate but as a friend and when i am in bitter anguish of spirit do not tell me that i ought to be gay villefort bowed when i hear misfortunes named madame
+he said i have within the last few months contracted the bad habit of thinking of my own and then i cannot help drawing up an egotistical parallel in my mind that is the reason that by the side of my misfortunes
+but this annoys you let us change the subject you were saying madame i came to ask you my friend said the baroness what will be done with this impostor impostor
+certainly madame you appear to extenuate some cases and exaggerate others impostor indeed
+is nothing more nor less than an assassin sir i do not deny the justice of your correction
+come forget him for a moment and instead of pursuing him let him go you are too late madame the orders are issued
+i hope so if they should arrest him i know that sometimes prisoners afford means of escape will you leave him in prison the procureur shook his head at least keep him there till my daughter be married
+impossible madame justice has its formalities what even for me said the baroness half jesting half in earnest for all even for myself among the rest
+replied villefort ah exclaimed the baroness without expressing the ideas which the exclamation betrayed villefort looked at her with that piercing glance which reads the secrets of the heart
+you refer to the terrible rumors spread abroad in the world that the deaths which have kept me in mourning for the last three months
+have not happened by natural means i was not thinking of that replied madame danglars quickly yes you were thinking of it and with justice
+you who pursue crime so vindictively answer now
+the baroness became pale you were saying this were you not well i own it i will answer you
+then resting both hands upon his desk he said in a voice more hollow than usual there are crimes which remain unpunished because the criminals are unknown
+villefort here extended his hand toward a large crucifix placed opposite to his desk when they are discovered i swear to you by all i hold most sacred
+now after the oath i have just taken and which i will keep madame dare you ask for mercy for that wretch but sir are you sure he is as guilty as they say listen
+this is his description benedetto condemned at the age of sixteen for five years to the galleys for forgery he promised well as you see first a runaway then an assassin
+and who is this wretch who can tell a vagabond a corsican has no one owned him no one his parents are unknown
+but who was the man who brought him from lucca another rascal like himself perhaps his accomplice the baroness clasped her hands
+for heaven's sake madame said villefort with a firmness of expression not altogether free from harshness for heaven's sake
+what am i the law has the law any eyes to witness your grief
+has the law a memory for all those soft recollections you endeavor to recall no madame
+and when it commands it strikes you will tell me that i am a living being and not a code a man and not a volume look at me madame
+have mankind treated me as a brother have they loved me have they spared me has any one shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at my hands no madame they struck me always struck me
+woman siren that you are
+well be it so let me blush for the faults you know and perhaps perhaps for even more than those but having sinned myself it may be more deeply than others
+i never rest till i have torn the disguises from my fellow creatures and found out their weaknesses i have always found them and more i repeat it with joy with triumph i have always found some proof of human perversity or error
+every criminal i condemn seems to me living evidence that i am not a hideous exception to the rest alas alas alas all the world is wicked let us therefore strike at wickedness
+with a feverish rage which gave a ferocious eloquence to his words
+this young man though a murderer is an orphan abandoned by everybody so much the worse or rather so much the better
+but this is trampling on the weak sir the weakness of a murderer his dishonor reflects upon us
+oh sir exclaimed the baroness you are without pity for others well then i tell you they will have no mercy on you be it so said villefort raising his arms to heaven at least
+delay the trial till the next assizes
+no madame said villefort instructions have been given
+five days are more than i require
+i sometimes lose all recollection of the past and then i experience the same sort of happiness i can imagine the dead feel still it is better than suffering but sir he has fled let him escape inaction is a pardonable offence
+i tell you it is too late early this morning the telegraph was employed and at this very minute
+a dragoon has brought this despatch from the minister of the interior
+madame danglars trembled with fear villefort started with joy arrested he exclaimed he was taken at compiegne and all is over
+pale and cold adieu sir she said adieu madame replied the king's attorney as in an almost joyful manner he conducted her to the door
+with her white paint and her scarlet smokestack the inverashiel one of the two small steamers that during the summer months plied up and down the loch and incidentally carried on communication between inverashiel and crianan
+was a picturesque addition to the landscape as she approached the wooden landing stage that stood half a mile below the promontory on which the castle was built it was the morning of friday the day following the funeral
+in spite of the brilliant sunset of the previous evening the loch lay dark and still its surface wore an oily treacherous look every detail of the inverashiel's tub like shape was reflected and beautifully distorted in the water
+as the few passengers who were waiting for her crossed the short gangway a shower burst over the loch and in a few minutes had driven every one into the little cabin except the two or three men who constituted the officers and crew of the steamer
+one of these was in the act of slackening the rope by which the boat had been warped alongside when a running gesticulating figure appeared in the distance shouting to them to wait for him waited for accordingly he was and in a few minutes gimblet
+rather out of breath after his run hurried on board and with a word of apology and thanks to the obliging skipper turned like the other passengers towards the shelter of the cabin with his hand on the knob of the door he hesitated
+through the glass top he had just caught sight of a figure that seemed familiar he had seen that tweed before the short girl with her back to him was wearing the dress in which he had seen her on the wednesday night
+searching among lord ashiel's papers in the library at the castle it was julia romaninov beyond a doubt and gimblet drew back quickly and took up his position behind the funnels on the after deck
+in spite of the rain he remained there until the boat reached crianan leaning against the rail with his collar turned up and his soft felt hat pulled down over his ears so that little of him was visible except the tip of his nose
+his mind always active was busier than usual as he watched the ripples roll away in endless succession from the sides of the inverashiel which looked so strangely less white on closer inspection
+or followed the smooth soaring movements of the gulls that swooped and circled around her
+as they drew near to crianan he concealed himself still more carefully behind a pile of crates and not till miss romaninov had left the steamer did he emerge from his hiding place and step warily off the boat
+the young lady was still in sight making her way up the steep pitch of the main street and the detective followed her discreetly loitering before shop windows as if fascinated by the display of scottish homespuns
+or samples of royal stewart tartan and taking an extraordinary interest in fishing tackle and trout flies but though the girl looked back more than once the little man in the ulster who was so intent on picking his way between the puddles
+did not apparently provide her with any food for suspicion and she made no attempt to see who was so carefully sheltered beneath the umbrella he carried at last they left the cobble stones of the little town and emerged upon the high road
+which here ran across the open moorland it was difficult now to continue the pursuit unobserved and gimblet became absorbed in the contemplation of an enormous cairngorm
+which was masquerading as an article of personal adornment in the window of the last outlying shop from this position not without its embarrassments since a couple of barefooted children came instantly to the door where they stood and stared at him unblinkingly
+he saw the russian advancing at a rapid pace across the moor and look where he would could perceive no means of keeping up with her unobserved upon the bare side of the hill just as he decided that the distance separating them had increased to an extent
+which warranted his continuing the chase he joyfully saw her slacken her pace and at the same moment a man who must have been sitting behind a boulder beside the road rose to his feet out of the heather and came forward to meet her
+for ten long minutes they stood talking driving poor gimblet to the desperate expedient of entering the shop and demanding a closer acquaintance with the cairngorm it is humiliating to relate that he recoiled before it when it was placed in his hand
+and nearly fled again into the road however he pulled himself together and held the proud proprietress a gaunt grey haired woman with knitting needles ever clicking in her dexterous hands
+in conversation upon the theme of its unique beauties until the subject was exhausted to the point of collapse every other minute he must stroll to the door and take a look up and down the road a friend he explained had promised to meet him in that place
+and though the shopwoman plainly doubted his veracity and kept a sharp eye that he did not take to his heels with the cairngorm she did not go so far as to suggest his removing himself from the zone of temptation
+at last when for the twentieth time he put his nose round the doorpost he saw that the pair had separated and were walking in opposite directions the girl continuing on her way while the man returned to the town
+he was indeed not a hundred yards off gimblet plunged once more into the shop and fastened upon some pencils with a zeal not very convincing after his disappointing vacillation over the brooch
+which she pressed upon him as particularly suited to his needs and charged him fourpence for by the time he issued forth into the open air his pockets full of packages the stranger had passed the shop and was turning the corner of the next house
+to him now gimblet devoted his powers of shadowing there was no great difficulty about it the man walked straight before him looking neither to the right nor to the left
+narrow pointed footprints that were deeply impressed in the muddy places he had no doubt they were the same as those he had noticed on the beach on the day of his arrival at inverashiel
+the stranger turned into the crianan hotel which stands on the lake front fifty yards from the landing place of the loch steamers gimblet passed the door without pausing and went down to the loch where he mingled with the boatmen and loafers who congregated by the waterside
+he kept however a strict eye on the door of the hotel and after a quarter of an hour saw the object of his attentions emerge with fishing rod and basket
+but now he had a good look as he passed close beside him he was a tall fair man evidently a foreigner but with nothing very striking about his appearance a pointed yellow beard hid the lower part of his face
+and for the rest his nose was short his eyes blue and close together and his forehead high and narrow he looked closely at gimblet as he went by and for a moment the eyes of the two men met
+both equally inscrutable and unflinching then the stranger glanced aside and strode on to where a small boat lay moored the detective turned his back while the fair man got in and pushed off into the loch gentleman going fishing
+he's axtra fond o the feeshin was the reply for a that he's a foreign shentleman waiting till the boat had become a distant speck on the face of the waters gimblet made his way into the inn and entered into conversation with the landlord
+on the pretext of engaging rooms for a friend the landlord was sorry but the house was full
+folks tak their rooms a month in advance they come here for the fishin on the loch
+indeed i can well believe that gimblet assured him i suppose you get a lot of tourists passing through though americans for instance
+i seldom hae an american bidin here they maistly gang doon the loch said the innkeeper i thought said gimblet that was a foreign looking man whom i saw a little while ago coming out of the hotel
+a polish gintleman he is count pretovsky a vary nice gintleman i couldna just cae him a tourist he's vary keen on the fishin
+a great many sporting foreigners come to our island nowadays gimblet remarked does he get many fish
+dear me said gimblet just what my friend wants i'm sorry you can't take him in i must tell him to write in good time next year if he wants a room as he parted from the landlord upon the doorstep of the crianan hotel the rob roy
+the second of the two loch steamers was edging away from the pier under a cloud of black smoke from her funnel the rain had stopped the passengers were scattered on the deck
+and in the bows of the vessel the detective caught sight of julia romaninov's tweed clad form she was leaning against the rail and gazing at a distant part of the loch where a black speck
+it was as gimblet had expected and though he chafed at the delay he regretted less than he would have otherwise that he could not catch the rob roy the inverashiel would be due on her homeward trip in a couple of hours time
+and meanwhile he had other business that must be attended to he went first to the post office where he registered and posted to scotland yard a packet he had brought with him then after asking his way of the sociable landlord of the hotel
+he proceeded to the police station a single storied stone building standing at the end of a side street here he made himself known to the inspector and imparted information which made that personage open his eyes considerably wider than was his custom
+if you will bring one of your men and come with me yourself said gimblet at the conclusion of the interview
+in the meantime there will be no harm done by a watch being kept on the foreign gentleman who is at this moment trolling for salmon on the loch the inspector agreed and when the inverashiel started an hour later on her voyage down the loch
+she carried the two policemen on her deck as well as the most notorious detective she was ever likely to have the privilege of conveying it was nearly three o'clock when they landed on the inverashiel pier
+the weather which for the last few hours had looked like clearing had now turned definitely to rain clouds had descended on the hills and the trees in the valleys stooped and dripped in the saturated mist laden air
+gimblet conducted the men to the cottage where lady ruth anxiously awaited them if you don't mind their staying here he suggested to her while i go up to the castle and consult lord ashiel about a magistrate it will be most convenient on account of the distance
+by all means said lady ruth i feel safer with them i expect you will find miss byrne up there she has not come in to lunch and i think she probably met mark and went to lunch at the castle she ought to know better than to go to lunch alone with a young man
+and i am just wondering if she has changed her mind and accepted him after all girls are kittle cattle but i've got quite fond of that one and i hope she's not forgotten poor david so soon i really am feeling anxious about her
+one hot summer day a few months after the marriage juliet returning to the consulate after a morning spent in very active exercise upon a tennis court was met on the doorstep by dora the youngest of the clarency butchers
+who was awaiting her approach in a high state of excitement hurry up juliet she cried as soon as she could make herself heard you'll never guess what there is for you something you don't often get what is it said juliet coming up the steps
+guess a present no at least i suppose not but there may be one inside inside oh then it's a parcel asked juliet good humouredly she felt a mild curiosity
+which she from the advanced age of twenty three could not look upon as particularly exciting no not a parcel cried dora dancing round her it's a letter there now
+then why do you say it's something i don't often get asked juliet suspiciously i often get letters it's an invitation to the gertignes dance i expect no no it isn't it's a letter from england
+it's very good of you to take such an interest in my fate juliet replied as she pulled off her gloves and went to the side table for the letter as a matter of fact she was a good deal excited now for what the child said was true enough
+she might even have gone further and said that she had never had a letter from england except while sir arthur was there on leave it was a large envelope addressed in a clerk's handwriting and she came to the conclusion as she tore it open
+that it must be an advertisement from some shop dear madam we shall esteem it a favour if you can make it convenient to call upon us one day next week upon a matter of business connected with a member of your family
+it is impossible to give you further details in a letter but if you will grant us the interview we venture to ask
+to be a reasonable probability of the result being of advantage to yourself trusting that you will let us have an immediate reply in which you will kindly name the day and hour when we may expect to see you we are yours faithfully
+solicitors the address was a street in holborn juliet read the letter through and straightway read it through again with a beating heart what did it mean was it possible she was going to find her own family at last
+she was recalled to the present by the voice of dora whom she now perceived to be reading the letter over her shoulder with unblushing interest say said dora isn't it exciting something to your advantage
+just what they put in the agony column when they leave you a fortune i bet your long lost uncle in the west has kicked the bucket and left you all his ill gotten gains mark my words you'll come back from england a lovely heiress
+i do wish the others would come in there's no one in the house except sir arthur where is he said juliet putting the sheet of paper back into the envelope and slipping it under her waistband you know dora
+i wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself i'm surprised at you i shouldn't have read it if you'd been quicker about telling me what was in it retorted dora it's not at all a nice thing to put temptation in the way of a little girl like me
+do you suppose i'm made of cast iron she departed with an injured air and juliet went to look for the consul what is it he asked as she put the envelope into his hand a letter you want me to read not a proposal eh
+hullo what's this he read it through carefully why juliet he said when he had finished this is very interesting isn't it it looks as if you were going to find out something about yourself doesn't it
+after all these years well well you think i must go then she said a little doubtfully go of course i should go if i were you why not
+no no i see no reason to suppose such a thing i know the firm of findlay and ince quite well by name and reputation oh i hope they will tell me who i am cried juliet have you no idea at all father
+no my dear you know i have not besides i promised lena i would never ask you are the child of a friend of hers that is all i know i think she scarcely realized how hard it would be for you not to know more when you grew up
+i often think that if she had lived she would have told you before now if you promised her not to ask i won't ask either said juliet loyally but i hope they'll tell me it will be different won't it if they tell me without my asking
+i think you might ask said sir arthur it is absurd that you should be bound by a promise that i made and you may be sure of one thing your asking or your not asking won't make any odds to findlay and ince
+if they mean to tell you they will and if they don't you're not likely to get it out of them and when shall i go cried juliet they say they want me to answer immediately you know oh well i don't know
+in a few days you will hardly be ready to start to morrow will you i could be ready easily said juliet you're in a great hurry to get away from us said sir arthur with a rather uneasy laugh not from you
+juliet put her arm through his i could never find another father half as nice as the one i've got but you could do very well without so many daughters you know she smiled at him mockingly you're like the old woman who lived in a shoe
+you ought to set up a school for young ladies i don't believe i shall be able to get on without my eldest daughter he replied half serious still i think it would be better for you if your real parents have decided to own up to you
+at all events if they do not turn out desirable i shall still be here i hope so i don't see how you can lose anything by taking this chance of finding out what you can about them at this point lady byrne came into the room
+the letter was produced again and she joined heartily in the excitement it had caused you had better start on monday she said to juliet that will give you two days to pack
+are you going to take her arthur she added turning to her husband i would like a shot he replied but i can't possibly get away next week i've got a lot of work on hand just now i suppose my dear he suggested doubtfully
+that you wouldn't be able to run over with her lady byrne declared that it was impossible for her to do so she had engagements she said for every day of the following week which it was out of the question to break
+had sir arthur forgotten that they themselves were having large dinner parties on tuesday and friday what she would do without juliet to help her in preparing for them she did not know
+but at least it was obvious that some one must be there to receive his guests no juliet would have to go alone she was really old enough to be trusted by herself for three days and there was no need that she could see
+she can go on monday see the lawyers on tuesday and come back on wednesday said lady byrne the helplessness of young girls is the one thing i disapprove of in your european system of education
+supposing she is detained in london he said what should detain her demanded his wife unless it is the discovery of her parents and if she finds them i presume they will be capable of looking after her in any case
+she can write or cable to us when she has seen the solicitors and it is no use providing for contingencies that will probably never arise
+a letter was written and dispatched to messrs findlay and ince saying that miss byrne would have pleasure in calling upon them at twelve o'clock on the following tuesday and juliet busied herself in preparations for her journey
+on monday morning she left ostend in the company of her maid it was a glorious august day on shore the heat was intense and it was a relief to get out of the stifling carriages of the crowded boat train
+and to breathe the gentle air from the sea that met them as they crossed the gangway on to the steamer juliet enjoyed every moment of the journey and would have been sorry when the crossing was over if she had not been so eager to set foot upon her native soil
+she leant upon the rail in the bows of the ship watching the white cliffs grow taller and more distinct and felt that now indeed she understood the emotions
+with which the heart of the exile is said to swell at the sight of his own land she wondered if the sight of their country moved other passengers on the boat as she herself was moved and made timid advances to a lady who was standing near her
+have you been away from england a long time she asked her i have been abroad during a considerable period replied the person she addressed a stern looking scotchwoman who did not appear anxious to enter into conversation
+from her severe demeanour juliet imagined she might be a governess going for a holiday you must be glad to be going home she ventured it's a far cry north to my home said the scotchwoman thawing slightly
+there may even be a scotchman among the porters you know by some chance no fear said her neighbour gloomily they'll be local men i have nae doubt
+which is one of the bonniest things you see on the continent to my way of thinking juliet could get no enthusiasm out of her and look which way she might she could not see any reflection on the faces of those around her of the emotions which stirred in her own breast
+it had been a rough crossing in spite of the cloudless sky and broiling sunshine and most of the passengers had been laid low by the rolling of the vessel they displayed anxiety enough to reach land
+no doubt she thought when the ship stopped and they felt better they would be more disposed to a sentimentality like hers she found her maid who had been one of the most sea sick of those aboard and assisted her ashore
+put her into a carriage and ministered to her wants with the help of a tea basket containing the delicious novelty of english bread and butter in half an hour's time they were steaming hurriedly towards london she was to lodge at a small hotel in jermyn street
+she was young strong and healthy and there was no reason that trifling discomforts of this kind should affect her enjoyment to the shortcomings of the bed indeed she shut her eyes in more senses than one
+for she was asleep three minutes after her head touched the pillow nor did she wake till her maid roused her the next morning
+over the roofs of the houses opposite she could see a blue streak of sky already the air had lost the touch of freshness which comes even to london in august during the first hours of the morning
+and the heat in the low ceilinged room on the third floor which juliet occupied for the sake of economy was oppressive in spite of the small sash windows being opened to their utmost capacity
+but juliet only laughed to herself with pleasure at the brilliancy of the day she felt that the weather was playing up to the occasion as became this important morning of her life for that it was important she did not doubt
+she was going to hear tremendous news that day make wonderful discoveries about her birth hear undreamt of things
+and it would not have astonished her to find herself claimed as daughter by any of the reigning families of europe she was prepared for anything or so she said to herself however astounding and that being so she was excited in proportion
+anyone could have told her that by this attitude of mind towards the future she was laying up for herself disappointment at the least if not the bitterest disillusions but there was no one to throw cold water on her hopes
+and she filled the air with castles of every style of architecture that her fancy suggested without any hindrance from doubt or misgiving she dressed quickly in the gayest humour but with even more care than she usually bestowed upon her appearance
+scandalized at the idea of such a precious garment being put on before breakfast that very one juliet assured her undaunted and was arrayed in it in spite of obvious disapproval after breakfast they went out
+and inquiring their way to bond street flattened their noses against the shop windows to their mutual satisfaction they had it almost to themselves for there were not many people left in that part of london
+but more than one head was turned to gaze at the pretty girl in the garden party dress who stood transfixed before shop after shop this amusement lasted till half past eleven when they returned to the hotel for juliet to give the final pats to her hair
+before she started to keep her appointment with the solicitors
+chapter three the awakening but warming was wrong in that an awakening came what a wonderfully complex thing this simple seeming unity
+the self who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving rebuilding the dim first stirrings of the soul
+the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious the subconscious to dawning consciousness until at last we recognise ourselves again and as it happens to most of us after the night's sleep
+so it was with graham at the end of his vast slumber a dim cloud of sensation taking shape a cloudy dreariness and he found himself vaguely somewhere recumbent faint but alive
+the pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs to occupy epochs gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time
+left vague perplexing memories strange creatures strange scenery as if from another planet there was a distinct impression too of a momentous conversation of a name
+he could not tell what name that was subsequently to recur of some queer long forgotten sensation of vein and muscle of a feeling of vast hopeless effort
+the effort of a man near drowning in darkness then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluent scenes graham became aware that his eyes were open
+and regarding some unfamiliar thing it was something white the edge of something a frame of wood he moved his head slightly following the contour of this shape
+it went up beyond the top of his eyes he tried to think where he might be did it matter seeing he was so wretched
+he felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towards the hour of dawn he had an uncertain sense of whispers and footsteps hastily receding
+the movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physical weakness he supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the valley but he could not recall that white edge he must have slept
+he remembered now that he had wanted to sleep he recalled the cliff and waterfall again and then recollected something about talking to a passer by how long had he slept
+what was that sound of pattering feet and that rise and fall like the murmur of breakers on pebbles he put out a languid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habit to place it
+and touched some smooth hard surface like glass this was so unexpected that it startled him extremely quite suddenly he rolled over stared for a moment and struggled into a sitting position
+the effort was unexpectedly difficult and it left him giddy and weak and amazed he rubbed his eyes the riddle of his surroundings was confusing
+but his mind was quite clear evidently his sleep had benefited him he was not in a bed at all as he understood the word but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress
+in a trough of dark glass the mattress was partly transparent a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly
+about his arm and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow was bound a curious apparatus of rubber bound so cunningly
+that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below and this bed was placed in a case of greenish coloured glass as it seemed to him a bar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention
+in the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus for the most part quite strange appliances though a maximum and minimum thermometer was recognisable
+the slightly greenish tint of the glass like substance which surrounded him on every hand obscured what lay behind but he perceived it was a vast apartment of splendid appearance
+and with a very large and simple white archway facing him close to the walls of the cage were articles of furniture a table covered with a silvery cloth silvery like the side of a fish
+a couple of graceful chairs and on the table a number of dishes with substances piled on them a bottle and two glasses he realised that he was intensely hungry he could see no one
+and after a period of hesitation scrambled off the translucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floor of his little apartment he had miscalculated his strength however
+and staggered and put his hand against the glass like pane before him to steady himself for a moment it resisted his hand bending outward like a distended bladder then it broke with a slight report
+and vanished a pricked bubble he reeled out into the general space of the hall greatly astonished he caught at the table to save himself knocking one of the glasses to the floor
+it rang but did not break and sat down in one of the armchairs when he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the bottle and drank a colourless liquid it was but not water
+with a pleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support and stimulus he put down the vessel and looked about him
+the apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that the greenish transparency that had intervened was removed the archway he saw led to a flight of steps going downward without the intermediation of a door
+to a spacious transverse passage this passage ran between polished pillars of some white veined substance of deep ultramarine and along it came the sound of human movements
+and voices and a deep undeviating droning note he sat now fully awake listening alertly forgetting the viands in his attention
+then with a shock he remembered that he was naked and casting about him for covering saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside him this he wrapped about him and sat down again trembling
+his mind was still a surging perplexity clearly he had slept and had been removed in his sleep but where and who were those people the distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars
+boscastle he poured out and partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid what was this place this place that to his senses seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive
+he looked about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment unstained by ornament and saw that the roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light
+and as he looked a steady sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed and came again and passed beat beat that sweeping shadow had a note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air
+he would have called out but only a little sound came into his throat then he stood up and with the uncertain steps of a drunkard made his way towards the archway he staggered down the steps
+tripped on the corner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself and saved himself by catching at one of the blue pillars the passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple
+and ended remotely in a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into a space of haze a space like the interior of some gigantic building beyond and remote
+were vast and vague architectural forms the tumult of voices rose now loud and clear and on the balcony and with their backs to him gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation
+were three figures richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright soft colourings the noise of a great multitude of people poured up over the balcony and once it seemed
+the top of a banner passed and once some brightly coloured object a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into the air perhaps flashed athwart the space and fell the shouts sounded like english
+there was a reiteration of wake he heard some indistinct shrill cry and abruptly these three men began laughing ha ha ha laughed one
+a red haired man in a short purple robe when the sleeper wakes when he turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage his face changed the whole man changed
+became rigid the other two turned swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless their faces assumed an expression of consternation an expression that deepened into awe
+chapter thirty four unc billy and old missus possum
+all the way home from school peter rabbit did his best to think who it could be who ate flesh yet wasn't a member of the order of flesh eaters
+every few hops he would stop to think but all his stopping and all his thinking were in vain and when he started for school the next morning he was as puzzled as ever
+on his way through the green forest he passed a certain tree he was just past and no more when a familiar voice hailed him
+what's yo hurry peter stopped abruptly and looked up in that tree there peering down at him from a hole high up in the trunk was a sharp whitish gray face
+with a pair of twinkling black eyes hello unc billy cried peter how are you and ol missus possum po'ly peter po'ly
+we uns haven't had breakfast yet so we uns are feeling po'ly replied unc billy with a grin a sudden thought popped into peter's head
+unc poked his head a little farther out and put his hand behind his ear as if he were a little hard of hearing
+am i a what he demanded
+repeated peter ah reckons ah might be if ah knew what it was but as long as ah don't
+mister opossum but peter wasn't listening the fact is peter had started lipperty lipperty lip for school without even being polite enough to say good by he arrived at school quite out of breath
+what do you know asked old mother nature
+yet doesn't belong to the order of flesh eaters
+cried peter right you are replied old mother nature however did you find it out i didn't exactly find it out i guessed it replied peter
+on my way here i saw unc billy and it popped into my head right away that he was one we haven't heard about and must be the one but if he eats flesh
+i don't see why he isn't a member of the order of flesh eaters it is because he belongs to a group which has something which makes them entirely different from all other animals and for this reason
+they have been given an order of their own explained old mother nature they belong to the order of marsupials which means pouched animals
+it is because the mothers have big pockets in which they carry their babies old missus possum has just such a pocket
+they look too funny for anything the opossums are the only marsupials in this country continued old mother nature
+now have i made it quite clear why although they eat flesh unc billy and ol missus possum are not members of the same big order as buster bear and the other flesh eaters everybody nodded
+just then chatterer the red squirrel shouted here comes unc billy ol missus possum and all the little possums sure enough down the lone little path
+came the possum family and a funny looking sight they were unc billy was whitish gray his face whiter than the rest of him he looked as if he had just gotten out of bed
+and forgotten to brush his hair it pointed every which way his legs were dark his feet black and his toes white his ears were without any hair at all
+and were black for the lower half the rest being white he had a long whitish tail without any hair on it altogether with his sharp face and naked tail
+he looked a great deal as though he might be a giant rat but if unc billy was a funny looking fellow ol missus possum was even more funny looking
+she seemed to have heads and tails all over her you see she had brought along her family and ol missus possum is one of those who believe in large families
+there were twelve youngsters and they were exactly like their parents only small they were clinging all over ol missus possum some were on her back some were clinging to her sides
+and a couple were in the big pocket where they had spent their babyhood we all done thought we'd come to school explained unc billy with a grin
+i'm glad you did replied old mother nature you see the rest of your friends here are a little curious about the possum family meanwhile ol missus possum was climbing a tree
+and when she had reached a comfortable crotch the little possums left her and began to play about in the tree it was then that it appeared what handy things those naked little tails were
+when the little possums crawled out where the branches were small they simply wrapped their tails around the twigs to keep from falling my exclaimed peter
+those certainly are handy tails handiest tails ever was declared unc billy
+suppose you climb a tree unc billy and show your friends here how you manage to get the eggs from a nest that you cannot reach by crawling along the branch on which it is placed said old mother nature
+unc billy grinned and good naturedly started up a tree he crept out on a branch that overhung another branch way out where the branch was small crept unc billy
+then he wrapped the end of his tail around the branch and swung himself off keeping hold of the branch only with his tail and one hind foot then
+stretching down full length he could just reach the branch below him you see he explained if there was a nest on this branch down here ah could get those eggs without any trouble
+again unc billy grinned and then pulled himself back to the other branch old mother nature shook her head reprovingly unc billy said she
+you are a bad old rascal to steal eggs what's more
+it is a wonder that between you and chatterer the red squirrel any of the birds succeed in raising families around here have you visited farmer brown's hen house lately unc billy shook his head
+not lately said he ah done got a dreadful scare the last time ah was up there
+where is your home asked johnny chuck i know said peter rabbit it's up in a big hollow tree unc billy looked down at peter
+said he are possums found anywhere except around here inquired happy jack yes indeed replied old mother nature they are found all down through the sunny south
+and in the warmer parts of the middle west unc billy and his relatives are not fond of cold weather they prefer to be where they can be reasonably warm all the year round some folks think unc billy isn't smart
+but those folks don't know unc billy he learned a long time ago that he can't run as fast as some others so he has learned to depend on his wits in time of danger what do you think he does i
+know cried peter i saw him do it once farmer brown's boy surprised unc billy and unc billy just fell right over dead pooh that's a story peter rabbit
+how could unc billy have fallen over dead and be alive up in that tree this very minute cried happy jack i didn't mean he was really dead but that he looked as if he were dead explained peter
+and he did too he was the deadest looking thing i ever saw i thought he was dead myself i was watching from a bramble tangle where i was hiding and i certainly thought
+the life had been scared right out of unc billy i guess farmer brown's boy thought so too he picked unc billy up by the tail and looked him all over and said you poor little thing
+i didn't mean to hurt you unc billy didn't so much as wink an eye farmer brown's boy went off up the path carrying unc billy by the tail by and by he laid unc billy down
+on an old stump while he went to look at a nest of blacky the crow when he came back unc billy wasn't there i never did see unc billy hurry as he did the minute farmer brown's boy's back was turned
+he came to life as suddenly as he had dropped dead very good peter said old mother nature some other smart little people try that trick sometimes
+but none of them can do it as well as unc billy possum pretending to be dead in order to remain alive is the cleverest thing unc billy does
+this book owes its origin to the fact that in the autumn of nineteen twenty one the authorities of manchester college oxford invited me to deliver the inaugural course of a lectureship in religion newly established under the will of the late professor upton
+no conditions being attached to this appointment it seemed a suitable opportunity to discuss so far as possible in the language of the moment some of the implicits which i believe to underlie human effort
+and achievement in the domain of the spiritual life the material gathered for this purpose has now been added to revised and to some extent re written
+or who are offended by the resulting demonstrations of continuity between our most homely and most lofty reactions to the universe might take to themselves the plain words of thomas a kempis thou art a man and not god thou art flesh
+and no angel since my subject is not the splendor of historic sanctity but the normal life of the spirit as it may be and is lived in the here and now
+no attention has been given to those abnormal experiences and states of consciousness which too often regarded as specially mystical are now recognized by all competent students as representing the unfortunate accidents
+rather than the abiding substance of spirituality readers of these pages will find nothing about trances ecstasies and other rare psychic phenomena which sometimes indicate holiness and sometimes only disease
+for information on these matters they must go to larger and more technical works my aim here is the more general one of indicating first the characteristic experiences discoverable within all great religions
+which justify or are fundamental to the spiritual life and the way in which these experiences may be accommodated to the world view of the modern man and next the nature of that spiritual life as it appears in human history
+the succeeding sections of the book treat in some detail the light cast on spiritual problems by mental analysis a process which need not necessarily be conducted from the standpoint of a degraded materialism
+and by recent work on the psychology of autistic thought and of suggestion these investigations have a practical interest for every man who desires to be the captain of his soul
+the relation in which institutional religion does or should stand to the spiritual life is also in part a matter for psychology which is here called upon to deal with the religious aspect of the social instincts
+and the problems surrounding symbols and cults these chapters lead up to a discussion of the personal aspect of the spiritual life its curve of growth characters and activities
+and a further section suggests some ways in which educationists might promote the up springing of this life in the young finally the last chapter attempts to place the fact of the life of the spirit in its relation to the social order
+and to indicate some of the results which might follow upon its healthy corporate development it is superfluous to point out that each of these subjects needs at least a volume to itself
+warm gratitude first to the principal and authorities of manchester college who gave me the opportunity of delivering these chapters in their original form and whose unfailing sympathy and kindness so greatly helped me
+psychology and the life of the spirit two contemplation and suggestion
+chapter two roses and thorns by the soft green light in the woody glade on the banks of moss where thy childhood played by the household tree
+her mother had been detained at home by a multitude of half reasons none of which anybody fully understood except mister hale who was perfectly aware that all his arguments in favour of a grey satin gown
+which was midway between oldness and newness had proved unavailing and that as he had not the money to equip his wife afresh from top to toe she would not show herself at her only sister's only child's wedding
+if missus shaw had guessed at the real reason why missus hale did not accompany her husband she would have showered down gowns upon her but it was nearly twenty years since missus shaw had been the poor pretty miss beresford
+and she had really forgotten all grievances except that of the unhappiness arising from disparity of age in married life on which she could descant by the half hour dearest maria had married the man of her heart
+only eight years older than herself with the sweetest temper and that blue black hair one so seldom sees mister hale was one of the most delightful preachers she had ever heard and a perfect model of a parish priest
+perhaps it was not quite a logical deduction from all these premises but it was still missus shaw's characteristic conclusion as she thought over her sister's lot
+missus hale if she spoke truth might have answered with a ready made list
+a white chip bonnet oh dozens of things for the wedding and hundreds of things for the house margaret only knew that her mother had not found it convenient to come
+and she was not sorry to think that their meeting and greeting would take place at helstone parsonage rather than during the confusion of the last two or three days in the house in harley street where she herself had had to play the part of figaro
+and was wanted everywhere at one and the same time her mind and body ached now with the recollection of all she had done and said within the last forty eight hours the farewells so hurriedly taken amongst all the other good byes
+of those she had lived with so long oppressed her now with a sad regret for the times that were no more it did not signify what those times had been they were gone never to return margaret's heart felt more heavy
+the place and the life she had longed for for years at that time of all times for yearning and longing just before the sharp senses lose their outlines in sleep
+her dear father leaning back asleep in the railway carriage his blue black hair was grey now and lay thinly over his brows the bones of his face were plainly to be seen
+too plainly for beauty if his features had been less finely cut as it was they had a grace if not a comeliness of their own the face was in repose but it was rather rest after weariness
+than the serene calm of the countenance of one who led a placid contented life margaret was painfully struck by the worn anxious expression and she went back over the open and avowed circumstances of her father's life
+to find the cause for the lines that spoke so plainly of habitual distress and depression poor frederick thought she sighing oh if frederick had but been a clergyman instead of going into the navy and being lost to us all
+i wish i knew all about it i never understood it from aunt shaw i only knew he could not come back to england because of that terrible affair poor dear papa how sad he looks
+i am so glad i am going home to be at hand to comfort him and mamma she was ready with a bright smile in which there was not a trace of fatigue to greet her father when he awakened he smiled back again but
+faintly as if it were an unusual exertion his face returned into its lines of habitual anxiety he had a trick of half opening his mouth as if to speak which constantly unsettled the form of the lips
+and gave the face an undecided expression but he had the same large soft eyes as his daughter eyes which moved slowly and almost grandly round in their orbits and were well veiled by their transparent white eyelids
+no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a yes and no and an't please you sir but the wide mouth was one soft curve of rich red lips and the skin if not white and fair
+was of an ivory smoothness and delicacy if the look on her face was in general too dignified and reserved for one so young now talking to her father it was bright as the morning
+full of dimples and glances that spoke of childish gladness and boundless hope in the future it was the latter part of july when margaret returned home the forest trees were all one dark full dusky green
+the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams the weather was sultry and broodingly still margaret used to tramp along by her father's side crushing down the fern with a cruel glee
+as she felt it yield under her light foot and send up the fragrance peculiar to it out on the broad commons into the warm scented light seeing multitudes of wild free living creatures revelling in the sunshine
+this life at least these walks realised all margaret's anticipations she took a pride in her forest its people were her people she made hearty friends with them
+learned and delighted in using their peculiar words took up her freedom amongst them nursed their babies talked or read with slow distinctness to their old people
+carried dainty messes to their sick resolved before long to teach at the school where her father went every day as to an appointed task but she was continually tempted off to go and see some individual friend
+man woman or child in some cottage in the green shade of the forest her out of doors life was perfect her in doors life had its drawbacks
+with the healthy shame of a child she blamed herself for her keenness of sight in perceiving that all was not as it should be there her mother her mother always so kind and tender towards her
+but every day he was more overpowered the world became more bewildering at each repeated urgency of his wife that he would put himself in the way of seeking some preferment
+and margaret would try to tempt her forth on to the beautiful broad upland sun streaked cloud shadowed common for she was sure that her mother had accustomed herself too much to an in doors life seldom extending her walks beyond the church
+the school and the neighbouring cottages this did good for a time but when the autumn drew on and the weather became more changeable her mother's idea of the unhealthiness of the place increased
+and she repined even more frequently that her husband who was more learned than mister hume a better parish priest than mister houldsworth should not have met with the preferment that these two former neighbours of theirs had done
+that she should have to give up many luxuries which had only been troubles and trammels to her freedom in harley street her keen enjoyment of every sensuous pleasure was balanced finely if not overbalanced
+by her conscious pride in being able to do without them all if need were but the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it there had been slight complaints and passing regrets on her mother's part
+not so pleasant in the latter half of september the autumnal rains and storms came on and margaret was obliged to remain more in the house than she had hitherto done
+helstone was at some distance from any neighbours of their own standard of cultivation it is undoubtedly one of the most out of the way places in england said missus hale in one of her plaintive moods
+if we only lived at the other side of the parish it would be something there we should be almost within walking distance of the stansfields certainly the gormans would be within a walk gormans said margaret
+are those the gormans who made their fortunes in trade at southampton oh i'm glad we don't visit them i don't like shoppy people i think we are far better off knowing only cottagers and labourers
+i call mine a very comprehensive taste i like all people whose occupations have to do with land i like soldiers and sailors and the three learned professions as they call them
+and with the soft violence of the west wind behind her as she crossed some heath she seemed to be borne onwards as lightly and easily as the fallen leaf that was wafted along by the autumnal breeze
+but the evenings were rather difficult to fill up agreeably immediately after tea her father withdrew into his small library and she and her mother were left alone missus hale had never cared much for books
+and had discouraged her husband very early in their married life in his desire of reading aloud to her while she worked at one time they had tried backgammon as a resource but as mister hale grew to take an increasing interest in his school and his parishioners
+he found that the interruptions which arose out of these duties were regarded as hardships by his wife not to be accepted as the natural conditions of his profession but to be regretted and struggled against by her as they severally arose
+so he withdrew while the children were yet young into his library to spend his evenings if he were at home in reading the speculative and metaphysical books which were his delight
+when margaret had been here before she had brought down with her a great box of books recommended by masters or governess and had found the summer's day all too short to get through the reading she had to do before her return to town
+now there were only the well bound little read english classics which were weeded out of her father's library to fill up the small book shelves in the drawing room thomson's seasons hayley's cowper middleton's cicero
+were by far the lightest newest and most amusing the book shelves did not afford much resource margaret told her mother every particular of her london life to all of which missus hale listened with interest
+sometimes amused and questioning at others a little inclined to compare her sister's circumstances of ease and comfort with the narrower means at helstone vicarage on such evenings margaret was apt to stop talking rather abruptly
+once or twice margaret found herself mechanically counting the repetition of the monotonous sound while she wondered if she might venture to put a question on a subject very near to her heart and ask where frederick was now
+the full account of which margaret had never heard and which now seemed doomed to be buried in sad oblivion
+when she was with her mother her father seemed the best person to apply to for information and when with him
+his room was kept exactly as he had left it and was regularly dusted and put into order by dixon missus hale's maid who touched no other part of the household work
+but always remembered the day when she had been engaged by lady beresford as ladies maid to sir john's wards the pretty miss beresfords the belles of rutlandshire
+alias her married life she remained with her and was devoted to her interests always considering herself as the good and protecting fairy whose duty it was to baffle the malignant giant mister hale
+he would be depressed for many days after witnessing a death bed or hearing of any crime but now margaret noticed an absence of mind as if his thoughts were pre occupied by some subject
+the oppression of which could not be relieved by any daily action such as comforting the survivors or teaching at the school in hope of lessening the evils in the generation to come mister hale did not go out among his parishioners as much as usual
+a signal which at one time had often to be repeated before any one was sufficiently alive to the hour of the day to understand what it was and attend to him now mister hale loitered about the garden if the morning was fine and if not
+half confidential shake of the head to the parson who watched him away beyond the sweet briar hedge and past the great arbutus before he turned into the room to begin his day's work with all the signs of a heavy heart
+not absolutely based on a knowledge of facts is easily banished for a time by a bright sunny day or some happy outward circumstance and when the brilliant fourteen fine days of october came on
+she had learnt drawing with edith and she had sufficiently regretted during the gloom of the bad weather her idle revelling in the beauty of the woodlands while it had yet been fine to make her determined to sketch what she could
+before winter fairly set in accordingly she was busy preparing her board one morning when sarah the housemaid threw wide open the drawing room door and announced
+chapter twelve morning calls well i suppose we must friends in council
+mister thornton had had some difficulty in working up his mother to the desired point of civility she did not often make calls and when she did it was in heavy state that she went through her duties
+but she refused to let him keep horses for it they were hired for the solemn occasions when she paid morning or evening visits she had had horses for three days not a fortnight before
+who might now put themselves to trouble and expense in their turn yet crampton was too far off for her to walk and she had repeatedly questioned her son as to whether his wish that she should call on the hales was strong enough to bear the expense of cab hire
+the last time you were out in a cab you came home with a headache from the jolting i never complained of it i'm sure no
+but so much the more i have to watch over you now as for fanny there a little hardship would do her good she is not made of the same stuff as you are john she could not bear it
+missus thornton was silent after this for her last words bore relation to a subject which mortified her she had an unconscious contempt for a weak character and fanny was weak in the very points in which her mother and brother were strong
+missus thornton was not a woman much given to reasoning her quick judgment and firm resolution served her in good stead of any long arguments and discussions with herself she felt instinctively that nothing could strengthen fanny to endure hardships patiently
+which the uneasy tenderness of missus thornton's manner to her daughter the shame with which she thought to hide the poverty of her child in all the grand qualities which she herself possessed unconsciously and which she set so high a value upon in others
+this shame i say betrayed the want of a secure resting place for her affection she never called her son by any name but john love and dear and such like terms were reserved for fanny
+but her heart gave thanks for him day and night and she walked proudly among women for his sake fanny dear i shall have horses to the carriage to day to go and call on these hales
+with what asked missus thornton her brow slightly contracting
+missus thornton did not speak but she laid her work on the table and seemed to think it will be a long way for her to walk back at night
+at this point mister thornton came in just before going to the mill mother i need hardly say that if there is any little thing that could serve missus hale as an invalid you will offer it i'm sure if i can find it out i will
+it will do you good instead of harm
+he went abruptly out of the room after saying this if he had staid a minute longer fanny would have cried at his tone of command even when he used the words you will oblige me
+fanny don't speak so of your brother he has good reasons of some kind or other or he would not wish us to go make haste and put your things on
+but the little altercation between her son and her daughter did not incline missus thornton more favourably towards these hales her jealous heart repeated her daughter's question
+missus thornton was shy it was only of late years that she had had leisure enough in her life to go into society and as society she did not enjoy it
+as dinner giving and as criticising other people's dinners she took satisfaction in it but this going to make acquaintance with strangers was a very different thing
+as missus thornton observed to herself she liked missus hale's double knitting far better that was sensible of its kind the room altogether was full of knick knacks which must take a long time to dust and time to people of limited income was money
+missus hale was making rather more exertion in her answers captivated by some real old lace which missus thornton wore lace as she afterwards observed to dixon of that old english point which has not been made for this seventy years and
+which cannot be bought it must have been an heir loom and shows that she had ancestors so the owner of the ancestral lace became worthy of something more than the languid exertion to be agreeable to a visitor
+fifteen shillings a week and three saved out of them thought margaret to herself but she must have been very young she probably has forgotten her own personal experience but she must know of those days
+margaret's manner had an extra tinge of coldness in it when she next spoke you have good concerts here i believe
+too crowded that is the worst
+but surely it is a very easy journey to london yes but somehow said fanny lowering her voice mamma has never been to london herself and can't understand my longing
+may i inquire margaret had not the words ready for an answer to this question which took her a little by surprise so miss thornton replied
+as fanny had put it it did seem as if they had been impertinently discussing missus thornton's feelings but she also rose up against that lady's manner of showing that she was offended missus thornton went on after a moment's pause
+do you know anything of milton miss hale have you seen any of our factories our magnificent warehouses no said margaret i have not seen anything of that description as yet
+then she felt that by concealing her utter indifference to all such places she was hardly speaking with truth so she went on
+every improvement of machinery is i believe to be seen there in its highest perfection i am so glad you don't like mills and manufactories and all those kind of things said fanny in a half whisper
+she will do you no good i see the mother looks very ill and seems a nice quiet kind of person
+who can blame her for giving way to the subdued happiness that succeeded not i not you if you speak truly the passion that controlled her may not be popular under a strictly puritan standard
+universal and irresistible telling us that father mother sister and brother are all to be forsaken for that love illimitable
+do not reproach the young creole because this passion was paramount in her soul do not blame her for feeling pleasure amidst moments that should otherwise have been devoted to sadness
+nor that her happiness was heightened on learning from the astonished spectators how her lover's life had been preserved as it might seem miraculously the aim of the assassin
+had been true enough he must have felt sure of it before turning the muzzle towards his own temples and firing the bullet that had lodged in his brain
+right over the heart he had hit his intended victim and through the heart would the leaden missile have made its way
+the gift of her who alone could have secured it such a place turned aside the shot causing it to ricochet not harmlessly however
+with the mental and corporeal excitement long sustained did not fail to produce its effect and the mind of maurice gerald once more returned to its delirious dreaming
+but no longer lay his body in danger in the chapparal surrounded by wolves and shadowed by soaring vultures in a hut where he was but ill attended
+in a jail where he was scarce cared for at all when again restored to consciousness it was to discover that the fair vision of his dreams was no vision at all but a lovely woman
+the spirit of the aristocratic planter steeped in sorrow and humiliated by misfortune had become purged of its false pride though it needed not this to make him willingly acquiesce in an alliance
+which instead of a nobody gave him a nobleman for his son such in reality was sir maurice gerald erst known as maurice the mustanger in texas
+the title would have counted for little nor did its owner care to carry it but by a bit of good fortune not always attendant on an irish baronetcy
+it carried along with it an endowment ample enough to clear casa del corvo of the mortgage held by the late cassius calhoun and claimed by his nearest of kin this was not woodley poindexter
+for after calhoun's death it was discovered that the ex captain had once been a benedict and there was a young scion of his stock living in new orleans who had the legal right to say he was his son
+it mattered not to maurice gerald who now clear of every entanglement became the husband of the fair creole after a visit to his native land including the european tour
+louise poindexter lady gerald she must now be called during her sojourn in the emerald isle saw nothing to excite her to jealousy only once again did this fell passion
+take possession of her spirit and then only in the shape of a shadow soon to pass away it was one day when her husband came home to the hacienda bearing in his arms the body of a beautiful woman
+not yet dead though the blood streaming from a wound in her bared bosom showed she had not long to live to the question who has done this she was only able to answer diaz
+diaz it was the last utterance of
+covarubio de los llanos as the spirit of the unhappy senorita passed into eternity
+whose story she now better comprehended she even assisted her lord in the saddling of his red bay steed and encouraged him in the pursuit of the assassin
+she joyed to see the latter led back at the end of a lazo held in the hand of her husband and refused to interfere when a band of regulators called hastily together
+dealt out summary chastisement by hanging him to a tree it was not cruelty only a crude kind of justice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
+and what a poor compensation it seemed to those who had taken part in exacting it as they stood gazing upon the remains of the villain and his victim the swarth ruffian dangling from the branch above
+and the fair form lying underneath the hearts of the texans were touched as perhaps they had never been before there was a strange thought passing through their minds
+a sadness independent of that caused by the spectacle of a murder it was regret at having so hastily despatched the assassin beautiful even in death was isidora such features as she possessed
+at length going with thoughts not altogether sacred in the physical world time is accounted the destroyer though in the moral it is oft the restorer
+nowhere has it effected greater changes than in texas during the last decade and especially
+plantations have sprung up where late the chapparal thickly covered the earth and cities stand where the wild steed once roamed over a pathless prairie
+you would become the recipient of a hospitality unequalled in european lands you would have for your host one of the handsomest men in texas for your hostess one of its most beautiful women
+both still this side of middle life residing under their roof you would find an old gentleman of aristocratic air and venerable aspect withal chatty and cheerful who would conduct you around the corrales
+show you the stock and never tire of talking about the hundreds ay thousands of horses and horned cattle seen roaming over the pastures of the plantation
+leaving him for a time you would come in contact with two other individuals attached to the establishment one is the groom of the stole by name phelim o'neal
+who has full charge of the horses the other a coachman of sable skin yclept pluto poindexter who would scorn to look at a horse except when perched upon the box
+and after having the ribbons deftly delivered into his hands since we last saw him the gay pluto has become tamed down to a staid and sober benedict black though he be
+florinda now the better half of his life has effected the transformation
+and back only after you have retired but the huge gobbler seen in the smoke house
+the domestics will tell it you but only in whispers since they know that it is a theme tabooed by the master and mistress of the mansion in whom it excites sad souvenirs it is the story
+at la porte the roads improve for some distance but once again i am benighted and sleep under a wheat shock traversing several miles of corduroy road through huckleberry swamps next morning i reach cram's point for breakfast
+a remnant of some indian tribe still lingers around here and gathers huckleberries for the market two squaws being in the village purchasing supplies for their camp in the swamps what's the name of these indians here i ask
+splendid gravel roads lead from crum's point to south bend and on through mishawaka alternating with sandy stretches to goshen which town is said by the goshenites to be the prettiest in indiana
+but there seems to be considerable pride of locality in the great hoosier state and i venture there are scores of prettiest towns in indiana nevertheless goshen is certainly a very handsome place with unusually broad well shaded streets
+has had an extra stout bone shaker made to order
+who being about fifty per cent less bulky ride regulation wheels jumbo goes all right when mounted but being unable to mount without aid he seldom ventures abroad by himself for fear of having to foot it back
+is so delightfully romantic at ten o'clock in the morning july seventeenth i bowl across the boundary line into ohio following the merchants and bankers telegraph road to napoleon i pass through a district where the rain has overlooked them for two months
+is half buried in hot dust the blackberries are dead on the bushes and the long suffering corn looks as though afflicted with the yellow jaundice
+and scarcely know a word of english yet a fat phlegmatic looking baby is peacefully reposing in a cradle which is simply half a monster pumpkin scooped out and dried it is the most intensely rustic cradle in the world
+surely this youngster's head ought to be level on agricultural affairs when he grows up if anybody's ought from napoleon my route leads up the maumee river and canal first trying the tow path of the latter and then relinquishing it for
+the very fair wagon road the maumee river winding through its splendid rich valley seems to possess a peculiar beauty all its own and my mind unbidden mentally compares it with our old friend the humboldt
+the latter stream traverses dreary plains where almost nothing but sagebrush grows the maumee waters a smiling valley where orchards fields and meadows alternate with sugar maple groves
+and in its fair bosom reflects beautiful landscape views that are changed and rebeautified by the master hand of the sun every hour of the day and doubly embellished at night by the moon it is whispered that during the late unpleasantness
+the ohio regiments could out yell the louisiana tigers or any other confederate troops two to one who has not heard the ohio yell most people are magnanimously inclined to regard this rumor as simply a gag on the buckeye boys
+but it isn't the ohioans are to the manner born the buckeye yell is a tangible fact all along the maumee it resounds in my ears nearly every man or boy who from the fields far or near
+sees me bowling along the road straightway delivers himself of a yell pure and simple at perrysburg i strike the famous maumee pike forty miles of stone road almost a dead level
+the western half is kept in rather poor repair these days but from fremont eastward it is splendid wheeling the atmosphere of bellevue is blue with politics and myself and another innocent unsuspecting individual hailing from new york
+are enticed into a political meeting by a wily politician and dexterously made to pose before the assembled company as two gentlemen who have come one from the atlantic the other from the pacific
+riding down far famed euclid avenue and calling at lake view cemetery to pay a visit to garfleld's tomb i bid them farewell at euclid village following the ridge road leading along the shore of lake erie to buffalo
+i ride through a most beautiful farming country passing through willoughby and mentor garfield's old home
+both sides of which are lined with magnificent farms whose fields and meadows fairly groan beneath their wealth of produce whose fructiferous orchards arc marvels of productiveness
+the gleaming waters of lake erie here and there glisten like burnished steel through the distant interspaces and away beyond stretches northward like a vast mirror to kiss the blue canadian skies
+where from the little hamlet of springfield the roads become good then better and finally best at girard the home of the veteran showman dan rice the beautifying works of whose generous hand are everywhere visible in his native town
+and so it continues with ever varying ever pleasing beauty to erie after which the highway becomes hardly so good twenty four hours after entering pennsylvania i make my exit across the boundary
+is popularly believed by many of its numerous local admirers to be the highest navigable lake in the world if so however lake tahoe in the sierra nevada mountains comes next
+as it is about six thousand feet above the level of the sea and has three steamers plying on its waters at fredonia i am shown through the celebrated watch movement factory here
+no wheelman has ever yet rode up this hill save the muscular and gritty captain of the fredonia club though several have attempted the feat from the top my road ahead is plainly visible for miles
+leading through the broad and smiling cattaraugus valley that is spread out like a vast garden below through which cattaraugus creek slowly winds its tortuous way stopping over night at angola
+i proceed to buffalo next morning catching the first glimpse of that important seaport of the lakes where fifteen miles across the bay the wagon road is almost licked by the swashing waves and entering the city over a misfit plank road
+by the most audaciously indifferent woman in the world a market woman homeward bound with her empty truck wagon recognizes my road rights to the extent of barely room to squeeze past between her wagon and the ditch
+and holds her long stiff buggy whip so that it swipes me viciously across the face knocks my helmet off into the mud ditch
+the woman a crimson crested blonde jogs serenely along without even deigning to turn her head leaving the bicycle at isham's who volunteers some slight repairs
+i take a flying visit by rail to see niagara falls returning the same evening to enjoy the proffered hospitality of a genial member of the buffalo bicycle club
+it is now evening and the sunbeams falling aslant intrude upon the space canopied by the tree from the golden brightness displayed by them at noon
+as if there was anger in the sky it is but an accident of the atmosphere the portent of an approaching storm
+for all this it is remarked as singular that a storm should be coming at the time since it symbolises the sentiment of the spectators who look on with sullenness in their hearts and gloom in their glances
+it would seem as if heaven's wrath was acting in concert with the passions of earth maurice gerald is no longer the cynosure of those scowling eyes he has been clamorously acquitted
+and is henceforth only one of the witnesses in the place late occupied by him another stands cassius calhoun is now the prisoner at the bar
+this is the only change observable the judge is the same the jury the same and the spectators as before though with very different feelings in regard to the criminality of the accused
+it has been established beyond the shadow of a doubt the evidence is already before them and though entirely circumstantial as in most cases of murder the circumstances form a chain irresistibly conclusive and complete
+there is but one missing link if link it may be called the motive the motive both for the murder and the mutilation
+for the testimony of gerald has been confirmed by a subsequent examination of the dead body the surgeon of the cantonment has pronounced the two distinct and that henry poindexter's death
+must have ensued almost instantaneously after his receiving the shot why should cassius calhoun have killed his own cousin why cut off his head no one can answer these questions
+save the murderer himself no one expects him to do so save to his maker before him he must soon stand for a knowledge of the motive is not deemed essential to his condemnation
+and he has been condemned the trial has come to a close the verdict guilty has been given and the judge laying aside his panama hat is about to put on the black cap
+that dread emblem of death preparatory to pronouncing the sentence in the usual solemn manner the condemned man is invited to make his final speech to avail himself as it were
+he starts at the invitation falling as it does like a death knell upon his ear he looks wildly around despairingly
+when on the faces that encircle him he sees not one wearing an expression of sympathy there is not even pity all appear to frown upon him
+his confederates those payed ruffians who have hitherto supported him are of no use now and their sympathy of no consequence they have shrunk out of sight
+before the majesty of the law and the damning evidence of his guilt despite his social standing and the wealth to sustain it he sees himself alone without friend or sympathiser
+for so stands the assassin in texas his demeanour is completely changed
+oft exhibited in bold brutal bullyism he looks cowed and craven and not strange that he should he feels that there is no chance of escape that he is standing by the side of his coffin
+on the edge of an eternity too terrible to contemplate to a conscience like his it cannot be otherwise than appalling all at once a light is seen to flask into his eyes
+sunken as they are in the midst of two livid circles he has the air of one on the eve of making confession is it to be an acknowledgment of guilt
+is he about to unburden his conscience of the weight that must be on it the spectators guessing his intention stand breathlessly observing him there is silence even among the cicadas
+it is broken by the formalised interrogatory of the judge have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon you no he replies i have not
+the jury has given a just verdict i acknowledge that i have forfeited my life and deserve to lose it
+shot him dead in the chapparal
+and expresses horror rather than indignation alike involuntary is the groan that goes with it proceeding from a single individual whom all know to be the father of the murdered man
+once more in their midst beyond these sounds soon ceasing there is nothing to hinder the confession from being continued i know that i've got to die proceeds the prisoner with an air of seeming recklessness
+after what i've confessed it would be folly in me to expect pardon and i don't i've been a bad fellow and no doubt have done enough to deserve my fate but bad as i may have been
+imputation of having murdered my own cousin i did take his life as i've told you you are all asking why and conjecturing about the motive there was none
+a new sensation makes itself manifest among the spectators it partakes of surprise curiosity and incredulity no one speaks or in any way attempts interruption
+you wonder at that it's easily explained i killed him by mistake the surprise culminates in a shout suppressed as the speaker proceeds yes by mistake
+and god knows i was sorry enough on discovering that i had made it i didn't know myself till long after the condemned man looks up as if in hopes that he has touched a chord of mercy
+there is no sign of it on the faces that surround him still solemnly austere
+continues he i needn't that i intended to kill some one i did nor am i going to deny who it was it was the cur i see standing before me in a glance of concentrated hatred
+the speaker rests his eye
+who only answers with a look so calm as almost to betray indifference yes i intended to kill him i had my reasons i'm not going to say what they were it's no use now
+and fatal to a friend it was sure enough and poor henry dropped from his horse
+either about the murder or its motive and the prisoner is spared further description of that fiendish deed that left the dead body of henry poindexter without a head
+you know all that's passed but not what's to come
+you see me standing on my grave
+till i've sent him to his i don't by god there is no need to guess at the meaning of this profane speech the last of calhoun's life its meaning is made clear by the act that accompanies it
+while speaking he has kept his right hand under the left breast of his coat along with the oath it comes forth holding a revolver the spectators have just time to see the pistol
+as it glints under the slanting sunbeams when two shots are heard in quick succession with a like interval between two men fall forward upon their faces and lie with their heads closely contiguous
+the crowd closes around believing both to be dead
+seven days had passed since prince andrew found himself in the ambulance station on the field of borodino his feverish state and the inflammation of his bowels which were injured
+were in the doctor's opinion sure to carry him off but on the seventh day he ate with pleasure a piece of bread with some tea and the doctor noticed that his temperature was lower he had regained consciousness that morning the first night after they left moscow
+had been fairly warm and he had remained in the caleche but at mytishchi the wounded man himself asked to be taken out and given some tea the pain caused by his removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness
+when he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with closed eyes then he opened them and whispered softly and the tea his remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished the doctor
+he felt prince andrew's pulse and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved he was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did not die now he would do so a little later with greater suffering
+timokhin the red nosed major of prince andrew's regiment had joined him in moscow and was being taken along with him having been wounded in the leg at the battle of borodino they were accompanied by a doctor
+prince andrew's valet his coachman and two orderlies they gave prince andrew some tea he drank it eagerly looking with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and remember something
+i don't want any more is timokhin here he asked timokhin crept along the bench to him i am here your excellency how's your wound mine sir
+prince andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something couldn't one get a book he asked what book the gospels i haven't one
+the doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he was feeling prince andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but reasonably
+and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable and in great pain the doctor and valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered and making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh
+that came from the wound began examining that dreadful place the doctor was very much displeased about something and made a change in the dressings turning the wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony
+he kept asking them to get him the book and put it under him what trouble would it be to you he said
+he pleaded in a piteous voice the doctor went into the passage to wash his hands you fellows have no conscience said he to the valet who was pouring water over his hands
+that i wonder how he can bear it by the lord jesus christ i thought we had put something under him said the valet the first time prince andrew understood where he was and what was the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how
+was when he asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at mytishchi after growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he again regained consciousness and while drinking tea once more recalled all that had happened to him
+and above all vividly remembered the moment at the ambulance station when at the sight of the sufferings of a man he disliked those new thoughts had come to him which promised him happiness and those
+thoughts though now vague and indefinite again possessed his soul he remembered that he had now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the gospels that was why he asked for a copy of them
+the uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts and when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete stillness of the night everybody near him was sleeping a cricket chirped from across the passage
+someone was shouting and singing in the street cockroaches rustled on the table on the icons and on the walls and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around the candle beside him the wick of which was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom
+his mind was not in a normal state a healthy man usually thinks of feels and remembers innumerable things simultaneously but has the power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to fix his whole attention
+a healthy man can tear himself away from the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can then return again to his own thoughts
+all the powers of his mind were more active and clearer than ever but they acted apart from his will most diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously at times his brain suddenly began to work with a vigor clearness and depth
+it had never reached when he was in health but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again yes a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be deprived
+he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes a happiness lying beyond material forces outside the material influences that act on man
+every man can understand it but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only for god but how did god enjoin that law and why was the son and suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off
+and prince andrew heard without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating piti piti piti and then
+and ti ti once more at the same time he felt that above his face above the very middle of it some strange airy structure was being erected out of slender needles or splinters
+to the sound of this whispered music he felt that he had to balance carefully though it was difficult so that this airy structure should not collapse but nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of
+whispered rhythmic music it stretches stretches spreading out and stretching said prince andrew to himself while listening to this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice of needles
+he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face
+each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure though it knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising
+which also oppressed him but perhaps that's my shirt on the table he thought and that's my legs and that is the door but why is it always stretching and drawing itself out and
+piti piti piti and ti ti and piti piti piti that's enough please leave off prince andrew painfully entreated someone and suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and force
+for some purpose or for some reason but the love which i while dying first experienced when i saw my enemy and yet loved him i experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an object
+now again i feel that bliss to love one's neighbors
+but an enemy can only be loved by divine love
+is he alive when loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred but divine love cannot change no neither death nor anything else can destroy it it is the very essence of the soul
+yet how many people have i hated in my life and of them all i loved and hated none as i did her
+not as he had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight but for the first time picturing to himself her soul and he understood her feelings her sufferings shame and remorse
+if only it were possible for me to see her once more just once looking into those eyes to say piti piti piti and
+ti ti and piti piti piti boom flopped the fly and his attention was suddenly carried into another world
+and delirium in which something particular was happening in that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall something was still stretching out and the candle with its red halo was still burning
+but besides all this something creaked there was a whiff of fresh air and a new white sphinx appeared standing at the door and that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very natasha of whom he had just been thinking
+oh how oppressive this continual delirium is thought prince andrew trying to drive that face from his imagination but the face remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer
+but he could not and delirium drew him back into its domain the soft whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur something oppressed him and stretched out and the strange face was before him
+he moved a little and suddenly there was a ringing in his ears
+when he came to himself natasha that same living natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to him was kneeling before him
+he realized that it was the real living natasha and he was not surprised but quietly happy natasha motionless on her knees she was unable to stir
+with frightened eyes riveted on him was restraining her sobs her face was pale and rigid only in the lower part of it something quivered prince andrew sighed with relief smiled
+and held out his hand you he said how fortunate with a rapid but careful movement natasha drew nearer to him on her knees and taking his hand carefully
+just touching it lightly with her lips forgive me she whispered raising her head and glancing at him forgive me i love you said prince andrew
+forgive what he asked
+broken whisper and began kissing his hand more rapidly just touching it with her lips i love you more better than before said prince andrew lifting her face with his hand
+so as to look into her eyes those eyes filled with happy tears gazed at him timidly compassionately and with joyous love natasha's thin pale face with its swollen lips
+was more than plain it was dreadful but prince andrew did not see that he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful they heard the sound of voices behind them peter the valet who was now wide awake had roused the doctor
+timokhin who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg had long been watching all that was going on carefully covering his bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench what's this said the doctor rising from his bed
+please go away madam at that moment a maid sent by the countess who had noticed her daughter's absence knocked at the door like a somnambulist
+fell sobbing on her bed from that time during all the rest of the rostovs journey at every halting place and wherever they spent a night natasha never left the wounded bolkonski
+and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a wounded man dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should prince andrew die in her daughter's arms during the journey
+as judging by what the doctor said it seemed might easily happen she could not oppose natasha though with the intimacy now established between the wounded man and natasha the thought occurred that should he recover their former engagement would be renewed
+no one least of all natasha and prince andrew spoke of this the unsettled question of life and death which hung not only over bolkonski but over all russia
+sonya and madame schoss who had not yet undressed went out with him only natasha and the countess remained in the room petya was no longer with the family
+which was making for troitsa the countess on hearing that moscow was on fire began to cry natasha pale with a fixed look was sitting on the bench under the icons just where she had sat down on arriving
+and paid no attention to her father's words she was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant three houses off oh how terrible said sonya returning from the yard chilled and frightened i believe the whole of moscow will burn
+there's an awful glow natasha do look you can see it from the window she said to her cousin evidently wishing to distract her mind but natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her
+and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove she had been in this condition of stupor since the morning when sonya to the surprise and annoyance of the countess had for some unaccountable reason
+found it necessary to tell natasha of prince andrew's wound and of his being with their party the countess had seldom been so angry with anyone as she was with sonya
+paid unceasing attention to her cousin look natasha how dreadfully it is burning said she what's burning asked natasha oh yes moscow
+and as if in order not to offend sonya and to get rid of her she turned her face to the window looked out in such a way that it was evident that she could not see anything and again settled down in her former attitude
+but you didn't see it yes really i did natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left in peace
+nor anything else could seem of importance to natasha the count returned and lay down behind the partition the countess went up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she was wont to do when natasha was ill
+then touched her forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was feverish and finally kissed her you are cold
+lie down all right i will i'll lie down at once said natasha
+where was he going how was he wounded was it serious and could she see him but after she had been told that she could not see him that he was seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all
+evidently disbelieving what they told her and convinced that say what she might she would still be told the same all the way she had sat motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes
+and the expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much and now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving she was planning something and either
+deciding or had already decided something in her mind the countess knew this but what it might be she did not know and this alarmed and tormented her natasha undress darling lie down on my bed
+a bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only madame schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor no mamma i will lie down here on the floor natasha replied irritably
+and she went to the window and opened it through the open window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly she put her head out into the damp night air and the countess saw her slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame
+natasha knew it was not prince andrew who was moaning she knew prince andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob
+the countess exchanged a look with sonya lie down darling lie down my pet said the countess softly touching natasha's shoulders come lie down oh yes
+i'll lie down at once said natasha and began hurriedly undressing tugging at the tapes of her petticoat when she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket
+that had been made up on the floor jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front and began replaiting it
+her long thin practiced fingers rapidly unplaited replaited and tied up her plait her head moved from side to side from habit but her eyes feverishly wide
+when her toilet for the night was finished she sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door natasha you'd better lie in the middle said sonya i'll stay here muttered natasha
+do lie down she added crossly and buried her face in the pillow the countess madame schoss and sonya undressed hastily and lay down the small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in the room
+but in the yard there was a light from the fire at little mytishchi a mile and a half away and through the night came the noise of people shouting at a tavern mamonov's cossacks had set up across the street and the adjutant's unceasing moans
+could still be heard for a long time natasha listened attentively to the sounds that reached her from inside and outside the room and did not move first she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under her
+and sonya's gentle breathing then the countess called to natasha natasha did not answer i think she's asleep mamma said sonya softly
+after a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one replied soon after that natasha heard her mother's even breathing natasha did not move though her little bare foot
+thrust out from under the quilt was growing cold on the bare floor as if to celebrate a victory over everybody a cricket chirped in a crack in the wall a cock crowed far off and another replied near by
+the shouting in the tavern had died down only the moaning of the adjutant was heard natasha sat up sonya are you asleep mamma she whispered
+no one replied natasha rose slowly and carefully crossed herself and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim supple bare feet the boards of the floor creaked
+stepping cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle it seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against all the walls of the room
+it was her own heart sinking with alarm and terror and overflowing with love she opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold damp earthen floor of the passage the cold she felt refreshed her
+with her bare feet she touched a sleeping man stepped over him and opened the door into the part of the hut where prince andrew lay it was dark in there in the farthest corner on a bench beside a bed
+on which something was lying stood a tallow candle with a long thick and smoldering wick from the moment she had been told that morning of prince andrew's wound and his presence there natasha had resolved to see him
+she did not know why she had to she knew the meeting would be painful
+all day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night but now that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might see how was he maimed what was left of him
+was he like that incessant moaning of the adjutant's yes he was altogether like that in her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified when she saw an indistinct shape in the corner and mistook his knees
+raised under the quilt for his shoulders she imagined a horrible body there and stood still in terror but an irresistible impulse drew her forward she cautiously took one step and then another
+and found herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage another man timokhin was lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons and two others the doctor and a valet lay on the floor
+the valet sat up and whispered something timokhin kept awake by the pain in his wounded leg gazed with wide open eyes at this strange apparition of a girl in a white
+dressing jacket and nightcap the valet's sleepy frightened exclamation
+horribly unlike a man as that body looked she must see him she passed the valet the snuff fell from the candle wick and she saw prince andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt
+and such as she had always seen him he was the same as ever but the feverish color of his face his glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her and especially his neck delicate as a child's
+revealed by the turn down collar of his shirt gave him a peculiarly innocent childlike look such as she had never seen on him before she went up to him and with a swift flexible youthful movement dropped on her knees
+they did not accompany each other to the doors of their chosen victims feeling sure that together they could not approach the subject seriously but they parted at the gate of each house the one holding the horse while the other took the soap samples
+and interviewed any one who seemed of a coming on disposition emma jane had disposed of three single cakes rebecca of three small boxes for a difference in their ability to persuade the public was clearly defined at the start
+though neither of them ascribed either success or defeat to anything but the imperious force of circumstances housewives looked at emma jane and desired no soap listened to her description of its merits and still desired none
+other stars in their courses governed rebecca's doings the people whom she interviewed either remembered their present need of soap or reminded themselves that they would need it in the future the notable point in the case being
+that lucky rebecca accomplished with almost no effort results that poor little emma jane failed to attain by hard and conscientious labor it's your turn rebecca and i'm glad too said emma jane
+drawing up to a gateway and indicating a house that was set a considerable distance from the road i haven't got over trembling from the last place yet a lady had put her head out of an upstairs window and called
+go away little girl whatever you have in your box we don't want any i don't know who lives here and the blinds are all shut in front if there's nobody at home you mustn't count it but take the next house as yours
+rebecca walked up the lane and went to the side door there was a porch there and seated in a rocking chair husking corn was a good looking young man or was he middle aged rebecca could not make up her mind
+at all events he had an air of the city about him well shaven face well trimmed mustache well fitting clothes rebecca was a trifle shy at this unexpected encounter but there was nothing to be done but explain her presence
+so she asked is the lady of the house at home i am the lady of the house at present said the stranger with a whimsical smile what can i do for you have you ever heard of the would you like or i mean
+do you need any soap queried rebecca do i look as if i did he responded unexpectedly rebecca dimpled i didn't mean that i have some soap to sell
+i mean i would like to introduce to you a very remarkable soap the best now on the market it is called the oh i must know that soap said the gentleman genially made out of pure vegetable fats isn't it
+the very purest corroborated rebecca no acid in it not a trace and yet a child could do the monday washing with it and use no force a babe corrected rebecca
+wise child this was great good fortune to find a customer who knew all the virtues of the article in advance rebecca dimpled more and more and at her new friend's invitation sat down on a stool at his side near the edge of the porch
+and the prices of both that and the snow white were unfolded presently she forgot all about her silent partner at the gate and was talking as if she had known this grand personage all her life
+i'm keeping house to day but i don't live here explained the delightful gentleman i'm just on a visit to my aunt who has gone to portland i used to be here as a boy and i am very fond of the spot
+i don't think anything takes the place of the farm where one lived when one was a child observed rebecca nearly bursting with pride at having at last successfully used the indefinite pronoun in general conversation
+so you consider your childhood a thing of the past do you young lady i can still remember it answered rebecca gravely though it seems a long time ago
+i can remember mine well enough and a particularly unpleasant one it was said the stranger so was mine sighed rebecca what was your worst trouble lack of food and clothes principally
+oh exclaimed rebecca sympathetically mine was no shoes and too many babies and not enough books but you're all right and happy now aren't you she asked doubtfully for though he looked handsome well fed and prosperous
+any child could see that his eyes were tired and his mouth was sad when he was not speaking i'm doing pretty well thank you said the man with a delightful smile
+how much has your aunt on hand now suggested the very modest and inexperienced agent and how much would she need
+i'm not certain said rebecca conscientiously but i'll look in the circular it's sure to tell and she drew the document from her pocket what are you going to do with the magnificent profits you get from this business
+we are not selling for our own benefit said rebecca confidentially my friend who is holding the horse at the gate is the daughter of a very rich blacksmith and doesn't need any money
+we are trying to get a premium for some friends of ours rebecca had never thought of alluding to the circumstances with her previous customers but unexpectedly she found herself describing mister simpson missus simpson and the simpson family
+their poverty their joyless life and their abject need of a banquet lamp to brighten their existence you needn't argue that point laughed the man as he stood up to get a glimpse of the rich blacksmith's daughter at the gate
+i can see that they ought to have it if they want it and especially if you want them to have it i've known what it was myself to do without a banquet lamp now give me the circular and let's do some figuring how much do the simpsons lack at this moment
+if they sell two hundred more cakes this month and next they can have the lamp by christmas rebecca answered and they can get a shade by summer time but i'm afraid i can't help very much after to day because my aunt miranda may not like to have me
+i see well that's all right i'll take three hundred cakes and that will give them shade and all
+tipped over and disappeared into a clump of lilac bushes it was a very short distance fortunately and the amused capitalist picked her up set her on her feet and brushed her off you should never seem surprised when you have taken a large order said he
+you ought to have replied can't you make it three hundred and fifty instead of capsizing in that unbusinesslike way oh i could never say anything like that exclaimed rebecca who was blushing crimson at her awkward fall
+but it doesn't seem right for you to buy so much are you sure you can afford it
+what if your aunt shouldn't like the kind of soap queried rebecca nervously my aunt always likes what i like he returned mine doesn't exclaimed rebecca then there's something wrong with your aunt or with me laughed rebecca
+what is your name young lady rebecca rowena randall sir what with an amused smile both your mother was generous she couldn't bear to give up either of the names she says
+i think i know already answered rebecca with a bright glance i'm sure you must be mister aladdin in the arabian nights oh please can i run down and tell emma jane she must be so tired waiting and she will be so glad
+at the man's nod of assent rebecca sped down the lane
+oh emma jane emma jane we are sold out mister aladdin followed smilingly to corroborate this astonishing unbelievable statement lifted all their boxes from the back of the wagon
+and taking the circular promised to write to the excelsior company that night concerning the premium if you could contrive to keep a secret you two little girls
+it would be rather a nice surprise to have the lamp arrive at the simpsons on thanksgiving day wouldn't it he asked as he tucked the old lap robe cosily over their feet
+oh don't mention it laughed mister aladdin lifting his hat i was a sort of commercial traveler myself once years ago and i like to see the thing well done good by miss rebecca rowena
+just let me know whenever you have anything to sell for i'm certain beforehand i shall want it good by mister aladdin i surely will cried rebecca tossing back her dark braids delightedly and waving her hand oh rebecca said emma jane in an awe struck whisper
+he raised his hat to us and we not thirteen it'll be five years before we're ladies never mind answered rebecca we are the beginnings of ladies even now he tucked the lap robe round us too continued emma jane
+in an ecstasy of reminiscence oh isn't he perfectly elergant and wasn't it lovely of him to buy us out and just think of having both the lamp and the shade for one day's work aren't you glad you wore your pink gingham now
+even if mother did make you put on flannel underneath you do look so pretty in pink and red rebecca and so homely in drab and brown i know it sighed rebecca i wish i was like you pretty in all colors
+and rebecca looked longingly at emma jane's fat rosy cheeks at her blue eyes which said nothing at her neat nose which had no character at her red lips from between which no word worth listening to had ever issued
+never mind said emma jane comfortingly everybody says you're awful bright and smart and mother thinks you'll be better looking all the time as you grow older you wouldn't believe it but i was a dreadful homely baby
+aunt miranda would say that was just like me and it is but i called him mister aladdin because he gave us a lamp you know the story of aladdin and the wonderful lamp
+oh rebecca how could you call him a nickname the very first time you ever saw him aladdin isn't a nickname exactly anyway he laughed and seemed to like it
+by dint of superhuman effort and putting such a seal upon their lips as never mortals put before the two girls succeeded in keeping their wonderful news to themselves
+on thanksgiving the lamp arrived in a large packing box and was taken out and set up by seesaw simpson who suddenly began to admire and respect the business ability of his sisters
+snow white rose red just before thanksgiving the affairs of the simpsons reached what might have been called a crisis even in their family
+which had been born and reared in a state of adventurous poverty and perilous uncertainty riverboro was doing its best to return the entire tribe of simpsons to the land of its fathers so to speak
+thinking rightly that the town which had given them birth rather than the town of their adoption should feed them and keep a roof over their heads until the children were of an age for self support there was little to eat in the household
+and less to wear though missus simpson did as always her poor best the children managed to satisfy their appetites by sitting modestly outside their neighbors kitchen doors when meals were about to be served
+they were not exactly popular favorites but they did receive certain undesirable morsels from the more charitable housewives life was rather dull and dreary however and in the chill and gloom of november weather
+with the vision of other people's turkeys bursting with fat and other people's golden pumpkins and squashes and corn being garnered into barns the young simpsons groped about for some inexpensive form of excitement
+and settled upon the selling of soap for a premium they had sold enough to their immediate neighbors during the earlier autumn to secure a child's handcart which though very weak on its pins could be trundled over the country roads
+with large business sagacity and an executive capacity which must have been inherited from their father they now proposed to extend their operations to a larger area and distribute soap to contiguous villages
+if these villages could be induced to buy the excelsior soap company paid a very small return of any kind to its infantile agents who were scattered through the state but it inflamed their imaginations by the issue of circulars
+with highly colored pictures of the premiums to be awarded for the sale of a certain number of cakes it was at this juncture that clara belle and susan simpson consulted rebecca who threw herself solidly and wholeheartedly into the enterprise
+promising her help and that of emma jane perkins the premiums within their possible grasp were three a bookcase a plush reclining chair and a banquet lamp of course the simpsons had no books
+and casting aside without thought or pang the plush chair
+not counting mister simpson who ordinarily sat elsewhere at the town's expense they warmed themselves rapturously in the vision of the banquet lamp which speedily became to them more desirable than food drink or clothing
+neither emma jane nor rebecca perceived anything incongruous in the idea of the simpsons striving for a banquet lamp they looked at the picture daily and knew that if they themselves were free agents they would toil suffer
+ay sweat for the happy privilege of occupying the same room with that lamp through the coming winter evenings it looked to be about eight feet tall in the catalogue and emma jane advised clara belle to measure the height of the simpson ceilings
+but a note in the margin of the circular informed them that it stood two and a half feet high when set up in all its dignity and splendor on a proper table three dollars extra it was only of polished brass continued the circular
+though it was invariably mistaken for solid gold and the shade that accompanied it at least it accompanied it if the agent sold a hundred extra cakes was of crinkled crepe paper printed in a dozen delicious hues
+from which the joy dazzled agent might take his choice seesaw simpson was not in the syndicate clara belle was rather a successful agent but susan who could only say thoap never made large returns
+and the twins who were somewhat young to be thoroughly trustworthy could be given only a half dozen cakes at a time and were obliged to carry with them on their business trips a brief document stating the price per cake dozen and box
+rebecca and emma jane offered to go two or three miles in some one direction and see what they could do in the way of stirring up a popular demand for the snow white and rose red brands the former being devoted to laundry purposes
+and the latter being intended for the toilet there was a great amount of hilarity in the preparation for this event and a long council in emma jane's attic they had the soap company's circular from which to arrange a proper speech
+and they had what was still better the remembrance of a certain patent medicine vender's discourse at the milltown fair his method when once observed could never be forgotten nor his manner nor his vocabulary
+emma jane practiced it on rebecca and rebecca on emma jane can i sell you a little soap this afternoon it is called the snow white and rose red soap
+six cakes in an ornamental box only twenty cents for the white twenty five cents for the red it is made from the purest ingredients and if desired could be eaten by an invalid with relish and profit
+oh rebecca don't let's say that interposed emma jane hysterically it makes me feel like a fool it takes so little to make you feel like a fool emma jane rebuked rebecca that sometimes i think that you must be one
+i don't get to feeling like a fool so awfully easy now leave out that eating part if you don't like it and go on the snow white is probably the most remarkable laundry soap ever manufactured
+immerse the garments in a tub lightly rubbing the more soiled portions with the soap leave them submerged in water from sunset to sunrise and then the youngest baby can wash them without the slightest effort
+babe not baby corrected rebecca from the circular it's just the same thing argued emma jane of course it's just the same thing but a baby has got to be called babe or infant in a circular
+the same as it is in poetry would you rather say infant no grumbled emma jane infant is worse even than babe
+and let elijah or elisha try the soap before we begin selling i can't imagine a babe doing a family wash with any soap answered rebecca but it must be true or they would never dare to print it so don't let's bother
+oh won't it be the greatest fun emma jane at some of the houses where they can't possibly know me i shan't be frightened and i shall reel off the whole rigmarole invalid babe and all
+perhaps i shall say even the last sentence if i can remember it we sound every chord in the great mac ro cosm of satisfaction
+this conversation took place on a friday afternoon at emma jane's house where rebecca to her unbounded joy was to stay over sunday her aunts having gone to portland to the funeral of an old friend
+saturday being a holiday they were going to have the old white horse drive to north riverboro three miles away eat a twelve o'clock dinner with emma jane's cousins and be back at four o'clock punctually
+when the children asked missus perkins if they could call at just a few houses coming and going and sell a little soap for the simpsons she at first replied decidedly in the negative
+she was an indulgent parent however and really had little objection to emma jane amusing herself in this unusual way it was only for rebecca as the niece of the difficult miranda sawyer that she raised scruples
+but when fully persuaded that the enterprise was a charitable one she acquiesced the girls called at mister watson's store and arranged for several large boxes of soap to be charged to clara belle simpson's account
+these were lifted into the back of the wagon and a happier couple never drove along the country road than rebecca and her companion it was a glorious indian summer day which suggested nothing of thanksgiving near at hand as it was
+it was a rustly day a scarlet and buff yellow and carmine bronze and crimson day there were still many leaves on the oaks and maples making a goodly show of red and brown and gold
+the air was like sparkling cider and every field had its heaps of yellow and russet good things to eat all ready for the barns the mills and the markets the horse forgot his twenty years
+sniffed the sweet bright air and trotted like a colt nokomis mountain looked blue and clear in the distance rebecca stood in the wagon and apostrophized the landscape with sudden joy of living
+great wide beautiful wonderful world with the wonderful water round you curled and the wonderful grass upon your breast world you are beautifully drest
+dull emma jane had never seemed to rebecca so near so dear so tried and true and rebecca to emma jane's faithful heart had never been so brilliant so bewildering so fascinating as in this visit together
+with its intimacy its freedom and the added delights of an exciting business enterprise a gorgeous leaf blew into the wagon does color make you sort of dizzy asked rebecca
+no it don't not a mite perhaps dizzy isn't just the right word but it's nearest i'd like to eat color and drink it and sleep in it if you could be a tree which one would you choose
+emma jane had enjoyed considerable experience of this kind and rebecca had succeeded in unstopping her ears ungluing her eyes and loosening her tongue so that she could play the game after a fashion
+i'd rather be an apple tree in blossom that one that blooms pink by our pig pen rebecca laughed there was always something unexpected in emma jane's replies
+i'd choose to be that scarlet maple just on the edge of the pond there and she pointed with the whip then i could see so much more than your pink apple tree by the pig pen i could look at all the rest of the woods
+see my scarlet dress in my beautiful looking glass and watch all the yellow and brown trees growing upside down in the water when i'm old enough to earn money i'm going to have a dress like this leaf
+then i think i'll have a brown sash like the trunk of the tree and where could i be green do they have green petticoats i wonder i'd like a green petticoat coming out now and then underneath
+to show what my leaves were like before i was a scarlet maple i think it would be awful homely said emma jane
+with a pink sash pink stockings bronze slippers
+why mister cropper changed his mind well miss maxwell how did you get along today asked mister baxter affably when the new teacher came to the table she was a slight dark girl rather plain looking
+but with a smart energetic way mister baxter approved of her he liked her style as he would have said the summer term had just opened in the maitland district esther maxwell was a stranger
+but she was a capable girl and had no doubt of her own ability to get and keep the school in good working order she smiled brightly at mister baxter very well for a beginning the children seem bright and teachable
+and not hard to control mister baxter nodded there are no bad children in the school except the cropper boys and they can be good enough if they like reckon they weren't there today no
+well miss maxwell i think it only fair to tell you that you may have trouble with those boys when they do come forewarned is forearmed you know mister cropper was opposed to our hiring you
+not of course that he had any personal objection to you but he is set against female teachers and when a cropper is set there is nothing on earth can change him he says female teachers can't keep order
+they know he'll back them up in secret no matter what they do just to prove his opinions cropper is sly and slippery and it is hard to corner him are the boys big queried esther anxiously
+yes thirteen and fourteen and big for their age you can't whip em that is the trouble a man might but they'd twist you around their fingers you'll have your hands full i'm afraid
+but maybe they'll behave all right after all mister baxter privately had no hope that they would but esther hoped for the best she could not believe that mister cropper would carry his prejudices into a personal application
+this conviction was strengthened when he overtook her walking from school the next day and drove her home he was a big handsome man with a very suave polite manner he asked interestedly about her school and her work
+hoped she was getting on well and said he had two young rascals of his own to send soon esther felt relieved she thought that mister baxter had exaggerated matters a little that plum tree of missus charley's is loaded with fruit again this year
+remarked mister baxter at the tea table that evening i came past it today on my way cross lots home from the woods there will be bushels of plums on it
+i don't suppose poor missus charley will get one of them any more than she ever has said missus baxter indignantly it's a burning shame that's what it is i just wish she could catch the croppers once
+you haven't any proof that it is really them mary objected her husband and you shouldn't make reckless accusations before folks i know very well it is them
+and missus charley knows it too although she can't prove it more's the pity i don't say isaac cropper steals those plums with his own hands but he knows who does and the plums go into mehitable cropper's preserving kettle
+there's nothing surer you see miss maxwell it's this way explained mister baxter turning to esther missus charley cropper's husband was isaac's brother
+they never got on well together and when charley died there was a tremendous fuss about the property isaac acted mean and scandalous clear through and public opinion has been down on him ever since
+but missus charley is a pretty smart woman and he didn't get the better of her in everything there was a strip of disputed land between the two farms and she secured it there's a big plum tree growing on it close to the line fence
+it's the finest one in maitland but missus charley never gets a plum from it
+asked esther they disappear said mister baxter with a significant nod when the plums are anything like ripe missus charley discovers some day that there isn't one left on the tree
+she has never been able to get a scrap of proof as to who took them or she'd make it hot for them but nobody in maitland has any doubt in his own mind that isaac cropper knows where those plums go
+i don't think mister cropper would steal protested esther well he doesn't consider it stealing you know he claims the land and says the plums are his
+i don't doubt that he is quite clear in his own mind that they are and he does hate missus charley i'd give considerable to see the old sinner fairly caught but he is too deep
+i think mister baxter is too hard on mister cropper said esther to herself later on he has probably some private prejudice against him but a month later she had changed her opinion
+during that time the cropper boys had come to school at first esther had been inclined to like them they were handsome lads with the same smooth way that characterized their father and seemed bright and intelligent
+for a few days all went well and esther felt decidedly relieved but before long a subtle spirit of insubordination began to make itself felt in the school esther found herself powerless to cope with it
+the croppers never openly defied her but they did precisely as they pleased the other pupils thought themselves at liberty to follow this example and in a month's time poor esther had completely lost control of her little kingdom
+some complaints were heard among the ratepayers and even mister baxter looked dubious she knew that unless she could regain her authority she would be requested to hand in her resignation
+but she was baffled by the elusive system of defiance which the cropper boys had organized one day she resolved to go to mister cropper himself and appeal to his sense of justice if he had any
+it had been an especially hard day in school when she had been absent at the noon hour all the desks in the schoolroom had been piled in a pyramid on the floor books and slates interchanged and various other pranks played
+when questioned every pupil denied having done or helped to do it alfred and bob cropper looked her squarely in the eyes and declared their innocence in their usual gentlemanly fashion yet esther felt sure that they were the guilty ones
+she also knew what exaggerated accounts of the affair would be taken home to maitland tea tables and she felt like sitting down to cry but she did not instead she set her mouth firmly helped the children restore the room to order
+and after school went up to isaac cropper's house that gentleman himself came in from the harvest field looking as courtly as usual even in his rough working clothes he shook hands heartily told her he was glad to see her
+and began talking about the weather esther was not to be turned from her object thus although she felt her courage ebbing away from her as it always did in the presence of the cropper imperviousness
+i have come up to see you about alfred and robert mister cropper she said they are not behaving well in school indeed mister cropper's voice expressed bland surprise that is strange
+as a rule i do not think alfred and robert have been troublesome to their teachers what have they been doing now they refuse to obey my orders said esther faintly
+my boys are high spirited fellows and need a strong firm hand to restrain them i have always said i considered it advisable to employ a male teacher in maitland school we should have better order
+not that i disapprove of you personally far from it i should be glad to see you succeed but i have heard many complaints regarding the order in school at present i had no trouble until your boys came
+retorted esther losing her temper a little and i believe that if you were willing to co operate with me that i could govern them well you see said mister cropper easily
+when i send my boys to school i naturally expect that the teacher will be capable of doing the work she has been hired to do then you refuse to help me said esther in a trembling voice
+why my dear young lady what can i do boys soon know when they can disobey a teacher with impunity no doubt you will be able to secure a school easier to control and will do good work
+but here as i have already said we need a firm hand at the helm but you are not going yet miss maxwell you need some refreshment after your long walk missus cropper will bring you in something no thank you said poor esther
+she felt that she must get away at once or she would burst into heartsick tears under those steely bland blue eyes when she got home she shut herself up in her room and cried there was nothing for her to do but resign she thought dismally
+on the following saturday esther went for an afternoon walk carrying her kodak with her it was a brilliantly fine autumn day and woods and fields were basking in a mellow haze esther went across lots to missus charley cropper's house intending to make a call
+but the house was locked up and evidently deserted so she rambled past it to the back fields passing through a grove of maples she came out among leafy young saplings on the other side just beyond her with its laden boughs hanging over the line fence
+was the famous plum tree esther looked at it for a moment then an odd smile gleamed over her face and she lifted her kodak monday evening esther called on mister cropper again
+after the preliminary remarks in which he indulged she said with seeming irrelevance that saturday had been a fine day there was an excellent light for snapshots she went on coolly
+i have brought you up a proof i thought you would be interested in it she rose and placed the proof on the table before mister cropper the plum tree came out clearly
+bob and alf cropper were up among the boughs picking the plums on the ground beneath them stood their father with a basket of fruit in his hand mister cropper looked at the proof and from it to esther
+his eyes had lost their unconcerned glitter but his voice was defiant the plums are mine by right he said perhaps said esther calmly but there are some who do not think so
+missus charley for instance she would like to see this proof i think don't show it to her cried mister cropper hastily i tell you miss maxwell the plums are mine but i am tired of fighting over them
+and i had decided before this that i'd let her have them after this it's only a trifle anyhow and about that little matter we were discussing the other night miss maxwell i have been thinking it over and
+i admit i was somewhat unreasonable i'll talk to alfred and robert and see what i can do very well said esther quietly the matter of the plums isn't my business
+and i don't wish to be involved in your family feuds especially as you say that you mean to allow missus charley to enjoy her own in future as for the school we will hope that matters will improve
+you'll leave the proof with me won't you said mister cropper eagerly oh certainly said esther smiling i have the negative still you know from that time out the cropper boys were models of good behaviour and the other turbulent spirits
+having lost their leaders were soon quelled complaint died away and at the end of the term esther was re engaged you seem to have won old cropper over to your side entirely mister baxter told her that night
+i never knew isaac cropper to change his opinions so handsomely esther smiled
+when the boat was nearing the island of marken the little yellow cheese had been presented with all due formality to one of the sailors who had been specially kind in the matter of securing good seats for mister king's party polly and phronsie having held a whispered conference in a retired nook
+to come out of it bright and smiling and now it has made two people happy phronsie polly had said when the presentation was well over and she ended up with a kiss it made me happy in the first place because you thought of me and then
+perhaps so said polly
+well maybe he has some we'll think so anyway polly answered oh see jasper is calling us to be sure there he was on the other side of the boat nearest marken
+and holding out their arms singing something all the while in a shrill high key
+cried jasper come polly and phronsie let us toss them some whiz spin went the coins to fall into the thick stubby grass on the bank
+the children stopping their song in mid air scrambled and sprawled all over each other in their efforts to secure the coveted money so jasper and polly threw the bits next time in the other direction then there was a shout and a rush
+and the same thing was repeated till only a tangle of arms and legs could be seen but some one of them always got the money dear me they've eyes just like birds exclaimed parson henderson to think of finding anything in that thick grass
+let them alone for that laughed old mister king their wits are sharpened by practice look out phronsie exclaimed jasper your stuivers went into the water here i'll hold you up then you can throw it farther
+there you go swinging her to his shoulder now then he guided her hand and away spun the coin it did it did crowed phronsie from her high perch
+so it did pet well now here is another there's a little girl back there and she hasn't any mourned phronsie
+to be sure said jasper well we must give her some and that's a fact the small girl kept on at a dog trot along the bank her eyes fixed on the wonderful people who tossed out such magic wealth
+and holding out her arms and singing her shrill song but when the money was thrown she was always a bit too late and the other children scrambling and scuffling had pounced upon it and had made off with it here you boys keep away you've had enough
+we're going to give this to the little girl jasper shouted to them as they threw coin after coin
+said old mister king laughing heartily at the performance and they wouldn't mind you in the least if they did i suppose not said jasper in chagrin oh the mean little beggars hold up your apron screamed polly to the little girl
+that's a good idea said jasper why didn't we think of it before she won't understand any better than the boys said old mister king you forget children that these youngsters don't know our language
+what a bother exclaimed jasper it is to have so many different languages anyway and she hasn't any apron polly corrected her mother that is her brown gown
+polly was already going through the motions of holding up an imaginary apron and at last the little girl understood by gestures what she could not possibly get into her head by words so she picked up the skirt of her gown in her sturdy little fists
+and one two three clinking coins fell safely into it but the boys racing along in advance soon discovered this successful trick and completely swarmed around her howling dreadfully so she hastened off
+happy in her prize which she huddled up in her gown as she ran isn't this just richness exclaimed polly gazing all about her in an ecstasy oh jasper what pictures we'll take and do see that woman's cap and those pot hooks of hair over her eyes
+take care polly you almost stepped off backward down the bank warned adela pulling her back as they got off the steamboat and stopped a bit to look around
+said polly well it's enough to make any one step backward to see such funny clothes and they are hay making adela gray as sure as you live didn't you suppose they would be answered adela composedly
+why that's one of the things i specially wanted to see yes so did i said polly
+then she stopped and looked at adela you may first she said no i'm not going to declared adela yes yes said polly i'd rather you did first i truly had adela
+she ran after her for adela had retreated down the bank and made as if she were going to follow the party now adela be good and listen to reason but adela ran off now that's too bad
+mourned polly for i'm afraid she'll keep away from me all the while we're on this island and then i can't get a chance to give her my kodak at all she had it at the model farm
+said polly such a little bit of a while doesn't count well let us take pictures as fast as we can suggested jasper and then when we do come up with adela why you'll have yours done so polly roused out of her dejection and set to work
+and presently the hay makers and the marken boys and girls the funny little houses that looked as if they dropped down pellmell from the clouds and settled where they had dropped the high ridges along which the men and boys walking in their full baggy trousers looked as if they were blown up
+and formed a dutch perspective perfectly awful all these queer delightful things were presently imprisoned in the two kodaks jasper looked up there that's my last picture he declared at any rate for now
+polly ran off a few steps and sat down on a log to focus the marken girls happened to look up and immediately whirled around and presented their backs to her oh dear how hateful she exclaimed
+that would have been a splendid picture never mind said jasper you can catch them unawares and have another try at them not so good as that said polly sorrowfully well it can't be helped
+so she was just going to get up from her log when the girls thinking from her attitude that she had given up the idea of taking a picture of them turned back to their work as quick as a flash polly focussed again and was just touching the button
+when a hand came in front of her kodak and she saw the grinning face of a marken girl under its pot hook of hair and with the long dangling curl on one side
+and don't you ever do that again and the hand was withdrawn and the girl clattered off as fast as she could run in her wooden shoes i got them said polly running back in triumph to jasper
+yes and i took a picture of the saucy girl while she was trying to stop yours said jasper so she didn't do much harm after all oh here is a splendid group see them standing by that old tumble down house polly he added excitedly
+well i had then but i've begun again said jasper recklessly he walked up to the group and held out his hand then pointed to his kodak they smiled and nodded showing all their teeth and the mother took the littlest baby
+for there seemed to be a very generous number of the smaller members of the family and sat down with it in her lap on the rickety step then they all drew up stiff as sticks and didn't even wink that's capital said jasper in huge satisfaction
+pouring the coins into the mother's lap where they rolled underneath the fat baby
+said phronsie as polly and jasper ran up to a doorway through which they could see their party phronsie stood just inside and appeared to be watching for them there's a woman here who's been showing us things
+there was missus fisher up by the tiny window bending over an old woman who had spread out in her lap some white embroidered garments while a young woman hovered near smiling and blushing and very happy at all this notice
+and the rest of the party crowded up as close as they could they are her daughter's wedding clothes said missus fisher i do believe for the old woman was working fearfully hard to make them understand
+and pointing first to the white garments and then to the young woman wedding clothes asked missus fisher speaking very slowly the old woman seemed to understand the one word wedding for she nodded furiously and smiled well pleased
+and then devoted her whole time and energy to the display of the garments and she even laughed aloud when old mister king put some coins in her hard hand
+she confided to jasper when once out of doors how else could they be pulled so tight and they look as hard as a drum i didn't investigate he said laughing i'll leave that to you polly well it's funny anyway she said
+and those embroidered jackets over their waists and those caps and horrible pot hooks and long curls it's well that we've got so many pictures for the people at home would never believe our stories without them
+continued polly squinting up at a crooked row all colours green stripes and black stripes and o dear me jasper king just look at phronsie jasper followed the direction of polly's finger
+there sat phronsie on a grassy bank a little above them with one of the fattest marken babies in her lap a variegated group of natives was near by watching her intently
+sighed phronsie giving motherly pats to the stout little legs dangling down from her lap come children grandpapa emerged from the little old house we must hurry on else we sha'n't get through this island come phronsie goodness me
+begged phronsie staggering to her feet
+goodness me no child exclaimed grandpapa in horror put her down phronsie she's ever so much too heavy for you dear he put forth a protesting hand but the tears ran down phronsie's cheeks and fell on the baby's stiff white cap
+at that old mister king was quite gone in despair phronsie polly bent over and whispered close to the wet little cheek don't you see grandpapa is feeling badly i'm afraid he will be sick phronsie if he is unhappy
+instantaneously with the consciousness of existence returned her recollection of the manuscript and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid's going away she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the ground and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on her pillow
+she now plainly saw that she must not expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books for the roll seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets was altogether but of trifling size
+and much less than she had supposed it to be at first her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page she started at its import could it be possible or did not her senses play her false an inventory of linen
+in coarse and modern characters seemed all that was before her if the evidence of sight might be trusted she held a washing bill in her hand she seized another sheet and saw the same articles with little variation a third a fourth and a fifth presented nothing new
+shirts stockings cravats and waistcoats faced her in each two others penned by the same hand marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting in letters hair powder shoe string and breeches ball and the larger sheet
+to suppose that a manuscript of many generations back could have remained undiscovered in a room such as that so modern so habitable
+for had not the cabinet appeared so exactly to agree with his description of her adventures she should never have felt the smallest curiosity about it this was the only comfort that occurred impatient to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly those detestable papers then scattered over the bed
+for she could now manage them with perfect ease in this there was surely something mysterious and she indulged in the flattering suggestion for half a minute till the possibility of the door's having been at first unlocked
+and yet unequal to an absolute falsehood
+but we have a charming morning after it she added desiring to get rid of the subject
+and how might you learn by accident or argument
+as a means of getting you out of doors and tempting you to more frequent exercise than you would otherwise take and though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic who can tell the sentiment once raised but you may in time come to love a rose
+but i do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors the pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me
+mamma says i am never within
+the mere habit of learning to love is the thing and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing has my sister a pleasant mode of instruction catherine was saved the embarrassment of attempting an answer by the entrance of the general
+whose smiling compliments announced a happy state of mind but whose gentle hint of sympathetic early rising did not advance her composure the elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on catherine's notice when they were seated at table and lucidly it had been the general's choice
+he was enchanted by her approbation of his taste confessed it to be neat and simple thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country and for his part to his uncritical palate the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of staffordshire
+he trusted however that an opportunity might ere long occur of selecting one though not for himself catherine was probably the only one of the party who did not understand him
+shortly after breakfast henry left them for woodston where business required and would keep him two or three days they all attended in the hall to see him mount his horse and immediately on re entering the breakfast room catherine walked to a window in the hope of catching another glimpse of his figure
+observed the general to eleanor woodston will make but a sombre appearance today is it a pretty place asked catherine what say you eleanor speak your opinion for ladies can best tell the taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men
+i think it would be acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many recommendations the house stands among fine meadows facing the south east with an excellent kitchen garden in the same aspect
+the walls surrounding which i built and stocked myself about ten years ago for the benefit of my son it is a family living miss morland and the property in the place being chiefly my own you may believe i take care that it shall not be a bad one
+did henry's income depend solely on this living he would not be ill provided for perhaps it may seem odd that with only two younger children i should think any profession necessary for him and certainly there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie of business
+but though i may not exactly make converts of you young ladies i am sure your father miss morland would agree with me in thinking it expedient to give every young man some employment the money is nothing it is not an object but employment is the thing
+has his profession the imposing effect of this last argument was equal to his wishes the silence of the lady proved it to be unanswerable something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the house and he now offered himself as her conductor
+and though catherine had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter it was a proposal of too much happiness in itself under any circumstances not to be gladly accepted
+and had seen only a few of its rooms the netting box just leisurely drawn forth was closed with joyful haste and she was ready to attend him in a moment
+the pleasure of accompanying her into the shrubberies and garden she curtsied her acquiescence but perhaps it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object
+the weather was at present favourable and at this time of year the uncertainty was very great of its continuing so which would she prefer he was equally at her service
+he yielded implicitly and would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment he left the room and catherine with a disappointed anxious face began to speak of her unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own inclination under a mistaken idea of pleasing her
+catherine did not exactly know how this was to be understood why was miss tilney embarrassed could there be any unwillingness on the general's side to show her over the abbey the proposal was his own
+neither her father nor mister allen did so it was certainly very provoking
+if henry had been with them indeed but now she should not know what was picturesque when she saw it such were her thoughts but she kept them to herself and put on her bonnet in patient discontent she was struck however beyond her expectation by the grandeur of the abbey
+as she saw it for the first time from the lawn the whole building enclosed a large court and two sides of the quadrangle rich in gothic ornaments stood forward for admiration the remainder was shut off by knolls of old trees or luxuriant plantations
+and the steep woody hills rising behind to give it shelter were beautiful even in the leafless month of march catherine had seen nothing to compare with it and her feelings of delight were so strong that without waiting for any better authority she boldly burst forth in wonder and praise
+the general listened with assenting gratitude and it seemed as if his own estimation of northanger had waited unfixed till that hour
+and he led the way to it across a small portion of the park the number of acres contained in this garden was such as catherine could not listen to without dismay being more than double the extent of all mister allen's as well as her father's including church yard and orchard
+the walls seemed countless in number endless in length a village of hot houses seemed to arise among them and a whole parish to be at work within the enclosure the general was flattered by her looks of surprise which told him almost as plainly
+as he soon forced her to tell him in words that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to them before
+without any ambition of that sort himself without any solicitude about it he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom if he had a hobby horse it was that he loved a garden though careless enough in most matters of eating he loved good fruit
+or if he did not his friends and children did there were great vexations however attending such a garden as his
+with a triumphant smile of self satisfaction the general wished he could do the same
+by its falling short of his plan how were mister allen's succession houses worked describing the nature of his own as they entered them mister allen had only one small hot house which missus allen had the use of for her plants in winter and there was a fire in it now and then
+he is a happy man said the general with a look of very happy contempt having taken her into every division and led her under every wall till she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering
+he suffered the girls at last to seize the advantage of an outer door and then expressing his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations about the tea house proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their walk if miss morland were not tired
+but where are you going eleanor why do you choose that cold damp path to it miss morland will get wet our best way is across the park
+said miss tilney that i always think it the best and nearest way
+it was a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old scotch firs and catherine struck by its gloomy aspect and eager to enter it could not even by the general's disapprobation be kept from stepping forward
+he perceived her inclination and having again urged the plea of health in vain was too polite to make further opposition he excused himself however from attending them the rays of the sun were not too cheerful for him and he would meet them by another course he turned away
+and catherine was shocked to find how much her spirits were relieved by the separation
+offered it no injury and she began to talk with easy gaiety of the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired i am particularly fond of this spot said her companion with a sigh it was my mother's favourite walk
+catherine had never heard missus tilney mentioned in the family before and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself directly in her altered countenance and in the attentive pause with which she waited for something more
+added eleanor though i never loved it then as i have loved it since at that time indeed i used to wonder at her choice but her memory endears it now and ought it not reflected catherine to endear it to her husband yet the general would not enter it
+miss tilney continuing silent she ventured to say her death must have been a great affliction a great and increasing one replied the other in a low voice
+i was only thirteen when it happened and though i felt my loss perhaps as strongly as one so young could feel it i did not i could not then know what a loss it was she stopped for a moment and then added with great firmness
+a mother would have been always present a mother would have been a constant friend
+was she a very charming woman was she handsome was there any picture of her in the abbey
+was it from dejection of spirits were questions now eagerly poured forth the first three received a ready affirmative
+her picture i suppose blushing at the consummate art of her own question hangs in your father's room no it was intended for the drawing room but my father was dissatisfied with the painting and for some time it had no place
+soon after her death i obtained it for my own and hung it in my bed chamber
+it is very like here was another proof a portrait very like of a departed wife not valued by the husband he must have been dreadfully cruel to her
+in spite of all his attentions he had previously excited and what had been terror and dislike before was now absolute aversion yes aversion his cruelty to such a charming woman made him odious to her
+she had often read of such characters characters which mister allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn but here was proof positive of the contrary she had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them directly upon the general
+and in spite of all her virtuous indignation she found herself again obliged to walk with him listen to him and even to smile when he smiled being no longer able however to receive pleasure from the surrounding objects she soon began to walk with lassitude
+the general perceived it and with a concern for her health which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the house he would follow them in a quarter of an hour
+chapter twenty one a moment's glance was enough to satisfy catherine that her apartment was very unlike the one which henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the description of it was by no means unreasonably large and contained neither tapestry nor velvet
+the walls were papered the floor was carpeted the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than those of the drawing room below the furniture though not of the latest fashion was handsome and comfortable and the air of the room altogether far from uncheerful
+her heart instantaneously at ease on this point she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of anything as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay
+and she was preparing to unpin the linen package which the chaise seat had conveyed for her immediate accommodation when her eye suddenly fell on a large high chest standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace the sight of it made her start
+and forgetting everything else she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder while these thoughts crossed her
+pushed back too as if meant to be out of sight i will look into it cost me what it may i will look into it and directly too by daylight if i stay till evening my candle may go out she advanced and examined it closely
+it was of cedar curiously inlaid with some darker wood and raised about a foot from the ground on a carved stand of the same the lock was silver though tarnished from age
+broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence and on the centre of the lid was a mysterious cipher in the same metal catherine bent over it intently but without being able to distinguish anything with certainty she could not in whatever direction she took it
+believe the last letter to be a t and yet that it should be anything else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment if not originally theirs by what strange events could it have fallen into the tilney family her fearful curiosity
+was every moment growing greater and seizing with trembling hands the hasp of the lock she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its contents with difficulty for something seemed to resist her efforts she raised the lid a few inches
+but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her starting quit her hold and the lid closed with alarming violence this ill timed intruder was miss tilney's maid sent by her mistress to be of use to miss morland and though catherine immediately dismissed her
+and forced her in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this mystery to proceed in her dressing without further delay her progress was not quick for her thoughts and her eyes were still bent on the object so well calculated to interest and alarm and though she dared not waste a moment upon a second attempt
+she could not remain many paces from the chest at length however having slipped one arm into her gown her toilette seemed so nearly finished that the impatience of her curiosity might safely be indulged
+and so desperate should be the exertion of her strength that unless secured by supernatural means the lid in one moment should be thrown back with this spirit she sprang forward and her confidence did not deceive her her resolute effort threw back the lid and gave to her astonished eyes
+entered the room and to the rising shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd expectation was then added the shame of being caught in so idle a search
+said miss tilney as catherine hastily closed it and turned away to the glass
+catherine had no leisure for speech being at once blushing tying her gown and forming wise resolutions with the most violent dispatch miss tilney gently hinted her fear of being late and in half a minute they ran downstairs together in an alarm not wholly unfounded
+for general tilney was pacing the drawing room his watch in his hand and having on the very instant of their entering pulled the bell with violence ordered dinner to be on table directly catherine trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke
+and sat pale and breathless in a most humble mood concerned for his children and detesting old chests and the general recovering his politeness as he looked at her spent the rest of his time in scolding his daughter for so foolishly hurrying her fair friend
+who was absolutely out of breath from haste when there was not the least occasion for hurry in the world
+till they were happily seated at the dinner table when the general's complacent smiles and a good appetite of her own restored her to peace the dining parlour was a noble room
+and fitted up in a style of luxury and expense which was almost lost on the unpractised eye of catherine who saw little more than its spaciousness and the number of their attendants of the former she spoke aloud her admiration and the general with a very gracious countenance
+acknowledged that it was by no means an ill sized room and further confessed that though as careless on such subjects as most people he did look upon a tolerably large eating room as one of the necessaries of life he supposed however
+that she must have been used to much better sized apartments at mister allen's no indeed was catherine's honest assurance mister allen's dining parlour was not more than half as large and she had never seen so large a room as this in her life
+the general's good humour increased why as he had such rooms he thought it would be simple not to make use of them
+mister allen's house he was sure must be exactly of the true size for rational happiness the evening passed without any further disturbance and in the occasional absence of general tilney with much positive cheerfulness
+it was only in his presence that catherine felt the smallest fatigue from her journey and even then even in moments of languor or restraint a sense of general happiness preponderated and she could think of her friends in bath without one wish of being with them the night was stormy
+the wind had been rising at intervals the whole afternoon and by the time the party broke up it blew and rained violently catherine as she crossed the hall listened to the tempest with sensations of awe and when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door
+yes these were characteristic sounds they brought to her recollection a countless variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes which such buildings had witnessed and such storms ushered in
+and most heartily did she rejoice in the happier circumstances attending her entrance within walls so solemn she had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or drunken gallants
+henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning in a house so furnished and so guarded she could have nothing to explore or to suffer and might go to her bedroom as securely as if it had been her own chamber at fullerton
+she was enabled especially on perceiving that miss tilney slept only two doors from her to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart and her spirits were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire
+as so many poor girls have been obliged to do and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot how glad i am that northanger is what it is if it had been like some other places i do not know that in such a night as this
+i could have answered for my courage but now to be sure there is nothing to alarm one she looked round the room the window curtains seemed in motion
+a glance at the old chest as she turned away from this examination was not without its use she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for bed she should take her time she should not hurry herself
+as if she wished for the protection of light after she were in bed the fire therefore died away and catherine having spent the best part of an hour in her arrangements was beginning to think of stepping into bed when on giving a parting glance round the room
+she was struck by the appearance of a high old fashioned black cabinet which though in a situation conspicuous enough had never caught her notice before henry's words his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at first
+immediately rushed across her and though there could be nothing really in it there was something whimsical it was certainly a very remarkable coincidence she took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet it was not absolutely ebony and gold
+but it was japan black and yellow japan of the handsomest kind and as she held her candle the yellow had very much the effect of gold the key was in the door and she had a strange fancy to look into it not however with the smallest expectation of finding anything
+but it was so very odd after what henry had said in short she could not sleep till she had examined it so placing the candle with great caution on a chair she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turn it but it resisted her utmost strength
+alarmed but not discouraged she tried it another way a bolt flew and she believed herself successful but how strangely mysterious the door was still immovable she paused a moment in breathless wonder
+the wind roared down the chimney the rain beat in torrents against the windows and everything seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation
+to retire to bed however unsatisfied on such a point would be vain since sleep must be impossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her immediate vicinity again therefore she applied herself to the key
+and after moving it in every possible way for some instants with the determined celerity of hope's last effort the door suddenly yielded to her hand her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory
+and having thrown open each folding door the second being secured only by bolts of less wonderful construction than the lock though in that her eye could not discern anything unusual a double range of small drawers appeared in view with some larger drawers above and below them and in the centre
+a small door closed also with a lock and key secured in all probability a cavity of importance catherine's heart beat quick but her courage did not fail her with a cheek flushed by hope and an eye straining with curiosity
+her fingers grasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth it was entirely empty with less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second a third a fourth each was equally empty not one was left unsearched
+and in not one was anything found well read in the art of concealing a treasure the possibility of false linings to the drawers did not escape her and she felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain the place in the middle alone remained now unexplored and though she had
+her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back into the further part of the cavity apparently for concealment and her feelings at that moment were indescribable her heart fluttered her knees trembled and her cheeks grew pale
+she seized with an unsteady hand the precious manuscript
+and while she acknowledged with awful sensations this striking exemplification of what henry had foretold resolved instantly to peruse every line before she attempted to rest the dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it with alarm
+a lamp could not have expired with more awful effect catherine for a few moments was motionless with horror it was done completely not a remnant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room
+a violent gust of wind rising with sudden fury added fresh horror to the moment catherine trembled from head to foot in the pause which succeeded a sound like receding footsteps and the closing of a distant door
+struck on her affrighted ear human nature could support no more a cold sweat stood on her forehead the manuscript fell from her hand and groping her way to the bed she jumped hastily in and sought some suspension of agony by creeping far underneath the clothes
+to close her eyes in sleep that night she felt must be entirely out of the question with a curiosity so justly awakened and feelings in every way so agitated repose must be absolutely impossible the storm too abroad so dreadful
+she had not been used to feel alarm from wind but now every blast seemed fraught with awful intelligence the manuscript so wonderfully found so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction how was it to be accounted for what could it contain
+by what means could it have been so long concealed and how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it till she had made herself mistress of its contents however she could have neither repose nor comfort and with the sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it
+as if by the attempt of somebody to enter hollow murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery and more than once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans
+chapter twenty seven but we must follow edward for a time on his arrival at paris he was kindly received by king charles who promised to assist his views in joining the army
+you have to choose between two generals both great in the art of war
+and turenne i have no doubt that they will be opposed to each other soon that will be the better for you as you will learn tactics from such great players which would your majesty recommend me to follow inquired edward
+and he will soon be opposed to this truculent and dishonest court who have kept me here as an instrument to accomplish their own wishes but who have never intended to keep their promises and place me on the english throne
+i will give you letters to conde and recollect that whatever general you take service under you will follow him without pretending to calculate how far his movements may be right or wrong that is not your affair
+conde is just now released from vincennes but depend upon it he will be in arms very soon as soon as he was furnished with the necessary credentials from the king edward presented himself at the levee of the prince of conde
+you are here highly spoken of said the prince for so young a man so you were at the affair of worcester we will retain you for your services will be wanted by and by
+can you procure any of your countrymen i know but of two that i can recommend from personal knowledge but these two officers i can venture to pledge myself for any more
+bring me the officers to morrow at this hour monsieur beverley au revoir
+edward went to chaloner and grenville who were delighted with the intelligence which he brought them the next day they were at the prince's levee and introduced by edward i am fortunate gentlemen
+said the prince in securing the services of such fine young men you will oblige me by enlisting as many of your countrymen as you may consider likely to do good service and then follow me to guienne to which province i am now about to depart
+and after my absence you will receive from them every assistance and necessary supplies which may be required a month after this interview conde who had been joined by a great number of nobles
+and had been re enforced by troops from spain set up the standard of revolt edward and his friends joined them with about three hundred english and scotchmen which they had enlisted and very soon afterward
+conde obtained the victory at blenan and in april sixteen fifty two advanced to paris turenne who had taken the command of the french army followed him
+and a severe action was fought in the streets of the suburb of saint antoine in which neither party had the advantage
+and not receiving the assistance he expected from the spaniards he fell back to the frontiers of champagne previous to his departure from paris edward had received humphrey's letter explaining away the intendant's conduct
+and the contents removed a heavy load from edward's mind but he now thought of nothing but war and although he cherished the idea of patience heatherstone he was resolved to follow the fortunes of the prince as long as he could
+he wrote a letter to the intendant thanking him for his kind feelings and intentions toward him and he trusted that he might one day have the pleasure of seeing him again he did not however think it advisable to mention the name of his daughter
+except in inquiring after her health and sending his respects it may be years before i see her again thought edward and who knows what may happen
+and edward with his friends followed his fortunes and gained his good will they were rapidly promoted time flew on and in the year sixteen fifty four the court of france concluded an alliance with cromwell
+and expelled king charles from the french frontiers the war was still carried on in the netherlands turenne bore down conde who had gained every campaign and the court of spain wearied with reverses
+made overtures of peace which was gladly accepted by the french during these wars cromwell had been named protector and had shortly afterward died
+edward who but rarely heard from humphrey was now anxious to quit the army and go to the king who was in spain but to leave his colors while things were adverse was impossible
+after the peace and the pardon of conde by the french king the armies were disbanded and the three adventurers were free they took their leave of the prince who thanked them for their long and meritorious services
+and they then hastened to king charles who had left spain and come to the low countries at the time of their joining the king richard the son of cromwell who had been nominated protector had resigned and every thing was ready for the restoration
+on the fifteenth of may sixteen sixty the news arrived that charles had been proclaimed king on the eighth and a large body of gentlemen went to invite him over the king sailed from scheveling
+was met at dover by general monk and conducted to london which he entered amid the acclamations of the people on the twenty ninth of the same month we may leave the reader to suppose that edward
+were among the most favored of those in his train as the procession moved slowly along the strand through a countless multitude the windows of all the houses were filled with well dressed ladies who waved their white kerchiefs to the king
+and his attendant suit chaloner edward and grenville who rode side by side as gentlemen in waiting were certainly the most distinguished among the king's retinue look edward
+at those lovely girls at yon window do you recognize them indeed i do not are they any of our paris beauties
+they are thy sisters alice and edith
+it is so i believe replied edward yes now that edith smiles i'm sure it is them yes replied grenville
+will they think you recognize us we shall see replied edward
+for while they had been speaking the procession had stopped is it possible thought edward that these can be the two girls in russet gowns that i left at the cottage and yet it must be
+well chaloner to all appearance your good aunts have done justice to their charge nature has done more edward i never thought that they would have grown into such lovely girls as they have
+although i always thought that they were handsome as they passed edward caught the eye of edith and smiled alice that's edward said edith so loud as to be heard by the king and all near him
+alice and edith rose and waved their handkerchiefs but they were soon obliged to cease and put them to their eyes are those your sisters edward said the king they are your majesty
+the king rose in his stirrups and made a low obeisance to the window where they were standing we shall have some court beauties beverley said the king looking at him over his shoulder as soon as the ceremonies were over
+and they could escape from their personal attentions edward and his two friends went to the house in which resided the ladies conynghame and his sisters we pass over the joy of this meeting after so many years absence and the pleasure
+which it gave to edward to find his sisters grown such accomplished and elegant young women that his two friends who were as the reader will recollect old acquaintances of alice and edith were warmly received we hardly need say
+now edward who do you think was here to day the reigning belle and the toast of all the gentlemen indeed i must be careful of my heart dear edith who is she
+no less than one with whom you were formerly well acquainted edward patience heatherstone patience heatherstone cried edward the toast of all london yes and deservedly so
+i can assure you but she is as good as she is handsome and moreover treats all the gay gallants with perfect indifference she is staying with her uncle sir ashley cooper and her father is also in town
+with her to day when did you hear from humphrey edith a few days back he has left the cottage now altogether indeed where does he reside then at arnwood the house has been rebuilt
+and i understand is a very princely mansion humphrey has charge of it until it is ascertained to whom it is to belong it belongs to mister heatherstone does it not replied edward
+how can you say so edward you received humphrey's letters a long while ago yes i did but let us not talk about it any more my dear edith i am in great perplexity
+what is your perplexity well replied edward since it is to be so let us sit down and talk over the matter i acknowledge the kindness of mister heatherstone
+and feel that all he asserted to humphrey is true still i do not like that i should be indebted to him for a property which is mine and that he has no right to give i acknowledge his generosity
+but i do not acknowledge his right of possession nay much as i admire and i may say fond as i am for time has not effaced the feeling of his daughter it still appears to me that
+although not said it is expected that she is to be included in the transfer and i will accept no wife on such conditions that is to say because all you wish for your property and a woman you love are offered you in one lot
+you will not accept them they must be divided and handed over to you in two said alice smiling you mistake dearest i am not so foolish but i have a certain pride which you can not blame accepting the property from mister heatherstone
+is receiving a favor were it given as a marriage portion with his daughter now why should i accept as a favor what i can claim as a right it is my intention of appealing to the king and demanding the restoration of my property
+he can not refuse it put not your trust in princes brother replied alice i doubt if the king or his council will consider it advisable to make so many discontented
+which has been so long held by others
+recollect also that mister heatherstone and his brother in law sir ashley cooper have done the king much more service than you ever have or can do they have been most important agents in his restoration
+and the king's obligations to them are much greater than they are to you besides merely for what may be called a point of honor for it is no more in what an unpleasant situation will you put his majesty
+at all events edward recollect you do not know what are the intentions of mister heatherstone wait and see what he proffers first but my dear sister it appears to me that his intentions are evident
+why has he rebuilt arnwood he is not going to surrender my property and make me a present of the house
+you were at the wars it was possible that you might or might not return he said this to humphrey who has all along been acting as his factotum in the business and recollect at the time that mister heatherstone commenced the rebuilding of the mansion
+what prospect was there of the restoration of the king or of your ever being in a position to apply for the restoration of your property i believe however that humphrey knows more of mister heatherstone's intentions than he has made known to us
+and i therefore say again my dear edward make no application till you ascertain what mister heatherstone's intentions may be your advice is good my dear alice and i will be guided by it replied edward
+and now let me give you some advice for your friends masters chaloner and grenville that much of their property has been taken away and put into other hands i know and probably they expect it will be restored upon their application to the king
+those who hold the property think so too and so far it is fortunate now from wiser heads than mine
+but at the same time if they were to meet the parties and close with them at once before the king's intentions are known they would recover their property at a third or a quarter of the value now is their time
+even a few days delay may make a difference they can easily obtain a delay for the payment of the moneys impress that upon them my dear edward
+and make the arrangements that is advice which must be followed replied edward we must go now and i will not fail to communicate it to them this very night we may as well here inform the reader
+that the advice was immediately acted upon and that chaloner and grenville recovered all their estates at about five years purchase edward remained at court several days he had written to humphrey and had dispatched a messenger with the letter
+but the messenger had not yet returned
+on the following day a drawing room was to be held and edward's sisters were to be presented edward was standing with many others of the suit behind the chair of the king amusing himself with the presentations as they took place
+and waiting for the arrival of his sisters chaloner and grenville were not with him they had obtained leave to go into the country for the object we have before referred to when his eyes caught advancing toward the king
+mister heatherstone who led his daughter patience that they had not perceived him was evident indeed her eyes were not raised once from the natural timidity felt by a young woman in the presence of royalty
+edward half concealed himself behind one of his companions that he might gaze upon her without reserve
+but little altered except having grown taller and more rounded and perfect in her figure and her court dress displayed proportions which her humble costume at the new forest had concealed or which time had not matured
+there was the same pensive sweet expression in her face which had altered little but the beautiful rounded arms
+and the proportion of the whole figure was a surprise to him and edward in his own mind agreed that she might well be the reigning toast of the day mister heatherstone advanced and made his obeisance
+and then his daughter was led forward and introduced by a lady unknown to edward after he had saluted her the king said loud enough for edward to hear
+i trust that the daughter will often grace our court patience made no reply but passed on and soon afterward edward lost sight of her in the crowd
+and time and absence have their effect upon the most ardent of lovers the sight of her so resplendent in beauty acted upon him like magic and he was uneasy till the ceremony was over and he was enabled to go to his sisters
+when he entered the room he found himself in the arms of humphrey who had arrived with the messenger after the greetings were over edward said alice and i have seen patience and i fear i must surrender at discretion
+mister heatherstone may make his own terms i must wave all pride rather than lose her i thought that i had more control over myself but i have seen her and feel that my future happiness depends upon obtaining her as a wife
+let her father but give me her and arnwood will be but a trifle in addition with respect to the conditions upon which you are to possess arnwood said humphrey i can inform you what they are
+they are wholly unshackled further than that you are to repay by installments the money expended in the building of the house this i am empowered to state to you and i think you will allow that mister heatherstone
+has fully acted up to what he stated were his views when he first obtained a grant of the property he has indeed replied edward as for his daughter edward you have yet to win her and wear her
+as the saying is her father will resign the property to you as yours by right but you have no property in his daughter and i suspect that she will not be quite so easily handed over to you
+but why should you say so humphrey have we not been attached from our youth yes it was a youthful passion i grant but recollect nothing came of it and years have passed away
+it is now seven years since you quitted the forest and in your letters to mister heatherstone you made no remark upon what had passed between you and patience since that you have never corresponded or sent any messages
+and you can hardly expect that a girl from the age of seventeen to twenty four will cherish the image of one who to say the least had treated her with indifference that is my view of the matter edward it may be wrong
+and it may be true replied edward mournfully well
+you know humphrey how many offers patience heatherstone has had and has every day i may say
+to a proud brother of mine who does not deserve her it may be so edith replied humphrey women are riddles i only argued upon the common sense of the thing much you know about women
+replied edith to be sure you do not meet many in the new forest where you have lived all your life very true my dear sister perhaps that is the reason that the new forest has had such charms for me
+after that speech sir the sooner you get back again the better retorted edith but edward made a sign to humphrey and they beat a retreat have you seen the intendant humphrey no
+i was about to call upon him but i wanted to see you first i will go with you i have not done him justice replied edward and yet i hardly know how to explain to him say nothing but meet him cordially
+that will be explanation sufficient i shall meet him as one whom i shall always revere
+what must he think of my not having called upon him nothing you hold a place at court you may not have known that he was in london as you have never met him your coming with me will make it appear so
+tell him that i have just made known to you his noble and disinterested conduct you are right i will i fear however humphrey that you are right and edith wrong as regards his daughter
+nay edward recollect that i have as edith observed passed my life in the woods edward was most kindly received by mister heatherstone edward
+on mister heatherstone repeating to him his intentions relative to arnwood expressed his sense of that gentleman's conduct simply adding you may think me impetuous sir but i trust you will believe me grateful
+patience colored up and trembled when edward first saw her edward did not refer to the past for some time after they had renewed their acquaintance he wooed her again and won her
+then all was explained about a year after the restoration there was a fete at hampton court given in honor of three marriages taking place edward beverley to patience heatherstone chaloner
+to alice and grenville to edith and as his majesty himself said as he gave away the brides could loyalty be better rewarded but our young readers will not be content if they do not hear
+some particulars about the other personages who have appeared in our little history humphrey must take the first place his love of farming continued edward gave him a large farm rent free
+and in a few years humphrey saved up sufficient to purchase a property for himself he then married clara ratcliffe who has not appeared lately on the scene owing to her having been about two years before the restoration
+claimed by an elderly relation who lived in the country and whose infirm state of health did not permit him to quit the house he left his property to clara about a year after her marriage to humphrey
+the cottage in the new forest was held by and eventually made over to pablo who became a very steady character and in the course of time married a young girl from arnwood and had a houseful of young gipsies
+oswald so soon as edward came down to arnwood gave up his place in the new forest and lived entirely with edward as his steward and phoebe also went to arnwood and lived to a good old age
+in the capacity of housekeeper her temper becoming rather worse than better as she advanced in years this is all that we have been able to collect relative to the several parties
+chapter thirty catherine's disposition was not naturally sedentary nor had her habits been ever very industrious but whatever might hitherto have been her defects of that sort
+her mother could not but perceive them now to be greatly increased she could neither sit still nor employ herself for ten minutes together walking round the garden and orchard again and again as if nothing but motion was voluntary
+and it seemed as if she could even walk about the house rather than remain fixed for any time in the parlour her loss of spirits was a yet greater alteration in her rambling and her idleness
+but when a third night's rest had neither restored her cheerfulness improved her in useful activity nor given her a greater inclination for needlework she could no longer refrain from the gentle reproof of
+my dear catherine i am afraid you are growing quite a fine lady i do not know when poor richard's cravats would be done if he had no friend but you your head runs too much upon bath
+catherine took up her work directly saying in a dejected voice that her head did not run upon bath much then you are fretting about general tilney and that is very simple of you
+for ten to one whether you ever see him again you should never fret about trifles after a short silence i hope my catherine you are not getting out of humour with home because it is not so grand as northanger
+that would be turning your visit into an evil indeed wherever you are you should always be contented but especially at home because there you must spend the most of your time i did not quite like at breakfast
+to hear you talk so much about the french bread at northanger i am sure i do not care about the bread it is all the same to me what i eat there is a very clever essay in one of the books upstairs upon much such a subject
+about young girls that have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance the mirror i think i will look it out for you some day or other because i am sure it will do you good catherine said no more and with an endeavour to do right
+applied to her work but after a few minutes sunk again without knowing it herself into languor and listlessness moving herself in her chair from the irritation of weariness much oftener than she moved her needle
+hastily left the room to fetch the book in question anxious to lose no time in attacking so dreadful a malady it was some time before she could find what she looked for and other family matters occurring to detain her
+a quarter of an hour had elapsed ere she returned downstairs with the volume from which so much was hoped her avocations above having shut out all noise but what she created herself
+she knew not that a visitor had arrived within the last few minutes till on entering the room the first object she beheld was a young man whom she had never seen before
+with a look of much respect he immediately rose and being introduced to her by her conscious daughter as mister henry tilney with the embarrassment of real sensibility
+began to apologize for his appearance there acknowledging that after what had passed he had little right to expect a welcome at fullerton and stating his impatience to be assured of miss morland's having reached her home in safety
+as the cause of his intrusion he did not address himself to an uncandid judge or a resentful heart far from comprehending him or his sister in their father's misconduct
+missus morland had been always kindly disposed towards each and instantly pleased by his appearance received him with the simple professions of unaffected benevolence thanking him for such an attention to her daughter
+though his heart was greatly relieved by such unlooked for mildness it was not just at that moment in his power to say anything to the purpose returning in silence to his seat therefore
+but her glowing cheek and brightened eye made her mother trust that this good natured visit would at least set her heart at ease for a time and gladly therefore did she lay aside the first volume of the mirror for a future hour
+desirous of mister morland's assistance as well in giving encouragement as in finding conversation for her guest whose embarrassment on his father's account she earnestly pitied
+missus morland had very early dispatched one of the children to summon him but mister morland was from home and being thus without any support at the end of a quarter of an hour she had nothing to say
+after a couple of minutes unbroken silence henry turning to catherine for the first time since her mother's entrance asked her with sudden alacrity if mister and missus allen were now at fullerton
+and on developing from amidst all her perplexity of words in reply the meaning which one short syllable would have given immediately expressed his intention of paying his respects to them and
+asked her if she would have the goodness to show him the way you may see the house from this window sir was information on sarah's side which produced only a bow of acknowledgment from the gentleman and a silencing nod from her mother
+for missus morland thinking it probable as a secondary consideration in his wish of waiting on their worthy neighbours that he might have some explanation to give of his father's behaviour
+which it must be more pleasant for him to communicate only to catherine would not on any account prevent her accompanying him they began their walk and missus morland was not entirely mistaken in his object in wishing it
+some explanation on his father's account he had to give but his first purpose was to explain himself and before they reached mister allen's grounds he had done it so well that catherine did not think it could ever be repeated too often
+and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society i must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude or in other words that a persuasion of her partiality for him
+had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought it is a new circumstance in romance i acknowledge and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity but if it be as new in common life
+the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own a very short visit to missus allen in which henry talked at random without sense or connection and catherine
+scarcely opened her lips dismissed them to the ecstasies of another tete a tete and before it was suffered to close she was enabled to judge how far he was sanctioned by parental authority in his present application
+on his return from woodston two days before he had been met near the abbey by his impatient father hastily informed in angry terms of miss morland's departure and ordered to think of her no more
+such was the permission upon which he had now offered her his hand the affrighted catherine amidst all the terrors of expectation as she listened to this account
+could not but rejoice in the kind caution with which henry had saved her from the necessity of a conscientious rejection by engaging her faith before he mentioned the subject
+nothing to lay to her charge but her being the involuntary unconscious object of a deception which his pride could not pardon and which a better pride would have been ashamed to own
+and designed her for his daughter in law on discovering his error to turn her from the house seemed the best though to his feelings an inadequate proof of his resentment towards herself and his contempt of her family
+john thorpe had first misled him the general perceiving his son one night at the theatre to be paying considerable attention to miss morland
+had accidentally inquired of thorpe if he knew more of her than her name thorpe most happy to be on speaking terms with a man of general tilney's importance had been joyfully and proudly communicative
+and being at that time not only in daily expectation of morland's engaging isabella but likewise pretty well resolved upon marrying catherine himself
+his vanity induced him to represent the family as yet more wealthy than his vanity and avarice had made him believe them with whomsoever he was or was likely to be connected
+his own consequence always required that theirs should be great and as his intimacy with any acquaintance grew so regularly grew their fortune the expectations of his friend morland therefore from the first overrated
+had ever since his introduction to isabella been gradually increasing and by merely adding twice as much for the grandeur of the moment by doubling what he chose to think the amount of mister morland's preferment trebling his private fortune
+bestowing a rich aunt and sinking half the children he was able to represent the whole family to the general in a most respectable light for catherine however the peculiar object of the general's curiosity
+and his own speculations he had yet something more in reserve and the ten or fifteen thousand pounds which her father could give her would be a pretty addition to mister allen's estate
+her intimacy there had made him seriously determine on her being handsomely legacied hereafter and to speak of her therefore as the almost acknowledged future heiress of fullerton naturally followed
+upon such intelligence the general had proceeded for never had it occurred to him to doubt its authority thorpe's interest in the family by his sister's approaching connection with one of its members
+and his own views on another circumstances of which he boasted with almost equal openness seemed sufficient vouchers for his truth and to these were added the absolute facts of the allens being wealthy and childless
+of miss morland's being under their care and as soon as his acquaintance allowed him to judge of their treating her with parental kindness his resolution was soon formed
+and thankful for mister thorpe's communication he almost instantly determined to spare no pains in weakening his boasted interest and ruining his dearest hopes
+catherine herself could not be more ignorant at the time of all this than his own children henry and eleanor perceiving nothing in her situation likely to engage their father's particular respect
+had seen with astonishment the suddenness continuance and extent of his attention and though latterly from some hints which had accompanied an almost positive command to his son of doing everything in his power to attach her
+henry was convinced of his father's believing it to be an advantageous connection it was not till the late explanation at northanger that they had the smallest idea of the false calculations which had hurried him on
+that they were false the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested them from thorpe himself whom he had chanced to meet again in town and who under the influence of exactly opposite feelings
+irritated by catherine's refusal and yet more by the failure of a very recent endeavour to accomplish a reconciliation between morland and isabella convinced that they were separated forever
+and spurning a friendship which could be no longer serviceable hastened to contradict all that he had said before to the advantage of the morlands confessed himself to have been totally mistaken in his opinion of their circumstances and character
+misled by the rhodomontade of his friend to believe his father a man of substance and credit whereas the transactions of the two or three last weeks proved him to be neither
+for after coming eagerly forward on the first overture of a marriage between the families with the most liberal proposals he had on being brought to the point by the shrewdness of the relator
+been constrained to acknowledge himself incapable of giving the young people even a decent support they were in fact a necessitous family numerous too almost beyond example by no means respected in their own neighbourhood
+as he had lately had particular opportunities of discovering aiming at a style of life which their fortune could not warrant seeking to better themselves by wealthy connections a forward bragging scheming race
+the terrified general pronounced the name of allen with an inquiring look and here too thorpe had learnt his error the allens he believed had lived near them too long
+and he knew the young man on whom the fullerton estate must devolve the general needed no more enraged with almost everybody in the world but himself he set out the next day for the abbey where his performances have been seen
+i leave it to my reader's sagacity to determine how much of all this it was possible for henry to communicate at this time to catherine how much of it he could have learnt from his father
+in what points his own conjectures might assist him and what portion must yet remain to be told in a letter from james
+catherine at any rate heard enough to feel that in suspecting general tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife she had scarcely sinned against his character or magnified his cruelty
+henry in having such things to relate of his father was almost as pitiable as in their first avowal to himself he blushed for the narrow minded counsel which he was obliged to expose
+the conversation between them at northanger had been of the most unfriendly kind henry's indignation on hearing how catherine had been treated on comprehending his father's views and being ordered to acquiesce in them
+had been open and bold the general accustomed on every ordinary occasion to give the law in his family prepared for no reluctance but of feeling
+no opposing desire that should dare to clothe itself in words could ill brook the opposition of his son steady as the sanction of reason and the dictate of conscience could make it but in such a cause his anger
+though it must shock could not intimidate henry who was sustained in his purpose by a conviction of its justice he felt himself bound as much in honour as in affection to miss morland
+and believing that heart to be his own which he had been directed to gain no unworthy retraction of a tacit consent
+he steadily refused to accompany his father into herefordshire an engagement formed almost at the moment to promote the dismissal of catherine and as steadily declared his intention of offering her his hand
+the general was furious in his anger and they parted in dreadful disagreement henry in an agitation of mind which many solitary hours were required to compose
+northanger abbey
+this little work was finished in the year eighteen o three and intended for immediate publication it was disposed of to a bookseller it was even advertised
+neither the author nor the public have any other concern than as some observation is necessary upon those parts of the work which thirteen years have made comparatively obsolete
+the public are entreated to bear in mind that thirteen years have passed since it was finished many more since it was begun and that during that period places manners books and opinions have undergone considerable changes
+chapter one no one who had ever seen catherine morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine her situation in life
+the character of her father and mother her own person and disposition were all equally against her her father was a clergyman without being neglected or poor and a very respectable man
+her mother was a woman of useful plain sense with a good temper and what is more remarkable with a good constitution she had three sons before catherine was born
+where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number but the morlands had little other right to the word for they were in general very plain and catherine for many years of her life as plain as any
+she had a thin awkward figure
+dark lank hair and strong features so much for her person and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind she was fond of all boy's plays and greatly preferred cricket
+not merely to dolls but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy nursing a dormouse feeding a canary bird or watering a rose bush indeed she had no taste for a garden
+and if she gathered flowers at all it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take such were her propensities
+her abilities were quite as extraordinary she never could learn or understand anything before she was taught and sometimes not even then for she was often inattentive and occasionally stupid
+her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat the beggar's petition and after all her next sister sally could say it better than she did not that catherine was always stupid by no means
+she learnt the fable of the hare and many friends as quickly as any girl in england her mother wished her to learn music and catherine was sure she should like it for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinnet
+so at eight years old she began she learnt a year and could not bear it and missus morland who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste allowed her to leave off
+french by her mother her proficiency in either was not remarkable and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could what a strange unaccountable character for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old
+hated confinement and cleanliness and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house such was catherine morland at ten at fifteen appearances were mending
+she began to curl her hair and long for balls her complexion improved her features were softened by plumpness and colour her eyes gained more animation and her figure more consequence
+her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery and she grew clean as she grew smart she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement
+catherine grows quite a good looking girl she is almost pretty today were words which caught her ears now and then and how welcome were the sounds to look almost pretty
+than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive missus morland was a very good woman and wished to see her children everything they ought to be but her time was so much occupied in lying in and teaching the little ones
+that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves and it was not very wonderful that catherine who had by nature nothing heroic about her should prefer cricket baseball riding on horseback
+and running about the country at the age of fourteen to books or at least books of information for provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them provided they were all story and no reflection
+she had never any objection to books at all but from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable
+many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its fragrance on the desert air from thompson that it is a delightful task to teach the young idea how to shoot
+and from shakespeare she gained a great store of information amongst the rest that trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ
+that the poor beetle which we tread upon in corporal sufferance feels a pang as great as when a giant dies and that a young woman in love always looks
+like patience on a monument smiling at grief so far her improvement was sufficient and in many other points she came on exceedingly well for though she could not write sonnets
+she brought herself to read them and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte of her own composition she could listen to other people's performance with very little fatigue
+her greatest deficiency was in the pencil she had no notion of drawing not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile that she might be detected in the design
+there she fell miserably short of the true heroic height at present she did not know her own poverty for she had no lover to portray she had reached the age of seventeen
+without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility without having inspired one real passion and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient
+this was strange indeed but strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out there was not one lord in the neighbourhood no not even a baronet
+there was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door not one young man whose origin was unknown her father had no ward and the squire of the parish no children
+but when a young lady is to be a heroine the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way mister allen
+who owned the chief of the property about fullerton the village in wiltshire where the morlands lived was ordered to bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution and his lady a good humoured woman fond of miss morland and probably aware that if
+she must seek them abroad invited her to go with them
+the night of the sixteenth to the seventeenth of february eighteen thirty three was a blessed night above its shadows heaven stood open it was the wedding night of marius and cosette the day had been adorable
+it had not been the grand festival dreamed by the grandfather a fairy spectacle with a confusion of cherubim and cupids over the heads of the bridal pair a marriage worthy to form the subject of a painting to be placed over a door but it had been sweet and smiling
+the manner of marriage in eighteen thirty three was not the same as it is to day france had not yet borrowed from england that supreme delicacy of carrying off one's wife of fleeing
+on coming out of church of hiding oneself with shame from one's happiness and of combining the ways of a bankrupt with the delights of the song of songs people had not yet grasped to the full the chastity exquisiteness
+the most sacred of the souvenirs of life mingled pell mell with the tete a tete of the conductor of the diligence and the maid servant of the inn in this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now living the mayor and his scarf the priest
+oaths to the norman horses with their tails knotted up false galloons varnished hat long powdered locks an enormous whip and tall boots france does not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like the english nobility
+and raining down on the post chaise of the bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of worn out shoes in memory of churchill
+which brought him good luck old shoes and slippers do not as yet form a part of our nuptial celebrations but patience as good taste continues to spread we shall come to that in eighteen thirty three a hundred years ago
+marriage was not conducted at a full trot strange to say at that epoch people still imagined that a wedding was a private and social festival that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity that gayety even in excess
+provided it be honest and decent does happiness no harm and that in short it is a good and a venerable thing that the fusion of these two destinies whence a family is destined to spring should begin at home and that the household should thenceforth
+natural and commonplace as this matter of marrying is the banns to publish the papers to be drawn up the mayoralty and the church produce some complication they could not get ready before the sixteenth of february
+now we note this detail for the pure satisfaction of being exact it chanced
+as the marriage was taking place under the regime of community of property the papers had been simple
+an accident happened to jean valjean he crushed the thumb of his right hand
+nor even to see his hurt not even cosette nevertheless this had forced him to swathe his hand in a linen bandage and to carry his arm in a sling and had prevented his signing m gillenormand
+in his capacity of cosette's supervising guardian had supplied his place we will not conduct the reader either to the mayor's office or to the church one does not follow a pair of lovers to that extent
+to the church of saint paul at that epoch
+was in process of repaving it was barred off
+and jean valjean marius still separated from his betrothed according to usage did not come until the second
+became entangled in a long procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the madeleine to the bastille and from the bastille to the madeleine maskers abounded on the boulevard
+merry andrew pantaloon and clown persisted in the good humor of that winter of eighteen thirty three paris had disguised itself as venice such shrove tuesdays are no longer to be seen now a days
+any one in these vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle police sergeants maintained on the sides of the boulevard these two interminable parallel files moving in contrary directions and saw to it that nothing interfered with that double current
+those two brooks of carriages flowing the one down stream the other up stream
+emblazoned with coats of arms held the middle of the way going and coming freely certain joyous and magnificent trains notably
+had the same privilege in this gayety of paris england cracked her whip lord seymour's post chaise harassed by a nickname from the populace passed with great noise in the double file along which the municipal guards galloped like sheep dogs
+honest family coaches loaded down with great aunts and grandmothers displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in disguise clowns of seven years of age columbines of six ravishing little creatures who felt that they formed an official part of the public mirth
+one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze the whole line then they set out again on the march the wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the bastille and skirting the right side of the boulevard
+nearly at the same moment the other file which was proceeding towards the madeleine halted also at that point of the file there was a carriage load of maskers these carriages or to speak more correctly these wagon loads of maskers
+are very familiar to parisians if they were missing on a shrove tuesday or at the mid lent it would be taken in bad part and people would say there's something behind that probably the ministry is about to undergo a change
+tow wigs pink tights dandified hats spectacles of a grimacer
+tormented with a butterfly shouts directed at pedestrians fists on hips bold attitudes bare shoulders immodesty unchained a chaos of shamelessness driven by a coachman crowned with flowers
+this is what that institution was like greece stood in need of the chariot of thespis france stands in need of the hackney coach of vade everything can be parodied even parody the saturnalia
+displaying her marble breast in a divine semi nudity having at the present day lost her shape under the soaked rags of the north has finally come to be called the jack pudding the tradition of carriage loads of maskers runs back to the most ancient days of the monarchy
+allot to the bailiff of the palace twenty sous tournois for three coaches of mascarades in the cross roads in our day these noisy heaps of creatures are accustomed to have themselves driven in some ancient cuckoo carriage whose imperial they load down
+or they overwhelm a hired landau with its top thrown back with their tumultuous groups twenty of them ride in a carriage intended for six they cling to the seats to the rumble on the cheeks of the hood on the shafts
+enriched with slang this carriage which has become colossal through its freight has an air of conquest uproar reigns in front tumult behind people vociferate shout howl
+gayety roars sarcasm flames forth joviality is flaunted like a red flag two jades there drag farce blossomed forth into an apotheosis it is the triumphal car of laughter a laughter that is too cynical to be frank
+there is government therein there one lays one's finger on a mysterious affinity between public men and public women it certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total of gayety
+that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should be enticed that the system of spying and serving as caryatids to prostitution should amuse the rabble when it confronts them
+that the crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags half dung half light roll by on four wheels howling and laughing that they should clap their hands at this glory composed of all shames
+the laughter of all is the accomplice of universal degradation certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the people and convert them into the populace and populaces like tyrants require buffoons the king has roquelaure
+the populace has the merry andrew paris is a great mad city on every occasion that it is a great sublime city there the carnival forms part of politics paris let us confess it willingly allows infamy to furnish it with comedy
+she only demands of her masters when she has masters one thing paint me the mud rome was of the same mind she loved nero nero was a titanic lighterman
+that one of these shapeless clusters of masked men and women dragged about on a vast calash should halt on the left of the boulevard while the wedding train halted on the right the carriage load of masks
+caught sight of the wedding carriage containing the bridal party opposite them on the other side of the boulevard hullo said a masker here's a wedding a sham wedding retorted another we are the genuine article and being too far off to accost the wedding party
+and fearing also the rebuke of the police the two maskers turned their eyes elsewhere at the end of another minute the carriage load of maskers had their hands full the multitude set to yelling which is the crowd's caress to masquerades
+and the two maskers who had just spoken had to face the throng with their comrades and did not find the entire repertory of projectiles of the fishmarkets too extensive to retort to the enormous verbal attacks of the populace a frightful exchange of metaphors took place
+in the meanwhile two other maskers in the same carriage a spaniard with an enormous nose an elderly air and huge black moustache and a gaunt fishwife who was quite a young girl
+and while their companions and the passers by were exchanging insults they had held a dialogue in a low voice their aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it the gusts of rain had drenched the front of the vehicle which was wide open
+the breezes of february are not warm as the fishwife clad in a low necked gown replied to the spaniard she shivered laughed and coughed here is their dialogue say now what daddy
+do you see that old cove what old cove yonder in the first wedding cart on our side
+yes well i'm sure that i know him ah i'm willing that they should cut my throat
+can you see the bride if you stoop down no and the bridegroom there's no bridegroom in that trap bah unless it's the old fellow try to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low i can't
+never mind that old cove who has something the matter with his paw i know and that i'm positive and what good does it do to know him
+i don't care a hang for old fellows that i don't i know him know him if you want to how the devil does he come to be one of the wedding party we are in it too where does that wedding come from
+hurry up and jump down trot my girl your legs are young i can't quit the vehicle why not i'm hired ah the devil i owe my fishwife day to the prefecture that's true if i leave the cart
+the first inspector who gets his eye on me will arrest me you know that well enough yes i do i'm bought by the government for to day all the same that old fellow bothers me do the old fellows bother you but you're not a young girl
+he's in the first carriage well in the bride's trap what then so he is the father what concern is that of mine i tell you that he's the father as if he were the only father listen
+what i can't go out otherwise than masked here i'm concealed no one knows that i'm here but to morrow there will be no more maskers it's ash wednesday i run the risk of being nabbed
+not particularly more than i am at any rate well what of that you must try to find out where that wedding party went to where it went yes i know where is it going then to the cadran bleu
+or elsewhere it's free wedding parties are at liberty that's not the point at all
+who that old cove belongs to and where that wedding pair lives i like that that would be queer it's so easy to find out a wedding party that passed through the street on a shrove tuesday a week afterwards a pin in a hay mow
+to realize one's dream to whom is this accorded there must be elections for this in heaven we are all candidates unknown to ourselves the angels vote cosette and marius had been elected cosette
+a necklace of fine pearls a wreath of orange flowers all this was white and from the midst of that whiteness she beamed forth it was an exquisite candor expanding and becoming transfigured in the light
+haughty with head held high amalgamating more than ever in his toilet and his manners all the elegances of the epoch of barras escorted cosette
+could not give his hand to the bride
+evil has no right to exist that there should be any unhappy men is in sooth a disgrace to the azure of the sky evil does not come from man who is good at bottom all human miseries have for their capital and central government hell
+good here i am uttering demagogical words as far as i am concerned i have no longer any political opinions let all me be rich that is to say mirthful and i confine myself to that when at the conclusion of all the ceremonies
+after having pronounced before the mayor and before the priest all possible yesses
+and all being finished cosette still could not believe that it was real she looked at marius she looked at the crowd she looked at the sky it seemed as though she feared that she should wake up from her dream
+marius beside cosette
+and jean valjean sat opposite them aunt gillenormand had withdrawn one degree and was in the second vehicle my children said the grandfather here you are monsieur le baron
+and cosette nestling close to marius caressed his ear with an angelic whisper so it is true my name is marius i am madame thou these two creatures were resplendent
+and irrecoverable moment at the dazzling intersection of all youth and all joy they realized the verses of jean prouvaire they were forty years old taken together it was marriage sublimated
+these two children were two lilies they did not see each other they did not contemplate each other cosette perceived marius in the midst of a glory marius perceived cosette on an altar and on that altar
+and in that glory the two apotheoses mingling in the background one knows not how behind a cloud for cosette in a flash for marius there was the ideal thing the real thing the meeting of the kiss and the dream
+the nuptial pillow all the torments through which they had passed came back to them in intoxication it seemed to them that their sorrows their sleepless nights their tears their anguish their terrors
+their unhappiness formed a halo round their happiness the long agony of their love was terminating in an ascension it was the same enchantment in two souls
+and with modesty in cosette they said to each other in low tones we will go back to take a look at our little garden in the rue plumet the folds of cosette's gown lay across marius
+one possesses and one supposes one still has time before one to divine the emotion on that day of being at mid day and of dreaming of midnight is indescribable the delights of these two hearts overflowed upon the crowd
+and inspired the passers by with cheerfulness
+in front of saint paul to gaze through the windows of the carriage at the orange flowers quivering on cosette's head then they returned home
+they beheld the light of a rising sun all at once the clock struck marius glanced at cosette's charming bare arm and at the rosy things which were vaguely visible through the lace of her bodice and cosette
+blushed to her very hair
+they pressed about cosette each one vied with the rest in saluting her
+to be present at the wedding of his cousin pontmercy cosette did not recognize him he on his side habituated as he was to have women consider him handsome retained no more recollection of cosette than of any other woman
+she caressed him with her smile a banquet had been spread in the dining room illumination as brilliant as the daylight is the necessary seasoning of a great joy mist and obscurity are not accepted by the happy
+was a venetian lustre with flat plates with all sorts of colored birds blue violet red and green perched amid the candles around the chandelier
+on the walls sconces with triple and quintuple branches mirrors silverware glassware plate porcelain faience pottery gold and silversmith's work all was sparkling and gay
+jean valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing room behind the door the leaf of which folded back upon him in such a manner as to nearly conceal him a few moments before they sat down to table cosette came
+and arranged themselves in the proper order around the table two large arm chairs figured on the right and left of the bride the first for m gillenormand the other for jean valjean
+the other arm chair remained empty they looked about for m fauchelevent he was no longer there m gillenormand questioned basque do you know where m fauchelevent is sir replied basque i do precisely
+m fauchelevent told me to say to you sir that he was suffering his injured hand was paining him somewhat and that he could not dine with monsieur le baron
+that he would come to morrow he has just taken his departure that empty arm chair chilled the effusion of the wedding feast for a moment but if m fauchelevent was absent
+and the grandfather beamed for two he affirmed that m fauchelevent had done well to retire early if he were suffering but that it was only a slight ailment this declaration sufficed moreover
+what is an obscure corner in such a submersion of joy cosette and marius were passing through
+from the moment when marius took his place and was the substitute cosette would not have regretted god himself she set her sweet little foot
+the arm chair being occupied m fauchelevent was obliterated and nothing was lacking and five minutes afterward the whole table from one end to the other was laughing with all the animation of forgetfulness at dessert
+this evening you shall have one from your grandfather listen to me i will give you a bit of advice adore each other i do not make a pack of gyrations i go straight to the mark be happy in all creation
+can people please each other too much take care estelle thou art too pretty have a care nemorin thou art too handsome fine stupidity in sooth can people enchant each other too much cajole each other too much
+charm each other too much can one be too much alive too happy
+down with the philosophers wisdom consists in jubilation make merry let us make merry are we happy because we are good or are we good because we are happy
+is the sancy diamond called the sancy because it belonged to harley de sancy or because it weighs six hundred carats i know nothing about it life is full of such problems the important point is to possess the sancy and happiness
+let us be happy without quibbling and quirking let us obey the sun blindly what is the sun it is love he who says love says woman ah ah behold omnipotence women
+ask that demagogue of a marius if he is not the slave of that little tyrant of a cosette and of his own free will too the coward woman there is no robespierre who keeps his place but woman reigns
+there has been the imperial sceptre surmounted by a globe there has been the sceptre of charlemagne which was of iron there has been the sceptre of louis the great which was of gold the revolution twisted them between its thumb and forefinger
+it is done with it is broken it lies on the earth there is no longer any sceptre but make me a revolution against that little embroidered handkerchief which smells of patchouli i should like to see you do it try why is it so solid
+because it is a gewgaw ah you are the nineteenth century well what then and we have been as foolish as you
+i should be only too happy to re enter it which of you has seen the planet venus the coquette of the abyss the celimene of the ocean rise in the infinite calming all here below the ocean is a rough alcestis well grumble as he will
+and arrange yourselves a nest for life pardi to love to be loved what a fine miracle when one is young
+i too have had my dream i too have meditated i too have sighed i too have had a moonlight soul love is a child six thousand years old love has the right to a long white beard
+methusalem is a street arab beside cupid for sixty centuries men and women have got out of their scrape by loving the devil who is cunning took to hating man man who is still more cunning took to loving woman in this way
+he does more good than the devil does him harm this craft was discovered in the days of the terrestrial paradise the invention is old my friends but it is perfectly new profit by it be daphnis and chloe
+manage so that when you are with each other nothing shall be lacking to you and that cosette may be the sun for marius and that marius may be the universe to cosette cosette let your fine weather be the smile of your husband marius
+adore each other and snap your fingers at all the rest believe what i say to you it is good sense and good sense cannot lie be a religion to each other each man has his own fashion of adoring god
+i would like greatly to get married if any one would have me
+to idolize to coo to preen ourselves to be dove like to be dainty to bill and coo our loves from morn to night to gaze at one's image in one's little wife to be proud to be triumphant to plume oneself
+and to take away from us and put back in his box
+my children receive an old man's blessing the evening was gay lively and agreeable the grandfather's sovereign good humor gave the key note to the whole feast and each person regulated his conduct
+there was a tumult then silence the married pair disappeared a little after midnight
+here we pause on the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling angel with his finger on his lips the soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place there should be flashes of light athwart such houses
+ought to make its escape through the stones of the walls in brilliancy and vaguely illuminate the gloom it is impossible that this sacred and fatal festival should not give off a celestial radiance to the infinite love is the sublime crucible
+dazzled with voluptuousness and believing themselves alone were to listen they would hear in their chamber a confused rustling of wings perfect happiness implies a mutual understanding with the angels that dark little chamber has all heaven for its ceiling
+when two mouths rendered sacred by love approach to create it is impossible that there should not be above that ineffable kiss a quivering throughout the immense mystery of stars these felicities are the true ones
+there is no joy outside of these joys love is the only ecstasy all the rest weeps to love or to have loved this suffices demand nothing more there is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life
+the author is pleased to be able to present a sequel to aunt jane's nieces the book which was received with so much favor last year yet it is not necessary one should have read the first book to fully understand the present volume
+the characters being taken to entirely new scenes the various foreign localities are accurately described
+while those who have not been so fortunate may acquire a clear conception of them
+lest i be accused of undue sensationalism in relating the somewhat dramatic sicilian incident i will assure my reader that the story does not exaggerate present conditions in various parts of the island in fact il duca and tato
+are drawn from life although they did not have their mountain lair so near to taormina as i have ventured to locate it except that i have adapted their clever system of brigandage to the exigencies of this story their history is truly related
+many who have travelled somewhat outside the beaten tracks in sicily will frankly vouch for this statement italy is doing its best to suppress the mafia and to eliminate brigandage from the beautiful islands it controls but so few of the inhabitants are italians
+or in sympathy with the government that the work of reformation is necessarily slow americans especially must exercise caution in travelling in any part of sicily yet with proper care not to tempt the irresponsible natives
+they are as safe in sicily as they are at home aunt jane's nieces are shown to be as frankly adventurous as the average clear headed american girl but their experiences amid the environments of an ancient and still primitive civilization are in no wise extraordinary
+the doyles are astonished it was sunday afternoon in miss patricia doyle's pretty flat at thirty seven o eight willing square in the small drawing room patricia or patsy as she preferred to be called
+was seated at the piano softly playing the one piece the music teacher had succeeded in drilling into her flighty head by virtue of much patience and perseverance in a thick cushioned morris chair reclined the motionless form of uncle john
+a chubby little man in a gray suit whose features were temporarily eclipsed by the newspaper that was spread carefully over them occasionally a gasp or a snore from beneath the paper suggested that the little man was snoozing
+as he sometimes gravely called it instead of listening to the music major doyle sat opposite stiffly erect with his admiring eyes full upon patsy at times he drummed upon the arms of his chair in unison with the music
+nodding his grizzled head to mark the time as well as to emphasize his evident approbation patsy had played this same piece from start to finish seven times since dinner because it was the only one she knew
+but the major could have listened to it seven hundred times without the flicker of an eyelash it was not that he admired so much the piece the girl was playing as the girl who was playing the piece his pride in patsy was unbounded
+that she should have succeeded at all in mastering that imposing looking instrument making it actually play chunes was surely a thing to wonder at but then patsy could do anything if she but tried suddenly uncle john gave a dreadful snort
+and sat bolt upright gazing at his companions with a startled look that melted into one of benign complacency as he observed his surroundings and realized where he was the interruption gave patsy an opportunity to stop playing the tune
+she swung around on the stool and looked with amusement at her newly awakened uncle you've been asleep she said no indeed quite a mistake replied the little man seriously i've only been thinking
+an such beaut chiful thoughts observed the major testily for he resented the interruption of his sunday afternoon treat you thought em aloud sir and the sound of it was a bad imithation of a bullfrog in a marsh
+you'll have to give up eating the salad sir bah don't i know asked uncle john indignantly well if your knowledge is better than our hearing i suppose you do retorted the major but to an ignorant individual like meself
+the impression conveyed was that you snored like a man that has forgotten his manners an gone to sleep in the prisence of a lady then no one has a better right to do that declared patsy soothingly and i'm sure our dear uncle john's thoughts
+were just the most beautiful dreams in the world tell us of them sir and we'll prove the major utterly wrong even her father smiled at the girl's diplomacy and uncle john who was on the verge of unreasonable anger beamed upon her gratefully
+i'm going to europe he said the major gave an involuntary start and then turned to look at him curiously and i'm going to take patsy along he continued with a mischievous grin the major frowned
+you're dreaming again patsy swung her feet from side to side for she was such a little thing that the stool raised her entirely off the floor there was a thoughtful look on her round freckled face and a wistful one in her great blue eyes
+as the full meaning of uncle john's abrupt avowal became apparent the major was still frowning but a half frightened expression had replaced the one of scornful raillery for he too knew that his eccentric brother in law was likely to propose any preposterous thing
+and then carry it out in spite of all opposition but to take patsy to europe would be like pulling the major's eye teeth or amputating his good right arm worse far worse it would mean taking the sunshine out of her old father's sky altogether
+and painting it a grim despairing gray but he resolved not to submit without a struggle sir said he sternly he always called his brother in law sir when he was in a sarcastic or reproachful mood i've had an idea for some time that you were plotting mischief
+i will ask you to explain to us sir the brutal suggestion you have just advanced uncle john laughed in the days when major doyle had thought him a poor man and in need of a helping hand
+the grizzled old irishman had been as tender toward him as a woman and studiously avoided any speech or epithet that by chance might injure the feelings of his dead wife's only brother but the major's invariable courtesy to the poor or unfortunate
+was no longer in evidence when he found that john merrick was a multi millionaire with a strongly defined habit of doing good to others and striving in obscure and unconventional ways to make everybody around him happy
+his affection for the little man increased mightily but his respectful attitude promptly changed and a chance to reprove or discomfit his absurdly rich brother in law was one of his most satisfactory diversions uncle john appreciated this
+and holding the dignified major in loving regard was glad to cross swords with him now and then to add variety to their pleasant relations it's this way major doyle he now remarked coolly
+you've no worry at all why we've just made you a quarter of a million in c h and d's the we is explained by stating that the major held an important position in the great banking house a position mister merrick had secured for him some months previously
+that's it said uncle john you've made me a quarter of a million that i don't want the c h and d stocks were going to pieces when i bought them and i had reason to hope i'd lose a good round sum on them but the confounded luck turned
+and the result is an accumulation of all this dreadful money so my dear major
+and where by industry and perseverance i can scatter some of my ill gotten gains the major smiled grimly that's europe right enough he said and i don't object john to your going there whenever you please you're disgracefully countryfied
+and europe'll open your eyes and prove to you how insignificant you really are i advise you to visit ireland sor which i'm reliably informed is the centhral jewel in europe's crown of beauty go
+and go whinever you please sor but forbear the wickedness of putting foolish thoughts into our patsy's sweet head she can't go a step and you know it it's positive cruelty to her sir to suggest such a thing
+the major's speech had a touch of the brogue when he became excited but recovered when he calmed down why you selfish old humbug cried uncle john indignantly why can't she go when there's money and time to spare
+would you keep her here to cuddle and spoil a vigorous man like yourself when she can run away and see the world and be happy it's a great happiness to cuddle the major said patsy softly and the poor man needs it as much as he does his slippers
+or his oatmeal for breakfast and patsy has the house to look after added the major complacently uncle john gave a snort of contempt for an unreasonable man show me an irishman he remarked
+here you've been telling me how europe is an education and a delight and in the next breath you deliberately deprive your little daughter whom you pretend to love of the advantages she might gain by a trip abroad and why just because you want her yourself
+and might be a bit lonesome without her but i'll settle that foolishness sir in short order you shall go with us impossible ejaculated the major it's the time of year i'm most needed in the office
+and mister marvin has been so kind and considerate that i won't play him a dirty trick by leaving him in the lurch patsy nodded approval that's right daddy she said uncle john lay back in the chair and put the newspaper over his face again
+then the major drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow you'd like to go mavourneen he asked softly yes daddy but i won't of course tut tut don't you go putting yourself against your old father's will patsy it's not so far to europe he continued thoughtfully
+and you won't be away much longer than you were when you went to elmhurst after aunt jane's money which you didn't get mary takes fine care of our little rooms and doubtless i shall be so busy that i won't miss you at all at all daddy
+she was in his lap now her chubby arms clasped around his neck and her soft cheek laid close beside his rough and ruddy one and when ye get back patsy darlin he whispered tenderly stroking her hair
+it's the way of life mavourneen unless a couple happens to be siamese twins they're bound to get separated in the course of events more or less if not frequently i won't go daddy
+oh yes you will it's not like you to be breakin my heart by stayin home next week said that wicked old uncle he remoinds me of the one that tried to desthroy the babes in the woods patsy dear you must try to reclaim him to humanity
+and he looked affectionately at the round little man under the newspaper uncle john emerged again it was wonderful how well he understood the doyle family his face was now smiling and wore a look of supreme satisfaction
+uncle john makes plans the thought came to me a long time ago uncle john resumed but it was only yesterday that i got all the details fixed and settled in my mind i've been a rough old duffer patsy
+and in all my hard working life never thought of such a thing as travelling or enjoying myself until i fell in with you and you taught me how pleasant it is to scatter sunshine in the hearts of others for to make others happy means a lot of joy for yourself
+a secret you were trying to keep from me you crafty young woman until i discovered it by accident now here i am with three nieces on my hands you may say two sir interrupted the major patsy can take care of herself
+hold your tongue said uncle john i say i've got three nieces as fine a trio of intelligent sweet and attractive young women as you'll run across in a month of sundays i dare you to deny it sir
+so off we go a week from tuesday in the first class steamer princess irene bound from new york for the bay of naples patsy's eyes showed her delight they fairly danced have you told beth and louise she asked his face fell
+not yet he said i'd forgotten to mention it to them for my part continued the girl i can get ready in a week easily but beth is way out in ohio and we don't know whether she can go or not i'll telegraph her and find out said uncle john
+do it to day suggested the major i will and to morrow you must see louise added patsy i'm not sure she'll want to go dear she's such a social butterfly you know that her engagements may keep her at home
+do you mean to say she's engaged asked mister merrick aghast only for the parties and receptions uncle but it wouldn't surprise me if she was married soon she's older than beth or me and has a host of admirers
+perhaps she's old enough to be sensible suggested the major well i'll see her and her mother to morrow morning decided uncle john
+you and beth shall go anyhow and we'll bring louise a wedding present with this declaration he took his hat and walking stick and started for the telegraph station leaving patsy and her father to canvass the unexpected situation
+john merrick was sixty years old but as hale and rugged as a boy of twenty he had made his vast fortune on the pacific coast
+who never had credited him with sufficient ability to earn more than a precarious livelihood but the man was shrewd enough in a business way although simple almost to childishness in many other matters when he returned quite unheralded to end his days at home
+and employ his ample wealth to the best advantage he for a time kept his success a secret and so learned much of the dispositions and personal characteristics of his three nieces they were at that time visiting his unmarried sister jane at her estate at elmhurst
+and in the race for aunt jane's fortune he watched the three girls carefully and found much to admire in each one of them patsy doyle however proved exceptionally frank and genuine
+patsy proved the one bright star in the firmament of disappointment supposing uncle john to be poor she insisted upon carrying him to new york with her and sharing with him the humble tenement room in which she lived with her father a retired veteran who helped pay the family expenses
+by keeping books for a mercantile firm while patsy worked in a hair dresser's shop it was now that uncle john proved a modern fairy godfather to aunt jane's nieces who were likewise his own nieces the three girls had little in common except their poverty
+elizabeth de graf being the daughter of a music teacher in cloverton ohio while louise merrick lived with her widowed mother in a social atmosphere of the second class in new york
+where the two women frankly intrigued to ensnare for louise a husband who had sufficient means to ensure both mother and daughter a comfortable home in spite of this worldly and unlovely ambition which their circumstances might partially excuse louise
+who was but seventeen had many good and womanly qualities could they have been developed in an atmosphere uninfluenced by the schemes of her vain and selfish mother uncle john casting aside the mask of poverty came to the relief of all three girls
+he settled the incomes of substantial sums of money upon both beth and louise making them practically independent for patsy he bought a handsome modern flat building located at thirty seven o eight willing square
+and installed her and the major in its cosiest apartment the rents of the remaining flats giving the doyles an adequate income for all time to come here uncle john believing himself cordially welcome as indeed he was made his own home
+and it required no shrewd guessing to arrive at the conclusion that little patsy was destined to inherit some day all his millions
+had long managed successfully john merrick's vast fortune and at his solicitation it gave major doyle a responsible position in its main office with a salary that rendered him independent of his daughter's suddenly acquired wealth and made him proud and self respecting
+money had no power to change the nature of the doyles the major remained the same simple honest courteous yet brusque old warrior who had won uncle john's love as a hard working book keeper
+and patsy's bright and sunny disposition had certain power to cheer any home whether located in a palace or a hovel never before in his life had uncle john been so supremely happy
+and never before had aunt jane's three nieces had so many advantages and pleasures it was to confer still further benefits upon these girls that their eccentric uncle had planned this unexpected european trip his telegram to elizabeth was characteristic
+patsy louise and i sail for europe next tuesday will you join us as my guest if so take first train to new york where i will look after your outfit answer immediately that was a message likely to surprise a country girl
+but it did not strike john merrick as in any way extraordinary he thought he could depend upon beth she would be as eager to go as he was to have her and when he had paid for the telegram he dismissed the matter from further thought next morning
+patsy reminded him that instead of going down town he must personally notify louise merrick of the proposed trip so he took a cross town line and arrived at the merrick's home at nine o'clock missus merrick was in a morning wrapper
+sipping her coffee in an upper room but she could not deny herself to uncle john her dead husband's brother and her only daughter's benefactor which meant indirectly her own benefactor so she ordered the maid to show him up at once
+louise is still sweetly sleeping she said and won't waken for hours yet is anything wrong with her he asked anxiously oh dear no but everyone does not get up with the milkman as you do john
+and the dear child was at the opera last night which made her late in getting home doesn't the opera let out before midnight the same as the theatres he asked i believe so but there is the supper afterward you know
+ah yes he returned thoughtfully i've always noticed that the opera makes folks desperately hungry for they flock to the restaurants as soon as they can get away singular isn't it why i never thought of it in that light
+but louise is well quite well thank you that's a great relief for i'm going to take her to europe with me next week he said missus merrick was so astonished that she nearly dropped her coffee cup
+and could make no better reply than to stare blankly at her brother in law we sail tuesday continued uncle john and you must have my niece ready in time and deliver her on board the princess irene at hoboken at nine o'clock sharp
+it will take a month at least to make her gowns and stuff and rubbish he growled that shows martha how little you know about european trips no one makes gowns to go abroad with you buy em in paris to bring home
+ah yes to be sure she muttered perhaps then it can be done if louise has no other engagements just what patsy said see here martha do you imagine that any girl who is half human could have engagements that would keep her from europe
+but the requirements of society you'll get me riled pretty soon martha and if you do you'll wish you hadn't this speech frightened the woman it wouldn't do to provoke uncle john however unreasonable he happened to be so she said meekly
+i've no doubt louise will be delighted to go and so will i you why why whom do you intend taking just the three girls aunt jane's three nieces also mine but you'll want a chaperone for them
+why so propriety requires it and so does ordinary prudence louise i know will be discreet for it is her nature but patsy is such a little flyaway
+uncle john grew red and his eyes flashed a chaperone he cried contemptuously not any in mine martha merrick either we young folks go alone without any death's head to perpetually glower at us
+three better girls never lived and i'll trust em anywhere besides that we aren't going to any of your confounded social functions we're going on a reg'lar picnic and if i don't give those girls the time of their lives my name ain't john merrick
+a chaperone indeed missus merrick held up her hands in horror i'm not sure john she gasped that i ought to trust my dear child with an uncle who disregards so openly the proprieties
+well i'm sure and the thing's settled he said more calmly don't worry ma'am i'll look after patsy and beth and louise will look after all of us just as she does after you because she's so discreet talk about your being a chaperone
+why you don't dare say your soul's your own when louise is awake that chaperone business is all humbuggery unless an old uncle like me can be a chaperone anyhow i'm the only one that's going to be appointed i won't wait for louise to wake up
+just tell her the news and help her to get ready on time and now i'm off good morning martha she really had no words of protest ready at hand and it was long after queer old john merrick had gone away that she remembered a dozen effective speeches that she might have delivered
+after all she sighed taking up her cup again it may be the best thing in the world for louise we don't know whether that young weldon who is paying her attentions just now is going to inherit his father's money or not he's been a bit wild i've heard
+and it is just as well to postpone any engagement until we find out the facts i can do that nicely while my sweet child is in europe with uncle john and away from all danger of entanglements
+i was burning with impatience to impart my news to him and this fact together with the ghostly proceedings of polton worked me up to a state of nervous tension that rendered either rest or thought equally impossible i looked out of the window at the lamp below glaring redly through the fog
+at this moment polton made a silent appearance on the stairs leading from the laboratory giving me quite a start and i was about to retire into the room when my ear caught the tinkle of a hansom approaching from paper buildings
+the vehicle drew nearer and at length stopped opposite the house on which polton slid down the stairs with the agility of a harlequin a few moments later i heard his voice ascending from the hall i do hope sir you're not much hurt
+though very disreputable to look at just came a cropper in the mud jervis he added as he noted my dismayed expression dinner and a clothes brush are what i chiefly need nevertheless he looked very pale and shaken when he came into the light on the landing
+and he sank into his easy chair in the limp manner of a man either very weak or very fatigued how did it happen i asked when polton had crept away on tip toe to make ready for dinner thorndyke looked round to make sure that his henchman had departed and said
+a queer affair jervis a very odd affair indeed i was coming up from the borough picking my way mighty carefully across the road on account of the greasy slippery mud and had just reached the foot of london bridge when i heard a heavy lorry coming down the slope a good deal too fast
+the horses came stamping and sliding straight on to me and before i could wriggle out of the way the hoof of one of them smashed in my hat that was a new one that i came home in and half stunned me then the near wheel struck my head making a dirty little scalp wound and pinned down my sleeve so that i couldn't pull away my arm
+yes i went into dry dock in the o p room and then old langdale insisted on my lying down for an hour or so in case any symptoms of concussion should appear but i was only a trifle shaken and confused still it was a queer affair you mean the man pushing you down in that way
+you don't think it was intentional surely i said no of course not he replied but without much conviction as it seemed to me and i was about to pursue the matter when polton reappeared and my friend abruptly changed the subject after dinner i recounted my conversation with walter hornby
+watching my colleague's face with some eagerness to see what effect this new information would produce on him the result was on the whole disappointing he was interested keenly interested but showed no symptoms of excitement
+so john hornby has been plunging in mines eh he said when i had finished he ought to know better at his age did you learn how long he had been in difficulties no but it can hardly have been quite sudden and unforeseen i should think not thorndyke agreed
+in which case the depreciation would not have affected him in the same way it would be interesting to know for certain it might have a considerable bearing on the present case might it not undoubtedly said thorndyke it might bear on the case in more ways than one
+that is well considered said my colleague but what is the special bearing on the case supposing it was so on the supposition i replied that mister hornby was in actual pecuniary difficulties at the date of the robbery it seems to me possible to construct a hypothesis
+in fact it is almost fantastic never mind that said he a sound thinker gives equal consideration to the probable and the improbable thus encouraged i proceeded to set forth the theory of the crime as it had occurred to me on my way home in the fog
+and i was gratified to observe the close attention with which thorndyke listened and his little nods of approval at each point that i made when i had finished he remained silent for some time looking thoughtfully into the fire and evidently considering how my theory and the new facts on which it was based
+really adds to the achievement for the dullest mind can perceive the obvious as for instance the importance of a finger print you have really done a great thing and i congratulate you for you have emancipated yourself at least to some extent
+from the great finger print obsession which has possessed the legal mind ever since galton published his epoch making monograph in that work i remember he states that a finger print affords evidence requiring no corroboration a most dangerous and misleading statement
+which has been fastened upon eagerly by the police who have naturally been delighted at obtaining a sort of magic touchstone by which they are saved the labour of investigation but there is no such thing as a single fact that affords evidence requiring no corroboration
+as well might one expect to make a syllogism with a single premise i suppose they would hardly go so far as that i said laughing no he admitted but the kind of syllogism that they do make is this the crime was committed by the person who made this finger print
+was the crime committed by the person who made this finger print that is where the corroboration is required that practically leaves the case to be investigated without reference to the finger print which thus becomes of no importance not at all rejoined thorndyke
+the finger print is a most valuable clue as long as its evidential value is not exaggerated take our present case for instance without the thumb print the robbery might have been committed by anybody there is no clue whatever
+quite replied thorndyke i have entertained it from the first and the new facts that you have gathered increase its probability you remember i said that four hypotheses were possible that the robbery was committed either by reuben by walter by john hornby or by some other person
+now putting aside the some other person for consideration only if the first three hypotheses fail we have left reuben walter and john but if we leave the thumb print out of the question the probabilities evidently point to john hornby
+since he admittedly had access to the diamonds whereas there is nothing to show that the others had the thumb print however transfers the suspicion to reuben but yet as your theory makes evident it does not completely clear john hornby
+as the case stands the balance of probabilities may be stated thus john hornby undoubtedly had access to the diamonds and therefore might have stolen them but if the thumb mark was made after he closed the safe and before he opened it again
+but there is no evidence that he had access to them and if he had not he could not have made the thumb mark in the manner and at the time stated but john hornby may have had access to the previously made thumb mark of reuben and may possibly have obtained it in which case he is almost certainly the thief
+as to walter hornby he may have had the means of obtaining reuben's thumb mark but there is no evidence that he had access either to the diamonds or to mister hornby's memorandum block
+the actual points at issue then i said are whether reuben had any means of opening the safe and whether mister hornby ever did actually have the opportunity of obtaining reuben's thumb mark in blood on his memorandum block
+yes replied thorndyke those are the points with some others and they are likely to remain unsettled reuben's rooms have been searched by the police who failed to find any skeleton or duplicate keys but this proves nothing as he would probably have made away with them when he heard of the thumb mark being found
+but by the end of the two weeks she grew tired of waiting and the days were so very long that at length not without some slight compunction she made up her mind to go and pay a guileless visit to miss priscilla gower herself
+i am going to see miss gower aunt she ventured to say one morning at the breakfast table
+what's that leonora he said going to see the stern vestal are you priscilla eh lady throckmorton shrugged her shoulders in an indifferent sarcasm she was often both sarcastic and indifferent in her manner toward sir dugald
+theo's in goings and out goings are scarcely our business so long as she enjoys herself she said present my regards to the miss gowers my dear and say i regret that my health does not permit me to accompany you a polite fiction by the way as my lady was looking her best
+albeit the fat gray horses and fat gray coachman did occasionally recognize the existence of that remote locality
+and in her pleasure at seeing him that young lady forgot both herself and sir dugald and exclaimed aloud oh mister oglethorpe she cried out i am so glad and then stopped in a confusion and trepidation absolutely brilliant
+he came to the window and looked in at her are you coming to see priscilla he said lady throckmorton said i might she answered the warmth in her face chilled by his unenthusiastic though kindly tone she did not know what a struggle it cost him to face her thus carelessly all at once
+he did not even open the carriage door himself but waited for the footman to do it priscilla will be glad to see you he said quietly i will go into the house again with you the dwarfed sitting room looked very much as it had looked on theo's first introduction to it
+but on this occasion miss elizabeth was not arrayed in the snuff colored satin and when they entered priscilla was kneeling down upon the hearth rug straightening out an obstreperous fold in it she rose collectedly at once and as her face turned toward them
+theo was struck with some fancy of its being a shade paler than it had been the last time she had seen it but her manner was not changed in the least and she welcomed her visitor with grave cordiality poor little snuff colored miss elizabeth was delighted
+she was getting very fond of company in her old age and had taken a great fancy to theodora north send the carriage away and stay with us until evening miss theodora she fluttered in wild old maidenly excitement
+do stay miss theodora and i will show you how to do the octagon stitch as i promised the last time you were here you remember how you admired it in that antimacassar i was making for priscilla miss elizabeth's chief delight and occupation was the making of miraculously gorgeous mysteries for priscilla
+and theo's modest eulogies of her last piece of work had won her admiration and regard at once consequently under stress of miss elizabeth the carriage was fain to depart much to the abasement of the fat gray coachman who felt himself much dishonored in finding he was compelled
+not only to pay majestic calls to broome street but to acknowledge the humiliating fact of friendly visits we must have a fire in the best parlor my dear chirped elizabeth ecstatically when theo's hat and jacket were being carried out of the room
+she was particularly reminded of it by the ceremonious repairing to the fire in the front parlor where everything was so orderly and even the family portraits had the appearance of family portraits roused from a deep reverie to be surprised at an intrusion
+my late lamented parents my dear said miss elizabeth rubbing her spectacles and admiringly regarding an owl like elderly gentleman in an aggressive brown wig and an equally owl like lady in a self announcing false front embarrassingly suggestive of miss elizabeth's own
+my late lamented parents at the respective ages of fifty and fifty seven my sister anastasia my only brother my sister in law his wife and my dear priscilla at seventeen years theo turned from the others to look at this last with a deeper interest
+she had a pale handsome ungirlish face a minerva face steady grave handsome eyes and a fine head unadorned save with a classic knot of black brown hair the picture was not even younger looking than priscilla was now
+miss elizabeth regarded it in affectionate admiration of its beauty my dear she said to theodora that is the most beautiful face in london to my old eyes it reminds me of my dear anastasia in her youth i was always glad my brother benjamin's daughter was not like his wife
+we were not fond of my brother benjamin's wife she was a very giddy young person and very fond of gayety she died of lung fever contracted through exposing herself one night at a military ball in direct opposition to my brother benjamin's wishes
+she insisted upon wearing blue satin slippers and a low necked dress oh dear said theodora secretly conscious of a guilty sympathy for the giddy young person who ran counter to brother benjamin's wishes in the matter of military balls and blue satin slippers
+yes my love miss elizabeth proceeded and for that reason i was always glad to find that priscilla was not at all like her priscilla and i have been very happy together in our quiet way she has been the best of dear good girls to me
+indeed i really don't know what i shall do when i must lose her as of course you know i shall be obliged to when she marries mister denis oglethorpe yes ma'am answered theo and as she spoke she felt a curious startled glow flash over her
+this was the first time an actual approach to the subject had been made in her presence yes my dear said miss elizabeth again i shall feel the separation very deeply but it must be you know they have waited so long for each other that i should be a very wicked selfish old woman to throw any obstacle
+eulogizing priscilla and her betrothed affectionately mister denis oglethorpe would be a rich man some of these days and then what a happy life must priscilla's be so young so beautiful so beloved not that wealth brings happiness my dear miss theodora
+riches are very deceitful you know but there is a great deal of solid comfort in a genteel sufficiency to all of which theo acquiesced modestly inwardly wondering if she was very wrong in wishing that oglethorpe had not left them quite so early
+the day passed pleasantly enough however in a quiet way miss elizabeth was very affectionate and communicative and told her a great many stories of anastasia and the late lamented benjamin as they sat by the fire together in the evening and blundered over the octagon stitch
+it was an afghan miss elizabeth was making now and when at tea time mister oglethorpe came he found theodora north sitting on the hearth flushed with industrious anxiety and thrown into reflected glow of brilliant berlin wool a beautiful young spider in a gorgeous afghan web
+her letters were never careless or behind time and no one was ever neglected in the multiplicity of messages she would be the most truthful and faithful of loving women a few years hence this handsome theodora there was some reserve in her manner toward denis this evening
+she attended to miss elizabeth's octagon stitch and left him to amuse priscilla he had not seemed very much pleased to see her in the morning and besides priscilla was plainly his business but when the carriage was announced and she returned to the parlor after an absence of a few minutes
+drawing on her gloves and buttoning her pretty jacket close up to her beautiful slender dusky throat denis took his hat and accompanied her to the carriage he did not wait for the footman this time but after assisting her to get in closed the door himself
+and nothing on earth could prevent it business has unexpectedly called me away from london from england he explained in a strange yet quite steady voice i am obliged to go to belgium at once
+and my affairs are in such a condition that i may be compelled to remain across the channel for some time be good enough to say to lady throckmorton that i regret deeply that i could not see her before going but but the news has been sudden and my time is fully occupied
+but i will write to her from my first stopping place i will tell her said theodora thank you he replied courteously and then after a short hesitation began again in the tone he used so often the tone that might be jest or earnest
+and now there is something else a subject upon which i wish to ask your unbiased opinion my dear theodora before i say good bye when a man finds himself in a danger with which he cannot combat and remain human
+in danger where defeat means dishonor do you not agree with me that the safest plan that man can adopt is to run away her quickened heart might almost have been running a life and death race with her leaping pulse but she answered him almost steadily
+this morning when you spoke to me through the carriage window you began to say something about being glad were you going to say he broke off here sharply no he exclaimed i will not ask you i was going to say that i was glad to see you theo interrupted gravely
+i was glad to see you and now perhaps you had better tell the coachman to drive on i will deliver your message to lady throckmorton and as i shall not see you again unless i am here in july of course you will come back then good bye mister oglethorpe
+she gave him her hand through the carriage window and for a moment he held it to all appearance quite calm as he looked down at the lovely face the flare of an adjacent gaslight revealed to him against a background of shadow
+mister denis oglethorpe has gone away he will not come back again until july when he is to marry miss gower this was the last entry recorded in the little pink and gold journal and after it came a gap of months
+it was midnight after the memorable day spent in broome street that the record was made and having made it theodora north shut the book with a startled feeling that she had shut within its pages an unfinished page of her life it was a strange feeling to have come upon her so suddenly
+it was startling it had come upon her without a moment's warning it seemed and yet if she had been conscious of it there had been warning enough warning enough for an older woman warning enough for denis oglethorpe
+but it had not seemed warning to a girl of scarcely seventeen years but she understood it now she had understood it the moment he told her in that strained steady voice that he was going away she had delivered his message to lady throckmorton
+and listened quietly to her wandering comments answering them as best she could she had waited patiently until sir dugald's barbarous eleven o'clock supper was over and then she had gone to her room stirred the fire and dropped down upon the hearth rug to think it over
+she thought over it for a long time her handsome eyes brooding over the red coals but after about half an hour she spoke out aloud to the silence of the room he loved me she said he loved me me poor priscilla
+that she would rather lose him knowing he loved her than win him feeling uncertain the glow in her eyes died away in tears but she was too young to realize despair or anything like it the truth was that the curious enchantment of the day had not been altogether sad
+and at seventeen one does not comprehend that fate can be wholly bitter or that some turn in fortune is not in store for the future however hopeless the present may seem in this mood the entry was made in the little journal and having made it theodora north cried a little hoped a little
+and wondered guilelessly how matters could end with perfect justice to priscilla gower the household seemed rather quiet after the change mister denis oglethorpe was a man to be missed under any circumstances and theo was not the only one who missed him
+lady throckmorton missed him also but she had the solace of her novels and her chocolate which theo had not novels had been delightful at downport when they were read in hourly fear of the tasks that always interfered to prevent any indulgence
+but in those days for some reason they were not as satisfactory as they appeared once and so being thrown on her own resources she succumbed to the very natural girlish weakness of feeling a sort of fascination for broome street it was hard to resist broome street
+this was a curious consolation the two spent hours together sometimes in the tiny parlor stumbling over berlin wool difficulties and now and then wandering to and fro conversationally from priscilla to the octagon stitch and from the octagon stitch to denis
+and she was sure her pale handsome face was paler though of course that was easily to be accounted for by her lover's absence she was a singular girl this priscilla gower the first time theo ever saw her display an interest in anybody or in anything
+was when she first heard pamela's love story mentioned she was sitting at work near them when theo chanced to mention arthur brunwalde and to her surprise priscilla looked up from her desk immediately he was your sister's lover was he not she said with an abrupt interest in the subject
+yes answered theo but he died you know priscilla nodded the week before their wedding day she said mister oglethorpe told me so theo answered in the affirmative again and poor pam could not forget him she added
+no she replied almost timidly pamela is fairer than i am and not so tall we are not alike at all i was not thinking of that said priscilla i was wondering if you were alike in disposition i think i was wondering most whether you would be as faithful as pamela
+i remember hearing mister oglethorpe say once you would be theo dropped her ivory crochet needle and bent to pick it up with a blurred vision and nervous fingers i cannot tell she said
+you are seventeen said priscilla i knew at seventeen theo recovered the needle and reset it in her work to give herself time and then she looked up and faced her questioner bravely in a sort of desperateness if i knew that i loved any one
+if i had ever loved any one as pamela loved mister brunwalde i should be like pamela she said i should never love any one else from that time she fancied that priscilla gower liked her better than she had done before at any rate she took more notice of her though she was never effusive of course
+she talked to her oftener and seemed to listen while she talked even though she was busy at the time she said to her once that she would like to know pamela and emboldened by this theo ventured to bring one of pam's letters to read to her
+and when she had read it told the whole story of her sister's generosity in a little burst of enthusiastic love and gratitude
+that fairly melted tender hearted old miss elizabeth to tears and caused her to confide afterward to theo the fact that she herself had felt the influence of the tender passion in consequence of the blandishments of a single gentleman of uncertain age
+whose performances upon the flute had been the means of winning her affections but had unhappily resulted in his contracting a fatal cold while serenading on a damp evening he used to play in a cottage near a wood my dear most beautifully said miss elizabeth wild with pathos
+though i regret to say that as we did not live in a musical neighborhood the people next door did not appreciate it the gentleman of the house even going so far as to say that he was not sorry when he died as he did a few weeks after the cold settled on his dear weak lungs
+he was the only lover i ever had my dear theodora and his name was elderberry a very singular name by the way but he was a very talented man when theo went into the little back bedroom that evening to put on her hat priscilla gower went with her
+and as she stood before the dressing table buttoning her sacque she was somewhat puzzled by the expression on her companion's face priscilla had taken up her muff and was stroking the white fur her eyes downcast upon her hand as it moved to and fro the ring upon its forefinger shining in the gaslight
+i had a letter from mister oglethorpe yesterday priscilla said at last he is in vienna now he asked if you were well to night i shall answer him have you any message to send i said theo it seemed to her so strange a thing for miss priscilla gower to say
+that her pronoun was almost an interjection i thought perhaps said priscilla quietly that a message from you would gratify him if you had one to send theo took up her gloves and began to draw them on a sudden feeling of pain or discomfort striking her
+it was a feeling scarcely defined enough to allow her to decide whether it was real pain or only discomfort i do not think i have any message to send she replied thank you miss priscilla she took her muff then
+and went back to the parlor to kiss miss elizabeth in a strange frame of mind she was beginning to feel more strangely concerning mister denis oglethorpe and it was priscilla gower who had stirred her heart she found lady throckmorton waiting at home for her to her surprise in a new mood
+she had that evening received a letter from denis herself and it had suggested an idea to her i have been thinking theo she said that we might take a run over the channel ourselves i have not been in paris for four years and i believe the change would do me good
+the last time i visited the spas my health improved greatly it was just like her ladyship to become suddenly possessed of a whim and to follow its lead on the spur of the moment she was a woman of caprices and her caprices always ruled the day as this one did to theo's great astonishment
+it seemed such a great undertaking to theodora this voyage of a few hours but lady throckmorton regarded it as the lightest of matters to her it was only the giving of a few orders being uncomfortably sea sick for a while and then landing in calais
+so when theo broke into exclamations of pleasure and astonishment she did not understand either her enthusiasm or her surprise what she said you like the idea do you
+well i think i have made up my mind about it we could go next week and i dare say we could reach vienna before denis oglethorpe goes away theo became suddenly silent she gave vent to no further exclamations she would almost have been willing to give up the pleasure of the journey after that
+she was learning that it was best for her not to see denis oglethorpe again and here it seemed that she must see him in spite of herself even though she was conscientious enough to wish to do what was best not so much because it was best for herself as because it was just to priscilla gower
+she was actually girlish and sensitive enough to fancy that mister denis oglethorpe might imagine their intention to follow him was some fault of hers and she was uncomfortable and nervous accordingly she hoped he would have left vienna before the letter reached him she hoped he might go away in spite of it
+she hoped it might never reach him at all and yet in spite of this she experienced an almost passionately keen sense of disappointment when on the day before their departure lady throckmorton received a letter from him regretting his inability to comply with her request
+and announcing his immediate departure for some place whose name he did not mention business had called him away and lady throckmorton of course knew what such business was and how imperative its demands were he might have waited theo said to herself
+with an unexpected inconsistent feeling of wretchedness i would have stayed anywhere to have seen him only for a minute he had no need to be so ready to go away
+where he spent his time in knocking his head against the wall until the courtiers were afraid he would kill himself they accordingly placed stuffed mattresses over every wall and allowed all his subjects who desired
+covered from head to foot in a long crape veil who wept and sobbed so much that the king noticed her she told him that she did not come like the rest to console him but rather to encourage his grief
+she herself had lost the best of husbands and here she began to weep so profusely that it was a wonder her eyes were not melted out of her head the king began to weep in company and to talk to her of his dear wife
+she did the same of her dear husband in fact they talked so much that they talked their sorrow quite away then lifting up her veil she showed lovely blue eyes and dark eyelashes
+the king noticed her more and more he spoke less and less of the departed queen by and by he ceased to speak of her at all the end was that he courted the inconsolable lady in the black veil and married her
+by his first marriage he had one daughter called florina or the little flora because she was so fresh and lovely at the time of his second marriage she was quite fifteen years old the new queen also had a daughter
+who was being brought up by her godmother the fairy soussio her name was troutina because her complexion was all spotted like a trout's back indeed she was altogether ugly and disagreeable and when contrasted with florina
+the king disputed nothing indeed he never did the queen ruled him in all things some time after news came that king charming would shortly arrive
+when the queen heard this news she sent for milliners dressmakers jewellers and decked troutina from head to foot but to florina she allowed not a single new frock the poor princess had to put on her old one
+who presented to him troutina all blazing with jewels yet so ugly that king charming involuntarily turned away his eyes but madam is there not another princess called florina
+he rose and made her a profound reverence paying her besides so many elegant compliments that the queen became very much displeased king charming took no heed
+but conversed with florina for three hours without stopping indeed his admiration of her was so plain that the queen and troutina begged of the king that she might be shut up in a tower during the whole time of his visit
+four men in masks entered and carried her off leaving her in a dark cell and in the utmost desolation meantime king charming eagerly awaited her re appearance but he saw her no more
+and by the queen's orders every one about him spoke all the evil they could of poor florina but he refused to believe one word no said he nature could not have united a base nature to such a sweet innocent face
+florina shut up in her tower lamented bitterly ah would i had been sent here before i saw this amiable prince who was so kind to me it is to prevent my meeting him again that the queen treats me so cruelly
+alas the little beauty i have has cost me sore the queen to win king charming for her daughter made him many presents among the rest an order of knighthood a golden heart
+but pierced by one only the motto being she alone the heart was made of a single ruby as big as an ostrich's egg
+a finger's length and the chain was of pearls each weighing a pound when the young king received this very handsome present he was much perplexed
+as i cannot fulfil it to troutina i would rather decline the favour she offers me than become unworthy of it civil as this answer was it irritated the queen and her daughter exceedingly
+and when since in all his audiences with their majesties he never saw florina he at last inquired where the younger princess was the queen answered fiercely that she was shut up in prison and would remain there till troutina was married
+when he was alone he sent for one of his attendants whom he trusted very much and begged him to gain information from some court lady about the princess florina this scheme succeeded so well
+next night troutina thickly veiled
+king charming met her received her in his arms and vowed to love her for ever then he lifted her into the fairy chariot and they sailed about in the air for some hours
+but as he was not likely to wish to sail about for ever he at last proposed that they should descend to earth and be married troutina agreed with all her heart but wished that the ceremony should be performed at her godmother's
+my child replied the godmother that is more easily said than done he is too deeply in love with florina meantime the king was left waiting in a chamber with diamond walls so thin and transparent
+that through them he saw troutina and soussio conversing together he stood like a man in a dream what am i betrayed has this enemy to my peace carried away my dear florina
+how great was his despair when soussio said to him in a commanding voice king charming behold the princess troutina to whom you have promised your faith marry her immediately
+do you think me a fool cried the king i have promised her nothing she is stop if you show me any disrespect i will respect you as much as a fairy deserves to be respected
+if you will only give me back my princess am not i she said troutina it was to me you gave this ring to me you spoke at the window i have been wickedly deceived cried the king
+but i will love no one except florina soussio employed persuasions threats promises entreaties
+and then tried quiet sulkiness but the king uttered not a word for twenty days and twenty nights he stood there without sleeping or eating or once sitting down they talking all the while at length soussio
+quite worn out said choose seven years of penitence and punishment or marry my goddaughter i choose answered the king and i will not marry your goddaughter then fly out of this window in the shape of a blue bird
+immediately the king's figure changed his arms formed themselves into wings his legs and feet turned black and thin and claws grew upon them
+his body wasted into the slender shape of a bird and was covered with bright blue feathers his eyes became round and beady his nose an ivory beak and his crown was a white plume on the top of his head
+he began to speak in a singing voice and then uttering a doleful cry fled away as far as possible from the fatal palace of soussio but though he looked only a blue bird
+the king was his own natural self still and remembered all his misfortunes and did not cease to lament for his beautiful florina flying from tree to tree he sang melancholy songs about her and himself
+and wished he were dead many a time the fairy soussio sent back troutina to her mother who was furious florina shall repent having pleased king charming cried she
+and dressing her own daughter in rich garments with a gold crown on her head and king charming's ring on her finger she took her to the tower florina your sister is come to see and bring you marriage presents
+for she is now the wife of king charming florina doubting no more her lover's loss fell down in a swoon and the queen immediately went to tell her father that she was mad for love and must be watched closely
+lest she should in some way disgrace herself the king said her stepmother might do with her exactly what she pleased when the princess recovered from her swoon she began to weep and wept all night long
+but it was too dark to see who she was and at daylight she shut the window next night it was broad moonlight and then he saw clearly the figure of a young girl weeping sore and knew that it was his beloved florina
+when she paused in her lamentations adorable princess said he why do you mourn your troubles are not without remedy who speaks to me so gently asked she
+a king who loves you and will never love any other so saying he flew up to the window and at first frightened the princess very much for she could not understand such an extraordinary thing
+as a bird who talked in words like a man yet kept still the piping voice of a nightingale but soon she began stroking his beautiful plumage and caressing him who are you charming bird
+you have spoken my name i am king charming condemned to be a bird for seven years because i will not renounce you ah do not deceive me i know you have married troutina
+sang the blue bird and told her his whole story which comforted her so much that she thought no more of her misfortunes they conversed till daybreak and promised faithfully every night to meet again thus
+what should i do if i saw his poor feathers scattered on the ground and knew that he was no more so she grieved all day long the beautiful blue bird hid in a hollow tree spent the hours in thinking of his princess
+and sought for some diamond ear rings which he brought back in his beak and when night came offered them to florina so night after night he brought her something beautiful and they talked together till day
+where he sang her praises in a voice so sweet that the passers by thought it was not a bird but a spirit rumours went about that the place was haunted and no one would go near the spot
+and though she saw nobody and he lived in the hollow of a tree they always found plenty to say to one another the malicious queen tried with all her might to get troutina married but in vain nobody would have her
+if it were florina now said the kings or the kings ambassadors we should be most happy to sign the contract that girl thwarts us still said the queen
+who liked to see her lovely and she had adorned herself with all the pretty things he had given her he perched on the window sill and she sat at the window and they were singing together a duet which the queen heard outside
+but he would not he had seen the queen and troutina and though he could not defend his princess he refused to leave her the two rushed upon her like furies her wonderful beauty and her splendid jewels startled them
+am i likely to do this i a poor princess kept in captivity for two years with you as my gaoler in captivity repeated the queen why then do you dress yourself so fine
+and adorn your chamber with flowers i have leisure enough i may just as well spend some of it in adorning myself instead of bemoaning my misfortune innocent as i am innocent indeed cried the queen
+and began to search the room in it she found all king charming's presents diamonds rubies emeralds amethysts in short jewels without end meantime from the window the blue bird
+who had the eye of a lynx sang aloud beware florina you see madam said florina even the spirits of the air take pity upon me i see that you are in league with demons but your father shall judge you
+and very much frightened the queen left her and went to hold counsel with troutina as to what was to be done they agreed to put in florina's chamber a waiting maid who should watch her from morning till night
+when the princess learnt this she was in great grief alas cried she i can no longer talk with my bird who loved me so
+but the serving maid watched her night and day at last overcome with weariness the girl fell asleep and then florina opened her little window and sang in a low voice blue bird blue bird come to my side
+the blue bird flew to the window sill and they lavished on one another a hundred caresses and talked together till dawn next night it happened the same till they began to hope that the waiting maid
+who warbled in her ear and touched her gently with his beak the spy listened and heard all their conversation very much astonished that a princess could be so fond of a mere bird when day came
+she related all to the queen and troutina who concluded that the bird could be no other than king charming they sent the girl back told her to express no curiosity but to feign sleep
+and to go to bed earlier than usual then the poor deceived princess opened her little window and sang her usual song blue bird blue bird come to my side
+but no blue bird appeared the queen had caused sharp knives to be hung outside the hollow of the tree he flew against them and cut his feet and wings till he dropped down covered with blood
+oh florina come to my help sighed he but she is dead i know and i will die also at that moment his friend the magician
+had gone eight times round the world in search of him made his ninth journey and came to the tree where the poor blue bird lay calling out king charming king charming the king recognised the voice of his best friend
+why can i not return and govern it as before i fear replied his friend that the thing is difficult who would obey a blue bird ah that is too true cried the king sadly
+people only judge by the outside meantime florina overcome with grief fell dangerously sick and in her sickness she kept singing day and night her little song blue bird blue bird
+come to my side but no one regarded her at last a sudden change took place in her fortunes the king her father died and the people who knew she was his heir began to inquire with one accord
+where was the princess florina they assailed the palace in crowds demanding her for their sovereign the riot became so dangerous that troutina and her mother fled away to the fairy soussio
+restored florina's health and gave her strength to call a council and arrange all the affairs of her kingdom then she departed by night and alone to go over the world in search of her blue bird the magician
+who was king charming's friend went to the fairy soussio whom he knew for they had quarrelled and made it up again as fairies and magicians do many times within the last five or six hundred years
+she received him civilly and asked him what he wanted he tried to make a bargain with her but could effect nothing unless king charming would consent to marry troutina the enchanter found this bride so ugly
+that he could not advise still the blue bird had run so many risks in his cage the nail it was hung upon had broken and the king suffered much in the fall minetta the cat had glowered at him with her green eyes
+he had been a linnet or a jay worse than all his next heir spread reports of his death
+under these circumstances the magician thought it best to agree with soussio that king charming should be restored to his kingdom and his natural shape for six months on condition that troutina should remain in his palace
+but he thought less of these things than how to escape from the horror of marrying troutina meanwhile the queen florina in a peasant's dress with a straw hat on her head and a canvas sack on her shoulder
+what are you doing here all alone good mother replied the queen i have too many troubles to be pleasant company for anybody tell me your troubles and i may be able to soften them
+do not afflict yourself happiness will yet be yours take these four eggs and whenever you are in trouble break them and see what ensues so saying the fairy vanished florina
+greatly comforted put the eggs in her sack
+she walked eight days and nights without stopping and then came to a mountain made entirely of ivory and nearly perpendicular despairing of ever climbing it
+she sank down at the foot prepared to die there when she bethought herself of the eggs let me see said she if the fairy has deceived me or not so she broke one and inside it were little hooks of gold
+which she fitted on her feet and hands and by means of which she climbed the mountain with ease arrived at the summit she found new difficulties for the valley below was one large smooth mirror
+in which sixty thousand women stood admiring themselves they had need for the charm of the mirror was that each saw herself therein not as she was but as she wished to be
+and the grimaces they made were enough to cause a person to die of laughter not one of them had ever gained the top of the mountain and when they saw florina there they all burst into angry outcries
+will you convey me to the palace of king charming the obedient pigeons did so flying day and night till they reached the city gates when the queen dismissed them with a sweet kiss which was worth more than her crown
+besides he is going to morrow to the temple with the princess troutina whom he has at last agreed to marry florina sat down on a door step and hid her face under her straw hat and her drooping hair
+alas she cried my blue bird has forsaken me she neither ate nor slept but rose with the dawn and pushed her way through the guards to the temple where she saw two thrones one for king charming
+and the other for troutina they arrived shortly he more charming and she more repulsive than ever knitting her brows troutina exclaimed what creature is that who dares approach so near my golden throne
+these are pretty trinkets said troutina and going up to the king she asked him what he thought of them at sight of the ornaments he turned pale remembering those he had given to florina
+these bracelets are worth half my kingdom i did not think there had been more than one pair in the world then i will buy these said troutina but florina refused to sell them for money
+the price she asked was permission to sleep a night in the chamber of echoes as you will your bargains are cheap enough replied troutina laughing and when she laughed she showed teeth like the tusks of a wild boar
+now the king when he was a blue bird had informed florina about this chamber of echoes where every word spoken could be heard in his own chamber
+but she had no more jewels to tempt troutina so she broke the third egg out of it came a chariot of polished steel inlaid with gold drawn by six green mice the coachman being a rose coloured rat
+and the postilion a grey one inside the carriage sat little puppets who behaved themselves just like live ladies and gentlemen when troutina went to walk in the palace garden florina awaited her in a green alley
+and made the mice gallop and the ladies and gentlemen bow till the princess was delighted and ready to buy the curiosity at any price again florina exacted permission to pass the night in the chamber of echoes and again the king
+undisturbed by her lamentation slept without waking till dawn the third day one of the palace valets passing her by said you stupid peasant girl it is well the king takes opium every night
+or you would disturb him by that terrible sobbing of yours does he so said the queen now comprehending all then if you will promise to night to keep the opium cup out of his way these pearls and diamonds
+and she took a handful of them from her sack shall assuredly be yours the valet promised and then florina broke her fourth egg out of which came a pie composed of birds which though they had been plucked
+baked and made ready for the table sang as beautifully as birds that are alive troutina charmed with this marvellous novelty bought it at the same price as the rest adding generously a small piece of gold
+then he rose up dressed himself hastily and went in search of her she was sitting mournfully on the floor with her hair hiding her face and her eyes swollen with tears but he knew at once his faithful florina
+and they embraced and wept together for what was the good of all their love when they were still in the power of the fairy soussio but at this moment appeared the friendly enchanter with a fairy still greater than soussio
+the one who had given florina the four eggs they declared that their united power was stronger than soussio's and that the lovers should be married without further delay when this news reached troutina she ran to the chamber of echoes
+and there beheld her beautiful rival whom she had so cruelly afflicted but the moment she opened her mouth to speak her wicked tongue was silenced for ever for the magician turned her into a trout which he flung out of the window
+this family likeness may be traced in the fairy tales of all countries i merely refer to it to show that the repetition of incidents was not unobserved or unintentional
+or any painful job so full of pleasures as the task of conducting a newspaper column the
+is disheartened because nobody notices it he soon outgrows this and is disheartened because too many people notice it and he imagines that all see the paltriness of it as plainly as he does
+there is nothing so amazing to him as to find that any one really enjoys his stuff poor soul he remembers how he groaned over it at his desk he remembers the hours he sat with lack lustre eye and addled brain
+brooding at the sluttish typewriter he remembers the flush of shame that tingled him as he walked sadly homeward thinking of some atrocious inanity he had sent upstairs to the composing room it is a job that engenders a healthy humility
+i had always wanted to have a try at writing a column heaven help me i think i had an idea that i was born for the job i may as well be candid there was a time when i seriously thought of inserting the following ad in a philadelphia newspaper
+i find a memorandum of it in my scrap book humorist young and untamed lineal descendent of eugene field frank stockton and francois rabelais desires to run a column in a philadelphia newspaper
+a guaranteed circulation getter said humorist can also supply excellent veins of philosophy poetry satire uplift glad material and indiscriminate musings
+remarkable opportunity for any newspaper desiring a really unusual editorial feature address humorist et cetera so besotted was i i would have paid to have this printed if i had not been counselled by an older and wiser head
+i instance this to show that the colyumist is likely to begin his job with the conception that it is to be a perpetual uproar of mirth and high spirits this lasts about a week
+he has to deal with the most elusive and grotesque material he knows his own mind and the unhappy creature everlastingly probing himself in the hope of discovering what is so rare in minds a thought is likely to end in a ferment of bitterness
+if you have to be endlessly speculating watching and making mental notes your brain gears soon get a hot box the original of all paragraphers
+came very near ending as a complete cynic though in what f p a would call his lastline he managed to wriggle into a more hopeful mood the first valuable discovery that the colyumist is likely to make is that all minds are very much the same
+the doctors tell us that all patent medicines are built on a stock formula a sedative a purge and a bitter if you are to make steady column topers out of your readers your daily dose must
+as far as possible average up to that same prescription if you employ the purge all the time or the sedative or the acid your clients will soon ask for something with another label
+it is hard to get the colyumist to admit this for he fears spoofing worse than the devil but it is eminently true if i were the owner of a newspaper
+the following words from isaiah the best of all watchwords for all who write woe unto them that call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter
+the most painful privilege of the colyumist's job is the number of people who drop in to see him usually when he is imprecating his way toward the hour of going to press this is all a part of the great and salutary human instinct against work
+yet now and then he gets a glimpse into a human vexation so sincere so honest and so moving that he turns away from the typewriter with a sigh he wonders how one dare approach the chronicling of this muddled panorama
+with anything but humility and despair frank harris once said of oscar wilde if england insists on treating her criminals like this she doesn't deserve to have any similarly
+if the public insists on bringing its woes to its colyumists it doesn't deserve to have any colyumists then the battered jester turns again to his machine and ticks off something like this
+a pessimist he says is a man who wears both belt and suspenders when a big jewellery firm in the city puts out a large ad bailey banks and biddle company watches for women of superior design and perfection of movement
+all that one needs to do to that is to write over it the caption so do we all and pass on to the next paragraph the more a colyumist is out
+on the streets making himself the reporter of the moods and oddities of men the better his stuff will be it seems to me that his job ought to be good training for a novelist as it teaches him a habit of human sensitiveness
+he becomes filled with an extraordinary curiosity about the motives and purposes of the people he sees
+who was standing on chestnut street studying a pocket notebook his umbrella leaned against a shop window on the sill of which he had laid a carefully rolled up newspaper by his feet was a neat leather brief case plumply filled with contents not discernible
+there he stood a sort of unsuccessful cyrus curtis very diminutive his gray hair rather long abaft his neck his yellowish straw hat with curly brim tilted backward as though in perplexity
+his timid and absorbed blue eyes poring over his memorandum book which was full of pencilled notes he had a slightly unkempt brief beard and whiskers his cheek bones pinkish his linen a little frayed there was something strangely pathetic about him
+and i would have given much to have been able to speak to him i halted at a window farther down the street and studied him then returned to pass him again and watched him patiently he stood quite absorbed and was still there when i went on
+that is just one of the thousands of vivid little pictures one sees on the city streets day by day to catch some hint of the meaning of all this to present a few scrawled notes of the amazing interest and colour of the city's life
+this is the colyumist's task as i see it it is a task not a whit less worthy less painful or less baffling than that of the most conscientious novelist
+and it is carried on in surroundings of extraordinary stimulation and difficulty it is heart racking to struggle day by day amid incessant interruption and melee to snatch out of the hurly burly some shreds of humour or pathos or
+dare one say beauty and phrase them intelligibly but it is fun one never buys a package of tobacco crosses a city square enters a trolley car or studies a shop window without trying in a baffled hopeless way
+to peer through the frontage of the experience to find some glimmer of the thoughts emotions and meanings behind and in the long run such a habit of inquiry must bear fruit in understanding and sympathy joseph conrad
+who seems by the way to be more read by newspaper men than any other writer put very nobly the pinnacle of all scribblers dreams when he said that human affairs deserve the tribute of a sigh which is not a sob a smile
+which is not a grin so much with apology for the ideals of the colyumist if he be permitted to speak truth without fear of mockery of course in the actual process and travail of his job you will find him far different
+you may know him by a sunken brooding eye clothing marred by much tobacco and a chafed and tetchy humour toward the hour of five p m having bitterly schooled himself to see men as paragraphs walking
+he finds that his most august musings have a habit of stewing themselves down to some ferocious or jocular three line comment
+to churn up from the typewriter some lyric that will rock with blue seas and frantic hearts
+poor soul he is like one condemned to harangue the vast idiotic world through a keyhole whence his anguish issues thin and faint yet who will say that all his labour is wholly vain
+perhaps some day the government will crown a colyumist laureate some majestic sage with ancient patient blue eyes and a snowy beard nobly stained with nicotine whose utterances will be heeded with shuddering respect
+the elusive kate ferris the mysterious kate ferris
+for a whole semester entered upon her college career in an entirely unpremeditated and impromptu manner it began one day away back in november
+georgie stopped to examine some loose sheets of paper which were impaled upon the door what's this patty oh that's the registration list for the german club priscilla's secretary you know and every one who wants to join comes here
+the study has been so full of freshmen all the time that i told her to hang it on the door and let them join outside it works beautifully patty turned the leaves and ran her eyes down the list of sprawling signatures it's a popular organization isn't it
+the freshmen are simply scrambling to get in they're trying to show fraeulein scherin how much interest they take in the subject georgie laughed patty picked up the pencil would you like to join
+i know priscilla would be gratified no thank you i pay club dues enough already i'm afraid i'm not exactly eligible myself as i don't know any german it's such a beautifully sharp pencil though that i hate not to write with it
+patty poised the pencil a moment and abstractedly traced the name kate ferris georgie laughed if there should happen to be a kate ferris in college she would be surprised to find herself a member of the german club
+and the incident was forgotten a few days later the two came in from class to find priscilla and the president of the german club sitting on the divan with their heads together frantically turning the leaves of the catalogue
+she isn't a sophomore the president announced she must be a freshman priscilla look again
+georgie and patty exchanged glances and inquired the trouble a girl named kate ferris has registered for the german club and we've gone through all the classes and there simply isn't any such girl in college possibly a special
+priscilla produced the registration list and triumphantly exhibited an unmistakable kate ferris they forgot to put her in the catalogue i never knew them to make such a mistake before said the president dubiously i don't believe we'd better put her in the roll book
+several weeks later priscilla was engaged in laboriously turning the minutes of the last meeting into grammatical german and as she closed the dictionary and grammar with a sigh of relief she remarked to patty do you know
+she hasn't paid her dues and as far as i can make out
+but have not been able to attend classes lately kate ferris priscilla exhibited the note to the president as a tangible proof that kate ferris still existed and reinscribed the name in the roll book
+a few weeks later she found a second note on her door block dear miss pond as i am very busy with my class work i find that i have not time to attend the german club meetings and so have decided to resign
+i left my letter of resignation on the bookcase kate ferris as priscilla scratched the name out of the roll book again she remarked to patty
+and advised me to stay in it so i shall be much obliged if you will not present my letter at the meeting after all as i have decided to follow her advice kate ferris
+priscilla tossed the note to patty with a groan and getting out the roll book she turned to the f and reenrolled kate ferris patty sympathetically watched the process over her shoulder the book is getting so thin in that spot she laughed
+that kate ferris is actually coming through on the other side if she changes her mind many more times there won't be anything left
+priscilla declared she's made me so much trouble that i'm curious to see what she looks like she did ask fraeulein scherin
+i have so many freshmen she apologized i cannot all of them with their queer names remember priscilla inquired about kate ferris from the freshmen she knew
+priscilla kept hearing about the girl on all sides but could never catch a glimpse of her
+but priscilla always happened to be out her name was posted on the bulletin board for having library books that were overdue she even wrote a paper for one of the german club meetings georgie was not a facile german scholar and it had required a whole saturday
+i am going to invite kate ferris she announced i insist upon finding out what she looks like do said patty i should like to find out myself the invitation was despatched and on the next day priscilla received a formal acceptance
+on the evening of the tea after the guests had gone and the furniture had been moved back the weary hostesses in somewhat rumpled evening dresses a considerable crush results when fifty are entertained in a room whose utmost capacity is fifteen
+were reentertaining one or two friends on the lettuce sandwiches and cakes the obliging guests had failed to consume the company and the clothes having passed in review the conversation flagged a little and georgie suddenly asked
+priscilla knit her brows she couldn't have come i kept watching for her all the evening it's strange isn't it when she was so careful to send an acceptance i'm growing positively
+i begin to think so myself said patty the next morning's mail brought a bunch of violets and an apology from kate ferris
+it's positively uncanny priscilla declared i shall go to the registrar and tell her that this kate ferris is neither down in the catalogue nor the college directory and find out where she lives
+she insists that there isn't any such person in college and that i must have made a mistake in the name did you ever hear anything so absurd that seems to me the only reasonable explanation patty agreed amicably
+perhaps it is harris instead of ferris priscilla faced her ominously you read the name yourself it was as plain as printing we're all liable to make mistakes patty murmured soothingly do you know
+said georgie i begin to think it's all a hallucination and that there really isn't any kate ferris it's strange of course but not any stranger than some of those cases you read about in psychology
+i'm afraid so sighed patty it's been very entertaining but she is really getting sensitive on the subject and i don't dare mention kate ferris's name when we're alone
+patty shook her head not just now i shouldn't dare she believes in corporal punishment a few days later priscilla received another note directed in the hand she had come to dread she threw it into the waste basket unopened
+but curiosity prevailing she drew it out again and read it dear miss pond as i have been obliged to leave college on account of my health i inclose my resignation to the german club i thank you very sincerely for your kindness to me this year
+where kate ferris's name had been changed her mind again patty asked pleasantly she's left college priscilla snapped and don't you ever mention her name to me again patty sighed sympathetically and remarked to the room in general
+stood in his doorway in the clear sunshine of this lovely summer morning both hands plunged deep into his pockets as was his wont and looked about him as if to see whether everything in the outer world was the same as yesterday
+and stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets it's always so with me said judith when i've lost anything i can't see it oh ho you're making a fool of me again that's all the thanks i get for telling you that you are losing something
+and i was just going to make you a present that is worth more than five francs to a fellow like you what is it show it to me
+first i will tell you something and then you shall have it replied judith look here blasi my sainted father used to say if you keep your hands out of your pockets they will get full but if you keep them in your pockets will be empty now both your hands are in your pockets
+no one ever knows how to take you grumbled blasi it wouldn't help you to take me if you did not take your hands out too said judith but never mind i have really something good for you and judith motioned to him to come nearer
+would you like to have a nice well washed shirt for sunday i will do one up for you if you will tell me something that was an offer worth listening to sunday was a wretched day for blasi for when he had turned his two shirts and worn them both on both sides
+he had never a clean one for sunday he had no one to wash for him his mother was dead and his father had enough else to spend for without the washing for a grown up son blasi's money went for other things than washing and he was not fond of doing it for himself
+come a little nearer to the well no one knows who may be behind those trees now listen can you tell me what is going wrong with dietrich he never whistles now he never laughs and his mother looks so sad and she rarely speaks even to answer when spoken to
+something has happened to dietrich yes and keeps on happening all sorts of things too but jost can tell you more than i can they sit together in the rehbock half the night and more too long after everybody else has gone there they sit in the little back room
+i don't understand anything about it somebody comes over from fohrensee and explains it to them he does not belong there but i guess you have seen him
+he has fiery red hair and red beard and red face he has business in fohrensee once a week and lives the rest of the time down in the city and he arranges everything down there and then brings the account of gains and losses up to them but it's a good deal more loss than gain
+dietrich puts in more money every time jost has nothing to put in but promises he tells dietrich all the time that presently the winnings will begin to flow in and says that at first a fellow must expect to lose so as to win all the more in the end
+i am just waiting though till i can trip him up and i'll do it with a vengeance too so that he won't forget it all his life long now that is a good idea said judith you'd better tell him then that you do it to pay your debts
+do you think she will have him the question seemed to interest judith for she stood stock still who whom what do you mean i mean veronica and jost do you think she will take him
+as blasi spoke he came slowly nearer to judith he has been saying some things lately that made me think so
+i know what you mean he went on but i am not so very stupid as you think it certainly means something when she is so changed jost says that she knows all that dietrich has been about
+and she is hot with anger against him because he has not told her about it himself jost says that if he only mentions dietrich's name before her she looks like a wild cat in a moment
+and he says too that he has noticed for some time that she has no objection to letting dietrich see that she can get along very well without his help and you know that she is capable of anything when she's angry
+and muttered i wonder if she wants to get him too
+yes she is she is she is capable of anything when she is angry now judith had looked upon her neighbor's boy from his childhood up as if he belonged to her he was her prime
+this very reserve however was rather distasteful to judith as regarded herself but she liked it towards others she had planned it all out that dietrich should marry veronica soon after the confirmation that they should set up a pretty little establishment and be her beloved neighbors
+judith bounced violently into the kitchen and set her jug down with such a bang that the water spurted up into the air and no one can get a word out of her either it is exactly as if all the oil had been burned out this last remark referred to gertrude
+who had greatly altered during the last few months she had no longer the cheerful expression that she had always been noted for she had grown very quiet and silent she even avoided her old and well tried friend judith
+and if the latter showed a disposition to talk about her household matters or her children's future gertrude would give her to understand that she had no time to stop to talk gertrude knew where dietrich spent his evenings she had expostulated with him about it more than once
+he had answered that he must keep on there for awhile till a certain undertaking which he had started with jost was fairly under way he assured her that this affair was certain to turn out all right and that she herself would be surprised and satisfied at the result
+he knew from some one who understood it that it could not fail he had to draw large sums several times for himself and also for jost but he was sanguine that in a short time it would all be paid back with interest
+gertrude herself could scarcely understand poor gertrude one night after she had gone to her room she heard her son leave the house with hasty steps it had become a regular thing now she had often said to herself
+ah how much longer will this go on but she tried hard to believe that it would soon come to an end and her son would resume his former orderly and happy mode of life but this evening she was so anxious that she could not stay in her bedroom
+she went down into the garden the moon peeped out from between the flying clouds and shone peacefully down upon the trees and the neat flower beds gertrude seated herself upon a small bench under the apple tree and gazed about the garden
+but he knew the straight road and would not his steps turn back to it again her thoughts went back to the days when her little dieterli loved good and orderly conduct it could not be that he had lost his love for it
+that in the right conduct of life lies inward and outward blessing she recalled the evening of the day when her husband was borne from the house to his burial she had taken the children by the hand and stupefied with pain was about to put them to bed
+but dieterli objected saying no mother no it is not good to go to bed before you say your prayers did her boy ever pray now oh dieterli my son you are wandering away but you know the way home
+she said to herself and she folded her hands in prayer for her habit was to lay all her troubles before god her supporter and comforter at this moment she heard through the stillness loud shouts and cries first at a distance
+then nearer and nearer until they grew into a wild tumult then many of the voices seemed to scatter in different directions while some sounded as if approaching the garden a vague fear seized gertrude
+three fellows shouting and calling passed on the other side of the hedge she recognized one of the voices jost she cried feebly jost what is it where is dietrich there was no answer jost did not or would not hear
+said gertrude white with terror don't leave me so but tell me blasi why dietrich hasn't come home with the rest of you blasi had too much respect for dietrich's mother to run away from her when she put a direct question to him although he would fain have escaped
+two men were killed some one stole the cattle dealer's money bag is dietrich killed speak out broke in gertrude trembling no he struck about him bravely till one of the fellows got enough of it and lay dead on the ground
+and then he made off with this
+gertrude mounted wearily to her room as if her last day was come she sat down upon her bed and when the morning light filled the room still she sat there listening in trembling anxiety
+as she had listened through all the long night in vain dietrich had not come home in the night
+and in its gyre had not turned wholly round before another in a ring enclosed it and motion joined to motion song to song song that as greatly doth transcend our muses our sirens in those dulcet clarions as primal splendour that which is reflected
+when juno to her handmaid gives command the one without born of the one within like to the speaking of that vagrant one whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapours
+after the dance and other grand rejoicings both of the singing and the flaming forth effulgence with effulgence blithe and tender together at once with one accord had stopped even as the eyes that as volition moves them must needs together shut and lift themselves
+out of the heart of one of the new lights there came a voice that needle to the star made me appear in turning thitherward and it began the love that makes me fair draws me to speak about the other leader by whom so well is spoken here of mine
+tis right where one is to bring in the other that as they were united in their warfare together likewise may their glory shine the soldiery of christ which it had cost so dear to arm again behind the standard moved slow and doubtful and in numbers few
+when the emperor who reigneth evermore provided for the host that was in peril through grace alone and not that it was worthy and as was said he to his bride brought succour with champions twain at whose deed at whose word the straggling people were together drawn
+within that region where the sweet west wind rises to open the new leaves wherewith europe is seen to clothe herself afresh not far off from the beating of the waves behind which in his long career the sun sometimes conceals himself from every man
+is situate the fortunate calahorra under protection of the mighty shield in which the lion subject is and sovereign therein was born the amorous paramour of christian faith the athlete consecrate kind to his own and cruel to his foes
+and when it was created was his mind replete with such a living energy that in his mother her it made prophetic as soon as the espousals were complete between him and the faith at holy font where they with mutual safety dowered each other
+the woman who for him had given assent saw in a dream the admirable fruit that issue would from him and from his heirs and that he might be construed as he was a spirit from this place went forth to name him with his possessive whose he wholly was
+dominic was he called and him i speak of even as of the husbandman whom christ elected to his garden to assist him envoy and servant sooth he seemed of christ for the first love made manifest in him was the first counsel that was given by christ
+silent and wakeful many a time was he discovered by his nurse upon the ground as if he would have said for this i came o thou his father felix verily o thou his mother verily joanna if this interpreted means as is said
+not for the world which people toil for now in following ostiense and taddeo but through his longing after the true manna he in short time became so great a teacher that he began to go about the vineyard which fadeth soon if faithless be the dresser
+not through itself but him who sits there and degenerates not to dispense or two or three for six not any fortune of first vacancy non decimas quae sunt pauperum dei
+he asked for but against the errant world permission to do battle for the seed of which these four and twenty plants surround thee then with the doctrine and the will together with office apostolical he moved like torrent which some lofty vein out presses
+and in among the shoots heretical his impetus with greater fury smote wherever the resistance was the greatest of him were made thereafter divers runnels whereby the garden catholic is watered so that more living its plantations stand
+in which the holy church itself defended and in the field its civic battle won truly full manifest should be to thee the excellence of the other unto whom thomas so courteous was before my coming
+but still the orbit which the highest part of its circumference made is derelict so that the mould is where was once the crust his family that had straight forward moved with feet upon his footprints are turned round so that they set the point upon the heel
+i am as i am wont twill not be from casal nor acquasparta from whence come such unto the written word that one avoids it and the other narrows
+who always in great offices postponed considerations sinister here are illuminato and agostino who of the first barefooted beggars were that with the cord the friends of god became hugh of saint victor is among them here
+and peter mangiador and peter of spain who down below in volumes twelve is shining nathan the seer and metropolitan chrysostom
+here is rabanus and beside me here shines the calabrian abbot joachim he with the spirit of prophecy endowed to celebrate so great a paladin have moved me the impassioned courtesy and the discreet discourses of friar thomas
+let him imagine who would well conceive what now i saw and let him while i speak retain the image as a steadfast rock the fifteen stars that in their divers regions the sky enliven with a light so great
+that in the point beginneth of the axis round about which the primal wheel revolves to have fashioned of themselves two signs in heaven
+the moment when she felt the frost of death and one to have its rays within the other and both to whirl themselves in such a manner that one should forward go the other backward
+and he will have some shadowing forth of that true constellation and the double dance that circled round the point at which i was because it is as much beyond our wont as swifter than the motion of the chiana moveth the heaven that all the rest outspeeds
+then broke the silence of those saints concordant the light in which the admirable life of god's own mendicant was told to me and said
+that it weighs down the balance of all sin whate'er of light it has to human nature been lawful to possess was all infused by the same power that both of them created and hence at what i said above dost wonder
+when i narrated that no second had the good which in the fifth light is enclosed now ope thine eyes to what i answer thee and thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse fit in the truth as centre in a circle that which can die
+and that which dieth not are nothing but the splendour of the idea which by his love our lord brings into being because that living light which from its fount effulgent flows so that it disunites not from him nor from the love in them intrined
+itself eternally remaining one thence it descends to the last potencies downward from act to act becoming such that only brief contingencies it makes and these contingencies i hold to be things generated
+which the heaven produces by its own motion with seed and without neither their wax nor that which tempers it remains immutable and hence beneath the ideal signet more and less shines through therefore it happens that the selfsame tree
+after its kind bears worse and better fruit and ye are born with characters diverse if in perfection tempered were the wax and were the heaven in its supremest virtue the brilliance of the seal would all appear but nature gives it evermore deficient
+in the like manner working as the artist who has the skill of art and hand that trembles if then the fervent love the vision clear of primal virtue do dispose and seal perfection absolute is there acquired
+now if no farther forth i should proceed then in what way was he without a peer
+think who he was and what occasion moved him to make request when it was told him ask i've not so spoken that thou canst not see clearly he was a king who asked for wisdom that he might be sufficiently a king twas not to know the number in which are the motors here above
+or if in semicircle can be made triangle so that it have no right angle whence if thou notest this and what i said a regal prudence is that peerless seeing in which the shaft of my intention strikes and if on rose thou turnest thy clear eyes
+and the good are rare with this distinction take thou what i said and thus it can consist with thy belief of the first father and of our delight and lead shall this be always to thy feet to make thee like a weary man move slowly
+both to the yes and no thou seest not for very low among the fools is he who affirms without distinction or denies as well in one as in the other case because it happens that full often bends current opinion in the false direction
+and then the feelings bind the intellect far more than uselessly he leaves the shore since he returneth not the same he went who fishes for the truth and has no skill
+thus did sabellius arius and those fools who have been even as swords unto the scriptures in rendering distorted their straight faces nor yet shall people be too confident in judging even as he is who doth count the corn in field or ever it be ripe
+for i have seen all winter long the thorn first show itself intractable and fierce and after bear the rose upon its top and i have seen a ship direct and swift run o'er the sea throughout its course entire to perish at the harbour's mouth at last
+as from without tis struck or from within into my mind upon a sudden dropped what i am saying at the moment when silent became the glorious life of thomas because of the resemblance that was born of his discourse and that of beatrice whom after him it pleased thus to begin
+this man has need and does not tell you so nor with the voice nor even in his thought of going to the root of one truth more declare unto him if the light wherewith blossoms your substance shall remain with you eternally the same that it is now
+and if it do remain say in what manner after ye are again made visible it can be that it injure not your sight as by a greater gladness urged and drawn they who are dancing in a ring sometimes uplift their voices and their motions quicken
+so at that orison devout and prompt the holy circles a new joy displayed in their revolving and their wondrous song whoso lamenteth him that here we die that we may live above has never there seen the refreshment of the eternal rain
+the one and two and three who ever liveth and reigneth ever in three and two and one not circumscribed and all things circumscribing three several times was chanted by each one among those spirits with such melody that for all merit it were just reward
+its brightness is proportioned to the ardour the ardour to the vision and the vision equals what grace it has above its worth when glorious and sanctified our flesh is reassumed then shall our persons be more pleasing by their being all complete
+for will increase whate'er bestows on us of light gratuitous the good supreme light which enables us to look on him therefore the vision must perforce increase increase the ardour which from that is kindled increase the radiance which from this proceeds
+nor can so great a splendour weary us for strong will be the organs of the body to everything which hath the power to please us so sudden and alert appeared to me both one and the other choir to say amen that well they showed desire for their dead bodies
+nor sole for them perhaps but for the mothers the fathers and the rest who had been dear or ever they became eternal flames and lo all round about of equal brightness arose a lustre over what was there like an horizon that is clearing up
+so that the sight seems real and unreal it seemed to me that new subsistences began there to be seen and make a circle outside the other two circumferences o very sparkling of the holy spirit how sudden and incandescent it became unto mine eyes that vanquished bore it not
+but beatrice so beautiful and smiling appeared to me that with the other sights that followed not my memory i must leave her then to uplift themselves mine eyes resumed the power and i beheld myself translated to higher salvation with my lady only
+well was i ware that i was more uplifted by the enkindled smiling of the star that seemed to me more ruddy than its wont with all my heart and in that dialect which is the same in all such holocaust to god i made as the new grace beseemed
+and not yet from my bosom was exhausted the ardour of sacrifice before i knew this offering was accepted and auspicious for with so great a lustre and so red splendours appeared to me in twofold rays i said o helios who dost so adorn them
+even as distinct with less and greater lights glimmers between the two poles of the world the galaxy that maketh wise men doubt thus constellated in the depths of mars those rays described the venerable sign that quadrants joining in a circle make
+here doth my memory overcome my genius for on that cross as levin gleamed forth christ so that i cannot find ensample worthy but he who takes his cross and follows christ again will pardon me what i omit seeing in that aurora lighten christ
+so from the lights that there to me appeared upgathered through the cross a melody which rapt me not distinguishing the hymn well was i ware it was of lofty laud because there came to me arise and conquer as unto him who hears and comprehends not
+so much enamoured i became therewith that until then there was not anything that e'er had fettered me with such sweet bonds perhaps my word appears somewhat too bold postponing the delight of those fair eyes into which gazing my desire has rest
+but who bethinks him that the living seals of every beauty grow in power ascending and that i there had not turned round to those can me excuse if i myself accuse to excuse myself and see that i speak truly for here the holy joy is not disclosed
+a will benign in which reveals itself ever the love that righteously inspires as in the iniquitous cupidity silence imposed upon that dulcet lyre and quieted the consecrated chords
+that heaven's right hand doth tighten and relax how unto just entreaties shall be deaf those substances which to give me desire of praying them with one accord grew silent tis well that without end he should lament
+who for the love of thing that doth not last eternally despoils him of that love as through the pure and tranquil evening air there shoots from time to time a sudden fire moving the eyes that steadfast were before
+and seems to be a star that changeth place except that in the part where it is kindled nothing is missed and this endureth little so from the horn that to the right extends unto that cross's foot there ran a star out of the constellation shining there
+so that fire seemed it behind alabaster thus piteous did anchises shade reach forward if any faith our greatest muse deserve when in elysium he his son perceived
+then pleasant to the hearing and the sight the spirit joined to its beginning things i understood not so profound it spake nor did it hide itself from me by choice but by necessity for its conception above the mark of mortals set itself
+and when the bow of burning sympathy was so far slackened that its speech descended towards the mark of our intelligence the first thing that was understood by me was benedight be thou o trine and one
+who hast unto my seed so courteous been and it continued hunger long and grateful drawn from the reading of the mighty volume wherein is never changed the white nor dark thou hast appeased my son within this light in which i speak to thee
+by grace of her who to this lofty flight with plumage clothed thee thou thinkest that to me thy thought doth pass from him who is the first as from the unit if that be known ray out the five and six and therefore
+who i am thou askest not and why i seem more joyous unto thee than any other of this gladsome crowd thou think'st the truth because the small and great of this existence look into the mirror wherein before thou think'st thy thought thou showest
+but that the sacred love in which i watch with sight perpetual and which makes me thirst with sweet desire may better be fulfilled now let thy voice secure and frank and glad proclaim the wishes the desire proclaim to which my answer is decreed already
+of the same weight for each of you became for in the sun which lighted you and burned with heat and radiance they so equal are that all similitudes are insufficient but among mortals will and argument for reason that to you is manifest
+diversely feathered in their pinions are whence i who mortal am feel in myself this inequality so give not thanks save in my heart for this paternal welcome truly do i entreat thee living topaz set in this precious jewel as a gem
+that thou wilt satisfy me with thy name o leaf of mine in whom i pleasure took e'en while awaiting i was thine own root such a beginning he in answer made me then said to me that one from whom is named thy race
+and who a hundred years and more has circled round the mount on the first cornice a son of mine and thy great grandsire was well it behoves thee that the long fatigue thou shouldst for him make shorter with thy works florence within the ancient boundary
+from which she taketh still her tierce and nones abode in quiet temperate and chaste no golden chain she had nor coronal nor ladies shod with sandal shoon nor girdle that caught the eye more than the person did
+not yet the daughter at her birth struck fear into the father for the time and dower did not o'errun this side or that the measure no houses had she void of families not yet had thither come sardanapalus to show what in a chamber can be done
+which surpassed shall in its downfall be as in its rise
+and from the mirror his dame depart without a painted face and him of nerli saw and him of vecchio contented with their simple suits of buff and with the spindle and the flax their dames o fortunate women
+another drawing tresses from her distaff told o'er among her family the tales of trojans and of fesole and rome as great a marvel then would have been held a lapo salterello
+as cincinnatus or cornelia now to such a quiet such a beautiful life of the citizen to such a safe community and to so sweet an inn did mary give me with loud cries invoked and in your ancient baptistery at once christian and cacciaguida i became
+moronto was my brother and eliseo from val di pado came to me my wife and from that place thy surname was derived i followed afterward the emperor conrad and he begirt me of his chivalry so much i pleased him with my noble deeds
+i followed in his train against that law's iniquity whose people doth usurp your just possession through your pastor's fault there by that execrable race was i released from bonds of the fallacious world
+o thou our poor nobility of blood if thou dost make the people glory in thee down here where our affection languishes a marvellous thing it ne'er will be to me for there where appetite is not perverted
+i say in heaven of thee i made a boast truly thou art a cloak that quickly shortens so that unless we piece thee day by day time goeth round about thee with his shears with you which rome was first to tolerate
+wherein her family less perseveres yet once again my words beginning made whence beatrice who stood somewhat apart smiling appeared like unto her who coughed
+and i began you are my ancestor you give to me all hardihood to speak you lift me so that i am more than i so many rivulets with gladness fill my mind that of itself it makes a joy because it can endure this and not burst
+then tell me my beloved root ancestral who were your ancestors and what the years that in your boyhood chronicled themselves tell me about the sheepfold of saint john how large it was and who the people were within it worthy of the highest seats
+as at the blowing of the winds a coal quickens to flame so i beheld that light become resplendent at my blandishments and as unto mine eyes it grew more fair with voice more sweet and tender but not in this modern dialect it said to me
+from uttering of the ave till the birth in which my mother who is now a saint of me was lightened who had been her burden
+five hundred fifty times and thirty more to reinflame itself beneath his paw my ancestors and i our birthplace had where first is found the last ward of the city by him who runneth in your annual game suffice it of my elders to hear this
+but who they were and whence they thither came silence is more considerate than speech all those who at that time were there between mars and the baptist fit for bearing arms were a fifth part of those who now are living but the community that now is mixed
+and him of signa who has sharp eyes for trickery already had not the folk which most of all the world degenerates been a step dame unto caesar
+some who turn florentines and trade and discount would have gone back again to simifonte there where their grandsires went about as beggars at montemurlo still would be the counts the cerchi in the parish of acone perhaps in valdigrieve
+the buondelmonti ever the intermingling of the people has been the source of malady in cities as in the body food it surfeits on and a blind bull more headlong plunges down than a blind lamb and very often cuts better and more a single sword than five
+if luni thou regard and urbisaglia how they have passed away and how are passing chiusi and sinigaglia after them to hear how races waste themselves away will seem to thee no novel thing nor hard
+seeing that even cities have an end all things of yours have their mortality even as yourselves but it is hidden in some that a long while endure and lives are short and as the turning of the lunar heaven covers and bares the shores without a pause
+in the like manner fortune does with florence therefore should not appear a marvellous thing what i shall say of the great florentines of whom the fame is hidden in the past i saw the ughi
+even in their fall illustrious citizens and saw as mighty as they ancient were with him of la sannella him of arca and soldanier ardinghi and bostichi near to the gate that is at present laden with a new felony of so much weight
+that soon it shall be jetsam from the bark the ravignani were from whom descended the county guido and whoe'er the name of the great bellincione since hath taken he of la pressa knew the art of ruling already
+and already galigajo had hilt and pommel gilded in his house mighty already was the column vair sacchetti giuochi fifant and barucci and galli and they who for the bushel blush
+the stock from which were the calfucci born was great already and already chosen to curule chairs the sizii and arrigucci o how beheld i those who are undone by their own pride and how the balls of gold florence enflowered in all their mighty deeds
+so likewise did the ancestors of those who evermore when vacant is your church fatten by staying in consistory the insolent race that like a dragon follows whoever flees and unto him that shows his teeth or purse is gentle as a lamb
+already rising was but from low people so that it pleased not ubertin donato that his wife's father should make him their kin already had caponsacco to the market from fesole descended and already giuda and infangato were good burghers
+i'll tell a thing incredible but true one entered the small circuit by a gate which from the della pera took its name each one that bears the beautiful escutcheon of the great baron whose renown and name the festival of thomas keepeth fresh
+knighthood and privilege from him received though with the populace unites himself to day the man who binds it with a border already were gualterotti and importuni and still more quiet would the borgo be if with new neighbours it remained unfed
+many would be rejoicing who are sad if god had thee surrendered to the ema the first time that thou camest to the city but it behoved the mutilated stone which guards the bridge that florence should provide a victim in her latest hour of peace
+with all these families and others with them florence beheld i in so great repose that no occasion had she whence to weep
+i leave you to it his round face betrayed little or no vestiges of his overnight irritation ought you to leave me to it smiled sir richmond i shall be interested to learn what happens but if you won't stay to see
+now sir please said the guard respectfully but firmly and doctor martineau got in sir richmond walked thoughtfully down the platform towards the exit what else could i do he asked aloud to nobody in particular
+section two for the better part of forty hours sir richmond had either been talking to miss grammont or carrying on imaginary conversations with her in her absence
+and she repeated no remembered comments and prophets of her contemporaries about herself she either concealed or she had lost any great interest in her own personality
+but she was interested in and curious about the people she had met in life and her talk of them reflected a considerable amount of light upon her own upbringing and experiences and her liking for sir richmond was pleasingly manifest
+she liked his turn of thought she watched him with a faint smile on her lips as he spoke and she spread her opinions before him carefully in that soft voice of hers like a shy child showing its treasures to some suddenly trusted and favoured visitor
+as a crisis in which they were called upon to do something they did not yet clearly know what into this topic they peered as into some deep pool side by side and in it they saw each other reflected
+its delight was particularly manifest in the cream and salad it produced for lunch both miss grammont and miss seyffert displayed an intelligent interest in their food after lunch they had all gone out to the stones and the wall
+to a happy use by clambering to the top of it and sliding on their little behinds down its smooth and sloping side amidst much mirthful squealing
+sir richmond and miss grammont had walked round the old circumvallation together but belinda seyffert had strayed away from them professing an interest in flowers
+that it would be possible to take this confused old world and reshape it set it marching towards that new world of yours of two hundred and fifty million fully developed beautiful and happy people why not
+nobody is doing anything with the world except muddle about why not give it a direction you'd take it in your hands like clay obdurate clay with a sort of recalcitrant unintelligent life of its own
+her imagination glowed in her eyes and warmed her voice i believe what you say is possible if people dare i am tired of following little motives that are like flames that go out when you get to them
+i am tired of seeing all the world doing the same i am tired of a world in which there is nothing great but great disasters here is something mankind can attempt that we can attempt and will i believe that as mankind grows up
+and pride ourselves upon our freedom from the sin of presumption not quite that well how do you put it we are afraid she said it's too vast we want bright little lives of our own
+sensible little piggy wiggys we have a right to life and happiness first said sir richmond as much right as a pig has to food but whether we get life and happiness or fail to get them we human beings
+who have imaginations want something more nowadays of course we want bright lives of course we want happiness just as we want food just as we want sleep but when we have eaten when we have slept when we have jolly things about us it is nothing
+we have been made an exception of and got our rations the big thing confronts us still
+i do not know why it should be so but i am compelled by something in my nature to want to serve this idea of a new age for mankind i want it as my culminating want i want a world in order
+a disciplined mankind going on to greater things don't you now you tell me of it she said with a smile i do but before no you've made it clear it wasn't clear before
+i've been talking of this sort of thing with my friend doctor martineau and i've been thinking as well as talking that perhaps is why i'm so clear and positive i don't complain that you are clear and positive i've been coming along the same way
+it's refreshing to meet you i found it refreshing to meet martineau a twinge of conscience about doctor martineau turned sir richmond into a new channel he's a most interesting man he said rather shy in some respects
+devoted to his work and he's writing a book which has saturated him in these ideas only two nights ago we stood here and talked about it the psychology of a new age the world he believes is entering upon a new phase in its history
+the adolescence so to speak of mankind it is an idea that seizes the imagination there is a flow of new ideas abroad he thinks widening realizations unprecedented hopes and fears
+there is a consciousness of new powers and new responsibilities we are sharing the adolescence of our race it is giving history a new and more intimate meaning for us
+making them matter as formerly they didn't seem to matter that idea of the bright little private life has to go by the board i suppose it has she said meditatively as though she had been thinking over some such question before
+incidentally he smiled i want to get a lasso over the neck of that very forcible and barbaric person your father i am doing my best to help lay the foundation of a scientific world control of fuel production and distribution
+but controlling father as distinguished from managing him she reviewed some private and amusing memories he is a most intractable man section three
+they had gone on to talk of her father and of the types of men who controlled international business she had had plentiful opportunities for observation in their homes and her own
+gunter lake the big banker she knew particularly well because it seemed she had been engaged or was engaged to marry him all these people she said are pushing things about affecting millions of lives
+you will find my father extremely difficult but some of our younger men would love it and she went on there are american women who'd love it too we're petted we're kept out of things we aren't placed
+we don't get enough to do we're spenders and wasters not always from choice while these fathers and brothers and husbands of ours play about with the fuel and power and life and hope of the world as though it was a game of poker
+with all the empty unspeakable solemnity of the male and treat us as though we ought to be satisfied if they bring home part of the winnings that can't go on she said her eyes went back to the long low undulating skyline of the downs
+she spoke as though she took up the thread of some controversy that had played a large part in her life that isn't going on she said with an effect of conclusive decision
+sir richmond recalled that little speech now as he returned from salisbury station to the old george after his farewell to martineau he recalled too the soft firmness of her profile and the delicate line of her lifted chin
+he felt that this time at any rate he was not being deceived by the outward shows of a charming human being this young woman had real firmness of character to back up her free and independent judgments
+in the composition of so sure and gallant a personality martineau was very fine minded in many respects but he was an old maid and like all old maids he saw man and woman in every encounter
+but passion was a thing men and women fell back upon when they had nothing else in common when they thought in the pleasantest harmony and every remark seemed to weave a fresh thread of common interest then it wasn't so necessary it might happen
+her views about america and about her own place in the world seemed equally fresh and original to sir richmond i realize i've got to be a responsible american citizen she had said
+that didn't mean that she attached very much importance to her recently acquired vote she evidently classified voters into the irresponsible who just had votes and the responsible who also had a considerable amount of property as well
+she had no illusions about the power of the former class it didn't exist they were steered to their decisions by people employed directed or stimulated by father and his friends and associates the owners of america the real responsible citizens
+or they fell a prey to the merely adventurous leading of revolutionaries but anyhow they were steered she herself it was clear was bound to become a very responsible citizen indeed
+she would some day she laughed be swimming in oil and such like property her interest in sir richmond's schemes for a scientific world management of fuel was therefore she realized a very direct one but it was remarkable to find a young woman seeing it like that
+father it seemed varied very much in his attitude towards her he despised and distrusted women generally and it was evident he had made it quite clear to her how grave an error it was on her part to persist in being a daughter and not a son
+at moments it seemed to sir richmond that she was disposed to agree with father upon that when mister grammont's sense of her regrettable femininity was uppermost
+and then he would direct his attention to a kind of masculinization of his daughter and to schemes for giving her the completest control of all he had to leave her provided she never married nor fell under masculine sway after all
+he would reflect as he hesitated over the practicability of his life's ideal there was hetty green this latter idea had reft her suddenly at the age of seventeen from the educational care of an english gentlewoman warranted to fit her for marriage with any prince in europe
+after a swift but competent training into a shirt waist and an office down town she had been entrusted at first to a harvester concern independent of mister grammont because he feared his own people wouldn't train her hard
+she had worked for ordinary wages and ordinary hours and at the end of the day she mentioned casually a large automobile with two menservants
+this masculinization idea had also sent her on a commission of enquiry into mexico there apparently she had really done responsible work but upon the question of labour mister grammont was fierce
+he discovered his daughter displaying what he considered an improper familiarity with socialist ideas
+and the idea of a matrimonial alliance with gunter lake gunter lake sir richmond gathered wasn't half a bad fellow generally it would seem miss grammont liked him and she had a way of speaking about him that suggested that in some way
+mister lake had been rather hardly used and had acquired merit by his behaviour under bad treatment there was some story however connected with her war services in europe upon which miss grammont was evidently indisposed to dwell
+still quite vaguely guessing so much fact about miss grammont as we have given had floated up in fragments and pieced itself together in sir richmond's mind in the course of a day and a half the fragments came up as allusions or by way of illustration
+the sustaining topic was this new age sir richmond fore shadowed this world under scientific control the utopia of fully developed people fully developing the resources of the earth
+for a number of trivial reasons sir richmond found himself ascribing the project of this new age almost wholly to doctor martineau and presenting it as a much completer scheme than he was justified in doing it was true that doctor martineau had not said many of the things sir richmond ascribed to him
+but also it was true that they had not crystallized out in sir richmond's mind before his talks with doctor martineau the idea of a new age necessarily carries with it the idea of fresh rules of conduct and of different relationships between human beings
+and it throws those who talk about it into the companionship of a common enterprise to morrow the new age will be here no doubt but today it is the hope and adventure of only a few human beings so that it was natural for miss grammont and sir richmond to ask
+what are we to do with such types as father and to fall into an idiom that assumed a joint enterprise they had agreed by a tacit consent to a common conception of the world they desired as a world scientifically ordered
+an immense organization of mature commonsense healthy and secure gathering knowledge and power for creative adventures as yet beyond dreaming
+and replaceable structures indeed both these two people found themselves thinking in this fashion with an unwonted courage and freedom because the other one had been disposed to think in this fashion before
+after twenty four eventful hours our two students of human motives found themselves together again by the fireplace in the old george smoking room they had resumed their overnight conversation in a state of considerable tension
+a broad and original thinker as you are thought is one matter rash inconsiderate action quite another and above all if i spend another day in or near the company of miss
+and bit his lower lip and considered we might drop belinda he suggested turning to his friend and speaking in low confidential tones she is quite a manageable person quite
+she could for example be left behind with the luggage and sent on by train i do not know if you realize how the land lies in that quarter it needs only a word to miss grammont there was no immediate reply
+for a moment he had a wild hope that his companion would agree and then he perceived that the doctor's silence meant only the preparation of an ultimatum i object to miss grammont and that side of the thing more than i do to miss seyffert
+sir richmond said nothing it may help you to see this affair from a slightly different angle if i tell you that twice today miss seyffert has asked me if you were a married man and of course you told her i was
+on the second occasion sir richmond smiled again frankly said the doctor this adventure is altogether uncongenial to me it is the sort of thing that has never happened in my life this highway coupling
+don't you think said sir richmond that you are attaching rather too much what shall i say romantic flirtatious meaning to this affair
+but isn't your attitude rather unfair unjust indeed and almost insulting to this miss grammont after all she's a young lady of very good social position indeed
+she doesn't strike you does she as an undignified or helpless human being her manners suggest a person of considerable self control and knowing less of me than you do she probably regards me as almost as safe as a maiden aunt say
+i'm twice her age we are a party of four there are conventions there are considerations aren't you really my dear martineau overdoing all this side of this very pleasant little enlargement of our interests
+am i said doctor martineau and brought a scrutinizing eye to bear on sir richmond's face i want to go on talking to miss grammont for a day or so sir richmond admitted then i shall prefer to leave your party
+there were some moments of silence i am really very sorry to find myself in this dilemma said sir richmond with a note of genuine regret in his voice it is not a dilemma said doctor martineau with a corresponding loss of asperity
+i grant you we discover we differ upon a question of taste and convenience but before i suggested this trip i had intended to spend a little time with my old friend sir kenelm latter at bournemouth nothing simpler than to go to him now
+i shall be sorry all the same i could have wished said the doctor that these ladies had happened a little later the matter was settled nothing more of a practical nature remained to be said
+but neither gentleman wished to break off with a harsh and bare decision when the new age is here said sir richmond then surely a friendship between a man and a woman will not be subjected to the the inconveniences your present code would set about it
+and honour than they have ever been before in matters of property economics and public conduct it will probably be just the reverse then there will be much more collective control and much more insistence legal insistence upon individual responsibility
+but we are not living in a new age yet we are living in the patched up ruins of a very old one and you if you will forgive me are living in the patched up remains of a life that had already had its complications
+this young lady whose charm and cleverness i admit behaves as if the new age were already here well that may be a very dangerous mistake both for her and for you this affair if it goes on for a few days more
+may involve very serious consequences indeed with which i for one do not wish to be involved sir richmond upon the hearthrug had a curious feeling that he was back in the head master's study at caxton
+and in many ways interesting i have been watching her i have not been favoured with very much of her attention but that fact has enabled me to see her in profile
+miss seyffert is a fairly crude mixture of frankness insincerity and self explanatory egotism and i have been able to disregard a considerable amount of the conversation she has addressed to me
+now i guess this miss grammont has had no mother since she was quite little your guesses doctor are apt to be pretty good said sir richmond you know that she has told me as much
+well she impressed me as having the air of a girl who has had to solve many problems for which the normal mother provides ready made solutions that is how i inferred that there was no mother i don't think there has been any stepmother
+her manner with miss seyffert an excellent manner for miss seyffert by the bye isn't the sort of manner anyone acquires in a day or for one person only she is a very sure and commanding young woman sir richmond nodded
+i suppose her father adores and neglects her and whenever she has wanted a companion or governess butchered the thing has been done these business americans i am told neglect their womenkind give them money and power let them loose on the world
+it is a sort of moral laziness masquerading as affection still i suppose custom and tradition kept this girl in her place and she was petted honoured amused
+talked about but not in a harmful way and rather bored right up to the time when america came into the war theoretically she had a tremendously good time i think this must be near the truth of her biography said sir richmond
+i mean that she was surrounded by a retinue of men who wanted to marry her or who behaved as though they wanted to marry her or who made her happiness and her gratifications and her condescensions seem a matter of very great importance to them
+she had the flattery of an extremely uncritical and unexacting admiration that is the sort of thing that gratifies a silly woman extremely miss grammont is not silly
+probably bored her more than she realized to anyone too intelligent to be steadily excited by buying things and wearing things and dancing and playing games and going to places of entertainment and being given flowers sweets jewellery
+and that she had already read and thought rather more than most young women in her position before she was twenty i guess she was already looking for something more interesting in the way of men than a rich admirer with an automobile full of presents those who seek find
+what do you think she found what would a rich girl find out there in america i don't know i haven't the material to guess with in london a girl might find a considerable variety of active interesting men rising politicians university men of distinction
+she would find that life was worth while to such people in a way that made the ordinary entertainments and amusements of her life a monstrous silly waste of time with the facility of her sex she would pick up from one of them the idea that made life worth while for him
+harsh educational experience and very profound mental disturbance there have been love experiences experiences that were something more than the treats and attentions and proposals that made up her life when she was sheltered over there
+and something more than that what it is i don't know the war has turned an ugly face to her she has seen death and suffering and ruin perhaps she has seen people she knew killed perhaps the man has been killed
+or she has met with cowardice or cruelty or treachery where she didn't expect it she has been shocked out of the first confidence of youth she has ceased to take the world for granted it hasn't broken her but it has matured her
+that i think is why history has become real to her which so attracts you in her history for her has ceased to be a fabric of picturesque incidents it is the study of a tragic struggle that still goes on
+she sees history as you see it and i see it she is a very grown up young woman it's just that said sir richmond it's just that if you see as much in miss grammont as all that why don't you want to come on with us you see the interest of her
+i see a lot more than that you don't know what an advantage it is to be as i am rather cold and unresponsive to women and unattractive and negligible negligible that is the exact word to them you can't look at a woman for five minutes
+seems to imply necessarily a certain imaginative fixity miss grammont has an impulsive and adventurous character and as i have been saying she was a spoilt child with no discipline
+you also are a person of high intelligence and defective controls she is very much at loose ends you on account of the illness of that rather forgotten lady miss martin leeds
+you i say are also at loose ends can you deny it my dear sir don't we both know that ever since we left london you have been ready to fall in love with any pretty thing in petticoats that seemed to promise you three ha'porth of kindness
+grotesquely happen he said she knows nothing of martin leeds you must remember that and then he added if she and you fall in love
+as the phrase goes what is to follow there was a pause sir richmond looked at his toes for a moment or so as if he took counsel with them and then decided to take offence
+really he said this is preposterous you talk of falling in love as though it was impossible for a man and woman to be deeply interested in each other without that and the gulf in our ages in our quality
+from the psychologist of a new age i find this amazing are men and women to go on for ever separated by this possibility into two hardly communicating and yet interpenetrating worlds
+is there never to be friendship and companionship between men and women without passion you ought to know even better than i do that there is not for such people as you two anyhow
+and at present the world is not prepared to tolerate friendship and companionship with that accompaniment that is the core of this situation a pause fell between the two gentlemen
+they had smoothed over the extreme harshness of their separation and there was very little more to be said well said sir richmond in conclusion i am very sorry indeed martineau
+appendix a the influence of menstruation on the position of women a question of historical psychology
+in regard to which it is impossible to speak with certainty but we here strike on a factor of such importance such neglected importance for the proper understanding of the sexual relations of men and women that it cannot be wholly ignored
+among the negroes of surinam a woman must live in solitude during the time of her period it is dangerous for any man or woman to approach her and when she sees a person coming near she cries out anxiously
+i am unclean i am unclean throughout the world we find traces of the custom of which this is a typical example but we must not too hastily assume that this custom is evidence of the inferior position occupied by semi civilized women
+it is necessary to take a broad view not only of the beliefs of semi civilized man regarding menstruation
+have been credited with some design sinister or erotic on women
+all these figures are reproduced by ploss and bartels even in modern europe the same ideas prevail in portugal according to reys it is believed that during menstruation women are liable to be bitten by lizards
+and to guard against this risk they wear drawers during the period in germany again it was believed up to the eighteenth century at least
+to build up this world wide belief regarding the origin of menstruation this primitive theory of the origin of menstruation probably brings before us in its earliest shape the special and intimate bond which has ever been held to connect women
+by virtue of the menstrual process with the natural or supernatural powers of the world everywhere menstruating women are supposed to be possessed by spirits and charged with mysterious forces it is at this point that a serious misconception
+as a matter of fact however the savage rarely discriminates between bad and good spirits every spirit may have either a beneficial or malignant influence
+the importance of recognizing the special sense in which the word unclean is used in this connection was clearly pointed out by robertson smith in the case of the semites
+is not the ordinary word for things physically foul it is a ritual term and corresponds exactly to the idea of taboo the ideas unclean and holy seem to us to stand in polar opposition to one another
+but it was not so with the semites among the later jews the holy books defiled the hands of the reader as contact with an impure thing did among lucian's syrians
+wellhausen however dealing with the early arabians expressly mentions that in pre islamic days clean and unclean were used solely with reference to women in and out of the menstrual state
+at a later date frazer developed this aspect of the conception of taboo and showed how it occurs among savage races generally he pointed out that the conceptions of holiness and pollution not having yet been differentiated
+women at childbirth and during menstruation are on the same level as divine kings chiefs and priests and must observe the same rules of ceremonial purity to seclude such persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall not spread
+is the object of the taboo which frazer compares to an electrical insulator to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world
+after describing the phenomena especially the prohibition to touch the ground or see the sun found among various races frazer concludes
+the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times the general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended so to say between heaven and earth
+whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof as in south america or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage as in new zealand she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief since being shut off both from the earth and from the sun
+the precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others in short the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which if not kept within bounds
+may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact to repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question
+the same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests
+and arguing that it proceeds from the custom of exogamy or marriage outside the clan and that this rests on certain ideas about blood which again are traceable to totemism a theory which we need not here discuss
+durkheim is brought face to face with the group of conceptions that now concern us he insists on the extreme ambiguity found in primitive culture concerning the notion of the divine and the close connection between aversion and veneration
+and points out that it is not only at puberty and each recurrence of the menstrual epoch that women have aroused these emotions but also at childbirth a sentiment of religious horror he continues
+which can reach such a degree of intensity which can be called forth by so many circumstances and reappears regularly every month to last for a week at least cannot fail to extend its influence beyond the periods to which it was originally confined
+and to affect the whole course of life a being who must be secluded or avoided for weeks months or years preserves something of the characteristics to which the isolation was due even outside those special periods
+and in fact in these communities the separation of the sexes is not merely intermittent it has become chronic the two elements of the population live separately
+durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples
+the prohibition to drink wine the blood of the grape found among some peoples is traced to its resemblance to blood and to its sacrificial employment as among the ancient arabians and still in the christian sacrament as a substitute for drinking blood
+throughout blood is generally taboo and it taboos everything that comes in contact with it now woman is chronically the theatre of bloody manifestations and therefore she tends to become chronically taboo for the other members of the community
+a more or less conscious anxiety a certain religious fear cannot fail to enter into all the relations of her companions with her and that is why all such relations are reduced to a minimum relations of a sexual character are specially excluded
+in the first place such relations are so intimate that they are incompatible with the sort of repulsion which the sexes must experience for each other the barrier between them does not permit of such a close union in the second place the organs of the body here specially concerned
+are precisely the source of the dreaded manifestations thus it is natural that the feelings of aversion inspired by women attain their greatest intensity at this point
+in any case indeed the same ideas being transferred to women also coitus produces weakness and it prevents the acquisition of supernatural powers thus among the western tribes of canada boas states
+only a youth who has never touched a woman or a virgin
+after having had sexual intercourse men as well as women
+yet the twofold influence of the menstruating woman remains clear when we review the whole group of influences which in this state she is supposed to exert she by no means acts only by paralyzing social activities and destroying the powers of life
+oh menstruating woman thou'rt a fiend from whom all nature should be closely screened her powers are also beneficial
+is in regular communication with the starry bodies
+in our own time the slow disintegration of primitive animistic conceptions aided certainly by the degraded conception of sexual phenomena taught by mediaeval monks for whom woman was templum aedificatum super cloacam
+has led to a disbelief in the more salutary influences of the menstruating woman a fairly widespread faith in her pernicious influence alone survives it may be traced even in practical and commercial one might add medical quarters
+in the great sugar refineries in the north of france the regulations strictly forbid a woman to enter the factory while the sugar is boiling or cooling the reason given being that if a woman were to enter during her period the sugar would blacken
+for the same reason to turn to the east no woman is employed in the opium manufactory at saigon it being said that the opium would turn and become bitter
+declared that one of the women workers must be menstruating all the women hindus mahometans aboriginal gonds et cetera showed by their energetic denials that they understood this superstition
+asking whether it was true that if a woman cured hams while menstruating the hams would be spoiled he had known this to happen twice another medical man wrote that if so what would happen to the patients of menstruating lady doctors
+a third wrote in the journal for april twenty seventh eighteen seventy eight i thought the fact was so generally known to every housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the menstrual period that i am surprised to see so many letters on the subject in the journal
+it is undoubtedly the fact that meat will be tainted if cured by women at the catamenial period
+have thought and taught that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute solemn religious rites would sour milk spoil the fermentation in wine vats and much other mischief in a general way influenced by hoary tradition
+but why this delay if time is precious and it enters as an important factor in the case
+for being swollen then by the afflux of blood
+than by curetting the womb during the very flow while i do not select this period for the removal of ovarian cysts or for other abdominal work such as the extirpation of the ovaries or a kidney or breaking up intestinal adhesions et cetera
+yet i have not hesitated to perform these operations at such a time and have never had reason to regret the course the only operations that i should dislike to perform during menstruation would be those involving the womb itself
+it must be added to this that we still have to take into consideration not merely the surviving influence of ancient primitive beliefs but the possible existence of actual nervous conditions during the menstrual period
+producing what may be described as an abnormal nervous tension in this way we are doubtless concerned with a tissue of phenomena inextricably woven of folk lore autosuggestion false observation
+thus he speaks of two young girls of about sixteen and seventeen slightly neuropathic but without definite hysterical symptoms who during the menstrual period feel themselves in a sort of electrical state
+with tingling and prickling sensations and feelings of attraction or repulsion at the contact of various objects these girls believe their garments stick to their skin during the periods it was only with difficulty that they could remove their slippers though fitting easily
+stockings had to be drawn off violently by another person
+an orchestral performer on the double bass informed laurent that whenever he left a tuned double bass in his lodgings during his wife's period a string snapped consequently he always removed his instrument at this time to a friend's house
+he added that the same thing happened two years earlier with a mistress a cafe concert singer who had indeed warned him beforehand a harpist also informed laurent that she had been obliged to give up her profession
+because during her periods several strings of her harp always the same strings broke especially when she was playing a friend of laurent's an official in cochin china also told him that the strings of his violin often snapped during the menstrual periods of his annamite mistress
+and are careful not to play on their instruments at this time two young ladies both good violinists also affirmed that ever since their first menstruation they had noted a tendency for the strings to snap at this period
+one a genuine artist who often performed at charity concerts systematically refused to play at these times and was often embarrassed to find a pretext the other who admitted that she was nervous and irritable at such times
+had given up playing on account of the trouble of changing the strings so frequently laurent also refers to the frequency with which women break things during the menstrual periods and considers that this is not simply due to the awkwardness caused by nervous exhaustion or hysterical tremors
+but that there is spontaneous breakage most usually it happens that a glass breaks when it is being dried with a cloth needles also break with unusual facility at this time clocks are stopped by merely placing the hand upon them
+i do not here attempt to estimate critically the validity of these alleged manifestations some of which may certainly be explained by the unconscious muscular action which forms the basis of the phenomena of table turning and thought reading
+such a task may best be undertaken through the minute study of isolated cases and in this place i am merely concerned with the general influence of the menstrual state
+in affecting the social position of women without reference to the analysis of the elements that go to make up that influence there is only one further point to which attention may be called
+i allude to the way in which the more favorable side of the primitive conception of the menstruating woman as priestess sibyl prophetess an almost miraculous agent for good an angel the peculiar home of the divine element
+the actual physical phenomena of menstruation with the ideas of taboo associated with that state sank into the background as culture evolved but on the other hand the ideas of the angelic position and spiritual mission of women
+the more favorable aspect of the primitive view of women's magic function has never quite died out the gradual decay and degradation of the primitive view has on the whole involved a lower estimate of women's nature and position
+woman has always been the witch she was so even in ancient babylonia but she has ceased to be the priestess the early teutons saw sanctum aliquid et providum in women who for the mediaeval german preacher
+and schopenhauer and even nietzsche have been more inclined to side with the preacher than with the half naked philosophers of tacitus's day but both views alike are but the extremes of the same primitive conception
+and the gradual evolution from one extreme of the magical doctrine to the other was inevitable in an advanced civilization as we see these ideas having their ultimate basis on the old story of the serpent
+and on a special and mysterious connection between the menstruating woman and the occult forces of magic tend to die out the separation of the sexes they involve becomes unnecessary living in greater community with men
+there were three good hotels several stores drapers watchmaker tailors shoemakers and butchers and bakers lots of diggers were returning who had made their pile and others going to try to make theirs of course we were amongst the latter
+after sundry refreshments we went into committee to consider what was to be done next we all agreed that a day's spell would do us a deal of good and that we should be all the better prepared for gold digging afterwards
+we were then only twelve or fourteen miles from forest creek and i proposed looking for fresh lodgings as the house we were staying at was anything but respectable this was agreed to and we searched and were successful in finding good beds
+food and liquors and plenty of company this will do said i we must make some money here how said fiddler jim the same as at the forest inn replied i at any rate we can but try said plumber george
+i am good to keep the door and repair their beer engine if through being overworked it should happen to get out of order well i'll see what's best to be done said i in the meantime you have a rest till i come back
+i beg your pardon said i to one of them but will you inform me if you have a room large enough for a dance oh yes we use the lodge room when we have a ball and missus halliday is very fond of a dance
+my mate plays and i am a london concert singer will you give us an engagement said i no said she i will not do that but you can have the use of our club room for nothing and you can charge what you like for admission
+i told her that at the forest inn the landlord found us in board and lodging very well then said she i will do the same when do you propose to commence to night said i then said she i'll tell the ostler to light up the room and get your stage ready
+i had a nobbler and returned to my mates and found them asleep wake up said i there's business to be done what's up said fiddler jim anything fresh asked plumber george yes said i telling them all about my arrangements
+what's to be done first said i we must get a large piece of cardboard and write on it in large letters a grand ball and concert will take place here to night admission
+the remainder of the day was spent going about informing the inhabitants what a treat was in store for them you must know that fiddler jim and myself had brought with us an old dress coat each and black trousers and white waistcoat all the worse for wear
+these and my coats and other rags for caricature business and the fiddle comprised our professional stock in trade
+plumber george was at the door taking the two shillings which i thought was little less than a robbery but i had agreed to do it they commenced the same programme as at the forest inn and all went off well the interval as before and drinks all round
+everybody was eager for the dance off they went missus halliday came in she was a scotch lassie and couldn't keep her feet quiet while the reel of tullegoram was being played she rushed into the room and began to twist and twirl about like an eel till she nearly fainted
+we thanked the company and retired to our room counted the cash and found we had taken eight pounds it's not bad said fiddler jim let's have another nobbler before we go to bed said plumber george all right rejoined i
+home to dinner everything going right rested in the afternoon
+the place was not rushed the second night but we nevertheless added four pounds more to our treasury after a good night's rest we got up and prepared to start
+we had about twelve or fourteen miles to walk to the great forest diggings that had given me the fever in london we stopped at sawpit gully and had a rest and beer six miles more and then we saw what is not easily forgotten
+we arrived safely at the creek and were astonished to see the number of tents the thousands at work men women girls and boys of all ages and the deep holes nearly frightened me
+joe joe which was responded to all round the diggings it was a saying or cry they had when the police went round to examine their licences i and my party walked on taking observations when all at once some one called out is that you plumber george
+yes said he all that remains of me since i left london what do you think of the diggings said mister postman
+which he held for twenty years he is alive now and has retired or is about to retire from the service an independent man once he was a poor tailor in london how long have you been here said postman just arrived said we have you had any dinner
+have you had any dinner no said i we have only just arrived you shall dine with me in my tent and i'll give you a shakedown to night said he thanks said i
+and i don't expect them back for a day or two in the meantime i will tell you a thing or two about the goldfields come with me to my butcher's the butcher's shop was a tent with two or three sheep hanging up also some sausages
+a quarter of mutton said postman all right said butcher we expect to have half of a bullock next week these are some friends of mine from adelaide you may safely trust them if they get hard up said postman they can have what they like on your recommendation
+we arrived at his tent and soon made a fire how are you going to cook asked fiddler jim you shall soon see said postman whereupon he got a tin bucket washed it out put water in slung it over the fire
+then mister postman proposed that we should go with him to johnny allsort's store and get some beer while the dinner was cooking to which we all agreed
+where we then were was called pennyweight flat on our right is moonlight flat then over there is long gully that hill on the left is called adelaide hill and the next is friar's creek then further on is campbell's creek
+and then comes murder creek which takes you on to tarrangower
+we were introduced to johnny as new arrivals he had made his fortune by selling to new chums such articles as tents cradles buckets tubs and frying pans in fact he could supply anything except gold dust which he bought or exchanged for tea sugar or grog
+got back safely and enjoyed our dinner after which we had a long yarn about digging
+some neighbours came in and jim turned out his fiddle and played a bit after which we had some grog fired off our pistols reloaded them made up the fire and then turned into our blankets with our firearms under our pillows
+i slept well till daylight when i got up and made a fire put on the billy and had breakfast we then gave johnny allsorts another call all of us going together mister postman accompanied us to see that we were not imposed upon
+johnny greeted us with how are you this morning will you take a nobbler after business said i good said mister postman now then said allsorts what is the first thing a good warm tent said fiddler tim
+i can accommodate you to a t i have one not far off that i bought off three diggers who went to the new rush come with me and you shall see it and then judge for yourself we all went to look at it and found it to be a good second hand tent
+too much said mister postman
+well we will not quarrel about a pound said he it is yours for four all right said the lot of us mister postman selected what we should want to begin with such as a cradle buckets rope picks shovels
+if you are lucky come and pay and in the meantime give me your names for the account so that if you have to leave i may have a claim on the tent we consulted together and agreed to his terms we then had nobblers all round took possession of our goods and moved into our new tent
+we arranged that plumber george was to be cook for the first week and the first thing that he had to do was to chop a tree down but fiddler jim however had to help him i went off to the butcher's shop and got credit for a quarter of mutton
+and when i got back they had lighted a fire so i fried some mutton boiled some potatoes and had dinner after which we went into committee what's the first thing to be done asked george we must take out our licence before we begin to dig said jim
+ah said i i forgot that we shall have to pay three pounds for it
+i'll try my friend mister postman said george he did so and got it we then took a walk to the commissioner's tent and got our licences after which we had a good look over the township which was called castlemaine and is so called to this day
+its original name however was mount alexander
+as it rained heavily we agreed not to start work until the next day so we returned to our tent and wrote letters informing the folks at home of our safe arrival got to work next day and took it in turns one to use the pick and the other the shovel
+we got down about four feet the first day and were very tired our hands not being used to pick and shovel work were very sore the next day we expected to bottom the hole the diggers told us that we should strike the pipe clay at about seven feet
+the deeper we went the labor of getting the stuff to the surface was increased as every bit had to be drawn up in buckets the third day we got to the pipe clay under which was found a small deposit of gravel
+they had undergone a remarkable change since our arrival at the butcher's shop they now wandered about fat sleek and contented and their former voracity had completely disappeared
+as regards ourselves a day or two longer made no difference our most important article of diet the pemmican was practically left untouched as for the time being dog had completely taken its place
+there was thus no great sign of depression to be noticed when we came back into the tent after finishing our work and had to while away the time as i went in i could descry wisting a little way off kneeling on the ground
+and engaged in the manufacture of cutlets the dogs stood in a ring round him and looked on with interest the north east wind whistled and howled the air was thick with driving snow and wisting was not to be envied
+to whatever age i may live in the course of the night the wind had gone back to the north and increased to a gale it was blowing and snowing so that when we came out in the morning we could not see the sledges they were half snowed under
+the temperature was not so very low
+we had all taken a turn outside to look at the weather and were sitting on our sleeping bags discussing the poor prospect it's the devil's own weather here at the butcher's said one it looks to me as if it would never get any better
+this is the fifth day and it's blowing worse than ever we all agreed there's nothing so bad as lying weather bound like this continued another it takes more out of you than going from morning to night personally i was of the same opinion
+one day may be pleasant enough but two three four
+no it was awful shall we try it no sooner was the proposal submitted than it was accepted unanimously and with acclamation when i think of my four friends of the southern journey
+it is the memory of that morning that comes first to my mind all the qualities that i most admire in a man were clearly shown at that juncture courage and dauntlessness without boasting or big words
+amid joking and chaff everything was packed and then out into the blizzard it was practically impossible to keep one's eyes open the fine drift snow penetrated everywhere
+the dogs were not much inclined to start and it took time to get them into their harness but at last we were ready one more glance over the camping ground to see that nothing we ought to have with us had been forgotten
+which we now thought would not be required were left behind the last thing to be done was planting a broken ski upright by the side of the depot it was wisting who did this thinking presumably that an extra mark would do no harm
+that it was a happy thought the future will show and then we were off it was a hard pull to begin with both for men and beasts as the high sastrugi continued towards the south
+and made it extremely difficult to advance those who had sledges to drive had to be very attentive and support them so that they did not capsize on the big waves and we who had no sledges found great difficulty in keeping our feet
+as we had nothing to lean against we went on like this slowly enough but the main thing was that we made progress the ground at first gave one the impression of rising though not much the going was extremely heavy
+it was like dragging oneself through sand meanwhile the sastrugi grew smaller and smaller and finally they disappeared altogether and the surface became quite flat the going also improved by degrees
+for what reason it is difficult to say as the storm continued unabated and the drift now combined with falling snow was thicker than ever it was all the driver could do to see his own dogs the surface
+which had become perfectly level had the appearance at times of sinking in any case one would have thought so from the pace of the sledges now and again the dogs would set off suddenly at a gallop the wind aft no doubt helped the pace somewhat
+but it alone could not account for the change i did not like this tendency of the ground to fall away in my opinion we ought to have done with anything of that sort after reaching the height at which we were a slight slope upward
+possibly but down no that did not agree with my reckoning so far the incline had not been so great as to cause uneasiness but if it seriously began to go downhill we should have to stop and camp
+would be madness we might risk falling into some chasm before we had time to pull up hanssen as usual was driving first strictly speaking i should now have been going in advance but the uneven surface at the start
+and the rapid pace afterwards had made it impossible to walk as fast the dogs could pull i was therefore following by the side of wisting's sledge and chatting with him suddenly i saw hanssen's dogs shoot ahead
+and downhill they went at the wildest pace wisting after them i shouted to hanssen to stop
+by twisting his sledge the others who were following stopped when they came up to him we were in the middle of a fairly steep descent what there might be below was not easy to decide nor would we try to find out in that weather
+we trampled down a place for the tent in the loose snow and soon got it up it was not a long day's march that we had done eleven and three quarter miles but we had put an end to our stay at the butcher's shop and that was a great thing
+the boiling point test that evening showed that we were ten thousand three hundred feet above the sea and that we had thus gone down six hundred twenty feet from the butcher's we turned in and went to sleep as soon as it brightened
+one has to seize every opportunity in these regions if one neglects to do so it may mean a long wait and much may be lost we therefore all slept with one eye open
+and we knew well that nothing could happen without our noticing it at three in the morning the sun cut through the clouds and we through the tent door to take in the situation was more than the work of a moment
+the sun showed as yet like a pat of butter and had not succeeded in dispersing the thick mists the wind had dropped somewhat but was still fairly strong this is after all the worst part of one's job
+turning out of one's good warm sleeping bag and standing outside for some time in thin clothes watching the weather we knew by experience that a gleam like this a clearing in the weather might come suddenly and then one had to be on the spot
+the gleam came it did not last long but long enough we lay on the side of a ridge that fell away pretty steeply the descent on the south was too abrupt but on the south east it was better and more gradual
+and ended in a wide level tract we could see no crevasses or unpleasantness of any kind it was not very far that we could see though only our nearest surroundings of the mountains we saw nothing
+had now broken loose again and the north easter was doing all it could
+since we had discovered the nature of our immediate surroundings if we once got down to the plain we knew that we could always feel our way on after putting ample brakes on the sledge runners
+we started off downhill in a south easterly direction the slight idea of the position that we had been able to get in the morning proved correct the descent was easy and smooth and we reached the plain without any adventure
+we could now once more set our faces to the south and in thick driving snow we continued our way into the unknown with good assistance from the howling north easterly gale we now recommenced the erection of beacons
+which had not been necessary during the ascent
+the last of them that we encountered the surface was now fine enough smooth as a floor and without a sign of sastrugi if our progress was nevertheless slow and difficult this was due to the wretched going
+which was real torture to all of us a sledge journey through the sahara could not have offered a worse surface to move over
+the weather improved in the course of the day and when we camped in the afternoon it looked quite smiling the sun came through and gave a delightful warmth after the last few bitter days it was not yet clear
+so that we could see nothing of our surroundings the distance according to our three sledge meters was eighteen and a half miles taking the bad going into consideration we had reason to be well satisfied with it
+our altitude came out at nine thousand four hundred seventy five feet above the sea or a drop of eight hundred twenty five feet in the course of the day this surprised me greatly what did it mean
+instead of rising gradually we were going slowly down
+but what according to dead reckoning our latitude that evening
+the night was filled with sharp gusts from the north the morning came with a slack wind but accompanied by mist and snowfall this was abominable here we were advancing over absolutely virgin ground and able to see nothing
+the surface remained about the same possibly rather more undulating that it had been blowing here at some time and violently too was shown by the under surface which was composed of sastrugi as hard as iron
+luckily for us the snowfall of the last few days had filled these up so as to present a level surface it was heavy going though better than on the previous day as we were advancing still blindly
+and fretting at the persistently thick weather one of us suddenly called out hullo look there a wild dark summit rose high out of the mass of fog to the east south east it was not far away
+on the contrary it seemed threateningly near and right over us we stopped and looked at the imposing sight but nature did not expose her objects of interest for long the fog rolled over again thick heavy and dark
+and blotted out the view we knew now that we had to be prepared for surprises after we had gone about ten miles the fog again lifted for a moment and we saw quite near a mile or so away
+two long narrow mountain ridges to the west of us running north and south and completely covered with snow these
+they were between nine thousand and ten thousand feet high and would probably serve as excellent landmarks on the return journey there was no connection to be traced between these mountains and those lying to the east of them
+they gave us the impression of being entirely isolated summits as we could not make out any lofty ridge running east and west
+we continued our course in the constant expectation of finding some surprise or other in our line of route the air ahead of us was as black as pitch as though it concealed something
+it could not be a storm or it would have been already upon us but we went on and on and nothing came our day's march was eighteen and a half miles i see that my diary for november twenty eighth
+does not begin very promisingly fog fog and again fog also fine falling snow which makes the going impossible poor beasts they have toiled hard to get the sledges forward to day
+but the day did not turn out so badly after all as we worked our way out of this uncertainty and found out what was behind the pitch dark clouds during the forenoon the sun came through and thrust aside the fog for a while and there
+to the south east not many miles away lay an immense mountain mass from this mass right across our course ran a great ancient glacier the sun shone down upon it and showed us a surface full of huge irregularities
+on the side nearest to the mountain these disturbances were such that a hasty glance was enough to show us the impossibility of advancing that way but right in our line of route straight on to the glacier
+and waited for decently clear weather so that we might survey the ground at our ease and choose the best way going forward without an idea of what the ground was like was not very pleasant
+but how long should we have to wait for clear weather that question was unanswerable possibly a week or even a fortnight and we had no time for that better go straight on then and take what might come
+what we could see of the glacier appeared to be pretty steep but it was only between the south and south east under the new land that the fog now and again lifted sufficiently to enable us to see anything
+we could see that the big crevasses lost themselves in it and the question of what the glacier looked like on the west
+it was plain enough that we should have stiff work it was therefore important to have as little as possible on the sledges we set to work at once to build the depot the snow here was excellent for this purpose
+as hard as glass in a short time an immense erection of adamantine blocks of snow rose into the air containing provisions for five men for six days and for eighteen dogs for five days
+a number of small articles were also left behind while we were thus occupied the fog had been coming and going some of the intervals had been quite clear and had given me a good view of the nearest part of the range
+it appeared to be quite isolated and to consist of four mountains one of these mount helmer hanssen lay separated from the rest the other three mounts oscar wisting
+and olav bjaaland lay closer together behind this group the air had been heavy and black the whole time showing that more land must be concealed there suddenly
+and the summits of a colossal mountain mass appeared our first impression was that this mountain mount thorvald nilsen must be something over twenty thousand feet high it positively took our breath away
+so formidable did it appear but it was only a glimpse that we had and then the fog enclosed it once more we had succeeded in taking a few meagre bearings of the different summits of the nearest group
+they were not very grand but better ones were not to be obtained for that matter the site of the depot was so well marked by its position under the foot of the glacier that we agreed it would be impossible to miss it
+having finished the edifice which rose at least six feet into the air
+so as to be able to see it still more easily on the way back an observation we had contrived to take while the work was in progress
+this did not agree very well with the latitude of our dead reckoning
+and a fine light snow was falling we had taken a bearing of the line of glacier that was most free of crevasses and so we moved on again
+the crevasses at its foot were not large but we had no sooner entered upon the ascent than the fun began there was something uncanny about this perfectly blind advance among crevasses and chasms on all sides
+we examined the compass from time to time and went forward cautiously
+but that after all was not much of a help to our drivers
+as the crevasses were often rendered quite invisible by a thin overlying layer of snow
+to have to cross such a surface as the effect of light and shade is usually to show up the edges of these insidious pitfalls but on a day like this when everything looked alike one's advance is doubtful we kept it going however
+by using the utmost caution wisting came near to sounding the depth of one of these dangerous crevasses with sledge dogs and all as the bridge he was about to cross gave way thanks to his presence of mind
+and a lightning like movement some would call it luck he managed to save himself in this way we worked up about two hundred feet but then we came upon such a labyrinth of yawning chasms and open abysses
+that we could not move there was nothing to be done but to find the least disturbed spot and set the tent there as soon as this was done hanssen and i set out to explore we were roped and therefore safe enough
+it required some study to find a way out of the trap we had run ourselves into towards the group of mountains last described which now lay to the east of us
+in all directions and evoked a picture of violent confusion thank god we were not here while this was going on i thought to myself as i stood looking out over this battlefield it must have been a spectacle like doomsday
+and not on a small scale either to advance in that direction then was hopeless but that was no great matter since our way was to the south on the south we could see nothing the fog lay thick and heavy there
+this ridge led us on to an icewave about twenty five feet high a formation which was due to the pressure having ceased before the wave had been forced to break and form hummocks
+we saw well enough that this would be a difficult place to pass with sledges and dogs but in default of anything better it would have to be done from the top of this wave formation we could see down on the other side
+which had hitherto been hidden from us the fog prevented our seeing far but the immediate surroundings were enough to convince us that with caution we could beat up farther from the height on which we stood
+as we saw absolutely nothing our object was to make tracks for the following day's journey the language we used about the glacier as we went was not altogether complimentary we had endless tacking and turning to get on
+a fissure had opened making a gateway about six feet wide this formation like every thing else on the glacier was obviously very old and for the most part filled with snow
+from this point the glacier as far as our view extended to the south looked better and better
+our companions were no less pleased with the news we brought of our prospects our altitude that evening was eight thousand six hundred fifty feet above the sea that is to say at the foot of the glacier
+we had reached an altitude of eight thousand four hundred fifty feet or a drop from the butcher's of two thousand five hundred seventy feet we now knew very well that we should have this ascent to make again perhaps even more
+and this idea did not arouse any particular enthusiasm in my diary i see that i conclude the day with the following words what will the next surprise be i wonder it was in fact
+an extraordinary journey that we were undertaking through new regions new mountains glaciers and so on without being able to see
+what i liked least about this feeling one's way forward in the dark was that it would be difficult very difficult indeed to recognize the ground again on the way back but with this glacier lying straight across our line of route
+a mistake there might be serious enough and it will appear later in this narrative that my fear of our not being able to recognize the way was not entirely groundless the beacons we had put up came to our aid
+and for our final success we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our prudence and thoughtfulness in adopting this expedient next morning november twenty ninth brought considerably clearer weather
+and allowed us a very good survey of our position we could now see that the two mountain ranges
+with summits from ten thousand to fifteen thousand feet mount thorvald nilsen was the most southerly we could see from this point mounts hanssen wisting bjaaland and hassel formed as we had thought the day before
+a group by themselves and lay separated from the main range the drivers had a warm morning's work they had to drive with great circumspection and patience to grapple with the kind of ground we had before us
+a slight mistake might be enough to send both sledge and dogs with lightning rapidity into the next world it took nevertheless a remarkably short time to cover the distance we had explored on the previous evening before we knew it
+we were at hell's gate bjaaland took an excellent photograph here which gives a very good idea of the difficulties this part of the journey presented in the foreground
+below the high snow ridge that forms one side of a very wide but partly filled up crevasse the marks of ski can be seen in the snow this was the photographer who in passing over this snow bridge
+struck his ski into it to try the strength of the support close to the tracks can be seen an open piece of the crevasse it is a pale blue at the top but ends in the deepest black in a bottomless abyss
+the photographer got over the bridge and back with a whole skin but there could be no question of risking sledges and dogs on it and it can be seen in the photograph that the sledges have been turned right round to try another way
+but taking into account all the turns and circuits we had been compelled to make it was not so short after all we set our tent on a good solid foundation and were well pleased with the day's work
+the altitude was eight thousand nine hundred sixty feet above the sea the sun was now in the west and shining directly upon the huge mountain masses it was a fairy landscape in blue and white
+clear as it now appeared to be one could understand that the weather was not all that could be wished for the south eastern end of mount thorvald nilsen lost itself in a dark impenetrable cloud
+which led one to suspect a continuation in that direction though one could not be certain mount nilsen ah anything more beautiful taking it altogether i have never seen
+peaks of the most varied forms rose high into the air partly covered with driving clouds some were sharp but most were long and rounded here and there one saw bright shining glaciers
+plunging wildly down the steep sides and merging into the underlying ground in fearful confusion but the most remarkable of them all was mount helmer hanssen its top was as round as the bottom of a bowl
+and covered by an extraordinary ice sheet which was so broken up and disturbed that the blocks of ice bristled in every direction like the quills of a porcupine it glittered and burned in the sunlight a glorious spectacle
+the administration of government in its largest sense comprehends all the operations of the body politic whether legislative executive or judiciary but in its most usual and perhaps its most precise signification
+it is limited to executive details and falls peculiarly within the province of the executive department the actual conduct of foreign negotiations the preparatory plans of finance
+the application and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the legislature the arrangement of the army and navy the directions of the operations of war
+these and other matters of a like nature constitute what seems to be most properly understood by the administration of government the persons therefore to whose immediate management these different matters are committed
+ought to be considered as the assistants or deputies of the chief magistrate and on this account they ought to derive their offices from his appointment at least from his nomination and ought to be subject to his superintendence
+this view of the subject will at once suggest to us the intimate connection between the duration of the executive magistrate in office and the stability of the system of administration to reverse and undo what has been done by a predecessor
+the person substituted is warranted in supposing that the dismission of his predecessor has proceeded from a dislike to his measures and that the less he resembles him the more he will recommend himself to the favor of his constituents
+these considerations and the influence of personal confidences and attachments would be likely to induce every new president to promote a change of men to fill the subordinate stations
+and these causes together could not fail to occasion a disgraceful and ruinous mutability in the administration of the government with a positive duration of considerable extent i connect the circumstance of re eligibility
+the first is necessary to give to the officer himself the inclination and the resolution to act his part well and to the community time and leisure to observe the tendency of his measures and thence to form an experimental estimate of their merits
+the last is necessary to enable the people when they see reason to approve of his conduct to continue him in his station in order to prolong the utility of his talents and virtues and to secure to the government the advantage of permanency
+in a wise system of administration nothing appears more plausible at first sight nor more ill founded upon close inspection than a scheme which in relation to the present point has had some respectable advocates i mean
+that of continuing the chief magistrate in office for a certain time and then excluding him from it either for a limited period or forever after this exclusion whether temporary or perpetual would have nearly the same effects
+when they were conscious that the advantages of the station with which it was connected must be relinquished at a determinate period than when they were permitted to entertain a hope of obtaining
+is to make their interests coincide with their duty even the love of fame the ruling passion of the noblest minds which would prompt a man to plan and undertake extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit
+and must commit that together with his own reputation to hands which might be unequal or unfriendly to the task the most to be expected from the generality of men in such a situation is the negative merit of not doing harm
+instead of the positive merit of doing good another ill effect of the exclusion would be the temptation to sordid views to peculation and in some instances to usurpation
+an avaricious man who might happen to fill the office looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed would feel a propensity not easy to be resisted by such a man
+to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory though the same man probably with a different prospect before him
+might content himself with the regular perquisites of his situation and might even be unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of his opportunities his avarice might be a guard upon his avarice
+add to this that the same man might be vain or ambitious as well as avaricious and if he could expect to prolong his honors by his good conduct he might hesitate to sacrifice his appetite for them to his appetite for gain
+but with the prospect before him of approaching an inevitable annihilation his avarice would be likely to get the victory over his caution his vanity or his ambition an ambitious man too
+when he found himself seated on the summit of his country's honors when he looked forward to the time at which he must descend from the exalted eminence for ever and reflected that no exertion of merit on his part could save him from the unwelcome reverse
+and sighing for a place which they were destined never more to possess a third ill effect of the exclusion would be
+in the exercise of his office that experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind what more desirable or more essential than this quality in the governors of nations
+where more desirable or more essential than in the first magistrate of a nation can it be wise to put this desirable and essential quality under the ban of the constitution and to declare that the moment it is acquired its possessor shall be compelled
+to abandon the station in which it was acquired and to which it is adapted this nevertheless is the precise import of all those regulations which exclude men from serving their country
+by the choice of their fellowcitizens after they have by a course of service fitted themselves for doing it with a greater degree of utility a fourth ill effect of the exclusion would be the banishing men from stations in which
+in certain emergencies of the state their presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety there is no nation which has not at one period or another experienced an absolute necessity of the services of particular men
+in particular situations perhaps it would not be too strong to say to the preservation of its political existence how unwise therefore must be every such self denying ordinance as serves to prohibit a nation from making use of its own citizens
+in the manner best suited to its exigencies and circumstances without supposing the personal essentiality of the man it is evident that a change of the chief magistrate at the breaking out of a war or at any similar crisis for another
+even of equal merit would at all times be detrimental to the community inasmuch as it would substitute inexperience to experience and would tend to unhinge and set afloat the already settled train of the administration
+a fifth ill effect of the exclusion would be that it would operate as a constitutional interdiction of stability in the administration by necessitating a change of men in the first office of the nation
+it would necessitate a mutability of measures it is not generally to be expected that men will vary and measures remain uniform the contrary is the usual course of things
+and we need not be apprehensive that there will be too much stability while there is even the option of changing nor need we desire to prohibit the people from continuing their confidence where they think it may be safely placed and where by constancy on their part
+they may obviate the fatal inconveniences of fluctuating councils and a variable policy these are some of the disadvantages which would flow from the principle of exclusion they apply most forcibly to the scheme of a perpetual exclusion
+but when we consider that even a partial exclusion would always render the readmission of the person a remote and precarious object the observations which have been made will apply nearly as fully to one case as to the other
+what are the advantages promised to counterbalance these disadvantages they are represented to be first greater independence in the magistrate
+unless the exclusion be perpetual there will be no pretense to infer the first advantage but even in that case may he have no object beyond his present station to which he may sacrifice his independence
+on the arrival of which he not only may but must be exposed to their resentments upon an equal perhaps upon an inferior footing it is not an easy point to determine whether his independence would be most promoted or impaired by such an arrangement
+as to the second supposed advantage there is still greater reason to entertain doubts concerning it if the exclusion were to be perpetual a man of irregular ambition of whom alone there could be reason in any case to entertain apprehension
+would with infinite reluctance yield to the necessity of taking his leave forever of a post in which his passion for power and pre eminence had acquired the force of habit and if he had been fortunate or adroit enough to conciliate the good will of the people
+there may be conceived circumstances in which this disgust of the people seconding the thwarted ambition of such a favorite might occasion greater danger to liberty than could ever reasonably be dreaded from the possibility of a perpetuation in office
+by the voluntary suffrages of the community exercising a constitutional privilege there is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in office men who had entitled themselves in their opinion
+the mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the united states is almost the only part of the system of any consequence which has escaped without severe censure or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents
+the most plausible of these who has appeared in print
+and hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect it is at least excellent
+but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose and at the particular conjuncture it was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station
+and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice a small number of persons
+selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations
+but the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration promise an effectual security against this mischief the choice of several to form an intermediate body of electors
+will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes and as the electors chosen in each state
+are to assemble and vote in the state in which they are chosen this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments which might be communicated from them to the people than if they were all to be convened
+at one time in one place nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal intrigue and corruption
+these most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils
+how could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the union but the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort with the most provident and judicious attention
+they have not made the appointment of the president to depend on any preexisting bodies of men who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of america
+to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment and they have excluded from eligibility to this trust all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the president in office
+no senator representative or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the united states can be of the numbers of the electors thus without corrupting the body of the people the immediate agents in the election
+will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias their transient existence and their detached situation already taken notice of afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so to the conclusion of it
+the business of corruption when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men requires time as well as means nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them dispersed as they would be over thirteen states
+in any combinations founded upon motives which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty
+on all but the people themselves
+this advantage will also be secured by making his re election to depend on a special body of representatives deputed by the society for the single purpose of making the important choice all these advantages will happily combine in the plan devised by the convention
+which is that the people of each state shall choose a number of persons as electors equal to the number of senators and representatives of such state in the national government who shall assemble within the state and vote for some fit person as president
+and the person who may happen to have a majority of the whole number of votes will be the president but as a majority of the votes might not always happen to centre in one man and as it might be unsafe to permit less than a majority to be conclusive
+it is provided that in such a contingency the house of representatives shall select out of the candidates who shall have the five highest number of votes the man who in their opinion may be best qualified for the office
+the process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of president will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications talents for low intrigue
+and the little arts of popularity may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single state but it will require other talents and a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole union
+or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of president of the united states it will not be too strong to say that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters
+pre eminent for ability and virtue and this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the constitution by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration
+though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says for forms of government let fools contest that which is best administered is best yet we may safely pronounce
+that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration the vice president is to be chosen in the same manner with the president with this difference that the senate is to do in respect to the former
+what is to be done by the house of representatives in respect to the latter the appointment of an extraordinary person as vice president has been objected to as superfluous if not mischievous
+the other consideration is that as the vice president may occasionally become a substitute for the president in the supreme executive magistracy all the reasons which recommend the mode of election prescribed for the one
+apply with great if not with equal force to the manner of appointing the other it is remarkable that in this as in most other instances the objection which is made would lie against the constitution of this state we have a lieutenant governor
+the duration in office of the executive from the new york packet
+and to the stability of the system of administration which may have been adopted under his auspices with regard to the first it must be evident that the longer the duration in office the greater will be the probability of obtaining so important an advantage
+it is a general principle of human nature that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it
+and of course will be willing to risk more for the sake of the one than for the sake of the other this remark is not less applicable to a political privilege or honor or trust than to any article of ordinary property
+the inference from it is that a man acting in the capacity of chief magistrate under a consciousness that in a very short time he must lay down his office will be apt to feel himself too little interested in it to hazard any material censure or perplexity
+from the independent exertion of his powers or from encountering the ill humors however transient which may happen to prevail either in a considerable part of the society itself or even in a predominant faction in the legislative body
+if the case should only be that he might lay it down unless continued by a new choice and if he should be desirous of being continued his wishes conspiring with his fears would tend still more powerfully to corrupt his integrity
+either in the community or in the legislature as its best recommendation but such men entertain very crude notions as well of the purposes for which government was instituted as of the true means by which the public happiness may be promoted
+the republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion
+or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests it is a just observation that the people commonly intend the public good
+this often applies to their very errors but their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it they know from experience that they sometimes err and the wonder is
+that they so seldom err as they do beset as they continually are by the wiles of parasites and sycophants by the snares of the ambitious the avaricious the desperate by the artifices
+of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it when occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations
+in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure
+but however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance in the executive to the inclinations of the people we can with no propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the legislature
+the latter may sometimes stand in opposition to the former and at other times the people may be entirely neutral in either supposition it is certainly desirable that the executive should be in a situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision
+the same rule which teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other
+to what purpose separate the executive or the judiciary from the legislative if both the executive and the judiciary are so constituted as to be at the absolute devotion of the legislative such a separation must be merely nominal
+and another to be dependent on the legislative body the first comports with the last violates the fundamental principles of good government and whatever may be the forms of the constitution unites all power in the same hands
+the tendency of the legislative authority to absorb every other has been fully displayed and illustrated by examples in some preceding numbers in governments purely republican this tendency is almost irresistible the representatives of the people
+they often appear disposed to exert an imperious control over the other departments and as they commonly have the people on their side
+they always act with such momentum as to make it very difficult for the other members of the government to maintain the balance of the constitution it may perhaps be asked how the shortness of the duration in office
+can affect the independence of the executive on the legislature unless the one were possessed of the power of appointing or displacing the other one answer to this inquiry may be drawn from the principle already remarked
+though not more conclusive will result from the consideration of the influence of the legislative body over the people which might be employed to prevent the re election of a man who by an upright resistance to any sinister project of that body should have made himself
+obnoxious to its resentment it may be asked also whether a duration of four years would answer the end proposed and if it would not whether a less period which would at least be recommended by greater security against ambitious designs
+would not for that reason be preferable to a longer period which was at the same time too short for the purpose of inspiring the desired firmness and independence of the magistrate it cannot be affirmed that a duration of four years or any other limited duration
+there would always be a considerable interval in which the prospect of annihilation would be sufficiently remote not to have an improper effect upon the conduct of a man indued with a tolerable portion of fortitude
+and in which he might reasonably promise himself that there would be time enough before it arrived to make the community sensible of the propriety of the measures he might incline to pursue though it be probable that as he approached the moment
+of establishing himself in the esteem and good will of his constituents he might then hazard with safety in proportion to the proofs he had given of his wisdom and integrity and to the title he had acquired to the respect and attachment of his fellow citizens
+as on the one hand a duration of four years will contribute to the firmness of the executive in a sufficient degree to render it a very valuable ingredient in the composition so on the other it is not enough to justify any alarm for the public liberty
+if a british house of commons from the most feeble beginnings from the mere power of assenting or disagreeing to the imposition of a new tax
+have by rapid strides reduced the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges of the nobility within the limits they conceived to be compatible with the principles of a free government while they raised themselves to the rank and consequence of a coequal branch of the legislature
+all the ancient establishments as well in the church as state if they have been able on a recent occasion to make the monarch tremble at the prospect
+what but that he might be unequal to the task which the constitution assigns him i shall only add that if his duration be such as to leave a doubt of his firmness that doubt is inconsistent with a jealousy of his encroachments
+catherine was completely awakened henry's address short as it had been had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done
+most bitterly did she cry it was not only with herself that she was sunk but with henry her folly which now seemed even criminal was all exposed to him and he must despise her forever
+the liberty which her imagination had dared to take with the character of his father could he ever forgive it the absurdity of her curiosity and her fears could they ever be forgotten
+she hated herself more than she could express he had she thought he had once or twice before this fatal morning shown something like affection for her but now
+in short she made herself as miserable as possible for about half an hour went down when the clock struck five with a broken heart and could scarcely give an intelligible answer to eleanor's inquiry if she was well
+the formidable henry soon followed her into the room and the only difference in his behaviour to her was that he paid her rather more attention than usual catherine had never wanted comfort more and he looked as if he was aware of it
+the evening wore away with no abatement of this soothing politeness and her spirits were gradually raised to a modest tranquillity she did not learn either to forget or defend the past
+but she learned to hope that it would never transpire farther and that it might not cost her henry's entire regard her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done nothing could shortly be clearer
+than that it had been all a voluntary self created delusion each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which
+long before her quitting bath and it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of reading which she had there indulged
+charming as were all missus radcliffe's works and charming even as were the works of all her imitators it was not in them perhaps that human nature at least in the midland counties of england was to be looked for
+and even of that if hard pressed would have yielded the northern and western extremities but in the central part of england there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved in the laws of the land and the manners of the age
+murder was not tolerated servants were not slaves and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be procured like rhubarb from every druggist among the alps and pyrenees perhaps there were no mixed characters
+there such as were not as spotless as an angel might have the dispositions of a fiend but in england it was not so among the english she believed in their hearts and habits
+upon this conviction she would not be surprised if even in henry and eleanor tilney some slight imperfection might hereafter appear
+and upon this conviction she need not fear to acknowledge some actual specks in the character of their father who though cleared from the grossly injurious suspicions which she must ever blush to have entertained she did believe
+upon serious consideration to be not perfectly amiable her mind made up on these several points and her resolution formed of always judging and acting in future with the greatest good sense
+she had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever and the lenient hand of time did much for her by insensible gradations in the course of another day henry's astonishing generosity
+and nobleness of conduct in never alluding in the slightest way to what had passed was of the greatest assistance to her and sooner than she could have supposed it possible in the beginning of her distress her spirits became absolutely comfortable
+and capable as heretofore of continual improvement by anything he said there were still some subjects indeed under which she believed they must always tremble the mention of a chest or a cabinet for instance
+and she did not love the sight of japan in any shape but even she could allow that an occasional memento of past folly however painful might not be without use
+the anxieties of common life began soon to succeed to the alarms of romance her desire of hearing from isabella grew every day greater she was quite impatient to know how the bath world went on and how the rooms were attended
+and especially was she anxious to be assured of isabella's having matched some fine netting cotton on which she had left her intent and of her continuing on the best terms with james
+her only dependence for information of any kind was on isabella james had protested against writing to her till his return to oxford and missus allen had given her no hopes of a letter till she had got back to fullerton
+she thanked him as heartily as if he had written it himself tis only from james however as she looked at the direction she opened it it was from oxford and to this purpose dear catherine
+though god knows with little inclination for writing i think it my duty to tell you that everything is at an end between miss thorpe and me i left her and bath yesterday never to see either again
+i shall not enter into particulars they would only pain you more you will soon hear enough from another quarter to know where lies the blame
+thank god i am undeceived in time but it is a heavy blow after my father's consent had been so kindly given but no more of this she has made me miserable forever
+let me soon hear from you dear catherine you are my only friend your love i do build upon i wish your visit at northanger may be over before captain tilney makes his engagement known
+or you will be uncomfortably circumstanced poor thorpe is in town i dread the sight of him his honest heart would feel so much i have written to him and my father her duplicity hurts me more than all
+till the very last if i reasoned with her she declared herself as much attached to me as ever
+i am ashamed to think how long i bore with it but if ever man had reason to believe himself loved i was that man i cannot understand even now
+what she would be at for there could be no need of my being played off to make her secure of tilney we parted at last by mutual consent happy for me had we never met
+dearest catherine beware how you give your heart
+and short exclamations of sorrowing wonder declared her to be receiving unpleasant news and henry earnestly watching her through the whole letter saw plainly that it ended no better than it began he was prevented however
+from even looking his surprise by his father's entrance they went to breakfast directly but catherine could hardly eat anything tears filled her eyes and even ran down her cheeks as she sat the letter was one moment in her hand
+then in her lap and then in her pocket and she looked as if she knew not what she did the general between his cocoa and his newspaper had luckily no leisure for noticing her but to the other two her distress was equally visible
+as soon as she dared leave the table she hurried away to her own room but the housemaids were busy in it and she was obliged to come down again she turned into the drawing room for privacy but henry and eleanor had likewise retreated thither
+and were at that moment deep in consultation about her she drew back trying to beg their pardon but was with gentle violence forced to return and the others withdrew
+after eleanor had affectionately expressed a wish of being of use or comfort to her after half an hour's free indulgence of grief and reflection catherine felt equal to encountering her friends
+such a friend as isabella had been to her and then their own brother so closely concerned in it she believed she must waive the subject altogether henry and eleanor were by themselves in the breakfast room and each as she entered it
+looked at her anxiously catherine took her place at the table and after a short silence eleanor said no bad news from fullerton i hope mister and missus morland your brothers and sisters i hope they are none of them ill
+no i thank you sighing as she spoke they are all very well my letter was from my brother at oxford nothing further was said for a few minutes and then speaking through her tears she added
+i do not think i shall ever wish for a letter again i am sorry said henry closing the book he had just opened if i had suspected the letter of containing anything unwelcome i should have given it with very different feelings
+it contained something worse than anybody could suppose poor james is so unhappy you will soon know why to have so kind hearted so affectionate a sister replied henry warmly must be a comfort to him under any distress
+i have one favour to beg said catherine shortly afterwards in an agitated manner that if your brother should be coming here you will give me notice of it that i may go away our brother frederick yes
+i am sure i should be very sorry to leave you so soon but something has happened that would make it very dreadful for me to be in the same house with captain tilney eleanor's work was suspended while she gazed with increasing astonishment
+but henry began to suspect the truth and something in which miss thorpe's name was included passed his lips how quick you are cried catherine you have guessed it i declare and yet when we talked about it in bath
+you little thought of its ending so isabella no wonder now i have not heard from her isabella has deserted my brother and is to marry yours could you have believed there had been such inconstancy and fickleness
+and everything that is bad in the world i hope so far as concerns my brother you are misinformed i hope he has not had any material share in bringing on mister morland's disappointment
+his marrying miss thorpe is not probable i think you must be deceived so far i am very sorry for mister morland sorry that anyone you love should be unhappy but my surprise would be greater
+will you take the trouble of reading to us the passages which concern my brother no read it yourself cried catherine whose second thoughts were clearer i do not know what i was thinking of blushing again that she had blushed before
+james only means to give me good advice he gladly received the letter and having read it through with close attention returned it saying well if it is to be so i can only say that i am sorry for it
+frederick will not be the first man who has chosen a wife with less sense than his family expected i do not envy his situation either as a lover or a son miss tilney
+at catherine's invitation now read the letter likewise and having expressed also her concern and surprise began to inquire into miss thorpe's connections and fortune her mother is a very good sort of woman was catherine's answer
+what was her father a lawyer i believe they live at putney are they a wealthy family no not very i do not believe isabella has any fortune at all but that will not signify in your family
+would it be to promote his happiness to enable him to marry such a girl she must be an unprincipled one or she could not have used your brother so and how strange an infatuation on frederick's side a girl
+inconceivable henry frederick too who always wore his heart so proudly
+it is all over with frederick indeed he is a deceased man defunct in understanding prepare for your sister in law eleanor and such a sister in law as you must delight in open candid
+artless guileless with affections strong but simple forming no pretensions and knowing no disguise such a sister in law henry i should delight in said eleanor with a smile
+but perhaps observed catherine though she has behaved so ill by our family she may behave better by yours now she has really got the man she likes she may be constant
+indeed i am afraid she will replied henry i am afraid she will be very constant unless a baronet should come in her way that is frederick's only chance i will get the bath paper and look over the arrivals
+you think it is all for ambition then and upon my word there are some things that seem very like it i cannot forget that when she first knew what my father would do for them she seemed quite disappointed that it was not more
+i never was so deceived in anyone's character in my life before among all the great variety that you have known and studied my own disappointment and loss in her is very great but as for poor james
+i suppose he will hardly ever recover it your brother is certainly very much to be pitied at present but we must not in our concern for his sufferings undervalue yours you feel i suppose that in losing isabella
+you lose half yourself you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy society is becoming irksome and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at bath the very idea of them without her is abhorrent
+you would not for instance now go to a ball for the world you feel that you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve on whose regard you can place dependence or whose counsel
+that i am never to hear from her perhaps never to see her again
+what is most to the credit of human nature such feelings ought to be investigated that they may know themselves
+chapter seventeen the abbe's chamber after having passed with tolerable ease through the subterranean passage which however did not admit of their holding themselves erect the two friends reached the further end of the corridor
+into which the abbe's cell opened from that point the passage became much narrower and barely permitted one to creep through on hands and knees the floor of the abbe's cell was paved and it had been by raising one of the stones in the most obscure corner
+of which dantes had witnessed the completion as he entered the chamber of his friend dantes cast around one eager and searching glance in quest of the expected marvels but nothing more than common met his view it is well
+said the abbe we have some hours before us it is now just a quarter past twelve o'clock instinctively dantes turned round to observe by what watch or clock the abbe had been able so accurately to specify the hour
+look at this ray of light which enters by my window said the abbe and then observe the lines traced on the wall well by means of these lines which are in accordance with the double motion of the earth and the ellipse it describes round the sun
+than if i possessed a watch for that might be broken or deranged in its movements while the sun and earth never vary in their appointed paths this last explanation was wholly lost upon dantes who had always imagined
+appeared to him perfectly impossible each word that fell from his companion's lips seemed fraught with the mysteries of science as worthy of digging out as the gold and diamonds in the mines of guzerat and golconda
+which he could just recollect having visited during a voyage made in his earliest youth
+i am anxious to see your treasures the abbe smiled and proceeding to the disused fireplace raised by the help of his chisel a long stone which had doubtless been the hearth beneath which was a cavity of considerable depth
+serving as a safe depository of the articles mentioned to dantes
+asked the abbe oh your great work on the monarchy of italy
+laid one over the other like folds of papyrus these rolls consisted of slips of cloth about four inches wide and eighteen long they were all carefully numbered and closely covered with writing so legible that dantes could easily read it
+as well as make out the sense it being in italian
+i wrote the word finis at the end of the sixty eighth strip about a week ago i have torn up two of my shirts and as many handkerchiefs as i was master of to complete the precious pages
+should i ever get out of prison and find in all italy a printer courageous enough to publish what i have composed my literary reputation is forever secured i see answered dantes
+now let me behold the curious pens with which you have written your work look
+showing to the young man a slender stick about six inches long and much resembling the size of the handle of a fine painting brush to the end of which was tied by a piece of thread
+and divided at the nib like an ordinary pen dantes examined it with intense admiration then looked around to see the instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into form ah yes said faria the penknife
+one could cut and thrust dantes examined the various articles shown to him with the same attention that he had bestowed on the curiosities and strange tools exhibited in the shops at marseilles
+as the works of the savages in the south seas from whence they had been brought by the different trading vessels as for the ink
+i told you how i managed to obtain that and i only just make it from time to time as i require it one thing still puzzles me observed dantes and that is how you managed to do all this by daylight
+night why for heaven's sake are your eyes like cats that you can see to work in the dark indeed they are not but god has supplied man with the intelligence that enables him to overcome the limitations of natural conditions
+i furnished myself with a light
+i separated the fat from the meat served to me melted it and so made oil here is my lamp so saying the abbe exhibited a sort of torch very similar to those used in public illuminations
+and matches i pretended that i had a disorder of the skin and asked for a little sulphur which was readily supplied dantes laid the different things he had been looking at on the table and stood with his head drooping on his breast
+as though overwhelmed by the perseverance and strength of faria's mind you have not seen all yet continued faria for i did not think it wise to trust all my treasures in the same hiding place let us shut this one up
+they put the stone back in its place the abbe sprinkled a little dust over it to conceal the traces of its having been removed rubbed his foot well on it to make it assume the same appearance as the other and then going towards his bed
+who supplied you with the materials for making this wonderful work i tore up several of my shirts and ripped out the seams in the sheets of my bed during my three years imprisonment at fenestrelle
+so that i have been able to finish my work here and was it not discovered that your sheets were unhemmed
+i hemmed the edges over again with what with this needle said the abbe as opening his ragged vestments he showed dantes a long sharp fish bone with a small perforated eye for the thread a small portion of which still remained in it
+i once thought continued faria of removing these iron bars and letting myself down from the window which as you see is somewhat wider than yours although i should have enlarged it still more preparatory to my flight
+however i discovered that i should merely have dropped into a sort of inner court and i therefore renounced the project altogether as too full of risk and danger nevertheless i carefully preserved my ladder
+and which sudden chance frequently brings about while affecting to be deeply engaged in examining the ladder the mind of dantes was in fact busily occupied by the idea
+that a person so intelligent ingenious and clear sighted as the abbe might probably be able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes where he himself could see nothing
+what are you thinking of asked the abbe smilingly imputing the deep abstraction in which his visitor was plunged to the excess of his awe and wonder i was reflecting in the first place replied dantes
+upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained what would you not have accomplished if you had been free possibly nothing at all the overflow of my brain would probably
+in a state of freedom have evaporated in a thousand follies misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect compression is needed to explode gunpowder captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus
+and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced from electricity lightning from lightning illumination no replied dantes i know nothing
+you must be blessed indeed to possess the knowledge you have the abbe smiled well said he but you had another subject for your thoughts did you not say so just now i did
+as yet but one of them let me hear the other it was this that while you had related to me all the particulars of your past life you were perfectly unacquainted with mine your life my young friend has not been of sufficient length
+i would fain fix the source of it on man that i may no longer vent reproaches upon heaven
+my father and mercedes come said the abbe closing his hiding place and pushing the bed back to its original situation let me hear your story dantes obeyed and commenced what he called his history
+but which consisted only of the account of a voyage to india and two or three voyages to the levant until he arrived at the recital of his last cruise with the death of captain leclere and the receipt of a packet to be delivered by himself to the grand marshal
+his interview with that personage and his receiving in place of the packet brought a letter addressed to a monsieur noirtier his arrival at marseilles and interview with his father his affection for mercedes and their nuptual feast
+his arrest and subsequent examination his temporary detention at the palais de justice and his final imprisonment in the chateau d'if from this point everything was a blank to dantes he knew nothing more not even the length of time he had been imprisoned
+mister collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his successful love for missus bennet having dawdled about in the vestibule to watch for the end of the conference no sooner saw elizabeth open the door
+than she entered the breakfast room and congratulated both him and herself
+mister collins received and returned these felicitations with equal pleasure and then proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview with the result of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied
+since the refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her character this information however startled missus bennet
+she would have been glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had meant to encourage him by protesting against his proposals but she dared not believe it
+she added that lizzy shall be brought to reason
+she is a very headstrong foolish girl and does not know her own interest but i will make her know it pardon me for interrupting you madam cried mister collins
+but if she is really headstrong and foolish i know not whether she would altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my situation who naturally looks for happiness in the marriage state
+if therefore she actually persists in rejecting my suit perhaps it were better not to force her into accepting me because if liable to such defects of temper she could not contribute much to my felicity
+sir you quite misunderstand me said missus bennet alarmed lizzy is only headstrong in such matters as these in everything else she is as good natured a girl as ever lived
+her mister bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered and fixed them on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the least altered by her communication
+i have not the pleasure of understanding you said he
+your mother insists upon your accepting it is it not so missus bennet yes or i will never see her again an unhappy alternative is before you elizabeth
+from this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents your mother will never see you again if you do not marry mister collins and i will never see you again if you do
+my dear replied her husband i have two small favours to request first that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion and secondly
+of my room i shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be not yet however in spite of her disappointment in her husband did missus bennet give up the point
+she talked to elizabeth again and again coaxed and threatened her by turns she endeavoured to secure jane in her interest but jane with all possible mildness declined interfering
+and elizabeth sometimes with real earnestness and sometimes with playful gaiety replied to her attacks though her manner varied however her determination never did
+mister collins meanwhile was meditating in solitude on what had passed he thought too well of himself to comprehend on what motives his cousin could refuse him and though his pride was hurt
+while the family were in this confusion charlotte lucas came to spend the day with them she was met in the vestibule by lydia who flying to her cried in a half whisper
+i am glad you are come for there is such fun here what do you think has happened this morning
+who came to tell the same news and no sooner had they entered the breakfast room where missus bennet was alone than she likewise began on the subject calling on miss lucas for her compassion
+she added in a melancholy tone
+i have no pleasure in talking to undutiful children
+who suffer as i do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking
+but it is always so those who do not complain are never pitied her daughters listened in silence to this effusion
+would only increase the irritation she talked on therefore without interruption from any of them till they were joined by mister collins
+and on perceiving whom she said to the girls
+elizabeth passed quietly out of the room jane and kitty followed but lydia stood her ground determined to hear all she could and charlotte
+detained first by the civility of mister collins whose inquiries after herself and all her family were very minute and then by a little curiosity satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending not to hear
+my dear madam replied he let us be for ever silent on this point far be it from me he presently continued
+in a voice that marked his displeasure to resent the behaviour of your daughter resignation to inevitable evils is the duty of us all the peculiar duty of a young man
+who has been so fortunate as i have been in early preferment and i trust i am resigned
+had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand for i have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our estimation
+without having paid yourself and mister bennet the compliment of requesting you to interpose your authority in my behalf
+my conduct may i fear be objectionable in having accepted my dismission from your daughter's lips instead of your own but we are all liable to error
+i have certainly meant well through the whole affair my object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself
+and if my manner has been at all reprehensible
+chapter twenty one the discussion of mister collins's offer was now nearly at an end and elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily attending it
+and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her mother as for the gentleman himself his feelings were chiefly expressed not by embarrassment or dejection or by trying to avoid her
+but by stiffness of manner and resentful silence he scarcely ever spoke to her and the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of himself were transferred for the rest of the day to miss lucas
+mister collins was also in the same state of angry pride elizabeth had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit but his plan did not appear in the least affected by it he was always to have gone on saturday
+after breakfast the girls walked to meryton to inquire if mister wickham were returned and to lament over his absence from the netherfield ball he joined them on their entering the town
+and attended them to their aunt's where his regret and vexation and the concern of everybody
+to elizabeth however he voluntarily acknowledged that the necessity of his absence had been self imposed i found said he as the time drew near
+that i had better not meet mister darcy that to be in the same room the same party with him for so many hours together might be more than i could bear and that scenes might arise unpleasant to more than myself
+and it was most acceptable as an occasion of introducing him to her father and mother soon after their return a letter was delivered to miss bennet
+the envelope contained a sheet of elegant little hot pressed paper well covered with a lady's fair flowing hand and elizabeth saw her sister's countenance change as she read it
+and saw her dwelling intently on some particular passages jane recollected herself soon and putting the letter away tried to join with her usual cheerfulness in the general conversation
+but elizabeth felt an anxiety on the subject which drew off her attention even from wickham and no sooner had he and his companion taken leave than a glance from jane invited her to follow her up stairs
+it is unlucky said she after a short pause that you should not be able to see your friends before they leave the country but may we not hope that the period of future happiness
+to which miss bingley looks forward may arrive earlier than she is aware and that the delightful intercourse you have known as friends will be renewed with yet greater satisfaction as sisters mister bingley will not be detained in london by them
+caroline decidedly says that none of the party will return into hertfordshire this winter i will read it to you when my brother left us yesterday
+he imagined that the business which took him to london might be concluded in three or four days but as we are certain it cannot be so and at the same time convinced that when charles gets to town he will be in no hurry to leave it again
+as to prevent your feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you it is evident by this added jane that he comes back no more this winter
+why will you think so it must be his own doing he is his own master but you do not know all i will read you the passage which particularly hurts me
+i will have no reserves from you
+and to confess the truth we are scarcely less eager to meet her again i really do not think georgiana darcy has her equal for beauty elegance and accomplishments and the affection she inspires in louisa and myself
+is heightened into something still more interesting
+he will have frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing her relations all wish the connection as much as his own and a sister's partiality is not misleading me i think
+when i call charles most capable of engaging any woman's heart with all these circumstances to favour an attachment and nothing to prevent it am i wrong my dearest jane
+in indulging the hope of an event which will secure the happiness of so many
+said jane as she finished it is it not clear enough does it not expressly declare that caroline neither expects nor wishes me to be her sister that she is perfectly convinced of her brother's indifference
+and that if she suspects the nature of my feelings for him she means most kindly to put me on my guard can there be any other opinion on the subject yes there can
+for mine is totally different will you hear it most willingly you shall have it in a few words miss bingley sees that her brother is in love with you and wants him to marry miss darcy
+she follows him to town in hope of keeping him there and tries to persuade you that he does not care about you jane shook her head indeed jane you ought to believe me
+no one who has ever seen you together can doubt his affection miss bingley i am sure cannot she is not such a simpleton could she have seen half as much love in mister darcy for herself
+but the case is this we are not rich enough or grand enough for them and she is the more anxious to get miss darcy for her brother from the notion that when there has been one intermarriage she may have less trouble in achieving a second
+in which there is certainly some ingenuity and i dare say it would succeed if miss de bourgh were out of the way but my dearest jane you cannot seriously imagine
+that because miss bingley tells you her brother greatly admires miss darcy he is in the smallest degree less sensible of your merit than when he took leave of you on tuesday or that it will be in her power to persuade him that instead of being in love with you
+caroline is incapable of wilfully deceiving anyone
+is that she is deceiving herself that is right you could not have started a more happy idea since you will not take comfort in mine believe her to be deceived by all means
+even supposing the best in accepting a man whose sisters and friends are all wishing him to marry elsewhere you must decide for yourself said elizabeth
+and if upon mature deliberation you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife i advise you by all means to refuse him
+the idea of his returning no more elizabeth treated with the utmost contempt it appeared to her merely the suggestion of caroline's interested wishes and she could not for a moment suppose that those wishes
+however openly or artfully spoken could influence a young man so totally independent of everyone she represented to her sister as forcibly as possible what she felt on the subject
+and had soon the pleasure of seeing its happy effect jane's temper was not desponding and she was gradually led to hope though the diffidence of affection sometimes overcame the hope that bingley would return to netherfield
+and answer every wish of her heart they agreed that missus bennet should only hear of the departure of the family without being alarmed on the score of the gentleman's conduct but even this partial communication gave her a great deal of concern
+and she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that the ladies should happen to go away just as they were all getting so intimate together after lamenting it however at some length
+and soon dining at longbourn and the conclusion of all was the comfortable declaration that though he had been invited only to a family dinner she would take care to have two full courses
+the bennets were engaged to dine with the lucases and again during the chief of the day was miss lucas so kind as to listen to mister collins elizabeth took an opportunity of thanking her
+it keeps him in good humour said she and i am more obliged to you than i can express charlotte assured her friend of her satisfaction in being useful
+and that it amply repaid her for the little sacrifice of her time this was very amiable but charlotte's kindness extended farther than elizabeth had any conception of
+by engaging them towards herself such was miss lucas's scheme and appearances were so favourable that when they parted at night
+but here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his character for it led him to escape out of longbourn house the next morning with admirable slyness and hasten to lucas lodge to throw himself at her feet
+he was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins from a conviction that if they saw him depart they could not fail to conjecture his design
+for though feeling almost secure and with reason for charlotte had been tolerably encouraging he was comparatively diffident since the adventure of wednesday his reception however was of the most flattering kind
+miss lucas perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane but little had she dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there
+in as short a time as mister collins's long speeches would allow everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both and as they entered the house
+the stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance and miss lucas
+who accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment cared not how soon that establishment were gained sir william and lady lucas were speedily applied to for their consent
+and his prospects of future wealth were exceedingly fair lady lucas began directly to calculate with more interest than the matter had ever excited before how many years longer mister bennet was likely to live
+and sir william gave it as his decided opinion that whenever mister collins should be in possession of the longbourn estate it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife should make their appearance at saint james's
+the whole family in short were properly overjoyed on the occasion the younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done
+and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of charlotte's dying an old maid charlotte herself was tolerably composed she had gained her point and had time to consider of it
+her reflections were in general satisfactory mister collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable his society was irksome and his attachment to her must be imaginary
+but still he would be her husband without thinking highly either of men or matrimony marriage had always been her object
+and however uncertain of giving happiness must be their pleasantest preservative from want this preservative she had now obtained and at the age of twenty seven
+without having ever been handsome she felt all the good luck of it the least agreeable circumstance in the business was the surprise it must occasion to elizabeth bennet
+whose friendship she valued beyond that of any other person elizabeth would wonder and probably would blame her and though her resolution was not to be shaken her feelings must be hurt
+she resolved to give her the information herself and therefore charged mister collins when he returned to longbourn to dinner to drop no hint of what had passed before any of the family
+for the curiosity excited by his long absence burst forth in such very direct questions on his return as required some ingenuity to evade and he was at the same time exercising great self denial
+for he was longing to publish his prosperous love as he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see any of the family the ceremony of leave taking was performed when the ladies moved for the night
+and missus bennet with great politeness and cordiality said how happy they should be to see him at longbourn again
+my dear madam he replied this invitation is particularly gratifying because it is what i have been hoping to receive
+and you may be very certain that i shall avail myself of it as soon as possible they were all astonished and mister bennet who could by no means wish for so speedy a return
+immediately said but is there not danger of lady catherine's disapprobation here my good sir you had better neglect your relations than run the risk of offending your patroness my dear sir
+you cannot be too much upon your guard risk anything rather than her displeasure and if you find it likely to be raised by your coming to us again which i should think exceedingly probable
+stay quietly at home and be satisfied that we shall take no offence believe me my dear sir my gratitude is warmly excited by such affectionate attention
+as for my fair cousins though my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary
+not excepting my cousin elizabeth with proper civilities the ladies then withdrew
+there was a solidity in his reflections which often struck her and though by no means so clever as herself she thought that if encouraged to read and improve himself by such an example as hers
+related the event of the day before the possibility of mister collins's fancying himself in love with her friend had once occurred to elizabeth within the last day or two but that charlotte could encourage him
+seemed almost as far from possibility
+and her astonishment was consequently so great as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum and she could not help crying out engaged to mister collins
+the steady countenance which miss lucas had commanded in telling her story gave way to a momentary confusion here on receiving so direct a reproach though as it was no more than she expected
+she soon regained her composure and calmly replied why should you be surprised my dear eliza
+and that she wished her all imaginable happiness i see what you are feeling replied charlotte you must be surprised very much surprised so lately as mister collins was wishing to marry you
+i hope you will be satisfied with what i have done i am not romantic you know i never was i ask only a comfortable home and considering mister collins's character
+i am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state elizabeth quietly answered undoubtedly and after an awkward pause
+the strangeness of mister collins's making two offers of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now accepted she had always felt that charlotte's opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own
+that when called into action she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage charlotte the wife of mister collins was a most humiliating picture
+to achieve a correct appreciation of the chinese
+and then one fine day cross over the yalu into manchuria it would be of exceptional advantage to the correctness of appreciation did he cross over the yalu on the heels of a hostile and alien army
+war is to day the final arbiter in the affairs of men and it is as yet the final test of the worth whileness of peoples tested thus the korean fails
+he lacks the nerve to remain when a strange army crosses his land the few goods and chattels he may have managed to accumulate he puts on his back along with his doors and windows and away he heads for his mountain fastnesses
+later he may return sans goods chattels doors and windows impelled by insatiable curiosity for a look see but it is curiosity merely a timid deerlike curiosity
+he is prepared to bound away on his long legs at the first hint of danger or trouble northern korea was a desolate land when the japanese passed through villages and towns were deserted
+the fields lay untouched there was no ploughing nor sowing no green things growing little or nothing was to be purchased one carried one's own food with him
+in many a lonely village not an ounce nor a grain of anything could be bought and yet there might be standing around scores of white garmented stalwart koreans smoking yard long pipes and chattering chattering ceaselessly chattering
+love money or force could not procure from them a horseshoe or a horseshoe nail upso was their invariable reply upso cursed word which means have not got
+they had tramped probably forty miles that day down from their hiding places just for a look see and forty miles back they would cheerfully tramp chattering all the way over what they had seen
+and the gloom of the landscape will be filled with tall flitting ghosts bounding like deer with great springy strides which one cannot but envy they have splendid vigour and fine bodies but they are accustomed to being beaten and robbed without protest or resistance
+by every chance foreigner who enters their country from this nerveless forsaken korean land i rode down upon the sandy islands of the yalu for weeks these islands had been the dread between the lines of two fighting armies
+the air above had been rent by screaming projectiles the echoes of the final battle had scarcely died away the trains of japanese wounded and japanese dead were trailing by
+on the conical hill a quarter of a mile away the russian dead were being buried in their trenches and in the shell holes made by the japanese and here in the thick of it all a man was ploughing green things were growing
+young onions and the man who was weeding them paused from his labour long enough to sell me a handful near by was the smoke blackened ruin of the farmhouse fired by the russians when they retreated from the riverbed two men were removing the debris
+cleaning the confusion preparatory to rebuilding they were clad in blue pigtails hung down their backs i was in china i rode to the shore into the village of kuelian ching
+there were no lounging men smoking long pipes and chattering the previous day the russians had been there a bloody battle had been fought and to day the japanese were there but what was that to talk about everybody was busy
+men were offering eggs and chickens and fruit for sale upon the street and bread as i live bread in small round loaves or buns i rode on into the country everywhere a toiling population was in evidence
+the houses and walls were strong and substantial stone and brick replaced the mud walls of the korean dwellings twilight fell and deepened and still the ploughs went up and down the fields the sowers following after
+trains of wheelbarrows heavily loaded squeaked by and pekin carts drawn by from four to six cows horses mules ponies or jackasses cows even with their newborn calves tottering along on puny legs outside the traces
+everybody worked everything worked i saw a man mending the road i was in china i came to the city of antung and lodged with a merchant he was a grain merchant
+corn he had hundreds of bushels stored in great bins of stout matting peas and beans in sacks and in the back yard his millstones went round and round grinding out meal also in his back yard were buildings containing vats sunk into the ground
+and here the tanners were at work making leather i bought a measure of corn from mine host for my horses and he overcharged me thirty cents i was in china antung was jammed with japanese troops
+it was the thick of war but it did not matter the work of antung went on just the same the shops were wide open the streets were lined with pedlars one could buy anything get anything made
+i dined at a chinese restaurant cleansed myself at a public bath in a private tub with a small boy to assist in the scrubbing i bought condensed milk bitter canned vegetables bread and cake i repeat it cake good cake
+i bought knives forks and spoons granite ware dishes and mugs there were horseshoes and horseshoers a worker in iron realized for me new designs of mine for my tent poles my shoes were sent out to be repaired
+a barber shampooed my hair a servant returned with corn beef in tins a bottle of port another of cognac and beer
+to wash out from my throat the dust of an army it was the land of canaan i was in china the korean is the perfect type of inefficiency of utter worthlessness
+the chinese is the perfect type of industry for sheer work no worker in the world can compare with him work is the breath of his nostrils it is his solution of existence
+liberty to him epitomizes itself in access to the means of toil to till the soil and labour interminably with rude implements and utensils is all he asks of life and of the powers that be
+work is what he desires above all things and he will work at anything for anybody during the taking of the taku forts he carried scaling ladders at the heads of the storming columns and planted them against the walls
+he did this not from a sense of patriotism but for the invading foreign devils because they paid him a daily wage of fifty cents he is not frightened by war he accepts it as he does rain and sunshine the changing of the seasons and other natural phenomena
+he prepares for it endures it and survives it and when the tide of battle sweeps by
+he is seen calmly bending to his usual tasks nay war itself bears fruits whereof he may pick before the dead are cold or the burial squads have arrived he is out on the field
+stripping the mangled bodies collecting the shrapnel and ferreting in the shell holes for slivers and fragments of iron the chinese is no coward
+he does not hide away his chickens and his eggs nor any other commodity he possesses he proceeds at once to offer them for sale nor is he to be bullied into lowering his price
+he has two large pears saved over from last year which he will sell for five sen or for the same price three small pears what if one soldier persist in taking away with him three large pears what if there be twenty other soldiers jostling about him
+and the soldier responsible for their flight
+nor is the chinese the type of permanence which he has been so often designated he is not so ill disposed toward new ideas and new methods as his history would seem to indicate true
+his forms customs and methods have been permanent these many centuries but this has been due to the fact that his government was in the hands of the learned classes and that these governing scholars found their salvation lay in suppressing all progressive ideas
+and been spread by their pamphlets and propagandists originality and enterprise have been suppressed in the chinese for scores of generations only has remained to him industry
+on the other hand his susceptibility to new ideas has been well demonstrated wherever he has escaped beyond the restrictions imposed upon him by his government so far as the business man is concerned he has grasped far more clearly the western code of business
+the western ethics of business than has the japanese he has learned as a matter of course to keep his word or his bond as yet the japanese business man has failed to understand this when he has signed a time contract
+and when changing conditions cause him to lose by it the japanese merchant cannot understand why he should live up to his contract it is beyond his comprehension and repulsive to his common sense that he should live up to his contract and thereby lose money
+he firmly believes that the changing conditions themselves absolve him and in so far adaptable as he has shown himself to be in other respects
+here we have the chinese four hundred millions of him occupying a vast land of immense natural resources resources of a twentieth century age of a machine age
+resources of coal and iron which are the backbone of commercial civilization
+truly would he of himself constitute the much heralded yellow peril were it not for his present management this management his government is set crystallized it is what binds him down to building as his fathers built
+the governing class entrenched by the precedent and power of centuries and by the stamp it has put upon his mind will never free him it would be the suicide of the governing class and the governing class knows it
+comes now the japanese on the streets of antung of feng wang chang or of any other manchurian city the following is a familiar scene
+on one side squats a chinese civilian on his hams on the other side squats a japanese soldier
+the other nods understanding sweeps the dust slate level with his hand and with his forefinger inscribes similar characters they are talking they cannot speak to each other but they can write
+long ago one borrowed the other's written language and long before that untold generations ago they diverged from a common root the ancient mongol stock there have been changes
+differentiations brought about by diverse conditions and infusions of other blood but down at the bottom of their being twisted into the fibres of them is a heritage in common a sameness in kind which time has not obliterated
+the infusion of other blood malay perhaps has made the japanese a race of mastery and power a fighting race through all its history a race which has always despised commerce and exalted fighting to day
+equipped with the finest machines and systems of destruction the caucasian mind has devised handling machines and systems with remarkable and deadly accuracy this rejuvenescent japanese race has embarked on a course of conquest the goal of which no man knows
+the head men of japan are dreaming ambitiously and the people are dreaming blindly a napoleonic dream and to this dream the japanese clings and will cling with bull dog tenacity the soldier shouting nippon banzai
+her sole support may go to the front are both expressing the unanimity of the dream the late disturbance in the far east marked the clashing of the dreams for the slav too is dreaming greatly
+granting that the japanese can hurl back the slav and that the two great branches of the anglo saxon race do not despoil him of his spoils the japanese dream takes on substantiality
+but given poor empty korea for a breeding colony and manchuria for a granary and at once the japanese begins to increase by leaps and bounds even so he would not of himself constitute a brown peril
+he has not the time in which to grow and realize the dream he is only forty five millions and so fast does the economic exploitation of the planet hurry on the planet's partition amongst the western peoples that before he could attain the stature requisite to menace
+he would see the western giants in possession of the very stuff of his dream the menace to the western world lies not in the little brown man but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their management
+the chinese is not dead to new ideas he is an efficient worker makes a good soldier and is wealthy in the essential materials of a machine age under a capable management he will go far
+the japanese is prepared and fit to undertake this management not only has he proved himself an apt imitator of western material progress a sturdy worker and a capable organizer but he is far more fit to manage the chinese than are we
+the baffling enigma of the chinese character is no baffling enigma to him he understands as we could never school ourselves nor hope to understand their mental processes are largely the same
+he thinks with the same thought symbols as does the chinese and he thinks in the same peculiar grooves he goes on where we are balked by the obstacles of incomprehension he takes the turning which we cannot perceive
+twists around the obstacle and presto is out of sight in the ramifications of the chinese mind where we cannot follow the chinese has been called the type of permanence and well he has merited it dozing as he has through the ages
+and as truly was the japanese the type of permanence up to a generation ago
+the ideas of the west were the leaven which quickened the japanese and the ideas of the west transmitted by the japanese mind into ideas japanese may well make the leaven powerful enough to quicken the chinese
+we have had africa for the afrikander and at no distant day we shall hear asia for the asiatic four hundred million indefatigable workers deft intelligent and unafraid to die aroused and rejuvenescent
+managed and guided by forty five million additional human beings who are splendid fighting animals scientific and modern constitute that menace to the western world which has been well named the yellow peril
+the possibility of race adventure has not passed away we are in the midst of our own the slav is just girding himself up to begin why may not the yellow and the brown start out on an adventure as tremendous as our own and more strikingly unique
+it is not the nature of life to believe itself weak there is such a thing as race egotism as well as creature egotism and a very good thing it is in the first place the western world will not permit the rise of the yellow peril
+it advances this idea with persistency and delivers itself of long arguments showing how and why this menace will not be permitted to arise
+the western world is warned if not armed against the possibility of it in the second place there is a weakness inherent in the brown man which will bring his adventure to naught from the west he has borrowed all our material achievement and passed our ethical achievement by
+our engines of production and destruction he has made his what was once solely ours he now duplicates rivalling our merchants in the commerce of the east thrashing the russian on sea and land a marvellous imitator truly
+but imitating us only in things material things spiritual cannot be imitated they must be felt and lived woven into the very fabric of life and here the japanese fails
+it required no revolution of his nature to learn to calculate the range and fire a field gun or to march the goose step it was a mere matter of training our material achievement is the product of our intellect
+it is knowledge and knowledge like coin is interchangeable it is not wrapped up in the heredity of the new born child but is something to be acquired afterward
+our soul stuff is not a coin to be pocketed by the first chance comer the japanese cannot pocket it any more than he can thrill to short saxon words or we can thrill to chinese hieroglyphics the leopard cannot change its spots nor can the japanese
+nor can we we are thumbed by the ages into what we are and by no conscious inward effort can we in a day rethumb ourselves nor can the japanese in a day or a generation rethumb himself in our image
+back of our own great race adventure back of our robberies by sea and land our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have done there is a certain integrity a sternness of conscience a melancholy responsibility of life
+a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel which is ours indubitably ours and which we cannot teach to the oriental as we would teach logarithms or the trajectory of projectiles
+that we have groped for the way of right conduct and agonized over the soul betokens our spiritual endowment though we have strayed often and far from righteousness the voices of the seers have always been raised
+and we have harked back to the bidding of conscience the colossal fact of our history is that we have made the religion of jesus christ our religion no matter how dark in error and deed ours has been a history of spiritual struggle and endeavour
+we are pre eminently a religious race which is another way of saying that we are a right seeking race
+it seems to me that they have no soul was her answer this must not be taken to mean that the japanese is without soul but it serves to illustrate the enormous difference between their souls and this woman's soul
+there was no feel no speech no recognition this western soul did not dream that the eastern soul existed it was so different so totally different religion as a battle for the right in our sense of right
+as a yearning and a strife for spiritual good and purity is unknown to the japanese measured by what religion means to us the japanese is a race without religion yet it has a religion
+as one japanese has written our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual to us the country is more than land and soil from which to mine gold or reap grain
+it is the sacred abode of the gods the spirit of our forefathers to us the emperor is more than the arch constable of a reichsstaat or even the patron of a kulturstaat he is the bodily representative of heaven on earth
+blending in his person its power and its mercy the religion of japan is practically a worship of the state itself patriotism is the expression of this worship the japanese mind does not split hairs as to whether the emperor is heaven incarnate or the state incarnate
+so far as the japanese are concerned the emperor lives is himself deity the emperor is the object to live for and to die for the japanese is not an individualist
+he has developed national consciousness instead of moral consciousness he is not interested in his own moral welfare except in so far as it is the welfare of the state the honour of the individual per se does not exist
+only exists the honour of the state which is his honour he does not look upon himself as a free agent working out his own personal salvation spiritual agonizing is unknown to him he has a sense of calm trust in fate
+a quiet submission to the inevitable a stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity a disdain of life and friendliness with death he relates himself to the state as amongst bees the worker is related to the hive himself nothing
+the state everything his reasons for existence the exaltation and glorification of the state the most admired quality to day of the japanese is his patriotism
+the western world is in rhapsodies over it unwittingly measuring the japanese patriotism by its own conceptions of patriotism for god my country and the czar cries the russian patriot
+but in the japanese mind there is no differentiation between the three the emperor is the emperor and god and country as well the patriotism of the japanese is blind and unswerving loyalty to what is practically an absolutism
+the emperor can do no wrong nor can the five ambitious great men who have his ear and control the destiny of japan no great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no deeper foundation than material success
+no higher prompting than conquest for conquest's sake and mere race glorification to go far and to endure it must have behind it an ethical impulse a sincerely conceived righteousness
+but it must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of western race egotism urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies
+so be it the world is whirling faster to day than ever before it has gained impetus affairs rush to conclusion the far east is the point of contact of the adventuring western people as well as of the asiatic
+we shall not have to wait for our children's time nor our children's children we shall ourselves see and largely determine the adventure of the yellow and the brown feng wang cheng manchuria
+which was the big news of the day and how could i not have been
+this mystery puzzled me finding it impossible to form any views i drifted from one extreme to the other something was out there that much was certain and any doubting thomas was invited to place his finger on the scotia's wound when i arrived in new york
+also discredited was the idea of a floating hull or some other enormous wreckage and again because of this speed of movement so only two possible solutions to the question were left creating two very distinct groups of supporters
+it couldn't stand up to inquiries conducted in both the new world and the old that a private individual had such a mechanism at his disposal was less than probable where and when had he built it and how could he have built it in secret
+only some government could own such an engine of destruction and in these disaster filled times when men tax their ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons it was possible that unknown to the rest of the world some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine
+and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down at least i hope it will but this hypothesis of a war machine collapsed in the face of formal denials from the various governments
+since the public interest was at stake and transoceanic travel was suffering
+besides how could the assembly of this underwater boat have escaped public notice keeping a secret under such circumstances would be difficult enough for an individual and certainly impossible for a nation whose every move is under constant surveillance by rival powers
+so after inquiries conducted in england france russia prussia spain italy america and even turkey the hypothesis of an underwater monitor was ultimately rejected and so the monster surfaced again
+despite the endless witticisms heaped on it by the popular press
+after i arrived in new york several people did me the honor of consulting me on the phenomenon in question in france i had published a two volume work in quarto entitled the mysteries of the great ocean depths well received in scholarly circles
+my views were in demand
+i confined myself to a flat no comment but soon pinned to the wall i had to explain myself straight out and in this vein the honorable pierre aronnax professor at the paris museum was summoned by the new york herald to formulate his views no matter what
+i complied since i could no longer hold my tongue i let it wag i discussed the question in its every aspect both political and scientific and this is an excerpt from the well padded article i published in the issue of april thirtieth
+therefore i wrote after examining these different hypotheses one by one we are forced every other supposition having been refuted to accept the existence of an extremely powerful marine animal
+the deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us no soundings have been able to reach them what goes on in those distant depths what creatures inhabit or could inhabit those regions twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water
+what is the constitution of these animals it's almost beyond conjecture however the solution to this problem submitted to me can take the form of a choice between two alternatives either we know every variety of creature populating our planet or we do not
+if we do not know every one of them if nature still keeps ichthyological secrets from us nothing is more admissible than to accept the existence of fish or cetaceans of new species or even new genera animals with a basically cast iron constitution
+that inhabit strata beyond the reach of our soundings and which some development or other an urge or a whim if you prefer can bring to the upper level of the ocean for long intervals if on the other hand we do know every living species
+we must look for the animal in question among those marine creatures already cataloged and in this event i would be inclined to accept the existence of a giant narwhale
+increase its dimensions fivefold or even tenfold then give this cetacean a strength in proportion to its size while enlarging its offensive weapons and you have the animal we're looking for it would have the proportions determined by the officers of the shannon
+the instrument needed to perforate the scotia and the power to pierce a steamer's hull in essence the narwhale is armed with a sort of ivory sword or lance as certain naturalists have expressed it it's a king sized tooth as hard as steel
+which the narwhale attacks with invariable success others have been wrenched not without difficulty
+owns one of these tusks with a length of two point two five meters and a width at its base of forty eight centimeters all right then imagine this weapon to be ten times stronger and the animal ten times more powerful
+launch it at a speed of twenty miles per hour multiply its mass times its velocity and you get just the collision we need to cause the specified catastrophe so until information becomes more abundant i plump for a sea unicorn of colossal dimensions
+no longer armed with a mere lance but with an actual spur like ironclad frigates or those warships called rams whose mass and motor power it would possess simultaneously this inexplicable phenomenon is thus explained away
+these last words were cowardly of me but as far as i could i wanted to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter from the americans who when they do laugh laugh raucously
+i had left myself a loophole yet deep down i had accepted the existence of the monster my article was hotly debated causing a fine old uproar
+moreover the solution it proposed allowed for free play of the imagination the human mind enjoys impressive visions of unearthly creatures now then the sea is precisely their best medium
+our creator cast them using a colossal mold that time has gradually made smaller with its untold depths couldn't the sea keep alive such huge specimens of life from another age
+continuous alteration couldn't the heart of the ocean hide the last remaining varieties of these titanic species for whom years are centuries and centuries millennia but i mustn't let these fantasies run away with me
+enough of these fairy tales that time has changed for me into harsh realities i repeat opinion had crystallized as to the nature of this phenomenon and the public accepted without argument the existence of a prodigious creature that had nothing in common with the fabled sea serpent
+yet if some saw it purely as a scientific problem to be solved more practical people especially in america and england were determined to purge the ocean of this daunting monster to insure the safety of transoceanic travel
+the shipping and mercantile gazette the lloyd's list france's packetboat and maritime and colonial review all the rags devoted to insurance companies who threatened to raise their premium rates were unanimous on this point
+the naval arsenals were unlocked for commander farragut who pressed energetically forward with the arming of his frigate but as it always happens just when a decision had been made to chase the monster the monster put in no further appearances
+for two months nobody heard a word about it not a single ship encountered it apparently the unicorn had gotten wise to these plots being woven around it people were constantly babbling about the creature even via the atlantic cable
+accordingly the wags claimed that this slippery rascal had waylaid some passing telegram and was making the most of it so the frigate was equipped for a far off voyage and armed with fearsome fishing gear but nobody knew where to steer it and impatience grew until on june second
+word came that the tampico a steamer on the san francisco line sailing from california to shanghai had sighted the animal again three weeks before in the northerly seas of the pacific this news caused intense excitement
+not even a twenty four hour breather was granted to commander farragut his provisions were loaded on board his coal bunkers were overflowing not a crewman was missing from his post to cast off he needed only to fire and stoke his furnaces half a day's delay would have been unforgivable
+chapter three as master wishes three seconds before the arrival of j b hobson's letter
+i understood at last that my true vocation my sole purpose in life was to hunt down this disturbing monster and rid the world of it even so i had just returned from an arduous journey exhausted and badly needing a rest
+i wanted nothing more than to see my country again my friends my modest quarters by the botanical gardens my dearly beloved collections but now nothing could hold me back i forgot everything else and without another thought of exhaustion friends or collections
+i accepted the american government's offer besides i mused all roads lead home to europe and our unicorn may be gracious enough to take me toward the coast of france that fine animal may even let itself be captured in european seas as a personal favor to me
+conseil i called in an impatient voice conseil was my manservant a devoted lad who went with me on all my journeys a gallant flemish boy whom i genuinely liked and who returned the compliment a born stoic punctilious on principle
+habitually hardworking rarely startled by life's surprises very skillful with his hands efficient in his every duty and despite his having a name that means counsel never giving advice not even the unsolicited kind
+from rubbing shoulders with scientists in our little universe by the botanical gardens the boy had come to know a thing or two in conseil i had a seasoned specialist in biological classification an enthusiast who could run with acrobatic agility
+up and down the whole ladder of branches groups classes subclasses orders families genera subgenera species and varieties but there his science came to a halt classifying was everything to him so he knew nothing else
+well versed in the theory of classification he was poorly versed in its practical application and i doubt that he could tell a sperm whale from a baleen whale and yet what a fine gallant lad
+for the past ten years conseil had gone with me wherever science beckoned not once did he comment on the length or the hardships of a journey never did he object to buckling up his suitcase for any country whatever china or the congo
+no matter how far off it was he went here there and everywhere in perfect contentment moreover he enjoyed excellent health that defied all ailments owned solid muscles but hadn't a nerve in him not a sign of nerves the mental type i mean
+the lad was thirty years old and his age to that of his employer was as fifteen is to twenty please forgive me for this underhanded way of admitting i had turned forty but conseil had one flaw he was a fanatic on formality
+and he only addressed me in the third person to the point where it got tiresome conseil i repeated while feverishly beginning my preparations for departure to be sure i had confidence in this devoted lad
+there was good reason to stop and think even for the world's most emotionless man
+conseil i called a third time conseil appeared
+yes my boy get my things ready get yours ready we're departing in two hours as master wishes conseil replied serenely we haven't a moment to lose pack as much into my trunk as you can my traveling kit my suits shirts and socks
+don't bother counting just squeeze it all in and hurry what about master's collections conseil ventured to observe we'll deal with them later what the archaeotherium hyracotherium oreodonts cheiropotamus and master's other fossil skeletons
+certainly i replied evasively but after we make a detour whatever detour master wishes oh it's nothing really a route slightly less direct that's all we're leaving on the abraham lincoln
+as master thinks best conseil replied placidly you see my friend it's an issue of the monster the notorious narwhale we're going to rid the seas of it the author of a two volume work in quarto on the mysteries of the great ocean depths
+it's a glorious mission but also a dangerous one
+these beasts can be quite unpredictable but we're going just the same we have a commander who's game for anything what master does i'll do conseil replied
+as master wishes a quarter of an hour later our trunks were ready conseil did them in a flash and i was sure the lad hadn't missed a thing because he classified shirts and suits as expertly as birds and mammals
+the hotel elevator dropped us off in the main vestibule on the mezzanine i went down a short stair leading to the ground floor
+i left instructions for shipping my containers of stuffed animals and dried plants to paris france
+for a fare of twenty francs the vehicle went down broadway to union square
+that great new york annex located on the left bank of the east river and in a few minutes we arrived at the wharf next to which the abraham lincoln was vomiting torrents of black smoke from its two funnels our baggage was immediately carried to the deck of the frigate
+i rushed aboard i asked for commander farragut one of the sailors led me to the afterdeck where i stood in the presence of a smart looking officer who extended his hand to me professor pierre aronnax he said to me
+the same i replied commander farragut in person welcome aboard professor your cabin is waiting for you i bowed and letting the commander attend to getting under way i was taken to the cabin that had been set aside for me
+the abraham lincoln reached an average speed of eighteen point three miles per hour a considerable speed but still not enough to cope with our gigantic cetacean the frigate's interior accommodations complemented its nautical virtues i was well satisfied with my cabin
+which was located in the stern and opened into the officers mess we'll be quite comfortable here i told conseil with all due respect to master conseil replied as comfortable as a hermit crab inside the shell of a whelk
+just then commander farragut was giving orders to cast off the last moorings holding the abraham lincoln to its brooklyn pier and so if i'd been delayed by a quarter of an hour or even less
+the frigate would have gone without me and i would have missed out on this unearthly extraordinary and inconceivable expedition whose true story might well meet with some skepticism but commander farragut didn't want to waste a single day
+at this order which was relayed to the engine by means of a compressed air device the mechanics activated the start up wheel steam rushed whistling into the gaping valves long horizontal pistons groaned and pushed the tie rods of the drive shaft
+the blades of the propeller churned the waves with increasing speed and the abraham lincoln moved out majestically amid a spectator laden escort of some one hundred ferries and tenders author's note tenders are small steamboats that assist the big liners
+the wharves of brooklyn and every part of new york bordering the east river were crowded with curiosity seekers departing from five hundred thousand throats three cheers burst forth in succession
+thousands of handkerchiefs were waving above these tightly packed masses hailing the abraham lincoln until it reached the waters of the hudson river at the tip of the long peninsula that forms new york city
+the wonderful right bank of this river all loaded down with country homes and passed by the forts to salutes from their biggest cannons
+whose thirty nine stars gleamed from the gaff of the mizzen sail
+it hugged this sand covered strip of land where thousands of spectators acclaimed us one more time the escort of boats and tenders still followed the frigate and only left us when we came abreast of the lightship whose two signal lights mark the entrance of the narrows to upper new york bay
+chapter five at random for some while the voyage of the abraham lincoln was marked by no incident but one circumstance arose that displayed ned land's marvelous skills and showed just how much confidence we could place in him
+off the falkland islands on june thirtieth the frigate came in contact with a fleet of american whalers and we learned that they hadn't seen the narwhale but one of them the captain of the monroe
+anxious to see ned land at work commander farragut authorized him to make his way aboard the monroe and the canadian had such good luck that with a right and left shot he harpooned not one whale but two striking the first straight to the heart and catching the other after a few minutes chase
+assuredly if the monster ever had to deal with ned land's harpoon i wouldn't bet on the monster the frigate sailed along the east coast of south america with prodigious speed by july third we were at the entrance to the strait of magellan abreast of cabo de las virgenes
+and maneuvered instead to double cape horn the crew sided with him unanimously indeed were we likely to encounter the narwhale in such a cramped strait many of our sailors swore that the monster couldn't negotiate this passageway simply because he's too big for it
+near three o'clock in the afternoon on july sixth fifteen miles south of shore the abraham lincoln doubled that solitary islet at the tip of the south american continent that stray rock dutch seamen had named cape horn after their hometown of hoorn
+our course was set for the northwest and the next day our frigate's propeller finally churned the waters of the pacific open your eyes open your eyes repeated the sailors of the abraham lincoln and they opened amazingly wide eyes and spyglasses
+a bit dazzled it is true by the vista of two thousand dollars didn't remain at rest for an instant day and night we observed the surface of the ocean and those with nyctalopic eyes whose ability to see in the dark increased their chances by fifty percent
+i no longer left the ship's deck sometimes bending over the forecastle railings sometimes leaning against the sternrail
+and how many times i shared the excitement of general staff and crew when some unpredictable whale lifted its blackish back above the waves in an instant the frigate's deck would become densely populated the cowls over the companionways would vomit a torrent of sailors and officers
+with panting chests and anxious eyes we each would observe the cetacean's movements i stared i stared until i nearly went blind from a worn out retina while conseil as stoic as ever kept repeating to me in a calm tone
+if master's eyes would kindly stop bulging master will see farther but what a waste of energy the abraham lincoln would change course and race after the animal sighted only to find an ordinary baleen whale
+or a common sperm whale that soon disappeared amid a chorus of curses however the weather held good our voyage was proceeding under the most favorable conditions by then it was the bad season in these southernmost regions
+because july in this zone corresponds to our january in europe but the sea remained smooth and easily visible over a vast perimeter ned land still kept up the most tenacious skepticism
+but this stubborn canadian spent eight hours out of every twelve reading or sleeping in his cabin a hundred times i chided him for his unconcern bah he replied nothing's out there professor aronnax
+and if there is some animal what chance would we have of spotting it can't you see we're just wandering around at random people say they've sighted this slippery beast again in the pacific high seas i'm truly willing to believe it but two months have already gone by since then
+and judging by your narwhale's personality it hates growing moldy from hanging out too long in the same waterways it's blessed with a terrific gift for getting around now professor you know even better than i that nature doesn't violate good sense
+these bearings determined the frigate took a more decisive westward heading and tackled the seas of the central pacific commander farragut felt and with good reason that it was best to stay in deep waters and keep his distance from continents or islands
+no doubt our bosun said because there isn't enough water for him
+then cut the tropic of cancer at longitude one hundred thirty two degrees and headed for the seas of china we were finally in the area of the monster's latest antics and in all honesty shipboard conditions became life threatening hearts were pounding hideously
+nobody ate nobody slept twenty times a day some error in perception or the optical illusions of some sailor perched in the crosstrees would cause intolerable anguish and this emotion repeated twenty times over
+kept us in a state of irritability so intense that a reaction was bound to follow and this reaction wasn't long in coming for three months during which each day seemed like a century the abraham lincoln plowed all the northerly seas of the pacific
+racing after whales sighted abruptly veering off course swerving sharply from one tack to another stopping suddenly putting on steam and reversing engines in quick succession at the risk of stripping its gears
+and it didn't leave a single point unexplored from the beaches of japan to the coasts of america and we found nothing nothing except an immenseness of deserted waves nothing remotely resembling a gigantic narwhale or an underwater islet
+and each man now wanted only to catch up on his eating and sleeping to make up for the time he had so stupidly sacrificed with typical human fickleness they jumped from one extreme to the other inevitably the most enthusiastic supporters of the undertaking became its most energetic opponents
+this reaction mounted upward from the bowels of the ship from the quarters of the bunker hands to the messroom of the general staff and for certain if it hadn't been for commander farragut's characteristic stubbornness the frigate would ultimately have put back to that cape in the south
+never had the crew of an american naval craft shown more patience and zeal
+a request to this effect was presented to the commander the commander stood his ground his sailors couldn't hide their discontent and their work suffered because of it i'm unwilling to say that there was mutiny on board
+and the abraham lincoln would chart a course toward european seas this promise was given on november second it had the immediate effect of reviving the crew's failing spirits the ocean was observed with renewed care
+each man wanted one last look with which to sum up his experience spyglasses functioned with feverish energy a supreme challenge had been issued to the giant narwhale and the latter had no acceptable excuse for ignoring this summons to appear
+two days passed the abraham lincoln stayed at half steam
+a thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its apathy enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake to the great satisfaction i must say of assorted sharks
+while the abraham lincoln heaved to its longboats radiated in every direction around it and didn't leave a single point of the sea unexplored but the evening of november fourth arrived with this underwater mystery still unsolved
+by then the frigate lay in latitude thirty one degrees fifteen north and longitude one hundred thirty six degrees forty two east the shores of japan were less than two hundred miles to our leeward night was coming on eight o'clock had just struck
+huge clouds covered the moon's disk then in its first quarter the sea undulated placidly beneath the frigate's stempost just then i was in the bow leaning over the starboard rail conseil stationed beside me stared straight ahead
+roosting in the shrouds the crew examined the horizon which shrank and darkened little by little officers were probing the increasing gloom with their night glasses sometimes the murky ocean sparkled beneath moonbeams that darted between the fringes of two clouds
+then all traces of light vanished into the darkness observing conseil i discovered that just barely the gallant lad had fallen under the general influence at least so i thought perhaps his nerves were twitching with curiosity for the first time in history
+come on conseil i told him here's your last chance to pocket that two thousand dollars if master will permit my saying so conseil replied i never expected to win that prize
+in master's little apartment conseil answered in master's museum
+and it would have attracted every curiosity seeker in town quite so conseil and what's more
+to be sure conseil replied serenely i do think they'll have fun at master's expense and must it be said it must be said conseil well then it will serve master right
+how true when one has the honor of being an expert as master is one mustn't lay himself open to conseil didn't have time to complete the compliment in the midst of the general silence a voice became audible
+said craggs pushing billy towards them as he spoke faix and ye might have got worse muttered a very old man billy traynor has the lucky hand how is my lord now nelly
+asked the corporal of a woman who with bare feet and dressed in the humblest fashion of the peasantry appeared he's getting weaker and weaker sir i believe he's sinking i'm glad it's billy is come i'd rather see him than all the doctors in the country
+follow me said craggs giving a signal to step lightly and he led the way up a narrow stone stair with a wall on either hand
+traversing a long low corridor they reached a door at which having waited for a second or two to listen craggs turned the handle and entered the room was very large and lofty and seen in the dim light of a small lamp upon the hearthstone
+the better to admit air to the sick man as billy drew nigh with cautious steps he perceived that although worn and wasted by long illness the patient was a man still in the very prime of life
+muttered he as he finished and then gently displacing the bedclothes laid his hand upon the heart with a long drawn sigh like that of utter weariness the sick man moved his head round and fixed his eyes upon him
+turning as he went to look back towards the bed and evidently going with reluctance is it fever asked the sick man in a faint but unfaltering accent it's a kind of cerebral congestion a matter of them membranes that's over the brain
+the accentuation of these words marked as it was by the strongest provincialism of the peasant attracted the sick man's attention and he bent upon him a look at once searching and severe what are you who are you
+cried he angrily what i am is n't so aisy to say but who i am is clean beyond me are you a doctor asked the sick man fiercely i'm afear'd i'm not
+and billy obeyed without speaking what do you mean by this craggs said the viscount trembling with passion who have you brought me what beggar have you picked off the highway or is he the travelling fool of the district
+but the anger that supplied strength hitherto now failed to impart energy and he sank back wasted and exhausted the corporal bent over him and spoke something in a low whisper but whether the words were heard or not the sick man now lay still
+breathing heavily can you do nothing for him asked craggs peevishly nothing but anger him to be sure i can if you let me
+said billy producing a very ancient lancet case of boxwood tipped with ivory i'll just take a dash of blood from the temporal artery to relieve the cerebrum and then we'll put cowld on his head and keep him quiet
+it's the same as opening a sluice in a mill dam he s better already he looks easier said craggs ay and he feels it continued billy just notice the respiratory organs and see how easy the intercostials is doing their work now
+i'll have that hair off of him if he is n't cooler towards evening so saying he covered the sick man with the wetted cloths and bathed his hands in the cooling fluid
+asked the corporal eagerly he ll do he ll do said billy he's a sanguineous temperament and he'll bear the lancet it's just like weatherin a point at say if you have a craft that will carry canvas there's always a chance for you
+he perceived that you were not a doctor said craggs when they reached the corridor
+but for all that it would be going too far to say that i was n't a doctor t is the same with physic and poetry you take to it or you don't take to it there's chaps ay and far from stupid ones either
+that could n't compose you ten hexameters if ye'd put them on a hot griddle for it and there's others that would talk rhyme rather than rayson and so with the ars medicatrix everybody has n't an eye for a hectic or an ear for a cough non contigit
+hush be still muttered craggs here's the young master and as he spoke a youth of about fifteen well grown and handsome but poorly even meanly clad approached them have you seen my father
+relieve the gorged vessels and don't drown the grand hydraulic machine the heart them's my sentiments turning from the speaker with a look of angry impatience the boy whispered some words in the corporal's ear what could i do sir was the answer
+it was this fellow or nothing and better a thousand times better nothing said the boy than trust his life to the coarse ignorance of this wretched quack and in his passion the words were uttered loud enough for billy to overhear them
+don't be hasty your honor said billy submissively and don't be unjust the realms of disaze is like an unknown tract of country or a country that's only known a little just round the coast as it might be once ye're beyond that
+one man is as good a guide as another
+what have you done have you given him anything broke in the boy hurriedly i took a bleeding from him little short of sixteen ounces from the temporial said billy proudly
+and i'll give him now a concoction of meadow saffron with a pinch of saltpetre in it to cause diaphoresis d'ye mind meanwhile
+just as he may have a knowledge of nature by observation what is sickness after all but just one of the phenomenons of all organic and inorganic matter a regular sort of shindy in a man's inside like a thunderstorm or a hurry cane outside
+he turned to the corporal and said look to him craggs and let him have his supper and when he has eaten it send him to my room billy bowed an acknowledgment and followed the corporal to the kitchen that's my lord's son i suppose
+said he as he seated himself and a fine young crayture too puer ingenuus with a grand frontal development and with this reflection he addressed himself to the coarse but abundant fare which craggs placed before him
+and with an appetite that showed how much he relished it this is elegant living ye have here mister craggs said billy as he drained his tankard of beer and placed it with a sigh on the table many happy years of it to ye i
+the life is not so bad said craggs but it's lonely sometimes life need never be lonely so long as a man has health and his faculties said billy give me nature to admire a bit of baycon for dinner
+and my fiddle to amuse me and i would n't change with the king of sugar candy i was there said craggs it's a fine island my lord wants to see the doctor said a woman entering hastily and the doctor is ready for him
+there's eight or nine of us here would miss him if he was gone troth he doesn't give much employment but we couldn't spare him croaked out a third when the entrance of the corporal cut short further commentary and the party gathered around the cheerful turf fire
+said billy i'll have to be up at the office for the bags at six o'clock faix
+sorra taste of it muttered another there's a sea runnin outside now that would swamp a life boat i'll not lose an illigant situation of six pounds ten a year
+my duty added he somewhat pretentiously is to carry the king's mail and if anything was to obstruckt or impade or delay the correspondience it's on me the blame would lie
+the letters wouldn't go the faster because you were drowned broke in the corporal no sir said billy rather staggered by the grin of approval that met this remark no sir what you ob sarve is true
+but nobody reflects on the sintry that dies at his post if you must and will go i'll give you the yawl said craggs and i ll go with you myself spoke like a british grenadier cried billy with enthusiasm
+carbineer if the same to you master said the other quietly i never served in the infantry
+which is as much as to say to storm the skies or lay siege to the moon give me one of the line or a heavy dragoon it's the same to me as the poet says and a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the sentiment
+said one coaxingly or a song would be better observed another faix cried a third tis himself could do it and in frinch or latin if ye wanted it the germans was the best i ever knew for music
+broke in craggs i was brigaded with arentschild's hanoverians in spain and they used to sit outside the tents every evening and sing by jove how they did sing all together like the swell of a church organ yes you're right
+said billy but evidently yielding an unwilling assent to this doctrine the germans has a fine national music and they re great for harmony but harmony and melody is two different things and which is best billy asked one of the company
+said billy with a degree of confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his expense well but where's the song exclaimed another ay said craggs we are forgetting the song now for it billy
+since all is going on so well above stairs i'll draw you a gallon of ale boys and we ll drink to the master's speedy recovery it was a rare occasion when the corporal suffered himself to expand in this fashion and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence
+billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of preparatory screwing and scraping which no matter how distressing to the surrounders seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument in the present case
+it is but fair to say there was neither comment nor impatience on the contrary they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming
+i have it now ladies and gentlemen he said making a low obeisance to the company and so saying he struck up a very popular tune the same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of
+the night before larry was stretched and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness managed with considerable taste sang a fig for the chansons of france whose meaning is always a riddle
+the music to sing or to dance is an irish tune played on the fiddle to your songs of the rhine and the rhone i m ready to cry out i am satis just give us something of our own in praise of our land of potatoes
+in fact it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration for it was partly incomprehensible and by the artful introduction of a word here and there of which his hearers knew nothing
+the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval nor was billy insensible to such flatteries the irritabile genus has its soft side and can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes
+less confident of his own merits but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure you're right there jim morris said he
+when i haven't tuppence to buy tobacco and without a shoe to my foot and my hair through my hat i can be dancin wid princesses and handin empresses in to tay musha musha
+and your own heart but what ye are to others that without that sacret bond between you wouldn't think of you at all i remember once on a time i was in the north of england travelling partly for pleasure and partly with a view to a small speculation in sheffield ware
+cheap penknives and scissors pencil cases bodkins and the like and i wandered about for weeks through what they call the lake country a very handsome place
+like what we have here in ireland more wood forest timber and better off people but nothing beyond that well one evening it was in august i came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake where there was a stone seat
+running out into the lake and there was two islands all wooded to the water's edge and behind all in the distance was a great mountain with clouds on the top and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin to change their colors
+and i stretched myself down at the water's edge and i fell into a fit of musing it's often and often i tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head and the beautiful things that i thought i saw that night out on the lake fornint me
+ye see i was fresh and fastin i never tasted a bit the whole day and my brain maybe was all the better for somehow janius real janius thrives best on a little starvation and from musing
+and blended in with the slight splash of oars that moved through the water carefully as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin it's clean beyond me to tell you what he said and maybe if i could
+for he was discoorsin about night and the moon and all that various poets said about them ye'd think that he had books and was reading out of them so glibly came the verses from his lips i never listened to such a voice before so soft so sweet
+so musical and the words came droppin down like the clear water filterin over a rocky ledge and glitterin like little spangles over moss and wild flowers it wasn't only in english but scotch ballads too and once or twice in italian that he recited
+till at last he gave out in all the fulness of his liquid voice them elegant lines out of pope's homer as when the moon refulgent lamp of night o'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light
+when not a breath disturbs the deep serene and not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene around her throne the vivid planets roll and stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole o'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed
+and top with silver every mountain's head then shine the vales the rocks in prospect rise a flood of glory bursts from all the skies the conscious swains rejoicing in the sight
+eye the blue vault and bless the useful light the lord forgive me but when he came to the last words and said useful light i couldn't restrain myself but broke out that's mighty like a bull anyhow
+is it you said he with a quiet laugh that accuses pope of a bull it is says i and what's more there isn't a poet from horace downwards that i won't show bulls in there's bulls in shakspeare and in milton
+there's bulls in the ancients i ll point out a bull in aristophanes what have we here said he turning to the others a poor crayture says i like goldsmith's chest of drawers
+with brains reduced a doable debt to pay to dream by night sell sheffield ware by day well with that he took a fit of laughing and handing the rest out of the boat
+he made me come along at his side discoorsin me about my thravels and all i seen and all i read till we reached an elegant little cottage on a bank right over the lake and then he brought me in and made me take tay with the family and i spent the night there
+and for many an hour afterwards when i just think over their kind words and pleasant faces more than one of the company had dropped off asleep during billy's narrative and of the others their complaisance as listeners appeared taxed to the utmost
+while the corporal snored loudly like a man who had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent there's the bell again muttered one that's from the lord's room and craggs starting up by the instinct of his office hastened off
+two gentlemen were coming towards her across the atlantic whose minds it chanced were very busily occupied by her affairs one of these was her father who was lying in his brass bed in his commodious cabin on the hollandia
+regretting his diminishing ability to sleep in the early morning now even when he was in the strong and soothing air of mid atlantic and thinking of v v because she had a way of coming into his mind when it was undefended
+and the other was mister gunter lake on the megantic one day out from sandy hook who found himself equally sleepless and preoccupied and although mister lake was a man of vast activities and complicated engagements
+he was coming now to europe for the express purpose of seeing v v and having things out with her fully and completely because in spite of all that had happened she made such an endless series of delays in coming to america
+old grammont as he appeared upon the pillow of his bed by the light of a rose shaded bedside lamp was a small headed grey haired gentleman with a wrinkled face and sunken brown eyes years of business experience
+mitigated only by such exercise as the game of poker affords had intensified an instinctive inexpressiveness under the most solitary circumstances old grammont was still inexpressive
+he was not even trying to sleep why he meditated had v v stayed on in europe so much longer than she need have done and why had gunter lake suddenly got into a state of mind about her
+why didn't the girl confide in her father at least about these things what was afoot she had thrown over lake once and it seemed she was going to turn him down again well
+whatever else you called her and no one could call grammont blood all ordinary fluid old grammont had never had any delusions about lake if lake's father hadn't been a big man
+lake would never have counted for anything at all suppose she did turn him down in itself that wasn't a thing to break her father's heart what did matter was not whether she threw lake over but what she threw him over for
+if it was because he wasn't man enough well and good but if it was for some other lover some good looking worthless impostor some european title or suchlike folly
+entertaining a lover being possibly most shameful thought in love like some ordinary silly female sinking to kisses to the deeds one could buy and pay for his v v
+what have you found out against her he had asked in a low even voice absolutely nothing sir said the agent suddenly white to the lips
+old grammont stared at his memory of that moment for a while that affair was all right quite all right of course it was all right and also happily caston was among the dead
+but it was well her broken engagement with lake had been resumed as though it had never been broken off if there had been any talk that fact answered it and now that lake had served his purpose
+old grammont did not care in the least if he was shelved v v could stand alone old grammont had got a phrase in his mind that looked like dominating the situation he dreamt of saying to v v
+as an able young business man perhaps some day a long time ahead she might marry there wasn't much reason for it but it might be she would not wish to be called a spinster take a husband
+thought old grammont when i am gone as one takes a butler to make the household complete in previous meditations on his daughter's outlook old grammont had found much that was very suggestive in the precedent of queen victoria
+she had had no husband of the lord and master type so to speak but only a prince consort well in hand why shouldn't the grammont heiress dominate her male belonging if it came to that in the same fashion
+never fear yet it was a curious anomaly that while one had a thousand ways of defending one's daughter and one's property against that daughter's husband there was no power on earth by which a father
+his protective duty to them these companions these seyffert women and so forth were all very well in their way there wasn't much they kept from you if you got them cornered and asked them intently
+straight and lovely desirable and unapproachable above that sort of nonsense above all other masculine subjugation v v i'm going to make a man of you his mind grew calmer
+whatever she wanted in paris should be hers he'd just let her rip they'd be like sweethearts together he and his girl old grammont dozed off into dreamland section five
+don't i know my dear girl that you don't love me yet let that be as you wish i want nothing you are not willing to give me nothing at all all i ask is the privilege of making life happy
+and it shall be happy for you all i ask all i ask protect guard cherish for to mister gunter lake it seemed there could be no lovelier thing in life than a wife
+he is the sort of man who can arrange things like that there'll be someone at falmouth to look after us and put us aboard the liner i must wire them where i can pick up a telegram to morrow wells in somerset
+looking out dreamily over beautiful views they would lunch in shaftesbury and walk round it then they would go in the afternoon through the pleasant west country where the celts had prevailed against the old folk of the stonehenge temple
+and the romans against the celts and the saxons against the romanized britons and the danes against the saxons a war scarred landscape abounding in dykes and entrenchments and castles sunken now into the deepest peace to glastonbury
+thence they would go on to wells to see yet another great cathedral and to dine and sleep glastonbury abbey and wells cathedral brought the story of europe right up to reformation times that will be a good day for us
+said sir richmond it will be like turning over the pages of the history of our family to and fro
+i want to show you something of our old river severn we will come right up to the present if we go through bristol there we shall have a whiff of america our new find from which the tobacco comes
+mother of i don't know how many american gloucesters bath we'll get in somehow and then as an anglo american showman i shall be tempted to run you northward a little way past tewkesbury
+just to go into a church here and there and show you monuments bearing little shields with the stars and stripes upon them
+the washington family monuments it was not only from england that america came said miss grammont but england takes an american memory back most easily and most fully
+and the baltic northmen past the emperors and the corinthian columns that smothered latin europe for you and me anyhow this is our past this was our childhood and this is our land
+and tell them to send their instructions to wells
+chapter sixteen no one in all raymond including the rectangle felt loreen's death more keenly than virginia it came like a distinct personal loss to her
+that short week while the girl had been in her home had opened virginia's heart to a new life she was talking it over with rachel the day after the funeral
+i am going to do something with my money to help those women to a better life virginia looked over to the end of the hall where the day before loreen's body had lain i have decided on a good plan as it seems to me
+i have talked it over with rollin he will devote a large part of his money also to the same plan how much money have you virginia to give in this way asked rachel once she would never have asked such a personal question
+now it seemed as natural to talk frankly about money as about anything else that belonged to god i have available for use at least four hundred and fifty thousand dollars rollin has as much more
+it is one of his bitter regrets now that his extravagant habits of life before his conversion practically threw away half that father left him we are both eager to make all the reparation in our power what would jesus do with this money
+we want to answer that question honestly and wisely the money i shall put into the news is i am confident in a line with his probable action
+it is as necessary that we have a christian daily paper in raymond especially now that we have the saloon influence to meet as it is to have a church or a college so i am satisfied that the five hundred thousand dollars that mister norman will know how to use so well
+will be a powerful factor in raymond to do as jesus would about my other plan rachel i want you to work with me
+the field where the tent now is has been in litigation for years we mean to secure the entire tract as soon as the courts have settled the title for some time i have been making a special study of the various forms of college settlements and residence methods
+of christian work and institutional church work in the heart of great city slums i do not know that i have yet been able to tell just what is the wisest and most effective kind of work that can be done in raymond but i do know this much
+my money i mean god's which he wants me to use can build wholesome lodging houses refuges for poor women asylums for shop girls safety for many and many a lost girl like loreen
+and i do not want to be simply a dispenser of this money god help me i do want to put myself into the problem but you know rachel i have a feeling all the time that all that limitless money and limitless personal sacrifice can possibly do
+will not really lessen very much the awful condition at the rectangle as long as the saloon is legally established there i think that is true of any christian work now being carried on in any great city
+the saloon furnishes material to be saved faster than the settlement or residence or rescue mission work can save it virginia suddenly rose and paced the hall rachel answered sadly and yet with a note of hope in her voice
+but virginia what a wonderful amount of good can be done with this money and the saloon cannot always remain here the time must come when the christian forces in the city will triumph virginia paused near rachel and her pale earnest face lighted up
+i believe that too the number of those who have promised to do as jesus would is increasing if we once have say five hundred such disciples in raymond the saloon is doomed
+but now dear i want you to look at your part in this plan for capturing and saving the rectangle your voice is a power i have had many ideas lately here is one of them you could organize among the girls a musical institute
+give them the benefit of your training there are some splendid voices in the rough there did any one ever hear such singing as that yesterday by those women rachel what a beautiful opportunity
+you shall have the best of material in the way of organs and orchestras that money can provide and what cannot be done with music to win souls there into higher and purer and better living
+before virginia had ceased speaking rachel's face was perfectly transformed with the thought of her life work it flowed into her heart and mind like a flood and the torrent of her feeling overflowed in tears that could not be restrained
+it was what she had dreamed of doing herself it represented to her something that she felt was in keeping with a right use of her talent yes she said as she rose and put her arm about virginia
+while both girls in the excitement of their enthusiasm paced the hall yes i will gladly put my life into that kind of service i do believe that jesus would have me use my life in this way virginia what miracles can we not accomplish in humanity
+if we have such a lever as consecrated money to move things with add to it consecrated personal enthusiasm like yours and it certainly can accomplish great things said virginia smiling
+rollin came back and sat down and together the three discussed their future plans rollin was apparently entirely free from embarrassment in rachel's presence while virginia was with them only his manner with her was almost precise if not cold
+the past seemed to have been entirely absorbed in his wonderful conversion he had not forgotten it but he seemed to be completely caught up for this present time in the purpose of his new life
+after a while rollin was called out and rachel and virginia began to talk of other things by the way what has become of jasper chase virginia asked the question innocently but rachel flushed and virginia added with a smile
+i suppose he is writing another book is he going to put you into this one rachel you know i always suspected jasper chase of doing that very thing in his first story virginia
+rachel spoke with the frankness that had always existed between the two friends jasper chase told me the other night that he in fact he proposed to me or he would if
+rachel stopped and sat with her hands clasped on her lap and there were tears in her eyes virginia i thought a little while ago i loved him as he said he loved me but when he spoke my heart felt repelled and i said what i ought to say
+i told him no i have not seen him since that was the night of the first conversions at the rectangle i am glad for you said virginia quietly why asked rachel a little startled
+because i have never really liked jasper chase he is too cold and i do not like to judge him but i have always distrusted his sincerity in taking the pledge at the church with the rest
+rachel looked at virginia thoughtfully i have never given my heart to him i am sure he touched my emotions and i admired his skill as a writer i have thought at times that i cared a good deal for him
+i think perhaps if he had spoken to me at any other time than the one he chose i could easily have persuaded myself that i loved him but not now again rachel paused suddenly and when she looked up at virginia again there were tears on her face
+virginia came to her and put her arm about her tenderly when rachel had left the house virginia sat in the hall thinking over the confidence her friend had just shown her there was something still to be told virginia felt sure from rachel's manner
+but she did not feel hurt that rachel had kept back something she was simply conscious of more on rachel's mind than she had revealed very soon rollin came back and he and virginia arm in arm as they had lately been in the habit of doing walked up and down the long hall
+it was easy for their talk to settle finally upon rachel because of the place she was to occupy in the plans which were being made for the purchase of property at the rectangle
+did you ever know of a girl of such really gifted powers in vocal music who was willing to give her life to the people as rachel is going to do she is going to give music lessons in the city have private pupils to make her living
+and then give the people in the rectangle the benefit of her culture and her voice it is certainly a very good example of self sacrifice replied rollin a little stiffly virginia looked at him a little sharply
+but don't you think it is a very unusual example can you imagine here virginia named half a dozen famous opera singers doing anything of this sort no i cannot rollin answered briefly
+neither can i imagine miss he spoke the name of the girl with the red parasol who had begged virginia to take the girls to the rectangle doing what you are doing virginia any more than i can imagine mister
+virginia spoke the name of a young society leader going about to the clubs doing your work rollin the two walked on in silence for the length of the hall coming back to rachel began virginia
+rollin why do you treat her with such a distinct precise manner i think rollin pardon me if i hurt you that she is annoyed by it you need to be on easy terms i don't think rachel likes this change
+rollin suddenly stopped he seemed deeply agitated he took his arm from virginia's and walked alone to the end of the hall then he returned with his hands behind him and stopped near his sister and said
+virginia have you not learned my secret virginia looked bewildered then over her face the unusual color crept showing that she understood i have never loved any one but rachel winslow rollin spoke calmly enough now
+that day she was here when you talked about her refusal to join the concert company i asked her to be my wife out there on the avenue she refused me as i knew she would and she gave as her reason the fact that i had no purpose in life which was true enough
+now that i have a purpose now that i am a new man don't you see virginia how impossible it is for me to say anything i owe my very conversion to rachel's singing
+and yet that night while she sang i can honestly say that for the time being i never thought of her voice except as god's message i believe that all my personal love for her was for the time merged into a personal love to my god and my saviour
+rollin was silent then he went on with more emotion i still love her virginia
+he stopped and looked his sister in the face with a sad smile i don't know about that said virginia to herself she was noting rollin's handsome face his marks of dissipation nearly all gone now
+the firm lips showing manhood and courage the clear eyes looking into hers frankly the form strong and graceful rollin was a man now why should not rachel come to love him in time
+he had come suddenly upon her as he turned into the avenue and his heart had leaped up at the sight of her he walked along by her now rejoicing after all in a little moment of this earthly love he could not drive out of his life i have just been over to see virginia
+said rachel she tells me the arrangements are nearly completed for the transfer of the rectangle property yes it has been a tedious case in the courts did virginia show you all the plans and specifications for building
+we looked over a good many it is astonishing to me where virginia has managed to get all her ideas about this work virginia knows more now about arnold toynbee and east end london and institutional church work in america
+than a good many professional slum workers she has been spending nearly all summer in getting information rollin was beginning to feel more at ease as they talked over this coming work of humanity it was safe common ground
+what have you been doing all summer i have not seen much of you rachel suddenly asked and then her face warmed with its quick flush of tropical color as if she might have implied too much interest in rollin or too much regret at not seeing him oftener
+i have been busy replied rollin briefly tell me something about it persisted rachel you say so little
+she put the question very frankly turning toward rollin in real earnest yes certainly he replied with a graceful smile i am not so certain that i can tell you much
+i have been trying to find some way to reach the men i once knew and win them into more useful lives he stopped suddenly as if he were almost afraid to go on rachel did not venture to suggest anything
+i have been a member of the same company to which you and virginia belong continued rollin beginning again i have made the pledge to do as i believe jesus would do
+and it is in trying to answer this question that i have been doing my work that is what i do not understand virginia told me about the other it seems wonderful to think that you are trying to keep that pledge with us but what can you do with the club men
+you have asked me a direct question and i shall have to answer it now replied rollin smiling again you see i asked myself after that night at the tent you remember he spoke hurriedly and his voice trembled a little
+what purpose i could now have in my life to redeem it to satisfy my thought of christian discipleship and the more i thought of it the more i was driven to a place where i knew i must take up the cross
+did you ever think that of all the neglected beings in our social system none are quite so completely left alone as the fast young men who fill the clubs and waste their time and money as i used to
+the churches look after the poor miserable creatures like those in the rectangle they make some effort to reach the working man they have a large constituency among the average salary earning people they send money and missionaries to the foreign heathen
+but the fashionable dissipated young men around town the club men are left out of all plans for reaching and christianizing and yet no class of people need it more i said to myself i know these men their good and their bad qualities i have been one of them
+i am not fitted to reach the rectangle people i do not know how but i think i could possibly reach some of the young men and boys who have money and time to spend so that is what i have been trying to do
+when i asked as you did what would jesus do that was my answer
+rollin's voice was so low on this last sentence that rachel had difficulty in hearing him above the noise around them but she knew what he had said she wanted to ask what his methods were but she did not know how to ask him
+her interest in his plan was larger than mere curiosity rollin page was so different now from the fashionable young man who had asked her to be his wife that she could not help thinking of him and talking with him as if he were an entirely new acquaintance
+they had turned off the avenue and were going up the street to rachel's home it was the same street where rollin had asked rachel why she could not love him they were both stricken with a sudden shyness as they went on
+rachel had not forgotten that day and rollin could not she finally broke a long silence by asking what she had not found words for before
+in your work with the club men with your old acquaintances what sort of reception do they give you how do you approach them what do they say rollin was relieved when rachel spoke he answered quickly oh it depends on the man
+a good many of them think i am a crank i have kept my membership up and am in good standing in that way i try to be wise and not provoke any unnecessary criticism but you would be surprised to know how many of the men have responded to my appeal
+i could hardly make you believe that only a few nights ago a dozen men became honestly and earnestly engaged in a conversation over religious matters i have had the great joy of seeing some of the men give up bad habits and begin a new life
+what would jesus do i keep asking it the answer comes slowly for i am feeling my way slowly one thing i have found out the men are not fighting shy of me i think that is a good sign
+another thing i have actually interested some of them in the rectangle work and when it is started up they will give something to help make it more powerful and in addition to all the rest i have found a way to save several of the young fellows from going to the bad in gambling
+rollin spoke with enthusiasm his face was transformed by his interest in the subject which had now become a part of his real life rachel again noted the strong manly tone of his speech
+with it all she knew there was a deep underlying seriousness which felt the burden of the cross even while carrying it with joy the next time she spoke it was with a swift feeling of justice due to rollin and his new life
+do you remember i reproached you once for not having any purpose worth living for she asked while her beautiful face seemed to rollin more beautiful than ever when he had won sufficient self control to look up i want to say
+i feel the need of saying in justice to you now that i honor you for your courage and your obedience to the promise you have made as you interpret the promise the life you are living is a noble one rollin trembled his agitation was greater than he could control
+rachel could not help seeing it they walked along in silence at last rollin said i thank you it has been worth more to me than i can tell you to hear you say that he looked into her face for one moment
+she read his love for her in that look but he did not speak when they separated rachel went into the house and sitting down in her room she put her face in her hands and said to herself
+i am beginning to know what it means to be loved by a noble man i shall love rollin page after all what am i saying rachel winslow have you forgotten she rose and walked back and forth she was deeply moved
+nevertheless it was evident to herself that her emotion was not that of regret or sorrow somehow a glad new joy had come to her
+it was indeed a part of it for if she was beginning to love rollin page it was the christian man she had begun to love the other never would have moved her to this great change
+and rollin as he went back treasured a hope that had been a stranger to him since rachel had said no that day
+in that hope he went on with his work as the days sped on and at no time was he more successful in reaching and saving his old acquaintances than in the time that followed that chance meeting with rachel winslow
+the summer had gone and raymond was once more facing the rigor of her winter season virginia had been able to accomplish a part of her plan for capturing the rectangle as she called it
+but the building of houses in the field the transforming of its bleak bare aspect into an attractive park all of which was included in her plan was a work too large to be completed that fall after she had secured the property
+but a million dollars in the hands of a person who truly wants to do with it as jesus would
+ought to accomplish wonders for humanity in a short time and henry maxwell going over to the scene of the new work one day after a noon hour with the shop men was amazed to see how much had been done outwardly
+yet he walked home thoughtfully and on his way he could not avoid the question of the continual problem thrust upon his notice by the saloon how much had been done for the rectangle after all
+even counting virginia's and rachel's work and mister gray's where had it actually counted in any visible quantity
+of course he said to himself the redemptive work begun and carried on by the holy spirit in his wonderful displays of power in the first church and in the tent meetings had had its effect upon the life of raymond
+but as he walked past saloon after saloon and noted the crowds going in and coming out of them as he saw the wretched dens as many as ever apparently
+he sickened at the sight he found himself asking how much cleansing could a million dollars poured into this cesspool accomplish
+was not the living source of nearly all the human misery they sought to relieve untouched as long as the saloons did their deadly but legitimate work
+was it not a practical waste of beautiful lives for these young women to throw themselves into this earthly hell when for every soul rescued by their sacrifice the saloon made two more that needed rescue he could not escape the question
+it was the same that virginia had put to rachel in her statement that in her opinion nothing really permanent would ever be done until the saloon was taken out of the rectangle
+henry maxwell went back to his parish work that afternoon with added convictions on the license business but if the saloon was a factor in the problem of the life of raymond no less was the first church and its little company of disciples who had pledged to do as jesus would do
+henry maxwell standing at the very centre of the movement was not in a position to judge of its power as some one from the outside might have done but raymond itself felt the touch in very many ways not knowing all the reasons for the change
+the winter was gone and the year was ended the year which henry maxwell had fixed as the time during which the pledge should be kept to do as jesus would do sunday the anniversary of that one a year ago was in many ways the most remarkable day that the first church ever knew
+frank hoskins elbow wound healed quickly without any serious results and tom rawle who had been under treatment at the field hospital was able to get about the camp
+but on the eighth day a veritable fury launched itself upon that section of the american french front in the shape of seemingly endless brigades of boches that were hurled over the top of their own breastworks across no man's land and upon the first line trenches of the allies
+for several days the american and french aviators had been reporting heavy german formations in that region evidently with the design of a terrific assault but the allied commanders had not expected it so soon and in truth they were not fully prepared for it
+it was a surprise attack in every sense of the word with all the terrible carnage that such a battle brings
+and their hidden artillery to the rear of them this was kept up for about seven hours and the duel of heavy guns shook the earth like a quake and was deafening then just as dawn was breaking the infantry onslaught
+including food and ammunition trains
+everything moved like clockwork and with the greatest possible speed and throughout it all men on both sides were shooting shouting shrieking
+or lifeless before superior numbers
+a stationary balloon showed where jerry and an observation officer were doing duty on that fateful day jerry was operating a telephone that ran directly to division headquarters and hardly a moment passed when he was not repeating some observation of the other man in the basket with him
+every detail of that tremendous battle jerry knew his own occasional glimpses over the side informed him of the temporary reverses his own army was suffering while the remarks of the officer told him where the germans were meeting their bitterest repulses
+where they were drawing up their heaviest forces of reserves what quick changes were being made in their general line of formation and how far back their forces seemed to extend slim goodwin
+to make sure that thus far his friend was still safe
+the wavering swaying target was watched from time to time and speculations made as to how long it could remain without being punctured by a bullet
+it was now well into the afternoon the germans had swept into the places vacated by the americans and french and still the battle raged it was now that slim began to wait anxiously for the new development
+the americans and french had retreated to a general line which permitted a quick re mobilization to the best advantage there their front line ranks held firm while the new formation was being effected behind them it was about four o'clock in the afternoon when this was complete
+and soon in great measure at least hostilities would be suspended for the night their work completed
+so you can judge pretty well for yourself guess he had a pretty good bird's eye view of the whole thing said joe as they passed on to meet again before mess except for spasmodic outbursts here and there the trench duel had almost entirely subsided
+and the heavy roar of the artillery also was punctuated with longer pauses
+while each side took account of stock and made necessary repairs or altered their plans to meet the new situation our young friends were busy with wash basin soap and water
+taking off the grime in preparation for the evening meal and wondering where jerry was keeping himself all the while when suddenly a very strange thing happened beyond the enemy's line
+more easily handled aeroplanes and used in great numbers by the germans shot into the air at great speed from behind the boche entrenchments
+it simply indicated that those manning the american and french anti aircraft guns
+and even this might have been considered a well designed hoax
+still going at maximum speed and now on a straight line toward the american side without seeking a further height the taube several times wavered and a moment later almost turned over but the pilot righted her
+he pointed her nose downward toward the american lines four american planes sailed off and upward to meet the oncoming german air armada but from the ground it could be seen that the man in the observer's place in the taube was making desperate signals
+the american planes maneuvered in such a way as to encircle the taube
+and the other german planes turned back toward their own lines the taube continued on its wavering crippled downward course toward the allied lines
+as the taube came within a hundred yards of the ground and righted herself for a landing
+of its own momentum it rolled to within a two minutes run of where the lieutenant and the others had been standing in another instant it was entirely surrounded by a crowd of curious american soldiers
+and after descending a little by permitting some of the gas to escape we jumped over the side of the basket and came down on our parachutes
+but some other german aviators saw the affair apparently recognized our uniforms and hardly gave us time to make a decent start say jerry concluded they certainly did pebble us with machine gun bullets
+opening them the boys could hardly suppress their jubilation stripped of their official verbiage the letters informed the young men that each of them was made a corporal joe for valorous service in saving the lives of three americans entombed in a cave
+chapter eight the death of the spy
+the young lieutenant it seemed had been following a trail which he believed was leading him closer and closer to the object of the hunt and it was in forging the links of this chain of circumstantial evidence that the young officer was led into the lower depths of the ship
+presumably from the engine or boiler room throw aside something as he hurried along the passageway leading from the wireless room
+and you stooped to pick up whatever it was that had been thrown away
+evidently also from the boiler or engine room brushed by us he had disappeared when the sailor said to me i think that was the fellow the one that just went by not wanting to arouse his suspicions i ended the conversation with a casual remark and then strolled away until i was out of the sailor's sight
+i was groping my way along when i thought i heard steps just ahead of me i stopped to listen and when the sound was not repeated i proceeded onward
+before i could utter a word i was a prisoner behind a locked door i called several times and
+every moment it became more stifling in there and i had no doubt that i had walked directly into a death trap it was then i began signaling on the steam pipe i guess it was a mighty lucky thing for me that slim goodwin strolled out on deck just at the time he did
+and that was all that lieutenant mackinson could tell the mysterious stranger remained what he had been from the first a desperate and dangerous and unknown spy
+put their heads together to devise a scheme of capture we've got more than one good reason for wanting to get this fellow slim reminded the others with considerable warmth
+to which he is an enemy and a traitor but in addition to that there is that knockout that he handed to joe and the midnight scare he gave jerry and me and finally his effort to kill lieutenant mackinson by slow suffocation
+well said joe i think i've got a plan that will work but
+well what's your suggestion slim demanded that we divide our forces answered joe solemnly lie in wait and try to ambush the foe right cried jerry joe you'll be a general before this war's over
+along what lines do we disperse our forces general asked slim along what lines would his royal stoutness suggest demanded jerry oh you don't have to keep reminding me that i'm a trifle heavy slim replied in a peevish tone
+a trifle heavy get that will you echoed jerry with a gale of laughter a trifle heavy oh my you'll find out if i sit on you slim threatened in a belligerent tone
+won't do it slim muttered oh yes you will counseled joe shake hands the two of you slim's good nature overcame his feigned reluctance but as jerry grasped his hand he gave jerry a jerk that nearly took him off his feet now we're square said slim
+and to do that he will have to use the wireless somehow it seems likely that he would make his effort at night
+the lieutenant could be in the wireless room and one of us in the battery room while the other two did duty outside
+it would be tiresome and monotonous work all right
+i'm willing said jerry but you and i will have to do the outside work
+well i'll cover the battery room said slim ignoring jerry's remark let's see lieutenant mackinson then suggested joe and they went to find the young officer who was convalescing from his encounter with the spy when he had approved the plan they got the o k of the captain
+to the three boys unable to see or talk to each other and joe and jerry scarcely daring to move the minutes lagged like hours
+black endless nights dawn came
+there were mutual feelings of disappointment but none of weakened determination what luck
+i will arrange for another man to stay in the wireless room during to day
+the sea is calm and we readily could discern a periscope a long distance away truly it was a beautiful night and it was in this alluring quiet of seemingly absolute peace
+the brighton boys and their friend and superior officer the lieutenant had been in their appointed places hardly more than an hour when joe and jerry at the same instant caught the sounds of some sort of scuffle on the deck above
+it came nearer and clearer until finally as it reached a point near to the top of the stairway under which joe was concealed the latter could discern the fog horn voice of the first assistant engineer
+the first assistant engineer was a mighty mountain of a man but his voice broke off as the commotion started again certainly he must have a rough customer to deal with thought jerry
+ye will will ye hissed the voice of the engineer again
+ye dirty hound i've a mind to boot ye into the sea
+and whin i asked him what he was about
+so said the captain in a voice so stern it made joe wince
+he's a third class machinist sir the engineer replied
+yes and i believe he's worse than that the captain added
+there was a strained silence for a moment then
+it looks as though we'd caught the man the doctor whispered
+there was a gasp of astonishment from joe followed by a louder holy smoke from slim do you recognize this man the captain asked in a sharp tone i should say i do sir joe responded
+he is the man who was planting ammunition in the waters near the navy yard that night before we sailed the very same one sir slim exclaimed with equal positiveness the ship's surgeon who had followed the others upon deck stepped closer for a better inspection of this enemy
+at the same instant the prisoner
+and thrust the engineer from him before anyone could interfere he was dashing down the deck toward the stern just as he took a wild headlong leap over the rail the captain fired while the captain through a speaking tube was instructing the man in the pilot house to signal below reverse engines
+the others rushed to the stern of the ship far behind them in the foamy trail left on the moonlit water by the vessel they saw what seemed to be the head of a man bobbing up and down and then it entirely disappeared the ship was turned
+gone said the captain in tones of very evident relief well it was death for him one way or another and he took his choice as the captain and surgeon moved away from the stern rail of the everett
+and made me run a mile in nothing flat added jerry and fought me to a knockout finish later mused joe and nearly smothered me to death spoke the lieutenant and was finally corralled by an irish engineer said slim gone concluded jerry
+chapter seven the timely rescue it was no pleasant thought to contemplate the presence of a bold
+that he was capable of going any lengths if necessary already had been proved and the evidence of his evil genius might come in horrible form at any instant nevertheless
+was sufficient to prevent jerry and slim from taking a full eight hours of much needed sleep while lieutenant mackinson joe and three other officers whom the captain had taken into his confidence in the matter followed out every possible clue in pursuit of a solution of the baffling mystery
+it was a case of watch everybody take every precaution and be prepared for anything only nine men on the vessel however including the spy himself knew anything about it
+refreshed by their sleep jerry and slim arose about four o'clock that afternoon joe who had rested easily throughout the later excitement of the preceding night was still in the midst of the investigation and was not then to be found
+jerry had some letters to write so slim went to the upper deck alone
+and his mind weighted anyway with the menacing mystery of the strange happenings of the night before he sat down on a coil of rope just in the lee of the forward smokestack to think the whole matter over for the twentieth time he was thus absorbed when something at first vague and indefinite then clearer
+like the awakening call that comes to a man in a sound sleep
+to find someone standing directly over him loudly and insistently calling his name
+a crackling merely from the pressure within for a moment slim thought an over wrought imagination was playing tricks upon him but he rose hastily and crossed the short intervening distance
+was rapping desperately upon that pipe and in the long and short dashes of the international code that someone was repeating a single word help help help in another instant using the heavy end of his jackknife as a crude transmitter slim was tapping off the reply
+who are you and where lieutenant mackinson the message began to come back
+can't make self heard can you help this is slim the youth rapped back upon the pipe caught your message on deck am coming with help at once and he dashed down the deck toward the captain's quarters almost bowling over the captain's aide as he hurtled into the sanctum of the ship's commander unannounced
+well the captain demanded sternly why all the haste lieutenant mackinson slim blurted out he's locked in a closet down near the engine room locked in a closet the captain repeated incredulously how do you know
+he gave a telegraphic call for help on the steam pipe which runs through there and connects with the whistle the lad explained i was on deck and heard it i talked with him over the pipe there is no time to lose then come with me and the captain himself hurriedly led the way down through the lower depths of the ship
+for a few steps they felt their way along and then stopped to listen there was nothing but the dull and constant hum of the engines and the almost insufferable heat
+they stood silent a moment and then faint and indistinct apparently from somewhere several feet ahead of them they both heard repeated that which had made slim stop
+the lad repeated them for the information of the captain
+m o t h e r i n g
+and he started down the passageway toward a narrow stairs leading to a still lower chamber in the vessel three turns two to the right and one to the left and the captain stopped again to listen seemingly from within the wall right at their elbows there came a feeble knock
+the officer whipped out a pocket flashlight they were directly in front of a heavy wooden door it was locked
+and slim hastened away to return two minutes later with all three tools
+but there was no response from within
+two more attempts and the panel fell in strips to the floor thus given something for a grip hold the captain who was a massive man took hold with both hands
+brought the entire door from its hinges
+the unconscious form of lieutenant mackinson tumbled out upon the floor his face was almost blue from suffocation the captain sounded three short sharp blasts upon a whistle which he had taken from his pocket and two oilers came running to the spot
+help us carry this man to fresh air immediately he ordered he has been overcome
+he had relapsed again and there was another wait of several minutes but this time the lieutenant's mind was clearing somebody shoved me in that closet he gasped and then slammed and locked the door he recognized the captain and the doctor
+found him locked in a small compartment down near the auxiliary engine room the commander said briefly
+he made his whereabouts known by tapping a message on a steam pipe
+nearly suffocated too
+his heart action is pretty weak even yet
+at that moment jerry came hurrying down the deck he was visibly excited but
+and so even as two men carried lieutenant mackinson away he remained standing at salute waiting for the captain to recognize him with a return of the salute and now what asked the captain jerry stepped forward with difficulty repressing his excitement
+when i returned i found this lying upon the table he opened his left hand in it lay a piece of light chain both ends broken beside it he continued was this note from his pocket he extracted a piece of paper the edges of which were roughly torn
+let this be a warning that no further interference will be of avail the captain looked from the note to the chain
+and no signature i believe sir said jerry
+the senior officer of the vessel took from his pocket the cross with its two bits of chain still dangling from it he placed the ends to the chain which jerry had found in the wireless room you are right he said simply and there could be no doubt about it
+appeared equally anxious a man is discovered at night in the battery room of the wireless department of this ship clearly upon an unfriendly mission said the captain half to himself and half for the benefit of the others summing up the evidence thus far known to them
+a few hours later that same night he returns to the battery room and succeeds in recovering the portable instrument to day lieutenant mackinson while pursuing an investigation of the affair
+is shoved into a closet and only escapes death from suffocation by making himself heard as he telegraphs for help over a steam pipe it must have been while we were rescuing the lieutenant that the same man again enters the wireless room and leaves there this chain
+we are not safe while he is free
+the following morning all of those who had arrived on the transports were established in a concentration camp but it was merely for the purpose of inspection of men and equipment and was not to be for long
+it was that same day that the three boys from brighton were for the first time assigned to a regular unit of the signal corps also with a real thrill they learned that they were almost immediately to see war service for american troops were already in the trenches
+his three assistants on the trip across were the first ones named the other two were tom rawle a fellow proportioned like their first friend in the service sergeant martin and a wiry energetic quick speaking youth named frank hoskins
+we have a long trip before us lieutenant mackinson informed them and we leave here on a special train in two hours in a short time we will be in the thick of it
+knowing they have important work to do and feeling capable of doing it well
+got here two weeks ago the big fellow answered
+did you get within sound of the big guns asked slim excitedly i should say so answered tom rawle and so will you within a few hours isn't that so hoskins yes answered frank
+hoskins knows explained rawle for he got nearer than i did only for a short time frank corrected modestly but they called it my baptism of fire i was out one night with an advance party we were nearly ambushed and had to beat a quick retreat
+well tell them all about it demanded tom rawle impatient at frank's unwillingness to talk much about himself
+and it was a surprise party for fair i can tell you
+then we all dropped on our stomachs and wriggled our way back into our own lines without any further damage but we did some rapid wriggling you can bet there wasn't any time wasted by any of us and inasmuch as we were apparently outnumbered
+say that must be thrilling to be a member of an advance party like that said jerry his enthusiasm as fiery as his hair i wonder if we'll get any work like that you sure will responded rawle and plenty of it you needn't worry on that score
+all ready they answered and the lieutenant led the way to the train
+also there was a wire company of the signal corps which was going to join another american unit for the first three or four hours of the trip the lads
+and from them they heard many serious and amusing stories many true tales of the attack and retreat of shot and shell and shrapnel and the hand grenade and the poisonous gas bombs thrown by the boches and then one by one the soldiers of uncle sam dropped off into long
+and restful slumber slumber that was to fit them for hard and difficult duties ahead this is where we get off finally announced lieutenant mackinson shaking the lads into wakefulness
+without the waste of a moment they climbed in lieutenant mackinson our three friends young hoskins and the towering rawle in another instant they were speeding across the country with the break of dawn
+where in that country they had seen big concentration camps and
+in the eastern part of france they came upon actual war in all its fateful progress with whole towns demolished forests and orchards blotted out stark ruin written over the face of the earth
+long strings of powerful motor trucks driving toward the scene of action they came upon towns and villages in that area known as behind the lines where french american belgian and british soldiers were recuperating after hard days and nights in the front line trenches
+by this time they were well within sound of the heavy guns and their driver told them that the artillery duel then going on had been in progress for forty eight hours at least
+in preparation for a great infantry advance but i understand that this time they expect to go forward before the end of to day which means added lieutenant mackinson
+on and on they went and nearer and nearer to the scene of actual battle they came they passed the third line trenches and now in places they seemed to be in a straight line with some of the concealed artillery
+that was pounding away at the enemy in terrible detonations that shook and rocked the ground every minute at the second line trenches their orders called for a halt they did not have to be told that there was something doing
+was a constantly moving line of motor trucks coming forward with men and shells while out ahead of them tremendous and menacing big tanks
+were pursuing their uneven course toward the front in preparation for a new kind of assault they look like miniature battleships on land don't they exclaimed slim
+equipped with guns and men that could travel with their own power practically anywhere across shell holes over trenches through barbed wire
+await me here he said to the five men under his immediate command
+and the latter immediately began a quick examination of his engine and tires which promised another early move we go forward as far as we can by automobile again the lieutenant informed them
+and after dark to night we are to establish an outlying communication from the farthest skirmish points to headquarters almost as he finished the sentence they were started
+joe remarked upon it in tones of open admiration it's nothing the youthful chauffeur replied you'll get used to it too as he turned the automobile and started backward slim suddenly remembered that they hadn't even heard his name don't know it said hoskins
+they had been directed to the quarters of major jones in charge of the signal corps men in that section and it was with considerable surprise that the boys learned upon arriving there that they were to accompany the lieutenant into the superior officer's presence for instructions
+he was a man they found about forty years old already grizzled and hardened by his field experience and he knew how to convey orders and transact business without a moment's delay you are to follow the red ink lines on this map he told lieutenant mackinson
+as they all leaned over his desk to follow the tracing of his pencil with which he showed them the course they were to take
+you will seek a suitable location from which to establish communications you will determine whether it can be done by wireless as soon as you can do so report what progress you have made use every caution for you will be in the country occupied by the enemy
+you should leave here about seven o'clock this evening it is now six fifteen minutes later they had examined their arms and equipped themselves with a full supply of small arms ammunition portable wireless instrument and antennae and three rations each of eating chocolate
+and if wounded might otherwise starve to death
+and promptly at seven o'clock they started upon the dangerous mission with nightfall the big cannonading had noticeably shut down
+it was a black night and they proceeded with the greatest caution they did not dare use the flashlights that each of them carried and frequently all of them would have to drop suddenly flat upon the ground as a big rocket went up from either side
+in this way they went forward yard by yard until they reached a thick clump of trees there after listening intently for several minutes without hearing a dangerous sound they spread out their coats tent like while lieutenant mackinson with gingerly flashes of his light
+examined the map again to make certain of their location
+while tom rawle quietly chuckling at the fat lad's misfortune aided him to his feet down flat said mackinson again as he discerned several shadows moving across a space a considerable distance to the north of them
+for fully ten minutes which seemed like an hour they lay there not daring to move they watched the enemy scouting party get a like scare and then after what seemed to be a whispered consultation turn back to the german lines
+what did you fall over the lieutenant finally asked of slim in a scarcely audible tone i just found it replied slim
+copper exclaimed the lieutenant hoskins let me have that kit
+a very small telegraph instrument the instant it was attached to the wire the receiver began to tick irregularly neither rawle nor hoskins understood german but to the others they were words easy to translate they had accidentally struck an enemy wire and had tapped it
+lead enemy to believe whole attack centered from your position
+the sleepers open their eyes and raise themselves on their elbows then the shepherd hears a warning voice which comes and goes like the wind saying if the horn is blown once again the world will be upset altogether
+terrified by the voice and the ferocious appearance of the heroes the shepherd retreats hurriedly locking the door behind him
+shalmaneser shamash adad ashur dan
+the syro cappadocian hittites had grown once again powerful and prosperous but no great leader like subbiluliuma arose to weld the various states into an empire
+so as to ensure the protection of the mingled peoples from the operations of the aggressive and ambitious war lords of assyria one kingdom had its capital at hamath and another at carchemish on the euphrates the kingdom of tabal flourished in cilicia khilakku
+it included several city states like tarsus tiana and comana kammanu farther west was the dominion of the thraco phrygian muski the tribes round the shores of lake van
+had asserted themselves and extended their sphere of influence the state of urartu was of growing importance and the nairi tribes had spread round the south eastern shores of lake van
+the northern frontier of assyria was continually menaced by groups of independent hill states which would have been irresistible had they operated together against a common enemy but were liable to be extinguished when attacked in detail
+a number of aramaean kingdoms had come into existence in mesopotamia and throughout syria
+when ashur natsir pal the third
+groups of the aramaeans had acquired a high degree of culture and become traders and artisans
+accustomed for generations to desert warfare they were fearless warriors their armies had great mobility being composed mostly of mounted infantry and were not easily overpowered by the assyrian forces of footmen
+the former had raided north syria and apparently penetrated as far as the mediterranean coast in consequence he came into conflict with babylonia but he ultimately formed an alliance with that kingdom his son tukulti ninip
+operated in southern mesopotamia
+in the north he had to drive back invading bands of the muski
+a sure indication that assyria was once again becoming powerful in northern mesopotamia and the regions towards armenia ashur natsir pal the third
+inaugurated a veritable reign of terror in mesopotamia and northern syria his methods of dealing with revolting tribes were of a most savage character chiefs were skinned alive and when he sacked their cities
+not only fighting men but women and children were either slaughtered or burned at the stake it is not surprising to find therefore that on more than one occasion the kings of petty states made submission to him without resistance as soon as he invaded their domains
+in his first year he overran the mountainous district between lake van and the upper sources of the tigris bubu the rebel son of the governor of nishtun who had been taken prisoner was transported to arbela where he was skinned alive
+like his father ashur natsir pal fought against the muski whose power was declining then he turned southward from the borders of asia minor and dealt with a rebellion in northern mesopotamia an aramaean pretender named akhiababa
+had established himself at suru in the region to the east of the euphrates enclosed by its tributaries the khabar and the balikh he had come from the neighbouring aramaean state of bit adini and was preparing it would appear
+to form a powerful confederacy against the assyrians when ashur natsir pal approached suru a part of its population welcomed him he entered the city seized the pretender and many of his followers
+these he disposed of with characteristic barbarity some were skinned alive and some impaled on stakes while others were enclosed in a pillar which the king had erected to remind the aramaeans of his determination to brook no opposition
+and when they had been flayed their skins were nailed upon the city walls another revolt broke out in the kirkhi district between the upper reaches of the tigris and the southwestern shores of lake van
+it was promoted by the nairi tribes and even supported by some assyrian officials terrible reprisals were meted out to the rebels when the city of kinabu was captured no fewer than three thousand prisoners were burned alive
+the unfaithful governor being flayed the city of damdamusa was set on fire then tela was attacked ashur natsir pal's own account of the operations runs as follows
+the city of tello was very strong
+they did not come down or embrace my feet with battle and slaughter i assaulted and took the city three thousand warriors i slew in battle their booty and possessions cattle sheep i carried away
+many captives i burned with fire many of their soldiers i took alive of some i cut off hands and limbs of others the noses ears and arms of many soldiers i put out the eyes
+i reared a column of the living and a column of heads i hung on high their heads on trees in the vicinity of their city their boys and girls i burned up in flames i devastated the city dug it up in fire burned it
+he was so greatly feared by the syro cappadocian hittites that when he approached their territory they sent him tribute yielding without a struggle
+for several years the great conqueror engaged himself in thus subduing rebellious tribes and extending his territory his military headquarters were at kalkhi to which city the court had been transferred
+thither he drafted thousands of prisoners the great majority of whom he incorporated in the assyrian army assyrian colonies were established in various districts for strategical purposes and officials supplanted the petty kings in certain of the northern city states
+the aramaeans of mesopotamia gave much trouble to ashur natsir pal although he had laid a heavy hand on suru the southern tribes the sukhi stirred up revolts in mesopotamia as the allies of the babylonians
+on one occasion ashur natsir pal swept southward through this region and attacked a combined force of sukhi aramaeans and babylonians the babylonians were commanded by zabdanu
+who was evidently anxious to regain control of the western trade route the assyrian war lord however proved to be too powerful a rival he achieved so complete a victory
+the people of kashshi babylonia and kaldu chaldaea were stricken with terror and had to agree to pay increased tribute
+reigned for about a quarter of a century
+having accumulated great booty he engaged himself as soon as peace was secured throughout his empire in rebuilding the city of kalkhi where he erected a great palace and made records of his achievements
+he also extended and redecorated the royal palace at nineveh and devoted much attention to the temples tribute poured in from the subject states the mountain and valley tribes in the north furnished in abundance wine and corn
+sheep and cattle and horses and from the aramaeans of mesopotamia and the syro cappadocian hittites came much silver and gold copper and lead jewels and ivory as well as richly decorated furniture armour and weapons
+artists and artisans were also provided by the vassals of assyria there are traces of phoenician influence in the art of this period ashur natsir pal's great palace at kalkhi was excavated by layard
+who has given a vivid description of the verdant plain on which the ancient city was situated as it appeared in spring its pasture lands known as the jaif are renowned he wrote
+in the evening after the labour of the day i often sat at the door of my tent giving myself up to the full enjoyment of that calm and repose which are imparted to the senses by such scenes as these
+as the sun went down behind the low hills which separate the river from the desert even their rocky sides had struggled to emulate the verdant clothing of the plain its receding rays were gradually withdrawn
+like a transparent veil of light from the landscape over the pure cloudless sky was the glow of the last light
+keshaf another venerable ruin rose indistinctly into the evening mist still more distant and still more indistinct was a solitary hill overlooking the ancient city of arbela
+the kurdish mountains whose snowy summits cherished the dying sunbeams yet struggled with the twilight the bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle
+at first faint became louder as the flocks returned from their pastures and wandered amongst the tents girls hurried over the greensward to seek their fathers cattle or crouched down to milk those which had returned alone to their well remembered folds
+bales of embroidered cloth ivory and jewels silver and gold the products of many countries while thousands of prisoners were assembled there to rear stately buildings which ultimately fell into decay and were buried by drifting sands
+layard excavated the emperor's palace and dispatched to london among other treasures of antiquity
+the assyrian sculptures of this period lack the technical skill the delicacy and imagination of sumerian and akkadian art but they are full of energy dignified and massive and strong and lifelike
+they reflect the spirit of assyria's greatness which however had a materialistic basis assyrian art found expression in delineating the outward form rather than in striving to create a thing of beauty which is a joy for ever
+when ashur natsir pal died
+whose military activities extended over his whole reign
+as shalmaneser was the first assyrian king who came into direct touch with the hebrews it will be of interest here to review the history of the divided kingdoms of israel and judah as recorded in the bible
+established the religion of the canaanites and made gods and molten images he was condemned for his idolatry by the prophet ahijah who declared the lord shall smite israel as a reed is shaken in the water
+and he shall root up israel out of this good land which he gave to their fathers and shall scatter them beyond the river
+and his people slew them with a great slaughter so there fell down slain in israel five hundred thousand chosen men thus the children of israel were brought under at that time and the children of judah prevailed because they relied upon the lord god of their fathers
+and abijah pursued after jeroboam and took cities from him bethel with the towns thereof and jeshanah with the towns thereof
+and they buried him in the city of david
+in his days the land was quiet ten years
+for he took away the altars of the strange gods and the high places and brake down the images and cut down the groves and commanded judah to seek the lord god of their fathers and to do the law and the commandment
+also he took away out of all the cities of judah the high places and the images
+he proceeded to fortify ramah a few miles to the north of jerusalem
+and apparently supported the rebellions of the northern mesopotamian kings
+and therefore unable either to assert its authority in judah
+in the hour of peril judah sought the aid of the king of damascus
+and the treasures of the king's house and delivered them into the hand of his servants
+the son of tabrimon the son of hezion king of syria that dwelt at damascus saying there is a league between me and thee and between my father and thy father behold
+when he was murdered by his servant zimri captain of half his chariots while he was drinking himself drunk in the house of arza steward of his house in tirzah
+zimri's revolt was shortlived he reigned only seven days in tirzah the army was encamped against gibbethon which belonged to the philistines and the people that were encamped heard say
+zimri hath conspired and hath also slain the king wherefore all israel made omri the captain of the host king over israel that day in the camp and omri went up from gibbethon and all israel with him
+and ahab did evil in the sight of the lord above all that were before him so notorious indeed were father and son that the prophet micah declared to the backsliders of his day for the statutes of omri are kept
+and all the works of the house of ahab and ye walk in their counsel
+boast himself as he that putteth it off
+two years previously he had broken the power of akhuni
+the leader of a strong confederacy of petty states thereafter the assyrian monarch turned towards the south west and attacked the hittite state of hamath
+the various rival kingdoms of syria united against him and an army of seventy thousand allies attempted to thwart his progress at qarqar on the orontes although shalmaneser claimed a victory on this occasion
+it was of no great advantage to him for he was unable to follow it up
+of damascus and ahab of israel akhabbu
+the latter had a force of ten thousand men under his command four years after ahab began to reign
+he turned not aside from it doing that which was right in the eyes of the lord nevertheless the high places were not taken away
+during this period but it is evident that the two kingdoms had been drawn together
+after repulsing the syrian allies at qarqar
+shalmaneser the third of assyria found it necessary to invade babylonia
+of that kingdom and was thus able to operate in the north west without fear of complications with the rival claimant of mesopotamia
+were rivals for the throne the former the rightful heir appealed for help to shalmaneser and that monarch at once hastened to assert his authority in the southern kingdom
+was supported by an aramaean army was defeated and put to death
+afterwards reigned over babylonia as the vassal of assyria and shalmaneser his overlord made offerings to the gods at babylon borsippa and cuthah
+and compelled to pay annual tribute in the following year shalmaneser had to lead an expedition into northern mesopotamia and suppress a fresh revolt in that troubled region but the western allies soon gathered strength again
+he found it necessary to return with a great army but was not successful in achieving any permanent success although he put his enemies to flight the various western kingdoms including damascus israel
+remained unconquered and continued to conspire against him the resisting power of the syrian allies however was being greatly weakened by internal revolts which may have been stirred up by assyrian emissaries
+a royal princess of israel was dead
+thus saith the lord i have anointed thee king over israel and thou shalt smite the house of ahab thy master that i may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets and the blood of all the servants of the lord
+jehu conspired against joram and then accompanied by an escort
+so that he might be the first to announce the revolt to the king whom he was to depose the watchman on the tower of jezreel saw jehu and his company approaching
+and informed joram who twice sent out a messenger to enquire is it peace neither messenger returned and the watchman informed the wounded monarch of israel he came even unto them and cometh not again
+and the driving is like the driving of jehu the son of nimshi for he driveth furiously king joram went out himself to meet the famous charioteer
+where he was welcomed he made offerings there to hadad the local thor and then suddenly marched southward hazael went out to oppose the advancing assyrians and came into conflict with them in the vicinity of mount hermon
+i fought with him shalmaneser recorded and accomplished his defeat
+he fled to save his life hazael took refuge within the walls of damascus which the assyrians besieged but failed however to capture shalmaneser's soldiers meanwhile wasted and burned cities without number
+and carried away great booty in those days shalmaneser recorded i received tribute from the tyrians and sidonians and from yaua jehu
+shows that the unpronounced aleph at the end was at that time sounded
+jehua shalmaneser did not again attack damascus his sphere of influence was therefore confined to north syria
+his revolt received the support of the orthodox hebrews and he began well by inaugurating reforms in the northern kingdom with purpose apparently to re establish the worship of david's god he persecuted the prophets of baal but soon became a backslider
+for although he stamped out the phoenician religion he began to worship the golden calves that were in bethel and that were in dan
+of the idolators of the ancient cult of the queen of heaven the crown of judah had been seized by the israelitish queen mother
+but another woman thwarted the completion of her monstrous design
+the king's son and put upon him the crown and gave him the testimony and made him king and jehoiada and his sons anointed him and said god save the king
+she came to the people into the house of the lord and she looked and behold the king stood at his pillar at the entering in and the princes and the trumpets by the king and all the people of the land rejoiced and sounded with trumpets
+also the singers with instruments of musick and such as taught to sing praise
+and said treason treason then jehoiada the priest brought out the captains of hundreds that were set over the host
+have her forth of the ranges and whoso followeth her let him be slain by the sword for the priest said slay her not in the house of the lord so they laid hands on her
+and when she was come to the entering of the horse gate by the king's house they slew her there and jehoiada made a covenant between him and between all the people
+and he delivered them into the hand of ben hadad the son of hazael all their days then jehoahaz repented he besought the lord and the lord hearkened unto him for he saw the oppression of israel
+and kept his generals continually employed suppressing revolts on his frontiers after he subdued the hittites
+tribes of the medes came under his power
+like the frontier tribes of india against the british troops the kingdom of urartu was growing more and more powerful
+the great empire was suddenly shaken to its foundations by the outbreak of civil war the party of rebellion was led by shalmaneser's son ashur danin apli
+he was a popular hero and received the support of most of the important assyrian cities including nineveh
+arbela imgurbel and dur balat as well as some of the dependencies shalmaneser retained kalkhi and the provinces of northern mesopotamia and it appears that the greater part of the army also remained loyal to him
+after four years of civil war shalmaneser died his chosen heir
+when at length the new king had stamped out the last embers of revolt within the kingdom he had to undertake the reconquest of those provinces which in the interval
+urartu in the north had grown more aggressive the syrians were openly defiant the medes were conducting bold raids
+shamshi adad however
+burned many cities and collected enormous tribute while thousands of prisoners were taken and forced to serve the conqueror having established his power in the north shamshi adad
+on his way southward he subdued many villages
+and achieved a great victory killing thirteen thousand and taking three thousand captives then the babylonian king
+but was defeated in a fierce battle on the banks of the daban canal
+two hundred horsemen and one hundred chariots shamshi adad conducted in all five campaigns in babylonia and chaldaea which he completely subdued penetrating as far as the shores of the persian gulf
+in the end he took prisoner the new king
+for over half a century after this disaster babylonia was a province of assyria
+he had found at last that the draughts containing dissolved pearls which the quack doctor leoni di spoleto prescribed for him as if he desired to adapt his remedies rather to the riches of his patient than to his necessities
+were useless and unavailing and so he had come to understand that he must part from those gentle tongued women of his those sweet voiced poets his palaces and their rich hangings therefore he had summoned to give him absolution for his sins
+in a man of less high place they might perhaps have been called crimes the dominican giralamo francesco savonarola it was not however without an inward fear against which the praises of his friends availed nothing
+that the pleasure seeker and usurper awaited that severe and gloomy preacher by whose words all florence was stirred and on whose pardon henceforth depended all his hope for another world indeed savonarola was one of those men of stone
+coming like the statue of the commandante to knock at the door of a don giovanni and in the midst of feast and orgy to announce that it is even now the moment to begin to think of heaven he had been born at ferrara
+had fled from his father's house and had taken the vows in the cloister of dominican monks at florence there where he was appointed by his superiors to give lessons in philosophy the young novice had from the first to battle against the defects of a voice that was both harsh and weak
+a defective pronunciation and above all the depression of his physical powers exhausted as they were by too severe abstinence savonarola from that time condemned himself to the most absolute seclusion and disappeared in the depths of his convent
+as if the slab of his tomb had already fallen over him there kneeling on the flags praying unceasingly before a wooden crucifix fevered by vigils and penances he soon passed out of contemplation into ecstasy and began to feel in himself
+that inward prophetic impulse which summoned him to preach the reformation of the church nevertheless the reformation of savonarola more reverential than luther's which followed about five and twenty years later respected the thing while attacking the man
+and had as its aim the altering of teaching that was human not faith that was of god he did not work like the german monk by reasoning but by enthusiasm with him logic always gave way before inspiration he was not a theologian
+but a prophet yet although hitherto he had bowed his head before the authority of the church he had already raised it against the temporal power to him religion and liberty appeared as two virgins equally sacred
+the result of this was that so long as lorenzo lived in riches happiness and magnificence savonarola had never been willing whatever entreaties were made to sanction by his presence a power which he considered illegitimate
+but lorenzo on his deathbed sent for him and that was another matter the austere preacher set forth at once bareheaded and barefoot hoping to save not only the soul of the dying man but also the liberty of the republic
+lorenzo as we have said was awaiting the arrival of savonarola with an impatience mixed with uneasiness so that when he heard the sound of his steps his pale face took a yet more deathlike tinge
+appeared on the threshold when he perceived him lorenzo dei medici reading in his marble brow the inflexibility of a statue fell back on his bed breathing a sigh so profound that one might have supposed it was his last
+then he advanced with a slow and solemn step towards the bed lorenzo watched his approach with terror then when he was close beside him he cried o my father i have been a very great sinner the mercy of god is infinite replied the monk
+you believe then that god will forgive my sins cried the dying man renewing his hope as he heard from the lips of the monk such unexpected words your sins and also your crimes god will forgive them all replied savonarola
+god will forgive your vanities your adulterous pleasures your obscene festivals so much for your sins
+francesco frescobaldi and more than three hundred others whose names were none the less dear to florence because they were less renowned so much for your crimes and at each of these names which savonarola pronounced slowly his eyes fixed on the dying man
+he replied with a groan which proved the monk's memory to be only too true then at last when he had finished lorenzo asked in a doubtful tone then do you believe my father that god will forgive me everything both my sins and my crimes
+everything said savonarola but on three conditions what are they asked the dying man the first said savonarola is that you feel a complete faith in the power and the mercy of god
+my father replied lorenzo eagerly i feel this faith in the very depths of my heart the second said savonarola is that you give back the property of others which you have unjustly confiscated and kept
+my father shall i have time asked the dying man god will give it to you replied the monk
+exclaimed lorenzo falling back on his bed and shaking his head never the monk without replying a single word made a step to withdraw my father my father said the dying man do not leave me thus have pity on me have pity on florence said the monk
+but my father cried lorenzo florence is free florence is happy florence is a slave florence is poor cried savonarola poor in genius poor in money and poor in courage poor in genius because after you lorenzo
+will come your son piero poor in money because from the funds of the republic you have kept up the magnificence of your family and the credit of your business houses poor in courage because you have robbed the rightful magistrates of the authority which was constitutionally theirs
+and diverted the citizens from the double path of military and civil life wherein before they were enervated by your luxuries they had displayed the virtues of the ancients and therefore when the day shall dawn which is not far distant continued the monk
+it is not i who desire it it is the lord replied savonarola coldly impossible impossible murmured lorenzo very well then die as you have lived cried the monk in the midst of your courtiers and flatterers
+let them ruin your soul as they have ruined your body and at these words the austere dominican without listening to the cries of the dying man left the room as he had entered it with face and step unaltered far above human things he seemed to soar
+a spirit already detached from the earth at the cry which broke from lorenzo dei medici when he saw him disappear
+and found their friend convulsively clutching in his arms a magnificent crucifix which he had just taken down from the bed head in vain did they try to reassure him with friendly words lorenzo the magnificent only replied with sobs
+his lips clinging to the feet of the christ he breathed his last in the arms of these three men of whom the most fortunate though all three were young was not destined to survive him more than two years
+chapter twenty six sight seeing general ord commanding the department of the platte at the time and who had been out on the alexis hunt had some business to attend to at fort mc pherson
+and i accepted his invitation to ride over to the post with him in an ambulance on the way thither he asked me how i would like to have an officer's commission in the regular army he said that general sheridan and himself had had some conversation about the matter
+and if i wanted a commission one could easily be procured for me i thanked general ord for his kindness and said that although an officer's commission in the regular army was a tempting prize yet i preferred to remain in the position i was then holding
+having determined to visit new york i acted upon general sheridan's suggestion and wrote to general stager from whom in a few days i received my railroad passes obtaining thirty days leave of absence from the department i struck out for the east
+on arriving in chicago in february eighteen seventy two i was met at the depot by colonel m v sheridan who said that his brother the general had not yet returned
+but had sent word that i was to be his and the colonel's guest at their house while i remained in chicago i spent two or three days very pleasantly in the great city of the west meeting several of the gentlemen who had been out on the sheridan hunt in september general stager
+colonel wilson editor of the journal mister sam johnson general rucker and others by all of whom i was most cordially received and well entertained i was introduced to quite a number of the best people of the city and was invited to several swell dinners
+that it was more difficult for me to face the throng of beautiful ladies
+i was to stop at niagara falls buffalo and rochester on my way to new york and he provided me with all the necessary railroad passes just as i was about to leave chicago i met professor henry a ward of rochester for whom during the previous year or two
+i had collected a large number of specimens of wild animals he was on his way to rochester and kindly volunteered to act as my guide until we reached that point we spent one day in viewing the wonders of niagara
+and i had the honor of receiving an invitation to dine with the mayor on arriving at new york i was met at the depot by mister j g hecksher who had been appointed as a committee of one to escort me to the union club
+where james gordon bennett leonard w jerome and others were to give me an informal reception and where i was to make my headquarters during my visit in the great metropolis i had an elegant dinner at the club rooms with the gentlemen who had been out on the september hunt and other members of the club
+he was delighted to see me and insisted on my becoming his guest he would listen to no excuses and on introducing me to messrs overton and blair proprietors of the brevoort they also gave me a pressing invitation to make my home at their house
+i finally compromised the matter by agreeing to divide my time between the union club the brevoort house and ned buntline's quarters the next few days i spent in viewing the sights of new york everything being new and startling
+convincing me that as yet i had seen but a small portion of the world i received numerous dinner invitations as well as invitations to visit different places of amusement and interest but as they came in so thick and fast i soon became badly demoralized and confused
+i found i had accepted invitations to dine at half a dozen or more houses on the same day and at the same hour james gordon bennett had prepared a dinner for me at which quite a large number of his friends were to be present
+but owing to my confusion arising from the many other invitations i had received i forgot all about it and dined elsewhere this was a bad break but i did not learn of my mistake until next day when at the union club house several gentlemen among them lawrence jerome
+and why i had not put in an appearance at bennett's dinner they said that bennett had taken great pains to give me a splendid reception that the party had waited till nine o'clock for me and that my non arrival caused considerable disappointment
+i apologized as well as i could by saying that i had been out on a scout and had got lost and had forgotten all about the dinner and expressed my regret for the disappointment i had created by my forgetfulness august belmont the banker being near said
+never mind gentlemen i'll give cody a dinner at my house thank you sir said i i see you are determined that i shall not run short of rations while i am in the city i'll be there sure
+both mister jerome and mister hecksher told me that i must not disappoint mister belmont for his dinners were splendid affairs i made a note of the date and at the appointed time i was promptly at mister belmont's mansion where i spent a very enjoyable evening
+mister bennett who was among the guests having forgiven my carelessness invited me to accompany him to the liederkranz masked ball which was to take place in a few evenings and would be a grand spectacle together we attended the ball and during the evening i was well entertained
+the dancers kept on their masks until midnight and the merry and motley throng presented a brilliant scene moving gracefully beneath the bright gas light to the inspiriting music to me it was a novel and entertaining sight
+and exhibited some of my backwoods steps which although not as graceful as some were a great deal more emphatic but when i undertook to do artistic dancing i found i was decidedly out of place in that crowd and i accordingly withdrew from the floor
+i occasionally passed an evening at niblo's garden viewing the many beauties of the black crook which was then having its long run under the management of jarrett and palmer whose acquaintance i had made and who extended to me the freedom of the theater
+ned buntline and fred maeder had dramatized one of the stories which the former had written about me for the new york weekly the drama was called buffalo bill the king of border men while i was in new york it was produced at the bowery theater
+and of course i was present on the opening night a private box having been reserved for me the theater was packed every seat being occupied as well as the standing room the drama was played smoothly and created a great deal of enthusiasm
+the audience upon learning that the real buffalo bill was present gave several cheers between the acts and i was called on to come out on the stage and make a speech
+and that i should be introduced to mister studley i finally consented and the next moment i found myself standing behind the footlights and in front of an audience for the first time in my life i looked up then down then on each side and everywhere i saw a sea of human faces
+but what they were i could not for the life of me tell nor could any one else in the house my utterances were inaudible even to the leader of the orchestra mister dean who was sitting only a few feet in front of me bowing to the audience i beat a hasty retreat into one of the canons of the stage
+i never felt more relieved in my life than when i got out of the view of that immense crowd that evening mister freleigh offered to give me five hundred dollars a week to play the part of buffalo bill myself
+and that he might as well try to make an actor out of a government mule i thanked him for the generous offer which i had to decline owing to a lack of confidence in myself or as some people might express it i didn't have the requisite cheek to undertake a thing of that sort
+the play of buffalo bill had a very successful run of six or eight weeks and was afterwards produced in all the principal cities of the country everywhere being received with genuine enthusiasm
+i met him soon after he got into town in answer to a question how i was enjoying myself i replied that i had struck the best camp i had ever seen and if he didn't have any objections i would like to have my leave of absence extended about ten days
+this he willingly did and then informed me that my services would soon be required at fort mc pherson as there was to be an expedition sent out from that point at westchester pennsylvania i had some relatives living whom i had never seen
+and now being so near i determined to make them a visit upon mentioning the matter to buntline he suggested that we should together take a trip to philadelphia and thence run out to westchester
+among them an elderly lady who was my grandmother as he informed me he told me that my aunt eliza his first wife was dead and that he had married a second time lizzie guss my cousin i thought was the most beautiful girl i had ever seen
+they were all very anxious to have us remain several days but as i had some business to attend to in new york i was obliged to return that day assuring them however that i would visit them again soon i bade them adieu and with buntline took the train for new york
+chapter fifteen champion buffalo killer shortly after the adventures mentioned in the preceding chapter i had my celebrated buffalo hunt with billy comstock a noted scout guide and interpreter
+who was then chief of scouts at fort wallace kansas comstock had the reputation for a long time of being a most successful buffalo hunter and the officers in particular who had seen him kill buffaloes were very desirous of backing him in a match against me
+it was accordingly arranged that i should shoot him a buffalo killing match and the preliminaries were easily and satisfactorily agreed upon we were to hunt one day of eight hours beginning at eight o'clock in the morning and closing at four o'clock in the afternoon
+the wager was five hundred dollars a side and the man who should kill the greater number of buffaloes from on horseback was to be declared the winner the hunt took place about twenty miles east of sheridan and as it had been pretty well advertised and noised abroad
+a large crowd witnessed the interesting and exciting scene an excursion party mostly from saint louis consisting of about a hundred gentlemen and ladies came out on a special train to view the sport and among the number was my wife with little baby arta
+the buffaloes were quite plenty and it was agreed that we should go into the same herd at the same time and make a run as we called it each one killing as many as possible a referee was to follow each of us on horseback when we entered the herd and count the buffaloes killed by each man
+when they were to come up as near as they pleased and witness the chase we were fortunate in the first run in getting good ground comstock was mounted on one of his favorite horses while i rode old brigham i felt confident that i had the advantage of comstock in two things
+first i had the best buffalo horse that ever made a track and second i was using what was known at that time as the needle gun a breech loading springfield rifle calibre fifty it was my favorite old lucretia which has already been introduced to the notice of the reader
+while comstock was armed with a henry rifle and although he could fire a few shots quicker than i could yet i was pretty certain that it did not carry powder and lead enough to do execution equal to my calibre fifty at last the time came to begin the match
+comstock and i dashed into a herd followed by the referees the buffaloes separated comstock took the left bunch and i the right my great forte in killing buffaloes from horseback was to get them circling by riding my horse at the head of the herd shooting the leaders
+till they would finally circle round and round on this morning the buffaloes were very accommodating
+i had nursed my buffaloes as a billiard player does the balls when he makes a big run after the result of the first run had been duly announced our saint louis excursion friends who had approached to the place where we had stopped set out a lot of champagne which they had brought with them
+and which proved a good drink on a kansas prairie and a buffalo hunter was a good man to get away with it while taking a short rest we suddenly spied another herd of buffaloes coming toward us it was only a small drove and we at once prepared to give the animals a lively reception
+they proved to be a herd of cows and calves which by the way are quicker in their movements than the bulls we charged in among them and i concluded my run with a score of eighteen while comstock killed fourteen
+we came up close to another herd as i was so far ahead of my competitor in the number killed i thought i could afford to give an extra exhibition of my skill i had told the ladies that i would on the next run ride my horse without saddle or bridle
+and i remember one fair lady who endeavored to prevail upon me not to attempt it that's nothing at all said i i have done it many a time and old brigham knows as well as i what i am doing and sometimes a great deal better so leaving my saddle and bridle with the wagons
+we rode to the windward of the buffaloes as usual and when within a few hundred yards of them we dashed into the herd i soon had thirteen laid out on the ground the last one of which i had driven down close to the wagons where the ladies were
+it frightened some of the tender creatures to see the buffalo coming at full speed directly toward them but when he had got within fifty yards of one of the wagons i shot him dead in his tracks this made my sixty ninth buffalo and finished my third and last run
+comstock having killed forty six as it was now late in the afternoon comstock and his backers gave up the idea that he could beat me and thereupon the referees declared me the winner of the match
+they prepared to depart having declined an invitation to pass the night there
+had attracted the attention of the indians who overtook him and his companion when they had gone about half a mile after surrounding the two men they suddenly attacked them they killed scalped and robbed comstock but grover although severely wounded made his escape
+owing to the fleetness of the excellent horse which he was riding this sad event occurred august twenty seventh eighteen sixty eight on our way back to camp we took with us some of the choice meat and finest heads
+in this connection it will not be out of place to state that during the time i was hunting for the kansas pacific i always brought into camp the best buffalo heads and turned them over to the company who found a very good use for them they had them mounted in the best possible manner
+and sent them to all the principal cities and railroad centers in the country having them placed in prominent positions at the leading hotels depots and other public buildings as a sort of trade mark or advertisement of the kansas pacific railroad
+and to day they attract the attention of the traveler almost everywhere whenever i am traveling over the country and see one of these trade marks i feel pretty certain that i was the cause of the death of the old fellow whose body it once ornamented
+my services as a hunter were not any longer required at this time there was a general indian war raging all along the western borders general sheridan had taken up his headquarters at fort hayes in order to be in the field to superintend the campaign in person
+as scouts and guides were in great demand i concluded once more to take up my old avocation of scouting and guiding for the army having no suitable place in which to leave my old and faithful buffalo hunter brigham and not wishing to kill him by scouting
+i determined to dispose of him i was very reluctant to part with him but i consoled myself with the thought that he would not be likely to receive harder usage in other hands than he had in mine i had several good offers to sell him
+but at the suggestion of some gentlemen in sheridan all of whom were anxious to obtain possession of the horse i put him up at a raffle in order to give them all an equal chance of becoming the owner of the famous steed there were ten chances at thirty dollars each and they were all quickly taken
+a purse of two hundred fifty dollars was made up to be given to the horse that could first reach wyandotte four miles distant the arrangement was carried out and brigham was entered as one of the contestants for the purse
+everybody laughed at mister bonham when it became known that he was to ride that poky looking plug against the five thoroughbreds which were to take part in the race when all the preliminaries had been arranged the signal was given and off went the horses for wyandotte
+for the first half mile several of the horses led brigham but on the second mile he began passing them one after the other and on the third mile he was in advance of them all and was showing them all the road at a lively rate on the fourth mile his rider let him out
+and arrived at the hotel the home station in wyandotte a long way ahead of his fastest competitor everybody was surprised as well as disgusted that such a homely critter should be the winner brigham of course had already acquired a wide reputation
+and his name and exploits had often appeared in the newspapers and when it was learned that this critter was none other than the identical buffalo hunting brigham nearly the whole crowd admitted that they had heard of him before and had they known him in the first place they certainly would have ruled him out
+i finally lost track of brigham and for several years i did not know what had become of him three years ago while i was at memphis tennessee i met a mister wilcox who had been one of the superintendents of construction of the kansas pacific railroad and he informed me that he owned brigham
+only a few miles out of town the next day i rode out with mister wilcox and took a look at the gallant old horse he was comfortably cared for in mister wilcox's stable and looked the same clever pony that he always was it seemed as if he almost remembered me
+and whenever i again visit memphis i shall surely go and see brigham if he is still alive but to return to the thread of my narrative from which i have wandered
+administration terrorism the administration tried in another way to stop picketing
+the agitation would certainly weaken so thought the administration to their great surprise however in the face of that reckless and extreme sentence the longest picket line of the entire campaign formed at the white house in the late afternoon of november tenth
+forty one women picketed in protest against this wanton persecution of their leader as well as against the delay in passing the amendment face to face with an embarrassing number of prisoners the administration used its wits and decided
+to reduce the number to a manageable size before imprisoning this group failing of that they tried still another way out they resorted to imprisonment with terrorism
+in order to show how widely representative of the nation this group of pickets was i give its personnel complete first group new york missus john winters brannan miss belle sheinberg
+missus l h hornsby
+missus cyn thia cohen miss m tilden burritt
+massachusetts missus agnes h morey brookline missus william bergen and miss camilla whitcomb worcester miss ella findeisen lawrence miss l j c daniels boston new jersey
+missus george scott montclair pennsylvania missus lawrence lewis miss elizabeth mc shane miss katherine lincoln philadelphia third group california missus william kent kentfield
+oregon miss alice gram miss betty gram portland utah missus r b quay missus t c robertson salt lake city colorado missus eva decker
+colorado springs missus genevieve williams manitou fourth group indiana missus charles w barnes indianapolis oklahoma missus kate stafford oklahoma city
+minnesota missus j h short minneapolis iowa
+des moines missus catherine martinette eagle grove fifth group new york miss lucy burns new york city district of columbia missus harvey wiley louisiana
+missus alice m cosu new orleans maryland miss mary bartlett dixon easton miss julia emory baltimore florida missus mary i nolan jacksonville
+as she said in court we took this action with great consecration of spirit with willingness to sacrifice personal liberty
+judge mullowny addressed the prisoners with many high sounding words about the seriousness of obstructing the traffic in the national capital and inadvertently slipped into a discourse on russia and the dangers of revolution
+but their minds were too full of the political aspect of our offense to conceal it the truth of the situation is that the court has not been given power to meet it the judge lamented it is very very puzzling i find you guilty of the offense charged
+but will take the matter of sentence under advisement and so the guilty pickets were summarily released the administration did not relish the incarceration of forty one women for another reason than limited housing accommodations
+forty one women representing sixteen states in the union might create a considerable political dislocation but these same forty one women were determined to force the administration to take its choice it could allow them to continue their peaceful agitation
+or it could stand the reaction which was bound to come from imprisoning them and so the forty one women returned to the white house gates to resume their picketing they stood guard several minutes before the police taken unawares could summon sufficient force to arrest them
+come back on friday i am not yet prepared to try the case logic dictated that either we had a right to stand at the gates with our banners or we did not have that right
+it had to stop picketing whether this was done legally or illegally logically or illogically clumsily or dexterously was of secondary importance picketing must be stopped
+using their welcome release to continue their protest the women again marched with their banners to the white house in an attempt to picket again they were arrested no one who saw that line will ever forget the impression it made not only on friends of the suffragists
+but on the general populace of washington to see these women force with such magnificent defiance the hand of a wavering administration on the following morning
+miss burns received six months in pronouncing the lightest sentence upon missus nolan the judge said that he did so on account of her age he urged her however to pay her fine hinting that jail might be too severe on her and might bring on death
+at this suggestion tiny missus nolan pulled herself up on her toes and said with great dignity
+i have a nephew fighting for democracy in france
+i should be ashamed if i did not join these brave women in their fight for democracy in america i should be proud of the honor to die in prison
+for the liberty of american women
+or do prison labor any words of mine would be inadequate to tell the story of the prisoners reception at the occoquan workhouse the following is the statement of missus nolan dictated upon her release in the presence of mister dudley field malone
+missus herndon was standing behind a desk when we were brought into this office and there were five or six men also in the room
+said she must speak to whittaker the superintendent of the place
+missus herndon called my name but i did not answer
+as they ran me past she was lying there with her arms out and we heard one of the men yell the suffrager my mother ain't no suffrager i'll put you through at the end of the corridor
+they pushed me through a door then i lost my balance and fell against the iron bed missus cosu struck the wall then they threw in two mats and two dirty blankets
+the door was barred from top to bottom
+missus cosu would not let me lie on the floor she put me on the couch and stretched out on the floor on one of the two pads they threw in
+when missus lewis doubled over and handled like a sack of something
+and only half conscious until morning
+i bade them both good by
+they took me to mister whittaker's office
+you're missus mary nolan said whittaker
+i said no don't you know now that i am mister whittaker the superintendent he asked is there any age limit to your workhouse i said would a woman of seventy three or a child of two be sent here
+i think i made him think he motioned to the guard get a doctor to examine her he said in the hospital cottage
+a negro trusty was there i fell back again into the same stupor the next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food the first i had been offered in over thirty six hours
+i just looked at the food and motioned it away it made me sick i was released on the sixth day and passed the dispensary as i came out
+and many others they had on coarse striped dresses and big grotesque heavy shoes i burst into tears as they led me away
+november twenty first nineteen seventeen the day following their commitment to occoquan mister o'brien of counsel was directed to see the women to ascertain their condition
+friends and relatives were alarmed as not a line of news had been allowed to penetrate to the world mister o'brien was denied admission and forced to come back to washington without any report whatsoever
+the next day mister o'brien again attempted to see his clients as did also the mother of miss matilda young the youngest prisoner in mister whittaker's care
+who went asking to see her mother miss morey was held under armed guard half a mile from the prison admission was denied to all of them
+the terrible anxiety at headquarters was not relieved the third day by a report brought from the workhouse by one of the marines stationed at quantico station virginia who had been summoned to the workhouse on the night the women arrived
+he brought news that unknown tortures were going on mister o'brien immediately forced his way through by a court order
+and which was being continued at that moment miss lucy burns who had assumed responsibility for the welfare of the women had managed to secrete small scraps of paper and a tiny pencil and jot down briefly the day by day events at the workhouse
+this week of brutality which rivaled old russia if it did not outstrip it was almost the blackest page in the administration's cruel fight against women here are some of the scraps of miss burn's day by day log
+smuggled out of the workhouse miss burns is so gifted a writer that i feel apologetic for using these scraps in their raw form but i know she will forgive me wednesday
+november fourteenth demanded to see superintendent whittaker request refused missus herndon the matron said we would have to wait up all night one of the men guards said he would put us in sardine box and put mustard on us
+superintendent whittaker came at nine p m he refused to hear our demand for political rights seized by guards from behind flung off my feet and shot out of the room
+all of us were seized by men guards and dragged to cells in men's part dorothy day was roughly used back twisted missus mary a nolan seventy three year old picket from jacksonville florida flung into cell
+i slept with dorothy day in a single bed i was handcuffed all night and manacled to the bars part of the time for asking the others how they were and was threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag thursday november sixteenth
+asked for whittaker who came he seized julia emory by the back of her neck and threw her into the room very brutally she is a little girl i asked for counsel to learn the status of the case i was told to shut up and was again threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag
+later i was taken to put on prison clothes refused and resisted strenuously
+when miss lucy burns and missus lawrence lewis were so weak that mister whittaker feared their death they were forcibly fed and taken immediately to the jail in washington of the experience missus lewis wrote i was seized
+and laid on my back where five people held me a young colored woman leaping upon my knees which seemed to break under the weight doctor gannon then forced the tube through my lips and down my throat i gasping and suffocating with the agony of it
+i didn't know where to breathe from and everything turned black when the fluid began pouring in i was moaning and making the most awful sounds quite against my will for i did not wish to disturb my friends in the next room finally
+the tube was withdrawn i lay motionless after a while i was dressed and carried in a chair to a waiting automobile laid on the back seat and driven into washington to the jail hospital previous to the feeding
+i had been forcibly examined by doctor gannon i protesting that i wished a woman physician of this experience miss burns wrote on tiny scraps of paper wednesday
+yesterday afternoon at about four or five missus lewis and i were asked to go to the operating room went there and found our clothes told we were to go to washington no reason as usual when we were dressed doctor gannon appeared
+and said he wished to examine us both refused were dragged through halls by force our clothing partly removed by force and we were examined heart tested blood pressure and pulse taken of course such data was of no value after such a struggle doctor gannon told me then i must be fed
+was stretched on bed two doctors matron four colored prisoners present whittaker in hall i was held down by five people at legs arms and head i refused to open mouth gannon pushed tube up left nostril
+i turned and twisted my head all i could but he managed to push it up it hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely tube drawn out covered with blood operation leaves one very sick
+left nostril throat and muscles of neck very sore all night after this i was brought into the hospital in an ambulance missus lewis and i placed in same room slept hardly at all this morning doctor ladd appeared with his tube
+missus lewis and i said we would not be forcibly fed said he would call in men guards and force us to submit went away and we were not fed at all this morning we hear them outside now cracking eggs
+with miss burns and missus lewis who were regarded as leaders in the hunger strike protest removed to the district jail mister whittaker and his staff at occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the morale of the hunger strikers
+each one was called to the mat and interrogated will you work will you put on prison clothes will you eat will you stop picketing will you go without paying your fine and promise never to picket again
+how baffled he must have been the answer was definite and final their resistance was superb one of the few warning incidents during the gray days of our imprisonment
+was the unexpected sympathy and understanding of one of the government doctors
+i have seen women in russia undergo extreme suffering for their ideals but unless i had seen this with my own eyes
+my sister hunger struck in russia where she was imprisoned for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of two of her friends indicted for a government offense she was fed after three days
+you girls are on your ninth day of hunger strike and your condition is critical it is a great pity that such women should be subjected to this treatment i hope that you will carry your point
+and force the hand of the government
+to be allowed to see the president and ask for a special order to visit her daughter failing to secure this she went daily to mister tumulty's office asking if he himself would not intercede for her
+the stories of the inhuman treatment at occoquan were false and that she must not believe them finally missus young pleaded to be allowed to send additional warm clothing to her daughter whom she knew to be too lightly clad for the vigorous temperature of november
+mister tumulty assured her that the women were properly clothed and refused to permit the clothing to be sent the subsequent stories of the women showed what agonies they had endured because they were inadequately clad from the dampness of the cells into which they were thrown
+missus john winters brannan was among the women who endured the night of terror missus brannan is the daughter of charles a dana founder of the new york sun and that great american patriot of liberty who was a trusted associate and counselor
+of abraham lincoln missus brannan life long suffragist is an aristocrat of intellect and feeling who has always allied herself with libertarian movements this was her second term of imprisonment
+she wrote a comprehensive affidavit of her experience after narrating the events which led up to the attack she continues superintendent whittaker then shouted out in a loud tone of voice
+seize these women take them off that one that one take her off the guards rushed forward and an almost indescribable scene of violent confusion ensued i saw one of the guards seize her lucy burns
+by the arms twist or force them back of her
+and put it on in order to prepare myself if attacked i was trembling at the time and was stunned with terror at the situation as it had developed and said to the superintendent i will give my name under protest and started to walk towards the desk whereon lay the books the superintendent shouted to me
+i saw the guards seizing the different women of the party with the utmost violence the furniture being overturned and the room a scene of the utmost disturbance
+i saw miss lincoln lying on the floor with every appearance of having just been thrown down by the two guards who were standing over her in a menacing attitude seeing the general disturbance
+i gave up all idea of giving my name at the desk and instinctively joined my companions to go with them and share whatever was in store for them the whole group of women were thrown dragged or herded out of the office on to the porch down the steps to the ground and forced to cross the road
+to the administration building during all of this time superintendent whittaker was directing the whole attack all of us were thrown into different cells in the men's prison i being put in one with four other women the cell containing a narrow bed
+and one chair which was immediately removed during the time that we were being forced into the cells the guards kept up an uproar shouting banging the iron doors clanging bars making a terrifying noise
+i and one of my companions were lying down on the narrow bed on which were a blanket and one pillow the door of the cell was opened and a mattress and a blanket being thrown in the door was violently banged to
+and lay down covering themselves with the blanket i looked across the corridor and saw miss lincoln and asked her whether she was all right being anxious to know whether she had been hurt by the treatment in the office building instantly superintendent whittaker rushed forward shouting at me
+gag you and put you in a straitjacket i wish to state again that the cells into which we were put were situated in the men's prison
+and who could at any moment look at us furthermore the water closets were in full view of the corridor where superintendent whittaker and the guards were moving about the flushing of these closets could only be done from the corridor and we were forced to ask the guards to do this for us
+the men who had shortly before attacked us
+i was exhausted by what i had seen and been through and spent the night in absolute terror of further attack and of what might still be in store for us i thought of the young girls who were with us and feared for their safety the guards acted brutal in the extreme
+incited to their brutal conduct towards us by the superintendent i thought of the offense with which we had been charged merely that of obstructing traffic and felt that the treatment that we had received was out of all proportion to the offense with which we were charged
+and that the superintendent the matron and guards would not have dared to act towards us as they had acted unless they relied upon the support of higher authorities it seemed to me that everything had been done from the time we reached the workhouse to terrorize us and my fear
+lest the extreme of outrage would be worked upon the young girls of our party became intense it is impossible for me to describe the terror of that night
+the affidavit then continues with the story of how missus brannan was compelled the following morning to put on prison clothes was given a cup of skimmed milk and a slice of toast
+and requested permission to lie down feeling so ill i could not sleep having a sense of constant danger i was almost paralyzed and in wretched physical condition
+seven of us being in the party we were so exhausted and weary that we were obliged to stop constantly to rest on our way back from the walk we heard the baying of hounds very near us in the woods the matron said
+one of the party miss findeisen asked whether they would attack us to which the matron replied that is just what they would do and hurried us along the baying grew louder and nearer at times and then more distant as the dogs rushed back and forth
+and this went on until we reached the sewing room the effect of this upon our nerves can better be imagined than described every conceivable lie was tried in an effort to force the women to abandon their various form of resistance
+they were told that no efforts were being made from the outside to reach them and that their attorney had been called off the case each one was told that she was the only one hunger striking each one was told that all the others had put on prison clothes and were working
+although they were separated from one another they suspected the lies and remained strong in their resistance after mister o'brien's one visit and the subsequent reports in the press he was thereafter refused admission to the workhouse
+it was evident that the administration was anxious to keep this group away from alice paul and her companions as they counted on handling the rebellion more easily in two groups than one meanwhile the condition of the prisoners in the workhouse grew steadily worse
+we decided to take the only course open to obtain a writ of habeas corpus a hurried journey by counsel to united states district judge waddill of norfolk virginia brought the writ
+it compelled the government to bring the prisoners into court and show cause why they should not be returned to the district jail this conservative southern judge said of the petition for the writ
+there followed a week more melodramatic than the most stirring moving picture film although the writ had been applied for in the greatest secrecy
+a detective suddenly appeared to accompany mister o'brien from washington to norfolk during his stay in norfolk and back to washington telephone wires at our headquarters were tapped it was evident that the administration was cognizant of every move in this procedure before it was executed
+no sooner was our plan decided upon than friends of the administration besought us to abandon the habeas corpus proceedings one member of the administration sent an emissary to our headquarters with the following appeal
+if you will only drop these proceedings i can absolutely guarantee you that the prisoners will be removed from the workhouse to the jail in a week in a week they may be dead by that time we answered we cannot wait
+and before the end of the week they hoped to increase their facilities for forcible feeding at the workhouse they also wished to conceal the treatment of the women the exposure of which would be inevitable in any court proceedings and lastly
+the administration was anxious to avoid opening up the whole question of the legality of the very existence of the workhouse in virginia persons convicted in the district for acts committed in violation of district law were transported to virginia alien territory to serve their terms
+it was a moot point whether prisoners were so treated with sufficient warrant in law eminent jurists held that the district had no right to convict a person under its laws and commit that person to confinement in another state they contended that sentence imposed upon a person for unlawful acts in the district
+should be executed in the district hundreds of persons who had been convicted in the district of columbia and who had served their sentences in virginia had been without money or influence enough to contest this doubtful procedure in the courts the administration
+was alarmed we quickened our pace a member of the administration rushed his attorney as courier to the women in the workhouse to implore them not to consent to the habeas corpus proceedings he was easily admitted and tried to extort from one prisoner at a time a promise to reject the plan
+the women suspected his solicitude and refused to make any promise whatsoever without first being allowed to see their own attorney we began at once to serve the writ ordinarily this would be an easy thing to do but for us it developed into a very difficult task
+a deputy marshal must serve the writ counsel sought a deputy for miles around washington not one was to be found at his home or lodgings none could be reached by telephone
+where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days when a deputy was found six attempts were made to serve the writ all failed finally by a ruse mister whittaker was caught at his home late at night
+chapter twenty one a soul overboard
+somebody had called his name he sat up in bed and listened there was not a sound he drew up the blind and looked out on a grey autumn morning windy and rainy he went back to bed and tried to sleep but in vain
+there were strange voices in the wind they moaned and warned and wept and whimpered he tried to think of something pleasant of his happiness he took his part and began to learn it it seemed to be nothing but yes my prince
+he tried to picture himself on the stage as horatio he tried to picture agnes in the part of ophelia
+spreading nets for hamlet at polonius's advice he attempted to drive away the thought and instead of agnes he saw the coquettish miss jacquette who had been the last to play the part at the municipal theatre
+he tried in vain to drive away these disagreeable fancies they followed him like gnats at last exhausted with the strain he fell asleep but only to suffer the same torment in his dream he roused himself with an effort but soon dropped off to sleep again
+he dressed hastily and as he picked up his boot a big spider ran across the floor the sight pleased him for he believed in the superstition that a spider is a harbinger of happiness
+he could not tell why but he thought of the spider and calmly opened the door a servant handed him a letter from falander begging him to come to his rooms at ten on very important business again he was assailed by the indescribable feeling of fear
+which had troubled his morning slumber he tried to while away the time until ten it was impossible he dressed and went to falander's house the latter had risen early his room had been put straight and he was ready to receive his friend
+he greeted rehnhjelm cordially but with unusual gravity rehnhjelm overwhelmed him with questions but falander refused to reply before ten o'clock rehnhjelm's anxiety grew and he wanted to know whether there was unpleasant news
+and he declared that many so called unbearable situations could be borne quite easily if only one did not exaggerate their importance the time passed slowly but at last it struck ten a gentle double rap at the door relieved the tension
+falander opened at once and admitted agnes without a look at those present she drew the key from the lock and locked the door from the inside a momentary embarrassment seized her when on turning round she was confronted by two men instead of only one
+but her embarrassment gave way to pleasant surprise when she recognized rehnhjelm throwing off her water proof she ran towards him
+a long time what do you mean i feel as if i hadn't seen you for a life time how splendid you are looking did you sleep well do you think i look better than usual yes you are flushed and there are little dimples in your cheeks won't you say good morning to falander
+the latter stood quietly listening to the conversation but his face was deadly white and he seemed to be absorbed in thought how worn you are looking said agnes crossing the room with the graceful movements of a kitten as rehnhjelm released her from his arms
+falander made no reply agnes looked at him more keenly
+a fleeting expression of trouble passed across her face as the surface of a pond is rippled by the breeze but she immediately regained her usual serenity glanced at rehnhjelm realized the situation and was prepared for anything
+may we be told what important business has brought us together here at this early hour she asked gaily putting her hand on falander's shoulder certainly said the latter with such firm resolution that her face paled
+as if he wanted to force his thoughts into another groove it's my birthday and i want you to have breakfast with me agnes who had seen the train rushing straight at her felt relieved she burst into merry laughter and embraced falander but as breakfast has been ordered for eleven we'll have to wait a while
+won't you sit down there was an ominous silence an angel is passing through the room said agnes you said rehnhjelm respectfully and ardently kissing her hand falander looked as if he had been thrown out of his saddle
+and was making violent efforts to regain it i saw a spider this morning said rehnhjelm that predicts happiness araignee matin chagrin said falander have you never heard that what does that mean asked agnes a spider on the morrow grief and sorrow
+the only sound which disturbed the stillness was the sound of the rain beating in gusts against the windows
+i hardly slept a wink what book was that asked rehnhjelm without betraying very much interest its title was pierre clement and its subject the usual woman's game
+wasn't she later on engaged to a man whom she really loved yes that was it and during all the time she kept up her old liaison the author wanted to show that a woman can love in two ways a man only in one that's true enough isn't it certainly
+but the day came when her fiance was going to compete with a picture to cut my tale short she gave herself to the president and pierre clement was happy and could be married and by this the author wanted to show that a woman will sacrifice everything to the man she loves
+a man on the other hand that is the most infamous statement i ever heard burst out falander he rose went to his writing desk threw open the flap and took out a black box here he said handing it to agnes
+what's that laughed agnes opening the box and taking out a six barrelled revolver i say what a sweet thing
+lock it up she said this is no toy my friends rehnhjelm had watched the scene speechlessly he understood the meaning well enough but he was unable to say a word and he was so much under the girl's spell that he could not even feel angry with her
+he realized that he had been stabbed but he had as yet not had time to feel the pain the girl's impudence disconcerted falander he wanted time to recover his moral execution had been a complete failure and his coup de theatre had been disastrous to himself
+hadn't we better go now asked agnes straightening her hat before the glass falander opened the door go and be damned to you he said you have ruined an honest man's peace of mind what are you talking about shut the door it's none too warm here
+hjalmar knows and it's no business of yours
+hadn't we better stop talking nonsense now and be off you shouldn't read stupid books all night then you wouldn't be in a bad temper on the next day put on your hats and come
+but you told hjalmar you were with your aunt don't listen to him said agnes going up to rehnhjelm and caressing him he's talking nonsense rehnhjelm's hand shot out he seized her by the throat and flung her on her back behind the stove
+where she fell on a little pile of wood and remained lying still and motionless he put on his hat but falander had to help him with his coat for he trembled violently come along let's be off he said spitting on the hearthstone falander hesitated for a moment
+i admire you he said the matter was really beyond discussion then let it for ever remain so we haven't much time to enjoy each other's company i am leaving for home by the next train to work and to forget let's go to the vaults now
+they went to the vaults and engaged a private room where breakfast was served to them has my hair turned grey asked rehnhjelm passing his hand over his hair which was damp and clung closely to his skull no old man that doesn't often happen even i'm not grey
+falander took his head in both his hands and rehnhjelm felt something hot and scalding dropping on his neck where's your philosophy now old fellow out with it i'm drowning give me a straw to clutch at
+some time after arvid falk's first experience as a reporter
+he was contrary to his custom not in dressing gown and slippers and his wife was wearing an expensive morning gown yes they were all here yesterday said missus falk laughing gaily all five of them
+and they were extremely sorry about the matter i wish the deuce nicholas remember you are no longer standing behind the counter what am i to say then if i lose my temper one doesn't lose one's temper one gets annoyed
+and it's permissible to say it's very extraordinary very well then it's very extraordinary that you have always something unpleasant up your sleeve why can't you refrain from telling me things you know will irritate me
+vex you old man you expect me to keep my vexations to myself but you lie lay old girl i say lie your burdens on my shoulders too was that what you promised me when we got married
+is that so yes and they were impertinent enough to say that i had no longer any reason to be stuck up proud old girl they said stuck up personally i should never have condescended
+to make use of such an expression what did you say
+you may depend on that the old lady threatened never again to cross our threshold did she really do you think she meant it no i don't but i'm certain that the old man you shouldn't speak of your father in that tone supposing somebody heard you
+do you think i should run that risk however the old man between you and me will never come here again falk pondered
+is your mother proud is she easily hurt i'm always so afraid of hurting people's feelings as you know you ought to tell me about her weak points so that i can take care you ask me whether she is proud
+you know she is in her own way supposing for instance she was told that we had given a dinner party without asking her and my sisters she would never come here again wouldn't she really you may depend upon it
+it's extraordinary that people of her class what's that oh nothing women are so sensitive how's your association getting on what did you call it the association for the promotion of women's rights what rights do you mean
+the wife shall have the right of disposing of her own property
+no she hasn't may i ask what your property is of which you are not allowed to dispose half of your's old man my dowry the devil who taught you such rubbish it's not rubbish it's the spirit of the age my dear
+the new law should read like this when a woman marries she becomes the owner of half her husband's property and of this half she can dispose as she likes and when she has run through it the husband will have to keep her
+i should take jolly good care not to under the new law you would be forced to do so or go to the poor house this would be the penalty for a man who doesn't keep his wife take care you are going too far but have you any meetings
+who were the women present tell me we are still busy with the statutes with the preliminaries but who are the women at present only missus homan the controller's wife and lady rehnhjelm rehnhjelm
+a very good name i think i've heard it before but didn't you tell me you were going to float a dorcas society as well found a dorcas society oh yes and what d'you think
+i'm glad that you're keeping away from the lower classes there's nothing so fatal to man or woman as to form low connexions my father always said that it was one of his strictest principles missus falk picked up the bread crumbs from the tablecloth
+each guessed the thoughts of the other and both realized that the first who broke the silence would say something foolish and compromising they cast about for fresh subjects of conversation mentally examined them and found them unsuitable
+every one of them had some connexion with what had been said or could be brought into connexion with it falk would have liked to have reason for finding fault with the breakfast so as to have an excuse for expressing indignation
+missus falk looked out of the window feebly hoping that there might be a change in the weather in vain a maid servant entered and saved the situation by offering them a tray with the newspapers at the same time announcing mister levin
+ask him to wait said the master curtly for a few moments his boots squeaked up and down the room preparing the visitor who was waiting in the corridor for his arrival the trembling levin greatly impressed by the newly invented waiting in the corridor
+was ultimately conducted into the master's private room where he was received like a petitioner have you brought the bill of exchange with you asked falk i think so replied the crestfallen levin
+which bank do you prefer i have bills on all with the exception of one in spite of the grave character of the situation falk could not help smiling as he looked at the incomplete guarantees on which the name was missing
+i'm known there well the shoemakers bank the tailors bank any one you like only do be quick about it they finally accepted the joiners bank and now said falk with a look as if he had bought the other's soul
+now you had better go and order a new suit but i want you to order it at a military tailor's so that they will supply you later on with a uniform on credit uniform
+it must be finished on thursday next when i'm going to give a big party as you know i've sold my shop and warehouse
+oh i congratulate you hold your tongue when i'm speaking you must go and pay a call now with your deceitful ways your unrivalled capacity for talking nonsense
+i want you to ask her what she thought of the party i gave on sunday last did you hold your tongue and do as i tell you she'll be jealous and ask you whether you were present of course you weren't for there was no party you'll both express discontent
+become good friends and slander me
+no not quite well it's not necessary that you should
+another thing tell nystroem that i've grown so proud that i don't want to have anything more to do with him tell him that straight out you'll be speaking the truth for once no hold on we'll postpone that
+you'll go to him speak of the importance of next thursday paint for him the great advantages the many benefits the brilliant prospects and so on you understand me i understand
+then you take the manuscript to the printers and then we'll kick him out if you like to call it that i have no objection and am i to read the verses to your guests and distribute them
+yes and another thing try to meet my brother find out all you can about his circumstances and friends make up to him worm yourself into his confidence the latter's an easy job become his friend tell him that i've cheated him
+tell him that i am proud and ask him how much he'll take for changing his name a tinge of green representing a blush spread over levin's pale face that's ugly he said what and besides one thing more
+i'm a business man and i like order in all my transactions i guarantee such and such a sum i must pay it that's clear oh no don't talk rubbish i have no security in case of death
+just sign this bond made out to the holder and payable at sight it's merely a formality at the word holder a slight tremor shook levin's body and he seized the pen hesitatingly although he well knew that retreat was impossible
+even the memories of his kind actions were not to survive him that sellen's stipend was stopped went without saying especially as the artist could not bring himself to petition for its continuance he did not believe that he required further assistance after having been given a helping hand once
+and moreover there were so many younger members of his profession in greater need of it but he was made to realize that not only was the sun extinguished but that the smaller planets too suffered from total eclipse he had worked strenuously during the summer
+the professor of landscape painting had told him as a friend that he would never be a great artist and the academician had seized the opportunity to rehabilitate himself and clung to his first opinion in addition to this the public taste in pictures had changed
+did not want landscapes but portraits of the watering places and summer resorts they knew and it was difficult to sell even these the only demand was for sentimental genre pictures and half nude figures
+therefore sellen had fallen on evil days for he could not bring himself to paint against his better judgment he was now renting a former photographic studio on the top of a house in government street the accommodation consisted of the studio itself
+with its rotten floor and leaking roof the latter defect was not felt at present
+when circumstances permitted the purchase of fuel the only piece of furniture was a wooden garden seat studded with protruding nails it was so short that a man using it as a bed
+had either to draw his knees up to his chin or allow his legs to dangle over the side the bedding consisted of half a rug the other half was at the pawnbroker's and a leather case stuffed to bursting point with studies and sketches
+in the dark room was a water tap and a basin with a waste pipe
+on a cold afternoon a short time before christmas sellen was standing before his easel painting for the third time a new picture on an old canvas he had just risen from his hard bed no servant had come in to light his fire
+partly because he had no servant and partly because he had nothing with which to make a fire no servant had brushed his clothes or brought his coffee and yet he was standing before his easel whistling merrily engaged in painting a brilliant sunset when there came four knocks at the door
+very plainly and very lightly clad without an overcoat
+how are you did you sleep well thanks how's the cash box oh
+and the notes there are so few in circulation i see they won't issue any more and the valuables
+i saw a great many chatterers this morning that means a hard winter you took a morning stroll i've walked about all night after leaving the red room at midnight you were at the red room last night yes and i made two new acquaintances doctor borg and a man called levin oh
+those rascals i know them why didn't you spend the night with them they turned up their noses at me because i had no overcoat and i felt ashamed but i am worn out i'll rest for a few moments on your sofa i've walked through the whole town and round half of it
+i must try and get work to day at a stone mason's or i shall starve
+quite true i'm going to lecture there on sunday next on sweden a good subject plenty to say if i should fall asleep on your sofa don't waken me i'm dead beat all right old chap go to sleep a few moments later olle was fast asleep and snoring loudly
+his head was hanging over one of the side railings which supported his thick neck and his legs over the other poor devil muttered sellen covering him up with his rug there was another knock but as it was unfamiliar sellen judged it wise to take no notice of it
+thereupon the clamour became so furious that it dissipated his apprehensions and he opened the door to doctor borg and levin borg was the first to speak is falk here no
+oh that extraordinary fellow who was with falk last night is he asleep yes did he spend the night here yes why haven't you a fire it's beastly cold because i have no wood send for some then where's the servant i'll make her trot
+gone to early service wake up that sleeping ox over there and send him no let him sleep objected sellen
+then i must show you another way what's the floor packing earth or rubbish i don't understand these matters replied sellen carefully stepping on some sheets of cardboard which were lying on the floor have you got another piece of cardboard
+asked sellen colouring up to the roots of his hair i want it and a pair of fire tongs sellen gave him the required articles took his sketching stool and sat down on the pieces of cardboard as if he were guarding a treasure
+borg took off his coat and with the help of the fire tongs loosened a board in the floor rotted by rain and acids confound you what are you doing exclaimed sellen i used to do this in my college days at upsala said borg
+but you can't do that sort of thing at stockholm hang it all i'm cold i must have a fire
+it shows too much what does that matter to me i don't live here but this is too hard meanwhile he had approached sellen and all of a sudden he pushed him and the stool over in falling the artist dragged the pieces of cardboard with him exposing the bare floor packing underneath
+miscreant to have a perfect timber yard and not to say a word about it the rain's done it i don't care who's done it let's light a fire he wrenched off a few pieces of wood with his strong hands and soon a fire was blazing in the grate
+levin had watched the scene quiet neutral and polite borg sat down before the fire and made the tongs red hot again there was a knock three short raps and a longer one that's falk said sellen opening the door
+said borg to the newcomer laying his hand on his breast pocket what a question to ask
+how much do you want i can let you have it are you serious asked falk and his face cleared serious
+the figure the amount i could do with say sixty crowns good lord how modest you are remarked borg and turned to levin yes it is very little said the latter take as much as you can get falk while the purse is open
+i'd rather not sixty crowns is all i want
+but how is it to be paid back twelve crowns every sixth month twenty four crowns per annum in two instalments said levin promptly and firmly those are easy terms replied falk where do you get money on those terms
+quick as lightning levin produced a promissory note a pen and a pocket inkstand the note had already been filled up by the others when falk saw the figure eight hundred he hesitated for a moment eight hundred crowns
+he asked you can have more if you are not satisfied no i won't
+but can you raise money on a bill of this sort without security without security you are forgetting that we are guaranteeing it replied levin with contemptuous familiarity i don't want to depreciate it observed falk i'm grateful for your guarantees
+oh won't it it's accepted already said borg bringing out a bill of acceptance as he called it go on falk sign falk signed his name borg and levin were watching him looking over his shoulders like policemen
+assessor dictated borg no i'm a journalist objected falk that's no good you are registered as assessor and as such you still figure in the directory did you look it up one should be correct in matters of form
+said borg gravely falk signed come here sellen and witness commanded borg i don't know whether i ought to replied sellen
+you are not in the country now and you are not dealing with peasants there's no reason why you shouldn't witness that falk's signature is genuine sellen signed shaking his head
+when all shaking was in vain borg took the tongs which were now red hot and held them under the sleeper's nostrils wake up you dog
+it'll end badly there'll be trouble silence you dog
+all we want now from you is a counter guarantee in place of struve's against whom an action has been brought what do you mean by a counter guarantee it's only a matter of form the loan was for eight hundred crowns on the painters bank the first payment has been made
+but now that struve has been proceeded against we must find a substitute it's a safe old loan and there are no risks the money was due a year ago falk signed and the other two witnessed
+borg carefully folded the bills and gave them to levin who immediately turned to go i'll give you an hour said borg if you are not back with the money by then i'll set the police on your track and satisfied with his morning's work
+the latter staggered to the fire lay down on the floor and curled himself up like a dog for a little while nobody spoke
+but seriously said falk what happens if one can't pay on the day when the money falls due one takes up a fresh loan at the tailors bank for instance replied borg
+the rough riders at guasimas on the day the american troops landed on the coast of cuba the cubans informed general wheeler
+blocking the way to santiago
+nor even a collection of houses it is the meeting place of two trails which join at the apex of a v three miles from the seaport town of siboney and continue merged in a single trail to santiago
+general wheeler guided by the cubans reconnoitred this trail on the twenty third of june and with the position of the enemy fully explained to him returned to siboney and informed general young and colonel wood
+that on the following morning he would attack the spanish position
+and what he was to do when he found him that night no one slept for until two o'clock in the morning troops were still being disembarked in the surf and two ships of war had their searchlights turned on the landing place
+lay the camp of the rough riders and through it cuban officers were riding their half starved ponies and scattering the ashes of the camp fires
+below them was the beach and the roaring surf in which a thousand or so naked men were assisting and impeding the progress shoreward of their comrades in pontoons and shore boats
+which were being hurled at the beach like sleds down a water chute it was one of the most weird and remarkable scenes of the war probably of any war
+or shouting with delight as they plunged into the first bath that had offered in seven days and those in the launches as they were pitched head first at the soil of cuba signalized their arrival by howls of triumph
+on either side rose black overhanging ridges
+of the search lights shaming the quiet moonlight
+the rough riders left camp at five in the morning with the exception of half a dozen officers they were dismounted and carried their blanket rolls haversacks ammunition and carbines
+along the trail to the west which was on high ground and a half mile to a mile distant from the trail along which general young and his regulars were marching
+there was a valley between us and the bushes were so thick on both sides of our trail
+to distinguish the other column as soon as the rough riders had reached the top of the ridge not twenty minutes after they had left camp which was the first opportunity that presented itself colonel wood ordered captain capron
+no flankers were placed for the reason that the dense undergrowth and the tangle of vines that stretched from the branches of the trees to the bushes below made it a physical impossibility
+a cuban officer and lieutenant colonel roosevelt they rode slowly in consideration of the troopers on foot who under a cruelly hot sun carried heavy burdens to those who did not have to walk
+we advanced talking in that fashion and in high spirits and congratulating ourselves in being shut of the transport and on breathing fine mountain air again
+we had been riding in this pleasant fashion for an hour and a half with brief halts for rest when wood stopped the head of the column and rode down the trail to meet capron who was coming back
+there was on one side of it a stout barbed wire fence of five strands by some fortunate accident this fence had been cut just where the head of the column halted on the left of the trail
+it shut off fields of high grass blocked at every fifty yards with great barricades of undergrowth and tangled trees and chapparal on the other side of the trail
+there was not a foot of free ground the bushes seemed absolutely impenetrable as indeed they were later found to be when we halted the men sat
+or fanned the air with their hats they had no knowledge of the situation such as their leaders possessed and their only emotion was one of satisfaction at the chance the halt gave them
+at the ready peering into the bushes we must have waited there while wood reconnoitred for over ten minutes then he returned and began deploying his troops out at either side of the trail
+g troop was ordered to beat into the bushes on the right and k and a were sent over the ridge on which we stood down into the hollow to connect with general young's column on the opposite side of the valley
+f and e troops were deployed in skirmish line on the other side of the wire fence wood had discovered the enemy a few hundred yards from where he expected to find him and so far from being surprised he had time
+acting on a false alarm and that there were no spaniards ahead of us i guessed it was capron's men firing at random to disclose the enemy's position i ran after g troop under captain llewellyn and found
+he would have been lost in the thicket at one moment the underbrush seemed swarming with our men and the next except that you heard the twigs breaking and heavy breathing or a crash as a vine pulled some one down
+through the two hours of fighting that followed although men were falling all around us the spaniards on the ridge were the only ones that many of us saw but the fire against us was not more than eighty yards away
+and so hot that our men could only lie flat in the grass and return it in that position it was at this moment that our men believed they were being
+which they imagined must have swung to the right and having lost its bearings and hearing them advancing through the underbrush had mistaken them for the enemy they accordingly ceased firing and began shouting
+later we examined the relative position of the trail which capron held and the position of g troop and they were at right angles to one another
+capron could not possibly have fired into us at any time unless he had turned directly around in his tracks and aimed up the very trail he had just descended
+they could not see twenty feet on three sides of them but on the right hand lay the valley and across it came the sound of young's brigade who were apparently heavily engaged
+the enemy's fire was so close that the men could not hear the word of command and captain llewellyn and lieutenant greenway unable to get their attention ran among them
+lieutenant colonel roosevelt ran up just then bringing with him lieutenant woodbury kane and ten troopers from k troop roosevelt lay down in the grass beside llewellyn and consulted with him eagerly
+kane was smiling with the charming content of a perfectly happy man when captain llewellyn told him his men were not needed and to rejoin his troop he led his detail over the edge of the hill on which we lay
+but walked erect still smiling roosevelt pointed out that it was impossible to advance farther on account of the network of wild grape vines that masked the spaniards from us and that we must cross the trail
+dragging the wounded with us owing to the low aim of the enemy we were forced to move on our knees and crawl even then men were hit one man near me was shot through the head
+it had been ordered to establish communication with general young's column and while advancing and firing on the ridge captain jenkins sent
+bearer back to climb the hill and wave his red and white banner where young's men could see it
+but he continued waving it until the tenth cavalry on the other side of the valley answered and the two columns were connected by a skirmish line composed of k troop and a under captain bucky o'neill
+g troop meanwhile had hurried over to the left and passing through the opening in the wire fence had spread out into open order it followed down after captain luna's troop and d and e troops
+which were well already in advance
+wood was walking up and down along it leading his horse which he thought might be of use in case he had to move quickly to alter his original formation
+his plan at present was to spread out his men so that they would join young on the right and on the left swing around until they flanked the enemy k and a troops
+it was only by the firing that he could tell where his men lay and that they were always advancing the advances were made in quick desperate rushes sometimes the ground gained
+was no more than a man covers in sliding for a base at other times half a troop would rise and race forward and then burrow deep in the hot grass and fire
+the fire discipline was excellent the prophets of evil of the tampa bay hotel had foretold that the cowboys would shoot as they chose and in the field would act independently of their officers
+handicapped their strength cruelly the enemy was hidden in the shade of the jungle while they for every thicket they gained
+which was as hot as a steam bath and with their flesh and clothing torn by thorns and the sword like blade of the spanish bayonet the glare of the sun was full in their eyes and as fierce as a lime light
+it had been converted into a dressing station and the wounded of g troop were left there in the care of the hospital stewards a tall gaunt young man with a cross on his arm was just coming back up the trail his head was bent
+i knew it could not have been under the same conditions and yet he was certainly associated with another time of excitement and rush and heat then i remembered him as now he had been covered with blood and dirt and perspiration
+but then he wore a canvas jacket and the man he carried on his shoulders was trying to hold him back from a white washed line and i recognized the young doctor with the blood bathing his breeches as bob church
+and that so few of them died is greatly due to this young man who went down into the firing line and pulled them from it and bore them out of danger
+and the college swells of the rough riders
+the walk down that trail presented one of the most grewsome pictures of the war
+had been abandoned all along its length it looked as though a retreating army had fled along it rather than that one troop had fought its way through it to the front
+for the wounded lying along its length were as still as the dead beside them the noise of the loose stones rolling under my feet brought a hospital steward out of the brush and he called after me
+lieutenant thomas is badly wounded in here and we can't move him
+some place where there is shade and a breeze
+large and powerfully built he was shot through the leg just below the trunk and i found him lying on a blanket half naked and covered with blood and with his leg bound in tourniquets made of twigs and pocket handkerchiefs
+it gave one a thrill of awe and wonder to see how these cowboy surgeons with a stick that one would use to light a pipe and with the gaudy kerchiefs they had taken from their necks
+you're taking me to the front aren't you you said you would they've killed my captain do you understand they've killed captain capron the mexicans they've killed my captain
+but he was not satisfied we stumbled over the stones and vines bumping his wounded body against the ground and leaving a black streak in the grass behind us but it seemed to hurt us more than it did him
+grave boyish faces filled with sympathy and concern only fifty feet from him and farther down the trail i passed his captain with his body propped against church's knee
+and with his head fallen on the surgeon's shoulder capron was always a handsome soldierly looking man
+and as i saw him then death had given him a great dignity and nobleness he was only twenty eight years old the age when life has just begun
+with it and that though they might peck and mend at the body he had received his final orders
+strangely mean and tawdry
+a boy was lying with a bullet wound between his eyes his chest was heaving with short hoarse noises which i guessed were due to some muscular action entirely and that he was virtually dead
+scribbled in it in pencil
+we only met two weeks ago at san antonio but he and me had got to be such good friends but there's nothing i can do now
+was well in advance of the farthest point
+and i was running forward feeling confident that i must be close on our men when i saw the body of a sergeant blocking the trail and stretched at full length across it
+it was apparently the body of the first man killed after death the bodies of some men seem to shrink almost instantly within themselves they become limp and shapeless
+with his regiment behind him and facing the enemies of his country the line at this time was divided by the trail into two wings the right wing composed of k and a troops was advancing through the valley
+i borrowed a carbine from a wounded man and joined the remnant of l troop which was close to the trail this troop was then commanded by second lieutenant day who on account of his conduct that morning
+and at the battle of san juan later when he was shot through the arm was promoted to be captain of l troop or as it was later officially designated capron's troop he was walking up and down the line as unconcernedly
+as though we were at target practice and an irish sergeant byrne was assisting him by keeping up a continuous flow of comments and criticisms that showed the keenest enjoyment of the situation
+byrne was the only man i noticed who seemed to regard the fight as in any way humorous
+the conditions were exceptional
+and eighty per cent of them had never before been under fire nor had one man in the regiment ever fired a krag jorgensen carbine until he fired it at a spaniard
+for their arms had been issued to them so soon before sailing that they had only drilled with them without using cartridges to this handicap was also added the nature of the ground
+and the fact that our men could not see their opponents their own men fell or rolled over on every side shot down by an invisible enemy with no one upon whom they could retaliate
+with no sign that the attack might not go on indefinitely yet they never once took a step backward but advanced grimly cleaning a bush or thicket of its occupants before charging it
+and securing its cover for themselves and answering each volley with one that sounded like an echo of the first the men were panting for breath the sweat ran so readily into their eyes that they could not see the sights of their guns
+their limbs unused to such exertion after seven days of cramped idleness on the troop ship trembled with weakness and the sun blinded
+but time after time they rose and staggered forward through the high grass
+and passing through a succession of convulsions he nevertheless in his brief moments of comparative peace bore himself with the utmost calm
+a soldier to duty that he continued writing his account of the fight
+as an excuse to go to leave the firing line i have watched other fights where the men engaged were quite willing to unselfishly bear the wounded from the zone of danger
+for aguardiente and was now occupied in force by the enemy lieutenant colonel roosevelt on the far left was moving up his men with the intention of taking this house on the flank
+wood who was all over the line had the same objective point in his mind the troop commanders had a general idea that the distillery was the key to the enemy's position and were all working in that direction
+it was extremely difficult for wood and roosevelt to communicate with the captains and after the first general orders had been given them they relied upon the latter's intelligence to pull them through
+i do not suppose wood out of the five hundred engaged saw more than thirty of his men
+so excellent was the intelligence of the officers and so ready the spirit of the men that they kept an almost perfect alignment as was shown when the final order came to charge in the open fields
+some of the men who were twice day's age begged him to let them take the enemy's impromptu fort on the run but he answered them tolerantly like spoiled children and held them down until there was a lull in the enemy's fire
+and ran for the cover they were directed to take like men trying to get out of the rain and fell panting on their faces while the western trappers and hunters slipped and wriggled through the grass like indians
+dodging from tree trunk to tree trunk and from one bush to another they fell into line at the same time with the others but while doing so they had not once exposed themselves
+some of the escapes were little short of miraculous the man on my right champneys marshall of washington had one bullet pass through his sleeve and another pass through his shirt where it was pulled close to his spine
+and roosevelt was so close to one bullet when it struck a tree that it filled his eyes and ears with tiny splinters major brodie and lieutenant thomas were both wounded within a few feet of colonel wood
+at siboney rowland sat still for a short time
+with the rest of the wounded but two days later he appeared in camp
+a distance of six miles and uphill all the way carrying his carbine canteen and cartridge belt i thought you were in hospital wood said i was rowland answered sheepishly
+when shot through the body asked to be propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge belt beside him and the last his troop saw of him he was seated alone grimly firing over their heads
+in the direction of the enemy early in the fight i came upon church attending to a young cowboy who was shot through the chest
+the entrance to his wound was so small that church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to stop the flow of blood i'm afraid i'll have to make this hole larger he said to the boy or you'll bleed to death
+can you stand being carried do you think you can carry me the trooper asked yes well exclaimed the boy admiringly you certainly know your business
+gave him his choice of riding down to siboney
+or of being carried a day later on a litter
+you can start at once but if you wait until to morrow when i can spare the men you can be carried all the way
+and into a huge mexican saddle he stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup and his untouched one into the other and gathered up the reins does it pain you can you stand it
+the firing from the enemy sounded less near and the bullets passed much higher roosevelt who had picked up a carbine and was firing to give the direction to the others determined upon a charge
+wood at the other end of the line decided at the same time upon the same manoeuvre it was called wood's bluff afterward for he had nothing to back it with
+while to the enemy it looked as though his whole force was but the skirmish line in advance of a regiment the spaniards naturally could not believe that this thin line which suddenly broke out of the bushes
+and from behind trees and came cheering out into the hot sunlight was the entire fighting force against it they supposed the regiment was coming close on its heels
+and as spanish troops hate being rushed as a cat hates water they fired a few parting volleys and broke and ran the cheering had the same invigorating effect on our own side as a cold shower
+it was what first told half the men where the other half were and it made every individual man feel better as we knew it was only a bluff the first cheer was wavering
+when we fired a volley one of the prisoners said later instead of falling back they came forward that is not the way to fight to come closer at every volley
+where he announced he had been attacked by the entire american army one of the residents of santiago asked one of the soldiers if those americans fought well well he replied
+storming a ridge equally worthy of praise but it has seemed better not to try and tell of anything i did not see but to limit myself to the work of the rough riders to whom after all the victory was due
+as it was owing to colonel wood's charge which took the spaniards in flank that general wheeler and general young were able to advance
+over four times their own number intrenched behind rifle pits and bushes in a mountain pass in spite of the smokeless powder used by the spaniards
+the rough riders routed them out of it and drove them back from three different barricades until they made their last stand in the ruined distillery whence they finally drove them by assault
+the eager spirit in which this was accomplished is best described in the spanish soldier's answer to the inquiring civilian they tried to catch us with their hands
+the chief street of mowbray called castle street after the ruins of the old baronial stronghold in its neighbourhood was as significant of the present civilization of this community as the haughty keep had been of its ancient dependence
+the dimensions of castle street were not unworthy of the metropolis it traversed a great portion of the town and was proportionately wide its broad pavements and its blazing gas lights indicated its modern order and prosperity
+while on each side of the street rose huge warehouses not as beautiful as the palaces of venice but in their way not less remarkable magnificent shops and here and there though rarely some ancient factory built among the fields
+in the infancy of mowbray by some mill owner not sufficiently prophetic of the future or sufficiently confident in the energy and enterprise of his fellow citizens to foresee that the scene of his labours
+would be the future eye sore of a flourishing posterity pursuing their course along castle street for about a quarter of a mile gerard and stephen turned down a street which intersected it
+and so on through a variety of ways and winding lanes till they arrived at an open portion of the town a district where streets and squares and even rows disappeared and where the tall chimneys and bulky barrack looking buildings
+that rose in all directions clustering yet isolated announced that they were in the principal scene of the industry of mowbray crossing this open ground they gained a suburb but one of a very different description
+to that in which was situate the convent where they had parted with sybil this one was populous noisy and lighted it was saturday night the streets were thronged an infinite population kept swarming to and fro
+by narrow archways like the entrance of hives so low that you were obliged to stoop for admission while ascending to these same streets from their dank and dismal dwellings by narrow flights of steps
+the subterraneous nation of the cellars poured forth to enjoy the coolness of the summer night and market for the day of rest the bright and lively shops were crowded and groups of purchasers were gathered round the stalls
+still offered many temptations to many who could not purchase and so it is widow said a little pale man wistfully come come it's getting late and your wife's ill you're a good soul
+or the mayor of mowbray at least wages said the man i wish you may get em those villains shuffle and screw have sarved me with another bate ticket and a pretty figure too
+oh the carnal monsters exclaimed the widow if their day don't come the bloody minded knaves and for small cops too small cops be hanged am i the man to send up a bad bottomed cop widow carey
+you sent up for snicks i have known you man and boy john hill these twenty summers and never heard a word against you till you got into shuffle and screw's mill oh they are a bad yarn john
+they do us all widow they pretends to give the same wages as the rest and works it out in fines you can't come and you can't go but there's a fine you're never paid wages but there's a bate ticket
+i've heard they keep their whole establishment on factory fines soul alive but those shuffle and screw are rotten snickey bad yarns said mistress carey
+weal indeed you look very like a soul as feeds on weal continued missus carey in an under tone as her declining customer moved away well it gets late said the widow
+and if you like to take this scrag end home to your wife neighbour hill we can talk of the rest next saturday and what's your will sir said the widow with a stern expression to a youth who now stopped at her stall
+he was about sixteen with a lithe figure and a handsome faded impudent face his long loose white trousers gave him height he had no waistcoat but a pink silk handkerchief was twisted carelessly round his neck
+a high crowned dark brown hat which relieved his complexion and heightened the effect of his mischievous blue eye well you need not be so fierce mother carey said the youth with an affected air of deprecation
+don't mother me said the jolly widow with a kindling eye go to your own mother who is dying in a back cellar without a winder while you've got lodgings in a two pair dying she's only drunk said the youth
+what makes her drink but toil working from five o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night and for the like of such as you that's a good one said the youth i should like to know what my mother ever did for me but give me treacle and laudanum when i was a babby
+to stop my tongue and fill my stomach by the token of which as my gal says she stunted the growth of the prettiest figure in all mowbray and here the youth drew himself up and thrust his hands in the side pockets of his pea jacket well
+i never said missus carey no i never heard a thing like that what not when you cut up the jackass and sold it for veal cutlets mother hold your tongue mister imperence said the widow it's very well known you're no christian and who'll believe what you say
+it's very well known that i'm a man what pays his way said the boy and don't keep a huckster's stall to sell carrion by star light but live in a two pair if you please and has a wife and family or as good
+said a good humoured voice it came from one of two factory girls who were passing her stall and stopped they were gaily dressed a light handkerchief tied under the chin their hair scrupulously arranged they wore coral neck laces and earrings of gold
+she added in a lower tone well i have left mister trafford's mill said the girl that's a bad job said missus carey for those traffords are kind to their people
+so it is said the girl but then it was so dull i can't stand a country life missus carey i must have company well i do love a bit of gossip myself said missus carey with great frankness
+and then i'm no scholar said the girl and never could take to learning and those traffords had so many schools learning is better than house and land said missus carey though i'm no scholar myself but then in my time things was different
+but young persons yes said mick i don't think i could get through the day if it wurno for our institute and what's that asked missus carey with a sneer the shoddy court literary and scientific to be sure said mick
+we have got fifty members and take in three london papers one northern star and two moral worlds and where are you now child continued the widow to the girl
+if you will take a dish of tea with us to morrow we expect some friends i take it kindly said missus carey and so you keep house together all the children keep house in these days times is changed indeed
+and we shall be happy to see you mick and julia if you are not engaged continued the girl and she looked at her friend a pretty demure girl who immediately said but in a somewhat faultering tone oh that we shall
+well we had no thoughts but i said to harriet as it is a fine night let us walk about as long as we can and then to morrow we will lie in bed till afternoon
+but at this season of the year i must have life the moment i came out i bathed in the river and then went home and dressed he added in a satisfied tone and now i am going to the temple i'll tell you what julia has been pricked to day with a shuttle
+i'll stand treat and take you and your friend to the temple well that's delight said caroline there's no one does the handsome thing like you dandy mick and i always say so oh i love the temple tis so genteel
+i was speaking of it to harriet last night
+i proposed to go with her but two girls alone you understand me one does not like to be seen in these places as if one kept no company very true said mick and now we'll be off good night widow
+the winter which preceded the entrance of the united states into the war was socially an extraordinary one it was marked by an almost feverish gayety as though having apparently determined to pursue a policy dictated purely by self interest
+mills and factories took on new life labor was scarce and high it was a period of extravagance rather than pleasure people played that they might not think washington convinced that the nation would ultimately be involved
+kept its secret well and continued to preach a neutrality it could not enforce war was to most of the nation a great dramatic spectacle presented to them at breakfast and in the afternoon editions
+for the red cross and kindred activities but although the war was in the nation's mind it was not yet in its soul life went on much as before an abiding faith in the allies was the foundation stone of its complacency
+the great six months battle of the somme with its million casualties was resulting favorably on the east the russians had made some gains there were wagers that the germans would be done in the spring
+but again washington knew that the british and french losses at the somme had been frightful that the amount of lost territory regained was negligible as against the territory still held that the food problem in the british islands was acute
+that the submarine sinkings were colossal our peace was at a fearful cost and on the edge of this volcano america played when graham spencer left the mill that tuesday afternoon it was to visit marion hayden
+he was rather bored now at the prospect he would have preferred going to the club to play billiards which was his custom of a late afternoon he drove rather more slowly than was his custom and so missed marion's invitation to get there before the crowd
+three cars before the house showed that she already had callers and indeed when the parlor maid opened the door a burst of laughter greeted him the hayden house was a general rendezvous there were usually by seven o'clock whiskey and soda glasses
+and tea cups on most of the furniture and half smoked cigarets on everything that would hold them including the piano marion herself met him in the hall and led him past the drawing room door
+i kept the library as long as i could we can sit on the stairs if you like which they proceeded to do quite amiably from various open doors came subdued voices the air was pungent with tobacco smoke
+permeated with a faint scent of late afternoon highballs tommy marion called when she had settled herself yes from a distance did you leave your cigaret on the piano
+no toots dear but i can easily mother marion explained
+well do you remember half the pretty things you told me last night not exactly but i meant them he looked up at her admiringly he was only a year from college and he had been rather arbitrarily limited to the debutantes
+since the night before he had been rankling under a sense of youth was i pretty awful last night he asked you were very interesting and i imagine rather indiscreet
+about the new war contracts oh business
+and i like big figures poor people always do has it really gone through i mean those things do slip up sometimes don't they it's gone through all right signed sealed and delivered
+encouraged by her interest he elaborated on the new work he even developed an enthusiasm for it to his own surprise and the girl listened intently leaning forward so that her arm brushed his shoulder
+her eyes slightly narrowed watched him closely she knew every move of the game she was determining to play marion hayden at twenty five knew already what her little world had not yet realized that such beauty as she had had
+was the beauty of youth only and that that was going late hours golf perhaps a little more champagne than was necessary at dinners and the mornings found her almost plain and too
+she had the far vision of the calculating mind she knew that if the country entered the war every eligible man she knew would immediately volunteer at twenty five she already noticed a change in the personnel of her followers
+were now sending flowers to the debutantes and cutting in on the younger men at balls her house was still a rendezvous but it was for couples like the ones who had preempted the drawing room the library and the music room that afternoon
+they met there smoked her cigarets made love in a corner occasionally became engaged but she was of the game no longer in it men still came to see her a growing percentage of them married
+they brought or sent her tribute flowers candy and cigarets
+but more and more her dinner invitations were from the older crowd like natalie spencer's stupid party the night before so she watched graham and listened he was a nice boy and a handsome one
+also he promised to be sole heir to a great business if the war only lasted long enough imagine your knowing all those things she said admiringly you're a partner aren't you he flushed slightly
+not yet but of course i shall be when you really get going i wonder if you will take me round and show me how shells are made i'm the most ignorant person you ever knew i'll be awfully glad to
+we'll go in and stir up some of the lovers she suggested and if tommy hale hasn't burned up the piano we can dance a bit you dance divinely you know it was after seven when he reached home he felt every inch a man
+he held himself very straight as he entered the house and the boyish grin with which he customarily greeted the butler had given place to a dignified nod natalie was in her dressing room at his knock she told the maid to admit him
+his new found maturity seemed to be slipping from him somehow here at home they always managed to make him feel like a small boy honestly mother i'd rather go to father and tell him about it
+she ignored his protest as she always ignored protests against her own methods of handling matters i'm accustomed to it was her sole reply but her resigned voice brought her as it always had
+the ready tribute of the boy's sympathy sit down graham i want to talk to you he sat down still uneasily fingering the roll of bills
+when at a sound in clayton's room he stuck the money hastily into his pocket have you noticed a change in your father since he came back her tone was so ominous that he started he's not sick is he
+she was holding out both hands to him piteously you wouldn't go would you i might have to go he evaded you wouldn't graham you're all i have all i have left to live for you wouldn't need to go it's ridiculous you're needed here
+your father needs you he needs me the hell of a lot the boy muttered but he went over and stooping down kissed her trembling face don't worry about me he said lightly i don't think we've got spine enough to get into the mix up anyhow
+and if we have you won't go promise me you won't go when he hesitated she resorted to her old methods with both clayton and the boy she was doing all she could to make them happy she made no demands none
+but when she asked for something that meant more than life to her it was refused of course she had gone through all sorts of humiliation to get him that money and this was the gratitude she received graham listened
+she was a really pathetic figure crouched in her low chair and shaken with terror she must have rather a bad time there were so many things she dared not take to his father she brought them to him instead her small grievances
+and she had helped him out of a hole just now all right i promise he said at last but you're worrying yourself for nothing mother she was quite content then cheered at once consulted the jewelled watch on her dressing table
+morley paused as he recognised egremont then advancing to gerard followed by his companion he said this is mister hatton of whom we were speaking last night and who claims to be an ancient acquaintance of yours
+perhaps i should rather say of your poor dear father said hatton scanning gerard with his clear blue eye and then he added he was of great service to me in my youth and one is not apt to forget such things
+and i venture to believe my prayers and vigils have been accepted
+and as he was speaking these words he turned and addressed them to sybil she beheld him with no little interest this mysterious name that had sounded so often in her young ears
+and was associated with so many strange and high hopes and some dark blending of doubt and apprehension and discordant thoughts hatton in his appearance realised little of the fancies
+that appearance was prepossessing a frank and even benevolent expression played upon his intelligent and handsome countenance his once rich brown hair still long though very thin
+detract from the favourable effect that he always at once produced
+is the privilege of the people of whom i am one said hatton bowing well recollecting that he was addressing the daughter of a chartist delegate but is your labour their labour said sybil
+is yours that life of uncomplaining toil wherein there is so much of beauty and of goodness that by the fine maxim of our church it is held to include the force and efficacy of prayer
+then hesitating while a soft expression came over her countenance she held forth her hand which he retained for a moment and withdrew i was with him more than an hour continued morley at first he recollected nothing
+he doubtless had them now as he never destroyed papers would order a search to be made for them and so on i was about to withdraw when he asked me carelessly a question about your father what he was doing and whether he were married and had children
+this led to a very long conversation in which he suddenly seemed to take great interest at first he talked of writing to see your father and i offered that gerard should call upon him
+he took down your direction in order that he might write to your father and give him an appointment when observing that it was westminster he said that his carriage was ordered to go to the house of lords in a quarter of an hour and that if not inconvenient to me
+he would propose that i should at once accompany him i thought whatever might be the result it must be a satisfaction to gerard at last to see this man of whom he has talked and thought so much and so we are here
+you did well good stephen as you always do said sybil with a musing and abstracted air no one has so much forethought and so much energy as you he threw a glance at her and immediately withdrew it their eyes had met
+hers were kind and calm and this egremont said morley rather hurriedly and abruptly and looking on the ground how came he here when we discovered him yesterday your father and myself agreed that we should not mention to you the
+the mystification of which we had been dupes and you did wrong said sybil there is no wisdom like frankness had you told me he would not have been here today he met and addressed me and i only recognised an acquaintance
+had he not accompanied me to this door and met my father which precipitated an explanation on his part which he found had not been given by others i might have remained in an ignorance which hereafter might have produced inconvenience
+you are right said morley looking at her rather keenly we have all of us opened ourselves too unreservedly before this aristocrat i should hope that none of us have said to him a word that we wish to be forgotten said sybil
+he chose to wear a disguise and can hardly quarrel with the frankness with which we spoke of his order or his family and for the rest he has not been injured from learning something of the feelings of the people by living among them
+and yet if anything were to happen to morrow said morley rest assured this man has his eye on us he can walk into the government offices like themselves and tell his tale for though one of the pseudo opposition the moment the people move
+the factions become united sybil turned and looked at him and then said and what could happen to morrow that we should care for the government being acquainted with it or us do not they know everything do not you meet in their very sight
+you pursue an avowed and legal aim by legal means do you not what then is there to fear and why should anything happen that should make us apprehensive all is very well at this moment said morley and all may continue well
+but popular assemblies breed turbulent spirits sybil your father takes a leading part he is a great orator and is in his element in this clamorous and fiery life it does not much suit me i am a man of the closet
+morley shrugged his shoulders and then said an easy question questions are always easy the fact is in active life one cannot afford to refine i could have wished the movement to have taken a different shape
+lawfully meeting in open day and their delegates from the whole realm declaring their grievances in language which would not disgrace the conquering race which has in vain endeavoured to degrade them
+there can be other than one and the same object a thousand said morley we have already as many parties as in saint stephen's itself you terrify me said sybil i knew we had fearful odds to combat against
+my visit to this city alone has taught me how strong are our enemies but i believed that we had on our side god and truth they know neither of them in the national convention said morley
+the factions and the failures of our oppressors at this moment gerard and hatton who were sitting in the remote part of the room rose together and advanced forward and this movement interrupted the conversation of sybil and morley
+saying in a voice which could only be heard by the individual whom he addressed you understand i have not the slightest doubt myself of your moral right i believe on every principle of justice that mowbray castle is as much yours
+as the house that is built by the tenant on the lord's land but can we prove it we never had the legal evidence you are in error in supposing that these papers were of any vital consequence mere memoranda
+very useful no doubt i hope i shall find them but of no validity if money were the only difficulty trust me it should not be wanting i owe much to the memory of your father my good gerard i would fain serve you and your daughter
+i'll not tell you what i would do for you my good gerard you would think me foolish but i am alone in the world and seeing you again and talking of old times i really am scarcely fit for business
+the war message concluded with still another defense of the fight for political liberty to such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes everything that we are and everything that we have with the pride of those who know
+we were face to face with the question which we had considered at the convention the previous month when war was rumored as to what position we as an organization should take in this situation the atmosphere of that convention had been dramatic in the extreme
+most of the delegates assembled had been approached either before going to washington or upon arriving and urged to use their influence to persuade the organization to abandon its work for the freedom of women and turn its activities into war channels
+although war was then only rumored the hysterical attitude was already prevalent women were asked to furl their banners and give up their half century struggle for democracy to forget the liberty that was most precious to their hearts
+the president will turn this imperialistic war into a crusade for democracy lay aside your own fight and help us crush germany and you will find yourselves rewarded with a vote out of the nation's gratitude were some of the appeals made to our women by government officials high and low
+and by the rank and file of men and women never in history did a band of women stand together with more sanity and greater solidarity than did these one thousand delegates representing thousands more throughout the states as our official organ the suffragist
+pointed out editorially in its issue of april twenty first nineteen seventeen
+we were united on no other subject some would offer passive resistance to the war others would become devoted followers of a vigorous military policy between these every shade of opinion was represented each was loyal to the ideas which she held for her country
+had nothing to do it was concerned only with the effort to obtain for women the opportunity to give effective expression through political power to their ideals whatever they might be
+the thousand delegates present at the convention though differing widely on the duty of the individual in war were unanimous in voting that in the event of war the national woman's party as an organization should continue to work for political liberty for women and for that alone
+believing as the convention stated in its resolutions that in so doing the organization serves the highest interest of the country
+they were also unanimous in the opinion that all service which individuals wished to give to war or peace should be given through groups organized for such purposes
+for one purpose only to secure an amendment to the united states constitution enfranchising women we declared officially through our organ that this held as the policy of the woman's party whatever turn public events may take
+and announced that no subjects would be considered by them unless the president urged them as war measures our task was from that time on to make national suffrage a war measure we at once urged upon the administration the wisdom of accepting this proposed reform as a war measure
+and pointed out the difficulty of waging a war for democracy abroad while democracy was denied at home but the government was not willing to profit by the experience of its allies in extending suffrage to women without first offering a terrible and brutal resistance
+was most perplexing here were we citizens without power and recognition with the only weapons to which a powerless class which does not take up arms can resort we could not and would not fight with men's weapons
+compare the methods women adopted to those men use in the pursuit of democracy
+bayonets machine guns poison gas deadly grenades liquid fire bombs armored tanks pistols barbed wire entanglements submarines mines every known scientific device with which to annihilate the enemy
+what did we do we continued to fight with our simple peaceful almost quaint device a banner a little more fiery perhaps pertinent to the latest political controversy but still only a banner inscribed with militant truth
+just as our political strategy had been to oppose at elections the party in power which had failed to use its power to free women so now our military strategy was based on the military doctrine of concentrating all one's forces on the enemy's weakest point
+and the denial of democracy at home this was the untenable position of president wilson and the democratic administration from which we must force them to retreat we could force such a retreat when we had exposed to the world this weakest point
+just as the bluff of a democratic crusade must be called so must the knight leader of the crusade be exposed to the critical eyes of the world
+here was the champion of their democratic aspirations here was a kind of universal moses expected to lead all peoples out of bondage no matter what the bondage no matter of how long standing
+it was an advantage to us in that it made our attack more dramatic one supposed to be impeccable was more vulnerable it was a disadvantage to have to overcome this universal trust and world wide popularity
+but this conflict of wits and brains against power only enhanced our ingenuity on the day the english mission headed by mister balfour and the french mission headed by m viviani visited the white house we took these inscriptions to the picket line
+in our capacity to embarrass mister wilson in his administration lay our only hope of success
+we intended to know why if democracy were so precious as to demand the nation's blood and treasure for its achievement abroad its execution at home was so undesirable meanwhile
+i tell you solemnly ladies and gentlemen we cannot any longer postpone justice in these united states
+and if he doesn't listen to my advice i am going to make it as unpleasant as i can president wilson
+some rumblings of political action began to be heard the democratic majority had appointed a senate committee on woman suffrage whose members were overwhelmingly for federal action the chairman senator andreas jones of new mexico
+promised an early report to the senate there were scores of gains in congress representatives and senators were tumbling over each other to introduce similar suffrage resolutions we actually had difficulty in choosing the man whose name should stamp our measure
+in addition to this plank they adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of democracy at home
+and instructing the chairman of the convention to request a committee consisting of representatives of all liberal groups
+they appointed a committee from the convention to carry these resolutions to the president the committee included mister j a h hopkins of the progressive party as chairman
+mister john spargo of the socialist party mister virgil hinshaw chairman of the executive committee of the prohibition party and miss mabel vernon secretary of the national woman's party
+the president was deeply moved indeed almost to the point of tears when miss mabel vernon said mister president the feelings of many women in this country are best expressed by your own words in your war message to congress
+we were not primarily interested in the amplification of congressional machinery unless this amplification was to be followed by the passage of the amendment the president could as easily have written the senate committee on suffrage or the judiciary committee of the house
+advising an immediate report on the suffrage resolution as have asked for the creation of another committee to report on the subject he made no mention of his state by state conviction however as he had in previous interviews
+and the committee of progressives understood him to have at least tacitly accepted federal action the house judiciary committee continued to refuse to act and the house rules committee steadily refused to create a suffrage committee
+hoping to win back to the fold the wandering progressives who had thus demonstrated their allegiance to suffrage and seeing an opportunity to embarrass the administration the republicans began to interest themselves in action on the amendment
+the authorization of an expenditure of ten thousand dollars for the erection of a monument to a dead president as a legitimate war measure it was clear from the partisan attitude of those who took part in the debate
+that we were advancing to that position where we were as good political material to be contested over by opposing political groups as was a monument to a dead president and if the democrats could defend such an issue as a war measure
+the administration was aroused it did not know how far the republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action so on the day of this flurry in the house the snail like rules committee
+and by a vote of six to five decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a woman suffrage committee in the house after all pending war measures have been disposed of before the meeting
+the pickets continued their vigil and the motion carried still uncertain as to the purposes of the republicans the democrats were moved to further action
+meeting in washington a few days later voted four to nine to officially urge upon the president that he call the two houses of congress together and recommend the immediate submission of the susan b anthony amendment this action which in effect reversed the plank in the democratic platform
+evidently aroused protests from powerful quarters also the republicans quickly subsided when they saw the democrats making an advance and so the democratic executive committee began to spread abroad the news that its act was not really official
+but merely reflected the personal conviction of the members present it extracted the official flavor and so of course no action followed in congress and so it went like a great game of chess
+the fact was that the pickets had moved the democrats a step
+behind this matching of political wits by the two parties stood the faithful pickets compelling them both to act simultaneously with these moves and counter moves in political circles the people in all sections of this vast country began to speak their minds
+meetings were springing up everywhere at which resolutions were passed backing up the picket line and urging the president and congress to act even the south the administration's stronghold sent fiery telegrams demanding action
+alabama south carolina texas maryland mississippi as well as the west middle west new england and the east the stream was endless every time a new piece of legislation was passed the war tax bill
+food conservation or what not women from unex pected quarters sent to the government their protest against the passage of measures so vital to women without women's consent coupled with an appeal for the liberation of women
+club women college women federations of labor various kinds of organizations sent protests to the administration leaders the picket line approaching its sixth month of duty had aroused the country to an unprecedented interest in suf frage
+it had rallied widespread public support to the amend ment as a war measure and had itself become almost univer sally accepted if not universally approved and in the midst of picketing ands in spite of all the prophecies and fears that picketing would set back the cause
+within one month michigan nebraska and rhode island granted presidential suffrage to women the leaders were busy marshaling their forces behind the president's war program which included the controversial conscription and espionage bills then pending
+and did not relish having our question so vivid in the public mind
+they had to face a possible charge of inconsistency insincerity or bad faith the freedom of ireland for example was not in the program
+the manifestations of popular approval of suffrage the constant stream of protests to the administration against its delay nationally and the shame of having women begging at its gates could result in only one of two things
+the administration had little choice it must yield to this pressure from the people or it must suppress the agitation which was causing such interest it must pass the amendment or remove the troublesome pickets it decided to remove the pickets
+the first arrests the administration chose suppression they resorted to force in an attempt to end picketing it was a policy doomed to failure as certainly as all resorts to force to kill agitation have failed ultimately
+this marked the beginning of the adoption by the administration of tactics from which they could never extricate themselves with honor unfortunately for them they were entering upon this policy toward women which savored of czarist practices
+at the very moment they were congratulating the russians upon their liberation from the oppression of a czar this fact supplied us with a fresh angle of attack president wilson sent a mission to russia to add america's appeal to that of the other allies to keep that impoverished country in the war
+such was our democratic zeal to persuade russia to continue the war and to convince her people of its democratic purposes and of the democratic quality of america
+this occasion offered us the opportunity again to expose the administration's weakness in claiming complete political democracy while women were still denied their political freedom
+as the car carrying the envoys passed swiftly through the gates of the white house there stood on the picket line two silent sentinels miss lucy burns of new york and missus lawrence lewis of philadelphia both members of the national executive committee
+with a great lettered banner which read to the russian envoys president wilson and envoy root are deceiving russia when they say we are a democracy help us win the world war so that democracy may survive we the women of america
+twenty million ameri can women are denied the right to vote presi dent wilson is the chief opponent of their na tional enfranchisement help us make this nation really free tell our government it must liberate its people before it can claim free russia as an ally
+rumors that the suffragists would make a special demonstration before the russian mission had brought a great crowd to the far gate of the white house a crowd composed almost entirely of men
+like all crowds this crowd had its share of hoodlums and roughs who tried to interfere with the women's order of the day there was a flurry of excitement over this defiant message of truth but nothing that could not with the utmost ease have been settled by one policeman
+there was the criticism in the press and on the lips of men that we were embarrassing our government before the eyes of foreign visitors in answering the criticism miss paul publicly stated our position thus
+can be changed in the twinkling of an eye the responsibility for our protest is therefore with the administration and not with the women of america if the lack of democracy at home weakens the administration
+in its fight for democracy three thousand miles away this was too dreadful a flurry at the gates of the chief of the nation at such a time would never do our allies in the crusade for democracy must not know that we had a day by day unrest at home
+what a picture common decency told the more humane leaders that this would never do i daresay political wisdom crept into the reasoning of others closing the woman's party headquarters was discussed perhaps a raid and all for what
+because women were holding banners asking for the precious principle at home that men were supposed to be dying for abroad finally a decision was reached embodying the combined wisdom of all the various conferees
+the chief of police major pullman was detailed to request us to stop picketing and to tell us that if we continued to picket we would be arrested we have picketed for six months without interference said miss paul has the law been changed
+no was the reply but you must stop it
+the following day miss lucy burns and miss katherine morey of boston carried to the white house gates we shall fight for the things we have always held nearest our hearts for democracy for the right of those who submit to authority
+to have a voice in their own government
+news had spread through the city that the pickets were to be arrested a moderately large crowd had gathered to see the fun one has only to come into conflict with prevailing authority whether rightly or wrongly to find friendly hosts vanishing with lightning speed
+to know that we were no longer wanted at the gates of the white house and that the police were no longer our friends was enough for the mob mind some members of the crowd made sport of the women others hurled cheap and childish epithets at them small boys were allowed to capture souvenirs
+as trophies of the sport thinking they had been mistaken in believing the pickets were to be arrested and having grown weary of their strenuous sport the crowd moved on its way two solitary figures remained standing on the sidewalk flanked by the vast pennsylvania avenue
+upon knowing the charge against them major pullman and his entire staff were utterly at a loss to know what to answer the administration had looked ahead only as far as threatening arrest they doubtless thought this was all they would have to do
+and never brought to trial the following day june twenty third more arrests were made two women at the white house two at the capitol all carried banners with the same words of the president there was no hesitation this time they were promptly arrested for obstructing the traffic
+they too were dismissed and their cases never tried
+when however women continued to picket in the face of arrest the administration quickened its advance into the venture of suppression it decided to bring the offenders to trial on june twenty sixth
+to pay a fine would be an admission of guilt we are innocent the six women who were privileged to serve the first terms of imprisonment for suffrage in this country were miss katherine morey of massachusetts missus annie arneil
+and miss mabel vernon of delaware miss lavinia dock of pennsylvania miss maud
+independence day july fourth nineteen seventeen is the occasion for two demonstrations in the name of liberty champ clark late democratic speaker of the house is declaiming to a cheering crowd behind the white house
+governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed in front of the white house thirteen silent sentinels with banners bearing the same words are arrested it would have been exceedingly droll if it had not been so tragic
+champ clark and his throng were not molested the women with practically a deserted street were arrested and served jail terms for obstructing traffic the trial of this group was delayed to give the jail authorities time to vacate and tidy up
+as one prisoner confided to miss joy young it developed that orders had been received at the jail immediately after the arrests and before the trial to make ready for the suffragettes what did it matter that their case had not yet been heard
+and was not the chief of police of the district of columbia a direct appointee of these same commissioners and was not the jail warden who made life for the women so unbearable in prison also a direct appointee of the commissioners
+it was all a merry little ring and its cavalier attitude toward the law toward justice and above all toward women was of no importance the world was on fire with a grand blaze this tiny flame would scarcely be visible
+chairman furnished without charge to all newspapers post offices government officials and agencies of a public character for the dissemination of official news of the united states government washington july third nineteen seventeen
+and reporters not to encourage us in our peculiar conduct by printing defies to the president of the united states even when flaunted on a pretty little purple and gold banner and exhorts the public to control its thrills
+the official bulletin concludes with it is a fact that there remains in america one man who has known exactly the right attitude to take and maintain toward the pickets
+a polite bow and for the rest a complete ignoring of their existence he happens to be the man around whom the little whirlwind
+and finally with an admonition that the rest of the country
+august riots imprisoning women had met with considerable public disapproval and attendant political embarrassment to the administration that the presidential pardon would end this embarrassment was doubtless the hope of the administration
+the pickets however returned to their posts in steadily increasing numbers their presence at the gates was desired by the administration no more now than it had been before the arrests and imprisonments but they had found no way to rid themselves of the pickets
+and as another month of picketing drew to an end the administration ventured to try other ways to stop it and with it the consequent embarrassment their methods became physically more brutal and politically more stupid their conduct
+became lawless in the extreme meanwhile the president had drafted the young men of america in their millions to die on foreign soil for foreign democracy he had issued a special appeal to women to give their work their treasure and their sons to this enterprise
+at the same time his now gigantic figure stood obstinately across the path to our main objective it was our daily task to keep vividly in his mind that objective it was our responsibility to compel decisive action from him
+twenty million american women are not self governed take the beam out of your own eye we did not expect public sympathy at this point we knew that not even the members of congress who had occasionally in debate but more frequently in their cloak rooms
+president and missus wilson passed through the gates on their way to a military review at fort myer the president saw american women being attacked while the police refused them protection not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd
+such inaction is always a signal for more violence on the part of rowdies as the throng moved to and fro between the white house and our headquarters immediately opposite so many banners were destroyed that finally miss lucy burns miss virginia arnold
+and miss elizabeth stuyvesant took those remaining to the second and third floor balconies of our building and hung them out at this point there was not a picket left on the street the crowd was clearly obstructing the traffic but no attempt was made to move them back or to protect the women
+climbed up to the second floor balcony mounted the iron railing and tore down all banners and the american flag one sailor administered a severe blow in the face with his clenched fist upon miss georgina sturgis of washington why did you do that she demanded
+and still no attempt by the police to quell the riot the climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired through one of the heavy glass windows of the second floor embedding itself in the ceiling the bullet grazed past the head of missus ella morton dean of montana
+captain flather of the first precinct with two detectives later examined the holes and declared they had been made by a thirty eight caliber revolver
+but the police looked on while all the banners were destroyed a few paces from headquarters more banners went out purple white and gold ones they too were destroyed before they reached the white house
+this entire spectacle was enacted on august fourteenth within a stone's throw of the white house miss paul summed up the situation when she said the situation now existing in washington exists because president wilson permits it
+asking questions making brief testimonials from the floor with almost evangelical fervor improvised collection baskets were piled high with bills women volunteered for picket duty and certain imprisonment
+and the following day a delegation left for washington i cite this experience of mine because it was typical every one who went through the country telling the story had similar experiences at this time indignation was swift and hot
+our mass meetings everywhere became meetings of protest during the entire campaign and resolutions of protest which always went immediately by wire from such meetings to the president his cabinet and to his leaders in congress of course created increasing
+uneasiness in democratic circles on august fifteenth the pickets again attempted to take their posts on the line on this day one lettered banner and fifty purple white and gold flags were destroyed by a mob led by sailors in uniform
+by a sailor who took her flag and then darted off into the crowd miss elizabeth stuyvesant was struck by a soldier in uniform and her blouse torn from her body miss maud jamison of virginia was knocked down and dragged along the sidewalk
+there were a few stars dying out in the dark west the atmosphere was clear and when the sun rose i knew he would turn the sable pall overhead into blueness the hull lay very deep
+i had at one time during the black hours struck into a mournful calculation and reckoned that the brig would float some two or three hours after sunrise
+and a deep of rolling sapphire i started with sudden terror to observe how close the covering board sat upon the water and how the head of every swell ran past as high as the bulwark rail
+yet for a few moments i stood contemplating the scene of ruin it was visible now to its most trifling detail the foremast was gone smooth off at the deck it lay over the starboard bow
+one extraordinary stroke i quickly detected the jolly boat had lain stowed in the long boat it was thus we carried those boats the little one lying snugly enough in the other the sea that had flooded our decks
+had floated the jolly boat out of the long boat and swept it bottom up to the gangway where it lay as though god's mercy designed it should be preserved for my use for not long after it had been floated out the brig struck the berg the masts fell
+and there lay the long boat crushed into staves this signal and surprising intervention filled my heart with thankfulness though my spirits sank again at the sight of my poor drowned shipmates
+and so made a tackle by the help of which i turned the jolly boat over i then with a handspike prised her nose to the gangway secured a bunch of rope on either side her to act as fenders or buffers
+when she should be launched and lying alongside ran her midway out by the tackle and attaching a line to a ring bolt in her bow shoved her over the side and she fell with a splash shipping scarce a hatful of water
+but i met with an oar that had belonged to the other boat and this with the mast and sail i dropped into her the swell lifting her up to my hand when the blue fold swung past my next business was to victual her
+i ran to the cabin but the lazarette was full of water and none of the provisions in it to be come at i thereupon ransacked the cabin and found a whole dutch cheese a piece of raw pork half a ham
+eight or ten biscuits some candles a tinder box several lemons a little bag of flower and thirteen bottles of beer these things i rolled up in a cloth and placed them in the boat
+the heavy sluggish sodden movement of the hull advised me to make haste she was now barely lifting to the swell that came brimming in broad liquid blue brows to her stem
+it seemed as though another ton of water would sink her and if the swell fell over her bows and filled the decks down she would go i had a small parcel of guineas in my chest and was about to fetch this money
+when a sort of staggering sensation in the upward slide of the hull gave me a fright and watching my chance i jumped into the boat and cast the line that held her adrift the sun was an hour above the horizon
+heaving very slowly though you felt the weight of the mighty ocean in every fold and eastwards the shoulders of the swell catching the glorious reflection of the sun hurled the splendour along
+till all that quarter of the sea looked to be a mass of leaping dazzle upon the eastern sea line lay a range of white clouds compact as the chalk cliffs of dover
+shot with pearly lustre floated overhead very high it was in truth a fair and pleasant morning of an icy coldness indeed but the air being dry its shrewdness was endurable
+with us had it dawned yesterday instead of to day my companions would have been alive and yonder sinking ruined fabric a trim ship capable of bearing us stoutly into warm seas and to our homes at last
+i threw the oar over the stern of the boat to keep her near to the brig not so much because i desired to see the last of her
+into those prodigious leagues of ocean which lay stretched under the sky whilst the hull floated she was something to hold on to so to say something for the eye amid the vastness of water to rest upon
+and her main deck blew up with a loud clap or blast of noise i could follow the line of her bulwarks fluctuating and waving in the clear dark blue when she was some feet under
+and which she dragged down with her on a sudden when the last fragment of mast had disappeared and when the hollows of the whirlpools were flattening to the level surface of the sea up rose a body with a sort of leap
+it was the sailor that had lain drowned on the starboard side of the forward deck being frozen stiff he rose in the posture in which he had expired that is with his arms extended
+so that when he jumped to the surface he came with his hands lifted up to heaven and thus he stayed a minute sustained by the eddies which also revolved him the shock occasioned by this melancholy object was so great
+and such was the state of my mind that imagination might quickly have worked the apparition had it lingered into an instrument for the unsettling of my reason i rose from the seat on to which i had sunk and loosed the sail
+and hauling the sheet aft put the oar over the stern and brought the little craft's head to an easterly course the draught of air was extremely weak and scarce furnished impulse enough to the sail to raise a bubble alongside
+the boat was about fifteen feet long
+ere i could heave a civilized coast or a habitable island into view at the start i had a mind to steer north west and blow as the wind would suffer into the south sea
+where perchance i might meet a whaler or a southseaman from new holland but my heart sank at the prospect of the leagues of water which rolled between me and the islands and the western american seaboard indeed
+i understood that my only hope of deliverance lay in being picked up and that though by heading east i should be clinging to the stormy parts i was more likely to meet with a ship hereabouts
+than by sailing into the great desolation of the north west the burden of my loneliness weighed down upon me so crushingly that i cannot but consider my senses must have been somewhat dulled by suffering
+i am persuaded my heart must have broken and that i should have died of grief faintly as the wind blew it speedily wafted me out of sight of the floating relics of the wreck
+and then all was bare bald swelling sea and empearled sky darkening in lagoons of azure down to the soft mountainous masses of white vapour lying like the coast of a continent on the larboard horizon
+but one living thing there was besides myself a grey breasted albatross of a princely width of pinion i had not observed it till the hull went down and then
+lifting my eyes with involuntary sympathy in the direction pointed to by the upraised arms of the sailor i observed the great royal bird hanging like a shape of marble directly over the frothing eddies
+it was as though the spirit of the deep had taken form in the substance of the noblest of all the fowls of its dominions and poised on tremorless wings
+was surveying with the cold curiosity of an intelligence empty of human emotion the destruction of one of those fabrics whose unequal contests and repeated triumphs had provoked its haughty surprise
+the bird quitted the spot of the wreck after a while and followed me its eyes had the sparkling blood red gleam of rubies
+it was as silent as a phantom and with arched neck and motionless plumes seemed to watch me with an earnestness that presently grew insufferable so far from finding any comfort of companionship in the creature
+it uttered a strange salt cry the very note of a gust of wind splitting upon a rope flapped its wings and after a turn or two
+i lay for a long while insensible and that i should have recovered my mind instead of dying in that swoon i must ever account as the greatest wonder of a life that has not been wanting in the marvellous
+i had no sooner sat up than all that had happened and my present situation instantly came to me my hair was stiff with ice there was no more feeling in my hands than had they been of stone
+my clothes weighed upon me like a suit of armour so inflexibly hard were they frozen yet i got upon my legs and found that i could stand and walk and that life flowed warm in my veins
+it was intensely dark the binnacle lamp was extinguished and the light in the cabin burned too dimly to throw the faintest colour upon the hatchway one thing i quickly noticed that the gale had broken and blew no more than a fresh breeze
+there was less spite in its wash less fury in its blow the multitudinous roaring of the heaving blackness had sobered into a hard and sullen growling a sound as of thunder among mountains heard in a valley
+the brig pitched and rolled heavily much of the buoyancy of her earlier dance was gone out of her nevertheless i could not persuade myself that this sluggishness was altogether due to the water she had taken in
+it was wonderful however that she should still be afloat no man could have heard the rending and grating of her side against the ice without supposing that every plank in it was being torn out
+finding that i had the use of my voice i holloaed as loudly as i could but no human note responded three or four times i shouted giving some of the people their names but in vain father of mercy i thought
+what has come to pass is it possible that all my companions have been washed overboard certainly five men at least were living before we fouled the ice and again i cried out is there any one alive
+my loneliness was more terrible to me than any other condition of my situation it was dreadful to be standing nearly dead with cold in utter darkness
+it was dreadful i say to be thus placed and to feel that i was in the heart of the rudest most desolate space of sea in the world into which the commerce of the earth dispatched but few ships all the year round
+but no feature of my lamentable situation so affrighted me so worked upon the passions of my mind as my loneliness oh for one companion
+even one only to make me an echo for mine own speech nay god himself the merciful father of all even he seemed not the blackness lay like a pall upon the deep and upon my soul
+misery and horror were within that shadow and beyond it nothing that my spirit could look up to i stood for some moments as one stunned and then my manhood trained to some purpose by the usage of the sea
+reasserted itself and maybe i also got some slender comfort from observing that dull and heavy as was the motion of the brig there was yet the buoyancy of vitality in her manner of mounting the seas and that after all
+her case might not be so desperate as was threatened by the way in which she had been torn and precipitated past the iceberg at moments when she plunged the whiteness of the water creaming upon the surges on either hand
+by preventing the seas which washed on to the forecastle from cascading with their former violence aft also that the whole length of the main and top masts lay upon the larboard rail and over the side
+my eyes directly sought it and found the time twenty minutes after ten this signified that i had ten or eleven hours of darkness before me
+i took down the lamp trimmed it and went to the lazarette hatch at the after end of the cabin here were kept the stores for the crew
+i swallowed half a pannikin of the hollands for the sake of the warmth and life of the draught and entering my cabin put on thick dry stockings first chafing my feet till i felt the blood in them
+and i then with a seaman's dispatch shifted the rest of my apparel and cannot express how greatly i was comforted by the change though the jacket and trousers i put on were still damp with the soaking of previous days
+i took from the captain's cabin a stout cloak and threw it over me enveloping my head which i had cased in a warm fur cap with the hood of it and thus equipped i lighted a small hand lantern that was used on dark nights for heaving the log
+nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at the picture of ruin the decks offered the main mast was snapped three or four feet above the deck and the stump of it showed as jagged and barbed as a wild beast's teeth
+but i now noticed that the weight of the hamper being on the larboard side balanced the list the vessel took from her shifted ballast and that she floated on a level keel with her bows fair at the sea
+i moved with extreme caution casting the lantern light before me sometimes starting at a sound that resembled a groan then stopping to steady myself during some particular wild leap of the hull
+until coming abreast of the main hatch the rays of the lantern struck upon a man's body which on my bringing the flame to his face proved to be captain rosy there was a wound over his right brow
+and as if that had not sufficed to slay him the fall of the masts had in some wonderful manner whipped a rope several times round his body binding his arms and encircling his throat so tightly
+that no executioner could have gone more artistically to work to pinion and choke a man under a mass of rigging in the larboard scuppers lay two bodies as i could just faintly discern
+for they lay under a whole body of shrouds complicated by a mass of other gear against which leaned a portion of the caboose i viewed them long enough to satisfy my mind that they were dead and then with a heart of lead turned away
+i crossed to the starboard side where the deck was comparatively clear and found the body of a seaman named abraham wise near the fore hatch
+no language that i have command of could put before you the horror that possessed me as i sat meditating upon my situation and recalling the faces of the dead the wind was rapidly falling and with it the sea
+but the motion of the brig continued very heavy a large swell having been set running by the long fierce gale that was gone and there being no uproar of tempest in the sky to confound the senses
+i could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy groaning and straining sounds rising from the hull with now and again a mighty blow as from some spar or lump of ice alongside weighty enough you would have supposed to stave the ship
+nevertheless her continuing to float in her miserably torn and mangled condition was so great a miracle that spite of my poor shipmates having perished and my own state being as hopeless as the sky was starless
+to judge by the sound of the quantity of water in the vessel that she was filling i knew well yet not leaking so rapidly but that had our crew been preserved we might easily have kept her free
+i had noticed the jolly boat bottom up near the starboard gangway and so far as i could make out by throwing the dull lantern light upon her she was sound but i could not have launched her without seeing what i was doing
+and even had i managed this she stood to be swamped and i to be drowned
+gloody settles the account a night of fever a night when i did slumber for a few minutes of horrid dreams this was what i might have expected and this is what really happened
+the fresh morning air flowing through my open window cooled and composed me the mercy of sleep found me when i woke and looked at my watch i was a new man the hour was noon i rang my bell
+the servant announced that a man was waiting to see me the same man sir who was found in the garden looking at your flowers i at once gave directions to have him shown up into my bedroom
+the delay of dressing was more than i had patience to encounter unless i was completely mistaken here was the very person whom i wanted to enlighten me gloody showed himself at the door
+with a face ominously wretched as well as ugly i instantly thought of cristel if you bring me bad news i said don't keep me waiting for it it's nothing that need trouble you sir
+i'm dismissed from my master's service that's all it was plainly not all relieved even by that guarded reply i pointed to a chair by the bedside do you believe that i mean well by you i asked
+what did he do flew into a furious rage i don't complain of that i daresay i deserved it please to excuse my getting up again i can't look you in the face and tell you of it he walked away to the window
+even a poor devil like me does sometimes feel it when he is insulted mister roylake he kicked me say no more about it sir i would never have mentioned it if i hadn't had something else to tell you only i don't know how
+in this difficulty he came back to my bedside look here sir what i say is that kick has wiped out the debt of thanks i owe him yes i say the account between us two is settled now on both sides
+what his master had no doubt inferred was what i saw plainly too cristel had saved my life and had been directed how to do it by the poor fellow who had suffered in my cause
+we will wait a little before we talk of setting the law in force i said in the meantime gloody i want you to tell me what you would tell the magistrate if i called you as a witness he considered a little
+the magistrate would put questions to me wouldn't he sir very good you put questions to me and i'll answer them to the best of my ability
+the investigation that followed was far too long and too wearisome to be related here if i give the substance of it i shall have done enough sometimes when he was awake and supposed that he was alone sometimes when he was asleep and dreaming
+the cur had betrayed himself it was a paltry vengeance i own to gratify a malicious pleasure as i did now in thinking of him and speaking of him by the degrading name which his morbid humility had suggested
+to give him some idea of the jealous hatred with which the cur regarded me he had done his best to warn me without actually betraying the man who had rescued him from starvation or the workhouse and he had failed
+but his resolution to do me good service in return for my kindness to him far from being shaken was confirmed by circumstances when his master returned to the chemical studies which have been already mentioned
+gloody was employed as assistant to the extent of his limited capacity for making himself useful he had no reason to suppose that i was the object of any of the experiments until the day before the tea party
+a lapse of a quarter of an hour followed the last dose was repeated and the dog soon sprang to his feet again as lively as ever gloody was thereupon told to set the animal free and was informed at the same time
+that he would be instantly dismissed if he mentioned to any living creature what he had just seen by what process he arrived at the suspicion that my safety might be threatened by the experiment on the dog he was entirely unable to explain
+it was borne in on my mind sir and that's all i can tell you he said i didn't dare speak to you about it you wouldn't have believed me or if you did believe me you might have sent for the police
+the one way of putting a stop to murdering mischief if murdering mischief it might be was to trust miss cristel that she was fond of you i don't mean any offence sir i pretty well guessed
+that she was true as steel and not easily frightened i didn't need to guess i knew it gloody had done his best to prepare cristel for the terrible confidence which he had determined to repose in her and had not succeeded
+she was pledged to secrecy under penalty of ruining the man who was trying to save me and to her presence of mind was trusted the whole responsibility of preserving my life what a situation for a girl of eighteen
+whatever she saw him drink she was to insist on your drinking it too you heard me ask leave to make the tea yes well that was one of the signals agreed on between us
+how did you know that he would not drink the whole contents of the jug you forget sir that i had seen the dog revived by two doses given with a space of time between them
+i ought to have remembered this after what he had already told me my intelligence brightened a little as i went on and your accident in the next room was planned of course i said
+i should say no judging by his looks he turned pale when he felt the floor shaken by your fall for once in a way he was honest honestly frightened i noticed the same thing sir when he picked me up off the floor
+a man who can change his complexion at will is a man we hav'n't heard of yet mister roylake i had been dressing for some time past longing to see cristel it is needless to say
+is there anything more i asked that i ought to know only one thing mister roylake that i can think of gloody replied i'm afraid it's miss cristel's turn next what do you mean
+while the deaf man lodges at the cottage he means mischief and his eye is on miss cristel early this morning sir i happened to be at the boat house somebody i leave you to guess who it is has stolen the oars
+i was dressed by this time and so eager to get to the cottage that i had already opened my door what i had just heard brought me back into the room as a matter of course we both suspected the same person of stealing the oars
+had we any proof to justify us gloody at once acknowledged that we had no proof i happened to look at the boat he said and i missed the oars oh yes i searched the boat house no oars no oars
+and nothing more that you have forgotten and ought to tell me nothing sir
+we had breakfast in the tavern kitchen
+was a short smooth faced voluble overgrown boy sort of man the mother was dumpy coarse and good natured they had a greasy easy tempered daughter of eighteen with a frowsy head and a face like a full moon
+while the heir of the household somewhat younger was a gaping grinning youth of the simple simon order who shovelled mashed potatoes into his mouth alternately with knife and fork and took bites of bread large enough for a ravenous dog
+the old grandmother with a face like parchment and one gleaming eye sat in a low rocking chair by the stove crooning over a corn cob pipe and using the wood box for a cuspadore she had a vinegary slangy tongue
+and being somewhat deaf would break in upon the conversation with remarks sharper than they were pat with our host a glib and rapid talker in a swaggering tone one could not but be much amused
+as he exhibited a degree of self appreciation that was decidedly refreshing he had been a veteran in the war of the rebellion he proudly assured us and pointed with his knife to his discharge paper which was hung up in an old looking glass frame
+by the side of the clock gemmen he invariably thus addressed us as though we were a coterie of checker players at a village grocery gemmen when i seen how them johnny rebs was a usin our boys in them prison pens
+joe my boy you go now an do some'n fer yer country a crack shot like you is joe says i to myself as kin hit a duck on the wing every time an no mistake
+an so i jined an i stuck her out gemmen till the thing was done they ain't no coward bout me
+now he says hold on a minute you didn't hev shakes afore the war says he not as much i says not knowin what the feller was drivin at but some i was a kid then and kids don't shake much says i
+well gemmen sure nough when i kem to think things over and talk it up with the doctor chap i lowed he was right then he let on he was a claim agint an i let him try his hand on workin up a pension for me
+an i don't know what my show is but i ought to hev a pension an no mistake gemmen they wa'n't no fellers did harder work n me in the war ef i do say it myself w ventured to ask what battles our host had been in
+what i wanted was to git a bead on ol wade himself an ef i do say it myself the ol man would a hunted his hole gemmen when i get a sight on a duck gemmen that duck's mine an no mistake
+an ef i'd a sighted wade hamptin then good by wade i tol the cap'n what i wanted but he said as how i was more use a takin keer of the supplies that cap'n hadn't no enterprise bout him
+there was heaps o blood spilt unnecessary by us boys a fightin to save the ol flag
+i said to our landlord by way of helping along the conversation there was a momentary silence broken by simple simon who wiped his knife on his tongue and made a wild attack on the butter dish pa he druv a mule team for gov'ment
+with a big ammernition wagin on behind
+this sudden revelation of the strength of the veteran's claim to glory and a pension put a damper upon his reminiscences of the war and giving the innocent simon a savage leer
+he soon contrived to turn the conversation upon his wonderful exploits in duck shooting and fishing industries in the pursuit of which he with so many of his fellow farmers on the bottoms appeared to be more eager than in tilling the soil
+it was quite evident that the breakfast we were eating was a special spread in honor of probably the only guests the quondam tavern had had these many months canoeists must not be too particular about the fare set before them but on this occasion
+we were able to swallow but a few mouthfuls of the repast and our lunch basket was drawn on as soon as we were once more afloat it is a great pity that so many farmers wives are the wretched cooks they are
+with an abundance of good materials already about them and rare opportunities for readily acquiring more tens of thousands of rural dames do manage to prepare astonishingly inedible meals
+sour doughy bread potatoes which if boiled are but half cooked and if mashed are floated with abominable butter or pastey flour gravy salt pork either swimming in a bowl of grease or fried to a leathery chip
+tea and coffee extremely weak or strong enough to kill an ox as chance may dictate and inevitably adulterated beyond recognition
+eggs that are spoiled by being fried to the consistency of rubber in a pan of fat deep enough to float doughnuts while the biscuits are yellow and bitter with saleratus this bill of fare warranted to destroy the best of appetites
+will be recognized by too many of my readers as that to be found at the average american farm house although we all doubtless know of some magnificent exceptions which only prove the rule we establish public cooking schools in our cities
+and economists like edward atkinson and hygienists like the late dio lewis assiduously explain to the metropolitan poor their processes of making a tempting meal out of nothing
+but our most crying need in this country to day is a training school for rural housewives where they may be taught to evolve a respectable and economical spread out of the great abundance with which they are surrounded
+it is no wonder that country boys drift to the cities where they can obtain properly cooked food and live like rational beings the river continues to widen as we approach the junction with the mississippi thirty nine miles below erie
+and to assume the characteristics of the great river into which it pours its flood the islands increase in number and in size some of them being over a mile in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth
+the bottoms frequently resolve themselves into wide morasses thickly studded with great elms maples and cotton woods among which the spring flood has wrought direful destruction the scene becomes peculiarly desolate
+and mournful often giving one the impression of being far removed from civilization threading the course of some hitherto unexplored stream penetrate the deep fringe of forest and morass on foot however and smiling prairies are found beyond
+of being either grounded or capsized now and then the banks become firmer with charming vistas of high wooded hills coming down to the water's edge broad savannas intervene decked out with variegated flora
+the spider wort the little blue lobelia and the cup weed these savannas are apparently overflowed in times of exceptionally high water
+and there are evidences that the stream has occasionally changed its course through the sunbaked banks of ashy gray mud in years long past at cleveland a staid little village on an open plain which we reached soon after the dinner hour
+there is an unused mill dam going to decay in the centre the main current has washed out a breadth of three or four rods through which the pent up stream rushes with a roar and a hundred whirlpools it is an ugly crevasse
+but a careful examination showed the passage to be feasible so we retreated an eighth of a mile up stream took our bearings and went through with a speed that nearly took our breath away and appeared to greatly astonish a half dozen fishermen
+idly angling from the dilapidated apron on either side it was like going through cleveland on the fast mail fourteen miles above the mouth of the rock is the chicago burlington and quincy railroad bridge with carbon cliff on the north
+and coloma on the south each one mile from the river the day had been dark with occasional slight showers and a stiff head wind so that progress had been slow we began to deem it worth while to inquire about the condition of affairs at the mouth
+stopping to question them we found them both well informed as to the railway time tables of the vicinity and the topography of the lower river they told us that the scenery for the next fourteen miles was similar in its dark desolation to that which we had passed through during the day
+also that owing to the great number of islands and the labyrinth of channels both in the rock and on the east side of the mississippi we should find it practically impossible to know when we had reached the latter we should doubtless proceed several miles below the mouth of the rock
+before we noticed that the current was setting persistently south and then would have an exceedingly difficult task in retracing our course and pulling up stream to our destination rock island which is six miles north of the delta of the rock
+they strongly advised our going into rock island by rail the present landing was the last chance to strike a railway except at milan twelve miles below it was now so late that we could not hope to reach milan before dark
+and milan was farther from rock island than either carbon cliff or coloma with less frequent railway service for these and other reasons we decided to accept this advice and to ship from coloma
+taking a final spurt down to a ferry landing a quarter of a mile beyond on the south bank
+having voyaged two hundred and sixty seven miles in somewhat less than seven days and a half leaving w to gossip with the ferryman's wife who came down to the bank with an armful of smiling twins to view a craft so strange to her vision
+i went up into the country to engage a team to take our boat upon its last portage after having been gruffly refused by a churlish farmer who doubtless recognized no difference between a canoeist and a tramp
+i struck a bargain with a negro cultivating a cornfield with a span of coal black mules and in half an hour he was at the ferry landing with a wagon washing out the canoe and chaining in the oars and paddle we lifted it into the wagon box
+piled our baggage on top and set off over the hills and fields to coloma
+ankle deep in mud for the late rains had well moistened the black prairie soil it was a unique and picturesque procession
+we were somewhat jaded by the time monday morning came for sunday brought not only no relief but repetitions of many of the most horrible of these tales of a wayside inn
+it was with no slight sense of relief that we paid our modest bill and at last broke away from such ghastly associations an involuntary shudder overcame me as we passed the head of the island
+at the foot of our host's orchard which he had described as a catch basin for human floaters our course still lay among large densely wooded islands many of them wholly given up to maples and willows
+and deep cuts through sun baked mudbanks the color of adobe but occasionally there are low gloomy bottoms heavily forested and strewn with flood wood while beyond the land rises gradually into prairie stretches
+in the bottoms the trees are filled with flocks of birds crows hawks blackbirds with stately blue herons and agile plovers foraging on the long gravel spits which frequently jut far into the stream
+ducks are frequently seen sailing near the shores while divers silently dart and plunge ahead of the canoe safely out of gunshot reach a head wind this morning made rowing more difficult by counteracting the influence of the current
+we were at lyndon at eleven o'clock there is a population of about two hundred clustered around a red paper mill the latter made a pretty picture standing out on the bold bank backed by a number of huge stacks of golden straw
+we met here the first rapids worthy of record also an old abandoned mill dam in the last stages of decay stretching its whitened skeleton across the stream a harbor for driftwood
+near the south bank the framework has been entirely swept away for a space several rods in width and through this opening the pent up current fiercely sweeps we went through the centre of the channel thus made with a swoop
+that gave us an impetus which soon carried our vessel out of sight of lyndon and its paper mill and straw stacks prophetstown five miles below is prettily situated in an oak grove on the southern bank
+only the gables of a few houses can be seen from the river whose banks of yellow clay and brown mud are here twenty five feet high during the first third of the present century this place was the site of a winnebago village whose chief
+was white cloud a shrewd sinister savage half winnebago and half sac who claimed to be a prophet he was black hawk's evil genius during the uprising of eighteen thirty two and in many ways
+was one of the most remarkable aborigines known to illinois history it was at the prophet's town as white cloud's village was known in pioneer days that black hawk rested upon his ill fated journey up the rock and from here
+at the instigation of the wizard he bade the united states soldiery defiance there are rapids almost continually from a mile above prophetstown to erie ten miles below the river bed here has a sharper descent than customary
+and is thickly strewn with bowlders many of them were visible above the surface at the low stage of water which we found but for the greater part they were covered for two or three inches what with these impediments
+the snags that had been left as the legacy of last spring's flood and the frequent sand banks and gravel spits navigation was attended by many difficulties and some dangers four or five miles below prophetstown
+a lone fisherman engaged in examining a traut line stretched between one of the numerous gloomy islands and the mainland kindly informed us of a mile long cut off the mouth of which was now in view that would save us several miles of rowing
+here the high banks had receded with several miles of heavily wooded boggy bottoms intervening floods had held high carnival and the aspect of the country was wild and deserted the cut off was an ugly looking channel
+but where our informant had gone through with his unwieldy hulk we considered it safe to venture with a canoe so readily responsive to the slightest paddle stroke
+it was a scene of howling desolation rack and ruin upon every hand the muddy torrent at a velocity of fully eight miles an hour went eddying and whirling and darting and roaring among the gnarled and blackened stumps the prostrate trees
+the twisted roots the huge bowlders which studded its course the stream was not wide enough for the oars the paddle was the sole reliance with eyes strained for obstructions we turned and twisted through the labyrinth
+jumping along at a breakneck speed and when we finally rejoined the main river below were grateful enough for the run had been filled with continuous possibilities of a disastrous smash up miles away from any human habitation
+the thunder storm which had been threatening since early morning soon burst upon us with a preliminary wind blast followed by drenching rain running ashore on the lee bank we wrapped the canvas awning around the baggage
+and made for a thick clump of trees on the top of an island mudbank where we stood buttoned to the neck in rubber coats a vigorous halloo came sounding over the water looking up we saw for the first time a small tent on the opposite shore
+a quarter of a mile away in front of which was a man shouting to us and beckoning us over it was getting uncomfortably muddy under the trees which had not long sufficed as an umbrella and the rubber coats were not warranted to withstand a deluge
+so we accepted the invitation with alacrity and paddled over through the pelting storm our host was a young fisherman who helped us and our luggage up the slimy bank to his canvas quarters which we found to be dry although odorous of fish
+while the storm raged without the young man who was a simple hearted fellow confided to us the details of his brief career he had been married but a year he said his little cabin lay a quarter of a mile back in the woods
+and so as to be convenient to his lines he was camping on his own wood lot the greater part of his time was spent in fishing or hunting according to the season and peddling the product in neighboring towns
+which had recently become enriched by the addition of an infant son the phenomenal powers of observation displayed by this first born youth were reported with much detail by the fond father who sat crouched upon a boat sail in one corner of the little tent
+his head between his knees and smoking vile tobacco in a blackened clay pipe it seemed that his wife was a ferryman's daughter and her father had besought his son in law to follow the same steady calling to be sure our host declared ferries on the rock river netted their owners
+which he considered a goodly sum and his father in law had offered to purchase an established plant for him but the young fellow said that ferrying was a dog's life and kept a feller home like barn chores
+so rejected the offer and settled down avowedly for life in his present precarious occupation as a result the indignant old man had forbidden him to again enter the parental ferry house until he agreed to accept his proposals
+and there was henceforth to be a standing family quarrel the fisherman having appealed to my judgment i endeavored with mild caution to argue him out of his position on the score of consideration for his wife and little one
+and firmly though with admirable good nature persisted in defending his roving tendencies in the course of our conversation i learned that the ferrymen who are more numerous on the lower than on the upper rock pay an annual license fee of five dollars each
+in consideration of which they are guarantied a monopoly of the business at their stands no other line being allowed within one mile of an existing ferry within an hour and a half the storm had apparently passed over and we continued our journey
+but after supper another shower and a stiff head wind came up and we were well bedraggled by the time a ferry landing near the little village of erie was reached the bottoms are here a mile or two in width with occasional openings in the woods
+where small fields are cultivated by the poorer class of farmers who were last spring much damaged by the flood which swept this entire country the ferryman a good natured young athlete
+was landing a farm wagon and team as we pulled in upon the muddy roadway when questioned about quarters he smiled and pointing to his little cabin a few rods off in the bushes said we've four people to sleep in two rooms
+it's sure we can't take ye i'd like to otherwise but erie's only a mile away we assured him that with these muddy swamp roads and in our wet condition nothing but absolute necessity would induce us to take a mile's tramp the parley
+ended in our being directed to a small farm house a quarter of a mile inland where luckless travelers belated on the dreary bottoms were occasionally kept making the canoe fast for the night we strung our baggage packs upon the paddle which we carried between us
+and set out along a devious way through a driving mist which blackened the twilight into dusk to find this place of public entertainment it is a little one story dilapidated farm house
+standing a short distance from the country road amid a clump of poplar trees forcing our way through the hingeless gate the violent removal of which threatened the immediate destruction of several lengths of rickety fence
+we walked up to the open front door and applied for shelter yes ma'am we sometimes keeps tavern ma'am replied a large greasy looking black haired woman of some forty years
+as her hands folded within her up turned apron she courtesied to w we were at once shown into a frowsy apartment which served as parlor sitting room and parental dormitory
+and cheap decorations peculiar in the country to all three classes of rooms the evidences of poverty shiftlessness and untasteful pretentiousness upon every side
+a huge wheezy old cabinet organ was set diagonally in one corner and upon this as we entered a young woman was pounding and paddling with much vigor while giving us sidelong glances of curiosity
+she was a neighbor on an evening visit decked out in a smart jockey cap with a green ostrich tip and bright blue ribbons and gay in a new calico dress
+a yellow field thickly planted to purple pineapples a jaunty forward creature in pimples and curls she rattled away through a moody and sankey hymn book the wheezes and groans of the antique instrument
+coming in like mournful ejaculations from the amen corner at a successful revival having exhausted her stock of tunes she wheeled around upon her stool and after declaring to her half dozen admiring auditors that her hands
+were as tired as after the mornin's milkin abruptly accosted w ma'am kin ye play on the orgin w confessed her inability chiefly from lack of practice in the art of incessantly working the pedals
+that's the trick o the hul business ma'am is the blowin it's all in gettin the bellers to work even like there's a good many what kin learn the playin part of it without no teacher but there has to be lessons to learn the bellers
+w modestly confessed to never having possessed such an instrument down in these parts rejoined the young woman as she worked the bellers into a strain or two of hold the fort apparently to show how easy it came to trained feet
+no house is now considered quite up to the fashi'n as ain't got a orgin the rain being now over she soon departed
+the bed chamber into which we were shown was a marvel it opened off the main room and was doubtless originally a cupboard seven feet square with a broad roped bedstead occupying the entire length
+necessitating the use of the bed as a dressing place after the fashion of a sleeping car bunk this cubby hole of a room was also the wardrobe for the women of the household the walls above the bed being hung nearly two feet deep
+with the oddest collection of calico and gingham gowns bustles hoopskirts hats bonnets and winter underwear i think i had ever laid eyes on much of this condition of affairs was not known however until next morning
+for it was as dark as egypt within except for a few faint rays of light which came straggling through the cracks in the board partition separating us from the sitting room candle we had no sooner crossed the threshold of our little box
+than the creaky old cleat door was gently closed upon us and buttoned by our hostess upon the outside as the only means of keeping it shut and we were left free to grope about among these mysteries as best we might
+we had hardly recovered from our astonishment at thus being locked into a dark hole the size of a fashionable lady's trunk and were quietly laughing over this odd adventure when the landlady applied her mouth to a crack and shouted as if she would have waked the dead hi there
+a few minutes later returning to the crack she added
+repressing our mirth we assured our good hostess that we would have a due regard for our personal safety
+at first he saw nothing reprehensible in this but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form of punishment suddenly changed once in summer he had sent for the village elder from bogucharovo
+a man who had succeeded to the post when dron died and who was accused of dishonesty and various irregularities nicholas went out into the porch to question him and immediately after the elder had given a few replies the sound of cries and blows were heard
+on returning to lunch nicholas went up to his wife who sat with her head bent low over her embroidery frame and as usual began to tell her what he had been doing that morning among other things he spoke of the bogucharovo elder countess mary turned red and then pale
+such an insolent scoundrel he cried growing hot again at the mere recollection of him if he had told me he was drunk and did not see but what is the matter with you mary he suddenly asked
+why whatever is the matter my dearest the looks of the plain countess mary always improved when she was in tears she never cried from pain or vexation but always from sorrow or pity and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm
+the moment nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain herself and began to cry nicholas i saw it he was to blame but why do you nicholas and she covered her face with her hands nicholas said nothing he flushed crimson left her side and paced up and down the room
+he understood what she was weeping about but could not in his heart at once agree with her that what he had regarded from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong is it just sentimentality old wives tales or is she right he asked himself
+mary he said softly going up to her it will never happen again i give you my word never he repeated in a trembling voice like a boy asking for forgiveness
+she took his hand and kissed it nicholas when did you break your cameo she asked to change the subject looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of laocoon's head today it was the same affair oh mary don't remind me of it and again he flushed
+i give you my word of honor it shan't occur again and let this always be a reminder to me and he pointed to the broken ring after that when in discussions with his village elders or stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench
+nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his eyes before the man who was making him angry but he did forget himself once or twice within a twelvemonth and then he would go and confess to his wife and would again promise that this should really be the very last time
+mary you must despise me he would say i deserve it you should go go away at once if you don't feel strong enough to control yourself she would reply sadly trying to comfort her husband among the gentry of the province nicholas was respected but not liked
+he did not concern himself with the interests of his own class and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid the whole summer from spring sowing to harvest he was busy with the work on his farm in autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same business like seriousness
+leaving home for a month or even two with his hunt in winter he visited his other villages or spent his time reading the books he read were chiefly historical and on these he spent a certain sum every year
+reading a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty but which afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters
+in winter except for business excursions he spent most of his time at home making himself one with his family and entering into all the details of his children's relations with their mother the harmony between him and his wife grew closer and closer
+and he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her from the time of his marriage sonya had lived in his house before that nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and sonya blaming himself and commending her
+he had asked princess mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin she thoroughly realized the wrong he had done sonya felt herself to blame toward her and imagined that her wealth had influenced nicholas choice
+but often felt ill will toward her which she could not overcome once she had a talk with her friend natasha about sonya and about her own injustice toward her you know said natasha you have read the gospels a great deal there is a passage in them that just fits sonya what asked countess mary surprised
+to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away you remember she is one that hath not why i don't know perhaps she lacks egotism i don't know but from her is taken away and everything has been taken away
+she is a sterile flower you know like some strawberry blossoms
+though countess mary told natasha that those words in the gospel must be understood differently yet looking at sonya she agreed with natasha's explanation
+and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower she seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a whole like a cat she had attached herself not to the people but to the home
+she waited on the old countess petted and spoiled the children was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient gratitude the country seat at bald hills had been rebuilt though not on the same scale as under the old prince
+the buildings begun under straitened circumstances were more than simple the immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood plastered only inside it had bare deal floors and was furnished with very simple hard sofas armchairs tables and chairs
+made by their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood the house was spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors whole families of the rostovs and bolkonskis relations sometimes came to bald hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for months
+at the end of january pierre went to moscow and stayed in an annex of his house which had not been burned he called on count rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in moscow and he intended to leave for petersburg two days later
+everybody was celebrating the victory everything was bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city everyone was pleased to see pierre everyone wished to meet him and everyone questioned him about what he had seen pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all
+but was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in any way to all questions put to him whether important or quite trifling such as where would he live was he going to rebuild when was he going to petersburg
+and would he mind taking a parcel for someone he replied yes perhaps or i think so and so on he had heard that the rostovs were at kostroma but the thought of natasha seldom occurred to him
+if it did it was only as a pleasant memory of the distant past he felt himself not only free from social obligations but also from that feeling which it seemed to him he had aroused in himself on the third day after his arrival he heard from the drubetskoys
+that princess mary was in moscow the death sufferings and last days of prince andrew had often occupied pierre's thoughts and now recurred to him with fresh vividness having heard at dinner that princess mary was in moscow and living in her house
+which had not been burned in vozdvizhenka street he drove that same evening to see her on his way to the house pierre kept thinking of prince andrew of their friendship of his various meetings with him and especially of the last one at borodino
+is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then in is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him before he died thought pierre he recalled karataev and his death and involuntarily began to compare these two men so different
+and yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the love he felt for both of them pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious mood the house had escaped the fire it showed signs of damage but its general aspect was unchanged the old footman
+who met pierre with a stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the house informed him that the princess had gone to her own apartments and that she received on sundays announce me perhaps she will see me said pierre
+yes sir said the man please step into the portrait gallery a few minutes later the footman returned
+in a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her another person dressed in black pierre remembered that the princess always had lady companions but who they were and what they were like he never knew or remembered this must be one of her companions he thought
+glancing at the lady in the black dress the princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand yes she said looking at his altered face after he had kissed her hand so this is how we meet again
+he spoke of you even at the very last she went on turning her eyes from pierre to her companion with a shyness that surprised him for an instant i was so glad to hear of your safety it was the first piece of good news we had received for a long time
+all i know i heard at second hand from others i only know that he fell in with the rostovs what a strange coincidence pierre spoke rapidly and with animation he glanced once at the companion's face saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him
+and as often happens when one is talking felt somehow that this companion in the black dress was a good kind excellent creature who would not hinder his conversing freely with princess mary but when he mentioned the rostovs princess mary's face expressed still greater embarrassment
+she again glanced rapidly from pierre's face to that of the lady in the black dress and said do you really not recognize her pierre looked again at the companion's pale delicate face with its black eyes and peculiar mouth and something near to him long forgotten and more than sweet
+looked at him from those attentive eyes but no it can't be he thought this stern thin pale face that looks so much older it cannot be she it merely reminds me of her but at that moment princess mary said natasha
+and with difficulty effort and stress like the opening of a door grown rusty on its hinges a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes and from that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused pierre with a happiness he had long forgotten
+and of which he had not even been thinking especially at that moment it suffused him seized him and enveloped him completely when she smiled doubt was no longer possible it was natasha and he loved her
+at that moment pierre involuntarily betrayed to her to princess mary and above all to himself a secret of which he himself had been unaware he flushed joyfully yet with painful distress he tried to hide his agitation but the more he tried to hide it the more clearly
+clearer than any words could have done did he betray to himself to her and to princess mary that he loved her no it's only the unexpectedness of it thought pierre but as soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with princess mary he again glanced at natasha
+he became confused in his speech and stopped in the middle of what he was saying
+but he had failed to recognize her because the change in her since he last saw her was immense she had grown thin and pale but that was not what made her unrecognizable she was unrecognizable at the moment he entered
+because on that face whose eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly interrogative
+what force moves the nations biographical historians and historians of separate nations understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers in their narration events occur solely by the will of a napoleon and alexander
+or in general of the persons they describe the answers given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one historian to each event
+as soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event the replies they give immediately lose all meaning for this force is understood by them all not only differently but often in quite contradictory ways
+one historian says that an event was produced by napoleon's power another that it was produced by alexander's
+besides this historians of that kind contradict each other even in their statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular person was based thiers a bonapartist says that napoleon's power was based on his virtue and genius
+lanfrey a republican says it was based on his trickery and deception of the people so the historians of this class by mutually destroying one another's positions destroy the understanding of the force which produces events
+and furnish no reply to history's essential question writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians view of the force which produces events
+they do not recognize it as a power inherent in heroes and rulers but as the resultant of a multiplicity of variously directed forces in describing a war or the subjugation of a people a general historian looks for the cause of the event
+not in the power of one man but in the interaction of many persons connected with the event according to this view the power of historical personages represented as the product of many forces can no longer it would seem
+be regarded as a force that itself produces events yet in most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power as a force that itself produces events and treat it as their cause
+in their exposition an historic character is first the product of his time and his power only the resultant of various forces and then his power is itself a force producing events gervinus schlosser and others for instance
+at one time prove napoleon to be a product of the revolution of the ideas of seventeen eighty nine and so forth and at another plainly say that the campaign of eighteen twelve and other things they do not like were simply the product of napoleon's misdirected will
+and that the very ideas of seventeen eighty nine were arrested in their development by napoleon's caprice the ideas of the revolution and the general temper of the age produced napoleon's power but napoleon's power suppressed the ideas of the revolution
+and the general temper of the age this curious contradiction is not accidental not only does it occur at every step but the universal historians accounts are all made up of a chain of such contradictions
+this contradiction occurs because after entering the field of analysis the universal historians stop halfway to find component forces equal to the composite or resultant force the sum of the components must equal the resultant
+and so to explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit in addition to the insufficient components another unexplained force affecting the resultant action
+specialist historians describing the campaign of eighteen thirteen or the restoration of the bourbons plainly assert that these events were produced by the will of alexander but the universal historian gervinus refuting this opinion of the specialist historian
+tries to prove that the campaign of eighteen thirteen and the restoration of the bourbons were due to other things beside alexander's will such as the activity of stein metternich madame de stael talleyrand
+fichte chateaubriand and others the historian evidently decomposes alexander's power into the components talleyrand chateaubriand and the rest but the sum of the components that is the interactions of chateaubriand
+talleyrand madame de stael and the others evidently does not equal the resultant namely the phenomenon of millions of frenchmen submitting to the bourbons that chateaubriand madame de stael
+but does not account for the submission of millions and therefore to explain how from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people resulted that is how component forces equal to one a gave a resultant equal to a thousand times a
+the historian is again obliged to fall back on power the force he had denied and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces that is he has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant
+and that is just what the universal historians do and consequently
+but contradict themselves peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain say according to whether they want rain or fine weather the wind has blown the clouds away or the wind has brought up the clouds
+and in the same way the universal historians sometimes when it pleases them and fits in with their theory say that power is the result of events and sometimes when they want to prove something else say that power produces events
+a third class of historians the so called historians of culture following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces producing events again take that force to be something quite different
+they see it in what is called culture in mental activity the historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their progenitors the writers of universal histories for if historical events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one another in such and such ways
+why not explain them by the fact that such and such people wrote such and such books of the immense number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon these historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is the cause
+only by a great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between intellectual activity and the movement of peoples and in no case can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions
+for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders of the french revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality of man or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the preaching of love but even admitting as correct
+all the cunningly devised arguments with which these histories are filled admitting that nations are governed by some undefined force called an idea history's essential question still remains unanswered
+and to the former power of monarchs and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the universal historians another newer force the idea is added the connection of which with the masses needs explanation
+it is possible to understand that napoleon had power and so events occurred with some effort one may even conceive that napoleon together with other influences was the cause of an event but how a book
+had the effect of making frenchmen begin to drown one another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal nexus of this new force with the event undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live contemporaneously
+just as such a connection may be found between the movements of humanity and commerce handicraft gardening or anything else you please
+one that history is written by learned men and so it is natural and agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity just as a similar belief is natural and agreeable
+to traders agriculturists and soldiers if they do not express it that is merely because traders and soldiers do not write history and two that spiritual activity enlightenment civilization culture ideas are all indistinct
+indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still less definite meaning and which can therefore be readily introduced into any theory but not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this kind
+which may possibly even be of use to someone for something the histories of culture
+are significant from the fact that after seriously and minutely examining
+as soon as they have to describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of eighteen twelve for instance they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise of power and say plainly that that was the result of napoleon's will speaking so
+the historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves and show that the new force they have devised does not account for what happens in history
+chapter twenty three it was eight o'clock when we landed we walked for a short time on the shore enjoying the transitory light and then retired to the inn
+the wind which had fallen in the south now rose with great violence in the west the moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descend
+the clouds swept across it swifter than the flight of the vulture and dimmed her rays while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens rendered still busier by the restless waves
+that were beginning to rise suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended i had been calm during the day but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects
+and not shrink from the conflict until my own life or that of my adversary was extinguished elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence
+when suddenly i heard a shrill and dreadful scream it came from the room into which elizabeth had retired as i heard it the whole truth rushed into my mind my arms dropped the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended
+i could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs this state lasted but for an instant
+great god why did i not then expire why am i here to relate the destruction of the best hope
+she was there lifeless and inanimate thrown across the bed her head hanging down and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair everywhere i turn i see the same figure her bloodless arms and relaxed form
+flung by the murderer on its bridal bier could i behold this and live alas life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated
+but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me i escaped from them
+to the room where lay the body of elizabeth my love my wife so lately living so dear so worthy she had been moved from the posture in which i had first beheld her
+but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what i now held in my arms had ceased to be the elizabeth whom i had loved and cherished the murderous mark of the fiend's grasp was on her neck
+and i felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber the shutters had been thrown back and with a sensation of horror not to be described
+i saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred a grin was on the face of the monster he seemed to jeer as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife
+but he eluded me leaped from his station and running with the swiftness of lightning plunged into the lake the report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room
+nets were cast but in vain after passing several hours we returned hopeless
+after having landed they proceeded to search the country parties going in different directions among the woods and vines i attempted to accompany them and proceeded a short distance from the house
+a film covered my eyes and my skin was parched with the heat of fever in this state i was carried back and placed on a bed hardly conscious of what had happened my eyes wandered round the room
+as if to seek something that i had lost after an interval i arose and as if by instinct crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay there were women weeping around i hung over it
+and joined my sad tears to theirs all this time no distinct idea presented itself to my mind
+subjects reflecting confusedly on my misfortunes and their cause i was bewildered in a cloud of wonder and horror the death of william the execution of justine
+the murder of clerval and lastly of my wife even at that moment i knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend
+my father even now might be writhing under his grasp and ernest might be dead at his feet this idea made me shudder and recalled me to action
+there were no horses to be procured and i must return by the lake but the wind was unfavourable and the rain fell in torrents
+however it was hardly morning and i might reasonably hope to arrive by night
+but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before a fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness no creature had ever been so miserable as i was so frightful an event is single in the history of man
+but why should i dwell upon the incidents that followed this last overwhelming event mine has been a tale of horrors i have reached their acme and what i must now relate
+know that one by one my friends were snatched away i was left desolate my own strength is exhausted
+and i must tell in a few words what remains of my hideous narration i arrived at geneva my father and ernest yet lived but the former sunk under the tidings that i bore
+misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste in wretchedness he could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him the springs of existence suddenly gave way
+sometimes indeed i dreamt that i wandered
+melancholy followed but by degrees i gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation and was then released from my prison for they had called me mad and during many months as i understood a solitary cell had been my habitation
+the monster whom i had created the miserable daemon whom i had sent abroad into the world for my destruction i was possessed by a maddening rage when i thought of him
+and desired and ardently prayed that i might have him within my grasp to wreak a great
+revenge on his cursed head nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes i began to reflect on the best means of securing him and for this purpose
+and told him that i had an accusation to make that i knew the destroyer of my family and that i required him to exert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer
+however wonderful forces conviction the story is too connected to be mistaken for a dream and i have no motive for falsehood
+my manner as i thus addressed him was impressive
+and this purpose quieted my agony and for an interval reconciled me to life i now related my history briefly but with firmness and precision marking the dates with accuracy
+and never deviating into invective or exclamation the magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous but as i continued he became more attentive and interested
+when i had concluded my narration i said this is the being whom i accuse and for whose seizure and punishment i call upon you to exert your whole power
+from the execution of those functions on this occasion
+i would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance
+who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice and inhabit caves and dens where no man would venture to intrude
+since the commission of his crimes and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered or what region he may now inhabit i do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which i inhabit
+and if he has indeed taken refuge in the alps he may be hunted like the chamois and destroyed as a beast of prey but i perceive your thoughts you do not credit my narrative
+and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the punishment which is his desert as i spoke rage sparkled in my eyes the magistrate was intimidated you are mistaken said he
+i will exert myself and if it is in my power to seize the monster be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes but i fear from what you
+have yourself described to be his properties that this will prove impracticable and thus while every proper measure is pursued you should make up your mind to disappointment that cannot be
+but all that i can say will be of little avail my revenge is of no moment to you yet while i allow it to be a vice
+my rage is unspeakable when i reflect that the murderer whom i have turned loose upon society still exists you refuse my just demand i have but one resource and i devote myself either in my life or death to his destruction
+i trembled with excess of agitation as i said this there was a frenzy in my manner and something i doubt not of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed
+how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom cease
+chapter twenty four my present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost i was hurried away by fury
+my first resolution was to quit geneva forever my country which when i was happy and beloved was dear to me now in my adversity became hateful
+i provided myself with a sum of money together with a few jewels which had belonged to my mother and departed and now my wanderings began which are to cease but with life
+all the hardships which travellers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet how i have lived i hardly know
+and prayed for death but revenge kept me alive i dared not die and leave my adversary in being when i quitted geneva my first labour
+uncertain what path i should pursue as night approached i found myself at the entrance of the cemetery where william elizabeth and my father reposed i entered it
+and approached the tomb which marked their graves everything was silent except the leaves of the trees which were gently agitated by the wind the night was nearly dark and the scene would have been solemn
+and affecting even to an uninterested observer the spirits of the departed seemed to flit around
+their murderer also lived and to destroy him i must drag out my weary existence i knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed by the sacred earth
+on which i kneel by the shades that wander near me by the deep and eternal grief that i feel i swear and by thee o night and the spirits that preside over thee to pursue the daemon
+which otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever and i call on you spirits of the dead and on you wandering ministers of vengeance to aid and conduct me in my work
+deep of agony let him feel the despair that now torments me i had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends
+heard and approved my devotion but the furies possessed me as i concluded and rage choked my utterance
+it rang on my ears long and heavily the mountains re echoed it and i felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter
+and that i was reserved for vengeance the laughter died away when a well known and abhorred voice apparently close to my ear
+i am satisfied miserable wretch you have determined to live and i am satisfied i darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded but the devil eluded my grasp
+suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than mortal speed i pursued him and for many months this has been my task
+scared by this horrid apparition informed me of his path sometimes he himself who feared that if i lost all trace of him i should despair and die left some mark to guide me
+the snows descended on my head and i saw the print of his huge step on the white plain to you first entering on life to whom care is new and agony unknown
+would suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties sometimes when nature overcome by hunger sank under the exhaustion a repast was prepared for me in the desert
+that restored and inspirited me the fare was indeed coarse such as the peasants of the country ate
+and vanish i followed when i could the courses of the rivers but the daemon generally avoided these as it was here that the population of the country chiefly collected
+i always presented to those who had provided me with fire and utensils for cooking my life as it passed thus was indeed hateful to me and it was during sleep alone that i could taste joy o blessed sleep
+often when most miserable i sank to repose and my dreams lulled me even to rapture the spirits that guarded me had provided these moments or rather hours of happiness that i might retain strength to fulfil my pilgrimage
+during the day i was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night for in sleep i saw my friends my wife and my beloved country again i saw the benevolent countenance of my father
+heard the silver tones of my elizabeth's voice and beheld clerval enjoying health and youth often when wearied by a toilsome march i persuaded myself that i was dreaming until night should come
+and that i should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends what agonizing fondness did i feel for them
+and persuade myself that they still lived at such moments vengeance that burned within me died in my heart and i pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven
+as the mechanical impulse of some power of which i was unconscious than as the ardent desire of my soul what his feelings were whom i pursued i cannot know
+these words were legible in one of these inscriptions you live and my power is complete follow me i seek the everlasting ices of the north
+where you will feel the misery of cold and frost to which i am impassive you will find near this place if you follow not too tardily a dead hare
+again do i vow vengeance again do i devote thee miserable fiend to torture and death never will i give up my search until he or i perish and then with what ecstasy
+the peasants were shut up in their hovels and only a few of the most hardy ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from their hiding places to seek for prey the rivers were covered with ice
+and no fish could be procured and thus i was cut off from my chief article of maintenance the triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours
+one inscription that he left was in these words prepare your toils only begin wrap yourself in furs and provide food for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings
+will satisfy my everlasting hatred my courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words
+and calling on heaven to support me i continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary of the horizon
+oh how unlike it was to the blue seasons of the south covered with ice it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior wildness and ruggedness
+the greeks wept for joy when they beheld the mediterranean from the hills of asia and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils i did not weep but i knelt down
+and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where i hoped notwithstanding my adversary's gibe to meet and grapple with him
+some weeks before this period i had procured a sledge and dogs and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed
+and i hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach with new courage therefore i pressed on and in two days arrived at a wretched hamlet on the seashore i inquired of the inhabitants
+concerning the fiend and gained accurate information a gigantic monster they said had arrived the night before armed with a gun and many pistols putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage
+through fear of his terrific appearance he had carried off their store of winter food and placing it in a sledge to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs
+he had harnessed them and the same night to the joy of the horror struck villagers had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land and they conjectured
+amidst cold that few of the inhabitants could long endure and which i the native of a genial and sunny climate could not hope to survive yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant
+my rage and vengeance returned and like a mighty tide overwhelmed every other feeling after a slight repose during which the spirits of the dead hovered round and instigated me to toil and revenge
+i departed from land i cannot guess how many days have passed since then but i have endured misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment
+which threatened my destruction but again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure
+i should guess that i had passed three weeks in this journey and the continual protraction of hope returning back upon the heart often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes
+despair had indeed almost secured her prey and i should soon have sunk beneath this misery once after the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil
+gained the summit of a sloping ice mountain and one sinking under his fatigue died i viewed the expanse before me with anguish when suddenly my eye caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain
+what it could be and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when i distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well known form within
+warm tears filled my eyes which i hastily wiped away that they might not intercept the view i had of the daemon but still my sight was dimmed by the burning drops until
+when for a short time some ice rock concealed it with its intervening crags i indeed perceptibly gained on it and when after nearly two days journey
+my heart bounded within me but now when i appeared almost within grasp of my foe my hopes were suddenly extinguished and i lost all trace of him more utterly than i had ever done before
+as with the mighty shock of an earthquake it split and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound the work was soon finished in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy
+and i was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice that was continually lessening and thus preparing for me a hideous death
+several of my dogs died and i myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when i saw your vessel riding at anchor
+i had no conception that vessels ever came so far north and was astounded at the sight i quickly destroyed part of my sledge to construct oars and by these means was enabled with infinite fatigue to move my ice raft in the direction of your ship
+but your direction was northwards you took me on board when my vigour was exhausted and i should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships into a death which i still dread for my task is unfulfilled
+oh when will my guiding spirit in conducting me to the daemon allow me the rest i so much desire or must i die and he yet live if i do
+swear to me walton that he shall not escape that you will seek him and satisfy my vengeance in his death and do i dare to ask of you to undertake my pilgrimage to endure the hardships that i have undergone no
+sometimes seized with sudden agony he could not continue his tale at others his voice broken yet piercing uttered with difficulty the words so replete with anguish
+the young party at roselands had now grown so large several additions having been made to it on monday afternoon and evening that a separate table was ordered to be spread for them in the nursery where they took their meals together
+missus brown the housekeeper taking the head of the table for the double purpose of keeping them in order and seeing that their wants were well supplied elsie came in to breakfast from a brisk walk with her papa looking fresh and rosy and bright as the morning
+quite different from some of the little guests who had been up far beyond their usual hours the night before and having just left their beds had come down pale and languid in looks and in some instances showing peevish and fretful tempers
+very trying to the patience of their attendants o elsie exclaimed carry howard
+we were all so sorry that you had to leave us so soon last night we had lots of fun after you left i think your papa might have let you stay up a little longer but he has promised that tonight as we are to have the christmas tree and ever so much will be going on
+late hours and rich food are very bad for little folks and i notice that miss elsie has grown a deal stronger and healthier looking since her papa came home he takes such good care of her indeed he does said elsie heartily thanking missus brown with one of her sweetest smiles
+whatever you all prefer said elsie if you like i will practice that duet with you the first hour after breakfast or do anything else you wish but the second hour i must spend with papa and after that i have nothing to do but entertain my company all day
+do you do lessons in holidays asked mary leslie a merry fun loving child about elsie's own age who considered lessons an intolerable bore and had some vague idea that they must have been invented for the sole purpose of tormenting children
+her blue eyes opened wide with astonishment when elsie quietly replied that her papa had kindly arranged to give her an hour every morning
+than spending the whole day in play elsie did keenly enjoy that quiet hour spent in studying and reciting to her father sitting on a low stool at his feet or perhaps oftener on his knee with his arm around her waist
+loving also his little pupil with all a father's fond yearning affection delighted in his task when elsie left her father she found that the carringtons had just arrived
+she and lucy had not seen each other since the week the latter had spent at roselands early in the summer and both felt pleased to meet missus carrington gave elsie a warm embrace remarking that she had grown and was looking extremely well better than she had ever seen her
+but no one was more delighted to meet elsie than herbert and she was very glad to learn that his health was gradually improving he was not however at all strong even yet and his mother thought it best for him to lie down and rest a little after his ride
+a variety of story books toys and games had been provided for their amusement elsie's entrance was hailed with delight for she was a general favorite oh elsie can't you tell us what to play cried mary leslie i'm so tired
+and she yawned wearily here are some dissected maps mary replied elsie opening a drawer would you not like them no indeed thank you they are too much like lessons
+will you play jack stones here are some smooth pebbles yes if you and carry and lucy will play with me agreed said the others let's have a game so elsie having first set the little ones to building block houses
+supplied harry carrington an older brother of lucy's with a book and two younger boys with dissected maps to arrange the four girls sat down in a circle on the carpet and began their game for a few moments all went on smoothly
+who was sobbing and wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron enna took my blocks sobbed the child
+you know flora is a visitor and we must be very polite to her no i won't returned enna flatly she's got enough now no i haven't i can't build a house with those flora said with another sob
+elsie stood a moment looking much perplexed then with a brightening face exclaimed in her cheerful pleasant way well never mind flora dear i will get you my doll
+the little weeper answered eagerly smiling through her tears elsie ran out of the room and was back again almost in a moment with the doll in her arms there dear little flora she said laying it gently on the child's lap
+please be careful of it for i have had it a long while and prize it very much because my guardian gave it to me when i was a very little girl and he is dead now i won't break it elsie indeed i won't replied flora confidently
+and elsie sat down to her game again a few moments afterward mister horace dinsmore passed through the room elsie he said as he caught sight of his little daughter go up to my dressing room there was evidently displeasure and reproof in his tone
+mister dinsmore passed out of one door while elsie left by the other the three little girls looked inquiringly into each other's faces what is the matter what has elsie done asked carry in a whisper i don't know
+nothing i guess replied lucy indignantly i do believe he's just the crossest man alive when i was here last summer he was all the time scolding and punishing poor elsie for just nothing at all i think he must be very strict said carry
+and that was the conclusion they all came to in the meantime elsie sat down alone in her banishment and tried to think what she could have done to deserve it it was some time before she could form any idea of its cause
+but at length it suddenly came to her recollection that once several months before this her father had found her sitting on the carpet and had bade her get up immediately and sit on a chair or stool saying never let me see you sitting on the floor elsie
+when there are plenty of seats at hand i consider it a very unladylike and slovenly trick she covered her face with her hands and sat thus for some moments feeling very sorry for her forgetfulness and disobedience very penitent on account of it
+and then kneeling down she asked forgiveness of god a full hour she had been there alone and the time had seemed very long when at last the door opened and her father came in elsie rose and came forward to meet him
+with the air of one who had offended and knew she was in disgrace but putting one of her little hands in his she looked up pleadingly into his face asking in a slightly tremulous tone dear papa are you angry with me
+i am always displeased when you disobey me elsie he replied very gravely laying his other hand on her head i am very sorry i was naughty papa she said humbly and casting down her eyes
+no sir i did not mean it so and i am very very sorry dear papa please forgive me and i will try never to forget again i think you disobeyed in another matter he said
+but i think i will remember not to do it again
+she held up her face for a kiss which he gave i wish i could always be good papa she said but i am naughty so often no said he i think you have been a very good girl for quite a long time
+and elsie found the children in the nursery engaged in eating flora turned to her as she entered please elsie don't be cross she said coaxingly i am real sorry your doll's broken but it wasn't my fault enna would try to snatch it
+and that made it fall and break its head poor elsie this was quite a trial and she could scarcely keep back the tears as following flora's glance she saw her valued doll lying on the window seat
+with its head broken entirely off she said not a word but hastily crossing the room took it up and gazed mournfully at it kind missus brown who had just finished helping her young charge all round
+followed her to the window never mind dear she said in her pleasant cheery tone patting elsie's cheek and smoothing her hair i've got some excellent glue and i think i can stick it on again and make it almost as good as ever
+no indeed he is not mary and he lets me eat everything that he thinks is good for me elsie answered with some warmth she was seated between caroline howard and lucy carrington what did your papa send you away for elsie whispered the latter
+quite unusual with her while the hot tears came into her eyes for she knew very well what was lucy's opinion of her father and more than half suspected that she had been making some unkind remark about him to the others
+and she was eager to remove any unfavorable impression they might have received i am sure he must love you very dearly elsie remarked caroline soothingly no one could help seeing that just by the way he looks at you elsie answered her with a pleased and grateful look
+whom she did not remember ever to have seen before but who insisted on seating the little girl on the sofa by her side and keeping her there a long while loading her with caresses and flattery my dear child she said what lovely hair you have
+so fine and soft and glossy such a beautiful color too
+natural ringlets i'm sure are they not yes ma'am elsie answered simply wishing from the bottom of her heart that the lady would release her and talk to some one else but the lady had no such intention you are a
+very sweet little girl i am sure and i shall love you dearly she said kissing her several times ah i would give anything if i had such a clear fair complexion and such rosy cheeks that makes you blush well i like to see it
+blushes are very becoming oh you needn't pretend you don't know you're handsome you're a perfect little beauty do tell me where did you get such splendid eyes but i needn't ask for i have only to look at your father to see where they came from
+mister dinsmore to elsie's papa who just then came toward them you ought to be very proud of this child she is the very image of yourself and a perfect little beauty too
+miss stevens is pleased to flatter me he said bowing low but flattery is not good for either grown up children or younger ones and i must beg leave to decline the compliment
+as i cannot see that elsie bears the slightest resemblance to me or any of my family she is very like her mother though he added with a half sigh and a tender loving glance at his little girl and that is just what i would have her
+it is such a lovely day but how soon do you start as soon as the ladies can be ready the horses will be at the door in a very few moments
+rising and sailing out of the room mister dinsmore took the seat she had vacated and passing his arm round his little girl said to her in an undertone my little daughter must not be so foolish as to believe that people mean all they say to her
+for some persons talk in a very thoughtless way and without perhaps intending to be exactly untruthful say a great deal that they really do not mean and i should be sorry indeed to see my little girl so spoiled by all this silly flattery
+as to grow up conceited and vain she looked at him with her own sweet innocent smile free from the slightest touch of vanity no papa she said i do not mind when people say such things because i know the bible says
+favor is deceitful and beauty is vain and in another place he that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a net for his feet so i will try to keep away from that lady shall i not papa whenever you can do so without rudeness daughter
+and he moved away thinking to himself how strangely the teachings of that book seem to preserve my child from every evil influence a sigh escaped him there was lurking within his breast a vague consciousness that her father needed such a safeguard
+but had it not lucy who was standing at the window turned quickly round come girls she said let us run out and see them off they're bringing up the horses
+how pretty she looks and there's that miss stevens coming out now hateful thing i can't bear her come elsie and carry and she ran out caroline and elsie following
+elsie however went no further than the hall where she stood still at the foot of the stairs come elsie called the other two from the portico come out here no replied the little girl i cannot come without something round me
+no lucy i must obey my father elsie answered in a very pleasant but no less decided tone some one caught her round the waist and lifted her up oh papa she exclaimed i did not know you were there
+and set her down the little girls watched until the last of the party had disappeared down the avenue and then ran gayly up stairs to elsie's room where they busied themselves until tea time in various little preparations for the evening
+who passed in and out with an air of mystery and importance and generally laden with some odd looking bundle when going in which they invariably left behind on coming out again and many a whispered consultation had been held as to what was probably going on in there
+elsie and carry seemed to be in the secret but only smiled and shook their heads wisely when questioned but at length tea being over and all both old and young assembled as if by common consent in the drawing room it began to be whispered about
+that their curiosity was now on the point of being gratified
+and every face brightened with mirth and expectation and when a moment after the doors were thrown open there was a universal burst of applause a large christmas tree had been set up at the further end of the room
+and with its myriad of lighted tapers and its load of toys and bonbons interspersed with many a richer and more costly gift made quite a display beautiful
+missus dinsmore and adelaide approached the tree and began the pleasant task of distributing the gifts everything was labelled and each as his or her name was called out stepped forward to receive the present no one had been forgotten each had something
+and almost every one had several pretty presents mary leslie and little flora arnott were made perfectly happy with wax dolls that could open and shut their eyes caroline howard received a gold chain from her mamma and a pretty pin from elsie
+because mary leslie's doll was a little larger than hers elsie had already received a pretty bracelet from her aunt adelaide a needle case from lora and several little gifts from her young guests
+and was just beginning to wonder what had become of her papa's promised present when she heard her name again and adelaide turning to her with a pleased look slipped a most beautiful diamond ring on her finger from your papa she said
+go and thank him it is well worth it elsie sought him out where he stood alone in a corner an amused spectator of the merry scene see papa she said holding up her hand i think it very beautiful
+thank you dear papa thank you very much does it please you my darling he asked stooping to press a kiss on the little upturned face so bright and happy yes papa
+the very prettiest ring i ever saw yet i think there is something else you would have liked better is there not he asked looking searchingly into her face dear papa i like it very much i would rather have it than anything else on the tree
+still you have not answered my question he said with a smile as he sat down and drew her to his side adding in a playful tone come i am not going to put up with any evasion tell me truly if you would have preferred something else
+and if so what it is elsie blushed and looked down then raising her eyes and seeing with what a tender loving glance he was regarding her she took courage to say yes papa there is one thing i would have liked better
+and that is your miniature to her surprise he looked highly pleased at her reply and giving her another kiss said well darling some day you shall have it
+mister horace dinsmore called adelaide taking some small glittering object from the tree another present for me he asked as walter came running with it he had already received several from his father and sisters
+do you like it papa she asked her face glowing with delight to see how pleased he was yes darling very much and i shall always think of my little girl when i use it keep it in your pocket and use it every day won't you papa
+and he laughed and stroked her hair
+not to night to morrow after breakfast you may eat the cream candy and the rock but none of the others they are colored and very unwholesome won't you eat some papa she asked with winning sweetness no dearest he said
+for though i too am fond of sweet things i will not eat them while i refuse them to you do papa she urged it would give me pleasure to see you enjoying it no darling i will wait until to morrow too
+then please keep it for me until to morrow papa will you yes he said
+and then as the gifts had all been distributed and the little folks were in high glee a variety of sports were commenced by them in which some of their elders also took a part and thus the hours sped away so rapidly
+that elsie was very much surprised when her father called her to go to bed is it half past nine already papa she asked
+in that hour jesus rejoiced in spirit and said i thank thee o father lord of heaven and earth that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes even so father for so it seemed good in thy sight
+says the apostle paul i say the truth in christ i lie not my conscience also bearing me witness in the holy ghost that i have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart
+my kinsmen according to the flesh brethren my heart's desire and prayer to god for israel is that they might be saved and such dear reader is in greater or less degree the feeling of every renewed heart
+loving jesus it would fain have others love him too it desires the salvation of all but for that of its own dear ones it longs and labors and prays it is like jacob wrestling with the angel when he said
+i will not let thee go except thou bless me and thus it was with elsie she knew now that her father was not a christian that he had no real love for jesus none of the true fear of god before his eyes
+she saw that if he permitted her to read to him from god's word as he sometimes did it was not that he felt any pleasure in listening but only to please her she had no reason to suppose he ever prayed and though he went regularly to church
+it was because he considered it proper and respectable to do so and not that he cared to worship god or to learn his will this conviction which had gradually dawned upon elsie until now it amounted to certainty caused her great grief
+she shed many tears over it in secret and very many and very earnest were the prayers she offered up for her dear father's conversion she was sitting on his knee one evening in the drawing room while he and several other gentlemen were conversing on the subject of religion
+they were discussing the question whether or no a change of heart were necessary to salvation the general opinion seemed to be that it was not and elsie listened with pain while her father expressed his decided conviction that all who led an honest upright moral life
+and attended to the outward observances of religion were quite safe he could see no necessity for a change of heart he did not believe in the doctrine of total depravity not he no indeed he thought the world much better than many people would have us believe
+elsie fixed her eyes on his face with a very mournful gaze while he was speaking but he was busy with his argument and did not notice her but one of the guests was just expressing his approval of mister dinsmore's sentiments when catching sight of elsie's face
+he stopped remarking your little girl looks as if she had something to say on the subject what is it my dear elsie blushed hesitated and looked at her father yes speak my daughter if you have anything to say he said encouragingly elsie lifted
+marvel not that i said unto thee ye must be born again she repeated these words of inspiration with a deep earnest solemnity that seemed to impress every hearer for a moment there was a deep hush in the room then the gentleman asked
+create in me a clean heart o god and renew a right spirit within me where did you learn all this he asked looking at her with mingled surprise and admiration in the bible sir she modestly replied you seem to have read it to some purpose said he
+and now since you consider that change so necessary can you tell me how it is to be brought about god's holy spirit alone can change a sinner's heart sir and how am i to secure his aid he asked elsie answered with a text
+she replied the sweet little face all suffused with blushes and the soft downcast eyes filling with tears why do you think so he asked again
+i think there is a text that says you must be able always to give a reason for the hope that is in you or something to that effect is there not yes sir be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you
+with meekness and fear then raising her eyes to his face with a touching mixture of deep humility and holy boldness she continued and this sir is my answer jesus says him that cometh unto me i will in no wise cast out
+and i believe him i did go to him and he did not cast me out but forgave my sins and taught me to love him and desire to serve him all my life this conversation between the gentleman and the little girl had drawn the attention of all present
+and now missus dinsmore who had more than once shown signs of impatience said well elsie i think you have now talked quite enough for a child of your age then pulling out her watch it is high time for little folks to be in bed elsie
+blushing deeply would have retired immediately but her father held her fast saying as he gave his stepmother an angry glance you need not go elsie unless you choose i am quite capable of judging when it is time to send you to bed
+whispered elsie who had a great dread of missus dinsmore's anger very well then you may do as you like he replied giving her a good night kiss and with a graceful good night to the company the little girl left the room
+her questioner followed her with an admiring glance then turning to her father exclaimed warmly she is a remarkably intelligent child dinsmore one that any father might be proud of i was astonished at her answers
+yes remarked travilla a text has been running in my head ever since you commenced your conversation something about these things being hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes and he added
+and her father's voice said good morning little daughter
+she asked raising her head to give him a smile of joyful welcome i did not know you were there ah i have been watching you for several minutes he said always poring over the same book elsie do you never tire of it no indeed papa
+it is always new and i do love it so it is so very sweet may i read a little to you she added coaxingly yes i love to listen to anything read by my darling he said sitting down and taking her on his knee
+laid her head on his breast asking dear papa don't you believe the bible certainly daughter i am not an infidel he replied in a careless tone well then papa she continued half hesitatingly
+i was much pleased with your intelligent answers to mister lee last evening elsie sighed and her eyes filled with tears it was not what she wanted what an odd child you are he said laughing
+she dropped her head on his breast and burst into tears and sobs why elsie my own darling what ails you he asked in great surprise
+i know no way in which a writer may more fittingly introduce his work to the public than by giving a brief account of who and what he is by this means some of the blame for what he has done is very properly shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life
+my parents migrated to canada in eighteen seventy six and i decided to go with them my father took up a farm near lake simcoe in ontario this was during the hard times of canadian farming
+and my father was just able by great diligence to pay the hired men and in years of plenty to raise enough grain to have seed for the next year's crop without buying any by this process my brothers and i were inevitably driven off the land
+that is induced by honest manual toil i was educated at upper canada college toronto of which i was head boy in eighteen eighty seven from there i went to the university of toronto where i graduated in eighteen ninety one
+at the university i spent my entire time in the acquisition of languages living dead and half dead and knew nothing of the outside world in this diligent pursuit of words i spent about sixteen hours of each day
+in other words i was what is called a distinguished graduate and as such i took to school teaching as the only trade i could find that need neither experience nor intellect i spent my time from eighteen ninety one to eighteen ninety nine on the staff of upper canada college
+an experience which has left me with a profound sympathy for the many gifted and brilliant men who are compelled to spend their lives in the most dreary the most thankless and the worst paid profession in the world
+and by means of this and some temporary employment by mc gill university i survived until i took the degree of doctor of philosophy in nineteen o three the meaning of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life and is pronounced completely full
+after this no new ideas can be imparted to him from this time and since my marriage which had occurred at this period i have belonged to the staff of mc gill university first as lecturer in political science and later as head of the department of economics and political science
+i am able to regard myself as singularly fortunate the emolument is so high as to place me distinctly above the policemen postmen street car conductors and other salaried officials of the neighbourhood
+while i am able to mix with the poorer of the business men of the city on terms of something like equality in point of leisure i enjoy more in the four corners of a single year than a business man knows in his whole life i thus have what the business man can never enjoy
+an ability to think and what is still better to stop thinking altogether for months at a time i have written a number of things in connection with my college life a book on political science and many essays magazine articles and so on
+a few years ago i went all round the british empire delivering addresses on imperial organization when i state that these lectures were followed almost immediately by the union of south africa the banana riots in trinidad and the turco italian war
+nor to construct even the smallest section of the transcontinental railway this however is a form of national ingratitude to which one becomes accustomed in this dominion apart from my college work i have written two books one called literary lapses
+and the other nonsense novels each of these is published by john lane london and new york and either of them can be obtained absurd though it sounds for the mere sum of three shillings and sixpence any reader of this preface for example ridiculous though it appears
+could walk into a bookstore and buy both of these books for seven shillings yet these works are of so humorous a character that for many years it was found impossible to print them the compositors fell back from their task suffocated with laughter and gasping for air
+many of my friends are under the impression that i write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist my own experience is exactly the other way
+but to write something out of one's own mind worth reading for its own sake is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments few and far between
+in regard to the present work i must disclaim at once all intentions of trying to do anything so ridiculously easy as writing about a real place and real people mariposa is not a real town on the contrary it is about seventy or eighty of them
+you may find them all the way from lake superior to the sea with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels and everywhere the sunshine of the land of hope similarly the reverend mister drone is not one person but about eight or ten
+to make him i clapped the gaiters of one ecclesiastic round the legs of another added the sermons of a third and the character of a fourth and so let him start on his way in the book to pick up such individual attributes as he might find for himself
+mullins and bagshaw and judge pepperleigh and the rest are it is true personal friends of mine but i have known them in such a variety of forms with such alternations of tall and short dark and fair that individually i should have much ado to know them
+and needs a teller as for mister smith with his two hundred and eighty pounds his hoarse voice his loud check suit
+all of this is known by everybody to be a necessary and universal adjunct of the hotel business the inspiration of the book
+a land of hope and sunshine where little towns spread their square streets and their trim maple trees beside placid lakes almost within echo of the primeval forest is large enough
+the fault lies rather with an art that is deficient than in an affection that is wanting
+it was not until the mining boom at the time when everybody went simply crazy over the cobalt and porcupine mines of the new silver country near the hudson bay
+there were always people going in and out of the barber shop mullins the manager of the exchange bank took his morning shave from jeff as a form of resuscitation with enough wet towels laid on his face to stew him and with jeff moving about in the steam razor in hand
+as grave as an operating surgeon then as i think i said mister smith came in every morning and there was a tremendous outpouring of florida water and rums essences and revivers and renovators regardless of expense
+what with jeff's white coat and mister smith's flowered waistcoat and the red geranium in the window and the florida water and the double extract of hyacinth the little shop seemed multi coloured and luxurious enough for the annex of a sultan's harem but what i mean is that
+till the mining boom jefferson thorpe never occupied a position of real prominence in mariposa
+everybody knew jeff and liked him but the odd thing was that till he made money nobody took any stock in his ideas at all it was only after he made the clean up that they came to see what a splendid fellow he was level headed i think was the term indeed
+in the speech of mariposa the highest form of endowment was to have the head set on horizontally as with a theodolite as i say it was when jeff made money that they saw how gifted he was and when he lost it but still there's no need to go into that
+i believe it's something the same in other places too the barber shop you will remember stands across the street from smith's hotel and stares at it face to face it is one of those wooden structures i don't know whether you know them
+with a false front that sticks up above its real height and gives it an air at once rectangular and imposing it is a form of architecture much used in mariposa and understood to be in keeping with the pretentious and artificial character of modern business
+and the shop itself has a large square window out of proportion to its little flat face painted on the panes of the window is the remains of a legend that once spelt barber shop executed with the flourishes that prevailed in the golden age of sign painting in mariposa
+through the window you can see the geraniums in the window shelf and behind them jeff thorpe with his little black scull cap on and his spectacles drooped upon his nose as he bends forward in the absorption of shaving
+as you open the door it sets in violent agitation a coiled spring up above and a bell that almost rings inside there are two shaving chairs of the heavier or electrocution pattern
+it is the current supposition of each of jeff's customers that everyone else but himself uses a separate mug one corner of the shop is partitioned off and bears the sign hot and cold baths fifty cents
+only old newspapers and a mop still it lends distinction somehow just as do the faded cardboard signs that hang against the mirror with the legends turkish shampoo seventy five cents and roman massage one dollar
+they said commonly in mariposa that jeff made money out of the barber shop he may have and it may have been that that turned his mind to investment but it's hard to see how he could a shave cost five cents and a hair cut fifteen or the two if you liked for a quarter
+and at that it is hard to see how he could make money
+and then in the other you see in mariposa shaving isn't the hurried perfunctory thing that it is in the city a shave is looked upon as a form of physical pleasure and lasts anywhere from twenty five minutes to three quarters of an hour in the morning hours perhaps there was a semblance of haste about it
+the razor would go slower and slower and pause and stop move and pause again till the shave died away into the mere drowse of conversation at such hours the mariposa barber shop would become a very palace of slumber
+and as you waited your turn in one of the wooden arm chairs beside the wall what with the quiet of the hour and the low drone of jeff's conversation the buzzing of the flies against the window pane and the measured tick of the clock above the mirror
+your head sank dreaming on your breast and the mariposa newspacket rustled unheeded on the floor it makes one drowsy just to think of it the conversation of course was the real charm of the place you see jefferson's forte or specialty was information
+where he got it all i don't know but i am inclined to think it came more or less out of the newspapers in the city people never read the newspapers not really only little bits and scraps of them but in mariposa it's different there
+they read the whole thing from cover to cover and they build up on it in the course of years a range of acquirement that would put a college president to the blush
+and of course the peculiarity of jeff's conversation was that he could suit it to his man every time
+there was a certain kind of man that jeff would size up sideways as he stropped the razor and in whose ear he would whisper i see where saint louis has took four straight games off chicago and so hold him fascinated to the end in the same way he would say to mister smith
+i see where it says that this flying squirl run a dead heat for the king's plate to a humble intellect like mine he would explain in full the relations of the keesar to the german rich dog
+the huge fortunes that a man with the right kind of head could make i've known jefferson to pause in his shaving with the razor suspended in the air as long as five minutes while he described with his eye half closed
+exactly the kind of a head a man needed in order to make a haul or a clean up it was evidently simply a matter of the head and as far as one could judge jeff's own was the very type required i don't know just at what time or how jefferson first began his speculative enterprises
+it was probably in him from the start there is no doubt that the very idea of such things as traction stock and amalgamated asbestos went to his head and whenever he spoke of mister carnegie and mister rockefeller the yearning tone of his voice made it as soft as lathered soap
+i suppose the most rudimentary form of his speculation was the hens that was years ago he kept them out at the back of his house which itself stood up a grass plot behind and beyond the barber shop and in the old days jeff would say with a certain note of pride in his voice
+that the woman had sold as many as two dozen eggs in a day to the summer visitors but what with reading about amalgamated asbestos and consolidated copper and all that the hens began to seem pretty small business and in any case the idea of two dozen eggs at a cent apiece almost makes one blush
+i suppose a good many of us have felt just as jeff did about our poor little earnings anyway i remember jeff telling me one day that he could take the whole lot of the hens and sell them off and crack the money into chicago wheat on margin and turn it over in twenty four hours he did it too
+after that the hen house stood empty and the woman had to throw away chicken feed every day at a dead loss of perhaps a shave and a half
+and right at our very doors you could see as i saw the night express going north every evening for all one knew rockefeller or carnegie or anyone might be on it
+so no wonder the town went wild all day in the street you could hear men talking of veins and smelters and dips and deposits and faults the town hummed with it like a geology class on examination day
+within a fortnight they put a partition down robertson's coal and wood office and opened the mariposa mining exchange and just about every man on the main street started buying scrip then presently young fizzlechip who had been teller in mullins's bank and that everybody had thought a worthless jackass before
+came back from the cobalt country with a fortune and loafed round in the mariposa house in english khaki and a horizontal hat drunk all the time
+they all went in jim eliot mortgaged the inside of the drug store and jammed it into twin tamagami pete glover at the hardware store bought nippewa stock at thirteen cents and sold it to his brother at seventeen and bought it back in less than a week at nineteen they didn't care they took a chance
+judge pepperleigh put the rest of his wife's money into temiskaming common and lawyer macartney got the fever too and put every cent that his sister possessed into tulip preferred and even when young fizzlechip shot himself in the back room of the mariposa house mister gingham buried him in a casket with silver handles
+they all went in or all except mister smith you see mister smith had come down from there and he knew all about rocks and mining and canoes and the north country he knew what it was to eat flour baked dampers under the lee side of a canoe propped among the underbrush
+but jeff thorpe was in the mining boom right from the start he bought in on the nippewa mine even before the interim prospectus was out
+and he and johnson the livery stablekeeper next door formed a syndicate
+and then unloaded them on one of the sausage men at netley's butcher shop at a clear cent per cent advance jeff would open the little drawer below the mirror in the barber shop and show you all kinds and sorts of cobalt country mining certificates
+blue ones pink ones green ones with outlandish and fascinating names on them that ran clear from the mattawa to the hudson bay and right from the start he was confident of winning there ain't no difficulty to it he said
+i don't say he used to continue with the scissors open and ready to cut
+but if a feller knows the country and keeps his head level he can't lose jefferson had looked at so many prospectuses and so many pictures of mines and pine trees and smelters that i think he'd forgotten that he'd never been in the country anyway what's two hundred miles
+to an onlooker it certainly didn't seem so simple i never knew the meanness the trickery of the mining business the sheer obstinate determination of the bigger capitalists not to make money when they might till i heard the accounts of jeff's different mines take the case of corona jewel
+there was a good mine simply going to ruin for lack of common sense she ain't been developed jeff would say there's silver enough in her so you could dig it out with a shovel she's full of it but they won't get at her and work her
+then he'd take a look at the pink and blue certificates of the corona jewel and slam the drawer on them in disgust worse than that was the silent pine a clear case of stupid incompetence
+utter lack of engineering skill was all that was keeping the silent pine from making a fortune for its holders the only trouble with that mine said jeff is they won't go deep enough
+if they'd just go right into her good they'd get it again she's down there all right but perhaps the meanest case of all was the northern star that always seemed to me every time i heard of it a straight case for the criminal law the thing was so evidently a conspiracy
+i bought her said jeff at thirty two and she stayed right there tight like she was stuck
+and i held on to her and they shoved her down to twenty one this morning they've got her down to sixteen but i don't mean to let go no sir in another fortnight they shoved her the same unscrupulous crowd down to nine cents and jefferson still held on
+a few days after that the same criminal gang had her down further than ever they've got her down to three cents said jeff but i'm with her yes sir they think they can shove her clean off the market but they can't do it i've boughten in johnson's shares
+and then and then well that's just the queer thing about the mining business why sudden as a flash of lightning it seemed the news came over the wire to the mariposa newspacket that they had struck a vein of silver in the northern star as thick as a sidewalk
+and that the stock had jumped to seventeen dollars a share and even at that you couldn't get it and jeff stood there flushed and half staggered against the mirror of the little shop with a bunch of mining scrip in his hand that was worth forty thousand dollars
+excitement it was all over the town in a minutes
+and in less than no time there wasn't standing room in the barber shop and over in smith's hotel they had three extra barkeepers working on the lager beer pumps
+and people were just clutching for them then at night there was a big oyster supper in smith's caff with speeches and the mariposa band outside and the queer thing was that the very next afternoon was the funeral of young fizzlechip
+a perfect iliad while he was clinging to her the whole thing was in the city papers a few days after with a photograph of jeff taken specially at ed moore's studio upstairs over netley's it showed jeff sitting among palm trees as all mining men do
+with one hand on his knee and a dog one of those regular mining dogs at his feet and a look of piercing intelligence in his face that would easily account for forty thousand dollars i say that the recognition meant a lot to jeff for its own sake
+that unless you hear about them separately and one by one you can't for a moment understand what they're like
+on her high stool with a steel cap on jabbing the connecting plugs in and out as if electricity cost nothing well
+there was myra who treated lovers like dogs and would slap them across the face with a banana skin to show her utter independence and there was miss cleghorn who was sallow and who bought a forty cent ancient history to improve herself and yet if she'd hit any man in mariposa with a banana skin
+he'd have had her arrested for assault mind you i don't mean that myra was merely flippant and worthless not at all she was a girl with any amount of talent you should have heard her recite the raven at the methodist social simply genius
+and when she acted portia in the trial scene of the merchant of venice at the high school concert
+so of course as soon as jeff made the fortune myra had her resignation in next morning
+and become a leading actress but as i said the public recognition counted a lot for jeff the moment you begin to get that sort of thing it comes in quickly enough brains you know are recognized right away that was why of course within a week from this
+jeff received the first big packet of stuff from the cuban land development company with coloured pictures of cuba and fields of bananas and haciendas and insurrectos with machetes and heaven knows what they heard of him somehow it wasn't for a modest man like jefferson to say how
+for all i know this cuban stuff may have been sent from morgan himself some of the people in mariposa said yes others said no there was no certainty anyway they were fair and straight this cuban crowd that wrote to jeff
+and that touches you no they asked no guarantee just send the money whether by express order or by bank draft or cheque they left that entirely to oneself as a matter between cuban gentlemen and they were quite frank about their enterprise
+bananas and tobacco in the plantation district reclaimed from the insurrectos you could see it all there in the pictures
+they made no rash promises just admitted straight out that the enterprise might realise four hundred per cent
+i liked it about jeff that he didn't stop shaving he went on just the same even when johnson the livery stable man came in with five hundred dollars and asked him to see if the cuban board of directors would let him put it in jeff laid it in the drawer and then shaved him for five cents in the same old way
+a few days later he got a letter from the cuban people from new york accepting the money straight off without a single question and without knowing anything more of johnson except that he was a friend of jeff's they wrote most handsomely any friends of jeff's were friends of cuba
+all money they might send would be treated just as jeff's would be treated one reason perhaps why jeff didn't give up shaving was because it allowed him to talk about cuba
+and that spread round him a kind of halo of wealth and mystery and outlandishness oh something spanish perhaps you've felt it about people that you know anyhow they asked him about the climate and yellow fever and what the negroes were like and all that sort of thing
+and for fruit they say it comes up so fast you can't stop it and then he would pass into details about the hash enders and the resurrectos and technical things like that till it was thought a wonder how he could know it still it was realized that a man with money has got to know these things
+look at morgan and rockefeller and all the men that make a pile they know just as much as jeff did about the countries where they make it it stands to reason did i say that jeff shaved in the same old way not quite
+i thought that perhaps getting so much money well you know the way it acts on people in the larger cities it seemed to spoil one's idea of jeff that copper and asbestos and banana lands should form the goal of his thought when if he knew it
+in fact i had perhaps borne him a grudge for what seemed to me his perpetual interest in the great capitalists he always had some item out of the paper about them
+he would say and another day he would pause in the course of shaving and almost whisper did you ever see this rockefeller it was only by a sort of accident that i came to know that there was another side to jefferson's speculation that no one in mariposa ever knew or will ever know now
+you could see the light of the lamp behind the blind and through the screen door as you came along
+there was a round table that the woman used to lay for supper
+and beside it jeff would sit with his spectacles on and the paper spread out reading about carnegie and rockefeller near him but away from the table was the woman doing needlework and myra when she wasn't working in the telephone exchange was there too with her elbows on the table reading marie corelli
+jeff laid down what he was reading and started to talk about carnegie this carnegie i bet you would be worth said jeff closing up his eyes in calculation as much as perhaps two million dollars if you was to sell him up
+i may say in parentheses that it was a favourite method in mariposa if you wanted to get at the real worth of a man to imagine him clean sold up put up for auction as it were it was the only way to test him and now look at em jeff went on
+they give it away and who do they give it to why to those as don't want it every time they give it to these professors and to this research and that and do the poor get any of it not a cent and never will i tell you boys continued jeff
+there were no boys present but in mariposa all really important speeches are addressed to an imaginary audience of boys i tell you if i was to make a million out of this cubey i'd give it straight to the poor yes sir divide it up into a hundred lots of a thousand dollars each and give it to the people that hadn't nothing
+so always after that i knew just what those bananas were being grown for indeed after that though jefferson never spoke of his intentions directly he said a number of things that seemed to bear on them
+he asked me for instance one day how many blind people it would take to fill one of these blind homes and how a feller could get ahold of them
+a feller could get enough of them to make a showing
+but still what's the use of talking of what jeff meant to do nobody knows or cares about it now the end of it was bound to come even in mariposa some of the people must have thought so
+else how was it that henry mullins made such a fuss about selling a draft for forty thousand on new york and why was it that mister smith wouldn't pay billy the desk clerk his back wages when he wanted to put it into cuba oh yes some of them must have seen it
+and yet when it came it seemed so quiet ever so quiet not a bit like the northern star mine and the oyster supper and the mariposa band it is strange how quiet these things look the other way round
+you remember the cuban land frauds in new york and porforio gomez shooting the detective and him and maximo morez getting clear away with two hundred thousand no of course you don't why even in the city papers it only filled an inch or two of type and anyway the names were hard to remember
+that was jeff's money part of it mullins got the telegram from a broker or someone and he showed it to jeff just as he was going up the street with an estate agent to look at a big empty lot on the hill behind the town the very place for these incurables
+and jeff went back to the shop so quiet have you ever seen an animal that is stricken through how quiet it seems to move
+and since that though it's quite a little while ago the shop's open till eleven every night now and jeff is shaving away to pay back that five hundred that johnson the livery man sent to the cubans and pathetic tut tut you don't know mariposa
+jeff has to work pretty late but that's nothing nothing at all if you've worked hard all your lifetime
+they were glad enough to get her and she says now that if there's one thing she hates it's the stage and she can't see how the actresses put up with it anyway things are not so bad
+the people march he became aware of someone urging a glass of clear fluid upon his attention looked up and discovered this was a dark young man in a yellow garment he took the dose forthwith and in a moment he was glowing
+a tall man in a black robe stood by his shoulder and pointed to the half open door into the hall this man was shouting close to his ear and yet what was said was indistinct because of the tremendous uproar from the great theatre
+behind the man was a girl in a silvery grey robe whom graham even in this confusion perceived to be beautiful her dark eyes full of wonder and curiosity were fixed on him her lips trembled apart
+a partially opened door gave a glimpse of the crowded hall and admitted a vast uneven tumult a hammering clapping and shouting that died away and began again and rose to a thunderous pitch
+and so continued intermittently all the time that graham remained in the little room he watched the lips of the man in black and gathered that he was making some explanation he stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up abruptly
+he grasped the arm of this shouting person tell me he cried who am i who am i the others came nearer to hear his words
+his eyes searched their faces they have told him nothing cried the girl tell me tell me cried graham you are the master of the earth you are owner of the world
+he did not believe he heard aright he resisted the persuasion he pretended not to understand not to hear he lifted his voice again i have been awake three days a prisoner three days
+it is london yes said the younger man and those who meet in the great hall with the white atlas how does it concern me
+councillors under the atlas why should they try to drug me to keep you insensible said the man in yellow to prevent your interference
+because you are the atlas sire said the man in yellow the world is on your shoulders they rule it in your name the sounds from the hall had died into a silence
+threaded by one monotonous voice now suddenly trampling on these last words came a deafening tumult a roaring and thundering cheer crowded on cheer voices hoarse and shrill beating overlapping and while it lasted
+the people in the little room could not hear each other shout graham stood his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had just heard the council he repeated blankly and then snatched at a name that had struck him
+but who is ostrog he said
+our leader in your name in my name
+why is he not here he has deputed us i am his brother his half brother lincoln he wants you to show yourself to these people and then come on to him that is why he has sent
+he is at the wind vane offices directing the people are marching in your name shouted the younger man they have ruled crushed tyrannised at last even in my name my name master
+the younger man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder
+no one expected you to wake they were cunning damned tyrants but they were taken by surprise they did not know whether to drug you hypnotise you kill you again the hall dominated everything ostrog is at the wind vane offices ready
+even now there is a rumour of fighting beginning the man who had called himself lincoln came close to him ostrog has it planned trust him we have our organisations ready we shall seize the flying stages
+even now he may be doing that then this public theatre bawled the man in yellow is only a contingent we have five myriads of drilled men we have arms cried lincoln we have plans a leader
+massed in the inaudible it is now or never the council is rocking they cannot trust even their drilled men hear the people calling to you graham's mind was like a night of moon and swift clouds
+now dark and hopeless now clear and ghastly he was master of the earth he was a man sodden with thawing snow of all his fluctuating impressions the dominant ones presented an antagonism
+on the one hand was the white council powerful disciplined few
+monstrous crowds packed masses of indistinguishable people clamouring his name hailing him master the other side had imprisoned him debated his death these shouting thousands beyond the little doorway had rescued him
+but why these things should be so he could not understand the door opened lincoln's voice was swept away and drowned and a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult these intruders came towards him
+and lincoln gesticulating the voices without explained their soundless lips show us the sleeper show us the sleeper was the burden of the uproar men were bawling for order silence
+a waving incessant confusion of crowded shouting faces men and women together waving pale blue garments extended hands many were standing one man in rags of dark brown a gaunt figure stood on the seat and waved a black cloth
+he met the wonder and expectation of the girl's eyes what did these people expect from him he was dimly aware that the tumult outside had changed its character was in some way beating marching his own mind too changed
+but a moment that was near to panic passed he tried to make audible inquiries of
+lincoln was shouting in his ear but graham was deafened to that all the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall he perceived what had happened to the uproar the whole mass of people was chanting together it was not simply a song
+the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music music like the music of an organ
+full of flaunting banners full of the march and pageantry of opening war and the feet of the people were beating time tramp tramp he was urged towards the door he obeyed mechanically
+the strength of that chant took hold of him stirred him emboldened him the hall opened to him
+wave your arm to them said lincoln wave your arm to them this said a voice on the other side he must have this arms were about his neck detaining him in the doorway and a black subtly folding mantle hung from his shoulders
+he threw his arm free of this and followed lincoln he perceived the girl in grey close to him her face lit her gesture onward for the instant she became to him flushed and eager as she was an embodiment of the song
+he emerged in the alcove again incontinently the mounting waves of the song broke upon his appearing and flashed up into a foam of shouting guided by lincoln's hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing the people
+the hall was a vast and intricate space galleries balconies broad spaces of amphitheatral steps and great archways far away high up seemed the mouth of a huge passage full of struggling humanity
+the whole multitude was swaying in congested masses individual figures sprang out of the tumult impressed him momentarily and lost definition again close to the platform swayed a beautiful fair woman carried by three men
+her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff next this group an old careworn man in blue canvas maintained his place in the crush with difficulty and behind shouted a hairless face a great cavity of toothless mouth a voice called
+ostrog all his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling song the multitude were beating time with their feet marking time tramp tramp tramp tramp the green weapons waved
+flashed and slanted then he saw those nearest to him on a level space before the stage were marching in front of him passing towards a great archway shouting to the council tramp tramp tramp tramp he raised his arm and the roaring was redoubled
+march his mouth shaped inaudible heroic words he waved his arm again and pointed to the archway shouting onward they were no longer marking time they were marching tramp tramp tramp tramp in that host
+were bearded men old men youths fluttering robed bare armed women girls men and women of the new age rich robes grey rags fluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominant blue
+a monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right he perceived a blue clad negro a shrivelled woman in yellow then a group of tall fair haired white faced blue clad men pushed theatrically past him he noted two chinamen
+a tall sallow dark haired shining eyed youth white clad from top to toe clambered up towards the platform shouting loyally and sprang down again and receded looking backward heads shoulders
+hands clutching weapons all were swinging with those marching cadences faces came out of the confusion to him as he stood there eyes met his and passed and vanished men gesticulated to him shouted inaudible personal things
+most of the faces were flushed but many were ghastly white and disease was there and many a hand that waved to him was gaunt and lean men and women of the new age strange and incredible meeting as the broad stream passed before him to the right
+tributary gangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in an incessant replacement of people tramp tramp tramp tramp the unison of the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of arches and passages men and women
+mingled in the ranks tramp tramp tramp tramp the whole world seemed marching tramp tramp tramp tramp his brain was tramping the garments waved onward the faces poured by more abundantly tramp tramp tramp tramp
+at lincoln's pressure he turned towards the archway walking unconsciously in that rhythm scarcely noticing his movement for the melody and stir of it the multitude the gesture and song all moved in that direction
+the flow of people smote downward until the upturned faces were below the level of his feet he was aware of a path before him of a suite about him of guards and dignities and lincoln on his right hand
+attendants intervened and ever and again blotted out the sight of the multitude to the left before him went the backs of the guards in black three and three and three he was marched along a little railed way and crossed above the archway
+with the torrent dipping to flow beneath and shouting up to him he did not know whither he went he did not want to know he glanced back across a flaming spaciousness of hall
+chapter twenty one the under side from the business quarter they presently passed by the running ways into a remote quarter of the city where the bulk of the manufactures was done
+on their way the platforms crossed the thames twice and passed in a broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city from the north in both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid
+the river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water overarched by buildings and vanishing either way into a blackness starred with receding lights a string of black barges passed seaward manned by blue clad men
+the road was a long and very broad and high tunnel along which big wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly here too the distinctive blue of the labour department was in abundance the smoothness of the double tracks
+struck graham most vividly one lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallic rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheep arrested his attention unduly abruptly the edge of the archway cut
+and blotted out the picture presently they left the way and descended by a lift and traversed a passage that sloped downward and so came to a descending lift again the appearance of things changed even the pretence of architectural ornament disappeared
+the lights diminished in number and size the architecture became more and more massive in proportion to the spaces as the factory quarters were reached and in the dusty biscuit making place of the potters among the felspar mills in the furnace rooms of the metal workers
+the blue canvas clothing was on man woman and child many of these great and dusty galleries were silent avenues of machinery endless raked out ashen furnaces testified to the revolutionary dislocation
+but wherever there was work it was being done by slow moving workers in blue canvas the only people not in blue canvas were the overlookers of the work places and the orange clad labour police and fresh from the flushed faces of the dancing halls
+the voluntary vigours of the business quarter graham could note the pinched faces the feeble muscles and weary eyes of many of the latter day workers such as he saw at work were noticeably inferior in physique to the few gaily dressed managers and forewomen
+who were directing their labours the burly labourers of the old victorian times had followed that dray horse and all such living force producers to extinction the place of his costly muscles was taken by some dexterous machine
+the latter day labourer male as well as female was essentially a machine minder and feeder a servant and attendant or an artist under direction the women in comparison with those graham remembered
+were as a class distinctly plain and flat chested two hundred years of emancipation from the moral restraints of puritanical religion two hundred years of city life had done their work in eliminating the strain of feminine beauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads
+to be brilliant physically or mentally to be in any way attractive or exceptional had been and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge a line of escape to the pleasure city and its splendours and delights and at last
+to the euthanasy and peace to be steadfast against such inducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls in the young cities of graham's former life the newly aggregated labouring mass
+had been a diverse multitude still stirred by the tradition of personal honour and a high morality now it was differentiating into an instinct class with a moral and physical difference of its own even with a dialect of its own
+they penetrated downward ever downward towards the working places presently they passed underneath one of the streets of the moving ways and saw its platforms running on their rails far overhead and chinks of white lights between the transverse slits
+the factories that were not working were sparsely lighted to graham they and their shrouded aisles of giant machines seemed plunged in gloom and even where work was going on the illumination was far less brilliant than upon the public ways
+he came to the warren of the jewellers and with some difficulty and by using his signature obtained admission to these galleries they were high and dark and rather cold in the first a few men were making ornaments of gold filigree
+each man at a little bench by himself and with a little shaded light the long vista of light patches with the nimble fingers brightly lit and moving among the gleaming yellow coils and the intent face like the face of a ghost in each shadow
+had the oddest effect the work was beautifully executed
+for the most part intricate grotesques or the ringing of the changes on a geometrical motif these workers wore a peculiar white uniform without pockets or sleeves they assumed this on coming to work but at night
+in spite of every precaution the labour policeman told them in a depressed tone the department was not infrequently robbed beyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs of artificial ruby
+many of these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white due to a disease caused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion asano apologised to graham for this offensive sight but excused himself on the score of the convenience of this route
+this is what i wanted to see said graham this is what i wanted to see trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement she might have done better with herself than that said asano
+graham made some indignant comments but sire we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple said asano in your days people could stand such crudities they were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years
+and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault looking over the parapet graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet more tremendous archings than any he had seen three barges smothered in floury dust were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felspar
+by a multitude of coughing men each guiding a little truck the dust filled the place with a choking mist and turned the electric glare yellow the vague shadows of these workers gesticulated about their feet and rushed to and fro against a long stretch of white washed wall
+every now and then one would stop to cough a shadowy huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water brought to graham's mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries and lifts that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky
+their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they went to and fro and as he looked at this scene some hidden voice in the darkness began to sing stop that shouted one of the policemen but the order was disobeyed
+and first one and then all the white stained men who were working there had taken up the beating refrain singing it defiantly the song of the revolt the feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of the song tramp tramp tramp
+the policeman who had shouted glanced at his fellow and graham saw him shrug his shoulders he made no further effort to stop the singing and so they went through these factories and places of toil seeing many painful and grim things
+that walk left on graham's mind a maze of memories fluctuating pictures of swathed halls and crowded vaults seen through clouds of dust of intricate machines the racing threads of looms the heavy beat of stamping machinery
+the roar and rattle of belt and armature of ill lit subterranean aisles of sleeping places illimitable vistas of pin point lights here was the smell of tanning and here the reek of a brewery
+and here unprecedented reeks everywhere were pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as graham had never before seen thick titans of greasy shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight of that complex city world
+even as these anemic millions were crushed by its complexity and everywhere were pale features lean limbs disfigurement and degradation once and again and again a third time
+graham heard the song of the revolt during his long unpleasant research in these places and once he saw a confused struggle down a passage and learnt that a number of these serfs had seized their bread before their work was done graham was ascending towards the ways again
+when he saw a number of blue clad children running down a transverse passage and presently perceived the reason of their panic in a company of the labour police armed with clubs trotting towards some unknown disturbance and then came a remote disorder
+but for the most part this remnant that worked worked hopelessly all the spirit that was left in fallen humanity was above in the streets that night calling for the master and valiantly and noisily keeping its arms
+they emerged from these wanderings and stood blinking in the bright light of the middle passage of the platforms again they became aware of the remote hooting and yelping of the machines of one of the general intelligence offices
+then a woman with a face of mute white terror and another who gasped and shrieked as she ran what has happened now said graham puzzled for he could not understand their thick speech then he heard it in english and perceived that the thing that everyone was shouting
+that men yelled to one another that women took up screaming that was passing like the first breeze of a thunderstorm chill and sudden through the city was this ostrog has ordered the black police to london the black police are coming from south africa the black police the black police
+he hesitated looked at graham's face and told him the thing he already knew but how can they know asked asano graham heard someone shouting stop all work stop all work
+and a swarthy hunchback ridiculously gay in green and gold came leaping down the platforms toward him bawling again and again in good english this is ostrog's doing ostrog the knave the master is betrayed his voice was hoarse
+he yelled an unspeakable horror that the black police had done in paris and so passed shrieking ostrog the knave for a moment graham stood still for it had come upon him again that these things were a dream
+he looked up at the great cliff of buildings on either side vanishing into blue haze at last above the lights and down to the roaring tiers of platforms and the shouting running people who were gesticulating past
+the master is betrayed they cried the master is betrayed suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent
+he said i might have known the hour has come he thought swiftly what am i to do go back to the council house said asano why should i not appeal the people are here
+you will lose time they will doubt if it is you but they will mass about the council house there you will find their leaders your strength is there with them suppose this is only a rumour
+it sounds true said asano let us have the facts said graham
+even now the ruins may be impassable graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him they went up the stepped platforms to the swiftest one and there asano accosted a labourer the answers to his questions were in the thick vulgar speech what did he say asked graham
+had not someone in the wind vane offices learnt he said a girl a girl not he said a girl he did not know who she was who came out from the council house crying aloud and told the men at work among the ruins
+and then another thing was shouted something that turned an aimless tumult into determinate movements it came like a wind along the street
+the following day was the three d of june eighteen thirty two a date which it is necessary to indicate on account of the grave events which at that epoch hung on the horizon of paris in the state of lightning charged clouds
+which she had not yet done up to that time she had contented herself with watching him on his passage along the boulevard without ever seeking to encounter him it was only on the evening before that she had attempted to address him
+so eponine followed him without his suspecting the fact she saw him displace the bar and slip into the garden
+and readily recognized the one which marius had moved
+none of that lisette she seated herself on the underpinning of the railing close beside the bar as though she were guarding it it was precisely at the point where the railing touched the neighboring wall there was a dim nook there
+she remained thus for more than an hour without stirring and without breathing a prey to her thoughts
+an old belated bourgeois who was making haste to escape from this
+as he skirted the garden railings and reached the angle which it made with the wall heard a dull and threatening voice saying i'm no longer surprised that he comes here every evening
+six men who were marching separately and at some distance from each other along the wall and who might have been taken for a gray patrol
+the first to arrive at the garden railing halted and waited for the others
+grasping each bar in succession and shaking them cautiously thus he came to the bar which marius had loosened as he was on the point of grasping this bar a hand emerged abruptly from the darkness fell upon his arm
+he felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a push in the middle of his breast and a hoarse voice said to him but not loudly there's a dog
+the man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings he bristled up in hideous wise nothing is so formidable to behold as ferocious beasts who are uneasy their terrified air evokes terror
+brujon and montparnasse had noiselessly drawn near without precipitation without uttering a word with the sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night some indescribable but hideous tools were visible in their hands
+which prowlers call fanchons ah see here what are you about there
+and threw herself on his neck i am here little father because i am here isn't a person allowed to sit on the stones nowadays
+there's nothing to be done here but embrace me my good little father it's a long time since i've seen you so you're out thenardier tried to disentangle himself from eponine's arms and grumbled that's good
+thenardier replied she's well i don't know let me alone and be off i tell you i won't go so there now
+small bony and feeble as that of a skeleton
+you know well that i'm no fool
+i have rendered you service on various occasions well i have made inquiries you will expose yourselves to no purpose you see i swear to you that there is nothing in this house there are lone women said guelemer
+who had stayed up to spread out some linen to dry eponine made a final effort well said she they're very poor folks
+cried thenardier when we've turned the house upside down and put the cellar at the top and the attic below we'll tell you what there is inside and whether it's francs or sous or half farthings
+and he pushed her aside with the intention of entering my good friend mister montparnasse said eponine i entreat you you are a good fellow don't enter
+take care you'll cut yourself replied montparnasse thenardier resumed in his decided tone decamp my girl and leave men to their own affairs
+the ventriloquist however finished his grin she went on friends listen well this is not what you want
+if you lay a hand on this gate i'll scream i'll beat on the door i'll rouse everybody i'll have the whole six of you seized i'll call the police she'd do it too
+you don't frighten me i tell you that you shan't enter this house because it doesn't suit me if you approach i'll bark i told you i'm the dog and i don't care a straw for you go your way you bore me
+pardine i'm not afraid i shall be hungry this summer and i shall be cold this winter aren't they ridiculous these ninnies of men
+she fastened her intent gaze upon thenardier and said not even of you father then she continued as she cast her blood shot spectre like eyes upon the ruffians in turn
+what do i care if i'm picked up to morrow morning on the pavement of the rue plumet killed by the blows of my father's club
+in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs she was forced to pause she was seized by a dry cough her breath came from her weak and narrow chest like the death rattle she resumed
+i have only to cry out and people will come and then slap bang there are six of you i represent the whole world thenardier made a movement towards her don't approach she cried he halted
+and said gently well no i won't approach but don't speak so loud so you intend to hinder us in our work my daughter but we must earn our living all the same
+and her attitude nothing more resolute and more surprising could be seen the six rascals speechless and gloomy at being held in check by a girl retreated beneath the shadow cast by the lantern and held counsel with furious and
+it's a shame to miss this anyway two women an old fellow who lodges in the back yard and curtains that ain't so bad at the windows the old cove must be a jew
+well go in then the rest of you exclaimed montparnasse do the job i'll stay here with the girl and if she fails us he flashed the knife which he held open in his hand in the light of the lantern
+thenardier said not a word and seemed ready for whatever the rest pleased brujon who was somewhat of an oracle and who had as the reader knows put up the job had not as yet spoken he seemed thoughtful
+he had the reputation of not sticking at anything and it was known that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado besides this he made verses and songs which gave him great authority
+where shall we go to sleep to night under pantin paris have you the key to the gate thenardier pardi
+who never took her eyes off of them saw them retreat by the road by which they had come she rose and began to creep after them along the walls and the houses she followed them thus as far as the boulevard there they parted
+it was the reflection of the torch which was burning in the corinthe barricade marius directed his steps towards that red light
+had preserved with the outside world at the corner of the last house on his left he thrust his head forward and looked into the fragment of the rue mondetour
+which cast a broad curtain of shadow in which he was himself engulfed he perceived some light on the pavement a bit of the wine shop and beyond a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall and men crouching down with guns on their knees
+all this was ten fathoms distant from him it was the interior of the barricade the houses which bordered the lane on the right concealed the rest of the wine shop the large barricade and the flag from him
+marius had but a step more to take
+folded his arms and fell to thinking about his father he thought of that heroic colonel pontmercy who had been so proud a soldier who had guarded the frontier of france under the republic
+his cockade blackened with powder his brow furrowed with his helmet in barracks in camp in the bivouac
+at the expiration of twenty years had returned from the great wars with a scarred cheek a smiling countenance tranquil admirable pure as a child having done everything for france and nothing against her
+to offer his breast to bayonets to shed his blood to seek the enemy to seek death that he was about to wage war in his turn and descend to the field of battle and that the field of battle upon which he was to descend was the street
+he thought of his father's sword which his grandfather had sold to a second hand dealer and which he had so mournfully regretted he said to himself that that chaste and valiant sword had done well to escape from him
+and to depart in wrath into the gloom that if it had thus fled it was because it was intelligent and because it had foreseen the future that it had had a presentiment of this rebellion the war of the gutters
+blows given and received in the rear it was because coming from marengo and friedland it did not wish to go to the rue de la chanvrerie it was because after what it had done with the father it did not wish to do this for the son
+he told himself that if that sword were there if after taking possession of it at his father's pillow he had dared to take it and carry it off for this combat of darkness between frenchmen in the streets
+it would assuredly have scorched his hands and burst out aflame before his eyes like the sword of the angel
+wound the side of his country and then he fell to weeping bitterly this was horrible but what was he to do live without cosette he could not since she was gone he must needs die
+had he not given her his word of honor that he would die she had gone knowing that this meant that it pleased her that marius should die and then it was clear that she no longer loved him
+should he retreat after going so far should he flee from danger after having approached it should he slip away after having come and peeped into the barricade slip away all in a tremble saying after all i have had enough of it as it is
+who were a mere handful against an army should he be untrue at once to his love to country to his word should he give to his cowardice the pretext of patriotism but this was impossible and if the phantom of his father was there in the gloom
+all at once he raised it a sort of splendid rectification had just been effected in his mind there is a widening of the sphere of thought which is peculiar to the vicinity of the grave
+it makes one see clearly to be near death the vision of the action into which he felt that he was perhaps on the point of entering appeared to him no more as lamentable but as superb
+he left none of them unanswered let us see why should his father be indignant are there not cases where insurrection rises to the dignity of duty
+civil war what does that mean is there a foreign war is not all war between men war between brothers war is qualified only by its object there is no such thing as foreign or civil war
+there is only just and unjust war until that day when the grand human agreement is concluded war that at least which is the effort of the future which is hastening on against the past which is lagging in the rear may be necessary
+whether foreign or civil is iniquitous it is called crime outside the pale of that holy thing justice by what right does one form of man despise another by what right should the sword of washington
+the one is the defender the other the liberator shall we brand every appeal to arms within a city's limits without taking the object into a consideration then note the infamy of brutus marcel arnould von blankenheim coligny hedgerow war
+war of the streets why not that was the war of ambiorix of artevelde of marnix of pelagius but ambiorix fought against rome artevelde against france
+an invasion violates the geographical frontier driving out the tyrant or driving out the english in both cases regaining possession of one's own territory there comes an hour when protestation no longer suffices
+the tenth of august electrifies them
+after diderot danton multitudes have a tendency to accept the master their mass bears witness to apathy a crowd is easily led as a whole to obedience men must be stirred up pushed on
+treated roughly by the very benefit of their deliverance their eyes must be wounded by the true light must be hurled at them in terrible handfuls
+of whom are you speaking do you call louis philippe the tyrant no
+are what history is in the habit of calling good kings but principles are not to be parcelled out the logic of the true is rectilinear the peculiarity of truth is that it lacks complaisance no concessions then
+both represent in a certain measure the confiscation of right and in order to clear away universal insurrection they must be combated it must be done france being always the one to begin
+when the master falls in france he falls everywhere in short what cause is more just and consequently what war is greater than that which re establishes social truth
+restores the people to the people restores sovereignty to man replaces the purple on the head of france restores equity and reason in their plenitude suppresses every germ of antagonism by restoring each one to himself
+annihilates the obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord and places the human race once more on a level with the right these wars build up peace
+there is no one who has not noticed it in his own case the soul and therein lies the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity has a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities
+without moving and there was perceptible that quasi silence which marks the last stage of expectation overhead at the small window in the third story marius descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to be singularly attentive
+this was the porter who had been killed by le cabuc below by the lights of the torch which was thrust between the paving stones this head could be vaguely distinguished nothing could be stranger in that sombre and uncertain gleam
+one would have said that the man who was dead was surveying those who were about to die a long trail of blood which had flowed from that head descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first floor
+these melancholy openings which take place in the gloom before despair are tempting marius thrust aside the bar which had so often allowed him to pass emerged from the garden and said i will go
+mad with grief no longer conscious of anything fixed or solid in his brain incapable of accepting anything thenceforth of fate after those two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love
+overwhelmed at once by all the reveries of despair he had but one desire remaining to make a speedy end of all he set out at rapid pace he found himself most opportunely armed
+by the boulevard traversed the esplanade and the bridge of the invalides
+and reached the rue de rivoli the shops were open there
+women were making their purchases in the stalls people were eating ices in the cafe laiter and nibbling small cakes at the english pastry cook's shop
+and at the same time the crowd increased in density for the passers by now amounted to a crowd no one could be seen to speak in this throng and yet there arose from it a dull deep murmur
+near the fountain of the arbre sec there were assemblages motionless and gloomy groups which were to those who went and came as stones in the midst of running water at the entrance to the rue des prouvaires
+there were hardly any black coats or round hats now but smock frocks blouses caps and bristling and cadaverous heads this multitude undulated confusedly in the nocturnal gloom
+its whisperings had the hoarse accent of a vibration although not one of them was walking a dull trampling was audible in the mire beyond this dense portion of the throng in the rue du roule in the rue des prouvaires
+only the solitary and diminishing rows of lanterns could be seen vanishing into the street in the distance the lanterns of that date resembled large red stars hanging to ropes and shed upon the pavement a shadow
+which had the form of a huge spider these streets were not deserted there could be descried piles of guns moving bayonets and troops bivouacking no curious observer passed that limit there circulation ceased
+there the rabble ended and the army began marius willed with the will of a man who hopes no more he had been summoned he must go he found a means to traverse the throng
+he shunned the patrols he avoided the sentinels he made a circuit reached the rue de bethisy
+there were no longer any lanterns after having passed the zone of the crowd he had passed the limits of the troops he found himself in something startling there was no longer a passer by no longer a soldier
+no longer a light there was no one solitude silence night
+entering a street was like entering a cellar he continued to advance he took a few steps some one passed close to him at a run was it a man or a woman were there many of them he could not have told
+it had passed and vanished proceeding from circuit to circuit he reached a lane which he judged to be the rue de la poterie near the middle of this street
+it was an overturned wagon his foot recognized pools of water gullies and paving stones scattered and piled up
+he climbed over the stones and found himself on the other side of the barrier he walked very near the street posts and guided himself along the walls of the houses a little beyond the barricade it seemed to him
+marius left the horses behind him as he was approaching a street which seemed to him to be the rue du contrat social a shot coming no one knows whence and traversing the darkness at random whistled close by him
+the whole of this itinerary
+which is like a city within a city
+hollowed out in the centre of paris there the glance fell into an abyss thanks to the broken lanterns thanks to the closed windows there all radiance all life all sound all movement ceased
+the invisible police of the insurrection were on the watch everywhere and maintained order that is to say night the necessary tactics of insurrection are to drown small numbers in a vast obscurity
+to multiply every combatant by the possibilities which that obscurity contains at dusk every window where a candle was burning received a shot the light was extinguished sometimes the inhabitant was killed hence
+nothing was stirring there was nothing but fright mourning stupor in the houses and in the streets a sort of sacred horror not even the long rows of windows and stores the indentations of the chimneys and the roofs
+and the vague reflections which are cast back by the wet and muddy pavements were visible an eye cast upward at that mass of shadows might perhaps have caught a glimpse here and there at intervals
+of indistinct gleams which brought out broken and eccentric lines and profiles of singular buildings something like the lights which go and come in ruins it was at such points that the barricades were situated
+the rest was a lake of obscurity foggy heavy and funereal above which in motionless and melancholy outlines rose the tower of saint jacques
+and where a few street lanterns still burned the aerial observer might have distinguished the metallic gleam of swords and bayonets the dull rumble of artillery and the swarming of silent battalions whose ranks were swelling from minute to minute
+and as we have just seen any street which one might come to offered nothing but darkness a wild darkness full of traps full of unseen and formidable shocks into which it was alarming to penetrate
+all was over no more light was to be hoped for henceforth except the lightning of guns no further encounter except the abrupt and rapid apparition of death where how when no one knew
+but it was certain and inevitable in this place which had been marked out for the struggle the government and the insurrection the national guard and popular societies the bourgeois and the uprising groping their way
+that the most timid felt themselves seized with resolution and the most daring with terror moreover on both sides the fury the rage and the determination were equal
+for the one party to advance meant death and no one dreamed of retreating for the other to remain meant death and no one dreamed of flight it was indispensable that all should be ended on the following day
+that triumph should rest either here or there that the insurrection should prove itself a revolution or a skirmish the government understood this as well as the parties the most insignificant bourgeois felt it
+here only one sound was audible a sound as heart rending as the death rattle
+nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what men were about to do nothing disturbed the harmony of the whole effect the stars had disappeared heavy clouds filled the horizon with their melancholy folds
+which had already witnessed so many revolutionary events while youth the secret associations the schools in the name of principles and the middle classes in the name of interests
+clasping and throwing each other while each one hastened and invited the last and decisive hour of the crisis far away and quite outside of this fatal quarter in the most profound depths of the unfathomable cavities of that
+wretched old paris which disappears under the splendor of happy and opulent paris the sombre voice of the people could be heard giving utterance to a dull roar a fearful and sacred voice
+chapter eighteen chained in warhoon it must have been several hours before i regained consciousness
+and bending over me was an ancient and ugly female as i opened my eyes she turned to one of the warriors saying he will live o jed tis well replied the one so addressed
+rising and approaching my couch he should render rare sport for the great games and now as my eyes fell upon him i saw that he was no thark for his ornaments and metal were not of that horde
+he was a huge fellow terribly scarred about the face and chest and with one broken tusk and a missing ear
+and depending from these a number of dried human hands his reference to the great games of which i had heard so much while among the tharks convinced me that i had but jumped from purgatory into gehenna
+after a few more words with the female during which she assured him that i was now fully fit to travel the jed ordered that we mount and ride after the main column
+i was strapped securely to as wild and unmanageable a thoat as i had ever seen and with a mounted warrior on either side to prevent the beast from bolting
+we rode forth at a furious pace in pursuit of the column my wounds gave me but little pain so wonderfully and rapidly had the applications and injections of the female exercised their therapeutic powers
+who proved to be the jeddak of the hordes of warhoon like the jed who had brought me he was frightfully scarred and also decorated with the breastplate of human skulls and dried dead hands
+which seemed to mark all the greater warriors among the warhoons as well as to indicate their awful ferocity which greatly transcends even that of the tharks the jeddak bar comas who was comparatively young
+was the object of the fierce and jealous hatred of his old lieutenant dak kova the jed who had captured me and i could not but note the almost studied efforts which the latter made to affront his superior
+he entirely omitted the usual formal salutation as we entered the presence of the jeddak and as he pushed me roughly before the ruler he exclaimed in a loud and menacing voice
+i have brought a strange creature wearing the metal of a thark whom it is my pleasure to have battle with a wild thoat at the great games he will die as bar comas your jeddak sees fit if at all
+with emphasis and dignity if at all roared dak kova by the dead hands at my throat but he shall die bar comas no maudlin weakness on your part shall save him
+rather than by a water hearted weakling from whom even old dak kova could tear the metal with his bare hands bar comas eyed the defiant and insubordinate chieftain for an instant his expression one of haughty
+fearless contempt and hate and then without drawing a weapon and without uttering a word he hurled himself at the throat of his defamer
+i never before had seen two green martian warriors battle with nature's weapons and the exhibition of animal ferocity which ensued was as fearful a thing as the most disordered imagination could picture
+bar comas had much the better of the battle as he was stronger quicker and more intelligent it soon seemed that the encounter was done saving only the final death thrust when bar comas slipped in
+breaking away from a clinch it was the one little opening that dak kova needed and hurling himself at the body of his adversary
+and with a last powerful effort ripped the young jeddak wide open the full length of his body the great tusk
+victor and vanquished rolled limp and lifeless upon the moss a huge mass of torn and bloody flesh
+bar comas was stone dead and only the most herculean efforts on the part of dak kova's females saved him from the fate he deserved three days later he walked without assistance to the body of bar comas which
+by custom had not been moved from where it fell and placing his foot upon the neck of his erstwhile ruler he assumed the title of jeddak of warhoon
+the injuries to dak kova had delayed the march so greatly that it was decided to give up the expedition which was a raid upon a small thark community in retaliation for the destruction of the incubator until after the great games
+they are a smaller horde than the tharks but much more ferocious
+food was brought me at intervals but owing to the utter darkness of the place i do not know whether i lay there days or weeks or months it was the most horrible experience of all my life
+and that my mind did not give way to the terrors of that inky blackness has been a wonder to me ever since the place was filled with creeping crawling things cold sinuous bodies passed over me when i lay down
+and in the darkness i occasionally caught glimpses of gleaming fiery eyes fixed in horrible intentness upon me no sound reached me from the world above and no word would my jailer vouchsafe when my food was brought to me
+although i at first bombarded him with questions finally all the hatred and maniacal loathing for these awful creatures who had placed me in this horrible place was centered by my tottering reason upon this single emissary
+who represented to me the entire horde of warhoons i had noticed that he always advanced with his dim torch to where he could place the food within my reach and as he stooped to place it upon the floor
+so with the cunning of a madman i backed into the far corner of my cell when next i heard him approaching
+i waited his coming crouching like some beast of prey as he stooped to place my food upon the ground i swung the chain above my head and crashed the links with all my strength upon his skull without a sound
+he slipped to the floor stone dead laughing and chattering like the idiot i was fast becoming
+no longer was i a jibbering idiot but a sane reasoning man with the means of escape within my very hands as i was groping to remove the chain from about my victim's neck
+back into my corner i crouched
+and stealthily on came the awful eyes until they reached the dead body at my feet then slowly they retreated but this time with a strange grating sound
+the looting of zodanga as the great gate where i stood swung open my fifty tharks headed by tars tarkas himself rode in upon their mighty thoats i led them to the palace walls
+which i negotiated easily without assistance once inside however the gate gave me considerable trouble
+and soon my fierce escort was riding across the gardens of the jeddak of zodanga as we approached the palace i could see through the great windows of the first floor into the brilliantly illuminated audience chamber of than kosis
+the immense hall was crowded with nobles and their women as though some important function was in progress there was not a guard in sight without the palace due i presume to the fact that the city and palace walls were considered impregnable
+and so i came close and peered within at one end of the chamber upon massive golden thrones encrusted with diamonds sat than kosis and his consort
+surrounded by officers and dignitaries of state before them stretched a broad aisle lined on either side with soldiery and as i looked there entered this aisle at the far end of the hall
+the head of a procession which advanced to the foot of the throne first there marched four officers of the jeddak's guard bearing a huge salver on which reposed upon a cushion of scarlet silk
+at the foot of the throne these two parties separated and halted facing each other at opposite sides of the aisle then came more dignitaries and the officers of the palace and of the army and finally
+two figures entirely muffled in scarlet silk so that not a feature of either was discernible these two stopped at the foot of the throne facing than kosis when the balance of the procession had entered and assumed their stations
+than kosis addressed the couple standing before him i could not hear his words but presently two officers advanced and removed the scarlet robe from one of the figures and i saw that kantos kan had failed in his mission
+for it was sab than prince of zodanga who stood revealed before me than kosis now took a set of the ornaments from one of the salvers and placed one of the collars of gold about his son's neck
+springing the padlock fast after a few more words addressed to sab than he turned to the other figure from which the officers now removed the enshrouding silks disclosing to my now comprehending view
+but to me it seemed the most fiendish sight i had ever witnessed and as the ornaments were adjusted upon her beautiful figure and her collar of gold swung open in the hands of than kosis i raised my long sword above my head
+i brought my long sword down upon the golden chain that would have bound dejah thoris to another in an instant all was confusion a thousand drawn swords menaced me from every quarter
+rode tars tarkas and his fifty warriors on their great thoats a cry of alarm and amazement broke from the assemblage but no word of fear and in a moment the soldiers and nobles of zodanga
+with drawn long sword in an instant we were engaged and i found no mean antagonist as we circled upon the broad platform i saw sab than rushing up the steps to aid his father
+but as he raised his hand to strike dejah thoris sprang before him and then my sword found the spot that made sab than jeddak of zodanga
+and again we faced each other he was soon joined by a quartet of officers and with my back against a golden throne i fought once again for dejah thoris i was hard pressed to defend myself
+and with him my last chance to win the woman i loved my blade was swinging with the rapidity of lightning as i sought to parry the thrusts and cuts of my opponents two i had disarmed and one was down
+when several more rushed to the aid of their new ruler and to avenge the death of the old as they advanced there were cries of the woman the woman strike her down it is her plot kill her kill her
+calling to dejah thoris to get behind me i worked my way toward the little doorway back of the throne but the officers realized my intentions and three of them sprang in behind me and blocked my chances for gaining a position
+the tharks were having their hands full in the center of the room
+when i saw tars tarkas surging through the crowd of pygmies that swarmed about him with one swing of his mighty longsword he laid a dozen corpses at his feet
+not one attempted to escape and when the fighting ceased it was because only tharks remained alive in the great hall other than dejah thoris and myself sab than lay dead beside his father
+and the corpses of the flower of zodangan nobility and chivalry covered the floor of the bloody shambles my first thought when the battle was over was for kantos kan
+and leaving dejah thoris in charge of tars tarkas i took a dozen warriors and hastened to the dungeons beneath the palace the jailers had all left to join the fighters in the throne room so we searched the labyrinthine prison without opposition
+i called kantos kan's name aloud in each new corridor and compartment and finally i was rewarded by hearing a faint response guided by the sound we soon found him helpless in a dark recess
+he was overjoyed at seeing me and to know the meaning of the fight faint echoes of which had reached his prison cell he told me that the air patrol had captured him before he reached the high tower of the palace
+so that he had not even seen sab than we discovered that it would be futile to attempt to cut away the bars and chains which held him prisoner so at his suggestion
+fortunately among the first i examined i found his jailer and soon we had kantos kan with us in the throne room the sounds of heavy firing mingled with shouts and cries came to us from the city's streets
+and tars tarkas hastened away to direct the fighting without kantos kan accompanied him to act as guide the green warriors commencing a thorough search of the palace for other zodangans and for loot and dejah thoris and i were left alone
+can it be that all earth men are as you alone a stranger hunted threatened persecuted you have done in a few short months what in all the past ages of barsoom no man has ever done
+joined together the wild hordes of the sea bottoms and brought them to fight as allies of a red martian people the answer is easy dejah thoris i replied smiling it was not i who did it it was love
+love for dejah thoris a power that would work greater miracles than this you have seen a pretty flush overspread her face and she answered you may say that now john carter and i may listen
+for i am free and more still i have to say ere it is again too late i returned i have done many strange things in my life many things that wiser men would not have dared
+but never in my wildest fancies have i dreamed of winning a dejah thoris for myself for never had i dreamed that in all the universe dwelt such a woman as the princess of helium
+but that you are you is enough to make me doubt my sanity as i ask you my princess to be mine he does not need to be abashed who so well knew the answer to his plea
+before the plea were made she replied rising and placing her dear hands upon my shoulders and so i took her in my arms and kissed her and thus in the midst of a city of wild conflict filled with the alarms of war
+with death and destruction reaping their terrible harvest around her did dejah thoris princess of helium true daughter of mars the god of war promise herself in marriage to john carter
+a fight that won friends the thing which more nearly resembled our earthly men than it did the martians i had seen held me pinioned to the ground with one huge foot
+while it jabbered and gesticulated at some answering creature behind me this other which was evidently its mate soon came toward us bearing a mighty stone cudgel
+with which it evidently intended to brain me the creatures were about ten or fifteen feet tall standing erect and had like the green martians an intermediary set of arms or legs
+midway between their upper and lower limbs their eyes were close together and non protruding their ears were high set but more laterally located than those of the martians
+when a bolt of myriad legged horror hurled itself through the doorway full upon the breast of my executioner with a shriek of fear the ape which held me leaped through the open window but its mate closed in a terrific
+death struggle with my preserver which was nothing less than my faithful watch thing i cannot bring myself to call so hideous a creature a dog as quickly as possible i gained my feet and backing against the wall i witnessed such a
+battle as it is vouchsafed few beings to see the strength agility and blind ferocity of these two creatures is approached by nothing known to earthly man
+my beast had an advantage in his first hold having sunk his mighty fangs far into the breast of his adversary but the great arms and paws of the ape
+backed by muscles far transcending those of the martian men i had seen had locked the throat of my guardian and slowly were choking out his life and bending back his head and neck upon his body
+where i momentarily expected the former to fall limp at the end of a broken neck in accomplishing this the ape was tearing away the entire front of its breast which was held in the vise like grip of the powerful jaws
+back and forth upon the floor they rolled neither one emitting a sound of fear or pain presently i saw the great eyes of my beast bulging completely from their sockets and blood flowing from its nostrils
+but so also was the ape whose struggles were growing momentarily less suddenly i came to myself
+i seized the cudgel which had fallen to the floor at the commencement of the battle and swinging it with all the power of my earthly arms i crashed it full upon the head of the ape crushing his skull as though it had been an eggshell
+scarcely had the blow descended when i was confronted with a new danger the ape's mate recovered from its first shock of terror had returned to the scene of the encounter by way of the interior of the building
+i glimpsed him just before he reached the doorway and the sight of him now roaring as he perceived his lifeless fellow stretched upon the floor and frothing at the mouth in the extremity of his rage filled me i must confess
+with dire forebodings i am ever willing to stand and fight when the odds are not too overwhelmingly against me but in this instance i perceived neither glory nor profit
+against the iron muscles and brutal ferocity of this enraged denizen of an unknown world in fact the only outcome of such an encounter so far as i might be concerned seemed sudden death
+i was standing near the window and i knew that once in the street i might gain the plaza and safety before the creature could overtake me at least there was a chance for safety in flight
+against almost certain death should i remain and fight however desperately it is true i held the cudgel but what could i do with it against his four great arms
+even should i break one of them with my first blow for i figured that he would attempt to ward off the cudgel he could reach out and annihilate me with the others before i could recover for a second attack
+in the instant that these thoughts passed through my mind i had turned to make for the window but my eyes alighting on the form of my erstwhile guardian threw all thoughts of flight to the four winds he lay gasping upon the floor of the chamber
+his great eyes fastened upon me in what seemed a pitiful appeal for protection i could not withstand that look nor could i on second thought have deserted my rescuer without giving as good an account of myself in his behalf
+as he had in mine without more ado therefore i turned to meet the charge of the infuriated bull ape he was now too close upon me for the cudgel to prove of any effective assistance
+so i merely threw it as heavily as i could at his advancing bulk it struck him just below the knees eliciting a howl of pain and rage and so throwing him off his balance that he lunged full upon me
+with arms wide stretched to ease his fall again as on the preceding day i had recourse to earthly tactics and swinging my right fist full upon the point of his chin
+i beheld tars tarkas sola and three or four warriors standing in the doorway of the chamber as my eyes met theirs i was for the second time the recipient of their zealously guarded applause
+my absence had been noted by sola on her awakening and she had quickly informed tars tarkas who had set out immediately with a handful of warriors to search for me as they had approached the limits of the city
+this encounter together with my set to with the martian warrior on the previous day and my feats of jumping placed me upon a high pinnacle in their regard evidently devoid of all the finer sentiments of friendship
+love or affection these people fairly worship physical prowess and bravery and nothing is too good for the object of their adoration as long as he maintains his position by repeated examples of his skill
+strength and courage sola who had accompanied the searching party of her own volition was the only one of the martians whose face had not been twisted in laughter as i battled for my life she on the contrary
+was sober with apparent solicitude and as soon as i had finished the monster rushed to me and carefully examined my body for possible wounds or injuries satisfying herself that i had come off unscathed she smiled quietly
+and taking my hand started toward the door of the chamber tars tarkas and the other warriors had entered and were standing over the now rapidly reviving brute which had saved my life
+they seemed to be deep in argument and finally one of them addressed me but remembering my ignorance of his language turned back to tars tarkas who with a word and gesture gave some command to the fellow
+and turned to follow us from the room there seemed something menacing in their attitude toward my beast and i hesitated to leave until i had learned the outcome it was well i did so for the warrior drew an
+evil looking pistol from its holster and was on the point of putting an end to the creature when i sprang forward and struck up his arm the bullet striking the wooden casing of the window exploded
+blowing a hole completely through the wood and masonry i then knelt down beside the fearsome looking thing and raising it to its feet motioned for it to follow me
+and sola grasping me tightly by the arm i had at least two friends on mars a young woman who watched over me with motherly solicitude and a dumb brute which as i later came to know
+held in its poor ugly carcass more love more loyalty more gratitude
+there never was a prouder mamma than madam cluck when she led forth her family of eight downy little chicks chanticleer strut snowball speckle peep peck downy and blot were their names
+and no sooner were they out of the shell than they began to chirp and scratch as gaily as if the big world in which they suddenly found themselves was made for their especial benefit it was a fine brood
+but poor madam cluck had bad luck with her chicks for they were her first and she didn't know how to manage them old aunt cockletop told her that she didn't and predicted that those poor dears would come to bad ends
+aunt cockletop was right as you will see when i have told the sad history of this unfortunate family the tragedy began with chanty who was the boldest little cockadoodle who ever tried to crow
+before he had a feather to his bit of a tail chanty began to fight and soon was known as the most quarrelsome chick in the farm yard having pecked his brothers and sisters he tried to do the same to his playmates
+the ducklings goslings and young turkeys and was so disagreeable that all the fowls hated him one day a pair of bantams arrived pretty little white birds with red crests and nice yellow feet
+chanty thought he could beat mister bantam easily he was so small and invited him to fight mister b declined then chanty called him a coward and gave missus b a peck
+which ended in chanty's utter defeat for he died from his wounds downy and snowball soon followed for the two sweet little things would swing on the burdock leaves that grew over the brook
+sitting side by side the plump sisters were placidly swaying up and down over the clear brown water rippling below when ah sad to relate the stem broke and down went leaf
+chickens and all to a watery death i'm the most unlucky hen ever hatched groaned
+and it did seem so for the very next week speckle the best and prettiest of the brood went to walk with aunt cockletop grasshoppering they called it in the great field across the road
+what a nice time speckle did have to be sure for the grasshoppers were lively and fat and aunt was in an unusually amiable mood never run away from anything but face danger and conquer it
+like a brave chick said the old biddy as she went clucking through the grass with her gray turban wagging in the wind speckle had hopped away from a toad with a startled chirp which caused aunt to utter that remark
+the words had hardly left her beak when a shadow above made her look up give one loud croak of alarm and then scuttle away as fast as legs and wings could carry her little speckle remembering the advice
+and unconscious of the danger stood her ground as a great hawk came circling nearer and nearer till with a sudden dart he pounced on the poor chicken and bore it away chirping dismally
+what shall i do it was a dreadful blow to missus cluck and aunt cockletop didn't show herself for a whole day after that story was known
+for every fowl in the yard twitted her with the difference between her preaching and her practice
+he was at it from morning till night and everyone was tired to death of hearing his shrill small voice making funny attempts to produce hoarse little crows as he sat on the wall and stretched his yellow neck
+till his throat quite ached with the effort ah if i could only fly to the highest beam in the barn and give a splendid crow that everyone could hear i should be perfectly happy said this silly little fowl
+so he tried every day to fly and crow and at last managed to get up then how he did strut and rustle his feathers while his playmates sat below and watched him
+you'll fall and get hurt said his sister blot hold your tongue you ugly little thing and don't talk to me i'm going to crow and can't be interrupted by any silly bit of a hen be quiet down there
+and hear if i can't do it as well as daddy the chicks stopped scratching and peeping and sat in a row to hear strut crow perching himself on the beam he tried his best
+came of it and all the chicks laughed that made strut mad and he resolved to crow even if he killed himself doing it he gave an angry cluck flapped his wings and tried again alas alas
+for poor strut he leaned so far forward in his frantic effort to get a big crow out that he toppled over and fell bump on the hard barn floor killing himself instantly
+for some time after this missus cluck kept her three remaining little ones close to her side watching over them with maternal care till they were heartily tired of her anxious cluckings peep and peck were always together
+being very fond of one another peep was a most inquisitive chicken poking her head into every nook and corner and never satisfied till she had seen all there was to see peck was a glutton
+eating everything she could find and often making herself ill by gobbling too fast and forgetting to eat a little gravel to help digest her food don't go out of the barn children i'm going to lay an egg
+and can't look after you just now said their mother one day yes ma'am chirped the chickens and then as she went rustling into the hay mow they began to run about and enjoy themselves with all their might
+peep found a little hole into the meal room and slipped in full of joy at the sight of the bags boxes and bins i'll eat all i want and then i'll call peck she said
+and having taken a taste of every thing she was about to leave when she heard the stableman coming and in her fright couldn't find the hole so flew into the meal bin and hid herself
+sam never saw her but shut down the cover of the bin as he passed and left poor peep to die no one knew what had become of her till some days later when she was found dead in the meal
+with her poor little claws sticking straight up as if imploring help peck meanwhile got into mischief also
+she strayed into the sheep shed and finding some salt ate as much as she liked not knowing that salt is bad for hens having taken all she wanted she ran back to the barn
+and was innocently catching gnats when her mamma came out of the hay mow with a loud cut cut cut
+where is peep asked missus cluck
+there peck stopped suddenly rolled up her eyes and began to stagger about as if she was tipsy mercy on us what's the matter with the chick cried missus cluck in great alarm fits ma'am answered doctor drake
+who just then waddled by oh what can i do screamed the distracted hen nothing ma'am it's fatal and the doctor waddled on to visit dame partlet's son who was ill of the pip my child my child
+don't flap and stagger so let me hold you taste this mint leaf have a drop of water what shall i do as poor missus cluck sighed and sobbed her unhappy child went scuffling about on her back
+gasping and rolling up her eyes in great anguish for she had eaten too much of the fatal salt and there was no help for her when all was over they buried the dead chicken under a currant bush covered the little grave with chickweed
+and the bereaved parent wore a black string round her leg for a month blot the last of that bright band needed no mourning for she was as black as a crow this was the reason why her mother never
+had loved her as much as she did the others who were all white gray or yellow poor little blot had been much neglected by every one but now her lonely mamma discovered how good and affectionate a chicken she was
+for blot was a great comfort to her never running away or disobeying in any way but always close to her side ready to creep under her wing or bring her a plump bug when the poor biddy's appetite failed her
+they were very happy together till thanksgiving drew near when a dreadful pestilence seemed to sweep through the farm yard for turkeys hens ducks and geese fell a prey to it
+and were seen by their surviving relatives featherless pale and stiff borne away to some unknown place whence no fowl returned blot was waked one night by a great cackling and fluttering in the hen house
+and peeping down from her perch saw a great hand glide along the roost clutch her beloved mother by the leg and pull her off screaming dolefully
+aunt cockletop pecked and croaked fiercely but tough as she was the old biddy did not escape and many another amiable hen and gallant cockadoodle fell a victim to that mysterious hand
+in the morning few remained and blot felt that she was a forlorn orphan a thought which caused her to sit with her head under her wing for several hours brooding over her sad lot
+and longing to join her family in some safe and happy land where fowls live in peace she had her wish very soon for one day when the first snowflakes began to flutter
+blot saw a little kitten mewing pitifully as it sat under the fence what is the matter dear asked kind blot
+i live at the red farm house over the hill only i don't know which road to take i'll show you come at once for night is coming on and the snow will soon be too deep for us said blot so away they went
+but it was a long way and dusk came on before the red farm house appeared now i'm safe thank you very much won't you come in and stay all night my mother will be glad to see you
+said the kit rubbing her soft white face against blot's little black breast
+so good by dear and off trotted blot along the snowy road hoping to get home before the hen house door was shut faster and faster fell the snow darker and darker grew the night
+and colder and colder became poor blot's little feet as she waded through the drifts the firelight was shining out into the gloom
+to find all doors shut and no shelter left for her but the bough of a leafless tree too stiff and weak to fly up she crept as close as possible to the bright glow which shone across the door step
+and with a shiver put her little head under her wing trying to forget hunger weariness and the bitter cold and wait patiently for morning but when morning came little blot lay frozen stiff under a coverlet of snow
+being alone in london yet wishing to celebrate the day i decided to pay my respects to the lions at the zoological gardens a lovely place it was and i enjoyed myself immensely for may day in england is just what it should be
+mild sunny flowery and spring like as i walked along the well kept paths between white and rosy hawthorn hedges i kept coming upon new and curious sights
+for the birds and beasts are so skilfully arranged that it is more like travelling through a strange and pleasant country than visiting a menagerie the first thing i saw was a great american bison
+and i was so glad to meet with any one from home that i'd have patted him with pleasure if he had shown any cordiality toward me he didn't however
+and put down his immense head with a sullen snort as if he'd have tossed me with great satisfaction i did not blame him for the poor fellow was homesick doubtless for his own wide prairies and the free life he had lost
+so i threw him some fresh clover and went on to the pelicans i never knew before what handsome birds they were not graceful but with such snowy plumage tinged with pale pink and faint yellow
+they had just had their bath and stood arranging their feathers with their great bills
+when fed they gobbled up the fish never stopping to swallow it till the pouches under their bills were full then they leisurely emptied them and seemed to enjoy their lunch with the grave deliberation of regular englishmen
+and there found a splendid sight six lions and lionesses in three or four different cages sitting or standing in dignified attitudes and eyeing the spectators with a mild expression in their fine eyes
+one lioness was ill and lay on her bed looking very pensive while her mate moved restlessly about her evidently anxious to do something for her and much afflicted by her suffering
+i liked this lion very much for though the biggest he was very gentle and had a noble face the tigers were rushing about as tigers usually are some creeping noiselessly to and fro
+some leaping up and down and some washing their faces with their velvet paws all looked and acted so like cats that i wasn't at all surprised to hear one of them purr when the keeper scratched her head
+it was a very loud and large purr but no fireside pussy could have done it better and every one laughed at the sound there were pretty spotted leopards panthers and smaller varieties of the same species
+i sat watching them a long time longing to let some of the wild things out for a good run they seemed so unhappy barred in those small dens suddenly the lions began to roar the tigers to snarl
+and all to get very much excited about something sniffing at the openings thrusting their paws through the bars and lashing their tails impatiently i couldn't imagine what the trouble was till
+this was their dinner and as they were fed but once a day they were ravenous such roars and howls and cries as arose while the man went slowly down the line
+gave one a good idea of the sounds to be heard in indian forests and jungles the lions behaved best for they only paced up and down with an occasional cry but the tigers were quite frantic
+for they tumbled one over the other shook the cages and tried to reach the bystanders
+one lady had a fright for the wind blew the end of her shawl within reach of a tiger's great claw and he clutched it trying to drag her nearer the shawl came off and the poor lady ran away screaming
+as if a whole family of wild beasts were after her
+the tigers snarled and fought and tore and got so savage i was very grateful that they were safely shut up in a few minutes nothing but white bones remained and then they howled for more
+one little leopard was better bred than the others for he went up on a shelf in the cage and ate his dinner in a quiet proper manner which was an example to the rest the lions ate in dignified silence
+all but my favourite who carried his share to his sick mate and by every gentle means in his power tried to make her eat she was too ill however and turned away with a plaintive moan which seemed to grieve him sadly
+he wouldn't touch his dinner but lay down near her with the lump between his paws as if guarding it for her and there i left him patiently waiting in spite of his hunger till his mate could share it with him
+as i took a last look at his fine old face i named him douglas and walked away humming to myself the lines of the ballad douglas douglas tender and true
+as a contrast to the wild beasts i went to see the monkeys who lived in a fine large house all to themselves here was every variety from the great ugly chimpanzee to the funny little fellows
+who played like boys and cut up all sorts of capers a mamma sat tending her baby and looking so like a little old woman that i laughed till the gray monkey with the blue nose scolded at me
+he was a cross old party and sat huddled up in the straw scowling at every one like an ill tempered old bachelor half a dozen little ones teased him capitally by dropping bits of bread
+nut shells and straws down on him from above as they climbed about the perches or swung by their tails one poor little chap had lost the curly end of his tail i'm afraid the gray one bit it off
+and kept trying to swing like the others forgetting that the strong curly end was what he held on with he would run up the bare boughs and give a jump expecting to catch and swing but the lame tail wouldn't hold him and down he'd go
+bounce on to the straw at first he'd sit and stare about him as if much amazed to find himself there then he'd scratch his little round head and begin to scold violently which seemed to delight the other monkeys
+and finally he'd examine his poor little tail and appear to understand the misfortune which had befallen him the funny expression of his face was irresistible and i enjoyed seeing him very much
+and gave him a bun to comfort him when i went away the snake house came next and i went in on my way to visit the rhinoceros family i rather like snakes
+since i had a tame green one who lived under the door step and would come out and play with me on sunny days these snakes i found very interesting only they got under their blankets and wouldn't come out and i wasn't allowed to poke them
+and blinked at me through the glass looking quite as dangerous as he was there were big and little snakes black brown and speckled lively and lazy pretty and plain ones but i liked the great boa
+best when i came to his cage i didn't see anything but the branch of a tree such as i had seen in other cages for the snakes to wind up and down where is he i wonder i hope he hasn't got
+out i said to myself thinking of a story i read once of a person in a menagerie who turned suddenly and saw a great boa gliding towards him
+as i stood wondering if the big worm could be under the little flat blanket before me the branch began to move all at once and with a start i saw a limb swing down to stare at me with the boa's glittering eyes
+and lay so still i had not seen him till he came to take a look at me a very villainous looking reptile he was and i felt grateful that i didn't live in a country
+where such unpleasant neighbours might pop in upon you unexpectedly he was kind enough to take a promenade and show me his size which seemed immense as he stretched himself
+and then knotted his rough grayish body into a great loop with the fiery eyed head in the middle he was not one of the largest kind but i was quite satisfied and left him to his dinner of rabbits
+which i hadn't the heart to stay and see him devour alive i was walking toward the camel's pagoda when all of a sudden a long dark curling thing came over my shoulder and i felt warm breath in my face it's the boa i thought
+much to the amusement of some children riding on the elephant whose trunk had frightened me he had politely tried to tell me to clear the way which i certainly had done with all speed picking myself out of the hedge
+i walked beside him examining his clumsy feet and peering up at his small intelligent eye i'm very sure he winked at me as if enjoying the joke and kept poking his trunk into my pocket
+hoping to find something eatable i felt as if i had got into a foreign country as i looked about me and saw elephants and camels walking among the trees flocks of snow white cranes stalking over the grass
+on their long scarlet legs striped zebras racing in their paddock queer kangaroos hopping about with little ones in their pouches pretty antelopes chasing one another
+and in an immense wire covered aviary all sorts of brilliant birds were flying about as gaily as if at home one of the curiosities was a sea cow who lived in a tank of salt water
+and came at the keeper's call to kiss him and flounder on its flippers along the margin of the tank after a fish it was very like a seal only much larger and had four fins instead of two
+its eyes were lovely so dark and soft and liquid but its mouth was not pretty and i declined one of the damp kisses which it was ready to dispense at word of command
+the great polar bear lived next door and spent his time splashing in and out of a pool of water or sitting on a block of ice panting as if the mild spring day was blazing midsummer
+he looked very unhappy and i thought it a pity that they didn't invent a big refrigerator for him these are not half of the wonderful creatures i saw
+the day was still young and far below us was stretched the moving floor of the channel with a silver grey film of night mists not yet lifted in the offing a hummocky up and down line of cliffs
+with the straight sunpath across it spangled and gleaming like a mackerel's back the relief of being once more on firm ground and the exultation of an escape from immediate danger removed my pain and made me forget that my leg was broken
+and the wind which a few minutes before threatened to blow me from that narrow ledge seemed now but the gentlest of breezes fresh with the breath of the kindly sea but this was only for a moment for the anguish came back and grew apace
+and i fell to thinking dismally of the plight we were in how things had been against us in these last days first there was losing the why not and that was bad enough second
+there was the being known by the excise for smugglers and perhaps for murderers third and last there was the breaking of my leg which made escape so difficult but most of all
+there came before my eyes that grey face turned up against the morning sun and i thought of all it meant for grace and would have given my own life to call back that of our worst enemy then elzevir sat up stretching himself like one waking out of sleep
+and said we must be gone they will not be back for some time yet and when they come will not think to search closely for us hereabouts but that we cannot risk and must get clear away
+this leg of thine will keep us tied for weeks and we must find some place where we can lie hid and tend it now i know such a hiding hole in purbeck which they call joseph's pit and thither we must go but it will take all the day to get there
+and so he took me in his arms again and started off across the fields i need not tell of that weary journey and indeed could not if i wished for the pain went to my head and filled me with such a drowsy anguish
+that i knew nothing except when some unlooked for movement gave me a sharper twinge and made me cry out at first elzevir walked briskly but as the day wore on went slower
+it was after noon for the sun was past the meridian and very hot for the time of year when the face of the country began to change and instead of the short sward of the open down sprinkled with tiny white snail shells
+the ground was brashy with flat stones and divided up into tillage fields it was a bleak wide bitten place enough looking as if twould never pay for turning and instead of hedges there were dreary walls built of dry stone without mortar
+behind one of these walls broken down in places but held together with straggling ivy and buttressed here and there with a bramble bush elzevir put me down at length and said i am beat and can carry thee no farther for this present
+though there is not now much farther to go we have passed purbeck gates and these walls will screen us from prying eyes if any chance comer pass along the down and as for the soldiers they are not like to come this way so soon
+and if they come i cannot help it for weariness and the sun's heat have made my feet like lead a score of years ago i would have laughed at such a task but now tis different
+so sit thee here and lean thy shoulder up against the wall and thus thou canst look through this broken place and watch both ways then if thou see aught moving wake me up
+i wish i had a thimbleful of powder to make this whistle sound' and he took maskew's silver butted pistol again from his bosom and handled it lovingly
+with that he flung himself down where there was a narrow shadow close against the bottom of the wall and in a minute i knew from his heavy breathing that he was asleep the wind had freshened much and was blowing strong from the west
+and now that i was under the lee of the wall
+and gets at length into shelter moreover though i was not tired by grievous toil like elzevir i had passed a night without sleep and felt besides the weariness of pain to lull me to slumber
+then i sought something to fix my thoughts and looking on that side of the wall where the sward was fell to counting the mole hills that were cast up in numbers thereabout and when i had exhausted them and reckoned up thirty little heaps of dry and powdery brown earth
+that lay at random on the green turf i turned my eyes to the tillage field on the other side of the wall and saw the inch high blades of corn coming up between the stones then i fell to counting the blades feeling glad to have discovered a reckoning that would not be exhausted at thirty
+but would go on for millions and millions and millions and before i had reached ten in so heroic a numeration was fast asleep a sharp noise woke me with a start that set the pain tingling in my leg
+and though i could see nothing i knew that a shot had been fired very near us i was for waking elzevir but he was already full awake and put a finger on his lip to show i should not speak then
+enough for him to look through the leaves without being seen he dropped down again with a look of relief and said tis but a lad scaring rooks with a blunderbuss we will not stir unless he makes this way a minute later he said the boy is coming straight for the wall
+we shall have to show ourselves and while he spoke there was a rattle of falling stones where the boy was partly climbing and partly pulling down the dry wall and so elzevir stood up the boy looked frightened and made as if he would run off
+but elzevir passed him the time of day in a civil voice and he stopped and gave it back what are you doing here son block asked scaring rooks for farmer topp was the answer
+have you got a charge of powder to spare said elzevir showing his pistol i want to get a rabbit in the gorse for supper and have dropped my flask maybe you've seen a flask in walking through the furrows he whispered to me to lie still
+no time was wasted in words elzevir had the flask in his pocket and the boy was biting the crown what shot have you said elzevir what have you dropped your shot flask too asked the boy
+and his voice had something of surprise in it nay but my shot are over small
+but thou must pay a shilling for them my master says i never am to use them except i see a swan or buzzard or something fit to cook come over i shall get a sound beating for my pains and to be beat is worth a shilling if thou art beat be beat for something more says elzevir the tempter
+the smugglers got off clear but they say the hue and cry is up already and that a head price will be fixed of twenty pound so if i sell you a fowling piece maybe i shall do wrong and have the government upon me as well as my master the surprise in his voice was changed to suspicion
+for while he spoke i saw that his eye had fallen on my foot though i tried to keep it in the shadow and that he saw the boot clotted with blood and the kerchief tied round my leg tis for that very reason says elzevir that i want the firelock
+these smugglers are roaming loose and a pistol is a poor thing to stop such wicked rascals on a lone hill side come come thou dost not want a piece to guard thee they will not hurt a boy he had the guinea between his finger and thumb
+and so i said as much to elzevir who only laughed saying the boy was simple and harmless but from where i sat i could peep out through the brambles in the open gap and see without being seen and there was my young gentleman walking carelessly enough
+but when elzevir sat down the boy gave a careful look round and seeing no one watching any more
+then i knew that he had guessed who we were and was off to warn the hue and cry but before elzevir was on his feet again the boy was out of sight over the hill brow let us move on said block tis but a little distance now to go and the heat is past already
+we must have slept three hours or more for thou art but a sorry watchman john tis when the sentry sleeps that the enemy laughs and for thee the posse might have had us both like daylight owls with that he took me on his back and made off with a lusty stride
+and in the shelter of the walls we had slept longer than we thought for the sun was westering fast and though the rest had refreshed me my leg had grown stiff and hurt the more in dangling when we started again
+elzevir was still walking strongly in spite of the heavy burden he carried and in less than half an hour i knew though i had never been there before we were in the land of the old marble quarries at the back of anvil point
+although i knew little of these quarries and certainly was in evil plight to take note of anything at that time yet afterwards i learnt much about them out of such excavations comes that black purbeck marble which you see in old churches in our country
+and i am told in other parts of england as well and the way of making a marble quarry is to sink a tunnel slanting very steeply down into the earth like a well turned askew till you reach fifty seventy or perhaps one hundred feet deep then
+from the bottom of this shaft there spread out narrow passages or tunnels mostly six feet high but sometimes only three or four and in these the marble is dug these quarries were made by men centuries ago some say by the romans themselves
+which was just putting on the brighter green of spring this turf was not smooth but hummocky for under it lay heaps of worthless stone and marble drawn out of the quarries ages ago which the green vestment had covered for the most part
+though it left sometimes a little patch of broken rubble peering out at the top of a mound there were many tumble down walls and low gables left of the cottages of the old quarrymen grass covered ridges marked out the little garden folds
+and here and there still stood a forlorn gooseberry bush
+on which the marble blocks were once hauled up by wooden winches down these steps no feet ever walked now for not only were suffocating gases said to beset the bottom of the shafts
+for if it were not for this holy purpose the mandrive would have power to strangle the man that hewed it it was by the side of one of these old shafts that elzevir laid me down at last the light was very low
+and the sward crept over the edges of the hole and every crack and crevice in steps and slide was green with ferns the green ferns shrouded the walls of the hole and ruddy brown brambles overgrew the steps
+there he said this is joseph's pit and here we must lie hid until thy foot is sound again once get to the bottom safe and we can laugh at posse and hue and cry
+and before they come to where we lie we can hold the troop at bay and sell our lives so dear they will not care to buy them we waited a few minutes and then he took me in his arms and began to descend the steps back first as one goes down a hatchway
+and how far off we were now and how long it was likely to be before i saw that dear village and grace again the stairs were still sharp cut and little worn but elzevir paid great care to his feet lest he should slip on the ferns and mosses with which they were overgrown
+he shoved them aside with his broad shoulders and screened my dangling leg from getting caught thus he came safe without stumble to the bottom of the pit when we got there all was dark but he stepped off into a narrow opening on the right hand
+and walked on as if he knew the way i could see nothing but perceived that we were passing through endless galleries cut in the solid rock high enough for the most part to allow of walking upright but sometimes so low as to force him to bend down
+and carry me in a very constrained attitude only twice did he set me down at a turning while he took out his tinder box and lit a match
+how fearful and dizzy tis to cast one's eyes so low i'll look no more
+shakespeare the while chalk was a bulwark between us and the foe and though one or two of them loosed off their matchlocks trying to get at us sideways they could not even see their quarry
+and twas only shooting at a venture we were safe but for how short a time safe just for so long as it should please the soldiers not to come down to take us
+safe with a discharged pistol in our grasp and a shot man lying at our feet elzevir was the first to speak can you stand john is the bone broken
+i cannot stand i said there is something gone in my leg and i feel blood running down into my boot he knelt and rolled down the leg of my stocking but though he only moved my foot
+ever so little it caused me sharp pain for feeling was coming back after the first numbness of the shot they have broke the leg though it bleeds little elzevir said we have no time to splice it here
+but i will put a kerchief round and while i wrap it listen to how we lie and then choose what we shall do i nodded biting my lips hard to conceal the pain he gave me and he went on
+we have a quarter of an hour before the posse can get down to us but come they will and thou canst judge what chance we have to save liberty
+and he jerked his thumb at maskew
+and therefore do not blame thee if thou didst make me waste a charge in air so one thing we can do is to wait here until they come and i can account for a few of them before they shoot me down but thou canst not fight with a broken leg
+and they will take thee alive and then there is a dance on air at dorchester jail i felt sick with pain and bitterly cast down to think that i was like to come so soon to such a vile end
+so only gave a sigh wishing heartily that maskew were not dead and that my leg were not broke but that i was back again at the why not or even hearing one of doctor sherlock's sermons in my aunt's parlour
+there is yet another way that we may try and if thou hadst but two whole legs i would have tried it but now tis little short of madness and yet if thou fear'st not i will still try it
+just at the end of this flat ledge farthest from where the bridle path leads down but not a hundred yards from where we stand there is a sheep track leading up the cliff it starts
+where the under cliff dies back again into the chalk face and climbs by slants and elbow turns up to the top the shepherds call it the zigzag and even sheep lose their footing on it and of men
+i never heard but one had climbed it and that was lander jordan when the excise was on his heels half a century back but he that tries it stakes all on head and foot and a wounded bird like thee may not dare that flight
+yet if thou art content to hang thy life upon a hair i will carry thee some way and where there is no room to carry
+it was a desperate chance enough but came as welcome as a patch of blue through lowering skies yes i said dear master elzevir let us get to it quickly and if we fall
+tis better far to die upon the rocks below than to wait here for them to hale us off to jail and with that i tried to stand thinking i might go dot and carry even with a broken leg
+and a thread of blood that welled up from it and trickled off on to the sward it was a sight to stagger any man and would have made me swoon perhaps but that there was no time for we were at the end of the under cliff
+and twas a task that might cow the bravest and when i looked upon the zigzag it seemed better to stay where we were and fall into the hands of the posse than set foot on that awful way and fall upon the rocks below
+for the zigzag started off as a fair enough chalk path but in a few paces narrowed down till it was but a whiter thread against the grey white cliff face
+faugh said elzevir tis a poor beast has lost his foothold it was an ill omen enough and i said as much beseeching him to make his own way up the zigzag
+and leave me where i was for that they might have mercy on a boy tush he cried it is thy heart that fails thee and tis too late now to change counsel
+we have fifteen minutes yet to win or lose with and if we gain the cliff top in that time we shall have an hour's start or more for they will take all that to search the under cliff and maskew too
+will keep them in check a little while they try to bring the life back to so good a man but if we fall why we shall fall together and outwit their cunning
+so shut thy eyes and keep them tight until i bid thee open them with that he caught me up again and i shut my eyes firm rebuking myself for my faint heartedness and not telling him how much my foot hurt me
+in a minute i knew from elzevir's steps that he had left the turf and was upon the chalk now i do not believe that there were half a dozen men beside in england who would have ventured up that path even free and untrammelled
+and not a man in all the world to do it with a full grown lad in his arms yet elzevir made no bones of it nor spoke a single word only he went very slow and i felt him scuffle with his foot
+thus he went on for a time that seemed without end and yet was really but a minute or two and by degrees i felt the wind that we could scarce perceive at all on the under cliff blow fresher and cold on the cliff side
+and then the path grew steeper and steeper and elzevir went slower and slower till at last he spoke john i am going to stop
+but open not thy eyes till i have set thee down and bid thee i did as bidden and he lowered me gently setting me on all fours upon the path and speaking again
+the path is too narrow here for me to carry thee and thou must creep round this corner on thy hands and knees but have a care to keep thy outer hand near to the inner and the balance of thy body to the cliff
+for there is no room to dance hornpipes here and hold thy eyes fixed on the chalk wall looking neither down nor seaward twas well he told me what to do and well i did it
+but spent much time that was so precious in travelling those ten yards to take me round the first elbow of the path for my foot was heavy and gave me fierce pain to drag though i tried to mask it from elzevir and he
+forgetting what i suffered cried out quicken thy pace lad if thou canst the time is short now so frail is man's temper that though he was doing more than any ever did to save another's life and was all i had to trust to in the world yet
+but here was another difficulty for the path was still so narrow and the cliff wall so close that he could not take me up in his arms so i lay flat on my face and he stepped over me setting his foot between my shoulders to do it
+and then while he knelt down upon the path
+putting my arms round his neck and so he bore me pickaback i shut my eyes firm again and thus we moved along another spell mounting still and feeling the wind still freshening
+both were on all fours now elzevir first and i following but as i crept along i relaxed care for a moment and my eyes wandered from the cliff side and looked down and far below
+i saw the blue sea twinkling like a dazzling mirror and the gulls wheeling about the sheer chalk wall and then i thought of that bloated carcass of a sheep that had fallen from this very spot perhaps and in an instant
+felt a sickening qualm and swimming of the brain and knew that i was giddy and must fall then i called out to elzevir and he guessing what had come over me cries to turn upon my side and press my belly to the cliff
+and how he did it in such a narrow strait i know not but he turned round and lying down himself thrust his hand firmly in my back pressing me closer to the cliff yet it was none too soon for if he had not held me tight
+i should have flung myself down in sheer despair to get quit of that dreadful sickness keep thine eyes shut john he said and count up numbers loud to me that i may know thou art not turning faint
+so i gave out one two three and while i went on counting heard him repeating to himself though his words seemed thin and far off we must have taken ten minutes to get here
+and in five more they will be on the under cliff and if we ever reach the top who knows but they have left a guard no no they will not leave a guard for not a man knows of the zigzag and if they knew
+like sitting guillemots against the cliff face so he talked to himself and all the while i would have given a world to pluck up heart and creep on farther yet could not for the deadly sweating fear that had hold of me
+thus i lay with my face to the cliff and elzevir pushing firmly in my back and the thing that frightened me most was that there was nothing at all for the hand to take hold of for had there been a piece of string or even a thread of cotton
+i think i could have done it but there was only the cliff wall sheer and white against that narrowest way with never cranny to put a finger into the wind was blowing in fresh puffs and though i did not open my eyes
+i knew that it was moving the little tufts of bent grass and the chiding cries of the gulls seemed to invite me to be done with fear and pain and broken leg and fling myself off on to the rocks below then elzevir spoke john he said
+there is no time to play the woman another minute of this and we are lost pluck up thy courage keep thy eyes to the cliff and forward yet i could not but answered i cannot i cannot
+move thou must and tis better to risk falling now than fall for certain with another bullet in thee later on and with that he shifted his hand from my back and fixed it in my coat collar moving backwards himself and setting to drag me after him
+now i was so besotted with fright that i would not budge an inch fearing to fall over if i opened my eyes and elzevir for all he was so strong could not pull a helpless lump backwards up that path
+so he gave it up leaving go hold on me with a groan and at that moment there rose from the under cliff below a sound of voices and shouting zounds they are down already cried elzevir and have found maskew's body
+it is all up another minute and they will see us but so strange is the force of mind on body and the power of a greater to master a lesser fear that when i heard those voices from below all fright of falling left me in a moment
+and i could open my eyes without a trace of giddiness so i began to move forward again on hands and knees and elzevir
+thinking that we were hiding by the sea five minutes later elzevir stepped on to the cliff top with me upon his back we have made something of this throw he said and are safe for another hour though i thought thy giddy head had ruined us
+hastening to begin his work the town is an old fashioned one and although the observance of the ancient church festival is no longer frowned upon as in years past yet it has been little regarded
+especially in the church of which nathan is a member as the saddler mounted the steps of his shop he felt the blood so rush along his limbs and tingle in his fingers
+that he could not forbear standing without the door for a moment as if to enjoy the triumph of the warmth within him over the cold morning air the little stone church
+which nathan attends stands in the same square with his shop and nearly opposite it was closed as usual on christmas day and a recent snow had heaped the steps and roof and loaded the windows
+nathan thought that it looked uncommonly beautiful in the softening twilight of the morning while nathan stood musing with his eyes fixed upon the church
+although a good deal stooping with long straight and very white hair falling over his shoulders which was the more conspicuous from the black velvet cap as it appeared that he wore
+as to who the stranger could be when he beheld him turn in between the posts by the path that leads to the church tread lightly over the snow and up the steps and knock hastily and vigorously at the church door
+but half recovered from his wonder he was just raising his voice to utter a remonstrance when to his sevenfold amazement the door was opened to the knock and the old man disappeared within
+it was not without a creeping feeling of awe mingled with his astonishment that nathan gazed upon the door through which this silent figure had vanished but he was not easily to be daunted
+he did not care to follow the steps of the stranger into the church but he remembered a shed so placed against the building near the farther end that he had often when a child at some peril indeed climbed upon its top
+and looked into the church through a little window at one side of the pulpit for this he started but he did not fail to run across the square and leap over the church gate at the top of his speed
+in order to gather warmth and courage for the attempt when nathan stoddard climbed upon the old shed and pressed his face against the glass of the little church window he had at first only a confused impression
+as he glared through the darkness into the old kirk of alloway the great chandelier of the church was partly lighted and there were besides many candles and lanterns burning in different parts of the room
+who were dressed in breeches and ruffled shirts and hooped petticoats and towering head dresses such as he had only seen in old pictures they were mounted upon benches and ladders
+and boards laid along the tops of the pews and were apparently just completing the decoration of the church which was already dressed with green with little trees in the corners and with green letters upon the walls
+the whole party appeared full of life and cheerfulness while the old man whom nathan had seen enter stood near the door looking quietly on with a little girl holding his hand
+it was not until nathan stoddard had looked for some little time upon this spectacle that he began to feel that he was witness of any thing more than natural the whole party had so home like an air
+the more he was filled for all their appearance of youth and their simple manners with a strange sort of veneration the sweet and cheerful faces of the young women seemed to grow awfully calm
+and beautiful as they brought their task to a close and their foreheads with the hair brought back in the old fashioned way to become more and more serene and high there was a strange beauty too
+about the old man's face he appeared to nathan as if he felt that the group before him only waited his command to fade away in the morning light that struggled among the candles but he could not bear to give the word
+and so they kept playing with the festoons and stepping about the pews to please him nathan felt a cold thrill partly from pleasure and partly from awe running up his back and a strong pain across his forehead
+until he felt that he was near swooning and like to fall and he clung desperately to his hold when the fit was over he dared venture no more but hastened to the ground
+that led nathan stoddard to keep secret what he had witnessed but it was like some deep and holy experience
+so he went back to his shop and sat looking upon the church and watching almost with dread the doves that lighted upon its roof and fluttered about and beat their wings against its windows
+the minister of nathan's parish was a young man by the name of dudley and it so happened that he had driven out before light on the morning we have spoken of to visit a sick man at some distance
+in returning home he had to pass along the rather unfrequented street which runs in the rear of his church and close to it as he was driving rapidly along his ear caught what seemed the peal of an organ
+he stopped his horse to listen
+and drove round into the square to the shop of nathan stoddard there is music to day in our church nathan he cried to the young saddler what can it mean but nathan answered not a word he caught the horse by the head
+and fastened him to a post before the door then stepping to the side of the sleigh he said to mister dudley come with me sir mister dudley looked upon the pale face and trembling lips of his parishioner
+and followed in silence nathan sprang upon the shed at the side of the church and scrambled up to the little window mister dudley followed and with nathan's help gained the same precarious foothold look in sir
+said nathan not venturing a glance himself mister dudley looked and had not nathan's arm been about his body he would have lost his hold in sheer amazement the building was crowded as he had never known it before
+and crowded with people whom his eye versed in the dress and manners of our forefathers recognized as the church goers of a century and a half ago the singers gallery was filled by a choir of girls and boys
+it was said to be a portrait of a minister in the town who lived in the last century and is still remembered for his virtues the sight of this old man's face completely stilled the agitation of the young minister
+he was leaning over the great bible with his hands folded upon it and his eyes seemingly filled with tears of pleasure and gratitude and bent upon the choir mister dudley listened intently
+by this time the sound of a gathering crowd below which he had not heeded at first was forced more and more upon his notice and the anxious voice of his oldest deacon calling mister dudley mister dudley
+rose high and loud while a great thundering at the front door of the church announced that the people below had also caught the sound of the music and were clamorous for admission
+mister dudley hastened round to prevent their causing any disturbance to the congregation within but he came only in time to see the door burst open and to be borne in with the crowd all gazed about in wonder
+had been fairly dressed for christmas by spirit hands when mister dudley reached his home after the wonder had in part spent itself he found that an enormous christmas pie
+had been left at his door by a white haired old man dressed in black about six in the morning just after he had gone to visit his sick parishioner the girl who received it reported the old man as saying
+in a tremulous but very kind voice give your master the christmas blessing of an old puritan minister how the meaning of this message would have been known to mister dudley had not the events we have told disclosed it
+and that he avows the intention of observing the christmas of the following year with public services unless indeed he should be anticipated by his ancient predecessor
+the most interesting of the short excursions we made from fort wrangell was the one up the stickeen river to the head of steam navigation from mt saint elias the coast range extends in a broad lofty chain
+beyond the southern boundary of the territory gashed by stupendous canyons
+though most of them are comparatively short as their highest sources lie in the icy solitudes of the range within forty or fifty miles of the coast a few however of these foaming roaring streams
+taku stickeen and perhaps others head beyond the range with some of the southwest branches of the mackenzie and yukon the largest side branches
+are still occupied by glaciers which descend in showy ranks their messy bulging snouts lying back a little distance in the shadows of the walls or pushing forward among the cotton woods
+that line the banks of the rivers or even stretching all the way across the main canyons compelling the rivers to find a channel beneath them the stickeen was perhaps the best known of the rivers that cross the coast range
+because it was the best way to the mackenzie river cassiar gold mines it is about three hundred and fifty miles long and is navigable for small steamers a hundred and fifty miles to glenora
+and sometimes to telegraph creek fifteen miles farther it first pursues a westerly course through grassy plains darkened here and there with groves of spruce and pine
+then curving southward and receiving numerous tributaries from the north it enters the coast range and sweeps across it through a magnificent canyon three thousand to five thousand feet deep
+of form and sculpture and are wonderfully adorned and enlivened with glaciers and waterfalls while throughout almost its whole extent the floor is a flowery landscape garden like yosemite
+the most striking features are the glaciers hanging over the cliffs descending the side canyons and pushing forward to the river greatly enhancing the wild beauty of all the others
+gliding along the swift flowing river the views change with bewildering rapidity wonderful too are the changes dependent on the seasons and the weather in spring when the snow is melting fast
+you enjoy the countless rejoicing waterfalls the gentle breathing of warm winds the colors of the young leaves and flowers when the bees are busy and wafts of fragrance are drifting hither and thither
+from miles of wild roses clover and honeysuckle the swaths of birch and willow on the lower slopes following the melting of the winter avalanche snow banks
+the bossy cumuli swelling in white and purple piles above the highest peaks gray rain clouds wreathing the outstanding brows and battlements of the walls
+and the breaking forth of the sun after the rain the shining of the leaves and streams and crystal architecture of the glaciers the rising of fresh fragrance the song of the happy birds
+and the serene color grandeur of the morning and evening sky in summer you find the groves and gardens in full dress glaciers melting rapidly under sunshine and rain waterfalls in all their glory
+the river rejoicing in its strength young birds trying their wings bears enjoying salmon and berries all the life of the canyon brimming full like the streams in autumn comes rest as if the year's work were done
+the rich hazy sunshine streaming over the cliffs calls forth the last of the gentians and goldenrods the groves and thickets and meadows bloom again as their leaves change to red and yellow petals
+the rocks also and the glaciers seem to bloom like the plants in the mellow golden light and so goes the song change succeeding change in sublime harmony through all the wonderful seasons and weather
+my first trip up the river was made in the spring with the missionary party soon after our arrival at wrangell we left wrangell in the afternoon and anchored for the night above the river delta
+we arrived before noon at the old trading post called buck's in front of the stickeen glacier and remained long enough to allow the few passengers who wished a nearer view to cross the river to the terminal moraine
+the sunbeams streaming through the ice pinnacles along its terminal wall produced a wonderful glory of color and the broad sparkling crystal prairie and the distant snowy fountains were wonderfully attractive
+and expands in a broad fan five or six miles in width separated from the stickeen river by its broad terminal moraine fringed with spruces and willows around the beautifully drawn curve of the moraine
+was once united front to front with the greater glacier though at first both were tributaries of the main stickeen glacier which once filled the whole grand canyon after the main trunk canyon was melted out
+cirques and branch canyons along the tops and sides of the walls the indians have a tradition that the river used to run through a tunnel under the united fronts of the two large tributary glaciers mentioned above
+which entered the main canyon from either side and that on one occasion an indian anxious to get rid of his wife had her sent adrift in a canoe down through the ice tunnel expecting that she would trouble him no more
+but to his surprise she floated through under the ice in safety all the evidence connected with the present appearance of these two glaciers indicates that they were united and formed a dam across the river
+and had receded to a greater or lesser height above the valley floor the big stickeen glacier is hardly out of sight ere you come upon another that pours a majestic crystal flood
+through the evergreens while almost every hollow and tributary canyon contains a smaller one the size of course varying with the extent of the area drained some are like mere snow banks others with the blue ice apparent
+depend in massive bulging curves and swells and graduate into the river like forms that maze through the lower forested regions and are so striking and beautiful that they are admired even by the passing miners
+with gold dust in their eyes thirty five miles above the big stickeen glacier is the dirt glacier the second in size its outlet is a fine stream abounding in trout
+on the opposite side of the river there is a group of five glaciers one of them descending to within a hundred feet of the river near glenora on the northeastern flank of the main coast range
+just below a narrow gorge called the canyon terraces first make their appearance where great quantities of moraine material have been swept through the flood choked gorge and of course outspread
+and deposited on the first open levels below here too occurs a marked change in climate and consequently in forests and general appearance of the face of the country on account of destructive fires the woods are younger
+and are composed of smaller trees about a foot to eighteen inches in diameter and seventy five feet high mostly two leaved pines which hold their seeds for several years after they are ripe the woods here are without a trace
+of those deep accumulations of mosses leaves and decaying trunks which make so damp and unclearable mass in the coast forests
+where the forest has been utterly destroyed the river bank cottonwoods are also smaller and the birch and contorta pines mingle freely with the coast hemlock and spruce the birch is common on the lower slopes
+and is very effective its round leafy pale green head contrasting with the dark narrow spires of the conifers and giving a striking character to the forest the tamarac pine or black pine as the variety of
+where it has escaped fire and snow avalanches there is another handsome spruce hereabouts picea alba very slender and graceful in habit drooping at the top like a mountain hemlock
+i saw fine specimens a hundred and twenty five feet high on deep bottom land a few miles below glenora the tops of some of them were almost covered with dense clusters of yellow and brown cones
+we reached the old hudson's bay trading post at glenora about one o'clock and the captain informed me that he would stop here until the next morning when he would make an early start for wrangell
+at a distance of about seven or eight miles to the northeastward of the landing there is an outstanding group of mountains crowning a spur from the main chain of the coast range whose highest point rises about
+eight thousand feet above the level of the sea and as glenora is only a thousand feet above the sea
+because of the advantageous position it occupied for general views of the peaks and glaciers of the east side of the great range although it was now twenty minutes past three and the days were getting short
+i thought that by rapid climbing i could reach the summit before sunset in time to get a general view and a few pencil sketches and make my way back to the steamer in the night mister young one of the missionaries asked permission to accompany me
+a fair day's work for a seasoned mountaineer to be done in less than half a day and part of a night but he insisted that he was a strong walker could do a mountaineer's day's work in half a day and would not hinder me in any way
+well i have warned you i said and will not assume responsibility for any trouble that may arise he proved to be a stout walker and we made rapid progress across a brushy timbered flat
+and up the mountain slopes open in some places and in others thatched with dwarf firs resting a minute here and there to refresh ourselves with huckleberries which grew in abundance in open spots about half an hour before sunset
+when we were near a cluster of crumbling pinnacles that formed the summit i had ceased to feel anxiety about the mountaineering strength and skill of my companion and pushed rapidly on in passing around the shoulder of the highest pinnacle
+where the rock was rapidly disintegrating and the danger of slipping was great i shouted in a warning voice be very careful here this is dangerous mister young was perhaps a dozen or two yards behind me but out of sight
+i found however that this was impossible in such a place i therefore tied his arms to his sides with my suspenders and necktie to prevent as much as possible inflammation from movement i then left him telling him to lie still
+to make sure that it was not interrupted by sheer precipices i concluded that with great care and the digging of slight footholds he could be slid down to the glacier where i could lay him on his back and perhaps be able to set his arms
+i reached up took hold of him by one of his feet and gently slid him down on his back
+dug heel notches and slid him down to them
+and the glacier was reached perhaps about midnight here i took off one of my boots tied a handkerchief around his wrist for a good hold
+and succeeded in getting one of his arms into place
+i therefore bound it closely to his side and asked him if in his exhausted and trembling condition he was still able to walk yes he bravely replied so with a steadying arm around him and many stops for rest
+i marched him slowly down in the starlight on the comparatively smooth
+a distance of perhaps a mile crossed the moraine bathed his head at one of the outlet streams and after many rests reached a dry place and made a brush fire i then went ahead looking for an open way
+and a leafy bed beside it i now told him i would run down the mountain hasten back with help from the boat and carry him down in comfort but he would not hear of my leaving him no no he said i can walk down don't leave me
+i reminded him of the roughness of the way his nerve shaken condition and assured him i would not be gone long but he insisted on trying
+and made him lean on my shoulder while i steadied him to prevent his falling this slow staggering struggle from fire to fire lasted until long after sunrise when at last we reached the ship and stood at the foot of the narrow single plank
+at a considerable angle i briefly explained to mister young's companions who stood looking down at us that he had been hurt in an accident and requested one of them to assist me in getting him aboard but strange to say instead of coming down to help
+they made haste to reproach him for having gone on a wild goose chase with muir these foolish adventures are well enough for mister muir they said but you mister young have a work to do you have a family you have a church
+and you have no right to risk your life on treacherous peaks and precipices
+had been swearing in angry impatience for being compelled to make so late a start and thus encounter a dangerous wind in a narrow gorge and was threatening to put the missionaries ashore to seek their lost companion
+while he went on down the river about his business but when he heard my call for help he hastened forward and elbowed the divines away from the end of the gangplank shouting in angry irreverence oh blank this is no time for preaching
+then with a man holding down his shoulders we succeeded in getting the bone into its socket notwithstanding the inflammation and contraction of the muscles and ligaments mister young was then put to bed and he slept all the way back to wrangell
+the azure fields of heaven were sembled right in a large round set with flow'rs of light the flowers de luce and the round sparks of dew that hung upon their azure leaves did show like twinkling stars that sparkle in the ev'ning blue
+giles fletcher no more remarkable man ever lived than my friend the young ellison he was remarkable in the entire and continuous profusion of good gifts ever lavished upon him by fortune
+from his cradle to his grave a gale of the blandest prosperity bore him along nor do i use the word prosperity in its mere wordly or external sense i mean it as synonymous with happiness
+the person of whom i speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the wild doctrines of turgot price priestley and condorcet of exemplifying by individual instance
+what has been deemed the mere chimera of the perfectionists in the brief existence of ellison i fancy that i have seen refuted the dogma that in man's physical and spiritual nature lies some hidden principle
+the antagonist of bliss an intimate and anxious examination of his career has taught me to understand that in general from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind
+that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content and that even now in the present blindness and darkness of all idea on the great question of the social condition
+it is not impossible that man the individual under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions may be happy with opinions such as these was my young friend fully imbued
+and thus is it especially worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was in great part the result of preconcert it is indeed evident
+experience mister ellison would have found himself precipitated by the very extraordinary successes of his life into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments
+but it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on happiness the ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words he admitted but four unvarying laws
+or rather elementary principles of bliss that which he considered chief was strange to say the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air the health he said
+attainable by other means than this is scarcely worth the name he pointed to the tillers of the earth the only people who as a class are proverbially more happy than others
+and then he instanced the high ecstasies of the fox hunter his second principle was the love of woman
+his fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit and he held that other things being equal the extent of happiness was proportioned to the spirituality of this object
+i have said that ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by fortune in personal grace and beauty he exceeded all men
+his intellect was of that order to which the attainment of knowledge is less a labor than a necessity and an intuition his family was one of the most illustrious of the empire his bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women
+his possessions had been always ample but upon the attainment of his one and twentieth year it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social world amid which they occur
+and seldom fail radically to alter the entire moral constitution of those who are their objects it appears that about one hundred years prior to mister ellison's attainment of his majority there had died in a remote province
+ellison this gentlemen had amassed a princely fortune and having no very immediate connexions conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease
+minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood bearing the name ellison who should be alive at the end of the hundred years
+many futile attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest their ex post facto character rendered them abortive
+a decree finally obtained forbidding all similar accumulations this act did not prevent young ellison upon his twenty first birth day
+from entering into possession as the heir of his ancestor seabright of a fortune of
+there were of course many speculations as to the mode of its disposal the gigantic magnitude and the immediately available nature of the sum dazzled and bewildered all who thought upon the topic
+the possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things with riches merely surpassing those of any citizen
+it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time or busying himself with political intrigues or aiming at ministerial power or purchasing increase of nobility
+or devising gorgeous architectural piles or collecting large specimens of virtu or playing the munificent patron of letters and art or endowing and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity
+but for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the young heir these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to be inadequate recourse was had to figures
+and figures but sufficed to confound it was seen that even at three per cent the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars
+which was one million and one hundred and twenty five thousand per month or thirty six thousand nine hundred and eighty six per day or one thousand five hundred and forty one per hour or
+six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up men knew not what to imagine
+enriching whole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance i was not surprised however
+nor was i greatly astonished at the nature of his decision in the widest and noblest sense he was a poet he comprehended moreover the true character the august aims
+the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment the proper gratification of the sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty some peculiarities either in his early education
+or in the nature of his intellect
+and it was this bias perhaps which imperceptibly led him to perceive that the most advantageous if not the sole legitimate field for the exercise of the poetic sentiment
+was to be found in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness thus it happened that he became neither musician nor poet if we use this latter term in its every day acceptation
+or it might have been that he became neither the one nor the other in pursuance of an idea of his which i have already mentioned the idea that in the contempt of ambition lay one of the essential principles of happiness on earth
+is it not indeed possible that while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious the highest is invariably above that which is termed ambition
+and may it not thus happen that many far greater than milton have contentedly remained mute and inglorious i believe the world has never yet seen and that
+unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion the world will never behold that full extent of triumphant execution in the richer productions of art
+of which the human nature is absolutely capable mister ellison became neither musician nor poet although no man lived more profoundly enamored both of music and the muse
+under other circumstances than those which invested him it is not impossible that he would have become a painter the field of sculpture although in its nature rigidly poetical
+was too limited in its extent and in its consequences to have occupied at any time much of his attention and i have now mentioned all the provinces in which
+even the most liberal understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared this sentiment capable of expatiating i mean the most liberal public or recognized conception of the idea involved in the phrase poetic sentiment
+no definition had spoken of the landscape gardener as of the poet yet my friend could not fail to perceive that the creation of the landscape garden offered to the true muse the most magnificent of opportunities
+here was indeed the fairest field for the display of invention or imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty
+the elements which should enter into combination being at all times and by a vast superiority the most glorious which the earth could afford in the multiform of the tree
+and in the multicolor of the flower he recognized the most direct and the most energetic efforts of nature at physical loveliness and in the direction or concentration of this effort or
+he perceived that he should be employing the best means laboring to the greatest advantage in the fulfilment of his destiny as poet
+its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it upon earth in his explanation of this phraseology mister ellison did much towards solving what has always seemed to me an enigma i mean the fact
+which none but the ignorant dispute that no such combinations of scenery exist in nature as the painter of genius has in his power to produce
+while the component parts may exceed individually the highest skill of the artist the arrangement of the parts will always be susceptible of improvement in short no position can be attained
+from which an artistical eye looking steadily will not find matter of offence in what is technically termed the composition of a natural landscape and yet how unintelligible is this
+in all other matters we are justly instructed to regard nature as supreme with her details we shrink from competition who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley
+the criticism which says of sculpture or of portraiture that nature is to be exalted rather than imitated is in error no pictorial or sculptural combinations of points
+of human loveliness do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path byron who often erred erred not in saying i've seen more living beauty
+ripe and real than all the nonsense of their stone ideal in landscape alone is the principle of the critic true and having felt its truth here
+it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has induced him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art having i say felt its truth here
+for the feeling is no affectation or chimera the mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations than the sentiment of his art yields to the artist he not only believes
+but positively knows that such and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter or form constitute and alone constitute the true beauty
+yet his reasons have not yet been matured into expression it remains for a more profound analysis than the world has yet seen fully to investigate and express them
+in his instinctive opinions by the concurrence of all his compeers let a composition be defective let an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form
+let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world by each will its necessity be admitted and even far more than this in remedy of the defective composition
+each insulated member of the fraternity will suggest the identical emendation i repeat that in landscape arrangements or collocations alone is the physical nature susceptible of exaltation and that
+therefore her susceptibility of improvement
+it was mister ellison who first suggested the idea that what we regarded as improvement or exaltation of the natural beauty
+that each alteration or disturbance of the primitive scenery might possibly effect a blemish in the picture if we could suppose this picture viewed at large from some remote point in the heavens
+it is easily understood says mister ellison that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail might at the same time injure a general and more distantly observed effect
+he spoke upon this topic with warmth regarding not so much its immediate or obvious importance which is little
+or of the collateral propositions which it might serve to corroborate or sustain there might be a class of beings human once but now to humanity invisible
+for whose scrutiny and for whose refined appreciation of the beautiful more especially than for our own had been set in order by god the great landscape garden of the whole earth in the course of our discussion
+to have well treated this theme there are properly he writes but two styles of landscape gardening the natural and the artificial
+one seeks to recall the original beauty of the country by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery cultivating trees in harmony with the hills or plain of the neighboring land
+detecting and bringing into practice those nice relations of size proportion and color which hid from the common observer are revealed everywhere to the experienced student of nature the result of the natural style of gardening
+in the prevalence of a beautiful harmony and order than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles the artificial style has as many varieties as there are different tastes to gratify
+it has a certain general relation to the various styles of building there are the stately avenues and retirements of versailles italian terraces and a various mixed old english style
+which bears some relation to the domestic gothic or english elizabethan architecture whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape gardening
+a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty this is partly pleasing to the eye by the show of order and design and partly moral a terrace
+calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that have passed there in other days the slightest exhibition of art is an evidence of care and human interest
+from what i have already observed said mister ellison you will understand that i reject the idea here expressed of recalling the original beauty of the country
+the original beauty is never so great as that which may be introduced of course much depends upon the selection of a spot with capabilities
+what is said in respect to the detecting and bringing into practice those nice relations of size proportion and color is a mere vagueness of speech which may mean much or little or nothing
+that the true result of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles
+is a proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of genius the merit suggested is at best negative
+and appertains to that hobbling criticism which in letters would elevate addison into apotheosis in truth
+appeals directly to the understanding and can thus be foreshadowed in rule the loftier merit which breathes and flames in invention or creation can be apprehended solely in its results
+rule applies but to the excellences of avoidance to the virtues which deny or refrain beyond these the critical art can but suggest
+we may be instructed to build an odyssey but it is in vain that we are told how to conceive a tempest an inferno a prometheus bound a nightingale
+such as that of keats or the sensitive plant of shelley but the thing done
+the sophists of the negative school who through inability to create have scoffed at creation are now found the loudest in applause what
+in its chrysalis condition of principle affronted their demure reason never fails in its maturity of accomplishment to extort admiration from their instinct of the beautiful or of the sublime
+are less objectionable a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty this is just and the reference to the sense of human interest is equally so
+i repeat that the principle here expressed is incontrovertible but there may be something even beyond it there may be an object in full keeping with the principle suggested
+yet which if attained would lend a charm to the landscape garden immeasurably surpassing that which a merely human interest could bestow
+so imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of beauty as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference it will be seen that in bringing about such result
+he secures all the advantages of interest or design while relieving his work of all the harshness and technicality of art
+in the most savage of the scenes of pure nature there is apparent the art of a creator yet is this art apparent only to reflection in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling
+now if we imagine this sense of the almighty design to be harmonized in a measurable degree if we suppose a landscape whose combined strangeness vastness
+definitiveness and magnificence shall inspire the idea of culture or care or superintendence on the part of intelligences superior yet akin to humanity
+then the sentiment of interest is preserved while the art is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary nature a nature which is not god nor an emanation of god
+in the sense that it is the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and god it was in devoting his gigantic wealth to the practical embodiment of a vision such as this
+in the free exercise in the open air which resulted from personal direction of his plans in the continuous and unceasing object which these plans afford
+in the contempt of ambition which it enabled him more to feel than to affect and lastly it was in the companionship and sympathy of a devoted wife
+that ellison thought to find and found an exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity
+the day after the cutters left antonia came over to see us grandmother noticed that she seemed troubled and distracted you've got something on your mind antonia she said anxiously
+she hesitated and then told us how strangely mister cutter had behaved before he went away
+as he had just put a new yale lock on the front door cutter had been so insistent in regard to these details that now she felt uncomfortable about staying there alone
+or the way he looked at her i feel as if he is up to some of his tricks again
+grandmother was apprehensive at once i don't think it's right for you to stay there feeling that way i suppose it would n't be right for you to leave the place alone either
+maybe jim would be willing to go over there and sleep and you could come here nights i'd feel safer knowing you were under my own roof i guess jim could take care of their silver and old usury notes as well as you could
+antonia turned to me eagerly oh would you jim
+the third night i spent at the cutters i awoke suddenly with the impression that i had heard a door open and shut everything was still however and i must have gone to sleep again immediately
+i was only half awake but i decided that he might take the cutters silver whoever he was
+i held my breath and lay absolutely still a hand closed softly on my shoulder and at the same moment i felt something hairy and cologne scented brushing my face
+the man became insane he stood over me choking me with one fist and beating me in the face with the other hissing and chuckling and letting out a flood of abuse so this is what she's up to when i'm away is it where is she you nasty whelp
+where is she under the bed are you hussy i know your tricks wait till i get at you i'll fix this rat you've got in here he's caught all right so long as cutter had me by the throat there was no chance for me at all
+when i got home i climbed in at the kitchen window i was covered with blood from my nose and lip but i was too sick to do anything about it i found a shawl and an overcoat on the hatrack lay down on the parlor sofa and in spite of my hurts went to sleep
+her cry of fright awakened me truly i was a battered object as she helped me to my room i caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror my lip was cut and stood out like a snout my nose looked like a big blue plum
+and one eye was swollen shut and hideously discolored grandmother said we must have the doctor at once but i implored her as i had never begged for anything before not to send for him i could stand anything i told her
+she seemed to understand though i was too faint and miserable to go into explanations when she took
+she spent the whole morning bathing and poulticing me and rubbing me with arnica i heard antonia sobbing outside my door but i asked grandmother to send her away i felt that i never wanted to see her again
+she had let me in for all this disgustingness grandmother kept saying how thankful we ought to be that i had been there instead of antonia but i lay with my disfigured face to the wall and felt no particular gratitude
+if the story once got abroad i would never hear the last of it i could well imagine what the old men down at the drug store would do with such a theme
+and had left again on the six o'clock train for denver that morning the agent said his face was striped with court plaster and he carried his left hand in a sling he looked so used up that the agent asked him what had happened to him since ten o'clock the night before
+my own garments had been treated so badly that i never saw them again grandmother burned them in the cutters kitchen range while antonia was packing her trunk and putting her room in order to leave it the front door bell rang violently
+there stood missus cutter locked out for she had no key to the new lock her head trembling with rage i advised her to control herself or she would have a stroke grandmother said afterwards
+antonia was frightened and was going home to stay for a while she told missus cutter it would be useless to interrogate the girl for she knew nothing of what had happened then missus cutter told her story
+she and her husband had started home from omaha together the morning before they had to stop over several hours at waymore junction to catch the black hawk train
+when he returned he told her that he would have to stay overnight there
+she saw him slip a twenty dollar bill into her handbag with her ticket that bill she said should have aroused her suspicions at once but did not the trains are never called at little junction towns everybody knows when they come in
+mister cutter showed his wife's ticket to the conductor and settled her in her seat before the train moved off
+and that cutter must have planned it so the conductor told her the black hawk train was due at waymore twelve minutes after the kansas city train left she saw at once that her husband had played this trick in order to get back to black hawk without her
+she had no choice but to go on to kansas city and take the first fast train for home cutter could have got home a day earlier than his wife by any one of a dozen simpler devices he could have left her in the omaha hotel
+but apparently it was part of his fun to outrage her feelings as much as possible mister cutter will pay for this missus burden he will pay missus cutter avouched nodding her horselike head and rolling her eyes
+certainly cutter liked to have his wife think him a devil in some way he depended upon the excitement he could arouse in her hysterical nature perhaps he got the feeling of being a rake more from his wife's rage and amazement
+than from any experiences of his own his zest in debauchery might wane but never missus cutter's belief in it the reckoning with his wife at the end of an escapade was something he counted on
+chapter thirty one isabel came back to florence but only after several months an interval sufficiently replete with incident it is not however during this interval that we are closely concerned with her
+our attention is engaged again on a certain day in the late spring time shortly after her return to palazzo crescentini
+to social uses and there was that in her expression and attitude
+the tall window was open and though its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with warmth
+too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle
+since the entrance to the palace was not through the garden in which stillness and privacy always reigned she wished rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture and to judge by the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do
+grave she found herself and positively more weighted as by the experience of the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the world
+a very different person from the frivolous young woman from albany who had begun to take the measure of europe on the lawn at gardencourt a couple of years before
+if her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect instead of fluttering their wings nervously about the present
+with several of the images that might have been projected on such a field we are already acquainted
+she had left her husband behind her but had brought her children to whom isabel now played with equal munificence and tenderness the part of maiden aunt mister ludlow
+the little ludlows had not yet even from the american point of view
+lily and the babies had joined her in switzerland in the month of july and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an alpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows
+and the shade of great chestnuts made a resting place for such upward wanderings as might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons they had afterwards reached the french capital which was worshipped
+and with costly ceremonies by lily but thought of as noisily vacant by isabel who in these days made
+missus ludlow sacrificed as i say to paris yet had doubts and wonderments not allayed at that altar and after her husband had joined her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these speculations
+missus ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently various
+which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the corner from her own at another
+on the whole as i have said she had fallen from high communion with the probabilities
+isabel had developed less however than lily had thought likely development to lily's understanding being somehow mysteriously connected with morning calls and evening parties intellectually doubtless she had made immense strides
+the trophies lily's conception of such achievements was extremely vague but this was exactly what she had expected of isabel to give it form and body
+we know ourselves that isabel had made conquests whether inferior or not to those she might have effected in her native land
+than that she didn't wish to speak it was more romantic to say nothing and drinking deep in secret of romance she was as little disposed to ask poor lily's advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever
+but lily knew nothing of these discriminations and could only pronounce her sister's career a strange anti climax an impression confirmed by the fact that isabel's silence about mister osmond for instance
+was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts as this happened very often it sometimes appeared to missus ludlow that she had lost her courage so uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as inheriting a fortune
+it made lily so fidgety and she asked such impossible questions isabel watched the train move away she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews
+the early dusk of a november afternoon had already closed in the street lamps in the thick brown air looked weak and red
+and euston square was a long way from piccadilly but isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose in order to get more sensations so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily
+set her right again she was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the london streets the moving crowds the hurrying cabs the lighted shops the flaring stalls the dark
+she made her way down to rome without touching at florence
+in the september previous had been recalled to america by a telegram from the interviewer
+and henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from mister bantling that he would soon come over
+had not been a fortnight in rome before she proposed to madame merle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the east madame merle remarked that her friend was restless
+but she added that she herself had always been consumed with the desire to visit athens and constantinople the two ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition and spent three months in greece in turkey in egypt
+isabel found much to interest her in these countries though madame merle continued to remark that even among the most classic sites
+her character had revealed itself
+a consummation the more desirable
+she considered with the presumption of youth that a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it
+an occasional lapse from candour in the conversation of a person who had raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the narrow ways of deception
+and there were several in her list of which our heroine had not even heard she had not heard of everything that was very plain
+advantageous to hear she had once or twice had a positive scare since it so affected her to have to exclaim of her friend
+but it stood for a high water mark in the ebb and flow of confidence madame merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline there being no point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less
+a stationary affection in other words was impossible it must move one way or the other however that might be the girl had in these days a thousand uses for her sense of the romantic which was more active than it had ever been
+i do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the pyramids in the course of an excursion from cairo or as she stood among the broken columns of the acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated to her as the strait of salamis
+deep and memorable as these emotions had remained she came back by the last of march from egypt and greece and made another stay in rome a few days after her arrival
+during which the fact of her being with his old friend madame merle in whose house she had gone to lodge made it virtually inevitable that he should see her every day when the last of april came
+and went to pay a visit at palazzo crescentini madame merle on this occasion remaining in rome
+winter lies too long in country towns hangs on until it is stale and shabby old and sullen on the farm the weather was the great fact and men's affairs went on underneath it as the streams creep under the ice
+but in black hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched frozen down to the bare stalk
+through january and february i went to the river with the harlings on clear nights and we skated up to the big island and made bonfires on the frozen sand but by march the ice was rough and choppy
+at our comfortable hotel missus harling had known d'arnault for years
+the wind from without made waves in the long carpet a coal stove glowed at either end of the room and the grand piano in the middle stood open there was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the house that night
+for missus gardener had gone to omaha for a week johnnie had been having drinks with the guests until he was rather absent minded it was missus gardener who ran the business and looked after everything her husband stood at the desk and welcomed incoming travelers
+he was a popular fellow but no manager missus gardener was admittedly the best dressed woman in black hawk drove the best horse and had a smart trap and a little white and gold sleigh
+she seemed indifferent to her possessions was not half so solicitous about them as her friends were she was tall dark severe with something indian like in the rigid immobility of her face her manner was cold and she talked little
+guests felt that they were receiving not conferring a favor when they stayed at her house even the smartest traveling men were flattered when missus gardener stopped to chat with them for a moment
+two classes those who had seen missus gardener's diamonds and those who had not when i stole into the parlor anson kirkpatrick marshall field's man
+he was a dapper little irishman very vain homely as a monkey with friends everywhere and a sweetheart in every port like a sailor i did not know all the men who were sitting about but i recognized a furniture salesman from kansas city
+a drug man and willy o'reilly who traveled for a jewelry house and sold musical instruments the talk was all about good and bad hotels actors and actresses and musical prodigies i learned that missus gardener had gone to omaha to hear booth and barrett
+who were to play there next week and that mary anderson was having a great success in a winter's tale in london the door from the office opened and johnnie gardener came in directing blind d'arnault he would never consent to be led
+his yellow face was lifted in the light with a show of white teeth all grinning and his shrunken papery eyelids lay motionless over his blind eyes good evening gentlemen no ladies here good evening gentlemen
+we going to have a little music some of you gentlemen going to play for me this evening it was the soft amiable negro voice like those i remembered from early childhood with the note of docile subservience in it
+he had the negro head too almost no head at all nothing behind the ears but folds of neck under close clipped wool
+when he was sitting or standing still he swayed back and forth incessantly like a rocking toy at the piano he swayed in time to the music and when he was not playing his body kept up this motion like an empty mill grinding on
+now gentlemen i expect you've all got grand voices seems like we might have some good old plantation songs to night the men gathered round him as he began to play my old kentucky home they sang one negro melody after another
+while the mulatto sat rocking himself his head thrown back his yellow face lifted its shriveled eyelids never fluttering he was born in the far south on the d'arnault plantation where the spirit if not the fact of slavery persisted
+when he was three weeks old he had an illness which left him totally blind
+his mother a buxom young negro wench who was laundress for the d'arnaults concluded that her blind baby was not right in his head and she was ashamed of him she loved him devotedly but he was so ugly with his sunken eyes and his fidgets
+that she hid him away from people all the dainties she brought down from the big house were for the blind child and she beat and cuffed her other children whenever she found them teasing him or trying to get his chicken bone away from him he began to talk early
+and his mammy said he was n't all wrong she named him samson because he was blind but on the plantation he was known as yellow martha's simple child
+he was docile and obedient but when he was six years old he began to run away from home always taking the same direction he felt his way through the lilacs along the boxwood hedge
+whenever she caught him slipping away from the cabin she whipped him unmercifully and told him what dreadful things old mister d'arnault would do to him if he ever found him near the big house but the next time samson had a chance he ran away again
+and went toward the window she saw this hideous little pickaninny dressed in an old piece of sacking standing in the open space between the hollyhock rows his body rocking automatically his blind face lifted
+though it did not occur to her that he might have more of it than other children one day samson was standing thus while miss nellie was playing her lesson to her music master the windows were open
+talk a little while and then leave the room he heard the door close after them he crept up to the front windows and stuck his head in there was no one there he could always detect the presence of any one in a room
+he put one foot over the window sill and straddled it his mother had told him over and over how his master would give him to the big mastiff if he ever found him meddling samson had got too near the mastiff's kennel once and had felt his terrible breath in his face
+he thought about that but he pulled in his other foot through the dark he found his way to the thing to its mouth he touched it softly and it answered softly kindly he shivered and stood still
+then he began to feel it all over ran his finger tips along the slippery sides embraced the carved legs tried to get some conception of its shape and size of the space it occupied in primeval night
+it was cold and hard and like nothing else in his black universe he went back to its mouth began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the mellow thunder as far as he could go
+he seemed to know that it must be done with the fingers not with the fists or the feet he approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct and coupled himself to it as if he knew it was to piece him out and make a whole creature of him
+that lay under the bones of his pinched conical little skull definite as animal desires the door opened miss nellie and her music master stood behind it but blind samson who was so sensitive to presences did not know they were there
+he was feeling out the pattern that lay all ready made on the big and little keys when he paused for a moment because the sound was wrong and he wanted another miss nellie spoke softly he whirled about in a spasm of terror
+leaped forward in the dark struck his head on the open window and fell screaming and bleeding to the floor he had what his mother called a fit the doctor came and gave him opium when samson was well again his young mistress led him back to the piano
+several teachers experimented with him they found he had absolute pitch and a remarkable memory as a very young child he could repeat after a fashion any composition that was played for him no matter how many wrong notes he struck he never lost the intention of a passage
+as piano playing it was perhaps abominable but as music it was something real vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than his other physical senses that not only filled his dark mind but worried his body incessantly
+and he were gloating over them and trickling them through his yellow fingers in the middle of a crashing waltz d'arnault suddenly began to play softly and turning to one of the men who stood behind him whispered
+somebody dancing in there he jerked his bullet head toward the dining room i hear little feet girls i spect anson kirkpatrick mounted a chair and peeped over the transom
+springing down he wrenched open the doors and ran out into the dining room tiny and lena antonia and mary dusak were waltzing in the middle of the floor they separated and fled toward the kitchen giggling kirkpatrick caught tiny by the elbows
+what's the matter with you girls dancing out here by yourselves when there's a roomful of lonesome men on the other side of the partition introduce me to your friends tiny the girls still laughing were trying to escape tiny looked alarmed
+she protested she'd be awful mad if you was to come out here and dance with us missus gardener's in omaha girl
+and you're tony and you're mary have i got you all straight o'reilly and the others began to pile the chairs on the tables johnnie gardener ran in from the office easy boys easy he entreated them you'll wake the cook and there'll be the devil to pay for me
+s a fact boys he said confidentially
+oh we'll make it all right with molly get your back up johnnie molly was missus gardener's name of course
+and on his watch case doubtless on his heart too he was an affectionate little man and he thought his wife a wonderful woman he knew that without her he would hardly be more than a clerk in some other man's hotel at a word from kirkpatrick
+over the piano and began to draw the dance music out of it while the perspiration shone on his short wool and on his uplifted face
+whenever the dancers paused to change partners or to catch breath he would boom out softly who's that goin back on me one of these city gentlemen i bet now you girls
+antonia seemed frightened at first
+tiny soderball was trim and slender with lively little feet and pretty ankles she wore her dresses very short she was quicker in speech lighter in movement and manner than the other girls mary dusak was broad and
+she looked bold and resourceful and unscrupulous and she was all of these they were handsome girls had the fresh color of their country up bringing and in their eyes that brilliancy which is called by no metaphor alas
+the light of youth d'arnault played until his manager came and shut the piano before he left us he showed us his gold watch which struck the hours and a topaz ring given him by some russian nobleman who delighted in negro melodies
+and had heard d'arnault play in new orleans at last he tapped his way upstairs after bowing to everybody docile and happy i walked home with antonia we were so excited that we dreaded to go to bed
+the confession of odette rider he could only gaze in stupified silence you he said wonderingly the girl was pale and her eyes never left his face she nodded yes it is i she said in a low voice
+you he said again and walked towards her he held out his hand and she gave him the wallet without a word sit down he said kindly he thought she was going to faint i hope i didn't hurt you i hadn't the slightest idea
+she shook her head oh i'm not hurt she said wearily
+she drew a chair to the table and dropped her face upon her hands and he stood by embarrassed almost terrified by this unexpected development so you were the visitor on the bicycle he said at last i didn't suspect
+it struck him at that moment that it was not an offence for odette rider to go up to her mother's house on a bicycle or even to take away a wallet which was probably hers if there was any crime at all
+she looked up at his words i on the bicycle she asked no it was not i not you she shook her head i was in the grounds
+i saw you using your lamp and i was quite close to you when you picked up the wallet she said listlessly but i was not on the bicycle who was it he asked she shook her head may i have that please
+she held out her hand and he hesitated after all he had no right or title to this curious purse he compromised by putting it on the table and she did not attempt to take it odette he said gently and walked round to her
+laying his hand on her shoulder why don't you tell me tell you what she asked without looking up tell me all there is to be told he said i could help you i want to help you she looked up at him
+he was tongue tied for a second because i love you he said and his voice shook it did not seem to him that he was talking the words came of their own volition he had no more intention of telling her he loved her indeed
+he had no more idea that he did love her than whiteside would have had yet he knew he spoke the truth and that a power greater than he had framed the words and put them on his lips the effect on the girl seemed extraordinary to him
+she did not shrink back she did not look surprised she showed no astonishment whatever
+oh that calm
+was the second shock of the evening it was as though she had known it all along he was on his knees by her side and his arm was about her shoulders even before his brain had willed the act my girl my girl he said gently won't you please tell me
+her head was still bent and her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible tell you what she asked what you know of this business he said don't you realise how every new development brings you more and more under suspicion
+what business do you mean he hesitated the murder of thornton lyne i know nothing of that she made no response to that tender arm of his but sat rigid something in her attitude chilled him
+and he dropped her hand and rose when she looked up she saw that his face was white and set he walked to the door and unlocked it i'm not going to ask you any more he said quietly you know best why you came to me to night
+she got up to her feet unsteadily and swayed toward him in a second he was by her side his arms about her she made no resistance but rather he felt a yielding towards him which he had missed before her pale face was upturned to his and he stooped and kissed her
+odette odette he whispered don't you realise that i love you and would give my life to save you from unhappiness won't you tell me everything please no no no she murmured with a little catch in her voice please don't ask me
+i am afraid oh i am afraid he crushed her in his arms his cheek against hers his lips tingling with the caress of her hair but there is nothing to be afraid of nothing he said eagerly if you were as guilty as hell i would save you
+if you are shielding somebody i would shield them because i love you odette no no she cried and pushed him back both her little hands pressing against his chest don't ask me don't ask me ask me tarling swung round
+there was a man standing in the doorway in the act of closing the door behind him milburgh he said between his teeth milburgh smiled the other mockingly i am sorry to interrupt this beautiful scene
+but the occasion is a desperate one and i cannot afford to stand on ceremony mister tarling tarling put the girl from him and looked at the smirking manager one comprehensive glance the detective gave him
+noted the cycling clips and the splashes of mud on his trousers and understood so you were the cyclist eh he said that's right said milburgh it is an exercise to which i am very partial what do you want asked tarling alert and watchful
+i want you to carry out your promise mister tarling said milburgh smoothly tarling stared at him my promise he said what promise to protect not only the evil doer
+tarling started do you mean to say he said hoarsely do you mean to accuse i accuse nobody said milburgh with a wide sweep of his hands i merely suggest that both miss rider and myself are in very serious trouble
+and that you have it in your power to get us safely out of this country to one where extradition laws cannot follow tarling took one step towards him and milburgh shrank back do you accuse miss rider of complicity in this murder he demanded milburgh smiled
+but it was an uneasy smile i make no accusation he said
+he shrugged his shoulders you will understand better when you read the contents of that wallet which i was endeavouring to remove to a place of safety tarling picked up the wallet from the table and looked at it i shall see the contents of this wallet to morrow he said
+locks will present very little difficulty
+and pulled from his pocket a chain at the end of which dangled a small bunch of keys here is the key he said unlock and read to night tarling took the key in his hand inserted it in first one tiny lock and then in the other
+the catches snapped open and he threw back the flap then a hand snatched the portfolio from him and he turned to see the girl's quivering face and read the terror in her eyes no no she cried almost beside herself no for god's sake no
+tarling stepped back he saw the malicious little smile on milburgh's face and could have struck him down miss rider does not wish me to see what is in this case he said
+here it was the girl's voice surprisingly clear and steady her shaking hands held the paper she had taken from the wallet and she thrust it toward the detective there is a reason she said in a low voice
+milburgh had gone too far tarling saw his face lengthen and the look of apprehension in his cold blue eyes then without further hesitation he opened the paper and read the first line took away his breath the confession of odette rider
+good god he muttered and read on
+adam understood dinah's haste to go away and drew hope rather than discouragement from it
+i wish i'd asked her to write to me though he thought and yet
+she wants to be quite quiet in her old way for a while and i've no right to be impatient and interrupting her with my wishes she's told me what her mind is and she's not a woman to say one thing and mean another
+i'll wait patiently that was adam's wise resolution and it throve excellently for the first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got
+but towards the middle of october the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly and showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion the weeks were unusually long dinah must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind
+he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first draught she offers him to care much about the taste of the second he treads the earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her and makes light of all difficulties
+but that sort of glow dies out memory gets sadly diluted with time and is not strong enough to revive us adam was no longer so confident as he had been he began to fear that perhaps dinah's old life
+would have too strong a grasp upon her
+if she had not felt this she would surely have written to him to give him some comfort but it appeared that she held it right to discourage him as adam's confidence waned his patience waned with it
+and he thought he must write himself he must ask dinah not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was needful he sat up late one night to write her a letter but the next morning he burnt it afraid of its effect
+it would be worse to have a discouraging answer by letter than from her own lips for her presence reconciled him to her will you perceive how it was adam was hungering for the sight of dinah
+and when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage a lover is likely to still it though he may have to put his future in pawn but what harm could he do by going to snowfield dinah could not be displeased with him for it
+she had not forbidden him to go she must surely expect that he would go before long by the second sunday in october
+that he was already on his way to snowfield on horseback this time for his hours were precious now and he had borrowed jonathan burge's good nag for the journey what keen memories went along the road with him
+he had often been to oakbourne and back since that first journey to snowfield but beyond oakbourne the greystone walls the broken country the meagre trees seemed to be telling him afresh
+the story of that painful past which he knew so well by heart but no story is the same to us after a lapse of time or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters and adam
+this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey country thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of the past that is a base
+and selfish even a blasphemous spirit which rejoices and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed another because it has been made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves
+adam could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had been brought so close to him he could never thank god for another's misery and if i were capable of that narrow sighted joy in adam's behalf
+i should still know he was not the man to feel it for himself he would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said evil's evil and sorrow's sorrow
+by wrapping it up in other words other folks were not created for my sake that i should think all square when things turn out well for me but it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life
+which a sad experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain surely it is not possible to feel otherwise any more than it would be possible
+by which his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day the growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty
+we can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner or a philosopher to his less complete formula
+something like this sense of enlarged being was in adam's mind this sunday morning as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past
+the hope of passing his life with her had been the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from snowfield eighteen months ago had been leading him tender and deep as his love for hetty had been
+so deep that the roots of it would never be torn away his love for dinah was better and more precious to him for it was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his acquaintance with deep sorrow
+it's like as if it was a new strength to me he said to himself to love her and know as she loves me
+for she's better than i am
+as if you could walk more fearless when you've more trust in another
+i've always been thinking i knew better than them as belonged to me
+when you can't look to them nearest to you t help you with a bit better thought
+when adam came in sight of the grey town on the hill side and looked searchingly towards the green valley below for the first glimpse of the old thatched roof near the ugly red mill the scene looked less harsh in the soft
+october sunshine than it had in the eager time of early spring and the one grand charm it possessed in common with all wide stretching woodless regions
+that it filled you with a new consciousness of the overarching sky had a milder more soothing influence than usual on this almost cloudless day adam's doubts and fears melted under this influence
+as the delicate weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear blue above him he seemed to see dinah's gentle face assuring him with its looks alone of all he longed to know
+he did not expect dinah to be at home at this hour but he got down from his horse and tied it at the little gate
+he had set his mind on following her and bringing her home she was gone to sloman's end a hamlet about three miles off over the hill the old woman told him
+to preach in a cottage there as her habit was
+so adam got on his horse again and rode to the town putting up at the old inn and taking a hasty dinner there in the company of the too chatty landlord from whose friendly questions and reminiscences
+he was glad to escape as soon as possible and set out towards sloman's end with all his haste it was nearly four o'clock before he could set off
+the little grey desolate looking hamlet unscreened by sheltering trees lay in sight long before he reached it and as he came near he could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn
+perhaps that's the last hymn before they come away adam thought i'll walk back a bit and turn again to meet her farther off the village he walked back till he got nearly to the top of the hill again
+and seated himself on a loose stone against the low wall to watch till he should see the little black figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill he chose this spot almost at the top of the hill
+because it was away from all eyes no house no cattle not even a nibbling sheep near no presence but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky
+she was much longer coming than he expected he waited an hour at least watching for her and thinking of her while the afternoon shadows lengthened and the light grew softer at last he saw the little black figure
+coming from between the grey houses and gradually approaching the foot of the hill slowly adam thought but dinah was really walking at her usual pace with a light quiet step
+now she was beginning to wind along the path up the hill but adam would not move yet he would not meet her too soon he had set his heart on meeting her in this assured loneliness and now he began to fear
+lest he should startle her too much yet he thought she's not one to be overstartled she's always so calm and quiet as if she was prepared for anything what was she thinking of as she wound up the hill
+perhaps she had found complete repose without him and had ceased to feel any need of his love on the verge of a decision we all tremble hope pauses with fluttering wings but now at last she was very near
+and adam rose from the stone wall it happened that just as he walked forward dinah had paused and turned round to look back at the village
+adam was glad for with the fine instinct of a lover he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw him he came within three paces of her and then said dinah
+she started without looking round as if she connected the sound with no place dinah adam said again
+what was in her mind she was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the voice but this second time she looked round
+what a look of yearning love it was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark eyed man she did not start again at the sight of him she said nothing but moved towards him so that his arm could clasp her round
+and they walked on so in silence while the warm tears fell adam was content and said nothing it was dinah who spoke first adam she said it is the divine will
+my soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life i live without you and this moment now you are with me and i feel that our hearts are filled with the same love i have a fulness of strength
+to bear and do our heavenly father's will that i had lost before adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes then we'll never part any more dinah till death parts us and they kissed each other
+crayfish soup
+one quarter pounds of butter six anchovies
+a little lobster spawn seasoning to taste two quarts of medium stock
+mode shell the crayfish and put the fish between two plates until they are wanted pound the shells in a mortar with the butter and anchovies when well beaten add a pint of stock and simmer for three quarters of an hour
+after it has been rubbed through the tammy if necessary add seasoning time
+this is one of those fishes that were highly esteemed by the ancients the greeks preferred it when brought from alexandria and the romans ate it boiled with cumin and seasoned with pepper and other condiments
+a recipe tells us that crayfish can be preserved several days in baskets with fresh grass such as the nettle or in a bucket with about three eighths of an inch of water more water would kill them
+because the large quantity of air they require necessitates the water in which they are kept to be continually renewed eel soup
+three blades of mace one bunch of sweet herbs one quarter oz of peppercorns salt to taste
+let them simmer for a few minutes then pour the water to them and add the onion cut in thin slices the herbs mace and seasoning simmer till the eels are tender but do not break the fish take them out carefully
+mix the flour smoothly to a batter with the cream bring it to a boil pour over the eels and serve time
+seasonable from june to march sufficient for eight persons note this soup may be flavoured differently by omitting the cream and adding a little ketchup or harvey's sauce lobster soup
+or six small ones the crumb of a french roll two anchovies one onion one small bunch of sweet herbs one strip of lemon peel
+a little nutmeg one teaspoonful of flour one pint of cream one pint of milk forcemeat balls mace salt and pepper to taste bread crumbs one egg two quarts of water mode
+pick the meat from the lobsters
+and the bag in the head put it in a stewpan with the crumb of the roll anchovies onions herbs lemon peel and the water simmer gently till all the goodness is extracted and strain it off
+at the same time adding the tails cut in pieces make the forcemeat balls with the remainder of the lobster seasoned with mace pepper and salt adding a little flour and a few bread crumbs moisten them with the egg
+heat them in the soup and serve time
+seasonable from april to october sufficient for eight persons oyster soup
+take it off the fire strain it again and add the remainder of the stock with the seasoning and mace bring it to a boil
+simmer for five minutes stir in the boiling cream pour it over the oysters and serve time
+mode beard the oysters and scald them in their own liquor then add it well strained to the broth thicken with the butter and flour and simmer for one quarter of an hour put in the oysters stir well
+but do not let it boil and serve very hot time three quarters hour average cost
+seasonable from september to april sufficient for eight persons season of oysters from april and may to the end of july oysters are said to be sick
+but by the end of august they become healthy having recovered from the effects of spawning when they are not in season the males have a black
+from some lines of oppian it would appear that the ancients were ignorant that the oyster is generally found adhering to rocks the starfish is one of the most deadly enemies of these bivalves the poet says
+the prickly star creeps on with full deceit to force the oyster from his close retreat when gaping lids their widen'd void display the watchful star thrusts in a pointed ray of all its treasures spoils the rifled case
+prawn soup
+two pints of prawns the crumbs of a french roll anchovy sauce or mushroom ketchup to taste one blade of mace one pint of vinegar a little lemon juice mode
+pick out the tails of the prawns put the bodies in a stewpan with one blade of mace
+and the same quantity of water stew them for one quarter hour and strain off the liquor put the fish stock or water into a stewpan add the strained liquor pound the prawns with the crumb of a roll moistened with a little of the soup
+rub them through a tammy and mix them by degrees with the soup add ketchup or anchovy sauce to taste with a little lemon juice when it is well cooked put in a few picked prawns let them get thoroughly hot and serve
+if not thick enough put in a little butter and flour time
+if made with water seasonable at any time sufficient for eight persons note this can be thickened with tomatoes and vermicelli served in it
+this little fish bears a striking resemblance to the shrimp but is neither so common nor so small
+there's no sense in wasting our time here said solomon owl to his small cousin simon screecher it's a fine night the mice will all be out sooner or later let's go over and sit in that old oak on the edge of the meadow
+simon screecher was more than willing and they had no sooner settled themselves among the bare branches of the oak when simon started to amuse himself by giving his well known quavering whistle solomon owl stopped him quickly
+don't do that he said sharply do you want to scare the mice simon screecher cut his whistle off right in the middle of it i forgot he murmured but i don't believe my whistling would do any harm
+i don't think there are many mice left on farmer green's place it's my opinion that they've moved away most of them or maybe old rough leg the hawk has caught more than his share
+solomon owl made no reply he was a person of few words if anybody asked his opinion he was ready to give it but he seldom gave any unsought advice
+i've about made up my mind said simon screecher that i'd move to some other neighborhood if i knew where there was good mousing i'd move to morrow while he was speaking solomon owl started ever so slightly
+you might as well send them a telegram saying that you'll be on hand to meet them at eight p m simon screecher was silenced for the time being and it wasn't long before solomon owl gave another start there's that squeak again he whispered
+i believe it is getting nearer too now master meadow mouse had a tunnel that led right beneath the tree where the two cousins were sitting
+and he had strolled that way after scurrying under the snow when he heard solomon owl laughing in the woods earlier in the evening it was he that solomon heard it was he that stuck his head out of a hole in the snow and peeped up at the star sprinkled sky
+he must have hurried over here from the woods he must be very hungry as solomon owl returned to the old oak his cousin simon screecher laughed somewhat unpleasantly missed him didn't you he inquired yes
+why didn't you grab him out of the snow simon asked what are your claws for what's your beak for i couldn't dig him out solomon owl replied the snow is three feet deep
+and it has seven different crusts one under another this is a hard winter said simon screecher i wish i'd gone south last fall i wonder how the mousing is down there
+eating a tree as simon screecher remarked to his cousin solomon owl it was a hard winter the snow was deep the days were cold and the nights were colder and worst of all food became scarce
+it seemed as if there wasn't anything to eat anywhere except at the farm buildings which farmer green had stuffed full of hay and grain during the summer and autumn many of the forest folk stole down from blue mountain after nightfall
+and visited the farmyard in the hope of getting a bite of something or other even master meadow mouse began to find it harder and harder to get enough seeds under the snow to satisfy his hunger
+he had stored away a stock of food but it hadn't been big enough and that was a great mistake master meadow mouse promised himself that he would not repeat it another time
+unfortunately all the promises in the world wouldn't give him a square meal when he needed one
+this is my first winter master meadow mouse explained i'm running short of food and i wish you'd tell me what to do in such a case that's easy his cousin answered get more
+and then he hurried away for he had important business to attend to poor master meadow mouse ran after him it was hard to follow his cousin through the winding galleries beneath the snow
+several times master meadow mouse took the wrong turn and had to retrace his steps but at last he found his busy cousin again you advised me to get more food said master meadow mouse but you didn't tell me where to get it
+in the orchard his cousin cried and then he hurried away again i wish he'd wait a minute master meadow mouse grumbled as he tore after his cousin once more
+i don't feel like running i haven't had a hearty meal for days the cousin seemed surprised when master meadow mouse overtook him what that busy gentleman exclaimed have you been to the orchard and back so soon no
+having said those three words he dashed off again even faster than before trees master meadow mouse echoed i can't eat trees
+there must be something that my cousin forgot to explain so i suppose i'll have to run after him again and ask him what he meant the fourth time that master meadow mouse found his cousin he took no chances
+he caught his cousin by his tail and held on firmly you're not going to get away from me till i've found out what i want to know he declared how can i eat a tree master meadow mouse demanded you can't
+his cousin replied struggling desperately to free himself for he was too busy to stop long then explain what you mean master meadow mouse cried eat the bark his cousin answered
+then and not till then did master meadow mouse let him go master meadow mouse chased his cousin no more but hurried away to farmer green's orchard where he gnawed a ring
+but farmer green didn't agree with him when he happened to go into the orchard one day later and saw tree after tree ruined he was very very much displeased
+i ought to have put wire netting around those young trees he told the hired man this is what comes of a hard winter
+a cold dip in one way peter mink was like master meadow mouse he enjoyed swimming and he spent a great deal of his time along the streams that threaded their way through pleasant valley sometimes peter dawdled on the banks of swift river
+sometimes he lingered for days in the neighborhood of black creek nor did he disdain so small a stream as the brook that crossed the meadow it was deep enough for a swim and he knew that muskrats lived under its banks
+well peter mink had surprised many a one swimming in the brook if it hadn't been for the meadow mice perhaps he wouldn't have visited the brook so often even in winter master meadow mouse just had to have his cold dip now and then
+just because there was skating for johnnie green on top of the brook it mustn't be supposed that master meadow mouse wasn't going to have a swim when he wanted one
+when peter mink wandered along a stream in winter he preferred to travel under the ice rather than walk upon the upper side of it
+it made little difference to him whether there was a dry strip along the edge of the stream where he could steal silently along without wetting his feet when he found no place to walk he swam now master meadow mouse was well aware of this trick of peter mink's
+this trick of lurking beneath the ice of river creek and brook but master meadow mouse would have his cold dip now and then despite peter mink and his prowling ways to be sure master meadow mouse tried to be careful
+before he crept from the end of his tunnel he stuck his head out and looked up and down and all around he peeped under the bank of the brook he even stared into the water and then if he saw nobody that was fiercer than paddy muskrat
+only then would he venture to skip to the water's edge and plunge in to tell the truth master meadow mouse always felt safer when one of the muskrat family happened to be taking a swim at the same time
+for the muskrats all had a warning signal that told everybody when there was danger when one of them caught sight of peter mink he never failed if he was in the water to give a loud slap upon the surface with his tail
+master meadow mouse always had one ear that was listening for that slap and when it sounded he never waited an instant but darted into his tunnel without even stopping to shake the water off his coat
+he said that he could dry his coat after he reached home while if he stopped to dry it at the edge of the brook perhaps he'd never get home at all you might think that now and then he would have said to himself
+oh i won't bother to look for peter mink to day he must be miles away i'll step right out of my tunnel and have my swim without taking a look see first but master meadow mouse was never so lazy as that
+and the day came at last when it was well worth his while to take the little extra trouble of peeping out before he had his swim for master meadow mouse caught a glimpse of a snakelike head that darted out from under the bank of the brook and darted back again out of sight
+the native inhabitants of the pacific slope the explorers and early settlers found a native race occupying nearly every portion of our continent these people had many characteristics in common and were all called indians
+in the western portion of the country where the surface is broken by numerous barriers such as mountains and deserts almost every valley was found to be occupied by a distinct group of indians called a tribe
+the language of each tribe differed so much from the languages of adjoining tribes that they could with difficulty understand one another these tribes were almost continually at war
+the indians upon the pacific slope were generally found to be inferior in most respects to those living in the central and eastern portions of the continent one might suppose that the tribes possessing the fair and fertile valleys of california
+would be the most advanced in civilization but such was not the case many of them were among the most degraded upon the continent they seemed unable to adapt themselves to the white man and his ways
+and in the older settled districts they have now nearly disappeared in the newer portions of the northwest and along the coast toward alaska the indians have not yet come into so direct contact with the white men
+they did not cultivate the soil nor did they hunt a great deal although the country abounded with game
+these indians have often been called diggers because they depended so largely for their living upon the roots which they dug it would seem natural that about san francisco bay the natives should have used canoes
+but according to early travellers they had none when they wished to go out upon the water they built rafts of bundles of rushes or tules tied together at favorable points along the shore the indians collected for their feasts
+and these spots are now indicated by heaps of shells in some places forming mounds of considerable size
+in the mountains the sites of the villages are marked by chips of obsidian a volcanic glass used in making arrow tips and by holes in the flat surfaces of granitic rocks near some spring or stream
+these holes were made for the purpose of grinding acorns or nuts many of the indian tribes developed great skill in the weaving of baskets which they used for many different purposes
+the baskets are still made in some places and are much sought after because of their beauty the indians of northern california in building their homes dug round shallow holes over which poles were bent in the form of a half circle
+and after he had entered and all openings were closed he poured water upon the stones until the room was filled with steam after enduring this process as long as he desired the indian came out and plunged into the cold water of a near by stream
+as may be imagined such a bath often resulted disastrously to the weak or sick the fact that the california indians could support themselves without any great exertion
+at certain seasons of the year when salmon were plentiful each tribe or group of indians established its camp near one of the many rapids and waterfalls along the columbia river large numbers of the salmon were caught by the use of traps
+after being partly dried they were packed in bales for winter use the fish thus prepared were considered very valuable and formed an article of trade with the tribes living farther from the river
+but this enthusiasm quickly disappears if a head wind comes up and the party goes ashore to wait for the breeze to turn in a more favorable direction these indians as might be supposed live largely upon fish
+berries are abundant during the summer and are also much used for food the clothing of the indians was originally a sort of blanket made of the woven fibres of cedar bark or more rarely of the skins of animals
+and leaving it there while the head is growing
+the buildings are strung along the shore close under the edge of the thick forest and just above the reach of the waves at high tide they are very solidly constructed
+for these indians do not move about as much as those farther south where the forests are less dense figure sixty five shows the framework of a partially built house while another stands at one side completed
+large posts are set in the ground at the corners and ends of the building cross logs are then placed upon the middle posts
+this is sometimes two feet in diameter and from sixty to eighty feet long it must require the united strength of many men to roll such a log into position upon the framework thus constructed split cedar boards are fastened
+and the building is practically finished such a house is usually occupied by a number of families upon queen charlotte islands there is a dwelling of this kind large enough to hold seven hundred indians
+the fronts of the houses are ornamented with figures hewn out of wood these represent men birds and animals and have a religious significance sometimes these figures are mounted upon the tops of tall poles
+the totem pole is a most interesting affair figure sixty six represents the pole at alert bay east of vancouver island it is one of the finest upon the north coast
+the figures of animals and birds carved upon it represent the mythological ancestors of the family or clan in front of whose abode the pole stands the indians often hunt similar animals to day
+but believe that their ancestors had supernatural power which raised them above the ordinary creatures the chinook indians live upon the lower columbia
+the name chinook has been given to a warm dry wind which blows down the eastern slope of the rocky mountains and out upon the great plains this wind is so named because it blows from the direction of the chinook indians country
+the chinook jargon is a strange sort of mixed language with which nearly all the tribes of the northwest are familiar it is formed of words from the chinook language together with others from different indian languages
+it seems almost certain that these american indians originally came across the narrow strip of water separating asia from america we do not know how long the indians have occupied our country
+but it has probably been several thousand years some of the main groups have undoubtedly been here longer than others
+and his tongue gave my hand a lick he pressed close to me as if he were fain to crowd himself into my hand he loved it with his tail with his paw with his tongue if he could speak i believe he would say with me
+that paradise is attained by touch for in touch is all love and intelligence this small incident started me on a chat about hands and if my chat is fortunate i have to thank my dog star
+in any case it is pleasant to have something to talk about that no one else has monopolized it is like making a new path in the trackless woods blazing the trail where no foot has pressed before
+i am glad to take you by the hand and lead you along an untrodden way into a world where the hand is supreme but at the very outset we encounter a difficulty you are so accustomed to light
+i promise that you shall not be led into fire or water or fall into a deep pit if you will follow me patiently you will find that there's a sound so fine nothing lives twixt it and silence
+and that there is more meant in things than meets the eye my hand is to me what your hearing and sight together are to you in large measure we travel the same highways read the same books speak the same language
+a slight flutter of the fingers began the intelligence the joy the fullness of my life like job i feel as if a hand had made me fashioned me together round about and moulded my very soul
+in all my experiences and thoughts i am conscious of a hand whatever moves me whatever thrills me is as a hand that touches me in the dark and that touch is my reality you might as well say that a sight which makes you glad
+all these and a thousand resultant combinations which take shape in my mind constitute my world ideas make the world we live in and impressions furnish ideas my world is built of touch sensations
+but without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life
+of beauty or of incongruity for with my hands i can feel the comic as well as the beautiful in the outward appearance of things remember that you dependent on your sight do not realize how many things are tangible
+all palpable things are mobile or rigid solid or liquid big or small warm or cold and these qualities are variously modified
+the coolness of a water lily rounding into bloom is different from the coolness of an evening wind in summer and different again from the coolness of the rain that soaks into the hearts of growing things and gives them life and body
+the velvet of the rose is not that of a ripe peach or of a baby's dimpled cheek the hardness of the rock is to the hardness of wood what a man's deep bass is to a woman's voice when it is low
+what i call beauty i find in certain combinations of all these qualities and is largely derived from the flow of curved and straight lines which is over all things what does the straight line mean to you
+it means several things it symbolizes duty it seems to have the quality of inexorableness that duty has when i have something to do that must not be set aside i feel as if i were going forward in a straight line
+or go on forever without swerving to the right or to the left that is what it means to escape this moralizing you should ask how does the straight line feel it feels as i suppose it looks straight
+now broken off or lengthened or swelling they rise and sink beneath my fingers they are full of sudden starts and pauses and their variety is inexhaustible and wonderful so you see i am not shut out from the region of the beautiful
+though my hand cannot perceive the brilliant colours in the sunset or on the mountain or reach into the blue depths of the sky physics tells me that i am well off in a world which i am told knows neither cold nor sound
+for at least every object appears to my fingers standing solidly right side up and is not an inverted image on the retina which i understand your brain is at infinite though unconscious labour to set back on its feet
+a tangible object passes complete into my brain with the warmth of life upon it and occupies the same place that it does in space for without egotism the mind is as large as the universe
+when i think of hills i think of the upward strength i tread upon when water is the object of my thought i feel the cool shock of the plunge and the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body
+the pleasing changes of rough and smooth pliant and rigid curved and straight in the bark and branches of a tree give the truth to my hand the immovable rock with its juts and warped surface
+a bird in my hand was then worth two in the barnyard my fingers cannot of course get the impression of a large whole at a glance but i feel the parts and my mind puts them together
+i move around my house touching object after object in order before i can form an idea of the entire house in other people's houses i can touch only what is shown to me the chief objects of interest
+carvings on the wall or a curious architectural feature exhibited like the family album therefore a house with which i am not familiar has for me at first no general effect or harmony of detail
+it is not a complete conception but a collection of object impressions which as they come to me are disconnected and isolated but my mind is full of associations sensations
+theories and with them it constructs the house the process reminds me of the building of solomon's temple
+the silent worker is imagination which decrees reality out of chaos without imagination what a poor thing my world would be
+my garden would be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and smells but when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty the bare ground brightens beneath my feet and the hedge row bursts into leaf
+and the rose tree shakes its fragrance everywhere i know how budding trees look and i enter into the amorous joy of the mating birds and this is the miracle of imagination
+which he has embodied in a sculptured form although compared with the life warm mobile face of a friend the marble is cold and pulseless and unresponsive yet it is beautiful to my hand
+its flowing curves and bendings are a real pleasure only breath is wanting but under the spell of the imagination the marble thrills and becomes the divine reality of the ideal imagination puts a sentiment into every line and curve
+and the statue in my touch is indeed the goddess herself who breathes and moves and enchants it is true however that some sculptures even recognized masterpieces do not please my hand
+when i touch what there is of the winged victory it reminds me at first of a headless limbless dream that flies towards me in an unrestful sleep
+the garments of the victory thrust stiffly out behind and do not resemble garments that i have felt flying fluttering folding spreading in the wind
+but imagination fulfils these imperfections and straightway the victory becomes a powerful and spirited figure with the sweep of sea winds in her robes and the splendour of conquest in her wings
+and i like the luxuriant wavy hair of bacchus and apollo and the wreath of ivy so suggestive of pagan holidays so imagination crowns the experience of my hands
+and they learned their cunning from the wise hand of another which itself guided by imagination led me safely in paths that i knew not
+the ferns drenched his stirrups as he brushed through them and each dripping tree top broke the sunlight and let it drop in tent like beams through the shimmering undermist a bird flashed here and there through the green gloom
+but there was no sound in the air but the footfalls of his horse and the easy creaking of leather under him the drip of dew overhead and the running of water below now and then he could see the same slender foot prints in the rich loam
+and he saw them in the sand where the first tiny brook tinkled across the path from a gloomy ravine there the little creature had taken a flying leap across it and beyond he could see the prints no more he little guessed that while he halted to let his horse drink
+he turned back up the creek and passed so close to where she had slipped aside into the bushes that she came near shrieking but his eyes were fixed on a pool of the creek above and to her wonder he strolled straight into the water with his boots on
+pushing the net in front of him he was a raider sure she thought now and he was looking for a moonshine still and the wild little thing in the bushes smiled cunningly there was no still up that creek
+and as he had left his horse below and his gun she waited for him to come back which he did by and by dripping and soaked to his knees then she saw him untie the queer gun on his saddle pull it out of a case and
+her eyes got big with wonder take it to pieces and make it into a long limber rod in a moment he had cast a minnow into the pool and waded out into the water up to his hips she had never seen so queer a fishing pole so queer a fisherman
+how could he get a fish out with that little switch she thought contemptuously by and by something hummed queerly the man gave a slight jerk and a shining fish flopped two feet into the air it was surely very queer
+but stood still winding something with one hand and again the fish would flash into the air and then that humming would start again while the fisherman would stand quiet and waiting for a while and then he would begin to wind again in her wonder
+drowning him stepping backward at the same time and a moment later the fish slid easily out of the edge of the water gasping along the edge of a low sand bank and the fisherman reaching down with one hand caught him in the gills then
+he looked up and smiled and she had seen no smile like that before howdye little girl one bare toe went burrowing suddenly into the sand one finger went to her red mouth and that was all
+and he smiled again cat got your tongue her eyes fell at the ancient banter but she lifted them straightway and stared again you live around here she stared on
+where no answer what's your name little girl and still she stared
+the steady eyes leaped angrily but there was still no answer and he bent to take the fish off his hook put on a fresh minnow turned his back and tossed it into the pool hit hain't he looked up again
+his line rang suddenly jack she cried you got a bite he pulled missed the strike and wound in the minnow was all right so he tossed it back again that isn't your name he said
+he said shaking his head affirmatively a long cry came down the ravine
+and the fisherman wondered if he had heard aright june the little girl gave a shrill answering cry but she did not move thar now she said who's that your mammy no tain't
+hit's my step mammy i'm a goin to ketch hell now her innocent eyes turned sullen and her baby mouth tightened good lord said the fisherman startled and then he stopped the words were as innocent on her lips as a benediction
+have you got a father like a flash her whole face changed
+drawled a voice from the bushes and it had a tone that made the fisherman whirl suddenly a giant mountaineer stood on the bank above him with a winchester in the hollow of his arm how are you
+the giant's heavy eyes lifted quickly but he spoke to the girl you go on home
+the girl shrank to the bushes but she cried sharply back don't you hurt him now dad he ain't even got a pistol he ain't no shet up
+the little creature vanished and the mountaineer turned to the fisherman who had just put on a fresh minnow and tossed it into the river purty well thank you he said shortly how are you fine was the nonchalant answer
+for a moment there was silence and a puzzled frown gathered on the mountaineer's face that's a bright little girl of yours
+no not in these mountains why the fisherman looked around and was almost startled by the fierce gaze of his questioner stop that please he said with a humourous smile you make me nervous
+the mountaineer's bushy brows came together across the bridge of his nose and his voice rumbled like distant thunder what's yo name stranger an what's yo business over hyeh dear me there you go you can see i'm fishing
+but why does everybody in these mountains want to know my name you heerd me yes the fisherman turned again and saw the giant's rugged face stern and pale with open anger now
+he had not moved hand or foot and he said nothing but his mouth was set hard and his bewildered blue eyes had a glint in them that the mountaineer did not at the moment see he was leaning with one arm on the muzzle of his winchester his face had suddenly become suave and shrewd and now he laughed again
+i might have a gun myself sometimes did you think you could scare me the mountaineer stared in genuine surprise twusn't no joke he said shortly
+i reckon you don't know who i be i don't care who you are again the mountaineer stared no use gittin mad young feller he said coolly i mistaken ye fer somebody else an i axe yer pardon
+when you git through fishin come up to the house right up the creek thar an i'll give ye a dram thank you said the fisherman stiffly and the mountaineer turned silently away at the edge of the bushes he looked back the stranger was still fishing
+and the old man went on with a shake of his head he'll come he said to himself oh he'll come that very point hale was debating with himself as he unavailingly cast his minnow into the swift water and slowly wound it in again
+how did that old man know his name and would the old savage really have hurt him had he not found out who he was the little girl was a wonder evidently she had muffled his last name on purpose not knowing it herself
+and it was a quick and cunning ruse he owed her something for that why did she try to protect him wonderful eyes too the little thing had deep and dark and how the flame did dart from them when she got angry he smiled remembering
+he liked that and her hair it was exactly like the gold bronze on the wing of a wild turkey that he had shot the day before well it was noon now the fish had stopped biting after the wayward fashion of bass
+he was hungry and thirsty and he would go up and see the little girl and the giant again and get that promised dram once more however he let his minnow float down into the shadow of a big rock
+a man with a woman behind him both old and spectacled all three motionless on the bank and looking at him
+only one answered hale with equal cheer the old woman pushed back her bonnet as he waded through the water towards them and he saw that she was puffing a clay pipe she looked at the fisherman and his tackle with the naive wonder of a child
+and then she said in a commanding undertone go on billy
+hale smiled he loved old people and two kinder faces he had never seen two gentler voices he had never heard
+said the old man chuckling but thar's a sight of em down thar below my old mill quietly the old woman hit the horse with a stripped branch of elm and the old gray with a switch of his tail started
+but calmly she hit the horse again and the old man called back over his shoulder you come on down to the mill an i'll show ye whar you can ketch a mess all right shouted hale holding back his laughter and on they went
+the old man remonstrating in the kindliest way the old woman silently puffing her pipe and making no answer except to flay gently the rump of the lazy old gray hesitating hardly a moment hale unjointed his pole
+left his minnow bucket where it was mounted his horse and rode up the path about him the beech leaves gave back the gold of the autumn sunlight and a little ravine high under the crest of the mottled mountain was on fire with the scarlet of maple
+when he got to the bare crest of a little rise he could see up the creek a spiral of blue rising swiftly from a stone chimney geese and ducks were hunting crawfish in the little creek that ran from a milk house of logs
+half hidden by willows at the edge of the forest and a turn in the path brought into view a log cabin well chinked with stones and plaster and with a well built porch a fence ran around the yard
+gee haw i tell ye an ox wagon evidently was coming on and the road was so narrow that he turned his horse into the bushes to let it pass
+still there was no sound of ox or wagon and the voice sounded like a child's so he went on at a walk in the thick sand and when he turned the bushes he pulled up again with a low laugh
+in the road across the creek was a chubby tow haired boy with a long switch in his right hand and a pine dagger and a string in his left attached to the string and tied by one hind leg was a frog
+the boy was using the switch as a goad and driving the frog as an ox and he was as earnest as though both were real i give ye a little rest now buck he said shaking his head earnestly
+gee gee the frog hopped several times
+said the little fellow panting in sympathy
+then he looked up for an instant he seemed terrified but he did not run instead he stealthily shifted the pine dagger over to his right hand and the string to his left here boy said the fisherman with affected sternness
+what are you doing with that dagger the boy's breast heaved and his dirty fingers clenched tight around the whittled stick don't you talk to me that a way he said with an ominous shake of his head i'll gut ye the fisherman threw back his head
+and his peal of laughter did what his sternness failed to do the little fellow wheeled suddenly and his feet spurned the sand around the bushes for home the astonished frog dragged bumping after him well
+permission to accept such additional employment should it offer having formed an article of the terms on which he had engaged me it was therefore arranged in the course of next day
+when evening came i prepared to step over in order to seek a conference with mademoiselle herself on the subject i had not had time to pay the visit before having been all day closely occupied in class
+i remember very well that before quitting my chamber i held a brief debate with myself as to whether i should change my ordinary attire for something smarter at last i concluded it would be a waste of labour doubtless thought i
+she is some stiff old maid for though the daughter of madame reuter she may well number upwards of forty winters besides if it were otherwise if she be both young and pretty i am not handsome
+and no dressing can make me so therefore i'll go as i am and off i started cursorily glancing sideways as i passed the toilet table surmounted by a looking glass a thin irregular face i saw
+with sunk dark eyes under a large square forehead complexion destitute of bloom or attraction something young but not youthful no object to win a lady's love no butt for the shafts of cupid
+in a moment i had pulled the bell in another moment the door was opened and within appeared a passage paved alternately with black and white marble the walls were painted in imitation of marble also and at the far end opened a glass door
+through which i saw shrubs and a grass plat looking pleasant in the sunshine of the mild spring evening for it was now the middle of april this then was my first glimpse of the garden but i had not time to look long
+the portress after having answered in the affirmative my question as to whether her mistress was at home opened the folding doors of a room to the left and having ushered me in closed them behind me i found myself in a salon
+with a very well painted highly varnished floor chairs and sofas covered with white draperies a green porcelain stove walls hung with pictures in gilt frames a gilt pendule and other ornaments on the mantelpiece
+a large lustre pendent from the centre of the ceiling mirrors consoles muslin curtains and a handsome centre table completed the inventory of furniture all looked extremely clean and glittering
+but the general effect would have been somewhat chilling had not a second large pair of folding doors standing wide open and disclosing another and smaller salon more snugly furnished offered some relief to the eye
+this room was carpeted and therein was a piano a couch a chiffonniere
+which being undrawn afforded another glimpse of the garden through the large clear panes round which some leaves of ivy some tendrils of vine were trained
+for i am not easily embarrassed i commenced the conversation by remarking on the pleasant aspect of her little cabinet
+yes she said she often thought so and added
+but you see i could not take my garden with me and i should scarcely find one so large and pleasant anywhere else in town i approved her judgment but you have not seen it yet said she rising
+come to the window and take a better view i followed her she opened the sash and leaning out i saw in full the enclosed demesne which had hitherto been to me an unknown region it was a long
+not very broad strip of cultured ground with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the middle there was a sort of lawn a parterre of rose trees some flower borders and on the far side
+it looked pleasant to me very pleasant so long a time had elapsed since i had seen a garden of any sort
+when i had taken a view of her well trimmed beds and budding shrubberies i allowed my glance to come back to herself nor did i hastily withdraw it
+who might indeed be older than i but was still young she could not i thought be more than six or seven and twenty she was as fair as a fair englishwoman she had no cap her hair was nut brown and she wore it in curls
+pretty her features were not nor very soft nor very regular but neither were they in any degree plain and i already saw cause to deem them expressive what was their predominant cast
+was it sagacity sense yes i thought so but i could scarcely as yet be sure i discovered however
+she said she was not absolutely certain of the wisdom of the step she was about to take because i was so young and parents might possibly object to a professor like me for their daughters but it is often well to act on one's own judgment said she
+and to lead parents rather than be led by them the fitness of a professor is not a matter of age and from what i have heard and from what i observe myself
+who is a married man of near fifty i remarked that i hoped she would find me worthy of her good opinion that if i knew myself i was incapable of betraying any confidence reposed in me du reste said she
+the surveillance will be strictly attended to and then she proceeded to discuss the subject of terms she was very cautious quite on her guard she did not absolutely bargain but she warily sounded me to find out what my expectations might be
+and when she could not get me to name a sum she reasoned and reasoned with a fluent yet quiet circumlocution of speech and at last nailed me down to five hundred francs per annum not too much but i agreed
+before the negotiation was completed it began to grow a little dusk i did not hasten it for i liked well enough to sit and hear her talk i was amused with the sort of business talent she displayed edward could not have shown himself more practical
+though he might have evinced more coarseness and urgency and then she had so many reasons so many explanations and after all she succeeded in proving herself quite disinterested and even liberal at last she concluded she could say no more
+because as i acquiesced in all things there was no further ground for the exercise of her parts of speech i was obliged to rise i would rather have sat a little longer what had i to return to but my small empty room
+especially now when the twilight softened her features a little and in the doubtful dusk i could fancy her forehead as open as it was really elevated her mouth touched with turns of sweetness as well as defined in lines of sense
+when i rose to go i held out my hand on purpose though i knew it was contrary to the etiquette of foreign habits she smiled and said ah
+and with the sort of tranquillity obvious in all she did a tranquillity which soothed and suited me singularly at least i thought so that evening brussels seemed a very pleasant place to me when i got out again into the street
+and it appeared as if some cheerful eventful upward tending career were even then opening to me on that selfsame mild still april night
+and her deep eyes fixed on the smoke in the valley below her breath was still coming fast between her parted lips there were tiny drops along the roots of her shining hair for the climb had been steep
+as on the white mists trailing up the steeps below her beyond them was a gap in the next mountain chain and down in the little valley just visible through it were trailing blue mists as well and she knew
+that they were smoke where was the great glare of yellow light that the circuit rider had told about and the leaping tongues of fire where was the shrieking monster that ran without horses like the wind
+and tossed back rolling black plumes all streaked with fire for many days now she had heard stories of the furriners who had come into those hills and were doing strange things down there and so at last
+she had climbed up through the dewy morning from the cove on the other side to see the wonders for herself she had never been up there before she had no business there now and if she were found out when she got back
+she would get a scolding and maybe something worse from her step mother and all that trouble and risk for nothing but smoke so she lay back and rested her little mouth tightening fiercely
+it was a big world though that was spread before her and a vague awe of it seized her straightway and held her motionless and dreaming beyond those white mists trailing up the hills
+beyond the blue smoke drifting in the valley those limitless blue waves must run under the sun on and on to the end of the world her dead sister had gone into that far silence
+and had brought back wonderful stories of that outer world and she began to wonder more than ever before whether she would ever go into it and see for herself what was there with the thought she rose slowly to her feet
+moved slowly to the cliff that dropped sheer ten feet aside from the trail and stood there like a great scarlet flower in still air there was the way at her feet
+that path that coiled under the cliff and ran down loop by loop through majestic oak and poplar and masses of rhododendron she drew a long breath and stirred uneasily
+she'd better go home now but the path had a snake like charm for her and still she stood following it as far down as she could with her eyes down it went
+writhing this way and that to a spur that had been swept bare by forest fires along this spur it travelled straight for a while and as her eyes eagerly followed it to where it sank sharply into a covert of maples
+the little creature dropped of a sudden to the ground and like something wild lay flat a human figure had filled the leafy mouth that swallowed up the trail and it was coming towards her
+with a thumping heart she pushed slowly forward through the brush until her face fox like with cunning and screened by a blueberry bush hung just over the edge of the cliff and there she lay
+like a crouched panther cub looking down for a moment all that was human seemed gone from her eyes but as she watched all that was lost came back to them
+and something more she had seen that it was a man but she had dropped so quickly that she did not see the big black horse
+now both man and horse had stopped the stranger had taken off his gray slouched hat and he was wiping his face with something white something blue was tied loosely about his throat
+she had never seen a man like that before his face was smooth and looked different as did his throat and his hands his breeches were tight
+which was deep in seat high both in front and behind and had strange long hooded stirrups starting to mount the man stopped with one foot in the stirrup and raised his eyes towards her so suddenly that she shrank back again
+in her wonder over him she almost forgot herself forgot to wonder where he was going and why he was coming into those lonely hills until as his horse turned a bend of the trail
+she saw hanging from the other side of the saddle something that looked like a gun he was a raider that man so cautiously and swiftly then she pushed herself back from the edge of the cliff
+sprang to her feet dashed past the big tree and winged with fear sped down the mountain leaving in a spot of sunlight at the base of the pine
+the yosemite or grizzly bear tribe fancying themselves secure in their deep mountain stronghold were the most troublesome and defiant of all and it was while the mariposa battalion under command of major savage
+was trying to capture this warlike tribe and conduct them to the fresno reservation that their deep mountain home the yosemite valley was discovered
+instructing them to tell the indians that if they would come in and make treaty with the commissioners they would be furnished with food and clothing and be protected but if they did not come in he would make war upon them and kill them all
+informed him of the wishes of the commissioners but the old chief was very suspicious of savage and feared that he was taking this method of getting the tribe into his power for the purpose of revenging his personal wrong
+tenaya inquired what was the object of taking all the indians to the san joaquin plain my people
+my young men have sometimes taken horses and mules from the whites
+my young men believed that the gold diggers were our enemies
+and we shall be glad to live in peace with them we will stay here and be friends my people do not want to go to the plains some of the tribes who have gone there are very bad we cannot live with them here we can defend ourselves
+to the major savage firmly said your people must go to the commissioners if they do not your young men will again steal horses and kill and plunder the whites
+it was your people who robbed my stores burned my houses and murdered my men it they do not make a treaty your whole tribe will be destroyed not one of them will be left alive to this the old chief replied
+it is useless to talk to you about who destroyed your property and killed your people i am old and you can kill me if you will but it is useless to lie to you who know more than all the indians
+therefore i will not lie to you but if you will let me return to my people i will bring them in he was allowed to go the next day he came back
+and said his people were on the way to our camp to go with the men sent by the great father who was so good and rich another day passed but no indians from the deep valley appeared
+after waiting still another day the expedition started for the valley when tenaya was questioned as to the route and distance he said that the snow was so deep that the horses could not go through it
+savage told tenaya that he was not telling the truth for indians could not cross the mountains in the deep snow and that he knew they must still be at his village or hiding somewhere near it
+to see your people who will not come they will come if i find them you will not find any of my people there said tenaya i do not know where they are my tribe is small
+many of the people of my tribe have come from other tribes and if they go to the plains and are seen they will be killed by the friends of those with whom they have quarreled i was told that i was growing old and it was well that i should go
+but that young and strong men can find plenty in the mountains therefore why should they go to the hot plains to be penned up like horses and cattle my heart has been sore since that talk
+but i am now willing to go for it is best for my people pushing ahead taking turns in breaking a way through the snow they arrived in sight of the great valley early in the afternoon
+and guided by one of tenaya's indians descended by the same route as that followed by the mariposa trail and the weary party went into camp on the river bank opposite el capitan after supper seated around a big fire
+pohono the bridal veil being the principal one the expedition remained only one day and two nights in the valley hurrying out on the approach of a storm and reached the south fork headquarters
+on the evening of the third day after starting out
+most of it had been explored in a general way and some of its principal features had been named but the indians had fled up the tenaya canyon trail and none of them were seen except an old woman unable to follow the fugitives
+a second expedition was made in the same year under command of major boling when the valley was entered no indians were seen but the many wigwams with smoldering fires
+showed that they had been hurriedly abandoned that very day later five young indians who had been left to watch the movements of the expedition were captured at the foot of the three brothers after a lively chase
+that same day the old chief was captured on the cliff on the east side of indian canyon by some of boling's scouts as tenaya walked toward the camp his eye fell upon the dead body of his favorite son captain boling
+through an interpreter expressed his regret at the occurrence but not a word did tenaya utter in reply later
+but was caught as he was about to swim across the river
+and when brought into the presence of captain boling he said in great emotion kill me sir captain yes kill me as you killed my son as you would kill my people if they were to come to you
+but wait a little and when i am dead i will call my people to come and they shall hear me in their sleep and come to avenge the death of their chief and his son yes sir america my spirit will make trouble for you and your people
+this led to another yosemite expedition a detachment of regular soldiers from fort miller under lieutenant moore u s a was at once dispatched to capture or punish the murderers
+when the captives were accused of the murder of the two white men they admitted that they had killed them to prevent white men from coming to their valley declaring that it was their home and that white men had no right to come there without their consent
+to this they replied that tenaya had never consented to the sale of their valley and had never received pay for it the other chief they said had no right to sell their territory
+the lieutenant being fully satisfied that he had captured the real murderers promptly pronounced judgment and had them placed in line and shot lieutenant moore pursued the fugitives to mono but was not successful in finding any of them
+they stole a number of stolen horses from their entertainers and made their way by a long obscure route by the head of the north fork of the san joaquin
+but early one morning after a feast of horse flesh a band of monos surprised them in their huts killing tenaya and nearly all his tribe only a small remnant escaped down the river canyon
+when mister j m hutchings having heard of its wonderful scenery collected a party and made the first regular tourist's visit to the yosemite
+described it in articles illustrated by a good artist who was taken into the valley by him for that purpose
+consisting of sixteen or eighteen persons the next year the regular pleasure travel began and a trail on the mariposa side of the valley was opened by mann brothers this trail was afterwards purchased by the citizens of the county
+the first house built in the yosemite valley was erected in the autumn of eighteen fifty six and was kept as a hotel the next year by g a hite and later by j h neal and s m cunningham
+by mister hutchings all these hotels have vanished except the frame house built in eighteen fifty nine which has been changed beyond recognition a large hotel built on the brink of the river in front of the old one
+after the establishment by act of congress in eighteen ninety of the yosemite national park and the recession in nineteen o five of the original reservation to the federal government by the state
+to the border of the park eight miles below the valley it is eighty miles long
+is guarded jealously from all but a few intimates the secret to take a contrary case of our infallible remedy for seasickness is thrust upon every traveller we meet
+insisting that she shall share our delight in them and there are books equally dear to us of which we say nothing fearing lest the praise of others
+almost as soon as he was discoverable let us spare a moment and a tear for those golden days in the early nineteen hundreds when there were five leisurely papers of an evening
+in which the free lance might graduate and he could speak of his alma mater whether the globe or the pall mall with as much pride as he never doubted the globe or the pall mall would speak one day of him
+myself but lately down from saint james i was not too proud to take some slight but pitying interest in men of other colleges the unusual name of a freshman up at westminster attracted my attention
+later one heard that this undergraduate from overseas had gone up at an age more advanced than customary
+so one felt that this westminster free lance in the thirties was no fit competitor for the youth of other colleges indeed it could not compete well i discovered him
+which made me thus ungenerous of his name or it may have been the feeling that the others were not worthy of him but how refreshing it was when some intellectually blown up stranger said do you ever read saki
+to us many others who were trying to do it too for we were so domestic he so terrifyingly cosmopolitan while we were being funny as planned with collar studs and hot water bottles
+if saki's careless cruelty that strange boyish insensitiveness of his did not give him an unfair start in the pursuit of laughter it may have been so but fortunately
+our efforts to be funny in the saki manner have not survived to prove it what is saki's manner
+like every artist worth consideration he had no recipe if his exotic choice of subject was often his strength it was often his weakness
+if his insensitiveness carried him through at times to victory it brought him at times to defeat i do not think that he has that mastery of the conte in this book at least
+which some have claimed for him
+which was not in the boyish saki's equipment he leaves loose ends everywhere nor in his dialogue delightful as it often is funny as it nearly always is is he the supreme master
+too much does it become monologue judiciously fed one character giving and the other taking but in comment in reference in description in every development of his story
+he has a choice of words a way of putting things which is as inevitably his own vintage as once tasted it becomes the private vintage of the connoisseur
+let us take a sample or two of saki nineteen eleven the earlier stages of the dinner had worn off the wine lists had been consulted
+locate is the pleasant word here still more satisfying in the story of the man who was tattooed from collar bone to waist line with a glowing representation of the fall of icarus
+is the word privilege the design when finally developed was a slight disappointment to monsieur deplis who had suspected icarus of being a fortress
+but he was more than satisfied with the execution of the work which was acclaimed by all who had the privilege of seeing it as pincini's masterpiece this story the background
+and missus packletide's tiger seem to me to be the masterpieces of this book in both of them clovis exercises needlessly his titular right of entry but he can be removed without damage
+who had been apprentice to the shoemaker aliakhin for three months did not go to bed the night before christmas
+had gone out to an early church service to procure from his employer's cupboard
+then spreading a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him he began to write before however deciding to make the first letter he looked furtively at the door and at the window glanced several times at the sombre ikon
+he wrote i am writing you a letter
+and vividly pictured to himself his grandfather
+always smiling and blear eyed all day he slept in the servants kitchen or trifled with the cooks
+how to sneak up and take a bite at a leg or slip into the larder
+more than once they had nearly broken his hind legs twice he had been hung up every week he was nearly flogged to death but he always recovered at this moment for certain
+his cudgel will be hanging from his belt he will be hugging himself with cold giving a little dry old man's cough and at times pinching a servant girl or a cook won't we take some snuff
+he asks holding out his snuff box to the women the women take a pinch of snuff and sneeze the old man goes into indescribable ecstasies breaks into loud laughter and cries
+not a breath of wind clear and frosty
+that it looks as if it had been polished and rubbed over with snow for the holidays vanka sighs dips his pen in the ink and continues to write last night i got a thrashing
+my master dragged me by my hair into the yard and belaboured me with a shoe maker's stirrup because
+i unfortunately fell asleep and during the week my mistress told me to clean a herring
+so she took the herring and stuck its snout into my face the assistants tease me send me to the tavern for vodka make me steal the master's cucumbers and the master beats me with whatever is handy
+food there is none in the morning it's bread at dinner gruel and in the evening bread again as for tea or sour cabbage soup the master and the mistress themselves guzzle that
+they make me sleep in the vestibule and when their brat cries i don't sleep at all but have to rock the cradle dear grandpapa for heaven's sake take me away from here
+home to our village i can't bear this any more i bow to the ground to you and will pray to god for ever and ever take me from here or i shall die
+the corners of vanka's mouth went down he rubbed his eyes with his dirty fist and sobbed i'll grate your tobacco for you he continued i'll pray to god for you
+and if there is anything wrong then flog me like the grey goat and if you really think i shan't find work
+for christ's sake to let me clean the boots or i'll go instead of fedya as underherdsman dear grandpapa i can't bear this any more it'll kill me i wanted to run away to our village
+but i have no boots and i was afraid of the frost and when i grow up i'll look after you
+the children don't come round at christmas with a star no one is allowed to sing in the choir
+all for sale and for every kind of fish awfully convenient and there was one hook which would catch a sheat fish weighing a pound and there are shops with guns like the master's and i am sure they must cost one hundred rubles each
+take a golden walnut and hide it in my green box ask the young lady olga ignatyevna for it say it's for vanka vanka sighed convulsively and again stared at the window
+he remembered that his grandfather always went to the forest for the christmas tree and took his grandson with him what happy times the frost crackled his grandfather crackled and as they both did
+vanka did the same then before cutting down the christmas tree his grandfather smoked his pipe took a long pinch of snuff and made fun of poor frozen little vanka
+the young fir trees wrapt in hoar frost stood motionless waiting for which of them would die suddenly a hare springing from somewhere would dart over the snowdrift his grandfather could not help shouting catch it catch it
+short tailed devil when the tree was down his grandfather dragged it to the master's house and there they set about decorating it the young lady olga ignatyevna vanka's great friend
+busied herself most about it when little vanka's mother pelagueya was still alive and was servant woman in the house olga ignatyevna used to stuff him with sugar candy and having nothing to do
+taught him to read write count up to one hundred and even to dance the quadrille when pelagueya died they placed the orphan vanka in the kitchen with his grandfather and from the kitchen he was sent to moscow
+and i am frightfully hungry and so sad that i can't tell you i cry all the time the other day the master hit me on the head with a last i fell to the ground and only just returned to life
+my life is a misfortune worse than any dog's i send greetings to aliona to one eyed tegor and the coachman and don't let any one have my mouth organ i remain your grandson
+from whom he had inquired the night before had told him that letters were to be put into post boxes and from there they were conveyed over the whole earth in mail troikas by drunken post boys
+and to the sound of bells vanka ran to the first post box and slipped his precious letter into the slit an hour afterwards lulled by hope he was sleeping soundly
+poor mortals who wait for a happy day cheer up your hearts
+if it be lawful firmly to believe
+though it be at hand yea and before there shall appear a race of men who loth to sit still in one place shall boldly go before all people's eyes suborning men of divers qualities to draw them
+and children their own parents in a word all reverence shall then be banished no true respect to other shall be had they'll say that every man should have his turn both in his going forth and his return
+such woes such jarrings
+that never were in history such coils set down as yet such tumults and garboils
+who trusting too much in their hopeful time live but a while and perish in their prime neither shall any who this course shall run leave off the race which he hath once begun
+the veriest lout of all shall be their judge o horrible and dangerous deluge deluge i call it and that for good reason for this shall be omitted in no season
+because they did not spare the flocks of beasts that innocentest are but did their sinews and their bowels take not to the gods a sacrifice to make but usually to serve themselves for sport
+and now consider i do you exhort in such commotions so continual what rest can take the globe terrestrial most happy then are they that can it hold and use it carefully as precious gold
+by keeping it in gaol whence it shall have no help but him who being to it gave and to increase his mournful accident
+shall cease to dart upon it any light more than in an eclipse or in the night so that at once its favour shall be gone and liberty with it be left alone and yet before it come to ruin thus
+inarime did not more quickly move when typheus did the vast huge hills remove and for despite into the sea them threw thus shall it then be lost by ways not few
+and yet before that they be clean disperst
+o he is worthy praise that shrinketh not no sooner was this enigmatical monument read over but gargantua fetching a very deep sigh said unto those that stood by
+are persecuted but happy is that man that shall not be scandalized but shall always continue to the end in aiming at that mark which god by his dear son hath set before us
+without being distracted or diverted by his carnal affections and depraved nature the monk then said what do you think in your conscience is meant and signified by this riddle what
+said gargantua the progress and carrying on of the divine truth by saint goderan said the monk that is not my exposition it is the style of the prophet merlin
+make upon it as many grave allegories and glosses as you will and dote upon it you and the rest of the world as long as you please for my part
+in dark and obscure terms the suborners of men are the makers of matches which are commonly friends after the two chases are made he that was in the upper end of the tennis court goeth out
+and the other cometh in they believe the first that saith the ball was over or under the line the waters are the heats that the players take till they sweat again the cords of the rackets are made of the guts of sheep or goats
+the globe terrestrial is the tennis ball after playing when the game is done they refresh themselves before a clear fire and change their shirts and very willingly they make all good cheer
+her willingness to break our friendship at the first opportunity gave me little room to think of anything else that she should risk her reputation to run after that man was inexplicable but it was just like a woman
+if she could get along without me i could get along without her i'm the easiest going person in the world but when it comes to allowing the girl you are practically engaged to to make a fool of herself over another man i won't stand for it
+and she didn't know but i made up my mind that she would have to give me an awfully good reason for her sudden interest in frank woods before i would forgive her these thoughts held my attention all the way out
+now and again i would be recalled from my gloom by some question from the coroner he was trying to solve the problem of who murdered jim
+as we neared the bridge i noticed again how scant the vegetation was on both sides of the road any one wishing to murder jim would have been able to see him coming
+could be seen the thirteenth hole of the country club golf links when we reached the crest of the hill leading down to the bridge our eyes at once caught sight of a tall maple tree on the right hand side of the road and about two hundred yards from it
+as he saw it the coroner gave a grunt of satisfaction there's our tree we stopped the car and scrambled through the thorny bushes that lined the road the ground was hard clay with only burdock and weeds growing on it
+there was nothing that would lead us to believe that any one had been there before when we reached the tree the coroner examined the ground around it carefully when he arose he seemed disappointed what did you expect to find here i asked
+i didn't know what we might find if the man who fired those shots used this tree i thought we might find an empty cartridge or two there ought to be at least some broken twigs or something to show that he was up there but i find nothing at all
+still the fact that the tree is where it is makes the theory plausible he shook his head no now that i've seen how far we are from the road i don't think it does
+those bullet holes in the back of the car were fired from above and behind the machine they slanted down but not sidewise
+but if the murderer used this tree two hundred yards from the road he would have started firing before the car came opposite
+i'm sorry for when i saw this tree i thought we'd struck the right track there's one thing i can't make out i stated and that is the strange cry of my sister in her delirium look out jim it's going to hit us she called out
+and i would be willing to swear it had something to do with the murder the coroner thought a moment then turned to me what else did she say nothing that seemed to refer to the accident all the rest was apparently delirium
+she begged forgiveness for some fancied wrong and repeated that a certain man was not guilty of dishonesty but her first weird cry had to do with the murder i'm sure
+everything points to an aeroplane it was done a hundred yes a thousand times in the war while i was over there with my hospital unit we used to get a lot of cases of motorcycle despatch riders who had been picked off by german aviators
+and is the head of an aeroplane firm but i don't think he has an aeroplane here he could get one easy enough the clever devil look over there he had the broad sweep of the golf course as a perfect landing ground
+helpless before approaching death i could imagine helen's agony as she saw that dim black shape
+look out jim it's going to hit us yes but how are we going to prove it i asked that's up to us now an aeroplane has such speed that it was easy for woods to fashion an ingenious alibi
+to account for every minute of his time on the night of the murder but there must be some holes in it there always is in a manufactured alibi i want you to go over to the country club and check up mister woods schedule of that night
+while i examine the golf links to see if he landed there we jumped into my car and drove rapidly to the club i went into the house by the back way to avoid meeting people and asked for jackson
+jackson what time did mister woods get out here on the evening mister felderson was killed
+did you see him at that time
+when was the first time you did see him jackson ah guess it was at dinnah time suh
+you're sure he was here all through dinner i asked yes suh he must hab been cause he ohdahd dinnah what time was he through dinner do you know the darky scratched his head ah reckon it war
+i asked the boy was trembling he rolled frightened eyes toward jackson who was glaring at him finally he broke into a wail
+motioning the angry jackson away he he set down at de table but he ain't eat none the boy stuttered what do you mean george
+ah brung him some soup but he got up powful sudden lak he had a call to de telephome an he ain't come back are you sure of that george yas suh
+ah ast him did he want dinnah aftah he come back but he say he ain't hongry what time was it when he came back i asked
+i gave the boy a dollar and he went away happy jackson had a sheepish look on his face then mister woods wasn't here all through dinner jackson drat dat boy
+he make me out a liah fo a dollah he grinned are you sure absolutely sure that you saw mister woods at half past eight i questioned yas suh you cain't catch me up no mo
+grogan do you remember who was in the bar between seven thirty and eight thirty on the night of the felderson murder only one or two of the gentlemen sir there was mister farnsworth and mister brown and i think mister woods
+are you sure mister woods was in here well no sir not exactly i remember mister farnsworth and mister brown there were probably some others the reason i think mister woods was here
+was because he called my attention to the fact a few nights after the murder there were a few gentlemen in here and they were talking of mister felderson's death mister woods said in view of the fact that the murderer hadn't been found
+almost any one might be accused some one asked him if he was worried we all knew sir that mister felderson and mister woods were not very friendly and mister woods laughed and said that fortunately he had a perfect alibi
+oh his alibi is good of course because he was around the club all that evening i guess he was here and i don't remember it i shook hands with him and left far out on the golf links the coroner was bending over examining something on the ground
+paralleling each other for almost a hundred yards
+he will never forgive i was walking away when a man touched me some one had seen me come from the doctor's office a few minutes before of course this meant detention till the coroner should arrive
+i quarreled with the circumstances but felt forced to submit happily jupp now came to the front and i was able to send him to new york to keep that watch over missus carew without which i could not have rested quiet an hour
+one great element of danger was removed most remarkably if not providentially from the path i had marked out for myself but there still remained that of this woman's possible impulses
+under her great determination to keep gwendolen in her own care but with jupp to watch the dock and a man in plain clothes at the door of the small hotel she was at present bound for i thought i might remain in yonkers contentedly the whole day
+missus carew and the child were still at the address she had given me all looked well in that direction
+miss porter who came in haste to greet me wore the careworn look of a long and unrelieved vigil
+how could i she asked when missus ocumpaugh did not close her eyes she did not even lie down but sat all night in an arm chair which she had wheeled into gwendolen's room
+staring like one who sees nothing out into the night through the window which overlooks the river this morning we can not make her speak her eyes are dry with fever only now and then she utters a little moan
+the doctor says she will not live to see her husband unless something comes to rouse her but the papers give no news and all the attempts of the police end in nothing
+you saw what a dismal failure their last attempt was the child on which they counted proved to be both red haired and pock marked gwendolen appears to be lost lost
+in spite of the despair thus expressed my way seemed to open a little i think i can break missus ocumpaugh's dangerous apathy if you will let me see her again will you let me try the nurse we have a nurse now
+will not consent i fear then telephone to the doctor tell him i am the only man who can do anything for missus ocumpaugh this will not be an exaggeration wait i will get his order
+i do not know why i have so much confidence in you in another fifteen minutes she came to lead me to missus ocumpaugh i entered without knocking they told me to she was seated as they said in a large chair
+but with no ease to herself for she was not even leaning against its back
+where from what she had intimated to me in our last interview
+there was a miniature in her hand but i saw at first glance that it was not the face of gwendolen over which her fingers closed so spasmodically it was her husband's portrait which she held
+and it was his face aroused and full of denunciation which she evidently saw in her fancy as i drew nearer her in my efforts to attract her attention for a shiver suddenly contracted her lovely features
+and she threw her arms out as if to ward from herself something which she had no power to meet in doing this her head turned slightly and she saw me instantly the spell under which she sat frozen
+yielded to a recognition of something besides her own terrible brooding she let her arms drop and the lips which had not spoken that morning moved slightly i waited respectfully
+i saw that in another moment she would speak you have come she panted out at last to hear my decision it is too soon the steamer has twenty four hours yet before it can make port
+i have not finished weighing my life against the good opinion of him i live for then faintly missus carew has gone to new york i finished no farther than that
+she asked anxiously she has not sailed i did not see how it was compatible with my duty to let her missus ocumpaugh's whole form collapsed the dangerous apathy was creeping over her again
+you are deciding for me she spoke very faintly you and doctor pool
+no not yet i wanted her to choose the noble course for mister ocumpaugh's sake yes and for her own no i ventured to rejoin you are the only one who can settle your own fate
+the word must come from you i am only trying to make it possible for you to meet your husband without any additional wrong to blunt his possible forgiveness oh he will never forgive
+and i have lost all and the set look returned in its full force
+missus ocumpaugh we may never have another moment together in confidence there is one thing i have never told you something which i think you ought to know as it may affect your whole future course
+it concerns gwendolen's real mother you say you do not know her no
+my darling is happy with missus carew too happy
+alarmed i put out my hand in a soothing gesture
+i made haste to say listen to my little story it will not add to your pain rather alleviate it
+i also knew that this patient had overheard what you said as well as i for impervious as the door looked i had often heard the doctor's mutterings when he thought i was safe beyond ear shot if not asleep
+yes she was ready to make her compact with the doctor just as you had done before she left everything was arranged for it was her child you took reared loved and have now lost
+at another time she might have resented these words especially the last but i had roused her curiosity her panting eager curiosity and she let them pass altogether unchallenged did you see this woman
+was she of common blood common manners it does not seem possible gwendolen is by nature so dainty in all her ways the woman was a lady i did not see her face it was heavily veiled
+but i heard her voice it was a lady's voice and what she wore beautiful jewels jewels you said she was poor so she declared herself but she had on her neck under her coat
+a string of beads which were both valuable and of exquisite workmanship i know because it broke just as she was leaving and the beads fell all over the floor and one rolled my way and i picked it up scamp that i was
+when both their backs were turned in their search for the others a bead a costly bead and you were not found out no missus ocumpaugh she never seemed to miss it
+to count correctly she thought she had them all but this has been in my pocket for six years perhaps you have seen its like
+till yesterday yesterday her great eyes haggard with suffering rose to mine then they fell on the bead which i had taken from my pocket the cry she gave was not loud but it effectually settled all my doubts
+i asked impressively for minutes she did not answer she was trembling like a leaf her mother she exclaimed at last her mother her own mother
+and she never hinted it to me by word or look oh valerie valerie what tortures we have both suffered and now you are happy while i grief seemed to engulf her
+feeling my position keenly i walked to the window but soon turned and came back in response to her cry i must see missus carew instantly
+they will think i have gone to be on hand to meet mister ocumpaugh and will say that i have not the strength override their objections i put my whole cause in your hands you will go with me
+with pleasure madam and thus was that terrifying apathy broken up
+they untied it and led it away some of them put their clothes on the donkey's back for a king must ride in comfort others spread their clothes out on the street for a king should ride in state
+jesus got on the donkey and started for jerusalem the disciples walked ahead when they had almost reached the city the disciples began to shout jesus used to say that they must not tell anyone that he was the messiah
+but now they could tell the whole world for jesus wanted everyone to know they were glad that they did not have to be quiet any longer
+and was a cry of welcome they shouted the words of a psalm hosanna to the son of david
+hosanna in the highest the city was crowded with travelers from all over palestine and from foreign countries too they were the pilgrims who had come for the passover feast the crowds saw the procession coming they saw the donkey
+some of the crowds began to shout with the disciples a great cry of hosanna went ringing down the street everyone seemed to be saying it
+some cut branches from the trees and waved them before the messiah it was a royal welcome only the priests and the rulers and the pharisees were sorry to see jesus come what is there we can do they said to one another
+who is this they asked others who knew him answered why this is jesus the prophet from nazareth in galilee
+this was his father's house and his house these were his father's people and his people the king for whom the jews had been waiting had come at last to reign
+this time he carried a whip in the court of the gentiles the money was clinking as it had done when jesus was a boy at tables sat the men who grew rich by exchanging the money of visitors for coins used in jerusalem
+others were selling doves for sacrifice the poor had to pay heavily to worship god in his own house jesus strode down the room with the whip in his hand and upset the tables where the money was
+when the men jumped up from their chairs he drove them out of the temple then he drove the sheep and the cattle out after the men it is written in the scriptures god's house shall be a house of prayer
+but you have made it into a den of thieves and robbers he cried this was too much for the priests of the temple and all the important men who ruled jerusalem the next day some of the rulers came to jesus and said
+what right have you to do these things who told you that you could act like this so far jesus had never said that he was the messiah
+but jesus was too quick for them he said i'll answer your question if you answer a question of mine when john the baptist used to preach to you and baptize people who gave him the right to do that
+then the rulers did not know what to say they thought to themselves now if we say that john was sent by god to preach he will say why didn't you listen to him then if we say that john didn't have any right to preach
+neither am i going to tell you what right i have to do these things every day that week jesus came and taught in the temple several times his enemies tried to trick him into saying something that would turn the people against him
+but jesus always had an answer which silenced them once they came and asked should we pay taxes to the romans that was a hard question
+everybody would hate him too but if he said they should not pay the taxes well they could count on the roman governor to settle with jesus then
+there was a man's picture stamped on one side of it jesus said whose picture is that why they answered that is a picture of caesar the emperor of rome all right said jesus
+do whatever your duty is to caesar and his government you will have to decide about that for yourselves and also do your duty to god it was such a clever answer that no one had a word to say
+watch out for the scribes and the pharisees he told the people and don't be like them they love to walk around in their long white robes and to have everybody bow to them in the street and to sit in the best seats in the synagogues and at dinners
+which people walk over without knowing what is underneath nobody knows how bad you are you snakes how can you escape the punishment which god is bringing upon you he left the pharisees and went into the temple
+where people were making their gifts to god
+then came a poor widow who put two small coins into the box jesus called his disciples to him and said i tell you this poor widow has given more than all these rich people are giving
+and it doesn't cost them anything to give what they do but this poor woman needs her money and she has given all she has with many words and stories he taught the people who thronged around him on the days of that week
+and this was the last story he ever told someday i shall sit upon my throne and judge all the nations of the earth to some people i will say come my heavenly father loves you
+take the reward he has planned for you to have for i was hungry and you gave me food i was thirsty and you gave me something to drink i was a stranger and you took me into your homes
+i had nothing to wear and you gave me clothes i was sick and in prison and you came to visit me then these people will be surprised and say lord when did we ever do anything for you
+then i will say to others go away god wants nothing to do with you for i was hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and in prison and you did nothing at all for me
+these people will also be surprised they will say lord
+if we had seen you needing anything we would have helped you and i will say many poor people needed your help and you did not help them when you failed them you failed me and now it is too late
+if he heard that there was someone in jerusalem pretending to be king of the jews the priests and the rulers wanted to kill jesus that was all they talked about but they did not know how it was to be done
+for whenever jesus came to jerusalem great crowds gathered around him none of the priests dared to lay a finger on him in the open the crowds would never let them it seemed to the people as if the messiah might have come at last
+but something had to be done the priests and the rulers said the week was going by
+we shall have to do away with jesus quietly someone said yes the others agreed we can't wait till the day of the passover if we should do anything to him on that day there would be a riot
+they were at their wits end to know how to get rid of jesus the craftiest men in jerusalem could not think what to do there was a knock at the door it was one of jesus twelve disciples
+what will you give me judas said if i turn jesus over to you the priests and rulers could hardly believe their ears thirty pieces of silver you shall have they cried if you give us jesus
+so for thirty pieces of silver judas agreed to show them where jesus was at some time when there was no one around but the twelve disciples send soldiers when i tell you judas said
+the other disciples will all be there and the soldiers won't know which man to take but i will go up to jesus and kiss him the man i kiss will be the one you want
+another form of desert it was weymouth which he had just entered weymouth then was not the respectable and fine weymouth of to day ancient weymouth did not present like the present one
+for the same reason they had not yet designed on the slope of the green hill towards the east fashioned flat on the soil by cutting away the turf and leaving the bare chalk to the view the white horse an acre long
+george the third having lost in his old age the intellect he had never possessed in his youth was not responsible for the calamities of his reign he was an innocent why not erect statues to him
+even good women in their houses a pell mell of sheds thrown from her devil's bag would give an idea of that irregular weymouth the good women in the sheds included the music hall remains as a specimen of those buildings
+a confusion of wooden dens carved and eaten by worms which carve in another fashion shapeless overhanging buildings some with pillars leaning one against the other for support against the sea wind
+and leaving between them awkward spaces of narrow and winding channels lanes and passages often flooded
+the deserted child carrying the foundling passed through the first street then the second then the third
+but all were closed and dark at intervals he knocked at the doors no one answered nothing makes the heart so like a stone as being warm between sheets the noise and the shaking had at length awakened the infant
+he knew this because he felt her suck his cheek she did not cry believing him her mother he was about to turn and wander long perhaps in the intersections of the scrambridge lanes
+then more cultivated plots than dwellings more thorn hedges than houses but fortunately he struck into a passage which exists to this day near trinity schools this passage led him to a water brink
+with melcombe regis and under the arches of which the backwater joins the harbour weymouth a hamlet was then the suburb of melcombe regis a city and port now melcombe regis is a parish of weymouth
+the village has absorbed the city it was the bridge which did the work bridges are strange vehicles of suction which inhale the population and sometimes swell one river bank at the expense of its opposite neighbour
+the boy went to the bridge which at that period was a covered timber structure he crossed it
+the bridge opened on a rather fine street called saint thomas's street he entered it here and there were high carved gables and shop fronts he set to knocking at the doors again
+he had no strength left to call or shout at melcombe regis as at weymouth no one was stirring the doors were all carefully double locked the windows were covered by their shutters as the eyes by their lids
+all its lethargies mingle their nightmares its slumbers are a crowd and from its human bodies lying prone there arises a vapour of dreams sleep has gloomy associates beyond this life
+the decomposed thoughts of the sleepers float above them in a mist which is both of death and of life and combine with the possible which has also perhaps the power of thought as it floats in space
+hence arise entanglements dreams those clouds interpose their folds and their transparencies over that star the mind
+into impalpability mysterious diffused existences amalgamate themselves with life on that border of death which sleep is those larvae and souls mingle in the air
+even he who sleeps not feels a medium press upon him full of sinister life the surrounding chimera in which he suspects a reality impedes him the waking man
+wending his way amidst the sleep phantoms of others unconsciously pushes back passing shadows has or imagines that he has a vague fear of adverse contact with the invisible
+and feels at every moment the obscure pressure of a hostile encounter which immediately dissolves there is something of the effect of a forest in the nocturnal diffusion of dreams this is what is called being afraid without reason
+what a man feels a child feels still more the uneasiness of nocturnal fear increased by the spectral houses increased the weight of the sad burden under which he was struggling
+which he took for the ocean he no longer knew in what direction the sea lay he retraced his steps struck to the left by maiden street and returned as far as saint alban's row
+there by chance and without selection he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass his blows on which he was expending his last energies were jerky and without aim now ceasing altogether for a time
+one voice answered that of time three o'clock tolled slowly behind him from the old belfry of saint nicholas then all sank into silence again
+they were just over a somewhat severe outbreak of the plague in london and that the fear of receiving sick vagabonds caused a diminution of hospitality everywhere people would not even open their windows for fear of inhaling the poison
+the child felt the coldness of men more terribly than the coldness of night
+the pitiless desert he had understood the unrelenting town was too much to bear the hour the strokes of which he had just counted had been another blow
+nothing is so freezing in certain situations as the voice of the hour it is a declaration of indifference it is eternity saying what does it matter to me he stopped
+to lie down there and die however the little infant leaned her head against his shoulder and fell asleep again this blind confidence set him onwards again
+he whom all supports were failing felt that he was himself a basis of support irresistible summons of duty neither such ideas nor such a situation belonged to his age
+he did what he chanced to do he set out again in the direction of johnstone row but now he no longer walked he dragged himself along he left saint mary's street to the left made zigzags through lanes
+he perceived the sea to the right and scarcely anything more of the town to his left what was to become of him here was the country again to the east great inclined planes of snow marked out the wide slopes of radipole
+should he continue this journey should he advance and re enter the solitudes should he return and re enter the streets what was he to do between those two silences the mute plain and the deaf city
+which of the two refusals should he choose there is the anchor of mercy there is also the look of piteousness it was that look which the poor little despairing wanderer threw around him
+misanthropy plays its pranks a strange and alarming grinding of teeth reached him through the darkness it was enough to drive one back he advanced
+to those to whom silence has become dreadful a howl is comforting that fierce growl reassured him that threat was a promise there was there a being alive and awake
+made by the reflection of snow and sea he saw a thing placed as if for shelter it was a cart unless it was a hovel it had wheels it was a carriage it had a roof it was a dwelling
+from the roof arose a funnel and out of the funnel smoke this smoke was red and seemed to imply a good fire in the interior behind projecting hinges indicated a door
+and in the centre of this door a square opening showed a light inside the caravan he approached
+at the same time as the mouth between the wheels a head was put through the window
+the mouth was silent the head began again is any one there the child answered yes who i you who are you whence do you come
+i am weary said the child what o'clock is it i am cold what are you doing there i am hungry the head replied
+the child bowed his forehead drew the sleeping infant closer in his arms and collected his strength to resume his journey he had taken a few steps and was hurrying away
+the child turned back
+resumed the voice who has sent me a fellow like this who is hungry and cold and who does not come in the child at once repulsed and invited remained motionless the voice continued
+you are told to come in you young rascal he made up his mind and placed one foot on the lowest step there was a great growl under the van he drew back the gaping jaws appeared
+cried the voice of the man the jaws retreated the growling ceased come up continued the man the child with difficulty climbed up the three steps he was impeded by the infant
+so benumbed rolled up and enveloped in the jacket that nothing could be distinguished of her and she was but a little shapeless mass he passed over the three steps and having reached the threshold stopped
+no candle was burning in the caravan probably from the economy of want the hut was lighted only by a red tinge arising from the opening at the top of the stove in which sparkled a peat fire
+on the stove were smoking a porringer and a saucepan containing to all appearance something to eat the savoury odour was perceptible the hut was furnished with a chest
+besides to the partition were attached some boards on brackets and some hooks from which hung a variety of things on the boards and nails were rows of glasses coppers an alembic
+a vessel rather like those used for graining wax which are called granulators and a confusion of strange objects of which the child understood nothing and which were utensils for cooking and chemistry the caravan was oblong in shape
+the stove being in front it was not even a little room it was scarcely a big box there was more light outside from the snow than inside from the stove everything in the caravan was indistinct and misty
+nevertheless a reflection of the fire on the ceiling enabled the spectator to read in large letters ursus philosopher the child in fact was entering the house of homo and ursus
+the one he had just heard growling the other speaking the child having reached the threshold perceived near the stove a man tall smooth thin and old dressed in gray whose head as he stood
+reached the roof the man could not have raised himself on tiptoe the caravan was just his size come in said the man who was ursus the child entered put down your bundle
+is it that you are afraid of tearing a hole in your rags worthless vagabond in the streets at this hour who are you answer but no i forbid you to answer there you are cold
+and with feverish haste he dragged off the boy's rags which tore into shreds with the other he took down from a nail a man's shirt and one of those knitted jackets which are up to this day called kiss me quicks here are clothes
+and chafed before the fire the limbs of the exhausted and bewildered child who at that moment warm and naked felt as if he were seeing and touching heaven the limbs having been rubbed he next wiped the boy's feet
+and the man slipped the knitted jacket over it now the man kicked the stool forward and made the little boy sit down again shoving him by the shoulders then he pointed with his finger to the porringer which was smoking upon the stove
+what the child saw in the porringer was again heaven to him namely a potato and a bit of bacon you are hungry
+the man took from the shelf a crust of hard bread and an iron fork and handed them to the child the boy hesitated perhaps you expect me to lay the cloth said the man and he placed the porringer on the child's lap
+not so quick you horrid glutton isn't he a greedy scoundrel
+you should see a lord sup in my time i have seen dukes eat they don't eat that's noble they drink however come you pig stuff yourself the absence of ears
+for the moment he was absorbed by two exigencies and by two ecstasies food and warmth ursus continued his imprecations muttering to himself
+i have seen king james supping in propria persona in the banqueting house where are to be admired the paintings of the famous rubens his majesty touched nothing this beggar here browses
+browses a word derived from brute what put it into my head to come to this weymouth seven times devoted to the infernal deities i have sold nothing since morning i have harangued the snow
+i have played the flute to the hurricane i have not pocketed a farthing and now to night beggars drop in horrid place there is
+battle struggle competition between the fools in the street and myself they try to give me nothing but farthings i try to give them nothing but drugs well to day i've made nothing
+not an idiot on the highway not a penny in the till eat away hell born boy tear and crunch we have fallen on times when nothing can equal the cynicism of spongers fatten at my expense parasite
+this wretched boy is more than hungry he is mad it is not appetite it is ferocity he is carried away by a rabid virus perhaps he has the plague have you the plague you thief
+suppose he were to give it to homo no never let the populace die but not my wolf but by the bye i am hungry myself i declare that this is all very disagreeable
+one crust of bread a mouthful of bacon and a drop of milk and i put it to warm
+a burden makes a rough road rougher it was little more than four hours since the hooker had sailed from the creek of portland leaving the boy on the shore
+during the long hours since he had been deserted and had been journeying onwards he had met but three persons of that human society into which he was perchance about to enter a man the man on the hill
+a woman the woman in the snow and the little girl whom he was carrying in his arms he was exhausted by fatigue and hunger yet advanced more resolutely than ever with less strength and an added burden
+that which he lost was not thrown away but was gained by her he found out that the poor infant enjoyed the comfort which was to her the renewal of life he continued to advance
+from time to time still holding her securely he bent down and taking a handful of snow he rubbed his feet with it to prevent their being frost bitten
+he put a little snow in his mouth and sucked it this for a moment assuaged his thirst but changed it into fever a relief which was an aggravation the storm had become shapeless from its violence
+deluges of snow are possible this was one
+this was perhaps the moment when the distracted hooker was going to pieces in the battle of the breakers he travelled under this north wind still towards the east over wide surfaces of snow he knew not how the hours had passed
+for a long time he had ceased to see the smoke such indications are soon effaced in the night besides it was past the hour when fires are put out or he had perhaps made a mistake
+doubting he yet persevered two or three times the little infant cried then he adopted in his gait a rocking movement and the child was soothed and silenced
+she ended by falling into a sound sleep shivering himself he felt her warm
+so that the frost should not get in through any opening and that no melted snow should drop between the garment and the child the plain was unequal in the declivities into which it sloped the snow
+driven by the wind into the dips of the ground was so deep in comparison with a child so small that it almost engulfed him and he had to struggle through it half buried he walked on working away the snow with his knees
+playing on his face warmed it for a moment then lingered and froze in his hair stiffening it into icicles he felt the approach of another danger he could not afford to fall
+he knew that if he did so he should never rise again he was overcome by fatigue and the weight of the darkness would as with the dead woman have held him to the ground and the ice glued him alive to the earth
+he had tripped upon the slopes of precipices and had recovered himself
+thenceforward the slightest fall would be death a false step opened for him a tomb he must not slip he had not strength to rise even to his knees now everything was slippery
+everywhere there was rime and frozen snow the little creature whom he carried made his progress fearfully difficult she was not only a burden which his weariness and exhaustion made excessive but was also an embarrassment
+she occupied both his arms and to him who walks over ice both arms are a natural and necessary balancing power he was obliged to do without this balance he did without it and advanced
+bending under his burden not knowing what would become of him this little infant was the drop causing the cup of distress to overflow he advanced reeling at every step as if on a spring board
+and accomplishing without spectators miracles of equilibrium let us repeat that he was perhaps followed on this path of pain by eyes unsleeping in the distances of the shadows the eyes of the mother and the eyes of god
+he staggered slipped recovered himself took care of the infant and gathering the jacket about her he covered up her head staggered again advanced slipped then drew himself up the cowardly wind drove against him
+apparently he made much more way than was necessary he was to all appearance on the plains where bincleaves farm was afterwards established between what are now called spring gardens and the parsonage house
+homesteads and cottages occupy the place of waste lands sometimes less than a century separates a steppe from a city suddenly a lull having occurred in the icy blast which was blinding him
+he perceived at a short distance in front of him a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow the reverse of a silhouette a city painted in white on a black horizon
+something like what we call nowadays a negative proof roofs dwellings shelter he had arrived somewhere at last he felt the ineffable encouragement of hope
+the watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some such emotion when he cries land ho he hurried his steps at length then he was near mankind
+there glowed within him that sudden warmth security that out of which he was emerging was over thenceforward there would no longer be night nor winter nor tempest
+it seemed to him that he had left all evil chances behind him
+he almost ran his eyes were fixed on the roofs there was life there he never took his eyes off them a dead man might gaze thus on what might appear through the half opened lid of his sepulchre
+there were the chimneys of which he had seen the smoke no smoke arose from them now he was not long before he reached the houses he came to the outskirts of a town an open street
+at that period bars to streets were falling into disuse the street began by two houses in those two houses neither candle nor lamp was to be seen nor in the whole street nor in the whole town
+so far as eye could reach the house to the right was a roof rather than a house nothing could be more mean the walls were of mud the roof was of straw and there was more thatch than wall
+a large nettle springing from the bottom of the wall reached the roof the hovel had but one door which was like that of a dog kennel and a window which was but a hole all was shut up at the side
+an inhabited pig sty told that the house was also inhabited the house on the left was large high built entirely of stone with a slated roof
+opposite to that of the pauper the boy did not hesitate he approached the great mansion the double folding door of massive oak studded with large nails was of the kind that leads one to expect
+no answer he struck again and two knocks no movement was heard in the house he knocked a third time there was no sound he saw that they were all asleep and did not care to get up
+but loud enough to be heard no voice was heard no step moved no candle was lighted he saw that there as well they did not care to awake
+the house of stone and the thatched hovel were equally deaf to the wretched the boy decided on pushing on further
+the little peasant there was a certain village wherein no one lived but really rich peasants and just one poor one whom they called the little peasant he had not even so much as a cow and still less money to buy one
+and yet he and his wife did so wish to have one one day he said to her listen i have a good idea there is our gossip the carpenter he shall make us a wooden calf and paint it brown so that it looks like any other and in time
+it will certainly get big and be a cow the woman also liked the idea and their gossip the carpenter cut and planed the calf and painted it as it ought to be and made it with its head hanging down as if it were eating next morning when the cows were being driven out
+the little peasant called the cow herd in and said look i have a little calf there but it is still small and has to be carried the cow herd said all right and took it in his arms and carried it to the pasture and set it among the grass
+the little calf always remained standing like one which was eating and the cow herd said it will soon run by itself just look how it eats already at night when he was going to drive the herd home again he said to the calf
+if you can stand there and eat your fill you can also go on your four legs i don't care to drag you home again in my arms
+and when the cow herd drove the cows through the village and the calf was missing he inquired where it was the cow herd answered it is still standing out there eating it would not stop and come with us but the little peasant said
+oh but i must have my beast back again then they went back to the meadow together but someone had stolen the calf and it was gone the cow herd said it must have run away the peasant however said don't tell me that
+and led the cow herd before the mayor who for his carelessness condemned him to give the peasant a cow for the calf which had run away and now the little peasant and his wife had the cow for which they had so long wished and they were heartily glad
+but they had no food for it and could give it nothing to eat so it soon had to be killed they salted the flesh and the peasant went into the town and wanted to sell the skin there so that he might buy a new calf with the proceeds on the way he passed by a mill
+and there sat a raven with broken wings and out of pity he took him and wrapped him in the skin but as the weather grew so bad and there was a storm of rain and wind he could go no farther and turned back to the mill and begged for shelter
+the miller's wife was alone in the house and said to the peasant lay yourself on the straw there and gave him a slice of bread and cheese the peasant ate it and lay down with his skin beside him and the woman thought he is tired and has gone to sleep
+in the meantime came the parson the miller's wife received him well and said my husband is out so we will have a feast the peasant listened and when he heard them talk about feasting he was vexed that he had been forced to make shift with a slice of bread and cheese
+then the woman served up four different things roast meat salad cakes and wine just as they were about to sit down and eat there was a knocking outside the woman said oh heavens it is my husband she quickly hid the roast meat inside the tiled stove
+the wine under the pillow the salad on the bed the cakes under it and the parson in the closet on the porch then she opened the door for her husband and said thank heaven you are back again
+there is such a storm it looks as if the world were coming to an end the miller saw the peasant lying on the straw and asked what is that fellow doing there ah said the wife the poor knave came in the storm and rain and begged for shelter
+the man said i have no objection but be quick and get me something to eat the woman said but i have nothing but bread and cheese i am contented with anything replied the husband so far as i am concerned bread and cheese will do and looked at the peasant and said
+come and eat some more with me the peasant did not require to be invited twice but got up and ate after this the miller saw the skin in which the raven was lying on the ground and asked what have you there the peasant answered i have a soothsayer inside it
+can he foretell anything to me said the miller why not answered the peasant but he only says four things and the fifth he keeps to himself the miller was curious and said
+and went thither and found the roast meat
+thirdly he says that there is some salad on the bed that would be a fine thing cried the miller and went there and found the salad
+fourthly he says that there are some cakes under the bed that would be a fine thing cried the miller and looked there and found the cakes and now the two sat down to the table together but the miller's wife was frightened to death and went to bed and took all the keys with her
+the miller would have liked much to know the fifth but the little peasant said first we will quickly eat the four things for the fifth is something bad so they ate and after that they bargained how much the miller was to give for the fifth prophecy
+until they agreed on three hundred talers then the peasant once more pinched the raven's head till he croaked loudly the miller asked what did he say the peasant replied he says that the devil is hiding outside there in the closet on the porch the miller said
+the devil must go out and opened the house door then the woman was forced to give up the keys and the peasant unlocked the closet the parson ran out as fast as he could and the miller said it was true i saw the black rascal with my own eyes
+the peasant however made off next morning by daybreak with the three hundred talers at home the small peasant gradually launched out he built a beautiful house and the peasants said the small peasant has certainly been to the place where golden snow falls
+and people carry the gold home in shovels then the small peasant was brought before the mayor and bidden to say from whence his wealth came he answered i sold my cow's skin in the town for three hundred talers when the peasants heard that they too wished to enjoy this great profit
+and ran home killed all their cows and stripped off their skins in order to sell them in the town to the greatest advantage the mayor however said but my servant must go first
+and when the others came he did not give them so much and said what can i do with all these skins then the peasants were vexed that the small peasant should have thus outwitted them wanted to take vengeance on him and accused him of this treachery before the mayor
+the innocent little peasant was unanimously sentenced to death and was to be rolled into the water in a barrel pierced full of holes he was led forth and a priest was brought who was to say a mass for his soul
+the others were all obliged to retire to a distance and when the peasant looked at the priest he recognized the man who had been with the miller's wife he said to him i set you free from the closet set me free from the barrel at this same moment up came
+with a flock of sheep the very shepherd whom the peasant knew had long been wishing to be mayor
+no i will not do it if the whole world insists on it i will not do it the shepherd hearing that came up to him and asked what are you about what is it that you will not do the peasant said they want to make me mayor
+myself in the barrel but i will not do it the shepherd said
+i would get into the barrel at once
+you will be mayor the shepherd was willing and got in and the peasant shut the top down on him
+the parson went to the crowd and declared that the mass had been said then they came and rolled the barrel towards the water when the barrel began to roll the shepherd cried i am quite willing to be mayor they believed no otherwise
+than that it was the peasant who was saying this and answered that is what we intend but first you shall look about you a little down below there and they rolled the barrel down into the water after that the peasants went home
+and as they were entering the village the small peasant also came quietly in driving a flock of sheep and looking quite contented then the peasants were astonished and said peasant from whence do you come have you come out of the water yes truly replied the peasant
+i sank deep deep down until at last i got to the bottom
+out of the barrel and crept out and there were pretty meadows on which a number of lambs were feeding and from thence i brought this flock away with me said the peasants are there any more there
+then the peasants made up their minds that they too would fetch some sheep for themselves a flock apiece but the mayor said i come first so they went to the water together
+whereupon the peasants cried we already see the sheep down below the mayor pressed forward and said i will go down first and look about me and if things promise well i'll call you
+but we must make a provision for winter or else we shall suffer from hunger said the cat and you little mouse cannot venture everywhere or you will be caught in a trap some day the good advice was followed and a pot of fat was bought but they did not know where to put it
+at length after much consideration the cat said i know no place where it will be better stored up than in the church for no one dares take anything away from there we will set it beneath the altar and not touch it until we are really in need of it
+so the pot was placed in safety
+my cousin has brought a little son into the world and has asked me to be godmother he is white with brown spots and i am to hold him over the font at the christening
+and you look after the house by yourself yes yes answered the mouse by all means go and if you get anything very good to eat think of me i should like a drop of sweet red christening wine myself all this however was untrue
+the cat had no cousin and had not been asked to be godmother she went straight to the church stole to the pot of fat began to lick at it and licked the top of the fat off then she took a walk upon the roofs of the town looked out for opportunities
+and then stretched herself in the sun and licked her lips whenever she thought of the pot of fat and not until it was evening did she return home well here you are again said the mouse no doubt you have had a merry day all went off well answered the cat
+what name did they give the child top off said the cat quite coolly top off cried the mouse that is a very odd and uncommon name is it a usual one in your family
+it is no worse than crumb stealer as your godchildren are called before long the cat was seized by another fit of yearning she said to the mouse you must do me a favour and once more manage the house for a day alone i am again asked to be godmother and
+as the child has a white ring round its neck i cannot refuse the good mouse consented but the cat crept behind the town walls to the church and devoured half the pot of fat nothing ever seems so good as what one keeps to oneself
+when she went home the mouse inquired and what was the child christened half done answered the cat half done
+i never heard the name in my life i'll wager anything it is not in the calendar the cat's mouth soon began to water for some more licking all good things go in threes said she i am asked to stand godmother again the child is quite black
+only it has white paws but with that exception it has not a single white hair on its whole body this only happens once every few years you will let me go won't you top off half done answered the mouse they are such odd names they make me very thoughtful
+you sit at home said the cat in your dark grey fur coat and long tail and are filled with fancies that's because you do not go out in the daytime during the cat's absence the mouse cleaned the house and put it in order but the greedy cat entirely emptied the pot of fat
+and well filled and fat she did not return home till night the mouse at once asked what name had been given to the third child it will not please you more than the others said the cat he is called all gone all gone cried the mouse
+that is the most suspicious name of all i have never seen it in print all gone what can that mean and she shook her head curled herself up and lay down to sleep from this time forth no one invited the cat to be godmother
+but when the winter had come and there was no longer anything to be found outside the mouse thought of their provision and said come cat we will go to our pot of fat which we have stored up for ourselves we shall enjoy that yes answered the cat
+you will enjoy it as much as you would enjoy sticking that dainty tongue of yours out of the window they set out on their way but when they arrived the pot of fat certainly was still in its place but it was empty alas said the mouse now i see what has happened now it comes to light
+you have devoured all when you were standing godmother first top off then half done then will you hold your tongue cried the cat
+all gone was already on the poor mouse's lips
+fundevogel there was once a forester who went into the forest to hunt and as he entered it he heard a sound of screaming as if a little child were there he followed the sound and at last came to a high tree and at the top of this a little child was sitting
+for the mother had fallen asleep under the tree with the child
+and set it on the high tree the forester climbed up brought the child down and thought to himself you will take him home with you and bring him up with your lina he took it home therefore and the two children grew up together and the one
+which he had found on a tree was called fundevogel because a bird had carried it away fundevogel and lina loved each other so dearly that when they did not see each other they were sad now the forester had an old cook who one evening took two pails and began to fetch water
+and did not go once only but many times out to the spring lina saw this and said listen old sanna why are you fetching so much water if you will never repeat it to anyone i will tell you why so lina said no
+she would never repeat it to anyone and then the cook said early tomorrow morning when the forester is out hunting i will heat the water and when it is boiling in the kettle i will throw in fundevogel and will boil him in it early next morning the forester got up and went out hunting
+and when he was gone the children were still in bed then lina said to fundevogel if you will never leave me i too will never leave you fundevogel said neither now nor ever will i leave you then said lina
+last night old sanna carried so many buckets of water into the house that i asked her why she was doing that and she said that if i would promise not to tell anyone and she said that early tomorrow morning when father was out hunting she would set the kettle full of water
+throw you into it and boil you but we will get up quickly dress ourselves and go away together the two children therefore got up dressed themselves quickly and went away when the water in the kettle was boiling
+both the children were gone then she was terribly alarmed and she said to herself
+they must be followed instantly to get them back again then the cook sent three servants after them who were to run and overtake the children the children however were sitting outside the forest and when they saw from afar the three servants running lina said to fundevogel never leave me
+and i will never leave you fundevogel said neither now nor ever
+do you become a rose tree and i the rose upon it when the three servants came to the forest nothing was there but a rose tree and one rose on it but the children were nowhere then said they there is nothing to be done here
+and they went home and told the cook that they had seen nothing in the forest but a little rose bush with one rose on it
+you simpletons you should have cut the rose bush in two and have broken off the rose and brought it home with you go and do it at once they had therefore to go out and look for the second time the children however saw them coming from a distance then lina said fundevogel
+never leave me and i will never leave you fundevogel said neither now nor ever said lina then do you become a church and i'll be the chandelier in it so when the three servants came nothing was there but a church with a chandelier in it
+they said therefore to each other what can we do here let us go home when they got home the cook asked if they had not found them so they said no they had found nothing but a church and there was a chandelier in it and the cook scolded them and said
+you fools why did you not pull the church to pieces and bring the chandelier home with you and now the old cook herself got on her legs and went with the three servants in pursuit of the children the children however saw from afar that the three servants were coming
+and the cook waddling after them then said lina fundevogel never leave me and i will never leave you then said fundevogel neither now nor ever said lina be a fishpond and i will be the duck upon it
+crisis in my mental history one stage onward for some years after this time i wrote very little and nothing regularly for publication and great were the advantages which i derived from the intermission
+it was of no common importance to me at this period to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind only without any immediate call for giving them out in print had i gone on writing
+might truly be called an object in life to be a reformer of the world my conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object the personal sympathies i wished for were those of fellow labourers
+in this enterprise i endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as i could by the way
+but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon my whole reliance was placed on this and i was accustomed to felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which i enjoyed
+through placing my happiness in something durable and distant in which some progress might be always making while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment this did very well for several years during which the general
+as from a dream it was in the autumn of eighteen twenty six i was in a dull state of nerves such as everybody is occasionally liable to unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement one of those moods
+in this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself suppose that all your objects in life were realized that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to
+the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down all my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end the end had ceased to charm and how could there ever again be any interest in the means
+i awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact i carried it with me into all companies into all occupations hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes oblivion of it
+for some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker the lines in coleridge's dejection i was not then acquainted with them exactly describe my case a grief without a pang void
+in vain i sought relief from my favourite books those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which i had always hitherto drawn strength and animation i read them now without feeling
+or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm and i became persuaded that my love of mankind and of excellence for its own sake had worn itself out
+i sought no comfort by speaking to others of what i felt if i had loved anyone sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity i should not have been in the condition i was
+i felt too that mine was not an interesting or in any way respectable distress there was nothing in it to attract sympathy advice
+and i saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed when the failure was probably irremediable and at all events beyond the power of
+his remedies of other friends i had at that time none to whom i had any hope of making my condition intelligible it was however abundantly intelligible to myself
+and the more i dwelt upon it the more hopeless it appeared my course of study
+whether of a good or of a bad kind were the results of association that we love one thing and hate another take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation
+with all things beneficial to the great whole
+all things hurtful to it this doctrine appeared inexpugnable but it now seemed to me on retrospect that my teachers had occupied themselves
+salutary associations they seemed to have trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments praise and blame reward and punishment now
+i did not doubt that by these means begun early and applied unremittingly intense associations of pain and pleasure especially of pain might be created
+and might produce desires and aversions capable of lasting undiminished to the end of life but there must always be something artificial and casual in associations thus produced
+what i had always before received with incredulity that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings as indeed it has when no other mental habit is cultivated
+and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives the very excellence of analysis i argued is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice
+that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clung together and no associations whatever could ultimately resist this dissolving force
+were it not that we owe to analysis our clearest knowledge of the permanent sequences in nature the real connexions between things not dependent on our will and feelings natural laws by virtue of which in many cases
+one thing is inseparable from another in fact which laws in proportion as they are clearly perceived and imaginatively realized cause our ideas of things which are always joined together in nature
+to cohere more and more closely in our thoughts analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations between causes and effects means and ends but tend altogether to weaken those which are
+to speak familiarly a mere matter of feeling they are therefore i thought favourable to prudence and clear sightedness but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues
+of the entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable no one had a stronger conviction than i had these were the laws of human nature by which as it seemed to me
+had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind i was thus as i said to myself left stranded at the commencement of my voyage with a well equipped ship
+and a rudder but no sail without any real desire for the ends which i had been so carefully fitted out to work for no delight in virtue or the general good
+the fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me as completely as those of benevolence i had had as i reflected some gratification of vanity at too early an age
+and there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic
+and in the result we can accompany keats through the glad and sad and mad and bad hours of his short and marvellous life
+we are still left in the dark it is true as to keats's race and descent whether keats's father came to london from cornwall or not sir sidney has not been able to decide on
+the rather shaky evidence that has been put forward if it should hereafter turn out that keats was a cornishman at one remove matthew arnold's conjecture as to the celtic element in him
+at the sign of the swan and hoop finsbury pavement and married his master's daughter it was at the stable at the swan and hoop not a public house by the way but a livery stable
+that keats was prematurely born at the end of october seventeen ninety five
+he was scarcely nine years old when his father was killed by a fall from a horse he was only fourteen when his mother who had re married unhappily and then been separated from her husband died a victim of chronic rheumatism and consumption
+it is from his mother that keats seems to have inherited his impetuous and passionate nature there is the evidence of a certain wholesale tea dealer the respectability of whose trade may have inclined him to censoriousness
+she was a person of unbridled temperament and that in her later years she fell into loose ways and was no credit to the family that she had other qualities besides those mentioned by the tea dealer is shown by the passionate affection
+that existed between her and her son john once as a young child when she was ordered to be kept quiet during an illness he is said to have insisted on keeping watch at her door with an old sword and allowing no one to go in
+as she lay dying he sat up whole nights with her in a great chair would suffer nobody to give her medicine or even cook her food but himself and read novels to her in her intervals of ease
+their grandfather the proprietor of the livery stable
+till the age of sixteen and afterwards enabled him to attend guy's hospital as a medical student it is almost impossible to credit the accepted story that he passed all his boyhood without making any attempt
+at writing poetry he did not begin to write says sir sidney colvin till he was near eighteen
+there is only one person indeed in all the keats circle to whom one is more passionately grateful than to cowden clarke that is fanny brawne
+with his genius before the autumn of eighteen eighteen when he met fanny brawne for the first time none the less had he died before that date he would have been remembered in literature not as a marvellous original artist
+she was unquestionably his good fairy as a poet this is the only matter upon which one is seriously disposed to quarrel with sir sidney colvin as a biographer he does not emphasize as he ought the debt we are under to fanny brawne
+as the intensifier of keats's genius the minx as keats irritably called her who transformed him in a few months from a poet of still doubtful fame into a master and an immortal the attachment
+sir sidney thinks was a misfortune for him though he qualifies this by adding that so probably under the circumstances must any passion for a woman have been well let us test this misfortune by its consequences
+in january eighteen nineteen he wrote the eve of saint agnes during the spring of that year he wrote the ode to psyche the ode on a grecian urn the ode to a nightingale
+and wrote the ode to autumn
+in other words practically all the fine gold of keats's work was produced in the months in which his passion for fanny brawne was consuming him as with fire his greatest poems we clearly owe to that heightened sense of beauty
+which resulted from his translation into a lover it seems to me a treachery to keats's memory to belittle a woman who was at least the occasion of such a passionate expenditure of genius sir sidney colvin
+does his best to be fair to fanny
+as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature he seems to have admired women vulgarly as creatures whose hands were waiting to be squeezed rather than as equal human beings
+was essentially a cynicism in the exhausted don juan mood hence keats was almost doomed to fall in love with provocation rather than with what the victorians called soul his destiny
+was not to be a happy lover but the slave of a minx it was not a slavery without dignity however it had the dignity of tragedy
+sir sidney colvin regrets that the love letters of keats to fanny were ever published it would be as reasonable in my opinion
+has almost no counterpart in biographical literature the thought of leaving miss brawne he writes to brown from yarmouth is beyond everything horrible the sense of darkness coming over me
+i eternally see her figure eternally vanishing and when he reaches naples he writes to the same friend i can bear to die i cannot bear to leave her o god
+my imagination is horribly vivid about her i see her i hear her o that i could be buried near where she lives i am afraid to write to her
+to receive a letter from her to see her handwriting would break my heart even to hear of her anyhow to see her name written would be more than i can bear
+sans merci sir sidney is all in favour and there is something to be said for his preference of the earlier version which begins o what can ail thee knight at arms alone and palely loitering
+but he does not perceive the reasons that led keats to alter this in the version he published in leigh hunt's indicator to ah what can ail thee wretched wight and so on
+to accuse hunt of wishing to alter knight at arms to wretched wight seems to me unwarrantable guessing surely a much more likely explanation is that keats
+every edition of keats ought to contain both versions just as it ought to contain both versions of hyperion nothing that i have written will be regarded i trust as
+depreciating the essential excellence power and in its scholarly way even the greatness of sir sidney colvin's book but a certain false emphasis here and there
+and his luxurious love of beauty
+his morbidness his mawkishness his fascination as by serpents on the other but in the resultant portrait it is a too respectable and virile keats that emerges keats was more virile as a man
+than is generally understood he does not owe his immortality to his virility however he owes it to his servitude to golden images to his citizenship of the world of the senses to his bondage to physical love
+had he lived longer he might have invaded other worlds his recasting of hyperion opens with a cry of distrust in the artist who is content to live in the little world of his art
+which has never been surpassed in literature that his own achievement lies he is great among the pagans not among the prophets unless we keep this clearly in mind our praise of him will not be appreciation
+it will be but a sounding funeral speech instead of communion with a lovely and broken spirit
+the butcher and how he was cast into the vault of the curfew tower turning off on the right the earl and his companion continued to descend the hill until they came in sight of the garter
+the door of the hostel opened and a fat jolly looking personage with a bald head and bushy grey beard and clad in a brown serge doublet and hose to match issued forth bearing a foaming jug of ale and a horn cup
+his appearance was welcomed by a joyful shout from the attendants come my masters he cried filling the horn here is a cup of stout windsor ale in which to drink the health of our jolly monarch bluff king hal
+and there's no harm i trust in calling him so marry is there not mine host cried the foremost attendant i spoke of him as such in his own hearing not long ago and he laughed at me
+in right merry sort i love the royal bully and will drink his health gladly and mistress anne boleyn's to boot and he emptied the horn
+they tell me mistress anne boleyn is coming to windsor with the king and the knights companions to morrow is it so asked the host again filling the horn and handing it to another attendant
+how times are changed since i bryan bowntance first stepped into my father's shoes and became host of the garter it was in fifteen o one twenty eight years ago when king henry the seventh
+ruled the land and when his elder son prince arthur was alive likewise in that year the young prince espoused catherine of arragon our present queen and soon afterwards died whereupon the old king
+not liking for he loved his treasure better than his own flesh to part with her dowry gave her to his second son henry our gracious sovereign whom god preserve
+here comes our young master the earl of surrey well i care not replied the host bluffly i've spoken no treason i love my king and if he wishes to have a divorce
+who was rushing in to see what was the matter the person thus ejected who was a powerfully built young man in a leathern doublet with his muscular arms bared to the shoulder
+turned his rage upon the host and seized him by the throat with a grip that threatened him with strangulation indeed but for the intervention of the earl's attendants who rushed to his assistance
+bryan cried in a voice of mingled rage and surprise to his assailant
+are you gone mad or do you mistake me for a sheep or a bullock that you attack me in this fashion my strong ale must have got into your addle pate with a vengeance the knave has been speaking treason of the king's highness said the tall man
+and i require the same attention at your hands to morrow i shall have my comrades
+but he is apt to get quarrelsome over his cups well said honest bryan cried the duke you have one quality of a good landlord that of a peacemaker
+give the knave a cup of ale and let him wash down his foul words in a health to the king wishing him a speedy divorce and a new queen
+i do not desire to sit with you you self dubbed duke rejoined mark but if you will doff your fine jerkin and stand up with me on the green
+and keep your mischievous tongue between your teeth beshrew me if i drink the king's health or that of his minion anne boleyn cried mark boldly but i will tell you what i will drink
+i will drink the health of king henry's lawful consort
+and i will add to it a wish that the pope may forge her marriage chains to her royal husband faster than ever a foolish wish cried bryan why mark you are clean crazed
+saints protect us exclaimed bryan why this is flat treason mark i can no longer uphold you not if you do not desire to share his prison mine host cried the duke of shoreditch
+and i promise you i will show them no better treatment awed by mark's determined manner the bystanders kept aloof i command you in the king's name to seize him roared shoreditch if he offers resistance he will
+full length upon the ground his companions drew their swords and would have instantly fallen upon the sturdy offender if morgan fenwolf who with the earl of surrey was standing among the spectators had not rushed forward and closing
+with mark before the latter could strike a blow grappled with him and held him fast till he was secured and his arms tied behind him and so it is you morgan fenwolf
+i now believe all i have heard of you what have you heard of him asked surrey advancing that he has dealings with the fiend with herne the hunter replied mark if i am hanged for a traitor
+heed not what the villain says my good fellow said the duke of shoreditch you have captured him bravely and i will take care your conduct is duly reported to his majesty to the castle with him to the castle
+he will lodge to night in the deepest dungeon of yon fortification pointing to the curfew tower above them there to await the king's judgment and to morrow night it will be well for him if he is not swinging from the
+had issued from the hostel and joined the earl and they walked together after the crowd in a few minutes the duke of shoreditch reached henry the eighth's gate where he shouted to a sentinel and told him what had occurred
+after some delay a wicket in the gate was opened and the chief persons of the party were allowed to pass through it with the prisoner who was assigned to the custody of a couple of arquebusiers by this time an officer had arrived and it was agreed
+at the suggestion of the duke of shoreditch to take the offender to the curfew tower accordingly they crossed the lower ward and passing beneath an archway near the semicircular range of habitations allotted to the petty canons
+traversed the space before the west end of saint george's chapel and descending a short flight of stone steps at the left and threading a narrow passage presently arrived at the arched entrance in the curfew
+whose hoary walls shone brightly in the moonlight they had to knock for some time against the stout oak door before any notice was taken of the summons at length
+the roof of which was composed of stout planks crossed by heavy oaken rafters and supported by beams of the same material on the left a steep ladder like flight of wooden steps led to an upper room
+came to a low strong door which they unlocked and obtained admission to a large octangular chamber with a vaulted roof and deep embrasures terminated by narrow loopholes
+with this the party withdrew and the door was fastened upon the prisoner an arquebusier was stationed at the foot of the steps
+having fully satisfied their curiosity shaped their course towards the castle gate on their way thither the earl looked about for morgan fenwolf but could nowhere discern him
+the principal character in the story if you presuming you are of the sex that does such things if you had gone into the drapery emporium which is really only magnificent for shop
+a perfectly fictitious co by the bye of putney on the fourteenth of august eighteen ninety five had turned to the right hand side where the blocks of white linen and piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which the pink and blue prints depend
+you might have been served by the central figure of this story that is now beginning he would have come forward bowing and swaying
+what he might have the pleasure of showing you under certain circumstances as for instance hats baby linen gloves silks lace or curtains
+and making a kind of circular sweep invited you to step this way and so led you beyond his ken
+huckaback blankets dimity cretonne linen calico are cases in point
+under which happier circumstances you might if of an observing turn of mind and not too much of a housewife to be inhuman have given the central figure of this story less cursory attention
+now if you had noticed anything about him it would have been chiefly to notice how little he was noticeable he wore the black morning coat the black tie and the speckled grey nether parts descending into shadow and mystery below the counter of his craft
+hair of a kind of dirty fairness greyish eyes and a skimpy immature moustache under his peaked indeterminate nose his features were all small but none ill shaped a rosette of pins decorated the lappel of his coat
+we could show you something better of course no trouble madam i assure you such were the simple counters of his intercourse so i say
+he would have danced about behind the counter have neatly refolded the goods he had shown you have put on one side those you selected extracted a little book with a carbon leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture
+made you out a little bill in that weak flourishing hand peculiar to drapers
+sayn then a puffy little shop walker would have come into view
+have scribbled a still more flourishing j m all over the document have asked you if there was nothing more have stood by you supposing that you were paying cash until the central figure of this story reappeared with the change
+one glance more at him and the puffy little shop walker would have been bowing you out with fountains of civilities at work all about you
+but real literature as distinguished from anecdote does not concern itself with superficial appearances alone literature is revelation modern literature is indecorous revelation
+it is the duty of the earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen even at the cost of some blushes and the thing that you would not have seen about this young man and the thing of the greatest moment to this story
+the thing that must be told if the book is to be written was let us face it bravely the remarkable condition of this young man's legs let us approach the business with dispassionate explicitness
+let us assume something of the scientific spirit the hard almost professorial tone of the conscientious realist let us treat this young man's legs as a mere diagram and indicate the points of interest with the unemotional
+and so to our revelation on the internal aspect of the right ankle of this young man you would have observed ladies and gentlemen a contusion and an abrasion on the internal aspect of the left ankle a contusion also
+on its external aspect a large yellowish bruise on his left shin there were two bruises one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into purple and another obviously of more recent date of a blotchy red
+tumid and threatening proceeding up the left leg in a spiral manner an unnatural hardness and redness would have been discovered on the upper aspect of the calf
+and above the knee and on the inner side an extraordinary expanse of bruised surface a kind of closely stippled shading of contused points
+the right leg would be found to be bruised in a marvellous manner all about and under the knee and particularly on the interior aspect of the knee so far we may proceed with our details
+fired by these discoveries an investigator might perhaps have pursued his inquiries further to bruises on the shoulders elbows and even the finger joints of the central figure of our story
+he had indeed been bumped and battered at an extraordinary number of points but enough of realistic description is as good as a feast
+even in literature one must know where to draw the line now the reader may be inclined to wonder how a respectable young shopman
+one might fancy that he had been sitting with his nether extremities in some complicated machinery a threshing machine say or one of those hay making furies but sherlock holmes
+would have fancied nothing of the kind
+considered in the light of the distribution of the other abrasions and contusions pointed unmistakably to the violent impact of the mounting beginner upon the bicycling saddle and that the ruinous state of the right knee was equally eloquent
+of the concussions attendant on that person's hasty frequently causeless and invariably ill conceived descents one large bruise on the shin is even more characteristic of the prentice cyclist
+for upon every one of them waits the jest of the unexpected treadle you try at least to walk your machine in an easy manner and whack you are rubbing your shin so out of innocence we ripen
+two bruises on that place mark a certain want of aptitude in learning such as one might expect in a person unused to muscular exercise blisters on the hands are eloquent of the nervous clutch of the wavering rider and so forth
+until sherlock is presently explaining by the help of the minor injuries that the machine ridden is an old fashioned affair with a fork instead of the diamond frame a cushioned tire well worn on the hind wheel
+rises a vision of a nightly struggle of two dark figures and a machine in a dark road the road to be explicit from roehampton to putney hill and with this vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel
+a gasping and grunting a shouting of steer man steer a wavering unsteady flight a spasmodic turning of the missile edifice of man and machine and a collapse then you descry dimly through the dusk
+thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of manhood assert itself and drive him against all the conditions of his calling against the counsels of prudence and the restrictions of his means
+to seek the wholesome delights of exertion and danger and pain and our first examination of the draper reveals beneath his draperies the man to which initial fact among others we shall come again in the end
+but enough of these revelations the central figure of our story is now going along behind the counter a draper indeed with your purchases in his arms to the warehouse where the various articles you have selected will presently be packed by the senior porter and sent to you
+and gripping the corners of the folds in his hands begins to straighten them punctiliously near him is an apprentice apprenticed to the same high calling of draper's assistant
+a ruddy red haired lad in a very short tailless black coat and a very high collar who is deliberately unfolding and refolding some patterns of cretonne
+the assistant is dreaming of the delicious time only four hours off now when he will resume the tale of his bruises and abrasions the apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts of boyhood and his imagination rides cap a pie
+through the chambers of his brain seeking some knightly quest in honour of that fair lady the last but one of the girl apprentices to the dress making upstairs
+he inclines rather to street fighting against revolutionaries because then she could see him from the window jerking them back to the present comes the puffy little shop walker with a paper in his hand the apprentice becomes extremely active
+they're going fairly well sir
+the shop walker brings up parallel to the counter any particular time when you want your holidays he asks hoopdriver pulls at his skimpy moustache no don't want them too late sir of course
+how about this day week hoopdriver becomes rigidly meditative gripping the corners of the gingham folds in his hands his face is eloquent of conflicting considerations can he learn it in a week that's the question
+otherwise briggs will get next week and he will have to wait until september when the weather is often uncertain he is naturally of a sanguine disposition
+all drapers have to be or else they could never have the faith they show in the beauty washability and unfading excellence of the goods they sell you the decision comes at last
+the next in the strict scale of precedence of the drapery emporium mister hoopdriver in alternating spasms anon straightens his gingham and anon becomes meditative with his tongue in the hollow of his decaying wisdom tooth
+at supper that night holiday talk held undisputed sway mister pritchard spoke of scotland miss isaacs clamoured of bettws
+i said hoopdriver when the question came to him why cycling of course you're never going to ride that dreadful machine of yours day after day said miss howe of the costume department i am
+said hoopdriver as calmly as possible pulling at the insufficient moustache
+you stow it said mister hoopdriver looking hard and threateningly at the junior apprentice and suddenly adding in a tone of bitter contempt
+i'm getting fairly safe upon it now he told miss howe at other times hoopdriver might have further resented the satirical efforts of the apprentice but his mind was too full of the projected tour to admit any petty delicacies of dignity
+when the gas was turned off for the night he was sitting on the edge of his bed rubbing arnica into his knee a new and very big place and studying a road map of the south of england
+was sitting up in bed and trying to smoke in the dark briggs had never been on a cycle in his life but he felt hoopdriver's inexperience and offered such advice as occurred to him have the machine thoroughly well oiled said briggs
+carry one or two lemons with you don't tear yourself to death the first day and sit upright never lose control of the machine and always sound the bell on every possible opportunity you mind those things and nothing very much can't happen to you hoopdriver you take my word
+save perhaps for a curse or so at his pipe and then break out with an entirely different set of tips avoid running over dogs hoopdriver whatever you do
+never let the machine buckle there was a man killed only the other day through his wheel buckling don't scorch don't ride on the foot path keep your own side of the road and if you see a tramline go round the corner at once and hurry off into the next county
+and always light up before dark you mind just a few little things like that hoopdriver and nothing much can't happen to you you take my word right you are said hoopdriver good night old man good night said briggs
+hoopdriver rode off into dreamland on his machine and was scarcely there before he was pitched back into the world of sense again something what was it never oil the steering it's fatal
+a voice that came from round a fitful glow of light was saying and clean the chain daily with black lead you mind just a few little things like that
+the ostler being a fool rushed violently down the road vociferating after them then he returned panting to the vicuna hotel and finding a group of men outside the entrance who wanted to know what was up stopped to give them the cream of the adventure
+that gave the fugitives five minutes then pushing breathlessly into the bar he had to make it clear to the barmaid what the matter was and the gov'nor being out they spent some more precious time wondering what ever was to be done
+there were also moral remarks and other irrelevant contributions there were conflicting ideas of telling the police and pursuing the flying couple on a horse that made ten minutes
+then stephen the waiter who had shown hoopdriver up came down and lit wonderful lights and started quite a fresh discussion by the simple question which that turned ten minutes into a quarter of an hour and in the midst of this discussion
+making a sudden and awestricken silence appeared bechamel in the hall beyond the bar walked with a resolute air to the foot of the staircase and passed out of sight you conceive the backward pitch of that exceptionally shaped cranium
+incredulous eyes stared into one another's in the bar as his paces muffled by the stair carpet went up to the landing turned reached the passage and walked into the dining room overhead
+it wasn't that one at all miss said the ostler i'd swear well that's mister beaumont said the barmaid anyhow their conversation hung comatose in the air switched up by bechamel
+they listened together his feet stopped turned went out of the diningroom down the passage to the bedroom stopped again poor chap said the barmaid she's a wicked woman sssh said stephen
+after a pause bechamel went back to the dining room they heard a chair creak under him interlude of conversational eyebrows i'm going up said stephen to break the melancholy news to him bechamel looked up from a week old newspaper
+as without knocking stephen entered bechamel's face suggested a different expectation beg pardon sir said stephen with a diplomatic cough well said bechamel wondering suddenly if jessie had kept some of her threats
+if so he was in for an explanation but he had it ready she was a monomaniac leave me alone with her he would say i know how to calm her missus beaumont said stephen well has gone
+he rose with a fine surprise gone he said with a half laugh gone sir on her bicycle on her bicycle why she went sir with another gentleman this time bechamel was really startled
+an other gentlemen who another gentleman in brown sir went into the yard sir got out the two bicycles sir and went off sir about twenty minutes ago bechamel stood with his eyes round and his knuckle on his hips
+but as yet he seemed merely stunned brown clothes he said and fairish a little like yourself sir in the dark the ostler sir jim duke
+then with infinite fervour he said but let us put in blank cartridge he said i might have thought he flung himself into the armchair damn her said bechamel for all the world like a common man
+i'll chuck this infernal business they've gone eigh yessir
+making a memorable saying let em go who cares and i wish him luck and bring me some bourbon as fast as you can there's a good chap
+stephen was too surprised to say anything but bourbon sir go on said bechamel damn you stephen's sympathies changed at once yessir he murmured fumbling for the door handle and left the room marvelling
+she had evidently gone off with him and that little business was over and he was here stranded and sold
+and his only ray of hope was that it seemed more probable after all that the girl had escaped through her stepmother in which case the business might be hushed up yet and the evil hour of explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed
+knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again and he reverted to his blasphemies he started up in a gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit and incontinently sat down again with a concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths
+he banged the arms of the chair with his fist and swore again
+i bechamel when with an abrupt tap and prompt opening of the door stephen entered with the bourbon
+the moonlight ride and so the twenty minutes law passed into an infinity
+the wretched creature has already sufficiently sullied our modest but truthful pages we leave the eager little group in the bar of the vicuna hotel we leave all bognor as we have left all chichester
+and midhurst and haslemere and guildford and ripley and putney and follow this dear fool of a hoopdriver of ours and his young lady in grey out upon the moonlight road how they rode
+how their hearts beat together and their breath came fast and how every shadow was anticipation and every noise pursuit for all that flight mister hoopdriver was in the world of romance had a policeman intervened because their lamps were not lit
+hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on after the fashion of a hero born had bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a duel hoopdriver had fought as one to whom agincourt was a reality and drapery a dream
+it was rescue elopement glory and she by the side of him he had seen her face in shadow
+he had seen her troubled and her eyes bright with tears but what light is there lighting a face like hers to compare with the soft glamour of the midsummer moon the road turned northward going round through the outskirts of bognor
+then amidst villas again some warm and lamplit some white and sleeping in the moonlight then between hedges over which they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low lying mist
+they scarcely heeded whither they rode at first being only anxious to get away turning once westward when the spire of chichester cathedral rose suddenly near them out of the dewy night pale and intricate and high
+at a footfall at a roughness in the road she seemed to be too intent upon escape to give much thought to him
+his mind became an enormous appreciation of the position the night was a warm white silence save for the subtile running of their chains
+he looked sideways at her as she sat beside him with her ankles gracefully ruling the treadles now the road turned westward and she was a dark grey outline against the shimmer of the moon
+and now they faced northwards and the soft cold light passed caressingly over her hair and touched her brow and cheek there is a magic quality in moonshine it touches all that is sweet and beautiful and the rest of the night is hidden
+it has created the fairies whom the sunlight kills and fairyland rises again in our hearts at the sight of it the voices of the filmy route
+white dust hot underfoot blinding to the eye is now a soft grey silence with the glitter of a crystal grain set starlike in its silver here and there overhead riding serenely through the spacious blue is the mother of the silence
+she who has spiritualised the world alone save for two attendant steady shining stars and in silence under her benign influence under the benediction of her light rode our two wanderers side by side through the transfigured and transfiguring night
+nowhere was the moon shining quite so brightly as in mister hoopdriver's skull at the turnings of the road he made his decisions with an air of profound promptitude and quite haphazard the right he would say or again
+the left as one who knew so it was that in the space of an hour they came abruptly down a little lane full tilt upon the sea
+hullo said mister hoopdriver sotto voce they dismounted abruptly stunted oaks and thorns rose out of the haze of moonlight that was tangled in the hedge on either side
+you are safe said mister hoopdriver sweeping off his cap with an air and bowing courtly where are we safe but where chichester harbour he waved his arm seaward as though it was a goal do you think they will follow us
+we have turned and turned again it seemed to hoopdriver that he heard her sob she stood dimly there holding her machine and he holding his could go no nearer to her to see if she sobbed for weeping or for want of breath
+are you tired he asked i will do what has to be done the two black figures in the broken light were silent for a space do you know she said i am not afraid of you i am sure you are honest to me
+he was taken with a sudden shame of his homely patronymic it's an ugly name he said but you are right in trusting me i would i would do anything for you this
+promised to help and protect me i was unhappy at home never mind why a stepmother idle unoccupied hindered cramped that is enough perhaps then he came into my life and talked to me of art and literature and set my brain on fire
+to be a human being not a thing in a hutch and he i know said hoopdriver and now here i am i will do anything said hoopdriver she thought you cannot imagine my stepmother no i could not describe her
+i am entirely at your service i will help you with all my power i have lost an illusion and found a knight errant she spoke of bechamel as the illusion mister hoopdriver felt flattered but he had no adequate answer
+what we had best be doing you are tired you know and we can't wander all night after the day we've had that was chichester we were near she asked if he meditated with a tremble in his voice
+you would make me your brother miss beaumont yes we could stop there together she took a minute to answer i am going to light these lamps said hoopdriver he bent down to his own and struck a match on his shoe
+grave and intent how could she ever have thought him common or absurd but you must tell me your name brother she said er carrington said mister hoopdriver after a momentary pause
+who would be hoopdriver on a night like this but the christian name christian name my christian name well chris he snapped his lamp and stood up if you will hold my machine i will light yours he said
+the mute emotion of his face affected her strangely she had to speak
+she said with a laugh to break the intensity he opened his mouth and shut it again and with a sudden wincing of his features abruptly turned and bent down to open the lantern in front of her machine she looked down at him
+almost kneeling in front of her with an unreasonable approbation in her eyes it was as i have indicated the hour and season of the full moon
+and it was chiefly by good luck and the fact that most roads about a town converge thereupon that chichester was at last attained it seemed at first as though everyone had gone to bed but the red hotel still glowed yellow and warm
+but that night he was in the mood to dare anything so you found your young lady at last said the ostler of the red hotel
+quite a misunderstanding said hoopdriver with splendid readiness my sister had gone to bognor but i brought her back here i've took a fancy to this place and the moonlight's simply dee vine we've had supper thenks and we're tired said mister hoopdriver
+i suppose you won't take anything jessie the glory of having her even as a sister and to call her jessie like that but he carried it off splendidly as he felt himself bound to admit good night sis he said and pleasant dreams
+but this was living indeed he told himself
+above this couple there was anne queen of england an ordinary woman was queen anne she was gay kindly august to a certain extent no quality of hers attained to virtue none to vice
+her stoutness was bloated her fun heavy her good nature stupid she was stubborn and weak as a wife she was faithless and faithful having favourites to whom she gave up her heart and a husband for whom she kept her bed
+as a christian she was a heretic and a bigot she had one beauty
+the rest of her person was indifferently formed she was a clumsy coquette and a chaste one her skin was white and fine she displayed a great deal of it it was she who introduced the fashion of necklaces of large pearls clasped round the throat
+she had a narrow forehead sensual lips fleshy cheeks large eyes short sight her short sight extended to her mind beyond a burst of merriment now and then almost as ponderous as her anger
+she lived in a sort of taciturn grumble and a grumbling silence words escaped from her which had to be guessed at she was a mixture of a good woman and a mischievous devil she liked surprises which is extremely woman like anne was a pattern
+she had fits of rage she was violent a brawler nobody more awkward than anne in directing affairs of state she allowed events to fall about as they might chance her whole policy was cracked
+she excelled in bringing about great catastrophes from little causes when a whim of authority took hold of her
+she did not explain her thought she exuded it there was something of the sphinx in this goose she rather liked fun teasing and practical jokes could she have made apollo a hunchback it would have delighted her but she would have left him a god
+good natured her ideal was to allow none to despair and to worry all she had often a rough word in her mouth
+with which she reddened her lips and having coloured her mouth would laugh she was greedily fond of the flat zealand gingerbread cakes she was proud of being fat more of a puritan than anything else she would nevertheless
+have liked to devote herself to stage plays she had an absurd academy of music copied after that of france in seventeen hundred a frenchman named foretroche wanted to build a royal circus at paris at a cost of four hundred thousand francs
+the assembly of twelve persons were it only to eat oysters and drink porter was a felony under her reign otherwise relatively mild pressing for the fleet was carried on with extreme violence a gloomy evidence that the englishman is a subject rather than a citizen
+for centuries england suffered under that process of tyranny which gave the lie to all the old charters of freedom and out of which france especially gathered a cause of triumph and indignation what in some degree diminishes the triumph is that while sailors were pressed in england
+soldiers were pressed in france in every great town of france any able bodied man going through the streets on his business was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a house called the oven
+those fit for service were picked out
+in sixteen ninety five there were thirty of these ovens in paris the laws against ireland emanating from queen anne were atrocious anne was born in sixteen sixty four two years before the great fire of london on which the astrologers there were some left
+predicted that being the elder sister of fire she would be queen and so she was thanks to astrology and the revolution of sixteen eighty eight she had the humiliation of having only gilbert archbishop of canterbury for godfather to be godchild of the pope was no longer possible in england
+a mere primate is but a poor sort of godfather anne had to put up with one however it was her own fault why was she a protestant denmark had paid for her virginity virginitas empta as the old charters expressed it
+there was never a bon mot but in french anne paid a deal of attention to her coins especially to copper coins which are the low and popular ones she wanted to cut a great figure on them six farthings were struck during her reign
+on the back of the first three she had merely a throne struck on the back of the fourth she ordered a triumphal chariot and on the back of the sixth a goddess holding a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other with the scroll
+why france excludes them there is a reason at once perhaps there is no other with english historians elizabeth embodies grandeur anne good nature as they will be it so but there is nothing delicate in the reigns of these women the lines are heavy
+three one idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the king what they do themselves they fight whose the glory the king's they pay whose the generosity the king's then the people love him for being so rich
+the equestrian statue reserved for kings alone is an excellent figure of royalty the horse is the people only that the horse becomes transfigured by degrees it begins in an ass it ends in a lion
+then it throws its rider and you have sixteen forty two in england and seventeen eighty nine in france and sometimes it devours him and you have in england sixteen forty nine and in france seventeen ninety three that the lion should relapse into the donkey is astonishing but it is so
+counted a hundred and fifty in her fleet the english had three armies five thousand men in catalonia ten thousand in portugal fifty thousand in flanders
+to monarchical and diplomatic europe a sort of prostitute the english people has always had in keeping parliament having voted a patriotic loan of thirty four million francs of annuities there had been a crush at the exchequer to subscribe it
+and that he would be but too happy if england would only tolerate the king of france fishing for cod at cape breton england was about to impose upon him the shame of demolishing himself the fortifications of dunkirk meanwhile she had taken gibraltar and was taking barcelona
+what great things accomplished how was it possible to refuse anne admiration for taking the trouble of living at the period
+bears to him the vague resemblance of a reflection like him she plays at a great reign she has her monuments her arts her victories her captains her men of letters her privy purse to pension celebrities her gallery of chefs d'oeuvre
+side by side with those of his majesty her court too was a cortege with the features of a triumph an order and a march it was a miniature copy of all the great men of versailles not giants themselves
+in it there is enough to deceive the eye add god save the queen which might have been taken from lulli and the ensemble becomes an illusion not a personage is missing christopher wren is a very passable mansard somers is as good as lamoignon anne has a racine in dryden
+a louvois in pembroke and a turenne in marlborough heighten the wigs and lower the foreheads the whole is solemn and pompous and the windsor of the time has a faded resemblance to marly still the whole was effeminate and anne's pere tellier was called sarah jennings
+however there is an outline of incipient irony which fifty years later was to turn to philosophy in the literature of the age and the protestant tartuffe is unmasked by swift
+although the england of the period quarrels and fights france she imitates her and draws enlightenment from her and the light on the facade of england is french light it is a pity that anne's reign lasted but twelve years or the english would not hesitate to call it the century of anne
+was greatly admired in england he is the kind of king they want in france said the english the love of the english for their own liberty is mingled with a certain acceptance of servitude for others that favourable regard of the chains which bind their neighbours
+not from choice however a part of her religion she derived from that ugliness
+was a cause of vexation to the queen to an ugly queen a pretty duchess is not an agreeable sister there was another grievance josiana's improper birth anne was the daughter of anne hyde a simple gentlewoman legitimately
+anne having this inferior blood in her veins felt herself but half royal and josiana having come into the world quite irregularly drew closer attention to the incorrectness less great but really existing in the birth of the queen
+the daughter of mesalliance looked without love upon the daughter of bastardy so near her it was an unpleasant resemblance josiana had a right to say to anne my mother was at least as good as yours at court no one said so but they evidently thought it
+this was a bore for her royal majesty why this josiana what had put it into her head to be born what good was a josiana certain relationships are detrimental
+just as in eighteen twenty four eugene deveria was the first to allow his beard to grow
+disguised by artful curling for to risk one's hair was almost to risk one's head the indignation was universal nevertheless
+and a peer of england he was insulted and the deed was well worth the insult in the hottest part of the row lord david suddenly appeared without his wig and in his own hair such conduct shakes the foundations of society
+he held his ground prince devereux was the first lord david dirry moir the second it is sometimes more difficult to be second than first it requires less genius but more courage the first intoxicated by the novelty may ignore the danger
+men found sufficient audacity to wear their own hair and powder was introduced as an extenuating circumstance in order to establish before we pass on an important period of history we should remark that the first blow in the war of wigs was really struck by a queen
+such great things made him a mark for public admiration there was not a club of which he was not the leader not a boxing match in which he was not desired as referee the referee is the arbitrator he had drawn up the rules of several clubs in high life
+the lowest stake allowed was a rouleau of fifty guineas and there was never less than twenty thousand guineas on the table by the side of each player was a little stand on which to place his cup of tea and a gilt bowl in which to put the rouleaux of guineas the players like servants when cleaning knives
+wore leather sleeves to save their lace breastplates of leather to protect their ruffles
+though handsome he belonged to the ugly club this club was dedicated to deformity the members agreed to fight not about a beautiful woman but about an ugly man the hall of the club was adorned by hideous portraits
+triboulet duns hudibras scarron over the chimney was a esop between two men each blind of an eye
+cocles being blind of the left camoens of the right eye so arranged that the two profiles without eyes were turned to each other the day that the beautiful missus visart caught the small pox the ugly club toasted her this club was still in existence in the beginning of the nineteenth century
+and mirabeau was elected an honorary member
+there was the fun club fun is like cant like humour a word which is untranslatable fun is to farce what pepper is to salt to get into a house and break a valuable mirror slash the family portraits poison the dog
+to give bad news which is untrue whereby people put on mourning by mistake is fun it was fun to cut a square hole in the holbein at hampton court
+a young millionaire lord who had during the night set fire to a thatched cottage a feat which made all london burst with laughter was proclaimed the king of fun the poor devils in the cottage were saved in their night clothes the members of the fun club all of the highest aristocracy
+used to run about london during the hours when the citizens were asleep pulling the hinges from the shutters cutting off the pipes of pumps filling up cisterns digging up cultivated plots of ground putting out lamps sawing through the beams which supported houses
+it was the rich who acted thus towards the poor for this reason no complaint was possible that was the best of the joke those manners have not altogether disappeared in many places in england and in english possessions at guernsey for instance
+to injure to fulfil this duty all means were held good in becoming a mohawk the members took an oath to be hurtful to injure at any price no matter when no matter whom no matter where was a matter of duty
+the gentleman behind him chastised him for this by a prick of his sword which made him spring round another prick in the back warned the fellow that one of noble blood was behind him and so on each one wounding him in his turn when the man closed round by the circle of swords and covered with blood
+had turned and danced about enough they ordered their servants to beat him with sticks to change the course of his ideas others hit the lion that is they gaily stopped a passenger
+if his eyes were gouged out he was paid for them such were towards the beginning of the eighteenth century the pastimes of the rich idlers of london the idlers of paris had theirs
+just like any one else he would gaily set fire to a cot of woodwork and thatch and just scorch those within but he would rebuild their houses in stone he insulted two ladies one was unmarried he gave her a portion the other was married he had her husband appointed chaplain
+and all those on the neck so much less for the enemy's beak he used to say then he extended the cock's wings and cut each feather one after another to a point and thus the wings were furnished with darts so much for the enemy's eyes he would say
+then he scraped its claws with a penknife sharpened its nails fitted it with spurs of sharp steel spat on its head spat on its neck anointed it with spittle as they used to rub oil over athletes then set it down in the pit a redoubtable champion exclaiming
+that's how to make a cock an eagle and a bird of the poultry yard a bird of the mountain lord david attended prize fights and was their living law on occasions of great performances
+and from his own mouth filled with water blowing a fine rain into his eyes and ears a thing which reanimates even a dying man if he was referee he saw that there was no foul play prevented any one whosoever he might be from assisting the combatants excepting the seconds
+declare the man beaten who did not fairly face his opponent watched that the time between the rounds did not exceed half a minute prevented butting
+and forbade a man's being hit when down all this science however did not render him a pedant nor destroy his ease of manner in society when he was referee rough pimple faced unshorn friends of either combatant never dared to come to the aid of their failing man
+lord david was one of the few referees whom they dared not thrash no one could train like him the pugilist whose trainer he consented to become was sure to win lord david would choose a hercules massive as a rock tall as a tower and make him his child
+the problem was to turn that human rock from a defensive to an offensive state in this he excelled having once adopted the cyclops he never left him he became his nurse he measured out his wine weighed his meat and counted his hours of sleep
+it was he who invented the athlete's admirable rules
+after which he undressed his man rubbed him and put him to bed in the street he never allowed him to leave his sight keeping him out of every danger runaway horses the wheels of carriages drunken soldiers pretty girls he watched over his virtue
+this maternal solicitude continually brought some new perfection into the pupil's education he taught him the blow with the fist which breaks the teeth and the twist of the thumb which gouges out the eye what could be more touching thus he was preparing himself for public life to which he was to be called later on
+it is no easy matter to become an accomplished gentleman lord david dirry moir was passionately fond of open air exhibitions of shows of circuses with wild beasts of the caravans of mountebanks of clowns tumblers merrymen open air farces and the wonders of a fair
+the true noble is he who smacks of the people therefore it was that lord david frequented the taverns and low haunts of london and the cinque ports in order to be able at need and without compromising his rank in the white squadron to be cheek by jowl with a topman or a calker
+the duchess josiana towards seventeen o five although lady josiana was twenty three and lord david forty four the wedding had not yet taken place and that for the best reasons in the world
+to have no tie until as late as possible appeared to him to be a prolongation of youth middle aged young men abounded in those rakish times they grew gray as young fops the wig was an accomplice later on powder became the auxiliary
+women too had their successes in the autumn of life witness ninon and marion such were the models of the day josiana and david carried on a flirtation of a particular shade they did not love they pleased each other
+felt herself a princess and carried her authority over him with a high tone in all their arrangements she had a fancy for lord david lord david was handsome but that was over and above the bargain she considered him to be fashionable to be fashionable is everything
+josiana thought great things of his horses his dogs his losses at play his mistresses lord david on his side bowed down before the fascinations of the duchess josiana a maiden without spot or scruple
+haughty inaccessible and audacious he addressed sonnets to her which josiana sometimes read in these sonnets he declared that to possess josiana would be to rise to the stars which did not prevent his always putting the ascent off to the following year
+he waited in the antechamber outside josiana's heart and this suited the convenience of both at court all admired the good taste of this delay lady josiana said it is a bore that i should be obliged to marry lord david
+i who would desire nothing better than to be in love with him josiana was the flesh nothing could be more resplendent she was very tall too tall her hair was of that tinge which might be called red gold she was plump
+fresh strong and rosy with immense boldness and wit she had eyes which were too intelligible she had neither lovers nor chastity she walled herself round with pride
+provided that the objects were uncommon and proportioned to the merits of one so highly placed she thought little of her reputation but much of her glory to appear yielding and to be unapproachable is perfection josiana felt herself majestic and material
+she discoursed on locke she was polite she was suspected of knowing arabic to be the flesh and to be woman are two different things
+which so readily turns to love josiana was not not that she was unfeeling the ancient comparison of flesh to marble is absolutely false the beauty of flesh consists in not being marble
+its beauty is to palpitate to tremble to blush to bleed to have firmness without hardness to be white without being cold to have its sensations and its infirmities its beauty is to be life and marble is death
+the king had made her a duchess and jupiter a nereid a double irradiation of which the strange brightness of this creature was composed in admiring her you felt yourself becoming a pagan and a lackey her origin had been bastardy and the ocean
+if she had stabbed herself it would like lucretia not have been until afterwards she was a virgin stained with every defilement in its visionary stage she was a possible astarte in a real diana she was in the insolence of high birth
+josiana brought to one's mind the line
+two with all that she was a prude it was the fashion remember elizabeth elizabeth was of a type that prevailed in england for three centuries
+the sixteenth seventeenth and eighteenth elizabeth was more than english she was anglican hence the deep respect of the episcopalian church for that queen respect resented by the church of rome which counterbalanced it with a dash of excommunication
+mary stuart less concerned with the church and more with the woman part of the question had little respect for her sister elizabeth and wrote to her as queen to queen and coquette to prude your disinclination to marriage arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being made love to
+mary stuart played with the fan elizabeth with the axe an uneven match they were rivals besides in literature mary stuart composed french verses elizabeth translated horace the ugly elizabeth decreed herself beautiful
+liked quatrains and acrostics had the keys of towns presented to her by cupids bit her lips after the italian fashion rolled her eyes after the spanish had in her wardrobe three thousand dresses and costumes
+collared hatton boxed the ears of essex showed her legs to bassompierre and was a virgin
+cynicism is at least as good as hypocrisy nowadays england whose loyola is named wesley casts down her eyes a little at the remembrance of that past age she is vexed at the memory yet proud of it
+juno resolves herself into araminta a pretension to divinity not admitted creates affectation in default of thunderclaps there is impertinence the temple shrivels into the boudoir not having the power to be a goddess she is an idol
+a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity and then woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes it is a line of circumvallation with a ditch every prude puts on an air of repugnance
+to whom it was said he had sold his sister miss churchill bolingbroke was in his meridian and richelieu in his dawn gallantry found its convenience in a certain medley of ranks men were equalized by the same vices as they were later on perhaps by the same ideas
+degradation of rank an aristocratic prelude began what the revolution was to complete it was not very far off the time when jelyotte was seen publicly sitting in broad daylight on the bed of the marquise d'epinay it is true for manners re echo each other
+that in the sixteenth century smeton's nightcap had been found under anne boleyn's pillow if the word woman signifies fault as i forget what council decided never was woman so womanlike as then never covering her frailty by her charms
+and her weakness by her omnipotence has she claimed absolution more imperiously in making the forbidden the permitted fruit eve fell in making the permitted the forbidden fruit she triumphs that is the climax
+all josiana's instincts impelled her to yield herself gallantly rather than to give herself legally to surrender on the score of gallantry implies learning
+it was a necessity doubtless but what a pity josiana appreciated lord david and showed him off there was between them a tacit agreement neither to conclude nor to break off the engagement they eluded each other this method of making love one step in advance and two back
+it is unbecoming to be married fades one's ribbons and makes one look old an espousal is a dreary absorption of brilliancy a woman handed over to you by a notary how commonplace
+the brutality of marriage creates definite situations suppresses the will kills choice has a syntax like grammar replaces inspiration by orthography makes a dictation of love disperses all life's mysteries
+diminishes the rights both of sovereign and subject by a turn of the scale destroys the charming equilibrium of the sexes the one robust in bodily strength the other all powerful in feminine weakness strength on one side beauty on the other
+makes one a master and the other a servant while without marriage one is a slave the other a queen to make love prosaically decent how gross
+lord david was ripening forty tis a marked period he did not perceive this and in truth he looked no more than thirty he considered it more amusing to desire josiana than to possess her he possessed others he had mistresses
+on the other hand josiana had dreams the duchess josiana had a peculiarity less rare than it is supposed one of her eyes was blue and the other black her pupils were made for love and hate for happiness and misery
+night and day were mingled in her look her ambition was this to show herself capable of impossibilities one day she said to swift you people fancy that you know what scorn is you people meant the human race
+she was a skin deep papist her catholicism did not exceed the amount necessary for fashion
+she wore great dresses of velvet satin or moire some composed of fifteen or sixteen yards of material with embroideries of gold and silver and round her waist many knots of pearls alternating with other precious stones she was extravagant in gold lace
+sometimes she wore an embroidered cloth jacket like a bachelor
+in latitude forty seven degrees
+and longitude seventeen degrees
+in the aftermath of this storm we were thrown back to the east away went any hope of escaping to the landing places of new york or the saint lawrence in despair
+poor ned went into seclusion like captain nemo conseil and i no longer left each other as i said the nautilus veered to the east to be more accurate i should have said to the northeast
+sometimes beneath them the ship wandered for days amid these mists so feared by navigators these are caused chiefly by melting ice which keeps the air extremely damp
+how many ships have perished in these waterways as they tried to get directions from the hazy lights on the coast how many casualties have been caused by these opaque mists how many collisions have occurred with these reefs
+where the breaking surf is covered by the noise of the wind how many vessels have rammed each other
+so the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where every ship defeated
+others newer and reflecting our beacon light on their ironwork and copper undersides among these vessels how many went down with all hands with their crews and hosts of immigrants
+at these trouble spots so prominent in the statistics cape race saint paul island the strait of belle isle the saint lawrence estuary
+and in only a few years how many victims have been furnished to the obituary notices by the royal mail inman and montreal lines by vessels named the solway the isis the paramatta
+the hungarian the canadian the anglo saxon the humboldt
+all run aground by the arctic and the lyonnais sunk in collisions by the president the pacific and the city of glasgow
+of their gloomy rubble the nautilus navigated
+by may fifteenth we were off the southern tip of the grand banks of newfoundland these banks are the result of marine sedimentation an extensive accumulation of organic waste
+brought either from the equator by the gulf stream's current or from the north pole by the countercurrent of cold water that skirts the american coast here too erratically drifting chunks collect from the ice breakup
+here a huge boneyard forms from fish mollusks
+dying over it by the billions the sea is of no great depth at the grand banks a few hundred fathoms at best but to the south there is a deep
+suddenly occurring depression a three thousand meter pit here the gulf stream widens
+a one meter lumpfish blackish on top
+and rare among its brethren in that it practices monogamy a good sized eelpout a type of emerald moray whose flavor is excellent wolffish with big eyes
+viviparous blennies whose eggs hatch inside their bodies like those of snakes bloated gobio
+measuring two decimeters grenadiers with long tails and gleaming with a silvery glow speedy fish venturing far from their high arctic seas our nets also hauled in a bold
+daring vigorous and muscular fish armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins a real scorpion measuring two to three meters the ruthless enemy
+blennies and salmon it was the bullhead of the northerly seas a fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules
+the nautilus's fishermen had some trouble getting a grip on this animal which thanks to the formation of its gill covers
+can protect its respiratory organs from any parching contact with the air and can live out of water for a good while and i'll mention for the record some little banded blennies
+that follow ships into the northernmost seas sharp snouted carp exclusive to the north atlantic scorpionfish and lastly
+chiefly the cod species which i detected in their waters of choice over these inexhaustible grand banks because newfoundland is simply an underwater peak
+you could call these cod mountain fish while the nautilus was clearing a path through their tight ranks
+mercy look at these cod he said why i thought cod were flat like dab or sole
+and spread out on display but in the water they're like mullet spindle shaped and perfectly built for speed i can easily believe master conseil replied but what crowds of them what swarms
+bah my friend there'd be many more without their enemies scorpionfish and human beings do you know how many eggs have been counted in a single female i'll go all out conseil replied
+five hundred thousand eleven million my friend eleven million i refuse to accept that until i count them myself so count them conseil
+but it would be less work to believe me besides frenchmen englishmen americans danes and norwegians catch these cod by the thousands they're eaten in prodigious quantities and without
+the seas would soon be depopulated of them accordingly in england and america alone five thousand ships manned by seventy five thousand seamen go after cod each ship brings back an average catch
+of four thousand four hundred fish making twenty two million off the coast of norway
+the total is the same fine conseil replied i'll take master's word for it i won't count them count what those eleven million eggs but i'll make one comment
+what's that if all their eggs hatched just four codfish could feed england america and norway as we skimmed the depths of the grand banks
+i could see perfectly those long fishing lines each armed with two hundred hooks that every boat dangled by the dozens the lower end of each line dragged the bottom by means of a small grappling iron
+of a cork float the nautilus had to maneuver shrewdly in the midst of this underwater spiderweb but the ship didn't stay long in these heavily traveled waterways it went up to about latitude forty two degrees
+this brought it abreast of saint john's in newfoundland and heart's content where the atlantic cable reaches its end point instead of continuing north the nautilus took an easterly heading
+as if to go along this plateau on which the telegraph cable rests where multiple soundings have given the contours of the terrain with the utmost accuracy it was on may seventeenth
+about five hundred miles from heart's content
+that i spotted this cable lying on the seafloor conseil whom i hadn't alerted mistook it at first for a gigantic sea snake and was gearing up to classify it in his best manner
+the fine lad and let him down gently by giving him various details on the laying of this cable the first cable was put down during the years eighteen fifty seven eighteen fifty eight but
+after transmitting about four hundred telegrams it went dead in eighteen sixty three engineers built a new cable that measured
+four thousand five hundred metric tons and was shipped aboard the great eastern this attempt also failed now then
+on may twenty fifth while submerged to a depth of three thousand eight hundred thirty six meters the nautilus lay in precisely the locality where this second cable suffered the rupture that ruined the undertaking
+the electricians on board decided to cut the cable before fishing it up and by eleven o'clock that evening they had retrieved the damaged part they repaired the joint and its splice
+then the cable was resubmerged but a few days later it snapped again and couldn't be recovered from the ocean depths
+who had risked his whole fortune to promote this undertaking called for a new bond issue it sold out immediately
+which was protected by a padding of textile material enclosed in a metal sheath the great eastern put back to sea on july thirteenth eighteen sixty six
+yet there was one hitch as they gradually unrolled this third cable the electricians observed on several occasions that someone had recently driven nails into it trying to damage its core
+captain anderson his officers and the engineers put their heads together then posted a warning
+without a trial after that these villainous attempts were not repeated by july twenty third the great eastern was lying no farther than eight hundred kilometers from newfoundland
+when it received telegraphed news from ireland
+signed between prussia and austria after the battle of sadova through the mists on the twenty seventh it sighted the port of heart's content
+had ended happily and in its first dispatch young america addressed old europe with these wise words so rarely understood glory to god in the highest and peace on earth to men of good will
+i didn't expect to find this electric cable in mint condition as it looked on leaving its place of manufacture the long snake was covered with seashell rubble and bristling with
+a crust of caked gravel protected it from any mollusks that might bore into it it rested serenely sheltered from the sea's motions under a pressure favorable to the transmission
+that goes from america to europe
+this cable will no doubt last indefinitely because as observers note
+besides on this well chosen plateau the cable never lies at depths that could cause a break the nautilus
+to its lowest reaches located four thousand four hundred thirty one meters down
+then we returned to the locality where the eighteen sixty three accident had taken place there the ocean floor formed a valley
+one hundred twenty kilometers wide into which you could fit mt blanc without its summit poking above the surface of the waves this valley is closed off to the east by a sheer wall
+two thousand meters high we arrived there on may twenty eighth and the nautilus
+head up north and beach us on the british isles no much to my surprise he went back down south and returned to european seas as we swung around the emerald isle
+i spotted cape clear for an instant plus the lighthouse on fastnet rock that guides all those thousands of ships setting out from glasgow or liverpool an important question then popped into my head
+would the nautilus dare to tackle the english channel ned land who promptly reappeared after we hugged shore never stopped questioning me what could i answer him
+after giving the canadian a glimpse of american shores was he about to show me the coast of france but the nautilus kept gravitating southward on may thirtieth
+in sight of land's end it passed between the lowermost tip of england and the scilly islands which it left behind to starboard if it was going to enter the english channel
+it clearly needed to head east it did not all day long on may thirty first the nautilus swept around the sea in a series of circles
+that had me deeply puzzled it seemed to be searching for a locality that it had some trouble finding at noon
+he didn't address a word to me he looked gloomier than ever what was filling him with such sadness was it our proximity to these european shores was he reliving his memories of that country
+he had left behind if so what did he feel remorse or regret for a good while these thoughts occupied my mind and i had a hunch that fate would soon give away the captain's secrets
+the next day june first the nautilus kept to the same tack it was obviously trying to locate some precise spot in the ocean just as on the day before
+captain nemo came to take the altitude of the sun the sea was smooth the skies clear eight miles to the east a big steamship was visible on the horizon line no flag
+was flapping from the gaff of its fore and aft sail and i couldn't tell its nationality a few minutes before the sun passed its zenith
+and took his sights with the utmost precision the absolute calm of the waves facilitated this operation the nautilus lay motionless neither rolling nor pitching i was on the platform just then
+after determining our position the captain pronounced only these words it's right here he went down the hatch had he seen that vessel change course
+and seemingly head toward us i'm unable to say i returned to the lounge the hatch closed and i heard water hissing in the ballast tanks the nautilus began to sink
+on a vertical line because its propeller was in check and no longer furnished any forward motion some minutes later it stopped at a depth of eight hundred thirty three meters and came to rest on the seafloor
+the ceiling lights in the lounge then went out the panels opened and through the windows i saw for a half mile radius the sea brightly lit by the beacon's rays
+i looked to port and saw nothing but the immenseness of these tranquil waters to starboard a prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my attention you would have thought
+it was some ruin enshrouded in a crust of whitened seashells as if under a mantle of snow carefully examining this mass i could identify the swollen outlines of a ship shorn
+of its masts which must have sunk bow first this casualty certainly dated from some far off time to be so caked with the limestone of these waters
+this wreckage must have spent many a year on the ocean floor what ship was this why had the nautilus come to visit its grave was it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged this craft under the waters
+i wasn't sure what to think but next to me i heard captain nemo's voice slowly say originally this ship was christened
+it carried seventy four cannons and was launched in seventeen sixty two on august thirteenth seventeen seventy eight commanded by la poype vertrieux
+it fought valiantly against the preston on july fourth seventeen seventy nine as a member of the squadron under admiral d'estaing it assisted in the capture
+of the island of grenada on september fifth seventeen eighty one under the count de grasse it took part in the battle of chesapeake bay in seventeen ninety four
+the new republic of france changed the name of this ship on april sixteenth of that same year it joined the squadron at brest under rear admiral
+who was entrusted with escorting a convoy of wheat coming from america under the command of admiral van stabel in this second year of the french revolutionary calendar
+this squadron fought an encounter with english vessels sir today is june first eighteen sixty eight or the thirteenth day in the month of pasture
+seventy four years ago to the day at this very spot in latitude
+and longitude seventeen degrees
+its three masts gone water in its hold a third of its crew out of action it preferred to go to the bottom with its three hundred fifty six seamen rather than surrender and with its flag
+nailed up on the afterdeck it disappeared beneath the waves to shouts of long live the republic this is the avenger i exclaimed yes sir the avenger a splendid name
+of this venerable and ancient city gradually slipping from our grasp trembling on the lips of narrative old age and day by day dropping piecemeal into the tomb in a little while thought i and those revered dutch burghers
+who serve as the tottering monuments of good old times will be gathered to their fathers their children engrossed by the empty pleasures or insignificant transactions of the present age will neglect to treasure up the recollections of the past
+and posterity will search in vain for memorials of the days of the patriarchs the origin of our city will be buried in eternal oblivion and even the names and achievements of wouter van twiller
+strange as it may seem though such multitudes of excellent works have been written about this country there are none extant which give any full and satisfactory account of the early history of new york
+or of its three first dutch governors i have however gained much valuable and curious matter from an elaborate manuscript written
+excepting a few errors in orthography which was found in the archives of the stuyvesant family many legends letters and other documents have i likewise gleaned in my researches among the family chests and lumber garrets of our respectable
+by that admirable and praiseworthy institution the new york historical society to which i here publicly return my sincere acknowledgments in the conduct of this inestimable work i have adopted no individual model
+and the strictest adherence to truth throughout my history i have enriched it after the manner of sallust with various characters of ancient worthies drawn at full length and faithfully colored
+sweetened it with the graces of sentiment like tacitus and infused into the whole the dignity the grandeur and magnificence of livy i am aware that i shall incur the censure of numerous very learned and judicious critics for
+of the historian and entice him to turn aside and refresh himself from his wayfaring but i trust it will be found that i have always resumed my staff and addressed myself to my weary journey with renovated spirits
+yet the loose and unconnected manner in which many of the facts herein recorded have come to hand rendered such an attempt extremely difficult this difficulty was likewise increased by one of the grand objects contemplated in my work
+but the chief merit on which i value myself and found my hopes for future regard is that faithful veracity with which i have compiled this invaluable little work
+carefully winnowing away the chaff of hypothesis and discarding the tares of fable which are too apt to spring up and choke the seeds of truth and wholesome knowledge had i been anxious to captivate the superficial throng
+the infant years of our city to introduce a thousand pleasing fictions but i have scrupulously discarded many a pithy tale and marvelous adventure whereby the drowsy ear of summer indolence might be enthralled
+jealously maintaining that fidelity gravity and dignity which should ever distinguish the historian for a writer of this class observes an elegant critic must sustain the character of a wise man writing for the instruction of posterity
+to decay who gathers together their scattered fragments as they rot and who piously at length collects their ashes into the mausoleum of his work and rears a triumphant monument
+to transmit their renown to all succeeding ages what has been the fate of many fair cities of antiquity whose nameless ruins encumber the plains of europe and asia and awaken the fruitless inquiry of the traveler
+they have perished from remembrance for want of a historian the philanthropist may weep over their desolation the poet may wander among their mouldering arches and broken columns
+and indulge the visionary flights of his fancy but alas alas the modern historian whose pen like my own is doomed to confine itself to dull matter of fact
+reunite the thread of generations the same sad misfortune which has happened to so many ancient cities will happen again and from the same sad cause to nine tenths of those which now flourish on the face of the globe
+chapter eight duco van der staal had taken a large vault like studio with a chilly north light up three flights of stairs in the via del babuino here he painted modelled and studied
+in the little shops along the tiber or in the mercato dei fiori that was his passion to hunt through rome for a panel of an old triptych or a fragment of ancient sculpture
+in this way his studio had not remained the large chilly vault like workroom bearing witness to zealous and serious study but had become a refuge for dim coloured remnants of antiquity
+and ancient art a museum for his dreaming spirit already as a child as a boy he had felt that passion for antiquity developing he learnt how to rummage through the stocks of old jewish dealers
+he spent all his pocket money on it and later without reserve the little that he was able to earn for sometimes very seldom he would finish something and sell it
+when he had the money to keep himself going and his personal needs were very small he felt rich and was content in his studio or would wander perfectly content through the streets of rome
+and his favourite headgear was a faded hat battered out of shape by the rain
+he would wander for hours through the ruins and see in a dazzling vision of phantom columns ethereal temples and translucent marble palaces looming up in a shimmering sunlit twilight and the tourists going by with their baedekers
+who passed this long lean young man seated carelessly on the foundations of the temple of saturn would never have believed in his architectural illusions of harmonious ascending lines crowned by an array of statues in noble
+and god like attitudes high in the blue sky but he saw them before him he raised the shafts of the pillars he fluted the severe doric columns he bent and curved the cushioned ionic capitals
+the temples rose in the twinkling of an eye the basilicas shot up as by magic the graven images stood white against the elusive depths of the sky and the via sacra became alive
+he in his admiration lived his dream his past it was as though he had known preexistence in ancient rome and the modern houses the modern capitol
+roman life came into being with a toga'd gesture a line of horace a sudden vision of an emperor's murder
+eaten up with age crumbled martyred mutilated with hammers till only a few occasional pillars lifted and bore a trembling architrave that threatened to come crashing to the ground
+and the browns and greys were so richly and nobly gilded by splashes of sunlight the ruins were so exquisitely beautiful in decay so melancholy in their unwitting fortuitousness of broken lines
+and caused them to burst asunder and shake and tremble for the sake of their wistful aftermath of beauty then his eyes grew moist his heart became more full than he could bear
+and he went away through the arch of titus by the colosseum through the arch of constantine
+neither in his mother nor in his sisters did he find a strain that sympathized with his eccentric tendencies and since that one friend who died he had never found another and had always been lonely within
+and without as though the victim of a predestination which would not allow him to meet with sympathy but he had peopled his loneliness so densely with his dreams that he had never felt unhappy because of it
+and even as he loved roaming alone among the ruins and along the country roads so he cherished the privacy of his lonely studio with the many silent figures on an old panel of some triptych
+on a tapestry or on the many closely hung sketches all around him all with the charm of their lines
+or a shadowy antique cabinet and in between all this lived his china and bronze and old silver while the faded gold embroidery of an ecclesiastical vestment gleamed faintly
+and the old leather bindings of his books stood in comfortable brown rows ready to give forth when his hands opened them images which mistily drifted upwards living their loves and their sorrows in the tempered browns and reds and golds
+of the soundless atmosphere of the studio such was his simple life without much inward doubting because he made no great demands upon himself and without the modern artist's melancholy
+being by nature a little shy of baedekered tourists of short skirted english ladies with their persistent little exclamations of uniform admiration and feeling entirely impossible in the half italian
+half cosmopolitan set of his rather worldly mother and smart little sisters who spent their time dancing and cycling with young italian princes and dukes
+and again until in his musing he seemed to hear it once more on her own lips until she joined the busts and torsos in his studio and appeared before him in the lily like frailness of her visible actuality
+against the preraphaelite stiffness of line
+his life had never known more than the natural virile impulse and the ordinary little love affair with a model
+and unreal balance between a woman who showed herself in the nude for a few lire and petrarch's laura
+and pregnant sense of the word and when he began to think and to think long and often of cornelie de retz
+and dreamed for days for a week about a woman in a poem
+never and that he irritated by some of her sayings had nevertheless seen her stand with her lily like outline
+the bridge the lonely bridge cuts dark across the marsh
+palely reflected in the amber colored water among them a constant banjo twanging of frogs and shrilling
+dark with crumbling railing and planks the bridge leads into the sunset across it many lonely figures their eyes a flare with the sunset their faces glowing with its colors
+salvation army a drum pounds out the hymn loud with gaudy angels tinsel cherubim to drown the fanfare of the street and with exultant lilting beat
+and dinning market stalls where women shout their wares and meat hangs out grotesque distorted by the gas flare's light into one sacred rhythm for the devil's spite a woman's thin raucous voice carries the tune bids men rejoice
+bathe in god's mercy draw near and learn salvation see with their own eyes the mystery cymbals at the hands of a tired girl slim wisp amid the swirl of crowded streets take up the tune
+faces are wan in the arc light's livid glare a wind gust carries the band's flare of song
+till with distance dimming it fades away among the silent dark array of city houses where no soul stirs
+as i go hastily by in the turbulent darkness an oval olive face with the sweetly sullen grace of the virgin when first she sees amid her garden's silver lilies the white robed angel gleam
+an old italian painter laboriously has played his soul away his love all his desire for fragrant things afar from earth shines the madonna as with a veil overlaid by incense smoke and dust age old
+at whose feet in time of dearth or need a myriad men have laid their sorrows and arisen bold incessantly the long rain falls slanting on black walls but through the dark interminable streets
+along pavements where rain beats its sharp tattoo and gas lamps shine greenish gold in the solitude the vision flames through my mood of that italian woman's face
+memory between rounded hills white with patches of buckwheat whose fragrance fills the little breeze that makes the birch leaves quiver beside a rollicking swift river
+light green in the deeps like your eyes in sunshine winds the canal lazy and brown as a water snake full of dazzle and sheen where the breeze sweeps the water with gossamer garments that shake the reeds standing sentinel
+and the marginal line of birches and willows our little steamer pulls its way with jingle of bells and panting throb of old engines in stiff array the water reeds wave and solemnly sway to the wash and swell of our passing
+among the reeds the ripples sob and die away till the canal is still again
+i stood beside you in the bow watched the sunlight lose itself among your hair that the breeze tugged at bright as the shattered sun rays where the prow cut the still water the warm light caught and tangled there
+education agreed that unless something were changed disaster would come to the nation you smiled when i pointed where a group of birches shivered in the green wood shadow up to their knees in water
+white and fair as dryads bathing a row of flat white houses and a wharf glided in sight the hoarse whistle shrieked for a landing bells jangled
+the lake waves were flakes of red gold burnished to copper gold red as the tangled gleam of sunlight in your hair saturnalia
+in men's hearts the mad gods rise and fill the streets with revelling with torchlight that glances on frozen pools with tapers starring the thick fogged night a dance like strayed fireflies
+to earth's brood of souls of old with covered heads and aspen wands mist shrouded priests do ancient rites the black ram's fleece is stained with blood that steams dull red on the frozen ground
+and pale votaries shiver with the cold that numbs the earth and etches patterned mirrors on the ponds whan that aprille
+is it the song of a meadow lark off the brown sere salt marshes or the eager patches in dooryards of yellow and pale lilac crocuses
+rhythmed clank of train couplings at night and the stormy gay tinted sunrises that shade with purple the contours of far off unfamiliar hills night piece
+a silver web has the moon spun a silver web upon all the sky where the frail stars quiver every one like tangled gnats that hum and die
+the moon has tangled the dull night in her silver skein and set alight each dew damp branch with milky flame and huge the moon broods on the night my soul is caught in the web of the moon
+behind those walls in those dark streets like the sound of a river swift unseen flowing in darkness oh the hoarse half heard murmur swirling beneath the snowy beauty of moonlight
+low a grey moon shrouded in sea fog air pregnant with spring rasp of my steps beside the lapping water within the dark
+down the worn out years a sob of broken loves old pain of dead farewells and one face fading into grey a silver web has the moon spun a silver web over all the sky
+before the morning leopold lay wound in the net of a low fever almost as ill as ever but with this difference that his mind was far less troubled and that even his most restless dreams
+to the final execution of the law she thought she could follow it all in his movements and the expressions of his countenance at a certain point the cold dew always appeared on his forehead
+talking face to face with jesus
+was amazing in its beauty for helen herself she was prey to a host of changeful emotions at one time she accused herself bitterly of having been the cause of the return of his illness
+the next a gush of gladness would swell her heart at the thought that now she had him at least safer for a while and that he might die and so escape the whole crowd of horrible possibilities
+for george's manipulation of the magistrate could but delay the disclosure of the truth even should no discovery be made leopold must at length suspect a trick and that would at once drive him to fresh action
+but amongst the rest a feeling which had but lately begun to indicate its far off presence now threatened to bring with it a deeper and more permanent sorrow it became more and more plain to her
+that she had taken the evil part against the one she loved best in the world that she had been as a satan to him had driven him back stood almost bodily in the way to turn him from the path of peace
+while she for the avoidance of shame and pity for the sake of the family as she had said to herself had pursued a course which if successful would at best have resulted in shutting him up as in a madhouse
+with his own inborn horrors with vain remorse and equally vain longing her conscience now that her mind was quieter from the greater distance to which the threatening peril had again withdrawn
+without committing the suicide of surrender she could not see that confession was the very door of refuge and safety towards which he must press george's absence was now again a relief
+and while she feared and shrank from the severity of wingfold she could not help a certain indiscribable sense of safety in his presence at least so long as leopold was too ill to talk for the curate
+he became more and more interested in the woman who could love so strongly and yet not entirely who suffered and must still suffer so much and who a faith even no greater than his own might render comparatively blessed
+but to so many of the secret chambers of the souls of the congregation for what a man dares not could not if he dared and dared not if he could say to another even at the time and in the place fittest of all
+he can say thence open faced before the whole congregation and the person in need thereof may hear it without umbrage or the choking husk of individual application irritating to the rejection of what truth may lie in it for him
+then would men soon understand that not the form of even soundest words availeth anything but a new creature when wingfold was in the pulpit then he could speak as from the secret to the secret but elsewhere he felt
+in regard to helen like a transport ship filled with troops which must go sailing around the shores of an invaded ally
+is it an infirmity of certain kinds of men or a wise provision for their protection that the brightest forms the truth takes in their private cogitations seem to lose half their lustre
+and all their grace when uttered in the presence of an unreceptive nature and they hear as it were their own voice reflected in a poor dull inharmonious echo and are disgusted but on the other hand
+or missing him gloomed back into the land of visions the tenderness of the curate's service the heart that showed itself in everything he did even in the turn and expression of the ministering hand
+was a kind of revelation to helen for while his intellect was hanging about the door asking questions and uneasily shifting hither and thither in its unloved perplexities
+had he not gone farther than his right had he not implied more conviction than was his words could not go beyond his satisfaction with what he found in the gospel or the hopes for the range of his
+conscious life springing therefrom but was he not now making people suppose him more certain of the fact of these things than he was
+even if he had been so carried away by the delight of his heart as to give such an impression it mattered little what was it to other people what he believed or how he believed if he had not been untrue to himself
+no harm would follow was a man never to talk from the highest in him to the forgetting of the lower was a man never to be carried beyond himself and the regions of his knowledge if so then farewell poetry and prophecy
+yea all grand discovery for things must be foreseen ere they can be realized apprehended ere they be comprehended this much he could say for himself and no more that he was ready to lay down his life for the mere chance
+but to the truth to the loveliness and harmony and righteousness and safety that he saw in the idea of the son of man as he read it in the story he dared not say what in a time of persecution torture might work upon him
+but he felt right hopeful that even were he base enough to deny him any cock might crow him back to repentance at the same time he saw plain enough that even if he gave his body to be burned
+nothing could satisfy him of that less than the conscious presence of the perfect charity without that he was still outside the kingdom wandering in a dream around its walls
+and with every fresh conflict every fresh gleam of doubtful victory the essential idea of the master looked more and more lovely and he began to see the working of his doubts on the growth of his heart and soul
+he had much time for reflection as he sat silent by the bedside of leopold sometimes helen would be sitting near though generally when he arrived she went out for her walk but never anything came to him he could utter to her
+chapter five through solway sands through taross moss blindfold he knew the paths to cross by wily turns by desperate bounds had baffled percy's best bloodhounds
+in eske or liddel fords were none but he would ride them one by one alike to him was time or tide december's snow or july's pride alike to him was tide or time moonless midnight or matin prime
+walter scott all the members of the wharton family laid their heads on their pillows that night with a foreboding of some interruption to their ordinary quiet uneasiness kept the sisters from enjoying their usual repose
+and they rose from their beds on the following morning unrefreshed and almost without having closed their eyes on taking an eager and hasty survey of the valley from the windows of their room nothing however but its usual serenity was to be seen
+compose the season for enjoyment in the open air they have their storms but they are distinct and not of long continuance leaving a clear atmosphere and a cloudless sky
+the sisters descended to the parlor with a returning confidence in their brother's security and their own happiness the family were early in assembling around the breakfast table and miss peyton with a little of that minute
+had pleasantly insisted that the absence of her nephew should in no manner interfere with the regular hours she had established consequently the party were already seated when the captain made his appearance
+though the untasted coffee sufficiently proved that by none of his relatives was his absence disregarded i think i did much better he cried taking a chair between his sisters and receiving their offered salutes
+turning to his younger and evidently favorite sister and tapping her cheek did you see banners in the clouds and mistake miss peyton's aeolian harp for rebellious music nay henry rejoined the maid
+looking at him affectionately much as i love my own country the approach of her troops just now would give me great pain the brother made no reply but returning the fondness expressed in her eye by a look of fraternal tenderness
+he gently pressed her hand in silence when caesar who had participated largely in the anxiety of the family and who had risen with the dawn and kept a vigilant watch on the surrounding objects as he stood gazing from one of the windows
+run massa harry run
+run repeated the british officer gathering himself up in military pride no mister caesar running is not my trade while speaking he walked deliberately to the window
+where the family were already collected in the greatest consternation
+his house was surrounded by a dozen sentinels two or three of the dragoons now dismounted and disappeared in a few minutes however they returned to the yard followed by katy from whose
+violent gesticulations it was evident that matters of no trifling concern were on the carpet a short communication with the loquacious housekeeper followed the arrival of the main body of the troop and the advance party remounting
+but they were all haughtily rejected by the young man as unworthy of his character it was too late to retreat to the woods in the rear of the cottage for he would unavoidably be seen and followed by a troop of horse as inevitably taken
+at length his sisters with trembling hands replaced his original disguise the instruments of which had been carefully kept at hand by caesar in expectation of some sudden emergency
+this arrangement was hastily and imperfectly completed as the dragoons entered the lawn and orchard of the locusts riding with the rapidity of the wind and in their turn the whartons were surrounded
+nothing remained now but to meet the impending examination with as much indifference as the family could assume the leader of the horse dismounted and followed by a couple of his men he approached the outer door of the building
+which was slowly and reluctantly opened for his admission by caesar the heavy tread of the trooper as he followed the black to the door of the parlor rang in the ears of the females as it approached nearer and nearer
+and drove the blood from their faces to their hearts with a chill that nearly annihilated feeling a man whose colossal stature manifested the possession of vast strength entered the room and removing his cap
+his appearance did not indicate as belonging to his nature his dark hair hung around his brow in profusion though stained with powder which was worn at that day and his face was nearly hid in the whiskers by which it was disfigured
+still the expression of his eye though piercing was not bad and his voice though deep and powerful was far from unpleasant frances ventured to throw a timid glance at his figure as he entered
+and saw at once the man from whose scrutiny harvey birch had warned them there was so much to be apprehended you have no cause for alarm ladies said the officer pausing a moment and contemplating the pale faces around him
+my business will be confined to a few questions which if freely answered will instantly remove us from your dwelling and what may they be sir stammered mister wharton
+rising from his chair and waiting anxiously for the reply has there been a strange gentleman staying with you during the storm continued the dragoon speaking with interest and in some degree sharing in the evident anxiety of the father
+and has not yet departed this gentleman repeated the other turning to captain wharton and contemplating his figure for a moment
+he approached the youth with an air of comic gravity and with a low bow continued i am sorry for the severe cold you have in your head sir i exclaimed the captain in surprise
+i have no cold in my head i fancied it then from seeing you had covered such handsome black locks with that ugly old wig it was my mistake you will please to pardon it
+mister wharton groaned aloud but the ladies ignorant of the extent of their visitor's knowledge remained in trembling yet rigid silence the captain himself moved his hand involuntarily to his head
+and discovered that the trepidation of his sisters had left some of his natural hair exposed the dragoon watched the movement with a continued smile when seeming to recollect himself turning to the father he proceeded
+mister harper echoed the other feeling a load removed from his heart yes i had forgotten but he is gone and if there be anything wrong in his character we are in entire ignorance of it
+to me he was a total stranger you have but little to apprehend from his character answered the dragoon dryly but he is gone how when and whither
+his countenance gradually lighting into a smile of pleasure
+he turned on his heel and left the apartment the whartons judging from his manner thought he was about to proceed in quest of the object of his inquiries they observed the dragoon on
+gaining the lawn in earnest and apparently pleased conversation with his two subalterns in a few moments orders were given to some of the troops and horsemen left the valley at full speed by its various roads
+the suspense of the party within who were all highly interested witnesses of this scene
+to the civil inquiries which then poured in and amongst which she had the pleasure of distinguishing the much superior solicitude of mister bingley's she could not make a very favourable answer jane was by no means better
+the sisters on hearing this repeated three or four times how much they were grieved how shocking it was to have a bad cold and how excessively they disliked being ill themselves and then thought no more of the matter
+and their indifference towards jane when not immediately before them restored elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her former dislike their brother indeed was the only one of the party whom she could regard with any complacency
+miss bingley was engrossed by mister darcy her sister scarcely less so and as for mister hurst by whom elizabeth sat he was an indolent man
+who when he found her to prefer a plain dish to a ragout had nothing to say to her when dinner was over she returned directly to jane and miss bingley began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room
+she has nothing in short to recommend her but being an excellent walker i shall never forget her appearance this morning she really looked almost wild she did indeed louisa
+six inches deep in mud i am absolutely certain and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office your picture may be very exact louisa said bingley but this was all lost upon me
+certainly not to walk three miles or four miles or five miles
+said bingley i am afraid mister darcy observed miss bingley in a half whisper that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes
+he replied they were brightened by the exercise a short pause followed this speech and missus hurst began again i have an excessive regard for miss jane bennet she is really a very sweet girl
+and i wish with all my heart she were well settled but with such a father and mother and such low connections i am afraid there is no chance of it
+yes and they have another who lives somewhere near cheapside that is capital added her sister and they both laughed heartily
+it would not make them one jot less agreeable but it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world replied darcy to this speech bingley made no answer
+but his sisters gave it their hearty assent and indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend's vulgar relations
+and sat with her till summoned to coffee she was still very poorly and elizabeth would not quit her at all till late in the evening when she had the comfort of seeing her sleep and when it seemed to her rather right than pleasant
+that she should go downstairs herself on entering the drawing room she found the whole party at loo and was immediately invited to join them but suspecting them to be playing high she declined it
+and making her sister the excuse said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay below with a book mister hurst looked at her with astonishment do you prefer reading to cards said he that is rather singular
+miss eliza bennet said miss bingley despises cards she is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else
+he immediately offered to fetch her others all that his library afforded and i wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own credit but i am an idle fellow and though i have not many i have more than i ever looked into
+i am astonished said miss bingley that my father should have left so small a collection of books what a delightful library you have at pemberley mister darcy it ought to be good he replied
+it has been the work of many generations
+charles when you build your house
+i wish it may but i would really advise you to make your purchase in that neighbourhood and take pemberley for a kind of model there is not a finer county in england than derbyshire with all my heart
+i will buy pemberley itself if darcy will sell it i am talking of possibilities charles upon my word caroline i should think it more possible to get pemberley by purchase than by imitation
+said miss bingley will she be as tall as i am i think she will she is now about miss elizabeth bennet's height or rather taller how i long to see her again i never met
+with anybody who delighted me so much such a countenance such manners and so extremely accomplished for her age her performance on the pianoforte is exquisite it is amazing to me said bingley
+the word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen but i am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general
+i cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen in the whole range of my acquaintance that are really accomplished nor i i am sure said miss bingley then
+observed elizabeth you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman yes i do comprehend a great deal in it
+no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with a woman must have a thorough knowledge of music singing drawing dancing and the modern languages to deserve the word
+added darcy and to all this she must yet add something more substantial in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading i am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women
+are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility of all this i never saw such a woman i never saw such capacity and taste and application and elegance as you describe united
+missus hurst and miss bingley both cried out against the injustice of her implied doubt and were both protesting that they knew many women who answered this description when mister hurst called them to order
+with bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward as all conversation was thereby at an end elizabeth soon afterwards left the room elizabeth bennet said miss bingley when the door was closed on her
+a very mean art undoubtedly replied darcy to whom this remark was chiefly addressed there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation
+whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable miss bingley was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to continue the subject
+elizabeth joined them again only to say that her sister was worse and that she could not leave her bingley urged mister jones being sent for immediately while his sisters convinced that no country advice could be of any service
+recommended an express to town for one of the most eminent physicians this she would not hear of but she was not so unwilling to comply with their brother's proposal and it was settled that mister jones should be sent for early in the morning
+if miss bennet were not decidedly better bingley was quite uncomfortable his sisters declared that they were miserable they solaced their wretchedness however by duets after supper
+and some time afterwards from the two elegant ladies who waited on his sisters in spite of this amendment however she requested to have a note sent to longbourn desiring her mother to visit jane and form her own judgement of her situation
+the note was immediately dispatched and its contents as quickly complied with missus bennet accompanied by her two youngest girls reached netherfield soon after the family breakfast had she found jane in any apparent danger
+she would not listen therefore to her daughter's proposal of being carried home neither did the apothecary who arrived about the same time think it at all advisable after sitting a little while with jane
+on miss bingley's appearance and invitation the mother and three daughters all attended her into the breakfast parlour bingley met them with hopes that missus bennet had not found miss bennet worse than she expected
+indeed i have sir was her answer she is a great deal too ill to be moved mister jones says we must not think of moving her we must trespass a little longer on your kindness
+removed cried bingley it must not be thought of my sister i am sure will not hear of her removal you may depend upon it madam said miss bingley with cold civility
+you will not think of quitting it in a hurry i hope though you have but a short lease whatever i do is done in a hurry replied he and therefore if i should resolve to quit netherfield i should probably be off in five minutes
+at present however i consider myself as quite fixed here that is exactly what i should have supposed of you said elizabeth you begin to comprehend me do you cried he turning towards her
+oh yes i understand you perfectly i wish i might take this for a compliment but to be so easily seen through i am afraid is pitiful that is as it happens
+it does not follow that a deep intricate character is more or less estimable than such a one as yours lizzy cried her mother remember where you are and do not run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home
+i did not know before continued bingley immediately that you were a studier of character it must be an amusing study
+they have at least that advantage the country said darcy can in general supply but a few subjects for such a study in a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and unvarying society
+but people themselves alter so much
+offended by his manner of mentioning a country neighbourhood i assure you there is quite as much of that going on in the country as in town everybody was surprised and darcy after looking at her for a moment
+turned silently away missus bennet who fancied she had gained a complete victory over him continued her triumph i cannot see that london has any great advantage over the country for my part
+they have each their advantages and i can be equally happy in either aye that is because you have the right disposition but that gentleman looking at darcy seemed to think the country was nothing at all
+indeed mamma you are mistaken said elizabeth blushing for her mother you quite mistook mister darcy he only meant that there was not such a variety of people to be met with in the country as in the town
+which you must acknowledge to be true certainly my dear nobody said there were but as to not meeting with many people in this neighbourhood i believe there are few neighbourhoods larger i know we dine with four and twenty families
+nothing but concern for elizabeth could enable bingley to keep his countenance his sister was less delicate and directed her eyes towards mister darcy with a very expressive smile
+elizabeth for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother's thoughts now asked her if charlotte lucas had been at longbourn since her coming away
+so much the man of fashion so genteel and easy he has always something to say to everybody that is my idea of good breeding and those persons who fancy themselves very important
+and never open their mouths quite mistake the matter did charlotte dine with you no she would go home i fancy she was wanted about the mince pies
+for my part mister bingley i always keep servants that can do their own work my daughters are brought up very differently but everybody is to judge for themselves and the lucases are a very good sort of girls i assure you it is a pity they are not handsome
+not that i think charlotte so very plain but then she is our particular friend
+i do not trust my own partiality when she was only fifteen there was a man at my brother gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister in law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away
+but however he did not perhaps he thought her too young however he wrote some verses on her and very pretty they were and so ended his affection said elizabeth impatiently
+there has been many a one i fancy overcome in the same way i wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love i have been used to consider poetry as the food of love said darcy
+of a fine stout healthy love it may everything nourishes what is strong already but if it be only a slight thin sort of inclination i am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away
+darcy only smiled and the general pause which ensued made elizabeth tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself again she longed to speak but could think of nothing to say
+and forced his younger sister to be civil also and say what the occasion required she performed her part indeed without much graciousness but missus bennet was satisfied and soon afterwards ordered her carriage upon this signal
+the youngest of her daughters put herself forward the two girls had been whispering to each other during the whole visit and the result of it was that the youngest should tax mister bingley with having promised on his first coming into the country to give a ball at netherfield
+lydia was a stout well grown girl of fifteen with a fine complexion and good humoured countenance a favourite with her mother whose affection had brought her into public at an early age she had high animal spirits
+and a sort of natural self consequence which the attention of the officers to whom her uncle's good dinners and her own easy manners recommended her had increased into assurance
+and abruptly reminded him of his promise
+his answer to this sudden attack was delightful to their mother's ear i am perfectly ready i assure you to keep my engagement and when your sister is recovered you shall if you please name the very day of the ball
+but you would not wish to be dancing when she is ill lydia declared herself satisfied
+and by that time most likely captain carter would be at meryton again and when you have given your ball she added i shall insist on their giving one also i shall tell colonel forster it will be quite a shame if he does not
+missus bennet and her daughters then departed and elizabeth returned instantly to jane leaving her own and her relations behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies and mister darcy the latter of whom however
+could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of her in spite of all miss bingley's witticisms on
+ponsonby sound build wigwams and settle the fuegians bifurcation of the beagle channel glaciers return to the ship second visit in the ship to the settlement equality of condition amongst the natives
+having now finished with patagonia and the falkland islands i will describe our first arrival in tierra del fuego a little after noon we doubled cape saint diego and entered the famous strait of le maire
+we kept close to the fuegian shore but the outline of the rugged inhospitable statenland was visible amidst the clouds in the afternoon we anchored in the bay of good success while entering we were saluted in a manner becoming the inhabitants of this savage land
+a group of fuegians partly concealed by the entangled forest were perched on a wild point overhanging the sea and as we passed by they sprang up and waving their tattered cloaks sent forth a loud and sonorous shout the savages followed the ship
+and just before dark we saw their fire and again heard their wild cry the harbour consists of a fine piece of water half surrounded by low rounded mountains of clay slate which are covered to the water's edge by one dense gloomy forest
+a single glance at the landscape was sufficient to show me how widely different it was from anything i had ever beheld at night it blew a gale of wind and heavy squalls from the mountains swept past us
+and we as well as others may call this good success bay in the morning the captain sent a party to communicate with the fuegians when we came within hail
+and began to shout most vehemently wishing to direct us where to land when we were on shore the party looked rather alarmed but continued talking and making gestures with great rapidity it was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle i ever beheld
+i could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal
+the chief spokesman was old and appeared to be the head of the family the three others were powerful young men about six feet high the women and children had been sent away these fuegians are a very different race from the stunted miserable wretches farther westward
+and they seem closely allied to the famous patagonians of the strait of magellan their only garment consists of a mantle made of guanaco skin with the wool outside this they wear just thrown over their shoulders leaving their persons as often exposed as covered
+his face was crossed by two broad transverse bars one painted bright red reached from ear to ear and included the upper lip the other white like chalk extended above and parallel to the first so that even his eyelids were thus coloured
+the other two men were ornamented by streaks of black powder made of charcoal the party altogether closely resembled the devils which come on the stage in plays like der freischutz their very attitudes were abject
+and the expression of their countenances distrustful surprised and startled after we had presented them with some scarlet cloth which they immediately tied round their necks they became good friends this was shown by the old man patting our breasts
+as people do when feeding chickens i walked with the old man and this demonstration of friendship was repeated several times it was concluded by three hard slaps which were given me on the breast and back at the same time he then bared his bosom for me to return the compliment which being done
+he seemed highly pleased the language of these people according to our notions scarcely deserves to be called articulate captain cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat but certainly no european ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse guttural and clicking sounds
+they are excellent mimics as often as we coughed or yawned or made any odd motion they immediately imitated us some of our party began to squint and look awry but one of the young fuegians whose whole face was painted black excepting a white band across his eyes
+succeeded in making far more hideous grimaces they could repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed them and they remembered such words for some time yet we europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language
+which of us for instance could follow an american indian through a sentence of more than three words all savages appear to possess to an uncommon degree this power of mimicry i was told almost in the same words of the same ludicrous habit among the caffres
+the australians likewise have long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man so that he may be recognized how can this faculty be explained is it a consequence of the more practised habits of perception and keener senses common to all men in a savage state
+as compared with those long civilized when a song was struck up by our party i thought the fuegians would have fallen down with astonishment with equal surprise they viewed our dancing but one of the young men when asked had no objection to a little waltzing
+little accustomed to europeans as they appeared to be yet they knew and dreaded our fire arms nothing would tempt them to take a gun in their hands they begged for knives calling them by the spanish word
+they explained also what they wanted by acting as if they had a piece of blubber in their mouth and then pretending to cut instead of tear it i have not as yet noticed the fuegians whom we had on board
+during the former voyage of the adventure and beagle in eighteen twenty six to eighteen thirty captain fitz roy seized on a party of natives as hostages for the loss of a boat which had been stolen to the great jeopardy of a party employed on the survey
+and some of these natives as well as a child whom he bought for a pearl button he took with him to england determining to educate them and instruct them in religion at his own expense to settle these natives in their own country
+was one chief inducement to captain fitz roy to undertake our present voyage and before the admiralty had resolved to send out this expedition captain fitz roy had generously chartered a vessel and would himself have taken them back the natives were accompanied by a missionary
+r matthews of whom and of the natives captain fitz roy has published a full and excellent account two men one of whom died in england of the small pox a boy and a little girl were originally taken and we had now on board
+york minster jemmy button whose name expresses his purchase money and fuegia basket york minster was a full grown short thick powerful man his disposition was reserved taciturn morose
+and when excited violently passionate his affections were very strong towards a few friends on board his intellect good jemmy button was a universal favourite but likewise passionate the expression of his face at once showed his nice disposition
+he was merry and often laughed and was remarkably sympathetic with any one in pain when the water was rough i was often a little sea sick and he used to come to me and say in a plaintive voice poor poor fellow but the notion after his aquatic life
+of a man being sea sick was too ludicrous and he was generally obliged to turn on one side to hide a smile or laugh
+poor poor fellow he was of a patriotic disposition and he liked to praise his own tribe and country
+and he abused all the other tribes he stoutly declared that there was no devil in his land jemmy was short thick and fat but vain of his personal appearance he used always to wear gloves
+his hair was neatly cut and he was distressed if his well polished shoes were dirtied he was fond of admiring himself in a looking glass and a merry faced little indian boy from the rio negro whom we had for some months on board soon perceived this and used to mock him
+too much skylark it seems yet wonderful to me when i think over all his many good qualities that he should have been of the same race and doubtless partaken of the same character with the miserable degraded savages whom we first met here lastly
+fuegia basket was a nice modest reserved young girl with a rather pleasing but sometimes sullen expression and very quick in learning anything especially languages this she showed in picking up some portuguese and spanish
+although all three could both speak and understand a good deal of english it was singularly difficult to obtain much information from them concerning the habits of their countrymen this was partly owing to their apparent difficulty in understanding the simplest alternative
+every one accustomed to very young children knows how seldom one can get an answer even to so simple a question as whether a thing is black or white the idea of black or white seems alternately to fill their minds so it was with these fuegians
+and hence it was generally impossible to find out by cross questioning whether one had rightly understood anything which they had asserted their sight was remarkably acute it is well known that sailors from long practice can make out a distant object much better than a landsman
+and jemmy when he had any little quarrel with the officer on watch would say me see ship me no tell it was interesting to watch the conduct of the savages when we landed towards jemmy button
+they immediately perceived the difference between him and ourselves and held much conversation one with another on the subject the old man addressed a long harangue to jemmy which it seems was to invite him to stay with them
+but jemmy understood very little of their language and was moreover thoroughly ashamed of his countrymen when york minster afterwards came on shore they noticed him in the same way and told him he ought to shave yet he had not twenty dwarf hairs on his face whilst we all wore our untrimmed beards
+they examined the colour of his skin and compared it with ours one of our arms being bared they expressed the liveliest surprise and admiration at its whiteness just in the same way in which i have seen the ourangoutang do at the zoological gardens
+we thought that they mistook two or three of the officers who were rather shorter and fairer though adorned with large beards for the ladies of our party
+that i dare say he thought himself the handsomest man in tierra del fuego after our first feeling of grave astonishment was over nothing could be more ludicrous than the odd mixture of surprise and imitation which these savages every moment exhibited
+the next day i attempted to penetrate some way into the country tierra del fuego may be described as a mountainous land partly submerged in the sea so that deep inlets and bays occupy the place where valleys should exist
+the mountain sides except on the exposed western coast are covered from the water's edge upwards by one great forest
+and are succeeded by a band of peat with minute alpine plants and this again is succeeded by the line of perpetual snow which according to captain king in the strait of magellan descends to between three thousand and four thousand feet
+is most rare i recollect only one little flat piece near port famine and another of rather larger extent near goeree road in both places and everywhere else the surface is covered by a thick bed of swampy peat even within the forest
+the ground is concealed by a mass of slowly putrefying vegetable matter which from being soaked with water yields to the foot finding it nearly hopeless to push my way through the wood i followed the course of a mountain torrent
+at first from the waterfalls and number of dead trees i could hardly crawl along but the bed of the stream soon became a little more open from the floods having swept the sides i continued slowly to advance for an hour along the broken and rocky banks
+and was amply repaid by the grandeur of the scene the gloomy depth of the ravine well accorded with the universal signs of violence on every side were lying irregular masses of rock and torn up trees other trees though still erect
+were decayed to the heart and ready to fall the entangled mass of the thriving and the fallen reminded me of the forests within the tropics yet there was a difference for in these still solitudes death instead of life seemed the predominant spirit
+had cleared a straight space down the mountain side by this road i ascended to a considerable elevation and obtained a good view of the surrounding woods the trees all belong to one kind the fagus betuloides
+for the number of the other species of fagus and of the winter's bark is quite inconsiderable this beech keeps its leaves throughout the year but its foliage is of a peculiar brownish green colour with a tinge of yellow as the whole landscape is thus coloured
+it has a sombre dull appearance nor is it often enlivened by the rays of the sun
+about fifteen hundred feet high which captain fitz roy has called after sir j banks in commemoration of his disastrous excursion which proved fatal to two men of his party and nearly so to doctor solander the snow storm which was the cause of their misfortune
+we followed the same water course as on the previous day till it dwindled away and we were then compelled to crawl blindly among the trees these from the effects of the elevation and of the impetuous winds were low thick and crooked
+at length we reached that which from a distance appeared like a carpet of fine green turf but which to our vexation turned out to be a compact mass of little beech trees about four or five feet high
+they were as thick together as box in the border of a garden and we were obliged to struggle over the flat but treacherous surface
+a ridge connected this hill with another distant some miles and more lofty so that patches of snow were lying on it as the day was not far advanced i determined to walk there and collect plants along the road
+it would have been very hard work had it not been for a well beaten and straight path made by the guanacos for these animals like sheep always follow the same line when we reached the hill we found it the highest in the immediate neighbourhood
+and the waters flowed to the sea in opposite directions we obtained a wide view over the surrounding country to the north a swampy moorland extended
+well becoming tierra del fuego there was a degree of mysterious grandeur in mountain behind mountain with the deep intervening valleys all covered by one thick dusky mass of forest the atmosphere likewise in this climate
+where gale succeeds gale with rain hail and sleet seems blacker than anywhere else in the strait of magellan looking due southward from port famine the distant channels between the mountains appeared from their gloominess to lead beyond the confines of this world
+and on the succeeding day favoured to an uncommon degree by a fine easterly breeze we closed in with the barnevelts and running past cape deceit with its stony peaks about three o'clock doubled the weather beaten cape horn the evening was calm and bright
+and we enjoyed a fine view of the surrounding isles cape horn however demanded his tribute and before night sent us a gale of wind directly in our teeth we stood out to sea and on the second day again made the land
+when we saw on our weather bow this notorious promontory in its proper form veiled in a mist and its dim outline surrounded by a storm of wind and water great black clouds were rolling across the heavens and squalls of rain with hail
+that the captain determined to run into wigwam cove this is a snug little harbour not far from cape horn and here at christmas eve we anchored in smooth water the only thing which reminded us of the gale outside
+was every now and then a puff from the mountains which made the ship surge at her anchors
+rises to the height of seventeen hundred feet the surrounding islands all consist of conical masses of greenstone associated sometimes with less regular hills of baked and altered clay slate this part of tierra del fuego
+may be considered as the extremity of the submerged chain of mountains already alluded to the cove takes its name of wigwam from some of the fuegian habitations but every bay in the neighbourhood might be so called with equal propriety the inhabitants
+living chiefly upon shell fish are obliged constantly to change their place of residence but they return at intervals to the same spots as is evident from the piles of old shells which must often amount to many tons in freight
+the fuegian wigwam resembles in size and dimensions a haycock it merely consists of a few broken branches stuck in the ground and very imperfectly thatched on one side with a few tufts of grass and rushes the whole cannot be the work of an hour
+and it is only used for a few days at goeree roads i saw a place where one of these naked men had slept which absolutely offered no more cover than the form of a hare the man was evidently living by himself
+on the west coast however the wigwams are rather better for they are covered with seal skins we were detained here several days by the bad weather the climate is certainly wretched the summer solstice was now passed
+yet every day snow fell on the hills and in the valleys there was rain accompanied by sleet the thermometer generally stood
+from the damp and boisterous state of the atmosphere
+one fancied the climate even worse than it really was while going one day on shore near wollaston island we pulled alongside a canoe with six fuegians these were the most abject and miserable creatures i anywhere beheld
+on the east coast the natives as we have seen have guanaco cloaks and on the west they possess seal skins amongst these central tribes the men generally have an otter skin or some small scrap about as large as a pocket handkerchief
+which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as low down as their loins it is laced across the breast by strings and according as the wind blows it is shifted from side to side but these fuegians in the canoe were quite naked and even one full grown woman was absolutely so
+it was raining heavily and the fresh water together with the spray trickled down her body in another harbour not far distant a woman who was suckling a recently born child came one day alongside the vessel and remained there out of mere curiosity
+their voices discordant and their gestures violent viewing such men one can hardly make one's self believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world it is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy
+how much more reasonably the same question may be asked with respect to these barbarians at night five or six human beings naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals
+whenever it is low water winter or summer night or day they must rise to pick shell fish from the rocks and the women either dive to collect sea eggs or sit patiently in their canoes and with a baited hair line without any hook jerk out little fish
+if a seal is killed or the floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered it is a feast and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi they often suffer from famine
+i heard mister low a sealing master intimately acquainted with the natives of this country give a curious account of the state of a party of one hundred and fifty natives on the west coast who were very thin and in great distress
+a succession of gales prevented the women from getting shell fish on the rocks and they could not go out in their canoes to catch seal a small party of these men one morning set out and the other indians explained to him that they were going a four days journey for food
+as soon as the blubber was brought into a wigwam an old man cut off thin slices and muttering over them broiled them for a minute
+who during this time preserved a profound silence mister low believes that whenever a whale is cast on shore the natives bury large pieces of it in the sand as a resource in time of famine and a native boy whom he had on board once found a stock thus buried
+the different tribes when at war are cannibals from the concurrent but quite independent evidence of the boy taken by mister low and of jemmy button it is certainly true that when pressed in winter by hunger
+they kill and devour their old women before they kill their dogs the boy being asked by mister low why they did this answered doggies catch otters old women no this boy described the manner in which they are killed by being held over smoke and thus choked
+he imitated their screams as a joke and described the parts of their bodies which are considered best to eat horrid as such a death by the hands of their friends and relatives must be the fears of the old women when hunger begins to press are more painful to think of
+but that they are pursued by the men and brought back to the slaughter house at their own firesides captain fitz roy could never ascertain that the fuegians have any distinct belief in a future life they sometimes bury their dead in caves
+and sometimes in the mountain forests we do not know what ceremonies they perform jemmy button would not eat land birds because eat dead men they are unwilling even to mention their dead friends we have no reason to believe that they perform any sort of religious worship
+though perhaps the muttering of the old man before he distributed the putrid blubber to his famished party may be of this nature each family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor whose office we could never clearly ascertain jemmy believed in dreams
+though not as i have said in the devil i do not think that our fuegians were much more superstitious than some of the sailors for an old quartermaster firmly believed that the successive heavy gales which we encountered off cape horn were caused by our having the fuegians on board
+the nearest approach to a religious feeling which i heard of was shown by york minster
+in a wild and excited manner he also related that his brother one day whilst returning to pick up some dead birds which he had left on the coast observed some feathers blown by the wind his brother said york imitating his manner what that
+and crawling onwards he peeped over the cliff and saw wild man picking his birds he crawled a little nearer and then hurled down a great stone and killed him york declared for a long time afterwards storms raged and much rain and snow fell
+as far as we could make out he seemed to consider the elements themselves as the avenging agents it is evident in this case how naturally in a race a little more advanced in culture the elements would become personified what the bad wild men were
+has always appeared to me most mysterious from what york said when we found the place like the form of a hare where a single man had slept the night before
+but other obscure speeches made me doubt this i have sometimes imagined that the most probable explanation was that they were insane the different tribes have no government or chief yet each is surrounded by other hostile tribes speaking different dialects
+and separated from each other only by a deserted border or neutral territory the cause of their warfare appears to be the means of subsistence their country is a broken mass of wild rocks lofty hills and useless forests
+and these are viewed through mists and endless storms the habitable land is reduced to the stones on the beach in search of food they are compelled unceasingly to wander from spot to spot and so steep is the coast that they can only move about in their wretched canoes
+they cannot know the feeling of having a home and still less that of domestic affection for the husband is to the wife a brutal master to a laborious slave was a more horrid deed ever perpetrated than that witnessed on the west coast by byron
+who saw a wretched mother pick up her bleeding dying infant boy whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the stones for dropping a basket of sea eggs how little can the higher powers of the mind be brought into play what is there for imagination to picture
+for reason to compare or judgment to decide upon to knock a limpet from the rock does not require even cunning that lowest power of the mind their skill in some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals for it is not improved by experience
+the canoe their most ingenious work poor as it is has remained the same as we know from drake for the last two hundred and fifty years whilst beholding these savages one asks whence have they come what could have tempted
+or what change compelled a tribe of men to leave the fine regions of the north to travel down the cordillera or backbone of america to invent and build canoes which are not used by the tribes of chile peru and brazil
+and then to enter on one of the most inhospitable countries within the limits of the globe although such reflections must at first seize on the mind yet we may feel sure that they are partly erroneous there is no reason to believe that the fuegians decrease in number
+therefore we must suppose that they enjoy a sufficient share of happiness of whatever kind it may be to render life worth having
+he surveyed the house from the sidewalk watching with a sort of speculative satisfaction a man's shadow that passed constantly to and fro across the drawn blinds of one of the lower windows
+the rest of the house was in darkness yes said jimmie dale nodding his head i rather thought so the servants will have retired hours ago it's safe enough
+i want to see mister thomas h carling cashier of the hudson mercantile national bank it's very important said jimmie dale earnestly i am mister carling replied the other what is it
+jimmie dale leaned forward from headquarters with a report he said in a low tone ah exclaimed the bank official sharply well it's about time i've been waiting up for it
+though i expected you would telephone rather than this come in thank you said jimmie dale courteously and stepped into the hall the other closed the front door the servants are in bed of course
+he explained as he led the way toward the lighted room this way please behind the other across the hall jimmie dale followed and close at carling's heels entered the room which was fitted up
+quite evidently regardless of cost as a combination library and study carling in a somewhat pompous fashion walked straight ahead toward the carved mahogany flat topped desk and as he reached it
+waved his hand take a chair he said over his shoulder and then turning in the act of dropping into his own chair grasped suddenly at the edge of the desk instead
+and with a low startled cry stared across the room jimmie dale was leaning back against the door that was closed now behind him and on jimmie dale's face was a black silk mask
+for an instant neither man spoke nor moved then carling spare built dapper in evening clothes edged back from the desk and laughed a little uncertainly
+as he smiled in private you've a strange method of securing privacy haven't you a bit melodramatic isn't it
+jimmie dale smiled indulgently my mask is only for effect he said my name is smith yes said carling i am very stupid thank you
+he had reached the other side of the room now and with a quick sudden movement jerked his hand to the dial of the safe that stood against the wall but jimmie dale was quicker without shifting his position his automatic whipped from his pocket
+held a disconcerting bead on carling's forehead please don't do that said jimmie dale softly it's rather a good make that safe i dare say it would take me half an hour to open it
+his voice was rising gradually well sir let me tell you that mister carling said jimmie dale in a low even tone unless you moderate your voice some one in the house might hear you i am quite well aware of that
+extracted the key from the door lock held it up for the other to see then dropped it into his pocket and his voice cold before
+jimmie dale moved over and stood in front of carling on the other side of the desk and stared silently at the immaculate fashionably groomed figure before him under the prolonged gaze carling's composure
+in a measure at least seemed to forsake him he began to drum nervously with his fingers on the desk and shift uneasily in his chair and then from first one pocket and then the other
+said jimmie dale slowly i haven't counted it your bank was robbed this evening at closing time i understand yes carling's voice was excited now
+but you how do you mean that you are returning the money to the bank exactly said jimmie dale carling was once more the pompous bank official
+he leaned back and surveyed jimmie dale critically with his little black eyes ah quite so he observed that accounts for the mask but i am still a little in the dark under the circumstances
+it is quite impossible that you should have stolen the money yourself and i didn't said jimmie dale i found it hidden in the home of one of your employees
+in moyne's home up in harlem
+you're wiser than you know my man that's what we suspected
+i'll telephone headquarters to make the arrest at once just a minute interposed jimmie dale gravely i want you to listen to a little story first a story
+what has a story got to do with this snapped carling the man has got a home said jimmie dale softly a home and a wife and a little baby girl
+you want to plead for him carling flung out gruffly well he should have thought of all that before it's quite useless for you to bring it up the man has had his chance already
+said carling icily you refuse absolutely jimmie dale's voice had a lingering wistful note in it i refuse said carling bluntly i won't have anything to do with it
+your bank was robbed to night of one hundred thousand dollars there are ten thousand here the other ninety thousand are in your safe you lie ashen to the lips carling had risen in his chair
+you lie he cried do you hear you lie i tell you you lie jimmie dale's lips parted ominously sit down he gritted between his teeth the white in carling's face had turned to gray
+his lips were working mechanically he sank down again in his chair jimmie dale still leaned over the desk resting his weight on his right elbow the automatic in his right hand covering carling you cur whispered
+jimmie dale there's just one reason only one that keeps me from putting a bullet through you while you sit there we'll get to that in a moment there is that little story first shall i tell it to you now
+for the past four years and god knows how many before that you've gone the pace the lavishness of this bachelor establishment of yours is common talk in new york far in excess of a bank cashier's salary
+but you were supposed to be a wealthy man in your own right and so in reality you were once but you went through your fortune two years ago
+exposure threatening you at any moment why don't you tell me again that i lie carling but now the man made no answer he had sunk a little deeper in his chair
+a dawning look of terror in the eyes that held fascinated on jimmie dale you cur said jimmie dale again you cur with your devil's work a year ago you saw this night coming
+when you must have money or face ruin and exposure you saw it then a year ago the day that moyne concealing nothing of his prison record applied through friends for a position in the bank
+your co officials were opposed to his appointment but you do you remember how you pleaded to give the man his chance and in your hellish ingenuity saw your way then out of the trap an ex convict from sing sing
+it was enough wasn't it what chance had he jimmie dale paused his left hand clenched until the skin formed whitish knobs over the knuckles carling's tongue sought his lips made a circuit of them
+and he tried to speak but his voice was an incoherent muttering i'll not waste words said jimmie dale in his grim monotone i'm not sure enough myself that i could keep my hands off you much longer
+the actual details of how you stole the money to day do not matter now a little later perhaps in court but not now you were the last to leave the bank
+but before leaving you pretended to discover the theft of a hundred thousand dollars that done up in a paper parcel was even then reposing in your desk you brought the parcel home put it in that safe there
+and notified the president of the bank by telephone from here of the robbery suggesting that police headquarters be advised at once he told you to go ahead and act as you saw best you notified the police
+the ex convict in the bank's employ you knew moyne was dining out to night you knew where and at a hint from you the police took up the trail a little later in the evening you took these two packages of banknotes from the rest
+and with this steamship ticket which you obtained yesterday while out at lunch by sending a district messenger boy with the money and instructions in a sealed envelope to purchase for you you went up to the moynes flat
+in harlem for the purpose of secreting them somewhere there you pretended to be much disappointed at finding moyne out you had just come for a little social visit
+to get better acquainted with the home life of your employees missus moyne was genuinely pleased and grateful
+who was already asleep in bed
+you jimmie dale's voice choked again you blot on god's earth you slipped the money and ticket under the child's mattress carling came forward with a lurch in his chair and his hands went out
+and it was safer much more circumspect on your part not to order the flat searched at once but only as a last resort as it were after you had led the police to trail him all evening and still remain without a clew
+and besides of course not until you had planted the evidence that was to damn him and wreck his life and home you were even generous in the amount you deprived yourself of out of the hundred thousand dollars
+evidence that he had done the job and had the balance somewhere what would his denials his protestations of innocence count for he was an ex convict a hardened criminal caught red handed with a portion of the proceeds of robbery
+and then jimmie dale laughed not pleasantly yes there's a way carling he said grimly that's why i'm here he picked up a sheet of writing paper and pushed it across the desk then a pen
+no he cried i won't i can't my god i i won't the automatic in jimmie dale's hand edged forward the fraction of an inch i have not used this yet you understand now why don't you he said under his breath
+no no carling pushed away the pen i'm ruined ruined as it is but this would mean the penitentiary too where you tried to send an innocent man in your place you hound where you some other way
+carling was babbling let me out of this for god's sake let me out of this carling said jimmie dale hoarsely i stood beside a little bed to night and looked at a baby girl a little baby girl with golden hair
+who smiled as she slept carling shivered and passed a shaking hand across his face take this pen said jimmie dale monotonously or this the automatic
+lifted until the muzzle was on a line with carling's eyes carling's hand reached out still shaking and took the pen and his body dragged limply forward hung over the desk
+the pen spluttered on the paper a bead of sweat spurting from the man's forehead dropped to the sheet there was silence in the room a minute passed another
+carling's pen travelled haltingly across the paper then with a queer low cry as he signed his name he dropped the pen from his fingers and rising unsteadily from his chair
+i guess it's all up i guess i knew it would be some day moyne hadn't anything to do with it i stole the money myself from the bank to night i guess it's all up
+thomas h carling from the paper jimmie dale's eyes shifted to the figure by the couch and the paper fluttered suddenly from his fingers to the desk carling was reeling clutching at his throat
+a small glass vial rolled upon the carpet and then even as jimmie dale sprang forward the other pitched head long over the couch and in a moment it was over presently jimmie dale picked up the vial
+and dropped it back on the floor again there was no label on it but it needed none the strong penetrating odor of bitter almonds was telltale evidence enough it was prussic
+or hydrocyanic acid probably the most deadly poison and the swiftest in its action that was known to science carling had provided against that some day in his confession for a little space
+motionless jimmie dale stood looking down at the silent outstretched form then he walked slowly back to the desk and slowly deliberately picked up the signed confession and the steamship ticket he held them an instant
+staring at them then methodically began to tear them into little pieces a strange tired smile hovering on his lips the man was dead now there would be disgrace enough for some one to bear a mother perhaps
+who knew and there was another way now since the man was dead jimmie dale put the pieces in his pocket went to the safe opened it and took out a parcel locked the safe carefully
+and carried the parcel to the desk he opened it there inside were nearly two dozen little packages of hundred dollar bills the other two packages that he had brought with him he added to the rest
+from his pocket he took out the thin metal insignia case and with the tiny tweezers lifted up one of the gray coloured diamond shaped paper seals he moistened the adhesive side and
+still holding it by the tweezers dropped it on his handkerchief and pressed the seal down on the face of the topmost package of banknotes he tied the parcel up then and picking up the pen addressed it in printed characters
+with the parcel under his arm stepped to the door and unlocked it he paused for an instant on the threshold for a single quick comprehensive glance around the room then passed on out into the street
+at the corner he stopped to light a cigarette and the flame of the match spurting up disclosed a face that was worn and haggard he threw the match away smiled a little wearily and went on
+a white gloved arm a voice and a silvery laugh just that no more jimmie dale in his favourite seat an aisle seat some seven or eight rows back from the orchestra stared at the stage
+to all outward appearances absorbed in the last act of the play inwardly quite oblivious to the fact that even a play was going on a white gloved arm a voice
+and a silvery laugh the words had formed themselves into a sort of singsong refrain that for the last few days had been running through his head a strange enough guiding star to mould and dictate every action in his life
+and that was all he had ever seen of her all that he had ever heard of her except those letters of course each of which had outlined the details of some affair for the gray seal to execute
+indeed it seemed a great length of time now since he had heard from her even in that way though it was not so many days ago after all perhaps it was the calm as it were that by contrast
+had given place to the strenuous months and weeks just past the storm raised by the newspapers at the theft of old luddy's diamonds had subsided into sporadic diatribes aimed at the police kline
+of the secret service had finally admitted defeat and a shadow no longer skulked day and night at the entrance to the sanctuary and larry the bat bore the government indorsement so to speak of being no more suspicious a character
+than that of a disreputable but harmless dope fiend of the underworld larry the bat the gray seal jimmie dale the millionaire
+subconsciously telegraphing to his mind the fact that the texture of the paper was hers hers and she must be one of those around him one of those crowding either the row of seats in front or behind
+or one of those just passing in the aisle it had fallen at his feet as he had stooped over for his hat but from just exactly what direction he could not tell his eyes eagerly hungrily
+critically swept face after face which one was hers what irony she whom he would have given his life to know for whom indeed he risked his life every hour of the twenty four
+was close to him now within reach and as far removed as though a thousand miles separated them she was there but he could not recognise a face that he had never seen
+with an effort he choked back the bitter impotent laugh that rose to his lips they were talking laughing around him her voice yes
+he had once heard that and that he would recognise again he strained to catch to individualise the tone sounds that floated in a medley about him it was useless of course
+every effort that he had ever made to find her had been useless she was too clever far too clever for that she too would know that he could and would recognise her voice where he could recognise nothing else
+and then suddenly he realised that he was attracting attention level stares from the women returned his gaze
+others in the same row of seats as his own were impatiently waiting to get by him with a muttered apology jimmie dale raised the seat of his chair allowing these latter to pass him and then
+slipping the letter into his pocketbook he snatched up his hat from the seat rack there was still a chance knowing he was there she would be on her guard but in the lobby among the crowd and unaware of his presence
+there was the possibility that if he could reach the entrance ahead of her she too might be talking and laughing as she left the theatre just a single word just a tone that was all he asked
+tight packed the mass of people jostled elbowed and pushed good naturedly it was a voice now her voice that he was listening for but though it seemed that every faculty was strained and intent upon that one effort
+his eyes too had in no degree relaxed their vigilance and once half grimly half sardonically he smiled to himself
+with their prosperous well groomed escorts there was the wowzer over there sleek dapper squirming in and out of the throng with the agility and stealth of a cat as larry the bat he had met the wowzer many times
+as indeed he had met and was acquainted with most of the elite of the underworld the wowzer beyond a shadow of doubt in his own profession stood upon a plane entirely by himself among those qualified to speak
+poke getter in the united states the crowd thinned in the lobby thinned down to the last few belated stragglers who passed him as he still loitered in the entrance
+and disappointment that burned within him stepped out to the pavement and headed down broadway after all he had known it in his heart of hearts all the time it had
+always been the same it was only one more occasion added to the innumerable ones that had gone before in which she had eluded him and now there was the letter
+automatically he quickened his steps a little it was useless futile profitless for the moment at least to disturb himself over his failure there was the letter
+what sudden emergency was the gray seal called upon to face this time what role unrehearsed without warning must he play what story of grim
+jimmie dale a block down he turned from broadway out of the theatre crowds that streamed in both directions past him the letter
+almost feverishly now he was seeking an opportunity to open and read it unobserved an eagerness upon him that mingled exhilaration at the lure of danger with a sense of premonition that irritably
+inevitably was with him at moments such as these it seemed it always seemed that with an unopened letter of hers in his possession it was as though he were about to open a page in the book of fate and read
+a pronouncement upon himself that might mean life or death he hurried on people still passed by him too many and then a cafe just ahead
+making a corner gave him the opportunity that he sought away from the entrance on the side street the brilliant lights from the windows shone out on a comparatively deserted pavement
+there was ample light to read by even as far away from the window as the curb and jimmie dale with an approving nod turned the corner and walked along a few steps until opposite the farthest window but
+as he halted here at the edge of the street he glanced quickly behind him at a man whom he had just passed the other had paused at the corner and was staring down the street jimmie dale instantly and nonchalantly produced his cigarette case
+selected a cigarette and fastidiously tapped its end on his thumb nail inspector burton in plain clothes he observed musingly to himself i wonder if it's just a fluke
+or something else we'll see jimmie dale took a box of matches from his pocket the first would not light
+that series of terrific events by which our quiet city and university in the northeastern quarter of germany were convulsed during the year eighteen sixteen has in itself and considered merely as a blind movement of human tiger passion
+ranging unchained among men something too memorable to be forgotten or left without its own separate record but the moral lesson impressed by these events is yet more memorable
+and deserves the deep attention of coming generations in their struggle after human improvement not merely in its own limited field of interest directly awakened but in all analogous fields of interest
+as in fact already and more than once in connection with these very events this lesson has obtained the effectual attention of christian kings and princes assembled in congress
+i knew familiarly all the parties who were concerned in it either as sufferers or as agents i was present from first to last and watched the whole course of the mysterious storm which fell upon our devoted city
+in a strength like that of a west indian hurricane and which did seriously threaten at one time to depopulate our university through the dark suspicions which settled upon its members and the natural reaction of generous indignation in repelling them
+by sacrificing whenever circumstances allowed them their houses and beautiful gardens in exchange for days uncursed by panic and nights unpolluted by blood nothing i can take upon myself to assert
+in every one of which these precautionary aids had failed to yield the slightest assistance the horror the perfect frenzy of fear which seized upon the town after that experience baffles all attempt at description
+the astounded police after an examination the most searching pursued from day to day
+had finally pronounced that no attempt apparently had been made to benefit by any of the signals preconcerted that no footstep apparently had moved in that direction then and after that result
+and the general feeling as it was described to me by a grave citizen whom i met in a morning walk for the overmastering sense of a public calamity broke down every barrier of reserve and all men talked freely to all men in the streets
+as they would have done during the rockings of an earthquake was even among the boldest like that which sometimes takes possession of the mind in dreams when one feels oneself sleeping alone utterly divided from all call or hearing of friends
+doors open that should be shut or unlocked that should be triply secured the very walls gone barriers swallowed up by unknown abysses nothing around one but frail curtains and a world of illimitable night
+whisperings at a distance correspondence going on between darkness and darkness like one deep calling to another and the dreamer's own heart the center from which the whole network of this unimaginable chaos radiates
+and in which the heart beats in conscious sympathy with an entire city through all its regions of high and low young and old strong and weak such agencies avail to raise and transfigure the natures of men
+in that respect therefore i had an advantage being upon the spot through the whole course of the affair for giving a faithful narrative as i had still more eminently from the sort of central station which i occupied
+with respect to all the movements of the case i may add that i had another advantage not possessed or not in the same degree by any other inhabitant of the town i was personally acquainted with every family of the slightest account belonging to the resident population
+a nobleman connected with the diplomacy of russia from which i quote an extract i wish in short to recommend to your attentions and in terms stronger than i know how to devise
+a young man on whose behalf the czar himself is privately known to have expressed the very strongest interest he was at the battle of waterloo as an aide de camp to a dutch general officer and is decorated with distinctions won upon that awful day
+however though serving in that instance under english orders and although an englishman of rank he does not belong to the english military service he has served young as he is
+which may account for his somewhat moorish complexion though after all that is not of a deeper tinge than i have seen among many an englishman he is himself one of the noblest looking of god's creatures
+mister wyndham's succession to the vast family estates is inevitable and probably near at hand meantime he is anxious for some assistance in his studies intellectually
+as i am sure you will not be slow to discover but his long military service and the unparalleled tumult of our european history since eighteen o five have interfered as you may suppose with the cultivation of his mind
+for he entered the cavalry service of a german power when a mere boy and shifted about from service to service as the hurricane of war blew from this point or from that
+and ten years hence you will look back with pride upon having contributed your part to the formation of one whom all here at saint petersburg not soldiers only but we diplomates look upon as certain to prove a great man
+he was to keep a table and an establishment of servants at his own cost was to have an apartment of some dozen or so of rooms the unrestricted use of the library with some other public privileges willingly conceded by the magistracy of the town
+that all was closed before the end of september and when once that consummation was attained i that previously had breathed no syllable of what was stirring now gave loose to the interesting tidings and suffered them to spread through the whole compass of the town
+it will be easily imagined that such a story already romantic enough in its first outline would lose nothing in the telling an englishman to begin with which name of itself and at all times is a passport into german favor
+next an englishman of rank
+then a soldier covered with brilliant distinctions and in the most brilliant arm of the service young moreover and yet a veteran by his experience fresh from the most awful battle of this planet since the day of pharsalia
+radiant with the favor of courts and of imperial ladies
+an antinous of faultless beauty a grecian statue as it were into which the breath of life had been breathed by some modern pygmalion such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one man's head
+on his arrival at my house i became sensible of a truth which i had observed some years before the commonplace maxim is that it is dangerous to raise expectations too high this
+which is thus generally expressed and without limitation is true only conditionally it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation but in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind
+it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point in anything which partakes of the infinite the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification while it is certain that ordinary observers possessing little sensibility
+the warning at any rate put me on the lookout for whatever eminence there might be of grandeur in his personal appearance while on the other hand this existed in such excess so far transcending anything i had ever met with in my experience
+that no expectation which it is in words to raise could have been disappointed these thoughts traveled with the rapidity of light through my brain as at one glance my eye took in the supremacy of beauty and power
+which seemed to have alighted from the clouds before me power and the contemplation of power in any absolute incarnation of grandeur or excess
+universally received with favor and distinction in reality his wealth and importance his military honors and the dignity of his character as expressed in his manners and deportment
+were too eminent to allow of his being treated with less than the highest attention in any society whatever but the effect of these various advantages enforced and recommended as they were by a personal beauty so rare
+was somewhat too potent for the comfort and self possession of ordinary people and really exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions under which such people could feel themselves at their ease he was not naturally of a reserved turn
+had communicated to his manners a more than military frankness but the profound melancholy which possessed him from whatever cause it arose necessarily chilled the native freedom of his demeanor
+unless when it was revived by strength of friendship or of love the effect was awkward and embarrassing to all parties every voice paused or faltered when he entered a room dead silence ensued
+not an eye but was directed upon him or else sunk in timidity settled upon the floor and young ladies seriously lost the power for a time of doing more than murmuring a few confused half inarticulate syllables
+either as actors or spectators certainly this result was not a pure effect of manly beauty however heroic and in whatever excess it arose in part from the many and extraordinary endowments which had centered in his person
+were there then no exceptions to this condition of awestruck admiration yes
+never was there so victorious a conquest interchanged between two youthful hearts never before such a rapture of instantaneous sympathy i did not witness the first meeting of this mysterious maximilian and this magnificent margaret
+and do not know whether margaret manifested that trepidation and embarrassment which distressed so many of her youthful co rivals but if she did it must have fled before the first glance of the young man's eye which would interpret past all misunderstanding
+on the part of margaret it seemed as if a new world had dawned upon her that she had not so much as suspected among the capacities of human experience like some bird she seemed with powers unexercised for soaring and flying
+and for a mere possibility which he had long too deeply contemplated fearing however that in his own case it might prove a chimera or that he might never meet a woman answering the demands of his heart he now found a corresponding reality that left nothing to seek
+here then and thus far nothing but happiness had resulted from the new arrangement but if this had been little anticipated by many far less had i for my part anticipated the unhappy revolution which was wrought in the whole nature
+who had died in giving birth to this third child the only one who had long survived her anxious that his son should go through a regular course of mathematical instruction now becoming annually more important in all the artillery services throughout europe
+and that he should receive a tincture of other liberal studies which he had painfully missed in his own military career the baron chose to keep his son for the last seven years at our college until he was now entering upon his twenty third year
+for the four last he had lived with me as the sole pupil whom i had or meant to have had not the brilliant proposals of the young russian guardsman persuaded me to break my resolution ferdinand von harrelstein had good talents
+not dazzling but respectable and so amiable were his temper and manners that i had introduced him everywhere and everywhere he was a favorite and everywhere indeed except exactly there where only in this world he cared for favor
+she it was whom he loved and had loved for years with the whole ardor of his ardent soul she it was for whom or at whose command he would willingly have died early he had felt that in her hands lay his destiny
+that she it was who must be his good or his evil genius at first and perhaps to the last i pitied him exceedingly but my pity soon ceased to be mingled with respect
+and the sole resource for him as i said often was to quit the city to engage in active pursuits of enterprise of ambition or of science but he heard me as a somnambulist might have heard me dreaming with his eyes open
+starting fearful agitated sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath invoking some absent person praying beseeching menacing some air wove phantom
+for more than i saw enough to fear some fearful catastrophe lead us not into temptation said his confessor to him in my hearing for though prussians the von harrelsteins were roman catholics lead us not into temptation
+reverend father do not you with the purpose of removing me from temptation be yourself the instrument for tempting me into a rebellion against the church do not you weave snares about my steps snares there are already and but too many
+the old man sighed and desisted then came but enough from pity from sympathy from counsel and from consolation and from scorn
+whose convent stood near the city gates there goes one ready equally for doing or suffering and of whom we shall soon hear that he is involved in some great catastrophe it may be of deep calamity
+for the costliness of the entertainment was understood to be an expression of official pride done in honor of the city not as an effort of personal display it followed from the spirit in which these half yearly dances originated
+that being given on the part of the city every stranger of rank was marked out as a privileged guest and the hospitality of the community would have been equally affronted by failing to offer or by failing to accept the invitation
+upon the evening at which i am now arrived the twenty second of january eighteen sixteen the whole city in its wealthier classes was assembled beneath the roof of a tradesman who had the heart of a prince
+in every point our entertainment was superb and i remarked that the music was the finest i had heard for years our host was in joyous spirits proud to survey the splendid company he had gathered under his roof
+happy to witness their happiness elated in their elation joyous was the dance joyous were all faces that i saw up to midnight very soon after which time supper was announced
+and that also i think was the most joyous of all the banquets i ever witnessed the accomplished guardsman outshone himself in brilliancy even his melancholy relaxed in fact how could it be otherwise
+hanging upon his words more lustrous and bewitching than ever i had beheld her there she had been placed by the host and everybody knew why that is one of the luxuries attached to love all men cede their places with pleasure
+women make way even she herself knew though not obliged to know why she was seated in that neighborhood and took her place if with a rosy suffusion upon her cheeks yet with fullness of happiness at her heart
+the music again began to pour its voluptuous tides through the bounding pulses of the youthful company again the flying feet of the dancers began to respond to the measures
+again the mounting spirit of delight began to fill the sails of the hurrying night with steady inspiration all went happily already had one dance finished some were pacing up and down leaning on the arms of their partners
+some were reposing from their exertions when o heavens what a shriek what a gathering tumult every eye was bent toward the doors every eye strained forward to discover what was passing
+but there every moment less and less could be seen for the gathering crowd more and more intercepted the view so much the more was the ear at leisure for the shrieks redoubled upon shrieks miss liebenheim had moved downward to the crowd
+and had lived with her uncle a tradesman not ten doors from margaret's own residence partly on the terms of a kinswoman partly as a servant on trial at this moment she was exhausted with excitement and the nature of the shock she had sustained
+mere panic seemed to have mastered her and she was leaning unconscious and weeping upon the shoulder of some gentleman who was endeavoring to soothe her a silence of horror seemed to possess the company
+most of whom were still unacquainted with the cause of the alarming interruption a few however who had heard her first agitated words
+now rushed tumultuously out of the ballroom to satisfy themselves on the spot the distance was not great and within five minutes several persons returned hastily and cried out to the crowd of ladies that all was true which the young girl had said
+what was true that her uncle mister weishaupt's family had been murdered that not one member of the family had been spared namely mister weishaupt himself and his wife neither of them much above sixty
+but both infirm beyond their years two maiden sisters of mister weishaupt from forty to forty six years of age and an elderly female domestic
+an incident happened during the recital of these horrors and of the details which followed that furnished matter for conversation even in these hours when so thrilling an interest had possession of all minds many ladies fainted among them
+and she would have fallen to the ground but for maximilian who sprang forward and caught her in his arms she was long of returning to herself and during the agony of his suspense he stooped and kissed her pallid lips
+that sight was more than could be borne by one who stood a little behind the group he rushed forward with eyes glaring like a tiger's and leveled a blow at maximilian it was poor maniacal von harrelstein
+many people stepped forward and checked his arm uplifted for a repetition of this outrage one or two had some influence with him and led him away from the spot
+while as to maximilian so absorbed was he that he had not so much as perceived the affront offered to himself margaret on reviving was confounded at finding herself so situated amid a great crowd
+and yet the prudes complained that there was a look of love exchanged between herself and maximilian that ought not to have escaped her in such a situation if they meant by such a situation one so public
+that it was a situation of excessive agitation but if they alluded to the horrors of the moment no situation more naturally opens the heart to affection and confiding love than the recoil from scenes of exquisite terror
+were marked by the coolest nay the most sneering indifference the first thing he did on being acquainted with the suspicions against himself was to laugh ferociously and to all appearance most cordially and unaffectedly
+gold repeaters massy plate gold snuff boxes untouched that argument certainly weighed much in his favor and yet again it was turned against him for a magistrate asked him how he happened to know already that nothing had been touched
+true it was and a fact which had puzzled no less than it had awed the magistrates that upon their examination of the premises many rich articles of bijouterie jewelry and personal ornaments had been found lying underanged
+for the private celebration of mass this crucifix as well as everything else in the little closet
+for hither had one of the ladies fled hither had one of the murderers pursued she had clasped the golden pillars which supported the altar had turned perhaps her dying looks upon the crucifix
+for there with one arm still wreathed about the altar foot though in her agony she had turned round upon her face did the elder sister lie when the magistrates first broke open the street door and upon the beautiful parquet
+or inlaid floor which ran round the room were still impressed the footsteps of the murderer these it was hoped might furnish a clew to the discovery of one at least among the murderous band they were rather difficult to trace accurately
+those parts of the traces which lay upon the black tessellae being less distinct in the outline than the others upon the white or colored most unquestionably so far as this went it furnished a negative circumstance in favor of the negro
+for the footsteps were very different in outline from his and smaller for aaron was a man of colossal build
+and as to his knowledge of the state in which the premises had been found and his having so familiarly relied upon the fact of no robbery having taken place as an argument on his own behalf
+he contended that he had himself been among the crowd that pushed into the house along with the magistrates that from his previous acquaintance with the rooms and their ordinary condition
+that in fact he had seen enough for his argument before he and the rest of the mob had been ejected by the magistrates but finally that independently of all this he had heard both the officers as they conducted him
+in six weeks or less from the date of this terrific event the negro was set at liberty by a majority of voices among the magistrates in that short interval other events had occurred no less terrific and mysterious
+attacked them singly in flight for in this first case all but one of the murdered persons appeared to have been making for the street door and in all this there was no subject for wonder except the original one as to the motive
+in sad leisurely or in terrific groups seemed to argue a lethargy like that of apoplexy in the victims one and all the very midnight of mysterious awe fell upon all minds
+three weeks had passed since the murder at mister weishaupt's three weeks the most agitated that had been known in this sequestered city we felt ourselves solitary and thrown upon our own resources
+all combination with other towns being unavailing from their great distance our situation was no ordinary one had there been some mysterious robbers among us the chances of a visit divided among so many
+would have been too small to distress the most timid while to young and high spirited people with courage to spare for ordinary trials
+but murderers exterminating murderers clothed in mystery and utter darkness these were objects too terrific for any family to contemplate with fortitude
+had these very murderers added to their functions those of robbery they would have become less terrific
+from the roll of those who were liable to a visit while such as knew themselves liable would have had warning of their danger in the fact of being rich and would from the very riches which constituted that danger have derived the means of repelling it but as things were
+no man could guess what it was that must make him obnoxious to the murderers imagination exhausted itself in vain guesses at the causes which could by possibility have made the poor weishaupts objects of such hatred to any man
+true they were bigoted in a degree which indicated feebleness of intellect but that wounded no man in particular while to many it recommended them true their charity was narrow and exclusive but to those of their own religious body it expanded munificently
+and being rich beyond their wants or any means of employing wealth which their gloomy asceticism allowed they had the power of doing a great deal of good among the indigent papists of the suburbs
+many of the cars are moderately priced affairs the tonneau well filled with children of miscellaneous ages and enlivened by a family dog or two for this is the way that the average american household spends its modern sabbath holiday
+for a road originally marked by the moccasined feet of indians and widened gradually by the toilsome journeyings of rough colonial carts and coaches
+it is difficult to say which feature of the steadily moving travel would most forcibly strike the original puritan settlers of the town the fact that even the common man the poor man could own such a vehicle of speed and ease or the fact that america
+such a short time ago a wilderness could produce not as the finest flower on its tree of evolution but certainly as its most exotic the plutocrat who lives in a palace with fifty servants to do his bidding
+and the fine lady whose sole exercise of her mental and physical functions consists in allowing her maid to dress her yes new england has changed amazingly in the revolutions of three centuries
+and here under the shadow of this square plain building hingham's old ship church while we pause to watch the sunday pageant of nineteen twenty we can most easily call back the sabbath rites and the ideals which created those rites
+this wooden meeting house with the truncated pyramidal roof and belfry to serve as a lookout station has just been built a stage ahead architecturally of the log meeting house with clay filled chinks thatched roof oiled paper windows
+earthen floor and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by sir christopher wren and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all over new england
+the old ship is entirely unconscious of the distinction which is awaiting it the distinction of being the oldest house for public worship in the united states which still stands on its original site and which is still used for its original purpose
+in the year sixteen eighty one it is merely the new meeting house of the little hamlet of hingham the people are very proud of their new building the timbers have been hewn with the broad axe out of solid white pine
+the marks are still visible particularly in those rafters of the roof open to the attic the belfry is precisely in the center of the four sided pitched roof to be sure this necessitates ringing the bell from one of the pews
+but a little later the bellringer will stand above and through a pane of glass let into the ceiling he will be able to see when the minister enters the pulpit the original backless benches were replaced by box pews with narrow seats like shelves
+no paint no decorations no colored windows no organ or anything which could even remotely suggest the color the beauty the formalism of the churches of england
+since in sixteen thirty five the general court decreed that no dwelling
+of any new plantation thus eliminating the excuse of too great distance every one is expected nay commanded to come to church in fact after the tolling of the last bell the houses may all be searched
+each ten families is under an inspector if there is any question of delinquents hiding in them and so in twos and threes often the man trudging ahead with his gun and the woman carrying her baby while the smaller children cling to her skirts
+sometimes man and woman and a child or two on horseback no matter how wild the storm how swollen the streams how deep the whirling snow they all come to church
+the congregation either waits for the minister and his wife outside the door or stands until he has entered the pulpit once inside they are seated with the most meticulous exactness according to rank age sex and wealth
+and the slaves and indians are in the rear to seat one's self in the wrong pue is an offense punishable by a fine here is the church and here are the people as the old rhyme has it what then of the services
+that they are interminable we know the tithing man or clerk may turn the brass bound hourglass by the side of the pulpit two and three times during the sermon and once or twice during the prayer interminable
+the old ship was not heated until eighteen twenty two the only relief from the chill and stiffness comes during the prayer when the congregation stands kneeling of course would savor too strongly of idolatry and the church of rome
+they stand too while the psalms and hymns are lined out and as they sing them very uncertainly and very incorrectly this performance alone sometimes takes an hour as there is no organ nor notes
+and only a few copies of the bay psalm book of which by the way a copy now would be worth many times its weight in gold after the morning service there is a noon intermission in which the half frozen congregation stirs around
+one sometimes wonders how the little things had any impulse to laugh in such an abysmal atmosphere but apparently the puritan boys and girls were entirely normal and even wholesomely mischievous as proved by the constantly required services of the tithing man
+these external trappings of the service sound depressing enough but if the message received within these chilly walls is cheering maybe we can forget or ignore the physical discomforts but is the message cheering hell damnation eternal tortures
+painful theological hair splittings harrowing self examinations and humiliating public confessions this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to listen to hour after hour searching their souls for sin with an almost frenzied eagerness
+appealing to the emotions quite as vividly although through a different channel as the most elaborate ceremonial when the soul is wrought to a certain pitch each hardship is merely an added opportunity to prove its faith
+from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their struggle in a new land it was religious zeal which furnished this motive power different implements and differently directed force are needed to extract the diamond from the earth
+having done its work having founded soundly and peopled strongly an exceptional region the new england conscience had no further necessity for being those whom it now tortures with its hot pincers of doubt and self reproach
+are sacrificed to a cause long since won the puritans themselves grew away from many of their excessive severities but as they gained bodily strength from their conflict with the elements so they gained a certain moral stamina
+by their self imposed religious observance and this moral stamina has marked new england ever since and marked her to her glory one cannot speak of hingham churches indeed one cannot speak of hingham
+without admiring mention of the new north church this building of exquisite proportions and finish within and without built by bulfinch in eighteen o six is one of the most flawless examples of its type on the south shore
+you will appreciate the cream colored paint the buff walls the quaint box pews of oiled wood with handrails gleaming from the touch of many generations with wooden buttons and protruding hinges proclaiming an ancient fashion
+but the unique feature of the new north church is its slave galleries these two small galleries between the roof and the choir loft held for thirty years in diminishing numbers negroes and indians
+the last occupant was a black lucretia who after being freed was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress which she did and which she continued to do until her death not so very long ago
+hingham its main street alas for the original name of bachelors rowe arched by a double row of superb elms on either side is incalculably rich in old houses old traditions old families
+even motoring through too quickly as motorists must one cannot help being struck by the substantial dignity of the place by the well kept prosperity of the houses large and small which fringe the fine old highway
+the town has preserved a cranford like charm and why not when the very house is still handsomely preserved where the nameless nobleman francis le baron was concealed between the floors
+and as we are told in missus austen's novel very properly capped the climax by marrying his brave little protector molly wilder why not when the lincoln family ancestors of abraham
+named after the indian chief who granted the original deeds of the town has found quarters in an extremely interesting house dating from sixteen eighty in the spacious living room are seventeen panels on the walls and in the doors
+painted with charming old fashioned skill by john hazlitt the brother of the english essayist the reverend daniel shute house built in seventeen forty six is practically intact with its paneled rooms
+and wall paper a hundred years old hingham's famous elms shade the house where parson ebenezer gay lived out his long pastorate of sixty nine years and nine months and the garrison house built before sixteen forty
+sheltered in its prime nine generations of the same family the rainbow roof house so called from the delicious curve in its roof is one of hingham's prettiest two hundred year old cottages and miss susan b willard's cottage
+is one of the oldest in the united states derby academy founded almost two centuries and a half ago by madam derby still maintains its social and scholarly prestige through all the educational turmoil of the twentieth century
+that john albion andrew who proved himself so truly one of our great men during the civil war courted eliza jones hersey and here that the happy years of their early married life were spent
+later another governor john d long was for many years a mighty figure in the town with its ancient churches and institutions its pensive graveyards and lovely elms
+hingham typifies what is quaintest and best in new england towns possibly the dappling of the elms possibly the shadow of the old ship church
+however it may seem to its inhabitants to the stranger everything in hingham is tinctured by the remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism even the number of historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days
+for when did religion and warfare not go hand in hand during the trouble with king philip the town had three forts one at fort hill one at the cemetery and one on the plain about a mile from the harbor and the sites may still be identified
+were landed on their salty decks for fifty years between eighteen eleven and eighteen sixty the rapid sailed as a packet between this town and boston making the trip on one memorable occasion in sixty seven minutes
+she was carried up the weymouth river and covered masts and hull with green bushes so that the marauding british cruisers might not find her and as we read we find ourselves remembering that camouflage is new only in name
+or would they realize that their sowing had brought forth richer fruit than they could guess it has all changed since puritan days and yet perhaps in no other place in new england does the hand of the past lie so visibly upon the community
+you cannot lift your eyes but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago the shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very hand of the past even your voice repeats the words which those old patriarchs
+well versed in biblical lore chose for their neighborhood names accord pond and glad tidings plain might have been lifted from some pilgrim's progress while the near by sea of galilee and jerusalem road
+are from the good book itself which way to egypt is this an echo from that time when the bible was the corner stone of church and state of home and school what's the best road to jericho beach surely it is some grave faced shade who calls
+a town of enterprise and character ever since the first water power mill in this country the first powder mill in this country the first chocolate mill in this country and thus through a whole line of first things the first violoncello
+few people to day think of milton in terms of industrial repute but rather as a place of estates too aristocratic to be fashionable
+and of charming walks and drives and views many of the old families who have given the town its prestige still live in their ancestral manors and many of the families who have moved there in recent years
+as the stranger passes through milton he is captivated by glimpses of ancient homesteads settling behind their white colonial fences topped with white colonial urns half hidden by their antique trees with an air of comfortable ease
+of breeding that neither parades nor conceals its quality yes this is milton this is modern milton boston society receives some of its most prominent contributions from this patrician source
+but modern milton is something more than this as old milton
+that swims forever against the sky that marches forever around the horizon the rounded summits of the blue hills to which the eye is irresistibly attracted before entering the town which principally claims them are the worn down stumps of ancient mountains
+and although so leveled by the process of the ages they are still the highest land near the coast from maine to mexico these eighteen or twenty skyey crests form the southern boundary of the so called boston basin
+and are the most prominent feature of the southern coast from them the massachuset tribe about the bay derived its name signifying near the great hills which name was changed by the english to massachusetts
+and applied to both bay and colony although its indian name has been taken from this lovely range the loveliness remains all the surrounding country shimmers under the mysterious bloom of these heights
+so vast that everything else is dwarfed beside them and yet so curiously airy that they seem to perpetually ripple against the sky the great blue hill especially the one which bears an observatory on its summit swims above one's head
+it seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one motors and although one may be forced to admit that this may be due more to the winding roads than to the illusiveness of the hill still the buoyant effect is the same
+ruskin declares somewhere with his quaint and characteristic mixture of positiveness and idealism that inhabitants of granite countries
+that clearly distinguishes them from the inhabitants of less pure districts perhaps he was right for surely here
+each has through its own fair name done honor to the fair names which have preceded it one of the very first to be attracted by the lofty and yet lovely appeal of this region was governor thomas hutchinson
+and the wide flat twist of the neponset river winding through it for all the world like a decorative panel
+this is the view that the governor so admired and tradition tells us
+he walked on foot down the hill shaking hands with his neighbors patriot and tory alike with tears in his eyes as he left behind him the garden and the trees he had planted and the house where he had so happily lived
+the view from the back holds even more intimate attraction here is the old old garden and although the ephemeral blossoms of the present springtime shine brightly forth the box full twenty feet high speaks of another epoch
+that visitors on entering from the street might see the gleam of his gold knee buckles as he stood on the distant porch the avenue however was never completed as belcher was appointed governor of and transferred to new jersey shortly after
+two other men of note who since the days of our years are but threescore and ten chose that their days without number should be spent in the town they loved were wendell phillips and rimmer the sculptor who are both buried at milton
+not only notable personages but notable events have been engendered under the shadow of these hills the suffolk resolves which were the prelude of the declaration of independence were adopted at the vose house
+still retains in its broad hospitable lines some shred of its ancient charm milton is full of history from the revolutionary days when the cannonading at bunker hill shook the foundations of the houses but not the nerves of the milton ladies
+when the fourth liberty loan of two million nine hundred fifty five thousand two hundred fifty dollars was subscribed from a population of nine thousand all the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the high level
+that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by the strength of the hills how much of its success milton attributes to its location for one joins indeed a distinguished fellowship when one builds upon a hill
+or on several hills as roman as well as bostonian history testifies can only be guessed by its tribute in the form of the blue hills reservation this state recreation park and forest reserve
+of about four thousand acres a labyrinth of idyllic footpaths and leafy trails of twisting drives and walks that open out upon superb vistas is now the property of the people of massachusetts the granite quarry man
+far more interested in the value of the stone that underlay the wooded slopes than in ruskin's theory of its purifying effect upon the inhabitants had already obtained a footing here when under the able leadership of charles francis adams
+the whole region was taken over by the state in eighteen ninety four as you pass through the reservation and if you are taking even the most cursory glimpse of milton you must include some portion of this park
+the race track with its judges stands is still there but there are no more horse races although the forbes family still holds a conspicuous place
+you may see too a solitary figure with a scientist's stoop or a tutor with a group of boys making a first hand study of a region which is full of interest to the geologist circling thus around the base of the great blue hill
+erected in eighteen eighty four by the late a lawrence rotch of milton who bequeathed funds for its maintenance it is now connected with harvard university
+once at the top the eye is overwhelmed by a circuit of more than a hundred and fifty miles it is almost too immense at first almost as barren as an empty expanse of rolling green sea but as the eye grows accustomed to the stretching distances
+objects both near and far begin to appear and soon if the day is clear buildings may be identified in more than one hundred and twenty five villages we are six hundred and thirty five feet above the sea on the highest coastland
+from agamenticus near york maine to the rio grande and the panorama thus unrolled is truly magnificent facing northerly we can easily distinguish cambridge somerville and malden
+and far beyond the hills of andover and georgetown a little to the east boston with its gilded dome then the harbor with its islands headlands and fortifications
+as far as eastern point lighthouse in gloucester forty miles to the northeast appear the twin lighthouses on thatcher's island seeming from here to be standing not on the land but out in the ocean
+while beyond it stretches massachusetts bay turning nearly east the eye passing over chickatawbut hill three miles off and second in height of the blue hills follows the beautiful curve of nantasket beach
+and the pointing finger of minot's light facing nearly south the long ridge of manomet hill in plymouth thirty three miles away stands clear against the sky while twenty six miles away in duxbury one sees the myles standish monument
+and far beyond it is the grand monadnock in jaffrey
+with its two equal summits the next group to the right is in lyndeboro at the right of lyndeboro and nearly over the readville railroad stations is joe english hill and to complete the round nearly north northwest are the summits
+of the uncanoonuc mountains fifty nine miles away this then is the great blue hill of milton those who are familiar with the state of massachusetts and new england can stand here and pick out a hundred distinguishing landmarks
+and those who have never been here before may find an unparalleled opportunity to see the whole region at one sweep of the eye from the point of view of topography the summit of great blue hill is the place to reach but for the sense of mysterious beauty
+the hill itself seen from a distance floating lightly like a vast blue ball against a vaster sky is dreamily suggestive in a way which the actual view superb as it is is not
+one remembers stevenson's observation that sometimes to travel hopefully is better than to arrive so let us come down for after all love is of the valley down again to the old town of milton
+we have not half begun to wander over it not half begun to hear the pleasant stories it has to tell when one is as old as this for milton was discovered by a band from plymouth who came up the neponset river in sixteen twenty one
+which drifts to us with a turn of the wind comes from a chocolate mill whose trade mark of a neat handed maid with her little tray is known all over the civilized world
+and those mills stand upon the site of the first grist mill in new england to be run by water power this was in sixteen thirty four and one likes to picture the sturdy colonists trailing into town their packs upon their backs
+like children in kindergarten games to have their grain ground israel stoughton was the name of the man who established this first mill a name perpetuated
+all ground is historic ground in milton that rollicking group of schoolboys yonder belongs to an academy which handsome and flourishing as it is to day was founded as long ago as seventeen eighty seven
+set against a stone wall near its original site this early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched roof and latticed windows if one may believe the relief
+but men of brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the colony in good stead one fancies the students roving eyes may have occasionally strayed down the indian trail directly opposite the old site a trail which
+although now attained to the proud rank of a lane churchill's lane still invites one down its tangled green way along the gray stone wall yes every step of ground has its tradition here
+yonder railroad track marks the spot where the very first tie in the country was laid and laid for no less significant purpose than to facilitate the carrying of granite blocks for bunker hill monument from their quarry to the harbor granite from the hills
+again we are drawn back to the irresistible magnet of those mighty monitors yes wherever one goes in milton either on foot to day or back through the chapters of three centuries ago the blue hills dominate every event
+and the great blue hill floats above them all
+chapter eighteen grave questions
+and barbicane and his two companions watched with scrupulous attention the brilliant rays which the celebrated mountain shed so curiously over the horizon what was this radiant glory what
+some twelve miles others thirty miles broad
+and seemed to cover particularly toward the east the northeast and the north the half of the southern hemisphere one of these jets extended as far as the circle of neander situated on the fortieth meridian
+another by a slight curve furrowed the sea of nectar breaking against
+with a luminous network what was the origin of these sparkling rays which shone on the plains as well as on the reliefs at whatever height they might be all started from a common center the crater
+they sprang from him herschel attributed their brilliancy to currents of lava congealed by the cold an opinion however which has not been generally adopted
+because the regularity of these luminous lines and the violence necessary to carry volcanic matter to such distances is inexplicable
+by jove replied michel ardan
+indeed said barbicane indeed continued michel it is enough to say
+well replied barbicane smiling and what hand would be powerful enough to throw a ball to give such a shock as that the hand is not necessary answered nicholl not at all confounded
+the shock which produced that rent
+a contraction something like a lunar stomach ache said michel ardan besides added barbicane this opinion is that of an english savant
+that nasmyth was no fool replied michel
+their projectile saturated with luminous gleams in the double irradiation of sun and moon must have appeared like an incandescent globe
+to intense heat nature was thus preparing them to become selenites become selenites that idea brought up once more the question of the habitability of the moon after what they had seen could the travelers solve it
+would they decide for or against it michel ardan persuaded his two friends to form an opinion and asked them directly if they thought that men and animals were represented in the lunar world
+i think that we can answer said barbicane but according to my idea the question ought not to be put in that form i ask it to be put differently put it your own way replied michel
+here it is continued barbicane the problem is a double one and requires a double solution is the moon habitable has the moon ever been inhabitable good
+replied nicholl first let us see whether the moon is habitable to tell the truth i know nothing about it answered michel and i answer in the negative continued barbicane
+in her actual state with her surrounding atmosphere certainly very much reduced her seas for the most part dried up her insufficient supply of water restricted vegetation sudden alternations of cold and heat
+her days and nights of three hundred fifty four hours the moon does not seem habitable to me nor does she seem propitious to animal development nor sufficient for the wants of existence as we understand it
+agreed replied nicholl but is not the moon habitable for creatures differently organized from ourselves
+seemed to us to move on the moon's surface
+and what have we seen everywhere and always the geological works of nature never the work of man if then there exist representatives of the animal kingdom on the moon
+they must have fled to those unfathomable cavities which the eye cannot reach which i cannot admit for they must have left traces of their passage on those plains which the atmosphere must cover however slightly raised it may be
+these traces are nowhere visible there remains but one hypothesis that of a living race to which motion which is life is foreign one might as well say living creatures which do not live replied michel
+the scientific commission assembled in the projectile of the gun club after having founded their argument on facts recently observed decide unanimously upon the question of the habitability of the moon no the moon
+said nicholl let us attack the second question an indispensable complement of the first i ask the honorable commission if the moon is not habitable has she ever been inhabited citizen barbicane
+my friends replied barbicane i did not undertake this journey in order to form an opinion on the past habitability of our satellite but i will add that our personal observations only confirm me in this opinion
+i believe indeed i affirm that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organized like our own that she has produced animals anatomically formed like the terrestrial animals
+but i add that these races human and animal have had their day and are now forever extinct
+relatively the organizing force of matter has been much more violent in the interior of the moon than in the interior of the terrestrial globe the actual state of this cracked twisted and burst disc abundantly proves this
+the moon and the earth were nothing but gaseous masses originally
+continued barbicane an atmosphere surrounded it
+for example its days and nights of three hundred fifty four hours at the terrestrial poles they last six months said michel an argument of little value since the poles are not inhabited let us observe my friends continued barbicane
+that if in the actual state of the moon its long nights and long days created differences of temperature insupportable to organization it was not so at the historical period of time the atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle
+vapor deposited itself in the shape of clouds this natural screen tempered the ardor of the solar rays and retained the nocturnal radiation
+light like heat can diffuse itself in the air hence an equality between the influences which no longer exists now that atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared and now i am going to astonish you
+astonish us said michel ardan i firmly believe that at the period when the moon was inhabited the nights and days did not last three hundred fifty four hours and why
+asked nicholl quickly because most probably then the rotary motion of the moon upon her axis was not equal to her revolution an equality which presents each part of her disc during fifteen days to the action of the solar rays
+granted replied nicholl but why should not these two motions have been equal as they are really so because that equality has only been determined by terrestrial attraction
+and who can say that this attraction was powerful enough to alter the motion of the moon at that period when the earth was still fluid just so replied nicholl and who can say that the moon has always been a satellite of the earth
+exclaimed michel ardan that the moon did not exist before the earth their imaginations carried them away into an indefinite field of hypothesis barbicane sought to restrain them
+those speculations are too high said he problems utterly insoluble
+let us only admit the insufficiency of the primordial attraction and then by the inequality of the two motions of rotation and revolution
+besides even without these conditions life was possible and so asked michel ardan humanity has disappeared from the moon yes replied barbicane
+after having doubtless remained persistently for millions of centuries
+as the terrestrial globe will one day become by cooling by cooling certainly replied barbicane as the internal fires became extinguished
+and the incandescent matter concentrated itself the lunar crust cooled by degrees the consequences of these phenomena showed themselves in the disappearance of organized beings and by the disappearance of vegetation soon the atmosphere was rarefied
+probably withdrawn by terrestrial attraction then aerial departure of respirable air and disappearance of water by means of evaporation at this period the moon becoming uninhabitable was no longer inhabited it was a dead world
+and have they calculated the time which our unfortunate sphere will take to cool certainly and you know these calculations perfectly
+but speak then my clumsy savant exclaimed michel ardan for you make me boil with impatience very well my good michel replied barbicane quietly we know what diminution of temperature the earth undergoes in the lapse of a century
+be brought down to zero four hundred thousand years exclaimed michel ah i breathe again really i was frightened to hear you i imagined that we had not more than fifty thousand years to live
+barbicane and nicholl could not help laughing at their companion's uneasiness
+which had just been considered again has the moon been inhabited he asked the answer was unanimously in the affirmative but during this discussion fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories
+the projectile was rapidly leaving the moon the lineaments faded away from the travelers eyes mountains were confused in the distance and of all the wonderful strange and fantastical form of the earth's satellite there soon remained nothing
+the girl who came into the world on that night when jesse ran through the fields crying to god that he be given a son had grown to womanhood on the farm
+and when not angry she was often morose and silent in winesburg it was said that she drank her husband the banker
+but louise could not be made happy she flew into half insane fits of temper during which she was sometimes silent sometimes noisy and quarrelsome she swore and cried out in her anger she got a knife from the kitchen and threatened her husband's life
+sometimes on summer afternoons she came out of the house and got into her carriage dismissing the driver she took the reins in her own hands and drove off at top speed through the streets
+to the people of the town it seemed as though she wanted to run them down when she had driven through several streets tearing around corners and beating the horses with the whip she drove off into the country on the country roads
+she became thoughtful and muttered words sometimes tears came into her eyes
+but for the influence of her husband and the respect he inspired in people's minds
+he was too young then to have opinions of his own about people but at times it was difficult for him not to have very definite opinions about the woman who was his mother david was always a quiet orderly boy
+and for a long time was thought by the people of winesburg to be something of a dullard his eyes were brown and as a child he had a habit of looking at things and people a long time without appearing to see what he was looking at
+when he heard his mother spoken of harshly or when he overheard her berating his father he was frightened and ran away to hide sometimes he could not find a hiding place and that confused him
+he closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything he had a habit of talking aloud to himself and early in life a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession of him on the occasions when david went to visit his grandfather on the bentley farm
+something happened to david he could not bear to go into the house where his mother and father lived and on an impulse he decided to run away from home
+the boy's imagination was excited and he fancied that he could see and hear strange things in the darkness into his mind came the conviction that he was walking and running in some terrible void where no one had ever been before
+the darkness about him seemed limitless the sound of the wind blowing in trees was terrifying when a team of horses approached along the road in which he walked he was frightened and climbed a fence through a field he ran until he came
+into another road and getting upon his knees felt of the soft ground with his fingers but for the figure of his grandfather whom he was afraid he would never find in the darkness he thought the world must be altogether empty
+when his cries were heard by a farmer who was walking home from town and he was brought back to his father's house he was so tired and excited that he did not know what was happening to him by chance david's father knew that he had disappeared
+on the street he had met the farm hand from the bentley place and knew of his son's return to town when the boy did not come home an alarm was set up and john hardy with several men of the town went to search the country
+the report that david had been kidnapped ran about through the streets of winesburg when he came home there were no lights in the house but his mother appeared and clutched him eagerly in her arms david thought she had suddenly become another woman
+for an hour the woman sat in the darkness and held her boy all the time she kept talking in a low voice david could not understand what had so changed her her habitually dissatisfied face had become he thought
+the most peaceful and lovely thing he had ever seen
+on and on went her voice it was not
+but she made him hide and be silent until she had sent them away he thought it must be a game his mother and the men of the town were playing with him and laughed joyously
+into his mind came the thought that his having been lost and frightened in the darkness was an altogether unimportant matter
+he thought that he would have been willing to go through the frightful experience a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother had suddenly become
+during the last years of young david's boyhood he saw his mother but seldom and she became for him just a woman with whom he had once lived still he could not get her figure out of his mind and as he grew older it became more definite
+when he was twelve years old he went to the bentley farm to live old jesse came into town and fairly demanded that he be given charge of the boy the old man was excited and determined on having his own way he talked to john hardy
+it is an atmosphere not corrupted by my presence she said sharply
+different with him louise turned and went out of the room leaving the two men to sit in embarrassed silence as very often happened she later stayed in her room for days
+even when the boy's clothes were packed and he was taken away she did not appear the loss of her son made a sharp break in her life and she seemed less inclined to quarrel with her husband john hardy thought it had all turned out very well indeed
+and so young david went to live in the bentley farmhouse with jesse two of the old farmer's sisters were alive and still lived in the house they were afraid of jesse and rarely spoke when he was about
+one of the women who had been noted for her flaming red hair when she was younger was a born mother and became the boy's caretaker every night when he had gone to bed she went into his room and sat on the floor
+when he became drowsy she became bold and whispered things that he later thought he must have dreamed her soft low voice called him endearing names
+and he dreamed that his mother had come to him and that she had changed so that she was always as she had been that time after he ran away he also grew bold and reaching out his hand stroked the face of the woman on the floor so that she was ecstatically happy
+began to think that at last his prayers had been answered although he was at that time only fifty five years old he looked seventy and was worn out with much thinking and scheming
+the effort he had made to extend his land holdings had been successful and there were few farms in the valley that did not belong to him but until david came he was a bitterly disappointed man
+there were two influences at work in jesse bentley and all his life his mind had been a battleground for these influences first there was the old thing in him he wanted to be a man of god and a leader among men of god
+his walking in the fields and through the forests at night had brought him close to nature and there were forces in the passionately religious man that ran out to the forces in nature the disappointment that had come to him when a daughter
+but he no longer demanded such recognition instead he prayed for it sometimes he was altogether doubtful and thought god had deserted the world
+he had grown into maturity in america in the years after the civil war and he like all men of his time had been touched by the deep influences that were at work in the country during those years when modern industrialism was being born
+jesse formed the habit of reading newspapers and magazines he invented a machine for the making of fence out of wire faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old times and places that he had
+always cultivated in his own mind was strange and foreign to the thing that was growing up in the minds of others the beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world when wars would be fought without patriotism when men would forget god and
+only pay attention to moral standards when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions was telling its story to jesse the man of god
+as it was to the men about him the greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be made by tilling the land more than once he went into winesburg to talk with his son in law john hardy about it you are a banker and you will have chances i never had
+big things are going to be done in the country
+you get into it i wish i were younger and had your chance
+at one time in his life he had been threatened with paralysis and his left side remained somewhat weakened as he talked his left eyelid twitched later
+and the stars came out it was harder to get back the old feeling of a close and personal god who lived in the sky overhead and who might at any moment reach out his hand touch him on the shoulder
+and it seemed to him that god had at last looked with favor upon him as for the boy on the farm life began to reveal itself to him in a thousand new and delightful ways the kindly attitude of all about him expanded his quiet nature
+and he lost the half timid hesitating manner he had always had with his people at night when he went to bed after a long day of adventures in the stables in the fields or driving about from farm to farm with his grandfather he wanted to embrace everyone in the house
+if sherley bentley the woman who came each night to sit on the floor by his bedside did not appear at once he went to the head of the stairs and shouted his young voice ringing through the narrow halls where for so long there had been a tradition of silence in the morning when he awoke and lay still in bed
+the sounds that came in to him through the windows filled him with delight he thought with a shudder of the life in the house in winesburg and of his mother's angry voice that had always made him tremble there in the country all sounds were pleasant sounds
+when he awoke at dawn the barnyard back of the house also awoke in the house people stirred about eliza stoughton the half witted girl was poked in the ribs by a farm hand and giggled noisily in some distant field a cow bawled and was answered
+by the cattle in the stables and one of the farm hands spoke sharply to the horse he was grooming by the stable door david leaped out of bed and ran to a window all of the people stirring about excited his mind and he wondered what his mother was doing
+six seven he said slowly wetting his finger and making straight up and down marks on the window ledge david ran to put on his trousers and shirt a feverish desire to get out of doors took possession of him
+when he had run through the long old house shutting the doors behind him with a bang he came into the barnyard and looked about with an amazed air of expectancy
+henry strader an old man who had been on the farm since jesse came into possession and who before david's time had never been known to make a joke made the same joke every morning it amused david so that he laughed and clapped his hands
+they rode in a comfortable old phaeton drawn by the white horse the old man scratched his thin white beard and talked to himself of his plans for increasing the productiveness of the fields they visited and of god's part in the plans all men made
+sometimes he looked at david and smiled happily and then for a long time he appeared to forget the boy's existence
+when he had first come out of the city to live on the land
+jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant part of the valley some miles from home a forest came down to the road and through the forest wine creek wriggled its way over stones toward a distant river
+all the afternoon jesse had been in a meditative mood and now he began to talk his mind went back to the night when he had been frightened by thoughts of a giant that might come to rob and plunder him of his possessions
+and again as on that night when he had run through the fields crying for a son he became excited to the edge of insanity
+when a rabbit jumped up and ran away through the woods he clapped his hands and danced with delight
+jesse bentley went along under the trees with his head bowed and with his mind in a ferment his earnestness affected the boy who presently became silent and a little alarmed
+that the presence of the boy and man on their knees in some lonely spot in the forest would make the miracle he had been waiting for almost inevitable
+it was in just such a place as this that other david tended the sheep when his father came and told him to go down unto saul he muttered
+he climbed over a fallen log and when he had come to an open place among the trees he dropped upon his knees and began to pray in a loud voice a kind of terror he had never known before took possession of david
+it seemed to him that he was in the presence not only of his grandfather but of someone else someone who might hurt him someone who was not kindly but dangerous and brutal
+when jesse bentley absorbed in his own idea suddenly arose and advanced toward him his terror grew until his whole body shook in the woods an intense silence seemed to lie over everything and suddenly out of the silence came the old man's harsh and insistent voice
+gripping the boy's shoulders jesse turned his face to the sky and shouted the whole left side of his face twitched and his hand on the boy's shoulder twitched also make a sign to me god he cried here i stand with the boy david
+come down to me out of the sky and make thy presence known to me with a cry of fear david turned and shaking himself loose from the hands that held him ran away through the forest
+the man did not look like his grandfather the conviction that something strange and terrible had happened that by some miracle a new and dangerous person had come into the body of the kindly old man took possession of him
+on and on he ran down the hillside sobbing as he ran when he fell over the roots of a tree and in falling struck his head
+and he awoke to find the old man's hand stroking his head tenderly that the terror left him
+steventon is a small rural village upon the chalk hills of north hants situated in a winding valley about seven miles from basingstoke the south western railway crosses it by a short embankment
+and as it curves round presents a good view of it on the left hand to those who are travelling down the line about three miles before entering the tunnel under popham beacon it may be known to some sportsmen as lying in one of the best portions of the vine hunt
+it is certainly not a picturesque country it presents no grand or extensive views but the features are small rather than plain the surface continually swells and sinks but the hills are not bold nor the valleys deep
+and though it is sufficiently well clothed with woods and hedgerows yet the poverty of the soil in most places prevents the timber from attaining a large size still it has its beauties the lanes wind along in a natural curve
+continually fringed with irregular borders of native turf and lead to pleasant nooks and corners one who knew and loved it well very happily expressed its quiet charms when he wrote true taste is not fastidious
+nor rejects because they may not come within the rule of composition pure and picturesque unnumbered simple scenes which fill the leaves of nature's sketch book of this somewhat tame country steventon from the fall of the ground and the abundance of its timber
+is certainly one of the prettiest spots
+compared with the broad river the rich valley and the noble hills which she had been accustomed to behold at her native home near henley upon thames the house itself stood in a shallow valley surrounded by sloping meadows well sprinkled with elm trees at the end of a small village of cottages
+each well provided with a garden scattered about prettily on either side of the road it was sufficiently commodious to hold pupils in addition to a growing family and was in those times considered to be above the average of parsonages
+no cornice marked the junction of wall and ceiling while the beams which supported the upper floors projected into the rooms below in all their naked simplicity covered only by a coat of paint or whitewash
+and about forty five years ago it was pulled down for the purpose of erecting a new house in a far better situation on the opposite side of the valley
+on the south side the ground rose gently and was occupied by one of those old fashioned gardens in which vegetables and flowers are combined flanked and protected on the east by one of the thatched mud walls common in that country and overshadowed by fine elms
+along the upper or southern side of this garden ran a terrace of the finest turf
+but the chief beauty of steventon consisted in its hedgerows a hedgerow in that country does not mean a thin formal line of quickset but an irregular border of copse wood and timber often wide enough to contain within it a winding footpath or a rough cart track
+and now and then the unwelcome adder two such hedgerows radiated as it were from the parsonage garden one a continuation of the turf terrace proceeded westward forming the southern boundary of the home meadows
+and was formed into a rustic shrubbery with occasional seats entitled the wood walk the other ran straight up the hill under the name of the church walk because it led to the parish church
+who have for more than a century rented it together with the chief farm in the parish the church itself i speak of it as it then was before the improvements made by the present rector
+might have appeared mean and uninteresting to an ordinary observer but the adept in church architecture would have known that it must have stood there some seven centuries and would have found beauty in the very narrow early english windows
+while its solitary position far from the hum of the village and within sight of no habitation except a glimpse of the gray manor house through its circling screen of sycamores has in it something solemn and appropriate to the last resting place of the silent dead
+sweet violets both purple and white grow in abundance beneath its south wall one may imagine for how many centuries the ancestors of those little flowers have occupied that undisturbed sunny nook
+thick coming fancies rose in her mind and gradually assumed the forms in which they came forth to the world
+the family was unbroken by death and seldom visited by sorrow their situation had some peculiar advantages beyond those of ordinary rectories steventon was a family living mister knight the patron was also proprietor of nearly the whole parish
+they shared with the principal tenant the command of an excellent manor and enjoyed in this reflected way some of the consideration usually awarded to landed proprietors
+they had enough to afford a good education to their sons and daughters to mix in the best society of the neighbourhood and to exercise a liberal hospitality to their own relations and friends a carriage and a pair of horses were kept
+this might imply a higher style of living in our days than it did in theirs there were then no assessed taxes the carriage once bought entailed little further expense and the horses probably like mister bennet's were often employed on farm work
+moreover it should be remembered that a pair of horses in those days were almost necessary if ladies were to move about at all
+when one looks at the few specimens still remaining of coach building in the last century it strikes one that the chief object of the builders must have been to combine the greatest possible weight with the least possible amount of accommodation
+the family lived in close intimacy with two cousins edward and jane cooper the children of missus austen's eldest sister and doctor cooper the vicar of sonning near reading the coopers lived for some years at bath
+i believe that cassandra and jane sometimes visited them there and that jane thus acquired the intimate knowledge of the topography and customs of bath which enabled her to write northanger abbey long before she resided there herself
+after the death of their own parents the two young coopers paid long visits at steventon edward cooper did not live undistinguished
+and in later life he was known by a work on prophecy called the crisis and other religious publications especially for several volumes of sermons much preached in many pulpits in my youth
+jane cooper was married from her uncle's house at steventon to captain afterwards sir thomas williams under whom charles austen served in several ships she was a dear friend of her namesake
+but was fated to become a cause of great sorrow to her for a few years after the marriage she was suddenly killed by an accident to her carriage there was another cousin closely associated with them at steventon
+who must have introduced greater variety into the family circle this was the daughter of mister austen's only sister missus hancock
+of whom i know little more than that he perished by the guillotine during the french revolution perhaps his chief offence was his rank but it was said that the charge of incivism under which he suffered rested on the fact of his having laid down some arable land into pasture
+his wife escaped through dangers and difficulties to england was received for some time into her uncle's family and finally married her cousin henry austen
+she and her second husband went to france in the hope of recovering some of the count's property and there narrowly escaped being included amongst the detenus orders had been given by buonaparte's government to detain all english travellers
+but at the post houses missus henry austen gave the necessary orders herself and her french was so perfect that she passed everywhere for a native
+she was a clever woman and highly accomplished after the french rather than the english mode and in those days when intercourse with the continent was long interrupted by war such an element in the society of a country parsonage must have been a rare acquisition
+the sisters may have been more indebted to this cousin than to missus la tournelle's teaching for the considerable knowledge of french which they possessed she also took the principal parts in the private theatricals in which the family several times indulged
+having their summer theatre in the barn and their winter one within the narrow limits of the dining room where the number of the audience must have been very limited on these occasions the prologues and epilogues were written by jane's eldest brother
+and some of them are very vigorous and amusing jane was only twelve years old at the time of the earliest of these representations and not more than fifteen when the last took place she was however an early observer
+and it may be reasonably supposed that some of the incidents and feelings which are so vividly painted in the mansfield park theatricals are due to her recollections of these entertainments some time before they left steventon one great affliction came upon the family
+he accompanied this friend to the west indies as chaplain to his regiment and there died of yellow fever to the great concern of his friend and patron who afterwards declared that if he had known of the engagement he would not have permitted him to go out to such a climate
+this little domestic tragedy caused great and lasting grief to the principal sufferer and could not but cast a gloom over the whole party the sympathy of jane was probably from her age and her peculiar attachment to her sister
+her reviewer in the quarterly of january eighteen twenty one observes concerning the attachment of fanny price to edmund bertram the silence in which this passion is cherished the slender hopes and enjoyments by which it is fed
+the restlessness and jealousy with which it fills a mind naturally active contented and unsuspicious the manner in which it tinges every event and every reflection are painted with a vividness and a detail of which we can scarcely conceive any one but a female
+and we should almost add a female writing from recollection capable this conjecture however probable was wide of the mark the picture was drawn from the intuitive perceptions of genius not from personal experience
+in no circumstance of her life was there any similarity between herself and her heroine in mansfield park
+in her youth she had declined the addresses of a gentleman who had the recommendations of good character and connections and position in life of everything in fact except the subtle power of touching her heart
+there is however one passage of romance in her history with which i am imperfectly acquainted and to which i am unable to assign name or date or place though i have it on sufficient authority
+many years after her death some circumstances induced her sister cassandra to break through her habitual reticence and to speak of it
+whose charm of person mind and manners was such that cassandra thought him worthy to possess and likely to win her sister's love when they parted
+and cassandra felt no doubt as to his motives but they never again met within a short time they heard of his sudden death i believe that if jane ever loved it was this unnamed gentleman but the acquaintance had been short
+any description that i might attempt of the family life at steventon which closed soon after i was born could be little better than a fancy piece
+would seem strange to us and should miss many more to which we are accustomed every hundred years and especially a century like the last marked by an extraordinary advance in wealth luxury and refinement of taste as well as in the mechanical arts which embellish our houses
+must produce a great change in their aspect these changes are always at work they are going on now but so silently that we take no note of them men soon forget the small objects which they leave behind them as they drift down the stream of life
+as pope says nor does life's stream for observation stay it hurries all too fast to mark their way important inventions such as the applications of steam gas and electricity may find their places in history
+who can now record the degrees by which the custom prevalent in my youth of asking each other to take wine together at dinner became obsolete who will be able to fix twenty years hence the date when our dinners began to be carved and handed round by servants
+instead of smoking before our eyes and noses on the table to record such little matters would indeed be to chronicle small beer
+but which the historian has the greatest difficulty in recovering at that time the dinner table presented a far less splendid appearance than it does now it was appropriated to solid food rather than to flowers fruits and decorations
+nor was there much glitter of plate upon it for the early dinner hour rendered candlesticks unnecessary
+though not less plentiful and savoury and the bill of fare in one house would not be so like that in another as it is now for family receipts were held in high estimation
+and might influence the family dinner for many generations
+one house would pride itself on its ham another on its game pie and a third on its superior furmity or tansey pudding beer and home made wines especially mead were more largely consumed vegetables were less plentiful and less various
+potatoes were used but not so abundantly as now and there was an idea that they were to be eaten only with roast meat they were novelties to a tenant's wife who was entertained at steventon parsonage certainly less than a hundred years ago
+and when missus austen advised her to plant them in her own garden she replied no no they are very well for you gentry but they must be terribly costly to rear but a still greater difference would be found in the furniture of the rooms
+which would appear to us lamentably scanty there was a general deficiency of carpeting in sitting rooms bed rooms and passages a pianoforte or rather a spinnet or harpsichord was by no means a necessary appendage
+it was to be found only where there was a decided taste for music not so common then as now or in such great houses as would probably contain a billiard table there would often be but one sofa in the house and that a stiff angular
+uncomfortable article there were no deep easy chairs nor other appliances for lounging for to lie down or even to lean back was a luxury permitted only to old persons or invalids
+and a model gentleman of his day that he would have made the tour of europe without ever touching the back of his travelling carriage but perhaps we should be most struck with the total absence of those elegant little articles which now embellish and encumber our drawing room tables
+we should miss the sliding bookcases and picture stands
+the periodicals and illustrated newspapers above all
+a small writing desk with a smaller work box or netting case was all that each young lady contributed to occupy the table for the large family work basket though often produced in the parlour lived in the closet
+there must have been more dancing throughout the country in those days than there is now
+as if it were a natural production with less fastidiousness as to the quality of music lights and floor many country towns had a monthly ball throughout the winter in some of which the same apartment served for dancing and tea room
+to the music of a harpsichord in the house or a fiddle from the village this was always supposed to be for the entertainment of the young people
+for she attributes this taste to her favourite heroines
+and made of importance many things connected with the ball rooms of those days have now passed into oblivion the barbarous law which confined the lady to one partner throughout the evening must indeed have been abolished before jane went to balls
+it must be observed however that this custom was in one respect advantageous to the gentleman inasmuch as it rendered his duties more practicable he was bound to call upon his partner the next morning
+to gallop all the country over the last night's partner to behold and humbly hope she caught no cold but the stately minuet still reigned supreme and every regular ball commenced with it it was a slow and solemn movement
+expressive of grace and dignity rather than of merriment it abounded in formal bows and courtesies with measured paces forwards backwards and sideways and many complicated gyrations
+it was executed by one lady and gentleman amidst the admiration or the criticism of surrounding spectators in its earlier and most palmy days as when sir charles and lady grandison delighted the company by dancing it at their own wedding
+the gentleman wore a dress sword and the lady was armed with a fan of nearly equal dimensions addison observes that women are armed with fans as men with swords and sometimes do more execution with them
+the graceful carriage of each weapon was considered a test of high breeding the clownish man was in danger of being tripped up by his sword getting between his legs
+and i have been told that those ladies who intended to dance minuets used to distinguish themselves from others by wearing a particular kind of lappet on their head dress i have heard also of another curious proof of the respect in which this dance was held
+gloves immaculately clean were considered requisite for its due performance while gloves a little soiled were thought good enough for a country dance and accordingly some prudent ladies provided themselves with two pairs for their several purposes
+the minuet expired with the last century but long after it had ceased to be danced publicly it was taught to boys and girls in order to give them a graceful carriage hornpipes cotillons and reels were occasionally danced
+but the chief occupation of the evening was the interminable country dance in which all could join this dance presented a great show of enjoyment but it was not without its peculiar troubles
+the ladies and gentlemen were ranged apart from each other in opposite rows so that the facilities for flirtation or interesting intercourse were not so great as might have been desired by both parties much heart burning and discontent sometimes arose as to who should stand above whom
+and especially as to who was entitled to the high privilege of calling and leading off the first dance and no little indignation was felt at the lower end of the room when any of the leading couples retired prematurely from their duties and did not condescend to dance up and down the whole set
+we may rejoice that these causes of irritation no longer exist and that if such feelings as jealousy rivalry and discontent ever touch celestial bosoms in the modern ball room they must arise from different and more recondite sources
+i am tempted to add a little about the difference of personal habits it may be asserted as a general truth that less was left to the charge and discretion of servants and more was done or superintended by the masters and mistresses
+with regard to the mistresses it is i believe generally understood that at the time to which i refer a hundred years ago they took a personal part in the higher branches of cookery as well as in the concoction of home made wines
+and distilling of herbs for domestic medicines which are nearly allied to the same art ladies did not disdain to spin the thread of which the household linen was woven some ladies liked to wash with their own hands their choice china after breakfast or tea
+as that they took an interest in such occupations and it must be borne in mind how many sources of interest enjoyed by this generation were then closed or very scantily opened to ladies a very small minority of them cared much for literature or science
+but i doubt whether the rising generation are equally aware how much gentlemen also did for themselves in those times
+than they are now master's eye makes the horse fat and if you would be well served serve yourself some gentlemen took pleasure in being their own gardeners performing all the scientific and some of the manual work themselves
+well dressed young men of my acquaintance who had their coat from a london tailor would always brush their evening suit themselves rather than entrust it to the carelessness of a rough servant and to the risks of dirt and grease in the kitchen
+for in those days servants halls were not common in the houses of the clergy and the smaller country gentry it was quite natural that catherine morland should have contrasted the magnificence of the offices at northanger abbey with the few shapeless pantries in her father's parsonage
+a young man who expected to have his things packed or unpacked for him by a servant when he travelled
+it was thought meritorious on the evening of a hunting day to turn out after dinner lanthorn in hand and visit the stable to ascertain that the horse had been well cared for this was of the more importance because previous to the introduction of clipping about the year eighteen twenty
+it was a difficult and tedious work to make a long coated hunter dry and comfortable and was often very imperfectly done of course such things were not practised by those who had gamekeepers and stud grooms and plenty of well trained servants
+but they were practised by many who were unequivocally gentlemen and whose grandsons occupying the same position in life may perhaps be astonished at being told that such things were
+of course they cannot be universally applicable such details varied in various circles and were changed very gradually
+but it is probable that their way of life differed a little from ours
+it may be that useful articles which would not now be produced in drawing rooms were hemmed and marked and darned in the old fashioned parlour but all this concerned only the outer life there was as much cultivation and refinement of mind as now
+the early hour at which hounds then met may account for this
+for they hunted at an early age in a scrambling sort of way upon any pony or donkey that they could procure or in default of such luxuries on foot i have been told that sir francis austen when seven years old
+bought on his own account it must be supposed with his father's permission a pony for a guinea and a half and after riding him with great success for two seasons sold him for a guinea more
+the same authority informs me that his first cloth suit was made from a scarlet habit which according to the fashion of the times had been his mother's usual morning dress if all this is true
+the future admiral of the british fleet must have cut a conspicuous figure in the hunting field the other peculiarity was that when the roads were dirty the sisters took long walks in pattens this defence against wet and dirt is now seldom seen
+the few that remain are banished from good society and employed only in menial work but a hundred and fifty years ago they were celebrated in poetry and considered so clever a contrivance that gay in his trivia
+ascribes the invention to a god stimulated by his passion for a mortal damsel and derives the name patten from patty the patten now supports each frugal dame which from the blue eyed patty takes the name
+but mortal damsels have long ago discarded the clumsy implement first it dropped its iron ring and became a clog afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe lighter to wear and more effectual to protect
+a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his accomplished sofa back to the original three legged stool
+i add the following epigram written by jane austen's uncle mister leigh perrot on reading in a newspaper the marriage of captain foote to miss patten through the rough paths of life with a patten your guard may you safely and pleasantly jog
+may the knot never slip nor the ring press too hard nor the foot find the patten a clog at the time when jane austen lived at steventon a work was carried on in the neighbouring cottages which ought to be recorded because it has long ceased to exist
+this was a better occupation for them than straw plaiting
+and did not admit of gadding and gossiping about the village the implement used was a long narrow machine of wood raised on legs furnished at one end with a large wheel and at the other with a spindle on which the flax or wool was loosely wrapped
+ballad poetry and fairy tales are full of allusions to it
+it was the labour assigned to the ejected nuns by the rough earl who said go spin ye jades go spin it was the employment at which roman matrons and grecian princesses presided amongst their handmaids
+heathen mythology celebrated it in the three fates spinning and measuring out the thread of human life
+a certain king and queen had three daughters the charms of the two elder were more than common but the beauty of the youngest was so wonderful that the poverty of language is unable to express its due praise the fame of her beauty was so great
+that strangers from neighboring countries came in crowds to enjoy the sight and looked on her with amazement paying her that homage which is due only to venus herself in fact venus found her altars deserted
+while men turned their devotion to this young virgin as she passed along the people sang her praises and strewed her way with chaplets and flowers this perversion of homage due only to the immortal powers to the exaltation of a mortal
+gave great offence to the real venus shaking her ambrosial locks with indignation she exclaimed am i then to be eclipsed in my honors by a mortal girl in vain then did that royal shepherd whose judgment was approved by jove himself
+give me the palm of beauty over my illustrious rivals pallas and juno but she shall not so quietly usurp my honors i will give her cause to repent of so unlawful a beauty
+mischievous enough in his own nature and rouses and provokes him yet more by her complaints she points out psyche to him and says my dear son punish that contumacious beauty give thy mother a revenge as sweet as her injuries are great
+infuse into the bosom of that haughty girl a passion for some low mean unworthy being so that she may reap a mortification as great as her present exultation and triumph cupid prepared to obey the commands of his mother
+there are two fountains in venus's garden one of sweet waters the other of bitter cupid filled two amber vases one from each fountain and suspending them from the top of his quiver hastened to the chamber of psyche whom he found asleep
+he shed a few drops from the bitter fountain over her lips though the sight of her almost moved him to pity then touched her side with the point of his arrow at the touch she awoke and opened eyes upon cupid himself invisible
+which so startled him that in his confusion he wounded himself with his own arrow heedless of his wound his whole thought now was to repair the mischief he had done and he poured the balmy drops of joy over all her silken ringlets
+psyche henceforth frowned upon by venus derived no benefit from all her charms true all eyes were cast eagerly upon her and every mouth spoke her praises
+her two elder sisters of moderate charms had now long been married to two royal princes but psyche in her lonely apartment deplored her solitude sick of that beauty which while it procured abundance of flattery had failed to awaken love
+consulted the oracle of apollo and received this answer the virgin is destined for the bride of no mortal lover her future husband awaits her on the top of the mountain he is a monster whom neither gods nor men can resist
+this dreadful decree of the oracle filled all the people with dismay and her parents abandoned themselves to grief but psyche said why my dear parents do you now lament me
+you should rather have grieved when the people showered upon me undeserved honors and with one voice called me a venus i now perceive that i am a victim to that name i submit lead me to that rock to which my unhappy fate has destined me
+accordingly all things being prepared the royal maid took her place in the procession which more resembled a funeral than a nuptial pomp and with her parents amid the lamentations of the people ascended the mountain
+on the summit of which they left her alone and with sorrowful hearts returned home while psyche stood on the ridge of the mountain panting with fear and with eyes full of tears the gentle zephyr raised her from the earth
+and bore her with an easy motion into a flowery dale by degrees her mind became composed and she laid herself down on the grassy bank to sleep when she awoke
+she entered it and in the midst discovered a fountain sending forth clear and crystal waters and fast by a magnificent palace whose august front impressed the spectator that it was not the work of mortal hands
+but the happy retreat of some god drawn by admiration and wonder she approached the building and ventured to enter every object she met filled her with pleasure and amazement golden pillars supported the vaulted roof
+and the walls were enriched with carvings and paintings representing beasts of the chase and rural scenes adapted to delight the eye of the beholder proceeding onward she perceived that besides the apartments of state
+there were others filled with all manner of treasures and beautiful and precious productions of nature and art while her eyes were thus occupied a voice addressed her though she saw no one uttering these words sovereign lady
+retire therefore to your chamber and repose on your bed of down and when you see fit repair to the bath supper awaits you in the adjoining alcove when it pleases you to take your seat there psyche gave ear to the admonitions of her vocal attendants
+and after repose and the refreshment of the bath seated herself in the alcove where a table immediately presented itself without any visible aid from waiters or servants and covered with the greatest delicacies of food and the most nectareous wines
+her ears too were feasted with music from invisible performers of whom one sang another played on the lute and all closed in the wonderful harmony of a full chorus she had not yet seen her destined husband
+but his accents were full of love and inspired a like passion in her she often begged him to stay and let her behold him but he would not consent on the contrary he charged her to make no attempt to see him
+for it was his pleasure for the best of reasons to keep concealed why should you wish to behold me he said have you any doubt of my love have you any wish ungratified if you saw me perhaps you would fear me perhaps adore me
+but all i ask of you is to love me i would rather you would love me as an equal than adore me as a god this reasoning somewhat quieted psyche for a time and while the novelty lasted she felt quite happy
+but at length the thought of her parents left in ignorance of her fate
+preyed on her mind and made her begin to feel her palace as but a splendid prison when her husband came one night she told him her distress and at last drew from him an unwilling consent that her sisters should be brought to see her
+so calling zephyr she acquainted him with her husband's commands and he promptly obedient soon brought them across the mountain down to their sister's valley they embraced her and she returned their caresses come said psyche
+enter with me my house and refresh yourselves with whatever your sister has to offer then taking their hands she led them into her golden palace and committed them to the care of her numerous train of attendant voices to refresh them in her baths
+and at her table and to show them all her treasures the view of these celestial delights caused envy to enter their bosoms at seeing their young sister possessed of such state and splendor so much exceeding their own
+they asked her numberless questions among others what sort of a person her husband was psyche replied that he was a beautiful youth who generally spent the daytime in hunting upon the mountains the sisters not satisfied with this reply
+soon made her confess that she had never seen him then they proceeded to fill her bosom with dark suspicions call to mind they said
+the inhabitants of this valley say that your husband is a terrible and monstrous serpent who nourishes you for a while with dainties that he may by and by devour you take our advice provide yourself with a lamp and a sharp knife
+put them in concealment that your husband may not discover them and when he is sound asleep slip out of bed bring forth your lamp and see for yourself whether what they say is true or not if it is hesitate not to cut off the monster's head and thereby recover your liberty
+psyche resisted these persuasions as well as she could but they did not fail to have their effect on her mind and when her sisters were gone their words and her own curiosity were too strong for her to resist so she prepared her lamp
+and a sharp knife and hid them out of sight of her husband when he had fallen into his first sleep she silently rose and uncovering her lamp beheld not a hideous monster but the most beautiful and charming of the gods
+with two dewy wings on his shoulders whiter than snow and with shining feathers like the tender blossoms of spring as she leaned the lamp over to have a nearer view of his face a drop of burning oil fell on the shoulder of the god
+startled with which he opened his eyes and fixed them full upon her then without saying one word he spread his white wings and flew out of the window psyche in vain endeavoring to follow him fell from the window to the ground
+cupid beholding her as she lay in the dust stopped his flight for an instant and said o foolish psyche is it thus you repay my love after having disobeyed my mother's commands and made you my wife will you think me a monster and cut off my head
+but go return to your sisters whose advice you seem to think preferable to mine i inflict no other punishment on you than to leave you forever love cannot dwell with suspicion so saying he fled away leaving poor psyche prostrate on the ground
+filling the place with mournful lamentations when she had recovered some degree of composure she looked around her but the palace and gardens had vanished and she found herself in the open field not far from the city where her sisters dwelt
+psyche meanwhile wandered day and night without food or repose in search of her husband casting her eyes on a lofty mountain having on its brow a magnificent temple she sighed and said to herself perhaps my love my lord inhabits there
+and directed her steps thither she had no sooner entered than she saw heaps of corn some in loose ears and some in sheaves with mingled ears of barley
+scattered about lay sickles and rakes and all the instruments of harvest without order as if thrown carelessly out of the weary reapers hands in the sultry hours of the day this unseemly confusion
+by separating and sorting everything to its proper place and kind
+to engage them all in her behalf the holy ceres whose temple it was finding her so religiously employed thus spoke to her o psyche truly worthy of our pity though i cannot shield you from the frowns of venus
+yet i can teach you how best to allay her displeasure go then and voluntarily surrender yourself to your lady and sovereign and try by modesty and submission to win her forgiveness and perhaps her favor will restore you the husband you have lost
+psyche obeyed the commands of ceres and took her way to the temple of venus endeavoring to fortify her mind and ruminating on what she should say and how best propitiate the angry goddess feeling that the issue was doubtful and perhaps fatal
+most undutiful and faithless of servants said she do you at last remember that you really have a mistress or have you rather come to see your sick husband yet laid up of the wound given him by his loving wife you are so ill favored and disagreeable
+that the only way you can merit your lover must be by dint of industry and diligence i will make trial of your housewifery then she ordered psyche to be led to the storehouse of her temple
+where was laid up a great quantity of wheat barley millet vetches beans and lentils prepared for food for her pigeons and said take and separate all these grains putting all of the same kind in a parcel by themselves
+and see that you get it done before evening then venus departed and left her to her task but psyche in a perfect consternation at the enormous work sat stupid and silent without moving a finger to the inextricable heap
+while she sat despairing cupid stirred up the little ant a native of the fields to take compassion on her the leader of the ant hill followed by whole hosts of his six legged subjects
+approached the heap and with the utmost diligence taking grain by grain they separated the pile sorting each kind to its parcel and when it was all done they vanished out of sight in a moment
+venus at the approach of twilight returned from the banquet of the gods breathing odors and crowned with roses seeing the task done she exclaimed this is no work of yours wicked one
+so saying she threw her a piece of black bread for her supper and went away next morning venus ordered psyche to be called and said to her behold yonder grove which stretches along the margin of the water
+there you will find sheep feeding without a shepherd with golden shining fleeces on their backs go fetch me a sample of that precious wool gathered from every one of their fleeces
+psyche obediently went to the riverside prepared to do her best to execute the command but the river god inspired the reeds with harmonious murmurs which seemed to say o maiden severely tried tempt not the dangerous flood
+nor venture among the formidable rams on the other side for as long as they are under the influence of the rising sun they burn with a cruel rage to destroy mortals with their sharp horns or rude teeth but when the noontide sun has driven the cattle to the shade
+and the serene spirit of the flood has lulled them to rest you may then cross in safety and you will find the woolly gold sticking to the bushes and the trunks of the trees thus the compassionate river god gave psyche instructions how to accomplish her task
+and by observing his directions she soon returned to venus with her arms full of the golden fleece but she received not the approbation of her implacable mistress who said i know very well it is by none of your own doings that you have succeeded in this task
+and i am not satisfied yet that you have any capacity to make yourself useful but i have another task for you here take this box and go your way to the infernal shades and give this box to proserpine
+and say my mistress venus desires you to send her a little of your beauty for in tending her sick son she has lost some of her own be not too long on your errand for i must paint myself with it to appear at the circle of the gods and goddesses this evening
+psyche was now satisfied that her destruction was at hand being obliged to go with her own feet directly down to erebus wherefore to make no delay of what was not to be avoided
+she goes to the top of a high tower to precipitate herself headlong thus to descend the shortest way to the shades below but a voice from the tower said to her why poor unlucky girl dost thou design to put an end to thy days in so dreadful a manner
+and what cowardice makes thee sink under this last danger who hast been so miraculously supported in all thy former then the voice told her how by a certain cave she might reach the realms of pluto and how to avoid all the dangers of the road
+but the voice added when proserpine has given you the box filled with her beauty of all things this is chiefly to be observed by you
+psyche encouraged by this advice obeyed it in all things and taking heed to her ways travelled safely to the kingdom of pluto she was admitted to the palace of proserpine
+and without accepting the delicate seat or delicious banquet that was offered her but contented with coarse bread for her food she delivered her message from venus presently the box was returned to her shut and filled with the precious commodity
+then she returned the way she came and glad was she to come out once more into the light of day but having got so far successfully through her dangerous task a longing desire seized her to examine the contents of the box
+what said she shall i the carrier of this divine beauty not take the least bit to put on my cheeks to appear to more advantage in the eyes of my beloved husband so she carefully opened the box but found nothing there of any beauty at all
+but an infernal and truly stygian sleep which being thus set free from its prison took possession of her and she fell down in the midst of the road a sleepy corpse without sense or motion but cupid being now recovered from his wound
+and not able longer to bear the absence of his beloved psyche slipping through the smallest crack of the window of his chamber which happened to be left open flew to the spot where psyche lay
+and gathering up the sleep from her body closed it again in the box and waked psyche with a light touch of one of his arrows again said he hast thou almost perished by the same curiosity
+but now perform exactly the task imposed on you by my mother and i will take care of the rest then cupid as swift as lightning penetrating the heights of heaven presented himself before jupiter with his supplication jupiter lent a favoring ear
+and pleaded the cause of the lovers so earnestly with venus that he won her consent on this he sent mercury to bring psyche up to the heavenly assembly and when she arrived handing her a cup of ambrosia he said drink this psyche and be immortal
+nor shall cupid ever break away from the knot in which he is tied but these nuptials shall be perpetual thus psyche became at last united to cupid and in due time they had a daughter born to them whose name was pleasure
+the fable of cupid and psyche is usually considered allegorical the greek name for a butterfly is psyche and the same word means the soul there is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as the butterfly
+bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb in which it has lain after a dull grovelling caterpillar existence to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions of the spring psyche then is the human soul
+which is purified by sufferings and misfortunes and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness in works of art psyche is represented as a maiden with the wings of a butterfly along with cupid
+in the different situations described in the allegory milton alludes to the story of cupid and psyche in the conclusion of his comus celestial cupid her famed son advanced holds his dear psyche sweet entranced
+after her wandering labors long till free consent the gods among make her his eternal bride and from her fair unspotted side two blissful twins are to be born youth and joy so jove hath sworn
+the allegory of the story of cupid and psyche is well presented in the beautiful lines of t k harvey they wove bright fables in the days of old when reason borrowed fancy's painted wings
+when truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold and told in song its high and mystic things and such the sweet and solemn tale of her the pilgrim heart to whom a dream was given that led her through the world love's worshipper
+through the dim grotto's tracery of spars mid the pine temples on the moonlit mount where silence sits to listen to the stars in the deep glade where dwells the brooding dove the painted valley and the scented air
+she heard far echoes of the voice of love and found his footsteps traces everywhere but nevermore they met since doubts and fears those phantom shapes that haunt and blight the earth had come twixt her a child of sin and tears
+and that bright spirit of immortal birth until her pining soul and weeping eyes had learned to seek him only in the skies till wings unto the weary heart were given and she became love's angel bride in heaven
+the story of cupid and psyche first appears in the works of apuleius a writer of the second century of our era it is therefore of much more recent date than most of the legends of the age of fable it is this that keats alludes to in his ode to psyche
+o latest born and loveliest vision far of all olympus faded hierarchy fairer than phoebe's sapphire regioned star or vesper amorous glow worm of the sky fairer than these though temple thou hast none
+nor altar heaped with flowers nor virgin choir to make delicious moan upon the midnight hours no voice no lute no pipe no incense sweet from chain swung censor teeming no shrine no grove no oracle no heat
+of pale mouthed prophet dreaming in moore's summer fete a fancy ball is described in which one of the characters personated is psyche not in dark disguise to night hath our young heroine veiled her light
+for see she walks the earth love's own his wedded bride by holiest vow pledged in olympus and made known to mortals by the type which now hangs glittering on her snowy brow
+chapter sixteen a girl and a bit of lowestoft immediately after breakfast the next morning billy was summoned to the telephone oh good morning uncle william she called in answer to the masculine voice that replied to her hullo
+billy are you very busy this morning no indeed not if you want me well i do my dear uncle william's voice was troubled i want you to go with me if you can to see a missus greggory she's got a teapot i want
+it's a genuine lowestoft harlow says will you go of course i will what time eleven if you can at park street she's at the west end
+harlow says others will have to know of it of course you see she's just made up her mind to sell it and asked him to find a customer i wouldn't trouble you but he says they're peculiar the daughter especially and may need some careful handling that's why i wanted you
+though i wanted you to see the tea pot too
+that she was one day to be mistress of the strata and all it contained was still anything but common to her i'd love to see it and i'll come gladly but i'm afraid i won't be much help uncle william she worried i'll take the risk of that
+why how funny well i'll come at eleven you say at park street yes and thank you my dear i tried to get kate to go too but she wouldn't by the way i'm going to bring you home to luncheon kate leaves this afternoon you know
+and it's been so snowy she hasn't thought best to try to get over to the house maybe aunt hannah would come too for luncheon would she i'm afraid not returned billy with a rueful laugh she's got three shawls on this morning
+i'll tell her though and i'll see you at eleven finished billy as she hung up the receiver promptly at the appointed time billy met uncle william at park street and together they set out for the west end street named on the paper in his pocket
+but when the shabby house on the narrow little street was reached the man looked about him with a troubled frown i declare billy i'm not sure but we'd better turn back he fretted i didn't mean to take you to such a place as this billy shivered a little
+nonsense uncle william of course you won't turn back
+she finished just above her breath missus greggory was found to be living in two back rooms at the top of four flights of stairs up which william henshaw toiled with increasing weariness and dismay punctuating each flight with a despairing
+billy really i think we should turn back but billy would not turn back and at last they found themselves in the presence of a white haired sweet faced woman who said yes she was missus greggory yes she was even as she uttered the words
+however she looked fearfully over her shoulders as if expecting to hear from the hall behind them a voice denying her assertion missus greggory was a cripple her slender little body was poised on two once costly crutches
+both the worn places on the crutches and the skill with which the little woman swung herself about the room testified that the crippled condition was not a new one billy's eyes were brimming with pity and dismay
+mechanically she had taken the chair toward which missus greggory had motioned her she had tried not to seem to look about her but there was not one detail of the bare little room from its faded rug to the patched but spotless tablecloth that was not stamped on her brain
+missus greggory had seated herself now and william henshaw had cleared his throat nervously
+we er i came from harlow missus greggory he gave me to understand you had an er teapot that er with his eyes on the cracked white crockery pitcher on the table william henshaw came to a helpless pause
+a curious expression or rather series of expressions crossed missus greggory's face terror joy dismay and relief seemed one after the other to fight for supremacy relief in the end conquered
+though even yet there was a second hurriedly apprehensive glance toward the door before she spoke the lowestoft yes i'm so glad that is of course i must be glad i'll get it her voice broke as she pulled herself from her chair
+there was only despairing sorrow on her face now the man rose at once
+what a beauty missus greggory had thrown open the door of a small cupboard near the collector's chair disclosing on one of the shelves a beautifully shaped teapot creamy in tint and exquisitely decorated in a rose design
+near it set a tray like plate of the same ware and decoration if you'll lift it down please yourself motioned missus greggory i don't like to with these she explained tapping the crutches at her side
+with fingers that were almost reverent in their appreciation the collector reached for the teapot his eyes sparkled billy look what a beauty and it's a lowestoft too the real thing the genuine true soft paste
+and there's the tray did you notice he exulted turning back to the shelf you don't see that every day they get separated most generally you know these pieces have been in our family for generations said missus greggory with an accent of pride
+you'll find them quite perfect i think perfect i should say they were cried the man they are then valuable missus greggory's voice shook indeed they are but you must know that
+i have been told so yet to me their chief value of course lies in their association my mother and my grandmother owned that teapot sir again her voice broke william henshaw cleared his throat but
+madam if you do not wish to sell he stopped abruptly his longing eyes had gone back to the enticing bit of china missus greggory gave a low cry but i do that is i must
+and that it will bring in money and we need money she threw a quick glance toward the hall door though she did not pause in her remarks i can't do much at work that pays i sew she nodded toward the machine by the window
+but with only one foot to make it go you see the other is
+she finished with a wistful whimsicality billy turned away sharply there was a lump in her throat and a smart in her eyes she was conscious suddenly of a fierce anger against she did not know what exactly but she fancied it was against the teapot
+or against uncle william for wanting the teapot or for not wanting it if he did not buy it and so you see i do very much wish to sell missus greggory said then perhaps you will tell me what it would be worth to you she concluded tremulously
+the collector's eyes glowed he picked up the teapot with careful rapture and examined it then he turned to the tray after a moment he spoke i have only one other in my collection as rare he said
+i paid a hundred dollars for that i shall be glad to give you the same for this madam missus greggory started visibly a hundred dollars so much as that she cried almost joyously
+brought of course if it's worth that to you she paused suddenly a quick step had sounded in the hall outside the next moment the door flew open
+mother only think i've she stopped and drew back a little her startled eyes went from one face to another then dropped to the lowestoft teapot in the man's hands her expression changed at once she shut the door quickly and hurried forward
+mother what is it who are these people she asked sharply billy lifted her chin the least bit she was conscious of a feeling which she could not name billy was not used to being called these people in precisely that tone of voice
+william henshaw too raised his chin he also was not in the habit of being referred to as these people my name is henshaw miss greggory i presume he said quietly i was sent here by mister harlow
+stammered missus greggory wetting her lips with an air of hurried apology and conciliation this gentleman says he will be glad to buy it er my daughter alice mister henshaw she hastened on in embarrassed introduction and miss
+neilson supplied the man as she looked at billy and hesitated a swift red stained alice greggory's face with barely an acknowledgment of the introductions she turned to her mother yes dear but that won't be necessary now
+as i started to tell you when i came in i have two new pupils and so turning to the man again i thank you for your offer but we have decided not to sell the teapot at present
+william henshaw frowned angrily that was the man but his eyes the collector's eyes sought the teapot longingly before either the man or the collector could speak however missus greggory interposed quick words of remonstrance
+but alice my dear she almost sobbed you didn't wait to let me tell you
+he will give us a hundred dollars a hundred dollars echoed the girl faintly
+billy watching the little scene with mingled emotions saw the glance with which the girl swept the bare little room and she knew that there was not a patch or darn or poverty spot in sight or out of sight which that glance did not encompass
+billy was wondering which she herself desired more that uncle william should buy the lowestoft or that he should not she knew she wished missus greggory to have the hundred dollars there was no doubt on that point then uncle william spoke
+and the final plea of the collector who sees a coveted treasure slipping from his grasp i am very sorry of course if my offer has annoyed you he said stiffly i certainly should not have made it had i not had missus greggory's assurance that she wished to sell the teapot
+alice greggory turned as if stung wished to sell she repeated the words with superb disdain she was plainly very angry her blue gray eyes gleamed with scorn and her whole face was suffused with a red that had swept to the roots of her soft hair
+do you think a woman wishes to sell a thing that she's treasured all her life a thing that is perhaps the last visible reminder of the days when she was living not merely existing alice
+i can't help it stormed the girl hotly i know how much you think of that teapot that was grandmother's i know what it cost you to make up your mind to sell it at all and then to hear these people talk about your wishing to sell it
+perhaps they think too we wish to live in a place like this that we wish to have rugs that are darned and chairs that are broken and garments that are patches instead of clothes alice gasped missus greggory in dismayed horror
+with a little outward fling of her two hands alice greggory stepped back her face had grown white again i beg your pardon of course she said in a voice that was bitterly quiet i should not have spoken so
+you are very kind mister henshaw but i do not think we care to sell the lowestoft to day both words and manner were obviously a dismissal and with a puzzled sigh william henshaw picked up his hat his face showed very clearly that he did not know what to do
+or what to say but it showed too as clearly that he longed to do something or say something during the brief minute that he hesitated however billy sprang forward missus greggory please won't you let me buy the teapot
+and then won't you keep it for me here i haven't the hundred dollars with me but i'll send it right away you will let me do it won't you it was an impulsive speech and a foolish one of course from the standpoint of sense and logic and reasonableness
+but it was one that might be expected perhaps from billy missus greggory must have divined in a way the spirit that prompted it for her eyes grew wet and with a choking dear child she reached out and caught billy's hand in both her own
+even while she shook her head in denial not so her daughter alice greggory flushed scarlet she drew herself proudly erect thank you she said with crisp coldness but distasteful as darns and patches are to us
+we prefer them infinitely to charity oh but please i didn't mean you didn't understand faltered billy for answer alice greggory walked deliberately to the door and held it open oh alice my dear pleaded missus greggory again feebly
+come billy we'll bid you good morning ladies said william henshaw then decisively and billy with a little wistful pat on missus greggory's clasped hands went once down the long four flights of stairs and out on the sidewalk
+william henshaw drew a long breath well by jove billy the next time i take you curio hunting it won't be to this place he fumed wasn't it awful choked billy awful
+the girl was the most stubborn unreasonable vixenish little puss i ever saw i didn't want her old lowestoft if she didn't want to sell it but to practically invite me there and then treat me like that scolded the collector his face growing red with anger
+still i was sorry for the poor little old lady i wish somehow she could have that hundred dollars it was the man who said this not the collector so do i rejoined billy dolefully
+well well but the darkness of mankind is untollable well sir you must know as you didn't hear it afore that there was a king
+and it was he that owned the churches in the early days the king you see was the right sort he was the real boy and loved sport as he loved his life and hunting in particular and from the rising o the sun up he got and away he went over the mountains after the deer
+and thinking of drowning himself that could get no diversion in life when all of a sudden turning round the corner
+god save you kindly king o'toole says the young man true for you says the king i am king o'toole says he prince and plennypennytinchery of these parts says he but how came ye to know that says he oh never mind says saint kavin
+you see it was saint kavin sure enough the saint himself in disguise and nobody else oh never mind says he i know more than that
+blur an agers how came ye to know about my goose says the king oh no matter i was given to understand it says saint kavin after some more talk the king says what are you i'm an honest man says saint kavin well honest man says the king
+and how is it you make your money so aisy
+is it a tinker you are says the king no says the saint i'm no tinker by trade king o'toole
+says he what would you say says he if i made your old goose as good as new my dear at the word of making his goose as good as new you'd think the poor old king's eyes were ready to jump out of his head
+with that the king whistled and down came the poor goose just like a hound waddling up to the poor cripple her master and as like him as two peas the minute the saint clapt his eyes on the goose i'll do the job for you says he king o'toole
+by jaminee says king o'toole if you do i'll say you're the cleverest fellow in the seven parishes oh by dad says saint kavin
+says he as to repair your old goose for nothing what'll you gi me if i do the job for you that's the chat says saint kavin i'll give you whatever you ask says the king isn't that fair
+says the saint that's the way to do business now
+this is the bargain i'll make with you king o'toole will you gi me all the ground the goose flies over the first offer after i make her as good as new i will says the king you won't go back o your word says saint kavin
+honour bright says king o'toole holding out his fist honour bright says saint kavin back again it's a bargain come here says he to the poor old goose
+and it's i that'll make you the sporting bird with that my dear he took up the goose by the two wings
+and throwing her up in the air whew says he jist givin her a blast to help her and with that my jewel she took to her heels flyin like one o the eagles themselves and cutting as many capers as a swallow before a shower of rain
+looking at his poor old goose flying as light as a lark and better than ever she was
+says saint kavin for making her the like by jabers says the king i say nothing beats the art o man barring the bees and do you say no more nor that says saint kavin and that i'm beholden to you says the king
+i will says king o'toole and you're welcome to it says he though it's the last acre i have to give but you'll keep your word true says the saint as true as the sun says the king it's well for you king o'toole that you said that word says he
+when the king was as good as his word saint kavin was pleased with him and then it was that he made himself known to the king and says he king o'toole you're a decent man for i only came here to try you you don't know me says he because i'm disguised musha
+then says the king who are you i'm saint kavin said the saint blessing himself oh queen of heaven says the king making the sign of the cross between his eyes and falling down on his knees before the saint is it the great saint kavin says he
+that i've been discoursing all this time without knowing it says he
+and so you're a saint says the king i am says saint kavin by jabers i thought i was only talking to a dacent boy says the king well you know the difference now says the saint i'm saint kavin says he the greatest of all the saints
+and so the king had his goose as good as new to divert him as long as he lived and the saint supported him after he came into his property as i told you until the day of his death and that was soon after for the poor goose thought he was catching a trout one friday
+but my jewel it was a mistake he made and instead of a trout it was a thieving horse eel and instead of the goose killing a trout for the king's supper by dad the eel killed the king's goose and small blame to him
+in their expressive language have named it the lions den probably because the captives possess teeth which frequently gnaw the bars and sometimes the keepers also it is a prison within a prison
+the walls are double the thickness of the rest the gratings are every day carefully examined by jailers whose herculean proportions and cold pitiless expression
+prove them to have been chosen to reign over their subjects for their superior activity and intelligence the court yard of this quarter is enclosed by enormous walls over which the sun glances obliquely
+when it deigns to penetrate into this gulf of moral and physical deformity on this paved yard are to be seen pacing to and fro from morning till night pale careworn and haggard like so many shadows
+the men whom justice holds beneath the steel she is sharpening there crouched against the side of the wall which attracts and retains the most heat they may be seen sometimes talking to one another but more frequently alone
+watching the door which sometimes opens to call forth one from the gloomy assemblage or to throw in another outcast from society the court of saint bernard has its own particular apartment
+it is a wretched damp nay even horrible spot more especially when we consider the agonizing conferences which have taken place between those iron bars and yet frightful though this spot may be
+it is looked upon as a kind of paradise by the men whose days are numbered it is so rare for them to leave the lions den for any other place than the barrier saint jacques or the galleys
+soon recovered its gloss in the parts which were still perfect for the wearer tried his best to make it assume the appearance of a new coat he bestowed the same attention upon the cambric front of a shirt which had considerably changed in color
+were watching the operations of the prisoner's toilet with considerable interest see the prince is pluming himself said one of the thieves he's a fine looking fellow said another
+his coat looks almost new and his boots shine like a nigger's face it's pleasant to have such well dressed comrades but didn't those gendarmes behave shameful must a been jealous to tear such clothes
+he looks like a big bug said another dresses in fine style and then to be here so young oh what larks meanwhile the object of this hideous admiration approached the wicket
+against which one of the keepers was leaning come sir he said lend me twenty francs you will soon be paid you run no risks with me remember i have relations who possess more millions
+come i beseech you lend me twenty francs so that i may buy a dressing gown it is intolerable always to be in a coat and boots and what a coat sir for a prince of the cavalcanti
+you are a man void of compassion i'll have you turned out this made the keeper turn around and he burst into a loud laugh the prisoners then approached and formed a circle
+the latter sure of quelling the tempest when the waves became too violent allowed them to rise to a certain pitch that he might be revenged on the importunate andrea and besides it would afford him some recreation during the long day
+the thieves had already approached andrea some screaming
+another kind of recreation in which a handkerchief is filled with sand pebbles
+rolled his tongue around his cheeks and smacked his lips in a manner equivalent to a hundred words among the bandits when forced to be silent it was a masonic sign caderousse had taught him
+he was immediately recognized as one of them the handkerchief was thrown down and the iron heeled shoe replaced on the foot of the wretch to whom it belonged some voices were heard to say that the gentleman was right
+that he intended to be civil in his way and that they would set the example of liberty of conscience and the mob retired the keeper was so stupefied at this scene that he took andrea by the hands
+said the same voice you see some one pays me a visit ah my dear sir you will see whether a cavalcanti is to be treated like a common person
+proves me to be under the protection of some powerful person this sudden fortune the facility with which i have overcome all obstacles an unexpected family and an illustrious name awarded to me
+gold showered down upon me and the most splendid alliances about to be entered into an unhappy lapse of fortune and the absence of my protector have cast me down certainly but not forever
+the hand which has retreated for a while will be again stretched forth to save me at the very moment when i shall think myself sinking into the abyss why should i risk an imprudent step it might alienate my protector
+upon the iron bars the bolted doors and the shadow which moved behind the other grating
+said andrea deeply affected good morning benedetto
+with his deep hollow voice you you said the young man looking fearfully around him do you not recognize me unhappy child silence
+you wish to speak with me alone do you not
+oh yes that is well
+then he mentally added still my unknown protector i am not forgotten they wish for secrecy since we are to converse in a private room i understand
+the keeper spoke for a moment with an official
+the room was whitewashed as is the custom in prisons but it looked quite brilliant to a prisoner though a stove a bed a chair and a table formed the whole of its sumptuous furniture
+andrea threw himself upon the bed the keeper retired now said the steward what have you to tell me and you
+you speak first oh no you must have much to tell me since you have come to seek me well be it so you have continued your course of villany you have robbed
+you have assassinated well i should say if you had me taken to a private room only to tell me this you might have saved yourself the trouble i know all these things but there are some with which
+who so gracefully mounted his horse
+as they say at the game of pincette
+come let us talk a little about my father who then am i
+but it was not you i presume who placed at my disposal one hundred thousand francs which i spent in four or five months it was not you who manufactured an italian gentleman for my father
+amongst the rest with a certain procureur whose acquaintance i did very wrong not to cultivate for he would have been very useful to me just now it was not you in fact who bailed me for one or two millions
+worthy foster father well well
+there resides a very rich gentleman at whose house you robbed and murdered did you not i believe i did the count of monte cristo tis you who have named him
+is too highly favored by heaven to be the father of such a wretch as you oh these are fine words and there will be fine doings if you do not take care menaces i do not fear them i will say
+do you think you are engaged with a pygmy like yourself
+what does scandal signify to me what possessions what reputation what pull as beauchamp says have i you great people always lose something by scandal notwithstanding your millions
+come who is my father i came to tell you ah cried benedetto his eyes sparkling with joy just then the door opened
+i will return to morrow
+good gendarmes i am at your service ah sir do leave a few crowns for me at the gate that i may have some things i am in need of it shall be done
+can i be deceived he murmured as he stepped into the oblong and grated vehicle which they call the salad basket never mind we shall see
+which had restored the courage of noirtier for ever since he had conversed with the priest his violent despair had yielded to a calm resignation which surprised all who knew his excessive affection
+had not seen his father since the morning of the death the whole establishment had been changed another valet was engaged for himself
+two women had entered madame de villefort's service in fact everywhere to the concierge and coachmen new faces were presented to the different masters of the house
+the proofs were certainly not convincing since they rested upon a few words written by an escaped galley slave on his death bed and who might have been actuated by hatred or revenge
+in accusing his companion but the mind of the procureur was made up he felt assured that benedetto was guilty and he hoped by his skill in conducting this aggravated case to flatter his self love
+which was about the only vulnerable point left in his frozen heart the case was therefore prepared owing to the incessant labor
+who wished it to be the first on the list in the coming assizes he had been obliged to seclude himself more than ever to evade the enormous number of applications
+presented to him for the purpose of obtaining tickets of admission to the court on the day of trial
+and the gloom which overshadowed the house was so recent
+which were the only means he had of dissipating his grief once only had villefort seen his father
+when the latter was to learn his father's name the magistrate harassed and fatigued
+similar to that in which tarquin lopped off the tallest poppies he began knocking off with his cane the long and dying branches of the rose trees which placed along the avenue
+at one of the open windows
+which villefort could scarcely distinguish his glance was so full of hate of ferocity and savage impatience
+to see upon what person this dark look was directed then he saw beneath a thick clump of linden trees which were nearly divested of foliage madame de villefort sitting with a book in her hand
+to smile upon her son or to throw back his elastic ball which he obstinately threw from the drawing room into the garden
+however at length he decided leaped out of the window into a cluster of heliotropes and daisies and ran to his mother his forehead streaming with perspiration
+pressed her lips upon it and sent him back with the ball in one hand and some bonbons in the other
+like that of the bird to the serpent walked towards the house as he approached it
+felt them pierce to the depths of his heart in that earnest look
+as well as a terrible menace then noirtier raised his eyes to heaven
+it is well sir replied villefort from below it is well have patience but one day longer what i have said i will do noirtier seemed to be calmed by these words
+and turned his eyes with indifference to the other side
+which seemed to strangle him and passing his livid hand across his forehead entered his study the night was cold and still the family had all retired to rest but villefort who alone remained up
+he had traced in red ink the magistrate had slept for a short time while the lamp sent forth its final struggles its flickerings awoke him and he found his fingers as damp and purple as though they had been dipped in blood
+which stood out in black relief on the horizon in the clover fields beyond the chestnut trees a lark was mounting up to heaven while pouring out her clear morning song
+and refreshed his memory to day he said with an effort to day the man who holds the blade of justice must strike wherever there is guilt involuntarily his eyes wandered towards the window
+of noirtier's room where he had seen him the preceding night the curtain was drawn and yet the image of his father was so vivid to his mind that he addressed the closed window as though it had been open
+and as if through the opening he had beheld the menacing old man yes he murmured yes be satisfied his head dropped upon his chest and in this position he paced his study
+then he threw himself dressed as he was upon a sofa less to sleep than to rest his limbs cramped with cold and study by degrees every one awoke
+heard the successive noises which accompany the life of a house the opening and shutting of doors
+to summon the waiting maid mingled with the first shouts of the child who rose full of the enjoyment of his age
+his new valet brought him the papers and with them a cup of chocolate what are you bringing me said he a cup of chocolate i did not ask for it who has paid me this attention
+my mistress sir she said you would have to speak a great deal in the murder case and that you should take something to keep up your strength and the valet placed the cup on the table nearest to the sofa
+with a gloomy expression then suddenly taking it up with a nervous motion he swallowed its contents at one draught it might have been thought that he hoped the beverage would be mortal
+the breakfast hour arrived
+well said villefort what then
+she is quite ready and wishes to know if she is to accompany you sir where to
+my mistress wishes much to be present at the trial ah said villefort with a startling accent does she wish that the man drew back and said
+if you wish to go alone sir i will go and tell my mistress
+and dented his pale cheeks with his nails tell your mistress he at length answered that i wish to speak to her and i beg she will wait for me in her own room yes sir
+then come to dress and shave me directly sir the valet re appeared almost instantly and having shaved his master assisted him to dress entirely in black
+when he had finished he said my mistress said she should expect you sir as soon as you had finished dressing i am going to her and villefort with his papers under his arm and hat in hand
+directed his steps toward the apartment of his wife at the door he paused for a moment to wipe his damp pale brow he then entered the room madame de villefort was sitting on an ottoman
+her bonnet was placed beside her on a chair and her gloves were on her hands
+she said in her naturally calm voice but how pale you are have you been working all night why did you not come down to breakfast well
+and cold as a statue edward said villefort fixing an imperious glance on the child go and play in the drawing room my dear i wish to speak to your mamma
+madame de villefort shuddered at the sight of that cold countenance that resolute tone and the awfully strange preliminaries edward raised his head looked at his mother
+the child unaccustomed to such treatment arose pale and trembling
+his father went up to him took him in his arms and kissed his forehead go he said go my child edward ran out
+which he closed behind the child and bolted
+said the young woman endeavoring to read her husband's inmost thoughts while a smile passed over her countenance which froze the impassibility of villefort what is the matter madame
+where do you keep the poison you generally use said the magistrate without any introduction placing himself between his wife and the door
+sees the murderous trap closing over its head a hoarse broken tone
+escaped from her while she became deadly pale monsieur she said i i do not understand you and in her first paroxysm of terror
+she had raised herself from the sofa in the next stronger very likely than the other she fell down again on the cushions i asked you continued villefort in a perfectly calm tone
+where you conceal the poison by the aid of which you have killed my father in law
+clasping her hands what do you say it is not for you to interrogate but to answer is it to the judge or to the husband stammered madame de villefort
+to the judge to the judge madame it was terrible to behold the frightful pallor of that woman the anguish of her look the trembling of her whole frame
+she muttered ah sir and this was all you do not answer madame exclaimed the terrible interrogator then he added with a smile yet more terrible than his anger
+it is true then you do not deny it she moved forward and you cannot deny it added villefort extending his hand toward her as though to seize her in the name of justice
+you have accomplished these different crimes with impudent address but which could only deceive those whose affections for you blinded them
+i have known that a poisoner lived in my house
+and not only in mine but in those of others thus your crime known by two persons suspected by many will soon become public and as i told you just now
+are you then a coward cried villefort in a contemptuous voice but i have always observed that poisoners were cowards can you be a coward
+can you be a coward continued villefort with increasing excitement you who could count one by one the minutes of four death agonies you who have arranged your infernal plans
+and removed the beverages with a talent and precision almost miraculous have you then who have calculated everything with such nicety have you forgotten to calculate one thing i mean
+you have done this i hope so at least madame de villefort stretched out her hands and fell on her knees i understand he said you confess but a confession made to the judges
+a confession made at the last moment extorted when the crime cannot be denied diminishes not the punishment inflicted on the guilty
+whoever she may be unless as i just said the poisoner has taken the precaution of keeping for herself a few drops of her deadliest potion madame de villefort uttered a wild cry
+and a hideous and uncontrollable terror spread over her distorted features oh do not fear the scaffold madame said the magistrate i will not dishonor you since that would be dishonor to myself no
+i mean that the wife of the first magistrate in the capital shall not by her infamy soil an unblemished name that she shall not with one blow dishonor her husband and her child no
+no oh no well madame it will be a laudable action on your part and i will thank you for it you will thank me for what for what you have just said
+what did i say oh my brain whirls i no longer understand anything oh my god my god and she rose with her hair dishevelled and her lips foaming
+she vociferated no you cannot wish that what i do not wish madame is that you should perish on the scaffold do you understand asked villefort oh mercy
+what i require is that justice be done
+he added with a flaming glance any other woman were it the queen herself i would send to the executioner but to you i shall be merciful to you i will say have you not madame
+put aside some of the surest deadliest most speedy poison oh pardon me sir let me live she is cowardly said villefort
+reflect that i am your wife you are a poisoner
+i i kill my boy cried the distracted mother
+ha ha ha and a frightful demoniac laugh finished the sentence which was lost in a hoarse rattle madame de villefort fell at her husband's feet he approached her
+think of it madame he said if on my return
+do you understand me he said i am going down there to pronounce the sentence of death against a murderer if i find you alive on my return you shall sleep to night in the conciergerie
+madame de villefort sighed her nerves gave way and she sunk on the carpet the king's attorney seemed to experience a sensation of pity he looked upon her less severely and bowing to her said slowly
+farewell madame farewell that farewell struck madame de villefort like the executioner's knife she fainted
+with two beds in it one laid on the floor it is ten o'clock on thursday night and the dark wall opposite the window shuts out the moonlight that might have struggled with the light of the one dip candle by which bartle massey is pretending to read
+the neglected beard of a man just risen from a sick bed his heavy black hair hangs over his forehead and there is no active impulse in him which inclines him to push it off that he may be more awake to what is around him
+he has one arm over the back of the chair and he seems to be looking down at his clasped hands he is roused by a knock at the door
+said bartle massey rising hastily and unfastening the door it was mister irwine adam rose from his chair with instinctive respect as mister irwine approached him and took his hand i'm late adam
+let us all sit down adam took his chair again mechanically and bartle for whom there was no chair remaining sat on the bed in the background have you seen her sir
+yes adam i and the chaplain have both been with her this evening did you ask her sir did you say anything about me yes said mister irwine with some hesitation
+it is not only you some fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow creatures she has scarcely said anything more than no either to me or the chaplain three or four days ago before you were mentioned to her
+when i asked her if there was any one of her family whom she would like to see to whom she could open her mind she said with a violent shudder tell them not to come near me i won't see any of them
+if they now urge you strongly to go and see her to morrow morning even without her consent
+that the interview might affect her favourably but i grieve to say i have scarcely any hope of that she didn't seem agitated when i mentioned your name she only said no in the same cold obstinate way as usual
+and if the meeting had no good effect on her it would be pure useless suffering to you severe suffering i fear she is very much changed adam started up from his chair
+and seized his hat which lay on the table but he stood still then and looked at mister irwine as if he had a question to ask which it was yet difficult to utter bartle massey rose quietly turned the key in the door
+and put it in his pocket is he come back said adam at last no he is not said mister irwine quietly lay down your hat adam unless you like to walk out with me for a little fresh air
+i fear you have not been out again to day you needn't deceive me sir said adam looking hard at mister irwine and speaking in a tone of angry suspicion you needn't be afraid of me i only want justice
+i want him to feel what she feels it's his work she was a child as it ud ha gone t anybody's heart to look at i don't care what she's done it was him brought her to it and he shall know it he shall feel it
+to sin and misery i'm not deceiving you adam said mister irwine arthur donnithorne is not come back was not come back when i left i have left a letter for him he will know
+he will know he will suffer long and bitterly he has a heart and a conscience i can't be entirely deceived in his character i am convinced
+he may be weak but he is not callous not coldly selfish i am persuaded
+all his life why do you crave vengeance in this way no amount of torture that you could inflict on him could benefit her no o god no adam groaned out sinking on his chair again
+but then that's the deepest curse of all that's what makes the blackness of it it can never be undone my poor hetty she can never be my sweet hetty again the prettiest thing god had made
+smiling up at me i thought she loved me and was good adam's voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone as if he were only talking to himself but now he said abruptly looking at mister irwine
+but she isn't as guilty as they say you don't think she is sir she can't ha done it that perhaps can never be known with certainty adam mister irwine answered gently
+in these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what seems to us strong evidence and yet for want of knowing some small fact our judgment is wrong but suppose the worst you have no right to say
+that the guilt of her crime lies with him and that he ought to bear the punishment it is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution we find it impossible to avoid mistakes
+even in determining who has committed a single criminal act and the problem
+you have a mind that can understand this fully adam when you are calm don't suppose i can't enter into the anguish that drives you into this state of revengeful hatred but
+for it is passion and you deceive yourself in calling it justice it might be with you precisely as it has been with arthur nay worse your passion might lead you yourself into a horrible crime
+no not worse said adam bitterly i don't believe it's worse i'd sooner do it i'd sooner do a wickedness as i could suffer for by myself than ha brought her to do wickedness
+and then stand by and see em punish her while they let me alone and all for a bit o pleasure as if he'd had a man's heart in him he'd ha cut his hand off sooner than he'd ha taken it what if he didn't foresee what's happened
+he foresaw enough he'd no right to expect anything but harm and shame to her
+not half so hateful as that let a man do what he will if he knows he's to bear the punishment himself
+and knows all the while the punishment ll fall on somebody else there again you partly deceive yourself adam there is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone you can't isolate yourself
+i feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of arthur's has caused to others but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it an act of vengeance on your part against arthur would simply be another evil
+added to those we are suffering under you could not bear the punishment alone you would entail the worst sorrows on every one who loves you you would have committed an act of blind fury that would leave all the present evils just as they were
+as long as you do not see that to fix your mind on arthur's punishment is revenge and not justice you are in danger of being led on to the commission of some great wrong remember what you told me about your feelings
+after you had given that blow to arthur in the grove adam was silent the last words had called up a vivid image of the past and mister irwine left him to his thoughts
+while he spoke to bartle massey about old mister donnithorne's funeral and other matters of an indifferent kind but at length adam turned round and said in a more subdued tone
+is dinah morris come to em sir seth said they'd sent for her no mister poyser tells me she was not come when he left they're afraid the letter has not reached her
+it seems they had no exact address adam sat ruminating a little while and then said
+but perhaps the poysers
+since they won't come nigh her themselves but i think she would for the methodists are great folks for going into the prisons and seth said he thought she would she'd a very tender way with her dinah had
+you never saw her sir did you yes i did i had a conversation with her she pleased me a good deal and now you mention it i wish she would come for it is possible that a gentle mild woman like her
+if i'd thought of it earlier i would have taken some measures for finding her out said mister irwine but it's too late now i fear well adam i must go now try to get some rest to night
+the next saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the donnithorne arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very day no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top boots
+the personal witness to the stranger's visit pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better than a bailiff such as satchell had been before him no one had thought of denying mister casson's testimony to the fact that he had seen the stranger nevertheless
+he proffered various corroborating circumstances i see him myself he said i see him coming along by the crab tree meadow on a bald faced hoss i'd just been t hev a pint
+and just as i come up by the big ash tree i see the man top boots coming along on a bald faced hoss i wish i may never stir if i didn't and i stood still till he come up and i says good morning sir
+i says for i wanted to hear the turn of his tongue as i might know whether he was a this country man so i says good morning sir it ll old hup for the barley this morning i think there'll be a bit got hin if we've good luck
+you're about as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on a key bugle well i don't know
+i should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by
+aye aye man said bartle with a tone of sarcastic consolation you talk the right language for you when mike holdsworth's goat says ba a a it's all right it ud be unnatural for it to make any other noise
+the rest of the party being loamsnire men
+and wisely fell back on the previous question which far from being exhausted in a single evening was renewed in the churchyard before service the next day with the fresh interest conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it
+and that fresh hearer was martin poyser who as his wife said
+she always cited it afterwards as a case of prevision which really had something more in it than her own remarkable penetration that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to herself i shouldna wonder if he's come about that man
+as is a going to take the chase farm wanting poyser to do something for him without pay but poyser's a fool if he does
+for the old squire's visits to his tenantry were rare and though missus poyser had during the last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches meaning even more than met the ear
+the speeches had always remained imaginary good day missus poyser said the old squire peering at her with his short sighted eyes a mode of looking at her which as missus poyser observed allays aggravated me
+it was as if you was a insect and he was going to dab his finger nail on you however she said your servant sir and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters
+and fly in the face of the catechism without severe provocation is your husband at home missus poyser yes sir he's only the rick yard i'll send for him in a minute if you'll please to get down and step in
+thank you i will do so i want to consult him about a little matter but you are quite as much concerned in it if not more i must have your opinion too hetty run and tell your uncle to come in
+said missus poyser as they entered the house and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to hetty's curtsy while totty conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry jam stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round furtively
+what a fine old kitchen this is said mister donnithorne looking round admiringly he always spoke in the same deliberate well chiselled polite way whether his words were sugary or venomous
+and you keep it so exquisitely clean missus poyser i like these premises do you know beyond any on the estate well sir since you're fond of em
+i should be glad if you'd let a bit o repairs be done to em for the boarding's that state as we're like to be eaten up wi rats and mice and the cellar you may stan up to your knees water in't if you like to go down but perhaps you'd rather believe my words
+not yet i must see your dairy
+on all hands about your fine cheese and butter said the squire looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which he and missus poyser might happen to disagree i think i see the door open there
+you must not be surprised if i cast a covetous eye on your cream and butter i don't expect that missus satchell's cream and butter will bear comparison with yours i can't say sir i'm sure it's seldom i see other folks's butter
+though there's some on it as one's no need to see the smell's enough
+but keeping near the door i'm sure i should like my breakfast better if i knew the butter and cream came from this dairy thank you that really is a pleasant sight unfortunately my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp
+i'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen ah poyser how do you do in the midst of business i see as usual i've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy
+mister poyser had just entered in shirt sleeves and open waistcoat with a face a shade redder than usual from the exertion of pitching as he stood red rotund and radiant
+said the old gentleman seating himself on a small chair near the door do you know missus poyser sit down pray both of you i've been far from contented for some time with missus satchell's dairy management
+i think she has not a good method as you have indeed sir i can't speak to that said missus poyser in a hard voice rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window as she continued to stand opposite the squire
+poyser might sit down if he liked she thought she wasn't going to sit down as if she'd give in to any such smooth tongued palaver mister poyser who looked and felt the reverse of icy did sit down in his three cornered chair
+and now poyser as satchell is laid up i am intending to let the chase farm to a respectable tenant i'm tired of having a farm on my own hands nothing is made the best of in such cases as you know
+said mister poyser with a good natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement if i'm called upon to speak sir said missus poyser after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness you know better than me
+not but what i'm glad to hear o anybody respectable coming into the parish there's some
+you're likely to find mister thurle an excellent neighbour i assure you such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan i'm going to mention especially as i hope you will find it as much to your own advantage as his
+indeed sir if it's anything t our advantage
+i think folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to em the fact is poyser said the squire ignoring missus poyser's theory of worldly prosperity
+now the plan i'm thinking of is to effect a little exchange if you were to have the hollow pastures you might increase your dairy which must be so profitable under your wife's management and i should request you missus poyser
+than corn land mister poyser was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees his head on one side and his mouth screwed up
+he was much too acute a man not to see through the whole business and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the subject but he disliked giving unpleasant answers unless it was on a point of farming practice
+he would rather give up than have a quarrel any day and after all it mattered more to his wife than to him so after a few moments silence he looked up at her and said mildly what dost say
+missus poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his silence but now she turned away her head with a toss looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow shed and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin
+held it firmly between her clasped hands say why i say you may do as you like
+i know there's them as is born t own the land and them as is born to sweat on't here missus poyser paused to gasp a little and i know it's christened folks's duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and
+blood ull bear it but i'll not make a martyr o myself and wear myself to skin and bone and worret myself as if i was a churn wi butter a coming in't for no landlord in england not if he was king george himself
+no no my dear missus poyser certainly not said the squire still confident in his own powers of persuasion you must not overwork yourself
+but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way there is so much milk required at the abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the addition to your dairy
+that it was not in this case a purely abstract question i daresay said missus poyser bitterly turning her head half way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm chair i daresay it's true for men
+wi ins an outs to fit int everything else if you could make a pudding wi thinking o the batter it ud be easy getting dinner
+what's to make me sure as the house won't be put o board wage afore we're many months older and then
+o nights wi twenty gallons o milk on my mind and dingall ull take no more butter let alone paying for it
+and lose half of em wi the measles and there's the fetching and carrying as ud be welly half a day's work for a man an hoss that's to be took out o the profits i reckon but there's folks ud hold a sieve under the pump
+that difficulty about the fetching and carrying you will not have missus poyser said the squire who thought that this entrance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on missus poyser's part
+bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony oh sir begging your pardon i've never been used t having gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places a making love to both the gells at once
+and keeping em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o gossip when they should be down on their knees a scouring if we're to go to ruin it shanna be wi having our back kitchen turned into a public well poyser
+and i shall not forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a neighbour i know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three years when the present one expires otherwise i daresay thurle who is a man of some capital
+even without the final threat her husband really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old place where he had been bred and born for he believed the old squire had small spite enough for anything
+was beginning a mild remonstrance explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and sell more stock with
+when missus poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say out this once though it were to rain notices to quit and the only shelter were the work house then sir if i may speak as
+sign her soul away i've a right to speak for i make one quarter o the rent and save another quarter
+wi the cellar full o water and frogs and toads hoppin up the steps by dozens and the floors rotten and the rats and mice gnawing every bit o cheese and runnin over our heads as we lie bed till we expect em to eat us up alive
+as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long ago
+till a place tumbles down and not then on'y wi begging and praying and having to pay half and being strung up wi the rent as it's much if he gets enough out o the land to pay for all he's put his own money into the ground beforehand see
+if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as that a maggot must be born the rotten cheese to like it i reckon you may run away from my words sir continued missus poyser following the old squire beyond the door
+for after the first moments of stunned surprise he had got up and waving his hand towards her with a smile had walked out towards his pony but it was impossible for him to get away immediately for john was walking the pony up and down the yard
+and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned you may run away from my words sir and you may go spinnin underhand ways o doing us a mischief for you've got old harry to your friend though nobody else is
+for want o knowing how t undo the tackle
+as speaks my mind there's plenty o the same way o thinking this parish
+for your name's no better than a brimstone match in everybody's nose if it isna two three old folks as you think o saving your soul by giving em a bit o flannel and a drop o porridge an you may be right thinking it'll take but little to save your soul
+there are occasions on which two servant girls and a waggoner may be a formidable audience and as the squire rode away on his black pony even the gift of short sightedness did not prevent him from being aware that molly
+and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's heels carried out the idea of missus poyser's solo in an impressive quartet missus poyser however had no sooner seen the pony move off than she turned round
+gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them into the back kitchen and unspearing her knitting began to knit again with her usual rapidity as she re entered the house thee'st done it now said mister poyser
+a little alarmed and uneasy but not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak yes i know i've done it said missus poyser
+there's no pleasure living if you're to be corked up for ever and only dribble your mind out by the sly like a leaky barrel i shan't repent saying what i think
+and there's little likelihood for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th
+this michaelmas twelvemonth said mister poyser and going into a strange parish where thee know'st nobody it'll be hard upon us both
+there's plenty o things may happen between this and michaelmas twelvemonth the captain may be master afore them for what we know said missus poyser inclined to take an unusually hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own merit
+and not by other people's fault i'm none for worreting said mister poyser rising from his three cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door
+some glory in their birth some in their skill some in their wealth some in their body's force some in their garments though new fangled ill
+some in their hawks and hounds some in their horse and every humour hath his adjunct pleasure wherein it finds a joy above the rest but these particulars are not my measure
+all these i better in one general best thy love is better than high birth to me richer than wealth prouder than garments costs
+since that my life on thy revolt doth lie
+happy to have thy love happy to die
+thy looks with me thy heart in other place for there can live no hatred in thine eye therefore in that i cannot know thy change
+in many's looks the false heart's history is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange but heaven in thy creation did decree that in thy face sweet love should ever dwell
+whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be
+how like eve's apple doth thy beauty grow if thy sweet virtue answer not thy show
+and will do none that do not do the thing they most do show who moving others are themselves as stone
+they rightly do inherit heaven's graces and husband nature's riches from expense they are the lords and owners of their faces others but stewards of their excellence
+the summer's flower is to the summer sweet though to itself it only live and die but if that flower with base infection meet the basest weed
+outbraves his dignity for sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds
+which like a canker in the fragrant rose doth spot the beauty of thy budding name
+that tongue that tells the story of thy days making lascivious comments on thy sport cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise naming thy name blesses an ill report
+o what a mansion have those vices got which for their habitation chose out thee where beauty's veil doth cover every blot and all things turns to fair that eyes can see
+take heed dear heart of this large privilege
+some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport both grace and faults are lov'd of more and less
+what old december's bareness everywhere and yet this time removed was summer's time the teeming autumn big with rich increase bearing the wanton burden of the prime
+like widow'd wombs after their lords decease yet this abundant issue seem'd to me but hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit for summer and his pleasures wait on thee
+and thou away the very birds are mute or if they sing tis with so dull a cheer that leaves look pale dreading the winter's near
+from you have i been absent in the spring when proud pied april dress'd in all his trim hath put a spirit of youth in every thing
+yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell of different flowers in odour and in hue could make me any summer's story tell or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew
+nor did i wonder at the lily's white nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose they were but sweet but figures of delight drawn after you you pattern of all those
+yet seem'd it winter still and you away as with your shadow i with these did play
+the forward violet thus did i chide sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells if not from my love's breath
+the purple pride which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells in my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd
+the roses fearfully on thorns did stand one blushing shame another white despair a third nor red nor white had stol'n of both and to his robbery had annex'd thy breath
+but for his theft in pride of all his growth a vengeful canker eat him up to death
+where art thou muse that thou forget'st so long to speak of that which gives thee all thy might spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song
+darkening thy power to lend base subjects light return forgetful muse and straight redeem in gentle numbers time so idly spent
+sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem and gives thy pen both skill and argument
+my love's sweet face survey if time have any wrinkle graven there if any be a satire to decay
+tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd when not to be receives reproach of being and the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd not by our feeling but by others seeing
+for why should others false adulterate eyes give salutation to my sportive blood or on my frailties why are frailer spies which in their wills count bad what i think good
+no i am that i am and they that level at my abuses reckon up their own i may be straight though they themselves be bevel
+by their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown unless this general evil they maintain all men are bad and in their badness reign
+which shall above that idle rank remain beyond all date even to eternity or at the least so long as brain and heart have faculty by nature to subsist
+thy record never can be miss'd that poor retention could not so much hold nor need i tallies thy dear love to score therefore to give them from me was i bold
+they are but dressings of a former sight our dates are brief and therefore we admire what thou dost foist upon us that is old and rather make them born to our desire than think that we before have heard them told
+thy registers and thee i both defy not wondering at the present nor the past for thy records and what we see doth lie
+it suffers not in smiling pomp nor falls under the blow of thralled discontent
+it fears not policy that heretic which works on leases of short number'd hours but all alone stands hugely politic that it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers to this i witness call
+the fools of time which die for goodness who have lived for crime
+were't aught to me i bore the canopy with my extern the outward honouring or laid great bases for eternity which proves more short than waste or ruining
+have i not seen dwellers on form and favour lose all and more by paying too much rent for compound sweet forgoing simple savour pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent no
+let me be obsequious in thy heart and take thou my oblation poor but free which is not mix'd with seconds knows no art but mutual render only me for thee hence thou suborned informer
+a true soul when most impeach'd stands least in thy control
+o thou my lovely boy who in thy power dost hold time's fickle glass his fickle hour who hast by waning grown
+if nature sovereign mistress over wrack as thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back she keeps thee to this purpose
+but now is black beauty's successive heir and beauty slander'd with a bastard shame for since each hand hath put on nature's power fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face
+sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower but is profan'd if not lives in disgrace
+and they mourners seem at such who not born fair no beauty lack sland'ring creation with a false esteem yet so they mourn
+whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap at the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand to be so tickled they would change their state and situation with those dancing chips o'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait
+murderous bloody full of blame savage extreme rude cruel not to trust enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight past reason hunted
+and no sooner had past reason hated as a swallow'd bait on purpose laid to make the taker mad mad in pursuit and in possession so had having and in quest to have
+extreme a bliss in proof
+if snow be white why then her breasts are dun if hairs be wires black wires grow on her head i have seen roses damask'd red and white
+but no such roses see i in her cheeks and in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks i love to hear her speak
+yet well i know that music hath a far more pleasing sound i grant i never saw a goddess go my mistress when she walks treads on the ground
+the slow little mud turtle when the twenty little mud turtles broke their egg shells one hot summer day and poked their way up through the warm sand in which they had been buried they looked almost as much alike as so many raindrops
+the mother turtle who was sunning herself on the bank near by said to her friends why there are my children did you ever see a finer family i believe i will go over and speak to them
+and then sat down until it should stop aching wait for me he called out to his brothers and sisters i'm coming in a minute the other little turtles waited but when his toe was comfortable again and he started toward them he met a very interesting snail
+and talked a while with him come on said the biggest little turtle don't let's wait any longer he can catch up so they sprawled along until they came to a place where they could sit in a row on an old log and they climbed onto it and sat just close enough together
+and not at all too close then the slow little turtle came hurrying over the sand with a rather cross look in his eyes and putting his feet down a little harder than he needed to quite as though he were out of patience about something why didn't you turtles wait for me
+you certainly are for i saw you scrambling out of the sand a little while ago and you came from the very place where i laid my eggs and covered them during the first really warm nights this year i was telling your father only yesterday that it was about time for you to hatch
+the sun has been so hot lately that i was sure you would do well the mother turtle stretched her head this way and that until there was hardly a wrinkle left in her neck skin she was so eager to see them all
+why are you not up here with your brothers and sisters she asked suddenly of the slow little turtle who was trying to make a place for himself on the log they didn't wait for me he said i was coming right along but they wouldn't wait i think they are just as mea
+the mother turtle raised one of her forefeet until all five of its toes with their strong claws were pointing at him she also raised her head as far as her upper shell would let her so you are the one she said
+i thought you were when i heard you trying to make the others wait it is too bad
+yet down in his little turtle heart he thought now they are going to catch it he was sure his mother was going to scold the other turtle children for leaving him he wanted to see what they would do so he looked out of his right eye at the ten brothers and sisters on that side
+the first year i had only a few children the next year i had more and so it has gone every year a few more children than the year before until now i never know quite how many i do have but there is always one slow little turtle
+who lags behind and wants the others to wait for him that makes him miss his share of good things and then he is quite certain to be cross and think it is somebody else's fault the slow little turtle felt the ten brothers and sisters on his right side looking at him out of their left eyes
+and the nine brothers and sisters on his left side looking at him out of their right eyes he drew in his head and his tail and his legs until all they could see was his rounded upper shell his shell side walls and the yellow edge of his flat lower shell
+i did hope said the mother turtle that i might have one family without such a child in it i cannot help loving even a slow child who is cross if he is hatched from one of my eggs yet it makes me sad very very sad
+and you she added turning to his brothers and sisters must be patient with him we shall not have him with us long
+i remember so well my first slow child and how he she began to cry and since she could not easily get her forefeet to her eyes she sprawled to the pond and swam off with only her head and a little of her upper shell showing above the water
+the slow little turtle was really frightened by what his mother had said and for a few days he tried to keep up with the others nothing happened to him and so he grew careless and made people wait for him just because he was not quite ready to go with them
+or because he wanted to do this or look at that or talk to some other person he was a very trying little turtle yet his mother loved him and did not like it when the rest called him a land tortoise it is all right you know to be a land tortoise when your father and mother are land tortoises
+and these cousins of the turtles look so much like them that some people cannot tell them apart that is because they forget that the tortoises live on land have higher back shells and move very very slowly turtles live more in the water
+and can move quickly if they will this is why other turtles sometimes make fun of a slow brother by calling him a land tortoise one beautiful sunshiny afternoon when most of the twenty little turtles were sitting on a floating log by the edge of the pond
+their mother was with some of her friends on another log near by she looked often at her children and thought how handsome their rounded up back shells were in the sunshine with the little red and yellow markings showing on the black
+she could see their strong little pointed tails too and their webbed feet with a stout claw on each toe she was so proud that she could not help talking about them
+yes said a fine old fellow who was floating near her a row of their mothers he was a turtle whom she had never liked very well but now she began to think that he was rather agreeable after all
+she was just noticing how beautifully the skin wrinkled on his neck when she heard a splash and saw two terrible great two legged animals wading into the pond from the shore boys she cried boys and she sprawled off the end of her log
+and slid into the water all her friends following her the biggest little turtle saw these great animals coming toward him he sprawled off the end of his log and slid into the water and all his brothers and sisters followed him except the slow little turtle
+then one of these great animals stooped over and picked him up and held him bottom side uppermost and rapped on that side which was flat and on the other side which was rounded and stared at him with two great eyes
+next the other great animal took him and turned him over and rapped on his shells and stared at him
+he was thinking over and over something has happened something has happened and he knew that back in the pond his mother would be trying to find him and could not the boys carried him to the edge of the meadow and put him down on the grass
+he lay perfectly still for a long long time and when he thought they had forgotten about him he tried to run away then they laughed and picked him up again and one of them took something sharp and shiny and cut marks into his upper shell
+this did not really give him pain yet as he said afterward it hurts almost as much to think you are going to be hurt as it does to be hurt it was not until the sun went down that the boys let the slow little turtle go
+then he was very very tired but he wanted so much to get back to his home in the pond that he started at once by moonlight this was the first time he had ever seen the moon for except when they are laying eggs turtles usually sleep at night
+i wish i might help you some time
+i'm here he cried joyfully poking first one and then another of them with his head the biggest little turtle moved without awakening i tell you i'm not hungry he murmured
+and again he fell fast asleep
+but cuddled inside his two shells and went to sleep also he was so tired that he did not awaken until the sun was high in the sky when he did open his eyes his relatives were sitting around looking at him and he remembered all that had happened before he slept
+does my shell look very bad he cried i wish i could see it oh i am so glad to get back i'll never be slow again never never his mother came and leaned her shell lovingly against his
+if you will only learn to keep up with your brothers and sisters she said i shall not be sorry that the boys carried you off you just wait and see said the slow little turtle and he was as good as his word after that
+he was always the first to slip from the log to the water if anything scared them and when one day a strange turtle from another pond came to visit he said to the turtles who had always lived there
+he is the quickest one in his family the pond people looked at each other and laughed that is queer they said after this we will call him the quick little turtle this made him very happy and when once in a while somebody forgot
+and by mistake called him the quick slow little turtle
+and this was the case with mother magpie she was always full of everybody's business but her own up and down here and there everywhere but in her own nest knowing everyone's affairs telling what everybody had been doing or ought to do
+and ready to cast her advice gratis at every bird and beast of the woods now she bustled up to the parsonage at the top of the oak tree to tell old parson too whit what she thought he ought to preach for his next sermon and how dreadful the morals of the parish were becoming
+then having perfectly bewildered the poor old gentleman who was always sleepy of a monday morning mother magpie would take a peep into missus oriole's nest sit chattering on a bough above and pour forth floods of advice
+depend upon it my dear mother magpie would say that this way of building your nest swinging like an old empty stocking from a bough isn't at all the thing i never built one so in my life and i never have headaches
+now you complain always that your head aches whenever i call upon you it's all on account of this way of swinging and swaying about in such an absurd manner but my dear
+piped missus oriole timidly the orioles always have built in this manner and it suits our constitution a fiddle on your constitution how can you tell what agrees with your constitution unless you try you own you are not well
+you are subject to headaches and every physician will tell you that a tilting motion disorders the stomach and acts upon the brain ask old doctor kite i was talking with him about your case only yesterday and says he missus magpie i perfectly agree with you
+but my husband prefers this style of building that's only because he isn't properly instructed pray did you ever attend doctor kite's lectures on the nervous system no i have no time to attend lectures who would sit on the eggs
+o missus magpie pray don't speak to my husband he will think i've been complaining no no he won't let me alone i understand just how to say the thing i've advised hundreds of young husbands in my day and i never gave offence
+i say my dear if you will persist in gossiping over our private family matters with that old mother magpie my dear i don't gossip she comes and bores me to death with talking and then goes off and mistakes what she has been saying for what i said
+but you must cut her i try to all i can but she won't be cut it's enough to make a bird swear said tommy oriole tommy oriole to say the truth had as good a heart as ever beat under bird's feathers
+but then he had a weakness for concerts and general society because he was held to be by all odds the handsomest bird in the woods and sung like an angel and so the truth was he didn't confine himself so much to the domestic nest as tom titmouse or billy wren
+the fact is quoth tommy i am a society bird and nature has marked out for me a course beyond the range of the commonplace and my wife must learn to accommodate if she has a brilliant husband
+whose success gratifies her ambition and places her in a distinguished public position she must pay something for it i'm sure billy wren's wife would give her very bill to see her husband in the circles where i am quite at home to say the truth
+my wife was all well enough content till old mother magpie interfered it is quite my duty to take strong ground and show that i cannot be dictated to
+and sometimes will take the most unreasonable courses if a meddlesome magpie gets her claw into their nest but old mother magpie had now got a new business in hand in another quarter she bustled off down to water dock lane where as we said in a former narrative
+lived the old music teacher doctor bullfrog the poor old doctor was a simple minded good amiable creature who had played the double bass and led the forest choir on all public occasions since nobody knows when
+latterly some youngsters had arisen who sneered at his performances as behind the age in fact since a great city had grown up in the vicinity of the forest tribes of wandering boys broke up the simple tastes and quiet habits
+which old mother nature had always kept up in those parts they pulled the young checkerberry before it even had time to blossom rooted up the sassafras shrubs and gnawed their roots fired off guns at the birds and on several occasions
+when old doctor bullfrog was leading a concert had dashed in and broken up the choir by throwing stones this was not the worst of it the little varlets had a way of jeering at the simple old doctor and his concerts
+that old bullfrog was a bore and that it was time to get up a new style of music in the parish and to give the charge of it to some more modern performer
+poor old doctor bullfrog knew nothing of this however and was doing his simple best in peace when mother magpie called in upon him one morning well neighbour how unreasonable people are who would have thought
+madam said doctor bullfrog with all that energy of tone for which he was remarkable i don't believe it i can't believe it you must have made a mistake
+no no my good friend i never make mistakes what i know i know certainly
+and nancy nibble who are married this very day i knew that thing six weeks before any bird or beast in our parts and i can tell you you are going to be scandalously and ungratefully treated doctor bullfrog
+bless me we shall all be ruined said missus bullfrog my poor husband oh as to that if you take things in time and listen to my advice said mother magpie we may yet pull you through you must alter your style a little
+adapt it to modern times everybody now is a little touched with the operatic fever and there's tommy oriole has been to new orleans and brought back a touch of the artistic if you would try his style a little something tyrolean you see
+dear madam consider my voice i never could hit the high notes how do you know it's all practice tommy oriole says so just try the scales as to your voice your manner of living has a great deal to do with it
+i always did tell you that your passion for water injured your singing suppose tommy oriole should sit half his days up to his hips in water as you do his voice would be as hoarse and rough as yours come up on the bank and learn to perch as we birds do
+we are the true musical race and so poor mister bullfrog was persuaded to forego his pleasant little cottage under the cat tails where his green spectacles and honest round back had excited even in the minds of the boys sentiments of respect and compassion
+he came up into the garden and established himself under a burdock and began to practise italian scales the result was that poor old doctor bullfrog instead of being considered as a respectable old bore
+got himself universally laughed at for aping fashionable manners every bird and beast in the forest had a gibe at him and even old parson too whit thought it worth his while to make him a pastoral call
+and admonish him about courses unbefitting his age and standing as to mother magpie you may be sure that she assured every one how sorry she was that dear old doctor bullfrog had made such a fool of himself
+but the tragedy for the poor old music teacher grew even more melancholy in its termination for one day as he was sitting disconsolately under a currant bush in the garden practising his poor old notes in a quiet way thump
+and with a few others devoted the most of the sabbath to their teaching when he and his brother arthur assembled the seventy anti slavery agents who were thereafter like firebrands scattered all over the land they held their meetings in this room
+these agents were entertained by abolitionists in the city and many of us had two or three of them in each of our families for a couple of weeks
+they went out all over the land and were instrumental in diffusing more truth perhaps about the dreadful system of american slavery than was accomplished in any other way he also aided in establishing several periodicals brimful of anti slavery truth
+among which were the anti slavery record the emancipator the slave's friend the latter to indoctrinate the children in anti slavery the american missionary society originally begun for the support of a mission in africa
+on the occasion of the return of the amistad captors to their native land and now doing so much for the freedmen of the south was almost entirely established by his efforts during the continuance of slavery much was done by this society
+the vigilance committee for aiding and befriending fugitives of which i was treasurer for many years had no better or warmer friend than he he was almost always at their meetings which were known only to the elect for we dared not hold them too publicly
+as we almost always had some of the travelers toward the north star present whose masters or their agents were frequently in the city in hot pursuit at first we sent them to canada but after a while sent them only to syracuse and the centre of the state
+in eighteen thirty four i think was the first rioting the sacking of mister tappan's house in rose street the mob brought all his furniture out and piling it up in the street set it on fire the family were absent at the time
+but hearing that there were a few loaded muskets there they took it out in threats but their mercantile establishment was almost ostracised at this time by the dry goods merchants
+and when they did so requested particularly that the bundles or boxes should not be marked from a tappan and co as was customary southern merchants especially avoided them
+and when two or three years later there was a general insolvency among them occasionally large losses to new york merchants and in some cases failure the tappans were saved by having no southern debts
+many remittances came for the help of the vigilance committee from england and scotland and at one time an extensive invoice of useful and fancy articles in several large boxes was received from the glasgow ladies sufficient to furnish a large bazaar or fair
+which was held in brooklyn for the benefit of the committee although lately afflicted by disease mister tappan still lives in the enjoyment of all his faculties and a good measure of health
+and in his advanced years sees now some of the great results of his life long efforts for the restoration and maintenance of human rights although still suffering under many of the evils which slavery has inflicted upon him the american slave no longer exists
+instead stands up in all our southern states the freedman knowing his rights and as a rule enjoying them original american abolitionists who met the scorn and odium the imputed shame and obloquy
+ye have done it unto me anthony lane new york november eighth eighteen seventy one mister lane mister tappan's personal friend who labored with him in the anti slavery cause
+and especially in the vigilance committee for many years from serious affection of his eyes
+mister tappan was therefore requested to furnish a few reminiscences from his own store house which he kindly did as follows
+my dear sir in answer to your request that i would furnish an article for your forthcoming book giving incidents within my personal knowledge relating to the underground rail road i have already apprized you of my illness and my consequent inability
+to write such an article as would be worthy of your publication however feeling somewhat relieved to day from my paralysis owing to the cheering sunshine and the favor of my almighty preserver i will try to do what i can in dictating a few anecdotes to my amanuensis
+which may afford you and your readers some gratification these facts i must give without reference to date as i will not tax my memory with perhaps a vain attempt to narrate them in order as mentioned in my life of arthur tappan
+but reflection convinced them that it was not only right to assist men in efforts to obtain their liberty when unjustly held in bondage but a duty abolitionists white and colored both in slave and free states
+those who had money contributed it freely and those who were destitute of money gave their time saying with the apostle silver and gold have i none but such as i have give i thee one
+i recollect that one morning on reaching my office that of the treasurer of the american missionary association my assistant told me that in the inner room were eighteen fugitives men women and children who had arrived that morning from the south in one company
+whom they had hired to conduct them without the limits of the city in the evening when the police force was changed they came through pennsylvania and new jersey to my office
+and by different agencies to canada two
+a missus mercy smith beckoned to me to come to her class
+in answer to my inquiries this girl told me the name of the southern city and the names of the persons who had held her as a slave and the mode of her escape et cetera i was walking near the water she said when a white sailor spoke to me
+if i would come to him in the evening i did so and was hid and fed by him and on landing at new york he conducted me to missus smith's house where i am now staying
+most of the teachers were warm hearted abolitionists and the whole number taught in this school during this period was seven or eight hundred
+to my inquiry have you parents living and also brothers and sisters she replied there is no child but myself were not your parents kind to you and did you not love them yes i love them very much
+how were you treated by your master and mistress they treated me very well how then said i could you put yourself in the care of that sailor who was a stranger to you and leave your parents i shall never forget her heart felt reply
+he told me i should be free one sunday morning i received a letter informing me that an officer belonging to savannah ga had started for new york in pursuit of two young men of nineteen or twenty
+and who had escaped and were supposed to be in new york the letter requested me to find them and give them warning as there was no time to be lost i concluded to go over to new york notwithstanding the doubtfulness of attempting to find them in so large a city
+i wrote notices to be read in the colored churches and colored sabbath schools which i delivered in person i then went to the colored school superintended
+i stated my errand to him with a description of the young men why said he i must have one of them in my school he took me to a class where i found one of the young men to whom i gave the needful information
+of savannah and that he had five children by the young man's mother who was his slave on his marriage to a white woman he sent his five colored children and their mother to auction to be sold for cash to the highest bidder
+on being put upon the auction block this young man addressed the bystanders and told them the circumstances of the case that his mother had long lived in the family of the doctor that it was cruel to sell her and her children
+and he warned the people not to bid for him for he would no longer be a slave to any man and if any one bought him he would lose his money he added i thought it right to say this i then spoke to the crowd
+my father said i has long been one of your first doctors and do you think it right for him to sell my mother and his children in this way i was sold and my brother also and the rest although my brother said to the crowd what i had said we soon made our escape
+and are now both in the city i am a blacksmith and have worked six months in one shop in new york with white journeymen not one of whom believes i suppose that i am a colored man it was not surprising for so fair was his complexion
+that with the aid of a brown wig after he had cut off his hair he was completely disguised he soon notified his brother who lived in another part of the city and both put themselves out of harm's way
+they were remarkably fine young men and it seemed a special providence that i should find them in such a large city and direct them to escape from their pursuer within one hour after i left my house in brooklyn
+so far i have been dealing with our general outfit and shall now pass to the special equipment of the shore party the hut we took out was built on my property on bundefjord so that i was able to watch the work as it progressed
+it was built by the brothers hans and joergen stubberud and was throughout a splendid piece of work which did honour to both the brothers the materials proved excellent in every way the hut was twenty six feet long by thirteen feet wide
+its height from the floor to the ridge of the roof was about twelve feet it was built as an ordinary norwegian house with pointed gable and had two rooms one of these was nineteen and a half feet long and was to serve as our dormitory dining room and sitting room
+the other room was six and a half feet long and was to be lindstroem's kitchen from the kitchen a double trap door led to the loft where we intended to keep a quantity of provisions and outfit the walls consisted of three inch planks
+for insulation we used cellulose pulp the floor and the ceiling between the rooms and the loft were double
+the doors were extraordinarily thick and strong and fitted into oblique grooves so that they closed very tightly there were two windows a triple one in the end wall of the main room and a double one in the kitchen
+for the covering of the roof we took out roofing paper and for the floor linoleum in the main room there were two air pipes
+there were bunks for ten men in two stages six on one wall and four on the other the furniture of the room consisted of a table a stool for each man and a lux lamp
+the hut was tarred several times and every part was carefully marked so that it could easily be set up to fasten it to the ground and prevent the antarctic storms from blowing it away i had strong eyebolts screwed into each end of the roof ridge
+and the four corners of the roof we carried six strong eyebolts a metre long to be rammed into the barrier between these bolts and those on the hut steel wires were to be stretched which could be drawn quite tight we also had two spare cables
+which could be stretched over the roof if the gales were too severe the two ventilating pipes and the chimney were secured outside with strong stays as will be seen every precaution was taken to make the hut warm and comfortable
+and to hold it down on the ground we also took on board a quantity of loose timber boards and planks besides the hut we took with us fifteen tents for sixteen men each ten of these were old but good
+they were served out to us from the naval stores the other five were new and we bought them from the army depots it was our intention to use the tents as temporary houses they were easily and quickly set up and were strong and warm
+on the voyage to the south roenne sewed new floors of good strong canvas to the five new tents all cases of provisions that were intended for winter quarters were marked and stowed separately in the hold
+we had ten sledges made by a firm of sporting outfitters in christiania they were built like the old nansen sledges but rather broader and were twelve feet long the runners were of the best american hickory shod with steel
+the other parts were of good tough norwegian ash to each sledge belonged a pair of spare runners which could easily be fitted underneath by means of clamps and as easily removed when not required
+the steel shoeing of the runners was well coated with red lead and the spare runners with tar these sledges were extremely strongly built and could stand all kinds of work on every sort of surface at that time
+i did not know the conditions on the barrier as i afterwards came to know them of course these sledges were very heavy we took twenty pairs of ski all of the finest hickory they were eight feet long and proportionately narrow
+i chose them of this length with a view to being able to cross the numerous cracks in the glaciers the greater the surface over which the weight could be distributed the better prospect we should have of slipping over the snow bridges
+we had forty ski poles with ebonite points the ski bindings were a combination of the huitfeldt and the hoeyer ellefsen bindings we also had quantities of loose straps
+we had six three man tents all made in the navy workshops the workmanship could not have been better they were the strongest and most practical tents that have ever been used they were made of the closest canvas with the floor in one piece
+one man was sufficient to set up the tent in the stiffest breeze i have come to the conclusion that the fewer poles a tent has the easier it is to set up which seems quite natural these tents have only one pole
+how often one reads in narratives of polar travel that it took such and such a time often hours to set up the tent and then when at last it was up one lay expecting it to be blown down at any moment
+there was no question of this with our tents they were up in a twinkling and stood against all kinds of wind we could lie securely in our sleeping bags and let it blow the arrangement of the door was on the usual sack principle
+which came from the estate of palsgaard in jutland and the material did all it promised these cases were one foot square and fifteen and a half inches high
+they had only a little round opening on the top closed with an aluminium lid which fitted exactly like the lid of a milk can large lids weaken the cases and i had therefore chosen this form we did not have to throw off the lashing of the case to get the lid off
+and this is a very great advantage we could always get at it a case with a large lid covered by the lashing gives constant trouble the whole lashing has to be undone for every little thing one wants out of the case this is not always convenient
+if one is tired and slack it may sometimes happen that one will put off till to morrow what ought to be done to day especially when it is bitterly cold
+the handier one's sledging outfit the sooner one gets into the tent and to rest and that is no small consideration on a long journey our outfit of clothing was abundant and more complete i suppose than that of any former polar expedition
+we may divide it into two classes the outfit for specially low temperatures and that for more moderate temperatures it must be remembered that no one had yet wintered on the barrier so we had to be prepared for anything
+in order to be able to grapple with any degree of cold we were supplied with the richest assortment of reindeer skin clothing we had it specially thick medium and quite light it took a long time to get these skin clothes prepared
+first the reindeer skins had to be bought in a raw state
+let me take the opportunity of thanking this man for the many and great services he has rendered me not only during my preparations for the third voyage of the fram
+with his help i have succeeded in obtaining things that i should otherwise never have been able to get he shrank from no amount of work but went on till he had found what i wanted
+this time he procured nearly two hundred and fifty good reindeer skins dressed by the lapps and sent them to christiania here i had great trouble in finding a man who could sew skins but at last i found one
+we then went to work to make clothes after the pattern of the netchelli eskimo and the sewing went on early and late thick anoraks and thin ones heavy breeches and light winter stockings and summer stockings
+we also had a dozen thin sleeping bags which i thought of using inside the big thick ones if the cold should be too severe everything was finished but not until the last moment the outer sleeping bags were made by mister brandt furrier of bergen
+and they were so excellent both in material and making up that no one in the world could have done better it was a model piece of work to save this outer sleeping bag we had it provided with a cover of the lightest canvas
+which was a good deal longer than the bag itself it was easy to tie the end of the cover together like the mouth of the sack and this kept the snow out of the bag during the day's march
+in this way we always kept ourselves free from the annoyance of drifting snow we attached great importance to having the bags made of the very best sort of skin and took care that the thin skin of the belly was removed
+as of course the cold penetrates more easily through the thin skin and gives rise to dampness in the form of rime on meeting the warmth of the body these thin patches remain damp whenever one is in the bag and in a short time they lose their hair
+the damp spreads like decay in wood and continually attacks the surrounding skin with the result that one fine day you find yourself with a hairless sleeping bag
+our burberry wind clothes were made in the form of anorak blouse and trousers both very roomy the others consisted of trousers and jacket with hood our mits were for the most part such as one can buy in any shop
+we wanted nothing else in and around winter quarters outside the mits we wore an outer covering of windproof material so as not to wear them out too quickly these mits are not very strong though they are good and warm
+besides these we had ten pairs of ordinary kid mits which were bought at a glove shop in christiania and were practically impossible to wear out i wore mine from framheim to the pole and back again and afterwards on the voyage to tasmania
+the lining of course was torn in places but the seams of the mits were just as perfect as the day i bought them taking into consideration the fact that i went on ski the whole way and used two poles it will be understood that the mits were strongly made
+we also had a number of woollen gloves which curiously enough the others greatly prized for myself i was never able to wear such things they simply freeze the fingers off me but most important of all is the covering of the feet
+for the feet are the most exposed members and the most difficult to protect one can look after the hands
+and this is a sufficiently troublesome piece of work to make one disinclined to undo it again until one is turning in they cannot be seen in the course of the day and one has to depend entirely on feeling but feeling in this case often plays curious tricks
+for if they had known it they could not possibly have let it go so far the fact is that in this case sensation is a somewhat doubtful guide for the feet lose all sensation
+it is true that there is a transitional stage when one feels the cold smarting in one's toes and tries to get rid of it by stamping the feet as a rule this is successful the warmth returns or the circulation is restored
+but it occasionally happens that sensation is lost at the very moment when these precautions are taken and then one must be an old hand to know what has happened many men conclude that as they no longer feel the unpleasant smarting sensation all is well
+and at the evening inspection a frozen foot of tallow like appearance presents itself an event of this kind may ruin the most elaborately prepared enterprise and it is therefore advisable in the matter of feet
+to carry one's caution to lengths which may seem ridiculous now it is a fact that if one can wear soft foot gear exclusively the risk of frost bite is far less than if one is compelled to wear stiff boots in soft foot gear of course
+the foot can move far more easily and keep warm but we were to take ski and to get full use out of them so that in any case we had to have a stiff sole for the sake of the bindings it is of no use to have a good binding unless you can use it in the right way
+in my opinion on a long journey such as that we had before us the ski must be perfectly steady i do not know anything that tires me more than a bad fastening that is one that allows the foot to shift in the binding
+i want the ski to be a part of oneself so that one always has full command of them i have tried many patents for i have always been afraid of a stiff fastening in cold temperatures but all these patents without exception are worthless in the long run
+i decided this time to try a combination of stiff and soft foot gear so that we could use the splendid huitfeldt hoeyer ellefsen bindings but this was no easy matter of our whole outfit nothing caused me more worry
+or gave us all more work in the course of the expedition than the stiff outer covering which we had to have but we solved the problem at last i applied to one of the leading makers of ski boots in christiania and explained the difficulty to him
+fortunately i had found a man who was evidently interested in the question we agreed that he should make a sample pair after the pattern of ski boots the sole was to be thick and stiff for we had to be prepared to use crampons but the uppers as soft as possible
+in order to avoid leather which usually becomes stiff and easily cracked in the cold he was to use a combination of leather and thin canvas for the uppers leather nearest the sole and canvas above it the measurements were taken from my foot
+which is not exactly a child's foot with two pairs of reindeer skin stockings on and ten pairs were made
+they were exhibited in the bootmaker's windows i used to go a long way round to avoid coming face to face with these monsters in public we are all a trifle vain and dislike having our own shortcomings shown up in electric light
+if i had ever cherished any illusions on the subject of a dainty little foot i am sure the last trace of such vanity died out on the day i passed the shoemaker's window and beheld my own boots
+i never went that way again until i was certain that the exhibition was closed one thing is certain that the boots were a fine piece of workmanship we shall hear later on of the alterations they had to undergo before we at last made them as large as we wanted
+for the giant boots turned out much too small among other equipment i must mention our excellent primus cooking apparatus this all came complete from a firm in stockholm for cooking on sledge journeys the primus stove ranks above all others
+it gives a great deal of heat uses little oil and requires no attention advantages which are important enough anywhere but especially when sledging there is never any trouble with this apparatus it has come as near perfection as possible
+we took five nansen cookers with us this cooker utilizes the heat more completely than any other but i have one objection to make to it it takes up space we used it on our depot journeys
+but were unfortunately obliged to give it up on the main southern journey we were so many in a tent and space was so limited that i dared not risk using it if one has room enough it is ideal in my opinion
+we had with us ten pairs of snow shoes and one hundred sets of dog harness of the alaska eskimo pattern the alaska eskimo drive their dogs in tandem the whole pull is thus straight ahead in the direction the sledge is going
+and this is undoubtedly the best way of utilizing the power i had made up my mind to adopt the same system in sledging on the barrier another great advantage it had was that the dogs would pass singly across fissures
+so that the danger of falling through was considerably reduced the exertion of pulling is also less trying with alaska harness than with the greenland kind as the alaska harness has a shallow padded collar
+which is slipped over the animal's head and makes the weight of the pull come on his shoulders whereas the greenland harness presses on his chest raw places which occur rather frequently with the greenland harness are almost entirely avoided with the other
+all the sets of harness were made in the navy workshops and after their long and hard use they are as good as ever there could be no better recommendation than this of instruments and apparatus for the sledge journeys we carried two sextants
+three artificial horizons of which two were glass horizons with dark glasses and one a mercury horizon and four spirit compasses made in christiania they were excellent little compasses
+i had drawn the maker's attention to this beforehand and asked him to use as pure a spirit as possible what his object was i still do not know but the spirit he employed was highly dilute
+the best proof of this was that the liquid in our compasses froze before the spirits in a flask we were naturally inconvenienced by this besides these we had an ordinary little pocket compass two pairs of binoculars one by zeiss and the other by goertz
+and snow goggles from doctor schanz
+during the whole stay on the barrier i myself wore a pair of ordinary spectacles with yellow glasses of quite a light tint
+how excellent these glasses are appears clearly enough from the fact that i never had the slightest touch of snow blindness on the southern journey
+it will perhaps be suggested that i am less susceptible to this ailment than others but i know from personal experience that such is not the case i have previously had several severe attacks of snow blindness we had two photographic cameras an air thermometer
+two aneroids with altitude scale to fifteen thousand feet and two hypsometers the hypsometer is only an instrument for determining the boiling point which gives one the height above the sea the method is both simple and reliable
+the medical stores for sledging were given by a london firm and the way in which the things were packed speaks for the whole outfit there is not a speck of rust on needles scissors knives or anything else although they have been exposed to much damp
+our own medical outfit which was bought in christiania and according to the vendor's statement unusually well packed became in a short time so damaged that the whole of it is now entirely spoilt the sledging provisions must be mentioned briefly
+i have already spoken of the pemmican i have never considered it necessary to take a whole grocer's shop with me when sledging the food should be simple and nourishing and that is enough a rich and varied menu is for people who have no work to do
+besides the pemmican we had biscuits milk powder and chocolate the biscuits were a present from a well known norwegian factory and did all honour to their origin they were specially baked for us and were made of oatmeal with the addition of dried milk and a little sugar
+they were extremely nourishing and pleasant to the taste thanks to efficient packing they kept fresh and crisp all the time these biscuits formed a great part of our daily diet and undoubtedly contributed in no small degree to the successful result
+milk powder is a comparatively new commodity with us but it deserves to be better known it came from the district of jaederen neither heat nor cold dryness nor wet could hurt it
+we had large quantities of it lying out in small thin linen bags in every possible state of the weather the powder was as good the last day as the first we also took dried milk from a firm in wisconsin this milk had an addition of malt and sugar
+and was in my opinion excellent it also kept good the whole time the chocolate came from a world renowned firm and was beyond all praise the whole supply was a very acceptable gift
+chapter six how saint monica lived in the days of her widowhood and how she put all her trust in god patricius had not much in the way of worldly goods to leave to his wife
+she needed little it is true for herself but there was augustine would it be possible for her even if she practised the strictest economy to keep him at carthage where he was doing so well
+romanianus divined her anxiety and hastened to set it at rest he had a house in carthage he said it should be augustine's as long as he required it
+this would settle the question of lodging for the rest continued romanianus as an old friend of patricius he had the right to befriend his son and monica must grant him the privilege
+of acting a father's part to augustine until he was fairly launched in life he had a child of his own
+if monica would befriend his boy they would be quits the gratitude of both mother and son towards this generous friend and benefactor lasted throughout their lives
+you it was romanianus wrote augustine in his confessions who when i was a poor young student in carthage opened to me your house your purse and still more your heart
+you it was who when i had the sorrow to lose my father comforted me by your friendship helped me with your advice and assisted me with your fortune
+monica mourned her husband's death with true devotion but hers was not a selfish sorrow she had love and sympathy for all who needed them
+and forgot her own grief in solacing that of others there were certain good works which the church gave to christian widows to perform the hospitals for instance were entirely in their hands
+they were small as yet built according to the needs of the moment from the funds of the faithful and held but few patients these devoted women succeeded each other at intervals
+in their task of washing and attending to the sick watching by their beds and cleaning their rooms their ministrations did not even cease there with reverent care they prepared the dead for burial
+thinking the while of the preparation of christ's body for the tomb and of him who said inasmuch as ye do it to the least of my brethren ye do it unto me
+it was a happy moment for monica when her turn came to serve the sick she would kiss their sores for very pity as she washed and dressed them and their faces grew bright at her coming
+they called her mother it seemed such a natural name to give her for she was a mother to them all and gave them a mother's love to some of the poor creatures friendless slaves as they often were
+who had known little sympathy or tenderness in their hard lives it was a revelation of christianity which taught them more than hours of preaching could have done but there was other work besides that at the hospital
+there were the poor to be helped the hungry to be fed the naked to be clothed she would gather the orphan children at her knee to teach them the truths of their faith when they were very poor
+she would keep them in her own house feed them at her own table and clothe them with her own hands if i am a mother to these motherless ones she would say to herself he will have mercy and give me back my boy
+if i teach them to know and love him as a father he will watch over my son it was a custom of the time on the feasts of saints and martyrs to make a pilgrimage to their tombs
+with a little basket of food and wine this was laid on the grave after which the faithful would partake of what they had brought while they thought and spoke of the noble lives of god's servants who had gone before
+the custom was abolished not long after on account of the abuses which had arisen but monica observed it to the end she scarcely tasted of her offering herself
+but gave it all away to the poor often indeed she went cold and hungry that they might be clothed and fed her love of prayer too could now find full scope
+every morning found her in her place in church for the holy sacrifice every evening she was there again silent absorbed in god the place where she knelt was often wet with her tears
+the time passed by unheeded patricius her husband was safe in god's hands but augustine her eldest born her darling in what dark paths was he wandering
+and yet in her heart of hearts there was a deep conviction that no sad news of his life at carthage could shake his was not the nature to find contentment in the things of earth
+he was born to something higher his noble heart his strong intelligence would bring him back to god and yet and yet
+her heart sank as she thought of graces wasted of conscience trampled underfoot of light rejected no there was no hope anywhere but with god in him she would trust and in him alone
+he was infinite in mercy and strong to save he had promised that he would never fail those who put their trust in him at his feet and at his feet alone
+monica poured out her tears and her sorrow with others she was serene and hopeful as of old even joyous always ready to help and comfort it was said of her after her death
+that no one had such a gift of helping others as she she never preached at people most people have an insurmountable dislike to being preached at but every word she said had a strange power of drawing souls to god
+of making them wish to be better augustine meanwhile at carthage was justifying all the hopes that had been formed of him he had even greater gifts it seemed than eloquence feeling and wit
+he was at the head of his class in rhetoric his master had spoken to him of a certain treatise of aristotle which he would soon be called upon to study it was so profound he said that few could understand it
+even with the help of the most learned professors augustine eager to make acquaintance with this wonderful work procured it at once and read it it seemed to him perfectly simple it was unnecessary he found
+to ask a single explanation it was the same with geometry music every science he took up this young genius of nineteen only discovered there were difficulties in the way
+when he had to teach others and realized how hard it was to make them understand what was so exceedingly simple to himself there was something strangely sympathetic and attractive about augustine
+he seemed modest and reserved about his own gifts although he himself tells us in his confessions that he was full of pride and ambition he had a gift of making true and faithful friends a charm in conversation
+that drew his young companions and even older men to his side a more worldly mother than monica would have been thoroughly proud of her son faith and virtue were alone weak and faint in that soul
+that could so ill do without them but to her they were the one essential thing the rest did not matter yet monica with true insight believed that with noble minds knowledge must draw men to god
+she hoped much therefore that augustine's brilliance of intellect would save him in the end and her hopes were not deceived already the noble philosophy of cicero
+pagan though he was had awakened a thirst for wisdom in the young student's soul already he felt the emptiness of earthly joys i longed my god he writes
+and i knew not that it was thou that wast working in me one thing cooled my ardour he goes on to say it was that the name of christ was not there and this name by thy mercy lord
+of thy son my saviour my heart had drawn in with my mother's milk and kept in its depths and every doctrine where this name did not appear fluent elegant and truth like though it might be
+could not master me altogether he then turned to the holy scriptures but they appeared to him inferior in style to cicero my pride he writes
+despised the manner in which the things are said and my intelligence could not discover the hidden sense
+and i disdained to humble myself and inflated with vainglory i believed myself great it was at this moment that he came in contact with the manicheans whose errors attracted him at once
+this extraordinary heresy had begun in the east and had spread all over the civilized world its followers formed a secret society with signs and passwords grades and initiations
+to impose on christians they used christian words for doctrines that were thoroughly unchristian perhaps the most remarkable thing about them was their hatred of the church augustine
+who remained amongst them for nine years thus describes them when writing to a friend thou knowest honoratus that for this reason alone did we fall into the hands of these men
+namely that they professed to free us from all errors and bring us to god by pure reason alone without that terrible principle of authority for what else induced me to abandon the faith of my childhood
+and follow these men for almost nine years but their assertion that we were terrified by superstition into a faith blindly imposed upon our reason while they urged no one to believe
+until the truth was fully discussed and proved who would not be seduced by such promises especially if he were a proud contentious young man thirsting for truth such as they then found me
+that was what the manicheans promised what augustine found amongst them he also tells us they incessantly repeated to me truth truth but there was no truth in them
+they taught what was false not only about thee my god who art the very truth but even about the elements of this world thy creatures so much for their doctrines as for the teachers themselves
+he found them carnal and loquacious full of insane pride the great charm of manicheism to augustine was that it taught that a man was not responsible for his sins this doctrine was convenient to one
+who could not find the strength to break with his bad habits such was my mind he sums up later looking back on this period of his life so weighed down so blinded by the flesh
+chapter five how augustine went to carthage and how patricius died a christian death augustine's year at home did not do for him what monica had hoped
+his old pagan schoolfellows gathered round him he was always with them the happy home life seemed to have lost its charm the want of principle and of honour in most of them
+disgusted him in his better moments nevertheless he was content to enjoy himself in their company he was even ashamed when they boasted of their misdoings to seem more innocent than they
+and would pretend to be worse than he really was lest his prestige should suffer in their eyes there were moments when he loathed it all and longed for the old life with its innocent pleasures
+but it is hard to turn back on the downhill road he tells us how he went one night with a band of these wild companions to rob the fruit tree of a poor neighbour it was laden with pears
+but they were not very good they did not care to eat them and threw them to the pigs it was not schoolboy greed that prompted the theft but the pure delight of doing evil
+of tricking the owner of the garden there was the wild excitement too of the daring the fear that they might be caught in the act he was careful to keep such escapades a secret from his mother but monica was uneasy
+knowing what might be expected from the companions her son had chosen patricius was altogether unable to give augustine the help that he needed the christian ideals of life and conduct were new to him as yet
+the old pagan ways seemed only natural he was scarcely likely to be astonished at the fact that his son's boyhood was rather like what his own had been he was standing it is true on the threshold of the church
+but her teaching was not yet clear to him his own feet were not firm enough in the ways of christ to enable him to stretch a steadying hand to another his mother was failing fast
+the end could not be far off monica was devoting herself heart and soul to the old woman who clung to her with tender affection and was never happy in her absence patricius watched them together
+and marvelled at the effects of the grace of baptism was that indeed his mother he asked himself that gentle patient old woman so thoughtful for others so ready to give up her own will
+she had used to be violent and headstrong like himself resentful and implacable in her dislikes but now she was more like monica than like him that was monica's way though her sweetness and patience
+seemed to be catching she was like the sunshine penetrating everywhere with its light and warmth he alas was far behind his mother catechumen though he was the old temper would often flash out still
+self conquest was the hardest task that he had ever undertaken and sometimes he almost lost heart and was inclined to give it up altogether then monica would gently remind him
+that with god's help the hardest things were possible and they would kneel and pray together and patricius would take heart again for the fight she had a wonderful gift for giving people courage patricius had noticed that before
+he supposed it was because she was so full of sympathy and always made allowances and then she seemed to think to be sure even that if one went on trying failures did not matter
+god did not mind them and that was a very comforting reflection for poor weak people like himself to go on trying was possible even for him although he knew he could not always promise himself success
+patricius was anxious about augustine's future all his efforts had not succeeded in saving the sum required for his first year at carthage
+he had discovered that it would cost a good deal more than he had at first supposed and it was difficult to see where the money was to come from it was at this moment that romanianus
+who knew the poverty of his friend came forward generously and put his purse at patricius's disposal the sum required was offered with such delicacy that it could not be declined augustine was sure to bring glory on his native town
+said romanianus it was an honour to be allowed to help in his education monica was almost glad to see her son depart the old boyish laziness had given way
+to a real zeal for learning and thirst after knowledge the idle life at home was certainly the worst thing for him hard work and the pursuit of wisdom might steady his wild nature and bring him back to god
+it was her only hope now as with prayers and tears she besought of him to watch over her son but monica did not know carthage
+if it was second only to rome for its culture and its schools it almost rivalled rome in its corruption there all that was worst in the civilization of the east and of the west met and mingled
+the bloody combats between men and beasts the gladiatorial shows that delighted the romans were free to all who chose to frequent the amphitheatre of carthage such plays as the romans delighted in
+impossible to describe were acted in the theatre the horrible rites of the eastern religions were practised openly there was neither discipline nor order in the schools
+the wealthier students gloried in their bad reputation they were young men of fashion who were capable of anything and who were careful to let others know it they went by the name of smashers or upsetters
+from their habit of raiding the schools of professors whose teaching they did not approve and breaking everything on which they could lay hands they treated new comers with coarse brutality but augustine seems in some manner
+to have escaped their enmity perhaps a certain dignity in the young man's bearing or perhaps his brilliant gifts won their respect for he surpassed them all in intelligence and speedily outstripped them in class
+augustine was eager for knowledge and eager for enjoyment he frequented the theatre his pleasure loving nature snatched at everything that life could give yet he was not happy
+my god he cried in later years with what bitter gall didst thou in thy great mercy sprinkle those pleasures of mine he could not forget
+patricius prayed with her he understood at last every day the germs of a noble nature that had lain so long dormant within him were gaining strength and life
+every day his soul was opening more and more to the understanding of spiritual things while monica watched the transformation with a heart that overflowed with gratitude and love
+the sorrows of the past were all forgotten in the joy of the present that happy union at the feet of christ there was but one cause for sadness patricius's health was failing
+his mother had already shown him the joys of a christian deathbed she had passed away smiling with their hands in hers and the name of jesus on her lips
+the beautiful prayers of the church had gone down with the departing soul to the threshold of the new life and had followed it into eternity she seemed close to them still in the light of that wonderful new faith
+and to be waiting for them in their everlasting home but monica's happiness was to be short lived for it seemed that patricius would soon rejoin his mother
+he did not deceive himself he spoke of his approaching death to monica and asked her to help him to make a worthy preparation for baptism which he desired to receive as soon as possible
+with the simplicity and trustfulness of a child he looked to her for guidance and did all that she desired the ceremony over he turned to his wife and smiled
+a wonderful peace possessed him the old life with all its stains had passed from him in those cleansing waters the new life was at hand once more he asked her
+to forgive him all the pain he had caused her all that he had made her suffer no she must not grieve he told her the parting would be but for a little while the meeting for all eternity
+she had been his angel he said he owed all his joy to her it was her love her patience that had done it all she had shown him the beauty of goodness and made him love it
+he thanked her for all that she had been to him all that she had shown him all that she had done for him her tears fell on his face her loving arms supported him her sweet voice broken with weeping
+spoke words of hope and comfort on the threshold of that other world monica bade farewell to her husband
+as we approached the inn at amherst the clockmaker grew uneasy it's pretty well on in the evening i guess said he and marm pugwash is as onsartin in her temper as a mornin in april
+it's all sunshine or all clouds with her and if she's in one of her tantrums she'll stretch out her neck and hiss like a goose with a flock of goslin's
+the old minister had an orchard of most particular good fruit for he was a great hand at buddin graftin and what not and the orchard it was on the south side of the house stretched right up to the road well
+there were some trees hung over the fence i never seed such bearers the apples hung in ropes for all the world like strings of onions and the fruit was beautiful nobody touched the minister's apples
+so i said to him one day minister said i how on airth do you manage to keep your fruit that's so exposed when no one else can't do it nohow why says he they are dreadfully pretty fruit ain't they
+that are outward row i grafted myself with the choicest kind i could find and i succeeded they are beautiful but so etarnal sour no human soul can eat them well
+the boys think the old minister's graftin has all succeeded about as well as that row
+if pugwash had a watery mouth when he married i guess it's pretty puckery by this time however if she goes to act ugly
+i'll give her a dose of soft sawder that will take the frown out of her frontispiece and make her dial plate as smooth as a lick of copal varnish it's a pity she's such a kickin devil too for she has good points good eye good foot
+neat pastern fine chest a clean set of limbs and carries a good but here we are now you'll see what soft sawder will do when we entered the house the travelers room was all in darkness
+and on opening the opposite door into the sitting room we found the female part of the family extinguishing the fire for the night missus pugwash had a broom in her hand and was in the act the last act of female housewifery of sweeping the hearth
+the strong flickering light of the fire as it fell upon her tall fine figure and beautiful face revealed a creature worthy of the clockmaker's comments good evening marm said mister slick how do you do
+and how's mister pugwash he said she why he's been abed this hour you don't expect to disturb him this time of night i hope oh no said mister slick certainly not
+and i am sorry to have disturbed you but we got detained longer than we expected i am sorry that so am i said she but if mister pugwash will keep an inn when he has no occasion to his family can't expect no rest
+here the clockmaker seeing the storm gathering stooped down suddenly and staring intently held out his hand and exclaimed well if that ain't a beautiful child come here my little man
+and shake hands along with me well i declare if that are little feller ain't the finest child i ever seed what not abed yet ah you rogue
+well i wish my old mother could see that child it is such a treat in our country said he turning to me the children are all as pale as chalk or as yaller as an orange lord
+that are little feller would be a show in our country come to me my man here the soft sawder began to operate missus pugwash said in a milder tone than we had yet heard go my dear to the gentleman
+go dear mister slick kissed him asked him if he would go to the states along with him told him all the little girls would fall in love with him for they didn't see such a beautiful face once in a month of sundays black eyes let me see
+she ought to be proud of you he continued well if i live to return here i must paint your face and have it put on my clocks and our folks will buy the clocks for the sake of the face did you ever see said he
+again addressing me such a likeness between one human and another as between this beautiful little boy and his mother i am sure you have had no supper said missus pugwash to me you must be hungry and weary too
+i will get you a cup of tea i am sorry to give you so much trouble said i not the least trouble in the world she replied on the contrary a pleasure we were then shown into the next room
+where the fire was now blazing up but mister slick protested he could not proceed without the little boy and lingered behind to ascertain his age and concluded by asking the child if he had any aunts that looked like mama
+as the door closed mister slick said it's a pity she don't go well in gear the difficulty with those critters is to git them to start arter that there is no trouble with them if you don't check em too short if you do they'll stop again
+run back and kick like mad and then old nick himself wouldn't start em pugwash i guess don't understand the natur of the crittur she'll never go kind in harness for him when i see a child said the clockmaker
+i always feel safe with these women folk for i have always found that the road to a woman's heart lies through her child you seem said i to understand the female heart so well i make no doubt you are a general favorite among the fair sex
+any man he replied that understands horses has a pretty considerable fair knowledge of women for they are jist alike in temper and require the very identical same treatment encourage the timid ones
+and i tell you there ain't one in a thousand that knows a grain about either on em you hear folks say oh such a man is an ugly grained critter he'll break his wife's heart jist as if a woman's heart was as brittle as a pipe stalk
+the female heart as far as my experience goes is jist like a new india rubber shoe you may pull and pull at it till it stretches out a yard long
+their hearts are made of stout leather i tell you
+i never knowed but one case of a broken heart and that was in t'other sex one washington banks he was a sneezer he was tall enough to spit down on the heads of your grenadiers and near about high enough to wade across charlestown river
+and as strong as a tow boat i guess he was somewhat less than a foot longer than the moral law and catechism too he was a perfect pictur of a man you couldn't fault him in no particular he was so just a made critter
+when they all came out together an amazin handsom sight too near about a whole congregation of young gals banks used to say i vow young ladies i wish i had five hundred arms to reciprocate one with each of you
+but i reckon i have a heart big enough for you all it's a whopper you may depend and every mite and morsel of it at your service well how you do act mister banks half a thousand little clipper clapper tongues would say
+all at the same time and their dear little eyes sparklin like so many stars twinklin of a frosty night well when i last seed him he was all skin and bone like a horse turned out to die he was teetotally defleshed
+a mere walkin skeleton i am dreadful sorry says i to see you banks lookin so peaked why you look like a sick turkey hen all legs what on airth ails you i'm dyin says he
+no says he shakin his head i hope i have too much clear grit in me to take on so bad for that what under the sun is it then said i why says he i made a bet
+the fore part of the summer with leftenant oby knowles that i could shoulder the best bower of the constitution frigate i won my bet but the anchor was so etarnal heavy that it broke my heart
+she durham july something or other at farmer hendry's we left york this morning and arrived in durham about eleven o'clock it seems there is some sort of an election going on in the town
+and there was not a single fly at the station mister copley looked about in every direction but neither horse nor vehicle was to be had for love or money at last we started to walk to the village
+mister copley so laden with our hand luggage that he resembled a pack mule we called first at the three tuns where they still keep up the old custom of giving a wee glass of cherry brandy to each guest on his arrival but alas
+they were crowded and we were turned from the hospitable door we then made a tour of the inns but not a single room was to be had not for that night nor for two days ahead on account of that same election hadn't we better go on to edinburgh
+i asked as we were resting in the door of the jolly sailor edinburgh never she replied
+and write up a record of our entire trip from winchester while the impressions were fresh in my mind
+said mister copley that is i hoped to finish off my previous sketches which are in a frightful state of incompletion and spend a good deal of time on the interior of this cathedral which is unusually beautiful
+in her opinion the constant consumption of malt liquors prevents a more dangerous indulgence in brandy and whisky she is gathering statistics but as the barmaids can never collect their thoughts while they are drawing ale
+for my part said i with mock humility i am a docile person who never has any intentions of her own but who yields herself sweetly to the intentions of other people in her immediate vicinity are you
+asked mister copley taking out his pencil yes i said so what are you doing merely taking note of your statement that's all now miss van tyck
+i have a plan to propose i was here last summer with a couple of harvard men and we lodged at a farmhouse about a mile distant from the cathedral if you will step into the coffee room for an hour
+i'll walk up to farmer hendry's and see if they will take us in i think we might be fairly comfortable can aunt celia have apollinaris and black coffee after her morning bath i asked i hope katharine
+if mister copley can secure apartments for us i shall be more than grateful so here we are all lodging together in an ideal english farmhouse
+and the butter and cream and eggs and mutton are delicious and i never never want to go home any more i want to live here for ever and wave the american flag on washington's birthday
+i am so happy that i feel as if something were going to spoil it all twenty years old to day i wish mamma were alive to wish me many happy returns the cathedral is very beautiful in itself
+and its situation is beyond all words of mine to describe i greatly admired the pulpit which is supported by five pillars sunk into the backs of squashed lions but mister copley when i asked him the period said pure brummagem
+not jenny wren christopher architecture has had in england especially no legitimate development this is the only cathedral with a bishop's throne or a sanctuary knocker he
+durham july nineteenth
+how did it happen to be election time why did the inns chance to be full
+i do not know i only know fate smiles that kitty and i eat our morning bacon and eggs together
+and dine with kitty and walk in the gloaming with kitty
+and after a day of heaven like this like lorna doone's lover ay and like every other lover i suppose i go to sleep and the roof above me swarms with angels having kitty under it she was so beautiful on sunday
+and when she looks up i am never ready for her to look down if it had been a secular occasion and she had dropped her handkerchief seven eighths of the students would have started to pick it up but i should have got there first well
+for there are facts to be considered delightful warm breathing facts we were coming home from evensong kitty and i i am anticipating for she was still miss schuyler then but never mind
+we were walking through the fields while missus benedict and aunt celia were driving as we came across a corner of the bit of meadow land that joins the stable and the garden we heard a muffled roar
+and as we looked around we saw a creature with tossing horns and waving tail making for us head down eyes flashing kitty gave a shriek we chanced to be near a pair of low bars i hadn't been a college athlete for nothing
+flung herself bodily into my arms crying jack jack save me it was the first time she had called me jack and i needed no second invitation i proceeded to save her in the usual way
+by holding her to my heart and kissing her lovely hair reassuringly as i murmured you are safe my darling not a hair of your precious head shall be hurt don't be frightened she shivered like a leaf
+i am frightened she said i can't help being frightened he will chase us i know where is he what is he doing now looking up to determine if i need abbreviate this blissful moment
+comfortable durham cow that somewhat rare but possible thing a sportive cow is he gone breathed kitty from my waistcoat yes he is gone she is gone darling but don't move
+it may come again my first too hasty assurance had calmed kitty's fears
+i did not facilitate the preparations and a moment of awkward silence ensued might i inquire i asked if the dear little person at present reposing in my arms will stay there with intervals for rest and refreshment
+for the rest of her natural life she withdrew entirely now all but her hand and her eyes sought the ground i suppose i shall have to that is if you think at least i suppose you do think
+she replied i was frightened within an inch of my life i told you this morning that i was dreadfully afraid of bulls especially mad ones and i told you that my nurse frightened me when i was a child with awful stories about them
+and that i never outgrew my childish terror i looked everywhere about the barn was too far the fence too high i saw him coming and there was nothing but you and the open country of course i took you it was very natural i'm sure
+she cried putting her hand over my lips and getting it well kissed in consequence
+rather odd commented mister jenks black paper and white ink white ink is easy enough to make stated mister parker
+i fancy they wanted it as conspicuous as possible yes agreed tom
+together with the antics of the thing in white last night shows that they are aware of our presence here and perhaps know who we are we will have to be on our guard do you think that fellow munson
+whom we left in the forest could have gotten here and warned them asked mister damon it's possible admitted tom but now let's see if the person who pinned this warning on our tent took any of our things
+a hasty examination however showed that nothing had been disturbed
+everyone talking during the progress of the meal about the events of the day and the rather weird culmination of it well we haven't had a great deal of success so far admitted tom
+good idea commented mister jenks we'll do it and move our camp i only hope those fellows don't find our airship and destroy it we'll have a hard time getting back to civilization again
+if we have to walk all the way this contingency caused tom some uneasiness he did not like to think that the unscrupulous men might damage the red cloud
+that had been built only after hard labor but he knew he could accomplish nothing by worrying and he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind
+they rather expected to see the thing in white again that night but it did not appear and morning came without anything having disturbed their heavy sleep for they were tired from the day's tramp
+it took them the greater part of the day to make a circuit of the base of phantom mountain in order to get to a place where a sort of trail led upward it's too late to do anything to night
+mister parker he asked as he saw the scientist tramping a little way up the side of the mountain i am going to make some observations was the answer and no one paid any more attention to him for some time
+supper was nearly ready when mister parker returned his face wore a rather serious air and mister damon noting it asked laughingly well
+did you discover any volcanoes that may erupt during the night and scare us to death no replied mister parker calmly but there is every indication that we will soon have a terrific electrical storm
+from a high peak i caught a glimpse of one working this way across the mountains then we'd better fasten the tent well down called tom we don't want it to blow away
+was mister parker's opinion from what then asked mister jenks from the discharges of lightning among these mountain peaks which contain so much iron ore
+we will be in grave danger the fact that the scientist had not always made correct predictions was not now considered by his hearers and tom and the two men gazed at mister parker in some alarm
+as the iron ore extends for miles we can not get out of the danger zone before the storm will reach us it will be here in less than half an hour then we'd better have supper remarked tom practically
+and get ready for it perhaps it may not be as bad as mister parker fears it will be bad enough declared the gloomy scientist and he seemed to find pleasure in his announcement
+for now low mutterings of thunder could be heard off toward the west black clouds rapidly obscured the heavens and the sound of thunder increased
+fitful flashes of lightning could be seen forking across the sky in jagged chains of purple light it's going to be a heavy storm tom admitted to himself
+i hope lightning doesn't strike around here the storm came on rapidly but there was a curious quietness in the air that was more alarming than if a wind had blown the campfire burned steadily
+and there was a certain oppressiveness in the atmosphere it was now quite dark save when the fitful lightning flashes came and they illuminated the scene brilliantly for a few seconds then by contrast
+it was blacker than ever suddenly as tom was gazing up toward the peak of phantom mountain he saw something that caused him to cry out in alarm he pointed upward and whispered hoarsely
+they must have followed us said mister jenks in a low voice slowly the figure advanced it waved the long white arms as if in warning
+at times it would be only dimly visible in the blackness then suddenly it would stand out in bold relief as a great flash of fire split the clouds the thunder meanwhile
+had been growing louder and sharper indicating the nearer approach of the storm each lightning flash was followed in a second or two by a terrific clap still there was no wind nor rain
+and the campfire burned steadily all at once there was a crash as if the very mountain had split asunder and the adventurers saw a great ball of purple bluish fire shoot down
+as if from some cloud and strike against the side of the crag not a hundred feet from where stood the ghostly figure in white that was a bad one cried mister damon
+shouting so as to be heard above the echoes of the thunderclap almost as he spoke there came another explosion even louder than the one preceding a great ball of fire pear shaped
+leaped for the same spot in the mountain there's a mass of iron ore there yelled mister parker the lightning is attracted to it his voice was swallowed up in the terrific crash that followed
+the figure in white could be seen hurrying back up the mountain trail evidently the electrical storm with lightning bolts discharging so close was too much for the ghost
+in another instant it looked as if the whole place about where the diamond seekers stood was a mass of fire great forked tongues of lightning leaped from the clouds and seemed to lick the ground
+and there was a strong smell of sulphur in the air we are in the midst of the storm cried mister parker we are standing on a mass of iron ore any minute may be our last
+but fate had not intended the adventurers for death by lightning almost as suddenly as it had begun the discharge of the tongues of fire ceased in the immediate vicinity of our friends
+they stood still awed not knowing what to do then once more came a terrific clap a great mass of fire like some red hot ingot from a foundry
+was hurled through the air straight at the face of the mountain and at the spot where the figure in white had stood but a few minutes before instantly the earth trembled as it had at earthquake island
+but it was not the same it was over in a few seconds then as the diamond seekers looked they saw in the glare of a score of lightning flashes that followed the one great clap
+in sixteen sixty five written by a citizen who continued all the while in london never made public before
+it was about the beginning of september sixteen sixty four that i among the rest of my neighbours heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in holland
+it was brought some said from italy others from the levant among some goods which were brought home by their turkey fleet others said it was brought from candia others from cyprus
+spread rumours and reports of things and to improve them by the invention of men as i have lived to see practised since
+and from them was handed about by word of mouth only so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation as they do now but it seems that the government had a true account of it
+and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over but all was kept very private hence it was that this rumour died off again and people began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in
+and that we hoped was not true till the latter end of november or the beginning of december sixteen sixty four when two men said to be frenchmen died of the plague in long acre
+or rather at the upper end of drury lane
+endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible but as it had gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood the secretaries of state got knowledge of it and concerning themselves to inquire about it in order to be certain of the truth
+two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the house and make inspection this they did and finding evident tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were dead
+and it was printed in the weekly bill of mortality in the usual manner thus plague two parishes infected one
+but after that i think it was about the twelfth of february another died in another house but in the same parish and in the same manner this turned the people's eyes pretty much towards that end of the town
+it began to be suspected that the plague was among the people at that end of the town and that many had died of it though they had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the public as possible
+this possessed the heads of the people very much and few cared to go through drury lane or the other streets suspected unless they had extraordinary business that obliged them to it
+the usual number of burials in a week in the parishes of saint giles in the fields and saint andrew's holborn were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen each few more or less
+it was observed that the ordinary burials increased in number considerably for example from december twenty seventh to january third
+the like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of saint bride's adjoining on one side of holborn parish and in the parish of saint james clerkenwell adjoining on the other side of holborn
+saint bride's zero saint james's eight
+saint bride's six saint james's nine
+saint james's seven
+saint bride's eight
+saint james's six besides this it was observed with great uneasiness by the people that the weekly bills in general increased very much during these weeks although it was at a time of the year when
+in one week since the preceding visitation of sixteen fifty six however all this went off again and the weather proving cold and the frost which began in december
+still continuing very severe even till near the end of february attended with sharp though moderate winds the bills decreased again and the city grew healthy and everybody began to look upon the danger as good as over
+from the beginning of april especially they stood at twenty five each week till the week from the eighteenth to the twenty fifth
+there was none of the plague and but four of the spotted fever but the following week it returned again and the distemper was spread into two or three other parishes
+not knowing that he was already infected this was the beginning of may yet the weather was temperate variable and cool enough and people had still some hopes that which encouraged them was that the city was healthy
+there died but three of which not one within the whole city or liberties and saint andrew's buried but fifteen which was very low
+but still as there was but one of the plague people began to be easy the whole bill also was very low for the week before the bill was but three hundred forty seven
+so that now all our extenuations abated and it was no more to be concealed nay it quickly appeared that the infection had spread itself beyond all hopes of abatement that in the parish of saint giles
+but this was all knavery and collusion
+yet there was fourteen of the spotted fever as well as fourteen of the plague
+upon the whole that there were fifty died that week of the plague the next bill was from the twenty third of may to the thirtieth when the number of the plague was seventeen but
+a frightful number of whom they set down but nine of the plague but on an examination more strictly by the justices of peace and at the lord mayor's request
+twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that parish but had been set down of the spotted fever or other distempers besides others concealed
+our neighbourhood continued very easy but at the other end of the town their consternation was very great and the richer sort of people especially the nobility and gentry from the west part of the city
+in an unusual manner and this was more particularly seen in whitechappel that is to say the broad street where i lived indeed nothing was to be seen but waggons and carts with goods
+coaches filled with people of the better sort and horsemen attending them and all hurrying away then empty waggons and carts appeared and spare horses with servants who it was apparent
+were returning or sent from the countries to fetch more people besides innumerable numbers of men on horseback some alone others with servants and generally speaking
+as anyone might perceive by their appearance this was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see and as it was a sight which i could not but look on from morning to night
+this hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was no getting at the lord mayor's door without exceeding difficulty there were such pressing and crowding there
+to get passes and certificates of health for such as travelled abroad for without these there was no being admitted to pass through the towns upon the road or to lodge in any inn
+now as there had none died in the city for all this time my lord mayor gave certificates of health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the ninety seven parishes and to those within the liberties too
+this hurry i say continued some weeks that is to say all the month of may and june and the more because it was rumoured that an order of the government was to be issued out
+to place turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from london to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with them
+concerning my own case and how i should dispose of myself that is to say whether i should resolve to stay in london or shut up my house and flee as many of my neighbours did i have set this particular down
+so fully because i know not but it may be of moment to those who come after me if they come to be brought to the same distress and to the same manner of making their choice and therefore
+to note what became of me i had two important things before me
+which was considerable and in which was embarked all my effects in the world and the other was the preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as i saw apparently was coming upon the whole city and which
+however great it was my fears perhaps as well as other people's represented to be much greater than it could be
+my trade was a saddler and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance trade but among the merchants trading to the english colonies in america so my effects lay very much in the hands of such
+but i had a family of servants whom i kept at my business had a house shop and warehouses filled with goods and in short to leave them all as things in such a case must be left that is to say
+without any overseer or person fit to be trusted with them had been to hazard the loss not only of my trade but of my goods and indeed of all i had in the world i had an elder brother
+at the same time in london and not many years before come over from portugal and advising with him his answer was in three words
+that the best preparation for the plague was to run away from it as to my argument of losing my trade my goods or debts he quite confuted me he told me the same thing which
+for says he is it not as reasonable that you should trust god with the chance or risk of losing your trade as that you should stay in so eminent a point of danger and trust him with your life i could not
+i say as many did because several did so at last especially those who had been in the armies in the war which had not been many years past and i must needs say that speaking of second causes
+had most of the people that travelled done so the plague had not been carried into so many country towns and houses as it was to the great damage and indeed to the ruin of abundance of people
+but then my servant whom i had intended to take down with me deceived me and being frighted at the increase of the distemper and not knowing when i should go he took other measures and left me
+so i was put off for that time and one way or other i always found that to appoint to go away was always crossed by some accident or other so as to disappoint and put it off again
+about these disappointments being from heaven i mention this story also as the best method i can advise any person to take in such a case especially if he be one that makes conscience of his duty
+and would be directed what to do in it namely that he should keep his eye upon the particular providences which occur at that time and look upon them complexly as they regard one another
+and as all together regard the question before him and then i think he may safely take them for intimations from heaven of what is his unquestioned duty to do in such a case i mean
+so these disappointments must have something in them extraordinary and i ought to consider whether it did not evidently point out or intimate to me that it was the will of heaven i should not go
+that would surround me and that if i attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my habitation and acted contrary to these intimations which i believe to be divine it was a kind of
+flying from god and that he could cause his justice to overtake me when and where he thought fit these thoughts quite turned my resolutions again and when i came to discourse with my brother again
+i told him that i inclined to stay and take my lot in that station in which god had placed me and that it seemed to be made more especially my duty on the account of what i have said
+my brother though a very religious man himself laughed at all i had suggested about its being an intimation from heaven and told me several stories of such foolhardy people as he called them
+as i was that i ought indeed to submit to it as a work of heaven if i had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases and that then not being able to go
+i ought to acquiesce in the direction of him who having been my maker had an undisputed right of sovereignty in disposing of me and that then there had been
+only because i could not hire a horse to go or my fellow was run away that was to attend me was ridiculous since at the time i had my health and limbs and other servants and might
+and in other places where he had been for my brother being a merchant was a few years before as i have already observed returned from abroad coming last from lisbon and how
+they would go unconcerned into infected places and converse with infected persons by which means they died at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week
+whereas the europeans or christian merchants who kept themselves retired and reserved generally escaped the contagion upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again
+and i began to resolve to go and accordingly made all things ready for in short the infection increased round me
+and as i had already prepared everything as well as i could as to my business and whom to entrust my affairs with i had little to do but to resolve i went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind
+irresolute and not knowing what to do i had set the evening wholly apart to consider seriously about it and was all alone for already people had as it were by a general consent
+what was my duty to do and i stated the arguments with which my brother had pressed me to go into the country and i set against them the strong impressions which i had on my mind for staying the visible call i seemed to have
+from the particular circumstance of my calling and the care due from me for the preservation of my effects which were as i might say my estate also the intimations which i thought
+i obeyed this lay close to me and my mind seemed more and more encouraged to stay than ever and supported with a secret satisfaction that i should be kept add to this that
+and at that juncture i happened to stop turning over the book
+i read on to the seventh verse exclusive and after that included the tenth as follows i will say of the lord he is my refuge and my fortress my god
+in him will i trust surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence he shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust
+because thou hast made the lord which is my refuge even the most high thy habitation there shall no evil befall thee neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling
+he was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time of health and if he did not think fit to deliver me still i was in his hands
+and it was meet he should do with me as should seem good to him with this resolution i went to bed
+the woman being taken ill with whom i had intended to entrust my house and all my affairs
+and afterwards fetched a round farther into buckinghamshire or bedfordshire to a retreat he had found out there for his family it was a very ill time to be sick in
+for if any one complained it was immediately said he had the plague
+yet being very ill both in my head and in my stomach i was not without apprehension that i really was infected but in about three days i grew better the third night i rested well
+sweated a little and was much refreshed the apprehensions of its being the infection went also quite away with my illness and i went about my business as usual
+it was now mid july and the plague which had chiefly raged at the other end of the town and as i said before in the parishes of saint giles saint andrew's holborn
+for the city that is to say within the walls was indifferently healthy still nor was it got then very much over the water into southwark
+of all distempers whereof it might be supposed above six hundred died of the plague yet there was but twenty eight in the whole city within the walls and but nineteen in southwark
+but we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out parishes which being very populous and fuller also of poor the distemper found more to prey upon than in the city
+yet there died no more of the plague on the whole southwark side of the water than sixteen but this face of things soon changed
+and it began to thicken in cripplegate parish especially and in clarkenwell so that by the second week in august cripplegate parish alone buried eight hundred eighty six and clarkenwell
+and of the last the bill itself said
+and having the key in my pocket i used to go into the house and over most of the rooms to see that all was well for though it be something wonderful to tell
+that any should have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a calamity as to rob and steal yet certain it is that all sorts of villainies and even levities and debaucheries
+were then practised in the town as openly as ever i will not say quite as frequently because the numbers of people were many ways lessened but the city itself began now to be visited too
+magistrates and servants left in the city as they fled now out of the city so i should observe that the court removed early
+in the month of june and went to oxford where it pleased god to preserve them and the distemper did not as i heard of so much as touch them for which i cannot say that
+and hardly anything of reformation though they did not want being told that their crying vices might without breach of charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible judgement upon the whole nation
+that if i had been a stranger and at a loss for my way i might sometimes have gone the length of a whole street i mean of the by streets and seen nobody to direct me
+but they walked in the middle of the great street neither on one side
+because as i suppose they would not mingle with anybody that came out of houses or
+as others retired really frighted with the distemper it was a mere desolating of some of the streets but the fright was not yet near so great in the city abstractly so called
+and particularly because though they were at first in a most inexpressible consternation yet as i have observed that the distemper intermitted often at first so they were as it were
+a little hardened it is true a vast many people fled as i have observed yet they were chiefly from the west end of the town and from that we call the heart of the city that is to say
+among the wealthiest of the people and such people as were unencumbered with trades and business but of the rest the generality stayed and seemed to abide the worst so that
+and in the suburbs in southwark and in the east part such as wapping ratcliff stepney rotherhithe and the like the people generally stayed except here and there a few wealthy families who as above
+and the royal family and the monarchy being restored had flocked to london to settle in business or to depend upon and attend the court for rewards of services preferments and the like
+was such that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred thousand people more than ever it held before nay some took upon them to say it had twice as many because
+all the ruined families of the royal party flocked hither all the old soldiers set up trades here and abundance of families settled here again
+to london i often thought that as jerusalem was besieged by the romans when the jews were assembled together to celebrate the passover by which means an incredible number of people were surprised there
+as this conflux of the people to a youthful and gay court made a great trade in the city especially in everything that belonged to fashion and finery
+manufacturers and the like
+missus savareen sat up waiting for her lord until long past midnight but her vigil was in vain lapierre after closing up his inn for the night dropped in according to his promise to see if any news of the absentee had arrived
+nothing further could be done in the way of searching for the latter personage until daylight it was getting on pretty well towards morning when missus savareen sought her couch and when she got there her slumber was broken and disturbed she knew not what to think
+but she was haunted by a dread that she would never again see her husband alive next morning soon after daylight the whole neighborhood was astir and the country round was carefully searched for any trace of the missing man
+squire harrington went down to town and made inquiries at the bank where he ascertained that the story told by savareen to old jonathan perry
+was substantially correct this effectually disposed of any possible theory as to jonathan and his wife having mistaken somebody else for savareen squire harrington likewise learned all about the man's doings on the previous afternoon
+and was able to fix the time at which he had started for home he had ridden from the door of the peacock at about a quarter to eight
+perry professed to have seen and conversed with him there was no longer any room for doubt that interview and conversation had actually taken place at eight o'clock on the previous evening and savareen had ridden northward from the gate within five minutes afterwards he could not have proceeded more than a hundred
+or at the very outside two hundred yards further or he must inevitably have been encountered by lapierre
+but the horse which had disappeared in this unaccountable manner it seemed improbable that two living substances of such bulk should pass out of being and leave no trace behind them they must literally have melted into thin air no they hadn't at least the black mare hadn't
+for she was discovered by several members of the searching party a little before noon when found she was quietly cropping the damp herbage at the edge of the cranberry swamp at the rear of squire harrington's farm she was wholly uninjured and had evidently spent the night there
+the bit had been removed from her mouth but the bridle hung intact round her neck the saddle however like its owner had disappeared from her back then the men began a systematic search in the interior of the swamp they soon came upon the saddle which had apparently been deliberately unbuckled
+and deposited on a dry patch of ground near the edge of the morass a little further in the interior they came upon a man's coat made of dark brown stuff
+as belong to savareen it was wet and besmirched with mud and in fact was lying half in and half out of a little puddle of water when it was found then the searchers made sure of finding the body but in this they were disappointed
+but found nothing further to reward their search the ground was too soft and marshy to retain any traces of footsteps and the mare and saddle furnished the only evidence that the object of their quest had been in the neighborhood of the swamp and of course this evidence was of the most vague and inconclusive character
+then the party proceeded in a body to the missing man's house here another surprise awaited them the coat was at once recognised by missus savareen as belonging to her husband but it was not the coat worn by him at the time of his disappearance of this there was no doubt whatever
+in fact he had not worn it for more than a week previously his wife distinctly remembered having folded and laid it away in the top of a large trunk on the saturday of the week before last since which time she had never set eyes on it here was a deepening of the mystery
+the search was kept up without intermission for several days nearly all of the farmers in the vicinity taking part in it even to the neglect of the harvest work which demanded their attention squire harrington was especially active and left no stone unturned to unravel the mystery
+lapierre gave up all his time to the search and left the royal oak to the care of its landlady the local constabulary bestirred themselves as they had never done before
+where a man's body might possibly lie concealed every tract of bush and woodland every barn and out building every hollow and ditch every field and fence corner was explored with careful minuteness even the wells of the district were peered into
+from off the face of the earth doctor scott the local coroner held himself in readiness to summon a coroner's jury at the shortest notice when all these measures proved unavailing a public meeting of the inhabitants was convened and funds were subscribed to still further prosecute the search
+dead or alive or which should throw any light upon his fate hand bills proclaiming this reward and describing the man's personal appearance were exhibited in every bar room and other conspicuous place throughout westchester and the adjacent townships
+advertisements setting forth the main facts were inserted in the principal newspapers of toronto hamilton and london
+a stitch in time saves embarrassing exposure
+wonderful parents are yet to be heard from who don't think theirs is a wonder a nocturnal animal to which everyone in a sleeping car is eager to give a wide berth bachelor from latin baculus a stick unattached
+hence an unattached man which any lady may stick stick to or get stuck on backbiter a mosquito balance something wanted by book keepers and often lost by topers
+may be found in a cash book or the kangaroo gait bandit an outlaw see alderman barber a brilliant conversationalist who occasionally shaves and cuts hair
+bars things found in harbors hotels fences prisons courts and music
+and developed in department stores on mondays symptoms loud talk pushing and shoving a combination prize fight and foot ball scrimmage old spelling bark gain baseball
+a game in which the young man who bravely strikes out for himself receives no praise for it bat senior partner of bat ball and co and never found without the rest of the firm as it takes several high balls to make one short bat beach
+a strip of sand skirted by water covered with lady killers in summer life savers in winter
+or heaven for smacks the year around benedict a married male benedictine a married female benediction their children berth an aid to sleep invented by pullman lower preferred
+birth an aid to life discovered by woman higher preferred bicycle skirt
+bigamy a form of insanity in which a man insists on paying three board bills instead of two billiousness a liver complaint often mistaken for piety bill of fare a list of eatables
+distinguished from menu by figures in the right hand column biograph a stereopticon picture taken with a chill and shown with tremors birdie
+to a man she is playing for a jay birthday anniversary of one's birth observed only by men and children blubber the useful product of a dead whale the useless product of a live baby
+blue the only color we can feel invisible blue a policeman blush a temporary erythema and calorific effulgence of the physiognomy aeteologized by the perceptiveness of the sensorium
+from a sense of shame anger or other cause
+muscular filaments of the facial capillaries whereby being divested of their elasticity
+praecordia board an implement for administering corporal punishment used by mothers and land ladies the festive board may be a shingle a hair brush
+bohemia not on the map a land flowing with canned milk and distilled honey and untroubled by consistency convention conscience or cash
+bone one dollar the original price of a wife note adam who had to give up one bone before he got eve bonnets a female head trouble which is contracted the latter part of lent and breaks out on easter boodle
+money born of poor but dishonest parents
+bower a shady retreat in general bowery a shady retreat in new york brace security for the trousers bracer security for the stomach bracelet security for the pawn broker brain
+human block known as the cranium and kept by the sarah sisters sarah brum and sarah belum assisted by medulla oblongata
+and white and furnished with light and heat hot or cold water if desired
+usually occupied by the intellect brothers thoughts and ideas
+can be found on the outside of a short red steer or the inside of a long black bottle brass band a clever though somewhat complicated arrangement for holding a crowd together brick an admirable person made of the right sort of clay and possessing plenty of sand
+what your friends call you before you go to the wall but never afterward brimstone a little bit of hades which finds its match on earth and smells to heaven better to strike it here than in the hereafter brevity
+a desirable quality in the fourth of july oration but not in the fireworks broke a word expressing the ultimate condition of one who is too much bent on speculating bum a fallen tough bump a tough fall bunco
+by stander one who is injured in a street fight
+chapter seven the amazing meeting in the shadows of the old courtyard bobby returned to his bed he lay there still shivering beneath the heavy blankets i don't dare he echoed graham's words there's nothing else any one can say
+i must decide what to do i must think it over but as always thought brought no release it merely insisted that the case against him was proved at last he had been seen slipping unconsciously from his room and at the same hour
+all that remained was to learn how he had accomplished the apparent miracles
+the woman at the lake and in the courtyard the movement of the body and the vanishing of the evidence under his hand paredes's odd behaviour all became in his mind puzzling details that failed to obscure the chief fact
+after this something must be done about paredes's detention he hadn't dreamed that his weariness could placate even momentarily such reflections but at last he slept again
+he was aroused by the tramping of men around the house and strange harsh voices he raised himself on his elbow and glanced from the window it had long been daylight two burly fellows in overalls carrying pick and spade across their shoulders
+pushed through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing he turned graham fully dressed stood at the side of the bed those men bobby asked wearily the grave diggers graham answered they are going to work in the old cemetery to prepare a place for silas blackburn
+that's why i've come to wake you up the minister's telephoned katherine he will be here before noon do you know it's after ten o'clock for some time bobby stared through the window at the desolate ragged landscape it was abnormally cold even for the late fall
+dull clouds obscured the sun and furnished an illusion of crowding earthward a funereal day the words slipped into his mind he repeated them when your grandfather's buried graham answered softly we'll all feel happier why bobby asked
+it won't lessen the fact of his murder time graham said lessens such facts even for the police bobby glanced at him flushing you mean you've decided to stand by me after what happened last night graham smiled
+i slept like a top last night i heard nothing i saw nothing ought i to want you to stand by me bobby said oughtn't i to make a clean breast of it
+graham frowned it's hard to believe he had any connection with your sleep walking last night yet it's as clear as ever that maria and he are up to some game in which you figure he shouldn't be in jail bobby persisted get up graham advised
+bathe and have some breakfast then we can decide there's no use talking of the other thing i've forgotten it as far as possible you must bobby sprang upright how can i forget it
+have i any right don't graham said i'll be with you again to night
+when bobby had bathed and dressed he found in spite of his mental turmoil that his sleep had done him good while he breakfasted graham urged him to eat tried to drive from his brain the morbid aftermath of last night's revealing moment
+the manager took my advice but maria's still missing
+he strolled over and handed bobby a number of newspapers where's robinson bobby asked i saw him in the court a while ago i daresay he's wandering around perhaps watching the men at the grave he learned nothing new last night i was with him at breakfast i gather not
+bobby looked up isn't that an automobile coming through the woods he asked maybe rawlins back from smithtown or the minister the car stopped at the entrance of the court they heard the remote tinkling of the front door bell jenkins passed through
+his sharp exclamation recalled howells's report which at their direction he had failed to mail had his exclamation been drawn by an accuser bobby started to rise graham moved toward the door then jenkins entered and stood to one side
+the former easy mannered uncommunicative foreigner he appeared moreover to have slept pleasantly his eyes showed no weariness his clothing no disarrangement he spoke at once
+overcoat i've nearly frozen driving from smithtown before either man could grope for a suitable greeting he faced bobby
+fact is bobby i left new york too suddenly
+you see i spent a good deal in smithtown yesterday
+graham interrupted with a flat demand for an explanation how did you get away
+later mister graham there is a hack driver outside who is even more suspicious than you he wants to be paid i asked rawlins to drive me back but he rushed from the courthouse probably to telephone his rotund superior
+bobby handed him a banknote he didn't miss graham's meaning glance
+pay him will you jenkins thanks
+why he should fail to refer to bobby's questions at the moment of his arrest or to the openly expressed enmity of graham only one theory promised to fit at all it was necessary for the panamanian to return to the cedars
+compelled him to remain for the present in the mournful tragic house therefore he would crush his justifiable anger
+and he had asked for money only a trifling sum yet graham would grasp at the fact to support his earlier suspicion paredes's arrival possessed one virtue it diverted bobby's thoughts temporarily from his own dilemma from his inability to chart a course
+graham on the other hand was ill at ease
+for him yesterday's incident was not so lightly to be passed over eventually his curiosity conquered the words came nevertheless with some difficulty
+we took it for granted you would find it necessary to stay in smithtown for a while
+simple enough mister graham i telephoned as soon as rawlins got me to the bastille i communicated with the lawyer who represents the company for which i once worked he's a prominent and brilliant man he planned it with some local fellow when i was arraigned at the opening of court this morning
+the judge could hold me only as a material witness he fixed a pretty stiff bail but the local lawyer was there with a bondsman and i came back my clothes are here you don't mind bobby that moment in the hall when graham had awakened him urged bobby to reply with a genuine warmth
+i don't mind i'm glad you're out of it
+your presence in the private staircase was the last straw you will forgive us carlos
+he smoked with a vast contentment that's better nothing to forgive bobby let us call it a misunderstanding graham moved closer
+his eyes still smiled but his voice was harder bygones are bygones isn't that so bobby since you wish it bobby said but more important than the knowledge graham desired loomed the old question what was the man's game what held him here
+robinson entered the flesh around his eyes was puffier than it had been yesterday worry had increased the incongruous discontent of his round face clearly he had slept little i saw you arrive he said rawlins warned me
+but i must say i didn't think you'd use your freedom to come to us
+since the law won't hold me at your convenience in smithtown i keep myself at your service here if bobby permits it could you ask more bobby shrank from the man with whom he had idled away so much time and money
+that fleeting satanic impression of yesterday came back sharper more alarming paredes's clear challenge to the district attorney was the measure of his strength his mind was subtler than theirs
+his reserve and easy daring mastered them all and always as now he laughed at the futility of their efforts to sound his purposes to limit his freedom of action bobby didn't care to meet the uncommunicative eyes whose depths he had never been able to explore
+that might make men walk unconsciously to accomplish the ends of an unscrupulous brain the district attorney appeared as much at sea as the others
+and glancing at bobby he asked with a hollow scorn you've no objection to the gentleman visiting you for the present if he wishes bobby answered
+robinson jerked his head toward the window i've been watching the preparations out there
+no hurry bobby answered with a quick intake of breath i suppose not robinson sneered since everybody knows well enough what's in it bobby arose robinson still sneered you'll be at the grave as chief mourner
+bobby walked from the room he hadn't cared to reply he feared as it was that he had let slip his increased self doubt he put on his coat and hat and left the house the raw cold the year's first omen of winter made his blood run quicker
+forced into his mind a cleansing stimulation but almost immediately even that prophylactic was denied him with his direction a matter of indifference chance led him into the thicket at the side of the house he had walked some distance
+the underbrush had long interposed a veil between him and the cedars above whose roofs smoke wreathed in the still air like fantastic figures weaving a shroud to lower over the time stained melancholy walls
+for once he was grateful to the forest because it had forbidden him to glance perpetually back at that dismal and pensive picture then he became aware of twigs hastily lopped off of bushes bent and torn of the uncovering through these careless means of an old path
+the dull thud of earth falling regularly he paused listening the labour of the men was given an uncouth rhythm by their grunting expulsions of breath otherwise the nature of their industry and its surroundings had imposed upon them a silence
+in itself beast like and unnatural at last a harsh voice came to bobby its brevity pointed the previous dumbness of the speaker deep enough and bobby turned and hurried back along the roughly restored path
+as if fleeing from an immaterial thing suddenly quickened with the power of accusation he could picture the fresh oblong excavation in the soil of the family burial ground
+there was an ironical justice in the condition of the old cemetery it had received no interment since the death of katherine's father like everything about the cedars silas blackburn had delivered it to the swift obliterating fingers of time
+if the old man in his selfishness had paused to gaze beyond the inevitable fact of death
+he would have guarded with a more precious interest the drapings of his final sleep this necessary task on which bobby had stumbled had made the thicket less congenial than the house as he walked back he forecasted with a keen apprehension his approaching ordeal
+could he witness the definite imprisonment of his grandfather in a narrow box could he watch the covering earth fall noisily in that bleak place of silence without displaying for robinson
+a strange man appeared walking from the direction of the house his black clothing relieved only by narrow edges of white cuffs between the sleeves and the heavy mourning gloves fitted with solemn harmony into the landscape and bobby's mood
+such a figure was appropriate to the cedars
+he emerged from the forest and saw again the leisurely weaving of the smoke shroud above the house then his eyes were drawn by the restless movements of a pair of horses
+no likely path yet whose crossing is the price of salvation he was glad to see graham leave the court and hurry toward him i was coming to hunt you up bobby the minister's arrived so has doctor groom everything's about ready doctor groom
+it's natural enough he should be here bobby agreed indifferently they walked slowly back to the house graham made it plain that his mind was far from the sad business ahead
+he asked he ignores what happened yesterday he settles himself in the cedars again i don't know what to think of it bobby answered this morning carlos gave me the creeps
+he spoke with pronounced deliberation startling bobby
+gave me the creeps too makes me surer than ever that he has an abominably deep purpose in using his wits to hang on here he suggests resources as hard to understand as anything that has happened in the old room you'll confess bobby he's had a good deal of influence over you an influence for evil
+i won't blame carlos for that bobby muttered he influenced you against your better judgment graham persisted to refuse to leave with me the night of your grandfather's death maria did her share bobby said he broke off looking at graham what are you driving at
+i've been asking myself since he came back graham answered if there's any queer power behind his quiet manner maybe he is psychic maybe he can do things we don't understand i've wondered if he had without your knowing it
+acquired sufficient influence to direct your body when your mind no longer controlled it it's a nasty thought but i've heard of such things you mean carlos may have made me go to the hall last night perhaps sent me to the old room those other times
+no i won't believe it i've been weak hartley but not that weak and i tell you i did feel howells's body move under my hand don't misunderstand me graham said gently i must consider every possibility you were excited and imaginative when you went to the old room to take the evidence
+might have moved spasmodically i mean
+and the disappearance of the evidence bobby defended himself if it had been stolen earlier the coat pocket might have retained its bulging shape
+but i was there and you weren't
+if it's so far fetched graham asked quietly why do you revolt from the idea bobby turned on him and why do you fill my mind with such thoughts if you think i'm guilty say so go tell robinson so
+he glanced away while the angry colour left his face he was a little dazed by the realization that he had spoken to graham as he might have done to an enemy as he had spoken to howells in the old bedroom he felt the touch of graham's hand on his shoulder i'm only working in your service graham said kindly
+for groom has brought the ghosts back with him don't make any mistake about that you want the truth don't you yes bobby said even if it does for me
+yet that flash of temper had given him courage to face the ordeal a lingering resentment at graham's suggestion lessened the difficulty of his position entering the court he scarcely glanced at the black wagon there were more dark clothed men in the hall rawlins had returned
+the panamanian had changed his clothing he too was sombrely dressed and instead of the vivid necktie he had worn from the courthouse a jet black scarf was perfectly arranged beneath his collar he lounged opposite the district attorney
+his eyes studying the fire his fingers on the chair arm were restless doctor groom stood at the foot of the stairs talking with the clergyman a stout and unctuous figure
+from his thickly bearded face his reddish eyes gleamed forth with a fresh instability the clergyman shook hands with bobby we need not delay your cousin is upstairs he included the company in his circling turn of the head any one who cares to go
+bobby forced himself to walk up the staircase facing the first phase of his ordeal he saw that the district attorney realized that too for he sprang from his chair and followed by rawlins started upward the entire company crowded the stairs
+graham summoned katherine one of the black clothed men opened the door of silas blackburn's room he stepped aside beckoning
+bobby went in with the others automatically through the dim light he catalogued remembered objects all intimate to his grandfather each oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man the iron bed the chest of drawers
+scratched and with broken handles the closed colonial desk the miserly rag carpet all seemed mutely asking as bobby did
+from the chest of drawers two candles the only light
+so for the second time the living met the dead and the law watched hopefully
+and so might marry again when he would
+and to assist and support me as long as i lived and that if he died before me he would leave sufficient to his mother to take care of me still in the name of a sister and he was in some respects careful of me when he heard of me
+as you shall hear in its time i came away for england in the month of august after i had been eight years in that country and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me which perhaps few women have gone through the life of
+we had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of england and where we arrived in two and thirty days but were then ruffled with two or three storms
+got some refreshment on shore and put to sea again though we met with very bad weather again in which the ship sprung her mainmast as they called it for i knew not what they meant but we got at last into milford haven in wales
+where though it was remote from our port
+the isle of britain i resolved to venture it no more upon the waters which had been so terrible to me so getting my clothes and money on shore with my bills of loading and other papers i resolved to come for london
+the port whither she was bound was to bristol where my brother's chief correspondent lived i got to london in about three weeks where i heard a little while after that the ship was arrived in bristol
+the breaking of her mainmast she had great damage on board and that a great part of her cargo was spoiled i had now a new scene of life upon my hands and a dreadful appearance it had i was come away with a kind of final farewell
+what i brought with me was indeed considerable had it come safe and by the help of it i might have married again tolerably well but as it was i was reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole and this without any hope of recruit
+i was entirely without friends nay even so much as without acquaintance
+that set me up formerly for a fortune she was dead and her husband also as i was informed upon sending a person unknown to inquire the looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to bristol and during my attendance upon that affair
+i took the diversion of going to the bath for as i was still far from being old so my humour which was always gay continued so to an extreme and being now as it were a woman of fortune though i was a woman without a fortune
+as had been my case before the bath is a place of gallantry enough expensive and full of snares i went thither indeed
+but i must do myself justice as to protest i knew nothing amiss i meant nothing but in an honest way nor had i any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which afterwards i suffered them to be guided
+as it is called there and contracted some unhappy acquaintances which rather prompted the follies i fell afterwards into than fortified me against them i lived pleasantly enough kept good company that is to say gay fine company
+but had the discouragement to find this way of living sunk me exceedingly and that as i had no settled income so spending upon the main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death and this gave me many sad reflections in the interval of my other thoughts
+however i shook them off
+but i was in the wrong place for it i was not now at redriff where if i had set myself tolerably up some honest sea captain or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony but i was at the bath
+where men find a mistress sometimes but very rarely look for a wife and consequently all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect to make there must have some tendency that way i had spent the first season well enough
+for though i had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to the bath for his diversion
+as it might be called i had resisted some casual offers of gallantry and had managed that way well enough i was not wicked enough to come into the crime for the mere vice of it and i had no extraordinary offers made me that tempted me with the main thing which i wanted
+i contracted an acquaintance with a woman in whose house i lodged who though she did not keep an ill house as we call it yet had none of the best principles in herself i had on all occasions behaved myself so well
+as not to get the least slur upon my reputation on any account whatever and all the men that i had conversed with were of so good reputation that i had not given the least reflection by conversing with them
+for a wicked correspondence if they had any of them offered it yet there was one gentleman as above who always singled me out for the diversion of my company as he called it which as he was pleased to say was very agreeable to him but at that time
+there was no more in it i had many melancholy hours at the bath after the company was gone
+and for recruits of money yet i chose to come back to bath for my residence because being on good terms with the woman in whose house i lodged in the summer i found that during the winter i lived rather cheaper there
+here i say i passed the winter as heavily as i had passed the autumn cheerfully
+of what lay hardest upon my mind and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances and the loss of my fortune by the damage of my goods at sea i told her also that i had a mother and a brother in virginia in good circumstances
+and as i had really written back to my mother in particular to represent my condition and the great loss i had received
+so i did not fail to let my new friend know that i expected a supply from thence and so indeed i did and as the ships went from bristol to york river in virginia and back again generally in less time from london
+and that my brother corresponded chiefly at bristol i thought it was much better for me to wait here for my returns than to go to london where also i had not the least acquaintance my new friend appeared sensibly affected with my condition
+and indeed was so very kind as to reduce the rate of my living with her to so low a price during the winter that she convinced me she got nothing by me and as for lodging during the winter i paid nothing at all
+till it was found necessary to do otherwise she had some persons of character that frequently lodged in her house and in particular the gentleman who as i said singled me out for his companion
+the winter before and he came down again with another gentleman in his company and two servants and lodged in the same house
+letting him know that i was still with her but she denied it and protested to me that she did not and he said the same in a word this gentleman came down and continued to single me out for his peculiar confidence as well as conversation
+if i might believe him was to him
+and he had such an opinion of my virtue that as he often professed he believed if he should offer anything else i should reject him with contempt he soon understood from me that i was a widow that i had arrived at bristol from virginia by the last ships
+and that i waited at bath till the next virginia fleet should arrive by which i expected considerable effects i understood by him and by others of him that he had a wife but that the lady was distempered in her head and was under the conduct
+of her own relations which he consented to to avoid any reflections that might as was not unusual in such cases be cast on him for mismanaging her cure and in the meantime he came to the bath to divert his thoughts
+from the disturbance of such a melancholy circumstance as that was my landlady who of her own accord encouraged the correspondence on all occasions gave me an advantageous character of him
+as a man of honour and of virtue as well as of great estate and indeed i had a great deal of reason to say so of him too for though we lodged both on a floor and he had frequently come into my chamber even when i was in bed
+and i also into his when he was in bed yet he never offered anything to me further than a kiss or so much as solicited me to anything till long after as you shall hear
+and she again used to tell me she believed it was so from the beginning however she used to tell me that she thought i ought to expect some gratification from him for my company for indeed he did as it were engross me and i was seldom from him
+i told her i had not given him the least occasion to think i wanted it
+and she did so and managed it so dexterously
+and so i put off all room for any offer for the present however it was not long before he attacked me again
+which he was sorry for assuring me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy his own curiosity but merely to assist me if there was any occasion but since i
+in need of any assistance he had but one thing more to desire of me and that was that i would promise him that when i was any way straitened or like to be so i would frankly tell him of it and that i would make use of him with the same freedom that he made the offer
+adding that i should always find i had a true friend though perhaps i was afraid to trust him i omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely obliged to let him know that i had a due sense of his kindness
+and indeed from that time i did not appear so much reserved to him as i had done before though still within the bounds of the strictest virtue on both sides but how free soever our conversation was i could not arrive to that sort of freedom
+though i was secretly very glad of his offer some weeks passed after this and still i never asked him for money when my landlady a cunning creature who had often pressed me to it but found that i could not do it
+makes a story of her own inventing and comes in
+oh widow says she i have bad news to tell you this morning what is that said i are the virginia ships taken by the french for that was my fear no no says she
+but the man you sent to bristol yesterday for money is come back and says he has brought none now i could by no means like her project
+which indeed he did not want and i clearly saw that i should lose nothing by being backward to ask so i took her up short
+said i for i assure you he brought me all the money i sent him for and here it is said i pulling out my purse with about twelve guineas in it and added i intend you shall have most of it by and by he seemed distasted a little at her talking
+as she did at first as well as i taking it as i fancied he would as something forward of her but when he saw me give such an answer he came immediately to himself again the next morning we talked of it again when i found he was fully satisfied
+and smiling said he hoped i would not want money and not tell him of it and that i had promised him otherwise i told him i had been very much dissatisfied at my landlady's talking so publicly the day before of what she had nothing to do with
+but i supposed she wanted what i owed her which was about eight guineas which i had resolved to give her and had accordingly
+he was in a might good humour when he heard me say i had paid her and it went off into some other discourse at that time but the next morning he having heard me up about my room before him he called to me and i answering he asked me to come into his chamber
+for he said he had something to say to me which was of some moment after some very kind expressions he asked me if i would be very honest to him and give a sincere answer to one thing he would desire of me
+at the word sincere and asking him if i had ever given him any answers which were not sincere i promised him i would why then his request was he said to let him see my purse
+i immediately put my hand into my pocket and laughing to him pulled it out and there was in it three guineas and a half
+not by a great deal well then he said he would have me promise to go and fetch him all the money i had every farthing i told him i would and i went into my chamber and fetched him a little private drawer
+where i had about six guineas more and some silver and threw it all down upon the bed and told him there was all my wealth honestly to a shilling he looked a little at it but did not tell it
+and then reaching his pocket pulled out a key and bade me open a little walnut tree box he had upon the table and bring him such a drawer which i did in which drawer there was a great deal of money in gold i believe near two hundred guineas
+but i knew not how much he took the drawer and taking my hand made me put it in and take a whole handful i was backward at that but he held my hand hard in his hand
+when i had done so he made me put them into my lap and took my little drawer
+and carry it all home into my own chamber i relate this story the more particularly because of the good humour there was in it and to show the temper with which we conversed
+and in a word pressed me to buy better
+for i loved nothing in the world better than fine clothes i told him i must housewife the money he had lent me or else i should not be able to pay him again he then told me in a few words that as he had a sincere respect for me and knew my circumstances
+and that he thought i had merited it from him by giving him my company so entirely as i had done after this he made me take a maid and keep house
+which i did very willingly believing as it appeared that i should lose nothing by it nor did the woman of the house fail to find her account in it too we had lived thus near three months when
+the company beginning to wear away at the bath he talked of going away
+i was not very easy in that proposal not knowing what posture i was to live in there or how he might use me but while this was in debate
+called shepton where he had some business and was there taken very ill and so ill that he could not travel so he sent his man back to bath to beg me that i would hire a coach and come over to him before he went
+he had left all his money and other things of value with me and what to do with them i did not know but i secured them as well as i could and locked up the lodgings and went to him where i found him very ill indeed however i persuaded him to be carried
+in a litter to the bath where there was more help and better advice to be had he consented and i brought him to the bath which was about fifteen miles as i remember here he continued very ill of a fever
+and kept his bed five weeks all which time i nursed him and tended him myself
+indeed if i had been his wife i could not have done more i sat up with him so much and so often that at last indeed he would not let me sit up any longer and then i got a pallet bed into his room and lay in it just at his bed's feet
+i was indeed sensibly affected with his condition and with the apprehension of losing such a friend as he was and was like to be to me and i used to sit and cry by him many hours together
+however at last he grew better and gave hopes that he would recover as indeed he did though very slowly were it otherwise than what i am going to say i should not be backward to disclose it
+as it is apparent i have done in other cases in this account but i affirm that through all this conversation abating the freedom of coming into the chamber when i or he was in bed and abating the necessary offices
+of attending him night and day when he was sick there had not passed the least immodest word or action between us oh that it had been so to the last after some time he gathered strength and grew well apace
+and i would have removed my pallet bed but he would not let me till he was able to venture himself without anybody to sit up with him and then i removed to my own chamber
+and when he grew quite well he made me a present of fifty guineas for my care and as he called it for hazarding my life to save his and now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable affection for me
+but all along attested it to be with the utmost reserve for my virtue and his own i told him i was fully satisfied of it he carried it that length that he protested to me that if he was naked in bed with me
+as he would defend it if i was assaulted by a ravisher i believed him and told him i did so but this did not satisfy him he would he said
+was a great while after this that i had occasion on my own business to go to bristol upon which he hired me a coach and would go with me and did so and now indeed our intimacy increased
+to have no lodging in the inn but in one large chamber with two beds in it
+and coming into that room said very frankly to him sir it is none of my business to inquire whether the lady be your spouse or no
+which drew quite across the room and effectually divided the beds well says my friend very readily these beds will do and as for the rest we are too near akin to lie together though we may lodge near one another
+he decently went out of the room till i was in bed and then went to bed in the bed on his own side of the room but lay there talking to me a great while at last repeating his usual saying that he could lie naked in the bed with me and not offer me the least injury
+he starts out of his bed and now my dear says he you shall see how just i will be to you and that i can keep my word and away he comes to my bed i resisted a little but i must confess i should not have resisted him much
+if he had not made those promises at all so after a little struggle as i said i lay still and let him come to bed when he was there he took me in his arms and so i lay all night with him but he had no more to do with me or offered anything to me
+other than embracing me as i say in his arms no not the whole night but rose up and dressed him in the morning and left me as innocent for him as i was the day i was born this was a surprising thing to me
+and perhaps may be so to others who know how the laws of nature work for he was a strong vigorous brisk person nor did he act thus on a principle of religion at all but of mere affection insisting on it
+that though i was to him to most agreeable woman in the world yet because he loved me he could not injure me
+chapter twelve the strange bargain ronicky drew his gun and waited good said the man of the sneer go ahead it was down in the cellar that we found the first tracks
+that dropped him into the coal bin did he get coal dust on his shoes right and he didn't have sense enough to wipe it off an amateur a rank amateur i told you said the man of the sneer with satisfaction
+you followed his trail up the stairs to the kitchen and down the hall and up to harry's room we already knew he'd gone there but he left that room again and came down the hall yes
+and where did it lead right to this room ronicky stepped from among the smooth silks
+the time had almost come for one desperate attempt to escape and he was ready to shoot to kill a moment of pause had come a pause which in the imagination of ronicky
+that's a likely story i can show you the tracks
+you fool they simply grew dim when they got to this door i've been here for some time go back and tell them to hunt some more go up to the attic and search there that's the place an amateur would most likely hide
+the man growled some retort and left closing the door heavily behind him while ronicky doone breathed freely again for the first time now said the man of the sneer tell me the whole of it ruth ronicky set his teeth
+had the clever devil guessed at the truth so easily had he sent his follower away merely to avoid having it known that a man had taken shelter in the room of the girl he loved go on the leader was repeating let me hear the whole truth
+i i stammered the girl and she could say no more the man of the sneer laughed unpleasantly let me help you it was somebody you met somewhere
+you smiled so much in fact that he followed you and found that you had come here the only way he could get in was by stealth is that right
+so he came in exactly that way like a robber but really only to keep a tryst with his lady love a pretty story a true romance
+my dear girl john began ruth tolliver her voice shaking tush he broke in as smoothly as ever let me tell the story for you and spare your blushes
+although you were glad to see him you warned him that it was dangerous to play with fire fire being me do i gather the drift of the story fairly well finally you have him worked up to the right pitch
+you show him that it is possible
+yes said the girl unevenly that is ah murmured the man of the sneer you seem rather relieved that i have guessed he left the house in that case ronicky doone had held the latch of the door turned back for some time
+now he pushed it open and stepped out he was only barely in time for the man of the sneer was turning quickly in his direction since there was only one hiding place in the room
+he was brought up with a shock by the sight of ronicky's big colt held at the hip and covering him with absolute certainty ruth tolliver did not cry out but every muscle in her face and body seemed to contract
+as if she were preparing herself for the explosion you don't have to put up your hands said ronicky doone wondering at the familiarity of the face of the man of the sneer he had brooded on it so often in the past few days that it was like the face of an old acquaintance
+he knew every line in that sharp profile thank you
+i congratulate you on your good taste a regular apollo my dear ruth he turned back to ronicky doone and i suppose you have overhead our entire conversation the whole lot of it said ronicky
+though i wasn't playing my hand at eavesdropping i couldn't help hearing you partner the man of the sneer looked him over leisurely western he said at last decidedly western are you staying long in the east my friend
+i dunno said ronicky doone smiling faintly at the coolness of the other what do you think about it meaning that i'm liable to put an end to your stay maybe tush tush
+i suppose ruth has filled your head with a lot of rot about what a terrible fellow i am but i don't use poison and i don't kill with mysterious x rays i am as you see a very quiet and ordinary sort
+ronicky doone smiled again you just oblige me partner he replied in his own soft voice just stay away from the walls of the room don't even sit down stand right where you are
+you'd murder me if i took another step asked the man of the sneer and a contemptuous and sardonic expression flitted across his face for the first time i'd sure blow you full of lead said ronicky fervently
+i'd kill you like a snake stranger which i mostly think you are so step light and step quick when i talk certainly said the other bowing i am entirely at your service he turned a little to ruth
+i see that you have a most determined cavalier i suppose he'll instantly abduct you and sweep you away from beneath my eyes she made a vague gesture of denial go ahead said the leader by the way
+my name is john mark i'm doone some call me ronicky doone i'm glad to know you ronicky doone i imagine that name fits you now tell me the story of why you came to this house of course it wasn't to see a girl
+you're wrong it was ah in spite of himself the face of john mark wrinkled with pain and suspicious rage i came to see a girl and her name i figure is caroline smith
+relief wonder and even a gleam of outright happiness shot into the eyes of john mark caroline you came for that suddenly he laughed heartily but there was a tremor of emotion in that laughter
+the perfect torture which had been wringing the soul of the man of the sneer projected through the laughter i ask your pardon my dear said john mark to ruth i should have guessed you found him he confessed why he was here you took pity on him
+and he brushed a hand across his forehead and was instantly himself calm and cool very well then it seems i've made an ass of myself but i'll try to make up for it now what about caroline
+leave this house and take a ride or a walk with me as much as that if you have to talk to her why not do the talking here i dunno replied ronicky doone i figure she'd think too much about you all the time
+yes i have a curious stock of useless information well you're right i'm going to try to get her back for bill but you can't expect me to assent to that i sure do and why
+this caroline smith may be a person of great value to me i have no doubt she is but i got a good argument
+the gun partner and if you couldn't get the girl but see how absurd the whole thing is ronicky doone i send for the girl i request her to go down with you to the street and take a walk because you wish to talk to her
+heavens man i can't persuade her to go with a stranger at night surely you see that i'll do that persuading said ronicky doone calmly and when you're on the streets with the girl
+do you suppose i'll rest idle and let you walk away with her once we're outside of the house mark said ronicky doone i don't ask no favors let your men come on
+i ain't terrible backward with the trigger finger john mark not that i figure on bragging but i want you to pick good men for my trail and tell em to step soft is that square
+suppose we shake hands to bind the bargain said ronicky you send for caroline smith i'm to do the persuading to get her out of the house we're safe to the doors of the house the minute we step into the street
+you're free to do anything you want to get either of us will you shake on that for a moment the leader hesitated then his fingers closed over the extended hand of ronicky doone and clamped down on them like so many steel wires contracting
+at the same time a flush of excitement and fierceness passed over the face of john mark ronicky doone taken utterly by surprise was at a great disadvantage
+a great rage came in the eyes of john mark a great wonder came in the eyes of the westerner where did john mark get his sudden strength well said ronicky we've shaken hands and now you can do what you please
+sit down leave the room anything
+that brought a start from john mark and a flash of eagerness but he repressed the idea after a single glance at the girl we've shaken hands he admitted slowly as though just realizing the full extent of the meaning of that act
+chapter eight two apparitions
+found a big double room that ran across the whole length of the house from the back it looked down on the lights glimmering on the black east river and across to the flare of brooklyn to the left the whole arc of the fifty ninth street bridge was exposed
+here they took up the vigil
+bill gregg shook his head that's not the one she's all different a pile different ronicky ronicky sighed
+go on back to sleep i'll call you again if anything happens
+ghost hours of the early morning they did not relax their vigil
+apparently the place was a harmless rooming house of fairly good quality not a sign of caroline smith appeared even during the second day
+by this time the nerves of the two watchers were shattered by the constant strain and the monotonous view from the front window was beginning to madden them it's proof that she ain't yonder said bill gregg
+and he grew pale at the thought partner said ronicky doone if they are trying to keep her away from us they sure have the sense to keep her under cover for as long as two days ain't that right
+it's just about our last chance bill we've done our hunting pretty near as well as we could if we don't land her this trip i'm about ready to give up
+one week was decided on as a fair test if at the end of that time caroline smith did not come out of the house across the street they could conclude that she did not stay there
+peering through the slit between the drawn curtains which sheltered him from being observed at his spying when he called out softly the sound brought gregg with one long leap out of the chair where he was sleeping to the window there could be no shadow of a doubt about it
+there stood caroline smith in the door of the house she closed the door behind her and walking to the top of the steps paused there and looked up and down the street bill gregg groaned
+snatched his hat and plunged through the door and ronicky heard the brief thunder of his feet down the first flight of stairs then the heavy thumps as he raced around the landing
+and so swift was that descent that when the girl idling down the steps across the street came onto the sidewalk bill gregg rushed out from the other side and ran toward her
+for never had the miner seemed so clumsily big and gaunt never had his clothes seemed so unpressed and shapeless while his soft gray hat to which he still clung religiously appeared hopelessly out of place in contrast with the slim prettiness of the girl
+she wore a black straw hat turned back from her face with a single big red flower at the side of it
+the same distinction between their clothes was in their faces the finely modeled prettiness of her features and the big careless chiseling of the features of bill gregg ronicky doone did not wonder that after her first fear her gesture was one of disdain and surprise
+he went a long slow step closer to her with both his hands outstretched
+ronicky doone followed that glance and he saw all hidden save the profile of the face
+what a face it was never in his life had ronicky doone seen a man who in one instant filled him with such fear and hatred such loathing and such dread such scorn and such terror
+the nose was hooked like the nose of a bird of prey the eyes were long and slanting like those of an oriental the face was thin almost fleshless so that the bony jaw stood out like the jaw of a death's head
+the girl hesitated a moment
+for she made a slight outward gesture with one hand if this were in her mind however it vanished instantly she turned with a shudder and hurried away down the street
+as for bill gregg he bore himself straight as a soldier and came back across the pavement but it was the erectness of a soldier who has met with a crushing defeat and only preserves an outward resolution while all the spirit within is crushed
+what a contrast between the ascent and the descent he had literally flown down now his heels clumped out a slow and regular death march as he came back to the room when gregg opened the door
+ronicky doone blinked and drew in a deep breath at the sight of the poor fellow's face gregg had known before that he truly loved this girl whom he had never seen
+now in the very moment of seeing his dream of the girl turned into flesh and blood he had lost her and there was something like death in the face of the big miner as he dropped his hat on the floor and sank into a chair
+after that he did not move so much as a finger from the position into which he had fallen limply his legs were twisted awkwardly sprawling across the floor in front of him one long arm dragged down toward the floor
+as if there was no strength in it to support the weight of the labor hardened hands his chin was fallen against his breast when ronicky doone crossed to him and laid a kind hand on his shoulder he did not look up it's ended
+said bill gregg faintly now we hit the back trail and forget all about this he added with a faint attempt at cynicism i've just wasted a pile of good money making time from the mine that's all
+said ronicky doone bill look me in the eye and tell me man to man that you're a liar he added can you ever be happy without her man the cruelty of that speech made gregg flush
+said gregg huskily ain't there that's where you and me don't agree
+look at the way things have gone you start out with a photograph of a girl now you've followed her found her name
+ain't that something done after you've done all that
+not you bill you're going to buck up and go ahead full steam
+bill gregg smiled sourly
+d'you know what she said well bill gregg she says i don't remember any such name that took the wind out of me i only had enough left to say
+the gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you from the west the one you sent your picture to and sent my picture to she says and looks as if the ground had opened under her feet you're mad she says
+and then she looks back over her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house d'you know why she looked back over her shoulder just for the reason i told you no bill there was a gent standing up there at a window watching her and how she acted
+he's the one who's kept her in that house
+that sent out the girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and speak to her when you seen her bill what that girl told you didn't come out of her own head it come out of the head of the gent across the way when you turned your back on her
+she looked like she'd run after you and try to explain but the fear of that fellow up in the window was too much for her and she didn't dare bill
+you got to get that gent i seen grinning from the window grinning asked bill gregg grinding his teeth and starting from his chair was the skunk laughing at me sure every minute bill gregg groaned i'll smash every bone in his ugly head
+shake said ronicky doone that's the sort of talk i wanted to hear
+chapter twelve the first day mile after mile of the rough trail fell behind him and still the pony shambled along at a loose trot or a swinging canter the steep upgrades it took at a steady jog
+and where the slopes pitched sharply down it wound among the rocks with a faultless sureness of foot certainly the choice of nash was well made an eastern horse of blood over a level course
+but it would have broken down after ten miles of that hard trail dawn came while they wound over the crest of the range and with the sun in their faces they took the downgrade it was well into the morning before nash reached logan
+i s'pose you're here askin after bard
+bard who's he logan considered the other with a sardonic smile
+you'll wear out the snapper on it i'm on my way to the a circle y listen i'm all for old man drew you know that tell me what bard has on him never heard the name before did he rustle a couple of your sheep
+d'you think i'm on somebody's trail don't you know i've been through with that sort of game for a hell of a while when rocks turn into ham and eggs i'll trust you steve i'll tell you what i done to bard anyway yesterday
+then he hinted around about learnin the way to eldara because he knows that town is pretty close to drew's place i guess i told him sure i did he should of gone due west but i sent him south there is a south trail
+only it takes about three days to get to eldara maybe you think that interests me it don't logan overlooked this rejoinder saying is it his scalp you're after your ideas are like nest eggs logan
+an you set over em like a hen they look like eggs they feel like eggs but they don't never hatch that's the way with your ideas they look all right they sound all right but they don't mean nothin so long
+what you say cuts both ways steve this feller bard
+he sounds like a tenderfoot but he ain't a tenderfoot feeling that this parting shot gave him the honours of the meeting he turned away whistling with such spirit that one of his dogs overhearing stood still and gazed at his master
+his eastern course nash pursued for a mile or more
+he was weary like his horse and he made no attempt to start a sudden burst of speed he let the pony go on at the same tireless jog clinging like a bulldog to the trail about midday
+hello young feller lo stranger what's the chance of bunking here for three or four hours and gettin a good feed for the hoss never better gimme the hoss
+feed him grain no you won't put him up i'll tend to that looks like a bad un that's it
+unsaddled him and gave him a small feed the horse first rolled on the dirt floor and then started methodically on his fodder having made sure that his mount was not off his feed nash rolled a cigarette and strolled back to the house with the boy
+where's the folks he asked ma's sick a little and didn't get up to day pa's down to the corral cussing mad but i can cook you up some chow all right son i got a dollar here that'll buy you a pretty good store knife
+the boy flushed so red that by contrast his straw coloured hair seemed positively white maybe you want to pay me he suggested fiercely maybe you think we're squatters that run a hotel
+recognizing the true western breed even in this small edition nash grinned speakin man to man son i didn't think that but i thought i'd sort of feel my way which i'll say you're lucky you didn't try to feel your way with pa
+and set about frying ham and making coffee this with crackers formed the meal he watched nash eat for a moment of solemn silence and then the foreman looked up to catch a meditative chuckle from the youngster let me in on the joke son nothin
+i was just thinkin of pa what's he sore about come out short at poker lately no he lost a hoss ha ha ha he explained
+nash sipped his coffee and waited on the mountain desert one does not draw out a narrator with questions
+he was a sure enough tenderfoot leastways he looked it an he talked it but he wasn't the familiarity of this description made steve sit up a trifle straighter was he a ringer maybe i dunno
+pa meets him at the door and asks him in
+the boy paused to remember and then with twinkling eyes he mimicked that's very good of you sir but i'll only stop to make a trade with you this horse and some cash to boot for a durable mount out of your corral
+the brute has gone lame you see
+an i won't ask much cash to boot i begin wonderin what pa was drivin at but i didn't say nothin' jest held myself together and waited look over there to the corral says pa and pointed
+it's the best hoss i've ever had it was the best horse pa ever had too it was a piebald pinto called jo after my cousin josiah who's jest a plain bad un and raises hell when there's any excuse the piebald
+he didn't even need an excuse you see
+when he leaves the corral he likes to have another hoss for a runnin mate and he was jest as tame as anything i could ride him anybody could ride him but if you took him outside the bars of the corral without company first thing he done
+when he seen that he was all laid out to make a trip by himself
+which jo can raise more hell for his size than any hoss i ever seen he's what you call an eddicated bucker he don't fool around with no pauses he jest starts in and figgers out a situation
+an he always used to win out in fact he was known for it all around these parts he begun nice and easy
+and the end was the rider lyin on the ground whenever the boys around here wanted any excitement they used to come over and try their hands with jo
+and tame down the bruises after jo laid em cold on the ground
+well this tenderfoot he looks over the hoss in the corral and says
+aw twenty five dollars is enough says pa all right says the tenderfoot here's the money and he counts it out in pa's hand he says what a little beauty it would be a treat to see him work on a polo field pa says
+then he steps on my foot to make me wipe the grin off'n my face down goes the tenderfoot and takes his saddle and flops it on the piebald pinto and the piebald was jest as nice as milk then he leads him out'n the corral and gets on
+but he didn't see none then the circus started an b'lieve me it was some circus jo hadn't had much action for some time
+thinkin up new ways of raisin hell
+which maybe you sort of gather that he had to keep on performin because the tenderfoot was still in the saddle he was an he never pulled leather no sir he never touched the buckin strap but jest sat there with his teeth set
+and his lips twistin back the same smile he had when he got into the saddle but pretty soon i s'pose jo had a chance to figure out that it didn't do him no particular harm to be alone the minute he seen that he stopped fightin
+and started off at a gallop the way the tenderfoot wanted him to go which was over there damn my eyes says pa
+there wouldn't be no drawin card to get the boys around the house no more but you're lookin sort of sleepy stranger i am answered nash well if you'd seen that show you wouldn't be thinkin of sleep not for some time maybe not
+but the point is i didn't see it d'you mind if i turn in on that bunk over there help yourself said the boy what time d'you want me to wake you up never mind i wake up automatic s'long bud
+the children are justified when they peep so curiously and timidly at a company of unknown faces each individual atom of everlasting time is capable of comprising a world of joy
+and at the same time of opening up a fathomless abyss of pain and suffering
+i understand now the old fairy tale about the man whom the sorcerer allowed to live a great many years in a few moments for i know by my own experience the terrible omnipotence of the fantasy
+since the last letter from your sister it is three days now i have undergone the sufferings of an entire life from the bright sunlight of glowing youth to the pale moonlight of sagacious old age
+every little detail she wrote about your sickness taken with what i had already gleaned from the doctor and had observed myself confirmed my suspicion that it was far more dangerous than you thought
+indeed no longer dangerous but decided past hope lost in this thought and my strength entirely exhausted on account of the impossibility of hurrying to your side
+my state of mind was really very disconsolate now for the first time i understand what it really was being new born by the joyful news that you are well again
+i did not think of it as about to happen in the future or even in the present everything was already past for a long time you had been wrapt in the bosom of the cold earth
+flowers had started to grow on the beloved grave and my tears had already begun to flow more gently mute and alone i stood and saw nothing but the features i had loved and the sweet glances of the expressive eyes
+now and then the pale face smiled and seemed asleep just as it had looked the last time i saw it then of a sudden the different memories all became confused
+with unbelievable rapidity the outlines changed reassumed their first form and transformed themselves again and again until the wild vision vanished
+only your holy eyes remained in the empty space and hung there motionless even as the friendly stars shine eternally over our poverty
+now a piercing pain from dark suns burned me with an insupportable glare now a beautiful radiance hovered about as if to entice me then i seemed to feel a fresh breath of morning air fan me
+i held my head up and cried aloud
+why should you torment yourself in a few minutes you can be with her
+i was already hastening to you when suddenly a new thought held me back and i said to my spirit
+unworthy man you cannot even endure the trifling dissonances of this ordinary life and yet you regard yourself as ready for and worthy of a higher life go away and do and suffer as your calling is
+and then present yourself again when your orders have been executed
+is it not to you also remarkable how everything on this earth moves toward the centre how orderly everything is how insignificant and trivial so it has always seemed to me
+and for that reason i suspect if i am not mistaken i have already imparted my suspicion to you that the next life will be larger and in the good as well as in the bad stronger wilder bolder and more tremendous
+as when a person suddenly finds himself alone in the midst of immeasurable mountains of ice everything about me and in me was cold and strange and even my tears froze
+wonderful worlds appeared and vanished before me in my uneasy dream i was sick and suffered great pain but i loved my sickness and welcomed the suffering
+i hated everything earthly and was glad to see it all punished and destroyed i felt so alone and so strangely
+and as a delicate spirit often grows melancholy in the very lap of happiness over its own joy and at the very acme of its existence becomes conscious of the futility of it all
+so did i regard my suffering with mysterious pleasure i regarded it as the symbol of life in general i believed that i was seeing and feeling the everlasting discord
+and the lovely forms of refined culture seemed dead and trivial to me in comparison with this monstrous world of infinite strength and of unending struggle and warfare
+even into the most hidden depths of existence on account of this remarkable feeling sickness acquired the character of a peculiar world complete in itself
+i felt that its mysterious life was richer and deeper than the vulgar health of the dreaming sleep walkers all around me and with the sickliness which was not at all unpleasant
+this feeling also clung to me and completely separated me from other men just as i was sundered from the earth by the thought that your nature and my love had been too sacred
+it seemed to me that all was right so and that your unavoidable death was nothing more than a gentle awakening after a light sleep i too thought that i was awake when i saw your picture
+which evermore transfigured itself into a cheerful diffused purity serious and yet charming quite you and yet no longer you the divine form irradiated by a wonderful light
+now it was like the terrible gleam of visible omnipotence now like a soft ray of golden childhood
+because every earthly sentiment was entirely strange to me and the feeling never left me that i was consecrated to death
+the years passed slowly by and deeds and works advanced laboriously to their goal one after the other a goal that seemed as little mine as the deeds and works seemed to be what they are called
+to me they were merely holy symbols and everything brought me back to my one beloved
+and the one eternal and indivisible humanity all existence was an uninterrupted divine service of solitary love
+finally i became conscious that it was now nearly over the brow was no longer smooth and the locks were becoming gray my career was ended but not completed
+the best strength of life was gone and still art and virtue
+stood ever unattainable before me i should have despaired had i not perceived and idolized both in you gracious madonna and you and your gentle godliness in myself
+then you appeared to me beckoning with the summons of death
+an earnest longing for you and for freedom seized me i yearned for my dear old fatherland and was about to shake off the dust of travel when i was suddenly called back to life by the promise and reassurance of your recovery
+and only in that way does a human being become one and a complete entity that is by regarding and poetically conceiving himself as the centre of everything and the spirit of the world
+but why poetically conceive since we find the germ of everything in ourselves and yet remain forever only a fragment of ourselves
+it looks at me joyously out of its deep eyes and opens its arms to embrace my spirit
+the holiest and most evanescent of those delicate traits and utterances of the soul which to one who does not know the highest seem like bliss itself
+are merely the common atmosphere of our spiritual breath and life the words are weak and vague
+furthermore in this throng of impressions i could only repeat anew the one inexhaustible feeling of our original harmony a great future beckons me on into the immeasurable
+each idea develops a countless progeny
+i remember everything even the griefs and all my thoughts that have been and are to be
+the blood rushes wildly through my swollen veins my mouth thirsts for the contact of your lips and my fancy seeks vainly among the many forms of joy for one
+which might at last gratify my desire and give it rest and then again i suddenly and sadly bethink me of the gloomy time when i was always waiting without hope
+and madly loving without knowing it when my innermost being overflowed with a vague longing which it breathed forth but rarely in half suppressed sighs
+oh i should have thought it all a fairy tale that there could be such joy such love as i now feel and such a woman who could be my most tender beloved my best companion and at the same time
+a perfect friend for it was in friendship especially that i sought for what i wanted and for what i never hoped to find in any woman in you i found it all and more than i could wish for
+you know nothing the womanliness of your soul aside from minor peculiarities consists in its regarding life and love as the same thing for you all feeling is infinite and eternal
+you recognize no separations your being is an indivisible unity that is why you are so serious and so joyous why you regard everything in such a large and indifferent way
+that is why you love me all of me and will surrender no part of me to the state to posterity or to manly pleasures i am all yours we are closest to each other
+and we understand each other you accompany me through all the stages of manhood from the utmost wantonness to the most refined spirituality in you alone i first saw true pride
+and true feminine humility the most extreme suffering if it is only surrounded without separating us
+would seem to me nothing but a charming antithesis to the sublime frivolity of our marriage why should we not take the harshest whim of chance for an excellent jest and a most frolicsome caprice since we
+like our love are immortal i can no longer say my love and your love they are both alike in their perfect mutuality marriage is the everlasting unity and alliance of our spirits
+as that last glass of champagne we drank together when i said and so let us drink out the rest of our lives
+and so i say again let us live and love i know you would not wish to survive me you would rather follow your dying husband into his coffin gladly and lovingly would you descend into the burning abyss
+even as the women of india do impelled by a mad law the cruel constraining purpose of which desecrates and destroys the most delicate sanctities of the will
+on the other side perhaps longing will be more completely realized i often wonder over it every thought and whatever else is fashioned within us
+seems to be complete in itself as single and indivisible as a person one thing crowds out another and that which just now was near and present soon sinks back into obscurity
+and then again come moments of sudden and universal clarity when several such spirits of the inner world completely fuse together into a wonderful wedlock and many a forgotten bit of our ego shines forth in a new light
+and even illuminates the darkness of the future with its bright lustre as it is in a small way
+i think in a large way that which we call a life is for the complete inner immortal man only a single idea an indivisible feeling
+and for him there come too moments of the profoundest and fullest consciousness when all lives fall together and mingle and separate in a different way
+the time is coming when we two shall behold in one spirit that we are blossoms of one plant or petals of one flower we shall then know with a smile
+that what we now call merely hope was really memory do you know how the first seed of this idea germinated in my soul before you and took root in yours
+weave our love ever and ever more closely and firmly together just as a child like an echo doubles the happiness of its gentle parents nothing can part us
+and certainly any separation would only draw me more powerfully to you i bethink me how at our last embrace you vehemently resisting i burst into simultaneous tears and laughter
+i tried to calm myself and in a sort of bewilderment i would not believe that i was separated from you until the surrounding objects convinced me of it against my will
+but then my longing grew again irresistible until on its wings i sank back into your arms suppose words or a human being to create a misunderstanding between us
+the poignant grief would be transient and quickly resolve itself into complete harmony how could separation separate us when presence itself is to us as it were too present
+we have to cool and mitigate the consuming fire with jests and thus for us the most witty of the forms and situations of joy is also the most beautiful
+it is not merely the delight of exhaustion or the anticipation of revenge i see in it a wonderful and profoundly significant allegory of the development of man and woman
+into complete humanity that was my dithyrambic fantasy on the loveliest situation in the loveliest of worlds i know right well what you thought of it
+and how you took it at that time and i think i know just as well what you will think of it and how you will take it here here in this little book in which you expect to find genuine history plain truth and calm reason
+yes even morality the charming morality of love
+how can a man wish to write anything which it is scarcely permissible to talk about which ought only to be felt
+i replied
+a man feels it he must wish to talk about it and what a man wishes to talk about he may write
+i wanted first to demonstrate to you that there exists in the original and essential nature of man a certain awkward enthusiasm which likes to utter boldly that which is delicate and holy
+and sometimes falls headlong over its own honest zeal and speaks a word that is divine to the point of coarseness this apology would indeed save me
+but perhaps only at the enormous expense of my manhood itself for whatever you may think of my manhood in particular you have nevertheless a great deal against the sex in general
+meantime i will by no means make common cause with them but will rather excuse and defend my liberty and audacity by means of the example of the little innocent wilhelmina
+since she too is a lady whom i love most tenderly
+an old man in agony but still genial and full of delicate wit drapes the motley spectacle of his lifelike writings with the costly tapestry of a preface which in itself is a beautiful and romantic painting
+but what shall my spirit bestow upon its offspring which like its parent is as poor in poesy as it is rich in love just one word a parting trope
+it is not alone the royal eagle who may despise the croaking of the raven the swan too is proud and takes no note of it
+human beings and what they want and do
+a fresh warm breath of life and love fanned me rustling and stirring in all the branches of the verdant grove i gazed and enjoyed it all the rich green the white blossoms and the golden fruit
+and in my mind's eye i saw too in many forms my one and only beloved now as a little girl now as a young lady in the full bloom and energy of love and womanhood
+and now as a dignified mother with her demure babe in her arms i breathed the spring and i saw clearly all about me everlasting youth smiling i said to myself
+from this feeling or thought nothing could have turned me neither general despair nor personal fear for i believed
+but i gladly lost myself in all those blendings and intertwinings of joy and pain from which spring the spice of life and the flower of feeling spiritual pleasure as well as sensual bliss
+a subtle fire flowed through my veins
+it was not only the wish to relieve the tormenting sting of my desire and to cool the sweet fire by gratification it was not for your lips that i longed or for your eyes or for your body
+a marvelous mingling of memories and desires all the mysteries of caprice in man and woman seemed to hover about me when suddenly in my solitude
+and yet with calm presence of mind i watched for the slightest sign of joy in you so that not one should escape me to impair the harmony i not only enjoyed but i felt and enjoyed
+the enjoyment you are so extraordinarily clever dearest lucinda that you have doubtless long ere this begun to suspect that this is all nothing but a beautiful dream
+not long ago i was standing by the window how long i do not know for along with the other rules of reason and morality i completely forgot about the lapse of time well i was standing by the window and looking out into the open
+the morning certainly deserves to be called beautiful the air is still and quite warm and the verdure here before me is fresh and even as the wide land undulates in hills and dales
+so the calm broad silvery river winds along in great bends and sweeps until it and the lover's fantasy cradled upon it like the swan pass away into the distance and lose themselves in the immeasurable
+my vision doubtless owes the grove and its southern color effect to the huge mass of flowers here beside me
+all the rest is readily explained by psychology
+all except that not long ago i was standing by the window and doing nothing and that i am now sitting here and doing something something which is perhaps little more than nothing perhaps even less
+i was just on the point of unfolding to you in clear and precise periods the exact and straightforward history of our frivolities and of my dulness i was going to expound to you step by step
+in accordance with natural laws the misunderstandings that attack the hidden centre of the loveliest existence and to confess to you the manifold effects of my awkwardness
+i was about to describe the apprenticeship of my manhood
+a period which taken as a whole or in parts i can never look back upon without a great deal of inward amusement a little melancholy and considerable self satisfaction
+still as a refined lover and writer i will endeavor to refashion the coarse occurrence and adapt it to my purpose for me and for this book however for my love of it and for its inner development
+there is no better adaptation of means to ends than this namely that right at the start i begin by abolishing what we call orderly arrangement keep myself entirely aloof from it
+frankly claiming and asserting the right to a charming confusion this is all the more necessary inasmuch as the material which our life and love offers to my spirit and to my pen is so incessantly progressive
+and so inflexibly systematic if the form were also of that character this in its way unique letter would then acquire an intolerable unity and monotony
+so i use my incontestable right to a confused style by inserting here in the wrong place one of the many incoherent sheets which i once filled with rubbish
+it was written in a mood of impatient longing due to my not finding you where i most surely expected to find you in your room on our sofa in the haphazard words suggested by the pen you had lately been using
+the selection is not difficult for since among the dreamy fancies which are here confided to you in permanent letters the recollection of this most beautiful world
+is the most significant and has a certain sort of resemblance to what they call thought i choose in preference to anything else a dithyrambic fantasy on the most lovely of situations
+for once we know to a certainty that we live in a most beautiful world the next need is obvious
+my loyalty towards the afflicted man whose friendly advances i had seen good reason to return was in no sense shaken his undeserved misfortunes his manly appeal to me at the spring
+still while cristel's entreaties and cristel's influence had failed to shake me gloody's strange language and gloody's incomprehensible conduct had troubled my mind i felt vaguely uneasy irritated by my own depression of spirits
+if i had been a philosopher i should have recognized the symptoms of a very common attack of a very widely spread moral malady the meanest of all human infirmities is also the most universal and the name of it is self esteem
+it is perhaps only right to add that my patience had been tried by the progress of domestic events which affected lady lena and myself viewed as victims calling with my stepmother at lord uppercliff's house later in the day
+or made an opportunity of talking together confidentially in a corner and once or twice i caught them looking at lady lena and at me even lord uppercliff perhaps not yet taken into their confidence
+noticed the proceedings of the two ladies and seemed to be at a loss to understand them when missus roylake and i were together again on our way home i was prepared to hear the praise of lady lena followed by a delicate examination into the state of my heart
+neither of these anticipations was realized once more my clever stepmother had puzzled me missus roylake talked as fluently as ever exhausting one common place subject after another
+without the slightest allusion to my lord's daughter to my matrimonial prospects or to my visits at the mill i was secretly annoyed feeling that my stepmother's singular indifference to domestic interests of paramount importance
+returning to the house i tried to occupy myself with my collection of insects sadly neglected of late useless my own moths failed to interest me i went back to the garden passing the open window of one of the lower rooms which looked out on the terrace
+i saw missus roylake reading a book in sad colored binding she was yawning over it fearfully when she discovered that i was looking at her equal to any emergency this remarkable woman instantly handed to me a second and similar volume
+i looked at the book i opened the book i recovered my presence of mind and handed it back if a female humbug was on one side of the window a male humbug was on the other
+which way did i turn my steps men will wonder what possessed me women will think it a proceeding that did me credit i took the familiar road which led to the gloomy wood and the guilty river the longing in me to see cristel again was more than i could resist
+not because i was in love with her only because i had left her in distress beyond the spring and within a short distance of the river i saw a lady advancing towards me on the path which led from the mill brisk smiling tripping along like a young girl
+behold the mock republican known in our neighborhood as lady rachel she held out both hands to me but for her petticoats i should have thought i had met with a jolly young man
+patronizing piety on the way to afternoon church i must positively make a sketch of the cottage by the mill i mean of course the picturesque side of it that fine girl of toller's was standing at the door she is really handsomer than ever are you going to see her you wicked man
+when we had left each other i thought of the absent captain in the navy who was lady rachel's husband he was a perfect stranger but i put myself in his place and felt that i too should have gone to sea
+old toller was alone in his kitchen evidently annoyed and angry we are all at sixes and sevens mister gerard i've had another row with that deaf devil my new name for him and i think it's rather clever
+he swears sir that he won't go at the end of his week's notice
+and shoot the man and shoot himself aha
+i'll be even with him you mark my words i'll be even with him that old toller the most exasperating of men judged by a quick temper had irritated my friend into speaking rashly was plain enough nevertheless i felt some anxiety
+about cristel after looking round the kitchen again i asked where she was sitting forlorn in her bedroom crying her father told me i went out for a walk by the river and i sat down and being sunday i fell asleep when i woke and got home again just now that
+was how i found her i don't like to hear my girl crying she's as good as gold and better no sir our deaf devil is not to blame for this he has given cristy no reason to complain of him she says so herself and she never told a lie yet
+but mister toller i objected something must have happened to distress her has she not told you what it is not she obstinate about it leaves me to guess it's clear to my mind mister gerard that somebody has got at her in my absence
+you will ask me who the person is
+but you mean to try yes i mean to try he answered me with little of the energy which generally distinguished him perhaps he was fatigued or perhaps he had something else to think of i offered a suggestion when we are
+in want of help i said we sometimes find it nearer than we had ventured to expect at our own doors the ancient miller rose at that hint like a fish at a fly gloody he cried find him at once mister toller
+i've got burdens on my mind he explained or i should have thought of it too having done justice to his own abilities he bustled out in less than a minute he was back again in a state of breathless triumph gloody has seen the person he announced and
+i beckoned to gloody waiting modestly at the door to come in and tell me what he had discovered i saw her outside sir rapping at the door here with her parasol that was the servant's report her parasol
+miss cristel looked like a person surprised at seeing a stranger what i should call a free and easy stranger she walked in sir as if the place belonged to her i am not suspicious by nature as i hope and believe
+the hat i had seen on the head of that hateful woman was now sufficiently described for a man sly old toller leaving gloody unnoticed and keeping his eye on me saw the signs of conviction in my face and said with his customary audacity
+who is she i followed at my humble distance the example of sir walter scott when inquisitive people asked him if he was the author of the waverley novels in plain english i denied all knowledge of the stranger wearing the green hat
+but i was naturally desirous of discovering next what lady rachel had said and i asked to speak with cristel her far seeing father might or might not have perceived a chance of listening to our conversation
+he led me to the door of his daughter's room and stood close by when i knocked softly and begged that she would come out the tone of the poor girl's voice answering forgive me sir i can't do it convicted the she socialist as i thought
+of merciless conduct of some sort assuming this conclusion to be the right one i determined then and there that lady rachel should not pass the doors of trimley deen again if her bosom friend resented that wise act of severity by leaving the house i should submit with resignation
+and should remember the circumstance with pleasure i am afraid you are ill cristel was all i could find to say under the double disadvantage of speaking through a door and having a father listening at my side oh no mister gerard not ill
+pray be kinder to me than ever pray let me be i said i would return on the next day and left the room with a sore heart old toller highly approved of my conduct he rubbed his fleshless hands and whispered
+you'll get it out of cristy to morrow and i'll help you i found gloody waiting for me outside the cottage he was anxious about miss cristel his only excuse he told me being the fear that she might be ill having set him at ease in that particular i said
+you seem to be interested in miss cristel his answer raised him a step higher in my estimation how can i help it sir an odd man with a personal appearance that might excite a prejudice against him in some minds
+i failed to see it myself in that light it struck me as i walked home that cristel might have made many a worse friend than the retired prize fighter a change in my manner was of course remarked by missus roylake's ready observation
+i told her that i had been annoyed and offered no other explanation wonderful to relate she showed no curiosity and no surprise more wonderful still at every fair opportunity that offered she kept out of my way
+my next day's engagement being for seven o'clock in the evening i put missus roylake's self control to a new test with prefatory excuses i informed her that i should not be able to dine at home as usual impossible as it was that she could have been prepared to hear this
+on the river margin of the wood i was confronted by a wild gleam of beauty in the familiar view for which previous experience had not prepared me am i wrong in believing that all scenery no matter how magnificent or how homely it may be
+derives a splendor not its own from favouring conditions of light and shade our gloomy trees and our repellent river presented an aspect superbly transfigured under the shadows of the towering clouds the fantastic wreaths of the mist
+and the lurid reddening of the sun as it stooped to its setting lovely interfusions of sobered color rested faded returned again on the upper leaves of the foliage as they lightly moved the mist rolling capriciously over the waters
+while it dimmed the turbid earthy yellow that discolored and degraded the stream under the full glare of day while my eyes followed the successive transformations of the view as the hour advanced tender and solemn influences breathed their balm over my mind
+days happy days that were past revived again i walked hand in hand with my mother among the scenes that were round me and learnt from her to be grateful for the beauty of the earth with a heart that felt it
+we were tracing our way along our favorite woodland path and we found a companion of tender years hiding from us she showed herself blushing hesitating offering a nosegay of wild flowers my mother whispered to me
+i thanked the little mill girl and gave her a kiss did i feel the child's breath in my day dream still fluttering on my cheek was i conscious of her touch i started trembled returned reluctantly to my present self
+a visible hand touched my arm as i turned suddenly a living breath played on my face the child had faded into a vanishing shade the perfected woman who had grown from her had stolen on me unawares and was asking me to pardon her
+mister gerard you were lost in your thoughts i spoke and you never heard me i looked at her in silence was this the dear cristel so well known to me or was it a mockery of her that had taken her place
+you have surprised me i answered something must have happened since i saw you last what is it nothing i advanced a step and drew her closer to me a dark flush discolored her face an overpowering brilliancy flashed from her eyes
+there was an hysterical defiance in her manner are you excited are you angry are you trying to startle me by acting a part i urged those questions on her one after another and i was loudly and confidently answered
+the deaf gentleman submitted why did you invite yourself because a tea party is not complete without a woman her manner was as strangely altered as her looks that she was beside herself for the moment i clearly saw
+i know that she has visited you and spoken to you do you know what she has said i can guess
+her manner had become quieter her face was more composed her expression almost recovered its natural charm while she spoke of lady rachel i was stupefied try sir to forget it and forgive it she resumed gently
+if i have misbehaved myself i don't rightly know what i am saying or doing i pointed to the new side of the cottage behind us is the cause there i asked no no indeed
+in that short time i told her that he had been found in my garden looking at the flowers as he had done no harm i said
+and felt i don't doubt it i had intended to say no more than this but the remembrance of gloody's mysterious prevarication and of the uneasiness which i had undoubtedly felt when i thought of it afterwards led me i cannot pretend to say how
+into associating cristel's agitation with something which this man might have said to her i was on the point of putting the question when she held up her hand and said hush the wind was blowing towards us from the river side village to which i have already alluded
+i am not sure whether i have mentioned that the name of the place was kylam it was situated behind a promontory of the river bank clothed thickly with trees and was not visible from the mill in the present direction of the wind we could hear the striking of the church clock
+cristel counted the strokes seven she said are you determined to keep your engagement she had repeated in an unsteady voice and with a sudden change in her color to paleness the strange question put to me by gloody
+in his case i had failed to trace the motive i tried to discover it now tell me why i ought to break my engagement i said remember what i told you at the spring she answered
+you are deceived by a false friend who lies to you and hates you the man she was speaking of turned the corner of the new cottage
+it's too late now instead of letting me precede her as i had anticipated she ran on before me made a sign to the deaf man as she passed him not to stop her and disappeared through the open door of her father's side of the cottage
+i was left to decide for myself what should i have done if i had been twenty years older
+the fear of appearing to be afraid and that i should have made my excuses to my host of the evening how would my moral courage have answered him if he had asked for an explanation useless to speculate on it had i possessed the wisdom of middle life
+his book of leaves would not have told him in my own handwriting that i believed in his better nature
+explain it who can i knew that i was going to drink tea with him and yet i was unwilling to advance a few steps and meet him on the road i find a new bond of union between us he said as he joined me we both feel that
+he pointed to the grandly darkening view the two men who could have painted the mystery of those growing shadows and fading lights lie in the graves of rembrandt and turner shall we go to tea on our way to his room we stopped at the miller's door
+will you inquire he said if miss cristel is ready i went in old toller was in the kitchen smoking his pipe without appearing to enjoy it what's come to my girl he asked the moment he saw me
+to day she's in her room praying the warnings which i had neglected rose in judgment against me i was silent i was awed before i recovered myself cristel entered the kitchen her father whispered
+time has passed since i first read it and changes have occurred in the interval which leave me free to exercise my own discretion and to let the autobiography speak for itself if i am asked what impression of the writer those extraordinary pages produced on me
+i feel at a loss how to reply not one impression but many impressions troubled and confused my mind certain passages in the confession inclined me to believe that the writer was mad but i altered my opinion at the next leaf
+and set him down as a man with a bitter humor
+at one time his tone in writing of his early life and his allusions to his mother won my sympathy and respect at another time the picture of himself in his later years and the defiant manner in which he presented it
+almost made me regret that he had not died of the illness which had struck him deaf
+at one positive conclusion as strangers he and i had first met as strangers i was determined we should remain having made up my mind so far the next thing to do with the clock on the mantel piece striking midnight was to go to bed
+i slept badly the events that had happened since my arrival in england had excited me i suppose now and then in the wakeful hours of the night i thought of cristel with some anxiety
+the poor girl as i was still inclined to fear might have serious reason to regret that he had ever entered her father's cottage at the breakfast table my stepmother and i met again missus roylake in an exquisite morning dress with her smile in perfect order
+informed me that she was dying with curiosity she had heard from the servants that i had not returned to the house until past ten o'clock on the previous night and she was absolutely bewildered by the discovery what could her dear gerard have been doing out in the dark by himself
+for all that time for some part of the time i answered i was catching moths in fordwitch wood
+missus roylake's fascinating smile disappeared when i mentioned the mill she suddenly became a cold lady i might even say a stiff lady
+of course that bold girl contrived to attract your notice i replied that i had met with the bold girl purely by accident on her side as well as on mine and then i started a new topic
+was it a pleasant dinner party last night i asked as if the subject really interested me i had not been quite four and twenty hours in england yet and i was becoming a humbug already
+my stepmother was her charming self again the moment my question had passed my lips society provided it was not society at the mill was always attractive as a topic of conversation your absence was the only drawback she answered
+i have asked the two ladies my lord has an engagement to dine here to day without ceremony they are most anxious to meet you my dear gerard you look surprised
+i was obliged to acknowledge my ignorance missus roylake was shocked at any rate she resumed you have heard of their father lord uppercliff i made another shameful confession
+either i had forgotten lord uppercliff during my long absence abroad or i had never heard of him
+we will drive out after luncheon and pay a round of visits when this prospect was placed before me i remembered having read in books of sensitive persons receiving impressions which made their blood run cold
+i must tell you that lady rachel is the eldest she is married to the honorable captain millbay of the navy now away in his ship a person of extraordinary strength of mind i don't mean the captain i mean lady rachel
+i admire her intellect but her political and social opinions i must always view with regret
+is simply the most charming girl in england if you don't fall in love with her
+poor sir george she refused him last week you really must have heard of sir george our member of parliament conservative of course quite broken hearted about lady lena gone away to america to shoot bears
+you want to smoke after breakfast well i won't be in your way go out on the terrace your poor father always took his cigar on the terrace they say smoking leads to meditation i leave you to meditate on lady lena don't forget
+she smiled and kissed her hand and fluttered out of the room charming perfectly charming and yet i was ungrateful enough to wish myself back in germany again i lit my cigar but not on the terrace
+leaving the house i took the way once more that led to fordwitch wood what would missus roylake have said if she had discovered that i was going back to the mill there was no other alternative the portfolio was a trust confided to me
+the sooner i returned it to the writer of the confession the sooner i told him plainly the conclusion at which i had arrived the more at ease my mind would be the sluggish river looked muddier than ever the new cottage looked uglier than ever
+i knocked at the door on the ancient side of the building
+he stared at me in momentary perplexity and suddenly recovering himself asked me to walk in are you the young master sir ah yes yes i thought so my girl cristy said she saw the young master last night thank you kindly sir i'm pretty well
+my meals don't show on me you will excuse my receiving you in the kitchen sir it's the best room we have did cristy tell you how badly we are off here for repairs you being our landlord we look to you to help us we are falling to pieces as it were
+on this old side of the house there's first drains he proceeded to reckon up the repairs counting with his fleshless thumb on his skinny fingers when he was interrupted by a curious succession of sounds which began with whining and ended with scratching at the cottage door
+in a minute after the door was opened from without a brown dog of the companionable retriever breed ran in and fawned upon old toller cristel followed from the kitchen garden with a basket of vegetables on her arm
+i now saw in their full beauty the luster of her brown eyes the warm rosiness of her dark complexion the delightful vivacity of expression which was the crowning charm of her face she paused confusedly in the doorway
+and tried to resist me when i insisted on relieving her of the basket mister gerard she protested
+my answer would no doubt have assumed the form of a foolish compliment if her father had not spared her that infliction
+he says all right and he does nothing there's first as i told you just now the truly dreadful state of the drains i tried to stop him by promising to speak to the bailiff myself on hearing this good news mister toller's gratitude became ungovernable
+he was more eager than ever and more eloquent than ever in returning to the repairs and then sir there's the oven they do call bread the staff of life it's a burnt staff at one time and a clammy staff at another
+his daughter interfered and stopped him at the critical moment when he was actually offering his arm to conduct me in state across the kitchen cristel had just put her pretty brown hand over his mouth and said oh father do pray be quiet
+when we were all three disturbed by another interruption a second door communicating as i concluded from its position with the new cottage was suddenly opened in the instant before the person behind it appeared the dog looked that way
+started up frightened and took refuge under the table at the next moment the deaf lodger walked into the room it was he beyond all doubt who had frightened the dog forewarned by instinct of his appearance
+what i had read of his writing disposed me now that i saw the man by daylight to find something devilish in the expression of his face no strong as it was my prejudice failed to make any discoveries that presented him at a disadvantage
+his personal attractions triumphed in the clear searching light i now perceived that his eyes were of that deeply dark blue which is commonly and falsely described as resembling the color of the violet to my thinking they were so entirely beautiful
+that they had no right to be in a man's face
+to the soft profusion of his reddish brown hair to his finely shaped sensitive lips but for two marked peculiarities in him which would have shown me to be wrong that is to say the expression of power about his head
+and the signs of masculine resolution presented by his mouth and chin on entering the room the first person and the only person who attracted his attention was cristel he bowed smiled possessed himself abruptly of her hand and kissed it
+jason had persuaded orpheus to accompany the argonauts when they went to fetch back the golden fleece for he knew that the perils of the way would be lightened by song to the sound of his lyre the argo had floated down to the sea
+and he played so sweetly when they passed the rocks of the sirens that the dreadful monsters sang their most alluring strains in vain
+whom he loved dearly and who returned his love but at their marriage the omens were not favorable hymen the marriage god came to it with a gloomy countenance and the wedding torches smoked
+and would not give forth a cheerful flame
+was to be but short lived for as the new made bride wandered through the woods with the other nymphs a poisonous serpent stung her heel and no remedy availed to save her orpheus was thrown
+into most passionate grief at his wife's death he could not believe that he had lost her for ever but prayed day and night without ceasing to the gods above to restore her to him when they would not listen
+he resolved to make one last effort to win her back he would go down to the lower world and seek her among the dead and try whether any prayer or persuasion could move pluto to restore his beloved near taenarum
+in laconia was a cave among dark and gloomy rocks through which led one of the entrances to the lower world this was the road by which hercules descended when he went to carry off cerberus
+the three headed dog that guards the threshold of pluto undaunted by the terrors of the place orpheus passed through this gate and down a dark and dismal road to the kingdom of the dead
+here he came in safety through the crowd of ghosts and phantoms and stood at last before the throne of pluto and proserpina then he touched the chords of his lyre and chanted these words
+great lords of the world below the earth to which all we mortals must one day come grant me to tell a simple tale
+the lifeless ghosts came flocking and as they heard they wept tantalus forgot his hunger and thirst
+sat on his stone to listen never yet had such sweet strains been heard in the world of gloom then for the first time tears moistened the cheeks of the furies and even the king and queen of the dead were moved to pity
+and she came yet halting from her recent wound take her says pluto and lead her back to the light
+nor must you once turn round to look upon her
+else the boon we grant you will be but vain a steep path led upward from the realm of darkness and the way was hard to find through the gloom in silence orpheus led on till the goal was close at hand
+and the welcoming light of the upper air began to penetrate the darkness then a sudden fear struck his heart
+he turned to gaze on his beloved dimly he saw her but for the last time for a power she could not resist drew her back orpheus stretched out his arms and tried to seize her but he only clasped the empty air
+he sat on the further bank without food or drink
+then at last he knew that the gods below were pitiless and full of sorrow he returned to the upper earth for three years
+finding his only consolation in the music of his lyre for he shunned all men and women
+one day he sat down to rest on a grassy hill in the sunshine and played and sang to beguile his sorrow as he played the coolness of shady branches seemed all about him and looking up he found himself in the midst of a wood
+oak poplar lime beech laurel ash pine plane and maple and many another tree had gathered together here drawn from their distant forest homes by the sounds of orpheus's lyre
+yes and the beasts and the birds of the field came too and orpheus sat in their midst and sang and played the tunes of sorrow suddenly a great noise was heard of laughter and shouting and merry making
+for this was one of the feasts of bacchus and the women were celebrating his rites wandering over the mountains with dance and revel when they saw orpheus they set up a shout of derision see they cried
+the wretched singer who mocks at women and will have no bride but the dead come let us kill him and show that no man shall despise us unpunished with these words they began to throw wands and stones at him
+and fell harmlessly to the ground then the women raised a wild shout and made such a clamor with trumpets and cymbals that the soft tones of the harp were drowned by the noise now at last the shots took effect
+and in their fury the women fell upon him dealing blow on blow orpheus fell lifeless to the ground but he was not to die unwept the little birds of the forest mourned for him even the stony rocks wept
+the trees shed their leaves with grief and the dryads and naiads tore their hair and put on the garb of sorrow only the pitiless revelers knew no remorse they seized the singer's head
+and threw it with his lyre into the river hebrus there it floated down stream and strange to tell the chords gave forth a lament and the lifeless tongue uttered words
+it cried till head and lyre were carried down to the sea and on to lesbos the isle of sweet song where in after years
+and sappho tuned afresh the lyre of orpheus
+for the future he must bend all his cunning and vigilance to the task of hiding himself from the gaze of those whom he had so injured and escaping the just punishment he had brought upon himself
+the world is large and i am very clever said loki to himself as he turned his back upon asgard and wandered out into manheim
+and no measure for the deep waters neither is there any possibility of counting the various forms under which i shall disguise myself odin will never be able to find me
+i have no cause to fear but though loki repeated this over and over again to himself he was afraid he wandered far into the thick woods and covered himself with the deep waters
+he climbed to the tops of misty hills and crouched in the dark of hollow caves but above the wood and through the water and down into the darkness a single ray of calm clear light seemed always to follow him
+and he knew that it came from the eye of odin who was watching him from air throne then he tried to escape the watchful eye by disguising himself under various shapes sometimes he was an eagle on a lonely mountain crag
+sometimes he hid himself as one among a troop of timid reindeer sometimes he lay in the nest of a wood pigeon sometimes he swam a bright spotted fish in the sea but wherever he was among living creatures
+or alone with dead nature everything seemed to know him and to find a voice in which to say to him
+air earth or water there was no rest for him anywhere tired at last of seeking what he could nowhere find loki built himself a house near a narrow glittering river which lower down flashed from a high rock into the sea below
+he took care that his house should have four doors in it that he might look out on every side and catch the first glimpse of the gods when they came as he knew they would come to take him away here his wife siguna and his two sons
+ali and nari came to live with him siguna was a kind woman far too good and kind for loki she felt sorry for him now that she saw he was in great fear and that every living thing had turned against him
+and she would have hidden him from the just anger of the gods if she could but the two sons cared little about their father's dread and danger they spent all their time in quarreling with each other and their loud angry voices sounding above the waterfall
+would speedily have betrayed the hiding place even if odin's piercing eye had not already found it out at last one day when he was sitting in the middle of his house looking alternately out of all the four doors and amusing himself as well as he could
+by making a fishing net he spied in the distance the whole company of the gods approaching his house the sight of them coming all together beautiful and noble and free pierced loki with a pang that was worse than death
+he rose without daring to look again threw his net on a fire that burned on the floor and rushing to the side of the little river he turned himself into a salmon swam down to the deepest stillest pool at the bottom
+and hid himself between two stones the gods entered the house and looked all round in vain for loki
+famous for his keen sight spied out the remains of the fishing net in the fire then odin knew at once that there was a river near and that it was there where loki had hidden himself he ordered his sons to make a new net and to cast it into the water
+and drag out whatever living thing they could find there it was done as he desired thor held one end of the net and all the rest of the gods drew the other through the water when they pulled it up the first time however it was empty and they would have gone away disappointed
+saw that something living had certainly touched them they then added a weight to the net and threw it with such force that it reached the bottom of the river and dragged up the stones in the pool loki now saw the danger he was in of being caught in the net and
+but not so quickly but that the gods saw him knew him through his disguise and resolved that he should no longer escape they themselves divided into two bands thor waded down the river to the waterfall
+the other gods stood in a group below loki swam backwards and forwards between them first he thought he would dart out into the sea and then that he would spring over the net back again into the river this last seemed the easiest way of escape
+and with the greatest speed he attempted it thor however was watching for him and as soon as loki leaped out of the water he stretched out his hand and caught him while he was yet turning in the air
+loki wriggled his slippery slimy length through thor's fingers but the thunderer grasped him tightly by the tail and holding him in this manner in this hand waded to the shore there father odin and the other gods met him and
+at odin's first searching look loki was obliged to drop his disguise and cowering and frightened to assume his proper shape before the assembled lords one by one they turned their faces from him for in looking at him
+they seemed to see over again the death of baldur the beloved you were told that there were high rocks looking over the sea near loki's house one of these higher than the rest had midway four projecting stones and to these the gods resolved to bind loki
+be able to torment the inhabitants of manheim or asgard by his evil doings thor proposed to return to asgard to bring a chain with which to bind the prisoner but odin assured him that he had no need to take such a journey
+loki he said has already forged for himself a chain stronger than any you can make while we have been occupied in catching him his two sons ali and nari transformed into wolves
+by their evil passions have fought with and destroyed each other with their sinews we must make a chain to bind their father and from that he can never escape it was done as asa odin said
+a rope was made of the dead wolves sinews and as soon as it touched loki's body it turned into bands of iron
+it all seemed so rapid and uncalculated after that the events that took place in this little modern room at the top of putney hill between midnight and sunrise that doctor silence was hardly able to follow and remember it all
+it came about with such uncanny swiftness and terror the light was so uncertain the movements of the black cat so difficult to follow on the dark carpet and the doctor himself so weary and taken by surprise that he found it almost impossible
+to observe accurately or to recall afterwards precisely what it was he had seen or in what order the incidents had taken place he never could understand what defect of vision on his part made it seem as though the cat had duplicated itself at first
+and then increased indefinitely so that there were at least a dozen of them darting silently about the floor leaping softly on to chairs and tables passing like shadows from the open door to the end of the room all black as sin
+with brilliant green eyes flashing fire in all directions it was like the reflections from a score of mirrors placed round the walls at different angles nor could he make out at the time why the size of the room seemed to have altered
+the snarling of the enraged and terrified collie sounded sometimes so far away the ceiling seemed to have raised itself so much higher than before and much of the furniture had changed in appearance and shifted marvellously it was all so confused and confusing
+into the dimensions of quite another chamber that came to him with its host of cats and its strange distances in a sort of vision but these changes came about a little later and at a time when his attention was so concentrated
+upon the proceedings of smoke and the collie that he only observed them as it were subconsciously and the excitement the flickering candlelight the distress he felt for the collie
+were the poorest possible allies to careful observation at first he was only aware that the dog was repeating his short dangerous bark from time to time snapping viciously at the empty air a foot or so from the ground once indeed
+he sprang upwards and forwards working furiously with teeth and paws and with a noise like wolves fighting but only to dash back the next minute against the wall behind him then after lying still for a bit he rose to a crouching position
+as though to spring again snarling horribly and making short half circles with lowered head and smoke all the while meowed piteously by the window as though trying to draw the attack upon himself then it was that the rush of the whole dreadful business
+seemed to turn aside from the dog and direct itself upon his own person the collie had made another spring and fallen back with a crash into the corner where he made noise enough in his savage rage to waken the dead before he fell to whining
+and directly afterwards the doctor's own distress became intolerably acute he had made a half movement forward to come to the rescue when a veil that was denser than mere fog seemed to drop down over the scene draping room
+walls animals and fire in a mist of darkness and folding also about his own mind other forms moved silently across the field of vision forms that he recognised from previous experiments and welcomed not
+unholy thoughts began to crowd into his brain sinister suggestions of evil presented themselves seductively ice seemed to settle about his heart and his mind trembled he began to lose memory
+memory of his identity of where he was of what he ought to do the very foundations of his strength were shaken
+and it was then that the room filled with this horde of cats all dark as the night all silent all with lamping eyes of green fire the dimensions of the place altered and shifted he was in a much larger space
+the whining of the dog sounded far away and all about him the cats flew busily to and fro silently playing their tearing rushing game of evil weaving the pattern of their dark purpose upon the floor
+he strove hard to collect himself and remember the words of power he had made use of before in similar dread positions where his dangerous practice had sometimes led but he could recall nothing consecutively
+a mist lay over his mind and memory he felt dazed and his forces scattered the deeps within were too troubled for healing power to come out of them it was glamour of course he realised afterwards
+the strong glamour thrown upon his imagination by some powerful personality behind the veil but at the time he was not sufficiently aware of this and as with all true glamour was unable to grasp
+behind him like wind booming and tearing its way down the windows rattled the candle flickered and went out the glacial atmosphere closed round him with the cold of death and a great rushing sound swept by overhead
+something from the region of utter cold was upon him and then quite suddenly through the confused mists about him there slowly rose up the personality that had been all the time directing the battle some force entered his being
+that shook him as the tempest shakes a leaf and close against his eyes clean level with his face he found himself staring into the wreck of a vast dark countenance a countenance that was terrible even in its ruin
+and the mark of spiritual evil was branded everywhere upon its broken features eyes face and hair rose level with his own
+he never could properly measure or determine these two a man and a woman looked straight into each other's visages and down into each other's hearts and john silence the soul with the good unselfish motive
+held his own against the dark discarnate woman whose motive was pure evil and whose soul was on the side of the dark powers it was the climax that touched the depth of power within him and began to restore him slowly to his own
+he was conscious of course of effort and yet it seemed no superhuman one for he had recognised the character of his opponent's power and he called upon the good within him to meet and overcome it
+the inner forces stirred and trembled in response to his call they did not at first come readily as was their habit for under the spell of glamour they had already been diabolically lulled into inactivity but come they eventually did
+and power and confidence came with them he began to breathe deeply and regularly and at the same time to absorb into himself the forces opposed to him and to turn them to his own account
+by ceasing to resist and allowing the deadly stream to pour into him unopposed he used the very power supplied by his adversary and thus enormously increased his own for this spiritual alchemy he had learned he understood that force
+ultimately is everywhere one and the same it is the motive behind that makes it good or evil and his motive was entirely unselfish he knew provided he was not first robbed of self control
+how vicariously to absorb these evil radiations into himself and change them magically into his own good purposes and since his motive was pure and his soul fearless they could not work him harm
+thus he stood in the main stream of evil unwittingly attracted by pender deflecting its course upon himself and after passing through the purifying filter of his own unselfishness these energies could only add to his store of experience of knowledge
+and therefore of power and as his self control returned to him he gradually accomplished this purpose even though trembling while he did so yet the struggle was severe and in spite of the freezing chill of the air
+the perspiration poured down his face then by slow degrees the dark and dreadful countenance faded the glamour passed from his soul the normal proportions returned to walls and ceiling the forms melted back into the fog
+and the whirl of rushing shadow cats disappeared whence they came and with the return of the consciousness of his own identity john silence was restored to the full control of his own will power in a deep modulated voice
+he made certain sigils gestures and movements at the same time for several minutes he continued to utter these words until at length the growing volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it
+for just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels so he knew from long study the occult use of sound and its direct effect upon the plastic region
+wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes harmony was restored first of all to his own soul and thence to the room and all its occupants and after himself the first to recognise it was the old dog lying in his corner
+flame began suddenly uttering sounds of pleasure that something between a growl and a grunt that dogs make upon being restored to their master's confidence doctor silence heard the thumping of the collie's tail against the floor and the grunt
+and the thumping touched the depth of affection in the man's heart and gave him some inkling of what agonies the dumb creature had suffered next from the shadows by the window a somewhat shrill purring announced the restoration of the cat to its normal state
+smoke was advancing across the carpet he seemed very pleased with himself and smiled with an expression of supreme innocence he was no shadow cat but real and full of his usual and perfect self possession he marched along picking his way delicately
+clearly he was anxious to make amends for the mischief to which he had unwittingly lent himself owing to his subtle and electric constitution still uttering his sharp high purrings he marched up to his master and rubbed vigorously against his legs
+and pawed his knees and stared beseechingly up into his face he turned his head towards the corner where the collie still lay thumping his tail feebly and pathetically john silence understood he bent down and stroked the creature's living fur
+noting the line of bright blue sparks that followed the motion of his hand down its back and then they advanced together towards the corner where the dog was smoke went first and put his nose gently against his friend's muzzle purring while he rubbed
+and uttering little soft sounds of affection in his throat the doctor lit the candle and brought it over he saw the collie lying on its side against the wall it was utterly exhausted and foam still hung about its jaws its tail and eyes responded to the sound of its name
+but it was evidently very weak and overcome smoke continued to rub against its cheek and nose and eyes sometimes even standing on its body and kneading into the thick yellow hair flame replied from time to time by little licks of the tongue
+most of them curiously misdirected but doctor silence felt intuitively that something disastrous had happened and his heart was wrung he stroked the dear body feeling it over for bruises or broken bones but finding none
+when a mysterious crime has been perpetrated or a great catastrophe has happened and the identity of the victims has not been established a great day invariably follows at the morgue
+the attendants are so accustomed to the horrors of the place that the most sickly sight fails to impress them and even under the most distressing circumstances they hasten gaily to and fro
+exchanging jests well calculated to make an ordinary mortal's flesh creep as a rule they are far less interested in the corpses laid out for public view on the marble slabs in the principal hall
+as the vehicle conveying lecoq reached the quay
+the newspapers had reported the tragedy at the widow chupin's drinking den of course more or less correctly and everybody wished to see the victims
+i prefer to alight here rather than in front of the morgue he said springing to the ground then producing first his watch and next his purse he added
+we have been an hour and forty minutes my good fellow consequently i owe you nothing at all replied the driver decidedly but no not a sou
+i am too worried already to think that i took the money these hussies offered me it would only have served me right if the liquor i bought with it had given me the gripes don't be uneasy about the score and if you need a trap use mine for nothing
+till you have caught the jades as lecoq's purse was low he did not insist you will at least take my name and address continued the driver certainly
+the magistrate will want your evidence and a summons will be sent you all right then address it to papillon eugene driver
+i lodge at his place because i have some small interest in the business you see the young detective was hastening away when papillon called him back when you leave the morgue you will want to go somewhere else he said
+you told me that you had another appointment and that you were already late yes i ought to be at the palais de justice but it is only a few steps from here no matter
+i will wait for you at the corner of the bridge it's useless to say no i've made up my mind and i'm a breton you know
+accordingly lecoq made a gesture of assent and then hurried toward the morgue if there was a crowd on the roadway outside it was because the gloomy building itself was crammed full of people indeed the sightseers
+most of whom could see nothing at all were packed as closely as sardines
+that lecoq managed to effect an entrance as usual he found among the mob a large number of girls and women for strange to say
+to the disgusting sights and horrible emotions that repay a visit to the morgue the shop and work girls who reside in the neighborhood readily go out of their way to catch a glimpse of the corpses
+which crime accident and suicide bring to this horrible place a few
+may come no further than the door but the others enter and after a long stare return and recount their impressions to their less courageous companions if there should be no corpse exhibited
+if all the marble slabs are unoccupied strange as it may seem the visitors turn hastily away with an expression of disappointment or discontent there was no fear of their doing so however
+for the mysterious murderer whose identity lecoq was trying to establish had furnished three victims for their delectation
+and yet a damp chill came from beyond the iron railings while from the crowd itself rose an infectious vapor impregnated with the stench of the chloride of lime used as a disinfectant
+as a continuous accompaniment to the exclamations sighs and whispered comments of the bystanders came the murmur of the water trickling from a spigot at the head of each slab a tiny stream that flowed forth
+only to fall in fine spray upon the marble through the small arched windows a gray light stole in on the exposed bodies bringing each muscle into bold relief
+revealing the ghastly tints of the lifeless flesh and imparting a sinister aspect to the tattered clothing hung around the room to aid in the identification of the corpses this clothing after a certain time is sold
+for nothing is wasted at the morgue however lecoq was too occupied with his own thoughts to remark the horrors of the scene he scarcely bestowed a glance on the three victims
+whom he could not perceive had gevrol intentionally or unintentionally failed to fulfil his promise
+unable to explain the cause of his comrade's absence lecoq addressed himself to the head keeper it would seem that no one has recognized the victims he remarked no one and yet
+ever since opening we have had an immense crowd if i were master here on days like this i would charge an admission fee of two sous a head
+it would bring in a round sum more than enough to cover the expenses the keeper's reply seemed to offer an inducement to conversation but lecoq did not seize it
+but after a moment's hesitation he ventured to inquire are you one of them yes i am replied lecoq exhibiting his card in support of his assertion and your name
+the keeper's face brightened up in that case said he i have a letter for you written by your comrade who was obliged to go away here it is the young detective at once tore open the envelope and read
+monsieur lecoq monsieur this simple formula of politeness brought a faint smile to his lips
+when at about nine o'clock three young men entered arm in arm from their manner and appearance i judged them to be clerks in some store or warehouse
+suddenly i noticed that one of them turned as white as his shirt and calling the attention of his companions to one of the unknown victims he whispered gustave
+his comrades put their hands over his mouth and one of them exclaimed what are you about you fool to mix yourself up with this affair do you want to get us into trouble thereupon they went out and i followed them
+but the person who had first spoken was so overcome that he could scarcely drag himself along and his companions were obliged to take him to a little restaurant close by i entered it myself and it is there i write this letter
+in the mean time watching them out of the corner of my eye i send this note explaining my absence to the head keeper who will give it you you will understand that i am going to follow these men a b
+s the handwriting of this letter was almost illegible and there were mistakes in spelling in well nigh every line still its meaning was clear and exact and could not fail to excite the most flattering hopes
+as the old coachman urged on his horse he could not refrain from saying things are going on to suit you a friendly hush was the only response
+who insisted upon remaining at his orders he succeeded at last however but even when he had reached the portico on the left side of the building
+lecoq had entered the left wing of the palais he climbed the stairs till he had reached the third floor and was about to enter the long narrow badly lighted corridor
+when finding a doorkeeper installed behind a heavy oaken desk he remarked
+the man shook his head no said he
+hence the driver's hope of finding them in the rue de bourgogne
+and yet he did not hesitate to jump on to the box and give the signal for starting in so doing he obeyed a maxim which he had
+a maxim intended to assure his after fame and which ran as follows always suspect that which seems probable and begin by believing what appears incredible
+as soon as the vehicle was well under way the young detective proceeded to ingratiate himself into the driver's good graces being anxious to obtain all the information that this worthy was able to impart
+in a tone that implied that all trifling would be useless the cabman cried hey up hey up cocotte and his mare pricked up her ears and quickened her pace so that the rue de choisy
+was speedily reached then it was that lecoq resumed his inquiries well my good fellow he began you have told me the principal facts now i should like the details
+how did these two women attract your attention
+i had been having a most unfortunate day six hours on a stand on the boulevards with the rain pouring all the time it was simply awful at midnight i had not made more than a franc and a
+half for myself but i was so wet and miserable and the horse seemed so done up that i decided to go home i did grumble i can tell you well i had just passed the corner of the rue picard
+when i saw two women standing under a lamp some little distance off i did not pay any attention to them for when a man is as old as i am women go on said lecoq who could not restrain his impatience
+i had already passed them when they began to call after me i pretended i did not hear them but one of them ran after the cab crying
+a louis for yourself i hesitated for a moment when the woman added and ten francs for the fare i then drew up lecoq was boiling over with impatience but he felt that the wisest course was not to interrupt the driver with questions
+but to listen to all he had to say as you may suppose continued the coachman i wasn't inclined to trust two such suspicious characters alone at that hour and in that part of the city
+so just as they were about to get into the cab i called to them wait a bit my little friends you have promised papa some sous where are they the one who had called after the cab at once handed me thirty francs
+saying above all make haste your recital could not be more minute exclaimed lecoq approvingly now how about these two women
+which ran after you the girl who was neatly dressed the one who the driver suddenly paused some vivid remembrance passed through his brain and abruptly jerking the rains
+i did notice something strange one of the two women called the other madame as large as life while the other said thee and thou and spoke as if she were somebody
+and which was it that said thee and thou
+she with shabby dress and shoes as big as a gouty man's you should have seen her shake the prim looking girl as if she had been a plum tree you little fool said she do you want to ruin us
+you will have time to faint when we get home now come along and then she began to sob indeed madame indeed i can't she said and really she seemed quite unable to move in fact
+she appeared to be so ill that i said to myself here is a young woman who has drunk more than is good for her these facts confirmed even if they corrected
+lecoq's first suppositions as he had suspected the social position of the two women was not the same he had been mistaken however
+in attributing the higher standing to the woman wearing the shoes with the high heels the marks of which he had so particularly noticed in the snow with all the attendant signs of precipitation terror and weakness
+in reality social preeminence belonged to the woman who had left the large broad footprints behind her and not merely was she of a superior rank but she had also shown superior energy
+contrary to lecoq's original idea it now seemed evident that she was the mistress and her companion the servant is that all my good fellow he asked the driver
+had a hand as small as a child's and in spite of her anger her voice was as sweet as music did you see her face i just caught a glimpse of it
+whether she was a blonde or brunette so many questions at a time confused the driver stop a minute he replied in my opinion she wasn't pretty and i don't believe she was young
+but she certainly was a blonde and with plenty of hair too was she tall or short stout or slender between the two this was very vague and the other
+asked lecoq the neatly dressed one the deuce as for her i did not notice her at all all i know about her is that she was very small would you recognize her if you met her again good heavens no
+the vehicle was now rolling along the rue de bourgogne half way down the street the driver pulled up and turning to lecoq exclaimed here we are that's the house the hussies went into
+to draw off the silk handkerchief that served him as a muffler to fold it and slip it into his pocket to spring to the ground and enter the house indicated was only the work of an instant for the young detective
+in the concierge's little room he found an old woman knitting lecoq bowed to her politely and displaying the silk handkerchief exclaimed madame i have come to return this article to one of your lodgers
+to which one really i don't exactly know in a moment the worthy dame imagined that this polite young man was making fun of her you scamp she began
+excuse me interrupted lecoq allow me to finish i must tell you that at about three o'clock in the morning of the day before yesterday i was quietly returning home when two ladies who were seemingly in a great hurry
+overtook me and passed on one of them dropped this handkerchief which i picked up i hastened after her to restore it but before i could overtake them they had rung the bell at your door and were already in the house
+for fear of disturbing you yesterday i was so busy i couldn't come however here i am at last and here's the handkerchief so saying
+i slipped on my dress and went out into the hall where i saw two women hastening toward the door before i could reach them they slammed the door in my face i opened it again as quickly as i could and looked out into the street
+but they were hurrying away as fast as they could in what direction oh they were running toward the rue de varennes
+however he bowed civilly to the concierge whom he might possibly have need of at another time and then went back to the cab as i had supposed they do not live here he remarked to the driver
+he first of all proceeded to the prefecture of police going the longest way round as a matter of course but on reaching his destination he could find no one who had seen the young detective accordingly
+and dependent on the customers it brought them being of a conscientious turn of mind he entered each establishment in succession and meeting now and again various acquaintances he felt compelled to proffer and accept
+numerous glasses of the favorite morning beverage white wine turn which way he would however loiter as long as he might
+he was returning in haste a trifle uneasy on account of the length of his absence when he perceived a cab pull up in front of the palais gateway a second glance and oh great good fortune he saw lecoq
+father absinthe and the virtuous toinon alight from this very vehicle his peace of mind at once returned and it was in a very important and somewhat husky tone
+that he delivered the order for lecoq to follow him without a minute's delay
+has asked for you a number of times said he he has been extremely impatient and he is in a very bad humor so you may expect to have your head snapped off in the most expeditious manner lecoq smiled as he went up the stairs
+was he not bringing with him the most potent of justifications he thought of the agreeable surprise he had in store for the magistrate and fancied he could picture the sudden brightening of that functionary's gloomy face
+and yet fate so willed it that the doorkeeper's message and his urgent appeal that lecoq should not loiter on the way produced the most unfortunate results
+when he saw however that the magistrate was not alone and when he recognized polyte chupin the original of the photograph
+he instantly perceived his mistake and understood its consequences there was only one thing to be done he must prevent any exchange of words between the two
+he ordered her to leave the room at once but the poor creature was quite overcome and trembled like a leaf her eyes were fixed upon her unworthy husband and the happiness she felt at seeing him again shone plainly in her anxious gaze
+just for one second and then she caught his withering glance and heard his words of menace terror stricken she staggered back and then lecoq seized her around the waist
+and lifting her with his strong arms carried her out into the passage the whole scene had been so brief
+was still forming the order for toinon to be removed from the room when he found the door closed again
+ah ah thought the smiling clerk in a flutter of delight this is something new but as these little diversions never made him forget his duties he leaned toward the magistrate and asked
+and word for word if you please he paused the door opened again this time to admit the magistrate's messenger who timidly and with a rather guilty air
+at the same time casting the blame on his own impatience and lack of caution
+yet obtaining the information he desired let us proceed he said to polyte who had not moved since his wife had been taken from the room
+being to all appearances sublimely indifferent to everything passing around him to the magistrate's proposal he carelessly nodded assent was that your wife who came in just now
+why did you behave in that manner it wasn't the time for sentiment you are not telling the truth you simply desired to attract her attention to influence her evidence i
+i influence her evidence i don't understand you but for that supposition your words would have been meaningless what words the magistrate turned to his clerk
+read the last remark you took down in a monotonous voice the smiling clerk repeated i should like to kill the person who dared to say that i knew lacheneur
+what did you mean by that it's very easy to understand sir
+don't prevaricate any longer he said you certainly ordered your wife not to say anything about lacheneur that's evident why did you do so what are you afraid of her telling us
+do you suppose the police are ignorant of your acquaintance with lacheneur of your conversation with him when he came in a cab to the corner of the waste ground near your mother's wine shop and of the hopes of fortune you based upon his promises
+be guided by me confess everything while there is yet time and abandon the present course which may lead you into serious danger one may be an accomplice in more ways than one
+as these words fell on polyte's ears it was evident his impudence and indifference had received a severe shock he seemed confounded and hung his head as if thoroughly abashed still he preserved an obstinate silence
+and the magistrate finding that this last thrust had failed to produce any effect gave up the fight in despair he rang the bell and ordered the guard to conduct the witness back to prison
+and to take every precaution to prevent him seeing his wife again when polyte had departed lecoq reentered the room
+but i thought you would be waiting for me and made haste to bring her here i thought i was acting for the best never mind the misfortune can be repaired no sir no since she has seen her husband
+it is quite impossible to get her to speak she loves that rascal intensely and he has a wonderful influence over her you heard what he said he threatened her with death if she breathed a word about lacheneur
+and she is so terrified that there is no hope of making her speak
+again set foot in his office the poor creature seemed nearly heartbroken
+polyte's threat had aroused the most sinister apprehensions in her mind not understanding his connection with the affair she asked herself if her testimony might not prove his death warrant
+no or i don't know and retracted everything she had previously stated to lecoq she swore that she had been misunderstood that her words had been misconstrued
+at last she burst into wild despairing sobs and pressed her frightened child against her breast what could be done to overcome this foolish obstinacy as blind and unreasoning as a brute's
+but remember that your strange silence injures your husband far more than anything you could say she left the room or rather she rushed wildly from it as though only too eager to escape
+no sooner had charles taken into his hands the reins of government than he showed an impatience to assemble the great council of the nation and he would gladly for the sake of despatch have called together the same parliament which had sitten under his father
+and which lay at that time under prorogation but being told that this measure would appear unusual he issued writs for summoning a new parliament on the seventh of may and it was not without regret that the arrival of the princess henrietta
+unexperienced and impolitic regarded as sincere all the praises and caresses with which he had been loaded while active in procuring the rupture with the house of austria and besides that he labored under great necessities
+he lightly mentioned the occasion which he had for supply he employed no intrigue to influence the suffrages of the members he would not even allow the officers of the crown who had seats in the house
+and that great anticipations were likewise made on the revenues of the crown they were not ignorant that charles was loaded with a large debt contracted by his father who had borrowed money both from his own subjects and from foreign princes
+they had learned by experience that the public revenue could with difficulty maintain the dignity of the crown even under the ordinary charges of government
+they were sensible that the present war was very lately the result of their own importunate applications and entreaties and that they had solemnly engaged to support their sovereign in the management of it
+they were acquainted with the difficulty of military enterprises directed against the whole house of austria against the king of spain possessed of the greatest riches and most extensive dominions of any prince in europe
+against the emperor ferdinand hitherto the most fortunate monarch of his age who had subdued and astonished germany by the rapidity of his victories deep impressions they saw must be made by the english sword
+and a vigorous offensive war be waged against these mighty potentates ere they would resign a principality which they had now fully subdued and which they held in secure possession by its being surrounded with all their other territories
+to answer therefore all these great and important ends to satisfy their young king in the first request which he made them to prove their sense of the many royal virtues particularly economy with which charles was endued
+the house of commons conducted by the wisest and ablest senators that had ever flourished in england thought proper to confer on the king a supply of two subsidies
+which the present conjuncture could suggest to them it is not to be doubted but spleen and ill will against the duke of buckingham had an influence with many so vast and rapid a fortune so little merited
+could not fail to excite public envy and however men's hatred might have been suspended for a moment while the duke's conduct seemed to gratify their passions and their prejudices it was impossible for him long to preserve the affections of the people
+his influence over the modesty of charles exceeded even that which he had acquired over the weakness of james nor was any public measure conducted but by his counsel and direction
+his vehement temper prompted him to raise suddenly to the highest elevation his flatterers and dependants and upon the least occasion of displeasure he threw them down with equal impetuosity and violence implacable in his hatred
+fickle in his friendships all men were either regarded as his enemies or dreaded soon to become such the whole power of the kingdom was grasped by his insatiable hand while he both engrossed the entire confidence of his master
+and held invested in his single person the most considerable offices of the crown however the ill humor of the commons might have been increased by these considerations we are not to suppose them the sole motives
+the last parliament of james amidst all their joy and festivity had given him a supply very disproportioned to his demand and to the occasion and as every house of commons which was elected during forty years
+succeeded to all the passions and principles of their predecessors we ought rather to account for this obstinacy from the general situation of the kingdom during that whole period than from any circumstances which attended this particular conjuncture
+the nation was very little accustomed at that time to the burden of taxes and had never opened their purses in any degree for supporting their sovereign even elizabeth notwithstanding her vigor and frugality
+and the necessary wars in which she was engaged had reason to complain of the commons in this particular nor could the authority of that princess which was otherwise almost absolute ever extort from them the requisite supplies
+would not augment their number in the same proportion the puritanical party though disguised had a great authority over the kingdom and many of the leaders among the commons had secretly embraced the rigid tenets of that sect
+all these were disgusted with the court both by the prevalence of the principles of civil liberty essential to their party and on account of the restraint under which they were held by the established hierarchy
+in order to fortify himself against the resentment of james buckingham had affected popularity and entered into the cabals of the puritans but being secure of the confidence of charles he had since abandoned this party
+and on that account was the more exposed to their hatred and resentment though the religious schemes of many of the puritans when explained appear pretty frivolous we are not thence to imagine that they were pursued by none but persons of weak understandings
+the match with france and the articles in favor of catholics which were suspected to be in the treaty were likewise causes of disgust to this whole party
+though it must be remarked that the connections with that crown were much less obnoxious to the protestants and less agreeable to the catholics than the alliance formerly projected with spain and were therefore received rather with pleasure than dissatisfaction
+as by the hardships which some of them had undergone in prosecution of them among these we may mention the names of sir edward coke sir edwin sandys sir robert philips sir francis seymour
+sir dudley digges sir john elliot sir thomas wentworth mister selden and mister pym animated with a warm regard to liberty
+of reducing the prerogative within more reasonable compass though their ancestors had blindly given way to practices and precedents favorable to kingly power and had been able notwithstanding to preserve some small remains of liberty
+it would be impossible they thought when all these pretensions were methodised and prosecuted by the increasing knowledge of the age to maintain any shadow of popular government in opposition to such unlimited authority in the sovereign
+it was necessary to fix a choice either to abandon entirely the privileges of the people or to secure them by firmer and more precise barriers than the constitution had hitherto provided for them in this dilemma
+men of such aspiring geniuses and such independent fortunes could not long deliberate they boldly embraced the side of freedom and resolved to grant no supplies to their necessitous prince without extorting concessions in favor of civil liberty
+the end they esteemed beneficent and noble the means regular and constitutional to grant or refuse supplies was the undoubted privilege of the commons and as all human governments particularly those of a mixed frame
+are in continual fluctuation it was as natural in their opinion and allowable for popular assemblies to take advantage of favorable incidents in order to secure the subject
+and who from a private station had mounted in the earliest youth
+he dared to carry his ambitious addresses to the queen herself and he failed not to make impression on a heart not undisposed to the tender passions that attachment at least of the mind which appears so delicious and is so dangerous
+seems to have been encouraged by the princess and the duke presumed so far on her good graces that after his departure he secretly returned upon some pretence and paying a visit to the queen
+was dismissed with a reproof which savored more of kindness than of anger information of this correspondence was soon carried to richelieu the vigilance of that minister was here further roused by jealousy
+he too either from vanity or politics had ventured to pay his addresses to the queen but a priest past middle age of a severe character and occupied in the most extensive plans of ambition or vengeance
+entirely disposed to gayety and gallantry the cardinal's disappointment strongly inclined him to counterwork the amorous projects of his rival when the duke was making preparations for a new embassy to paris
+a message was sent him from louis that he must not think of such a journey in a romantic passion he swore that he would see the queen in spite of all the power of france
+and from that moment he determined to engage england in a war with that kingdom he first took advantage of some quarrels excited by the queen of england's attendants and he persuaded charles to dismiss at once all her french servants
+contrary to the articles of the marriage treaty he encouraged the english ships of war and privateers to seize vessels belonging to french merchants
+and strongly solicited charles to embrace the protection of these distressed religionists he represented that after the inhabitants of rochelle had been repressed by the combined squadrons of england and holland
+after peace was concluded with the french king under charles's mediation the ambitious cardinal was still meditating the destruction of the hugonots that preparations were silently making in every province of france for the suppression of their religion
+that forts were erected in order to bridle rochelle the most considerable bulwark of the protestants that the reformed in france cast their eyes on charles as the head of their faith
+and considered him as a prince engaged by interest as well as inclination to support them that so long as their party subsisted charles might rely on their attachment as much as on that of his own subjects but if their liberties were once ravished from them
+the power of france freed from this impediment would soon become formidable to england and to all the neighboring nations though charles probably bore but small favor to the hugonots who so much resembled the puritans in discipline and worship
+in religion and politics he yet allowed himself to be gained by these arguments enforced by the solicitations of buckingham a fleet of a hundred sail and an army of seven thousand men were fitted out for the invasion of france
+and both of them intrusted to the command of the duke who was altogether unacquainted both with land and sea service the fleet appeared before rochelle but so ill concerted were buckingham's measures that the inhabitants of that city
+shut their gates and refused to admit allies of whose coming they were not previously informed
+hastened the vengeance of their master exhausted their provisions in supplying their allies and were threatened with an immediate siege
+charles gave them a gracious and a compliant answer to all their remonstrances he was however in his heart extremely averse to these furious measures
+though a determined protestant by principle as well as inclination he had entertained no violent horror against popery and a little humanity he thought was due by the nation to the religion of their ancestors
+an abatement of the more rigorous laws was all he intended and his engagements with france notwithstanding that their regular execution had never been promised or expected required of him some indulgence
+but so unfortunate was this prince that no measure embraced during his whole reign was ever attended with more unhappy and more fatal consequences
+the extreme rage against popery was a sure characteristic of puritanism the house of commons discovered other infallible symptoms of the prevalence of that party
+they petitioned the king for replacing such able clergy as had been silenced for want of conformity to the ceremonies they also enacted laws for the strict observance of sunday which the puritans affected to call the sabbath
+and which they sanctified by the most melancholy indolence it is to be remarked that the different appellations of this festival were at that time known symbols of the different parties
+the king finding that the parliament was resolved to grant him no supply and would furnish him with nothing but empty protestations of duty
+was intrusted with the command he sailed immediately for cadiz and found the bay full of spanish ships of great value he either neglected to attack these ships or attempted it preposterously
+the army was landed and a fort taken but the undisciplined soldiers finding store of wine could not be restrained from the utmost excesses further stay appearing fruitless they were reembarked and the fleet put to sea
+with an intention of intercepting the spanish galleons but the plague having seized the seamen and soldiers they were obliged to abandon all hopes of this prize and return to england loud complaints were made against the court for intrusting so important a command
+was obliged again to have recourse to a parliament though the ill success of his enterprises diminished his authority and showed every day more plainly the imprudence of the spanish war though the increase of his necessities
+rendered him more dependent and more exposed to the encroachments of the commons he was resolved to try once more that regular and constitutional expedient for supply perhaps too a little political art which at that time he practised
+was much trusted to he had named four popular leaders sheriffs of counties sir edward coke sir robert philips sir thomas wentworth and sir francis seymour and though the question had been formerly much contested
+he thought that he had by that means incapacitated them from being elected members but his intention being so evident rather put the commons more upon their guard
+enow of patriots still remained to keep up the ill humor of the house and men needed but little instruction or rhetoric to recommend to them practices
+the sum was little proportioned to the greatness of the occasion and ill fitted to promote those views of success and glory for which the young prince in his first enterprise so ardently longed but this circumstance was not the most disagreeable one
+the supply was only voted by the commons the passing of that vote into a law was reserved till the end of the session a condition was thereby made in a very undisguised manner with their sovereign
+under color of redressing grievances which during this short reign could not be very numerous they were to proceed in regulating and controlling every part of government which displeased them
+and if the king either cut them short in this undertaking or refused compliance with their demands he must not expect any supply from the commons great dissatisfaction was expressed by charles at a treatment which he deemed so harsh and undutiful
+but his urgent necessities obliged him to submit
+had expressed all duty and obedience in expectation that an opportunity would offer of reinstating himself in his former credit and authority even after charles's accession he despaired not
+he submitted to the king's commands of remaining at his country seat and of absenting himself from parliament many trials he made to regain the good opinion of his master
+but finding them all fruitless and observing charles to be entirely governed by buckingham his implacable enemy he resolved no longer to keep any measures with the court a new spirit he saw and a new power arising in the nation
+and to these he was determined for the future to trust for his security and protection when the parliament was summoned charles by a stretch of prerogative had given orders that no writ as is customary should be sent to bristol
+that nobleman applied to the house of lords by petition and craved their good offices with the king for obtaining what was his due as a peer of the realm his writ was sent him but accompanied with a letter from the lord keeper coventry
+commanding him in the king's name to absent himself from parliament this letter bristol conveyed to the lords and asked advice how to proceed in so delicate a situation
+the king's prohibition was withdrawn and bristol took his seat provoked at these repeated instances of vigor which the court denominated contumacy charles ordered his attorney general to enter an accusation of high treason against him
+by way of recrimination bristol accused buckingham of high treason both the earl's defence of himself and accusation of the duke remain and together with some original letters still extant
+of delivering ships to the french king in order to serve against the hugonots of being employed in the sale of honors and offices of accepting extensive grants from the crown of procuring many titles of honor for his kindred
+and of administering physic to the late king without acquainting his physicians all these articles appear from comparing the accusation and reply to be either frivolous or false or both
+the only charge which could be regarded as important was that he had extorted a sum of ten thousand pounds from the east india company and that he had confiscated some goods belonging to french merchants on pretence of their being the property of spanish
+so that it is difficult for us to give a decisive opinion with regard to these articles
+but so rivetted throughout the nation were the prejudices with regard to spanish deceit and falsehood that very few of the commons seem as yet to have been convinced that they had been seduced by buckingham's narrative
+a certain proof that a discovery of this nature was not as is imagined by several historians
+the king seemed desirous of embracing every opportunity by which he could express a contempt and disregard for them no one was at that time sufficiently sensible of the great weight which the commons bore in the balance of the constitution
+the history of england had never hitherto afforded one instance where any great movement or revolution had proceeded from the lower house and as their rank both considered in a body and as individuals was but the second in the kingdom
+nothing less than fatal experience could engage the english princes to pay a due regard to the inclinations of that formidable assembly the earl of suffolk chancellor of the university of cambridge dying about this time
+buckingham though lying under impeachment was yet by means of court interest chosen in his place the commons resented and loudly complained of this affront and the more to enrage them the king himself wrote a letter to the university extolling the duke
+yet lest any ambiguity should remain sir dudley carleton vice chamberlain took care to explain it i pray you consider said he what these new counsels are or may be i fear to declare those that i conceive
+in all christian kingdoms you know that parliaments were in use anciently by which those kingdoms were governed in a most flourishing manner until the monarchs began to know their own strength and seeing the turbulent spirit of their parliaments at length
+they by little and little began to stand on their prerogatives and at last overthrew the parliaments throughout christendom
+which bringeth such happiness to this nation and makes us envied of all others while there is this sweetness between his majesty and the commons lest we lose the repute of a free people by our turbulency in parliament
+these imprudent suggestions rather gave warning than struck terror a precarious liberty the commons thought which was to be preserved by unlimited complaisance was no liberty at all and it was necessary while yet in their power
+to secure the constitution by such invincible barriers that no king or minister should ever for the future dare to speak such a language to any parliament or even entertain such a project against them
+the commons immediately declared that they would proceed no further upon business till they had satisfaction in their privileges charles alleged as the reason of this measure certain seditious expressions which he said had in their accusation of the duke
+dropped from these members upon inquiry it appeared that no such expressions had been used the members were released and the king reaped no other benefit from this attempt than to exasperate the house still
+and to show some degree of precipitancy and indiscretion moved by this example the house of peers were roused from their inactivity and claimed liberty for the earl of arundel who had been lately confined in the tower
+after many fruitless evasions the king
+his mother who had great influence over him was a professed catholic his wife was not free from suspicion
+so violent was the bigotry of the times that it was thought a sufficient reason for disqualifying any one from holding an office
+this article together with the new impositions laid on merchandise by james constituted near half of the crown revenues and by depriving the king of these resources they would have reduced him to total subjection and dependence
+while they retained such a pledge besides the supply already promised they were sure that nothing could be refused them though after canvassing the matter near three ninths they found themselves utterly incapable of fixing any legal crime upon the duke
+the smallest appearance of guilt could not be fixed upon him what idea he asked must all mankind entertain of his honor should he sacrifice his innocent friend to pecuniary considerations what further authority should he retain in the nation
+were he capable in the beginning of his reign to give in so signal an instance such matter of triumph to his enemies and discouragement to his adherents to day the commons pretend to wrest his minister from him
+to morrow they will attack some branch of his prerogative by their remonstrances and promises and protestations they had engaged the crown in a war as soon as they saw a retreat impossible
+without waiting for new incidents without covering themselves with new pretences they immediately deserted him and refused him all reasonable supply it was evident that they desired nothing so much as to see him plunged in inextricable difficulties
+of which they intended to take advantage to such deep perfidy to such unbounded usurpations it was necessary to oppose a proper firmness and resolution
+chapter fourteen wherein will appear the name of enjolras mistress
+continued to insult the cannon and each time that that gloomy cloud of projectiles which is called grape shot passed overhead with its terrible sound he assailed it with a burst of irony you are wearing out your lungs poor brutal old fellow
+you pain me you are wasting your row that's not thunder it's a cough and the bystanders laughed
+who make us crazy that is to say brave when a man is as much in love as a tiger
+that is one way of taking our revenge for the capers that mesdames our grisettes play on us roland gets himself killed for angelique all our heroism comes from our women a man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger it is the woman that sets the man off
+he is not in love and yet he manages to be intrepid it is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire
+had any one been near him that person would have heard him mutter in a low voice patria
+and assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement he added my name is eight pounder in fact a new personage had entered on the scene this was a second piece of ordnance
+and placed this second piece in line with the first this outlined the catastrophe a few minutes later the two pieces rapidly served were firing point blank at the redoubt
+the platoon firing of the line and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the artillery another cannonade was audible at some distance at the same time that the two guns were furiously attacking the redoubt from the rue de la chanvrerie
+the four cannons echoed each other mournfully the barking of these sombre dogs of war replied to each other
+the other balls the piece which was firing balls was pointed a little high and the aim was calculated so that the ball struck the extreme edge of the upper crest of the barricade and crumbled the stone down upon the insurgents mingled with bursts of grape shot
+the object of this mode of firing was to drive the insurgents from the summit of the redoubt and to compel them to gather close in the interior that is to say this announced the assault the combatants once driven from the crest of the barricade by balls and
+from the windows of the cabaret by grape shot the attacking columns could venture into the street without being picked off perhaps even without being seen could briskly and suddenly scale the redoubt
+and he shouted fire on the artillery men all were ready the barricade which had long been silent poured forth a desperate fire seven or eight discharges followed with a sort of rage and joy
+the street was filled with blinding smoke and at the end of a few minutes athwart this mist all streaked with flame two thirds of the gunners could be distinguished lying beneath the wheels of the cannons
+those who were left standing continued to serve the pieces with severe tranquillity but the fire had slackened things are going well now said bossuet to enjolras success
+another quarter of an hour of this success and there will not be any cartridges left in the barricade it appears that gavroche overheard this remark chapter fifteen gavroche outside
+courfeyrac suddenly caught sight of some one at the base of the barricade outside in the street amid the bullets gavroche had taken a bottle basket from the wine shop had made his way out through the cut and was quietly engaged in emptying
+the full cartridge boxes of the national guardsmen who had been killed on the slope of the redoubt into his basket what are you doing there asked courfeyrac gavroche raised his face i'm filling my basket citizen don't you see the grape shot
+gavroche replied well it is raining what then courfeyrac shouted come in instanter said gavroche and with a single bound he plunged into the street
+it will be remembered that fannicot's company had left behind it a trail of bodies twenty corpses lay scattered here and there on the pavement through the whole length of the street twenty cartouches for gavroche meant a provision of cartridges for the barricade
+the smoke in the street was like a fog whoever has beheld a cloud which has fallen into a mountain gorge between two peaked escarpments can imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows of lofty houses
+it rose gradually and was incessantly renewed hence a twilight which made even the broad daylight turn pale the combatants could hardly see each other from one end of the street to the other short as it was
+this obscurity which had probably been desired and calculated on by the commanders who were to direct the assault on the barricade was useful to gavroche beneath the folds of this veil of smoke and thanks to his small size
+he rifled the first seven or eight cartridge boxes without much danger he crawled flat on his belly galloped on all fours took his basket in his teeth twisted glided undulated wound from one dead body to another
+and emptied the cartridge box or cartouche as a monkey opens a nut they did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade which was quite near for fear of attracting attention to him on one body that of a corporal he found a powder flask
+for thirst said he putting it in his pocket by dint of advancing he reached a point where the fog of the fusillade became transparent so that the sharpshooters of the line ranged on the outlook behind their paving stone dike
+and the sharpshooters of the banlieue massed at the corner of the street suddenly pointed out to each other something moving through the smoke at the moment when gavroche was relieving a sergeant who was lying near a stone door post of his cartridges a bullet struck the body
+fichtre ejaculated gavroche they are killing my dead men for me a second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside him a third overturned his basket
+it was a charming and terrible sight gavroche though shot at was teasing the fusillade he had the air of being greatly diverted it was the sparrow pecking at the sportsmen to each discharge he retorted with a couplet
+they aimed at him constantly and always missed him the national guardsmen and the soldiers laughed as they took aim at him he lay down sprang to his feet hid in the corner of a doorway then made a bound disappeared re appeared scampered away returned
+replied to the grape shot with his thumb at his nose and all the while went on pillaging the cartouches emptying the cartridge boxes and filling his basket the insurgents panting with anxiety followed him with their eyes the barricade trembled he sang
+he was not a child he was not a man he was a strange gamin fairy he might have been called the invulnerable dwarf of the fray the bullets flew after him he was more nimble than they he played a fearful game of hide and seek with death
+every time that the flat nosed face of the spectre approached the urchin administered to it a fillip one bullet however better aimed or more treacherous than the rest finally struck the will o' the wisp of a child
+gavroche was seen to stagger then he sank to the earth the whole barricade gave vent to a cry but there was something of antaeus in that pygmy for the gamin to touch the pavement is the same as for the giant to touch the earth gavroche had fallen only to rise again
+chapter twelve disorder a partisan of order
+he did not answer my question he is a man who does good by gun shots said combeferre those who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know that the national guard from the suburbs was valiant against insurrections
+it was particularly zealous and intrepid in the days of june eighteen thirty two
+whose establishment had been closed by the riots became leonine at the sight of his deserted dance hall and got himself killed to preserve the order represented by a tea garden in that bourgeois and heroic time
+in the presence of ideas which had their knights interests had their paladins the prosiness of the originators detracted nothing from the bravery of the movement the diminution of a pile of crowns made bankers sing the marseillaise
+they shed their blood lyrically for the counting house and they defended the shop that immense diminutive of the fatherland with lacedaemonian enthusiasm at bottom we will observe there was nothing in all this that was not extremely serious
+it was social elements entering into strife while awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium another sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism the barbarous name of the correct party
+the drum suddenly beat capricious calls at the command of such or such a colonel of the national guard
+such and such national guardsmen fought for an idea and on their own account at critical moments on days they took counsel less of their leaders than of their instincts
+some of the sword like fannicot others of the pen like henri fonfrede civilization unfortunately represented at this epoch rather by an aggregation of interests than by a group of principles was or thought itself in peril
+it set up the cry of alarm each constituting himself a centre defended it succored it and protected it with his own head and the first comer took it upon himself to save society zeal sometimes proceeded to extermination
+a platoon of the national guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of war and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes it was an improvisation of this sort that had slain jean prouvaire fierce lynch law
+with which no one party had any right to reproach the rest for it has been applied by the republic in america as well as by the monarchy in europe this lynch law was complicated with mistakes on one day of rioting a young poet named paul aime garnier
+was pursued in the place royale with a bayonet at his loins
+they shouted there's another of those saint simonians and they wanted to kill him now he had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the duc de saint simon
+and had shouted death on the sixth of june eighteen thirty two a company of the national guards from the suburbs commanded by the captain fannicot above mentioned
+out of caprice and its own good pleasure this fact singular though it may seem was proved at the judicial investigation opened in consequence of the insurrection of eighteen thirty two captain fannicot a bold and impatient bourgeois
+a sort of condottiere of the order of those whom we have just characterized a fanatical and intractable governmentalist could not resist the temptation to fire prematurely
+and the ambition of capturing the barricade alone and unaided that is to say with his company exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old coat which he took for the black flag he loudly blamed the generals and chiefs of the corps
+and who were allowing the insurrection to fry in its own fat to use the celebrated expression of one of them for his part he thought the barricade ripe and as that which is ripe ought to fall he made the attempt
+he commanded men as resolute as himself raging fellows as a witness said his company the same which had shot jean prouvaire the poet was the first of the battalion posted at the angle of the street
+this movement executed with more good will than strategy cost the fannicot company dear before it had traversed two thirds of the street it was received by a general discharge from the barricade four the most audacious who were running on in front
+were mown down point blank at the very foot of the redoubt and this courageous throng of national guards very brave men but lacking in military tenacity were forced to fall back after some hesitation leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement
+this momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time to re load their weapons and a second and very destructive discharge struck the company before it could regain the corner of the street its shelter a moment more and it was caught between two fires
+and it received the volley from the battery piece which not having received the order had not discontinued its firing the intrepid and imprudent fannicot was one of the dead from this grape shot he was killed by the cannon that is to say by order
+this attack which was more furious than serious
+they are getting their own men killed and they are using up our ammunition for nothing
+insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons insurrection which is speedily exhausted has only a certain number of shots to fire and a certain number of combatants to expend an empty cartridge box a man killed cannot be replaced
+as repression has the army it does not count its men and as it has vincennes it does not count its shots repression has as many regiments as the barricade has men and as many arsenals as the barricade has cartridge boxes
+thus they are struggles of one against a hundred which always end in crushing the barricade unless the revolution uprising suddenly flings into the balance its flaming archangel's sword this does happen sometimes
+then everything rises the pavements begin to seethe popular redoubts abound paris quivers supremely the quid divinum is given forth a tenth of august is in the air a twenty ninth of july is in the air
+a wonderful light appears the yawning maw of force draws back and the army that lion sees before it erect and tranquil that prophet france chapter thirteen
+passing gleams in the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade there is a little of everything there is bravery there is youth honor enthusiasm the ideal conviction
+the rage of the gambler and above all intermittences of hope one of these intermittences one of these vague quivers of hope suddenly traversed the barricade of the rue de la chanvrerie at the moment when it was least expected listen
+who was still on the watch it seems to me that paris is waking up it is certain that on the morning of the sixth of june the insurrection broke out afresh for an hour or two to a certain extent
+reanimated some fancies barricades were begun in the rue du poirier and the rue des gravilliers in front of the porte saint martin a young man armed with a rifle attacked alone a squadron of cavalry
+in plain sight on the open boulevard he placed one knee on the ground shouldered his weapon fired killed the commander of the squadron and turned away saying there's another who will do us no more harm he was put to the sword
+the slats of the blind could be seen to tremble at every shot a child fourteen years of age was arrested in the rue de la cossonerie with his pockets full of cartridges many posts were attacked at the entrance to the rue bertin poiree
+a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed a regiment of cuirrassiers at whose head marched marshal general cavaignac de barague in the rue planche mibray they threw old pieces of pottery and household utensils
+down on the soldiers from the roofs a bad sign
+as he recalled suchet's saying at saragossa
+these general symptoms which presented themselves at the moment when it was thought that the uprising had been rendered local this fever of wrath these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep masses of
+all this taken together disturbed the military chiefs
+they delayed the attack on the barricades maubuee
+in order that they might have to deal with the barricades only and be able to finish them at one blow columns were thrown into the streets where there was fermentation sweeping the large sounding the small right and left now slowly and cautiously now at full charge
+the troops broke in the doors of houses whence shots had been fired at the same time
+this repression was not effected without some commotion and without that tumultuous uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the people
+moreover he had seen wounded men passing the end of the street in litters and he said to courfeyrac
+their hope did not last long the gleam was quickly eclipsed in less than half an hour what was in the air vanished it was a flash of lightning unaccompanied by thunder and the insurgents felt that sort of leaden cope
+which the indifference of the people casts over obstinate and deserted men fall over them once more the general movement which seemed to have assumed a vague outline had miscarried and the attention of the minister of war and the strategy of the generals
+could now be concentrated on the three or four barricades which still remained standing the sun was mounting above the horizon
+it was true that his teacher was long past his prime slow upon his feet and stiff in his joints but even so he was still a tough antagonist but montgomery had found at last that he could more than hold his own with him he had won the university medal and his teacher
+in which he had the worst of it but had made the prize fighter stretch himself to the uttermost there was his whole record and was it enough to encourage him to stand up to the master of croxley he had never heard of the master before
+but then he had lost touch of the ring during the last few years of hard work after all what did it matter if he won there was the money which meant so much to him if he lost it would only mean a thrashing he could take punishment without flinching of that he was certain
+matched against a pugilist over at croxley i cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition it is really a prize fight a glove fight you said
+i am informed that a two oz glove is an evasion by which they dodge the law and make it difficult for the police to interfere
+to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful home but you will realise mister montgomery that while there are such influences for us to counteract it is very necessary that we should live up to our highest
+the doctor's sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not once or twice had occasion to test his highest and come upon it at unexpectedly humble elevations it is always so particularly easy to
+compound for sins we're most inclined to by damning those we have no mind to in any case montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in such a fight promoters backers spectators it is the actual fighter
+who holds the strongest and most honourable position his conscience gave him no concern upon the subject endurance and courage are virtues not vices and brutality is at least better than effeminacy
+the assistant strolled down there after tea and asked in a casual way whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the master of croxley
+the little man could hardly articulate in his astonishment why sir he's the first mon o the district an his name's as well known in the west riding as the winner o t derby but lor sir here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers
+and so the croxley herald has his life an record an here it is an thou canst read it for thysel the sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an islet of illustration the latter was a coarse wood cut of a pugilist's head and neck
+silas craggs and beneath the master of croxley thou'll find all about him there sir said the tobacconist he's a witherin tyke he is and we're proud to have him in the county if he hadn't broke his leg he'd have been champion of england
+broke his leg has he yes and it set badly they ca him owd k behind his back for that is how his two legs look but his arms well if they was both stropped to a bench as the sayin is
+i'll take this with me said montgomery and putting the paper into his pocket he returned home it was not a cheering record which he read there the whole history of the croxley master was given in full his many victories his few defeats
+born in eighteen fifty seven said the provincial biographer silas craggs better known in sporting circles as the master of croxley is now in his fortieth year hang it i'm only twenty three
+and won the proud title which he still holds ambitious of a more than local fame he secured a patron and fought his first fight against jack barton of birmingham in may eighteen eighty at the old loiterers club craggs
+who fought at ten stone two at the time had the better of fifteen rattling rounds and gained an award on points against the midlander having disposed of james dunn of rotherhithe cameron of glasgow and a youth named fernie
+it was owing to this that he was defeated in seven rounds by willox the man whom he had previously beaten and afterwards by james shaw of london though the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of his career undismayed by his reverses
+the master adapted the style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his career of victory defeating norton the black hobby wilson and levi cohen the latter a heavy weight conceding two stone he fought a draw with the famous billy mc quire
+who may wish to learn the difference between a bar room scramble and a scientific contest the latest of these ambitious souls comes from the wilson coal pits which have undertaken to put up a stake of one hundred pounds and back their local champion
+there are various rumours afloat as to who their representative is to be the name of ted barton being freely mentioned but the betting which is seven to one on the master against any untried man is a fair reflection of the feeling of the community
+no light matter this which he had undertaken no battle with a rough and tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation the man's record showed that he was first class or nearly so there were a few points in his favour and he must make the most of them
+there was age twenty three against forty there was an old ring proverb that youth will be served but the annals of the ring offer a great number of exceptions a hard veteran full of cool valour and ring craft
+could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most striplings he could not rely too much upon his advantage in age but then there was the lameness that must surely count for a great deal and lastly there was the chance that the master might underrate his opponent
+that he might be remiss in his training and refuse to abandon his usual way of life if he thought that he had an easy task before him in a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible montgomery prayed that it might be so
+meanwhile if his opponent were the best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring his own duty was clear he must prepare himself carefully throw away no chance and do the very best that he could but he knew enough to appreciate the difference which exists in boxing as in every sport
+between the amateur and the professional the coolness the power of hitting above all the capability of taking punishment count for so much those specially developed gutta percha like abdominal muscles of the hardened pugilist
+will take without flinching a blow which would leave another man writhing on the ground such things are not to be acquired in a week but all that could be done in a week should be done the medical assistant had a good basis to start from
+tall enough for anything on two legs as the old ring men used to say lithe and spare with the activity of a panther and a strength which had hardly yet ever found its limitations his muscular development was finely hard
+but as the visiting was done on foot and considerable distances had to be traversed it was a training in itself for the rest he punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb bells for an hour every morning and evening and boxed twice a day with ted barton in the gymnasium
+gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing two handed slogger barton was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness but doubtful about his strength hard hitting was the feature of his own style and he exacted it from others
+all thot's better mon thot's fine he would add as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a right counter thot's how i likes to feel em happen thou'lt pull through yet he chuckled with joy when montgomery knocked him into a corner
+these causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated mister montgomery consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and this very beer would be most acceptable no doubt sir but at present i prefer to do without them
+i should do a double day's work on friday so as to leave everything in order i should hope to be back in the evening i am afraid i cannot spare you mister montgomery this was a facer if he could not get leave he would go without it
+you will remember doctor oldacre that when i came to you it was understood that i should have a clear day every month i have never claimed one but now there are reasons why i wish to have a holiday upon saturday doctor oldacre gave in with a very bad grace
+of course if you insist upon your formal rights there is no more to be said mister montgomery though i feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the welfare of the practice do you still insist yes sir very good have your way
+a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his saturday which aroused his curiosity i have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs mister montgomery but were you thinking of having a day in leeds upon saturday no sir
+in the country yes sir you are very wise you will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a very valuable restorative have you thought of any particular direction i am going over croxley way
+a very interesting relic of the early norman era by the way there is one objection which i see to your going to croxley on saturday it is upon that date as i am informed that that ruffianly glove fight takes place
+you may find yourself molested by the blackguards whom it will attract i will take my chance of that sir said the assistant on the friday night which was the last night before the fight
+he's simply ripping said the undergraduate
+that's only three pund off in a week's trainin said the horse breaker he said right when he said that he was in condition well it's fine stuff all there is of it but i'm none so sure as there is enough
+he kept poking his finger into montgomery as if he were one of his horses i hear that the master will scale a hundred and sixty odd at the ring side but there's some of that which he'd like well to pull off and leave behind wi his shirt said purvis
+i hear they've had a rare job to get him to drop his beer and if it had not been for that great red headed wench of his
+she fair scratted the face off a potman that had brought him a gallon from t chequers they say the hussy is his sparrin partner as well as his sweetheart and that his poor wife is just breakin her heart over it hullo young un what do you want
+the door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad about sixteen grimy and black with soot and iron stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp ted barton seized him by the collar
+see here thou yoong whelp this is private and we want noan o thy spyin but i maun speak to mister wilson the young cantab stepped forward well my lad what is it
+i wanted to tell your mon somethin aboot t maister we've no time to listen to gossip my boy we know all about the master but thou doan't sir nobody knows but me and mother and we thought as we'd like thy mon to know sir
+for we want him to fair bray him oh you want the master fair brayed do you so do we well what have you to say is this your mon sir well suppose it is then it's him i want to tell aboot it
+t maister is blind o the left eye nonsense it's true sir not stone blind but rarely fogged he keeps it secret but mother knows and so do i if thou slip him on the left side he can't cop thee thou'll find it right as i tell thee
+and mark him when he sinks his right tis his best blow his right upper cut t maister's finisher they ca it at t works it's a turble blow when it do come home thank you my boy this is information worth having about his sight said wilson
+how came you to know so much who are you i'm his son sir wilson whistled and who sent you to us my mother i maun get back to her again take this half crown no sir i don't seek money in comin here
+i do it for love suggested the publican for hate said the boy and darted off into the darkness seems to me t red headed wench may do him more harm than good after all remarked the publican
+he sat in silence with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands outside through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened brick and slate a line of enormous chimneys like cyclopean pillars
+upheld the lowering dun coloured cloud bank for six days in the week they spouted smoke but to day the furnace fires were banked for it was sunday sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and blasted by the greed of man
+he should be back again at the university completing the last year which would give him his medical degree but alas he had not the money with which to pay his class fees nor could he imagine how he could procure it
+he was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of doctor oldacre himself a large clean shaven respectable man with a prim manner and an austere face he had prospered exceedingly by the support of the local church interest
+and the rule of his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him his standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high and he expected the same from his assistants
+his appearance and words were always vaguely benevolent a sudden impulse came over the despondent student he would test the reality of this philanthropy i beg your pardon doctor oldacre said he rising from his chair
+i have a great favour to ask of you the doctor's appearance was not encouraging his mouth suddenly tightened and his eyes fell yes mister montgomery you are aware sir that i need only one more session to complete my course
+i am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere mister montgomery one moment sir i had hoped sir that perhaps if i signed a paper promising you interest upon your money you would advance this sum to me i will pay you back sir i really will or
+if you like i will work it off after i am qualified the doctor's lips had thinned into a narrow line his eyes were raised again and sparkled indignantly your request is unreasonable mister montgomery
+consider sir how many thousands of medical students there are in this country no doubt there are many of them who have a difficulty in finding their fees am i to provide for them all or why should i make an exception in your favour i am grieved and disappointed mister montgomery
+that you should have put me into the painful position of having to refuse you he turned upon his heel and walked with offended dignity out of the surgery the student smiled bitterly and turned to his work of making up the morning prescriptions
+he only excelled in his strength and where was he to find a customer for that but the ways of fate are strange and his customer was at hand look y'ere said a voice at the door montgomery looked up
+for the voice was a loud and rasping one a young man stood at the entrance a stocky bull necked young miner in tweed sunday clothes and an aggressive neck tie he was a sinister looking figure with dark insolent eyes
+and the jaw and throat of a bulldog look y'ere said he again why hast thou not sent t medicine oop as thy master ordered montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern worker at first it had enraged him
+but after a time he had grown callous to it and accepted it as it was meant but this was something different it was insolence brutal overbearing insolence with physical menace behind it what name he asked coldly
+the provocation was so gross the insult so unprovoked that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man's mettle he finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack
+look here said he turning round to the miner your medicine will be made up in its turn and sent down to you i don't allow folk in the surgery wait outside in the waiting room if you wish to wait at all yoong man said the miner
+the blows were almost simultaneous a savage swing which whistled past montgomery's ear and a straight drive which took the workman on the chin luck was with the assistant that single whizzing uppercut and the way in which it was delivered
+had enough asked the assistant breathing fiercely through his nose but no answer came the man was insensible and then the danger of his position came upon montgomery and he turned as white as his antagonist
+a sunday the immaculate doctor oldacre with his pious connection a savage brawl with a patient he would irretrievably lose his situation if the facts came out it was not much of a situation but he could not get another without a reference
+loosened his collar and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face he sat up at last with a gasp and a scowl domn thee thou's spoilt my neck tie said he mopping up the water from his breast
+i'm sorry i hit you so hard said montgomery apologetically thou hit me hard i could stan such fly flappin all day twas this here press that cracked my pate for me and thou art a looky man to be able to boast as thou hast outed me
+and now i'd be obliged to thee if thou wilt give me t wife's medicine montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner you are weak still said he won't you stay awhile and rest t wife wants her medicine
+said the man and lurched out at the door the assistant looking after him saw him rolling with an uncertain step down the street until a friend met him and they walked on arm in arm the man seemed in his rough northern fashion to bear no grudge
+yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness which sharpened into dismay when late in the afternoon he was informed that three gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery a coroner's inquest
+above all what they could expect from him was a most inexplicable problem the first was sorley wilson the son of the owner of the nonpareil coalpit he was a young blood of twenty heir to a fortune a keen sportsman
+and down for the easter vacation from magdalene college he sat now upon the edge of the surgery table looking in thoughtful silence at montgomery and twisting the ends of his small black waxed moustache the second was purvis the publican
+and he also leaned forward in silence from his chair a fat red hand upon either knee and stared critically at the young assistant so did the third visitor fawcett the horse breaker who leaned back his long thin legs with their boxcloth riding gaiters
+no it's off it's nowt stand oop lad let's see thee standin it was the publican who spoke montgomery obeyed he would learn all about it no doubt if he were patient
+a hundred and thirty a hundred and fifty if he's an ounce well the master doesn't scale much more than that a hundred and seventy five that was when he was hog fat and living high work the grease out of him and i lay there's no great difference between them
+have you been weighed lately mister montgomery it was the first direct question which had been asked him he had stood in the midst of them like a horse at a fair and he was just beginning to wonder whether he was more angry or amused i am just eleven stone said he
+but trainin for everyday work ain't the same as trainin with a trainer and i dare bet with all respec to your opinion mister wilson that there's half a stone of tallow on him at this minute the young cantab put his fingers on the assistant's upper arm
+then with his other hand on his wrist he bent the forearm sharply and felt the biceps as round and hard as a cricket ball spring up under his fingers feel that said he the publican and horse breaker felt it with an air of reverence
+good lad he'll do yet cried purvis gentlemen said montgomery i think that you will acknowledge that i have boon very patient with you
+and now i must really beg that you will have the goodness to tell me what is the matter they all sat down in their serious business like way that's easy done mister montgomery said the fat voiced publican but before sayin anything we had to wait and see whether
+for it would be somethin new to find isaac fawcett as a spoil sport well then we will make up the hundred for the stake among us and the fight stands always supposin the young man is willin excuse all this rot mister montgomery
+said the university man in a genial voice we've begun at the wrong end i know but we'll soon straighten it out
+you remember the man whom you knocked out this morning he is barton the famous ted barton i'm sure sir you may well be proud to have outed him in one round said the publican why it took morris the ten stone six champion
+a deal more trouble than that before he put barton to sleep you've done a fine performance sir and happen you'll do a finer if you give yourself the chance i never heard of ted barton beyond seeing the name on a medicine label said the assistant well
+you may take it from me that he's a slaughterer said the horse breaker you've taught him a lesson that he needed for it was always a word and a blow with him and the word alone was worth five shillin in a public court he won't be so ready now to shake his nief in the face of everyone he meets
+however that's neither here nor there montgomery looked at them in bewilderment for goodness sake gentlemen tell me what it is you want me to do he cried we want you to fight silas craggs better known as the master of croxley
+but why because ted barton was to have fought him next saturday he was the champion of the wilson coal pits and the other was the master of the iron folk down at the croxley smelters we'd matched our man for a purse of a hundred against the master
+but you've queered our man and he can't face such a battle with a two inch cut at the back of his head there's only one thing to be done sir
+if you can lick ted barton you may lick the master of croxley but if you don't we're done for there's no one else who is in the same street with him in this district it's twenty rounds two ounce gloves queensberry rules and a decision on points if you fight to the finish
+for a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of montgomery's head
+all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready to his hand if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up he had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength
+than his brains in a year but a chill of doubt came over him how can i fight for the coal pits said he i am not connected with them eh lad but thou art cried old purvis we've got it down in writin and it's clear enough
+it would be a very sporting thing of you mister montgomery if you would come to our help when we are in such a hole of course you might not like to take the hundred pounds but i have no doubt that in the case of your winning we could arrange that it should take the form of a watch or piece of plate
+or any other shape which might suggest itself to you you see you are responsible for our having lost our champion so we really feel that we have a claim upon you give me a moment gentlemen it is very unexpected
+i am afraid the doctor would never consent to my going in fact i am sure that he would not but he need never know not before the fight at any rate we are not bound to give the name of our man so long as he is within the weight limits on the day of the fight that is all that concerns anyone
+thou'll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the best known mon twixt here and bradford thou art a witherin tyke thou art and no mistake and if thou beat the master of croxley thou'll find all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for thee at the four sacks
+it is the most sporting thing i ever heard of in my life said young wilson by george sir if you pull it off you've got the constituency in your pocket if you care to stand you know the out house in my garden next the road exactly
+then you'll want a sparring partner ogilvy has been acting for barton but we don't think that he is class enough barton bears you no grudge he's a good hearted fellow though cross grained with strangers he looked upon you as a stranger this morning but he says he knows you now
+what were they disputing then said emily no ma'amselle nor fighting but almost as good for i believe there was not one of the signors sober
+and what is more not one of those fine ladies sober either i thought when i saw them first that all those fine silks and fine veils why ma'amselle their veils were worked with silver
+and fine trimmings boded no good i guessed what they were good god exclaimed emily what will become of me
+if you are to go running about the castle among all these drunken signors
+and across the great hall and up the marble stair case and along the north gallery and through the west wing of the castle and i am in the corridor in a minute are you so says he and what is to become of you if you meet any of those noble cavaliers in the way
+well says i if you think there is danger then go with me and guard me i am never afraid when you are by what says he when i am scarcely recovered of one wound shall i put myself in the way of getting another
+no no says he i will cut the way shorter than through the vaulted passage and up the marble stair case and along the north gallery and through the west wing of the castle for you shall stay here annette you shall not go out of this room to night so
+well well said emily impatiently and anxious to enquire on another subject
+yes he did indeed ma'amselle notwithstanding all i could say to the contrary
+and he mistook ludovico's hall for old carlo's
+so we were all as still as night that he might suppose there was nobody in the room but the signor was as cunning as the best of us and kept calling out at the door
+come forth my valorous signor steward just then old carlo opened his door and he came with a flask in his hand for as soon as the signor saw him
+he was as tame as could be and followed him away as naturally as a dog does a butcher with a piece of meat in his basket all this i saw through the key hole well annette said ludovico jeeringly shall i let you out now
+interrupted emily quite wearied by this story do you know whether there are any prisoners in the castle and whether they are confined at this end of the edifice
+but it is expected back to night or to morrow and i shall know then perhaps emily enquired if she had ever heard the servants talk of prisoners ah ma'amselle said annette archly
+now i dare say you are thinking of monsieur valancourt and that he may have come among the armies which they say are come from our country to fight against this state and that he has met with some of our people and is taken captive
+o lord how glad i should be if it was so would you indeed be glad said emily in a tone of mournful reproach to be sure i should
+ma'am replied annette and would not you be glad too to see signor valancourt i don't know any chevalier i like better i have a very great regard for the signor truly
+your regard for him cannot be doubted said emily since you wish to see him a prisoner why no ma'amselle not a prisoner either but one must be glad to see him you know and it was only the other night i dreamt
+and then it was gone and nothing to be seen but the old castle walls so they helped one another up again as fast as they could you would not believe ma'amselle though i shewed you the very cannon where it used to appear
+and are you indeed so simple annette said emily smiling at this curious exaggeration of the circumstances she had witnessed as to credit these stories credit them ma'amselle why
+all the world could not persuade me out of them roberto and sebastian and half a dozen more of them went into fits to be sure there was no occasion for that i said myself there was no need of that
+for says i when the enemy comes what a pretty figure they will cut if they are to fall down in fits all of a row the enemy won't be so civil perhaps as to walk off like the ghost and leave them to help one another up
+but will fall to cutting and slashing till he makes them all rise up dead men no no says i there is reason in all things
+being because it is no business of mine to look gruff and fight battles emily endeavoured to correct the superstitious weakness of annette though she could not entirely subdue her own to which the latter only replied
+nay ma'amselle you will believe nothing you are almost as bad as the signor himself who was in a great passion when they told of what had happened and swore that the first man who repeated such nonsense should be thrown into the dungeon under the east turret this was a hard
+but i dare say he had other reasons for calling it so than you have ma'am emily looked displeased and made no reply as she mused upon the recollected appearance which had lately so much alarmed her and considered the circumstances of the figure having stationed itself
+opposite to her casement she was for a moment inclined to believe it was valancourt whom she had seen yet if it was he why did he not speak to her when he had the opportunity of doing so and if he was a prisoner in the castle
+and he could be here in no other character how could he obtain the means of walking abroad on the rampart
+were the same or if they were whether this was valancourt she however desired that annette would endeavour to learn whether any prisoners were in the castle and also their names o dear ma'amselle said annette i forget to tell you what you bade me ask about
+the ladies as they call themselves who are lately come to udolpho why that signora livona that the signor brought to see my late lady at venice is his mistress now and was little better then i dare say and ludovico says
+but pray be secret ma'am that his excellenza introduced her only to impose upon the world that had begun to make free with her character so when people saw my lady notice her they thought what they had heard must be scandal
+but i thought they were dismal sounds so soon after my poor lady's death too
+but she cannot hear them now poor soul said i emily turned away to conceal her emotion and then desired annette to go and make enquiry concerning the prisoners that might be in the castle
+but conjured her to do it with caution and on no account to mention her name or that of monsieur valancourt now i think of it ma'amselle said annette i do believe there are prisoners for i overheard one of the signor's men yesterday
+and saying what a fine thing it was for his excellenza to catch up men and they were as good booty as any other because of the ransoms
+because said he we don't go shares there this information heightened emily's impatience to know more and annette immediately departed on her enquiry the late resolution of emily to resign her estates to montoni now gave way to new considerations
+the possibility that valancourt was near her revived her fortitude and she determined to brave the threatened vengeance at least till she could be assured whether he was really in the castle she was in this temper of mind when she received a message from montoni requiring her attendance in the cedar parlour
+which she obeyed with trembling and on her way thither endeavoured to animate her fortitude with the idea of valancourt montoni was alone i sent for you said he to give you another opportunity of retracting your late mistaken assertions
+i will condescend to advise where i may command
+if i have no right in these estates sir said emily of what service can it be to you that i should sign any papers concerning them if the lands are yours by law you certainly may possess them without my interference or my consent
+i will have no more argument said montoni with a look that made her tremble what had i but trouble to expect when i condescended to reason with a baby but i will be trifled with no longer
+let the recollection of your aunt's sufferings in consequence of her folly and obstinacy teach you a lesson sign the papers emily's resolution was for a moment awed she shrunk at the recollections he revived
+and from the vengeance he threatened but then the image of valancourt who so long had loved her and who was now perhaps so near her came to her heart and together with the strong feelings of indignation with which she had always
+from her infancy regarded an act of injustice inspired her with a noble though imprudent courage sign the papers said montoni more impatiently than before never sir
+replied emily that request would have proved to me the injustice of your claim had i even been ignorant of my right montoni turned pale with anger while his quivering lip and lurking eye made her almost repent the boldness of her speech
+then all my vengeance falls upon you he exclaimed with an horrible oath and think not it shall be delayed
+you have dared to question my right now dare to question my power i have a punishment which you think not of it is terrible this night this very night' this
+night repeated another voice montoni paused and turned half round but seeming to recollect himself he proceeded in a lower tone you have lately seen one terrible example of obstinacy and folly
+yet this it appears has not been sufficient to deter you
+i could make you tremble at the bare recital he was interrupted by a groan which seemed to rise from underneath the chamber they were in and as he threw a glance round it impatience and rage flashed from his eyes
+yet something like a shade of fear passed over his countenance emily sat down in a chair near the door for the various emotions she had suffered now almost overcame her but montoni paused scarcely an instant and commanding his features
+resumed his discourse in a lower yet sterner voice i say i could give you other instances of my power and of my character which it seems you do not understand or you would not defy me
+i could tell you that when once my resolution is taken but i am talking to a baby let me however repeat that terrible as are the examples i could recite the recital could not now benefit you
+for though your repentance would put an immediate end to opposition it would not now appease my indignation i will have vengeance as well as justice another groan filled the pause which montoni made
+leave the room instantly said he seeming not to notice this strange occurrence without power to implore his pity she rose to go but found that she could not support herself awe and terror overcame her and she sunk again into the chair
+quit my presence cried montoni this affectation of fear ill becomes the heroine who has just dared to brave my indignation did you hear nothing signor said emily trembling and still unable to leave the room
+i heard my own voice rejoined montoni sternly and nothing else
+obey my order repeated montoni and for these fool's tricks i will soon discover by whom they are practised emily again rose and exerted herself to the utmost to leave the room while montoni followed her
+but instead of calling aloud to his servants to search the chamber as he had formerly done on a similar occurrence passed to the ramparts as in her way to the corridor she rested for a moment at an open casement emily saw a party of montoni's troops winding down a distant mountain
+whom she noticed no further than as they brought to her mind the wretched prisoners they were perhaps bringing to the castle at length having reached her apartment she threw herself upon the couch overcome with the new horrors of her situation
+on this particular evening he dined at rector's a restaurant of some local fame which occupied a basement at clark and monroe streets thereafter he visited the resort of fitzgerald and moy's in adams street opposite the imposing federal building
+there he leaned over the splendid bar and swallowed a glass of plain whiskey and purchased a couple of cigars one of which he lighted this to him represented in part high life a fair sample of what the whole must be
+drouet was not a drinker in excess he was not a moneyed man he only craved the best as his mind conceived it and such doings seemed to him a part of the best
+rector's with its polished marble walls and floor its profusion of lights its show of china and silverware and above all its reputation as a resort for actors and professional men seemed to him the proper place for a successful man to go
+he loved fine clothes good eating and particularly the company and acquaintanceship of successful men when dining it was a source of keen satisfaction to him to know that joseph jefferson was wont to come to this same place
+or that henry e dixie a well known performer of the day was then only a few tables off at rector's he could always obtain this satisfaction for there one could encounter politicians brokers actors
+some rich young rounders of the town all eating and drinking amid a buzz of popular commonplace conversation that's so and so over there was a common remark of these gentlemen among themselves
+particularly among those who had not yet reached but hoped to do so the dazzling height which money to dine here lavishly represented you don't say so would be the reply why
+why he's manager of the grand opera house when these things would fall upon drouet's ears he would straighten himself a little more stiffly and eat with solid comfort if he had any vanity this augmented it
+the floors were of brightly coloured tiles the walls a composition of rich dark polished wood which reflected the light and coloured stucco work which gave the place a very sumptuous appearance
+the long bar was a blaze of lights polished wood work coloured and cut glassware and many fancy bottles
+with rich screens fancy wines and a line of bar goods unsurpassed in the country at rector's drouet had met mister g w hurstwood manager of fitzgerald and moy's
+he had been pointed out as a very successful and well known man about town hurstwood looked the part for besides being slightly under forty he had a good stout constitution an active manner and a solid substantial air
+which was composed in part of his fine clothes his clean linen his jewels and above all his own sense of his importance drouet immediately conceived a notion of him as being some one worth knowing
+and was glad not only to meet him but to visit the adams street bar thereafter whenever he wanted a drink or a cigar hurstwood was an interesting character after his kind he was shrewd and clever in many little things
+and capable of creating a good impression his managerial position was fairly important a kind of stewardship which was imposing but lacked financial control he had risen by perseverance and industry
+the chief executive and financial functions devolved upon the owners
+and upon a cashier who looked after the money taken in for the most part he lounged about dressed in excellent tailored suits of imported goods a solitaire ring a fine blue diamond in his tie a striking vest of some new pattern
+and a watch chain of solid gold which held a charm of rich design and a watch of the latest make and engraving he knew by name and could greet personally with a well old fellow
+hundreds of actors merchants politicians and the general run of successful characters about town and it was part of his success to do so he had a finely graduated scale of informality and friendship which improved from the how do you do
+who by long frequenting of the place became aware of his position to the why old man how are you which he addressed to those noted or rich individuals who knew him and were inclined to be friendly there was a class however
+too rich too famous or too successful with whom he could not attempt any familiarity of address and with these he was professionally tactful assuming a grave and dignified attitude paying them the deference which would win their good feeling
+without in the least compromising his own bearing and opinions there were in the last place a few good followers neither rich nor poor famous nor yet remarkably successful with whom he was friendly on the score of good fellowship
+these were the kind of men with whom he would converse longest and most seriously
+to go to the races the theatres the sporting entertainments at some of the clubs he kept a horse and neat trap had his wife and two children who were well established in a neat house on the north side near lincoln park
+and was altogether a very acceptable individual of our great american upper class the first grade below the luxuriously rich
+the latter's genial nature and dressy appearance pleased him he knew that drouet was only a travelling salesman and not one of many years at that but the firm of bartlett caryoe and company
+hurstwood knew caryoe quite well having drunk a glass now and then with him in company with several others when the conversation was general
+a moderate sense of humour and could tell a good story when the occasion required he could talk races with hurstwood
+and report the state of trade in the cities which he visited and so managed to make himself almost invariably agreeable to night he was particularly so since his report to the company had been favourably commented upon
+his new samples had been satisfactorily selected and his trip marked out for the next six weeks why hello charlie old man
+how goes it the room was crowded drouet shook hands beaming good nature and they strolled towards the bar oh all right i haven't seen you in six weeks when did you get in
+friday said drouet had a fine trip glad of it said hurstwood his black eyes lit with a warmth which half displaced the cold make believe that usually dwelt in them what are you going to take he added as the barkeeper in snowy jacket and tie
+leaned toward them from behind the bar old pepper said drouet a little of the same for me put in hurstwood how long are you in town this time inquired hurstwood only until wednesday i'm going up to saint paul
+george evans was in here saturday and said he saw you in milwaukee last week yes i saw george returned drouet great old boy isn't he we had quite a time there together
+as was considered proper and hurstwood taking the barest suggestion of whiskey and modifying it with seltzer what's become of caryoe remarked hurstwood i haven't seen him around here in two weeks
+barely comes down to the office now just one boy hasn't he asked hurstwood yes and a swift pacer laughed drouet i
+no he can't injure that any i guess hurstwood was standing his coat open his thumbs in his pockets the light on his jewels and rings relieving them with agreeable distinctness he was the picture of fastidious comfort
+to one not inclined to drink and gifted with a more serious turn of mind such a bubbling chattering glittering chamber must ever seem an anomaly a strange commentary on nature and life
+here come the moths in endless procession to bask in the light of the flame such conversation as one may hear would not warrant a commendation of the scene upon intellectual grounds
+it seems plain that schemers would choose more sequestered quarters to arrange their plans that politicians would not gather here in company to discuss anything save formalities where the sharp eared may hear and it would scarcely be justified on the score of thirst
+nevertheless the fact that here men gather here chatter here love to pass and rub elbows must be explained upon some grounds it must be that a strange bundle of passions and vague desires
+the many friends he met here dropped in because they craved
+the company the glow the atmosphere which they found one might take it after all as an augur of the better social order for the things which they satisfied here though sensory were not evil
+no evil could come out of the contemplation of an expensively decorated chamber the worst effect of such a thing would be perhaps to stir up in the material minded an ambition to arrange their lives upon a similarly splendid basis
+in the last analysis that would scarcely be called the fault of the decorations but rather of the innate trend of the mind that such a scene might stir the less expensively dressed to emulate the more expensively dressed
+could scarcely be laid at the door of anything save the false ambition of the minds of those so affected remove the element so thoroughly and solely complained of liquor
+and there would not be one to gainsay the qualities of beauty and enthusiasm which would remain the pleased eye with which our modern restaurants of fashion are looked upon is proof of this assertion yet here is the fact of the lighted chamber
+the dressy greedy company the small self interested palaver the disorganized aimless wandering mental action which it represents the love of light and show and finery which to one outside
+under the serene light of the eternal stars must seem a strange and shiny thing under the stars and sweeping night winds what a lamp flower it must bloom a
+insect infested rose of pleasure see that fellow coming in there said hurstwood glancing at a gentleman just entering arrayed in a high hat and prince albert coat his fat cheeks puffed and red as with good eating
+no where said drouet
+said hurstwood indicating the direction by a cast of his eye the man with the silk hat oh yes said drouet now affecting not to see who is he that's jules wallace the spiritualist
+drouet followed him with his eyes much interested doesn't look much like a man who sees spirits does he said drouet oh i
+returned hurstwood he's got the money all right and a little twinkle passed over his eyes i don't go much on those things do you
+well you never can tell said hurstwood there may be something to it i wouldn't bother about it myself though by the way he added are you going anywhere to night the hole in the ground
+said drouet mentioning the popular farce of the time well you'd better be going it's half after eight already and he drew out his watch the crowd was already thinning out considerably
+some bound for the theatres some to their clubs and some to that most fascinating of all the pleasures for the type of man there represented at least the ladies yes i will said drouet
+come around after the show i have something i want to show you said hurstwood sure said drouet elated you haven't anything on hand for the night have you added hurstwood not a thing well come round then
+i struck a little peach coming in on the train friday remarked drouet by way of parting by george that's so i must go and call on her before i go away oh never mind her hurstwood remarked
+say she was a little dandy i tell you
+twelve o'clock said hurstwood that's right
+night and morning he recited the prayer
+although the fame of his virtue did not reach far yet his neighbours respected and revered him
+and when his roof or his walls fell out of repair they would mend them for him so for the things of this world he took no thought one very cold night when he little thought any one was outside he heard a voice calling
+your reverence your reverence so he rose and went out to see who it was and there he beheld an old badger standing any ordinary man would have been greatly alarmed at the apparition
+but now i am growing old and this severe cold is more than i can bear i pray you to let me enter and warm myself at the fire of your cottage that i may live through this bitter night
+went into the hut and squatting down by the fire began to warm itself and the priest with renewed fervour recited his prayers and struck his bell before the image of buddha looking straight before him
+after two hours the badger took its leave with profuse expressions of thanks and went out and from that time forth it came every night to the hut as the badger would collect and bring with it dried branches and dead leaves from the hills for firewood
+the priest at last became very friendly with it and got used to its company so that if ever as the night wore on the badger did not arrive he used to miss it and wonder why it did not come
+and even after my death i must remember them what can i do to requite them if there is anything that you wish for pray tell me the priest smiling at this speech answered
+being such as i am i have no desire and no wishes glad as i am to hear your kind intentions there is nothing that i can ask you to do for me you need feel no anxiety on my account as long as i live when the winter comes
+you shall be welcome here the badger on hearing this could not conceal its admiration of the depth of the old man's benevolence but having so much to be grateful for it felt hurt at not being able to requite it
+as this subject was often renewed between them the priest at last touched by the goodness of the badger's heart said since i have shaven my head renounced the world and forsaken the pleasures of this life i have no desire to gratify
+yet i own i should like to possess three riyos in gold food and raiment i receive by the favour of the villagers so i take no heed for those things were i to die to morrow and attain my wish of being born again into the next world
+the same kind folk have promised to meet and bury my body thus although i have no other reason to wish for money still if i had three riyos i would offer them up at some holy shrine that masses and prayers might be said for me
+whereby i might enter into salvation yet i would not get this money by violent or unlawful means i only think of what might be if i had it so you see since you have expressed such kind feelings toward me
+i have told you what is on my mind when the priest had done speaking the badger leant its head on one side with a puzzled and anxious look so much so that the old man was sorry he had expressed a wish which seemed to give the beast trouble
+and tried to retract what he had said posthumous honours after all are the wish of ordinary men i who am a priest ought not to entertain such thoughts or to want money so pray pay no attention to what i have said
+and the badger feigning assent to what the priest had impressed upon it returned to the hills as usual from that time forth the badger came no more to the hut
+the priest thought this very strange but imagined either that the badger stayed away because it did not like to come without the money or that it had been killed in an attempt to steal it and he blamed himself for having added to his sins for no purpose
+repenting when it was too late persuaded however that the badger must have been killed he passed his time in putting up prayers upon prayers for it after three years had gone by one night
+the old man heard a voice near his door calling out your reverence your reverence as the voice was like that of the badger he jumped up as soon as he heard it and ran to open the door and there sure enough was the badger
+if the money which you required had been for unlawful purposes i could easily have procured as much as ever you might have wanted but when i heard that it was to be offered to a temple for masses for your soul
+fused it afresh in the fire and at this work i spent months and days as the badger finished speaking the priest looked at the money which it had produced and sure enough he saw that it was bright and new and clean
+as he was thanking the badger with great politeness and ceremony the beast said in doing this i have but fulfilled my own wish still i hope that you will tell this thing to no man indeed replied the priest
+but i shall say that the badger that gave me the money has ceased coming to my hut you need not fear being waylaid but can come as of old and shelter yourself from the cold to this the badger nodded assent and as long as the old priest lived
+it came and spent the winter nights with him from this story it is plain that even beasts have a sense of gratitude in this quality dogs excel all other beasts
+written in the annals of japan
+on the same errand as themselves as soon as the children saw the foxes they picked up a bamboo stick and took the creatures stealthily in the rear and when the old foxes took to flight they surrounded them and beat them with the stick
+so that they ran away as fast as their legs could carry them but two of the boys held down the cub and seizing it by the scruff of the neck went off in high glee the two friends were looking on all the while and one of them raising his voice shouted out
+hallo you boys what are you doing with that fox the eldest of the boys replied we're going to take him home and sell him to a young man in our village he'll buy him and then he'll boil him in a pot and eat him
+well replied the other after considering the matter attentively i suppose it's all the same to you whom you sell him to you'd better let me have him oh but the young man from our village promised us a good sum if we could find a fox
+and got us to come out to the hills and catch one and so we can't sell him to you at any price well i suppose it cannot be helped then but how much would the young man give you for the cub oh he'll give us three hundred cash at least
+and gave half a bu to the three boys who ran away delighted the man's friend upon this said to him well certainly you have got queer tastes what on earth are you going to keep the fox for
+how could i stand by and see life taken it was but a little i spent only half a bu to save the cub but had it cost a fortune i should not have grudged it i thought you were intimate enough with me to know my heart
+but to day you have accused me of being eccentric and i see how mistaken i have been in you however our friendship shall cease from this day forth and when he had said this with a great deal of firmness
+the other retiring backward and bowing with his hands on his knees replied indeed indeed i am filled with admiration at the goodness of your heart when i hear you speak thus i feel more than ever how great is the love i bear you
+so they stroked it gently on the back and petted it and as the pain of the wound seemed to have subsided they were admiring the properties of the herb when opposite to them they saw the old foxes sitting watching them by the side of some stacks of rice straw
+look there the old foxes have come back out of fear for their cub's safety come we will set it free and with these words they untied the string round the cub's neck and turned its head toward the spot where the old foxes sat
+so with peace in their hearts the latter went off to another place and choosing a pretty spot produced the wine bottle and ate their noonday meal and after a pleasant day they returned to their homes and became firmer friends than ever
+now the man who had rescued the fox's cub was a tradesman in good circumstances he had three or four agents and two maid servants besides men servants and altogether he lived in a liberal manner he was married and this union had brought him one son
+even though our child should die for it they said we will not ourselves deprive other creatures of their lives but you who live among the hills are sure to hear when your neighbours go out fox hunting
+we don't care what price we might have to pay for a fox's liver pray buy one for us at any expense so they pressed him to exert himself on their behalf and he having promised faithfully to execute the commission went his way
+in the night of the following day there came a messenger who announced himself as coming from the person who had undertaken to procure the fox's liver so the master of the house went out to see him i have come from mister so and so
+last night the fox's liver that you required fell into his hands so he sent me to bring it to you with these words the messenger produced a small jar adding in a few days he will let you know the price
+when he had delivered his message the master of the house was greatly pleased and said indeed i am deeply grateful for this kindness which will save my son's life then the good wife came out and received the jar with every mark of politeness
+we must make a present to the messenger indeed sir i've already been paid for my trouble well at any rate you must stop the night here thank you sir i've a relation in the next village whom i have not seen for a long while
+and i will pass the night with him and so he took his leave and went away the parents lost no time in sending to let the physician know that they had procured the fox's liver the next day the doctor came and compounded a medicine for the patient
+which at once produced a good effect and there was no little joy in the household as luck would have it three days after this the man whom they had commissioned to buy the fox's liver came to the house so the goodwife hurried out to meet him and welcome him
+how quickly you fulfilled our wishes and how kind of you to send at once the doctor prepared the medicine and now our boy can get up and walk about the room and it's all owing to your goodness wait a bit cried the guest
+who did not know what to make of the joy of the two parents the commission with which you entrusted me about the fox's liver turned out to be a matter of impossibility so i came to day to make my excuses and now i really can't understand what you are so grateful to me for
+pray inquire carefully into the matter well this is very strange four nights ago a man of some five or six and thirty years of age came with a verbal message from you to the effect that you had sent him with a fox's liver
+which you had just procured and said that he would come and tell us the price another day when we asked him to spend the night here he answered that he would lodge with a relation in the next village and went away the visitor was more and more lost in amazement and
+last spring when i was taking out my cub to play it was carried off by some boys and only saved by your goodness the desire to requite this kindness pierced me to the quick at last when calamity attacked your house
+i thought i might be of use to you your son's illness could not be cured without a liver taken from a live fox so to repay your kindness i killed my cub and took out its liver then its sire disguising himself as a messenger
+brought it to your house and as she spoke the fox shed tears and the master of the house wishing to thank her moved in bed upon which his wife awoke and asked him what was the matter but he too to her great astonishment
+was biting the pillow and weeping bitterly why are you weeping thus asked she at last he sat up in bed and said last spring when i was out on a pleasure excursion i was the means of saving the life of a fox's cub
+as i told you at the time the other day i told mister so and so that although my son were to die before my eyes i would not be the means of killing a fox on purpose but asked him in case he heard of any hunter killing a fox
+to buy it for me how the foxes came to hear of this i don't know but the foxes to whom i had shown kindness killed their own cub and took out the liver and the old dog fox disguising himself as a messenger from the person to whom
+we had confided the commission came here with it his mate has just been at my pillow side and told me all about it hence it was that in spite of myself i was moved to tears
+when she heard this the goodwife likewise was blinded by her tears and for a while they lay lost in thought but at last coming to themselves they lighted the lamp on the shelf on which the family idol stood
+and spent the night in reciting prayers and praises and the next day they published the matter to the household and to their relations and friends now although there are instances of men killing their own children to requite a favour
+there is no other example of foxes having done such a thing so the story became the talk of the whole country now the boy who had recovered through the efficacy of this medicine selected the prettiest spot on the premises
+the saints who are worshipped in japan writes a native authority are men who in the remote ages when the country was developing itself were sages and by their great and virtuous deeds having earned the gratitude of future generations
+all matters connected with the shrines of the shinto or indigenous religion are confided to the superintendence of the families of yoshida and fushimi
+the affairs of the buddhist or imported religion are under the care of the family of kanjuji as it is necessary that those who as priests perform the honourable office of serving the gods should be persons of some standing
+a certain small rank is procured for them through the intervention of the representatives of the above noble families who on the issuing of the required patent receive as their perquisite a fee which although insignificant in itself
+whose penniless condition forms a great contrast to the wealth of their inferiors in rank the daimios i believe that this is the only case in which rank can be bought or sold in japan
+in china on the contrary in spite of what has been written by meadows and other admirers of the examination system a man can be what he pleases by paying for it
+are locally worshipped touching the remedy of the fox's liver prescribed in the tale i may add that there would be nothing strange in this to a person acquainted with the chinese pharmacopoeia which the japanese long exclusively followed
+although they are now successfully studying the art of healing as practised in the west when i was at peking i saw a chinese physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck down with fever
+and on another occasion a groom of mine suffering from dysentery was treated with acupuncture of the tongue the art of medicine would appear to be at the present time in china much in the state in which it existed in europe in the sixteenth century
+for retention caused by either renal or vesical calculi but i have myself thoroughly experienced the utility of an oil i make myself whereof scorpions form a very large portion of the ingredients
+if only the region of the heart and all the pulses of the body be anointed with it it will free the patients from the effects of all kinds of poisons taken by the mouth corrosive ones excepted decoctions of egyptian mummies were much commended
+and often prescribed with due academical solemnity and the bones of the human skull pulverized and administered with oil were used as a specific in cases of renal calculus see petri andreae matthioli opera fifteen seventy four
+then the middle son went hunting and as he issued from the town a hare sprang out of a bush and the prince after it and hither and thither till the hare fled into the water mill and the prince after it
+but it was not a hare but a dragon which waited for and devoured him when some days had elapsed and the princes did not return either of them the whole court was in sorrow
+then the third son went hunting to see whether he could not find his brothers when he issued from the town again up sprang a hare out of a bush and the prince after it and hither and thither till the hare fled into the water mill
+but the prince did not choose to follow it but went to find other game saying to himself when i return i shall find you after thus he went for a long time up and down the hill but found nothing and then returned to the water mill
+she replied my son that was not a hare but a dragon it kills and throttles many people hearing this the prince was somewhat disturbed and said to the old woman what shall we do now doubtless my two brothers also have perished here
+the old woman answered they have indeed but there's no help for it go home my son lest you follow them then he said to her dear old woman do you know what i know that you will be glad to liberate yourself from that pest
+the old woman interrupted him how should i not it captured me too in this way but now i have no means of escape then he proceeded listen well to what i am going to say to you ask it whither it goes and where its strength is
+when the dragon came in the old woman began to question it where in god's name have you been whither do you go so far you will never tell me whither you go the dragon replied well my dear old woman i do go far
+my strength is a long way off and you cannot go thither far in another empire under the emperor's city is a lake in that lake is a dragon and in that dragon a boar and in the boar a pigeon and in that is my strength
+took a shepherd's staff in his hand and went into the world as he went on thus from village to village and from town to town at last he came into another empire and into the imperial city in a lake under which the dragon was
+on going into the town he began to inquire who wanted a shepherd the citizens told him that the emperor did then he went straight to the emperor after he announced himself the emperor admitted him into his presence and asked him
+and when you call the sheep out they go thither at once and spread themselves round the lake but whatever shepherd goes off there that shepherd returns back no more therefore my son i tell you
+don't let the sheep have their own way and go where they will but keep them where you will the prince thanked the emperor got himself ready and called out the sheep taking with him more over two hounds that could catch a boar in the open country
+and the hounds and bagpipes under the stump then tucked up his hose and sleeves waded into the lake and began to shout dragon dragon come out to single combat with me to day
+let me go prince that i may moisten my parched head in the lake and toss you to the sky but the prince replied come dragon don't talk nonsense if i had the emperor's daughter to kiss me on the forehead i would toss you still higher
+because he had come whereas previously no shepherd had been able to come from the lake the next day the prince got ready again and went with his sheep straight to the lake but the emperor sent two grooms after him to go stealthily and see what he did
+and they placed themselves on a high hill whence they could have a good view when the shepherd arrived he put the hounds and bagpipes under the stump and the falcon upon it then tucked up his hose and sleeves waded into the lake and shouted dragon dragon
+come out to single combat with me that we may measure ourselves once more together unless you are a woman the dragon replied i will do so prince now now erelong behold the dragon it was large it was terrible
+it was disgusting and it seized him by the waist and wrestled with him a summer's day till afternoon but when the afternoon heat came on the dragon said let me go prince that i may moisten my parched head in the lake and may toss you to the sky
+when night approached the prince drove the sheep as before and went home playing the bagpipes when he arrived at the town the whole town was astir and began to wonder because the shepherd came home every evening which no one had been able to do before
+those two grooms had already arrived at the palace before the prince and related to the emperor in order everything that they had heard and seen now when the emperor saw that the shepherd returned home he immediately summoned his daughter into his presence and told her all
+and i am your only daughter and you don't care about me if i perish then the emperor began to persuade and encourage her don't fear my daughter you see we have had so many changes of shepherds and of all that went out to the lake not one has returned
+so many people when on the morrow the day dawned and the sun came forth up rose the shepherd up rose the maiden too to begin to prepare for going to the lake the shepherd was cheerful more cheerful than ever
+but the emperor's daughter was sad and shed tears the shepherd comforted her lady sister i pray you do not weep but do what i tell you when it is time run up and kiss me and fear not as he went and drove the sheep
+when they arrived at the lake the sheep immediately spread round it and the prince placed the falcon on the stump and the hounds and bagpipes under it then tucked up his hose and sleeves waded into the water and shouted dragon dragon
+the prince replied come dragon don't talk nonsense if i had the emperor's daughter to kiss me on the forehead i would toss you much higher when he said this the emperor's daughter ran up and kissed him on the face on the eye and on the forehead
+then he swung the dragon and tossed it high into the air and when it fell to the ground it burst into pieces but as it burst into pieces out of it sprang a wild boar and started to run away but the prince shouted to his shepherd dogs
+hold it don't let it go and the dogs sprang up and after it caught it and soon tore it to pieces but out of the boar flew a pigeon and the prince loosed the falcon and the falcon caught the pigeon
+cut these three wands up from below and strike with them upon their root an iron door will immediately open into a large vault in that vault are many people old and young rich and poor small and great wives and maidens
+so that you could settle a populous empire there too are your brothers when the pigeon had told him all this the prince immediately wrung its neck the emperor had gone out in person
+he washed himself nicely took the falcon on his shoulder the hounds behind him and the bagpipes under his arm played as he went drove the sheep
+when they came to the town all the town assembled as to see a wonder the emperor who had seen all his heroism from the hill called him into his presence and gave him his daughter went immediately to church had them married and held a wedding festival for a week
+the butterfly's children by missus alfred gatty let me hire you as a nurse for my poor children said a butterfly to a quiet caterpillar who was strolling along a cabbage leaf in her
+who will take care of my baby butterflies when i am gone will you kind mild green caterpillar but you must mind what you give them to eat caterpillar they cannot of course live on your rough food
+you must give them early dew and honey from the flowers and you must let them fly about only a little way at first for of course one can't expect them to use their wings properly all at once
+dear me it is a sad pity you cannot fly yourself but i have no time to look for another nurse now so you will do your best i hope dear dear
+and with these words the butterfly drooped her wings and died and the green caterpillar who had not had the opportunity of even saying yes or no to the request
+was left standing alone by the side of the butterfly's eggs a pretty nurse she has chosen indeed poor lady exclaimed she and a pretty business i have in hand why her senses must have left her
+or she never would have asked a poor crawling creature like me to bring up her dainty little ones much they'll mind me truly when they feel the gay wings on their backs and can fly away out of my sight whenever they choose
+however there lay the eggs on the cabbage leaf and the green caterpillar had a kind heart so she resolved to do her best but she got no sleep that night she was so very anxious
+she made her back quite ache with walking all night round her young charges for fear any harm should happen to them and in the morning says she to herself two heads are better than one
+whom should the caterpillar consult there was the shaggy dog who sometimes came into the garden but he was so rough he would most likely whisk all the eggs off the cabbage leaf with one brush of his tail
+sighed the caterpillar in great distress and then she thought and thought till at last she thought of the lark and she fancied that because he went up so high and nobody knew where he went to
+he must be very clever and know a great deal for to go up very high which she could never do was the caterpillar's idea of perfect glory now in the neighbouring corn field their lived a lark
+and the caterpillar sent a message to him to beg him to come and talk to her and when he came she told him all her difficulties and asked him what she was to do to feed and rear the little creatures so different from herself
+perhaps you will be able to inquire and hear something about it next time you go up high observed the caterpillar timidly the lark said perhaps he should but he did not satisfy her curiosity any further
+soon afterwards however he went singing upwards into the bright blue sky by degrees his voice died away in the distance till the green caterpillar could not hear a sound
+so she resumed her walk round the butterfly's eggs nibbling a bit of the cabbage leaf now and then as she moved along
+i believe everything i am told observed the caterpillar hastily well then first of all i will tell you what these little creatures are to eat what do you think it is to be guess
+dew and the honey out of flowers i am afraid sighed the caterpillar no such thing old lady something simpler than that something that you can get at quite easily
+never said the caterpillar indignantly it was their dying mother's last request that i should do no such thing their dying mother knew nothing about the matter persisted the lark
+but why do you ask me and then disbelieve what i say you have neither faith nor trust oh i believe everything i am told said the caterpillar nay but you do not replied the lark you won't believe me even about the food
+and yet that is but a beginning of what i have to tell you why caterpillar what do you think those little eggs will turn out to be butterflies to be sure said the caterpillar caterpillars sang the lark
+but i find that he is foolish and saucy instead
+i would tell you if you would believe me sang the lark descending once more i believe everything i am told reiterated the caterpillar with as grave a face as if it were a fact
+then i'll tell you something else cried the lark for the best of my news remains behind you will one day be a butterfly yourself wretched bird exclaimed the caterpillar
+you jest with my inferiority now you are cruel as well as foolish
+i will ask your advice no more i told you you would not believe me cried the lark nettled in his turn i believe everything that i am told persisted the caterpillar that is
+i see so many wonderful things i know no reason why there should not be more oh caterpillar it is because you crawl because you never get beyond your cabbage leaf that you call any thing impossible
+as well as you do look at my long green body and these endless legs and then talk to me about having wings and a painted feathery coat fool and fool you cried the indignant lark
+oh caterpillar what comes to you from thence receive as i do
+interrupted the lark how am i to learn faith asked the caterpillar at that moment she felt something at her side she looked round eight or ten little green caterpillars were moving about
+and had already made a show of a hole in the cabbage leaf they had broken from the butterfly's eggs shame and amazement filled our green friend's heart but joy soon followed
+for as the first wonder was possible the second might be so too teach me your lesson lark she would say and the lark sang to her of the wonders of the earth below and of the heaven above
+and the caterpillar talked all the rest of her life to her relations of the time when she should be a butterfly but none of them believed her she nevertheless had learnt the lark's lesson of faith
+and when she was going into her chrysalis grave she said i shall be a butterfly some day but her relations thought her head was wandering and they said poor thing
+and when she was a butterfly and was going to die again she said
+trees but trees there were in plenty they stood everywhere from coast to coast they saw themselves reflected in all the rivers and lakes and stretched their mighty boughs up towards heaven
+we are all oak trees they said we own the land and rule over it and they were right there were only a few human beings there in those days and those that there were were nothing better than wild animals
+the bear the wolf and the fox went out hunting while the stag grazed by the edge of the fen the field mouse sat outside his hole and ate acorns and the beaver built his artistic houses by the river banks
+one day the bear came trudging along and lay down at full breadth under a great oak tree are you there again you robber said the oak and shook a lot of withered leaves down over him you should not squander your leaves my old friend
+said the bear licking his paws that is all the shade you can give against the sun if you are not pleased with me you can go answered the oak proudly
+i am lord in the land and whatever way you look you find my brothers and nothing else true muttered the bear that is just what is so sickening i have been for a little tour abroad i may tell you and am just a little bit spoilt
+it was in a land down towards the south there i took a nap under the beech trees they are tall slim trees not crooked old things like you and their tops are so dense that the sunbeams cannot creep through them
+but i don't want to chatter any more with you just now i have had to trot a mile on account of a confounded hunter who struck me on one of my hind legs with an arrow now i should like to have a sleep
+and perhaps you will be kind enough to leave me at peace since you cannot give me shade the bear stretched himself out and closed his eyes but he got no sleep that time for the other trees had heard his story
+what kind of trees can they be whose leaves sit so close together that the sunbeams cannot creep between them asked a little oak who was listening to what the big ones were talking about but by his side stood an old gnarled tree
+who gave the little oak a clout on the head with one of his lowest boughs hold your tongue he said and don't talk till you have something to talk about you need none of you believe a word of the bear's nonsense
+i will bring some beech nuts with me and i vow you will all turn yellow with jealousy when you see how pretty the new trees are then he made off but the oaks talked the whole day long one to another about the funny trees he had told them about
+if they come i will kill them said the little oak tree but directly afterwards he got one on the head from the old oak if they come you shall treat them politely you young dog said he but they will not come
+but in this the old oak was wrong for they did come towards autumn the bear came back and lay down under the old oak my friends down there wish me to present their compliments he said
+and he picked some funny things out of his shaggy coat here you may see what i have for you what is it asked the oak that is beech answered the bear the beech nuts which i promised you
+they killed my wife and one of my brothers and i must see about finding a place where i can live in peace there is scarcely a spot left where a self respecting bear can stay goodbye you old gnarled oak trees
+the snow lay high over the whole land and every tree stood deep in his own thoughts and dreamt of the spring and when the spring came the grass stood green and the birds began singing where they left off last
+the kings of the wood do not come till the whole company is assembled but at last they came all the leaves burst forth from the swollen buds and the trees looked at one another and complimented one another on their beauty
+and every morning when the sun came out they peeped down to look for the beeches they were really a little uneasy but they were too proud to talk about it and one day the little shoots did at last burst forth from the earth
+the sun shone on them and the rain fell on them so it was not long before they grew tall oh how pretty they are said the great oak and stooped his crooked boughs still more so that they could get a good view of them
+you are welcome among us said the old oak and graciously inclined his head to them you shall be my foster children and be treated just as well as my own thanks said the little beeches
+and they said no more but the little oak could not bear the strange trees it is dreadful the way you shoot up into the air he said in vexation you are already half as tall as i am but i beg you to take notice that i am much older
+and of good family besides the beeches laughed with their little tiny green leaves but said nothing shall i bend my branches a little aside so that the sun can shine better on you the old tree asked politely
+many thanks answered the beeches we can grow very nicely in the shade and the whole summer passed by and another summer after that and still more summers the beeches went on growing
+and at last quite overtopped the little oak keep your leaves to yourself cried the oak you overshadow me and that is what i can't endure i must have plenty of sunshine
+the beeches only laughed and went on growing at last they closed together over the little oak's head and then he died that was a horrid thing to do
+a great oak called out and shook his boughs in terror but the old oak took his foster children under his protection it serves him right he said he is paid out for his boasting
+you begin to be rather pushing the old tree said you should try to grow a little broader and stop this shooting up into the air just see where your branches are soaring
+how will you be able to hold out when a regular storm comes i assure you the wind gives one's head a good shaking my old boughs have creaked many a time and what do you think will become of the flimsy finery that you stick up in the air
+every one has his own manner of growth and we have ours answered the young beeches this is the way it's done where we come from and we are perhaps as good as you are
+that is not a polite way of speaking to an old tree with moss on his boughs said the oak i begin to repent that i was so kind to you if you have a spark of honourable feeling alive in you
+be good enough to move your leaves a little to one side there have been scarcely any buds on my lowest branches this year you overshadow me so i don't quite understand how that concerns us answered the beeches
+every one has quite enough to do to look after himself if he is equal to his work and has luck it turns out well for him if not he must be prepared to go to the wall that is the way of the world
+then the oak's lowest branch died and he began to be seriously alarmed you are pretty things he said if this is the way you reward me for my hospitality when you were little i let you grow at my feet
+and sheltered you against the storm i let the sun shine on you as much as ever he would and i treated you as if you were my own children and in return for all this you stifle me stuff and nonsense
+said the beeches so they put forth flowers and fruit and when the fruit was ripe the wind shook the boughs and scattered it round far and wide you are quick people like me said the wind i like you for it
+and am glad to do you a good turn and the fox rolled on the ground at the foot of the beech trees and got his fur full of the prickly fruits and ran with them far out into the country the bear did the same
+and grinned into the bargain at the old oak while he lay and rested in the shadow of the beeches the field mouse was beside himself with joy over his new food and thought that beech nuts tasted much nicer than acorns
+all round new little beech trees shot up which grew just as fast as their parents and looked as green and as happy as if they did not know what an uneasy conscience was
+but the old oak gazed sadly out over the wood the light green beech leaves were peeping out everywhere and the oaks were sighing and bewailing their distress to one another
+they are taking our strength out of us they said and shook as much as the beeches around would let them the land is ours no longer one bough died after another
+and the storm broke them off and cast them on the ground the old oak had now only a few leaves left at the very top the end is near he said gravely
+by this time there were many more human beings in the land than there were before and they made haste to hew down the oaks while there were still some remaining oak timber is better than beech timber they said
+at last we get a little appreciation said the old oak but we have to pay for it with our lives then he said to the beech trees what was i thinking of when i helped you on in your young days
+what an old stupid i was before that we oak trees were lords in the land and now every year i see my brothers around me perishing in the fight against you it will soon be all over with me
+and not one of my acorns has sprouted under your shade but before i die i should like to know the name you give to such conduct that will not take long to say old friend answered the beeches
+jeff the inquisitive by general rush c hawkins among the gunboats doing duty on the inland waters of north carolina in the early spring of eighteen sixty two
+which composed what commodore goldsborough designated his pasteboard fleet was the louisiana commanded by commander alexander murray who was noted for his efficiency and good nature his treatment of his crew
+made him one of the most popular officers in the whole fleet he entered into all of their sports and sympathized with the discomforts of forecastle life he was fond of animal pets and always welcomed the arrival of a new one
+he was a perfectly black pig of the racer razor back order which at that time were plentiful in the coast sections of the more southern of the slave holding states they were called racers
+because of their long legs slender bodies and great capacity for running and razor backs on account of the prominence of the spinal column the origin of this particular species of the porcine tribe is unknown but there is a tradition to the effect
+possibly while escaping from the prospective mess kettle of a confederate picket in those days confederate pickets were not very particular as to the quality or kind of food and i have a suspicion that even a razor back would have been a welcome addition to their meal
+the doctor was consulted and after a careful diagnosis decided there was no organic disease want of parental care want of nourishment and exposure were held responsible for jeff's unfavorable condition
+it was decided to put him on a light diet of milk which proved an immediate success for within forty eight hours after his first meal the patient became as lively as possible as days and weeks went on
+he attached himself to each individual of the ship he had no favorites but was hail fellow well met with all he developed all the playful qualities of a puppy and reasoned out a number of problems in his own way
+his particular admirers declared that he learned the meaning of the different whistles of the boatswain that he knew when the meal pennant was hoisted to the peak could tell when the crew was beat to quarters for drill
+in this act of courtesy he is always accompanied by the officer of the deck and often by others that may happen to be at hand after the advent of jeff whenever i went on board the louisiana he was always at the gangway
+and seemingly was deeply interested in the event it may be said of him generally that he was overflowing with spirits and took an active interest in all the daily routine work of his ship
+in the gradual development of jeff's character it was discovered that he had none of the usual well known traits of the pig he was more like a petted and pampered dog
+was playful good natured and expressed pleasure pain anger and desire with various squeals and grunts delivered with a variety of intonations that were very easily interpreted
+he was never so happy as when in the lap of one of the sailors having his back stroked his pleasure upon those occasions was evinced by the emission of frequent good natured grunts and looking up into the face of the friendly stroker
+when on shore he followed his favorites like a dog and was never known to root except in speech and appearance he was the counterpart of a happy good natured and well cared for household dog
+possibly however rather more intelligent than the average canine pet the fourth of july eighteen sixty two was a gala day at roanoke island
+was made more glorious by the exchange of camp hospitalities and an indulgence in such simple hilarity as the occasion seemed to require but jeff was not forgotten early in the morning he was bathed and scrubbed
+more than to his heart's content and then patriotically decorated in his right ear was a red ribbon in his left a white one around his neck another of blue
+thus adorned he was brought on shore to pay me a visit and as he came through my door he appeared to be filled with the pride of patriotism and a realization of the greatness of the occasion
+his reward for this unusual demonstration was instantaneous and consisted of some apples and a toothsome dessert of sugar afterward he made the round of the camps with a special escort of warrant officers and devoted jack tars
+he was seen after he had run a few yards to make a great jump and then remain in his tracks the pursuing party found him actively engaged in demolishing a moccasin which he had crushed by jumping and landing with his feet upon its head and back
+hogs of this particular kind are famous snake killers a big rattler or a garter snake is all the same to them they advance to the attack with the greatest impetuosity and a feast upon snake is the usual reward of exceptional bravery
+jeff was a confirmed lover of good eating and in time paid the usual penalty for over indulgence of his very piggish appetite while the meal pennant was up
+it was his habit to go from one fore castle mess to another and to insist upon having rather more than his share of the choice morsels from each in a short time he came to the repair shop very much the worse for wear with an impaired digestion
+and a cuticle that showed unmistakable evidence of scurvy for the first he was put upon short rations for the second sand baths on shore were prescribed
+under this treatment poor jeff lost all his buoyancy of spirits and his habitual friskiness and became sad and dejected but bore his troubles with patience he took to the sand baths at once
+and gave forth many disgruntled grunts when lifted out of them the last time i saw jeff in eighteen sixty two he was buried up to his ears in the cool sands of the roanoke island shore with eyes upturned and looking like a very sad pig
+chapter twenty one why puck the pony was beaten mark robarts returned home the day after the scene at the albany considerably relieved in spirit
+indeed after what mister sowerby had said and after lord lufton's assent to it it would have been madness he considered to decline it and then too mister sowerby's promise about the bills was very comfortable to him after all
+on the day after his return he received proper authentic tidings of his presentation to the prebend he was in fact already prebendary
+the income was already his own
+the enjoyment of one's own happiness at such windfalls depends so much on the free and freely expressed enjoyment of others lady lufton's congratulations had nearly made him throw up the whole thing but his wife's smiles re encouraged him
+and lucy's warm and eager joy made him feel quite delighted with mister sowerby and the duke of omnium and then that splendid animal dandy came home to the parsonage stables much to the delight of the groom and gardener
+which he had bought from mister sowerby some little time since with the object of obliging him he mark intended to sell him again as soon as he could do so judiciously this as i have said above was not satisfactory
+neither of the two ladies at framley parsonage knew much about horses or of the manner in which one gentleman might think it proper to oblige another by purchasing the superfluities of his stable but they did both feel that there were horses enough in the parsonage stable without dandy
+and that the purchasing of a hunter with the view of immediately selling him again was to say the least of it an operation hardly congenial with the usual tastes and pursuits of a clergyman i hope you did not give very much money for him mark said fanny
+not more than i shall get again said mark
+i suppose i shall have to go into residence almost immediately said mark recurring to the more agreeable subject of the stall
+the house will not be furnished will it mark said his wife i don't know how we shall get on don't frighten yourselves i shall take lodgings in barchester and we shall not see you all the time said missus robarts with dismay
+but the prebendary explained that he would be backwards and forwards at framley every week and that in all probability he would only sleep at barchester on the saturdays and sundays and perhaps not always then
+the worst of it is that both of them are obliged to wear wigs shall you have a hat mark with curly things at the side and strings through to hold them up asked lucy i fear that does not come within my perquisites nor a rosette
+it was now the month of april and the fields were beginning to look green and the wind had got itself out of the east and was soft and genial and the early spring flowers were showing their bright colours in the parsonage garden and all things were sweet and pleasant
+went away when the spring came leaving their houses innocent and empty the parish duty was better attended to and perhaps domestic duties also at such period he was a pattern parson and a pattern husband
+atoning to his own conscience for past shortcomings by present zeal and then though she had never acknowledged it to herself the absence of her dear friend lady lufton was perhaps in itself not disagreeable missus robarts did love lady lufton heartily
+indeed just at this moment
+dandy was rather a thorn in his side those wretched bills were to come due early in may and before the end of april sowerby wrote to him saying that he was doing his utmost to provide for the evil day
+but that if the price of dandy could be remitted to him at once it would greatly facilitate his object nothing could be more different than mister sowerby's tone about money at different times when he wanted to raise the wind everything was so important
+haste and superhuman efforts and men running to and fro with blank acceptances in their hands could alone stave off the crack of doom but at other times when retaliatory applications were made to him
+he could prove with the easiest voice and most jaunty manner that everything was quite serene now at this period he was in that mood of superhuman efforts and he called loudly for the hundred and thirty pounds for dandy after what had passed
+mark could not bring himself to say that he would pay nothing till the bills were safe and therefore with the assistance of mister forrest of the bank he did remit the price of dandy to his friend sowerby in london and lucy robarts
+she had declared to him plainly that she did not love him and could not love him and had thus thrown away not only riches and honour and high station but more than that much worse than that she had flung away from her the lover to whose love her warm heart clung
+that her love did cling to him she knew even then and owned more thoroughly as soon as he was gone so much her pride had done for her and that strong resolve that lady lufton should not scowl on her and tell her that she had entrapped her son
+i know it will be said of lord lufton himself that putting aside his peerage and broad acres and handsome sonsy face he was not worth a girl's care and love
+but what would the world come to if none but absolute true heroes were to be thought worthy of women's love what would the men do and what oh what would become of the women
+lucy robarts in her heart did not give her dismissed lover credit for much more heroism than did truly appertain to him did not perhaps give him full credit for a certain amount of heroism which did really appertain to him
+treats herself as a farmer treats his sheep and oxen makes hardly more of herself of her own inner self in which are comprised a mind and soul than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest stage of degradation
+but a title and an estate and an income are matters which will weigh in the balance with all eve's daughters as they do with all adam's sons pride of place and the power of living well in front of the world's eye are dear to us all are doubtless intended to be dear
+the mistress of such a destiny what more or what better could the world have done for her and now she had thrown all that aside because she would not endure that lady lufton should call her a scheming artful girl actuated by that fear she had repulsed him with a falsehood
+though the matter was one on which it was so terribly expedient that she should tell the truth and yet she was cheerful with her brother and sister in law
+it was when she was quite alone at night in her own room or in her solitary walks that a single silent tear would gather in the corner of her eye and gradually moisten her eyelids she never told her love nor did she allow concealment to feed on her damask cheek
+in all her employments in her ways about the house and her accustomed quiet mirth she was the same as ever in this she showed the peculiar strength which god had given her but not the less did she in truth mourn for her lost love and spoiled ambition
+we are going to drive over to hogglestock this morning fanny said one day at breakfast i suppose mark you won't go with us
+the pony carriage is wretched for three oh as for that i should have thought the new horse might have been able to carry you as far as that i heard you say you wanted to see mister crawley so i do and the new horse as you call him shall carry me there to morrow
+will you say that i'll be over about twelve o'clock you had better say earlier as he is always out about the parish very well say eleven it is parish business about which i am going so it need not irk his conscience to stay in for me
+well lucy we must drive ourselves that's all you shall be charioteer going and then we'll change coming back to all which lucy agreed and as soon as their work in the school was over they started
+not a word had been spoken between them about lord lufton since that evening now more than a month ago on which they had been walking together in the garden lucy had so demeaned herself on that occasion
+as to make her sister in law quite sure that there had been no love passages up to that time and nothing had since occurred which had created any suspicion in missus robarts mind she had seen at once that all the close intimacy between them was over and thought that everything was as it should be
+but she did not betray herself perhaps he may she said and then gave the pony a little touch with her whip oh lucy i won't have puck beaten he was going very nicely i beg puck's pardon
+but you see when one is trusted with a whip one feels such a longing to use it oh but you should keep it still i feel almost certain that lady lufton would like such a match i daresay she might miss grantly will have a large fortune i believe
+and then she is quiet and reserved she does not require excitement and i am sure is conscientious in the performance of her duties very conscientious i have no doubt said lucy with something like a sneer in her tone but the question i suppose is
+whether lord lufton likes her i think he does in a sort of way he did not talk to her so much as he did to you ah that was all lady lufton's fault because she didn't have him properly labelled
+oh by god's mercy very little as for me i shall get over it in three or four years i don't doubt that's if i can get ass's milk and change of air we'll take you to barchester for that but as i was saying i really do think lord lufton likes griselda grantly
+then i really do think that he has uncommon bad taste said lucy with a reality in her voice differing much from the tone of banter she had hitherto used what lucy said her sister in law looking at her
+there is i believe nothing in her mentally whatever may be her moral excellences to me she is more absolutely like a statue than any other human being i ever saw to sit still and be admired is all that she desires and if she cannot get that
+to sit still and not be admired would almost suffice for her i do not worship lady lufton as you do but i think quite well enough of her to wonder that she should choose such a girl as that for her son's wife that she does wish it i do not doubt
+but i shall indeed be surprised if he wishes it also and then as she finished her speech lucy again flogged the pony this she did in vexation because she felt that the tell tale blood had suffused her face why lucy
+if he were your brother you could not be more eager about it no i could not he is the only man friend with whom i was ever intimate and i cannot bear to think that he should throw himself away it's horridly improper to care about such a thing i have no doubt
+i shall not be satisfied it's no use your looking at me fanny you will make me talk of it and i won't tell a lie on the subject i do like lord lufton very much and i do dislike griselda grantly almost as much
+therefore i shall not be satisfied if they become man and wife however
+there was then nothing more said on the subject and in two minutes they arrived at the house of the hogglestock clergyman missus crawley had brought two children with her when she came from the cornish curacy to hogglestock and two other babies had been added to her cares since then
+one of these was now ill with croup and it was with the object of offering to the mother some comfort and solace that the present visit was made the two ladies got down from their carriage having obtained the services of a boy to hold puck and soon found themselves in missus crawley's single sitting room
+which they knew it would be impossible to introduce in mister crawley's presence she as we have said was not quite so gaunt not altogether so haggard as in the latter of those dreadful cornish days lady lufton and missus arabin between them
+and the scanty comfort of their improved though still wretched income had done something towards bringing her back to the world in which she had lived in the soft days of her childhood but even the liberal stipend of a hundred and thirty pounds a year
+liberal according to the scale by which the incomes of clergymen in some of our new districts are now apportioned would not admit of a gentleman with his wife and four children living with the ordinary comforts of an artisan's family
+as regards the mere eating and drinking the amounts of butcher's meat and tea and butter they of course were used in quantities which any artisan would have regarded as compatible only with demi starvation better clothing for her children was necessary and better clothing for him
+as for her own raiment the wives of few artisans would have been content to put up with missus crawley's best gown the stuff of which it was made had been paid for by her mother when she with much difficulty bestowed upon her daughter her modest wedding trousseau
+lucy had never seen missus crawley these visits to hogglestock were not frequent and had generally been made by lady lufton and missus robarts together
+almost as penniless as the curate himself then they would walk together for hours along the rock bound shore listening to the waves discussing deep polemical mysteries sometimes with hot fury then again with tender loving charity
+but always with a mutual acknowledgment of each other's truth now they lived comparatively near together but no opportunities arose for such discussions at any rate once a quarter mister crawley was pressed by his old friend to visit him at the deanery
+and doctor arabin had promised that no one else should be in the house if mister crawley objected to society but this was not what he wanted the finery and grandeur of the deanery and the comfort of that warm snug library would silence him at once
+then old days would have come back to them but now arabin always rides on a sleek fine horse now a days he once said to his wife with a sneer
+at the end of the last chapter we left lucy robarts waiting for an introduction to missus crawley who was sitting with one baby in her lap while she was rocking another who lay in a cradle at her feet mister crawley in the meanwhile had risen from his seat with his finger between the leaves of an old grammar
+for she had work of this kind of her own at home which she by no means neglected though the attendance of nurses was more plentiful with her than at hogglestock missus crawley did get up and told lucy that she was glad to see her and mister crawley came forward grammar in hand looking humble and meek
+the realities of life had become so stern to her that the outward aspects of them were as nothing she would have liked a new gown because it would have been useful but it would have been nothing to her if all the county knew that the one in which she went to church had been turned three times
+it galled him however to think that he and his were so poorly dressed i am afraid you can hardly find a chair miss robarts said mister crawley
+moving a pile of ragged coverless books on to the table i hope he'll forgive me for moving them they are not bob's at least not the most of them but mine said the girl but some of them are mine said the boy ain't they grace
+and are you a great scholar asked lucy drawing the child to her i don't know said grace with a sheepish face i am in greek delectus and the irregular verbs greek delectus and the irregular verbs and lucy put up her hands with astonishment
+and she knows an ode of horace all by heart said bob an ode of horace said lucy still holding the young shamefaced female prodigy close to her knees it is all that i can give them said mister crawley apologetically
+a little scholarship is the only fortune that has come in my way and i endeavour to share that with my children i believe men say that it is the best fortune any of us can have said lucy thinking however in her own mind
+that horace and the irregular greek verbs savoured too much of precocious forcing in a young lady of nine years old but nevertheless grace was a pretty simple looking girl and clung to her ally closely and seemed to like being fondled
+so that lucy anxiously wished that mister crawley could be got rid of and the presents produced i hope you have left mister robarts quite well said mister crawley with a stiff ceremonial voice
+yes i have heard of it said mister crawley gravely i hope that his promotion may tend in every way to his advantage here and hereafter it seemed however to be manifest from the manner in which he expressed his kind wishes
+that his hopes and expectations did not go hand in hand together by the by he desired us to say that he will call here to morrow at about eleven didn't he say fanny yes
+looking up for a moment from the anxious discussion in which she was already engaged with missus crawley on nursery matters pray tell him said mister crawley that i shall be happy to see him
+his new duties do not disturb him much as yet said lucy and his riding over here will be no trouble to him yes there he has the advantage over me i unfortunately have no horse
+and then lucy began petting the little boy and by degrees slipped a small bag of gingerbread nuts out of her muff into his hands she had not the patience necessary for waiting as had her sister in law the boy took the bag peeped into it and then looked up into her face
+what is that bob said mister crawley gingerbread faltered bobby feeling that a sin had been committed though probably feeling also that he himself could hardly as yet be accounted as deeply guilty miss robarts said the father we are very much obliged to you
+but our children are hardly used to such things
+oh certainly bob my child
+and then the bag in a solemn manner was carried over to their mother who taking it from her son's hands laid it high on a bookshelf and not one now said lucy robarts very piteously don't be so hard mister crawley not upon them but upon me
+this was very discouraging to lucy if one small bag of gingerbread nuts created so great a difficulty how was she to dispose of the pot of guava jelly and box of bonbons which were still in her muff or how distribute the packet of oranges with which the pony carriage was laden
+and there was jelly for the sick child and chicken broth which was indeed another jelly and to tell the truth openly there was also a joint of fresh pork and a basket of eggs from the framley parsonage farmyard which missus robarts was to introduce should she find herself capable of doing so
+but which would certainly be cast out with utter scorn by mister crawley if tendered in his immediate presence there had also been a suggestion as to adding two or three bottles of port but the courage of the ladies had failed them on that head and the wine was not now added to their difficulties
+lucy found it very difficult to keep up a conversation with mister crawley the more so as missus robarts and missus crawley presently withdrew into a bedroom taking the two younger children with them how unlucky thought lucy that she has not got my muff with her
+but the muff lay in her lap ponderous with its rich enclosures i suppose you will live in barchester for a portion of the year now said mister crawley i really do not know as yet mark talks of taking lodgings for his first month's residence
+mark thinks that as he is so near he need not be much absent from framley even during his residence and then lady lufton is so good about the schools ah yes but lady lufton is not a clergyman miss robarts
+it was on lucy's tongue to say that her ladyship was pretty nearly as bad but she stopped herself at this moment providence sent great relief to miss robarts in the shape of missus crawley's red armed maid of all work who walking up to her master
+whispered into his ear that he was wanted it was the time of day at which his attendance was always required in his parish school and that attendance being so punctually given those who wanted him looked for him there at this hour and if he were absent did not scruple to send for him
+miss robarts i am afraid you must excuse me said he getting up and taking his hat and stick lucy begged that she might not be at all in the way and already began to speculate how she might best unload her treasures
+and then stick in hand he walked forth and lucy fancied that bobby's eyes immediately rested on the bag of gingerbread nuts bob said she almost in a whisper
+i have left a book behind me he said and coming back through the room he took up the well worn prayer book which accompanied him in all his wanderings through the parish bobby when he saw his father had retreated a few steps back as also did grace who to confess the truth
+had been attracted by the sound of sugar plums in spite of the irregular verbs and lucy withdrew her hand from her muff and looked guilty was she not deceiving the good man nay teaching his own children to deceive him
+but there are men made of such stuff that an angel could hardly live with them without some deceit papa's gone now whispered bobby i saw him turn round the corner he at any rate had learned his lesson as it was natural that he should do
+some one else also had learned that papa was gone for while bob and grace were still counting the big lumps of sugar candy each employed the while for inward solace with an inch of barley sugar the front door opened and a big basket and a bundle done up in a kitchen cloth
+i did venture to bring them said fanny with a look of shame for i know how a sick child occupies the whole house ah my friend said missus crawley taking hold of missus robarts arm and looking into her face that sort of shame is over with me
+god has tried us with want and for my children's sake i am glad of such relief but will he be angry i will manage it dear missus robarts you must not be surprised at him his lot is sometimes very hard to bear
+such things are so much worse for a man than for a woman fanny was not quite prepared to admit this in her own heart but she made no reply on that head i am sure i hope we may be able to be of use to you she said if you will only look upon me as an old friend and write to me if you want me
+to feel herself so different from the wives of other clergymen around her to know that they lived softly while she with all the work of her hands and unceasing struggle of her energies could hardly manage to place wholesome food before her husband and children it was a terrible thing a grievous thing to think of
+that all the work of her mind should be given up to such subjects as these but nevertheless she could bear it she said as long as he would carry himself like a man and face his lot boldly before the world and then she told how he had been better there at hogglestock than in their former residence down in cornwall
+missus arabin told me that she was so anxious you should go to them said missus robarts ah yes but that i fear is impossible the children you know missus robarts
+oh no i could not punish you for your goodness in that way but he would not go he could go and leave me at home sometimes i have thought that it might be so and i have done all in my power to persuade him i have told him that if he could mix once more with the world with the clerical world you know
+that he would be better fitted for the performance of his own duties but he answers me angrily that it is impossible that his coat is not fit for the dean's table and missus crawley almost blushed as she spoke of such a reason what with an old friend like doctor arabin
+but what can i do i fear that he regards the rich as his enemies he is pining for the solace of some friend to whom he could talk for some equal with a mind educated like his own to whose thoughts he could listen and to whom he could speak his own thoughts
+but such a friend must be equal not only in mind but in purse and where can he ever find such a man as that but you may get better preferment ah no and if he did we are hardly fit for it now if i could think that i could educate my children
+if i could only do something for my poor grace in answer to this missus robarts said a word or two but not much she resolved however that if she could get her husband's leave something should be done for grace
+and was it not incumbent on her to make some kindly use of all the goods with which providence had blessed herself and then they went back to the sitting room each again with a young child in her arms
+lucy had been engaged the while with the children and when the two married ladies entered they found that a shop had been opened at which all manner of luxuries were being readily sold and purchased at marvellously easy prices the guava jelly was there and the oranges and the sugar plums red and yellow and striped
+and moreover the gingerbread had been taken down in the audacity of their commercial speculations and the nuts were spread out upon a board behind which lucy stood as shop girl disposing of them for kisses mamma mamma said bobby running up to his mother you must buy something of her
+and he pointed with his fingers at the shop girl you must give her two kisses for that heap of barley sugar looking at bobby's mouth at the time one would have said that his kisses might be dispensed with when they were again in the pony carriage behind the impatient puck and were well away from the door
+fanny was the first to speak how very different those two are she said different in their minds and in their spirit but how much higher toned is her mind than his how weak he is in many things and how strong she is in everything
+how false is his pride and how false his shame but we must remember what he has to bear it is not every one that can endure such a life as his without false pride and false shame but she has neither said lucy
+because you have one hero in a family does that give you a right to expect another said missus robarts of all my own acquaintance missus crawley i think comes nearest to heroism and then they passed by the hogglestock school and mister crawley when he heard the noise of the wheels came out
+some disorder had surely crept into the course of the elements destroying their benignant influence the wind prince of air raged through his kingdom lashing the sea into fury
+and subduing the rebel earth into some sort of obedience the god sends down his angry plagues from high famine and pestilence in heaps they die again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
+on their great hosts and breaks their tottering walls arrests their navies on the ocean's plain and whelms their strength with mountains of the main
+their deadly power shook the flourishing countries of the south and during winter even we in our northern retreat began to quake under their ill effects
+that fable is unjust which gives the superiority to the sun over the wind who has not seen the lightsome earth the balmy atmosphere and basking nature become dark cold
+and ungenial when the sleeping wind has awoke in the east or when the dun clouds thickly veil the sky
+until the dank earth refusing to imbibe the superabundant moisture it lies in pools on the surface when the torch of day seems like a meteor to be quenched
+who has not seen the cloud stirring north arise the streaked blue appear and soon an opening made in the vapours in the eye of the wind through which the bright azure shines
+the clouds become thin an arch is formed for ever rising upwards till the universal cope being unveiled the sun pours forth its rays re animated and fed by the breeze
+then mighty art thou o wind to be throned above all
+whether thou comest destroying from the east or pregnant with elementary life from the west thee the clouds obey the sun is subservient to thee the shoreless
+ocean is thy slave thou sweepest over the earth and oaks the growth of centuries submit to thy viewless axe the snow drift is scattered on the pinnacles of the alps
+the avalanche thunders down their vallies thou holdest the keys of the frost and canst first chain and then set free the streams under thy gentle governance the buds and leaves are born
+they flourish nursed by thee why dost thou howl thus o wind by day and by night for four long months thy roarings have not ceased the shores of the sea are strewn with wrecks
+the earth has shed her beauty in obedience to thy command the frail balloon dares no longer sail on the agitated air thy ministers the clouds deluge the land with rain
+rivers forsake their banks the wild torrent tears up the mountain path plain and wood and verdant dell are despoiled of their loveliness
+our very cities are wasted by thee alas what will become of us it seems as if the giant waves of ocean and vast arms of the sea were about to wrench the deep rooted island from its centre and cast it
+a ruin and a wreck upon the fields of the atlantic what are we the inhabitants of this globe least among the many that people infinite space our minds embrace infinity
+of our being is subject to merest accident day by day we are forced to believe this he whom a scratch has disorganized he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us
+had the same powers as i i
+in the face of all this we call ourselves lords of the creation wielders of the elements masters of life and death and we allege in excuse of this arrogance that though the individual is destroyed
+man continues for ever thus losing our identity that of which we are chiefly conscious we glory in the continuity of our species and learn to regard death without terror
+but when any whole nation becomes the victim of the destructive powers of exterior agents then indeed man shrinks into insignificance he feels his tenure of life insecure
+his inheritance on earth cut off i remember after having witnessed the destructive effects of a fire i could not even behold a small one in a stove without a sensation of fear
+the mounting flames had curled round the building as it fell and was destroyed they insinuated themselves into the substances about them
+and the impediments to their progress yielded at their touch could we take integral parts of this power and not be subject to its operation could we domesticate a cub of this wild beast
+and not fear its growth and maturity thus we began to feel with regard to many visaged death let loose on the chosen districts of our fair habitation
+and above all with regard to the plague we feared the coming summer nations bordering on the already infected countries began to enter upon serious plans for the better keeping out of the enemy
+we a commercial people were obliged to bring such schemes under consideration and the question of contagion became matter of earnest disquisition
+that the plague was not what is commonly called contagious like the scarlet fever or extinct small pox was proved it was called an epidemic but the grand question
+was still unsettled of how this epidemic was generated and increased if infection depended upon the air the air was subject to infection
+has been brought by ships to one sea port town yet the very people who brought it there were incapable of communicating it in a town more fortunately situated but how are we to judge of airs
+and pronounce in such a city plague will die unproductive in such another nature has provided for it a plentiful harvest
+in the same way individuals may escape ninety nine times and receive the death blow at the hundredth because bodies are sometimes
+these reflections made our legislators pause before they could decide on the laws to be put in force the evil was so wide spreading so violent and immedicable that no care no prevention could be judged superfluous
+which even added a chance to our escape these were questions of prudence there was no immediate necessity for an earnest caution england was still secure france
+germany italy and spain were interposed walls yet without a breach between us and the plague our vessels truly were the sport of winds and waves even as gulliver
+brobdignagians but we on our stable abode could not be hurt in life or limb by these eruptions of nature we could not fear we did not yet a feeling of awe
+a breathless sentiment of wonder a painful sense
+degradation of humanity was introduced into every heart nature our mother and our friend had turned on us a brow of menace she shewed us plainly that though she permitted us to assign her laws and subdue her apparent powers
+we must quake she could take our globe
+and all that man's mind could invent or his force achieve she could take the ball in her hand and cast it into space where life would be drunk up and man and all his efforts for ever annihilated
+these speculations were rife among us yet not the less we proceeded in our daily occupations and our plans whose accomplishment demanded the lapse of many years no voice was heard telling us to hold
+when foreign distresses came to be felt by us through the channels of commerce we set ourselves to apply remedies subscriptions were made for the emigrants and merchants bankrupt by the failure of trade
+the english spirit awoke to its full activity and as it had ever done set itself to resist the evil and to stand in the breach which diseased nature had suffered chaos and death to make
+in the bounds and banks which had hitherto kept them out at the commencement of summer we began to feel that the mischief which had taken place in distant countries was greater than we had at first suspected
+quito was destroyed by an earthquake mexico laid waste by the united effects of storm pestilence and famine crowds of emigrants inundated the west of europe
+and our island had become the refuge of thousands in the mean time
+he had sought this office with eagerness under the idea of turning his whole forces to the suppression of the privileged orders of our community
+at length forbade a recourse to the usual modes of relief trade was stopped by the failure of the interchange of cargoes usual between us and america india egypt and greece
+in vain our protector and his partizans sought to conceal this truth in vain day after day he appointed a period for the discussion of the new laws concerning hereditary rank and privilege
+in vain he endeavoured to represent the evil as partial and temporary these disasters came home to so many bosoms and through the various channels of commerce were carried so
+entirely into every class and division of the community that of necessity they became the first question in the state the chief subjects to which we must turn our attention
+can it be true each asked the other with wonder and dismay that whole countries are laid waste whole nations annihilated by these disorders in nature the vast cities of america the fertile plains of
+hindostan the crowded abodes of the chinese are menaced with utter ruin where late the busy multitudes assembled for pleasure or profit
+now only the sound of wailing and misery is heard the air is empoisoned and each human being inhales death even while in youth and health their hopes are in the flower
+we called to mind the plague of thirteen forty eight when it was calculated that a third of mankind had been destroyed as yet western europe was uninfected would it always be so
+o yes it would countrymen fear not in the still uncultivated wilds of america what wonder that among its other giant destroyers plague should be numbered
+it would expire in these climes it drinks the dark blood of the inhabitant of the south but it never feasts on the pale faced celt if
+perchance some stricken asiatic
+plague dies with him uncommunicated and innoxious let us weep for our brethren though we can never experience their reverse
+let us lament over and assist the children of the garden of the earth late we envied their abodes their spicy groves fertile plains and abundant loveliness but in this mortal life extremes are always matched
+the thorn grows with the rose the poison tree and the cinnamon mingle their boughs
+marble halls and infinite wealth is now a tomb the tent of the arab is fallen in the sands and his horse spurns the ground unbridled and unsaddled the voice of lamentation fills the valley of cashmere
+its dells and woods its cool fountains and gardens of roses are polluted by the dead in circassia and georgia the spirit of beauty weeps over the ruin of its favourite temple the form of woman
+our own distresses though they were occasioned by the fictitious reciprocity of commerce encreased in due proportion bankers merchants and manufacturers
+whose trade depended on exports and interchange of wealth became bankrupt such things when they happen singly affect only the immediate parties but the prosperity of the nation was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses
+families bred in opulence and luxury were reduced to beggary the very state of peace in which we gloried was injurious there were no means of employing the idle
+even the source of colonies was dried up for in new holland
+and the cape of good hope plague raged
+and bring back the earth to its accustomed health
+at the multitude of evils that gathered round us must he tax the landed interest to assist our commercial population to do this he must gain the favour of the chief land holders the nobility of the country
+and these were his vowed enemies he must conciliate them by abandoning his favourite scheme of equalization he must confirm them
+he must sell his cherished plans for the permanent good of his country for temporary relief he must aim no more at the dear object of his ambition
+throwing his arms aside he must for present ends give up the ultimate object of his endeavours he came to windsor to consult with us every day added to his difficulties
+the arrival of fresh vessels with emigrants the total cessation of commerce the starving multitude that thronged around the palace of the protectorate were circumstances not to be tampered with
+the blow was struck the aristocracy obtained all they wished and they subscribed to a twelvemonths bill which levied twenty per cent on all the rent rolls of the country
+calm was now restored to the metropolis and to the populous cities before driven to desperation and we returned to the consideration of distant calamities wondering if the future would bring any alleviation
+to their excess it was august so there could be small hope of relief during the heats on the contrary
+while starvation did its accustomed work thousands died unlamented for beside the yet warm corpse the mourner was stretched made mute by death
+on the eighteenth of this month news arrived in london that the plague was in france and italy these tidings were at first whispered about town but no one dared express aloud the soul quailing intelligence
+when any one met a friend in the street he only cried as he hurried on you know while the other with an ejaculation of fear and horror would answer
+what will become of us at length it was mentioned in the newspapers the paragraph was inserted in an obscure part we regret to state
+that there can be no longer a doubt of the plague having been introduced at leghorn genoa and marseilles no word of comment followed
+we were as a man who hears that his house is burning and yet hurries through the streets borne along by a lurking hope of a mistake
+and sees his sheltering roof enveloped in a flame before it had been a rumour but now in words uneraseable in definite and undeniable print the knowledge went forth
+its obscurity of situation rendered it the more conspicuous the diminutive letters grew gigantic to the bewildered eye of fear they seemed graven
+with a pen of iron impressed by fire woven in the clouds stamped on the very front of the universe the english
+whether travellers or residents came pouring in one great revulsive stream back on their own country and with them crowds of italians and spaniards
+our little island was filled even to bursting at first an unusual quantity of specie made its appearance with the emigrants but these people had no means of receiving back into their hands what they spent among us
+rents were unpaid and their remittances failed them it was impossible to see these crowds of wretched perishing creatures late nurslings of luxury
+and not stretch out a hand to save them as at the conclusion of the eighteenth century the english unlocked their hospitable store for the relief of those driven from their homes by political revolution
+so now they were not backward in affording aid to the victims of a more wide spreading calamity we had many foreign friends whom we eagerly sought out and relieved from dreadful penury
+our castle became an asylum for the unhappy a little population occupied its halls the revenue of its possessor which had always found a mode of expenditure congenial to his generous nature
+was now attended to more parsimoniously that it might embrace a wider portion of utility it was not however money except partially but the necessaries of life
+that became scarce it was difficult to find an immediate remedy the usual one of imports was entirely cut off in this emergency to feed the very people to whom we had given refuge we were obliged to yield to the plough
+our pleasure grounds and parks live stock diminished sensibly in the country from the effects of the great demand in the market even the poor deer our antlered proteges
+were obliged to fall for the sake of worthier pensioners the labour necessary to bring the lands to this sort of culture employed and fed the offcasts of the diminished manufactories
+adrian did not rest only with the exertions he could make with regard to his own possessions he addressed himself to the wealthy of the land he made proposals in parliament little adapted to please the rich
+earnest pleadings and benevolent eloquence were irresistible to give up their pleasure grounds to the agriculturist to diminish sensibly the number of horses kept for the purposes of luxury throughout the country
+yet to the honour of the english be it recorded that although natural
+made them delay awhile yet when the misery of their fellow creatures became glaring an enthusiastic generosity inspired their decrees
+the most luxurious were often the first to part with their indulgencies as is common in communities a fashion was set the high born ladies of the country would have deemed themselves disgraced
+if they had now enjoyed what they before called a necessary the ease of a carriage chairs as in olden time and indian palanquins were introduced for the infirm
+but else it was nothing singular to see females of rank going on foot to places of fashionable resort it was more common for all who possessed landed property to secede to their estates
+attended by whole troops of the indigent to cut down their woods to erect temporary dwellings and to portion out their parks parterres and flower gardens
+to necessitous families many of these of high rank in their own countries now with hoe in hand turned up the soil it was found necessary at last
+to check the spirit of sacrifice and to remind those whose generosity proceeded to lavish waste that until the present state of things became permanent of which there was no likelihood
+so far as to make a reaction difficult experience demonstrated that in a year or two pestilence would cease it were well that in the mean time
+we should not have destroyed our fine breeds of horses or have utterly changed the face of the ornamented portion of the country
+the infection had now spread in the southern provinces of france but that country had so many resources in the way of agriculture
+and its increase through foreign emigration was less felt than with us the panic struck appeared of more injury than disease and its natural
+concomitants winter was hailed a general and never failing physician
+were welcomed with gratitude the effects of purifying cold were immediately felt and the lists of mortality abroad were
+many of our visitors left us those whose homes were far in the south fled delightedly from our northern winter and sought their native land secure of plenty even after their fearful
+visitation we breathed again
+he said speaking of the ship she went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick the illustration was good the questions were aiming at facts
+and the official inquiry was being held in the police court of an eastern port he stood elevated in the witness box with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room
+the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces out of white faces out of red faces out of faces attentive spellbound
+as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice it was very loud it rang startling in his own ears it was the only sound audible in the world
+for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast came to him poignant and silent
+outside the court the sun blazed within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver the shame that made you burn the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed the face of the presiding magistrate
+clean shaved and impassible looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors the light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men
+as if facts could explain anything after you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash say a water logged wreck you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done
+looking at jim with thoughtful blue eyes the other a heavy scornful man thrown back in his seat his left arm extended full length drummed delicately with his finger tips on a blotting pad in the middle the magistrate
+i was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic i thought the precaution reasonable i took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward after opening the forepeak hatch i heard splashing in there
+his fingers played incessantly touching the paper without noise i did not think of danger just then i might have been a little startled all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly
+i knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold i went back to tell the captain i came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge ladder he seemed dazed and
+told me he thought his left arm was broken he had slipped on the top step when getting down while i was forward he exclaimed my god that rotten bulkhead'll give way in a minute
+he did not strike him again he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low
+stop the engines instead of making a row about it on deck i heard him say get up run fly he swore also the engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine room companion
+which was on the port side he moaned as he ran he spoke slowly he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men
+who wanted facts after his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things
+the facts those men were so eager to know had been visible tangible open to the senses occupying their place in space and time requiring for their existence a fourteen hundred ton steamer
+perdition that dwelt within like a malevolent soul in a detestable body he was anxious to make this clear this had not been a common affair everything in it had been of the utmost importance
+and fortunately he remembered everything he wanted to go on talking for truth's sake perhaps for his own sake also and while his utterance was deliberate his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts
+he seemed calm enough only he stumbled several times and once as i stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had been stone blind he made no definite answer to what i had to tell
+felt a shiver run down his back the big assessor had dropped his eyelids and drummed on without a sound careless and mournful the eyes of the other above the sunburnt clasped fingers
+the magistrate had swayed forward
+he rested his temple in the palm of his hand the wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads on the dark faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies on the europeans sitting together very hot
+and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins and holding their round pith hats on their knees while gliding along the walls the court peons buttoned tight in long white coats flitted rapidly to and fro
+rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others with his face worn and clouded but with quiet eyes that glanced straight interested and clear jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out
+what's the good of this what's the good he tapped with his foot slightly bit his lip and looked away over the heads he met the eyes of the white man the glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others
+it was an act of intelligent volition jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought this fellow ran the thought looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder
+he had come across that man before in the street perhaps he was positive he had never spoken to him for days for many days he had spoken to no one but had held silent incoherent and endless converse with himself
+like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness at present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived
+the sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer that man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty jim looked at him then turned away
+and audibly perhaps it would be after dinner on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar ends the elongated bulk of each cane chair
+harboured a silent listener now and then a small red glow would move abruptly and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand part of a face in profound repose or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes
+overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead and with the very first word uttered marlow's body extended at rest in the seat would become very still as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time
+at his back was the dark night with the clear stars whose distant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured the eye into the depths of a greater darkness
+and yet a mysterious light seemed to show me his boyish head as if in that moment the youth within him had for a moment glowed and expired you are an awful good sort to listen
+like this he said it does me good you don't know what it is to me you don't words seemed to fail him it was a distinct glimpse he was a youngster of the sort you like to see about you
+of the sort you like to imagine yourself to have been of the sort whose appearance claims the fellowship of these illusions you had thought gone out extinct cold and which as if rekindled at the approach of another flame
+you don't know what it is for a fellow in my position to be believed make a clean breast of it to an elder man it is so difficult so awfully unfair so hard to understand
+the mists were closing again i don't know how old i appeared to him and how much wise not half as old as i felt just then not half as uselessly wise as i knew myself to be
+surely in no other craft as in that of the sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink or swim go out so much to the youth on the brink looking with shining eyes upon that
+glitter of the vast surface which is only a reflection of his own glances full of fire there is such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea such a glorious indefiniteness
+such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward what we get well we won't talk of that but can one of us restrain a smile
+in no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality in no other is the beginning all illusion the disenchantment more swift the subjugation more complete
+hadn't we all commenced with the same desire ended with the same knowledge carried the memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of imprecation what wonder that when some
+heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the strength of a wider feeling the feeling that binds a man to a child he was there before me believing that
+and he had been deliberating upon death confound him he had found that to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life while all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night what more natural
+and his voice spoke i was so lost you know it was the sort of thing one does not expect to happen to one it was not like a fight for instance
+he appeared changed as if he had suddenly matured one couldn't be sure he muttered ah you were not sure i said
+and was placated by the sound of a faint sigh that passed between us like the flight of a bird in the night well i wasn't he said courageously it was something like that wretched story they made up it was not a lie
+but it wasn't truth all the same it was something one knows a downright lie there was not the thickness of a sheet of paper between the right and the wrong of this affair
+how much more did you want i asked but i think i spoke so low that he did not catch what i said he had advanced his argument as though life had been a network of
+his voice sounded reasonable suppose i had not i mean to say suppose i had stuck to the ship well how much longer say a minute half a minute
+i interjected i would have meant to be he retorted and that's more than i meant when i he shivered as if about to swallow some nauseous drug jumped
+he pronounced with a convulsive effort whose stress as if propagated by the waves of the air made my body stir a little in the chair he fixed me with lowering eyes don't you believe me he cried i swear
+i ought to have known i am i am a gentleman too yes yes i said hastily he was looking me squarely in the face and withdrew his gaze slowly
+now you understand why i didn't after all didn't go out in that way i wasn't going to be frightened at what i had done and anyhow if i had stuck to the ship i would have done my best to be saved
+men have been known to float for hours in the open sea and be picked up not much the worse for it i might have lasted it out better than many others there's nothing the matter with my heart
+a hair's breadth he muttered not the breadth of a hair between this and that and at the time it is difficult to see a hair at midnight i put in
+a little viciously i fear don't you see what i mean by the solidarity of the craft i was aggrieved against him as though he had cheated me
+keep up the illusion of my beginnings as though he had robbed our common life of the last spark of its glamour and so you cleared out at once jumped he corrected me incisively jumped mind
+he repeated and i wondered at the evident but obscure intention well yes perhaps i could not see then but i had plenty of time and any amount of light in that boat and i could think too
+nobody would know of course but this did not make it any easier for me you've got to believe that too i did not want all this talk no yes i won't lie
+i wanted it it is the very thing i wanted there do you think you or anybody could have made me if i i am i am not afraid to tell and i wasn't afraid to think either i looked it in the face
+i wasn't going to run away at first at night if it hadn't been for those fellows i might have no by heavens i was not going to give them that satisfaction they had done enough they made up a story and believed it for all i know
+but i knew the truth and i would live it down alone with myself i wasn't going to give in to such a beastly unfair thing what did it prove after all i was confoundedly cut up sick of life
+no the proper thing was to face it out alone for myself wait for another chance
+chapter two after two years of training he went to sea and entering the regions so well known to his imagination found them strangely barren of adventure he made many voyages
+he knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water he had to bear the criticism of men the exactions of the sea and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work
+the edge of his temper and the fibre of his stuff that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences not only to others but also to himself
+there are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man
+that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice with a strength beyond control with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear
+the sunshine the memories the future which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life jim
+disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his scottish captain used to say afterwards man it's a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it spent many days stretched on his back dazed battered hopeless
+and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest he did not care what the end would be and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference the danger when not seen has the imperfect vagueness of human thought
+he lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck but now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily
+and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost then fine weather returned and he thought no more about it
+his lameness however persisted and when the ship arrived at an eastern port he had to go to the hospital his recovery was slow and he was left behind
+afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease who held the doctor for an ass and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion they told each other the story of their lives
+played cards a little or yawning and in pyjamas lounged through the day in easy chairs without saying a word the hospital stood on a hill and a gentle breeze entering through the windows always flung wide open
+brought into the bare room the softness of the sky the languor of the earth the bewitching breath of the eastern waters there were perfumes in it suggestions of infinite repose the gift of endless dreams
+jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens beyond the roofs of the town over the fronds of palms growing on the shore at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the east at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets
+lighted by festal sunshine its ships like toys its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant with the eternal serenity of the eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the eastern seas
+he associated naturally with the men of his calling in the port these were of two kinds some very few and seen there but seldom led mysterious lives
+had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers they appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans hopes dangers enterprises ahead of civilisation in the dark places of the sea
+had remained as officers of country ships they had now a horror of the home service with its harder conditions severer view of duty and the hazard of stormy oceans they were attuned to the eternal peace of eastern sky and sea
+how this one had an easy billet in japan somewhere and that one was doing well in the siamese navy and in all they said in their actions in their looks in their persons could be detected the soft spot the place of decay
+the determination to lounge safely through existence to jim that gossiping crowd viewed as seamen seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows but at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men
+in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil in time beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment and suddenly giving up the idea of going home
+she was owned by a chinaman chartered by an arab and commanded by a sort of renegade new south wales german very anxious to curse publicly his native country but who apparently on the strength of bismarck's victorious policy
+brutalised all those he was not afraid of and wore a blood and iron air combined with a purple nose and a red moustache after she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside eight hundred pilgrims more or less
+they streamed aboard over three gangways they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet without a word a murmur or a look back
+and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck flowed forward and aft overflowed down the yawning hatchways filled the inner recesses of the ship like water filling a cistern
+like water flowing into crevices and crannies like water rising silently even with the rim eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes with affections and memories they had collected there
+coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the east after treading the jungle paths descending the rivers coasting in praus along the shallows crossing in small canoes from island to island passing through suffering
+meeting strange sights beset by strange fears upheld by one desire they came from solitary huts in the wilderness from populous campongs from villages by the sea at the call of an idea
+they had left their forests their clearings the protection of their rulers their prosperity their poverty the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers they came covered with dust with sweat with grime with rags
+the strong men at the head of family parties the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously shy little girls with tumbled long hair
+the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts wrapped in loose ends of soiled head cloths their sleeping babies the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief
+said the german skipper to his new chief mate an arab the leader of that pious voyage came last he walked slowly aboard handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban a string of servants followed loaded with his luggage
+and on the secret purposes of their hearts the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the strait and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw pile lighthouse planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal seemed to wink at her
+its eye of flame as if in derision of her errand of faith she cleared the strait crossed the bay continued on her way through the one degree passage she held on straight for the red sea under a serene sky
+enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought oppressed the heart withered all impulses of strength and energy and under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea blue and profound remained still without a stir
+without a ripple without a wrinkle viscous stagnant dead the patna with a slight hiss passed over that plain luminous and smooth unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky
+glided past on his descent and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows the five whites on board lived amidships isolated from the human cargo
+the awnings covered the deck with a white roof from stem to stern and a faint hum a low murmur of sad voices alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the ocean
+such were the days still hot heavy disappearing one by one into the past as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship and the ship lonely under a wisp of smoke
+held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity
+it would be a little hard to blame the rector of pennicote that in the course of looking at things from every point of view he looked at gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage
+why should he be expected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter and wish his niece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would approve as the best possible
+it is rather to be set down to his credit that his feelings on the subject were entirely good natured and in considering the relation of means to ends it would have been mere folly to have been guided by the exceptional and idyllic
+in order that a marquis might fall in love with her or to have insisted that since a fair maiden was to be sought she should keep herself out of the way mister gascoigne's calculations were of the kind called rational
+and he did not even think of getting a too frisky horse in order that gwendolen might be threatened with an accident and be rescued by a man of property he wished his niece well and he meant her to be seen to advantage in the best society of the neighborhood
+her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with gwendolen's own wishes but let no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage as the direct end of her witching the world with her grace on horseback or with any other accomplishment
+that she was to be married some time or other she would have felt obliged to admit and that her marriage would not be of a middling kind such as most girls were contented with she felt quietly unargumentatively sure
+but her thoughts never dwelt on marriage as the fulfillment of her ambition the dramas in which she imagined herself a heroine were not wrought up to that close to be very much sued or hopelessly sighed for as a bride was indeed
+an indispensable and agreeable guarantee of womanly power but to become a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that condition was on the whole a vexatious necessity her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state
+in which a woman could not do what she liked had more children than were desirable was consequently dull and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum of course marriage was social promotion
+she could not look forward to a single life but promotions have sometimes to be taken with bitter herbs a peerage will not quite do instead of leadership to the man who meant to lead and this delicate limbed sylph of twenty meant to lead
+for such passions dwell in feminine breasts also in gwendolen's however they dwelt among strictly feminine furniture and had no disturbing reference to the advancement of learning or the balance of the constitution
+her knowledge being such as with no sort of standing room or length of lever could have been expected to move the world she meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner
+and to have their lives blown hither and thither like empty ships in which no will was present it was not to be so with her she would no longer be sacrificed to creatures worth less than herself
+but would make the very best of the chances that life offered her and conquer circumstances by her exceptional cleverness
+the archery club and invitations to dine with the arrowpoints as the highest lights in her scenery was not a position that seemed to offer remarkable chances but gwendolen's confidence lay chiefly in herself
+she felt well equipped for the mastery of life with regard to much in her lot hitherto she held herself rather hardly dealt with but as to her education she would have admitted that it had left her under no disadvantages
+in the school room her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness
+and what remained of all things knowable she was conscious of being sufficiently acquainted with through novels plays and poems about her french and music the two justifying accomplishments of a young lady she felt no ground for uneasiness
+and when to all these qualifications negative and positive we add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy persons are born with so that any subject they turn their attention to impresses them with their own power of forming a correct judgment on it
+who can wonder if gwendolen felt ready to manage her own destiny there were many subjects in the world perhaps the majority in which she felt no interest because they were stupid
+for subjects are apt to appear stupid to the young as light seems dull to the old but she would not have felt at all helpless in relation to them if they had turned up in conversation it must be remembered that no one had disputed her power or her general superiority
+what will gwendolen think if the footman trod heavily in creaking boots or if the laundress's work was unsatisfactory the maid said this will never do for miss harleth
+if the wood smoked in the bedroom fireplace missus davilow whose own weak eyes suffered much from this inconvenience spoke apologetically of it to gwendolen
+if when they were under the stress of traveling she did not appear at the breakfast table till every one else had finished the only question was how gwendolen's coffee and toast should still be of the hottest and crispest
+it was always she herself who had to be tolerant to beg that alice who sat waiting on her would not stick up her shoulders in that frightful manner and that isabel instead of pushing up to her and asking questions would go away to miss merry
+always she was the princess in exile who in time of famine was to have her breakfast roll made of the finest bolted flour from the seven thin ears of wheat and in a general decampment was to have her silver fork kept out of the baggage
+how was this to be accounted for the answer may seem to lie quite on the surface in her beauty a certain unusualness about her
+a decision of will which made itself felt in her graceful movements and clear unhesitating tones so that if she came into the room on a rainy day when everybody else was flaccid and the use of things in general was not apparent to them
+there seemed to be a sudden sufficient reason for keeping up the forms of life and even the waiters at hotels showed the more alacrity in doing away with crumbs and creases and dregs with struggling flies in them
+this potent charm added to the fact that she was the eldest daughter toward whom her mamma had always been in an apologetic state of mind for the evils brought on her by a step father may seem so full a reason for gwendolen's domestic empire
+that to look for any other would be to ask the reason of daylight when the sun is shining but beware of arriving at conclusions without comparison
+whose firmness showed itself in no very graceful or euphonious way and who were not eldest daughters with a tender timid mother compunctious at having subjected them to inconveniences
+some of them were a very common sort of men and the only point of resemblance among them all was a strong determination to have what was pleasant with a total fearlessness in making themselves disagreeable or dangerous when they did not get it
+the fear and the fondness being perhaps both heightened by what may be called the iridescence of her character the play of various nay contrary tendencies
+for macbeth's rhetoric about the impossibility of being many opposite things in the same moment referred to the clumsy necessities of action and not to the subtler possibilities of feeling we cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent
+we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment
+all things are changes not into nothing but into that which is not at present marcus aurelius
+deeds are the pulse of time his beating life and righteous or unrighteous being done must throb in after throbs till time itself be laid in darkness
+and the universe quiver and breathe upon no mirror more in the evening she sent for him again it was already near the hour at which she had been brought in from the sea the evening before
+and the light was subdued enough with blinds drawn up and windows open she was seated gazing fixedly on the sea resting her cheek on her hand looking less shattered than when he had left her but with a deep melancholy in her expression
+which as deronda approached her passed into an anxious timidity she did not put out her hand but said how long ago it is then will you sit near me again a little while
+and again turned with the same expression which yet did not issue in speech there was some fear hindering her and deronda wishing to relieve her timidity averted his face
+presently he heard her cry imploringly you will not say that any one else should know most decidedly not said deronda there is no action that ought to be taken in consequence
+but if i had not had that murderous will that moment if i had thrown the rope on the instant perhaps it would have hindered death no i think not said deronda slowly
+if it were true that he could swim he must have been seized with cramp with your quickest utmost effort it seems impossible that you could have done anything to save him
+that momentary murderous will cannot i think have altered the course of events its effect is confined to the motives in your own breast within ourselves our evil will is momentous
+and sooner or later it works its way outside us it may be in the vitiation that breeds evil acts but also it may be in the self abhorrence that stings us into better striving i am saved from robbing others
+she spoke hesitatingly i had not thought of them said deronda i was thinking too much of the other things perhaps you don't quite know the beginning of it all said gwendolen slowly as if she were overcoming her reluctance
+there was some one else he ought to have married and i knew it and i told her i would not hinder it and i went away that was when you first saw me
+but then we became poor all at once and i was very miserable and i was tempted i thought i shall do as i like and make everything right i persuaded myself and it was all different it was all dreadful
+then came hatred and wicked thoughts that was how it all came i told you i was afraid of myself
+if you did not know how miserable i was you might but now it has all been no use i can care for nothing but saving the rest from knowing poor mamma
+worth anything worthy enough i shall always be too wicked to the voice broke off helpless deronda's heart was pierced he turned his eyes on her poor beseeching face and said
+i believe that you may become worthier than you have ever yet been worthy to lead a life that may be a blessing no evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love and desire to continue in
+and make no effort to escape from you have made efforts you will go on making them but you were the beginning of them you must not forsake me said gwendolen leaning with her clasped hands on the arm of her chair and looking at him
+while her face bore piteous traces of the life experience concentrated in the twenty four hours that new terrible life lying on the other side of the deed which fulfills a criminal desire i will bear any penance
+i will lead any life you tell me but you must not forsake me you must be near if you had been near me if i could have said everything to you i should have been different you will not forsake me
+it could never be my impulse to forsake you said deronda promptly with that voice which like his eyes had the unintentional effect of making his ready sympathy seem more personal and special than it really was
+and in that moment he was not himself quite free from a foreboding of some such self committing effect his strong feeling for this stricken creature could not hinder rushing images of future difficulty
+to an indefinite hope anxieties both immediate and distant crowded on his thought and it was under their influence that after a moment's silence he said
+and i am not without hope that missus davilow may shortly follow him her presence will be the greatest comfort to you it will give you a motive to save her from unnecessary pain yes yes i will try and you will not go away
+not till after sir hugo has come but we shall all go to england as soon as possible said deronda not wishing to enter into particulars
+gwendolen looked toward the window again with an expression which seemed like a gradual awakening to new thoughts the twilight was perceptibly deepening
+or else at diplow i am quite uncertain where i shall live said deronda coloring she was warned by his changed color that she had spoken too rashly and fell silent
+when you are among your friends again you will discern new duties said deronda make it a task now to get as well and calm as much like yourself as you can before he hesitated
+before my mother comes said gwendolen ah i must be changed i have not looked at myself should you have known me she added turning toward him if you had met me now
+should you have known me for the one you saw at leubronn yes i should have known you said deronda mournfully the outside change is not great i should have seen at once that it was you and that you had gone through some great sorrow
+don't wish now that you had never seen me don't wish that said gwendolen imploringly while the tears gathered i should despise myself for wishing it said deronda how could i know what i was wishing
+we must find our duties in what comes to us not in what we imagine might have been if i took to foolish wishing of that sort i should wish not that i had never seen you but that i had been able to save you from this
+you have saved me from worse said gwendolen in a sobbing voice
+it will be better for me to go now said deronda worn in spirit by the perpetual strain of this scene remember what we said of your task to get well and calm before other friends come
+he rose as he spoke and she gave him her hand submissively but when he had left her she sank on her knees in hysterical crying the distance between them was too great
+beholding a possible life which she had sinned herself away from
+chapter twelve o gentlemen the time of life is short to spend that shortness basely were too long if life did ride upon a dial's point still ending at the arrival of an hour shakespeare
+on the second day after the archery meeting mister henleigh mallinger grandcourt was at his breakfast table with mister lush everything around them was agreeable
+the still life in the room which seemed the stiller for its sober antiquated elegance as if it kept a conscious well bred silence unlike the restlessness of vulgar furniture whether the gentlemen were agreeable to each other was less evident
+mister grandcourt had drawn his chair aside so as to face the lawn and with his left leg over another chair and his right elbow on the table was smoking a large cigar while his companion was still eating the dogs
+gave a vacillating preference first to one gentleman then to the other being dogs in such good circumstances that they could play at hunger and liked to be served with delicacies which they declined to put in their mouths all except fetch
+the beautiful liver colored water spaniel which sat with its forepaws firmly planted and its expressive brown face turned upward watching grandcourt with unshaken constancy
+he held in his lap a tiny maltese dog with a tiny silver collar and bell and when he had a hand unused by cigar or coffee cup it rested on this small parcel of animal warmth
+grandcourt looked at her with unchanged face for half a minute and then took the trouble to lay down his cigar while he lifted the unimpassioned fluff close to his chin and gave it caressing pats all the while gravely watching fetch
+who poor thing whimpered interruptedly as if trying to repress that sign of discontent and at last rested her head beside the appealing paw looking up with piteous beseeching so at least a lover of dogs must have interpreted fetch
+and grandcourt kept so many dogs that he was reputed to love them at any rate his impulse to act just in that way started from such an interpretation but when the amusing anguish burst forth in a howling bark
+that the brute of a cigar required relighting fetch having begun to wail found like others of her sex that it was not easy to leave off indeed the second howl was a louder one and the third was like unto it
+turn out that brute will you said grandcourt to lush without raising his voice or looking at him as if he counted on attention to the smallest sign and lush immediately rose lifted fetch though she was rather heavy
+shall you ride or drive to quetcham to day i am not going to quetcham you did not go yesterday grandcourt smoked in silence for half a minute and then said
+i suppose you sent my card and inquiries i went myself at four and said you were sure to be there shortly they would suppose some accident prevented you from fulfilling the intention especially if you go to day
+silence for a couple of minutes then grandcourt said what men are invited here with their wives
+then there are mister hollis and lady flora and the cushats and the gogoffs rather a ragged lot remarked grandcourt after a while why did you ask the gogoffs
+grandcourt like many others had two remarkably different voices hitherto we have heard him speaking in a superficial interrupted drawl suggestive chiefly of languor
+and one of your damned musicians but not a comic fellow i wonder if klesmer would consent to come to us when he leaves quetcham nothing but first class music will go down with miss arrowpoint
+lush spoke carelessly but he was really seizing an opportunity and fixing an observant look on grandcourt who now for the first time turned his eyes toward his companion but slowly and without speaking until he had given two long luxuriant puffs
+when he said perhaps in a lower tone than ever but with a perceptible edge of contempt what in the name of nonsense have i to do with miss arrowpoint and her music
+you need not give yourself much trouble perhaps but some forms must be gone through before a man can marry a million very likely but i am not going to marry a million
+that's a pity to fling away an opportunity of this sort and knock down your own plans your plans i suppose you mean you have some debts you know and things may turn out inconveniently after all
+and the daughter's looks and manners require no allowances any more than if she hadn't a sixpence she is not beautiful but equal to carrying any rank and she is not likely to refuse such prospects as you can offer her
+perhaps not the father and mother would let you do anything you like with them but i should not like to do anything with them here it was lush who made a little pause before speaking again
+and then he said in a deep voice of remonstrance good god grandcourt after your experience will you let a whim interfere with your comfortable settlement in life spare your oratory i know what i am going to do
+what lush put down his cigar and thrust his hands into his side pockets as if he had to face something exasperating but meant to keep his temper i am going to marry the other girl
+have you fallen in love this question carried a strong sneer i am going to marry her you have made her an offer already then no she is a young lady with a will of her own i fancy
+extremely well fitted to make a rumpus she would know what she liked she doesn't like you said grandcourt with the ghost of a smile perfectly true said lush adding again in a markedly sneering tone
+however if you and she are devoted to each other that will be enough grandcourt took no notice of this speech but sipped his coffee rose and strolled out on the lawn all the dogs following him
+lush glanced after him a moment then resumed his cigar and lit it but smoked slowly consulting his beard with inspecting eyes and fingers till he finally stroked it with an air of having arrived at some conclusion and said in a subdued voice
+check old boy lush being a man of some ability had not known grandcourt for fifteen years without learning what sort of measures were useless with him though what sort might be useful remained often dubious
+in the beginning of his career he held a fellowship and was near taking orders for the sake of a college living but not being fond of that prospect accepted instead the office of traveling companion to a marquess and afterward to young grandcourt
+who had lost his father early and who found lush so convenient that he had allowed him to become prime minister in all his more personal affairs the habit of fifteen years had made grandcourt more and more in need of lush's handiness
+and lush more and more in need of the lazy luxury to which his transactions on behalf of grandcourt made no interruption worth reckoning i cannot say that the same lengthened habit had intensified grandcourt's want of respect for his companion
+since that want had been absolute from the beginning but it had confirmed his sense that he might kick lush if he chose only he never did choose to kick any animal because the act of kicking is a compromising attitude
+and a gentleman's dogs should be kicked for him he only said things which might have exposed himself to be kicked if his confidant had been a man of independent spirit
+but what son of a vicar who has stinted his wife and daughters of calico in order to send his male offspring to oxford can keep an independent spirit when he is bent on dining with high discrimination riding good horses
+living generally in the most luxuriant honey blossomed clover and all without working mister lush had passed for a scholar once and had still a sense of scholarship when he was not trying to remember much of it
+since in his own opinion he had never done a bad action it did not seem necessary to consider whether he should be likely to commit one if his love of ease required it lush's love of ease was well satisfied at present
+and if his puddings were rolled toward him in the dust he took the inside bits and found them relishing
+friday was a comfortable day in the household of king everybody was in good humour the story girl sparkled through several tales that ranged from the afrites and jinns of eastern myth through the piping days of chivalry down to the homely anecdotes of carlisle workaday folks
+she was in turn an oriental princess behind a silken veil the bride who followed her bridegroom to the wars of palestine disguised as a page the gallant lady who ransomed her diamond necklace by dancing a coranto
+with a highwayman on a moonlit heath and buskirk's girl who joined the sons and daughters of temperance just to see what was into it and in each impersonation she was so thoroughly the thing impersonated
+cecily and sara ray found a sweet new knitted lace pattern in an old magazine
+chancing accidentally i vow to overhear certain of these secrets i learned that sara ray had named an apple for johnny price and cecily true's you live there was eight seeds in it and you know eight means they both love
+while cecily admitted that willy fraser had written on his slate and showed it to her if you love me as i love you no knife can cut our love in two but sara ray never you breathe this to a living soul
+cecily how old must we be before we can have a real beau but sara always denied it so i am inclined to believe felix simply made it up himself paddy distinguished himself by catching a rat
+and being intolerably conceited about it until sara ray cured him by calling him a dear sweet cat and kissing him between the ears then pat sneaked abjectly off his tail drooping
+very few cats have and most of them have such an inordinate appetite for flattery that they will swallow any amount of it and thrive thereon paddy had a finer taste the story girl and i were the only ones who could pay him compliments to his liking
+the story girl would box his ears with her fist and say bless your gray heart paddy you're a good sort of old rascal and pat would purr his satisfaction i used to take a handful of the skin on his back shake him gently and say
+pat you've forgotten more than any human being ever knew and i vow paddy would lick his chops with delight but to be called a sweet cat oh sara sara
+felicity tried and had the most gratifying luck with a new and complicated cake recipe a gorgeous compound
+the number of eggs she used in it would have shocked aunt janet's thrifty soul but that cake like beauty was its own excuse uncle roger ate three slices of it at tea time and told felicity she was an artist
+the poor man meant it as a compliment but felicity who knew uncle blair was an artist and had a poor opinion of such fry looked indignant and retorted indeed she wasn't
+i'd like to sighed felicity but we'd come home tired and with all the milking to do you boys better go alone peter and i will attend to the milking for one evening said uncle roger you can all go
+i have an idea that a raspberry pie for to morrow night when the folks come home would hit the right spot accordingly after tea we all set off armed with jugs and cups felicity thoughtful creature also took a small basketful of jelly cookies along with her
+a pretty walk through a world of green whispering boughs and spice sweet ferns and shifting patches of sunlight the raspberries were plentiful
+then we foregathered around a tiny wood spring cold and pellucid under its young maples and ate the jelly cookies and the story girl told us a tale of a haunted spring in a mountain glen where a fair white lady dwelt
+who pledged all comers in a golden cup with jewels bright and if you drank of the cup with her said the story girl her eyes glowing through the emerald dusk about us you were never seen in the world again you were whisked straightway to fairyland and lived there with a fairy bride
+i think there is such a place in spite of uncle edward said the story girl dreamily and i think there is a way of getting there too if we could only find it
+one bitter day when they seek it
+and that is the tragedy of life on that day the gates of eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day only a few who remain children at heart can ever find that fair lost path again
+they and only they can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles the world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story tellers
+as we sat there the awkward man passed by with his gun over his shoulder and his dog at his side he did not look like an awkward man there in the heart of the maple woods
+he strode along right masterfully and lifted his head with the air of one who was monarch of all he surveyed the story girl kissed her fingertips to him with the delightful audacity which was a part of her
+you'd understand why if you ever saw him at a party or a picnic said felicity trying to pass plates and dropping them whenever a woman looked at him they say it's pitiful to see him i must get well acquainted with that man next summer said the story girl
+if i put it off any longer it will be too late i'm growing so fast aunt olivia says i'll have to wear ankle skirts next summer if i begin to look grown up he'll get frightened of me and then i'll never find out the golden milestone mystery
+do you think he'll ever tell you who alice is i asked i have a notion who alice is already said the mysterious creature but she would tell us nothing more when the jelly cookies were all eaten it was high time to be moving homeward
+and the precincts of a possibly enchanted spring when we reached the foot of the orchard and entered it through a gap in the hedge it was the magical mystical time of between lights off to the west was a daffodil glow hanging over the valley of lost sunsets
+and i got back about fifteen minutes ago i set down on the front door steps for a moment and all at once i heard a bell ring in the house eight times i tell you i was skeered i made a bolt for the orchard and you won't catch me going near that house till your uncle roger comes home
+there we stood in a huddled demoralized group oh what an eerie place that orchard was what shadows what noises
+well here's the key go and see for yourself said peter felicity had no intention of going and seeing i think you boys ought to go she said retreating behind the defence of sex you ought to be braver than girls
+somebody killed or something like that you know nothing like that ever happened in our family the kings have always been respectable perhaps it is emily
+king's ghost whispered felix she never appeared anywhere but in the orchard said the story girl oh oh children isn't there something under uncle alec's tree we peered fearfully through the gloom there was something something that wavered and fluttered advanced retreated
+that's only my old apron said felicity i hung it there to day when i was looking for the white hen's nest oh what shall we do uncle roger may not be back for hours i can't believe there's anything in the house maybe it's only peg bowen suggested dan
+there was not a great deal of comfort in this we were almost as much afraid of peg bowen as we would be of any spectral visitant peter scoffed at the idea peg bowen wasn't in the house before your uncle roger locked it up and how could she get in afterwards he said
+no it isn't peg bowen it's something that walks i know a story about a ghost said the story girl the ruling passion strong even in extremity it is about a ghost with eyeholes but no eyes
+don't cried cecily hysterically don't you go on don't you say another word i can't bear it don't you the story girl didn't but she had said enough
+all at once something leaped from the bough of a tree and alighted before us we split the air with a simultaneous shriek
+he struggled out of my clasp and disappeared over the long grasses with soundless leaps
+he was a strange furtive animal a questing beast presently the moon rose but this only made matters worse the shadows had been still before now they moved and danced as the night wind tossed the boughs the old house with its dreadful secret
+was white and clear against the dark background of spruces we were woefully tired but we could not sit down because the grass was reeking with dew the family ghost only appears in daylight said the story girl
+i know he'll laugh at us awful but it's better to be laughed at than scared like this uncle roger did not come until nearly ten never was there a more welcome sound than the rumble of his wheels in the lane
+we ran to the orchard gate and swarmed across the yard just as uncle roger alighted at the front door he stared at us in the moonlight
+there's no use asking the meaning of this i suppose said uncle roger with the calm of despair i've gave up trying to fathom you young ones peter where's the key what yarn have you been telling
+uncle roger unlocked and flung open the front door as he did so clear and sweet rang out ten bell like chimes
+we had to wait until uncle roger stopped laughing before we heard the explanation we thought he never would stop
+and now it has almost frightened you poor little monkeys to death we heard uncle roger chuckling all the way to the barn
+i was so frightened i wouldn't mind if he'd laugh once and have it done with it
+i shall tell it too i don't care if the joke is as much on myself as any one a story is a story no matter who it's on but it is hateful to be laughed at and grown ups always do it i never will when i'm grown up i'll remember better
+it's all peter's fault said felicity i do think he might have had more sense than to take a clock striking for a bell ringing
+it don't sound a bit like other clocks
+i wouldn't have said the story girl honestly i thought it was a bell when i heard it and the door open too let us be fair felicity
+but it was over two hours since we had eaten the cookies and felicity suggested that a saucerful apiece
+missus allen said catherine the next morning will there be any harm in my calling on miss tilney today i shall not be easy till i have explained everything go by all means my dear only put on a white gown miss tilney always wears white
+catherine cheerfully complied and being properly equipped was more impatient than ever to be at the pump room that she might inform herself of general tilney's lodgings for though she believed they were in milsom street she was not certain of the house
+and missus allen's wavering convictions only made it more doubtful to milsom street she was directed and having made herself perfect in the number hastened away with eager steps and a beating heart to pay her visit explain her conduct and be forgiven
+tripping lightly through the church yard and resolutely turning away her eyes that she might not be obliged to see her beloved isabella and her dear family who she had reason to believe were in a shop hard by she reached the house without any impediment looked at the number
+and with a look which did not quite confirm his words said he had been mistaken for that miss tilney was walked out catherine with a blush of mortification left the house she felt almost persuaded that miss tilney was at home and too much offended to admit her
+and as she retired down the street could not withhold one glance at the drawing room windows in expectation of seeing her there
+at the bottom of the street however she looked back again and then not at a window but issuing from the door she saw miss tilney herself she was followed by a gentleman whom catherine believed to be her father and they turned up towards edgar's buildings
+catherine in deep mortification proceeded on her way she could almost be angry herself at such angry incivility but she checked the resentful sensation she remembered her own ignorance she knew not how such an offence as hers might be classed by the laws of worldly politeness
+to what a degree of unforgivingness it might with propriety lead nor to what rigours of rudeness in return it might justly make her amenable dejected and humbled she had even some thoughts of not going with the others to the theatre that night
+for she soon recollected in the first place that she was without any excuse for staying at home and in the second
+to the theatre accordingly they all went no tilneys appeared to plague or please her she feared that amongst the many perfections of the family a fondness for plays was not to be ranked but perhaps it was because they were habituated to the finer performances of the london stage
+on the beginning of the fifth however the sudden view of mister henry tilney and his father joining a party in the opposite box recalled her to anxiety and distress the stage could no longer excite genuine merriment no longer keep her whole attention
+every other look upon an average was directed towards the opposite box and for the space of two entire scenes did she thus watch henry tilney without being once able to catch his eye no longer could he be suspected of indifference for a play
+his notice was never withdrawn from the stage during two whole scenes
+and forced him to hear her explanation feelings rather natural than heroic possessed her instead of considering her own dignity injured by this ready condemnation instead of proudly resolving in conscious innocence
+to show her resentment towards him who could harbour a doubt of it to leave to him all the trouble of seeking an explanation and to enlighten him on the past only by avoiding his sight or flirting with somebody else she took to herself all the shame of misconduct
+or at least of its appearance and was only eager for an opportunity of explaining its cause the play concluded the curtain fell henry tilney was no longer to be seen where he had hitherto sat but his father remained
+and perhaps he might be now coming round to their box she was right in a few minutes he appeared
+you must have thought me so rude but indeed it was not my own fault was it missus allen did not they tell me that mister tilney and his sister were gone out in a phaeton together and then what could i do but i had ten thousand times rather have been with you
+my dear you tumble my gown was missus allen's reply her assurance however standing sole as it did was not thrown away it brought a more cordial more natural smile into his countenance
+and he replied in a tone which retained only a little affected reserve we were much obliged to you at any rate for wishing us a pleasant walk after our passing you in argyle street you were so kind as to look back on purpose
+but indeed i did not wish you a pleasant walk i never thought of such a thing but i begged mister thorpe so earnestly to stop i called out to him as soon as ever i saw you now missus allen did not oh you were not there but indeed i did and if mister thorpe would only have stopped
+i would have jumped out and run after you is there a henry in the world who could be insensible to such a declaration henry tilney at least was not with a yet sweeter smile he said everything that need be said of his sister's concern regret
+and dependence on catherine's honour oh do not say miss tilney was not angry cried catherine because i know she was for she would not see me this morning when i called i saw her walk out of the house the next minute after my leaving it i was hurt but i was not affronted
+perhaps you did not know i had been there i was not within at the time but i heard of it from eleanor and she has been wishing ever since to see you to explain the reason of such incivility but perhaps i can do it as well it was nothing more than that my father
+and he being hurried for time and not caring to have it put off made a point of her being denied that was all i do assure you
+and meant to make her apology as soon as possible catherine's mind was greatly eased by this information yet a something of solicitude remained from which sprang the following question thoroughly artless in itself though rather distressing to the gentleman but mister tilney
+why were you less generous than your sister if she felt such confidence in my good intentions and could suppose it to be only a mistake why should you be so ready to take offence me i take offence
+nay i am sure by your look when you came into the box you were angry i angry i could have no right well nobody would have thought you had no right who saw your face he replied by asking her to make room for him and talking of the play he remained with them some time
+and was only too agreeable for catherine to be contented when he went away before they parted however it was agreed that the projected walk should be taken as soon as possible and setting aside the misery of his quitting their box
+she was upon the whole left one of the happiest creatures in the world while talking to each other
+was engaged in conversation with general tilney
+what could they have to say of her she feared general tilney did not like her appearance she found it was implied in his preventing her admittance to his daughter rather than postpone his own walk a few minutes how came mister thorpe to know your father was her anxious inquiry
+as she pointed them out to her companion he knew nothing about it but his father like every military man
+when the entertainment was over thorpe came to assist them in getting out catherine was the immediate object of his gallantry and while they waited in the lobby for a chair he prevented the inquiry which had travelled from her heart almost to the tip of her tongue by asking
+in a consequential manner whether she had seen him talking with general tilney he is a fine old fellow upon my soul stout active looks as young as his son i have a great regard for him i assure you
+know him there are few people much about town that i do not know i have met him forever at the bedford and i knew his face again today the moment he came into the billiard room one of the best players we have by the by and we had a little touch together though i was almost afraid of him at first
+the odds were five to four against me and if i had not made one of the cleanest strokes that perhaps ever was made in this world i took his ball exactly but i could not make you understand it without a table however i did beat him a very fine fellow as rich as a jew
+lowering his voice well done general said i i am quite of your mind
+elinor saw with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend his visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction
+while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect it was evident that he was unhappy she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of inspiring
+but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one
+he joined her and marianne in the breakfast room the next morning before the others were down and marianne who was always eager to promote their happiness as far as she could soon left them to themselves but before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour door open
+as you are not yet ready for breakfast
+this was a subject which ensured marianne's attention and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of these scenes
+when edward interrupted her by saying you must not enquire too far marianne remember i have no knowledge in the picturesque and i shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars
+which ought to be irregular and rugged and distant objects out of sight which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere you must be satisfied with such admiration as i can honestly give i call it a very fine country
+the hills are steep the woods seem full of fine timber
+i can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories grey moss and brush wood but these are all lost on me i know nothing of the picturesque
+i am afraid it is but too true said marianne but why should you boast of it i suspect said elinor that to avoid one kind of affectation edward here falls into another because he believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really feel
+and is disgusted with such pretensions he affects greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses he is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own it is very true said marianne that admiration of landscape scenery
+is become a mere jargon every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was i detest jargon of every kind and sometimes i have kept my feelings to myself
+because i could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning i am convinced said edward that you really feel all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess to feel
+but in return your sister must allow me to feel no more than i profess i like a fine prospect but not on picturesque principles i do not like crooked twisted blasted trees i admire them much more if they are tall straight and flourishing
+i do not like ruined tattered cottages i am not fond of nettles or thistles or heath blossoms i have more pleasure in a snug farm house than a watch tower
+marianne looked with amazement at edward with compassion at her sister
+till a new object suddenly engaged her attention she was sitting by edward and in taking his tea from missus dashwood his hand passed so directly before her as to make a ring with a plait of hair in the centre very conspicuous on one of his fingers
+but i should have thought her hair had been darker marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt but when she saw how much she had pained edward her own vexation at her want of thought could not be surpassed by his
+he coloured very deeply and giving a momentary glance at elinor replied yes it is my sister's hair the setting always casts a different shade on it you know elinor had met his eye and looked conscious likewise
+that the hair was her own she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as marianne the only difference in their conclusions was that what marianne considered as a free gift from her sister elinor was conscious must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself
+she was not in a humour however to regard it as an affront and affecting to take no notice of what passed by instantly talking of something else she internally resolved henceforward to catch every opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself beyond all doubt
+that it was exactly the shade of her own edward's embarrassment lasted some time and it ended in an absence of mind still more settled he was particularly grave the whole morning marianne severely censured herself for what she had said
+before the middle of the day they were visited by sir john and missus jennings who having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the cottage came to take a survey of the guest with the assistance of his mother in law sir john was not long in discovering
+that the name of ferrars began with an f and this prepared a future mine of raillery against the devoted elinor which nothing but the newness of their acquaintance with edward could have prevented from being immediately sprung
+but as it was she only learned from some very significant looks how far their penetration founded on margaret's instructions extended sir john never came to the dashwoods without either inviting them to dine at the park the next day or to drink tea with them that evening
+on the present occasion for the better entertainment of their visitor towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute he wished to engage them for both you must drink tea with us to night said he
+missus jennings enforced the necessity and who knows but you may raise a dance said she and that will tempt you miss marianne a dance cried marianne impossible who is to dance who why yourselves and the careys and whitakers to be sure
+what you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be nameless is gone i wish with all my soul cried sir john that willoughby were among us again this and marianne's blushing gave new suspicions to edward
+and who is willoughby said he in a low voice to miss dashwood by whom he was sitting she gave him a brief reply
+edward saw enough to comprehend not only the meaning of others but such of marianne's expressions as had puzzled him before and when their visitors left them he went immediately round her and said in a whisper i have been guessing shall i tell you my guess
+what do you mean shall i tell you certainly well then i guess that mister willoughby hunts marianne was surprised and confused yet she could not help smiling at the quiet archness of his manner and after a moment's silence said
+hope i am sure you will like him
+chapter thirteen somebody runs away school is done now we'll have fun sung bab and betty
+tired teacher had dismissed them for eight whole weeks and gone away to rest the little school house was shut up lessons were over spirits rising fast and vacation had begun the quiet town seemed suddenly inundated with children
+all in such a rampant state that busy mothers wondered how they ever should be able to keep their frisky darlings out of mischief thrifty fathers planned how they could bribe the idle hands to pick berries or rake hay and the old folks
+while wishing the young folks well secretly blessed the man who invented schools the girls immediately began to talk about picnics and have them too for little hats sprung up in the fields like a new sort of mushroom
+every hillside bloomed with gay gowns looking as if the flowers had gone out for a walk and the woods were full of featherless birds chirping away as blithely as the thrushes robins and wrens
+the boys took to base ball like ducks to water and the common was the scene of tremendous battles waged with much tumult but little bloodshed to the uninitiated it appeared as if these young men had lost their wits
+for no matter how warm it was there they were tearing about in the maddest manner jackets off sleeves rolled up queer caps flung on any way all batting shabby leather balls and catching the same
+as if their lives depended on it every one talking in his gruffest tone bawling at the top of his voice squabbling over every point of the game and seeming to enjoy himself immensely in spite of the heat dust uproar
+and imminent danger of getting eyes or teeth knocked out thorny was an excellent player but not being strong enough to show his prowess he made ben his proxy and sitting on the fence acted as umpire to his heart's content
+ben was a promising pupil and made rapid progress for eye foot and hand had been so well trained that they did him good service now and brown was considered a first rate catcher
+and guarding jackets when not needed with the air of one of the old guard on duty at the tomb of napoleon bab also longed to join in the fun which suited her better than stupid picnics or fussing over dolls
+but her heroes would not have her at any price and she was obliged to content herself with sitting by thorny and watching with breathless interest the varying fortunes of our side a grand match was planned for the fourth of july but when the club met
+unpropitious thorny had gone out of town with his sister to pass the day two of the best players did not appear and the others were somewhat exhausted by the festivities which began at sunrise for them
+so they lay about on the grass in the shade of the big elm languidly discussing their various wrongs and disappointments it's the meanest fourth i ever saw can't have no crackers because somebody's horse got scared last year
+growled sam kitteridge bitterly resenting the stern edict which forbade free born citizens to burn as much gunpowder as they liked on that glorious day last year jimmy got his arm blown off when they fired the old cannon
+didn't we have a lively time going for the doctors and getting him home asked another boy looking as if he felt defrauded of the most interesting part of the anniversary because no accident had occurred ain't going to be fireworks either unless somebody's
+barn burns up don't i just wish there would gloomily responded another youth who had so rashly indulged in pyrotechnics on a former occasion that a neighbor's cow had been roasted whole
+i wouldn't give two cents for such a slow old place as this why last fourth at this time
+all in my best toggery hot as pepper but good fun looking in at the upper windows and hearing the women scream when the old thing waggled round and i made believe i was going to tumble off said ben
+and felt some natural regret at descending from so lofty a sphere catch me cuttin away if i had such a chance as that answered sam trying to balance his bat on his chin
+and getting a smart rap across the nose as he failed to perform the feat much you know about it old chap it's hard work i can tell you and that wouldn't suit such a lazy bones then you are too big to begin
+though you might do for a fat boy if smithers wanted one said ben surveying the stout youth with calm contempt let's go in swimming not loaf round here if we can't play
+proposed a red and shiny boy panting for a game of leap frog in sandy pond may as well don't see much else to do sighed sam rising like a young elephant the others were about to follow
+tearing down the street like a runaway colt waving a long strip of paper as he ran now then what's the matter demanded ben as the other came up grinning and puffing but full of great news
+panted billy putting the paper into sam's hand and surveying the crowd with a face as beaming as a full moon look out for the big show read sam
+new great golden menagerie circus and colosseum will exhibit at berryville july fourth at one and seven precisely admission fifty cents children half price
+don't forget day and date h frost manager while sam read the other boys had been gloating over the enticing pictures which covered the bill there was the golden car
+filled with noble beings in helmets all playing on immense trumpets the twenty four prancing steeds with manes tails and feathered heads tossing in the breeze the clowns the tumblers the strong men
+and the riders flying about in the air as if the laws of gravitation no longer existed but best of all was the grand conglomeration of animals where the giraffe appears to stand on the elephant's back
+the zebra to be jumping over the seal the hippopotamus to be lunching off a couple of crocodiles and lions and tigers to be raining down in all directions with their mouths wide open and their tails as stiff as that of the famous northumberland house lion
+cricky wouldn't i like to see that said little cyrus fay devoutly hoping that the cage in which this pleasing spectacle took place was a very strong one you never would it's only a picture
+that now is something like and ben who had pricked up his ears at the word circus laid his finger on a smaller cut of a man hanging by the back of his neck with a child in each hand two men suspended from his feet
+and the third swinging forward to alight on his head i m going said sam with calm decision for this superb array of unknown pleasures fired his soul and made him forget his weight how will you fix it asked ben
+just as he used to feel it when his father caught him up to dash into the ring foot it with billy it's only four miles and we've got lots of time so we can take it easy mother won't care if i send word by cy
+answered sam producing half a dollar as if such magnificent sums were no strangers to his pocket come on brown you'll be a first rate fellow to show us round as you know all the dodges said billy
+anxious to get his money's worth well i don't know began ben longing to go but afraid missus moss would say no if he asked leave he's afraid sneered the red faced boy
+who felt bitterly toward all mankind at that instant because he knew there was no hope of his going say that again and i'll knock your head off and ben faced round with a gesture which caused the other to skip out of reach precipitately
+hasn't got any money more likely observed a shabby youth whose pockets never had any thing in them but a pair of dirty hands ben calmly produced a dollar bill and waved it defiantly before this doubter
+observing with dignity i've got money enough to treat the whole crowd if i choose to which i don't then come along and have a jolly time with sam and me we can buy some dinner and get a ride home as like as not
+said the amiable billy with a slap on the shoulder and a cordial grin which made it impossible for ben to resist what are you stopping for demanded sam ready to be off that they might take it easy
+he'll get lost or stolen if i take him and it's too far to carry him home if you are in a hurry began ben persuading himself that this was the true reason of his delay let cy take him back he'll do it for a cent won't you cy proposed billy
+smoothing away all objections for he liked ben and saw that he wanted to go no i won't i don't like him he winks at me and growls when i touch him muttered naughty cy remembering how much reason poor sanch had to distrust his tormentor
+there s bab she'll do it come here sissy ben wants you called sam beckoning to a small figure just perching on the fence down it jumped and came fluttering up
+i want you to take sanch home and tell your mother i'm going to walk and may be won't be back till sundown miss celia said i might do what i pleased all day you remember now
+ben spoke without looking up and affected to be very busy buckling a strap into sanch's collar for the two were so seldom parted that the dog always rebelled it was a mistake on ben's part for
+while his eyes were on his work bab's were devouring the bill which sam still held
+you just catch hold of this and run along home lock sanch up for an hour and tell your mother i'm all right answered ben bound to assert his manly supremacy before his mates he's going to the circus
+whispered fay hoping to make mischief circus
+falling into a state of great excitement at the mere thought of such delight you couldn't walk four miles began ben yes i could as easy as not you haven't got any money you have i saw you showing your dollar
+and you could pay for me and ma would pay it back can't wait for you to get ready i'll go as i am i don't care if it is my old hat and bab jerked it on to her head your mother wouldn't like it she won't like your going either
+she isn't my missis now miss celia wouldn't care and i'm going any way do do take me ben i'll be just as good as ever was
+don't you bother we don't want any girls tagging after us said sam walking off to escape the annoyance i'll bring you a roll of chickerberry lozengers if you won't tease
+whispered kind hearted billy with a consoling pat on the crown of the shabby straw hat when the circus comes here you shall go certain sure and betty too said ben feeling mean while he proposed what he knew was a hollow mockery
+they never do come to such little towns you said so and i think you are very cross and i won't take care of sanch so now cried bab getting into a passion yet ready to cry she was so disappointed
+i suppose it wouldn't do hinted billy with a look from ben to the little girl who stood winking hard to keep the tears back of course it wouldn't i'd like to see her walking eight miles
+girls are such a bother when you want to knock round no bab you can't go travel right home and don't make a fuss come along boys
+and we don't want to walk fast ben spoke very decidedly and taking billy's arm away they went leaving poor bab and sanch to watch them out of sight one sobbing the other whining dismally
+somehow those two figures seemed to go before ben all along the pleasant road and half spoilt his fun for though he laughed and talked cut canes and seemed as merry as a grig
+he could not help feeling that he ought to have asked leave to go and been kinder to bab
+if i'd told her i'd like to show her round and she's been real good to me no use now i'll take the girls a lot of candy and make it all right he tried to settle it in that way and trudged gayly off
+and planning to do the honors handsomely to the boys it was very warm and just outside of the town they paused by a wayside watering trough to wash their dusty faces
+and cool off before plunging into the excitements of the afternoon as they stood refreshing themselves a baker's cart came jingling by and sam proposed a hasty lunch while they rested a supply of gingerbread was soon bought
+and climbing the green bank above they lay on the grass under a wild cherry tree munching luxuriously while they feasted their eyes at the same time on the splendors awaiting them for the great tent with all its flags flying
+was visible from the hill we'll cut across those fields
+i want to have a good go at every thing especially the lions said sam beginning on his last cookie i heard em roar just now and billy stood up to gaze with big eyes at the flapping canvas
+which hid the king of beasts from his longing sight that was a cow mooing don't you be a donkey bill when you hear a real roar you'll shake in your boots said ben holding up his handkerchief to dry
+i wish you'd hurry up sam folks are going in now i see em and billy pranced with impatience for this was his first circus and he firmly believed that he was going to behold all that the pictures promised
+hold on a minute while i get one more drink buns are dry fodder said sam rolling over to the edge of the bank and preparing to descend with as little trouble as possible he nearly went down head first however for
+as he looked before he leaped he beheld a sight which caused him to stare with all his might for an instant then turn and beckon saying in an eager whisper
+and both suppressed an astonished hullo for there stood bab waiting for sancho to lap his fill out of the overflowing trough such a shabby tired looking couple as they were
+bab with a face as red as a lobster and streaked with tears shoes white with dust playfrock torn at the gathers something bundled up in her apron and one shoe down at the heel as if it hurt her
+sancho lapped eagerly with his eyes shut all his ruffles were gray with dust and his tail hung wearily down the tassel at half mast as if in mourning for the master whom he had come to find
+bab still held the strap intent on keeping her charge safe though she lost herself but her courage seemed to be giving out as she looked anxiously up and down the road
+seeing no sign of the three familiar figures she had been following as steadily as a little indian on the war trail oh sanch what shall i do if they don't come along we must have gone by them somewhere for i don't see any one that way
+and there isn't any other road to the circus seems to me bab spoke as if the dog could understand and answer
+and fixing his sharp eyes on the grass above him gave a suspicious bark it's only squirrels don't mind but come along and be good for i m so tired i don't know what to do sighed bab
+trying to pull him after her as she trudged on bound to see the outside of that wonderful tent even if she never got in but sancho had heard a soft chirrup and with a sudden bound twitched the strap away sprang up the bank
+and landed directly on ben's back as he lay peeping over a peal of laughter greeted him and having got the better of his master in more ways than one he made the most of the advantage by playfully worrying him as he kept him down
+licking his face in spite of his struggles burrowing in his neck with a ticklish nose snapping at his buttons and yelping joyfully as if it was the best joke in the world to play hide and seek for four long miles
+before ben could quiet him bab came climbing up the bank with such a funny mixture of fear fatigue determination and relief in her dirty little face
+that the boys could not look awful if they tried how dared you come after us miss demanded sam as she looked calmly about her and took a seat before she was asked sanch would come after ben
+i couldn't make him go home so i had to hold on till he was safe here else he'd be lost and then ben would feel bad the cleverness of that excuse tickled the boys immensely
+and sam tried again while ben was getting the dog down and sitting on him now you expect to go to the circus i suppose course i do ben said he didn't mind paying if i could get there without bothering him and i have
+and i'll go home alone i ain't afraid sanch will take care of me if you won't answered bab stoutly what do you suppose your mother will say to you asked ben feeling much reproached by her last words
+i guess she'll say you led me into mischief and the sharp child nodded as if she defied him to deny the truth of that
+advised sam thinking bab great fun
+what would you have done if you hadn't found us asked billy forgetting his impatience in his admiration for this plucky young lady i'd have gone on and seen the circus
+was the prompt answer but you haven't any money oh i'd ask somebody to pay for me i m so little it wouldn't be much
+i thought of that and planned how i'd fix it if i didn't find ben i'd make sanch do his tricks and get a quarter that way so now answered bab undaunted by any obstacle i do believe she would
+you are a smart child bab and if i had enough i'd take you in myself said billy heartily for having sisters of his own he kept a soft place in his heart for girls especially enterprising ones
+i'll take care of her it was very naughty to come bab but so long as you did you needn't worry about any thing i'll see to you and you shall have a real good time said ben accepting his responsibilities without a murmur
+and bound to do the handsome thing by his persistent friend i thought you would and bab folded her arms as if she had nothing further to do but enjoy herself are you hungry asked billy
+fishing out several fragments of gingerbread starving and bab ate them with such a relish that sam added a small contribution and ben caught some water for her in his hand where the little spring bubbled up beside a stone now
+commanded ben giving sanch a roll on the grass to clean him bab scrubbed her face till it shone and pulling down her apron to wipe it scattered a load of treasures collected in her walk some of the dead flowers
+bits of moss and green twigs fell near ben and one attracted his attention a spray of broad smooth leaves with a bunch of whitish berries on it where did you get that he asked poking it with his foot
+in a swampy place coming along sanch saw something down there and i went with him cause i thought may be it was a musk rat and you'd like one if we could get him
+and with intense interest no only a snake and i don't care for snakes i picked some of that it was so green and pretty thorny likes queer leaves and berries you know answered bab spatting down her rough locks
+well he won't like that nor you either
+and i shouldn't wonder if you'd got poisoned bab don't touch it
+and ben looked anxiously at bab who felt her chubby face all over and examined her dingy hands with a solemn air asking eagerly will it break out on me fore i get to the circus
+not for a day or so i guess but it's bad when it does come
+of the number of letters that arrived in monkshaven the fosters shopkeepers and bankers had the largest share the morning succeeding the day on which sylvia had engaged herself to kinraid the fosters seemed unusually anxious to obtain their letters
+several times jeremiah came out of the parlour in which his brother john was sitting in expectant silence and passing through the shop looked up and down the market place in search of the old lame woman who was charitably employed to deliver letters
+and who must have been lamer than ever this morning to judge from the lateness of her coming although none but the fosters knew the cause of their impatience for their letters yet there was such tacit sympathy between them and those whom they employed
+with her basket of letters one of these seemed of especial consequence to the good brothers they each separately looked at the direction and then at one another and without a word they returned with it unread into the parlour shutting the door and drawing the green silk curtain close the better to read it in privacy
+and were perhaps as full of consideration as to the possible contents of this london letter
+a minute ago philip and he were on a level of ignorance from which the former was evidently going to be raised but he soon returned to his usual state of acquiescence in things as they were which was partly constitutional and partly the result of his quaker training
+it was apparently by john foster's wish that philip had been summoned jeremiah the less energetic and decided brother was still discussing the propriety of the step when philip entered
+that the fosters had for some time received anonymous letters warning them with distinct meaning though in ambiguous terms against a certain silk manufacturer in spitalfields with whom they had had straightforward business dealings for many years
+but to whom they had latterly advanced money the letters hinted at the utter insolvency of this manufacturer they had urged their correspondent to give them his name in confidence and this morning's letter had brought it
+but the name was totally unknown to them though there seemed no reason to doubt the reality of either it or the address the latter of which was given in full
+and was publicly distinguished for his excellent and philanthropic character but these letters were provocative of anxiety especially since this morning's post had brought out the writer's full name and various particulars showing his intimate knowledge of dickinson's affairs
+after much perplexed consultation john had hit upon the plan of sending hepburn to london to make secret inquiries respecting the true character and commercial position of the man whose creditors not a month ago they had esteemed it an honour to be
+even now jeremiah was ashamed of their want of confidence in one so good he believed that the information they had received would all prove a mistake founded on erroneous grounds if not a pure invention of an enemy
+and he had only been brought partially to consent to the sending of hepburn by his brother's pledging himself that the real nature of philip's errand should be unknown to any human creature save them three as all this was being revealed to philip he sat apparently unmoved and simply attentive
+in fact he was giving all his mind to understanding the probabilities of the case leaving his own feelings in the background till his intellect should have done its work he said little but what he did say was to the point and satisfied both brothers
+john perceived that his messenger would exercise penetration and act with energy while jeremiah was soothed by philip's caution in not hastily admitting the probability of any charge against dickinson and in giving full weight to his previous good conduct and good character
+philip had the satisfaction of feeling himself employed on a mission which would call out his powers and yet not exceed them in his own mind he forestalled the instructions of his masters and was silently in advance of john foster's plans and arrangements
+while he appeared to listen to all that was said with quiet business like attention it was settled that the next morning he was to make his way northwards to hartlepool whence he could easily proceed either by land or sea to newcastle from which place smacks were constantly sailing to london
+saying it was more than he should require but they repeated with fresh urgency their warnings about the terrible high prices of london till he could only resolve to keep a strict account and bring back all that he did not expend since nothing but his taking the whole sum would satisfy his employers
+the latter was silent brooding over the confidence which philip had apparently received but which was withheld from him he did not yet know of the culminating point of philip's proposed journey to london
+that great city of london which from its very inaccessibility fifty years ago loomed so magnificent through the mist of men's imaginations it is not to be denied that philip felt exultant at the mere fact of going to london but then again the thought of leaving sylvia
+of not seeing her for a week a fortnight nay he might be away for a month for no rash hurry was to mar his delicate negotiation gnawed at his heart
+several times that day as he perceived coulson's jealous sullenness
+as they all sat at tea in alice rose's house place philip announced his intended journey
+to lunnon exclaimed alice hester said nothing
+said coulson luck said alice turning sharp round on him niver let me hear such a vain word out o thy mouth laddie again it's the lord's doing and luck's the devil's way o putting it
+niver fret thyself mother about t shirt said philip if i need a shirt
+but if that's the frame o mind thou'rt in lunnon is like for to be a sore place o temptation there's pitfalls for men and traps for money at ivery turn as i've heerd say
+said coulson he's sent for
+philip knows said hester and then somehow her voice failed her and she stopped philip paid no attention to this half uttered sentence he was eager to tell coulson as far as he could do so without betraying his master's secret how many drawbacks there were to his proposed journey
+in the responsibility which it involved and his unwillingness to leave monkshaven he said coulson i'd give a deal it were thou that were going and not me at least there is many a time i'd give a deal
+i'll not deny but at other times i'm pleased at the thought on't but if i could i'd change places wi thee at this moment it's fine talking said coulson half mollified and yet not caring to show it i make no doubt it were an even chance betwixt us two at first
+she was playing with her teaspoon but he could see that she was choking down her tears
+what's to do hester said he she lifted up those eyes usually so soft and serene now they were full of the light of indignation shining through tears to do she said coulson i'd thought better of thee
+going and doubting and envying philip as niver did thee an ill turn or said an ill word or thought an ill thought by thee and sending him away out o t house this last night of all
+she hastily got up and left the room
+and yet he was reproached for the course it was taking
+and till he had patiently with long continuing and deep affection worked his way into her regard was set aside during the present walk he would speak to her of his passionate attachment before he left for an uncertain length of time and the certain distance of london
+and all the modification on this point which his judgment could obtain from his impetuous and excited heart was that he would watch her words and manner well when he announced his approaching absence and if in them he read the slightest token of tender regretful feeling
+he would pour out his love at her feet not even urging the young girl to make any return or to express the feelings of which he hoped the germ was already budding in her he would be patient with her he could not be patient himself
+they had seen him already or his impulse would have been to dodge behind the wall and avoid them even though one of his purposes in going to haytersbank had been to bid his uncle farewell kinraid took him by surprise from the hearty greeting he gave him
+and convinced of her great love towards himself had forgotten any previous jealousy of philip secure and exultant his broad handsome weather bronzed face was as great a contrast to philip's long thoughtful sallow countenance
+he told his uncle that he was bound for london the next day on business connected with the fosters daniel was deeply struck with the fact that he was talking to a man setting off for london at a day's notice
+nay said philip i knew nought about it last night it's none o my doing going for i'd liefer ha stayed where i am yo'll like it when once yo're there
+no i shan't he replied shortly liking has nought to do with it ah yo knew nought about it last neet continued daniel musingly
+before going to sea said philip half smiling na
+though our ship lay a fortneet off gravesend kinraid now seemed in a hurry but philip was stung with curiosity to ascertain his movements and suddenly addressed him i heard yo were these parts
+and sail for the north seas day after he turned away and began to whistle as if he did not wish for any further conversation with his interrogator philip indeed had nothing more to say to him he had learned all he wanted to know i'd like to bid good by to sylvie is she at home he asked of her father
+so they parted but philip had not gone many steps before his uncle called him back kinraid slowly loitering on meanwhile
+gearin and a an folk is talkin on a new kind o mak and if thou's bound for york i'm not going by york i'm going by a newcastle smack newcassel
+can give all requisite information ay ay said robson
+i'll reckon to hear fro thee in a week or mayhap less
+brunton sells cheese and that's no better philip promised to do his best and to write word to robson who satisfied with his willingness to undertake the commission bade him go on and see if he could not find the lass
+and she had covertly watched them up the brow in the field she sate down to meditate and dream about her great happiness in being beloved by her hero charley kinraid no gloomy dread of his long summer's absence no fear of the cold
+glittering icebergs bearing mercilessly down on the urania nor shuddering anticipation of the dark waves of evil import crossed her mind he loved her and that was enough her eyes looked trance like into a dim glorious future of life
+her lips still warm and reddened by his kiss were just parted in a happy smile when she was startled by the sound of an approaching footstep a footstep quite familiar enough for her to recognize it and which was unwelcome now
+as disturbing her in the one blessed subject of thought in which alone she cared to indulge well philip an what brings here was her rather ungracious greeting why sylvie are yo sorry to see me
+but she turned it off with assumed lightness oh yes
+penitently as if anxious to be forgiven sylvia did not want his penitence did not care for her ribbon was troubled by his earnestness of manner but he knew nothing of all that he only knew
+that she whom he loved had asked him to do something for her and he had neglected it so anxious to be excused and forgiven he went on with the apology she cared not to hear if she had been less occupied with her own affairs less engrossed with deep feeling
+she would have reproached him if only in jest for his carelessness as it was she scarcely took in the sense of his words
+he paused a little sylvia's galloping thoughts were pulled suddenly up by his silence she felt that he wanted her to say something but she could think of nothing besides an ambiguous well
+almost as if beseeching her to show or express some sorrow at a journey the very destination of which showed that he would be absent for some time to lunnon
+nothing more as philip's instinct told him but he reasoned that first correct impression away with ingenious sophistry not to live there only to stay for some time
+suddenly a light shone down into philip's mind his voice was changed as he spoke next
+she stooped for something she had dropped and came up red as a rose to be sure what then and she eyed him defiantly though in her heart she trembled she knew not why what then
+that the half of some silver coin was among the contents thus turned over before the box was locked but thy mother wouldn't like it sylvie he's played false wi other lasses he'll be playing thee false some o these days if thou lets him come about thee
+it were willie coulson as telled me as solemn and serious as one man can speak to another
+said sylvia shivering all over with passion
+it were yo'r own mother sylvia as knowed yo had no brother or any one to see after yo and yo so pretty so pretty sylvia he continued shaking his head sadly that men run after yo against their will as one may say
+and to warn yo if need were my mother niver bade yo to come spying after me and blaming me for seeing a lad as my feyther thinks well on
+sylvie sylvie
+dark the wood fire not gathered together by careful hands died out into gray ashes dolly reid had done her work and gone home there were but philip and sylvia in the house
+at length he raised his stiffened body and stood up dizzy up the little wooden stairs he went where he had never been before to the small square landing almost filled up with the great chest for oat cake he breathed hard for a minute and then knocked at the door of sylvia's room
+sylvie i'm going away say good by no answer not a sound heard sylvie a little louder and less hoarsely spoken there was no reply sylvie
+i shall be a long time away perhaps i may niver come back at all here he bitterly thought of an unregarded death say good by no answer he waited patiently can she be wearied out and gone to sleep he wondered yet once again
+and god bless yo i'm sorry i vexed yo no reply with a heavy heavy heart he creaked down the stairs felt for his cap and left the house
+the need for his departure and yet he stood still for a little time like one entranced as if his will had lost all power to compel him to leave the place those two words of hers which two hours before would have been so far beneath his aspirations
+and touched her pride maybe too
+and i'll be home again as soon as iver i can in half a year such as he forgets if iver he's thought serious about her but in a my lifetime if i live to fourscore i can niver forget
+black and bitter but welcome enough to the farmers
+and bell robson though not getting worse did not make any progress towards amendment
+or washing or churning days her life was quiet and monotonous although hard working and while her hands mechanically found and did their accustomed labour the thoughts that rose in her head always centred on charley kinraid his ways his words
+like nancy and borrowing the poor girl's own words she would say softly to herself he once was here but all along she believed in her heart he would come back again to her though it touched her strangely to imagine the agonies of forsaken love
+he was very busy with facts and figures
+and to see sylvia for the two fosters were punctiliously anxious to make their shopmen test all their statements insisting on an examination of the stock as if hepburn and coulson were strangers to the shop
+by degrees both hepburn and coulson were introduced to distant manufacturers and wholesale dealers
+but this it was evident would not have satisfied their masters who were scrupulous in insisting that whatever advantage there was should always fall on the side of the younger men when philip saw sylvia she was always quiet and gentle
+perhaps more silent than she had been a year ago and she did not attend so briskly to what was passing around her she was rather thinner and paler but whatever change there was in her was always an improvement in philip's eyes
+so long as she spoke graciously to him he thought she was suffering from long continued anxiety about her mother or that she had too much to do and either cause was enough to make him treat her with a grave regard and deference which had a repressed tenderness in it
+of which she otherwise occupied was quite unaware she liked him better too than she had done a year or two before because he did not show her any of the eager attention which teased her then although its meaning was not fully understood
+things were much in this state when the frost broke and milder weather succeeded this was the time so long looked forward to by the invalid and her friends as favouring the doctor's recommendation of change of air her husband was to take her
+to spend a fortnight with a kindly neighbour who lived near the farm they had occupied forty miles or so inland before they came to haytersbank the widow woman was to come and stay in the house to keep sylvia company during her mother's absence
+daniel indeed was to return home after conveying his wife to her destination but there was so much to be done on the land at this time of the year that sylvia would have been alone all day had it not been for the arrangement just mentioned
+and yet these must be reached before june or the year's expedition would be of little avail every blacksmith's shop rung with the rhythmical clang of busy hammers beating out old iron such as horseshoes nails or stubs into the great harpoons
+conscious of the demand in which they were held at this season of the year it was war time too many captains unable to procure men in monkshaven would have to complete their crews in the shetlands the shops in the town were equally busy
+stores had to be purchased by the whaling masters warm clothing of all sorts to be provided these were the larger wholesale orders but many a man and woman too brought out their small hoards to purchase extra comforts or precious keepsakes for some beloved one
+it was the time of the great half yearly traffic of the place another impetus was given to business when the whalers returned in the autumn and the men were flush of money and full of delight at once more seeing their homes and their friends
+there was much to be done in fosters shop and later hours were kept than usual some perplexity or other was occupying john and jeremiah foster
+but it thus happened that they did not give the prompt assistance they were accustomed to render at such times and coulson had been away on some of the new expeditions devolving on him and philip as future partners
+one evening after the shop was closed while they were examining the goods and comparing the sales with the entries in the day book coulson suddenly inquired by the way hester does thee know where the parcel of best bandanas is gone there was four left as i'm pretty sure when i set off to sandsend
+is he here again said philip i didn't see him what brings him here
+i wish i'd seen him said coulson
+why what's up said philip surprised at william's unusual manner and at the same time rather gratified to find a reflection of his own feelings about kinraid coulson's face was pale with anger
+and then my master saw another girl that he liked better' william almost choked in his endeavour to keep down all appearance of violent anger and then went on and that he played t same game wi as i've heerd tell and how did thy sister take it
+she died in a six month said william she forgived him but it's beyond me i thought it were him when i heerd of t work about darley kinraid and coming fra newcassel where annie lived prentice and i made inquiry
+this fault of his was one with which the two grave sedate young men had no sympathy their hearts were true and constant whatever else might be their failings and it is no new thing to damn the faults we have no mind to
+he had only come that afternoon to monkshaven and for the sole purpose of seeing sylvia once more before he went to fulfil his engagement as specksioneer in the urania a whaling vessel that was to sail from north shields on thursday morning and this was monday
+sylvia sat in the house place her back to the long low window in order to have all the light the afternoon hour afforded for her work a basket of her father's unmended stockings was on the little round table beside her
+and one was on her left hand which she supposed herself to be mending but from time to time she made long pauses and looked in the fire and yet there was but little motion of flame or light in it out of which to conjure visions
+it was redd up for the afternoon covered with a black mass of coal over which the equally black kettle hung on the crook in the back kitchen dolly reid sylvia's assistant during her mother's absence chanted a lugubrious ditty befitting her condition as a widow
+charley kinraid and the story of crazy nancy had been the subjects for her dreams for many a day and many a night now he stood there bright and handsome as ever with just that much timidity in his face that anxiety as to his welcome
+she did not come forward to meet him she went crimson to the very roots of her hair but that in the waning light he could not see and she shook so that she felt as if she could hardly stand but the tremor was not visible to him
+the tones the looks that had accompanied those words but all she said was i didn't think to see yo
+she felt his eyes were upon her watching every motion and grew more and more confused in her expression and behaviour he was a little taken aback by the nature of his reception and was not sure at first whether to take the great change in her manner
+as a favourable symptom or otherwise by and by luckily for him in some turn of her arm to reach the scissors on the table she caught the edge of her work basket and down it fell she stooped to pick up the scattered stockings and ball of worsted
+and so did he and when they rose up he had fast hold of her hand and her face was turned away half ready to cry
+yo might ha forgotten me and yet i thought we made a bargain against forgetting each other no answer he went on yo've never been out o my thoughts sylvia robson
+and i've been near neither kith nor kin as yet and now i'm here you won't speak to me i don't know what to say
+till i'd taught her to love me more but if she's a cold heart and cannot care for a honest sailor why then i'd best go back at once he made for the door he must have been pretty sure from some sign or other or he would never have left it to her womanly pride to give way
+he had not taken two steps when she turned quickly towards him and said something
+and then they sat down on the settle together and when she was more composed they began to talk he asked her about her mother not sorry in his heart at bell robson's absence
+he had intended if necessary to acknowledge his wishes and desires with regard to sylvia to her parents but for various reasons he was not sorry that circumstances
+had given him the chance of seeing her alone and obtaining her promise to marry him without being obliged to tell either her father or her mother at present i ha spent my money pretty free he said and i've ne'er a penny to the fore
+and yo'r parents may look for something better for yo my pretty
+i shall go to sea happy now thinking i've yo'r word yo're not one to go back from it i'm sure else it's a long time to leave such a pretty girl as yo and ne'er a chance of a letter reaching yo just to tell yo once again how i love yo
+there'll be no need o that murmured sylvia she was too dizzy with happiness to have attended much to his details of his worldly prospects but at the sound of his tender words of love her eager heart was ready to listen i don't know
+and there's yon tall fellow of a cousin as looks black at me
+he's a notion of being sweet on yo hisself not he said sylvia with some contempt in her tone
+but she weary of a subject she cared nothing about and eager to identify herself with all his interests asked him about his plans almost at the same time that he said these last words and they went on as lovers do
+at any rate it was not unwelcome he liked kinraid and had strong sympathy not merely with what he knew of the young sailor's character but with the life he led and the business he followed
+robson listened to all he said with approving nods and winks till charley had told him everything he had to say and then he turned and struck his broad horny palm into kinraid's as if concluding a bargain
+he wound up with a chuckle as the thought struck him that this great piece of business of disposing of their only child had been concluded while his wife was away
+mischief only knows but she's noan keen on matterimony
+we'n best keep this matter to ourselves till thou comes int port again
+an oud man like me isn't as good company as a pretty lass laughing a low rich laugh over his own wit daniel went to the bottom of the stairs and called sylvie
+for a time there was no answer then a door was unbolted and sylvia said i can't come down again
+what seemed at the moment an incomprehensible puzzle had as we afterwards learned a very simple explanation one of the g s directors mister baldwin who had come in on mister camp's car
+seeing through the device the party had at once gone to this ranch where the owner baldwin mounted them and it was their dust cloud we had seen as they rode up to ash forks
+to make matters more serious baldwin had rounded up his cowboys and brought them along with him in order to make any resistance impossible i made no objection to the sheriff serving the paper
+and the stars in their courses are against sisera with the sheriff and mister camp i then walked over to the saloon where judge wilson was waiting to dispose of my case
+and answered that i asked an adjournment of the case so that i might be heard by counsel it was denied as was to have been expected indeed why they took the trouble to go through the forms was beyond me
+i told wilson i should not produce the letters and he asked if i knew what that meant i couldn't help laughing and retorting it very appropriately means contempt of the court your honor
+seeing that i understood the moves too well to be bluffed the judge mister camp and the lawyer held a whispered consultation my surprise can be imagined when at its conclusion mister camp said
+on the night of october fourteenth and ask that he be taken into custody on that charge i couldn't make out this new move and puzzled over it while judge wilson ordered my commitment
+but the next step revealed the object for the lawyer then asked for a search warrant to look for stolen property the judge was equally obliging and began to fill one out on the instant
+this made me feel pretty serious for the letters were in my breast pocket and i swore at my own stupidity in not having put them in the station safe when i had first arrived at ash forks
+there weren't many moments in which to think while the judge scribbled away at the warrant but in what time there was i did a lot of head work without however finding more than one way out of the snarl
+and when i saw the judge finish off his signature with a flourish i played a pretty desperate card you're just too late gentlemen i said pointing out the side window of the saloon there come the cavalry
+the three conspirators jumped to their feet and bolted for the window
+as he did so i gave him a shove towards the three which sent them all sprawling on the floor in a pretty badly mixed up condition i made a dash for the door and as i went through it
+i grabbed the key and locked them in when i turned to do so i saw the lot struggling up from the floor and knowing that it wouldn't take them many seconds to find their way out through the window
+as only western horses will stand it didn't take me long to have those bridles back in place and as i tossed each over the peak of the mexican saddle
+i gave two of the ponies slaps which started them off at a lope across the railroad tracks i swung myself into the saddle of the third and flicked him with the loose ends of the bridle in a way which made him understand that i meant business
+and considering that he had covered over forty miles that afternoon in pretty quick time it was not surprising that there wasn't very much go left in him
+two hundred feet therefore brought me to the edge of the town and i wheeled my pony and rode down behind the rear of the buildings in turning i looked back and saw half a dozen mounted men already in pursuit
+but i lost sight of them the next moment as soon as i reached a street leading back to the railroad i turned again and rode towards it my one thought being to get back if possible to the station
+and put the letters into the railroad agent's safe when i reached the main street i saw that my hope was futile for another batch of cowboys were coming in full gallop towards me very thoroughly heading me off in that direction
+to escape them i headed up the street away from the station with the pack in close pursuit they yelled at me to hold up and i expected every moment to hear the crack of revolvers
+in expectation of hearing the shooting begin and to know that any moment may be your last i don't suppose i was on the ragged edge more than thirty seconds but they were enough to prove to me that
+to keep one's back turned to an enemy as one runs away takes a deal more pluck than to stand up and face his gun fortunately for me my pursuers felt so sure of my capture
+that not one of them drew a bead on me the moment i saw that there was no escape i put my hand in my breast pocket and took out the letters intending to tear them into a hundred pieces but
+as i did so i realized that to destroy united states mail not merely entailed criminal liability but was off color morally i faltered
+balancing the outwitting of camp against state's prison the doing my best for madge against the wrong of it i think i'm as honest a fellow as the average but i have to confess that i couldn't decide to do right
+till i thought that madge wouldn't want me to be dishonest even for her i turned across the railroad tracks and cut in behind some freight cars that were standing on a siding
+this put me out of view of my pursuers for a moment and in that instant i stood up in my stirrups lifted the broad leather flap of the saddle and tucked the letters underneath it as far in as i could force them
+it was a desperate place in which to hide them but the game was a desperate one at best and the very boldness of the idea might be its best chance of success
+i was now heading for the station over the ties and was surprised to see fred cullen with lord ralles on the tracks up by the special for my mind had been so busy in the last hour
+that i had forgotten that fred was due the moment i saw him i rode towards him pressing my pony for all he was worth my hope was that i might get time to give fred the tip as to where the letters were
+but before i was within speaking distance baldwin came running out from behind the station and seeing me turned called back and gesticulated evidently to summon some cowboys to head me off
+afraid to shout anything which should convey the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the letters as the next best thing i pulled a couple of old section reports from my pocket
+intending to ride up and run into my car for i knew that the papers in my hand would be taken to be the wanted letters and that if i could only get inside the car even for a moment the suspicion would be that i had been able to hide them
+hide them fred was quick as a flash and grabbing them off the ground sprang up the steps of my car and ran inside just escaping a bullet from my pursuers
+ours are not the carollings of your poor shivering little east angles or south mercians where they have to plod round afoot in countries where they do not know what a sleigh ride is
+i had asked harry to have sixteen of the best voices in the chapel school to be trained to eight or ten good carols without knowing why we did not care to disappoint them if a february thaw setting in on the twenty fourth of december
+should break up the spree before it began then i had told howland that he must reserve for me a span of good horses and a sleigh that i could pack sixteen small children into tight stowed
+howland is always good about such things knew what the sleigh was for having done the same in other years and doubled the span of horses of his own accord because the children would like it better and it would be no difference to him
+sunday night as the weather nymphs ordered the wind hauled round to the northwest and everything froze hard monday night things moderated and the snow began to fall steadily so steadily
+and so tuesday night the metropolitan people gave up their unequal contest all good men and angels rejoicing at their discomfiture and only a few of the people in the very lowest bolgie being ill natured enough to grieve
+and without fatigue to horse or man so it was that when i came down with lycidas to the chapel at seven o'clock i found harry had gathered there his eight pretty girls and his eight jolly boys
+and had them practising for the last time carol carol christians carol joyfully carol for the coming of christ's nativity i think the children had got inkling of what was coming
+or perhaps harry had hinted it to their mothers certainly they were warmly dressed and when fifteen minutes afterwards howland came round himself with the sleigh he had put in as many rugs and bear skins
+as if he thought the children were to be taken new born from their respective cradles great was the rejoicing as the bells of the horses rang beneath the chapel windows and harry did not get his last da capo for his last carol
+under the full moon on the snow still white with sixteen children at the happiest
+there can be nothing better than two or three such hours first driver out on commonwealth avenue that will tone down the horses stop on the left after you have passed fairfield street
+so we dashed up to the front of haliburton's palace where he was keeping his first christmas tide and the children whom harry had hushed down for a square or two broke forth with good full voice under his strong lead in
+shepherd of tender sheep singing with all that unconscious pathos with which children do sing and starting the tears in your eyes in the midst of your gladness the instant the horses bells stopped their voices began
+in an instant more we saw haliburton and anna run to the window and pull up the shades and in a minute more faces at all the windows and so the children sung through clement's old hymn
+little did clement think of bells and snow as he taught it in his sunday school there in alexandria but perhaps to day as they pin up the laurels and the palm in the chapel at alexandria
+they are humming the words not thinking of clement more than he thought of us as the children closed with
+haliburton came running out and begged me to bring them in but i told him no as soon as i could hush their shouts of merry christmas that we had a long journey before us and must not alight by the way
+and the children broke out with hail to the night hail to the day rather a favorite quicker and more to the childish taste perhaps than the other and with another merry christmas we were off again
+we ran the sleigh into a bank on the slope of pinckney street in front of walter's house and before they suspected there that any one had come the children were singing carol carol christians carol joyfully
+kisses flung from the window kisses flung back from the street merry christmas again with a good will and then one of the girls began when anna took the baby and pressed his lips to hers
+and all of them fell in so cheerily o dear me it is a scrap of old ephrem the syrian if they did but know it and when after this harry would fain have driven on
+because two carols at one house was the rule how the little witches begged that they might sing just one song more there because missus alexander had been so kind to them when she showed them about the german stitches
+and then up the hill and over to the north end and as far as we could get the horses up into moon court that they might sing to the italian image man who gave lucy the boy and dog in plaster
+though chrysostom should have made a few remarks to them seventeen times in the chapel then the italian image man heard for the first time in his life now is the time of christmas come and
+jesus in his babes abiding and then we came up hanover street and stopped under mister gerry's chapel where they were dressing the walls with their evergreens and gave them hail to the night hail to the day
+and so down state street and stopped at the advertiser office because when the boys gave their literary entertainment mister hale put in their advertisement for nothing and up in the old attic there
+and the in general man from his more serious views and the daily the next morning wished everybody a merry christmas with even more unction and resolved that in coming years it would have a supplement
+large enough to contain all the good wishes so away again to the houses of confectioners who had given the children candy
+to the palaces of millionnaires who had prayed for these children with tears if the children only knew it to doctor frothingham's in summer street i remember where we stopped because the boston association of ministers met there
+and out on dover street bridge that the poor chair mender might hear our carols sung once more before he heard them better sung in another world where nothing needs mending
+king of glory king of peace hear the song and see the star welcome be thou heavenly king
+and all the others rung out with order or without order breaking the hush directly as the horses bells were stilled thrown into the air with all the gladness of childhood
+everywhere a little crowd gathered round us and then we dashed away far enough to gather quite another crowd and then back perhaps not sorry to double on our steps if need were and leaving every crowd with a happy thought of
+the star the manger and the child at nine we brought up at my house d street three doors from the corner and the children picked their very best for polly and my six little girls to hear
+begged that they might stay till the last moment they could walk back from the stable and rather walk than not indeed
+patrick deasey described himself as a philosopher psychologist and humorist it was partly because patrick delighted in long words and partly to excuse himself
+for being full of the sour cream of an inhuman curiosity his curiosity however did not extend itself to science
+at first when deasey retired from the police force with a pension and an heiress with three hundred pounds and time hung heavy on his hands he would try to satisfy this craving through the medium of a host of small
+flirtations with everybody's maid in this way he could inform himself exactly how many loaves were taken by the sweeneys for a week's consumption as compared with those which were devoured by all the cassidys
+for whom the bottles at the presbytery went in by the back door and what was the real cause of the quarrel between the twin miss mc inerneys but these were but blackbird scratchings as it were
+upon the deep soil of the human heart what deasey cared about was what he called the secrets of the soul never met a man he was wont to say with no backstairs to his mind
+to ring at the front door of ordinary intercourse was not enough for him when deasey invested his wife's money in a public house he developed a better plan it was the plan which made him ultimately describe himself
+he would gently close the door of the bar parlour pick up a tumbler breathe on it polish the breath lean one elbow on the bar look round him once again
+and setting the whisky bottle betwixt his customer and himself with a nod which said help yourself he would lean forward with the soft indulgent grin of the human man of the world and begin now
+but as between frien's certain delicate little facts in your past life have come inadvertently to me hearing sometimes he would allude to a certain document or
+incriminating facts or certain letters he would ring the changes on these three according to the sex and temperament with which he had to deal
+but always whatever the words whatever the nature or sex the shot would tell first came the little start the straightened figure the pallor or flush
+the shamed and suddenly lit eyes and then who told you mister deasey sir or where did you get the letter ah now that would be telling
+deasey would make reply but twas from a certain person whom perhaps we need not name then the whiskey bottle would move forward like a pawn in chess and the next soothing words would be
+and your secret is safe with me forthwith the little skeleton in that man's cupboard would lean forward and press upon the door until at last the door flew open and a bone or two
+and sometimes the whole skeleton would rattle out upon the floor he had played this game so often that almost at first sight he could classify his dupes
+under the three heads into which he had divided them those who demanded with violent threats which melted like snow before the sunshine of john jamieson the letter or the name of the informant
+those who asked after a gentle sip or two how the letter had come into his hands and those who asked immediately if the letter hadn't been destroyed as a rule from the type that demanded the letter back
+he only caught sight of the tip of the secret's ears from those they were nearly always the women who swiftly asked if he hadn't destroyed the letters he caught shame faced gleams of the truth
+but those who asked between pensive sips how the facts or the letter had come his way these were the ones who yielded deasey the richest harvest of rattling skeleton bones
+indeed it was curiously instructive how john jamieson laid down a causeway of gleaming stepping stones so that deasey might cross lightly over the turgid waters of his victims souls
+has been inadvertently revealed to me but is for ever sacred in me breast it was strange to see how from the underworld of the man's mind there would trip out the company of misshapen hobgoblins
+and gnomes which had been locked away in darkness maybe this many a year well how would i get the time to clane the childer and to wash their heads and i working all the day at curing stinkin hides
+and he fell over on the side and busted all his veins or well an wouldn't you draw two pinsions yourself mister deasey if you'd a wife with two han's like a sieve for yellow gold
+there was one of this nature which troubled his rest long well the way of it was you see he put it up the chimbley but when the chimbley sweepers come he transferred it in his weskit
+to my place and i dropped it down the well they found it when they let the bucket down but i wasn't his accomplice at all twas only connivance with me when he had spoken of the chimney and the well
+deasey concluded at once it was a foully murdered corpse but then again you could not well conceal a corpse in someone's waistcoat and gold coins would melt or be mislaid amongst the loose bricks of a sooty chimney
+deasey had craved for corpses but nothing so grim as that had risen to his whisky bait until he tried the same old game on missus geraghty what subtle instinct was it that had prompted him to add
+to the first unvarying words but all that is now past and over and safe beneath the mouldering clay at these last words the widow geraghty knew well the barrier was down
+that fences off one human soul from another all the same she shook her trembling head when deasey drew the cork at her refusal deasey was struck with the most respectful compassion
+until that hour he had never known one single lacerated soul decline this consolation and to look at me she wept forthwith
+no ma'am returned deasey to look at you ye'd think ma'am ye could never kill a fly and respectfully he passed the peppermints sometimes the widow muttered i hears it
+and the two bright eyes of it and the little clay cold feet deasey knew what was coming now and he twitched in every vein and she so white haired and so regular at church
+and the black bonnet on the head of her an all it was the only little one she had went on the widow bowed almost to the bar by shame and it always perched up on her knee and taking food from her mouth
+but i had bad teeth in me head and i couldn't get my rest with the jaws aching and all the whiles it screeching with the croup twould madden you all the same deasey whispered
+maybe it wasn't your fault twas maybe your man egged you on to do the shameful deed
+let you get up and cut its throat says he and then we will be shut of the domned screechin thing then you got the knife ma'am prompted deasey it was the bread knife she answered with the ugly notches in the blade
+this touch of the grey feet laid a spell on deasey's hankering morbidity what turned the feet grey he whispered
+why if you will believe me they were the sons of that very phrixus who in his childhood had been carried to colchis on the back of the golden fleeced ram since that time phrixus had married the king's daughter
+and had spent their play days in the outskirts of the grove in the center of which the golden fleece was hanging upon a tree they were now on their way to greece in hopes of getting back a kingdom that had been wrongfully taken from their father
+when the princes understood whither the argonauts were going they offered to turn back and guide them to colchis
+every person who might venture within his reach there are other difficulties in the way continued the young princes
+i do not wonder that you think the dragon very terrible you have grown up from infancy in the fear of this monster
+at all events turn back who may i will never see greece again unless i carry with me the golden fleece we will none of us turn back cried his nine and forty brave comrades
+much good may it do him and orpheus whose custom it was to set everything to music began to harp and sing most gloriously
+and nothing so truly honorable as to be eaten up at one mouthful in case of the worst after this being now under the guidance of the two princes who were well acquainted with the way
+heard of their arrival he instantly summoned jason to court
+who dethroned his father you are welcome brave jason
+pray are you on a pleasure voyage
+or what other cause has procured me the happiness of seeing you at my court great sir replied jason
+for chiron had taught him how to behave with propriety whether to kings or beggars
+provided i bring him the golden fleece this as your majesty is aware is now hanging on a tree here at colchis and i humbly solicit your gracious leave to take it away in spite of himself the king's face twisted itself into an angry frown
+for above all things else in the world he prized the golden fleece and was even suspected of having done a very wicked act in order to get it into his own possession
+had come to colchis with the sole purpose of taking away his chief treasure
+what are the conditions which you must fulfill before getting possession of the golden fleece i have heard rejoined the youth that a dragon lies beneath the tree on which the prize hangs and that whoever approaches him runs the risk of being devoured at a mouthful
+true said the king with a smile that did not look particularly good natured very true young man but there are other things as hard or perhaps a little harder to be done before you can even have the privilege of being devoured by the dragon for example
+which vulcan the wonderful blacksmith made for me there is a furnace in each of their stomachs and they breathe such hot fire out of their mouths and nostrils that nobody has hitherto gone nigh them without being instantly burned to a small black cinder
+i must encounter the peril answered jason composedly since it stands in the way of my purpose
+from which cadmus raised a crop of armed men they are an unruly set of reprobates those sons of the dragon's teeth and unless you treat them suitably they will fall upon you sword in hand
+and the four footed pedant his schoolmaster into the bargain why what a foolhardy self conceited coxcomb he is we'll see what my fire breathing bulls will do for him well prince jason he continued aloud and as complaisantly as he could
+make yourself comfortable for to day and to morrow morning since you insist upon it you shall try your skill at the plow while the king talked with jason a beautiful young woman was standing behind the throne she fixed her eyes earnestly upon the youthful stranger
+this young woman followed him out of the room i am the king's daughter she said to him and my name is medea i know a great deal of which other young princesses are ignorant and can do many things which they would be afraid so much as to dream of if you will trust to me
+i can instruct you how to tame the fiery bulls and sow the dragon's teeth and get the golden fleece indeed beautiful princess answered jason if you will do me this service i promise to be grateful to you my whole life long gazing at medea
+he beheld a wonderful intelligence in her face she was one of those persons whose eyes are full of mystery so that while looking into them
+yet can never be certain whether you see into the farthest depths or whether there be not something else hidden at the bottom if jason had been capable of fearing anything
+for beautiful as she now looked
+princess he exclaimed you seem indeed very wise and very powerful but how can you help me to do the things of which you speak are you an enchantress yes prince jason answered medea with a smile
+it is well for you that i am favorably inclined for otherwise you would hardly escape being snapped up by the dragon i should not so much care for the dragon replied jason if i only knew how to manage the brazen footed and fiery lunged bulls
+which will prevent you from being burned up and cure you if you chance to be a little scorched
+which it contained and where to meet her at midnight only be brave added she and before daybreak the brazen bulls shall be tamed the young man assured her that his heart would not fail him he then rejoined his comrades and told them what had passed between the princess and himself
+and warned them to be in readiness in case there might be need of their help at the appointed hour he met the beautiful medea on the marble steps of the king's palace
+just as they had been pulled out of the monster's jaws by cadmus long ago medea then led jason down the palace steps and through the silent streets of the city and into the royal pasture ground where the two brazen footed bulls were kept it was a starry night
+with a bright gleam along the eastern edge of the sky
+in that farthest corner of the field it will be excellent sport i assure you when they catch a glimpse of your figure my father and all his court delight in nothing so much as to see a stranger trying to yoke them in order to come at the golden fleece
+it makes a holiday in colchis whenever such a thing happens for my part i enjoy it immensely you cannot imagine in what a mere twinkling of an eye their hot breath shrivels a young man into a black cinder are you sure beautiful medea asked jason
+the instant he made a step farther
+these you will understand were caused by the breath of the brazen bulls which was quietly stealing out of their four nostrils as they lay chewing their cuds at the first two or three steps which jason made
+the four fiery streams appeared to gush out somewhat more plentifully for the two brazen bulls had heard his foot tramp and were lifting up their hot noses to snuff the air he went a little farther
+one other stride did bold jason make and suddenly as a streak of lightning on came these fiery animals
+as has always been the fashion with angry bulls their breath scorched the herbage before them so intensely hot it was indeed that it caught a dry tree under which jason was now standing and set it all in a light blaze but as for jason himself
+it's late alexey alexandrovitch she said when she had gone through the doorway anna it's necessary for me to have a talk with you with me she said wonderingly she came out from behind the door of the dressing room and looked at him
+why what is it what about she asked sitting down well let's talk if it's so necessary but it would be better to get to sleep anna said what came to her lips and marveled hearing herself at her own capacity for lying
+how simple and natural were her words and how likely that she was simply sleepy
+that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural either in the sound or the sense of her words but to him knowing her knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual
+she noticed it and asked him the reason to him knowing that every joy every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once to him now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind
+that she did not care to say a word about herself meant a great deal he saw that the inmost recesses of her soul that had always hitherto lain open before him were closed against him more than that he saw from her tone
+that she was not even perturbed at that but as it were said straight out to him yes it's shut up and so it must be and will be in future now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have returning home and finding his own house locked up
+but perhaps the key may yet be found thought alexey alexandrovitch i want to warn you he said in a low voice that through thoughtlessness and lack of caution
+your too animated conversation this evening with count vronsky he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis attracted attention he talked and looked at her laughing eyes which frightened him now with their impenetrable look
+i wasn't dull does that offend you alexey alexandrovitch shivered and bent his hands to make the joints crack
+anna is this you said alexey alexandrovitch quietly making an effort over himself and restraining the motion of his fingers
+what do you want of me alexey alexandrovitch paused and rubbed his forehead and his eyes he saw that instead of doing as he had intended that is to say warning his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the world
+he had unconsciously become agitated over what was the affair of her conscience and was struggling against the barrier he fancied between them
+and i beg you to listen to it i consider jealousy as you know a humiliating and degrading feeling and i shall never allow myself to be influenced by it but there are certain rules of decorum which cannot be disregarded with impunity this evening it was not i observed it
+but judging by the impression made on the company everyone observed that your conduct and deportment were not altogether what could be desired i positively don't understand said anna shrugging her shoulders he doesn't care she thought
+but other people noticed it and that's what upsets him you're not well alexey alexandrovitch she added and she got up and would have gone towards the door but he moved forward as though he would stop her his face was ugly and forbidding
+as anna had never seen him she stopped and bending her head back and on one side began with her rapid hand taking out her hairpins well i'm listening to what's to come she said calmly and ironically and indeed i listen with interest
+began alexey alexandrovitch ferreting in one's soul one often ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed your feelings are an affair of your own conscience
+to myself and to god to point out to you your duties our life has been joined not by man but by god that union can only be severed by a crime and a crime of that nature brings its own chastisement
+i don't understand a word and oh dear how sleepy i am unluckily she said rapidly passing her hand through her hair feeling for the remaining hairpins anna for god's sake don't speak like that he said gently perhaps i am mistaken
+but believe me what i say i say as much for myself as for you i am your husband and i love you for an instant her face fell and the mocking gleam in her eyes died away but the word love threw her into revolt again she thought
+love can he love if he hadn't heard there was such a thing as love he would never have used the word he doesn't even know what love is alexey alexandrovitch really i don't understand she said define what it is you find
+that my words seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place
+in that case i beg you to forgive me but if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest foundation for them
+when she came into the bedroom he was already in bed his lips were sternly compressed and his eyes looked away from her anna got into her bed and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to her again she both feared his speaking and wished for it
+but he was silent she waited for a long while without moving and had forgotten about him she thought of that other she pictured him and felt how her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him suddenly
+she heard an even tranquil snore for the first instant alexey alexandrovitch seemed as it were appalled at his own snoring and ceased but after an interval of two breathings the snore sounded again
+with a new tranquil rhythm it's late it's late she whispered with a smile
+greatly encouraged at finding himself not yet turned into a cinder
+just as the brazen brutes fancied themselves sure of tossing him into the air he caught one of them by the horn and the other by his screwed up tail and held them in a gripe like that of an iron vice one with his right hand the other with his left
+to be sure but the secret of the matter was that the brazen bulls were enchanted creatures and that jason had broken the spell of their fiery fierceness by his bold way of handling them and ever since that time
+when danger assails them to do what they call taking the bull by the horns and to gripe him by the tail is pretty much the same thing that is to throw aside fear and overcome the peril by despising it
+it was now easy to yoke the bulls and to harness them to the plow
+who perhaps used to allow himself to be harnessed to the plow at any rate our hero succeeded perfectly well in breaking up the greensward and by the time that the moon was a quarter of her journey up the sky the plowed field lay before him
+a large tract of black earth ready to be sown with the dragon's teeth so jason scattered them broadcast and harrowed them into the soil with a brush harrow and took his stand on the edge of the field anxious to see what would happen next
+must we wait long for harvest time he inquired of medea who was now standing by his side whether sooner or later it will be sure to come answered the princess a crop of armed men never fails to spring up when the dragon's teeth have been sown
+and whole months before the yellow grain would be ripened for the sickle but by and by all over the field
+like sparkling drops of dew these bright objects sprouted higher and proved to be the steel heads of spears then there was a dazzling gleam from a vast number of polished brass helmets beneath which as they grew farther out of the soil
+tore themselves up by the roots wherever a dragon's tooth had fallen there stood a man armed for battle they made a clangor with their swords against their shields and eyed one another fiercely
+full of rage and stormy passions and ready to take the life of every human brother in recompense of the boon of their own existence
+and how it would have rejoiced any great captain who was bent on conquering the world like alexander or napoleon to raise a crop of armed soldiers as easily as jason did
+clashing their swords against their shields and boiling over with the red hot thirst for battle then they began to shout show us the enemy lead us to the charge death or victory come on brave comrades conquer or die
+and a hundred other outcries such as men always bellow forth on a battle field and which these dragon people seemed to have at their tongues ends at last the front rank caught sight of jason who beholding the flash of so many weapons in the moonlight
+had thought it best to draw his sword in a moment all the sons of the dragon's teeth appeared to take jason for an enemy and crying with one voice guard the golden fleece they ran at him with uplifted swords and protruded spears
+the armed men were now so nigh that jason could discern the fire flashing out of their enraged eyes when he let fly the stone and saw it strike the helmet of a tall warrior who was rushing upon him with his blade aloft
+and instead of running any farther towards jason they began to fight among themselves the confusion spread through the host
+hewing and stabbing at one another lopping off arms heads and legs and doing such memorable deeds that jason was filled with immense admiration although at the same time he could not help laughing to behold these mighty men punishing each other
+for an offense which he himself had committed in an incredibly short space of time almost as short indeed as it had taken them to grow up all but one of the heroes of the dragon's teeth were stretched lifeless on the field
+the last survivor the bravest and strongest of the whole had just force enough to wave his crimson sword over his head and give a shout of exultation crying victory victory immortal fame
+when he himself fell down and lay quietly among his slain brethren and there was the end of the army that had sprouted from the dragon's teeth that fierce and feverish fight was the only enjoyment which they had tasted on this beautiful earth
+let them sleep in the bed of honor said the princess medea with a sly smile at jason the world will always have simpletons enough just like them fighting and dying for they know not what and fancying that posterity
+will take the trouble to put laurel wreaths on their rusty and battered helmets could you help smiling prince jason to see the self conceit of that last fellow
+you will think differently in the morning said medea true the golden fleece may not be so valuable as you have thought it but then there is nothing better in the world and one must needs have an object you know come your night's work has been well performed
+that the first part of your allotted task is fulfilled
+entering the presence chamber he stood at the foot of the throne and made a low obeisance your eyes look heavy prince jason observed the king you appear to have spent a sleepless night
+and have concluded not to get yourself scorched to a cinder in attempting to tame my brazen lunged bulls
+the field has been plowed the dragon's teeth have been sown broadcast and harrowed into the soil
+and depart with my nine and forty comrades
+and looked very angry and excessively disturbed for he knew that in accordance with his kingly promise he ought now to permit jason to win the fleece if his courage and skill should enable him to do so but since the young man had met with such good luck in the matter of the brazen bulls
+and the dragon's teeth the king feared that he would be equally successful in slaying the dragon and therefore though he would gladly have seen jason snapped up at a mouthful he was resolved and it was a very wrong thing of this wicked potentate
+not to run any further risk of losing his beloved fleece you never would have succeeded in this business young man said he if my undutiful daughter medea had not helped you with her enchantments had you acted fairly you would have been at this instant
+to speak my mind plainly you shall never set eyes on so much as one of its glistening locks jason left the king's presence in great sorrow and anger he could think of nothing better
+march at once to the grove of mars slay the dragon take possession of the golden fleece get on board the argo and spread all sail for iolchos the success of this scheme depended it is true on the doubtful point
+at so many mouthfuls by the dragon but as jason was hastening down the palace steps
+and although she had done him so much service only the night before he was by no means very certain that she would not do him an equally great mischief before sunset these enchantresses you must know are never to be depended upon
+will he give you the golden fleece without any further risk or trouble on the contrary answered jason he is very angry with me for taming the brazen bulls and sowing the dragon's teeth
+and he forbids me to make any more attempts and positively refuses to give up the golden fleece whether i slay the dragon or no yes jason said the princess and i can tell you more unless you set sail from colchis
+stealing through the streets of colchis on their way to the sacred grove
+lowing nodding their heads and thrusting forth their snouts which as other cattle do
+their fierce nature was thoroughly tamed and with their fierceness the two furnaces in their stomachs had likewise been extinguished
+than ever before indeed it had heretofore been a great inconvenience to these poor animals that whenever they wished to eat a mouthful of grass the fire out of their nostrils had shriveled it up before they could manage to crop it
+how they contrived to keep themselves alive is more than i can imagine but now instead of emitting jets of flame and streams of sulphurous vapor they breathed the very sweetest of cow breath after kindly patting the bulls
+jason followed medea's guidance into the grove of mars where the great oak trees that had been growing for centuries threw so thick a shade that the moonbeams struggled vainly to find their way through it
+medea squeezed jason's hand look yonder she whispered do you see it gleaming among the venerable oaks there was a radiance not like the moonbeams but rather resembling the golden glory of the setting sun
+what is it asked jason have you come so far to seek it
+when it glitters before your eyes it is the golden fleece jason went onward a few steps farther and then stopped to gaze o how beautiful it looked shining with a marvelous light of its own that
+prize which so many heroes had longed to behold but had perished in the quest of it either by the perils of their voyage or by the fiery breath of the brazen lunged bulls how gloriously it shines cried jason in a rapture it
+the terrible dragon had quite slipped out of jason's memory soon however something came to pass that reminded him what perils were still to be encountered an antelope that probably mistook the yellow radiance for sunrise came
+for he was twisted round the trunk of the tree on which the fleece hung and seizing the poor antelope swallowed him with one snap of his jaws after this feat the dragon seemed sensible that some other living creature was within reach
+on which he felt inclined to finish his meal in various directions he kept poking his ugly snout among the trees stretching out his neck a terrible long way now here
+upon my word as the head came waving and undulating through the air and reaching almost within arm's length of prince jason it was a very hideous and uncomfortable sight
+the gape of his enormous jaws was nearly as wide as the gateway of the king's palace well jason whispered medea for she was ill natured as all enchantresses are and wanted to make the bold youth tremble
+what do you think now of your prospect of winning the golden fleece jason answered only by drawing his sword and making a step forward stay foolish youth said medea grasping his arm
+far more effectually than your sword the dragon had probably heard the voices for swift as lightning his black head and forked tongue came hissing among the trees again darting full forty feet at a stretch as it approached
+medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide open throat immediately with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle flinging his tail up to the tip top of the tallest tree
+and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again the dragon fell at full length upon the ground and lay quite motionless it is only a sleeping potion said the enchantress to prince jason
+so i did not wish to kill him outright quick snatch the prize and let us begone you have won the golden fleece jason caught the fleece from the tree
+with her peacock beside her she clapped her hands for joy and beckoning him to make haste disappeared among the duskiness of the trees
+who were disporting themselves in the moonlight a few hundred feet aloft jason bade them tell the rest of the argonauts to embark as speedily as possible but lynceus with his sharp eyes had already caught a glimpse of him bringing the golden fleece
+although several stone walls a hill and the black shadows of the grove of mars intervened between by his advice the heroes had seated themselves on the benches of the galley
+held perpendicularly ready to let fall into the water as jason drew near he heard the talking image calling to him with more than ordinary eagerness in its grave sweet voice make haste prince jason for your life make haste
+chapter twenty nine as bibbs came out of the new house a sunday trio was in course of passage upon the sidewalk an ample young woman placid of face a black clad
+thin young man whose expression was one of habitual anxiety habitual wariness and habitual eagerness he propelled a perambulator containing the third
+sundayfied and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives how'd you like for me to be that young fella mamma the husband whispered he's one of the sons and there ain't but two left now
+the wife stared curiously at bibbs well i don't know she returned he looks to me like he had his own troubles i expect he has like anybody else said the young husband but i guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money
+well maybe if you keep on the way you been
+she glanced back at bibbs who had turned north he walks kind of slow and stooped over like so much money in his pockets it makes him sag i guess said the young husband with bitter admiration
+mary happening to glance from a window saw bibbs coming and she started clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm
+what is the matter i saw something was terribly wrong when i
+she paused and he came in not lifting his eyes to hers always when he crossed that threshold he had come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers
+ah poor boy she said with a gesture of understanding and pity i know what it is he followed her into the room where they always sat and sank into a chair you needn't tell me she said
+they've made you give up your father's won you're going to do what he wants you've given up
+affirmation she gave a little cry of compassion and came and sat near him bibbs she said i can be glad of one thing though it's selfish i can be glad you came straight to me it's more to me than even if you'd come because you were happy
+she did not speak again for a little while then she said
+could you tell me about it do you want to still he did not look up but in a voice shaken and husky he asked her a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his words
+mary he said could you marry me what did you say bibbs she asked quietly his tone and attitude did not change will you marry me
+both of her hands leaped to her cheeks she grew red and then white she rose slowly and moved backward from him staring at him at first incredulously then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in her wide eyes
+it was like a spoken question the room filled with strangeness in the long silence the two were so strange to each other at last she said what made you say that he did not answer
+bibbs look at me her voice was loud and clear what made you say that look at me he could not look at her and he could not speak what was it that made you she said i want you to tell me
+you've given up to your father she said slowly and then you came to ask me she broke off
+yes he said just audibly no she cried you do not then what made you ask me what is it that's happened nothing wait she said
+let me think it's something that happened since our walk this morning yes since you left me at noon something happened that she stopped abruptly
+with a tremulous murmur of amazement and dawning comprehension she remembered that sibyl had gone to the new house bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say i do i do want you to marry me if if
+you could she looked at him and slowly shook her head bibbs do you her voice was as unsteady as his little more than a whisper do you think i'm
+in love with you no he said somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word it did not seem to come from mary's parted lips but he was aware of it why
+i've had nothing but dreams bibbs said desolately but they weren't like that sibyl said no girl could care about me he smiled faintly
+and when i first came home edith told me sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married me she meant it to express sibyl's extremity you see but i hardly needed either of them to tell me i hadn't thought of myself as
+well not as particularly captivating oddly enough mary's pallor changed to an angry flush those two she exclaimed sharply and then with thoroughgoing contempt lamhorn that's like them
+she turned away went to the bare little black mantel and stood leaning upon it presently she asked when did missus roscoe sheridan say that no girl could care about you
+to day mary drew a deep breath i think i'm beginning to understand a little she bit her lip there was anger in good truth in her eyes and in her voice
+answer me once more she said bibbs do you know now why i stopped wearing my furs yes i thought so your sister in law told you didn't she i
+i heard her say i think i know what happened now mary's breath came fast and her voice shook but she spoke rapidly you heard her say more than that you heard her say that we were bitterly poor and on that account i tried first to marry your brother and then
+and then that i tried to marry you you heard her say that and you believe that i don't care for you and that no girl could care for you but you think i am in such an extremity as sibyl was
+you took your father's offer and then came to ask me to marry you what had i shown you of myself that could make you suddenly she sank down kneeling with her face buried in her arms upon the lap of a chair
+tears overwhelming her mary mary he cried helplessly oh no you you don't understand i do though she sobbed i do he came and stood beside her you kill me
+he said i can't make it plain from the first of your loveliness to me i was all self it was always you that gave and i that took i was the dependent i did nothing but lean on you
+you seemed to lean down out of a rosy cloud to be kind to me i never dreamed i could do anything for you i never dreamed you could need anything to be done for you by anybody
+and to day i heard that that you
+anybody with money she sobbed and you thought we were so so desperate you believed that i had no he said quickly i didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for me for that no no no
+i knew you'd never thought of me except generously to give i said i couldn't make it plain he cried despairingly wait she lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously like a child
+help me up bibbs then when she was once more upon her feet she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly but reassuringly as if to tell him in that way
+that she knew he had not meant to hurt her and that smile of hers so lamentable but so faithfully friendly misted his own eyes for his shamefacedness lowered them no more
+let me tell you what you want to tell me she said you can't because you can't put it into words they are too humiliating for me and you're too gentle to say them tell me though isn't it true
+you didn't believe that i'd tried to make you fall in love with me never never for an instant you didn't believe i'd tried to make you want to marry me no no no i believe it bibbs
+you thought that i was fond of you you knew i cared for you but you didn't think i might be in love with you but you thought that i might marry you without being in love with you
+because you did believe i had tried to marry your brother and mary i only knew for the first time that you that you were were desperately poor she said you can't even say that bibbs it was true
+i did try to make jim want to marry me i did and she sank down into the chair weeping bitterly again bibbs was agonized mary he groaned
+i didn't know you could cry listen she said listen till i get through i want you to understand we were poor and we weren't fitted to be we never had been and we didn't know what to do
+we'd been almost rich there was plenty but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the town he wanted to be richer but instead well just about the time your father finished building next door
+we found we hadn't anything people say that sometimes meaning that they haven't anything in comparison with other people of their own kind but we really hadn't anything we hadn't anything at all bibbs
+you might wonder why i didn't
+and i wonder myself why when a family loses its money people always say the daughters ought to go and be stenographers it's curious
+no i'd been raised to be either married comfortably or a well to do old maid if i chose not to marry the poverty came on slowly bibbs but at last it was all there
+and i didn't know how to be a stenographer i didn't know how to be anything except a well to do old maid or somebody's wife and i couldn't be a well to do old maid then bibbs i did what i'd been raised to know how to do
+i went out to be fascinating and be married i did it openly at least and with a kind of decent honesty i told your brother i had meant to fascinate him
+but i let him think that perhaps i meant to marry him i think i did mean to marry him i had never cared for anybody and i thought it might be there really wasn't anything more than a kind of excited fondness i can't be sure
+but i think that though i did mean to marry him i never should have done it because that sort of a marriage is it's sacrilege something would have stopped me
+she meant no harm but she was horrible and she put what i was doing into such horrible words and they were the truth oh i saw myself she was proposing a miserable compact with me
+and i couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her though i'd so cheapened myself she had a right to assume that i would but i couldn't i left her and i wrote to your brother just a quick scrawl i told him just what i'd done
+i asked his pardon and i said i would not marry him i posted the letter but he never got it that was the afternoon he was killed that's all bibbs now you know what i did and you know
+she pressed her clenched hands tightly against her eyes leaning far forward her head bowed before him bibbs had forgotten himself long ago his heart broke for her couldn't you isn't there
+won't you he stammered mary i'm going with father isn't there some way you could use the money without without she gave a choked little laugh you gave me something to live for he said you kept me alive i think
+and i've hurt you like this
+oh a thousand times her right hand went out in a faltering gesture and just touched his own for an instant but there's nothing to forgive and you can't you can't
+can't what bibbs you couldn't marry you she said for him yes no no no she sprang up facing him
+and without knowing what she did she set her hands upon his breast pushing him back from her a little i can't i can't don't you see mary no no and you must go now bibbs i can't bear any more please
+mary never never never she cried in a passion of tears you mustn't come any more i can't see you dear never never never somehow in helpless stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture
+he got himself to the door
+chapter eight the great fight for clean government
+as to the government of this city said mister newberry leaning back in a leather armchair at the mausoleum club and lighting a second cigar it's rotten that's all
+absolutely rotten assented mister dick overend ringing the bell for a second whiskey and soda corrupt said mister newberry between two puffs of his cigar full of graft said mister overend
+flicking his ashes into the grate crooked aldermen said mister newberry a bum city solicitor said mister overend and an infernal grafter for treasurer yes assented mister newberry
+and then leaning forwards in his chair and looking carefully about the corridors of the club he spoke behind his hand and said and the mayor's the biggest grafter of the lot and what's more he added
+sinking his voice to a whisper the time has come to speak out about it fearlessly mister overend nodded it's a tyranny he said worse than russia rejoined mister newberry
+they had been sitting in a quiet corner of the club it was on a sunday evening
+not argumentatively or with any heat but with the reflective sadness that steals over an elderly man when he sits in the leather armchair of a comfortable club smoking a good cigar and musing on the decadence of the present day
+the rottenness of the federal government didn't anger them it merely grieved them they could remember both of them how different everything was when they were young men just entering on life
+when mister newberry and mister dick overend were young men went into congress from pure patriotism there was no such thing as graft or crookedness as they both admitted in those days and as for the united states senate
+here their voices were almost hushed in awe why when they were young the united states senate but no neither of them could find a phrase big enough for their meaning they merely repeated
+and then shook their heads and took long drinks of whiskey and soda then naturally speaking of the rottenness of the federal government had led them to talk of the rottenness of the state legislature
+how different from the state legislatures that they remembered as young men not merely different in the matter of graft but different so mister newberry said in the calibre of the men
+he recalled how he had been taken as a boy of twelve by his father to hear a debate he would never forget it giants he said that was what they were in fact the thing was more like a witenagemot
+than a legislature he said he distinctly recalled a man whose name he didn't recollect speaking on a question he didn't just remember what either for or against
+it thrilled him he would never forget it it stayed in his memory as if it were yesterday but as for the present legislature here mister dick overend sadly nodded assent in advance to what he knew was coming
+as for the present legislature well mister newberry had had he said occasion to visit the state capital a week before in connection with a railway bill that he was trying to that is that he was anxious to
+from speaking of the crookedness of the state government mister newberry and mister dick overend were led to talk of the crookedness of the city government and they both agreed as above that things were worse than in russia what secretly irritated them both most
+was that they had lived and done business under this infernal corruption for thirty or forty years and hadn't noticed it they had been too busy the fact was that their conversation reflected not so much their own original ideas
+as a general wave of feeling that was passing over the whole community there had come a moment quite suddenly it seemed when it occurred to everybody at the same time that the whole government of the city was rotten the word is a strong one
+but it is the one that was used look at the aldermen they said rotten look at the city solicitor rotten and as for the mayor himself phew the thing came like a wave
+everybody felt it at once people wondered how any sane intelligent community could tolerate the presence of a set of corrupt scoundrels like the twenty aldermen of the city their names it was said
+were simply a byword throughout the united states for rank criminal corruption this was said so widely that everybody started hunting through the daily papers to try to find out who in blazes were aldermen anyhow
+and as a matter of fact at the moment when this wave of feeling struck the city nobody knew or cared who were aldermen anyway to tell the truth the aldermen had been much the same persons for about fifteen or twenty years some were in the produce business
+others were butchers two were grocers and all of them wore blue checkered waistcoats and red ties and got up at seven in the morning to attend the vegetable and other markets nobody had ever really thought about them that is to say nobody on plutoria avenue
+sometimes one saw a picture in the paper and wondered for a moment who the person was but on looking more closely and noticing what was written under it one said oh i see an alderman and turned to something else whose funeral is that
+a man would sometimes ask on plutoria avenue oh just one of the city aldermen
+oh i see i beg your pardon i thought it might be somebody important
+how and where this movement of indignation had started people said that it was part of a new wave of public morality that was sweeping over the entire united states certainly it was being remarked in almost every section of the country
+chicago newspapers were attributing its origin to the new vigour and the fresh ideals of the middle west in boston it was said to be due to a revival of the grand old new england spirit in philadelphia
+they called it the spirit of william penn in the south it was said to be the reassertion of southern chivalry making itself felt against the greed and selfishness of the north while in the north they recognized it at once
+as a protest against the sluggishness and ignorance of the south in the west they spoke of it as a revolt against the spirit of the east and in the east they called it a reaction against the lawlessness of the west but everywhere they hailed it as a new sign of the glorious
+unity of the country if therefore mister newberry and mister overend were found to be discussing the corrupt state of their city they only shared in the national sentiments of the moment in fact in the same city hundreds of other citizens
+as disinterested as themselves were waking up to the realization of what was going on as soon as people began to look into the condition of things in the city they were horrified at what they found it was discovered for example
+in a city with a hundred and fifty deaths a week and sometimes even better an undertaker sat on the council a city that was about to expropriate land and to spend four hundred thousand dollars for a new cemetery had an undertaker
+on the expropriation committee itself and worse than that alderman undercutt was a butcher in a city that consumed a thousand tons of meat every week and alderman o'hooligan it leaked out was an irishman
+imagine it an irishman sitting on the police committee of the council in a city where thirty eight and a half out of every hundred policemen were irish either by birth or parentage the thing was monstrous so
+when mister newberry said it's worse than russia he meant it every word now just as mister newberry and mister dick overend were finishing their discussion the huge bulky form of mayor mc grath came ponderously past them as they sat
+he looked at them sideways out of his eyes he had eyes like plums in a mottled face and being a born politician he knew by the very look of them that they were talking of something that they had no business to be talking about but
+being a politician he merely said good evening gentlemen without a sign of disturbance good evening mister mayor said mister newberry rubbing his hands feebly together and speaking in an
+ingratiating tone there is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest man caught in the act of speaking boldly and fearlessly of the evil doer good evening mister mayor echoed mister dick overend also rubbing his hands
+warm evening is it not the mayor gave no other answer than that deep guttural grunt which is technically known in municipal interviews as refusing to commit oneself did he hear
+whispered mister newberry as the mayor passed out of the club i don't care if he did whispered mister dick overend half an hour later mayor mc grath entered the premises of the thomas jefferson club
+which was situated in the rear end of a saloon and pool room far down in the town boys he said to alderman o'hooligan and alderman gorfinkel who were playing freeze out poker in a corner behind the pool tables
+you want to let the boys know to keep pretty dark and go easy there's a lot of talk i don't like about the elections going round the town let the boys know that just for a while the darker they keep the better whereupon the word was passed
+from the thomas jefferson club to the george washington club and thence to the eureka club coloured and to the kossuth club hungarian and to various other centres of civic patriotism in the lower parts of the city
+once upon a time there was a servant who served a wise man
+day after day time in and time out for seven years in those years the servant was well enough contented but no one likes to abide in the same place forever and so one day he took it into his head that he would like to go out into the world
+to see what kind of a fortune a man might make there for himself
+you have served me faithfully these seven years gone and now that you ask leave to go you shall go but it is little or nothing in the way of money that i can give you and so you will have to be content with what i can afford
+see here is a little pebble and its like is not to be found in the seven kingdoms for whoever holds it in his mouth can hear while he does so
+paying his way with the few pennies he had saved in his seven years of service but for all of his travelling nothing of good happened to him until one morning he came to a lonely place where there stood a gallows and there he sat him down to rest
+and it is just in such an unlikely place as this that a man's best chance of fortune comes to him sometimes as the servant sat there there came two ravens flying and lit upon the cross beam overhead
+there they began talking to one another and the servant popped the pebble into his mouth to hear what they might say yonder is a traveller in the world said the first raven yes said the second
+why thus said the second
+and there he would find a man sitting
+that man would lead him to the garden
+the fruit of happiness said the first raven and of what use would the fruit of happiness be to him
+and wish and whatever one asks for one shall have you may guess that when the servant understood the talk of the ravens he was not slow in making use of what he heard up he scrambled
+and away he went as fast as his legs could carry him on and on he travelled until he came to the cross roads and the stone cross of which the raven spoke and there sure enough sat the traveller
+there is one condition you must fulfil many strange things will happen upon our journey between here and there
+and say not a word do you agree to that yes said the servant i do very well said his new comrade then let us be jogging
+and the time is none too long to get there so all the rest of that day they journeyed onward together until towards evening they came to a town with high towers and steep roofs and tall spires
+the servant's companion entered the gate as though he knew the place right well and led the way up one street and down another until by and by they came to a noble house that stood a little apart by itself with gardens of flowers and fruit trees all around it
+there the travelling companion stopped and drawing out a little pipe from under his jacket
+to listen to the music well he played and played until by and by the door opened and out came a serving man ho piper said he
+where dozens of servants were serving a fine feast but only one man sat at table a young man with a face so sorrowful that it made a body's heart ache to look upon him can you play good music piper said he
+but suddenly everything went wrong his wife and he fell out and quarrelled until there was no living together and she had to go back to her old home then his companions deserted him and now he lived all alone yours is a hard case said the travelling companion
+thereupon he drew out his pipes and began to play and it was such a tune as no man ever listened to before he played and he played and after a while one after another of those who listened to him began to get drowsy first they winked
+then they shut their eyes and then they nodded until all were as dumb as logs and as sound asleep as though they would never waken again only the servant and the piper stayed awake for the music did not make them drowsy as it did the rest
+then when all but they two were tight and fast asleep
+and stepping up to the young man took from off his finger a splendid ruby ring as red as blood and as bright as fire and popped the same into his pocket and all the while the serving man stood gaping like a fish
+to see what his comrade was about
+none was more ugly than this to bewitch the poor sorrowful young man into a sleep and then to rob him of his ruby ring
+but the next day they jogged on together again until by and by they came to a great forest there they wandered up and down till night came upon them and found them still stumbling onward through the darkness
+he seemed to doubt nothing nor fear nothing but trudged straight ahead until by and by they saw a light twinkling far away and when they came to it they found a gloomy stone house as ugly as eyes ever looked upon
+up stepped the servant's comrade and knocked upon the door rap tap tap by and by it was opened a crack and there stood an ugly old woman blear eyed and crooked and gnarled as a winter twig
+no matter for that said the travelling companion we can go no farther to night so you must let us in and hide us as best you may and in he went as he said with the servant at his heels
+trembling like a leaf at what he had heard the old woman gave them some bread and meat to eat and then hid them away in the great empty meal chest in the corner and there they lay as still as mice
+by and by in came the gang of thieves with a great noise and uproar and down they sat to their supper
+how they had cruelly robbed and murdered poor people
+he drew from his pocket the ruby ring which he had stolen from the sorrowful young man's finger
+then he led the way out of the house and if the serving man had wondered the day before at that which the comrade did he wondered ten times more to see him give so beautiful a ring
+the two travellers came to a little hut neat enough
+and there the comrade knocked upon the door and asked for lodging
+nevertheless they made the travellers welcome and set before them the very best that was to be had in the house and after both had eaten and drunk they showed them to bed in a corner as clean as snow and there they slept the night through
+but the next morning before the dawning of the day the travelling companion was stirring again
+for i have a bit of work to do before i leave this place and strange work it was
+he gathered together a great heap of straw and sticks of wood and stuffed all under the corner of the house then he struck a light and set fire to it
+all was a red blaze behind them
+on they jogged and by the time evening was at hand they had come to a neat cottage
+in this cottage lived a widow and her only son and they also made the travellers welcome and set before them a good supper and showed them to a clean bed this time the travelling comrade did neither good nor ill to those of the house
+but in the morning he told the widow whither they were going and asked if she and her son knew the way to the garden where grew the fruit of happiness yes said she that we do for the garden is not a day's journey from here
+and my son himself shall go with you to show you the way that is good said the servant's comrade and if he will do so i will pay him well for his trouble so the young man put on his hat and took up his stick
+and off went the three up hill and down dale until by and by they came over the top of the last hill and there below them lay the garden and what a sight it was the leaves shining and glistening like so many jewels in the sunlight
+all he could do was to stand and look
+torrent without a bridge for a body to cross over yonder is what you seek said the young man pointing with his finger and there you can see for yourself the fruit of happiness
+but suddenly catching the widow's son by the collar he lifted him and flung him into the black rushing water splash went the young man and then away he went whirling over rocks and water falls there cried the comrade
+that is your reward for your service
+he found his tongue at last and all that he had bottled up
+such abuse as he showered upon his travelling companion no man ever listened to before but to all the servant said the other answered never a word until he had stopped for sheer want of breath then poor fool said the travelling companion
+thereupon as he ended speaking he struck his staff upon the ground instantly the earth trembled and the sky darkened overhead until it grew as black as night
+the garden and the torrent and all were gone and nothing was left but a naked plain covered over with the bones of those who had come that way before seeking the fruit which the travelling servant had sought it was a long time before the servant found his way back into the world again
+but what a change he beheld it was a poor cottage no longer but a splendid palace fit for a queen to dwell in
+and she was dressed in clothes fit for a queen to wear shining with gold and silver and precious stones the servant stood and stared like one bereft of wits
+an angel came and showed the way to my son
+but to bring an apple for me also then the poor travelling servant began to thump his head he saw well enough through the millstone now and that he too might have had one of the fruit if he had but held his tongue a little longer
+the house that he had seen the angel set fire to there he beheld masons and carpenters hard at work hacking and hewing and building a fine new house and there he saw the poor man himself standing by giving them orders how is this said the travelling servant
+for many a long day and never knew that a great treasure of silver and gold was hidden beneath it until a few days ago there came an angel
+the next morning the poor servant jogged along on his homeward way more sad and downcast than ever and by evening he had come to the robbers den in the thick woods and there the old woman came running to the door to meet him
+he gave it to the captain of the band and after he had gone the robbers fought for it with one another until they were all killed so now the world is rid of them and travellers can come and go as they please back jogged the travelling servant
+and the next day came to the town and to the house of the sorrowful young man there lo and behold instead of being dark and silent as it was before all was ablaze with light and noisy with the sound of rejoicing and merriment
+there happened to be one of the household standing at the door and he knew the servant as the companion of that one who had stolen the ruby ring up he came and laid hold of the servant by the collar calling to his companions that he had caught one of the thieves
+into the house they hauled the poor servant and into the same room where he had been before and there sat the young man at a grand feast with his wife and all his friends around him but when the young man saw the poor serving man he came to him
+and took him by the hand and set him beside himself at the table
+it was the ring of discord that bred strife wherever it came
+my wife and all my friends fell out with me and we quarrelled so that they all left me but though i knew it not at that time your comrade was an angel and took the ring away with him and now i am as happy as i was sorrowful before
+rap tap tap he knocked at the door and the wise man who had been his master opened to him
+very well said the wise man come in and shut the door and for all i know the travelling servant is there to this day for he is not the only one in the world who has come in sight of the fruit of happiness
+and then jogged all the way back home again to cook cabbage and onions and pot herbs and to make broth for wiser men than himself to sup
+no offence said the blacksmith i meant not to speak ill of your story come come sir will you not take a pot of ale with me why said saint george somewhat mollified
+i would as lief as not i liked the story well enough piped up the little tailor who had killed seven flies at a blow twas a good enough story of its sort but why does nobody tell a tale of good big giants and of wild boars and of unicorns
+such as i killed in my adventures you wot of old ali baba had been sitting with his hands folded and his eyes closed now he opened them and looked at the little tailor
+who was as big as a giant and six times as powerful and besides that he added
+clattered the bottom of his canican against the table
+come friend let us have it stop a bit said fortunatus what is this story mostly about it is said ali baba about two men betwixt whom there was
+ill luck and the fiddler once upon a time saint nicholas came down into the world to take a peep at the old place and see how things looked in the spring time on he stepped along the road to the town where he used to live
+for he had a notion to find out whether things were going on nowadays as they one time did by and by he came to a cross road and who should he see sitting there but ill luck himself ill luck's face was as gray as ashes
+and his hair as white as snow
+and two great wings grew out of his shoulders for he flies fast and comes quickly to those whom he visits does ill luck
+which he kept cracking and eating as he trudged along the road and just then he came upon one with a worm hole in it when he saw ill luck it came into his head to do a good turn to poor sorrowful man good morning ill luck says he
+even if it be through a key hole now is that so yes says ill luck it is well look now friend says saint nicholas
+yes says ill luck i could indeed i should like to see you says saint nicholas for then i should be of a mind to believe what people say of you well says ill luck i have not much time to be pottering and playing upon jack's fiddle but to oblige an old friend
+then what do you think saint nicholas did
+and no sooner had ill luck entered the nut than he stuck the plug in the hole and there was man's enemy
+so says saint nicholas that's a piece of work well done then he tossed the hazel nut under the roots of an oak tree near by and went his way and that is how this story begins well
+nobody met with ill luck but one day who should come travelling that way
+and phst pop out came ill luck along with it plague take the fiddler say i listen says ill luck it has been many a long day that i have been in that hazel nut and you are the man that has let me out
+for once in a way i will do a good turn to a poor human body therewith and without giving the fiddler time to speak a word ill luck caught him up by the belt and whiz away he flew like a bullet
+then away he flew to attend to other matters of greater need when the fiddler had gathered his wits together and himself to his feet he saw that he lay in a beautiful garden of flowers and fruit trees and marble walks and what not
+all built of white marble with a fountain in front and peacocks strutting about on the lawn well the fiddler smoothed down his hair and brushed his clothes a bit and off he went to see what was to be seen at the grand house at the end of the garden
+he entered the door and nobody said no to him then he passed through one room after another and each was finer than the one he left behind many servants stood around but they only bowed and never asked whence he came
+the table was spread with a feast that smelled so good that it brought tears to the fiddler's eyes and water to his mouth and all the plates were of pure gold the little old man sat alone but another place was spread
+do not say that sit down to the table and eat and when i have told you all you will say it was not ill luck but good luck that brought you the fiddler had his own mind about that but all the same down he sat at the table
+and fell to with knife and fork at the good things as though he had not had a bite to eat for a week of sundays i am the richest man in the world says the little old man after a while i am glad to hear it says the fiddler you may well be said the old man
+and without wife or child and this morning i said to myself that the first body that came to my house i would take for a son or a daughter as the case might be you are the first
+and so you shall live with me as long as i live and after i am gone everything that i have shall be yours the fiddler did nothing but stare with open eyes and mouth as though he would never shut either again
+everything the fiddler wanted came to his hand he lived high and slept soft and warm and never knew what it was to want either more or less or great or small in all of those three or four days he did nothing but enjoy himself
+with might and main but by and by he began to wonder where all the good things came from then before long he fell to pestering the old man with questions about the matter at first the old man put him off with short answers
+but the fiddler was a master hand at finding out anything he wanted to know he dinned and drummed and worried until flesh and blood could stand it no longer so at last the old man said that he would show him the treasure house where all his wealth came from
+and at that the fiddler was tickled beyond measure
+there in a corner by the wall was a great trap door of iron the old man fitted the key to the lock and turned it he lifted the door and then went down a steep flight of stone steps and the fiddler followed close at his heels
+down below it was as light as day for in the centre of the room hung a great lamp that shone with a bright light
+you must never open that door yonder at the back of the room should you do so ill luck will be sure to overtake you oh no the fiddler would never think of doing such a thing as opening the door
+and out into the sunlight again it took him maybe an hour to count all the money and jewels he had brought up with him after he had done that he began to wonder what was inside of the little door at the back of the room first he wondered
+perhaps i can see what is there without opening the door so down he took the key and off he marched to the garden he opened the trap door and went down the steep steps to the room below there was the door at the end of the room
+but when he came to look there was no key hole to it
+he heard a sound like the waves beating on the shore well says he this is the most curious thing i have seen for a long time since i have come so far i may as well see the end of it
+so he entered the passageway and closed the door behind him he went on and on and the spark of light kept growing larger and larger and by and by pop out he came at the other end of the passage sure enough
+there he stood on the sea shore with the waves beating and dashing on the rocks he stood looking and wondering to find himself in such a place when all of a sudden something came with a whiz and a rush and caught him by the belt and away he flew like a bullet
+by and by he managed to screw his head around and look up and there it was ill luck that had him i thought so said the fiddler and then he gave over kicking well on and on they flew over hill and valley over moor and mountain
+until they came to another garden and there ill luck let the fiddler drop swash down he fell into the top of an apple tree and there he hung in the branches it was the garden of a royal castle
+and all had been weeping and woe though they were beginning now to pick up their smiles again and this was the reason why the king of that country had died and no one was left behind him but the queen
+and so she had come out into the garden for a bit of rest and there she sat under the shade of an apple tree fanning herself and crying when swash down fell the fiddler into the apple tree and down fell a dozen apples
+you fell from heaven for i saw it with my eyes and heard it with my ears i see how it is now you were sent hither from heaven to be my husband and my husband you shall be you shall be king of this country half and half with me as queen
+and shall sit on a throne beside me you can guess whether or not that was music to the fiddler's ears so the princes were sent packing and the fiddler was married to the queen and reigned in that country well three or four days passed
+and all was as sweet and happy as a spring day but at the end of that time the fiddler began to wonder what was to be seen in the castle the queen was very fond of him and was glad enough to show him all the fine things that were to be seen
+you must not ask or wish to know should you open that door ill luck will be sure to overtake you pooh said the fiddler i don't care to know anyhow and off they went hand in hand yes
+that was a very fine thing to say but before an hour had gone by the fiddler's head began to hum and buzz like a beehive i don't believe said he there would be a grain of harm in my peeping inside that door all the same
+why look says he it is just like the door at the rich man's house over yonder i wonder if it is the same inside as outside and he opened the door and peeped in yes there was the long passage
+and the spark of light at the far end as though the sun were shining he cocked his head to one side and listened yes said he i think i hear the water rushing but i am not sure i will just go a little further in
+and listen and so he entered and closed the door behind him well he went on and on until pop there he was out at the farther end and before he knew what he was about he had stepped out upon the sea shore
+away flew the fiddler like a bullet and there was ill luck carrying him by the belt again away they sped
+until the fiddler's head grew so dizzy that he had to shut his eyes suddenly ill luck let him drop and down he fell thump bump on the hard ground then he opened his eyes and sat up
+or else i would have been a king if it had not been for ill luck and that is the way we all of us talk doctor faustus had sat all the while neither drinking ale nor smoking tobacco but with his hands folded and in silence
+i know not why it is said he but that story of yours my friend brings to my mind a story of a man whom i once knew a great magician in his time and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist
+and a rhetorician an astronomer an astrologer and a philosopher as well tis a long list of excellency said old bidpai
+nay said saint george everything must have a name it hath no name said doctor faustus but i shall give it a name and it shall be
+how i hate the man who talks about the brute creation with an ugly emphasis on brute as for me i am proud of my close kinship with other animals
+i take a jealous pride in my simian ancestry i like to think that i was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms
+and amphioxus fish dinosaurs and apes who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the garden of eden w n p barbellion
+last sunday potter took me out driving along upper broadway where those long rows of tall new apartment houses were built a few years ago it was a mild afternoon and great crowds of people were out
+sunday afternoon crowds they were not going anywhere they were just strolling up and down staring at each other and talking there were thousands and thousands of them
+i turned and asked why what about them i wasn't sure whether he had an idea or a headache other creatures don't do it he replied with a discouraged expression
+are any other beings ever found in such masses but vermin aimless staring vacant minded look at them
+i can get no sense whatever of individual worth or of value in men as a race when i see them like this it makes one almost despair of civilization i thought this over for awhile
+and yet at other times i too feel like a spectator an alien but even then i had never felt so alien or despairing as potter let's remember i said it's a simian civilization
+potter was staring disgustedly at some vaudeville sign boards yes i said those for example are distinctively simian why should you feel disappointment at something inevitable and i went on to argue that it wasn't as though we were descended from
+eagles for instance instead of broadly speaking from ape like or monkeyish beings being of simian stock we had simian traits our development naturally bore the marks of our origin
+what could you expect two if we had been made directly from clay the way it says in the bible and had therefore inherited no intermediate characteristics
+if a god or some principle of growth had gone that way to work with us he or it might have molded us in much more splendid forms but considering our simian descent it has done very well
+the only people who are disappointed in us are those who still believe that clay story or who unconsciously still let it color their thinking there certainly seems to be a power at work in the world
+by virtue of which every living thing grows and develops and it tends toward splendor seeds become trees and weak little nations grow great but the push or the force that is doing this the yeast as it were
+has to work in and on certain definite kinds of material because this yeast is in us there may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting mankind but because of our line of descent
+there are also queer limitations three in those distant invisible epochs before men existed before even the proud missing link strutted around through the woods
+little realizing how we his greatgrandsons would smile wryly at him much as our own descendants may shudder at us ages hence the various animals were desperately competing for power they couldn't or didn't live as equals
+certain groups sought the headship many strange forgotten dynasties rose met defiance and fell in the end it was our ancestors who won and became simian kings and bequeathed a whole planet to us
+and kept us in cages or show us for sport in the forest while they ruled the world so potter and i developing this train of thought began to imagine we had lived many ages ago and somehow or other had alighted here from some older planet
+familiar with the ways of evolution elsewhere in the universe we naturally should have wondered what course it would take on this earth even in this out of the way corner of the cosmos we might have reflected and on this tiny star
+it may be of interest to consider the trend of events we should have tried to appraise the different species as they wandered around each with its own set of good and bad characteristics which group we'd have wondered would ever contrive to rule all the rest
+and how great a development could they attain to thereafter
+we might first have considered the lemurs or apes they had hands aesthetically viewed the poor simians were simply grotesque but travelers who knew other planets might have known what beauty may spring from an uncouth beginning in this magic universe
+still those frowsy unlovely hordes of apes and monkeys were so completely lacking in signs of kingship they were so flighty too in their ways and had so little purpose and so much love for absurd and idle chatter
+they are not easily left behind even after long stages and they form a terrible obstacle to all high advancement
+the bees or the ants might have seemed to us more promising their smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap they could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals
+and in these orderly insects there are obviously a capacity for labor and co operative labor at that which could carry them far we all know that they have a marked genius great gifts of their own
+in a civilization of super ants or bees there would have been no problem of the hungry unemployed no poverty no unstable government no riots no strikes for short hours
+no derision of eugenics no thieves perhaps no crime at all ants are good citizens they place group interests first but they carry it so far they have few or no political rights
+an ant doesn't have the vote apparently he just has his duties this quality may have something to do with their having groups wars the egotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression
+so the egotism of the groups is extremely ferocious and active is this one of the reasons why ants fight so much we have seen the same phenomenon occur in certain nations of men and the ants commit atrocities in and after their battles that are
+i wish i could truly say inhuman but conversely ants are absolutely unselfish within the community they are skilful ingenious their nests and buildings are relatively larger than man's
+the scientists speak of their paved streets vaulted halls their hundreds of different domesticated animals their pluck and intelligence their individual initiative their chaste and industrious lives
+darwin said the ant's brain was one of the most marvelous atoms in the world perhaps more so than the brain of man yes of present day man who for thousands and thousands of years has had so much more chance to develop his brain
+a thoughtful observer would have weighed all these excellent qualities when we think of these creatures as little men which is all wrong of course we see they have their faults to our eyes they seem too orderly for instance
+repressively so their ways are more fixed than those of the old egyptians and their industry is painful to think of it's hyper chinese but we must remember this is a simian comment
+the instincts of the species that you and i belong to are of an opposite kind and that makes it hard for us to judge ants fairly but we and the ants are alike in one matter the strong love of property
+and instead of merely struggling with nature for it they also fight other ants the custom of plunder seems to be a part of most of their wars this has gone on for ages among them and continues today
+raids ferocious combats and loot are part of an ant's regular life ant reformers if there were any might lay this to their property sense and talk of abolishing property as a cure for the evil
+but that would not help for long unless they could abolish the love of it ants seem to care even more for property than we do ourselves we men are inclined to ease up a little when we have all we need
+they can't bear to stop they keep right on working this means that ants do not contemplate they heed nothing outside of their own little rounds it is almost as though their fondness for labor had closed fast their minds
+conceivably they might have developed inquiring minds but this would have run against their strongest instincts the ant is knowing and wise but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation
+would they have been able therewith to rule their instincts or to stop work long enough to examine themselves or the universe or to dream of any noble development probably not reason is seldom or never the ruler
+it is the servant of instinct it would therefore have told the ants that incessant toil was useful and good toil has brought you up from the ruck of things reason would have plausibly said
+it's by virtue of feverish toil that you have become what you are being endlessly industrious is the best road for you to the heights
+the preceding pages have outlined the career of the second connecticut heavy artillery and have narrated some of the more memorable events of its history enough has been told of what it did to furnish grounds for deducing what it was
+but to deal with the regiment on the personal side is hardly possible within the limits of such a sketch as this though it is a matter that cannot be entirely passed by
+made up the organization whose not uneventful existence has been described that they were better men or worse braver men or more patriotic than their descendants and successors would prove under similar conditions
+or than the hundreds of thousands of their contemporaries who devoted themselves to the same service is not to be believed yet to have passed through such experiences as have been recounted which became for them for a time the commonplaces of every day life
+is enough to place them apart from ordinary men in the eyes of our peace knowing generation in fact to have passed the tests of so fierce a course of education gives them a title to a place thus apart the university man of to day
+as the burden of the baccalaureate sermons so frequently testifies is consigned to a special place of responsibility in life because of his training these men surely earned one of special honor by reason of theirs which was too
+not like the other preparation alone but also fulfilment the realization of how typical it all was of that generation and that time brings the clearest understanding of the real scope of the civil war
+a number of the officers and men were college graduates when they enlisted and others gained degrees after the war ended the list which follows is however necessarily incomplete in fact an absolutely correct list is no doubt hopelessly impossible
+and was enlisted as captain of a company which he had been active in recruiting lieutenant colonel nathaniel smith of woodbury entered the yale law school in the class of eighteen fifty three but did not graduate
+ill health forced him to relinquish his commission early in eighteen sixty four and until his death in eighteen seventy seven he was a leading citizen of the county judge augustus h fenn major and brevet colonel
+came back from the war having lost an arm at cedar creek to take a course in the law school at harvard and yale made him a master of arts in eighteen eighty nine his prominence for many years in public life and as judge in the highest courts in the state is well known
+at the time of his death in eighteen ninety seven he was a lecturer in the yale law school and member of the supreme court of errors
+captain and brevet major was a graduate of williams in the class of eighteen fifty seven he was pastor of the congregational church at east canaan when the regiment was organized and was one of its recruiting officers adjutant theodore f vaill
+the historian of the regiment was a student before the war at union college but did not graduate captain george s williams of new milford was a member of the class of eighteen fifty two at yale for a time
+and received a degree from trinity in eighteen fifty five surgeon henry plumb and assistant surgeons robert g hazzard and john w lawton were all graduates of the yale medical school in the classes of eighteen sixty one
+and after the war was for some years rector of saint john's church in salisbury he was later connected with a church college in missouri where he died in eighteen ninety eight
+studied after the war at the berkeley divinity school and has been for many years rector of saint john's church in bridgeport lieutenant and brevet captain lewis w munger
+sergeant theodore c glazier was a graduate of trinity in the class of eighteen sixty and was a tutor there when he enlisted he was later made colonel of a colored regiment and served with credit in that capacity
+corporal edward c hopson a graduate of trinity in eighteen sixty four was killed at cedar creek sergeant garwood r merwin who had been a member of the class of eighteen sixty four at yale
+colonel mackenzie graduated at west point in eighteen sixty two but he was never a resident of the county or of connecticut and his only connection with either was through his commission from governor buckingham
+there are not a few other names upon the rolls of the regiment which upon more thorough investigation than has been possible in the present case would certainly be added to the list
+a complete history of the organization would also give a large place to the association of its veterans formed shortly after the war whose frequent gatherings have more than a superficial likeness to the reunions of college classes
+memorable among these meetings was the one held on october twenty first eighteen ninety six the occasion being the dedication of the regiment's monument in the national cemetery at arlington
+as a whole the regiment was a body thoroughly representative not only of the army of which it was a fraction an army as has been often said unlike any other the world has known but also of the population from which it was drawn
+it was made up of men of almost all conditions of life and of widely different ages though naturally with young men in a large majority of mechanics from the housatonic and naugatuck valleys and farmers boys from the hills of men of education and men of none
+though the large addition to its numbers which the increase in size necessitated made it perhaps somewhat less homogeneous than at first it did not greatly alter its essential characteristics
+the records kept by the association referred to furnish suggestive revelations as to the various elements that composed it the names of men of every sort and kind are found upon the rolls there were veterans of the mexican war
+there were refugees from the revolutionary uprisings in europe of eighteen forty eight there were some who had served under compulsion in the armies of the south there were men whose obviously fictitious names concealed stories which could be guessed to be extraordinary
+there were names which have been for years among the best known and most honored in this state and there were those of outcasts and wrecks a large part of these men came back after their service ended to resume the peaceful life of citizenship
+and every town among us has known some of them ever since among its leading figures while some in quarters far distant have also attained to honors and responsibilities as the records show
+some had over trustful characters like the seals or exploitable characters like cows and chickens and sheep such creatures sentence themselves to be captives by their lack of ambition dogs they have more spirit
+but they have lost their chance of kingship through worshipping us the dog's finer qualities can't be praised too warmly there is a purity about his devotion which makes mere men feel speechless but with all love for dogs
+one must grant they are vassals not rulers they are too parasitic the one willing servant class of the world and we have betrayed them by making under simians of them
+loving us they let us stop their developing in tune with their natures and they've patiently tried ever since to adopt ways of ours they have done it too but of course they can't get far it's not their own road
+dogs have more love than integrity they've been true to us yes but they haven't been true to themselves pigs the pig is remarkably intelligent and brave but he's gross
+and grossness delays one's achievement it takes so much time the snake too though wise has a way of eating himself into stupors if super snake men had had banquets they would have been too vast to describe
+and well should the elephant know it he had the best chance of all wiser even than the lion or the wisest of apes his wisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister consider his dignity his poise and skill
+he was plastic too he had learned to eat many foods and endure many climates once some say this race explored the globe their bones are found everywhere in south america even
+so the elephants columbus may have found some road here before ours they are cosmopolitans these suave and well bred beings they have rich emotional natures long memories loyalty they are steady and sure
+and not narrow not self absorbed for they seem interested in everything what was it then that put them out of the race could it have been a quite natural belief that they had already won and when they saw that they hadn't
+and that the monkey men were getting ahead were they too great minded and decent to exterminate their puny rivals it may have been their tolerance and patience that betrayed them they wait too long before they resent an imposition or insult
+just as ants are too energetic and cats too shrewd for their own highest good so the elephants suffer from too much patience their exhibitions of it may seem superb such power and such restraint combined are noble
+more live and let live in allowing other species to stay here our way is to kill good and bad male and female and babies till the few last survivors lie hidden away from our guns
+all species must surrender unconditionally those are our terms and come and live in barns alongside us or on us as parasites the creatures that want to live a life of their own we call wild if wild
+then no matter how harmless we treat them as outlaws and those of us who are specially well brought up shoot them for fun some might be our friends we don't wish it we keep them all terrorized
+when one of us conquering monkey men enters the woods most animals that scent him slink away or race off in a panic it is not that we have planned this deliberately but they know what we're like race by race they have been slaughtered
+soon all will be gone we give neither freedom nor life room to those we defeat if we had been as strong as the elephants we might have been kinder when great power comes naturally to people
+it is used more urbanely we use it as parvenus do because that's what we are the elephant being born to it is easy going confident tolerant he would have been a more humane king
+the elephant is stupid when it comes to learning how to use tools so are all other species except our own isn't it strange a tool in the most primitive sense is any object lying around
+that can obviously be used as an instrument for this or that purpose many creatures use objects as materials as birds use twigs for nests but the step that no animal takes is learning freely to use things as instruments
+when an elephant plucks off a branch and swishes his flanks and thus keeps away insects he is using a tool but he does it only by a vague and haphazard association of ideas if he once became a conscious user of tools
+he would of course go much further we ourselves who are so good at it now were slow enough in beginning think of the long epochs that passed before it entered our heads
+and all that while the contest for leadership blindly went on without any species making use of this obvious aid the lesson to be learned was simple the reward was the rule of a planet yet only one species our own
+has ever had that much brains it makes you wonder what other obvious lessons may still be unlearned it is not necessarily stupid however to fail to use tools to use tools involves using reason
+instead of sticking to instinct now sticking to instinct has its disadvantages but so has using reason whichever faculty you use the other atrophies and partly deserts you we are trying to use both
+but we still don't know which has the more value a sudden vision comes to me of one of the first far away ape men who tried to use reason instead of instinct as a guide for his conduct i imagine him perched in his tree
+torn between those two voices wailing loudly at night by a river in his puzzled distress my poor far off brother
+and thereafter achieve a high civilization but that wasn't the problem the real problem
+some quenchless desire to urge them on and on and also adaptability of a thousand kinds to their environment the rhinoceros cares little for adaptability he slogs through the world but we
+we are experts adaptability is what we depend on we talk of our mastery of nature which sounds very grand but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves first to her ways
+we attain no power over nature till we learn natural laws and our lordship depends on the adroitness with which we learn and conform adroitness however is merely an ability to win
+back of it there must be some spur to make us use our adroitness why don't we all die or give up when we're sick of the world because the love of life is reenforced in most energized beings
+by some longing that pushes them forward in defeat and in darkness all creatures wish to live and to perpetuate their species of course but those two wishes alone evidently do not carry any race far
+in addition to these a race to be great needs some hunger some itch to spur it up the hard path we lately have learned to call evolution the love of toil in the ants and of craft in cats are examples
+as if the young lady had been in a position to appeal to it but in fact the british public remained for the present profoundly indifferent to miss isabel archer whose fortune had dropped her as her cousin said into the dullest house in england
+her gouty uncle received very little company and missus touchett not having cultivated relations with her husband's neighbours was not warranted in expecting visits from them she had however a peculiar taste she liked to receive cards
+for what is usually called social intercourse she had very little relish but nothing pleased her more than to find her hall table whitened with oblong morsels of symbolic pasteboard she flattered herself that she was a very just woman
+and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing in this world is got for nothing she had played no social part as mistress of gardencourt and it was not to be supposed that in the surrounding country a minute account should be kept of her comings and goings
+but it is by no means certain that she did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken of them and that her failure really very gratuitous to make herself important in the neighbourhood had not much to do with the acrimony of her allusions to her husband's adopted country
+isabel presently found herself in the singular situation of defending the british constitution against her aunt
+isabel always felt an impulse to pull out the pins not that she imagined they inflicted any damage on the tough old parchment but because it seemed to her her aunt might make better use of her sharpness
+she was very critical herself it was incidental to her age her sex and her nationality but she was very sentimental as well and there was something in missus touchett's dryness that set her own moral fountains flowing now what's your point of view
+she asked of her aunt when you criticise everything here you should have a point of view yours doesn't seem to be american you thought everything over there so disagreeable when i criticise i have mine it's thoroughly american
+there are as many points of view in the world as there are people of sense to take them you may say that doesn't make them very numerous american never in the world that's shockingly narrow my point of view thank god is personal
+isabel thought this a better answer than she admitted it was a tolerable description of her own manner of judging but it would not have sounded well for her to say so
+would savour of immodesty even of arrogance
+with whom she talked a great deal and with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a large licence to extravagance her cousin used as the phrase is to chaff her
+he very soon established with her a reputation for treating everything as a joke and he was not a man to neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred
+of laughing at all things beginning with himself such slender faculty of reverence as he possessed centred wholly upon his father for the rest he exercised his wit indifferently upon his father's son this gentleman's weak lungs
+his useless life his fantastic mother
+his adopted and his native country his charming new found cousin i keep a band of music in my ante room he said once to her it has orders to play without stopping it renders me two excellent services
+it keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments and it makes the world think that dancing's going on within
+the liveliest waltzes seemed to float upon the air isabel often found herself irritated by this perpetual fiddling
+and enter the private apartments it mattered little that he had assured her they were a very dismal place she would have been glad to undertake to sweep them and set them in order it was but half hospitality to let her remain outside
+it must be said that her wit was exercised to a large extent in self defence for her cousin amused himself with calling her columbia and accusing her of a patriotism so heated that it scorched he drew a caricature of her
+in the folds of the national banner isabel's chief dread in life at this period of her development was that she should appear narrow minded what she feared next afterwards was that she should really be so but she nevertheless
+she would be as american as it pleased him to regard her and if he chose to laugh at her she would give him plenty of occupation she defended england against his mother but when ralph sang its praises on purpose as she said to work her up
+she found herself able to differ from him on a variety of points in fact the quality of this small ripe country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an october pear
+and her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which enabled her to take her cousin's chaff
+if her good humour flagged at moments it was not because she thought herself ill used but because she suddenly felt sorry for ralph it seemed to her he was talking as a blind and had little heart in what he said
+i don't know what's the matter with you she observed to him once but i suspect you're a great humbug that's your privilege ralph answered who had not been used to being so crudely addressed i don't know what you care for
+i don't think you care for anything you don't really care for england when you praise it you don't care for america even when you pretend to abuse it i care for nothing but you dear cousin said ralph if i could believe
+even that i should be very glad ah well i should hope so the young man exclaimed isabel might have believed it and not have been far from the truth he thought a great deal about her she was constantly present to his mind
+at a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her sudden arrival which promised nothing and was an open handed gift of fate had refreshed and quickened them given them wings and something to fly for
+poor ralph had been for many weeks steeped in melancholy his outlook habitually sombre lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud
+the old man had been gravely ill in the spring and the doctors had whispered to ralph that another attack would be less easy to deal with just now he appeared disburdened of pain but ralph could not rid himself of a suspicion that this was a subterfuge of the enemy
+who was waiting to take him off his guard if the manoeuvre should succeed there would be little hope of any great resistance ralph had always taken for granted that his father would survive him that his own name would be the first grimly called
+the father and son had been close companions and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business
+at the prospect of losing his great motive ralph lost indeed his one inspiration
+but without the encouragement of his father's society he should barely have patience to await his own turn he had not the incentive of feeling that he was indispensable to his mother it was a rule with his mother to have no regrets
+he bethought himself of course that it had been a small kindness to his father to wish that of the two the active rather than the passive party should know the felt wound he remembered that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an early end as a clever fallacy
+which he should be delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first but of the two triumphs that of refuting a sophistical son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of being which with all abatements he enjoyed
+he wondered whether he were harbouring love for this spontaneous young woman from albany but he judged that on the whole he was not after he had known her for a week he quite made up his mind to this and every day he felt a little more sure
+lord warburton had been right about her she was a really interesting little figure ralph wondered how their neighbour had found it out so soon and then he said it was only another proof of his friend's high abilities
+which he had always greatly admired if his cousin were to be nothing more than an entertainment to him ralph was conscious she was an entertainment of a high order a character like that he said to himself
+a real little passionate force to see at play is the finest thing in nature it's finer than the finest work of art than a greek bas relief
+than a gothic cathedral it's very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least looked for it i had never been more blue more bored than for a week before she came i had never expected less that anything pleasant would happen
+a greek bas relief to stick over my chimney piece the key of a beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand and i'm told to walk in and admire my poor boy you've been sadly ungrateful
+and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble again the sentiment of these reflexions was very just
+his cousin was a very brilliant girl
+but she needed the knowing and his attitude with regard to her though it was contemplative and critical was not judicial he surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly
+isabel's originality was that she gave one an impression of having intentions of her own whenever she executes them said ralph may i be there to see it devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place
+and his wife's position was that of rather a grim visitor so that in the line of conduct that opened itself to ralph duty and inclination were harmoniously mixed he was not a great walker but he strolled about the grounds with his cousin
+a pastime for which the weather remained favourable with a persistency not allowed for in isabel's somewhat lugubrious prevision of the climate and in the long afternoons of which the length was but the measure of her gratified eagerness
+they took a boat on the river the dear little river as isabel called it where the opposite shore seemed still a part of the foreground of the landscape or drove over the country in a phaeton a low capacious thick wheeled phaeton
+but which he had now ceased to enjoy isabel enjoyed it largely and handling the reins in a manner which approved itself to the groom as knowing was never weary of driving her uncle's capital horses through winding lanes and byways
+full of the rural incidents she had confidently expected to find past cottages thatched and timbered past ale houses latticed and sanded past patches of ancient common and glimpses of empty parks
+between hedgerows made thick by midsummer when they reached home they usually found tea had been served on the lawn
+but the two for the most part sat silent the old man with his head back and his eyes closed his wife occupied with her knitting and wearing that appearance of rare profundity with which some ladies consider the movement of their needles
+one day however a visitor had arrived the two young persons after spending an hour on the river strolled back to the house and perceived lord warburton sitting under the trees and engaged in conversation
+of which even at a distance the desultory character was appreciable with
+he had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau and had asked as the father and son often invited him to do for a dinner and a lodging isabel seeing him for half an hour on the day of her arrival had discovered in this brief space that she liked him
+he had indeed rather sharply registered himself on her fine sense and she had thought of him several times she had hoped she should see him again hoped too that she should see a few others gardencourt was not dull
+the place itself was sovereign her uncle was more and more a sort of golden grandfather and ralph was unlike any cousin she had ever encountered her idea of cousins having tended to gloom then
+her impressions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was as yet hardly a hint of vacancy in the view but isabel had need to remind herself that she was interested in human nature and that her foremost hope in coming abroad
+had been that she should see a great many people when ralph said to her as he had done several times i wonder you find this endurable you ought to see some of the neighbours and some of our friends
+though you would never suppose it when he offered to invite what he called a lot of people and make her acquainted with english society she encouraged the hospitable impulse and promised in advance to hurl herself into the fray
+little however for the present had come of his offers and it may be confided to the reader that if the young man delayed to carry them out it was because he found the labour of providing for his companion by no means so severe as to require extraneous help
+isabel had spoken to him very often about specimens it was a word that played a considerable part in her vocabulary she had given him to understand that she wished to see english society illustrated by eminent cases
+well now there's a specimen he said to her as they walked up from the riverside and he recognised lord warburton a specimen of what asked the girl a specimen of an english gentleman do you mean they're all like him
+oh no they're not all like him
+said isabel because i'm sure he's nice
+the fortunate lord warburton exchanged a handshake with our heroine and hoped she was very well but i needn't ask that he said since you've been handling the oars i've been rowing a little isabel answered but how should you know it
+oh i know he doesn't row he's too lazy said his lordship indicating ralph touchett with a laugh he has a good excuse for his laziness isabel rejoined lowering her voice a little ah he has a good excuse for everything
+cried lord warburton still with his sonorous mirth my excuse for not rowing is that my cousin rows so well said ralph she does everything well she touches nothing that she doesn't adorn
+it makes one want to be touched miss archer lord warburton declared
+who if it pleased her to hear it said that her accomplishments were numerous was happily able to reflect that such complacency was not the indication of a feeble mind inasmuch as there were several things in which she excelled
+had at least the element of humility that it always needed to be supported by proof lord warburton not only spent the night at gardencourt but he was persuaded to remain over the second day and when the second day was ended
+he determined to postpone his departure till the morrow during this period he addressed many of his remarks to isabel who accepted this evidence of his esteem with a very good grace she found herself liking him extremely
+the first impression he had made on her had had weight but at the end of an evening spent in his society she scarce fell short of seeing him though quite without luridity as a hero of romance
+with a quickened consciousness of possible felicities it's very nice to know two such charming people as those she said meaning by those her cousin and her cousin's friend it must be added moreover
+that an incident had occurred which might have seemed to put her good humour to the test
+but his wife remained in the drawing room with the other members of the party she prolonged her vigil for something less than an hour and then rising observed to isabel that it was time they should bid the gentlemen good night isabel had as yet no desire to go to bed
+the occasion wore to her sense a festive character and feasts were not in the habit of terminating so early so without further thought she replied very simply need i go dear aunt i'll come up in half an hour
+it's impossible i should wait for you missus touchett answered
+ralph will light my candle isabel gaily engaged i'll light your candle do let me light your candle miss archer
+only i beg it shall not be before midnight
+and transferred them coldly to her niece
+you're not you're not at your blest albany my dear isabel rose blushing i wish i were she said oh i say mother ralph broke out
+i must take it as i find it can't i stay with my own cousin isabel enquired i'm not aware that lord warburton is your cousin perhaps i had better go to bed the visitor suggested that will arrange it
+missus touchett gave a little look of despair and sat down again
+ralph meanwhile handed isabel her candlestick he had been watching her it had seemed to him her temper was involved an accident that might be interesting but if he had expected anything of a flare he was disappointed for the girl simply laughed a little
+nodded good night and withdrew accompanied by her aunt for himself he was annoyed at his mother though he thought she was right above stairs the two ladies separated at missus touchett's door isabel had said nothing on her way up
+isabel considered i'm not vexed but i'm surprised and a good deal mystified wasn't it proper i should remain in the drawing room not in the least young girls here in decent houses
+don't sit alone with the gentlemen late at night you were very right to tell me then said isabel i don't understand it but i'm very glad to know it i shall always tell you her aunt answered whenever i see you taking what seems to me too much liberty
+yes i think i'm very fond of them but i always want to know the things one shouldn't do so as to do them asked her aunt
+bell had declared that her sister would be very happy to see john eames if he would go over to allington and he had replied that of course he would go there so much having been as it were settled
+he was able to speak of his visit as a matter of course at the breakfast table on the morning after the earl's dinner party i must get you to come round with me dale and see what i am doing to the land the earl said
+but the squire preferred walking and in this way they were disposed of soon after breakfast john had it in his mind to get bell to himself for half an hour and hold a conference with her but it either happened that lady julia was too keen in her duties as a hostess
+or else as was more possible bell avoided the meeting no opportunity for such an interview offered itself though he hung about the drawing room all the morning you had better wait for luncheon now lady julia said to him about twelve
+but this he declined and taking himself away hid himself about the place for the next hour and a half during this time he considered much whether it would be better for him to ride or walk if she should give him any hope
+he could ride back triumphant as a field marshal then the horse would be delightful to him but if she should give him no hope if it should be his destiny to be rejected utterly on that morning then the horse would be terribly in the way of his sorrow
+resting when he might choose to rest and running when it might suit him to run and she is not like other girls he thought to himself she won't care for my boots being dirty so at last he elected to walk
+stand up to her boldly man the earl had said to him by george what is there to be afraid of
+there's nothing sets em against a man like being sheepish how the earl knew so much
+i am not prepared to say but eames took his advice as being in itself good and resolved to act upon it not that any resolution will be of any use he said to himself as he walked along
+when the moment comes i know that i shall tremble before her and i know that she'll see it
+he had last seen her on the lawn behind the small house just at that time when her passion for crosbie was at the strongest eames had gone thither impelled by a foolish desire to declare to her his hopeless love
+and she had answered him by telling him that she loved mister crosbie better than all the world besides of course she had done so at that time but nevertheless her manner of telling him had seemed to him to be cruel and he also had been cruel
+he had told her that he hated crosbie calling him that man and assuring her that no earthly consideration should induce him to go into that man's house then he had walked away moodily wishing him all manner of evil
+was it not singular that all the evil things which he in his mind had meditated for the man had fallen upon him crosbie had lost his love he had so proved himself to be a villain that his name might not be so much as mentioned
+he had been ignominiously thrashed but what good would all this be if his image were still dear to lily's heart i told her that i loved her then he said to himself though i had no right to do so
+at any rate i have a right to tell her now when he reached allington he did not go in through the village and up to the front of the small house by the cross street but turned by the church gate and passed over the squire's terrace
+here he encountered hopkins
+mister john may i make so bold and hopkins held out a very dirty hand which eames of course took unconscious of the cause of this new affection i'm just going to call at the small house and i thought i'd come this way
+to be sure this way or that way or any way who's so welcome mister john i envies you i envies you more than i envies any man if i could a got him by the scuff of the neck i'd a treated him jist like any wermin i would indeed he was wermin i
+ollays said it i hated him ollays i did indeed mister john
+he never looked at one as though one were a christian did he mister john
+only she poor young lady she'll be better now mister john a deal better
+tell me mister john did you give it him well when you got him i heard you did two black eyes and all his face one mash of gore and hopkins who was by no means a young man stiffly put himself into a fighting attitude
+eames passed on over the little bridge which seemed to be in a state of fast decay unattended to by any friendly carpenter now that the days of its use were so nearly at an end and on into the garden lingering on the spot where he had last said farewell to lily
+but there was no one to be seen in the garden and no sound to be heard as every step brought him nearer to her whom he was seeking he became more and more conscious of the hopelessness of his errand him she had never loved
+and why should he venture to hope that she would love him now
+had he not been aware that his promise to others required that he should persevere he had said that he would do this thing and he would be as good as his word but he hardly ventured to hope that he might be successful
+in this frame of mind he slowly made his way up across the lawn my dear there is john eames said missus dale who had first seen him from the parlour window don't go mamma
+i don't know perhaps it will be better that i should no mamma no what good can it do it can do no good i like him as well as i can like any one i love him dearly but it can do no good let him come in here and be very kind to him
+and i shall be very glad to see him then missus dale went round to the other room and admitted her visitor through the window of the drawing room we are in terrible confusion john are we not and so you are really going to live in guestwick
+well it looks like it does it not but to tell you a secret only it must be a secret you must not mention it at guestwick manor even bell does not know we have half made up our minds to unpack all our things and stay where we are
+eames was so intent on his own purpose and so fully occupied with the difficulty of the task before him that he could hardly receive missus dale's tidings with all the interest which they deserved unpack them all again he said
+that will be very troublesome is lily with you missus dale yes she is in the parlour come and see her so he followed missus dale through the hall and found himself in the presence of his love
+how do you do john how do you do lily we all know the way in which such meetings are commenced each longed to be tender and affectionate to the other
+but neither knew how to throw any tenderness into this first greeting so you're staying at the manor house said lily yes i'm staying there your uncle and bell came yesterday afternoon have you heard about bell said missus dale
+oh yes mary told me i'm so glad of it i always liked doctor crofts very much i have not congratulated her because i didn't know whether it was a secret but crofts was there last night and if it is a secret he didn't seem to be very careful about keeping it
+i don't know that i am fond of such secrets but as she said this she thought of crosbie's engagement which had been told to every one and of its consequences is it to be soon he asked well yes we think so
+of course nothing is settled it was such fun said lily james who took at any rate a year or two to make his proposal wanted to be married the next day afterwards no lily not quite that well mamma it was very nearly that
+i don't know anybody i should so much like for a brother i'm very glad you like him very glad i hope you'll be friends always there was some little tenderness in this as john acknowledged to himself i'm sure we shall if he likes it that is if i ever happen to see him
+i'll do anything for him i can if he ever comes up to london wouldn't it be a good thing missus dale if he settled himself in london no john it would be a very bad thing why should he wish to rob me of my daughter missus dale was speaking of her eldest daughter
+but the very allusion to any such robbery covered john eames's face with a blush
+and for the moment silenced him you think he would have a better career in london said lily speaking under the influence of her superior presence of mind she had certainly shown defective judgment in desiring her mother not to leave them alone
+and of this missus dale soon felt herself aware the thing had to be done and no little precautionary measure such as this of missus dale's enforced presence would prevent it of this missus dale was well aware
+and she felt moreover that john was entitled to an opportunity of pleading his own cause
+but not the less should he have it of right seeing that he desired it but yet missus dale did not dare to get up and leave the room lily had asked her not to do so and at the present period of their lives all lily's requests were sacred
+they continued for some time to talk of crofts and his marriage and when that subject was finished they discussed their own probable or as it seemed now improbable removal to guestwick it's going too far mamma said lily
+to say that you think we shall not go it was only last night that you suggested it the truth is john that hopkins came in and discoursed with the most wonderful eloquence nobody dared to oppose hopkins he made us almost cry he was so pathetic
+he has just been talking to me too said john as i came through the squire's garden and what has he been saying to you said missus dale oh i don't know not much
+john however remembered well at this moment all that the gardener had said to him did she know of that encounter between him and crosbie and if she did know of it in what light did she regard it
+he had sworn to himself that he would not leave the small house without asking lily to be his wife it seemed to him as though he would be guilty of falsehood towards the earl if he did so lord de guest had opened his house to him
+and had asked all the dales there and had offered himself up as a sacrifice at the cruel shrine of a serious dinner party to say nothing of that easier and lighter sacrifice which he had made in a pecuniary point of view in order that this thing might be done
+under such circumstances eames was too honest a man not to do it let the difficulties in his way be what they might he had sat there for an hour and missus dale still remained with her daughter
+should he get up boldly and ask lily to put on her bonnet and come out into the garden as the thought struck him he rose and grasped at his hat i am going to walk back to guestwick said he it was very good of you to come so far to see us
+i was always fond of walking he said
+have a glass of wine before you go oh dear no i think i'll go back through the squire's fields and out on the road at the white gate the path is quite dry now i dare say it is said missus dale lily
+i wonder whether you would come as far as that with me as the request was made missus dale looked at her daughter almost beseechingly do pray do said he it is a beautiful day for walking
+the path proposed lay right across the field into which lily had taken crosbie when she made her offer to let him off from his engagement could it be possible that she should ever walk there again with another lover no john she said not to day
+i think i am almost tired and i had rather not go out it would do you good said missus dale i don't want to be done good to mamma besides i should have to come back by myself i'll come back with you said johnny
+oh yes and then i should have to go again with you but john really i don't wish to walk to day whereupon john eames again put down his hat lily said he and then he stopped missus dale walked away to the window
+lily i have come over here on purpose to speak to you indeed i have come down from london only that i might see you have you john yes i have you know well all that i have got to tell you
+no john no she answered
+always no to that how can it be otherwise you would not have me marry you while i love another but he is gone he has taken another wife i cannot change myself because he is changed
+if you are kind to me you will let that be enough but you are so unkind to me no no oh i would wish to be so kind to you john here take my hand it is the hand of a friend who loves you and will always love you
+dear john i will do anything everything for you but that there is only one thing said he still holding her by the hand but with his face turned from her nay do not say so
+i could not have that one thing and i was nearer to my heart's longings than you have ever been i cannot have that one thing but i know that there are other things and i will not allow myself to be broken hearted
+you are stronger than i am he said not stronger but more certain make yourself as sure as i am and you too will be strong is it not so mamma
+i wish it could be otherwise i wish it could be otherwise if you can give him any hope mamma tell me that i may come again in a year he pleaded i cannot tell you so you may not come again not in this way
+that i loved him better than all the world besides it is still the same i still love him better than all the world how then can i give you any hope
+but it will not be so for ever lily for ever why should he not be mine as well as hers when that for ever comes john if you understand what it is to love
+you will say nothing more of it i have spoken to you more openly about this than i have ever done to anybody even to mamma because i have wished to make you understand my feelings
+i should be disgraced in my own eyes if i admitted the love of another man after after it is to me almost as though i had married him
+i am not blaming him remember these things are different with a man she had not dropped his hand and as she made her last speech was sitting in her old chair with her eyes fixed upon the ground
+she spoke in a low voice slowly almost with difficulty but still the words came very clearly with a clear distinct voice which caused them to be remembered with accuracy
+to him it seemed to be impossible that he should continue his suit after such a declaration to missus dale they were terrible words speaking of a perpetual widowhood
+and telling of an amount of suffering greater even than that which she had anticipated
+or had attempted to make so clear an exposition of her own feelings i should be disgraced in my own eyes if i admitted the love of another man they were terrible words but very easy to be understood
+missus dale had felt from the first that eames was coming too soon that the earl and the squire together were making an effort to cure the wound too quickly after its infliction that time should have been given to her girl to recover
+but now the attempt had been made and words had been forced from lily's lips the speaking of which would never be forgotten by herself i knew that it would be so said john ah yes
+you know it because your heart understands my heart and you will not be angry with me and say naughty cruel words as you did once before we will think of each other john and pray for each other and will always love one another
+when we do meet let us be glad to see each other no other friend shall ever be dearer to me than you are you are so true and honest when you marry i will tell your wife what an infinite blessing god has given her
+you shall never do that yes i will i understand what you mean but yet i will good by missus dale he said good by john
+and i will love you now then she put up her lips and kissed his face and so will i love you said lily giving him her hand again
+he looked longingly into her face as though he had thought it possible that she also might kiss him then he pressed her hand to his lips and without speaking any further farewell took up his hat and left the room poor fellow
+said missus dale they should not have let him come said lily but they don't understand
+and they mean to be good natured and to give me another very shortly after that lily went away by herself and sat alone for hours and when she joined her mother again at tea time nothing further was said of john eames's visit
+he made his way out by the front door and through the churchyard and in this way on to the field through which he had asked lily to walk with him
+as he made his way through the tombstones he paused and read one as though it interested him
+and then pulled out his own watch as though to verify the one by the other he made unconsciously a struggle to drive away from his thoughts the facts of the late scene and for some five or ten minutes he succeeded
+and laughed inwardly as he remembered the figure of rafferty bringing in the knight's shoes he had gone some half mile upon his way before he ventured to stand still and tell himself that he had failed in the great object of his life yes
+he had failed and he acknowledged to himself with bitter reproaches that he had failed now and for ever he told himself that he had obtruded upon her in her sorrow with an unmannerly love
+and rebuked himself as having been not only foolish but ungenerous his friend the earl had been wont in his waggish way to call him the conquering hero and had so talked him out of his common sense as to have made him almost think that he would be successful in his suit
+he almost hated the earl for having brought him to this condition a conquering hero indeed how should he manage to sneak back among them all at the manor house crestfallen and abject in his misery
+everybody knew the errand on which he had gone and everybody must know of his failure how could he have been such a fool as to undertake such a task under the eyes of so many lookers on
+was it not the case that he had so fondly expected success as to think only of his triumph in returning and not of his more probable disgrace he had allowed others to make a fool of him
+and had so made a fool of himself that now all hope and happiness were over for him how could he escape at once out of the country back to london how could he get away without saying a word further to any one
+he crossed the road at the end of the squire's property where the parish of allington divides itself from that of abbot's guest in which the earl's house stands and made his way back along the copse which skirted the field in which they had encountered the bull
+ah yes it had been well for him that he had not come out on horseback that ride home along the high road and up to the manor house stables would under his present circumstances have been almost impossible to him
+as it was he did not think it possible that he should return to his place in the earl's house how could he pretend to maintain his ordinary demeanour under the eyes of those two old men it would be better for him to get home to his mother
+to send a message from thence to the manor and then to escape back to london so thinking but with no resolution made he went on through the woods
+there he stopped and stood a while with his broad hand spread over the letters which he had cut in those early days so as to hide them from his sight what an ass i have been always and ever he said to himself
+it was not only of his late disappointment that he was thinking but of his whole past life he was conscious of his hobbledehoyhood
+of that backwardness on his part in assuming manhood which had rendered him incapable of making himself acceptable to lily before she had fallen into the clutches of crosbie
+if such sending might possibly be done by fair beating regardless whether he himself might be called upon to follow him was it not hard that for the two of them for lily and for him also
+there should be such punishment because of the insincerity of that man when he had thus stood upon the bridge for some quarter of an hour he took out his knife and with deep rough gashes in the wood cut out lily's name from the rail
+he had hardly finished and was still looking at the chips as they were being carried away by the stream when a gentle step came close up to him and turning round he saw that lady julia was on the bridge she was close to him
+and had already seen his handiwork has she offended you john she said
+do you mean to cut it out from your heart never i would if i could but i never shall keep to it as to a great treasure it will be a joy to you in after years and not a sorrow
+will be a consolation when you are as old as i am it is something to have had a heart
+and john i can understand her feeling now and indeed i thought all through that you were asking her too soon but the time may yet come when she will think better of your wishes no no never i begin to know her now
+if you can be constant in your love you may win her yet remember how young she is and how young you both are come again in two years time and then when you have won her you shall tell me that i have been a good old woman to you both
+i shall never win her lady julia as he spoke these last words the tears were running down his cheeks
+it was well for him that she had come upon him in his sorrow when he once knew that she had seen his tears
+how the subject feels under hypnotization doctor cooper's experience effect of music doctor alfred marthieu's experiments
+the sensations produced during a state of hypnosis are very interesting as may be supposed they differ greatly in different persons
+one of the most interesting accounts ever given is that of doctor james r cocke a hypnotist himself who submitted to being operated upon by a professional magnetizer
+he was at that time a firm believer in the theory of personal magnetism a delusion from which he afterward escaped on the occasion which he describes the operator commanded him to close his eyes
+but he did open them at once again he told him to close the eyes and at the same time he gently stroked his head and face and eyelids with his hand doctor cocke fancied he felt a tingling sensation in his forehead and eyes
+which he supposed came from the hand of the operator afterward he came to believe that this sensation was purely imaginary on his part then he says a sensation akin to fear came over me
+the operator said you are going to sleep you are getting sleepy you cannot open your eyes i was conscious that my heart was beating rapidly and i felt a sensation of terror
+he then made passes over my head down over my hands and body but did not touch me he then said to me you cannot open your eyes the motor apparatus of my lids would not seemingly respond to my will
+yet i was conscious that while one part of my mind wanted to open my eyes another part did not want to so i was in a paradoxical state i believed that i could open my eyes and yet could not
+the feeling of not wishing to open my eyes was not based upon any desire to please the operator i had no personal interest in him in any way but be it understood i firmly believed in his power to control me
+then he stroked the arm and said it was growing numb he said you have no feeling in it have you doctor cocke goes on i said no and i knew that i said no
+the operator went on pricking the arm with a pin and though doctor cocke felt the pain he said he did not feel it and at the same time the sensation of terror increased i was not conscious of my body at all he says further on
+but i was painfully conscious of the two contradictory elements within me i knew that my body existed but could not prove it to myself i knew that the statements made by the operator were in a measure untrue
+i obeyed them voluntarily and involuntarily this is the last remembrance that i have of that hypnotic experience after this however the operator caused the doctor to do a number of things which he learned of from his friends after the performance was over
+it seemed to me that the hypnotist commanded me to awake as soon as i dropped my arm and yet ten minutes of unconsciousness had passed on a subsequent occasion doctor cocke who was blind was put into a deep hypnotic sleep
+by fixing his mind on the number twenty six and holding up his hand this time he experienced a still greater degree of terror and incidentally learned that he could hypnotize himself the matter of self hypnotism
+we shall consider in another chapter in this connection we find great interest in an article in the medical news july twenty eighth eighteen ninety four
+in which he describes the effects of music upon hypnotic subjects while in vienna he took occasion to observe closely the enthusiastic musical devotees as they sat in the audience at the performance of one of wagner's operas
+he believed they were in a condition of self induced hypnotism in which their subjective faculties were so exalted as to supersede their objective perceptions music was no longer to them a succession of pleasing sounds
+but the embodiment of a drama in which they became so wrapped up that they forgot all about the mechanical and external features of the music and lived completely in a fairy world of dream
+this observation suggested to him an interesting series of experiments his first subject was easily hypnotized and of an emotional nature wagner's
+was played from the piano score the pulse of the subject became more rapid and at first of higher tension increasing from a normal rate of sixty beats a minute to one hundred twenty then
+as the music progressed the tension diminished the respiration increased from eighteen to thirty per minute great excitement in the subject was evident his whole body was thrown into motion his legs were drawn up his arms tossed into the air
+the state of mind brought up before him in the most realistic and vivid manner possible the picture of the ride of tam o'shanter which he had seen years before the picture
+soon became real to him and he found himself taking part in a wild chase not as witch devil or tam even but in some way his consciousness was spread through every part of the scene being of it
+and yet playing the part of spectator as is often the case in dreams doctor warthin tried the same experiment again this time on a young man who was not so emotional and was hypnotized with much more difficulty
+this subject did not pass into such a deep state of hypnotism but the result was practically the same the pulse rate rose from seventy to one hundred twenty the sensation remembered was that of riding furiously through the air
+the experiment was repeated on other subjects in all cases with the same result
+to him it always expressed the pictured wild ride of the daughters of wotan the subject taking part in the ride it was noticeable in each case that the same music played to them in the waking state produced no special impression
+at first it seemed to produce the opposite effect for the pulse was lowered later it rose to a rate double the normal and the tension was diminished the impression described by the subject afterward
+and the subject seemed to contemplate a landscape of lofty grandeur a different sort of music was played
+appears to summon sigmund to valhalla
+it became slow and irregular and very small the respiration decreased almost to gasping the face grew pale and a cold perspiration broke out readers who are especially interested in this subject
+will find descriptions of many other interesting experiments in the same article doctor cocke describes a peculiar trick he played upon the sight of a subject says he i once hypnotized a man
+and call the letters as i directed stimulation was in this case impossible as i made him read fifteen or twenty pages he calling the letters as suggested each time they occurred the extraordinary heightening
+and clairvoyance if the powers of the mind are so enormously increased all that is required of a very sensitive and easily hypnotized person is to hypnotize him or herself when he will be able to read thoughts
+courting a broomstick the side show let us now describe some of the manifestations of hypnotism to see just how it operates and how it exhibits itself
+the following is a description of a public performance given by doctor herbert l flint a very successful public operator it is in the language of an eye witness a new york lawyer
+in response to a call for volunteers twenty young and middle aged men came upon the stage they evidently belonged to the great middle class the entertainment commenced by doctor flint passing around the group
+who were seated on the stage in a semicircle facing the audience and stroking each one's head and forehead repeating the phrases close your eyes think of nothing but sleep you are very tired you are drowsy
+you feel very sleepy as he did this several of the volunteers closed their eyes at once and one fell asleep immediately one or two remained awake
+while a few were wide awake and smiling at the rest these latter were dismissed as unlikely subjects when the stage had been cleared of all those who were not responsive the doctor passed around and snapping his finger
+at each individual awoke him one of the subjects when questioned afterward as to what sensation he experienced at the snapping of the fingers replied that it seemed to him as if something inside of his head responded
+and with this sensation he regained self consciousness this is to be doubted as a rule subjects in this stage of hypnotism do not feel any sensation that they can remember
+that you can't pull them apart they are fast you cannot pull them apart try you can't the whole class made frantic efforts to unclasp their hands but were unable to do so the doctor's explanation of this is
+that what they were really doing was to force their hands closer together thus obeying the counter suggestion that they thought they were trying to unclasp their hands was evident from their endeavors
+one young fellow aged about eighteen said that he was addicted to the cigarette habit the suggestion was made to him that he would not be able to smoke a cigarette for twenty four hours after the entertainment he was asked to smoke as was his usual habit
+he was then away from any one who could influence him he replied that the very idea was repugnant however he was induced to take a cigarette in his mouth but it made him ill and he flung it away with every expression of disgust
+this is an instance of what is called post hypnotic suggestion doctor cocke tells of suggesting to a drinker whom he was trying to cure of the habit that for the next three days anything he took would make him vomit
+they immediately began and twirled them faster and faster in spite of their efforts to stop one of the subjects said he thought of nothing but the strange action of his hands and sometimes it puzzled him to know why they whirled
+at this point doctor flint's daughter took charge of the class she pointed her finger at one of them and the subject began to look steadily before him at which the rest of the class were highly amused
+presently the subject's head leaned forward the pupils of his eyes dilated and assumed a peculiar glassy stare he arose with a steady gliding gait
+then he stopped miss flint led him to the front of the stage and left him standing in profound slumber he stood there stooping eyes set and vacant fast asleep
+in the meantime the act had caused great laughter among the rest of the class one young fellow in particular laughed so uproariously that tears coursed down his cheeks and he took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes
+just as he was returning it to his pocket the lady suddenly pointed a finger at him
+but the moment the gesture was made his countenance fell his mirth stopped while that of his companions redoubled and the change was so obvious that the audience shared in the laughter but the subject neither saw nor heard
+his eyes assumed the same expression that had been noticed in his companion's he too arose in the same attitude as if his head were pulling the body along and following the finger in the same way as his predecessor
+another was given a broomstick and told to hunt game in the woods before him another was given a large rag doll and told that it was an infant and that he must look among the audience and discover the father
+he was informed that he could tell who the father was by the similarity and the color of the eyes these suggestions were made in a loud tone miss flint being no nearer one subject than another
+the bare suggestion was given as now think that you are a newsboy and are selling papers or now think that you are hunting and are going into the woods to shoot birds so the party was started
+at the same time into the audience the one who was impersonating a newsboy went about crying his edition in a loud voice while the hunter crawled along stealthily and carefully
+the newsboy even adopted the well worn device of asking those whom he solicited to buy to help him get rid of his stock one man offered him a cent when the price was two cents the newsboy chaffed the would be purchaser
+and taking him into the center of the stage showed him a small riding whip he looked at it indifferently enough he was told it was a hot bar of iron but he shook his head still incredulous
+the suggestion was repeated and as the glazed look came into his eyes the incredulous look died out every member of the class was following the suggestion made to the subject in hand all of them had the same expression in their eyes the doctor said
+that his daughter was hypnotizing the whole class through this one individual as she spoke she lightly touched the subject with the end of the whip the moment the subject felt the whip he jumped and shrieked as if it really were a hot iron
+she touched each one of the class in succession and every one manifested the utmost pain and fear one subject sat down on the floor and cried in dire distress
+had the suggestion been continued it would undoubtedly have raised a blister one of the amusing experiments tried at a later time was that of a tall young man diffident pale and modest being given a broom carefully wrapped in a sheet
+and told that it was his sweetheart he accepted the situation and sat down by the broom he was a little sheepish at first but eventually he grew bolder and smiled upon her such a smile as malvolio casts upon olivia
+the manner in which little by little he ventured upon a familiar footing was exceedingly funny but when in a moment of confident response to his wooing he clasped her round the waist and imprinted a chaste kiss upon the brushy part of the broom
+disguised by the sheet the house resounded with roars of laughter the subject however was deaf to all of the noise he was absorbed in his courtship and he continued to hug the broom and exhibit in his features
+all the world loves a lover as the saying is and all the world loves to laugh at him one of the subjects was told that the head of a man in the audience was on fire
+he looked for a moment and then dashed down the platform into the audience and seizing the man's head vigorously rubbed it as this did not extinguish the flames he took off his coat and put the fire out in doing this he set his coat on fire
+then he calmly resumed his garment and walked back to the stage the side show closed the evening's entertainment a young man was told to think of himself as managing a side show at a circus
+when his mind had absorbed this idea he was ordered to open his exhibition he at once mounted a table and in the voice of the traditional side show fakir began to dilate upon the fat woman and the snakes
+that for the small sum of ten cents they could see more wonders than ever before had been crowded under one canvas tent he harangued the crowd as they surged about the tent door
+he pointed to a suppositious canvas picture he chaffed the boys he flattered the vanity of the young fellows with their girls telling them that they could not afford for the small sum of ten cents to miss this great show
+and it is true that a person can deliberately hypnotize himself when he wishes to till he has become accustomed to it and is expert in it so to speak it does away at a stroke with the claims of all professional hypnotists and magnetic healers
+that they have any peculiar power in themselves which they exert over their fellows one of these professionals gives an account in his book of what he calls the wonderful lock method he says that
+though he is locked up in a separate room he can make the psychic power work through the walls all that he does is to put his subjects in the way of hypnotizing themselves
+he shows his inconsistency when he states that under certain circumstances the hypnotizer is in danger of becoming hypnotized himself in this he makes no claim that the subject is using any psychic power
+but of course if the hypnotizer looks steadily into the eyes of his subject and the subject looks into his eyes the steady gaze on a bright object will produce hypnotism in one quite as readily as in the other
+hypnotism is an established scientific fact but the claim that the hypnotizer has any mysterious psychic power is the invariable mark of the charlatan
+probably no scientific phenomenon was ever so grossly prostituted to base ends as that of hypnotism later we shall see some of the outrageous forms this charlatanism assumes
+and how it extends to the professional subjects as well as to the professional operators till those subjects even impose upon scientific men who ought to be proof against such deception
+moreover the possibility of self hypnotization carefully concealed and called by another name opens another great field of humbug and charlatanism of which the advertising columns of the newspapers are constantly filled
+namely that of the clairvoyant and medium we may conceive how such a profession might become perfectly legitimate and highly useful but at present it seems as if any person who went into it
+however honest he might be at the start soon began to deceive himself as well as others until he lost his power entirely to distinguish between fact and imagination before discussing the matter further
+let us quote doctor cocke's experiment in hypnotizing himself it will be remembered that a professional hypnotizer or magnetizer had hypnotized him by telling him to fix his mind on the number twenty six and holding up his hand
+i was intensely cold my heart seemed to stand still i had ringing in my ears my hair seemed to rise upon my scalp i persisted in the effort and the previously mentioned noise in my ears grew louder and louder
+the roar became deafening it crackled like a mighty fire i was fearfully conscious of myself having read vivid accounts of dreams visions et cetera it occurred to me that i would experience them
+i felt in a vague way that there were beings all about me but could not hear their voices i felt as though every muscle in my body was fixed and rigid
+the roar in my ears grew louder still and i heard above the roar reports which sounded like artillery and musketry then above the din of the noise a musical chord i seemed to be absorbed in this chord i knew nothing else
+secondly i wished to be hypnotized these together with a vivid imagination and strained attention brought on the states which occurred
+his descriptions of dreams bear a wonderful likeness to de quincey's dreams such as those described in the english mail coach de profundis and the confessions of an english opium eater
+all of which were presumably due to opium the causes which doctor cocke thinks produced the hypnotic condition in his case namely belief desire to be hypnotized and strained attention united with a vivid imagination
+are causes which are often found in conjunction and produce effects which we may reasonably explain on the theory of self hypnotization
+for instance the effects of an exciting religious revival are very like those produced by mesmer's operations in paris the subjects become hysterical and are ready to believe anything or do anything
+by prolonging the operation a whole community becomes more or less hypnotized in all such cases however unusual excitement is commonly followed by unusual lethargy
+in fact it is a sort of intoxication the same phenomena are probably accountable for many of the strange records of history the wonderful cures at lourdes of which we have read in zola's novel of that name
+are no doubt the effect of hypnotization by the priests some of the strange movements of whole communities during the crusades are to be explained either on the theory of hypnotization or of contagion
+and possibly these two things will turn out to be much the same in fact on no other ground can we explain the so called children's crusade in which over thirty thousand children from germany from all classes of the community
+tried to cross the alps in winter and in their struggles were all lost or sold into slavery without even reaching the holy land again hypnotism is accountable for many of the poet's dreams
+gazing steadily at a bed of bright coals or a stream of running water will invariably throw a sensitive subject into a hypnotic sleep that will last sometimes for several hours doctor cocke says
+that he has experimented in this direction with patients of his says he they have the ability to resist the state or to bring it at will many of them describe beautiful scenes from nature or some mighty cathedral
+with its lofty dome or the faces of imaginary beings beautiful or demoniacal according to the will and temper of the subject perhaps the most wonderful example of self hypnotism which we have in history
+is that of the mystic swedenborg who saw such strange things in his visions and at last came to believe in them as real the same explanation may be given of the manifestations of oriental prophets
+for in the orient hypnotism is much easier and more systematically developed than with us of the west the performances of the dervishes and also of the fakirs who wound themselves and perform many wonderful feats
+their impersonations are ridiculous in the extreme one man i remember believed himself to be controlled by the spirit of charles sumner being uneducated he used the most wretched english
+and his language was utterly devoid of sense while on the other hand a very intelligent lady who believed herself to be controlled by the spirit of charlotte cushman personated the part very well doctor cooke says of himself
+i can hypnotize myself to such an extent that i will become wholly unconscious of events taking place around me and a long interval of time say from one half to two hours will be a complete blank
+this is a painful chapter for me to write mercifully it is to be a short one later on i shall become used to the situation inclined even to dwell upon its humorous side
+but for the moment i cannot see beyond the sadness of it that to a prince of the royal house of araby
+roger scurvilegs frankly breaks down over it that abominable woman he says meaning of course belvane and he has hysterics for more than a page let us describe it calmly
+coronel came back from his stroll in the same casual way in which he had started
+he was not thinking of udo he was wondering if princess hyacinth had an attendant of surpassing beauty or a dragon of surpassing malevolence if in fact
+there were any adventures in euralia for a humble fellow like himself coronel said a small voice behind him he turned round indifferently
+he said isn't it time we were starting we aren't starting said the voice what's the matter what are you hiding in the bushes for whatever's the matter udo
+coronel stopped your royal highness's commands he began rather coldly there was an ominous sniffing from the bushes coronel said an unhappy voice at last
+i think i'm coming out wondering what it all meant coronel waited in silence yes i am coming out coronel said the voice but you mustn't be surprised if i don't look very well
+i'm i'm coronel here i am said udo pathetically
+it is difficult to say what he was save that there was an impression of magnificence about his person such magnificence anyhow as is given by an astrakhan trimmed fur coat
+coronel decided that it was an occasion for tact ah here you are he said cheerfully shall we get along don't be a fool coronel said udo almost crying
+well think of that udo showed what he thought of it by waving it peevishly this is not a time for tact he said tell me what i look like coronel considered for a moment
+really frankly he asked
+said udo nervously then frankly your royal highness looks funny very funny said udo wistfully very funny said coronel his highness sighed
+i was afraid so he said that's the cruel part about it had i been a lion there would have been a certain pathetic splendour about my position isolated cut off suffering in regal silence
+he waved an explanatory paw even in the most hideous of beasts there might be a dignity he meditated for a moment have you ever seen a yak coronel he asked never
+i saw one once in barodia it is not a beautiful animal coronel but as a yak i should not have been entirely unlovable one does not laugh at a yak coronel
+and where one does not laugh one may come to love
+striking i haven't seen it you see to one who didn't know your royal highness
+rabbit he sobbed so undignified
+he added bitterly how did it happen i don't know coronel i just went to sleep
+he sat up suddenly and stared at coronel it was that old woman did it you mark my words coronel she did it why should she
+i was very polite to her don't you remember my saying to you be polite to her because she's probably a fairy
+so they held a council of war prince udo put forward two suggestions the first was that coronel should go back on the morrow and kill the old woman the second
+was that coronel should go back that afternoon and kill the old woman coronel pointed out that as she had turned prince udo into into a a quite so said udo
+it was likely that she alone could turn him back again and that in that case he had better only threaten her i want somebody killed said udo rather naturally suppose said coronel
+and make her tell me what she knows she knows something i'm certain then we shall see better what to do udo mused for a space why didn't they turn you into anything he asked
+really i don't know perhaps because i'm too unimportant yes that must be it he began to feel a little brighter obviously that's it he caressed a whisker with one of his paws
+they were afraid of me he began to look so much happier that coronel thought it was a favourable moment in which to withdraw shall i go now your royal highness
+he murmured to himself obviously
+good bye your royal highness
+coronel got on his horse and rode away as soon as he was out of earshot he began to laugh spasm after spasm shook him no sooner had he composed himself to gravity
+than a remembrance of udo's appearance started him off again i couldn't have stayed with him a moment longer he thought i should have burst
+however we'll soon get him all right that evening he reached the place where the cottage had stood but it was gone next morning he rode back to the wood udo was gone too
+he returned to the palace and began to think it out left to himself udo very soon made up his mind there were three courses open to him he might stay where he was till he was restored to health
+this he rejected at once when you have the head of a rabbit the tail of a lion and the middle of a woolly lamb the need for action of some kind is imperative
+he might go back to araby
+so popular to araby where he rode daily among his father's subjects that they might have the pleasure of cheering him how awkward for everybody on to euralia then
+why not the princess hyacinth had called for him what devotion it showed if he came to her even now in his present state of bad health she was in trouble
+already then he had suffered in her service so at least he would say and so possibly it might be coronel had thought him funny but women had not much sense of humour as a rule
+she would find him strokable and the lion in him
+she would find that inspiring
+untamable in the man they love well there it was it was not as if he had coronel with him coronel and he in his present health could never have gone into euralia together
+the contrast was too striking but he alone hyacinth's only help surely she would appreciate his magnanimity also as he had told himself a moment ago
+but no doubt he would think of some tremendously cunning device later on to euralia then with all dispatch he trotted off
+a woman's life saved the cause of her falling into the sea
+i omitted several very material parts in my father's journey across the english channel to holland which that they may not be totally lost
+i will now faithfully give you in his own words as i heard him relate them to his friends several times on my arrival says my father at helvoetsluys i was observed to breathe with some difficulty
+carrying their heads at the extremity of their tails i crossed continued he one prodigious range of rocks equal in height to the alps the tops or highest parts of these marine mountains
+are said to be upwards of one hundred fathoms below the surface of the sea on the sides of which there was a great variety of tall noble trees loaded with marine fruit such as lobsters crabs oysters scollops
+fruit shook off the branches of the tree it grows upon by the motion of the water as those in our gardens are by that of the wind the lobster trees appeared the richest but the crab and oysters were the tallest
+the periwinkle is a kind of shrub it grows at the foot of the oyster tree and twines round it as the ivy does the oak
+as she sank she fell upon her side and forced a very large lobster tree out of its place it was in the spring when the lobsters were very young
+and many of them being separated by the violence of the shock they fell upon a crab tree which was growing below them they have like the farina of plants united and produced a fish resembling both
+i endeavoured to bring one with me but it was too cumbersome and my salt water pegasus seemed much displeased at every attempt to stop his career whilst i continued upon his back
+besides i was then though galloping over a mountain of rocks that lay about midway the passage at least five hundred fathom below the surface of the sea and began to find the want of air inconvenient
+therefore i had no inclination to prolong the time add to this my situation was in other respects very unpleasant i met many large fish who were if i could judge by their open mouths
+not only able but really wished to devour us now as my rosinante was blind i had these hungry gentlemen's attempts to guard against in addition to my other difficulties
+as we drew near the dutch shore and the body of water over our heads did not exceed twenty fathoms i thought i saw a human figure in a female dress then lying on the sand before me with some signs of life
+when i came close i perceived her hand move i took it into mine and brought her on shore as a corpse an apothecary who had just been instructed by doctor hawes
+of london treated her properly and she recovered she was the rib of a man who commanded a vessel belonging to helvoetsluys he was just going out of port on a voyage when she hearing he had got a mistress with him
+followed him in an open boat as soon as she had got on the quarter deck she flew at her husband and attempted to strike him with such impetuosity that he thought it most prudent to slip on one side
+and let her make the impression of her fingers upon the waves rather than his face he was not much out in his ideas of the consequence for meeting no opposition she went directly overboard
+and it was my unfortunate lot to lay the foundation for bringing this happy pair together again i can easily conceive what execrations the husband loaded me with when on his return
+he found this gentle creature waiting his arrival and learned the means by which she came into the world again
+the enigma was more impenetrable than ever who was this little one whom thenardier had called the lark was she his ursule the prisoner had not seemed to be affected by that word the lark
+this was what marius perceived most clearly of all a sort of horrible fascination held him nailed to his post from which he was observing and commanding this whole scene there he stood
+almost incapable of movement or reflection as though annihilated by the abominable things viewed at such close quarters he waited in the hope of some incident no matter of what nature
+and then i will give my life and my blood if necessary but i will deliver her nothing shall stop me nearly half an hour passed in this manner thenardier seemed to be absorbed in gloomy reflections
+the prisoner did not stir still marius fancied that at intervals and for the last few moments he had heard a faint dull noise in the direction of the prisoner all at once thenardier addressed the prisoner
+think that the lark really is your daughter
+they will both enter the carriage with my comrade behind somewhere outside the barrier there is a trap harnessed to two very good horses your young lady will be taken to it she will alight from the fiacre
+my comrade will enter the other vehicle with her and my wife will come back here to tell us it's done as for the young lady no harm will be done to her
+and just as soon as you have handed over to me those little two hundred thousand francs she will be returned to you if you have me arrested my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the lark that's all
+the prisoner uttered not a syllable after a pause thenardier continued it's very simple as you see there'll be no harm done unless you wish that there should be harm done
+i'm telling you how things stand i warn you so that you may be prepared he paused the prisoner did not break the silence and thenardier resumed
+as soon as my wife returns and says to me the lark is on the way we will release you and you will be free to go and sleep at home you see that our intentions are not evil
+what that young girl whom they were abducting was not to be brought back one of those monsters was to bear her off into the darkness whither and what if it were she it was clear that it was she
+what was he to do discharge the pistol place all those scoundrels in the hands of justice but the horrible man with the meat axe would none the less be out of reach with the young girl
+it was by the peril of the one he loved that he felt himself restrained this frightful situation which had already lasted above half an hour was changing its aspect every moment
+marius had sufficient strength of mind to review in succession all the most heart breaking conjectures seeking hope and finding none
+in the midst of this silence the door at the bottom of the staircase was heard to open and shut again the prisoner made a movement in his bonds here's the bourgeoise said thenardier
+he had hardly uttered the words when the thenardier woman did in fact rush hastily into the room red panting breathless with flaming eyes and cried as she smote her huge hands on her thighs simultaneously
+false address the ruffian who had gone with her made his appearance behind her and picked up his axe again she resumed nobody there
+she paused choking then went on
+you are too good you see if it had been me i'd have chopped the beast in four quarters to begin with and if he had acted ugly i'd have boiled him alive he would have been obliged to speak and say where the girl is
+and where he keeps his shiners that's the way i should have managed matters people are perfectly right when they say that men are a deal stupider than women
+it's nothing but a big carriage gate
+and after all that racing and fee to the coachman and all i spoke to both the porter and the portress a fine stout woman and they know nothing about him marius breathed freely once more
+was safe while his exasperated wife vociferated
+for several minutes he uttered not a word but swung his right foot which hung down and stared at the brazier with an air of savage revery
+finally he said to the prisoner with a slow and singularly ferocious tone
+what did you expect to gain by that to gain time cried the prisoner in a thundering voice and at the same instant he shook off his bonds they were cut
+the prisoner was only attached to the bed now by one leg before the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward he had bent down into the fireplace had stretched out his hand to the brazier
+and had then straightened himself up again and now thenardier the female thenardier and the ruffians huddled in amazement at the extremity of the hovel
+stared at him in stupefaction as almost free and in a formidable attitude he brandished above his head the red hot chisel which emitted a threatening glow
+when the police made their descent on it this sou piece was one of those marvels of industry which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in the shadows and for the shadows marvels which are nothing else than instruments of escape
+are to jewellers work what the metaphors of slang are to poetry there are benvenuto cellinis in the galleys
+the unhappy wretch who aspires to deliverance finds means sometimes without tools sometimes with a common wooden handled knife to saw a sou into two thin plates
+to hollow out these plates without affecting the coinage stamp and to make a furrow on the edge of the sou in such a manner that the plates will adhere again this can be screwed together and unscrewed at will it is a box
+in this box he hides a watch spring and this watch spring properly handled cuts good sized chains and bars of iron the unfortunate convict is supposed to possess merely a sou not at all
+he possesses liberty it was a large sou of this sort
+they also found a tiny saw of blue steel which would fit the sou it is probable that the prisoner had this sou piece on his person at the moment when the ruffians searched him that he contrived to conceal it in his hand
+as he had not been able to bend down for fear of betraying himself he had not cut the bonds of his left leg the ruffians had recovered from their first surprise be easy
+that you can make me write what i do not choose to write that you can make me say what i do not choose to say he stripped up his left sleeve and added see here
+at the same moment he extended his arm and laid the glowing chisel which he held in his left hand by its wooden handle
+the revolts of the flesh and the senses when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth and make it appear on the brow just as rebellions among the soldiery force the captain to show himself
+the horrible glowing tool disappeared into the night whirling as it flew and fell far away on the snow the prisoner resumed do what you please with me he was disarmed
+seize him said thenardier two of the ruffians laid their hands on his shoulder and the masked man with the ventriloquist's voice took up his station in front of him
+ready to smash his skull at the slightest movement at the same time marius heard below him at the base of the partition but so near that he could not see who was speaking this colloquy conducted in a low tone
+there is only one thing left to do cut his throat that's it it was the husband and wife taking counsel together thenardier walked slowly towards the table
+opened the drawer and took out the knife marius fretted with the handle of his pistol unprecedented perplexity for the last hour he had had two voices in his conscience
+the one enjoining him to respect his father's testament the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner these two voices continued uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to agony up to that moment
+marius cast a wild glance about him the last mechanical resource of despair all at once a shudder ran through him at his feet on the table a bright ray of light from the full moon
+this was the expedient of which he was in search the solution of that frightful problem which was torturing him of sparing the assassin and saving the victim he knelt down on his commode stretched out his arm seized the sheet of paper
+softly detached a bit of plaster from the wall wrapped the paper round it and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of the den it was high time thenardier had conquered his last fears or his last scruples
+she handed it to her husband where did this come from demanded thenardier pardie ejaculated his wife where do you suppose it came from through the window of course
+thenardier rapidly unfolded the paper and held it close to the candle it's in eponine's handwriting the devil he made a sign to his wife who hastily drew near
+asked the thenardier woman we haven't the time through what
+replied thenardier since ponine has thrown the stone through the window it indicates that the house is not watched on that side the mask with the ventriloquist's voice deposited his huge key on the floor
+thenardier exclaimed are you mad are you crazy what a pack of boobies you want to waste time do you draw lots do you by a wet finger by a short straw
+with written names thrown into a hat would you like my hat cried a voice on the threshold
+i now hasten to the more moving part of my story i shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which from what i had been have made me what i am
+it surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure
+my senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and a thousand sights of beauty it was on one of these days when my cottagers periodically rested from labour the old man played on his guitar
+that i observed the countenance of felix was melancholy beyond expression he sighed frequently and once his father paused in his music and i conjectured
+that he inquired the cause of his son's sorrow felix replied in a cheerful accent and the old man was recommencing his music when someone tapped at the door it was a lady on horseback accompanied by a country man as a guide
+the lady was dressed in a dark suit and covered with a thick black veil agatha asked a question to which the stranger only replied by pronouncing in a sweet accent the name of felix
+on hearing this word felix came up hastily to the lady who when she saw him threw up her veil
+and her complexion wondrously fair
+every trait of sorrow vanished from his face and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy of which i could hardly have believed it capable
+she appeared affected by different feelings wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes
+she did not appear to understand him but smiled he assisted her to dismount and dismissing her guide conducted her into the cottage
+and would have kissed his hand but he raised her and embraced her affectionately
+she was neither understood by nor herself understood the cottagers they made many signs which i did not comprehend but i saw that her presence diffused gladness through the cottage dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the morning mists
+and pointing to her brother made signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came some hours passed thus while they by their countenances expressed joy the cause of which i did not comprehend
+presently i found by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger repeated after them that she was endeavouring to learn their language and the idea instantly occurred to me that i should make use of the same instructions to the same end
+retired early when they separated felix kissed the hand of the stranger and said good night sweet safie he sat up much longer conversing with his father and by the frequent repetition of her name i conjectured that their lovely guest
+was the subject of their conversation i ardently desired to understand them and bent every faculty towards that purpose but found it utterly impossible the next morning felix went out to his work
+and after the usual occupations of agatha were finished the arabian sat at the feet of the old man and taking his guitar played some airs so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes
+when she had finished she gave the guitar to agatha who at first declined it she played a simple air and her voice accompanied it in sweet accents but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger
+the old man appeared enraptured and said some words which agatha endeavoured to explain to safie and by which he appeared to wish to express that she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music
+the days now passed as peaceably as before with the sole alteration that
+in the countenances of my friends safie was always gay and happy she and i improved rapidly in the knowledge of language so that in two months i began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors
+in the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage and the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers sweet to the scent and the eyes stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods the sun became warmer the nights clear and balmy
+although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun for i never ventured abroad during daylight
+my days were spent in close attention that i might more speedily master the language and i may boast
+who understood very little and conversed in broken accents whilst i comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken while i improved in speech i also learned the science of letters as it was taught to the stranger and this opened before me
+the book from which felix instructed safie was volney's ruins of empires i should not have understood the purport of this book had not felix in reading it
+he had chosen this work he said because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the eastern authors
+and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world it gave me an insight into the manners governments and religions of the different nations of the earth
+degenerating of the decline of that mighty empire of chivalry christianity and kings i heard of the discovery of the american hemisphere
+inhabitants these wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings was man indeed at once so powerful so virtuous and magnificent yet so vicious and base
+and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike to be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being to be base and vicious as many on record have been appeared
+a condition more abject than that
+or even why there were laws and governments but when i heard details of vice and bloodshed my wonder ceased and i turned away with disgust and loathing every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me
+i heard of the division of property of immense wealth and squalid poverty of rank descent and noble blood
+united with riches a man might be respected with only one of these advantages but without either he was considered except in very rare instances as a vagabond and a slave doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few
+and what was i of my creation and creator i was absolutely ignorant but i knew that i possessed no money no friends no kind of property
+sensations of hunger thirst and heat of what a strange nature is knowledge
+and that was death a state which i feared yet did not understand
+except through means which i obtained by stealth
+miserable unhappy wretch other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply
+how the father doted on the smiles of the infant
+no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses
+all my past life was now a blot a blind vacancy in which i distinguished nothing from my earliest remembrance i had been as i then was in height and proportion
+i had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me what was i
+i lay on my straw but i could not sleep i thought of the occurrences of the day what chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people and i longed to join them but dared not
+which influenced their actions the cottagers arose the next morning before the sun the young woman arranged the cottage and prepared the food and the youth departed after the first meal
+this day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it the young man was constantly employed out of doors and the girl in various laborious occupations within the old man whom i soon perceived to be blind
+employed his leisure hours on his instrument or in contemplation nothing could exceed the love and respect which the younger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion
+and duty with gentleness and he rewarded them
+they were not entirely happy the young man and his companion often went apart and appeared to weep i saw no cause for their unhappiness but i was deeply affected by it if such lovely creatures were miserable
+it was less strange that i an imperfect and solitary being should be wretched yet why were these gentle beings unhappy
+they were dressed in excellent clothes and still more they enjoyed one another's company and speech interchanging each day looks of affection and kindness what did their tears imply
+a considerable period elapsed
+it was poverty and they suffered that evil in a very distressing degree their nourishment consisted entirely of the vegetables of their garden and the milk of one cow which gave very little during the winter
+when its masters could scarcely procure food to support it they often i believe suffered the pangs of hunger very poignantly especially the two younger cottagers for several times they placed food before the old man when they reserved none for themselves
+this trait of kindness moved me sensibly i had been accustomed during the night to steal a part of their store for my own consumption
+i abstained and satisfied myself with berries nuts and roots which i gathered from a neighbouring wood
+and brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days
+the young woman when she opened the door in the morning
+she uttered some words in a loud voice and the youth joined her who also expressed surprise i observed with pleasure that he did not go to the forest that day but spent it in repairing the cottage and cultivating the garden
+by degrees i made a discovery of still greater moment i found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds
+i perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain smiles or sadness in the minds and countenances of the hearers this was indeed a godlike science and i ardently desired to become acquainted with it
+but i was baffled in every attempt i made for this purpose
+not having any apparent connection with visible objects i was unable to discover any clue by which i could unravel the mystery of their reference by great application however
+and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel i discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse i learned and applied the words fire milk bread and wood
+but the old man had only one which was father the girl was called sister or agatha and the youth felix brother or son i cannot describe the delight i felt
+when i learned the ideas appropriated to each of these sounds and was able to pronounce them
+as yet to understand or apply them such as good dearest unhappy i spent the winter in this manner the gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me
+when they were unhappy i felt depressed when they rejoiced i sympathized in their joys
+often endeavoured to encourage his children as sometimes i found that he called them to cast off their melancholy
+agatha listened with respect her eyes sometimes filled with tears which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived
+and tone were more cheerful after having listened to the exhortations of her father it was not thus with felix he was always the saddest of the group and even to my unpractised senses he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his friends
+but if his countenance was more sorrowful
+especially when he addressed the old man i could mention innumerable instances which although slight
+in the midst of poverty and want
+from beneath the snowy ground early in the morning before she had risen
+where to his perpetual astonishment he found his store always replenished by an invisible hand in the day i believe he worked sometimes for a neighbouring farmer because he often went forth and did not return until dinner yet brought no wood with him
+he read to the old man and agatha this reading had puzzled me extremely at first but by degrees i discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when he talked i conjectured therefore
+that he found on the paper signs for speech which he understood and i ardently longed to comprehend these also but how was that possible when i did not even understand the sounds for which they stood as signs i improved however sensibly in this science
+of conversation although i applied my whole mind to the endeavour
+to discover myself to the cottagers
+which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure
+as the sun became warmer and the light of day longer
+from this time felix was more employed and the heart moving indications of impending famine disappeared
+and they procured a sufficiency of it several new kinds of plants sprang up in the garden which they dressed and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced the old man leaning on his son
+my mode of life in my hovel was uniform during the morning i attended the motions of the cottagers and when they were dispersed in various occupations i slept the remainder of the day was spent in observing my friends
+when they had retired to rest if there was any moon or the night was star light
+and once or twice i heard them on these occasions utter the words good spirit wonderful
+my thoughts now became more active and i longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures i was inquisitive to know why felix appeared so miserable and agatha so sad i thought foolish wretch
+that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people when i slept or was absent the forms of the venerable blind father
+i imagined that they would be disgusted until
+and led me to apply with fresh ardour to the acquiring the art of language my organs were indeed harsh but supple and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones yet i pronounced such words as i understood with tolerable ease
+greatly altered the aspect of the earth men who before this change seemed to have been hid in caves dispersed themselves and were employed in various arts of cultivation
+happy happy earth fit habitation for gods which so short a time before
+my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature
+chapter eleven it is with considerable difficulty that i remember the original era of my being
+by degrees i remember a stronger light pressed upon my nerves so that i was obliged to shut my eyes darkness then came over me and troubled me but hardly had i felt this when by opening my eyes as i now suppose
+the light poured in upon me again i walked and i believe descended but i presently found a great alteration in my sensations before dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me
+the light became more and more oppressive to me
+this was the forest near ingolstadt and here i lay by the side of a brook resting from my fatigue until i felt tormented by hunger and thirst this roused me from my nearly dormant state
+i slaked my thirst at the brook and then lying down was overcome by sleep it was dark when i awoke i felt cold also and half frightened
+as it were instinctively finding myself so desolate
+i had covered myself with some clothes but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of night
+i knew and could distinguish nothing but feeling pain invade me on all sides i sat down and wept soon a gentle light stole over the heavens and gave me a sensation of pleasure
+the moon i gazed with a kind of wonder it moved slowly but it enlightened my path and i again went out in search of berries i was still cold when under one of the trees i found a huge cloak
+no distinct ideas occupied my mind all was confused i felt light and hunger and thirst and darkness innumerable sounds rang in my ears and on all sides various scents saluted me
+the only object that i could distinguish was the bright moon and i fixed my eyes on that with pleasure several changes of day and night passed and the orb of night had greatly lessened when i began to distinguish my sensations from each other
+i gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with drink and the trees that shaded me with their foliage
+which often saluted my ears proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals
+and to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof
+sometimes i tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds but was unable sometimes i wished to express my sensations in my own mode but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again
+the moon had disappeared from the night and again with a lessened form showed itself while i still remained in the forest my sensations had by this time become distinct and my mind received every day additional ideas
+my eyes became accustomed to the light and to perceive objects in their right forms i distinguished the insect from the herb and by degrees one herb from another
+one day when i was oppressed by cold i found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars and was overcome with delight at the warmth i experienced from it
+in my joy i thrust my hand into the live embers but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain how strange i thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects i examined the materials of the fire
+the wet wood which i had placed near the heat dried and itself became inflamed i reflected on this and by touching the various branches
+and then spreading my cloak i lay on the ground and sank into sleep it was morning when i awoke and my first care was to visit the fire
+i observed this also
+when they were nearly extinguished when night came again i found with pleasure that the fire gave light as well as heat and that the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food
+and tasted much more savoury than the berries i gathered from the trees i tried therefore to dress my food in the same manner placing it on the live embers
+and the nuts and roots much improved
+when i found this i resolved to quit the place that i had hitherto inhabited to seek for one where the few wants i experienced
+and knew not how to reproduce it i gave several hours to the serious consideration of this difficulty
+i struck across the wood towards the setting sun i passed three days in these rambles and at length discovered the open country a great fall of snow had taken place the night before
+the appearance was disconsolate and i found my feet chilled by the cold damp substance that covered the ground it was about seven in the morning and i longed to obtain food and shelter at length i perceived a small hut
+this was a new sight to me and i examined the structure with great curiosity finding the door open i entered an old man sat in it near a fire over which he was preparing his breakfast he turned on hearing a noise and perceiving me shrieked loudly
+his appearance different from any i had ever before seen and his flight somewhat surprised me
+after their sufferings in the lake of fire i greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd's breakfast which consisted of bread cheese milk and wine the latter however i did not like then overcome
+i lay down among some straw and fell asleep
+which shone brightly on the white ground
+i proceeded across the fields for several hours until at sunset i arrived at a village
+allured my appetite one of the best of these i entered but i had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked and one of the women fainted the whole village was roused some fled some attacked me
+refuge in a low hovel quite bare and making a wretched appearance after the palaces i had beheld in the village this hovel however joined a cottage of a neat and pleasant appearance but after my late dearly bought experience i dared not enter it
+no wood however was placed on the earth which formed the floor but it was dry and although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks i found it an agreeable asylum from the snow and rain
+however miserable from the inclemency of the season and still more from the barbarity of man
+that i might view the adjacent cottage
+one part was open and by that i had crept in but now i covered every crevice by which i might be perceived with stones and wood
+all the light i enjoyed came through the sty
+having thus arranged my dwelling and carpeted it with clean straw i retired for i saw the figure of a man at a distance and i remembered too well my treatment the night before to trust myself in his power
+by a loaf of coarse bread which i purloined and a cup
+which flowed by my retreat the floor was a little raised so that it was kept perfectly dry and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was tolerably warm
+the rain dropping branches and dank earth i ate my breakfast with pleasure and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little water when i heard a step and looking through a small chink i beheld a young creature
+with a pail on her head passing before my hovel the girl was young and of gentle demeanour
+her fair hair was plaited but not adorned she looked patient yet sad
+and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing the pail which was now partly filled with milk as she walked along
+presently i saw the young man again with some tools in his hand cross the field behind the cottage
+on examining my dwelling i found that one of the windows of the cottage had formerly occupied a part of it but the panes had been filled up with wood in one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate
+whitewashed and clean but very bare of furniture in one corner near a small fire sat an old man leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude the young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage but presently
+who taking up an instrument began to play and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale it was a lovely sight
+the silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager
+he raised her and smiled with such kindness and affection that i felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature
+and i withdrew from the window unable to bear these emotions
+bearing on his shoulders a load of wood the girl met him at the door helped to relieve him of his burden and taking some of the fuel into the cottage placed it on the fire then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage
+and he showed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese she seemed pleased and went into the garden for some roots and plants which she placed in water and then upon the fire
+and appeared busily employed in digging and pulling up roots
+the old man had in the meantime been pensive but on the appearance of his companions
+the meal was quickly dispatched the young woman was again occupied in arranging the cottage the old man walked before the cottage in the sun for a few minutes leaning on the arm of the youth nothing could exceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent creatures
+but to my extreme wonder
+did not put an end to the pleasure i experienced in watching my human neighbours
+the youth began not to play but to utter sounds that were monotonous and neither resembling the harmony of the old man's instrument nor the songs of the birds
+he was obliged from time to time to visit his correspondents on business and one day being under the necessity of going a long journey on an affair of importance he took horse and carried with him a wallet containing biscuits and dates
+because he had a great desert to pass over where he could procure no sort of provisions he arrived without any accident at the end of his journey and having dispatched his affairs took horse again in order to return home
+the fourth day of his journey he was so much incommoded by the heat of the sun and the reflection of that heat from the earth
+having alighted he tied his horse to a branch and sitting down by the fountain took some biscuits and dates out of his wallet as he ate his dates he threw the shells carelessly in different directions when he had finished his repast
+being a good moosulmaun he washed his hands face and feet and said his prayers before he had finished and while he was yet on his knees he saw a genie white with age
+the genie spoke to him in a terrible voice rise that i may kill thee with this cimeter as thou hast killed my son and accompanied these words with a frightful cry
+the merchant being as much alarmed at the hideous shape of the monster as at his threatening language answered him trembling alas my good lord of what crime can i be guilty towards you that you should take away my life
+demanded the genie did you not take dates out of your wallet
+i did all that you say answered the merchant i cannot deny it if it be so resumed the genie i tell thee that thou hast killed my son and in this manner when thou wert throwing the shells about my son was passing by
+and thou didst throw one into his eye which killed him therefore i must kill thee
+pardon me cried the merchant no pardon exclaimed the genie no mercy is it not just to kill him that has killed another
+replied the merchant but certainly i never killed your son and if i have it was unknown to me and i did it innocently i beg you therefore to pardon me and suffer me to live no no returned the genie
+persisting in his resolution i must kill thee since thou hast killed my son then taking the merchant by the arm he threw him with his face on the ground and lifted up his cimeter to cut off his head the merchant with tears
+protested he was innocent bewailed his wife and children and supplicated the genie in the most moving expressions the genie with his cimeter still lifted up had the patience to hear his unfortunate victims to the end of his lamentations
+all this whining said the monster is to no purpose
+what exclaimed the merchant can nothing prevail with you will you absolutely take away the life of a poor innocent yes replied the genie i am resolved
+as soon as she had spoken these words perceiving it was day and knowing that the sultan rose early in the morning to say his prayers and hold his council scheherazade discontinued her story dear sister said dinarzade
+the remainder of it replied scheherazade is more surprising and you will be of this opinion if the sultan will but permit me to live over this day
+i will wait till to morrow for i can at any time put her to death when she has concluded her story having thus resolved not to put scheherazade to death that day he rose and went to his prayers and to attend his council
+instead of sleeping he spent the night in sighs and groans bewailing the lot of his daughter of whom he believed he should himself shortly be the executioner as with this melancholy prospect before him he dreaded to meet the sultan
+he was agreeably surprised when he found the prince entered the council chamber without giving him the fatal orders he expected the sultan according to his custom spent the day in regulating his affairs and when the night had closed in retired with scheherazade
+the next morning before day dinarzade failed not to call to her sister my dear sister if you be not asleep i pray you till day break which is very near to go on with the story you began last night
+the sultan without waiting for scheherazade to ask his permission bade her proceed with the story of the genie and the merchant upon which scheherazade continued her relation as follows f n
+in the original work scheherazade continually breaks off to ask the sultan to spare her life for another day that she may finish the story she is relating as these interruptions considerably interfere with the continued interest of the stories it has been deemed advisable to omit them
+for heaven's sake hold your hand allow me one word
+to bid my wife and children adieu and
+that they may not go to law after my death when i have done this i will come back and submit to whatever you shall please to command but said the genie if i grant you the time you ask i doubt you will never return
+if you will believe my oath answered the merchant i swear by all that is sacred that i will come and meet you here without fail what time do you require then demanded the genie
+i ask a year said the merchant i cannot in less settle my affairs and prepare myself to die without regret but i promise you that this day twelve months i will return under these trees
+to put myself into your hands do you take heaven to be witness to this promise said the genie i do answered the merchant and you may rely on my oath upon this the genie left him near the fountain and disappeared
+the merchant being recovered from his terror mounted his horse and proceeded on his journey
+but grieved on the other when he reflected on his fatal oath when he reached home his wife and children received him with all the demonstrations of perfect joy but he instead of returning their caresses wept so bitterly
+that his family apprehended something calamitous had befallen him
+we are all overjoyed said she at your return but you alarm us by your lamentations pray tell us the cause of your sorrow alas replied the husband i have but a year to live
+he then related what had passed betwixt him and the genie and informed her that he had given him his oath to return at the end of the year to receive death from his hands when they heard this afflicting intelligence they all began to lament in the most distressing manner
+the children all in tears made the house resound with their groans and the father not being able to resist the impulse of nature mingled his tears with theirs so that in a word they exhibited the most affecting spectacle possible
+on the following morning the merchant applied himself to put his affairs in order and first of all to pay his debts he made presents to his friends gave liberal alms to the poor
+he gave her in addition as much as the law would allow him at last the year expired and he was obliged to depart he put his burial clothes in his wallet but when he came to bid his wife and children adieu their grief surpassed description
+when however it became necessary for him to tear himself from these dear objects he addressed them in the following terms my dear wife and children i obey the will of heaven in quitting you follow my example
+submit with fortitude to this necessity and consider that it is the destiny of man to die having thus spoken he went out of the hearing of the cries of his family and pursuing his journey arrived on the day appointed
+an old man leading a hind appeared and drew near him
+brother may i ask why you are come into this desert place which is possessed solely by evil spirits and where consequently you cannot be safe from the beautiful trees which are seen here one might indeed suppose the place inhabited
+he then seated himself by the merchant and they entered into conversation but i see day said scheherazade and must leave off yet the best of the story is to come the sultan resolving to hear the end of it
+suffered her to live that day also the next morning dinarzade made the same request to her sister as before my dear sister said she
+but the sultan wishing to learn what followed betwixt the merchant and the genie bade her proceed with that which she did as follows sir while the merchant and the old man who led the hind were conversing
+they saw another old man coming towards them followed by two black dogs
+the old man with the hind told him the adventure of the merchant and genie with all that had passed between them particularly the merchant's oath
+they had scarcely begun to converse together when there arrived a third old man leading a mule he addressed himself to the two former and asked why the merchant who sat with them looked so melancholy they told him the reason
+which appeared to him so extraordinary
+the merchant and the three old men began to lament and fill the air with their cries when the old man who led the hind saw the genie lay hold of the merchant and about to kill him
+i will tell you the history of my life and of the hind you see and if you think it more wonderful and surprising than the adventure of the merchant i hope you will pardon the unfortunate man a third of his offence
+what is more my wife she was only twelve years of age when i married her so that i may justly say she ought to regard me equally as her father her kinsman and her husband
+we lived together twenty years without any children her barrenness did not effect any change in my love i still treated her with much kindness and affection
+my desire of having children only induced me to purchase a slave by whom i had a son who was extremely promising my wife being jealous cherished a hatred for both mother and child
+but concealed her aversion so well that i knew nothing of it till it was too late mean time my son grew up and was ten years old when i was obliged to undertake a long journey
+before i went i recommended to my wife of whom i had no mistrust the slave and her son and prayed her to take care of them during my absence which was to be for a whole year
+she however employed that time to satisfy her hatred she applied herself to magic
+the wretch carried my son to a desolate place where by her enchantments she changed him into a calf and gave him to my farmer to fatten pretending she had bought him
+her enmity did not stop at this abominable action but she likewise changed the slave into a cow and gave her also to my farmer at my return i enquired for the mother and child
+your slave said she is dead and as for your son i know not what is become of him i have not seen him this two months i was afflicted at the death of the slave
+but as she informed me my son had only disappeared i was in hopes he would shortly return however eight months passed and i heard nothing of him when the festival of the great bairam was to be celebrated
+the unfortunate mother of my son i bound her but as i was going to sacrifice her she bellowed piteously and i could perceive tears streaming from her eyes this seemed to me very extraordinary
+and finding myself moved with compassion i could not find in my heart to give her a blow but ordered my farmer to get me another my wife who was present was enraged at my tenderness
+and resisting an order which disappointed her malice she cried out what are you doing husband sacrifice that cow your farmer has not a finer nor one fitter for the festival out of deference to my wife i came again to the cow
+and combating my compassion which suspended the sacrifice was going to give her the fatal blow when the victim redoubling her tears and bellowing disarmed me a second time
+i then put the mallet into the farmer's hands and desired him to take it and sacrifice her himself for her tears and bellowing pierced my heart the farmer less compassionate than myself sacrificed her
+though to she seemed very fat take her yourself said i to him
+i did not enquire what he did with the cow but soon after he had taken her away he returned with a fat calf though i knew not the calf was my son yet i could not forbear being moved at the sight of him on his part
+as soon as he beheld me he made so great an effort to come near me that he broke his cord
+with his head against the ground as if he meant to excite my compassion conjuring me not to be so cruel as to take his life and did as much as was possible for him to signify that he was my son
+i was more surprised and affected with this action than with the tears of the cow i felt a tender pity which interested me on his behalf or rather nature did its duty
+go said i to the farmer carry home that calf take great care of him and bring me another in his stead immediately as soon as my wife heard me give this order she exclaimed what are you about husband
+take my advice sacrifice no other calf but that wife i replied i will not sacrifice him i will spare him and pray do not you oppose me
+the wicked woman had no regard to my wishes she hated my son too much to consent that i should save him i tied the poor creature and taking up the fatal knife was going to plunge it into my son's throat
+when turning his eyes bathed with tears in a languishing manner towards me he affected me so much that i had not strength to kill him i let the knife fall and told my wife positively
+that i would have another calf to sacrifice and not that she used all her endeavours to persuade me to change my resolution but i continued firm
+i come said he to communicate to you a piece of intelligence for which i hope you will return me thanks i have a daughter that has some skill in magic yesterday
+these two metamorphoses were made by the enchantments of our master's wife who hated both the mother
+this is what my daughter told me said the farmer and i come to acquaint you with it i leave you to judge how much i was surprised i went immediately to my farmer to speak to his daughter myself
+as soon as i arrived i went forthwith to the stall where my son was kept he could not return my embraces but received them in such a manner as fully satisfied me he was my son
+my good maid said i can you restore my son to his former shape yes she replied i can
+except on two conditions the first is that you give him to me for my husband and the second that you allow me to punish the person who changed him into a calf as to the first i replied
+as to what relates to my wife i also agree a person who has been capable of committing such a criminal action justly deserves to be punished
+only i must pray you not to take her life i am going then answered she to treat her as she treated your son to this i consent said i
+provided you first of all restore to me my son
+pronounced over it words that i did not understand and addressing herself to the calf o calf if thou west created by the almighty and sovereign master of the world such as thou appearest at this time continue in that form
+but if thou be a man and art changed into a calf by enchantment return to thy natural shape by the permission of the sovereign creator as she spoke she threw water upon him
+and in an instant he recovered his natural form my son
+with such a transport of joy that i knew not what i was doing it is heaven that hath sent us this young maid to remove the horrible charm by which you were enchanted and to avenge the injury done to you and your mother i doubt not
+but in acknowledgment you will make your deliverer your wife as i have promised he joyfully consented but before they married she changed my wife into a hind and this is she whom you see here
+i desired she might have this shape rather than another less agreeable that we might see her in the family without horror since that time my son is become a widower and gone to travel
+it being now several years since i heard of him i am come abroad to inquire after him and not being willing to trust anybody with my wife till i should return home i thought fit to take her everywhere with me
+this is the history of myself and this hind is it not one of the most wonderful and surprising i admit it is said the genie and on that account forgive the merchant one third of his crime
+the story of the grecian king
+there was in the country of yunaun or greece a king who was leprous and his physicians had in vain endeavoured his cure
+arrived at his court this physician had learnt the theory of his profession in greek persian turkish arabic latin syriac and hebrew books he was an experienced natural philosopher
+i know said he after the usual ceremonials that your majesty's physicians have not been able to heal you of the leprosy but if you will accept my service i will engage to cure you without potions
+or external applications the king listened to what he said and answered if you be able to perform what you promise i will enrich you and your posterity
+do you assure me that you will cure my leprosy without potion or applying any external medicine yes sire replied the physician i promise myself success through god's assistance
+and to morrow with your majesty's permission i will make the trial the physician returned to his quarters made a hollow mace and at the handle he put in his drugs
+with which next morning he presented himself before the king and falling down at his feet kissed the ground
+and after a profound reverence said to the king he judged it meet that his majesty should take horse
+the king did so and when he arrived there the physician came to him with the mace and said exercise yourself with this mace and strike the ball until you find your hands and body perspire
+when the medicine i have put up in the handle of the mace is heated with your hand it will penetrate your whole body and as soon as you perspire you may leave off the exercise
+immediately on your return to your palace go into the bath and cause yourself to be well washed and rubbed then retire to bed and when you rise to morrow you will find yourself cured
+the king took the mace and struck the ball which was returned by his officers who played with him he played so long that his hands and his whole body were in a sweat and then the medicine shut up in the handle of the mace had its operation
+as the physician had said upon this the king left off play returned to his palace entered the bath and observed very exactly his physician had prescribed to him
+the next morning when he arose he perceived with equal wonder and joy that his leprosy was cured and his body as clean as if it had never been affected as soon as he was dressed he came into the hall of audience where he ascended his throne
+and shewed himself to his courtiers who eager to know the success of the new medicine came thither betimes and when they saw the king perfectly cured expressed great joy
+bowed himself before the throne with his face to the ground the king perceiving him made him sit down by his side presented him to the assembly and gave him all the commendation he deserved
+but as he treated all his court that day made him eat at his table alone with him
+but caused him to be clad in a rich robe
+continued every day to load him with new favours but this king had a vizier who was avaricious envious and naturally capable of every kind of mischief
+he could not behold without envy the presents that were given to the physician whose other merits had already begun to make him jealous
+to effect this he went to the king and told him in private that he had some information of the greatest consequence to communicate the king having asked what it was sire said he
+it is highly dangerous for a monarch to confide in a man whose fidelity he has never tried
+i am well informed of what i have had the honour to reveal to your majesty therefore do not rest in dangerous security if your majesty be asleep be pleased to awake
+and came to settle himself at your court for the sole purpose of executing the horrible design which i have intimated no no vizier interrupted the king
+i am certain that this physician whom you suspect to be a villain and a traitor is one of the best and most virtuous of men you know by what medicine or rather by what miracle he cured me of my leprosy
+if he had had a design upon my life why did he save me then he needed only to have left me to my disease i could not have escaped it as life was fast decaying forbear then to fill me with unjust suspicions
+instead of listening to you i tell you that from this day forward i will give that great man a pension of a thousand pieces of gold per month for his life nay though i were to share with him all my riches and dominions
+i should never pay him sufficiently for what he has done i perceive it to be his virtue that raises your envy but do not think i will be unjustly prejudiced against him i remember too well what a vizier said to king sinbad his master
+to prevent his putting to death the prince his son what the grecian king said about king sinbad raised the vizier's curiosity who said i pray your majesty to pardon me
+if i have the boldness to ask what the vizier of king sinbad said to his master to divert him from putting the prince his son to death the grecian king had the condescension to satisfy him that vizier said he
+after having represented to king sinbad that he ought to beware lest on the accusation of a mother in law he should commit an action of which he might afterwards repent
+all the witnesses who had anything to say had long ago given in their testimony and when at or near noon
+it was to find in two faces only any signs of the eagerness and expectancy which filled his own breast to suffocation but as these faces were those of agnes halliday and amabel page
+he soon recognised that his own judgment was not at fault and that notwithstanding outward appearances and the languid interest shown in the now lagging proceedings
+but vital consequence frederick was not visible in the great hall but that he was near at hand soon became evident from the change sweetwater now saw in amabel
+for while she had hitherto sat under the universal gaze with only the faint smile of conscious beauty on her inscrutable features
+and glanced at the great door of entrance with an evil expectancy that startled even sweetwater so little had he really understood the nature of the passions labouring in that venomous breast
+smiled as she met his eye with that curious slow dipping of her dimples which had more than once confounded the coroner and rendered her at once the admiration and abhorrence of the crowd
+looked away as soon as possible
+from which he had removed the ring which up to this hour he had invariably worn on his third finger in this glance of hers and this action of his began the struggle that was to make that day memorable in many hearts
+and to him a full attention was being given in the hope that some real enlightenment would come at last to settle the questions which had been raised by amabel's incomplete and unsatisfactory testimony but no man can furnish what he does not possess
+and the few final minutes before noon passed by without any addition being made to the facts which had already been presented for general consideration as the witness sat down the clock began to strike as the slow
+hesitating strokes rang out sweetwater saw frederick yield to a sudden but most profound emotion the old fear which we understand if sweetwater did not had again seized the victim of amabel's ambition
+with a fell and steady purpose he found his right hand stealing toward the left in the significant action she expected better to yield than fall headlong into the pit one word of hers would open
+he had not meant to yield but now that the moment had come now that he must at once and forever choose between a course that led simply to personal unhappiness and one that involved not only himself
+but those dearest to him in disgrace and sorrow he felt himself weaken to the point of clutching at whatever would save him from the consequences of confession moral strength and that tenacity of purpose
+which only comes from years of self control were too lately awakened in his breast to sustain him now as stroke after stroke fell on the ear he felt himself yielding beyond recovery
+and had almost touched his finger in the significant action of assent which amabel awaited with breathless expectation when was it miracle or only the suggestion of his better nature
+the memory of a face full of holy pleading rose from the past before his eyes and with an inner cry of mother he flung his hand out and clutched his father's arm in a way to break the charm of his own dread
+and end forever the effects of the intolerable fascination that was working upon him next minute the last stroke of noon rang out and the hour was up which amabel had set as the limit of her silence a pause
+which to their two hearts if to no others seemed strangely appropriate followed the cessation of these sounds then the witness was dismissed and amabel
+when frederick leaping with a bound to his feet drew all eyes towards himself with the cry let me be put on my oath i have testimony to give of the utmost importance in this case the coroner was astounded
+everyone was astounded no one had expected anything from him and instinctively every eye turned towards amabel to see how she was affected by his action strangely evidently
+ever forgot though it conveyed no hint of her real feelings which were somewhat chaotic frederick who had forgotten her now that he had made up his mind to speak waited for the coroner's reply if you have testimony
+said that gentleman after exchanging a few hurried words with mister courtney and the surprised knapp you can do no better than give it to us at once mister frederick sutherland will you take the stand
+with a noble air from which all hesitation had vanished frederick started towards the place indicated but stopped before he had taken a half dozen steps
+go he whispered but in so thrilling a tone it was heard to the remotest corner of the room spare me the anguish of saying what i have to say in your presence i could not bear it you could not bear it later
+if you will wait for me in one of these rooms i will repeat my tale in your ears but go now it is my last entreaty there was a silence no one ventured a dissent
+no one so much as made a gesture of disapproval then mister sutherland struggled to his feet cast one last look around him and disappeared through a door which had opened like magic before him then and not till then
+did frederick move forward the moment was intense the coroner seemed to share the universal excitement
+this you will believe when i tell you that i was the person miss page followed into missus webb's house and whom she heard descend the stairs during the moment she crouched behind the figure of the sleeping philemon it was more
+infinitely more than anyone there had expected
+and the shock the surprise
+was almost appalling in its intensity had it not been for the consciousness of mister sutherland's near presence the feeling would have risen to outbreak and many voices were held in subjection by the remembrance of this venerated man's last look
+that otherwise would have made themselves heard in despite of the restrictions of the place and the authority of the police to frederick it was a moment of immeasurable grief and humiliation
+on every face in every shrinking form in subdued murmurs and open cries he read instant and complete condemnation and yet in all his life from boyhood up to this hour never had he been so worthy of their esteem and consideration
+he did not lose his determined attitude he had observed a change in amabel and a change in agnes and if only to disappoint the vile triumph of the one
+he withstood the clamour and began speaking again before the coroner had been able to fully restore quiet i know said he
+but if anyone who listens to me thinks me guilty of the death i was so unfortunate as to have witnessed
+doctor talbot and you gentlemen of the jury in the face of god and man i here declare that missus webb in my presence and before my eyes
+gave to herself the blow which has robbed us all of a most valuable life she was not murdered it was a solemn assertion but it failed to convince the crowd before him as by one impulse men and women broke into a tumult
+she was too good it's all calumny a wretched lie broke in unrestrained excitement from every part of the large room in vain the coroner smote with his gavel in vain the local police endeavoured to restore order
+the tide was up and over swept everything for an instant
+of amabel smoothing out the folds of her crisp white frock with an incredulous almost insulting smile that at once fixed attention again on frederick he seized the occasion and spoke up in a tone of great resolve
+i have made an assertion said he before god and before this jury to make it seem a credible one i shall have to tell my own story from the beginning am i allowed to do so mister coroner you are
+was the firm response then gentlemen continued frederick still without looking at amabel whose smile had acquired a mockery that drew the eyes of the jury toward her more than once during the following recital
+you know and the public generally now know that missus webb has left me the greater portion of the money of which she died possessed i have never before acknowledged to anyone not even to the good man who awaits this jury's verdict
+on the other side of that door yonder that she had reasons for this good reasons reasons of which up to the very evening of her death
+or that i was the special object of her attention or that we were under any mutual obligations in any way why then i should have thought of going to her in the great strait in which i found myself on that day
+i cannot say i knew she had money in her house this i had unhappily been made acquainted with in an accidental way
+and quite capable of doing a very unselfish act still this would not seem to be reason enough for me to intrude upon her late at night with a plea for a large loan of money had i not been in a desperate condition of mind
+which made any attempt seem reasonable that promised relief from the unendurable burden of a pressing and disreputable debt i was obliged to have money a great deal of money and i had to have it at once
+as i had been told early in the evening a small entertainment was being given which would insure its being open even at so late an hour as midnight miss page who will i am sure pardon the introduction of her name into this narrative
+has taken pains to declare to you that in the expedition she herself made into town that evening she followed some person's steps down hill this is very likely true and those steps were probably mine for after leaving the house by the garden door
+and so hastened on till i came to the gate on high street here i had a moment of hesitation and thoughts bitter enough for me to recall them at this moment came into my mind
+but they passed thank god and with no more desperate feeling than a sullen intention of having my own way about this money i lifted the latch of the front door and stepped in
+or at least to hear the sound of merry voices and laughter in the rooms above but no sounds of any sort awaited me indeed the house seemed strangely silent for one so fully lighted and astonished at this
+i pushed the door ajar at my left and looked in an unexpected and pitiful sight awaited me
+i saw the master of the house with his head sunk forward on his arms asleep the expected guests had failed to arrive and he tired out with waiting had fallen into a doze at the board
+this was a condition of things for which i was not prepared missus webb whom i wished to see was probably up stairs and while i might summon her by a sturdy rap on the door beside which i stood i had so little desire to wake her husband
+of whose mental condition i was well aware that i could not bring myself to make any loud noise within his hearing yet i had not the courage to retreat all my hope of relief from the many difficulties that menaced me
+lay in the generosity of this great hearted woman and if out of pusillanimity
+nothing but shame and disaster awaited me yet how could i hope to lure her down stairs without noise i could not and so yielding to the impulse of the moment without any realisation
+i slipped up the narrow staircase
+for she rose and meeting my eye with a gaze in which shock and some strange and poignant agony totally incomprehensible to me were strangely blended she cried out no no frederick you don't know what you are doing
+if you want my money take it if you want my life
+don't stain yours don't i did not understand her i did not know until i thought it over afterward that my hand was thrust convulsively into my breast in a way which taken with my wild mien
+give then i want hundreds thousands now now to save myself disgrace shame prison await me if i don't have them give give and my hand went out toward it not toward her
+but she mistook the action mistook my purpose and
+more than the outward seeming of her life can hardly measure plunged against it and i can tell you no more her blood and batsy's shriek from the adjoining room swam through my consciousness and then she fell as i supposed
+and i in scarcely better case fell also this as god lives is the truth concerning the wound found in the breast of this never to be forgotten woman the feeling the pathos the anguish even to be found in his tone made this story
+seemed appear for the moment plausible and batsy asked the coroner must have fallen when we did for i never heard her voice after the first scream but i shall speak of her again
+what i must now explain is how the money in missus webb's drawer came into my possession and how the dagger she had planted in her breast came to be found on the lawn outside when i came to myself and that must have been very soon i found
+that the blow of which i had been such a horrified witness had not yet proved fatal the eyes i had seen close as i had supposed forever were now open and she was looking at me with a smile that has never left my memory and never will
+there is no blood on you she murmured you did not strike the blow
+there are five hundred dollars on that table take them and let them pave your way to a better life
+do these words this action of hers seem incredible to you sirs alas alas they will not when i tell you and here he cast one anxious deeply anxious glance at the room in which mister sutherland was hidden
+that unknown to me unknown to anyone living but herself unknown to that good man from whom it can no longer be kept hidden agatha webb was my mother
+and gradually subside so this crowd yielded to its awe and man by man sank back into his seat till quiet was again restored and only a circle of listening faces confronted the man who had just stirred a whole roomful to its depths
+seeing this and realising his opportunity frederick at once entered into the explanations for which each heart there panted this will be overwhelming news to him who has cared for me since infancy
+you have heard him call me son with what words shall i overthrow his confidence in the truth and rectitude of his long buried wife and make him know in his old age that he has wasted years of patience upon one who was not of his blood
+or lineage the wonder the incredulity you manifest are my best excuse for my long delay in revealing the secret entrusted to me by this dying woman an awed silence greeted these words
+the astounding fact which i have just communicated to you was made known by my mother with the dagger still plunged in her breast she would not let me draw it out she knew that death would follow that act
+and she prized every moment remaining to her because of the bliss she enjoyed of seeing
+the love the passion
+transformed me in an instant from a selfish brute into a deeply repentant man i knelt before her in anguish i made her feel that wicked as i had been i was not
+and when i saw by her clearing brow and peaceful look that i had fully persuaded her of this i let her speak what words she would and tell as she was able
+it is a sacred story to me and if you must know it let it be from her own words in the letters she left behind her she only told me that to save me from the fate of the children who had preceded me
+and under circumstances calculated to deceive mister sutherland consequently he had never known i was not his own child
+she enjoined me not to enlighten him now if by any sacrifice on my part i could rightfully avoid it that she was happy in having me hear the truth before she died that the joy which this gave her was so great
+she did not regret her fatal act violent and uncalled for as it was for it had showed her my heart and allowed me to read hers
+and she made me promise i would care for him to the last with tenderness saying that i would be able to do this without seeming impropriety since she had willed me all her fortune under this proviso finally
+and though her strength and breath were fast failing her she made me understand that she was worried about the zabels who had not come according to a sacred custom between them to celebrate the anniversary of her wedding
+and prayed me to see the two old gentlemen before i slept since nothing but death or dire distress would have kept them from gratifying the one whim of my father's failing mind i promised
+she pointed to the dagger in her breast but before i could lay my hand upon it she called for batsy i want her to hear me declare before i go said she that this stroke was delivered by myself upon myself
+but when i rose to look for batsy i found that the shock of her mistress's fatal act had killed her
+in case my presence in this house of death should become known
+for fear it would make her last moments miserable
+but was too terrified to move or speak and this satisfied my mother and made her last breath one of trust and contented love she died as i drew the dagger from her breast
+and flung it wildly from the window then i lifted her and laid her where you found her on the sofa
+james zabel much less that it bore his initials on the handle he paused and the awe occasioned by the scene he had described was so deep and the silence so prolonged that a shudder passed over the whole assemblage
+when from some unknown quarter a single cutting voice arose in this one short mocking comment oh the fairy tale was it amabel who spoke some thought so and looked her way
+as if begging pardon for the wicked doubts which had driven him to this defence frederick met that look with one so severe it partook of harshness then resuming his testimony he said
+and of how one of them james by name came to be involved in this affair when i left my dead mother's side i was in such a state of mind that i passed with scarcely so much as a glance the room where my new found father sat sleeping
+but as i hastened on toward the quarter where the zabels lived i was seized by such compunction for his desolate state that i faltered in my rapid flight and did not arrive at the place of my destination as quickly as i intended when i did
+but i did not turn away remembering my mother's anxiety an anxiety so extreme it disturbed her final moments i approached the front door and was about to knock when i found it open greatly astonished i at once passed in
+and seeing my way perfectly in the moonlight entered the room on the left the door of which also stood open it was the second house i had entered unannounced that night and in this as in the other
+i encountered a man sitting asleep by the table it was john the elder of the two and perceiving that he was suffering for food and in a condition of extreme misery i took out the first bill my hand encountered
+as i did so he gave a sigh but did not wake
+i hastened away and took the shortest path home had i been more of a man or if my visit to missus webb had been actuated by a more communicable motive i would have gone at once to the good man who believed me to be of his own flesh and blood
+and told him of the strange and heart rending adventure which had changed the whole tenor of my thoughts and life
+in which i found myself placed but the memory of a thousand past ingratitudes together with the knowledge of the shock which he could not fail to receive on learning at this late day
+was neither of her blood nor his rose up between us and caused me not only to attempt silence but to secrete in the adjoining woods the money i had received in the vain hope that all visible connection between myself and my mother's tragic death
+would thus be lost you see i had not calculated on miss amabel page
+startled the crowd and gave sweetwater already suffering under shock after shock of mingled surprise and wonder
+and that something besides justice had actuated amabel in her treatment of this young man this feeling was shared by others and a reaction set in in frederick's favour which even affected the officials who were conducting the inquiry
+frederick himself felt the change and showed it by the look of relief and growing confidence he cast at agnes of the questions and answers which now passed between him and the various members of the jury i need give no account
+they but emphasised facts already known and produced but little change in the general feeling
+when he was allowed to resume his seat
+she rose with a bound nought that she had anticipated had occurred facts of which she could know nothing had changed the aspect of affairs and made the position of frederick something so remote from any she could have imagined
+that she was still in the maze of the numberless conflicting emotions which these revelations were calculated to call out in one who had risked all on the hazard of a die and lost she did not even know at this moment whether she was glad or sorry he could explain so cleverly
+she had not a pure enough heart to do so to her all self sacrifice was an anomaly no woman of the mental or physical strength of agatha webb would plant a dagger in her own breast just to prevent another person from committing a crime
+were he lover husband or son so amabel believed and so would these others believe also when once relieved of the magnetic personality of this extraordinary witness
+yet how thrilling it had been to hear him plead his cause so well it was almost worth the loss of her revenge to meet his look of hate and dream of the possibility of turning it later into the old look of love yes yes she loved him now
+not even for his money for she could contemplate its loss but for himself who had so boldly shown that he was stronger than she and could triumph over her by the sheer force of his masculine daring
+with such feelings
+how conduct herself under questions which would be much more searching now than before she could not even decide in her own mind she must let impulse have its way happily she took the right stand at first
+she did not endeavour to make any corrections in her former testimony only acknowledging that the flower whose presence on the scene of death had been such a mystery had fallen from her hair at the ball and that she had seen frederick pick it up and put it in his buttonhole
+beyond this and the inferences it afterward awakened in her mind she would not go
+the two were alone in the grassy courtyard of the ruined castle the rest of the picnic party had wandered away from them or they from it out of the green grown mound of fallen masonry by the corner of the chapel a great may bush grew
+silvered and pearled on every scented still spray the sky was deep clear strong blue above and against the blue the wallflowers shone bravely from the cracks and crevices of ruined arch and wall and buttress
+they shine like gold she said
+do you want some he said and on the instant his hand had found a strong jutting stone his foot a firm ledge and she saw his figure grey flannel against grey stone go up the wall towards the yellow flowers
+oh don't she cried i don't really want them please not i wish then she stopped because he was already some twelve feet from the ground and she knew that one should not speak to a man who is climbing ruined walls
+had loved him these two years had loved him since the day of their first meeting and that was just as long as he had loved her but he had never told his love there is a code of honour right or wrong
+and it forbids a man with an income of a hundred and fifty a year to speak of love to a girl who is reckoned an heiress there are plenty who transgress the code but they are in all the other stories
+he drove his passion on the curb and mastered it yet the questions does she love me does she know i love her does she wonder why i don't speak and the counter questions will she think i don't care
+when we let our emotions play the primitive games with us but always the morning brought strength to keep to his resolution he saw her three times a year when christmas easter and midsummer brought her to stay with an aunt brought him home to his people for holidays
+and though he had denied himself the joy of speaking in words he had let his eyes speak more than he knew and now he had reached the wallflowers high up and was plucking them and throwing them down so that they fell in a wavering bright shower round her feet
+there was no sound at all but the grating of his feet as he set them on the stones and the movement now and then of a bird in the ivy then came a rustle a gritty clatter loud falling stones his foot had slipped and he had fallen
+no he was hanging by his hands above the great refectory arch and his body swung heavily with the impetus of the checked fall he was moving along now slowly hanging by his hands now he grasped an ivy root another
+and pulled himself up till his knee was on the moulding of the arch she would never have believed anyone who had told her that only two minutes had been lived between the moment of his stumble and the other moment when his foot touched the grass
+caught him by the arms just above the elbow shook him angrily as one shakes a naughty child looked him once in the eyes and buried her face in his neck sobbing long dry breathless sobs even then he tried to be strong
+don't he said tenderly don't worry it's all right i was a fool pull yourself together there's someone coming i don't care she said
+for the touch of his cheek pressed against her hair told her all that she wanted to know let them come i don't care oh how could you be so silly and horrid
+oh how could you of course a really honourable young man
+he didn't he accepted it with his arms round her and his lips against the face where the tears now ran warm and salt it was one of the immortal moments the picture was charming too
+a picture to wring the heart of the onlooker with envy or sympathy according to his nature but there was only one onlooker a man of forty or thereabouts who paused for an instant under the great gate of the castle and took in the full charm and meaning of the scene
+he turned away and went back along the green path with hell in his heart the other two were in paradise the onlooker fell like the third in eden the serpent in fact two miles away he stopped and lit a pipe
+it's got to be borne i suppose he said like all the rest of it she's happy enough i ought to be glad anyway i can't stop it perhaps he swore a little
+if he did the less precise and devotional may pardon him he had loved the girl since her early teens and it was only yesterday's post that had brought him the appointment that one might marry on the appointment had come through her father
+the lover who came to his love over strewn wallflowers desired always as has been seen to act up to his moral ideas so he took next day a much earlier train than was at all pleasant
+and called on her father to explain his position and set forth his prospects his coming was heralded by a letter from her one must not quote it it is not proper to read other people's letters especially letters to a trusted father from a child only and adored
+its effect may be indicated briefly it showed the father that the girl's happiness had had two long years in which to learn to grow round the thought of the young man whom he now faced for the first time odd
+for to the father he seemed just like other young men it seemed to him that there were so many more of the same pattern from whom she might have chosen and many of them well off too however the letter lay in the prosperous pocket book in the breast of the father's frock coat
+and the lover was received as though that letter were a charm to ensure success a faulty or at least a slow working charm however for the father did not lift a bag of gold from his safe and say take her take this also be happy
+he only consented to a provisional engagement took an earnest interest in the young man's affairs and offered to make his daughter an annual allowance on her marriage at my death she will have more he said
+the young man made a reverent note of the name and the interview seemed played out it's a complicated nuisance the father mused it isn't even as if i knew anything of the chap i oughtn't to have allowed the child to make these long visits to her aunt
+but as uncomfortable as toothache all the same he had another caller that afternoon he whom we know as the onlooker came to thank him for the influence that had got him the appointment as doctor to the influential insurance company the father opened his heart to the onlooker
+but i don't see how to develop the action it really is rather amusing that i i should have to tap his beastly chest and listen to his cursed lungs and ask sympathetic questions about his idiotic infant illnesses
+one thing he ought to be able to remember those pretty vividly the confounded pup the onlooker had never done anything wronger than you have done my good reader and he never expected to meet a giant temptation any more than you do
+what did he die of for the answer was heart and in it the devil rose and showed the onlooker the really only true and artistic way to develop the action in this situation so dramatic in its possibilities
+the illuminative flash of temptation was so sudden so brilliant that the doctor onlooker closed his soul's eyes and yielded without even the least pretence of resistance he took his stethoscope from the table
+he walked with more than his ordinary firmness of gait as a man does who is just drunk enough to know that he must try to look sober he walked down the street certain words ringing in his ears heart affected probably hereditary weakness
+no office in the world would insure you and so it was all over the dreams the hopes the palpitating faith in a beautiful future his days might be long they might be brief but be his life long or short he must live it alone
+he had a little fight with himself as he went down wimpole street then he hailed a hansom and went and told her father who quite agreed with him that it was all over the father wondered at himself for being more sorry than glad
+she said why you want me more than ever but i may die at any moment so may i and you may live to be a hundred i'll take my chance
+oh don't you see too that if there is only a little time we ought to spend it together it's impossible he said it's no good i must set my teeth and bear it and you i hope it won't be as hard for you as it will for me
+but you can't give me up if i won't be given up can you his smile struck her dumb it was more convincing than his words
+you'll forgive me won't you i didn't know and oh what's the use of talking yet they talked for hours conventionally he should have torn himself away unable to bear the strain of his agony
+as a matter of fact he sat by her holding her hand it was for the last time the last last time there was really a third at that interview the onlooker had imagination enough to see the scene between the parting lovers
+they parted and now the onlooker dared not meet her dared not call at the house as he had used to do at last the father pressed him he went he met her and it was as though he had met the ghost of her whom he had loved
+her eyes had blue marks under them her chin had grown more pointed her nose sharper there was a new line on her forehead and her eyes had changed over the wine he heard from the father that she was pining for the lover who had inherited heart disease
+i suppose it was you who saw him by the way said he a tall well set up young fellow dark not bad looking i i don't remember lied the onlooker
+with the eyes of his memory on the white face of the man he had stabbed now the lover and the onlooker had each his own burden to bear and the lover's was the easier he worked still though there was now nothing to work for more
+he worked as he had never worked in his life because he knew that if he did not take to work he should take to drink or worse devils and he set his teeth and swore that her lover should not be degraded he knew that she loved him and there was a kind of fierce pain pleasure
+like that of scratching a sore in the thought that she was as wretched as he was that divided in all else they were yet united in their suffering he thought it made him more miserable to know of her misery but it didn't he never saw her but he dreamed of her
+and sometimes the dreams got out of hand and carried him a thousand worlds from all that lay between them then he had to wake up and that was bad but the onlooker was no dreamer and he saw her about three times a week
+covering a clear cut mask of set endurance and there was no work that could shut out that sight no temptation of the world the flesh or the devil to give him even the relief of a fight he had no temptations he had never had but the one
+his soul was naked to the bitter wind of the actual and the days went by went by and every day he knew more and more surely that he had lied and thrown away his soul and that the wages of sin were death and no other thing whatever
+and gradually little by little the whole worth of life seemed to lie in the faint far chance of his being able to undo the one triumphantly impulsive and unreasoning action of his life
+but there are some acts that there is no undoing and the hell that had burned in his heart so fiercely when he had seen her in the other man's arms burned now with new bright lights and infernal flickering flame tongues and at last out of hell
+the onlooker reached out his hands and caught at prayer he caught at it as a drowning man catches at a white gleam in the black of the surging sea about him it may be a painted spar it may be empty foam the onlooker prayed
+yes speaking professionally i think you are wrong you lessen your chances of life why don't you try a complete change because if you must know my chances of life have ceased to interest me
+the lover was short with the onlooker but he persisted well if one isn't interested in one's life one may be interested in one's death or the manner of it in your place i should enlist
+it's better to die of a bullet in south africa than of fright in london that roused the lover as it was meant to do i don't really know what business it is of yours sir he said
+but it's your business to know that they wouldn't pass a man with a heart like mine i don't know they're not so particular just now they want men i should try it if i were you if you don't have a complete change you'll go all to pieces
+that's all the onlooker got out at the next station short of owning to his own lie he had done what he could to insure its being found out for the lie it was or at least for a mistake
+and when he had done what he could he saw that the lover might not find it out might be passed for the army might go to the front might be killed and then well i've done my best anyhow he said to himself
+and himself answered him liar you have not done your best you will have to eat your lie yes though it will smash your life and ruin you socially and professionally you will have to tell him you lied and tell him why
+you will never let him go to south africa without telling him the truth and you know it well you know best i suppose he said to himself but are you perfectly certain
+ye'll mak a fine soldier my lad i think not said the lover and he went out from the presence this time he reeled like a man too drunk to care how drunk he looks he drove in cabs from harley street to wimpole street
+when he had told the girl everything and when she was able to do anything but laugh and cry and cling to him with thin hands she said dear i do so hate to think badly of anyone but do you really think that man was mistaken
+he's very very clever my child
+don't mean that i know you're all right thank god oh thank god i mean don't you think he may have lied to you to prevent your marrying me
+why should he he asked me to marry him three weeks ago he's a very old friend of ours i do hate to be suspicious but it is odd and then his trying to get you to south africa
+i'm certain he wanted you out of the way he wanted you to get killed oh how can people be so cruel
+chapter twenty nine edith cavell as the name of florence nightingale became world famous at the close of the crimean war more than sixty years ago the name of another english nurse who suffered martyrdom in the world war
+will go down into history with the lustre of glory and self sacrifice surrounding it that name is edith cavell edith cavell was born at swardeston in norwich england in eighteen seventy three
+her father was an english minister of the old school who was rector of a single parish in norwich for more than half a century edith and her sister were brought up in strict conformance with church ideas
+and were taught the value of leading useful lives and the glory of self sacrifice as was customary at the time when she was a young girl she received her education on the continent attending school in the city of brussels in belgium
+she then returned to her home and remained there until when twenty one years old and resolved to give her life to some useful and benevolent occupation she decided to become a trained nurse and went to london to study that calling
+she studied at the london hospital a place we are told where the hardest and most difficult conditions prevailed and where the nurses were worked to the limit of their strength she also held the position of a nurse in two other hospitals
+the shoreditch infirmary in hoxton and the saint pancras infirmary and she gained a reputation both for hard work and efficiency while her patients often spoke of her gentleness and her kindness not content with forgetting a patient when discharged from the hospital
+and at first they were inclined to look upon miss cavell as an untrained outsider but her tact efficiency and skill soon won the hearts of these good women who afforded her every courtesy and entered into cordial cooperation with her
+her home succeeded so well that three years after its commencement miss cavell started also a training school for nurses she was popular everywhere in the belgian capital
+but her mother was close to her heart and she saw her as often as she could i may be looked on as an old maid she is reported as saying but with my work and my mother i am a very happy one and desire nothing more as long as i have these two
+when war was declared miss cavell lost no time in hurrying back to brussels believing that her duty called her there she wrote a letter commenting on the german army when it swept through belgium and in it she voiced her pity for the tired footsore german soldiers
+who were later to slay her brussels became a part of the german empire and a tyrannical governor came there to establish his headquarters issuing proclamations threatening the belgians with death for minor offenses and filling brussels with spies and intrigue
+miss cavell desired to continue her hospital work and went to the governor von bissing to get permission to do so he granted it for the quiet english nurse made an impression upon him we are told that the arrogant german formed a high opinion of her
+so much so that he secretly determined to keep her under the strictest supervision from that time on spies dogged her tracks she cared for the wounded german soldiers and nursed a number of german officers as well as the belgians who were in her care
+but this made no difference to the authorities they were determined to detect her in some crime and punish her it was not fitting they thought that an enemy should be engaged in works of mercy even though they themselves might benefit thereby
+and soon spies began to come to the governor with tales and fabrications of the crimes that she had been committing in their eyes they bore witness that she had given an overcoat to a frenchman who was cold and hungry and the frenchman later escaped over the dutch frontier
+on the night of august fifth nineteen fifteen we are told miss cavell was tying up the wounds of a wounded german soldier when a group of armed men entered the room and their leader told her roughly that she was under arrest
+a blow was the only response when she tried to expostulate she was taken to prison and placed in solitary confinement her arrest was shrouded with the most careful secrecy for the germans did not want to have the representatives of neutral governments
+such as the united states know of the affair or of what they proposed to do but word of her plight did reach england through a traveler and at once the british government requested the american ambassador doctor page
+to get what information he could from brand whitlock the american minister in belgium he went at once to the german authorities but they evaded his questions and waited ten days before giving him a reply then the germans sent him a statement
+and furnishing them with guides to help them to the dutch frontier whence they might escape into holland and return to england this was the german statement if what they said were true there was still no cause for killing the unfortunate woman in their power
+for she was not accused at any time of having been a spy but they had planned to try her for her life and mister whitlock soon guessed this in spite of the fact that the germans kept their preparations from him so far as possible
+an american lawyer mister de leval was requested by mister whitlock to take miss cavell's case and do whatever was possible in her behalf he was not allowed to see the prisoner and was not even allowed to look at the documents in the case until the trial began
+another lawyer who was a belgian suddenly appeared and told the americans that there was not the least cause for them to worry as miss cavell was sure to receive only just treatment he also promised to let them know when the trial was to take place
+and that he would keep them informed of all the developments in the case all these promises were broken it is true that he sent a note a few days before the trial telling mister whitlock that the case was about to come to court
+he never informed them that the death sentence had been imposed he never came to see them afterward and when they sought him for an explanation and for assistance he had disappeared miss cavell was kept in solitary confinement for two months
+was calm dignified and brave at the trial and faced her accusers heroically she was dressed in her nurse's uniform and wore the badge of the red cross when mister whitlock learned that she had been tried and sentenced to death
+he did everything possible to secure her pardon or at least a moderation of the punishment he wrote to baron von der lancken pointing out in a clear and decisive manner that miss cavell had served the germans by caring for their wounded
+and that the death sentence had never before been inflicted for the crime of which she was accused he also wrote a note to the baron which is as follows my dear baron i am too ill to present my request to you in person
+but i appeal to your generosity of heart to support it and save this unfortunate woman from death have pity on her brand whitlock
+all through the day the american legation sent message after message to the german authorities asking for information they received none at six twenty in the evening they were told by a subordinate that the sentence had not been given
+only to learn later that it had indeed been declared and that miss cavell would face a firing squad at two o'clock the following morning mister whitlock then urged baron von der lancken
+to mitigate the sentence and at eleven in the evening he was told that von bissing refused to do anything to save miss cavell's life at the same time that the governor denied this appeal edith cavell was allowed to see a british chaplain she told him that she was not in the least afraid of death
+and willingly gave her life for her country her words resembled those of florence nightingale that have been quoted elsewhere in this book death she said was well known to her and she had seen it so often that it was not strange or fearful to her
+early in the morning with her eyes bandaged miss cavell was led out to face the rifles of the huns she wore an english flag over her bosom only germans were witnesses of the execution but the german chaplain who attended said that she died like a heroine
+when her death became known the entire civilized world was shocked and horrified in england this murder did more to stimulate recruiting than anything else up to that time all day long lines of men waited to sign the papers of enlistment
+and in miss cavell's home town every eligible man was sworn into the army a bitter denunciation of the german act was made by sir edward grey the germans themselves had only a poor excuse for what they had done
+in brief the case against the german authorities is as follows they had not previously inflicted the death penalty for the offense of which miss cavell was accused they had kept her in solitary confinement and prevented her from consulting an advocate up to the time of her trial
+she was tried with great haste and with great secrecy and after the trial the sentence was carried out far more speedily than usual moreover they had deceived mister whitlock and the other members of the american legation and had done so deliberately
+after the execution they refused to return the body but the name of edith cavell has become one of the world's great names and her fame grows brighter as time passes
+none of us whether children or adults needs an introduction to mother goose those things which are earliest impressed upon our minds cling to them most tenaciously the snatches sung in the nursery are never forgotten
+nor are they ever recalled without bringing back with them myriads of slumbering feelings and half forgotten images we hear the sweet low voice of the mother singing soft lullabies to her darling
+and see the kindly wrinkled face of the grandmother as she croons the old ditties to quiet our restless spirits one generation is linked to another by the everlasting spirit of song
+the ballads of the nursery follow us from childhood to old age and they are readily brought from memory's recesses at any time to amuse our children or our grandchildren the collection of jingles we know and love as the melodies of mother goose
+are evidently drawn from a variety of sources while they are taken altogether a happy union of rhyme wit
+the research after the author of each individual verse would indeed be hopeless it would be folly to suppose them all the composition of uneducated old nurses for many of them contain much reflection wit and melody
+it is said that shelley wrote pussy cat mew and dean swift little bo peep and these assertions are as difficult to disprove as to prove some of the older verses however
+are doubtless offshoots from ancient folk lore songs and have descended to us through many centuries the connection of mother goose with the rhymes which bear her name is difficult to determine and in fact three countries claim her for their own
+france england and america about the year sixteen fifty there appeared in circulation in london a small book named rhymes of the nursery or lulla byes for children
+which contained many of the identical pieces that have been handed down to us but the name of mother goose was evidently not then known in this edition were the rhymes of little jack homer old king cole mistress mary sing a song o sixpence
+and little boy blue in sixteen ninety seven charles perrault published in france
+although perrault's tales differ materially from those we now know under this title they comprised the sleeping beauty the fairy little red riding hood blue beard puss in boots
+riquet with the tuft cinderella and little thumb eight stories in all on the cover of the book was depicted an old lady holding in her hand a distaff
+america bases her claim to mother goose upon the following statement made by the late john fleet eliot a descendant of thomas fleet the printer at the beginning of the eighteenth century there lived in boston a lady named eliza goose
+written also vergoose and vertigoose who belonged to a wealthy family her eldest daughter elizabeth goose or vertigoose
+and in due time gave birth to a son like most mothers in law in our day the importance of missus goose increased with the appearance of her grandchild and poor mister fleet half distracted with her endless nursery ditties finding all other means fail
+tried what ridicule could effect and actually printed a book under the title songs of the nursery or mother goose's melodies for children on the title page was the picture of a goose with a very long neck and a mouth wide open and below this
+printed by t fleet at his printing house in pudding lane seventeen nineteen price two coppers mister wm a wheeler the editor of hurd and houghton's elaborate edition of mother goose eighteen seventy reiterated this assertion
+and a writer in the boston transcript of june seventeenth eighteen sixty four says fleet's book was partly a reprint of an english collection of songs barclay's and the new title was doubtless a compliment by the printer to his mother in law goose for her contributions
+she was the mother of sixteen children and a typical old woman who lived in a shoe we may take it to be true that fleet's wife was of the vergoose family and that the name was often contracted to goose
+but the rest of the story is unsupported by any evidence whatever in fact all that mister eliot knew of it was the statement of the late edward a crowninshield of boston that he had seen fleet's edition in the library of the american antiquarian society
+repeated researches at worcester having failed to bring to light this supposed copy and no record of it appearing on any catalogue there we may dismiss the entire story with the supposition that mister eliot misunderstood the remarks made to him
+indeed as mister william h whitmore points out in his clever monograph upon mother goose albany eighteen eighty nine it is very doubtful whether in seventeen nineteen
+boston children at that date says mister whitmore were fed upon gospel food and it seems extremely improbable that an edition could have been sold
+is of about the same date as boston's there lived in a town in sussex about the year seventeen o four an old woman named martha gooch she was a capital nurse and in great demand to care for newly born babies therefore
+through long years of service as nurse she came to be called mother gooch this good woman had one peculiarity she was accustomed to croon queer rhymes and jingles over the cradles of her charges and these rhymes
+seemed so senseless and silly to the people who overheard them that they began to call her mother goose in derision the term being derived from queen goosefoot the mother of charlemagne the old nurse paid no attention to her critics
+but continued to sing her rhymes as before for however much grown people might laugh at her the children seemed to enjoy them very much and not one of them was too peevish to be quieted and soothed by her verses
+at one time mistress gooch was nursing a child of mister ronald barclay a physician residing in the town and he noticed the rhymes she sang and became interested in them in time he wrote them all down and made a book of them
+which it is said was printed by john worthington and son in the strand london in seventeen twelve under the name of ye melodious rhymes of mother goose but even this story of martha gooch
+is based upon very meager and unsatisfactory evidence the earliest english edition of mother goose's melodies that is absolutely authentic was issued by john newbury of london about the year seventeen sixty and the first authentic american edition
+in seventeen eighty five none of the earlier editions however contained all the rhymes so well known at the present day since every decade has added its quota to the mass of jingles attributed to mother goose
+some of the earlier verses have become entirely obsolete and it is well they have for many were crude and silly and others were coarse it is simply a result of the greater refinement of modern civilization
+that they have been relegated to oblivion while the real gems of the collection will doubtless live and grow in popular favor for many ages
+it does not matter in the least whether she was in reality a myth or a living eliza goose martha gooch or the mere oye of perrault the songs that cluster around her name are what we love
+and each individual verse appeals more to the childish mind than does mother goose herself many of these nursery rhymes are complete tales in themselves telling their story tersely but completely there are others which are but bare suggestions
+leaving the imagination to weave in the details of the story perhaps therein may lie part of their charm but however that may be i have thought the children might like the stories told at greater length that they may dwell the longer upon their favorite heroes and heroines
+for that reason i have written this book in making the stories i have followed mainly the suggestions of the rhymes and my hope is that the little ones will like them and not find that they interfere with the fanciful creations of their own imaginations
+l frank baum chicago illinois
+and one of these flocks used to be cared for by a poor woman who supported herself and her little girl by this means they lived in a small cottage nestled at the foot of one of the hills and each morning the mother took her crook
+and started out with her sheep that they might feed upon the tender juicy grasses with which the hills abounded the little girl usually accompanied her mother and sat by her side
+upon the grassy mounds and watched her care for the ewes and lambs so that in time she herself grew to be a very proficient shepherdess so when the mother became too old and feeble to leave her cottage little bo peep as she was called
+decided that she was fully able to manage the flocks herself she was a little mite of a child with flowing nut brown locks and big gray eyes that charmed all who gazed into their innocent depths she wore a light gray frock
+fastened about the waist with a pretty pink sash and there were white ruffles around her neck and pink ribbons in her hair all the shepherds and shepherdesses upon the hills both young and old soon came to know little bo peep very well indeed
+and there were many willing hands to aid her if which was not often she needed their assistance bo peep usually took her sheep to the side of a high hill above the cottage and allowed them to eat the rich grass while she herself sat upon a mound and
+laying aside her crook and her broad straw hat with its pink ribbons devoted her time to sewing and mending stockings for her aged mother one day while thus occupied
+good morning little bo peep and looking up the girl saw a woman standing near her and leaning upon a short stick she was bent nearly double by weight of many years her hair was white as snow and her eyes as black as coals
+deep wrinkles seamed her face and hands while her nose and chin were so pointed that they nearly met she was not pleasant to look upon but bo peep had learned to be polite to the aged so she answered sweetly
+good morning mother can i do anything for you no dearie returned the woman in a cracked voice but i will sit by your side and rest for a time the girl made room on the mound beside her
+and the stranger sat down and watched in silence the busy fingers sew up the seams of the new frock she was making by and by the woman asked why do you come out here to sew because i am a shepherdess replied the girl
+but where is your crook on the grass beside me and where are your sheep bo peep looked up and could not see them they must have strayed over the top of the hill she said and i will go and seek them
+do not be in a hurry croaked the old woman they will return presently without your troubling to find them do you think so asked bo peep of course do not the sheep know you
+oh yes they know me every one and do not you know the sheep i can call every one by name said bo peep confidently for though i am so young a shepherdess i am fond of my sheep and know all about them
+the old woman chuckled softly as if the answer amused her and replied no one knows all about anything my dear but i know all about my sheep protested little bo peep do you indeed
+then you are wiser that most people and if you know all about them you also know they will come home of their own accord and i have no doubt they will all be wagging their tails behind them as usual
+oh said little bo peep in surprise do they wag their tails i never noticed that indeed exclaimed the old woman then you are not very observing for one who knows all about sheep
+perhaps you have never noticed their tails at all no answered bo peep thoughtfully i do n't know that i ever have the woman laughed so hard at this reply
+that she began to cough and this made the girl remember that her flock had strayed away i really must go and find my sheep she said rising to her feet and then i shall be sure to notice their tails and see if they wag them sit still my child
+said the old woman i am going over the hill top myself and i will send the sheep back to you so she got upon her feet and began climbing the hill and the girl heard her saying as she walked away little bo peep has lost her sheep
+and does n't know where to find em but leave em alone and they ll come home all wagging their tails behind em little bo peep sat still and watched the old woman toil slowly up the hill side and disappear over the top by and by she thought
+very soon i shall see the sheep coming back but time passed away and still the errant flock failed to make its appearance soon the head of the little shepherdess began to nod
+little bo peep fell fast asleep and dreamt she heard them bleating but when she awoke she found it a joke for still they were a fleeting the girl now became quite anxious and wondered why the old woman had not driven her flock over the hill
+but as it was now time for luncheon she opened her little basket and ate of the bread and cheese and cookies she had brought with her after she had finished her meal and taken a drink of cool water from a spring near by
+she decided she would not wait any longer so up she took her little crook determined for to find them and began climbing the hill when she got to the top there was never a sight of sheep about
+only a green valley and another hill beyond now really alarmed for the safety of her charge bo peep hurried into the valley and up the farther hill side panting and tired she reached the summit and pausing breathlessly
+gazed below her quietly feeding upon the rich grass was her truant flock looking as peaceful and innocent as if it had never strayed away from its gentle shepherdess bo peep uttered a cry of joy and hurried toward them
+but when she came near she stopped in amazement and held up her little hands with a pretty expression of dismay she had found them indeed but it made her heart bleed
+nothing was left to each sheep but a wee little stump where a tail should be and little bo peep was so heart broken that she sat down beside them and sobbed bitterly
+but after awhile the tiny maid realized that all her tears would not bring back the tails to her lambkins so she plucked up courage and dried her eyes and arose from the ground just as the old woman hobbled up to her
+so you have found your sheep dearie she said in her cracked voice yes replied little bo peep with difficulty repressing a sob but look mother they ve all left their tails behind them why so they have exclaimed the old woman
+and then she began to laugh as if something pleased her what do you suppose has become of their tails asked the girl oh some one has probably cut them off they make nice tippets in winter time you know
+and then she patted the child upon her head and walked away down the valley bo peep was much grieved over the loss that had befallen her dear sheep and so driving them before her she wandered around to see if by any chance she could find the lost tails
+but soon the sun began to sink over the hill tops and she knew she must take her sheep home before night overtook them she did not tell her mother of her misfortune for she feared the old shepherdess would scold her
+and bo peep had fully decided to seek for the tails and find them before she related the story of their loss to anyone each day for many days after that little bo peep wandered about the hills seeking the tails of her sheep
+and those who met her wondered what had happened to make the sweet little maid so anxious but there is an end to all troubles no matter how severe they may seem to be and it happened one day as bo peep did stray unto a meadow hard by
+the little shepherdess was overjoyed at this discovery and reaching up her crook she knocked the row of pretty white tails off the tree and gathered them up in her frock but how to fasten them onto her sheep again was the question
+and after pondering the matter for a time she became discouraged and thinking she was no better off than before the tails were found she began to weep and to bewail her misfortune but amidst her tears she bethought herself of her needle and thread
+why she exclaimed smiling again i can sew them on of course then she heaved a sigh and wiped her eye and ran o'er hill and dale oh and tried what she could as a shepherdess should to tack to each sheep its tail oh
+but the very first sheep she came to refused to allow her to sew on the tail and ran away from her and the others did the same so that finally she was utterly discouraged she was beginning to cry again when the same old woman she had before met
+came hobbling to her side and asked what are you doing with my cat tails your cat tails replied bo peep in surprise what do you mean why these tails are all cut from white pussycats and i put them on the tree to dry
+what are you doing with them i thought they belonged to my sheep answered bo peep sorrowfully
+i must hunt until i find those that belong to my sheep my dear said the old woman i have been deceiving you you said you knew all about your sheep and i wanted to teach you a lesson for however wise we may be
+no one in this world knows all about anything sheep do not have long tails there is only a little stump to answer for a tail neither do rabbits have tails nor bears nor many other animals
+and if you had been observing you would have known all this when i said the sheep would be wagging their tails behind them and then you would not have passed all those days in searching for what is not to be found
+so now little one run away home and try to be more thoughtful in the future your sheep will never miss the tails
+and now little bo peep no more did weep my tale of tails ends here
+and a girl called bellah postik they were cousins and as their mothers were great friends and constantly in and out of each other's houses they had often been laid in the same cradle and had played and fought over their games when they are grown up they will marry said the mothers
+and soon they might have been heard bewailing to each other the hardness of their lots
+i would rent a bit of ground from the master and then we could be married yes answered bellah with a deep sigh but we live in such hard times and at the last fair the price of pigs had risen again we shall have long to wait
+that is quite clear replied houarn turning away to his work whenever they met they repeated their grievances and at length houarn's patience was exhausted and one morning he came to bellah and told her that he was going away to seek his fortune
+the girl was very unhappy as she listened to this and felt sorry that she had not tried to make the best of things she implored houarn not to leave her but he would listen to nothing the birds he said continue flying until they reach a field of corn and
+like them i shall seek till i get what i want that is money to buy a cow and a pig to fatten and if you love me bellah you won't attempt to hinder a plan which will hasten our marriage the girl saw it was useless to say more so she answered sadly
+well go then since you must but first i will divide with you all that my parents left me and going to her room she opened a small chest and took from it a bell a knife and a little stick this bell she said can be heard at any distance however far
+but it only rings to warn us that our friends are in great danger the knife frees all it touches from the spells that have been laid on them while the stick will carry you wherever you want to go i will give you the knife to guard you against the enchantments of wizards
+and the bell to tell me of your perils the stick i shall keep for myself so that i can fly to you if ever you have need of me then they cried for a little on each other's necks and houarn started for the mountains but in those days as in these beggars abounded
+and through every village he passed they followed houarn in crowds mistaking him for a gentleman because there were no holes in his clothes there is no fortune to be made here he thought to himself it is a place for spending and not earning i see i must go further
+and he walked on to pont aven a pretty little town built on the bank of a river he was sitting on a bench outside an inn
+and the men answered that it was the name given to the fairy that dwelt in the lake
+and besought him not to be so mad and to throw away his life in such a foolish manner but he only laughed
+but the men did not know how this was to be done and shaking their heads over his obstinacy left him to his fate
+the island was large and lying almost across it was a lake with a narrow opening to the sea houarn paid the boatman and sent him away and then proceeded to walk round the lake
+as soon as the young man had recovered from his surprise he prepared to jump into the lake and swim to shore but the bird had guessed his intentions and plunged beneath the water
+the pink and white of her face reminded you of the shells of her palace while her long black hair was intertwined with strings of coral and her dress of green silk seemed formed out of the sea at the sight of her houarn stopped dazzled by her beauty
+my name is houarn he answered
+and she beckoned him to follow her into a second hall whose floors and walls were formed of pearls while down the sides there were tables laden with fruit and wines of all kinds
+came from shipwrecked vessels and were brought to her palace by a magic current of water i do not wonder exclaimed houarn who now felt quite at home do not wonder that the people on the earth have so much to say about you the rich are always envied
+the young man gazed at her in surprise could any one so rich and so beautiful really wish to be his wife he looked at her again and bellah was forgotten as he answered a man would be mad indeed to refuse such an offer i can only accept it with joy
+when it was full she went into a large kitchen and threw them all into a golden pot
+but it did not sound the least like that to houarn there it is again he said after a short pause
+jump she replied but soon the noise grew louder and like cries what is it asked houarn beginning to feel uncomfortable just the crickets on the hearth said she and broke into a song which drowned the cries from the pot
+but though houarn held his peace he was not as happy as before something seemed to have gone wrong and then he suddenly remembered bellah is it possible i can have forgotten her so soon
+and four men stood before him houarn save us we entreat you and save yourself too murmured they not daring to raise their voices
+and no sooner was the ceremony over than she turned us into fishes as she had done to all our forerunners who are in the fish pond still where you will shortly join them
+it was at this very moment that bellah who was skimming the milk in the farm dairy heard the fairy bell tinkle violently at the sound she grew pale for she knew it meant that houarn was in danger
+little staff of apple tree over the earth and over the sea up in the air be guide to me everywhere to wander free and immediately the stick became a smart little horse with a rosette at each ear and a feather on his forehead he stood quite still
+the swallow is less swift than the wind the wind is less swift than the lightning but you my horse if you love me must be swifter than them all for there is a part of my heart that suffers the best part of my heart that is in danger and the horse heard her
+and galloped like a straw carried along by a tempest till they reached the foot of a rock called the leap of the deer
+to save you repeated bellah but who are you my little friend
+and it is owing to her that i am here but what are you doing in this nest i am sitting on six eggs of stone and i shall not be set free till they are hatched
+when you have found her you must contrive to get hold of the net of steel that hangs from her waist and shut her up in it for ever but where am i to find a young man's clothes asked she i will show you he replied
+and the fourth an iron without waiting for orders they sat down in the nest and crossing their legs comfortably began to prepare the suit of clothes for bellah with one of the leaves of the cabbage they made her a coat
+and with it in her hand she stepped into the blue boat which conducted her to the palace of shells the groac'h seemed overjoyed to see her and told her that never before had she beheld such a handsome young man
+very soon she led her visitor into the great hall where wine and fruit were always waiting and on the table lay the magic knife left there by houarn
+and to the pond which contained the fish their sides shining with a thousand different colours
+and turning rapidly flung it over the witch's head become in body what you are in soul cried she and in an instant the lovely fairy of the sea was a toad horrible to look upon she struggled hard to tear the net asunder but it was no use
+her eyes fell on a green frog on his knees beside her his little paws crossed over his little heart bellah felt as if fingers were tightening round her throat but she managed to cry is this you my houarn is this you it is i croaked the little frog
+in a car drawn by six cockchafers which once had been the six stone eggs here i am he exclaimed you have broken the spell that held me and now come and get your reward and dismounting from his chariot he led them down into the caves filled with gold and jewels
+and shoes with silver buckles the women were all filled with envy but little cared barbaik what they might whisper behind her back as long as she knew that her clothes were finer than anyone else's and that she had more partners than any other girl
+and what was worse often made fun of him with the rest
+one evening he was bringing back his horses from the fields and stopped at a little lake on the way home to let them drink he was tired with a long day's work and stood with his hand on the mane of one of the animals waiting till they had done and thinking all the while of barbaik
+when a voice came out of the gorse close by
+it is i the brownie of the lake replied the voice but where are you inquired jegu look close and you will see me among the reeds in the form of a little green frog i can take he added proudly any shape i choose
+and even which is much harder be invisible if i want to then show yourself to me in the shape in which your family generally appear replied jegu certainly if you wish and the frog jumped on the back of one of the horses and changed into a little dwarf all dressed in green
+at first under different animal shapes since that time partly from habit and partly to amuse ourselves we have continued to transform ourselves and it was in this way that i got to know you how exclaimed jegu filled with astonishment
+but how are you going to do it exclaimed jegu wonderingly that is my affair perhaps i may tell you later meanwhile you just eat and sleep and don't worry yourself about anything
+jegu declared that nothing could be easier and then taking off his hat he thanked the dwarf heartily and led his horses back to the farm next morning was a holiday and barbaik was awake earlier than usual
+as she wished to get through her work as soon as possible and be ready to start for a dance which was to be held some distance off she went first to the cow house which it was her duty to keep clean but to her amazement she found fresh straw put down
+the racks filled with hay the cows milked and the pails standing neatly in a row
+and when she met him outside the door she stopped and thanked him for his help to be sure jegu only replied roughly that he didn't know what she was talking about but this answer made her feel all the more certain that it was he and nobody else
+indeed barbaik had only to express a wish for it to be satisfied if the wind was cold or the sun was hot and she was afraid to go out lest her complexion should be spoilt she need only to run down to the spring close by and say softly i should like my churns to be full
+and my wet linen to be stretched on the hedge to dry and she need never give another thought to the matter if she found the rye bread too hard to bake or the oven taking too long to heat she just murmured i should like to see my six loaves on the shelf above the bread box
+why am i not already back from morlaix with my milk pot empty my butter bowl inside it a pound of wild cherries on my wooden plate and the money i have gained in my apron pocket and in the morning when she got up lo and behold
+and six new pieces of silver in the pocket of her apron and she believed that all this was owing to jegu and she could no longer do without him even in her thoughts when things had reached this pass the brownie told the young man that he had better ask barbaik to marry him
+and this time the girl did not turn rudely away but listened patiently to the end
+and she could sleep every morning till breakfast time just like a young lady and as for the rest of the day
+she would wear the beautiful dresses that came when she wished for them
+barbaik was furious
+her heart was filled with rage against the brownie who had caused her to expect a life of ease and pleasure but when she looked at jegu and beheld his red face squinting eyes and untidy hair her anger was doubled
+while now i can receive no presents except from my husband i can never dance except with my husband oh you wretched dwarf i will never never forgive you in spite of her fierce words no one knew better than barbaik how to put her pride in her pocket when it suited her
+and after receiving an invitation to a wedding she begged the brownie to get her a horse to ride there to her great joy he consented bidding her set out for the city of the dwarfs and to tell them exactly what she wanted
+she had hardly spoken when the horse appeared and mounting on his back she started for the village where the wedding was to be held at first she was so delighted with the chance of a holiday from the work which she hated that she noticed nothing
+but very soon it struck her as odd that as she passed along the roads full of people they all laughed as they looked at her horse at length she caught some words uttered by one man to another why the farmer's wife has sold her horse's tail and turned in her saddle
+but it was of no use he declined to move out of a walk
+so one day the brownie asked jegu if he might bring his friends to have supper in the great barn and whether he would allow them to dance there of course jegu was only too pleased to be able to do anything for the brownie and he ordered barbaik to spread her best table cloths in the barn
+when all was ready the dwarfs in new green suits came bustling in very happy and merry and took their seats at the table but in a moment they all sprang up with a cry and ran away screaming for barbaik had placed pans of hot coals under their feet and all their poor little toes were burnt
+you won't forget that in a hurry she said smiling grimly to herself but in a moment they were back again with large pots of water which they poured on the fire then they joined hands and danced round it singing wicked traitress
+the wedding shuts one gate and opens another the longings and dreamings of courtship are at an end the supreme intimacy of life begins as john and mary move away from the altar pronounced man and wife they know they are starting a great adventure
+his beaming face masks a stiff determination to keep his bride happy in spite of any worldly obstacles her radiance hides a solemn inward vow to do everything humanly possible to make smooth the way of their life together they are right
+unless they are very different from most people this new joint enterprise is going to mean more to each of them than anything else ever can before them is a clear road not to happiness as they may believe but to the opportunity for gaining happiness
+when one has received the promise of something greatly desired but must wait awhile before its delivery the happiness of the waiting period is characterized by the absence of a critical spirit and therefore is apt to be thought of as an experience of pure delight
+but the first days of marriage bring out a different set of feelings those that come when one has definitely obtained possession of anything that before was only promised at first the emotions seem to stand still this is the long coveted moment then one begins to appraise
+is the object of one's wishes as desirable as one had expected because reality rarely measures up to imagination the first answer is almost bound to be no this is not what i expected and the first emotion tends to be disappointment
+regardless of hazy but optimistic expectations and the object possessed will more than likely turn out to be better than although different from what the imagination pictured knowing that a fleeting sense of disappointment is not peculiar to one's own marriage but likely to occur in all
+roughly both the helps and the hindrances to married happiness can be lumped under one word personalities temperament mannerisms tastes all that is implied in the distinct individuality of each person make up the chief source of the advantages
+and disadvantages with which the couple enter marriage these traits cannot be changed overnight nor is it necessary or at all wise that they should be john attracts mary and she appeals to him because the personality of each one is what it is
+love has grown up between the two as a result of this personality attraction and love is the motive that will make both try to keep open the pathway to marriage success but love is not a finished product that once it comes can forever after be trusted to keep its strength
+like everything else that is alive it must be kept growing through exercise or it wastes away love gives the push that keeps a marriage moving but it does not give the direction that comes from understanding and cooperation
+this is what they must guard against while love is still the moving force of their lives they must study the problems that are due to come to wait until they are beset by them is to beg for trouble
+in order to cope with their problems they must realize first that they cannot stumble upon married happiness that they must possess and cultivate a positive will to succeed
+here are nine guideposts to help john and mary along their road one the first requirement is the building of a union that is just to both the smaller issues on which this rests are the lively clashes of opposite desires
+inevitable in the coming together of any two persons intensified when those two persons are as different as a man and a woman and unavoidable for two committed to a lifetime together in the close quarters of marriage two
+compromise will lift these essentially petty decisions of precedence above the level of selfishness decisions must be made on the basis of what is good for both not the selfish or narrow wish of either
+the choice that brings the larger advantage to the two persons in their common role of marriage partners is the one to be made human judgment being as faulty as it is
+in either situation the particular couple involved have to weigh delicately the effect on their joint enterprise of the conflicting courses of action much as mary may crave a child or a car
+if each one is hurt at the other's inability to join instantly in his or her plans they will need to take pains not to get sidetracked into making a personal contest of the affair trying to win over your partner with a single eye to getting what you want
+regardless of its effect on the mate is short sighted in the extreme even if you could care only for personal pleasure that cannot long outlast your spouse's displeasure staging a contest or a succession of small contests for the sake of finding out who is boss
+builds up a habit of fighting that may lead to a bitter end it is useless to discover who can win in any particular skirmish what is important is to learn whether one of you is set on being head of the house if your spouse craves that distinction by all means hand it over without delay
+it is an empty honor for the one who bends but does not break will readily develop the fine art of influencing the headstrong one because it is part of the traditional feminine character to enjoy giving in to the man this tendency must be scrutinized when it appears
+no man can afford to be crippled for life by letting his wife swaddle him with solicitude as some mothers spoil their children for their own glorification a woman's feeling that she will be emotionally gratified by making a sacrifice does not prove that aside from her momentary pleasure
+any individual woman may waver between a craving for self sacrifice and a repugnance to the very thought of it this changeableness can make her feel resentful after she has given in to her husband all this must be taken into account in making decisions
+compromise not submission should be the rule if john forges ahead on one count mary must find an acceptable outlet for herself on some other front three
+and the effort to do so to please the partner is liable to result in a topheavy hypocrisy a superstructure calculated to impress the observer but built on a shaky foundation of chaos
+a chameleon changes color easily to match its environment or temper of the moment but a human being's more lasting change is not so readily made each marriage partner must be proud of the other and let the other continue to be proud of him or her
+therefore you have to respect yourself and act as if you did even at home too many couples exploit the sense of let down that marriage brings with it after so long a time husband and wife cease to feel that they must exert themselves for each other in little matters
+knowing themselves accepted they lounge mentally mannerly and physically when at home or elsewhere alone together some of this relaxation is a good thing but it is a mistake to let home and spouse degenerate into nothing more than an invitation to be lazy
+using the mate for relief as in nagging whining crying or grumbling is taboo if you are tired or irritable you can rest or exercise for restoration as in the days before marriage
+and dry up the source of refreshment you are trying to tap fatigue and nervousness expressed breed fatigue and nervousness in a sympathetic audience four too great concentration is to be avoided
+even the greatest love stagnates if it is kept out of the main current of life to care only for each other is selfishness for two only one step removed from self centered engrossment
+this is why the unique value of children is their service as an entering wedge in the close grown love of husband and wife a wedge that widens and holds forever wider the unity of love it has penetrated other responsibilities other interests may serve a similar purpose
+though more easily dislodged and seldom striking so deep friends old and new have a function in relieving the overclose concern of one marriage partner with the other if they are to play their full part in preventing overconcentration
+common friends are fine but for this purpose there is special need of friends for either spouse who can call forth those sides of his or her nature that are not aroused by the mate
+the factor that underlies all the perplexities and most of the contentment of marriage is its unique degree of concentrated intimacy here the supreme testing always comes each means so much to the other
+the wife may be alone part of the day and profit by it when john comes home at night he has not had that privilege
+or by going out without his wife or by having his friends in when she is not around five the general level of emotion is what counts not the spectacular scaling of peaks staking all on high moments is melodrama with no comic relief
+some husbands some wives are artists at achieving and momentarily living up to romantic settings but quickly flop down to the lower levels of decent fairness between the high spots of their sentimental flare ups others cannot utter a poetic phrase
+make a romantic gesture or let their eyes show the quick intensity of their tender emotions if they must die for it this difference is one of make up and training not of marriage capacity the couple who are sure of each other's steady affection regardless of its expression in romantic interludes
+another terrible moment that is due to come may seem even more frightening because it is you who are slipping soon or late you find that some familiar mannerism of your spouse displeases you it may be a slight uncouthness at table
+now it vexes you and your vexation terrifies you does this mean that you no longer love your mate as you did you cannot help your change of feeling how then can you hope to keep your affection from disappearing altogether if it has already begun to wane
+you remember other people you once thought you loved and wonder panic stricken how you can keep this love from dying as those other loves did this is probably an almost universal experience marking not the beginning of the end of love
+maturity brings recognition of human imperfections in the most heroic but also develops the ability to weigh big and little things and to
+always it is the unturned page the holds the answer to the question how goes it with this marriage the present is useful only as a foundation stone for the future which is being built up out of many fleeting present moments each quickly lost in the past
+seven there can be no narrowing of marriage to mere sex adjustment
+and the two persons have to work out a common life that means something to them over and above the pleasure they may take in each other's company as a continuing part of this life adjustment sex adjustment can develop into a permanent factor of married happiness
+but without the larger adjustment the partial adjustment cannot be made in any fundamental and enduring form in the sex life in marriage as in other parts of the association each partner wins by considering the other before the self
+but instead a complete trust in each other one who prides himself or herself on having to be handled with gloves has a great deal of growing up to do in order to be able to be an active partner in the marriage cry babying is no more helpful in marriage than in business or social life
+in the healthy marriage this sympathetic response will soon give way to anger which in turn may have the effect of a dash of cold water in the face of the oversensitive one helping him or her to buck up and behave like an adult in the unhealthy marriage sympathy will grow into pity
+the marriage partner who is mature will maintain trust in the other's good intentions in the face of what might seem to be occasions for hurt feelings a chief advantage of the married estate is its opportunity for frankness why doesn't his wife tell him of that unpleasant mannerism so he can correct it
+mary may soon lose courage and relinquish her wifely job of husband improvement or the combination may be reversed frankness must go clothed in tact stiff minded people who are frank only when angry lose their case before they present it
+if the expression of anger is to have its proper stimulative effect it has to be administered but rarely and then in small doses more has a paralyzing effect on the recipient
+producing a response in kind that takes away the ability to think of anything except retaliation nine willingness to grow is the most necessary factor for success marriage is a life program of going on together that requires maturity
+as this is an impossibility they are aware of increasing dissatisfaction that does not mean they are unadapted to each other they are afraid to leave the known pleasures of their first youth for the unguessed satisfactions of maturity so they try to stand still
+hoping to keep their marriage unchanged in its first stage of promise if both husband and wife accept maturing responsibilities as they come their marriage relationship will keep pace with their own development and will therefore become increasingly satisfying to them
+when it was the three hundred and forty seventh night she said it hath reached me o auspicious king that ibrahim son of al mahdi continued now when the housemaster heard my name he sprang to his feet and said
+indeed i wondered that such gifts should belong to any but the like of thee and fortune hath done me a good turn for which i cannot thank her too much but haply this is a dream for how could i hope that one of the caliphate house should visit my humble home
+and carouse with me this night
+as to the cause of my visit in the most courteous terms so i told him the whole affair first and last hiding naught and said to him now as to the food i have had my will but of the hand and wrist i have still to win my wish
+quoth he thou shalt have thy desire of the hand and wrist also inshallah then said he to the slave girl ho such an one bid such an one come down and he called his slave girls down one by one and showed them to me
+but i saw not my mistress among them and he said o my lord there is none left save my mother and sister but by allah i must needs have them also down and show them to thee so i marvelled at his courtesy and large heartedness and said
+may i be thy sacrifice begin with the sister and he answered with joy and goodwill so she came down and he showed me her hand and behold she was the owner of the hand and wrist quoth i
+seeketh in marriage my sister such an one and i call you to witness that i give her in wedlock to him and that he hath settled upon her ten thousand dinars and he said to me i give thee my sister in marriage at the portion aforesaid
+i consent answered i and am herewith content whereupon he gave one of the bags to her and the other to the witnesses and said to me o our lord i desire to adorn a chamber for thee where thou mayst sleep with thy wife
+but i was abashed at his generosity and was ashamed to lie with her in his house so i said equip her and send her to my place
+and by thy being o commander of the faithful he sent me with her such an equipage that my house for all its greatness was too strait to hold it and i begot on her this boy that standeth in thy presence
+then al maamun marvelled at the man's generosity and said gifted of allah is he never heard i of his like and he bade ibrahim bin al mahdi bring him to court that he might see him he brought him and the caliph conversed with him
+and his wit and good breeding so pleased him that he made him one of his chief officers and allah is the giver the bestower men also relate the tale of the woman whose hands were cut off for giving alms to the poor
+a certain king once made proclamation to the people of his realm saying if any of you give alms of aught i will verily and assuredly cut off his hand
+wherefore all the people abstained from alms deed and none could give anything to any one now it chanced that one day a beggar accosted a certain woman and indeed hunger was sore upon him and said to her
+give me an alms and shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say when it was three hundred and forty eighth night she said
+it hath reached me o auspicious king that quoth the beggar to the woman give me an alms however small but she answered him how can i give thee aught when the king cutteth off the hands of all who give alms
+then he said i conjure thee by allah almighty give me an alms so when he adjured her by the holy name of allah she had ruth on him and gave him two scones
+the king heard of this whereupon he called her before him and cut off her hands after which she returned to her house now it chanced after a while that the king said to his mother i have a mind to take a wife
+so do thou marry me to a fair woman quoth she there is among our female slaves one who is unsurpassed in beauty but she hath a grievous blemish the king asked what is that and his mother answered
+she hath had both her hands cut off said he let me see her so she brought her to him and he was ravished by her and married her and went in unto her and begat upon her a son
+now this was the woman who had given two scones as an alms to the asker and whose hands had been cut off therefor and when the king married her her fellow wives envied her and wrote to the common husband that she was an unchaste
+having just given birth to the boy so he wrote to his mother bidding her carry the woman into the desert and leave her there the old queen obeyed his commandment and abandoned the woman and her son in the desert
+whereupon she fell to weeping for that which had befallen her and wailing with exceeding sore wail as she went along she came to a river and knelt down to drink being overcome with excess of thirst
+for fatigue of walking and for grief but as she bent her head the child which was at her neck fell into the water then she sat weeping bitter tears for her child and as she wept behold came up two men who said to her
+what maketh thee weep quoth she i had a child at my neck and he hath fallen into the water they asked wilt thou that we bring him out to thee and she answered yes
+so they prayed to almighty allah and the child came forth of the water to her safe and sound
+yes replied she whereupon they prayed to allah extolled and exalted be he
+and with the profit he laid in daily bread for his household one morning he went out and sold the day's yarn as wont when there met him one of his brethren who complained to him of need so he gave him the price of the thread and returned empty handed to his family
+who said to him where is the cotton and the food quoth he such an one met me and complained to me of want whereupon i gave him the price of the yarn and they said how shall we do we have nothing to sell
+so he took them to the bazar but none would buy them of him however presently as he stood in the market there passed by a man with a fish and shahrazad perceived the dawn of day
+and ceased saying her permitted say when it was the three hundred and forty ninth night she said it hath reached me o auspicious king
+that the man took the trencher and jar to the bazar but none would buy them of him however there presently passed by a man with a fish which was so stinking and so swollen
+and he said to the jew wilt thou sell me thine unsaleable ware for mine yes answered the jew and giving him the wooden trencher and jar took the fish and carried it home to his family who said
+what shall we do with this fish quoth he we will broil it and eat it till it please allah to provide bread for us so they took it and ripping open its belly found therein a great pearl and told the head of the household who said
+see ye if it be pierced if so it belongeth to some one of the folk if not tis a provision of allah for us so they examined it and found it unpierced
+now when it was the morrow the jew carried it to one of his brethren which was an expert in jewels and the man asked o such an one whence haddest thou this pearl
+it was a gift of almighty allah to us and the other said it is worth a thousand dirhams and i will give thee that but take it to such an one for he hath more money and skill than i so the jew took it to the jeweller who said
+it is worth seventy thousand dirhams and no more then he paid him that sum and the jew hired two porters to carry the money to his house as he came to his door a beggar accosted him saying
+quoth the jew to the asker but yesterday we were even as thou take thee half this money so he made two parts of it and each took his half
+the baker and other tradesmen dunned and importuned me and my misery became extreme for i knew of no resource nor what to do things being on this wise there came to me one day certain of my servants and said to me
+at the door is a pilgrim wight who seeketh admission to thee quoth i admit him so he came in and behold he was a khorasani we exchanged salutations and he said to me
+tell me art thou abu hassan al ziyadi and i replied yes what is thy wish quoth he i am a stranger and am minded to make the pilgrimage but i have with me a great sum of money which is burdensome to bear
+so i wish to deposit these ten thousand dirhams with thee whilst i make my pilgrimage and return if the caravan march back and thou see me not then know that i am dead in which case the money is a gift from me to thee but if i come back
+it shall be mine i answered be it as thou wilt an thus please allah almighty so he brought out a leather bag and i said to the servant fetch the scales
+and when he brought them the man weighed out the money and handed it to me after which he went his way then i called the purveyors and paid them my liabilities
+and shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say when it was the three hundred and fiftieth night she said it hath reached me o auspicious king
+that quoth abu hassan al ziyadi i called the purveyors and paid them my liabilities and spent freely and amply saying to myself by the time he returns allah will have relieved me with one or other of the bounties he hath by him
+however on the very next day the servant came in to me and said thy friend the khorasan man is at the door admit him answered i so he came in and said to me i had purposed to make the pilgrimage
+and i have resolved to return so give me the monies i deposited with thee yesterday when i heard this i was troubled and perplexed beyond measure of perplexity known to man and wotted not what reply to make him
+for if i denied it he would put me on my oath and i should be disgraced in the world to come whilst if i told him that i had spent the money he would make an outcry and dishonour me before men
+so i said to him allah give thee health
+so i rose and bade the boy saddle me the she mule answered he o my lord it is yet but the first third of the night and indeed we have hardly had time to rest i returned to my bed
+but sleep was forbidden to me and i ceased not to awaken the boy and he to put me off till break of day when he saddled me the mule and i mounted and rode out not knowing whither to go
+whilst she fared on with me to the eastward of baghdad presently as i went along behold
+expound to me thy case so i recounted to him my case and he wept sore and said to me
+woe to thee succour abu hassan al ziyadi i awoke a second time but knowing thee not i went to sleep again and he came to me a third time and still i knew thee not and went to sleep again then he came to me once more and said out on thee
+succour abu hassan al ziyadi after that i dared not sleep any more but watched the rest of the night and aroused my people and sent them on all sides in quest of thee then he gave me one myriad of dirhams saying this is for the khorasani
+and other ten thousand saying spend freely of this and amend thy case therewith and set thine affairs in order
+and behold presently came the khorasani so i carried him into the house and brought out to him one myriad of dirhams saying here is thy money quoth he it is not my very money how cometh this
+so i told him the whole story and he wept and said by allah haddest thou told me the fact at first i had not pressed thee
+five years is but a short time in the life of a man and yet many things may happen therein for instance the whole way of a family's life may be changed good natures may be made into bad ones
+and out of a soul of faith grow a spirit of unbelief the independence of respectability may harden into the insolence of defiance and the sensitive cheek of modesty into the brazen face of shamelessness
+it may be true that the habits of years are hard to change but this is not true of the first sixteen or seventeen years of a young person's life else kitty hamilton and joe could not so easily have become what they were
+it had taken barely five years to accomplish an entire metamorphosis of their characters in joe's case even a shorter time was needed he was so ready to go down that it needed but a gentle push to start him and once started
+there was nothing within him to hold him back from the depths for his will was as flabby as his conscience and his pride which stands to some men for conscience had no definite aim or direction
+hattie sterling had given him both his greatest impulse for evil and for good she had at first given him his gentle push but when she saw that his collapse would lose her a faithful and useful slave
+she had sought to check his course her threat of the severance of their relations had held him up for a little time and she began to believe that he was safe again he went back to the work he had neglected drank moderately
+and acted in most things as a sound sensible being then all of a sudden he went down again and went down badly she kept her promise and threw him over
+then he became a hanger on at the clubs a genteel loafer he used to say in his sober moments that at last he was one of the boys that sadness had spoken of he did not work
+but he soon tired of being separated from hattie and straightened up again after some demur she received him upon his former footing it was only for a few months he fell again for almost four years this had happened intermittently
+finally he took a turn for the better that endured so long that hattie sterling again gave him her faith then the woman made her mistake she warmed to him she showed him that she was proud of him
+he went forth at once to celebrate his victory he did not return to her for three days then he was battered unkempt and thick of speech she looked at him in silent contempt for a while as he sat nursing his aching head
+she said finally with cutting scorn you ought to be put under a glass case and placed on exhibition he groaned and his head sunk lower a drunken man is always disarmed
+his helplessness instead of inspiring her with pity inflamed her with an unfeeling anger that burst forth in a volume of taunts
+no one had ever looked at you until i picked you up and you ve been strutting around ever since
+and now this is the way you pay me back drunk half the time and half drunk the rest well you know what i told you the last time you got loaded i mean it too you re not the only star in sight see she laughed meanly
+and began to sing you ll have to find another baby now for the first time he looked up and his eyes were full of tears tears both of grief and intoxication there was an expression of a whipped dog on his face
+he pleaded stretching out his hands to her her eyes blazed back at him but she sang on insolently tauntingly the very inanity of the man disgusted her
+and on a sudden impulse she sprang up and struck him full in the face with the flat of her hand he was too weak to resist the blow and tumbling from the chair fell limply to the floor where he lay at her feet
+alternately weeping aloud and quivering with drunken hiccoughing sobs
+you sha'n't lay around my house he had already begun to fall into a drunken sleep but she shook him got him to his feet and pushed him outside the door now go you drunken dog
+and never put your foot inside this house again he stood outside swaying dizzily upon his feet and looking back with dazed eyes at the door then he muttered pu me out wi you pu me out damn you well
+and he half walked half fell down the street sadness and skaggsy were together at the club that night five years had not changed the latter as to wealth or position or inclination
+and he was still a frequent visitor at the banner he always came in alone now for maudie had gone the way of all the half world and reached depths to which mister skaggs's job prevented him from following her however
+he mourned truly for his lost companion and to night he was in a particularly pensive mood some one was playing rag time on the piano and the dancers were wheeling in time to the music
+skaggsy looked at them regretfully as he sipped his liquor it made him think of maudie he sighed and turned away i tell you sadness he said impulsively dancing is the poetry of motion
+yes replied sadness and dancing in rag time is the dialect poetry the reporter did not like this it savoured of flippancy
+and he was about entering upon a discussion to prove that sadness had no soul when joe with blood shot eyes and dishevelled clothes staggered in and reeled towards them drunk again
+said sadness really it s a waste of time for joe to sober up hullo there as the young man brought up against him take a seat he put him in a chair at the table
+oh a hair of the dog some men shave their dogs clean and then have hydrophobia here jack they drank and then as if the whiskey had done him good joe sat up in his chair
+lucky dog you might have known it would have happened sooner or later better sooner than never skaggs smoked in silence and looked at joe
+then bracing himself up again he broke out suddenly
+he never stole that money know he di n he threatened to fall asleep now but the reporter was all alert he scented a story by jove he exclaimed did you hear that
+come come wake up here three more jack what about your father father
+here here tell us about your father and the money if he did n't steal it who did who did tha s it who did ol man di n steal it know he di n oh let him alone skaggsy
+yes he does a drunken man tells the truth in some cases said sadness oh let me alone man
+and if this story is one i m a made man the drink seemed to revive the young man again
+at its close he relapsed into stupidity murmuring she throwed me down well sneered sadness you see drunken men tell the truth and you don't seem to get much guilt out of our young friend
+you re disappointed are n't you i confess i am disappointed
+oh you have well don't handle it carelessly it might go off and sadness rose the reporter sat thinking for a time and then followed him leaving joe in a drunken sleep at the table
+there he lay for more than two hours when he finally awoke he started up as if some determination had come to him in his sleep a part of the helplessness of his intoxication had gone but his first act was to call for more whiskey
+this he gulped down and followed with another and another for a while he stood still brooding silently his red eyes blinking at the light then he turned abruptly and left the club
+it was very late when he reached hattie's door but he opened it with his latch key as he had been used to do he stopped to help himself to a glass of brandy as he had so often done before
+then he went directly to her room
+his voice was steadier now but grim what do you want
+get out or i ll have you taken out she sprang up in bed glaring angrily at him his hands twitched nervously as if her will were conquering him and he were uneasy
+he said yes and i m going to do it again
+she started to rise but he took a step towards her and she paused he looked as she had never seen him look before his face was ashen and his eyes like fire and blood she quailed beneath the look
+he took another step towards her you put me out to night he repeated like a dog his step was steady and his tone was clear menacingly clear she shrank back from him
+back to the wall still his hands twitched
+still he crept slowly towards her his lips working and his hands moving convulsively joe joe she said hoarsely what s the matter
+the gown had fallen away from her breast and showed the convulsive fluttering of her heart
+and his hands sought each other while the fingers twitched over one another like coiling serpents you put me out you you and you made me what i am
+the realisation of what he was of his foulness and degradation seemed just to have come to him fully you made me what i am and then you sent me away you let me come back and now you put me out
+she gazed at him fascinated she tried to scream and she could not this was not joe this was not the boy that she had turned and twisted about her little finger
+this was a terrible terrible man or a monster
+for an instant she lost their steady glare and then she found her voice the scream was checked as it began his fingers had closed over her throat just where the gown had left it temptingly bare they gave it the caress of death
+she struggled they held her her eyes prayed to his but his were the fire of hell she fell back upon her pillow in silence he had not uttered a word he held her
+finally he flung her from him like a rag and sank into a chair
+and exceedingly unhappy in fact d'artagnan d'artagnan we say for we must call him by his name to remind our readers of his existence d'artagnan we repeat
+had absolutely nothing whatever to do amidst these brilliant butterflies of fashion after following the king during two whole days at fontainebleau
+the musketeer felt that he needed something more than this to satisfy the cravings of his nature at every moment assailed by people asking him how do you think this costume suits me monsieur d'artagnan he would reply to them in quiet sarcastic tones
+why i think you are quite as well dressed as the
+it was just such a compliment d'artagnan would choose where he did not feel disposed to pay any other
+whenever any one asked him how do you intend to dress yourself this evening he replied i shall undress myself at which the ladies all laughed
+and also to receive in exchange d'artagnan asked the king for leave of absence for a matter of private business at the moment d'artagnan made his request
+quite exhausted from dancing you wish to leave me monsieur d'artagnan inquired the king with an air of astonishment
+any one who had the distinguished honor of being near him could wish to leave him sire said d'artagnan
+ah if i could only hold the balancing pole while you were dancing it would be a very different affair but my dear monsieur d'artagnan said the king gravely people dance without balancing poles
+ah indeed said the musketeer continuing his imperceptible tone of irony
+therefore at fontainebleau for to do so would be useless but with the permission of our readers follow him to the rue des lombards where he was located at the sign of the pilon d'or
+and the weather was exceedingly warm there was only one window open and that one belonging to a room
+a perfume of spices mingled with another perfume less exotic but more penetrating namely that which arose from the street ascended to salute the nostrils of the musketeer d'artagnan reclining in an immense straight backed chair with his legs not stretched out
+but simply placed upon a stool formed an angle of the most obtuse form that could possibly be seen both his arms were crossed over his head his head reclining upon his left shoulder like alexander the great his eyes
+usually so quick and intelligent in their expression were now half closed and seemed fastened as it were upon a small corner of blue sky that was visible behind the opening of the chimneys
+there was just enough blue and no more to fill one of the sacks of lentils or haricots which formed the principal furniture of the shop on the ground floor thus extended at his ease and sheltered in his place of observation behind the window d'artagnan
+seemed as if he had ceased to be a soldier as if he were no longer an officer belonging to the palace but was on the contrary a quiet easy going citizen in a state of stagnation between his dinner and supper or between his supper and his bed
+while the windows of the upper apartments were being closed and the rhythmic steps of a patrol of soldiers forming the night watch could be heard retreating d'artagnan continued however to think of nothing except the blue corner of the sky a few paces from him
+and his eyes fixed on d'artagnan who was either thinking dreaming or sleeping with his eyes open
+but d'artagnan did not stir
+after a prolonged reflection on the subject the most ingenious means that suggested itself to him under the present circumstances was to let himself roll off the sack on to the floor murmuring at the same time against himself the word stupid but
+notwithstanding the noise produced by planchet's fall d'artagnan who had in the course of his existence heard many other and very different falls did not appear to pay the least attention to the present one besides
+and yet planchet fancied that in token of tacit approval he saw him imperceptibly smile at the word stupid this emboldened him to say are you asleep monsieur d'artagnan no planchet i am not even asleep replied the musketeer
+i am in despair said planchet to hear such a word as even well
+of course monsieur d'artagnan well well then the word distresses me beyond measure tell me why you are distressed planchet said d'artagnan if you say that you are not even asleep
+planchet you know that i am never bored except to day and the day before yesterday bah monsieur d'artagnan it is a week since you returned here from fontainebleau
+in other words you have no longer your orders to issue or your men to review and maneuver you need the sound of guns drums and all that din and confusion
+when you were there when we both were there a certain arab
+he was a clever fellow although of a very odd complexion which was the same color as your olives well this arab whenever he had done eating or working used to sit down to rest himself
+as i am resting myself now and smoked i cannot tell you what sort of magical leaves in a large amber mouthed tube
+better to sit down than to stand up to lie down than to sit down to be dead than to lie down he was an acutely melancholy arab and i remember him perfectly well
+he used to cut off the heads of protestants with the most singular gusto precisely and then used to embalm them when they were worth the trouble
+he looked like a basket maker making baskets you are quite right planchet he did
+i have no doubt of it but what do you think of his mode of reasoning
+in point of fact then better to sit down than to stand up is plain enough especially when one may be fatigued and planchet smiled in a roguish way as for better to be lying down let that pass
+it is in my opinion very absurd my own undoubted preference being for my bed and if you are not of my opinion it is simply as i have already had the honor of telling you because you are boring yourself to death planchet
+exactly well then i am like his hare he has got a hare also then he has all sorts of animals well what does his hare do then
+thinks ah
+and yet monsieur you have a look out upon the street yes and wonderfully interesting that is of course but it is no less true monsieur that
+ah planchet my friend returned d'artagnan you are getting ambitious
+would be one of the privileged travelers and as the plume in porthos's hat made the wooden candles suspended over the front jingle together
+for the morrow but the grocer had a heart of gold ever mindful of the good old times a trait that carries youth into old age so planchet notwithstanding a sort of internal shiver checked as soon as experienced
+received porthos with respect mingled with the tenderest cordiality porthos who was a little cold and stiff in his manners at first on account of the social difference existing at that period between a baron and a grocer soon began to soften when he perceived so much good feeling
+and into the drawers full of sweetmeats
+where his fingers could always fish up whatever his nose detected the delicious figs from provence filberts from the forest tours plums were subjects of his uninterrupted attention for five consecutive hours his teeth like millstones cracked heaps of nuts
+the shells of which were scattered all over the floor where they were trampled by every one who went in and out of the shop porthos pulled from the stalk with his lips at one mouthful bunches of the rich muscatel raisins with their beautiful bloom
+at each other without venturing to open their lips they did not know who porthos was for they had never seen him before
+had already begun to disappear
+he will very soon have none at all to do if this sort of thing continues grumbled the foreman who had planchet's word that he should be his successor in the midst of his despair
+he approached porthos who blocked up the whole of the passage leading from the back shop to the shop itself he hoped that porthos would rise and that this movement would distract his devouring ideas what do you want my man asked porthos affably
+i should like to pass you monsieur if it is not troubling you too much very well said porthos it does not trouble me in the least at the same moment he took hold of the young fellow by the waistband lifted him off the ground and placed him very gently on the other side
+smiling all the while with the same affable expression as soon as porthos had placed him on the ground the lad's legs so shook under him that he fell back upon some sacks of corks but noticing the giant's gentleness of manner he ventured again and said
+yes but if raisins nuts and almonds are heating there is no doubt at all of it monsieur honey is very cooling said porthos stretching out his hand toward a small barrel of honey which was open and he plunged the scoop with
+the foreman clasped his hands together the two others got under the counters fearing porthos might have a taste for human flesh we shall only take a sort of snack here said d'artagnan
+so much the better you overwhelm me monsieur le baron the monsieur le baron had a great effect upon the men who detected a personage of the highest quality in an appetite of that kind this title too reassured them
+they had never heard that an ogre was ever called monsieur le baron i will take a few biscuits to eat on the road said porthos carelessly and he emptied a whole jar of aniseed biscuits into the huge pocket of his doublet
+my shop is saved exclaimed planchet yes as the cheese was whispered the foreman what cheese the dutch cheese inside which a rat had made his way and we found only the rind left
+where it had just been announced that some refreshment was prepared alas thought the grocer addressing a look at d'artagnan full of entreaty which the latter half understood as soon as they had finished eating they set off it was late
+when the three riders who had left paris about six in the evening arrived at fontainebleau
+and seemed delighted to talk to him about his meadows his woods and his rabbit warrens porthos had all the taste and pride of a landed proprietor when d'artagnan saw his two companions in earnest conversation
+separated himself from the whole world as he had done from porthos and from planchet the moon shone softly through the foliage of the forest the breezes of the open country rose deliciously perfumed to the horse's nostrils and they snorted and pranced along delightedly
+in the beautiful meadows where the grass grew as high as the knees and where he had played under the green apple trees covered with red cheeked fruit he went on to say that he had solemnly promised himself that as soon as he should have made his fortune he would return to nature
+how so why you seem to be in the way of making your fortune very soon
+what is it inquired porthos looking all round him as if in search of the circumstance that annoyed planchet and desirous of freeing him from it why formerly said the grocer you used to call me planchet quite short
+and you would have spoken to me then in a much more familiar manner than you do now certainly certainly i should have said so formerly replied the good natured porthos with an embarrassment full of delicacy but formerly
+so that monsieur le baron continued the grocer
+if that be the case my dear planchet i will do so certainly replied porthos and
+but a fortunate movement of the horse made him miss his aim
+which made the animal's legs almost give way d'artagnan burst out laughing as he said take care planchet
+oh said planchet mousqueton is not dead and yet monsieur le baron is very fond of him
+and i was only saying this very morning to d'artagnan how much i regretted him but tell me planchet thank you monsieur le baron thank you good lad good lad how many acres of park have you got of park
+whereabouts monsieur at your chateau oh monsieur le baron i have neither chateau nor park nor meadows nor woods what have you got then inquired porthos and why do you call it a country seat i did not call it a country seat monsieur le baron
+replied planchet somewhat humiliated but a country box ah ah i understand you are modest no monsieur le baron i speak the plain truth i have rooms for a couple of friends that's all
+in the first place they can walk about the king's forest which is very beautiful
+nearly as beautiful as my forest at berry planchet opened his eyes very wide
+because i don't know where it ends and also because it is full of poachers how can the poachers make the forest so agreeable to you because they hunt my game and i hunt them
+which in these peaceful times is for me a sufficiently pleasing picture of war on a small scale
+the cavaliers looked up and saw that what planchet had announced to them was true ten minutes afterwards they were in the street called the rue de lyon on the opposite side of the hostelry of the beau paon a high hedge of bushy elders
+hawthorn and wild hops formed an impenetrable fence behind which rose a white house with a high tiled roof
+between the two a small door with a porch supported by a couple of pillars formed the entrance to the house the door was gained by a step raised a little from the ground
+on second thoughts he took hold of his horse by the bridle and led it about thirty paces further on his two companions following him he then advanced about another thirty paces until he arrived at the door of a cart house lighted by an iron grating and lifting up a wooden latch pushed open one of the folding doors
+he entered first leading his horse after him by the bridle into a small courtyard where an odor met them which revealed their close vicinity to a stable that smells all right said porthos loudly getting off his horse and i almost begin to think
+pierrefonds i have only one cow planchet hastened to say modestly and i have thirty said porthos or rather i don't exactly know how many i have when the two cavaliers had entered planchet fastened the door behind them
+in the meantime d'artagnan who had dismounted with his usual agility inhaled the fresh perfumed air with the delight a parisian feels at the sight of green fields and fresh foliage
+porthos clawed hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground and ate or rather browsed upon them shells and all
+and dressed in an old stable suit of clothes the peasant
+oh they shall have as much as they like gently gently my man said d'artagnan we are getting on a little too fast a few oats and a good bed nothing more some bran and water for my horse said porthos
+and came out into a little garden behind the house the principal front of which as we have already noticed faced the street as they approached
+this room softly lighted by a lamp placed on the table seemed from the end of the garden like a smiling image of repose comfort and happiness in every direction where the rays of light fell
+whether upon a piece of old china or upon an article of furniture shining from excessive neatness or upon the weapons hanging against the wall the soft light was softly reflected and its rays seemed to linger everywhere upon something or another agreeable to the eye the lamp which lighted the room
+whilst the foliage of jasmine and climbing roses hung in masses from the window frames splendidly illuminated a damask table cloth as white as snow the table was laid for two persons amber colored wine sparkled in a long cut glass bottle
+near the table in a high backed armchair reclined fast asleep a woman of about thirty years of age her face the very picture of health and freshness upon her knees lay a large cat with her paws folded under her
+and her eyes half closed purring in that significant manner which according to feline habits indicates perfect contentment
+at the sound of this gigantic voice the cat took flight
+introduced his two companions into the room where the table was already laid permit me my dear he said to present to you monsieur le chevalier d'artagnan my patron
+monsieur le baron du vallon
+porthos bowed with a reverence which anne of austria would have approved of
+and he unhesitatingly embraced the lady in question not however
+frankly conceded d'artagnan complimented planchet and said you are indeed a man who knows how to make life agreeable life monsieur said planchet laughing is capital which a man ought to invest as sensibly as he possibly can
+planchet turned to his housekeeper you have before you he said to her
+and about two others as well said the lady with a very decided flemish accent madame is dutch inquired d'artagnan porthos curled his mustache a circumstance which was not lost upon d'artagnan who noticed everything i am from antwerp said the lady
+you should not call her madame said d'artagnan why not asked planchet because it would make her seem older every time you call her so well
+and a very pretty name too said porthos
+she ran away from a brute of a husband who was in the habit of beating her being myself a picard born i was always very fond of the artesian women and it is only a step from artois to flanders
+she placed her two thousand florins in my establishment
+and which have brought her in ten thousand bravo planchet she is free and well off she has a cow a maid servant and old celestin at her orders she mends my linen knits my winter stockings she only sees me every fortnight
+a meal into a regular feast fresh butter salt beef anchovies tunny a shopful of planchet's commodities fowls vegetables salad fish from the pond and the river game from the forest all the produce in fact of the province
+the glass of which could hardly be seen for the thick coating of dust which covered them porthos's heart began to expand as he said i am hungry and he sat himself beside madame truchen whom he looked at in the most killing manner
+do not trouble yourselves he said if truchen should leave the table now and then during supper for she will have to look after your bedrooms in fact the housekeeper made her escape quite frequently and they could hear on the first floor above them the creaking of the wooden bedsteads and the rolling of the castors on the floor
+d'artagnan still preserved his dignity and self possession but porthos had lost a portion of his and the mirth soon began to grow somewhat uproarious d'artagnan
+recommended a new descent into the cellar and as planchet no longer walked with the steadiness of a well trained foot soldier
+they set off humming songs wild enough to frighten anybody who might be listening
+while the two wine bibbers
+porthos fancies himself at la rochelle thought d'artagnan as they returned freighted with bottles
+d'artagnan whom nothing ever escaped remarked how much redder truchen's left cheek was than her right
+and truchen was looking at him with a most bewitching smile the sparkling wine of anjou very soon produced a remarkable effect upon the three companions
+after his friend had undressed him d'artagnan got into his own bed saying to himself mordioux
+no one in the house was capable of taking the slightest notice
+like a kind good housekeeper it was still perfectly dark then
+he took by assault porthos's room which was next to his own the worthy porthos was sleeping with a noise like distant thunder in the dim obscurity of the room his gigantic frame was prominently displayed
+and his swollen fist hung down outside the bed upon the carpet
+the whole household was already up the cook was mercilessly slaughtering in the poultry yard celestin was gathering white cherries in the garden porthos
+brisk and lively as ever held out his hand to planchet's and d'artagnan requested permission to embrace madame truchen the latter to show that she bore no ill will approached porthos upon whom she conferred the same favor
+took both his friends by the hand i am going to show you over the house he said
+i am a great stickler for a good view myself said porthos
+i have had four avenues laid out and at the end of each is a landscape of an altogether different character from the others
+and he led his two guests to a window ah said d'artagnan this is the rue de lyon yes i have two windows on this side a paltry insignificant view
+for there is always that bustling and noisy inn which is a very disagreeable neighbor i had four windows here but i bricked up two let us go on said d'artagnan
+it is the horizon a thick line of green which is yellow in the spring green in the summer red in the autumn and white in the winter
+i assure you it is very curious hardly a day passes that some one is not buried there for fontainebleau is by no means an inconsiderable place sometimes we see young girls clothed in white carrying banners
+and then too we see some of the officers of the king's household i should not like that said porthos there is not much amusement in it at all events said d'artagnan
+if i had any i should be far from rejecting them said planchet but possessing only this little cemetery full of flowers so moss grown shady and quiet i am contented with it and i think of those who live in town in the rue des lombards for instance
+and who have to listen to the rumbling of a couple of thousand vehicles every day and to the soulless tramp tramp tramp of a hundred and fifty thousand foot passengers but living said porthos living remember that
+why i feel it does me good to contemplate a few dead upon my word said d'artagnan
+monsieur said planchet i am one of those good humored sort of men whom heaven created for the purpose of living a certain span of days
+we are going to have a representation now for i think i heard something like chanting yes said d'artagnan i hear singing too
+the officiating priest the beadle
+no no one seems to be following the coffin yes said porthos i see a man
+i find it interesting said d'artagnan leaning on the window sill
+it is exactly my own case i was so melancholy at first that i could do nothing but make the sign of the cross all day and the chants were like so many nails being driven into my head but now they lull me to sleep
+what said porthos to d'artagnan as he turned round are you going to remain here yes i will join you presently
+not yet ah yes the grave digger is waiting until the cords are fastened round the bier but
+leave me leave me i feel i am beginning already to be much comforted by my meditations so do not interrupt me
+the two bearers of the corpse had unfastened the straps by which they carried the litter and were letting their burden glide gently into the open grave
+the grave having been filled up the priests turned away and the grave digger having addressed a few words to them followed them as they moved away
+it is aramis himself aramis in fact remained alone on that side at least for hardly had he turned his head when a woman's footsteps and the rustling of her dress were heard in the path close to him he immediately turned round
+yes he added after a pause
+either by way of attack or defense that they must be conversing about any other subject than of love at the end of the conversation the lady rose and bowed profoundly to aramis
+the cavalier kneels at the beginning the young lady by and by gets tamed down and then it is she who has to supplicate who is this lady i would give anything to ascertain this seemed impossible however for aramis was the first to leave
+i must and will learn who that woman is said the musketeer again and then without further deliberation he set off in pursuit of her as he was going along he tried to think how he could possibly contrive to make her raise her veil she is not young he said
+and is a woman of high rank in society i ought to know that figure and peculiar style of walk as he ran the sound of his spurs and of his boots upon the hard ground of the street made a strange jingling noise a fortunate circumstance in itself
+which he was far from reckoning upon the noise disturbed the lady she seemed to fancy she was being either followed or pursued which was indeed the case and turned round
+he murmured madame de chevreuse d'artagnan would not go home until he had learnt everything
+a poor franciscan mendicant friar replied the latter who had not even a dog to love him in this world and to accompany him to his last resting place if that were really the case thought d'artagnan
+as wingfold came out of the room which was near the stair helen rose from the top of it where she had been sitting all the time he had been with her brother he closed the door gently behind him and stepped softly along the landing
+a human soul in guilt and agony is an awful presence but there was more than that in the hush of the curate he felt as if he had left the physician of souls behind him at the bedside
+but at his head stood one who watched his throes with the throbs of such a human heart as never beat in any bosom but his own and the executioners were angels of light no wonder if with such a feeling in his breast wingfold walked softly and his face glistened
+he was not aware that the tears stood in his eyes but helen saw them you know all she faltered i do will you let me out by the garden again i wish to be alone she led the way down the stair
+and walked with him through the garden wingfold did not speak you don't think very badly of my poor brother do you mister wingfold said helen meekly it is a terrible fate he returned
+i think i never saw a lovelier disposition i do hope his mind will soon be more composed i think he knows where alone he can find rest i am well aware how foolish that of which i speak seems to some minds miss lingard
+but when a man is once overwhelmed in his own deeds when they have turned into spectres to mock at him when he loathes himself and turns with sickness from past present and future i know but one choice left
+into the life i hope your brother will enter i am so glad you don't hate him hate him who but a demon could hate him helen lifted a grateful look from eyes that swam in tears
+the terror of his possible counsel for the moment vanished he could never tell him to give himself up
+the dwarf exclaimed helen shuddering at the remembrance of what she had gone through at the cottage yes that man's soul is as grand and beautiful and patient as his body is insignificant and distorted and troubled
+he is the wisest and best man i have ever known i must ask leopold returned helen who the better the man was represented felt the more jealous and fearful of the advice he might give
+her love and her conscience were not yet at one with each other they parted at the door from the garden and she returned to the sick room she paused hesitating to enter all was still as the grave she turned the handle softly and peeped in
+could it be that wingfold's bearing had communicated to her mind a shadow of the awe with which he had left the place where perhaps a soul was being born again leopold did not move terror laid hold of her heart
+she stepped quickly in and round the screen to the side of the bed there to her glad surprise he lay fast asleep with the tears not yet dried upon his face her heart swelled with some sense unknown before
+was it rudimentary thankfulness to the father of her spirit as she stood gazing with the look of a mother over her sick child he lifted his eyelids and smiled a sad smile when did you come into the room he said a minute ago she answered
+i did not hear you he returned no you were asleep not i mister wingfold is only just gone i have let him out on the meadow since leopold stared looked half alarmed and then said
+did god make me sleep helen she did not answer the light of a new hope in his eye as if the dawn had begun at last to break over the dark mountains was already reflected from her heart oh helen he said
+that is a good fellow such a good fellow a pang of jealousy the first she had ever felt shot to her heart she had hitherto since his trouble been all in all to her leopold
+had the curate been a man she liked she would not perhaps have minded it so much you will be able to do without me now she said sadly i never could understand taking to people at first sight some people are made so i suppose helen
+i know i took to you at first sight i shall never forget the first time i saw you when i came to this country a lonely little foreigner and you a great beautiful lady for such you seemed to me though you have told me since you were only a great gawky girl
+i know that could never have been you ran to meet me and took me in your arms and kissed me i was as if i had crossed the sea of death and found paradise in your bosom i am not likely to forget you for mister wingfold
+good and kind and strong as he is even she could not make me forget you helen but neither you nor i can do without mister wingfold any more i fancy i wish you liked him better
+but you will in time you see he's not one to pay young ladies compliments as i have heard some parsons do and he may be a little no not unpolished not that that's not what i mean but unornamental in his manners
+you know all about him though you never saw him before that is true returned leopold but then he came to me with his door open and let me walk in
+he hasn't got a secret like us helen he added sadly what did he say to you much what he said to you from the pulpit the other day i should think then she was right for all his hardness and want of sympathy the curate had yet had regard to her entreaties
+and was not going to put any horrid notions about duty and self sacrifice into the poor boy's head he's coming again to morrow added leopold almost gleefully and then perhaps he will tell me more and help me on a bit did he tell you he wants to bring a friend with him
+no i can't see the good of taking more people into our confidence why should he not do what he thinks best helen you don't interfere with the doctor why should you with him when a man is going to the bottom as fast as he can
+and another comes diving after him it isn't for me to say how he is to take hold of me no helen when i trust i trust out and out helen sighed thinking how ill that had worked with emmeline
+it was some moments before either of them spoke and it did not help wingfold that she sat clouded by a dark coloured veil at length he said you must not fear to trust me because i doubt my ability to help you i can at least assure you of my sympathy
+can you tell me she said from behind more veils than that of lace how to get rid of a haunting idea that depends on the nature of the idea i should imagine answered the curate such things sometimes arise merely from the state of the health
+and there the doctor is the best help helen shook her head and smiled behind her veil a grievous smile the curate paused but receiving no assistance ventured on again if it be a thought of something past and gone
+for which nothing can be done i think activity in one's daily work must be the best aid to endurance oh dear oh dear sighed helen when one has no heart to endure and hates the very sunlight
+you wouldn't talk about work to a man dying of hunger would you i'm not sure about that he wouldn't heed you perhaps not what would you do then give him some food and try him again i think
+then give me some food some hope i mean and try me again without that i don't care about duty or life or anything tell me then what is the matter
+i may be able to hint at some hope said wingfold very gently do you call yourself a christian the question would to most people have sounded strange abrupt inquisitorial but to helen it sounded not one of them all
+no she answered ah said the curate a little sadly and went on because then i could have said you know where to go for comfort
+might it not be well however to try if there is any to be had from him that said come unto me and i will give you rest i can do nothing with that i have tried and tried to pray but it is of no use
+i suppose it is because i cannot believe there is anyone hearing a word i say yesterday when i got alone in the park i prayed aloud
+i thought that perhaps even if he might not be able to read what was in my heart he might be able to hear my voice i was even foolish enough to wish i knew greek because perhaps he would understand me better if i were to pray in greek
+she tried hard but could not prevent a sob
+will you not tell me something about it said the curate yet more gently
+his help may be on the way to you or even with you only you do not recognize it for what it is i have known that kind of thing tell me some fact or some feeling i can lay hold of
+possibly there is something you ought to do and are not doing and that is why you cannot rest i think jesus would give no rest except in the way of learning of him helen's sobs ceased
+but what appeared to the curate a long silence followed at length she said with faltering voice suppose it were a great wrong that had been done and that was the unendurable thought suppose i say
+that was what made me miserable then you must of course make all possible reparation answered wingfold at once but if none were possible what then
+here the answer was not so plain and the curate had to think at least he said at length you could confess the wrong and ask forgiveness
+again the curate took time to reply i am endeavouring to answer your questions as well as i can he said but it is hard to deal with generalities
+you see how useless for that very reason my answers have as yet been still i have something more to say and hesitate only because it may imply more confidence than i dare profess and of all things i dread untruth
+for surely there cannot be any other kind of god than the father of jesus christ
+therefore surely the first step for anyone who has committed such a crime must be to humble himself before god confess the sin and ask forgiveness and cleansing
+and the creature he has made and if god heard the man's prayer and forgave him then the man would certainly know it in his heart and be consoled perhaps by the gift of humility
+then you think confession to god is all that is required if there be no one else wronged to whom confession can be made if the case were mine
+and sometimes i much fear that in taking holy orders i have grievously sinned i should then do just as i have done with regard to that cry to the living power which i think originated me to set the matter right for me
+then to forgive and console me alas alas that he will not hear of he would rather be punished than consoled i fear for his brain but indeed that might be well
+she had gone much farther than she had intended but the more doubtful help became the more she was driven by the agony of a perishing hope to search the heart of wingfold again the curate pondered are you sure he said at length
+that the person of whom you speak is not neglecting something he ought to do something he knows perhaps he had come back to the same with which he started through her veil he saw her turn deadly white
+ever since leopold said the word jury a ghastly fear had haunted helen she pressed her hand on her heart and made no answer i speak from experience the curate went on from what else could i speak
+i know that so long as we hang back from doing what conscience urges there is no peace for us i will not say our prayers are not heard for mister polwarth has taught me that the most precious answer prayer can have
+lies in the growing strength of the impulse towards the dreaded duty and in the ever sharper stings of the conscience i think i asked already whether there were no relatives to whom reparation could be made yes yes gasped helen
+and i told you reparation was impossible her voice had sunk almost to a groan
+helen rose and hastened to her brother with a heart of lead in her body she started when she saw him some change had passed on him since the morning
+that glimmer on his countenance doubtful as the first of the morning when the traveller knows not whether the light be in the sky or only in his brain
+but at the same time he appeared more wasted and pinched and death like than she had yet seen him or was it only in her eyes was she but reading in his face the agony she had herself gone through that day helen helen he cried as she entered the room
+what was that poldie asked helen with a pang of fear why those words of course what else you sang them to me afterwards you know helen
+don't you think he might be able to do something
+was this what came of praying she thought bitterly something or other i don't know what exactly returned leopold oh helen he broke out with a cry stifled by the caution that had grown habitual to both of them
+is there no help of any kind anywhere surely mister wingfold could tell me something comfort me somehow if i were to tell him all about it i could trust the man that said such things as those you told me that i could
+oh i wish i hadn't run away but had let them take me and hang me helen felt herself grow white she turned away and pretended to search for something she had dropped
+i don't think he would be of the slightest use to you she said still stooping and she felt like a devil dragging the soul of her brother to hell but that was a foolish fancy and must be resisted
+not if i told him everything leopold hissed from between his teeth in the struggle to keep down a shriek no not if you told him everything she answered and felt like a judge condemning him to death
+what is he there for then said leopold indignantly and turned his face to the wall and moaned helen had not yet thought of asking herself whether her love to her brother was all clear love and nowise mingled with selfishness
+whether in the fresh horror that day poured into the cup that had seemed already running over it was of her brother only she thought or whether threatened shame to herself had not a part in her misery
+for what attempt even had he made to comfort her what had he done but utter common places and truisms about duty and who could tell but
+indeed was she not certain that such a man bringing the artillery of his fanaticism to bear upon her poor boy's wild enthusiastic temperament would speedily persuade him to make a reality of that terrible thing he had already thought of that hideously impossible possibility
+it could not have been long she thought
+apparently senseless on the pillow and she thought he was dead the same moment she was free the horror had departed from her own atmosphere too and she made haste to restore him
+but in all she did for him she felt like the executioner who gives restoratives to the wretch that has fainted on the rack or the wheel what right had she she thought to multiply to him his moments of torture
+if the cruel power that had created him for such misery whoever whatever wherever he might be
+yet she hesitated not a single moment in her ministrations there is so much passes in us of which our consciousness takes no grasp or but with such a flitting touch as scarcely to hand it over to the memory
+that i feel encouraged to doubt whether ever there was a man absolutely without hope that there have been alas are many who are aware of no ground of hope nay even who feel no glimmer in them of anything they can call hope i know
+but i think in them all is an underlying unconscious hope i think that not one in all the world has more than a shadowy notion of what hopelessness means perhaps utter hopelessness is the outer darkness
+at length leopold opened his eyes
+nonsense dear poldie it was all fancy nothing more she returned in a voice almost as hollow as his and the lightness of the words uttered in such a tone jarred dismayfully on her own ear fancy he repeated
+i know what fancy is as well as any man or woman born that was no fancy she stood there by the wardrobe in the same dress her face as white as her dress and listen i will tell you
+i will soon satisfy you it could be no fancy here he pushed her from him and looked straight in her eyes i saw her back reflected in the mirror of the wardrobe door and
+here the fixed look of horror threatened to return upon his face but he went on listen
+ugh i saw it in the mirror his voice had risen to a strangled shriek his face was distorted
+if indeed that be a possible source of courage and it is not gathered rather from the hidden hope of which i speak and the love that will cleave and not forsake she set her teeth and said let her come then poldie i am with you and i defy her
+she shall know that a sister's love is stronger than the hate of a jilt even if you did kill her before god poldie i would after all rather be you than she say what you will
+but leopold seemed not to hear a word she said and lay with his face to the wall
+she had sought the door of paradise and the door of hell had been opened to her if the frightful idea which she did not doubt had already suggested itself to leopold should now be encouraged there was nothing but black madness before her
+her poldie on the scaffold god in heaven infinitely rather would she poison herself and him then she remembered how pleased and consoled he had been when she said something about their dying together and that reassured her a little
+but she must take care that foolish extravagant curate should not come near him there was no knowing to what he might persuade him poor poldie was so easily led by any show of nobility anything that looked grand or self sacrificing
+helen's only knowledge of guilt came from the pale image of it lifted above her horizon by the refraction of her sympathy she did not know perhaps never would understand the ghastly horror of conscious guilt besides which there is no evil else
+agonies of injury a man may endure and so far from being overwhelmed rise above them tenfold a man who were he to awake to the self knowledge of a crime would sink into a heap of ruin
+then indeed if there be no god or one that has not an infinite power of setting right that which has gone wrong with his work then indeed welcome the faith for faith it may then be called of such as say there is no hereafter
+helen did not know to what gulfs of personal shame nay to what summits of public execration a man may be glad to flee for refuge from the fangs of home born guilt if so be there is any refuge to be found in either
+and some kind of refuge there does seem to be strange it is and true that in publicity itself lies some relief from the gnawing of the worm as if even a cursing humanity were a barrier of protection between the torn soul and its crime
+it flees to its kind for shelter from itself hence i imagine in part may the coolness of some criminals be accounted for their quietness is the relief brought by confession even confession but to their fellows
+is it that the crime seems then lifted a little from their shoulders and its weight shared by the ace helen had hoped that the man who had spoken in public so tenderly and at the same time so powerfully of the saving heart of the universe
+that would have no divisions of pride no scatterings of hate
+which she might have carried home in gladness to her sick souled brother to comfort and strengthen him
+and make him feel that after all there was yet a place for him in the universe and that he was no outcast of gehenna but instead of such words of gentle might like those of the man of whom he was so fond of talking
+he had only spoken drearily of duty hinting at a horror that would plunge the whole ancient family into a hell of dishonour and contempt
+skeletons they were and no human beings at all her father
+if leopold had had her mother for his too instead of the dark skinned woman with the flashing eyes he would never have brought this upon them it was all his mother's fault the fault of her race and of the horrible drug her people had taught him to take
+and was he to go and confess it and be tried for it and be great god and here was the priest actually counselling what was worse than any suicide
+suddenly however it occurred to her that the curate had had no knowledge of the facts of the case and had therefore been compelled to talk at random it was impossible he should suspect the crime of which her brother had been guilty
+and therefore could not know the frightful consequences of such a confession as he had counselled had she not better then tell him all and so gather from him some right and reasonable advice for the soothing of the agonies of her poor broken winged angel
+but alas what security had she that a man capable of such priestly seveirity and heartlessness
+no she would venture no farther sooner would she go to george bascombe from whom she not only could look for no spiritual comfort but whose theories were so cruel against culprits of all sorts
+alas alas she was alone absolutely alone in the great waste death eyed universe but for a man to talk so of the tenderness of jesus christ
+and then serve her as the curate had done it was indeed shameless he would never have treated a poor wretched woman like that and as she said thus to herself again the words sounded in the ear of her heart
+come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and i will give you rest whence came the voice from her memory or from that inner chamber of the spirit which the one spirit bearing spirit
+keeps for his own in every house that he builds alas so long in most human houses shut away from the rest of the rooms and forgotten or recollected with uneasiness as a lumber closet in which lie too many things that had better not be looked into
+but what matter where the voice that had said them so long as the words were true and she might believe them whatever is true can be believed of the true heart ere she knew
+helen was on her knees with her head on the chair yet once more crying to the hearer of cries possible or impossible being she knew not in the least but words reported of him had given birth to the cry to help her in her dire need
+instead of any word or thought even coming to her that might be fancied an answer she was scared from her knees by an approaching step
+chapter fourteen it was sunset when we arrived in rosville and found mister morgeson waiting for us with his carriage at the station from its open sides
+i looked out on a tranquil agreeable landscape there was nothing saline in the atmosphere the western breeze which blew in our faces had an earthy scent with fluctuating streams of odors from trees and flowers
+as we passed through the town cousin charles pointed to the academy which stood at the head of a green pretty houses stood round it and streets branched from it in all directions flower gardens shrubbery and trees were scattered everywhere
+rosville was larger and handsomer than surrey that is my house on the right he said we looked down the shady street through which we were going
+and peaked roof and on the side toward us a large yard and stables we drove into the yard and a woman came out on the piazza to receive us it was missus morgeson or my wife cousin alice
+as mister morgeson introduced her giving us a cordial welcome she led us into a parlor where tea was waiting a servant came in for our bonnets and baskets cousin alice begged us to take tea at once
+we were hardly seated when we heard the cry of a young child she left the table hastily to come back in a moment with an apology which she made to cousin charles rather than to us i had never seen a table so well arranged
+so fastidiously neat it glittered with glass and french china cousin charles sent away a glass and a plate frowning at the girl who waited there must have been a speck or a flaw in them the viands were as pretty as the dishes
+the lamb chops were fragile the bread was delicious but cut in transparent slices and the butter pat was nearly stamped through with its bouquet of flowers this was all the feast except sponge cake which felt like muslin in the fingers
+i could have squeezed the whole of it into my mouth still hungry i observed that cousin charles and alice had finished and though she shook her spoon in the cup feigning to continue and he snipped crumbs in his plate
+i felt constrained to end my repast he rose then and pushing back folding doors we entered a large room leaving alice at the table windows extending to the floor opening on the piazza
+but notwithstanding the stream of light over the carpet i thought it somber and out of keeping with the cottage exterior
+the furniture was dark the mantel and table tops were black marble and the vases and candelabra were bronze he directed mother's attention to the portraits of his children explaining them
+dark and delicate but to look at it made me shiver mother came toward us pleading fatigue as an excuse for retiring and cousin charles called cousin alice who went with us to our room in the morning she said
+we should see her three children she never left them she was so afraid of their being ill also telling mother that she would do all in her power to make my stay in rosville pleasant and profitable as a mother
+she could appreciate her anxiety and sadness in leaving me mother thanked her warmly and was sure that i should be happy but i had an inward misgiving that i should not have enough to eat i hear edward said alice good night
+presently a girl the same who had taken our bonnets came in with a pitcher of warm water and a plate of soda biscuit she directed us where to find the apparel she had nicely smoothed and folded took off the handsome counterpane and the pillows trimmed with lace
+putting others of a plainer make in their places shook down the window curtains asked us if we would have anything more and quietly disappeared i offered mother the warm water and appropriated the biscuits there were six i ate every one
+undressing meanwhile and surveying the apartment cassy missus morgeson is an excellent housekeeper yes i said huskily for the dry biscuit choked me what would temperance and hepsey say to this
+i think they would grumble and admire look at this showing her the tassels of the inner window curtains done up in little bags and the glass is pinned up with nice yellow paper
+and here is a damask napkin fastened to the wall behind the washstand and everything stands on a mat i wonder if this is to be my room it is probably the chamber for visitors why
+it was byron and turning over the leaves till i came to don juan i read it through
+which was not the one we had taken tea in but a small apartment with a door opening into the garden
+and their mother was tending and watching them the oldest was eight years the youngest three months cousin alice gave us descriptions of their tastes and habits dwelling with emphasis on those of the baby
+i drew from her conversation the opinion that she had a tendency to the rearing of children i was glad when cousin charles came in looking at his watch send off the babies alice and ring the bell for breakfast she sent out the two youngest
+put little edward in his chair and breakfast began missus morgeson said charles the horses will be ready to take you round rosville we will call on doctor price for you to see the kind of master cassandra will have i have already spoken to him about receiving a new pupil
+i said mother tried in vain to look hard hearted and to persuade that it was good for me but she lost her appetite with the thought of losing me which the mention of doctor price brought home
+the ham was most savory but cut in such thin slices that it curled and the biscuits were as white and feathery as snowflakes
+cousin alice gave unremitting attention to edward who ate as little as the rest mother i said afterward
+i noticed how elegant their table appointments were and i shall buy new china in boston to morrow i wish hepsey would not load our table as she does hepsey is a good woman mother do give my love to her now that i think of it
+she was always making up some nice dish tell her i remember it will you when cousin charles put us into the carriage and hoisted little edward on the front seat mother noticed that two men held the horses and that they were not the same he had driven the night before
+she said she was afraid to go they looked ungovernable but he reassured her and one of the men averring that mister morgeson could drive anything she repressed her fears and we drove out of the yard behind a pair of horses
+that stood on their hind legs as often as that position was compatible with the necessity they were under of getting on for they evidently understood that they were guided by a firm hand edward was delighted with their behavior
+and for the first time i saw his father smile on him these are fine brutes he said not taking his eyes from them but they are not equal to my mare nell alice is afraid of her but i hope that you cassandra
+leaping so high that the harness seemed rattling from their backs he struck them and said go on now go on devils there was no further trouble he encouraged mother not to be afraid looking keenly at me
+and the scholars some sixty boys and girls were coming downstairs from the hall to go into the rooms each side of a great door doctor price was behind them he stopped when he saw us an introduction took place and he inquired for doctor snell
+as an old college friend locke morgeson sounded familiarly he said a member of his mother's family named somers had married a gentleman of that name he remembered it from an old ivory miniature which his mother had shown him
+telling him it was the likeness of her cousin rachel's husband i replied we knew that grandfather had married a rachel somers cousin charles was surprised and a little vexed that the doctor had never told him
+and we followed him to her school room i was at once interested and impressed by the appearance of my teacher that was to be she was a dignified kind looking woman who asked me a few questions in such a pleasant direct manner
+that i frankly told her i was eighteen years old very ignorant and averse from learning but i did not speak loud enough for anybody beside herself to hear now said mother when we came away
+think how much greater your advantages are than mine have ever been how miserable was my youth it is too late for me to make any attempt at cultivation i have no wish that way
+and that there was no congregational church in rosville she went to boston that friday afternoon anxious to get safely home with veronica we parted with many a kiss and shake of the hand and last words
+instead of my heart leaping for joy as i had expected a sudden indifference filled it i felt averse to the change from the narrow ways of barmouth which for the moment i regretted
+when i entered the house and saw mother in her old place her surroundings unaltered i suffered a disappointment i had not had the power of transferring the atmosphere of my year's misery to surrey
+i heard the wonted sound of the banging of doors the doors at grand'ther's i mused had list nailed round their edges but then he had the list being a tailor i vum said temperance with her hand on her hip
+and not offering to approach me your hair is as thick as a mop hepsey rubbing her fingers against her thumb remarked that she hoped learning had not taken away my appetite
+is it best to cook more missus morgeson
+the boy by name charles came to see the new arrival but smitten with diffidence crept under the table and examined me from his retreat
+inquired mother he is getting his double teeth oh yes and where's veronica she's up garret writing geography and told me nothing in the world must disturb her till she had finished an account of the city of palmiry
+said temperance call her when supper is ready replied mother who asked me to come into the bedroom where arthur was sleeping he was a handsome child large and fair and as i lifted his white lax fingers
+a torrent of love swept through me and i kissed him i am afraid i make an idol of him cassy are you unhappy because you love him so well mother and feel that you must make expiation cassandra she spoke with haste
+did you experience any shadow of a change during the revival at barmouth no more than the baby here did i shall have faith though
+because you have had the blessing of so good a man as your grand'ther but i never heard a word of grand'ther's prayers do you remember his voice
+my hearing him or not would make no difference since god could hear and answer grand'ther does not like me i never pleased him she looked astonished then reflective
+temperance brought arthur to the table half asleep but he roused when she drummed on his plate with a spoon hepsey was stationed by the bannock knife in hand to serve it as we began our meal
+veronica came in from the kitchen with a plate of toasted crackers she set the plate down and gravely shook hands with me saying she had concluded to live entirely on toast but supposed i would eat all sorts of food as usual
+her face was still long and narrow but prettier and her large dark eyes had a slight cast which gave her face an indescribable expression distant indifferent and speculative as the eyes were
+and ate it in silence the plenty around me the ease and independence gave me a delightful sense of comfort the dishes were odd some of china some of delf and were continually moved out of their places for we helped ourselves
+she was too much engaged in conversation to fulfill her duties that way
+i grew blithe as i saw it winking under the rays of the afternoon sun and clapping my hands said i was glad to get home we left veronica at the table and mother resumed her conversation with me in a corner of the room
+presently temperance came in with charles bringing fresh plates as soon as they began their supper veronica asked temperance how the fish tasted is it salt middling how is the bannock excellent
+the glutton but he has not been here long they are all so when they first come she then gave him a large slice of the cake veronica contrary to her wont
+i feel evil still you know turning to me that my temper is worse than ever it is like a tiger's oh verry said mother not quite so bad you are too hard upon yourself
+say so to my own child verry turned her face to the wall and said no more but she had started a less pleasant train of thought it was changed again by temperance coming with lights
+though the tall brass lamps glittered like gold their circle of light was small the corners of the room were obscure mister park entering retreated into one and mother was obliged to forego the pleasure of undressing arthur
+so she sent him off with temperance and charles whose duty it was to rock the cradle as long as his babyship required soon after father came and hepsey brought in his hot supper while he was eating it grandfather john morgeson bustled in
+as he shook hands with me i saw that his hair had whitened he held a tasseled cane between his knees and thumped the floor whenever he asked a question
+and mother listened with a vague respectful attention her hand was pressed against her breast as if she were repressing an inward voice which claimed her attention
+her hair dropped on her shoulder and looked like a brown coiled serpent veronica who had been silently observing her rose from the sofa picked up the comb and fastened her hair without speaking as she passed she gave me a dark look
+eh verry said father are you there were you glad to see cassy home again should i be glad what can she do grandfather pursed up his mouth
+and turned toward mother as if he would like to say you understand bringing up children don't you she comprehended him and giving her head a slight toss told verry to go and play on the piano i was going she answered pettishly
+and darting out a moment after we heard her grandfather went and presently mister park got up in a lingering way
+joe bacon mother retired verry still played her talent is wonderful said father taking the cigar from his mouth by the way you must take lessons in milford i wish you would learn to sing
+though the fire had gone out the lamps winked brightly and father moving his cigar to the other side of his mouth changed his regards from one lamp to the other and said he thought i was growing to be an attractive girl
+a very strong relation of reserve generally existed between parent and child instead of a confidential one and the child was apt to discover that reserve on the part of the parent was not superiority but cowardice or indifference
+let it not be so with us was his conclusion he threw away the stump of his cigar and went to fasten the hall door i took one of the brass lamps proposing to go to bed
+as i passed through the upper entry veronica opened her door she was undressed and had a little book in her hand which she shook at me saying
+we sat in state to be condoled with and waited upon
+though i am sure the performers thereof had small encouragement veronica alone would see no one her room was the only one not invaded for the neighbors took the house into their hands assisted by that part of the morgesons
+who were too distantly related to consider themselves as mourners to be shut up with us it was put under rigorous funeral law and inspected from garret to cellar they supervised all the arrangements
+her course was taken for granted mine was imposed upon me i remonstrated with temperance but she replied that it was all well meant and always done
+i endured the same annoyances over and over again from relays of people bed time especially was their occasion i was not allowed to undress alone i must have drinks either to compose or stimulate
+they reiterated the character the peculiarities the virtues of the mother i had lost who could never be replaced who was in a better world however i was in a measure
+kept from myself during this interval the matter is often subservient to the manner arthur's feelings were played upon also he wept often confiding to me his grief and his plans for the future
+things would go well he said for everybody must expect to die then the bible says so he informed me also that he expected to be an architect and that mother liked it he had an idea
+which he had imparted to her of an arch it must be made of black marble with gold veins and ought to stand in egypt with the word pandemonium on it the kitchen was the focus of interest to him
+for meals were prepared at all hours for comers and goers temperance told me that the mild and indifferent mourners were fond of good victuals and she thought their hearts were lighter than their stomachs when they went away
+because he looked so grief struck aunt merce was engaged with a dressmaker and with the orders for bonnets and veils she discussed the subject of the mourning with the morgesons i acquiesced in all her arrangements
+for she derived a simple comfort from these external tokens veronica refused to wear the bonnet and veil and the required bombazine bombazine made her flesh crawl why should she wear it mother hated it too
+for she had never worn out the garments made for grand'ther warren she's a bigger child than ever temperance remarked and must have her way
+coming into my room dressed for the funeral no
+the yard is full of carriages already somebody handed me gloves my bonnet was tied a handkerchief given to me and the door opened in the passage i heard a knocking from veronica's room and crossed to learn what she wanted
+is this like her she asked showing me a drawing how could you have done this because i have tried is it like yes the idea
+but what a picture she had attempted to make mother's shadowy face serenely looked from a high small window set in clouds like those which gather over the sun when it draws water
+it was closely pressed to the glass and she was regarding dark indefinite creatures below it
+keep it but don't work on it any more and i put it away she was wan and languid but collected i see you are ready somebody must bury the dead go
+will the house be empty yes good i can walk through it once more the dead must be buried that is certain but why should it be certain that i must be the one to do it you think i can go through with it then
+i have set your behavior down to your will you may be right perhaps mother was always right about me too she was against me she looked at me with a timidity and apprehension that made my heart bleed
+i think we might kiss each other now she said i opened my arms holding her against my breast so tightly that she drew back but kissed my cheek gently and took from her pocket
+a flacon of salts which she fastened to my belt by its little chain and said again go but recalling me said
+the landing stair was full of people i locked the door and took out the key the stairs were crowded all made way for me with a silent respect aunt merce when she saw me
+put her hand on an empty chair beside father who sat by the coffin those passages in the bible which contain the beautifully poetic images relating to the going of man to his long home were read and to my ear
+they seemed to fall on the coffin in dull strife with its inmate who mutely contradicted them a discourse followed which was calculated to harrow the feelings to the utmost arthur began to cry so nervously
+that some considerate friend took him out and aunt merce wept so violently that she grew faint and caught hold of me i gave her the flacon of salts which revived her but i felt as father looked stern
+and anxious to escape the unprofitable trial as the coffin was taken out to the hearse my heart twisted and palpitated as if a command had been laid upon it to follow and not leave her
+when the hearse moved down the street father arthur and i were called and assisted in our own chaise as if we were helpless the reins were put in father's hands and the horse was led behind the hearse
+at last the word was given and the long procession began to move through the street which was deserted a cat ran out of a house and scampered across the way arthur laughed and father jumped nervously at the sound of his laugh
+the graveyard was a mile outside the village a sandy plain where a few stunted pines transplanted from the woods near it struggled to keep alive as we turned from the street into the lane which led to it
+and rode up a little hill where the sand was so deep that it muffled the wheels and feet of the horses the whole round of the gray sky was visible it hung low over us i wished it to drop and blot out the vague nothings under it
+we left the carriage at the palings and walked up the narrow path among the mounds where every stone was marked morgeson some so old that they were stained with blotches of yellow moss
+slanting backward and forward in protest against the folly of indicating what was no longer beneath them the mounds were covered with mats of scanty tangled grass with here and there a rank spot of green
+it was the custom and father took his hat off to thank his friends for their sympathy and attention his lips moved but no words were audible the procession moved down the path again
+arthur's hand was in mine he stamped his feet firmly on the sand as if to break the oppressive silence which no one seemed disposed to disturb the same ceremonies were performed in starting us homeward
+but not a soul was there when we went in the duties of friendship and tradition had been fulfilled the neighbors had gone home to their avocations for the public the tragedy was over all speculation on the degree of our grief
+or our indifference was settled we could take off our mourning garments and our mourning countenance now that we were alone or we could give way to that anguish we are afraid and ashamed to show except before the one
+for a week before thanksgiving there was great excitement among the schoolgirls on account of the approaching football game the four were as excited as the others although not so many of their own particular friends were in the harvard team
+it was to be a game with princeton one of the great university matches and for special reasons there was the deepest interest in the match those girls who had brothers in college or even cousins or friends held themselves with more dignity than any of the others
+and those who had relatives in the team were too proud for anything as brenda said the game was to be played in holmes field and tickets were not easy to get because the seats were far less numerous than now on the great soldiers field
+the girls were making up little groups to go to the game with youths of their acquaintance as escorts under the chaperonage of older people a few who had received no invitation were especially miserable and took no trouble to disguise their feelings
+who had not been invited elsewhere to go in some other party now edith was of a generally generous disposition and not inclined to limit her favors of whatever nature to any particular set of girls
+and even occasionally from brenda both of whom were inclined to be more exclusive so it happened that the general harmony of the four was somewhat disturbed when nora one day at recess exclaimed who do you suppose is going with us to the game
+for of course in the minds of the others there could be but one game
+why who is it cried brenda and who is it echoed belle i know that you can't guess oh don't be silly nora it wouldn't be worth while to guess about something you'll know all about so soon
+except that you speak as if it were some one we might not care to have and if that's the case i declare it's too bad said belle if it's anything like that broke in brenda rather snappishly i will just tell edith what i think
+it that cried nora didn't i say that it was a person a girl if i must be more definite ruth roberts if i must tell just who it is oh cried belle and ah echoed brenda
+you need not look so surprised rejoined nora and if you take my advice you will not say anything to edith she ought to have her own way in arranging her own party and you know when she makes up her mind it is of no use to talk to her about it
+it's hard enough to have julia tagging about everywhere but why in the world we should have ruth roberts when we never see her anywhere except at school i really cannot understand and i don't see how you and nora can like it either why
+ruth roberts is as pleasant a girl as there is in school and yet she would have a terribly lonely time if it were not for edith and julia nobody else ever thinks of speaking to her well why should we
+yes that's what i think too nora smiled pleasantly and her eyes looked brighter than ever under the rim of her brown felt hat with its trimmings of lighter brown nora's temper was not easily ruffled
+then belle added a final word oh it's clear that this is all julia's doings
+but i don't see turning rather snappishly towards brenda why the rest of us have got to take up ruth roberts just because your cousin julia is so devoted to her now this was a little too much even for brenda
+and anyway i'm thankful to have julia take a fancy to anybody it leaves us a great deal freer to do as we like i should think that you would see that yourself oh well said nora laughing the whole thing is not worth quarreling about
+yes i know but still the least said the soonest mended said nora though to tell you the truth the quotation did not sound especially appropriate the least said the soonest mended
+i am going to carry an orange scarf and perhaps an orange flag what for why i never heard of such a thing exclaimed nora nor i cried brenda at a harvard game
+i should call it very impolite if there were no orange flags shown at the game well you have the most ridiculous ideas hasn't she brenda brenda nodded assent and nora continued
+why it's a duty to do everything you can to help your own side i never said that harvard was my side interrupted belle didn't i tell you that i have a cousin on the princeton team you'd better not say anything of that kind to philip
+or to edith either they are both perfectly devoted to harvard and they expect their party to give great encouragement to the harvard team why belle i cannot imagine your doing anything else i'm not a child responded belle very crossly
+walking away from nora and brenda i do not need to be told what to do what nora or brenda might have answered i cannot say for hardly had belle disappeared within the house when edith herself appeared with julia and ruth
+ruth was a pretty and amiable girl about julia's age and therefore a little older than the four she had been in the school for two years before the coming of julia but in all that time she had had only a speaking acquaintance with the other girls
+that they were very selfish in leaving their schoolmate so entirely to herself it was not because they did not like her they were merely so very much wrapped up in their own affairs that they hardly noticed that she was often left to herself
+ruth lived in the suburbs and as belle had said outside of school the other girls seldom saw her at recess each little group had so many personal things to talk about that an outsider would have been decidedly in the way
+and would perhaps have been a little uncomfortable in joining them no one gets a great deal of enjoyment from reading a single chapter in the middle of a book and so it is often hard to be a mere listener
+when the tongues of half a dozen girls are vigorously discussing people and events of which the listener has not the slightest knowledge ruth herself was very independent
+she had acquired the habit of studying during recess since after school she spent more time than most girls of her age in outdoor sports it did her no great harm to pass the half hour of recess in this way ruth as well as julia
+had undertaken to prepare for college and it had been a great delight to her to have the latter placed with her in one or two special classes julia's liking for her had made edith take a little more interest in her than would otherwise have been the case
+no one who saw the hearty way in which nora and brenda greeted ruth as she came up with edith and julia could for a moment have imagined that she had been under discussion the mercurial brenda for the moment
+was so annoyed by belle's proposed championship of princeton that she was unexpectedly cordial to ruth and almost to her own surprise found herself urging ruth to come to town early on the saturday of the game to take luncheon with her and julia
+the latter expressed her thanks in a glance towards her cousin as ruth accepted very gracefully and nora exclaimed what fun we are going to have
+oh dear i can hardly wait for saturday i know it replied brenda it's less than a week too but it seems an awfully long time
+he was a harvard sophomore and realized his own importance quite as much as the girls did but still there was always the chance that he would come into the room just for a minute and tell them some of the latest cambridge news
+he would have scorned to call it gossip if there was any one thing in the world he hated so he said it was girls talk this jabbering about nothing for his part he wouldn't waste his time that way
+yet when he had an appreciative audience and girls generally appreciated what philip said he would often spend as much as half an hour talking about the fellows
+and he would grow almost enthusiastic when describing the tussle between ned brown and stanley hooper over the respective merits of boston and new york in which hooper the new yorker was terribly beaten and upon my word he concluded
+i wasn't sorry for the new york set is getting just unbearable i wouldn't so much mind fighting stanley hooper myself about new york and boston i guess i'd show him that new york isn't the whole world
+i should say not exclaimed nora but belle who had some new york cousins was silent brenda however noticing belle's expression and not feeling disposed to side completely with nora said
+you're terribly narrow nora to think that nobody's any good unless he comes from boston i didn't say so replied nora no but that's what you mean and i'm surprised philip blair
+well you'd better talk brenda barlow broke in nora again just see the way you treat julia if she'd been born in boston i don't treat her interrupted brenda
+no that's just it you don't treat her decently
+how queer girls are do you always fight like this when you're together we don't fight like you boys answered edith good humoredly we don't knock each other down and run the risk of breaking one another's noses
+philip looked over his shoulder in the glass there was nothing the matter with his own shapely nose and i doubt that he would have run any such risk as edith suggested perhaps this was the reason why philip was not a fighter
+there was one good thing about the little disputes in which brenda and belle indulged they very seldom lasted long in the present instance the girls were ashamed of having shown temper before philip
+oh say did you hear about the time will hardon had with the dicky last week he asked nora nodded she too had a brother in college what was it asked edith you haven't told me philip
+how funny you are edith said belle you never hear anything hasn't anyone told you how the other fellows made him run blindfolded in his shirt sleeves down beacon street no really
+and everybody looking at him oh said one girl and ah said another and how silly they all cried together if girls amused themselves like that what fun you'd make of us said the practical nora
+oh it gives a fellow a chance to show what kind of stuff he's made of explained philip whether he has good manners and whether he's clever and all that there must be better ways of showing bravery
+said the practical edith i don't believe you know a bit more about will hardon's bravery than you did before we knew something about his manners what why when he saw where he was he didn't run away or flunk out
+he only looked a little sheepish the other fellows said
+he walked off as nice as you please wasn't he mad at the two fellows for taking him there of course not that's a part of the thing why there are fellows in cambridge who would go through fire and water
+or stand on their heads in front of a pulpit for the sake of getting into the dicky i tell you we make some of them suffer
+although he had belonged to the illustrious organization a very short time well i think you're perfectly horrid cried brenda i mean the dicky i've heard about the way you make people suffer branding them with hot cigars and making them run barefoot winter nights and
+there are a lot of girls studying in cambridge now at the annex and the fellows don't like it at all well i declare exclaimed nora i'd like to know what difference it makes to them
+oh they hate to see these girls going about with books and trying to get into harvard yes trying to break down the walls said nora sarcastically
+oh see here it would just spoil everything to have women in the classes with us are you afraid they'd get ahead of you asked edith gently now look here edith
+interrupted philip i've heard that some professors say that their annex classes do better work than ours but anybody can tell that that's all rot i believe it's all perfectly true said nora
+well i wish myself that our english instructor hadn't such a fondness for reading themes to us that the girls have written he makes out that they are better than ours but i can't say that i see it myself who gets the best marks
+does julia wear glasses or look green i beg your pardon brenda no she doesn't said nora shortly she's about the nicest girl i know oh she is lovely added edith
+a matter of opinion murmured belle under her breath you don't mean to say you haven't seen her cried brenda in surprise no i haven't happened to answered philip
+she's invited to my cooking party next week said nora you know that you've accepted too so you'll see her oh yes by the way said philip what evening is it friday of course replied nora
+so we can sit up late without thinking about school the next day well you'll see me sure said philip but see here it's five o'clock now and i have an engagement down town
+philip hurried off bowing in a very grown up way to the group of girls for whatever criticisms any one might make about philip's indolence and disinclination to study no one could deny that he had very good manners
+though only about four years their senior he seemed much older than brenda and her friends years before they had all been playmates together but his two years in college had taken him away from them
+and it was not often that he condescended to spend as long a time in their presence as had been the case this afternoon do you think that philip looks very well edith
+replied philip's sister it seemed to me he was just a little pale he is always pale said edith do you suppose he sits up too late asked brenda i'll warrant he doesn't study too much said belle
+how can you criticise edith's brother don't let her do it edith it doesn't trouble me answered the placid edith i know all about philip and he's good enough for me that's right said nora
+he says there are two or three fellows just sponging off of philip all the time and philip is too good natured to say anything i wonder how he'll like julia said edith
+hastily interposed belle boys never like a girl who studies especially one who is going to college well julia is just the nicest girl i know said nora repeating the words she had used to philip
+five times mister thomas harmon vainly rang the bell of the remsen mansion while engaged upon the sixth variation he became aware of a face in the window scrutinizing him all right called the face
+laid up inquired mister harmon shaking hands bottled up answered the young man gloomily can i help possibly did you ever kill a subpoena server
+not yet care to try what does the thing look like cast your eyes toward the avenue and you'll see one
+he never asks questions about other people's troubles he now busied himself in thought haven't you any of your amateur theatrical duds here was the outcome of his cogitations all of'em
+why not dress a part and walk away incognito oh certainly assented the other with bitterness put on a suit of tights and dive out of the conservatory window disguised as annette kellerman i suppose
+what's the matter with an old man makeup and the front door just this friend murphy on watch hauls out his little paper and on the chance of its being me slaps the wrist of anybody who appears on those steps
+merely a matter of distracting friend murphy's attention for ten seconds at the end of the ten seconds you will be seen going up the steps to the front door
+presently you will be seen coming down again unable to effect an entrance against the watchfulness of the faithful connor
+i get you i'm to be in disguise but how shall we get the process server off guard leave that to me the two conspirators elaborated their plan built it up revised it
+tested it at every point and pronounced it perfect but we've forgotten one point said remsen at the end of the discussion what's that where do i go when i get out where do you want to go
+plumb in the dead center of nowhere thirteen miles from a railroad fishing and hunting on the premises reads like a real estate man's prospectus observed remsen this year pursued harmon
+i'm keeping open house for a special reason two fellows i know are getting married to morrow it's a double wedding it's also a double honeymoon but they aren't onto that yet harmon's clear brown eyes twinkled
+one half won't know how the other half lives till they get there i've loaned the place to both couples for a fortnight it's a dead secret neither couple knows where the other is going they're on oath
+they won't thank you when they meet across the dinner table oh it isn't as bad as that they'll be a mile apart the lees will be at the cottage they get off at meredith and go in on the truck the woods i'm sending to the island
+they climb out at ashland and go over by boat unless they all happen to take the same train one pair won't even know the other is around until they meet up on the lake or in the woods sounds like a party doesn't it want to join
+get yourself a car from the garage and motor to the bungalow that's at the third corner of my little triangular piece of mountain and forest
+wouldn't know them if i did any other agreeable surprises about the resort no oh yes i nearly forgot there's a little friend of gloria greene's girl tired out
+too much gayety or something don't know what it is or who she is but she's up against it for a month's rest so miss greene wished her on boulder brook and welcome where does she go inquired remsen suspiciously
+to the cave or the castle on the crags or the haunted manor house or the co educational club or which one of the numerous institutions you maintain in your private city she goes to the farmhouse
+missus bond my housekeeper is looking after her seclusion is her watchword if you see her make a noise like a dry leaf and blow away you'll go won't you remsen meditated
+it certainly seems made to order and it's mighty good of you old man yes i'll just take you up on that there's a train at nine o'clock in the morning to morrow make it the day after
+i've got some things to attend to now about our jail breaking scheme i've got an amendment how would it be if the taxi i arrive in should catch fire at the psychological moment can it be done
+easily i'm not a manufacturer of chemicals for nothing great keep it going for ten seconds for the benefit of the watchful murphy and if you look up after that
+you'll see the englishest looking englishman you ever sat eyes on outside the pages of punch trying to tear my old fashioned doorbell out by the roots that's your best make up is it remsen
+fortified by my accent it is most convincing that'll be carteret who rodney carteret am i supposed to know him rather
+not know a man with whom you toured for two months in japan said remsen reproachfully stupid of me confessed harmon grinning carteret good old roddy certainly then i'd better capture you
+him i mean and take him to the nine o'clock train for boulder brook in my taxi right o old thing be here at eight thirty cheery o said his host britishly
+from its window emerged a heavy puff of smoke from its door emerged mister thomas harmon who rolled upon the pavement apparently strangling mister murphy rushed to his aid
+when he was restored to his feet and his breath and the taxi had ceased to imitate fafnir the dragon a tall figure in an extremely english ulster which had hastily emerged from the remsen front door rushed down ten steps
+and leisurely climbed them again was wrenching violently at the bell for a time mister murphy regarded him disdainfully then crossed over held brief colloquy and returned hot chance he's got of breaking in
+he observed to mister harmon what is he making all the fuss about inquired that gentleman as the visitor again applied himself forcefully to the bell wants to see mister remsen
+but the old bulldog of a butler won't let him put his nose inside the door says his name is carteret and he's come all the way from england to see him england not roddy carteret
+it was done almost as well as that accomplished actor mister jacob remsen could have done it harmon sprang across the street
+he called what on earth are you doing over here the bell ringer adjusted a monocle and ambled down the steps to shake hands
+perhaps you can tell me what's amiss with this beastly house i'll tell you proffered the obliging and innocent mister murphy he did so then i'll just go back and jolly well camp there till somebody jolly well lets me in
+decided the caller argument followed while the chauffeur burrowed into the mechanism of his car it ended by the englishman bestowing two dollars upon mister murphy to get a message to mister remsen containing a protest and an address
+the two gentlemen then moved away in the extinguished taxi tickets had been provided by the forethoughtful harmon the fugitive was the first man in the parlor car
+and were shown into drawing room a at the upper end of the car shortly after another couple also glistening as to garb entered and took possession of drawing room b at the lower end of the car
+the eluder of justice eyed them and drew his own conclusions here we are all of us he said to himself retiring discreetly behind his newspaper
+the flying stars the most beautiful crime i ever committed flambeau would say in his highly moral old age
+was also by a singular coincidence my last it was committed at christmas as an artist
+i had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which i found myself choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe as if for a statuary group
+thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak while jews on the other hand should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless
+among the lights and screens of the cafe riche thus in england if i wished to relieve a dean of his riches which is not so easy as you might suppose i wished to frame him
+if i make myself clear in the green lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town similarly in france when i had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant
+which is almost impossible it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars and those solemn plains of gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of millet
+well my last crime was a christmas crime a cheery cosy english middle class crime a crime of charles dickens
+i did it in a good old middle class house near putney a house with a crescent of carriage drive a house with a stable by the side of it a house with the name on the two outer gates
+a house with a monkey tree enough you know the species i really think my imitation of dickens's style was dexterous and literary it seems almost a pity
+i repented the same evening flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside and even from the inside it was odd seen from the outside
+it was perfectly incomprehensible and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it from this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable
+opened on the garden with the monkey tree and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of boxing day she had a pretty face with brave brown eyes
+but her figure was beyond conjecture for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur but for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear
+the winter afternoon was reddening towards evening and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds filling them as it were with the ghosts of the dead roses
+on one side of the house stood the stable on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind the young lady having scattered bread for the birds
+for the fourth or fifth time that day because the dog ate it passed unobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind
+here she gave an exclamation of wonder real or ritual and looking up at the high garden wall above her beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure
+oh don't jump mister crook she called out in some alarm it's much too high the individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse
+was a tall angular young man with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush intelligent and even distinguished lineaments but a sallow and almost alien complexion
+this showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take any care perhaps it was a symbol
+he took no notice of the girl's alarmed adjuration but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside her where he might very well have broken his legs i think i was meant to be a burglar
+he said placidly and i have no doubt i should have been if i hadn't happened to be born in that nice house next door i can't see any harm in it anyhow
+how can you say such things she remonstrated well said the young man if you're born on the wrong side of the wall i can't see that it's wrong to climb over it
+i never know what you will say or do next she said i don't often know myself replied mister crook but then i am on the right side of the wall now
+and which is the right side of the wall asked the young lady smiling whichever side you are on said the young man named crook
+as they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice coming nearer and nearer and a car of splendid speed great elegance
+and stood throbbing hullo hullo said the young man with the red tie here's somebody born on the right side anyhow i didn't know miss adams that your santa claus was so modern as this
+oh that's my godfather sir leopold fischer he always comes on boxing day then after an innocent pause which unconsciously betrayed some lack of enthusiasm
+ruby adams added he is very kind john crook journalist had heard of that eminent city magnate and it was not his fault if the city magnate
+had not heard of him for in certain articles in the clarion or the new age sir leopold had been dealt with austerely but he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading of the motor car
+which was rather a long process a large neat chauffeur in green got out from the front and a small neat manservant in grey got out from the back and between them they deposited sir leopold on the doorstep
+and began to unpack him like some very carefully protected parcel rugs enough to stock a bazaar furs of all the beasts of the forest and scarves of all the colours of the rainbow
+were unwrapped one by one till they revealed something resembling the human form the form of a friendly but foreign looking old gentleman with a grey goat like beard and a beaming smile
+who rubbed his big fur gloves together long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch had opened in the middle and colonel adams father of the furry young lady
+had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside he was a tall sunburnt and very silent man who wore a red smoking cap like a fez making him look like one of the english sirdars
+or pashas in egypt with him was his brother in law lately come from canada a big and rather boisterous young gentleman farmer with a yellow beard by name james blount
+with him also was the more insignificant figure of the priest from the neighbouring roman church for the colonel's late wife had been a catholic and the children as is common in such cases had been trained to follow her
+everything seemed undistinguished about the priest even down to his name which was brown yet the colonel had always found something companionable about him and frequently asked him to such family gatherings
+in the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for sir leopold and the removal of his wraps porch and vestibule indeed
+were unduly large in proportion to the house and formed as it were a big room with the front door at one end and the bottom of the staircase at the other in front of the large hall fire
+over which hung the colonel's sword the process was completed and the company including the saturnine crook presented to sir leopold fischer that venerable financier however
+still seemed struggling with portions of his well lined attire and at length produced from a very interior tail coat pocket a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be his christmas present for his god daughter
+with an unaffected vain glory that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them all it flew open at a touch and half blinded them
+it was just as if a crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes in a nest of orange velvet lay like three eggs three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them
+fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel the wonder of the whole group
+i had to be careful of em coming down they're the three great african diamonds called the flying stars because they've been stolen so often all the big criminals are on the track
+but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have kept their hands off them i might have lost them on the road here it was quite possible quite natural i should say
+growled the man in the red tie i shouldn't blame em if they had taken em when they ask for bread and you don't even give them a stone i think they might take the stone for themselves
+i won't have you talking like that cried the girl who was in a curious glow you've only talked like that since you became a horrid what's his name you know what i mean
+a saint said father brown i think said sir leopold with a supercilious smile that ruby means a socialist
+a radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes remarked crook with some impatience and a conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam neither i assure you
+does a socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney sweep a socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney sweeps paid for it but who won't allow you
+put in the priest in a low voice to own your own soot crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect does one want to own soot he asked one might
+with speculation in his eye i've heard that gardeners use it and i once made six children happy at christmas when the conjuror didn't come entirely with soot applied externally
+oh splendid cried ruby oh i wish you'd do it to this company the boisterous canadian mister blount was lifting his loud voice in applause
+and the astonished financier his in some considerable deprecation when a knock sounded at the double front doors the priest opened them and they showed again the front garden of evergreens monkey tree and all
+now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet sunset the scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint like a back scene in a play that they forgot a moment the insignificant figure standing in the door
+he was dusty looking and in a frayed coat evidently a common messenger any of you gentlemen mister blount he asked and held forward a letter doubtfully
+mister blount started and stopped in his shout of assent ripping up the envelope with evident astonishment he read it his face clouded a little and then cleared and he turned to his brother in law and host
+i'm sick at being such a nuisance colonel he said with the cheery colonial conventions but would it upset you if an old acquaintance called on me here tonight on business in point of fact it's florian
+that famous french acrobat and comic actor i knew him years ago out west he was a french canadian by birth and he seems to have business for me though i hardly guess what
+of course of course replied the colonel carelessly my dear chap any friend of yours no doubt he will prove an acquisition
+he'll black his face if that's what you mean cried blount laughing i don't doubt he'd black everyone else's eyes i don't care i'm not refined
+i like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top hat not on mine please said sir leopold fischer with dignity well well observed crook airily
+don't let's quarrel there are lower jokes than sitting on a top hat dislike of the red tied youth born of his predatory opinions and evident intimacy with the pretty godchild
+led fischer to say in his most sarcastic magisterial manner no doubt you have found something much lower than sitting on a top hat what is it pray
+letting a top hat sit on you for instance said the socialist now now now cried the canadian farmer with his barbarian benevolence don't let's spoil a jolly evening
+what i say is let's do something for the company tonight not blacking faces or sitting on hats if you don't like those but something of the sort why couldn't we have a proper old english pantomime
+clown columbine and so on i saw one when i left england at twelve years old and it's blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since i came back to the old country only last year
+and i find the thing's extinct nothing but a lot of snivelling fairy plays i want a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight blue birds
+or something blue beard's more in my line and him i like best when he turned into the pantaloon i'm all for making a policeman into sausages said john crook
+it's a better definition of socialism than some recently given but surely the get up would be too big a business not a scrap cried blount quite carried away
+a harlequinade's the quickest thing we can do for two reasons first one can gag to any degree and second all the objects are household things
+tables and towel horses and washing baskets and things like that that's true admitted crook nodding eagerly and walking about but i'm afraid i can't have my policeman's uniform
+haven't killed a policeman lately blount frowned thoughtfully a space and then smote his thigh yes we can he cried i've got florian's address here
+and he knows every costumier in london i'll phone him to bring a police dress when he comes and he went bounding away to the telephone oh it's glorious godfather
+almost dancing i'll be columbine and you shall be pantaloon the millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity i think my dear he said
+you must get someone else for pantaloon i will be pantaloon if you like said colonel adams taking his cigar out of his mouth and speaking for the first and last time
+you ought to have a statue cried the canadian as he came back radiant from the telephone there we are all fitted mister crook shall be clown
+he's a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes i can be harlequin that only wants long legs and jumping about my friend florian phones he's bringing the police costume he's changing on the way
+we can act it in this very hall the audience sitting on those broad stairs opposite one row above another these front doors can be the back scene either open or shut shut
+you see an english interior open a moonlit garden it all goes by magic and snatching a chance piece of billiard chalk from his pocket he ran it across the hall floor
+half way between the front door and the staircase to mark the line of the footlights how even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained a riddle
+but they went at it with that mixture of recklessness and industry that lives when youth is in a house and youth was in that house that night though not all may have isolated the two faces and hearts from which it flamed
+as always happens the invention grew wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions from which it had to create the columbine looked charming in an outstanding skirt
+that strangely resembled the large lamp shade in the drawing room the clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour from the cook and red with rouge from some other domestic who remained
+like all true christian benefactors anonymous the harlequin already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes was with difficulty
+prevented from smashing the old victorian lustre chandeliers that he might cover himself with resplendent crystals in fact he would certainly have done so had not ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels
+she had worn at a fancy dress party as the queen of diamonds indeed her uncle james blount was getting almost out of hand in his excitement he was like a schoolboy
+he put a paper donkey's head unexpectedly on father brown who bore it patiently and even found some private manner of moving his ears he even essayed to put the paper donkey's tail
+to the coat tails of sir leopold fischer this however was frowned down uncle is too absurd cried ruby to crook round whose shoulders she had seriously placed a string of sausages
+why is he so wild he is harlequin to your columbine said crook i am only the clown who makes the old jokes i wish you were the harlequin
+she said and left the string of sausages swinging father brown though he knew every detail done behind the scenes and had even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into a pantomime baby
+went round to the front and sat among the audience with all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinee the spectators were few relations one or two local friends
+laura went down stairs knocked at the study door and entered scarcely waiting for the response senator dilworthy was alone with an open bible in his hand upside down laura smiled and said forgetting her acquired correctness of speech it is only me
+ah come in sit down and the senator closed the book and laid it down i wanted to see you
+and the senator beamed with his own congressional wit in the committee of the whole things are working very well we have made ever so much progress in a week i believe that you and i together could run this government beautifully uncle the senator beamed again
+he liked to be called uncle by this beautiful woman did you see hopperson last night after the congressional prayer meeting yes he came he's a kind of eh he is one of my friends laura he's a fine man a very fine man
+i don't know any man in congress i'd sooner go to for help in any christian work what did he say oh he beat around a little he said he should like to help the negro his heart went out to the negro and all that plenty of them say that but he was a little afraid of the tennessee land bill
+if senator dilworthy wasn't in it he should suspect there was a fraud on the government he said that did he yes and he said he felt he couldn't vote for it he was shy not shy child cautious he's a very cautious man
+i have been with him a great deal on conference committees he wants reasons good ones didn't you show him he was in error about the bill i did i went over the whole thing i had to tell him some of the side arrangements some of the you didn't mention me
+oh no i told him you were daft about the negro and the philanthropy part of it as you are daft is a little strong laura but you know that i wouldn't touch this bill
+and for the good of the colored race much as i am interested in the heirs of this property and would like to have them succeed laura looked a little incredulous and the senator proceeded don't misunderstand me i don't deny that it is for the interest of all of us that this bill should go through and it will
+i have no concealments from you but i have one principle in my public life which i should like you to keep in mind it has always been my guide i never push a private interest if it is not justified and ennobled by some larger public good
+if it was not to aid in the salvation of his fellow men the senator spoke with feeling and then added i hope you showed hopperson that our motives were pure yes and he seemed to have a new light on the measure i think will vote for it
+i hope so his name will give tone and strength to it i knew you would only have to show him that it was just and pure in order to secure his cordial support i think i convinced him yes i am perfectly sure he will vote right now
+that's good that's good said the senator smiling and rubbing his hands is there anything more you'll find some changes in that i guess handing the senator a printed list of names those checked off are all right ah m m
+running his eye down the list that's encouraging what is the c before some of the names and the b b those are my private marks that c stands for convinced with argument
+i expect to see the chairman of the committee to day mister buckstone
+but he has charitable impulses if we secure him we shall have a favorable report by the committee
+oh i saw senator balloon he will help us i suppose balloon is a whole hearted fellow i can't help loving that man for all his drollery and waggishness he puts on an air of levity sometimes but there aint a man in the senate knows the scriptures as he does
+he did not make any objections not exactly he said shall i tell you what he said asked laura glancing furtively at him certainly he said he had no doubt it was a good thing if senator dilworthy was in it it would pay to look into it
+the senator laughed but rather feebly and said balloon is always full of his jokes i explained it to him he said it was all right he only wanted a word with you continued laura he is a handsome old gentleman and he is gallant for an old man
+my daughter said the senator with a grave look i trust there was nothing free in his manner free repeated laura with indignation in her face with me there there child i meant nothing balloon talks a little freely sometimes with men
+but he is right at heart his term expires next year and i fear we shall lose him he seemed to be packing the day i was there his rooms were full of dry goods boxes into which his servant was crowding all manner of old clothes and stuff
+i suppose he will paint pub docs on them and frank them home that's good economy isn't it yes yes but child all congressmen do that it may not be strictly honest indeed it is not unless he had some public documents mixed in with the clothes
+it's a funny world good bye uncle i'm going to see that chairman and humming a cheery opera air she departed to her room to dress for going out before she did that however she took out her note book and was soon deep in its contents marking dashing
+erasing figuring and talking to herself free i wonder what dilworthy does think of me anyway one two eight seventeen
+wouldn't dilworthy open his eyes if he knew some of the things balloon did say to me there hopperson's influence ought to count twenty the sanctimonious old curmudgeon son in law sinecure in the negro institution that about gauges him the three committeemen
+sons in law nothing like a son in law here in washington or a brother in law and everybody has em let's see sixty one with places twenty five persuaded it is getting on we'll have two thirds of congress in time dilworthy must surely know i understand him
+uncle dilworthy uncle balloon tells very amusing stories when ladies are not present i should think so m m eighty five there i must find that chairman queer buckstone acts
+seemed to be in love i was sure of it he promised to come here and he hasn't strange very strange i must chance to meet him to day laura dressed and went out thinking she was perhaps too early for mister buckstone to come from the house
+but as he lodged near the bookstore she would drop in there and keep a look out for him while laura is on her errand to find mister buckstone it may not be out of the way to remark that she knew quite as much of washington life as senator dilworthy gave her credit for
+and more than she thought proper to tell him she was acquainted by this time with a good many of the young fellows of newspaper row and exchanged gossip with them to their mutual advantage
+they were always talking in the row everlastingly gossiping bantering and sarcastically praising things and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage colonel sellers liked this talk amazingly though he was sometimes a little at sea in it
+and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation to the correspondents it seems that they had got hold of the dry goods box packing story about balloon one day and were talking it over when the colonel came in the colonel wanted to know all about it and hicks told him
+and then hicks went on with a serious air colonel if you register a letter it means that it is of value doesn't it and if you pay fifteen cents for registering it the government will have to take extra care of it and even pay you back its full value if it is lost isn't that so
+yes i suppose it's so well senator balloon put fifteen cents worth of stamps on each of those seven huge boxes of old clothes and shipped that ton of second hand rubbish old boots and pantaloons and what not through the mails as registered matter
+it was an ingenious thing and it had a genuine touch of humor about it too i think there is more real talent among our public men of to day than there was among those of old times a far more fertile fancy a much happier ingenuity
+now colonel can you picture jefferson or washington or john adams franking their wardrobes through the mails and adding the facetious idea of making the government responsible for the cargo for the sum of one dollar and five cents statesmen were dull creatures in those days
+i have a much greater admiration for senator balloon yes balloon is a man of parts there is no denying it i think so he is spoken of for the post of minister to china or austria and i hope will be appointed
+what we want abroad is good examples of the national character john jay and benjamin franklin were well enough in their day but the nation has made progress since then balloon is a man we know and can depend on to be true to himself
+yes and balloon has had a good deal of public experience he is an old friend of mine he was governor of one of the territories a while and was very satisfactory indeed he was he was ex officio indian agent too
+whose land had been taken from them by the white man in the interests of civilization but balloon knew their needs better he built a government saw mill on the reservation with the money and the lumber sold for enormous prices a relative of his did all the work free of charge
+that is to say he charged nothing more than the lumber would bring but the poor injuns not that i care much for injuns what did he do for them gave them the outside slabs to fence in the reservation with governor balloon was nothing less than a father to the poor indians but balloon is not alone
+we have many truly noble statesmen in our country's service like balloon the senate is full of them don't you think so colonel well i dunno i honor my country's public servants as much as any one can i meet them sir every day and the more i see of them
+of securing their services few lands are so blest that is true colonel to be sure you can buy now and then a senator or a representative but they do not know it is wrong and so they are not ashamed of it they are gentle and confiding and childlike
+and in my opinion these are qualities that ennoble them far more than any amount of
+i quite agree with you colonel sellers well hesitated the colonel i am afraid some of them do buy their seats yes i am afraid they do but as senator dilworthy himself said to me it is sinful it is very wrong it is shameful
+heaven protect me from such a charge that is what dilworthy said and yet when you come to look at it you cannot deny that we would have to go without the services of some of our ablest men sir if the country were opposed to to bribery it is a harsh term i do not like to use it
+the cars came scudding in towards dublin running evenly like pellets in the groove of the naas road
+careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the continent sped its wealth and industry now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed their sympathy however was for the blue cars
+the cars of their friends the french the french moreover were virtual victors their team had finished solidly they had been placed second and third and the driver of the winning german car was reported a belgian
+each blue car therefore received a double measure of welcome as it topped the crest of the hill and each cheer of welcome was acknowledged with smiles and nods by those in the car in one of these trimly built cars was a party of four young men whose spirits seemed to be at present
+in fact these four young men were almost hilarious they were charles segouin the owner of the car andre riviere a young electrician of canadian birth a huge hungarian named villona
+and a neatly groomed young man named doyle segouin was in good humour because he had unexpectedly received some orders in advance he was about to start a motor establishment in paris
+and riviere was in good humour because he was to be appointed manager of the establishment these two young men who were cousins were also in good humour because of the success of the french cars villona was in good humour because he had had a very satisfactory luncheon
+and besides he was an optimist by nature the fourth member of the party however was too excited to be genuinely happy he was about twenty six years of age with a soft light brown moustache and rather innocent looking grey eyes
+his father who had begun life as an advanced nationalist had modified his views early he had made his money as a butcher in kingstown and by opening shops in dublin and in the suburbs he had made his money many times over
+he had also been fortunate enough to secure some of the police contracts and in the end he had become rich enough to be alluded to in the dublin newspapers as a merchant prince he had sent his son to england to be educated in a big catholic college
+and had afterwards sent him to dublin university to study law jimmy did not study very earnestly and took to bad courses for a while he had money and he was popular and he divided his time curiously between musical and motoring circles
+his father remonstrative but covertly proud of the excess had paid his bills and brought him home
+who had seen so much of the world and was reputed to own some of the biggest hotels in france such a person as his father agreed was well worth knowing even if he had not been the charming companion he was
+villona was entertaining also a brilliant pianist but unfortunately very poor the car ran on merrily with its cargo of hilarious youth the two cousins sat on the front seat jimmy and his hungarian friend sat behind
+decidedly villona was in excellent spirits he kept up a deep bass hum of melody for miles of the road the frenchmen flung their laughter and light words over their shoulders and often jimmy had to strain forward to catch the quick phrase
+this was not altogether pleasant for him as he had nearly always to make a deft guess at the meaning and shout back a suitable answer in the face of a high wind besides villona's humming would confuse anybody the noise of the car too
+rapid motion through space elates one so does notoriety so does the possession of money these were three good reasons for jimmy's excitement he had been seen by many of his friends that day in the company of these continentals
+at the control segouin had presented him to one of the french competitors and in answer to his confused murmur of compliment the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of shining white teeth
+it was pleasant after that honour to return to the profane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks then as to money he really had a great sum under his control
+but jimmy who in spite of temporary errors was at heart the inheritor of solid instincts knew well with what difficulty it had been got together this knowledge had previously kept his bills within the limits of reasonable recklessness
+and if he had been so conscious of the labour latent in money when there had been question merely of some freak of the higher intelligence how much more so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his substance it was a serious thing for him
+jimmy had a respect for his father's shrewdness in business matters and in this case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment money to be made in the motor business pots of money moreover segouin had the unmistakable air of wealth
+jimmy set out to translate into days work that lordly car in which he sat how smoothly it ran in what style they had come careering along the country roads the journey laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life
+and gallantly the machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the swift blue animal they drove down dame street the street was busy with unusual traffic loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient tram drivers
+near the bank segouin drew up and jimmy and his friend alighted a little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay homage to the snorting motor the party was to dine together that evening in segouin's hotel and meanwhile jimmy and his friend who was staying with him
+were to go home to dress the car steered out slowly for grafton street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers they walked northward with a curious feeling of disappointment in the exercise while the city hung its pale globes of light above them
+in a haze of summer evening in jimmy's house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion a certain pride mingled with his parents trepidation a certain eagerness also to play fast and loose for the names of great foreign cities have at least this virtue
+and as he stood in the hall giving a last equation to the bows of his dress tie his father may have felt even commercially satisfied at having secured for his son qualities often unpurchaseable his father therefore was unusually friendly with villona
+and his manner expressed a real respect for foreign accomplishments but this subtlety of his host was probably lost upon the hungarian who was beginning to have a sharp desire for his dinner the dinner was excellent exquisite
+segouin jimmy decided had a very refined taste the party was increased by a young englishman named routh whom jimmy had seen with segouin at cambridge the young men supped in a snug room lit by electric candle lamps
+they talked volubly and with little reserve jimmy whose imagination was kindling conceived the lively youth of the frenchmen twined elegantly upon the firm framework of the englishman's manner a graceful image of his he thought and a just one
+he admired the dexterity with which their host directed the conversation the five young men had various tastes and their tongues had been loosened villona with immense respect began to discover to the mildly surprised englishman the beauties of the english madrigal
+riviere not wholly ingenuously undertook to explain to jimmy the triumph of the french mechanicians the resonant voice of the hungarian was about to prevail in ridicule of the spurious lutes of the romantic painters
+when segouin shepherded his party into politics here was congenial ground for all jimmy under generous influences felt the buried zeal of his father wake to life within him he aroused the torpid routh at last
+the room grew doubly hot and segouin's task grew harder each moment there was even danger of personal spite the alert host at an opportunity lifted his glass to humanity and when the toast had been drunk he threw open a window significantly
+that night the city wore the mask of a capital the five young men strolled along stephen's green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke they talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders the people made way for them
+at the corner of grafton street a short fat man was putting two handsome ladies on a car in charge of another fat man the car drove off and the short fat man caught sight of the party andre it's farley
+a torrent of talk followed farley was an american no one knew very well what the talk was about villona and riviere were the noisiest but all the men were excited they got up on a car squeezing themselves together amid much laughter
+to a music of merry bells
+they were walking out of kingstown station the ticket collector saluted jimmy he was an old man fine night sir it was a serene summer night the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at their feet
+they proceeded towards it with linked arms singing cadet roussel in chorus stamping their feet at every ho ho hohe vraiment they got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the american's yacht there was to be supper music cards
+villona said with conviction it is delightful there was a yacht piano in the cabin villona played a waltz for farley and riviere farley acting as cavalier and riviere as lady
+then an impromptu square dance the men devising original figures what merriment jimmy took his part with a will this was seeing life at least then farley got out of breath and cried stop
+a man brought in a light supper and the young men sat down to it for form's sake they drank however it was bohemian they drank ireland england france hungary the united states of america jimmy made a speech a long speech
+villona saying hear hear whenever there was a pause there was a great clapping of hands when he sat down it must have been a good speech farley clapped him on the back and laughed loudly what jovial fellows what good company they were cards cards
+the table was cleared villona returned quietly to his piano and played voluntaries for them the other men played game after game flinging themselves boldly into the adventure they drank the health of the queen of hearts and of the queen of diamonds
+jimmy felt obscurely the lack of an audience the wit was flashing play ran very high and paper began to pass jimmy did not know exactly who was winning but he knew that he was losing but it was his own fault for he frequently mistook his cards
+they were devils of fellows but he wished they would stop it was getting late someone gave the toast of the yacht the belle of newport and then someone proposed one great game for a finish the piano had stopped villona must have gone up on deck
+it was a terrible game they stopped just before the end of it to drink for luck jimmy understood that the game lay between routh and segouin what excitement jimmy was excited too he would lose of course how much had he written away
+the men rose to their feet to play the last tricks talking and gesticulating routh won the cabin shook with the young men's cheering and the cards were bundled together they began then to gather in what they had won farley and jimmy were the heaviest losers
+he knew that he would regret in the morning but at present he was glad of the rest glad of the dark stupor that would cover up his folly he leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head between his hands counting the beats of his temples
+the cabin door opened and he saw the hungarian standing in a shaft of grey light
+in this miserable state they came to the first village the peasants wives flocked about them and as it appeared through their disguise that they were people of some condition asked them what was the occasion of their travelling in a habit that did not seem to belong to them
+instead of answering the question they fell to weeping which only served to heighten the curiosity of the peasants and to move their compassion ganem's mother told them what she and her daughter had endured at which the good countrywomen were sensibly afflicted
+and endeavoured to comfort them they treated them as well as their poverty would permit took off their horse hair shifts which were very uneasy to them and put on them others which they gave them with shoes and something to cover their heads and save their hair
+jalib al koolloob and her mother departed from that village taking short journeys towards aleppo they used at dusk to retire near or into the mosques where they passed the night on the mat if there was any
+or else on the bare pavement and sometimes rested in the public places appointed for the use of travellers as for sustenance they did not want for they often came to places where bread boiled rice and other provisions are distributed to all travellers who desire it
+at length they came to aleppo but would not stay there and continuing their journey towards the euphrates crossed the river
+thence notwithstanding all they had endured they proceeded to bagdad that was the place they had fixed their thoughts upon
+but they hoped because they wished it their affection for him increasing instead of diminishing with their misfortunes their conversation was generally about him and they inquired for him of all they met but let us leave jalib al koolloob and her mother
+and return to fetnah she was still confined closely in the dark tower since the day that had been so fatal to ganem and herself however disagreeable as her prison was to her it was much less grievous than the thoughts of ganem's misfortune
+the uncertainty of whose fate was a killing affliction there was scarcely a moment in which she did not lament him
+and sometimes by those night walks came to the knowledge of things that happened in his court which would otherwise never have reached his ear one of those nights in his walk he happened to pass by the dark tower and fancying he heard somebody talk
+stops and drawing near the door to listen distinctly heard these words which fetnah whose thoughts were always on ganem uttered with a loud voice o ganem too unfortunate ganem where are you at this time
+whither has thy cruel fate led thee alas it is i that have made you wretched why did you not let me perish miserably rather than afford me your generous relief what melancholy return have you received for your care and respect
+the commander of the faithful who ought to have rewarded persecutes you and in requital for having always regarded me as a person reserved for his bed you lose your fortune and are obliged to seek for safety in flight
+how can you exculpate yourself when you shall appear with ganem before the tribunal of the supreme judge and the angels shall testify the truth before your face all the power you are now invested with and which makes almost the whole world tremble
+will not prevent your being condemned and punished for your violent and unjust proceedings here fetnah ceased her complaints her sighs and tears putting a stop to her utterance
+he plainly perceived that if what he had heard was true his favourite must be innocent and that he had been too hasty in giving such orders against ganem and his family
+he was overjoyed at the thought for he respected fetnah and had been much concerned at her disgrace therefore flying instantly to the tower madam said he to the favourite with such an air as expressed his satisfaction be pleased to follow me
+i hope you will never more return to this melancholy abode the commander of the faithful wishes to speak with you and i draw from this a happy omen
+she prostrated herself before him and so continued her face bathed in tears
+i think you charge me with violence and injustice who is he that notwithstanding the regard and respell he had for me is in a miserable condition speak freely
+you know the natural goodness of my disposition and that i love to do justice by these words
+commander of the true believers said she if i have let fall any word that is not agreeable to your majesty i most humbly beseech you to forgive me but he whose innocence and wretched state you desire to be informed of
+is ganem the unhappy son of abou ayoub late a rich merchant of damascus he saved my life from a grave and afforded me a sanctuary in his house
+i must own that from the first moment he saw me he perhaps designed to devote himself to me and conceived hopes of engaging me to admit his love i guessed at this by the eagerness which he shewed in entertaining me
+and doing me all the good offices i so much wanted under the circumstances i was then in but as soon as he heard that i had the honour to belong to you ah madam said he that which belongs to the master is forbidden to the slave from that moment
+i owe this justice to his virtue to declare his behaviour was always suitable to his words you commander of the true believers well know with what rigour you have treated him and you will answer for it before the tribunal of god
+i must make a confession which perhaps may displease you but i beg pardon of your majesty beforehand speak daughter said haroon al rusheed i forgive you all provided you conceal nothing from me well then replied fetnah
+let me inform you that ganem's respectful behaviour joined to all the good offices he did me gained him my esteem i went further yet you know the tyranny of love i felt some tender inclination rising in my breast
+he perceived it but far from availing himself of my frailty and notwithstanding the flame which consumed him he still remained steady in his duty and all that his passion could force from him were the words i have already repeated to your majesty
+that which belongs to the master is forbidden to the slave this ingenuous confession
+and enlarging on the obligations she owed to ganem but above all she highly extolled his discretion
+when she had done speaking
+i believe all you have told me but why was it so long before you let me hear from you was there any need of staying a whole month after my return before you sent me word where you were commander of the true believers answered fetnah
+ganem went abroad so very seldom that you need not wonder we were not the first that heard of your return besides ganem who took upon him to deliver the letter i wrote to nouron nihar
+was a long time before he could find an opportunity of putting it into her own hands it is enough fetnah
+i acknowledge my fault and would willingly make amends for it by heaping favours on the young merchant of damascus consider therefore what i can do for him ask what you think fit and i will grant it
+and rising again said commander of the true believers after returning your majesty thanks for ganem i most humbly entreat you to cause it to be published throughout your do minions that you pardon the son of abou ayoub and that he may safely come to you
+i must do more rejoined the prince in requital for having saved your life and the respect he has strewn for me to make amends for the loss of his fortune in short to repair the wrong i have done to himself and his family
+i give him to you for a husband
+she then withdrew into the apartment she had occupied before her melancholy adventure
+she spend the whole day and the thousand pieces of gold in giving alms at the mosques and returned to the palace in the evening
+the next day she took another purse of the same value and in the like equipage as the day before went to the square of the jewellers shops and stopping at the gateway without alighting sent one of her black eunuchs for the syndic or chief of them
+the syndic who was a most charitable man and spent above two thirds of his income in relieving poor strangers sick or in distress did not make fetnah wait knowing by her dress that she was a lady belonging to the palace i apply myself to you said she
+putting the purse into his hands as a person whose piety is celebrated throughout the city i desire you to distribute that gold among the poor strangers you relieve for i know you make it your business to assist those who apply to your charity
+i am also satisfied that you prevent their wants and that nothing is more grateful to you than to have an opportunity of relieving their misery madam answered the syndic i shall obey your commands with pleasure but if you desire to exercise your charity in person
+and will be pleased to step to my house
+i met them yesterday as they were coming into the city they were in a deplorable condition and it moved me the more because i thought they were persons of rank through all the rags that covered them notwithstanding the impression the sun has made on their faces
+whilst she herself led them to our warm bath and gave them clean linen
+because we wish to let them take some rest before we trouble them with our questions fetnah without knowing why felt a curiosity to see them the syndic would have conducted her to his house
+for they were the persons the syndic had been speaking of to fetnah the syndic's wife being informed by the slave that a lady from the palace was in her house was hastening to meet her but fetnah who had followed the slave did not give her time
+on her coming into the chamber the syndic's wife prostrated herself before her
+fetnah raised her up and said my good lady
+madam answered the syndic's wife they lie in those beds you see by each other
+good woman said she i come to offer you my assistance i have considerable interest in this city and may be of service to you and your companion madam answered ganem's mother
+that fetnah and the syndic's wife could not forbear letting fall some tears
+said to ganem's mother be so kind as to tell us your misfortunes and recount your story you cannot make the relation to any persons better disposed to use all possible means to comfort you
+madam replied abou ayoub's disconsolate widow a favourite of the commander of the true believers a lady whose name is fetnah is the occasion of all our misfortunes these words were like a thunderbolt to the favourite
+but suppressing her agitation and concern she suffered ganem's mother to proceed in the following manner
+i had a son called ganem who coming to trade at bagdad has been accused of carrying off fetnah
+and then to banish us out of syria for ever but how unworthy soever our usage has been
+what a pleasure would it be for his sister and me to see him again embracing him we should forget the loss of our property and all the evils we have suffered on his account alas
+no doubt of it said fetnah interrupting her there he is no more guilty than you are i can assure you of his innocence for i am that very fetnah you so much complain of who through some fatality in my stars
+have occasioned you so many misfortunes to me you must impute the loss of your son if he is no more but if i have occasioned your misfortune i can in some measure relieve it
+and doubt not he will do you as much good as he has done you injury you are no longer his enemies he waits for ganem to requite the service he has done me by uniting our fortunes he gives me to him for his consort
+therefore look on me as your daughter and permit me to vow eternal duty and affection having so said she bowed down on ganem's mother who was so astonished that she could return no answer
+fetnah held her long in her arms and only left her to embrace the daughter who sitting up
+the wealth ganem had in this city is not lost it is in my apartment in the palace but i know all the treasure of the world cannot comfort you without ganem if i may judge of you by myself blood is no less powerful than love in great minds
+but why should we despair of seeing him again we shall find him the happiness of meeting with you makes me conceive fresh hopes perhaps this is the last day of your sufferings and the beginning of a greater felicity than you enjoyed in damascus
+when ganem was with you fetnah would have proceeded but the syndic of the jewellers coming in interrupted her madam said he to her i come from seeing a very moving object it is a young man whom a camel driver had just carried to an hospital
+he was bound with cords on a camel because he had not strength enough to sit they had already unbound him and were carrying him into the hospital when i happened to pass by i went up to the young man viewed him attentively
+and fancied his countenance was not altogether unknown to me i asked him some questions concerning his family and his country but all the answers i could get were sighs and tears i took pity on him
+perceived that he had need to have particular care taken of him i would not permit him to be put into the hospital for i am too well acquainted with their way of managing the sick and am sensible of the incapacity of the physicians
+i have caused him to be brought to my own house by my slaves and they are now in a private room where i placed him putting on some of my own linen and treating him as they would do myself fetnah's heart beat at these words of the jeweller
+and she felt a sudden emotion for which she could not account shew me said she to the syndic into the sick man's room i should be glad to see him the syndic conducted her and whilst she was going thither
+whose eyes were closed his countenance pale disfigured and bathed in tears she gazed earnestly on him her heart beat and she fancied she beheld ganem but yet she would not believe her eyes
+though she found something of ganem in the objets she beheld yet in other respects he appeared so different that she durst not imagine it was he that lay before her unable however to withstand the earnest desire of being satisfied
+ganem said she with a trembling voice is it you i behold having spoken these words she stopped to give the young man time to answer but observing that he seemed insensible alas ganem added she
+it is not you that i address my imagination being overcharged with your image has given to a stranger a deceitful resemblance
+however indisposed would know the voice of fetnah at the name of fetnah ganem for it was really he
+ah madam said he by what miracle he could say no more such a sudden transport of joy seized him that he fainted away fetnah and the syndic did all they could to bring him to himself
+but as soon as they perceived he began to revive the syndic desired the lady to withdraw lest the sight of her should heighten his disorder the young man having recovered looked all around and not seeing what he sought exclaimed
+what is become of you charming fetnah did you really appear before my eyes or was it only an illusion no sir said the syndic it was no illusion it was i that caused the lady to withdraw
+but you shall see her again as soon as you are in a condition to bear the interview you now stand in need of rest and nothing ought to obstruct your taking it the situation of your affairs is altered since you are as i suppose that ganem
+in favour of whom the commander of the true believers has caused a proclamation to be made in bagdad declaring that he forgives him what is passed be satisfied for the present with knowing so much
+the lady who just now spoke to you will acquaint you with the rest therefore think of nothing but recovering your health i will contribute all in my power towards it having spoke these words he left ganem to take his rest
+exhausted by hard living and toil
+there was no occasion for the syndic's saying any more to ganem's mother as soon as she was told that she could not converse with her son without hazarding his life she ceased insisting to go and see him
+fetnah then said let us bless heaven for having brought us all together
+and tomorrow morning i will return to you this said she embraced the mother and the daughter and went away as soon as she came to the palace
+which was immediately granted and being brought into the prince's closet where he was alone she prostrated herself at his feet with her face on the ground according to custom he commanded her to rise and having made her sit down asked whether she had heard any news of ganem
+commander of the true believers said she i have been so successful that i have found him and also his mother and sister
+and she satisfied his inquiries saying so many things in commendation of ganem's mother and sister he desired to see them as well as the young merchant though haroon al rusheed was passionate and in his heat sometimes guilty of cruel actions
+having therefore no longer cause to doubt but that he had unjustly persecuted ganem and his family and had publicly wronged them he resolved to make them public satisfaction
+that your search has proved so successful it is a real satisfaction to me not so much for your sake as for my own i will keep the promise i have made you you shall marry ganem and i here declare you are no longer my slave you are free
+go back to that young merchant and as soon as he has recovered his health you shall bring him to me with his mother and sister the next morning early fetnah repaired to the syndic of the jewellers being impatient to hear of ganem's health and tell the mother and daughter the good news she had for them
+who told her that ganem had rested well that night and that his disorder proceeding altogether from melancholy the cause being removed he would soon recover his health
+rest and the good medicines he had taken but above all the different situation of his mind had wrought so good an effect that the syndic thought he might without danger see his mother his sister and his mistress provided he was prepared to receive them
+because there was ground to fear that not knowing his mother and sister were at bagdad the sight of them might occasion too great surprise and joy it was therefore resolved that fetnah should first go alone into ganem's chamber
+when she thought it was proper matters being so ordered the syndic announced fetnah's coming to the sick man who was so transported to see her that he was again near fainting away well ganem said she drawing near to his bed
+you have again found your fetnah whom you thought you had lost for ever
+what miracle has restored you to my sight
+he has doubtless listened to you you have dispelled his jealousy and he has restored you to his favour yes my dear ganem answered fetnah i have cleared myself before the commander of the true believers who to make amends for the wrong he has done you
+beautiful fetnah may i give credit to what you tell me
+nothing is more certain answered the lady
+who before caused search to be made for you to take away your life and who in his fury caused your mother and your sister to suffer a thousand indignities desires now to see you that he may reward the respect you had for him
+and there is no question but that he will load your family with favours
+and he could not forbear letting fall some tears at the relation notwithstanding the thoughts which arose in his mind at the prospect of being married to his mistress but when fetnah informed him that they were actually in bagdad and in the same house with him
+he appeared so impatient to see them that the favourite could no longer defer giving him the satisfaction and accordingly called them in they were at the door waiting for that moment they entered went up to ganem and embracing him in their turns
+the syndic himself and his wife were so moved at the spectacle that they could not forbear weeping nor sufficiently admire the secret workings of providence which had brought together into their house four persons whom fortune had so cruelly persecuted
+when they had dried up their tears ganem drew them afresh by the recital of what he had suffered from the day he left fetnah till the moment the syndic brought him to his house he told them that having taken refuge in a small village he there fell sick
+that some charitable peasants had taken care of him but finding he did not recover a camel driver had undertaken to carry him to the hospital at bagdad
+and how she had cleared herself in conclusion when they had related what accidents had befallen them fetnah said let us bless heaven which has brought us all together again and let us think of nothing but the happiness that awaits us
+as soon as ganem has recovered his health
+but i will go and make some provision for them this said she went to the palace and soon returned with a purse containing a thousand pieces of gold which she delivered to the syndic desiring him to buy apparel for the mother and daughter
+the syndic who was a man of a good taste chose such as were very handsome and had them made up with all expedition they were finished in three days and ganem finding himself strong enough prepared to go abroad
+while he was making ready with his mother and sister the grand vizier jaaffier came to the syndic's house he had come on horseback attended by a great number of officers sir said he to ganem as soon as he entered
+i am come from the commander of the true believers my master and yours the orders i have differ much from those which i do not wish to revive in your memory i am to bear you company
+ganem returned no other answer to the vizier's compliment than by profoundly bowing his head
+which he managed very gracefully the mother and daughter were mounted on mules belonging to the palace and whilst fetnah on another mule led them by a bye way to the prince's court jaaffier conducted ganem and brought him into the hall of audience
+arabs persians egyptians africans and syrians of his own dominions not to mention strangers when the vizier had conducted ganem to the foot of the throne
+i am glad to see you and desire to hear from your own mouth where you found my favourite and all that you have done for her ganem obeyed
+after which he said to him ganem i will have you live in my court commander of the true believers answered the young merchant a slave has no will but his master's on whom his life and fortune depend
+and assigned him a considerable pension he then descended from his throne and causing only ganem and the grand vizier follow him retired into his own apartment
+not questioning but that fetnah was in waiting with abou ayoub's widow and daughter he caused them to be called in they prostrated themselves before him he made them rise and was so charmed by jalib al koolloob's beauty
+that after viewing her very attentively he said i am so sorry for having treated your charms so unworthily that i owe them such a satisfaction as may surpass the injury i have done i take you to wife
+who shall become the first cause of your good fortune as she was of your past sufferings this is not all added he turning towards ganem's mother you are still young i believe you will not disdain to be allied to my grand vizier
+i give you to jaaffier and you fetnah to ganem let a cauzee and witnesses be called and the three contracts be drawn up and signed immediately
+but he was resolved to marry her haroon thought this such an extraordinary story that he ordered his historiographer to commit it to writing with all its circumstances
+after the sermon as the sermon drew to a close and the mist of his emotion began to disperse individual faces of his audience again dawned out on the preacher's ken
+mister drew's head was down as i have always said certain things he had been taught in his youth and had practised in his manhood certain mean ways counted honest enough in the trade had become to him
+regarded from the ideal point of the divine in
+of the advantages he took for he knew that he had known them such as shrunk from the light not coming
+he was now doing his best to banish them from his business and yet they were a painful presence to his spirit so grievous to be borne
+from them by the indwelling presence of the god of all living men and true merchants was a blessedness unspeakable small was the suspicion in the abbey church of olaston that morning
+battery of sin sprung suffering withstanding and enduring and stilling the recoil of the awful force wherewith his father had launched the worlds and given birth to human souls
+with wills that might become free as his own while wingfold had been speaking in general terms with the race in his mind's and the congregation in his body's eye he had yet thought more of one soul with its one crime and its intolerable burden
+than all the rest leopold was ever present to him and while he strove to avoid absorption in a personal interest however justifiable it was of necessity
+of his utterance at times indeed he felt as if he were speaking to him immediately and to him only at others although then he saw her no more than him
+that he was comforting the sister individually in holding out to her brother the mighty hope of a restored purity and when once more his mind could receive the messages
+and the firm mouth had forgotten itself into a tremulous form which the stillness of absorption had there for the moment fixed but even already although he could not yet read it upon her
+countenance a snake had begun to lift its head from the chaotic swamp which runs a creek at least into every soul the rudimentary desolation a remnant of the time
+when the world was without form and void and the snake said why then did he not speak like that to my leopold why did he not comfort him with such a good hope
+well becoming a priest of the gentle jesus or if he fancied he must speak of confession why did he not speak of it in plain honest terms instead of suggesting the idea of it so that the poor boy
+imagined it came from his own spirit and must therefore be obeyed as the will of god so said the snake and by the time helen had walked home with her aunt the glow had sunk from her soul and
+a gray wintry mist had settled down upon her spirit and she said to herself that if this last hope in george should fail her she would not allow the matter to trouble her any farther
+she was a free woman and as leopold had chosen other counsellors had thus declared her unworthy of confidence and after all that she had suffered and done for love of him
+had she not done enough would even her father require more of her than she had already done and endured
+from the couch she took no notice that he had got up and dressed while she was at church and he knew that a cloud had come between them and that after all she had borne and done for him he and his sister were now farther apart
+for the time at least than when oceans lay betwixt their birth and their meeting and he found himself looking back with vague longing even to the terrible old house of glaston
+and the sharing of their agony therein his eyes followed her as she walked across to the dressing room and the tears rose and filled them but he said nothing and the sister who all the time of the sermon
+had been filled with wave upon wave of wishing that poldie could hear this could hear that could have such a thought to comfort him such a lovely word to drive the horror from his soul
+now cast on him a chilly glance and said never a word of the things to which she had listened with such heavings of the spirit ocean for she felt with an instinct more righteous than her will
+that they would but strengthen him in his determination to do whatever the teacher of them might approve as she repassed him to go to the drawing room she did indeed say a word of kindness but it was in a forced tone
+and was only about his dinner his eyes over flowed but he shut his lips so tight that his mouth grew grim with determination and no more tears came to the friend who joined her at the church door and in george
+in order thereby to attain to a better innocence than without it could ever be theirs how far she mistook or how far she knew or suspected that she spoke falsely i will not pretend to know but although she spoke as she did
+there was something either in the curate or in the sermon that had quieted her a little and she was less contemptuous in her condemnation of him than usual happily both for himself and others the curate
+was not one of those who cripple the truth and blind their own souls
+occasion to the dishonest to cavil and condemn imagine saint paul having a prevision of how he would be misunderstood and heeding it what would then have become of all those his most magnificent outbursts and would any amount of
+apostolic carefulness have protected him i suspect it would only have given rise to more vulgar misunderstandings and misrepresentations still to explain to him who loves not is but to give him the more
+plentiful material for misinterpretation let a man have truth in the inward parts and out of the abundance of his heart let his mouth speak if then he should have ground to fear honest misunderstanding
+let him preach again to enforce the truth for which he is jealous and if it should seem to any that the two utterances need reconciling let those who would have them consistent reconcile them for themselves
+that after an early breakfast he had mounted helen's mare and set out to call on mister hooker
+the groom took his horse in the street and he came into the drawing room helen hastened to meet him well george she said anxiously oh it's all right will be at least i am sure
+i will tell you all about it in the garden after dinner aunt has the good sense never to interrupt us there he added i'll just run and show myself to leopold he must not suspect that i am of your party and
+were before him it was a part of his destiny to become the champion of the anti slavery cause in the national legislature
+was to present fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens of pennsylvania praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the district of columbia he simply moved their reference to the committee on the district of columbia
+that he had always cherished an abhorrence of slavery and a bitter antipathy to slave holders as a class is sufficiently indicated by many chance remarks scattered
+multiplying for the purpose of spreading and increasing a popular hostility towards the great
+as would insure definite results instead of being wasted in endeavors which as yet were impossible of achievement drawing his duty from his situation and surroundings he left to others to younger men and
+outside the walls of congress the business of firing the people and stirring popular opinion and sympathy he was set to do that portion of the work of abolition which was to be done in congress
+to encounter the mighty efforts which were made to stifle the great humanitarian cry in the halls of the national legislature this was quite as much as one man was equal to
+overawe him nor loneliness dispirit him he was probably the most formidable fighter in debate of whom parliamentary records preserve the memory
+the leading lawyers the rich merchants the successful manufacturers not only opposed to him but entertaining towards him sentiments of personal dislike and even vindictiveness this stratum of the community
+having a natural distaste for disquieting agitation and influenced by class feeling the gentlemen of the north sympathizing with the aristocracy of the south could not make common cause with anti slavery people fortunately
+was after all of trifling consequence to him and of no serious influence upon the course of history the old new england instinct was in him as it was in the mass of the people that instinct made him the real exponent of new england thought
+when his fellow representatives almost to a man deserted him he was sustained by many a token of sympathy and admiration coming from among the people at large
+quite in the wrong and predestined to well merited defeat
+mister adams again presented two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the district of columbia but without giving rise to much excitement the
+at the next session of congress they concluded to try to stop it and their ingenious scheme was to make congress shot proof so to speak against such missiles on january fourth eighteen thirty six mister adams presented an abolition petition
+but in a moment mister glascock of georgia moved that the petition be not received debate sprang up on a point of order and two days later before the question of reception was determined a resolution was offered by mister jarvis of maine
+declaring that the house would not entertain any petitions for the abolition
+one that congress had no power to interfere with slavery in any state two that congress ought not to interfere with slavery in the district of columbia
+that whereas the agitation of the subject was disquieting and objectionable all petitions
+they had assumed an untenable position henceforth
+mister adams had a support among the people at large vastly greater than he could have enjoyed as the opponent of slavery as his adversaries had shaped the issue he was predestined to victory in a free country
+having constituted a vote mister adams called attention to the omission the clerk by direction of the speaker thereupon called his name
+that it was not in order might be entered on the journal
+he brought up the matter again one of his opponents made a false step and mister adams bantered him upon it until the other was provoked into saying that if the question ever came to the issue of war the southern people
+no one ever gained much in a war of words with this ever ready and merciless tongue
+incipient stage of such a conflict that tests the mettle of the little band of innovators when it grows into a great party question much less courage is demanded the mere presentation of an
+as then made up the house of representatives wore hardly even upon the iron temper and inflexible disposition of mister adams the most insignificant error of conduct in me at this time he writes in april
+eighteen thirty seven would be my irredeemable ruin in this world and both the ruling political parties are watching with intense anxiety for some overt act by me to set the whole pack of their hireling presses upon me
+the extremists who had cast aside all regard for what was practicable and who utterly scorned to consider the feasibility or the consequences of measures
+urging him to action which would only have destroyed him forever in political life would have stripped him of his influence exiled him from that position in congress where he could render the most efficient service that was in him
+i have gone he said as far upon this article the abolition of slavery as the public opinion of the free portion of the union will bear
+and so far that scarcely a slave holding member of the house dares to vote with me upon any question i have as yet been thoroughly sustained by my own state but one step further and i hazard my own standing and influence there
+my own final overthrow and the cause of liberty itself for an indefinite time certainly for more than my remnant of life were there in the house one member capable of taking the lead in this cause of universal emancipation
+which is moving onward in the world and in this country i would withdraw from the contest which will rage with increasing fury as it draws to its crisis but for the management of which my age infirmities and approaching end
+totally disqualify me there is no such man in the house september fifteenth eighteen thirty seven he says i have been for some time occupied day and night
+no returned to my request from the servile side of the house the next day he presented fifty one more like documents and notes having previously presented one hundred and fifty more
+in december eighteen thirty seven still at this same work he made a hard but fruitless effort
+all laid on the table january fifteenth he presented fifty more january twenty eighth he received thirty one petitions and spent that day and the next in assorting and filing these and others which he previously had amounting in all to one hundred and twenty
+february fourteenth in the same year was a field day in the petition campaign he presented then no less than three hundred and fifty petitions all but three or four of which bore more or less
+i said that in another part of the capitol it had been threatened that if a northern abolitionist should go to north carolina and utter a principle of the declaration of independence' here a loud cry of order order burst forth in which the speaker yelled the loudest
+i waited till it subsided and then resumed that if they could catch him they would hang him i said this so as to be distinctly heard throughout the hall the renewed
+order notwithstanding the speaker then said the gentleman from massachusetts will take his seat
+and presented another petition he did not dare tell me
+let us enter the elegant building occupied by his newspaper every portion is interesting the rooms where editors and assistants work are large light and airy and as tasteful as parlors alas how unhomelike and barren
+notwithstanding that the typographical union had formerly sanctioned a reduction and notwithstanding that the reduced scale was operative in every printing office in philadelphia except his own he said my business is prosperous why should not my men share in my prosperity
+was commented on most favorably at home
+amounting of course to many thousands of dollars annually mister childs has taken care of many who have become old or disabled in his service the foreman of his composing room had worked for him less than twelve months before he failed in health
+for years this man has drawn his weekly pay though never going to the establishment this is indeed practical christianity besides caring for the living in eighteen sixty eight this wise employer of labor
+purchased two thousand feet in woodlands for a printers cemetery and gave it to the philadelphia typographical society with a sum of money to keep the grounds in good order yearly the first person buried beyond the handsome marble gothic gateway was a destitute and aged printer
+who had died at the almshouse and whose dying message to mister childs was that he could not bear to fill a pauper's grave his wish was cordially granted but after seeing the admirable provision made for his workmen we must enter the private office of mister childs
+he is most accessible to all with no airs of superior position welcoming persons from every clime daily
+he listens courteously to any requests and then bids you make yourself at home in this elegant office that certainly has no superior in the world perhaps no rival
+the room itself in the queen anne style with exquisite wood carving marble tiles brass ornaments and painted glass is a gem here is his motto a noble one and thoroughly american
+warwickshire the seat of the earls craven fitted up by one of its lords for the reception of queen elizabeth over a dozen valuable clocks are seen one made in amsterdam over two hundred years ago
+which besides the time of day gives the phases of the moon the days of the week and the month another a clock constructed by david rittenhouse the astronomer of the revolution in the old colonial days which plays a great variety of music
+has a little planetarium attached and nearly six thousand teeth in wheels it was made for joseph potts who paid six hundred and forty dollars for it the spanish minister in seventeen seventy eight offered eight hundred for it that he might present it to his sovereign
+and were taken by him to the hermitage here also is a photograph of old ironsides stewart in a frame made from the frigate constitution in which great victories were achieved besides many portraits given by famous people with their autographs
+mister childs bids us take our choice of some rare china cups and saucers we choose one dainty with red birds and carry it away as a pleasant remembrance of a princely giver in a princely apartment
+where the well known newspaper the public ledger was published he was ambitious as who is not that comes to prominence and one day he made the resolution that he would sometime be the owner of this great paper and its building
+his habits were the best and why should not such a boy succeed in three years when he was twenty one he had become the head of a publishing house
+allibone dedicated his great work dictionary of english and american authors to the energetic and appreciative young publisher he had now acquired wealth sooner almost than he could have hoped before him were bright prospects
+as a publisher but the prize that he had set out to win was to own the public ledger the opportunity came in december eighteen sixty four but his paper was losing money his friends advised against taking such a burden he would surely fail
+he bought the property doubled the subscription rates lowered the advertising excluded everything questionable from the columns of his paper made his editorials brief yet comprehensive until under his judicious management the journal reached the large circulation
+of ninety thousand daily for ten years he has given the ledger almanac to every subscriber costing five thousand dollars annually the yearly profits it is stated have been four hundred thousand dollars
+all this has not been accomplished without thought and labor fortune of course had come and fame he built homes elegant ones in philadelphia and at newport but these are not simply places in which to spend money but centres
+of hospitality and culture his library is one of the most charming places in this country the wood work is carved ebony with gold the bookshelves six feet high on every side and the ceiling built in sunken panels
+blue and gold in the centre is a table made from ebony brought from africa by paul du chaillu
+of the standard authors but other things are of deeper interest
+james russell lowell's june idyl begun in eighteen fifty and finished eighteen years afterward the manuscript of james fenimore cooper's life of captain richard somers and edgar allan poe's
+enough to fill two large volumes on the terms which you allowed me before that is you receive all profits and allow me twenty copies for distribution to friends from this it seems that poe had the usual struggles of literary people
+written over with dark blue ink with many erasures and changes here are also fifty six volumes of dickens works with an autograph letter in each from the author to mister childs
+don juan now we look upon the smallest book ever printed dante's divina commedia bound in turkey gilt less than two and one fourth inches long by one and one half inches wide the collection of mister and missus s c hall
+letters and manuscripts from lamb hawthorne mary somerville harriet
+coleridge wordsworth browning and hundreds of others is of almost priceless value in eighteen seventy nine missus hall gave the bible
+as the best and most valuable offering she could make to him as a grateful tribute of respect regard and esteem another valuable book is made up of the portraits of the presidents with an autograph letter from each
+in eighteen seventy six a work on his empire with his picture and his autograph george peabody sat for a full length portrait for mister childs the album of missus childs contains the autographs of a great number of the leading men and women
+of the world one could linger here for days but we must see the lovely country seat called wootton some distance out from the city
+and exquisite plants brought over from south america and africa the farm adjoining is a delight to see here is the dairy built of white flintstone while the milkroom has stained glass windows as though it were a chapel
+lord dufferin sir stafford northcote herbert spencer john waller m p of the london times dean stanley thomas hughes dickens grant evarts
+the pennsylvania museum and the school of industrial arts he gave ten thousand dollars for a centennial exposition he has been one of general grant's most generous helpers yet while doing for the great he does not forget the unknown
+he gives free excursions to poor children a dinner annually to the newsboys and aids hundreds who are in need of an education he has placed a stained glass window in westminster abbey in commemoration of george herbert and william
+integrity and true faith in himself
+his ability to apply the power of money in advancing the well being of his fellow men is unrivalled he is naturally kind and sympathetic and these generous feelings are exalted not depressed by his success in accumulating a fortune
+like man in the classification of animals he forms a genus in himself he stands alone there is not another in the wide world like him
+february third eighteen ninety four from the effects of a stroke of paralysis sustained at the ledger office on january eighteenth
+of the passing of the first born
+thou hast forgotten o summer swallow but the world shall end when i forget swinburne
+sang the bit of yellow paper that fluttered into my room one brown october morning then the fear of fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of creation i wondered how it looked
+while i was unconsciously wandering i fled to my wife and child repeating the while to myself half wonderingly wife and child wife and child
+fled fast and faster than boat and steam car and yet must ever impatiently await them away from the hard voiced city
+into my own berkshire hills that sit all sadly guarding the gates of massachusetts up the stairs i ran to the wan mother and whimpering babe to the sanctuary on whose altar a life at my bidding
+had offered itself to win a life and won what is this tiny formless thing this newborn wail from an unknown world all head and voice
+i handle it curiously and watch perplexed its winking breathing and sneezing i did not love it then it seemed a ludicrous thing to love but her i loved
+my girl mother she whom now i saw unfolding like the glory of the morning the transfigured woman through her i came to love the wee thing as it grew strong
+as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half formed word and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life how beautiful he was
+held him and glanced at the hot red soil of georgia and the breathless city of a hundred hills and felt a vague unrest why was his hair
+i saw as it fell across my baby the shadow of the veil within the veil was he born said i and there within shall he live a negro and a negro's son
+bitterly he unbowed pride of a hunted race clinging with that tiny dimpled hand ah wearily to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful
+and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie
+i saw the shadow of the veil as it passed over my baby i saw the cold city towering above the blood red land i held my face beside his little cheek
+showed him the star children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash and stilled with an even song the unvoiced terror of my life so sturdy and masterful he grew so filled with bubbling life
+he tinged her every dream and idealized her every effort no hands but hers must touch and garnish those little limbs no dress or frill must touch them that had not wearied her fingers
+no voice but hers could coax him off to dreamland and she and he together spoke some soft and unknown tongue and in it held communion i too mused above his little white bed
+through the newer strength of his saw the dream of my black fathers stagger a step onward in the wild phantasm of the world heard in his baby voice the voice of the prophet
+that was to rise within the veil and so we dreamed and loved and planned by fall and winter and the full flush of the long southern spring
+till the hot winds rolled from the fetid gulf till the roses shivered and the still stern sun quivered its awful light over the hills of atlanta and then one night the little feet pattered wearily to the wee white bed
+and the tiny hands trembled and a warm flushed face tossed on the pillow and we knew baby was sick ten days he lay there a swift week
+out into the starlight i crept to rouse the gray physician the shadow of death the shadow of death the hours trembled on the night listened
+and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train the day changed not
+the same tall trees peeped in at the windows the same green grass glinted in the setting sun only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing a childless mother
+i shirk not i long for work i pant for a life full of striving i am no coward to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm nor even quail before the awful shadow of the veil but hearken o death
+is not this my life hard enough is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough but that thou must needs enter here thou o death
+and baby boy wast thou so jealous of one little coign of happiness that thou must needs enter there thou o death a perfect life was his
+all joy and love with tears to make it brighter sweet as a summer's day beside the housatonic the world loved him the women kissed his curls the men looked gravely into his wonderful eyes
+and the children hovered and fluttered about him i can see him now changing like the sky from sparkling laughter to darkening frowns and then to wondering thoughtfulness as he watched the world
+he knew no color line poor dear and the veil though it shadowed him had not yet darkened half his sun he loved the white matron he loved his black nurse
+and in his little world walked souls alone uncolored and unclothed i yea all men are larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life
+she who in simple clearness of vision sees beyond the stars said when he had flown he will be happy there he ever loved beautiful things
+and i far more ignorant and blind by the web of mine own weaving sit alone winding words and muttering if still he be and he be there and there be a there
+let him be happy o fate blithe was the morning of his burial with bird and song and sweet smelling flowers the trees whispered to the grass
+they did not say much those pale faced hurrying men and women they did not say much they only glanced and said niggers
+in vain for where o god beneath thy broad blue sky shall my dark baby rest in peace where reverence dwells and goodness and a freedom that is free
+all that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart nay blame me not if i see the world thus darkly through the veil and my soul whispers ever to me saying not dead
+no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood fool that i was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the veil i might have known that yonder deep
+which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart for what forsooth shall a negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows well sped my boy
+before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence had held your ideals unattainable and taught you to cringe and bow
+better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you idle words
+aye and found it lighter too some day for surely surely this is not the end
+surely there shall yet dawn some mighty morning to lift the veil and set the prisoned free not for me i shall die in my bonds but for fresh young souls who have not known the night
+and waken to the morning a morning when men ask of the workman not is he white but can he work when men ask artists not are they black but do they know
+some morning this may be long long years to come but now there wails on that dark shore within the veil the same deep voice thou shalt forego
+and all have i foregone at that command and with small complaint all save that fair young form that lies so coldly wed with death
+in the nest i had builded if one must have gone why not i why may i not rest me from this restlessness and sleep from this wide waking
+was not the world's alembic time in his young hands and is not my time waning are there so many workers in the vineyard that the fair promise of this little body
+could lightly be tossed away the wretched of my race that line the alleys of the nation sit fatherless and unmothered
+sleep then child sleep till i sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet
+this was indeed the egypt of the confederacy the rich granary whence potatoes and corn and cotton poured out to the famished and ragged confederate troops as they battled for a cause lost long before eighteen sixty one
+sheltered and secure it became the place of refuge for families wealth and slaves yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell the red clay sub soil already had begun to peer above the loam
+the harder the slaves were driven the more careless and fatal was their farming then came the revolution of war and emancipation the bewilderment of reconstruction and now what is the egypt of the confederacy
+and yonder in the field is her dark young husband hoeing to support her at thirty cents a day without board across the way is gatesby brown and tall lord of two thousand acres shrewdly won and held
+there is a store conducted by his black son
+five miles below here is a town owned and controlled by one white new englander he owns almost a rhode island county with thousands of acres and hundreds of black laborers
+their cabins look better than most and the farm with machinery and fertilizers is much more business like than any in the county although the manager drives hard bargains in wages when now we turn and look five miles above
+there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes two of blacks and three of whites and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago so he was hanged for rape
+and here too is the high whitewashed fence of the stockade as the county prison is called the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail
+and they not because they are guilty but because the state needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor immigrants are heirs of the slave baron in dougherty and as we ride westward by wide stretching cornfields and stubby orchards of peach and pear
+we see on all sides within the circle of dark forest a land of canaan here and there are tales of projects for money getting born in the swift days of reconstruction
+improvement companies wine companies mills and factories most failed and foreigners fell heir it is a beautiful land this dougherty west of the flint the forests are wonderful
+the solemn pines have disappeared and this is the oakey woods with its wealth of hickories beeches oaks and palmettos but a pall of debt hangs over the beautiful land the merchants are in debt to the wholesalers
+the planters are in debt to the merchants the tenants owe the planters and laborers bow and bend beneath the burden of it all here and there a man has raised his head above these murky waters
+we passed one fenced stock farm with grass and grazing cattle that looked very home like after endless corn and cotton here and there are black free holders there is the gaunt dull black jackson with his hundred acres
+i says look up if you don't look up you can't get up remarks jackson philosophically and he's gotten up dark carter's neat barns would do credit to new england his master helped him to get a start
+but when the black man died last fall the master's sons immediately laid claim to the estate and them white folks will get it too said my yellow gossip i turn from these well tended acres with a comfortable feeling that the negro is rising
+even then however the fields as we proceed begin to redden and the trees disappear rows of old cabins appear filled with renters and laborers cheerless bare and dirty for the most part although here and there
+so he moved here where the rent is higher the land poorer and the owner inflexible he rents a forty dollar mule for twenty dollars a year poor lad a slave at twenty two this plantation owned now by a foreigner
+was a part of the famous bolton estate after the war it was for many years worked by gangs of negro convicts and black convicts then were even more plentiful than now it was a way of making negroes work and the question of guilt was a minor one
+hard tales of cruelty and mistreatment of the chained freemen are told but the county authorities were deaf until the free labor market was nearly ruined by wholesale migration then they took the convicts from the plantations
+but not until one of the fairest regions of the oakey woods had been ruined and ravished into a red waste out of which only a yankee or an immigrant could squeeze more blood from debt cursed tenants no wonder that luke black
+slow dull and discouraged shuffles to our carriage and talks hopelessly why should he strive every year finds him deeper in debt how strange that georgia the world heralded refuge of poor debtors
+should bind her own to sloth and misfortune as ruthlessly as ever england did the poor land groans with its birth pains and brings forth scarcely a hundred pounds of cotton to the acre where fifty years ago
+twenty years yonder sunken cheeked old black man has labored under that system and now turned day laborer is supporting his wife and boarding himself on his wages of a dollar and a half a week received only part of the year
+the bolton convict farm formerly included the neighboring plantation here it was that the convicts were lodged in the great log prison still standing a dismal place it still remains with rows of ugly huts
+unshaded with no charm of past association only a memory of forced human toil now then and before the war they are not happy these black men whom we meet throughout this region
+there is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation negro at best the natural good nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom
+and still having nothing to be sure he had given four children a common school training and perhaps if the new fence law had not allowed unfenced crops in west dougherty he might have raised a little stock and kept ahead
+as it is he is hopelessly in debt disappointed and embittered he stopped us to inquire after the black boy in albany whom it was said a policeman had shot and killed for loud talking on the sidewalk
+and then he said slowly let a white man touch me and he dies i don't boast this i don't say it around loud or before the children but i mean it
+and we passed on now sears
+happy well yes he laughed and flipped pebbles and thought the world was as it was he had worked here twelve years and has nothing but a mortgaged mule children yes seven but they hadn't been to school this year
+couldn't afford books and clothes and couldn't spare their work there go part of them to the fields now three big boys astride mules and a strapping girl with bare brown legs
+here and there we meet distinct characters quite out of the ordinary one came out of a piece of newly cleared ground making a wide detour to avoid the snakes he was an old hollow cheeked man with a drawn
+made nothing for two years but i reckon i've got a crop now the cotton looked tall and rich and we praised it he curtsied low and then bowed almost to the ground
+with an imperturbable gravity that seemed almost suspicious then he continued my mule died last week a calamity in this land equal to a devastating fire in town
+but a white man loaned me another then he added eyeing us
+the whistle place which includes his bit of land was bought soon after the war by an english syndicate the dixie cotton and corn company a marvellous deal of style their factor put on with his servants and coach and six so much so
+that the concern soon landed in inextricable bankruptcy nobody lives in the old house now but a man comes each winter out of the north and collects his high rents i know not which are the more touching such old empty houses
+or the homes of the masters sons sad and bitter tales lie hidden back of those white doors tales of poverty of struggle of disappointment a revolution such as that of sixty three is a terrible thing
+for money money where was it to come from and so the son rose in the night and killed his baby and killed his wife and shot himself dead and the world passed on
+i remember wheeling around a bend in the road beside a graceful bit of forest and a singing brook a long low house faced us with porch and flying pillars great oaken door and a broad lawn shining in the evening sun
+but the window panes were gone the pillars were worm eaten and the moss grown roof was falling in half curiously i peered through the unhinged door and saw where on the wall across the hall
+welcome quite a contrast to the southwestern part of dougherty county is the northwest soberly timbered in oak and pine it has none of that half tropical luxuriance of the southwest
+then too there are fewer signs of a romantic past and more of systematic modern land grabbing and money getting white people are more in evidence here
+and there were fences and meadows here and there most of this land was poor and beneath the notice of the slave baron before the war since then his poor relations and foreign immigrants have seized it
+the returns of the farmer are too small to allow much for wages and yet he will not sell off small farms there is the negro sanford he has worked fourteen years as overseer on the ladson place and
+but the owner will not sell off a few acres two children a boy and a girl are hoeing sturdily in the fields on the farm where corliss works he is smooth faced and brown and is fencing up his pigs
+for pa willis was the tall and powerful black moses who led the negroes for a generation and led them well he was a baptist preacher and when he died two thousand black people followed him to the grave and now they preach his funeral sermon each year
+a weazened sharp featured little woman who curtsied quaintly as we greeted her further on lives jack delson the most prosperous negro farmer in the county it is a joy to meet him
+a great broad shouldered handsome black man intelligent and jovial six hundred and fifty acres he owns and has eleven black tenants a neat and tidy home nestled in a flower garden and a little store stands beside it
+we pass the munson place where a plucky white widow is renting and struggling and the eleven hundred acres of the sennet plantation with its negro overseer
+then the character of the farms begins to change
+the overseers are white and the cabins are bare board houses scattered here and there the rents are high and day laborers and contract hands abound it is a keen hard struggle for living here
+and few have time to talk tired with the long ride we gladly drive into gillonsville it is a silent cluster of farmhouses standing on the crossroads with one of its stores closed and the other kept by a negro preacher
+it was one of those scenes one cannot soon forget a wide low little house whose motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch there we sat after the long hot drive drinking cool water
+the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher and finally the neat
+matronly preacher's wife plump yellow and intelligent own land said the wife well only this house then she added quietly we did buy seven hundred acres across up yonder and paid for it but they cheated us out of it
+nearly a year went by lady isabel carlyle had spent it on the continent that refuge for such fugitives now moving about from place to place with her companion now stationary and alone quite half the time
+taking one absence with the other he had been away from her chiefly in paris pursuing his own course and his own pleasure how fared it with lady isabel just as it must be expected to fare and does fare
+when a high principled gentlewoman falls from her pedestal never had she experienced a moment's calm or peace or happiness since the fatal night of quitting her home she had taken a blind leap in a moment of wild passion
+when instead of the garden of roses it had been her persuader's pleasure to promise her she would fall into but which in truth she had barely glanced at for that had not been her moving motive
+she had found herself plunged into a yawning abyss of horror from which there was never more any escape never more never more the very instant the very night of her departure she awoke to what she had done the guilt
+whose aspect had been shunned in the prospective assumed at once its true frightful color the blackness of darkness and a lively remorse a never dying anguish took possession of her soul forever oh reader believe me
+lady wife mother should you ever be tempted to abandon your home so will you awake whatever trials may be the lot of your married life though they may magnify themselves to your crushed spirit as beyond the nature
+the endurance of woman to bear resolve to bear them fall down upon your knees and pray to be enabled to bear them pray for patience pray for strength to resist the demon that would tempt you to escape bear unto death
+rather than forfeit your fair name and your good conscience for be assured that the alternative if you do rush on to it will be found worse than death poor thing poor lady isabel she had sacrificed husband children
+reputation home all that makes life of value to woman she had forfeited her duty to god had deliberately broken his commandments for the one poor miserable mistake of flying with francis levison
+but the instant the step was irrevocable the instant she had left the barrier behind repentance set in even in the first days of her departure in the fleeting moments of abandonment when it may be supposed she might momentarily forget conscience
+it was sharply wounding her with its adder stings and she knew that her whole future existence whether spent with that man or without him would be a dark course of gnawing retribution nearly a year went by save some six or eight weeks
+furnished in the vicinity of the place grenette a windy old house it was full of doors and windows chimneys and cupboards and he said he should remain there lady isabel remonstrated
+she wished to go farther on where they might get quicker news from england but her will now was as nothing she was looking like the ghost of her former self talk of her having looked ill when she took that voyage over the water with mister carlyle you should have seen her now
+misery marks the countenance worse than sickness her face was white and worn her hands were thin her eyes were sunken and surrounded by a black circle care was digging caves for them
+a stranger might have attributed these signs to the state of her health she knew better knew that they were the effects of her wretched mind and heart it was very late for breakfast but why should she rise early only to drag through another endless day
+languidly she took her seat at the table just as captain levison's servant a frenchman whom he had engaged in paris entered the room with two letters point de gazette pierre
+and all the time the sly fox had got the times in his coat pocket but he was only obeying the orders of his master it had been captain levison's recent pleasure that the newspapers should not be seen by lady isabel until he had over looked them
+you will speedily gather his motive pierre departed toward captain levison's room and lady isabel took up the letters and examined their superscription with interest it was known to her that mister carlyle had not lost a moment
+in seeking a divorce and the announcement that it was granted was now daily expected she was anxious for it anxious that captain levison should render her the only reparation in his power before the birth of her unhappy child
+little thought she that there was not the least intention on his part to make her reparation any more than he had made it to others who had gone before her she had become painfully aware of the fact that the man for whom she had chosen to sacrifice herself
+the decked out dandies before the world are frequently the greatest slovens in domestic privacy he wished her good morning in a careless tone of apathy and she as apathetically answered to it pierre says there are some letters he began
+last out a whole ten months you are in egregious error compliments the very opposite to honey and sweetness have generally supervened long before try it if you don't believe me two letters she continued
+and they are both in the same handwriting your solicitors i believe up went his hand at the last word and he made a sort of grab at the letters stalked to the farthest window opened it and glanced over its contents sir
+we beg to inform you that the suit carlyle vs carlyle is at an end the divorce was pronounced without opposition according to your request we hasten to forward you the earliest intimation of the fact we are sir faithfully yours moss and grab
+it was over then and all claim to the name of carlyle was declared to have been forfeited by the lady isabel forever captain levison folded up the letter and placed it securely in an inner pocket is there any news she asked
+news of the divorce i mean tush was the response of captain levison as if wishing to imply that the divorce was yet a far off affair
+sir after sending off our last dated to day we received tidings of the demise of sir peter levison your grand uncle he expired this afternoon in town where he had come for the benefit of medical advice
+we have much pleasure in congratulating you upon your accession to the title and estates and beg to state that should it not be convenient to you to visit england at present we will be happy to transact all necessary matters for you
+on your favoring us with instructions and we remain sir most faithfully yours moss and grab sir francis levison bart the outside of the letter was superscribed as the other f levison esquire
+at last thank the pigs was the gentleman's euphonious expression as he tossed the letter open on the breakfast table the divorce is granted feverishly uttered lady isabel he made no reply but seated himself to breakfast
+you may drop that odious title isabel which has stuck to me too long i own a better now what one pray you can look and see lady isabel took up the letter and read it sir francis swallowed down his coffee and rang the
+table hand bell the only bell you generally meet with in france pierre answered it put me up a change of things said he in french i start for england in an hour it is very well pierre responded and departed to do it
+lady isabel waited till the man was gone and then spoke a faint flush of emotion in her cheeks you do not mean what you say you will not leave me yet i cannot do otherwise he answered there's a mountain of business to be attended to
+besides i should not choose for the old man's funeral to take place without me
+you might not be back in time in time for what oh how can you ask she rejoined in a sharp tone of reproach you know too well in time to make me your wife when the divorce shall appear i shall chance it
+coolly observed sir francis chance it chance the legitimacy of the child you must assure that before all things
+now don't put yourself in a fever isabel how many times am i to be compelled to beg that of you it does no good is it my fault if i am called suddenly to england have you no pity for your child she urged in agitation
+nothing can repair the injury if you once suffer it to come upon him he will be a by word amidst men throughout his life you had better have written to the law lords to urge on the divorce he returned i cannot help the delay
+there has been no delay quite the contrary but it may be expected hourly now you are worrying yourself for nothing isabel i shall be back in time he quitted the room as he spoke and lady isabel remained in it the image of despair
+nearly an hour elapsed when she remembered the breakfast things and rang for them to be removed
+where is pierre miladi asked
+scarcely had she closed the door upon herself and the tray when sir francis levison appeared equipped for traveling good bye isabel said he without further circumlocution or ceremony
+lady isabel excited beyond all self control slipped the bolt of the door and half leaning against it half leaning at his feet held up her hand in supplication francis have you any consideration left for me any in the world
+how can you be so alarmed isabel of course i have he continued in a peevish though kind tone as he took hold of her hands to raise her no not yet i will remain here until you say you will wait another day or two
+you know that the french protestant minister is prepared to marry us the instant news of the divorce shall arrive
+you will wait i cannot wait he replied his tone changing to one of determination it is useless to urge it he broke from her and left the room and in another minute had left the house pierre attending him a feeling amounting to a conviction
+and white and sleety and sloppy the gutters running through the middle of certain of the streets were unusually black and the people crept along especially dismal close to the fire in the barn of a french bedroom
+full of windows and doors and draughts with its wide hearth and its wide chimney into which we could put four or five of our english ones shivered lady isabel vane she had an invalid cap on and a thick woolen invalid shawl
+and she shook and shivered perpetually though she had drawn so close to the wood fire that there was a danger of her petticoats igniting and the attendant had frequently to spring up and interpose between them and the crackling logs
+she had had a long illness terminating in a low fever
+that miladi would soon get about if she would only rouse herself she had got so far about as to sit up in the windy chamber and it seemed to be to her a matter of perfect indifference whether she ever got out of it
+had he come who is it she asked of the nurse miladi it is monsieur and pierre is with him i have begged milady often and often not to fret for monsieur would surely come miladi see i am right
+the girl departed closing the door and lady isabel sat looking at it schooling her patience another moment and it was flung open sir francis levison approached to greet her as he came in she waved him off begging him
+in a subdued quiet tone not to draw too near as any little excitement made her faint now he took a seat opposite to her and began pushing the logs together with his boot as he explained that he really could not get away from town before
+settling the logs to his apparent satisfaction to speak and act let there be plain truth between us at this interview if there never has been before i don't understand you naked truth unglossed over
+she pursued bending her eyes determinately upon him it must be with all my heart returned sir francis it is you who have thrown out the challenge mind
+when you left in july you gave me a sacred promise to come back in time for our marriage you know what i mean when i say in time but of course i meant to do so when i gave the promise he interrupted but no sooner had i set my foot in london
+than i found myself overwhelmed with business and away from it i could not get even now i can only remain with you a couple of days for i must hasten back to town you are breaking faith already she said after hearing him calmly to the end
+your words are not words of truth but of deceit you did not intend to be back in time for the marriage
+what fancies you do take up uttered francis levison some time subsequent to your departure she quietly went on one of the maids was setting to rights the clothes in your dressing closet and she brought me a letter she found in one of the pockets
+i saw by the date that it was one of those two which you received on the morning of your departure it contained the information that the divorce was pronounced she spoke so quietly so apparently without feeling or passion that sir francis was agreeably astonished
+he should have less trouble in throwing off the mask but he was an ill tempered man and to hear that the letter had been found to have the falseness of his fine protestations and promises laid bare did not improve his temper now lady isabel continued
+it would have been better to have undeceived me then to have told me that the hopes i was cherishing for the sake of the unborn child were worse than vain i did not judge so he replied the excited state you then appeared to be in
+would have precluded your listening to any sort of reason her heart beat a little quicker but she stilled it you deem that it was not in reason that i should aspire to be the wife of sir francis levison he rose and began kicking at the logs with the heel of his boot this time
+well isabel you must be aware that it is an awful sacrifice for a man in my position to marry a divorced woman the hectic flushed into her thin cheeks but her voice sounded calm as before
+when i expected or wished for the sacrifice it was not for my own sake i told you so then but it was not made and the child's inheritance is that of sin and shame there he lies sir francis half turned to where she pointed
+and saw an infant's cradle by the side of the bed he did not take the trouble to look at it i am the representative now of an ancient and respected baronetcy he resumed in a tone as of apology for his previous heartless words
+and to make you my wife would so offend all my family that stay interrupted lady isabel you need not trouble yourself to find needless excuses had you taken this journey for the purpose of making me your wife were you to propose to do so this day
+and bring a clergyman into the room to perform the ceremony it would be futile the injury to the child can never be repaired and for myself i cannot imagine any fate in life worse than being compelled to pass it with you
+if you have taken this aversion to me it cannot be helped he coldly said inwardly congratulating himself let us not doubt at being spared the work of trouble he had anticipated you made commotion enough once about me making you reparation
+she shook her head all the reparation in your power to make all the reparation that the whole world can invent could not undo my sin it and the effects must lie upon me forever oh sin was the derisive exclamation
+you ladies should think of that beforehand yes she sadly answered may heaven help all to do so who may be tempted as i was if you mean that as a reproach to me it's rather out of place chafed sir francis
+whose fits of ill temper were under no control and who never when in them cared what he said to outrage the feelings of another the temptation to sin as you call it lay not in my persuasions half so much as in your jealous anger toward your husband
+quite true was her reply and i believe you were on the wrong scent isabel if it will be any satisfaction to you to hear it since we are mutually on this complimentary discourse it is of no consequence to smooth over facts
+i do not understand what you would imply she said drawing her shawl round her with a fresh shiver how on the wrong scent with regard to your husband and that hare girl you were blindly outrageously jealous of him go on
+and i say i think you are on the wrong scent i do not believe mister carlyle ever thought of the girl in that way what do you mean she gasped they had a secret between them not of love a secret of business and those interviews they had together
+her dancing attendance upon him perpetually related to that and that alone her face was more flushed than it had been throughout the interview he spoke quietly now quite in an equal tone of reasoning it was his way when the ill temper was upon him
+and the calmer he spoke the more cutting were his words he need not have told her this what was the secret she inquired in a low tone nay i can't explain all they did not take me into their confidence they did not even take you
+and carlyle was acting in it under the rose for missus hare she could not seek out carlyle herself so she sent the young lady that's all i know how did you know it i had reason to think so
+what reason i must request you to tell me i overheard scraps of their conversation now and then in those meetings and so gathered my information you told a different tale to me sir francis was her remark
+as she turned her indignant eyes toward him sir francis laughed all stratagems are fair in love and war she dared not immediately trust herself to reply and a silence ensued sir francis broke it pointing with his left thumb
+over his shoulder in the direction of the cradle what have you named that young article there the name which ought to have been his by inheritance
+was her icy answer let's see how old is he now he was born on the last day of august sir francis threw up his arms and stretched himself as if a fit of idleness had overtaken him then advanced to the cradle and pulled down the clothes
+who is he like isabel my handsome self were he like you in spirit i would pray that he might die ere he could speak or think she burst forth and then remembering the resolution marked out for herself subsided
+outwardly into calmness again what else retorted sir francis you know my disposition pretty well by this time isabel and may be sure that if you deal out small change to me
+she made no reply sir francis put the clothes back over the sleeping child returned to the fire and stood a few moments with his back to it is my room prepared for me do you know he presently asked no it is not she quietly rejoined
+these apartments are mine now they have been transferred into my name and they can never again afford you accommodation will you be so obliging i am not strong as to hand me that writing case sir francis walked to the table she indicated
+which was at the far end of the great barn of a room and taking the writing case from it gave it to her she reached her keys from the stand at her elbow unlocked the case and took from it some bank notes
+i received these from you a month ago she said they came by post and never had the grace to acknowledge them he returned in a sort of mock reproachful tone forty pounds that was the amount was it not i believe so
+allow me to return them to you count them return them to me for what inquired sir francis in amazement i have no longer anything whatever to do with you in any way do not make my arm ache holding out these notes to you so long take them
+if it be your wish that all relations should end between us why let it be so he said i must confess i think it may be the wisest course as things have come to this pass for a cat and dog life which would seemingly be ours is not agreeable
+remember though that it is your doing not mine but you cannot think i am going to see you starve isabel a sum we will fix upon the amount amicably
+i beg of you to cease she passionately interrupted what do you take me for take you for why how can you live you have no fortune you must receive assistance from some one i will not receive it from you if the whole world denied me
+sarcastically rejoined sir francis generous man a flush deep and painful dyed her cheeks i should have said my late husband you need not have reminded me of the mistake
+if you will accept nothing for yourself you must for the child he at any rate falls to my share i shall give you a few hundred a year with him she beat her hands before her as if beating off the man and his words
+whom do you take me for what do you take me for she repeated rising in her bitter mortification if you have put me beyond the pale of the world i am still lord mount severn's daughter you did as much toward putting yourself beyond its pale as
+don't i know it have i not said so she sharply interrupted and then she sat striving to calm herself clasping together her shaking hands well if you will persist in this perverse resolution i cannot mend it
+resumed sir francis in a little time you may probably wish to recall it in which case a line addressed to me at my banker's will lady isabel drew herself up put away those notes if you please she interrupted not allowing him to finish his sentence
+he took out his pocket book and placed the bank notes within it your clothes
+you will have the goodness to order pierre to take away this afternoon and now sir francis i believe that is all we will part to remain mortal enemies from henceforth is that to be it to be strangers she replied correcting him
+i wish you a good day so you will not even shake hands with me isabel i would prefer not and thus they parted sir francis left the room but not immediately the house he went into a distant apartment
+and calling the servants before him there were but two gave them each a year's wages in advance
+then he paid a visit to the landlord and handed him likewise a year's rent in advance making the same remark after that he ordered dinner at a hotel and the same night he and pierre departed on their journey home again
+sir francis thanking his lucky star that he had so easily got rid of a vexatious annoyance and lady isabel she passed her evening alone sitting in the same place close to the fire and the sparks
+into an adjoining room when lady isabel lay down to rest she sank into a somewhat calmer sleep than she had known of late also into a dream she thought she was back at east lynne not back in one sense
+but that she seemed never to have gone away from it walking in the flower garden with mister carlyle while the three children played on the lawn her arm was within her husband's and he was relating something to her what the news was she could not remember afterward
+excepting that it was connected with the office and old mister dill and that mister carlyle laughed when he told it they appeared to be interrupted by the crying of archibald and in turning to the lawn to ask what was the matter she awoke
+alas it was the actual crying of her own child which awoke her this last child the ill fated little being in the cradle beside her
+the iconoclasts
+it would have been well for his reputation in history unhappily for himself though happily enough for the east roman realm he survived yet twenty years to carry through a series of measures which were in his eyes not less important than the repulse of the moslems from his capital
+historians have given to the scheme of reform which he took in hand the name of the iconoclastic movement because of the opposition to the worship of images which formed one of the most prominent features of his action
+for the last hundred years the empire had been declining in culture and civilization literature and art seemed likely to perish in the never ending clash of arms the old roman jurisprudence was being forgotten
+the race of educated civil servants was showing signs of extinction the governors of provinces were now without exception rough soldiers not members of that old bureaucracy whose roman traditions had so long kept the empire together
+not least among the signs of a decaying civilization were the gross superstitions which had grown up of late in the religious world
+unnoticed and unguarded against by theologians who devoted all their energies to the barren monothelite and monophysite controversies image worship and relic worship in particular had developed with strange rapidity and assumed the shape of mere fetishism
+slavs and bulgarians all of whom he beat back with great slaughter on the numerous occasions when they invaded the empire but in the minds both of constantine himself and of his contemporaries his dealings with things religious were the main feature of his reign
+and shortly afterwards begun to close monasteries wholesale we are told that he compelled many of their inmates to marry by force of threats others were exiled to cyprus by the hundred not a few were flogged and imprisoned
+these unwise measures had the natural effect the monks were everywhere regarded as martyrs and the image worship which they supported grew more than ever popular with the masses while still in the full vigour of his persecuting enthusiasm
+while the empress dowager irene became sole regent and her name was associated with that of her son in all acts of state
+but in his twenty second year he rebelled against his mother's dictation and took his place at the helm of the state irene had actually striven to oppose him by armed force but he pardoned her and after secluding her for a short time
+restored her to her former dignity the unnatural mother was far from acquiescing in her son's elevation
+seized the young emperor blinded him and immured him in a monastery before any of his adherents were able to come to his aid
+her grand treasurer having gained over some of the eunuchs and other courtiers about her person
+the iconoclastic controversy had prepared the way for it while the fact that a woman sat on the imperial throne served as a good excuse for the pope's action leo declared that a female reign was an anomaly and an abomination
+and took upon himself the onus of ending it so far as italy was concerned by creating a new emperor of the west
+there was of course no legality in the act and karl the great was in no real sense the successor of honorius and romulus augustulus but he ruled a group of kingdoms which embraced the larger half of the old western empire and formed a fair equipoise to the realm now ruled by irene from eight hundred then onward we have once more a west roman empire in existence as well as the east roman
+the roman and the persian empires drained of men and money and ravaged from end to end by each other's marauding armies sank down in exhaustion to heal them of their deadly wounds
+never before had either power dealt its neighbour such fearful blows as in this last struggle in previous wars the contest had been waged around border fortresses and the prize had been the conquest of some small slice of marchland
+had struck deadly blows at the heart of each other's empire and harried the inmost provinces up to the gates of each other's capitals the persian had turned the wild hordes of the avars loose on thrace
+they were bleeding at every pore utterly wearied and exhausted and desirous of nothing but a long interval of peace to recover their lost strength precisely at this moment a new and terrible enemy fell upon the two war worn combatants
+and delivered an attack so vehement that it was destined to destroy the ancient kingdom of persia and to shear away half the provinces of the roman empire
+the politics of arabia had up to this time been of little moment either to roman or persian each of them had allies among the arab tribes and had sometimes sent an expedition or an embassy southward
+into the land beyond the syrian desert but neither of them dreamed that the scattered and disunited tribes of arabia would ever combine or become a serious danger
+events of world wide importance had been taking place in the arabian peninsula for the first and last time in history there had arisen among the arabs one of those world compelling minds that are destined to turn aside the current of events
+into new channels and change the face of whole continents mahomet that strangest of moral enigmas prophet and seer fanatic and impostor was developing his career all through the years of the persian war
+by an extraordinary mixture of genuine enthusiasm and vulgar cunning of self deception and deliberate imposture of benevolence and cruelty of austerity and licence he had worked himself and his creed to the front
+the turbulent polytheists of arabia had by him been converted into a compact band of fanatics burning to carry all over the world by the force of their swords their new war cry that
+god was god and mahomet his prophet
+bidding them embrace islam the persian replied with the threat that he would put the prophet in chains when he had leisure the roman made no direct reply but sent mahomet some small presents
+neglecting the theological bent of his message and only thinking of enlisting a possible political ally both answers were regarded as equally unsatisfactory by the prophet and he doomed the two empires to a similar destruction
+is not a thing to be despised
+nor scoff with gibbon at the feebleness of the troops who were routed by them if the soldiers of queen victoria armed with modern rifles and artillery found the fanatical arab a formidable foe let us not blame the soldiers of heraclius who faced the same enemy
+in the early engagements between the east romans and the saracens the superior discipline and more regular arms of the one
+were not a sufficient counterpoise to put against the mad recklessness of the other the moslem wanted to get killed that he might reap the fruits of martyrdom in the other world and cared not how he died if he had first slain an enemy
+the roman fought well enough but he did not like his adversary yearn to become a martyr and the odds were on the man who held his life the cheapest
+and to do so had not only drained the treasury but imposed some new and unwise taxes on the harassed provincials and disbanded many of his veterans for the sake of economy
+syria and egypt after spending twelve and ten years respectively under the persian yoke had not yet got back into their old organization
+both countries were much distracted with religious troubles the heretical sects of the monophysites and jacobites who swarmed within their boundaries had lifted up their heads under the persian rule being relieved from the governmental repression that had hitherto been their lot
+they seem to have constituted an actual majority of the population and bitterly resented the endeavours of heraclius to enforce orthodoxy in the reconquered provinces their discontent was so bitter
+the details of the arab conquest of syria have not been preserved by the east roman historians who seem to have hated the idea of recording the disasters of christendom the moslems on the other hand had not yet commenced to write and ere historians arose among them
+the tale of the invasion had been intertwined with a whole cycle of romantic legends fitter for the arabian nights
+gabatha in ituraea thoroughly roused by this disaster heraclius set all the legions of the east marching and sixty thousand men crossed the jordan and advanced to recover bostra
+the arabs met them at the fords of the hieromax an eastern tributary of the jordan and a fierce battle raged all day the romans drove the enemy back to the very gates of their camp but a last charge headed by the fierce warrior khaled
+broke their firm array when a victory seemed almost assured all the mailed horsemen of heraclius
+paradise is before you the devil and hell fire behind the fanatical orientals threw themselves on regiment after regiment and drove it off the field all syria east of jordan was lost in this fatal battle damascus its great stronghold
+most of its population were massacred
+and was beginning to fail in health he could do nothing emesa and heliopolis were sacked before his eyes and after an inglorious campaign he hurried to jerusalem
+took the true cross from its sanctuary where he had replaced it in triumph five years before and retired to constantinople
+hardly had he reached it when the news arrived that his discontented and demoralized troops had proclaimed a rebel emperor though the enemy was before them
+and the aged omar came over the desert proud to take possession of the city which mahomet had reckoned the holiest site on earth save mecca alone the patriarch sophronius was commanded to guide the conqueror around the city
+and when he saw the rude arab standing by the altar of the church of the holy sepulchre cried aloud now is the abomination of desolation which was spoken of by daniel the prophet truly in the holy place
+was a sovereign of a different type from any emperor that we have yet encountered in the annals of the eastern empire he was a bold reckless callous and selfish young man
+he was in short of the stuff of which tyrants are made justinian was but seventeen when he came to the throne but he soon showed that he intended to rule the empire after his own good pleasure
+long before he had begun to learn the lessons of state craft ere he had reached his twenty first year justinian had plunged into war with the bulgarians he attacked them suddenly inflicted several defeats on their king
+and took no less than thirty thousand prisoners whom he sent over to asia and forced to enlist in the army of armenia
+bearing verses of the koran justinian refused to receive them and declared war his second venture in the field was disastrous his unwilling recruits from bulgaria deserted to the enemy when he met the saracens at sebastopolis
+and the roman army was routed with great slaughter the two subsequent campaigns were equally unsuccessful
+justinian's wars depleted his treasury yet he persisted in plunging into expensive schemes of building at the same time and was driven to collect money by the most reckless extortion he employed two unscrupulous ministers theodotus
+the accountant general an ex abbot who had deserted his monastery and the eunuch stephanus the keeper of the privy purse these men were to justinian what ralph flambard was to william rufus
+they raised him funds by flagrant extortion and illegal stretching of the law both were violent and cruel theodotus is said to have hung recalcitrant tax payers up by ropes above smoky fires till they were nearly stifled
+stephanus thrashed and stoned every one who fell into his hands he is reported to have actually administered a whipping to the empress dowager during the absence of her son and justinian did not punish him when he returned
+while the emperor's financial expedients were making him hated by the moneyed classes he was rendering himself no less unpopular in the army
+he began to execute or imprison his officers and to decimate his beaten troops to be employed by him in high command was almost as dangerous as it was to be appointed a general in chief during the dictatorship of robespierre
+general of the theme of hellas was about to set out to assume his command as he parted from his friends he exclaimed that his days were numbered and that he should be expecting the order for his execution to arrive at any moment then a certain monk named paul stood forth
+and bade him save himself by a bold stroke if he would aim a blow at justinian he would find the people and the army ready to follow him
+and rushing to the state prison at the head of a few friends broke it open and liberated some hundreds of political prisoners a mob joined him he seized the cathedral of saint sophia
+no one would fight for justinian who was caught and brought before the rebel leader in company with his two odious ministers
+and banished him to cherson theodotus and stephanus he handed over to the mob who dragged them round the city and burnt them alive
+the new emperor was not a man of capacity and had been driven into rebellion by his fears rather than his ambition he held the throne barely three years amid constant revolts at home and defeats abroad
+the asiatic frontier was ravaged by the armies of abdalmalik and at the same time a great disaster befel the western half of the empire
+where the romans had still maintained themselves by hard fighting
+his troops gained several victories over the saracens
+and even invaded northern syria
+the people and army were out of hand the ephemeral emperor could count on no loyalty and any shock was sufficient to upset his precarious throne we must now turn to the banished justinian
+who had been sent into exile with his nose mutilated he had been transported to cherson the greek town in the crimea close to the modern sebastopol which formed the northernmost outpost of civilization
+and enjoyed municipal liberty under the suzerainty of the empire justinian displayed in his day of adversity a degree of capacity which astonished his contemporaries he fled from cherson and took refuge with the khan of the khazars
+the tartar tribe who dwelt east of the sea of azof with this prince the exile so ingratiated himself that he received in marriage his sister who was baptized and christened theodora
+to induce him to surrender justinian and the treacherous barbarian determined to accept the bribe and sent secret orders to two of his officers
+the emperor learnt of the plot through his wife and saved himself by the bold expedient of going at once to one of the two khazar chiefs and asking for a secret interview when they were alone he fell on him and strangled him
+and then calling on the second khazar served him in the same fashion before the khan's orders had been divulged to any one this gave him time to escape and he fled in a fishing boat out into the euxine with a few friends and servants who had followed him into exile
+while they were out at sea a storm arose and the boat began to fill one of his companions cried to justinian to make his peace with god and pardon his enemies ere he died but the emperor's stern soul was not bent by the tempest
+may god drown me here he answered
+the boat weathered the storm and justinian survived to carry out his cruel oath he came ashore in the land of the bulgarians and soon won favour with their king terbel who wanted a good excuse for invading the empire
+and found it in the pretence of supporting the exiled monarch with a bulgarian army at his back justinian appeared before constantinople
+there was no fighting for the adherents of tiberius were as unready to strike a blow for their master
+so justinian recovered his throne without fighting for the people had by this time half forgotten his tyranny and regretted the rule of the house of heraclius but they were soon to find out that they had erred in submitting to the exile
+and should have resisted him at all hazards justinian came back in a relentless mood bent on nothing but revenging his mutilated nose and his ten years of exile his first act was to send for the two usurpers who had sat on his throne
+as he tried to flee into asia justinian had them led round the city in chains and then bound them side by side before his throne in the cathisma the imperial box at the hippodrome
+there he sat in state using their prostrate bodies as a footstool while his adherents chanted the verse from the ninety first psalm thou shalt tread on the lion and asp the young lion and dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet
+and apsimarus after this strange exhibition the two ex emperors were beheaded their execution began a reign of terror for justinian had his oath to keep and was set on wreaking vengeance on every one who had been concerned in his deposition
+and put out the eyes of the patriarch who had crowned him then he set to work to hunt out meaner victims many prominent citizens of constantinople were sown up in sacks and drowned in the bosphorus soldiers were picked out by the dozen and beheaded
+a special expedition was sent by sea to sack cherson the city of the emperor's exile because he had a grudge against its citizens the chief men were caught and sent to the capital where justinian had them bound to spits and roasted
+these atrocities were mere samples of the general conduct of justinian in a few years he had made himself so much detested that it might be said that he had been comparatively popular in the days of his first reign
+the army of the tyrant laid down their arms when philippicus approached and he was led forth and beheaded without further delay an end too good for such a monster the conqueror also sought out and slew his little son tiberius
+whom the sister of the khan of the khazars had borne to him during his exile so ended the house of heraclius after it had sat for five generations and one hundred and one years on the throne of constantinople
+the six years which followed were purely anarchical justinian's wild and wicked freaks had completed the demoralization which had already set in before his restoration everything in the army and the state was completely disorganized and out of gear
+it required a hero to restore the machinery of government and evolve order out of chaos but the hero was not at once forthcoming and the confusion went on increasing
+to replace justinian by philippicus was only to substitute king log for king stork the new emperor was a mere man of pleasure and spent his time in personal enjoyment letting affairs of state slide on as best they might
+in less than two years he was upset by a conspiracy
+philippicus was blinded and compelled to exchange the pleasures of the palace for the rigours of a monastery but the court intrigue which dethroned philippicus did not please the army
+who gave the imperial crown to theodosius of adrammytium a respectable but obscure commissioner of taxes more merciful than any of his ephemeral predecessors
+after compelling him to take holy orders meanwhile the organization of the empire was visibly breaking up the affairs both of the realm and the city were neglected and decaying civil education was disappearing and military discipline dissolved
+and every year their ravages penetrated further inland
+with the express purpose of laying siege to constantinople no one hindered him for the army raised to serve against him
+they had penetrated into phrygia
+with every expectation of success when at last there appeared the man who was destined to save the east roman empire from a premature dismemberment
+who had made a great reputation amid the fearful disasters of the last ten years he was now general of the anatolic theme the province which included the old cappadocia and lycaonia after inducing the saracens more by craft than force
+to raise the siege of amorium leo disowned his allegiance to the incapable theodosius and marched toward the bosphorus the unfortunate emperor who had not coveted the throne he occupied nor much desired to retain it
+chapter twenty five the flight gabbett guided by the crow had determined to beach the captured boat on the southern point of cape surville it will be seen by those who have followed the description of the topography of colonel arthur's penitentiary
+that nothing but the desperate nature of the attempt could have justified so desperate a measure the perpendicular cliffs seemed to render such an attempt certain destruction but vetch who had been employed in building the pier at the neck
+knew that on the southern point of the promontory was a strip of beach upon which the company might by good fortune land in safety with something of the decision of his leader rex the crow determined at once that in their desperate plight this was the only measure
+and setting his teeth as he seized the oar that served as a rudder he put the boat's head straight for the huge rock that formed the northern horn of pirates bay save for the faint phosphorescent radiance of the foaming waves the darkness was intense
+and burgess for some minutes pulled almost at random in pursuit the same tremendous flash of lightning which had saved the life of mc nab by causing rex to miss his aim showed to the commandant the whale boat balanced on the summit of an enormous wave
+and apparently about to be flung against the wall of rock which magnified in the flash seemed frightfully near to them the next instant burgess himself his boat lifted by the swiftly advancing billow
+saw a wild waste of raging seas scooped into abysmal troughs in which the bulk of a leviathan might wallow at the bottom of one of these valleys of water lay the mutineers boat looking with its outspread oars like some six legged insect
+floating in a pool of ink the great cliff whose every scar and crag was as distinct as though its huge bulk was but a yard distant seemed to shoot out from its base towards the struggling insect a broad flat straw that was a strip of dry land
+the next instant the rushing water carrying the six legged atom with it creamed up over this strip of beach
+appeared to stoop down over the ocean and as it stooped the billow rolled onwards the boat glided down into the depths and the whole phantasmagoria was swallowed up in the tumultuous darkness of the tempest burgess his hair bristling with terror
+shouted to put the boat about but he might with as much reason have shouted at an avalanche the wind blew his voice away and emptied it violently into the air a snarling billow jerked the oar from his hand
+despite the desperate efforts of the soldiers the boat was whirled up the mountain of water like a leaf on a water spout and a second flash of lightning showed them what seemed a group of dolls struggling in the surf and a walnut shell bottom upwards was driven
+by the recoil of the waves towards them for an instant all thought that they must share the fate which had overtaken the unlucky convicts but burgess succeeded in trimming the boat and awed by the peril he had so narrowly escaped gave the order to return
+as the men set the boat's head to the welcome line of lights that marked the neck a black spot balanced upon a black line was swept under their stern and carried out to sea as it passed them this black spot emitted a cry
+and they knew that it was one of the shattered boat's crew clinging to an oar he was the only one of em alive said burgess bandaging his sprained wrist two hours afterwards at the neck and he's food for the fishes by this time he was mistaken however
+fate had in reserve for the crew of villains a less merciful death than that of drowning aided by the lightning and that wonderful good luck which urges villainy to its destruction vetch beached the boat and the party bruised and bleeding
+reached the upper portion of the shore in safety of all this number only cox was lost he was pulling stroke oar and being something of a laggard stood in the way of the crow who seeing the importance of haste in preserving his own skin plucked the man backwards by the collar
+and passed over his sprawling body to the shore cox grasping at anything to save himself clutched an oar and the next moment found himself borne out with the overturned whale boat by the under tow he was drifted past his only hope of rescue the guard boat
+with a velocity that forbade all attempts at rescue and almost before the poor scoundrel had time to realize his condition he was in the best possible way of escaping the hanging that his comrades had so often humorously prophesied for him
+being a strong and vigorous villain however he clung tenaciously to his oar and even unbuckling his leather belt passed it round the slip of wood that was his salvation girding himself to it as firmly as he was able
+in this condition plus a swoon from exhaustion he was descried by the helmsman of the pretty mary a few miles from cape surville at daylight next morning
+lowered a boat and picked him up nearly bisected by the belt gorged with salt water frozen with cold and having two ribs broken the victim of vetch's murderous quickness retained sufficient life to survive blunt's remedies for nearly two hours
+during that time he stated that his name was cox that he had escaped from port arthur with eight others that john rex was the leader of the expedition that the others were all drowned and that he believed john rex had been retaken having placed blunt in possession of these particulars
+he further said that it pricked him to breathe cursed jemmy vetch the settlement and the sea and so impenitently died blunt smoked three pipes and then altered the course of the pretty mary two points to the eastward and ran for the coast
+it was possible that the man for whom he was searching had not been retaken and was even now awaiting his arrival it was clearly his duty hearing of the planned escape having been actually attempted not to give up the expedition while hope remained
+the pretty mary hugging the coast as closely as she dared crawled in the thin breeze all day and saw nothing it would be madness to land at cape surville for the whole station would be on the alert so blunt as night was falling
+stood off a little across the mouth of pirates bay he was walking the deck groaning at the folly of the expedition when a strange appearance on the southern horn of the bay made him come to a sudden halt there was a furnace blazing in the bowels of the mountain
+blunt rubbed his eyes and stared he looked at the man at the helm do you see anything yonder jem jem a sydney man who had never been round that coast before briefly remarked lighthouse
+blunt stumped into the cabin and got out his charts no lighthouse was laid down there only a mark like an anchor and a note remarkable hole at this point a remarkable hole indeed
+a remarkable lime kiln would have been more to the purpose blunt called up his mate william staples a fellow whom sarah purfoy's gold had bought body and soul william staples looked at the waxing and waning glow for a while
+and then said in tones trembling with greed it's a fire lie to and lower away the jolly boat old man that's our bird for a thousand pounds the pretty mary shortened sail and blunt and staples got into the jolly boat
+goin a hoysterin sir said one of the crew with a grin as blunt threw a bundle into the stern sheets staples thrust his tongue into his cheek the object of the voyage was now pretty well understood among the carefully picked crew
+blunt had not chosen men who were likely to betray him though for that matter rex had suggested a precaution which rendered betrayal almost impossible
+clothes returned blunt we can't bring him off if it is him in his canaries he puts on these duds d'ye see sinks her majesty's livery and comes aboard a shipwrecked mariner that's well thought of whose notion's that
+the madam's i'll be bound ay she's a knowing one and the sinister laughter of the pair floated across the violet water go easy man said blunt as they neared the shore they're all awake at eaglehawk and if those cursed dogs give tongue
+there'll be a boat out in a twinkling it's lucky the wind's off shore staples lay on his oar and listened the night was moonless and the ship had already disappeared from view they were approaching the promontory from the south east
+and this isthmus of the guarded neck was hidden by the outlying cliff in the south western angle of this cliff about midway between the summit and the sea was an arch which vomited a red and flickering light that faintly shone upon the sea in the track of the boat
+the light was lambent and uncertain now sinking almost into insignificance and now leaping up with a fierceness that caused a deep glow to throb in the very heart of the mountain sometimes a black figure would pass across this gigantic furnace mouth
+stooping and rising as though feeding the fire one might have imagined that a door in vulcan's smithy
+and that the old hero was forging arms for a demigod blunt turned pale it's no mortal he whispered let's go back and what will madam say returned dare devil will staples who would have plunged into mount erebus had he been paid for it
+missus vickers pale and sick with terror yet sustained by that strange courage of which we have before spoken passed rapidly under the open skylight and prepared to ascend sylvia her romance crushed by too dreadful reality
+clung to her mother with one hand and with the other pressed close to her little bosom the english history in her all absorbing fear she had forgotten to lay it down
+and shuddering shook her head the men above swore impatiently at the delay and the three hastened on deck who's to command the brig now asked undaunted bates as they came up i am says john rex
+and with these brave fellows i'll take her round the world the touch of bombast was not out of place it jumped so far with the humour of the convicts that they set up a feeble cheer at which sylvia frowned
+frightened as she was the prison bred child was as much astonished at hearing convicts cheer as a fashionable lady would be to hear her footman quote poetry bates however practical and calm took quite another view of the case
+the bold project so boldly avowed seemed to him a sheer absurdity the dandy and a crew of nine convicts navigate a brig round the world preposterous why not a man aboard could work a reckoning
+his nautical fancy pictured the osprey helplessly rolling on the swell of the southern ocean or hopelessly locked in the ice of the antarctic seas and he dimly guessed at the fate of the deluded ten
+even if they got safe to port the chances of final escape were all against them for what account could they give of themselves overpowered by these reflections the honest fellow made one last effort to charm his captors back to their pristine bondage
+fools he cried do you know what you are about to do you will never escape give up the brig and i will declare before my god upon the bible that i will say nothing but give all good characters
+lesly and another burst into a laugh at this wild proposition but rex who had weighed his chances well beforehand felt the force of the pilot's speech and answered seriously it's no use talking he said shaking his still handsome head
+we have got the brig and we mean to keep her i can navigate her though i am no seaman so you needn't talk further about it mister bates it's liberty we require what are you going to do with us asked bates leave you behind bates's face blanched
+what here yes it don't look a picturesque spot does it and yet i've lived here for some years and he grinned bates was silent the logic of that grin was unanswerable come cried the dandy shaking off his momentary melancholy
+look alive there lower away the jolly boat missus vickers go down to your cabin and get anything you want
+but i have no wish to leave you without clothes bates listened in a sort of dismal admiration at this courtly convict he could not have spoken like that had life depended on it now my little lady continued rex
+run down with your mamma and don't be frightened sylvia flashed burning red at this indignity frightened
+frightened let me pass prisoner the whole deck burst into a great laugh at this and poor missus vickers paused trembling for the consequences of the child's temerity to thus taunt the desperate convict who held their lives in his hands seemed sheer madness
+in the boldness of the speech however lay its safeguard rex whose politeness was mere bravado was stung to the quick by the reflection upon his courage and the bitter accent with which the child had pronounced the word prisoner
+the generic name of convicts made him bite his lips with rage had he had his will he would have struck the little creature to the deck but the hoarse laugh of his companions warned him to forbear there is public opinion even among convicts
+and rex dared not vent his passion on so helpless an object as men do in such cases he veiled his anger beneath an affectation of amusement in order to show that he was not moved by the taunt he smiled upon the taunter more graciously than ever
+your daughter has her father's spirit madam said he to missus vickers with a bow bates opened his mouth to listen his ears were not large enough to take in the words of this complimentary convict he began to think that he was the victim of a nightmare he absolutely felt
+that john rex was a greater man at that moment than john bates as missus vickers descended the hatchway the boat with frere and the soldiers came within musket range and lesly according to orders fired his musket over their heads
+shouting to them to lay to but frere boiling with rage at the manner in which the tables had been turned on him had determined not to resign his lost authority without a struggle disregarding the summons he came straight on with his eyes fixed on the vessel
+it was now nearly dark and the figures on the deck were indistinguishable the indignant lieutenant could but guess at the condition of affairs suddenly from out of the darkness a voice hailed him hold water back water
+it cried and was then seemingly choked in its owner's throat the voice was the property of mister bates standing near the side he had observed rex and fair bring up a great pig of iron erst used as part of the ballast of the brig
+and poise it on the rail their intention was but too evident and honest bates like a faithful watch dog barked to warn his master bloodthirsty cheshire caught him by the throat and frere unheeding
+ran the boat alongside under the very nose of the revengeful rex the mass of iron fell half in board upon the now stayed boat and gave her sternway with a splintered plank villains cried frere would you swamp us
+and a dozen such as ye the brig's ours can't ye see and we're your masters now frere stifling an exclamation of rage cried to the bow to hook on but the bow had driven the boat backward and she was already beyond arm's length of the brig
+looking up he saw cheshire's savage face and heard the click of the lock as he cocked his piece the two soldiers exhausted by their long pull made no effort to stay the progress of the boat
+the deck of the osprey had become invisible in the darkness frere struck his fist upon the thwart in sheer impotence of rage the scoundrels he said between his teeth they've mastered us what do they mean to do next
+the answer came pat to the question from the dark hull of the brig broke a flash and a report and a musket ball cut the water beside them with a chirping noise between the black indistinct mass which represented the brig
+and the glimmering water was visible a white speck which gradually neared them come alongside with ye hailed a voice or it will be the worse for ye they want to murder us says frere give way men
+it's no use mister frere said the man nearest him we can do no good now and they won't hurt us i dare say you dogs you are in league with them bursts out frere purple with indignation do you mutiny
+come come sir returned the soldier sulkily this ain't the time to bully and as for mutiny why one man's about as good as another just now this speech from the lips of a man who
+but a few minutes before would have risked his life to obey orders of his officer did more than an hour's reasoning to convince maurice frere of the hopelessness of resistance his authority
+he was now no more than anyone else indeed he was less than many for those who held the firearms were the ruling powers with a groan he resigned himself to his fate and looking at the sleeve of the undress uniform he wore
+it seemed to him that virtue had gone out of it when they reached the brig they found that the jolly boat had been lowered and laid alongside in her were eleven persons bates with forehead gashed and hands bound the stunned grimes
+russen and fair pulling lyon riley cheshire and lesly with muskets and john rex in the stern sheets
+and a loaded musket across his knees the white object which had been seen by the men in the whale boat was a large white shawl which wrapped missus vickers and sylvia
+he had feared that the child was injured by the direction of rex the whale boat was brought alongside the jolly boat and cheshire and lesly boarded her
+frere attempted to resist this indignity but cheshire clapping his musket to his ear swore he would blow out his brains if he uttered another syllable frere catching the malignant eye of john rex
+remembered how easily a twitch of the finger would pay off old scores and was silent step in here sir if you please said rex with polite irony i am sorry to be compelled to tie you but i must consult my own safety as well as your convenience
+fell pinioned as he was he could not rise without assistance and russen pulled him roughly to his feet with a coarse laugh in his present frame of mind that laugh galled him worse than his bonds
+poor missus vickers with a woman's quick instinct saw this and even amid her own trouble found leisure to console him the wretches she said under her breath as frere was flung down beside her to subject you to such indignity
+sylvia said nothing and seemed to shrink from the lieutenant perhaps in her childish fancy she had pictured him as coming to her rescue
+and clad in dazzling mail or at the very least as a muscular hero who would settle affairs out of hand by sheer personal prowess if she had entertained any such notion the reality must have struck coldly upon her senses
+mister frere purple clumsy and bound was not at all heroic now my lads says rex who seemed to have endured the cast off authority of frere we give you your choice stay at hell's gates or come with us
+the soldiers paused irresolute to join the mutineers meant a certainty of hard work with a chance of ultimate hanging yet to stay with the prisoners was as far as they could see to incur the inevitable fate of starvation on a barren coast
+dimly caught the meaning of the sentence
+go with him ye beggars said he and leave us honest men oh ye'll get a tying up for this the phrase tying up brought with it recollection of the worst portion of military discipline the cat
+and revived in the minds of the pair already disposed to break the yoke that sat so heavily upon them a train of dismal memories the life of a soldier on a convict station was at that time a hard one he was often stinted in rations
+and of necessity deprived of all rational recreation while punishment for offences was prompt and severe the companies drafted to the penal settlements were not composed of the best material and the pair had good precedent for the course they were about to take
+which is it to be we'll go with you says the man who had pulled the stroke in the whale boat spitting into the water with averted face upon which utterance the convicts burst into joyous oaths and the pair were received with much hand shaking
+then rex with lyon and riley as a guard got into the whale boat and having loosed the two prisoners from their bonds ordered them to take the place of russen and fair the whale boat was manned by the seven mutineers
+rex steering fair russen and the two recruits pulling and the other four standing up with their muskets levelled at the jolly boat their long slavery had begotten such a dread of authority in these men that they feared it even when it was bound and menaced by four muskets
+keep your distance shouted cheshire as frere and bates in obedience to orders began to pull the jolly boat towards the shore and in this fashion was the dismal little party conveyed to the mainland it was night when they reached it
+but the clear sky began to thrill with a late moon as yet unrisen and the waves breaking gently upon the beach glimmered with a radiance born of their own motion frere and bates jumping ashore helped out missus vickers sylvia and the wounded grimes
+this being done under the muzzles of the muskets rex commanded that bates and frere should push the jolly boat as far as they could from the shore and riley catching her by a boat hook as she came towards them she was taken in tow
+three cheers for old england and liberty upon which a great shout went up echoed by the grim hills which had witnessed so many miseries to the wretched five this exultant mirth sounded like a knell of death
+great god cried bates running up to his knees in water after the departing boats would you leave us here to starve
+psychotherapy and the community both the physician and the patient find their place in the community the life interests of which are superior to the interests of the individual
+it is an unavoidable question how far from the higher point of view of the social mind the psychotherapeutic efforts should be encouraged or suppressed are there any conditions which suggest suspicion of or direct opposition to such curative work
+of course society has to be sure that no possible misuse and damage are to result from such practice fears in that direction have been uttered repeatedly but from very different standpoints
+one which is perhaps most often heard in popular circles results from an entire misunderstanding and deserves hardly any discussion after our detailed study of the processes involved it is claimed that suggestive power especially in the form of
+hypnotization may be secretly misused to make anyone without his knowledge and against his will a passive instrument of the hypnotist's intent often this is coupled with telepathic fancies
+the hypnotist is believed to have mystic power to bring any person in a distant region under his mental control and thus to be able to carry out any sinister plans by the help of his innocent victim all hypnotizing therefore ought to be interdicted by the state
+the presuppositions of such a view are as we know now entirely absurd we know that hypnotism is not based on any special power of the hypnotizer there is no magnetic fluid in the sense of the old mesmerism
+the imagination of the hypnotized person is the only hypnotizing agency thus no one can be hypnotized without his knowledge or against his will the story of telepathic mysteries which is often brought before the public
+is probably always the outcome of a diseased brain it is indeed a frequent symptom in paranoia and other insanities that the patient who feels abnormal organic sensations and abnormal unaccountable impulses interprets them as influences of a distant enemy
+whole pamphlets have been written with elaboration of such insane misinterpretations and requests to legislatures have been made in that spirit but the physician recognizes easily throughout the whole argumentation the well known phenomena of the mental disease
+to be sure while no one can be hypnotized against his will many a person is liable to accept suggestions from others and thus to carry out the wishes of others almost without knowing and certainly without willing that the other mind interfere with the interplay of the own motives
+but if we were to strike out all suggestive influences from social life we should give up social life itself suggestion is given wherever men come in contact in itself it is neither good nor bad the good resolution and the bad one can be suggested
+the good example and the bad can be effective both encouragement of the noble and imitation of the evil may work with the same mental technique certainly there are some persons who have a stronger influence than others on the imagination of those with whom they come in contact
+their expression awakens confidence their voice and their words reach deeper layers of the mind their calmness and firmness overwhelm more easily the antagonistic ideas
+but the chief difference lies after all in the different degrees of suggestibility among those who receive such impressions the easily suggestible person cannot be protected by any interdict he may catch suggestions everywhere
+any advertisement in the newspaper and any display in the shop window may overrun his own intentions what he needs is training in firmness the application of reenforced suggestion or even of hypnotism in the doctor's office is even for him
+no possible source of danger on a higher level are objections which come from serious quarters and which are not without sympathy with true science in recent times this opposition has repeatedly found eloquent expression it is an objection from the standpoint of morality
+belonging therefore entirely to the purposive view of the mind but we have now reached a point where it is our duty to do justice to this purposive view too as long as we discussed the problem entirely from the standpoint of the physician
+no other view of mental life except the causal one could be in question as soon as we look at it from the standpoint of the community it becomes our duty to bring the causal and the purposive view into harmony and it would be narrow and short sighted simply to
+draw the practical consequences of a naturalistic view of the mind without inquiring whether or not serious interests in the purposive sphere are injured if there is moral criticism against suggestive therapy it is the duty of the community to consider it
+this opposition argues as follows hypnotic influence brings the patient under the will control of the hypnotizer and thus destroys his own freedom whatever the patient may reach in the altered states is reached without his own effort while he is the passive receiver
+his achievement has therefore no moral value and if he is really cured of his drunkenness or of his perverse habits of his misuse of cocaine or of his criminal tendencies he has lost the right to be counted a moral agent it would be better
+if there were more suffering in the world than that the existence of the moral will should be undermined no one ought to take such arguments lightly the spirit which directs them is needed more than anything else in our time of reaching out for superficial goods
+no one can insist too earnestly that life is worth living only if it serves moral duties and moral freedom and is not determined by pleasures and absence of pain only those who set forth this argument are entirely willing to acknowledge the
+profound effect which suggestive therapeutics may create more than this they have to acknowledge it to gain a basis for their attack just because the hypnotizer can entirely change the desires and passions the habits and perversities of the suffering victim
+he seems to them a moral wrongdoer who negates the principle of human freedom a forcible book of recent days calls the suggestive power of the psychotherapist the great psychological crime it says to the hypnotist
+by your own testimony you stand convicted of applying a process which deprives your subjects of the inalienable right and power of individual self control in proportion as you deprive him of the power of self control
+you deprive him of that upon which his individual responsibility and moral status depend in proportion as you deprive him of the free control and exercise of those powers of the soul upon which his individual responsibility and moral status depend
+you thereby rob him of those powers upon which he must depend for the achievement of individual immortality but this censure too is entirely mistaken not because it urges the purposive views against the causal
+but because it is in error as to the facts such critics are fully under the influence of the startling results which are reached they do not take the trouble to examine the long and difficult way which has had to be traversed with patience and energy
+it is quite true that if i hypnotize a man and suggest to him to take up after awaking the book which lies on my table he follows my suggestion without conflict and in a certain sense without freedom he feels a simple impulse to go to the table and lift the book and
+as no stronger natural desire and no moral objection stand in the way he carries out that meaningless impulse and perhaps even invents a foolish motive to explain to himself why he wanted to look at that book
+but after a long experience i have my doubts as to whether a man was ever cured in such a way by hypnotism of serious disturbances and of those anomalous actions which the critics want to see overcome by the patient's own moral efforts on the contrary
+every suggestion has to rely on the efforts and struggles of the patient himself and all that the psychotherapists can give him is help in his own moral fight his own will is presupposition for being hypnotized
+if again and again i hesitate to undertake new cases it is just because i have to see during the treatment too much of this daily and hourly striving against overpowering impulses the joy of removing some obstacles from the way of the patients
+is too much overshadowed by the deep pity and sympathy with their suffering and craving during the whole period of successive treatments to make a man fight where despair is inevitable and where the enemy is necessarily stronger than his own powers can certainly not be the moral demand
+morality postulates that everyone find conditions in which he can be victorious if he puts his strongest efforts to the task in our discussion of the mental symptoms i reported as an illustration of the suggestive treatment of the drug passion
+the case of a morphinist to make clear this purposive side of the case as against the causal one which alone interested the physician i may add a few features to the short report as a typical example
+when that man left my laboratory for the last time to go out to work and happiness you might well have believed from his joyful face that it had been an easy and pleasant time in which hypnotic influence smoothly removed from him the dangerous desire for morphine
+in truth it was the result of four months of the most noble and courageous suffering and struggling he had been for years a slave to his passion to quote from his little autobiography when i realized that i was addicted to morphine
+that is coming to anyone who is the user of opium or any of its alkaloids for the first few months i found great relief after every injection of morphine but soon i could not get the same easy feeling and could eat but very little and what sleep i got was in the daytime
+i finally went to the sanitarium of a doctor
+when i first went to see the professor in the harvard psychological laboratory i was using between thirty two and thirty eight grains of morphine daily he put me under his treatment october sixth and that day cut me down by hypnotic treatment to nine grains a day or
+three doses of three grains a day i took my hypodermic as directed but on the following day i lay on the bed too exhausted to get up even to get around the room and i could not eat
+the desire for the drug was something terrible but in about four days i got used to the loss of so much morphine and stayed on this amount for a week seeing the professor every other day for hypnotic treatment and then returning to my room where i spent twenty two hours of the twenty four on the bed
+but did not sleep more than two or three hours a day
+i was cut off by hypnotic suggestion half a grain and this put me to fighting the desire again
+these reductions of the dose were made a week apart and sometimes only two days the worst time of all was a cut from four injections of a fourth of a grain each to four of one eighth of a grain each which was about january tenth
+at this time i had the worst two days of my life i tried whiskey but it gave relief only for about half an hour and then the desire was worse than ever
+he was thus at every moment during the day and night in full possession of the deadly poison with which he could have fully satisfied his craving it was a moral victory when he finally reached the point at which he went for several weeks without any desire for morphine
+and finally presented the remaining tablets to a hospital and yet there would not have been the least chance for his winning this ethical victory without the outer help of the hypnotist we do not eliminate the moral will but we remove some unfair obstacles from its path
+we have no mystic power by which our will simply takes hold of the other man's will but we inhibit and suppress by influence on the imagination those abnormal impulses which resist the sound desires if that were immoral
+we should have to make up our minds that all education and training were perverted with such immoral elements every sound respect for authority which makes a child willing to accept the advice and maxims of his elders is just such an influence
+if it were really a moral demand that the will be left to its own resources and that no outside influence come to strengthen its power or remove its hindrances or smooth its path then we ought to let the children grow up as nature created them
+and ought not to try to suppress from without by discipline and training by love and encouragement the willful impulses and the ugly habits even every good model for imitation is such a suggestive influence from without and every solemn appeal to loyalty and friendship
+to patriotism and religion increases the degree of suggestibility that is the glory of life that the suggestive power may belong to moral values instead of mere pleasures but it is not the aim of life to remain untouched by suggestion
+and he who by suggestion helps the weak mind to overcome obstacles which the strong mind can overthrow from its inborn resources works for the good of the individual and of the community in the spirit of truest morality much more justified than such
+ethical objections are the fears which move entirely in the causal sphere it must be acknowledged that a method which has such powerful influence over the mind that it can secure ideas and emotions and impulses which the own will of the patient cannot produce
+ought to be allowed only to those who are prepared for its skillful use to hypnotize or to perform any persistent psychotherapeutic treatment may thus be dangerous if it is done by the unfit
+we have discussed before the injuries which might result from the administration of such powerful psychotherapeutic effects through the best meaning minister but we can extend this fear to anyone who has not systematically studied medicine and to a certain degree normal and abnormal psychology
+the possibilities of overlooking symptoms which ought to suggest an entirely different treatment or of adjusting the treatment badly to the special physical conditions or of ignoring the desirable physical supplement by drugs or of creating unintentionally by suggestion
+injurious effects are always open when medical amateurs undertake such work certainly there is no physician who is not liable to make mistakes and a physician who has never given any attention to psychology and psychiatry
+would also be a rather poor agent of psychotherapeutic methods but the probability is that such a physician would simply abstain by principle from all psychotherapeutic methods his mistake only begins if from his lack of acquaintance with the subject
+he draws the conclusion that the method itself is undesirable that his real preparation ought to include psychological studies we have pointed out before and the time seems ripe for the community to urge such a reform of the studies
+all that involves the conviction that even the experimental psychologist as such is not prepared to enter into medical treatment and a psychological clinic managed by a psychologist who is not a doctor of medicine
+is certainly not better than a church clinic i cannot even acknowledge the right of psychologists to make hypnotic experiments merely for the psychological experiment's sake nobody ought to be brought into a hypnotic or otherwise abnormal state of mind
+if it is not suggested by the interests of the subject himself science has the right to make hypnotic experiments or experiments with abnormal mental states only under the one condition that a physician has hypnotized the subject in the interests of his health
+and that the patient has agreed beforehand to allow in the presence of witnesses certain psychological studies needless to say that any hypnotization for mere amusement and as a parlor trick ought to be considered as
+criminal on some other objections which interest the community as such we had to touch before and there is no need of returning to them with any fullness of argument we spoke of the danger which the mental cures carry with them when they are based on any particular creed
+what is gained if some nervous disorders are helped by belief if the belief itself devastates our intellectual culture and brings the masses down again to a view of the world which has all the earmarks of barbarism
+that is indeed one of the central dangers of all non medical suggestive cures that while any belief may cure through the mere emotional power of the act of believing the content of the belief gains an undeserved appearance of truth
+any absurd superstition can become accredited because its curative value may be equal to a truly valuable suggestion the intellectual life of the community would have to suffer greatly if the way to be freed from bodily suffering
+had to be the belief in the metaphysical doctrines of missus eddy's science and health from a cultural viewpoint too suggestive therapeutics must stand the higher the more sharply it is separated from special philosophical or religious doctrines
+no theory of the world and of god ought to gain authority over the mind from such an external motive as a belief in its curative effects freest from such implications is certainly the hypnotic method of the physician
+who does not need the strong religious reenforcement of the suggestion because he reenforces instead the suggestibility of the patient by slight influences on his senses
+even where sound religion without superstition and without pseudophilosophy stands behind the therapeutic work the community will not give up the question whether the church does not necessarily neglect by it the interests which are superior
+the community becomes more and more strongly aware that too many factors of our modern society urge the church to undertake non religious work social aid and charity work ought to be filled with religious spirit
+still more that is true of the healing of the sick whether or not such expansion of church activity in different directions saps the vital strength of religion itself is indeed a problem for the whole community
+the fear suggests itself that the spiritual achievement may become hampered that in the competition of the church with the other agencies of social life the particular church task may be pushed to the background and that thus the church
+in imitating that which others can do just as well or better loses the power to do that which the church alone can do the final outcome is therefore practically in every way the same from whatever starting point we may come we are led to the conviction
+that the physician alone is called to administer psychotherapeutic work but that he needs a thorough psychological training besides his medical one but the interest of the community is not only a negative one
+society does not only ask where psychical treatment can be dangerous but asks with not less right whether the scheme and the method might not be fructified for other social ends besides the mere healing of the sick if psychotherapy demonstrates that for instance
+hypnotism makes possible the reshaping of a pathological mind it is a natural thought to use the same power for remodeling perhaps the lazy or the intemperate the careless or the inattentive the dishonest or the criminal mind
+both educators and criminologists have indeed often raised such questions and social reformers have not seldom seen there wide perspectives for social movements in future times
+there can be no doubt that the possibility of such remodeling activity is given but as far as education is concerned certainly grave misgivings ought to be felt when we spoke of the treatment of the sick
+we had always to emphasize that the suggestion cures symptoms but not diseases in the same way hypnotic suggestion might reenforce a single trait but would not reform the personality of the child
+yes the artificial reenforcement of such special features would deprive education of that which is the most essential namely the development of the power to overcome difficulties by own energy
+wherever a reasonable amount of own will force and attention can be expected to overcome the antagonistic influence there artificial hypnotic influence ought to be avoided everything ought to be left in that case to suggestions within normal limits
+in the form of good example and persuasions authority and discipline love and sympathy that holds true even for very slight abnormalities which seem still within the limits where the own energies can bring about the cure for instance
+i have steadily refused requests of students and others to use hypnotism for the purpose of overcoming merely bad habits such as the habit of biting the nails a child who finds some difficulty in sticking seriously to his tasks might learn now this
+and now that under the influence of hypnotic suggestions but he would remain entirely untrained for mastering the next lesson in the same way some naughty traits might be artificially removed but the child would not gain anything towards the much more important power
+of suppressing an ugly tendency by his own effort all that finds its limits where the inhibitions or obstacles in the brain of the child are too strong possibly to be overcome by the own good will but in that case
+psychotherapy has its right the feeble minded and the retarded child the perverse child and the emotionally unstable child belong under the care of the physician
+which are at his disposal still more complex is the criminological problem it sounds like an easy remedy for the greatest social calamity if it is proposed simply to hypnotize the criminal and to supplant his antisocial will by a moral one
+and if the absurdity of such a proposal is recognized it seems to many justified to demand such an intrusion at least in the case of the born criminal even if the occasional criminal cannot be reached
+but the conception of the born criminal is also only a label which is superficially used for a great variety of minds that men are born with a brain which necessarily produces criminal actions is not indicated by any facts
+the varieties which nature really produces are brains which are more liable than others to produce antisocial actions we recognized from the start that the abnormal mind never introduces any new elements but is characterized only by a change of proportions
+there is too much or too little of a certain mental process and just for that reason there must be a steady and continuous transition from the normal to the entirely abnormal
+we will pass to the consideration of a regular out and out pirate one from whose mast head would have floated the black flag with its skull and cross bones if that emblematic piece of bunting had been in use by the pirates of the period
+and his own was unknown and the brazilian because he was born in brazil though of dutch parents unlike most of his fellow practitioners he did not gradually become a pirate from his early youth
+he never had an intention of being anything else as soon as he grew to be a man he became a bloody buccaneer and at the first opportunity he joined a pirate crew and had made but a few voyages when it was perceived by his companions
+that he was destined to become a most remarkable sea robber he was offered the command of a ship with a well armed crew of marine savages
+he fell in with a spanish ship loaded with silver bullion having captured this he sailed with his prize to jamaica which was one of the great resorts of the english buccaneers there his success delighted the community
+his talents for the conduct of great piratical operations soon became apparent and he was generally acknowledged as the head pirate of the west indies he was now looked upon as a hero even by those colonists
+who had no sympathy with pirates and as for esquemeling he simply worshipped the great brazilian desperado if he had been writing the life and times of alexander the great julius caesar or mister gladstone
+he could not have been more enthusiastic in his praises and as in the arabian nights the roc is described as the greatest of birds so in the eyes of the buccaneer biographer this roc was the greatest of pirates
+that roc now became famous the better he became known the more general was the fear and respect felt for him and we are told that the mothers of the islands used to put their children to sleep by threatening them with the terrible roc if they did not close their eyes
+this story however i regard with a great deal of doubt
+but i do not believe it is an easy thing to frighten a child into going to sleep if i found it necessary to make a youngster take a nap i should say nothing of the condition of affairs in cuba or of the persecutions of the armenians
+this renowned pirate from brazil must have been a terrible fellow to look at he was strong and brawny his face was short and very wide with high cheek bones and his expression probably resembled that of a pug dog
+his eyebrows were enormously large and bushy and from under them he glared at his mundane surroundings he was not a man whose spirit could be quelled by looking him steadfastly in the eye it was his custom in the daytime to walk about
+carrying a drawn cutlass resting easily upon his arm edge up very much as a fine gentleman carries his high silk hat and any one who should impertinently stare or endeavor to quell his high spirits in any other way
+would probably have felt the edge of that cutlass descending rapidly through his physical organism he was a man who insisted upon being obeyed and if any one of his crew behaved improperly or was even found idle
+but although he was so strict and exacting during the business sessions of his piratical year by which i mean when he was cruising around after prizes he was very much more disagreeable when he was taking a vacation
+on his return to jamaica after one of his expeditions it was his habit to give himself some relaxation after the hardships and dangers through which he had passed and on such occasions it was a great comfort to roc to get himself thoroughly drunk
+with his cutlass waving high in the air he would rush out into the street and take a whack at every one whom he met as far as was possible the citizens allowed him to have the street to himself and it was not at all likely
+that his visits to jamaica were looked forward to with any eager anticipations roc it may be said was not only a bloody pirate but a blooded one he was thoroughbred
+from the time he had been able to assert his individuality he had been a pirate and there was no reason to suppose that he would ever reform himself into anything else there were no extenuating circumstances in his case
+in his nature there was no alloy nor moderation nor forbearance the appreciative esquemeling who might be called the boswell of the buccaneers could never have met his hero roc
+when that bushy bearded pirate was running amuck in the streets but if he had it is not probable that his book would have been written he assures us that when roc was not drunk he was esteemed but at the same time feared
+but there are various ways of gaining esteem and roc's method certainly succeeded very well in the case of his literary associate as we have seen the hatred of the spaniards by the buccaneers began very early in the settlement of the west indies
+but in all the instances of ferocious enmity toward the spaniards there has been nothing to equal the feelings of roc the brazilian upon that subject his dislike to everything spanish arose he declared
+seems to have been that there was nothing too bad for a spaniard the object of his life was to wage bitter war against spanish ships and spanish settlements he seldom gave any quarter to his prisoners
+then there was nothing for them to do but to go on board their vessels and put out to sea in search of some fresh prize so far roc's career had been very much like that of many other companions of the coast
+differing from them only in respect to intensity and force but he was a clever man with ideas
+he was cruising about campeachy without seeing any craft that was worth capturing
+and find out whether or not there were any spanish vessels in the bay which were well laden and which were likely soon to come out so with a small boat filled with some of his trusty men he rowed quietly into the port to see what he could discover
+and had sent that mild mannered observer into the harbor to investigate into the state of affairs
+but he chose to go himself and he came to grief no sooner did the people on the ships lying in the harbor behold a boat approaching with a big browed broad jawed mariner sitting in the stern
+and with a good many more broad backed hairy mariners than were necessary pulling at the oars than they gave the alarm
+roc must have had a great deal of confidence in his own powers or perhaps he relied somewhat upon the fear which his very presence evoked but he made a mistake this time he had run into the lion's jaw and the lion had closed his teeth upon him
+when the pirate captain and his companions were brought before the governor he made no pretence of putting them to trial buccaneers were outlawed by the spanish
+and were considered as wild beasts to be killed without mercy wherever caught consequently roc and his men were thrown into a dungeon and condemned to be executed if however the spanish governor had known what was good for himself
+during the time that preparations were going on for making examples of these impertinent pirates
+this was a branch of the business in which a capable pirate was obliged to be proficient if he could not get himself out of scrapes he could not expect to be successful in this case there was no chance of cutting down sentinels
+or jumping overboard with a couple of wine jars for a life preserver or of doing any of those ordinary things which pirates were in the habit of doing when escaping from their captors
+inside of a fortress and if they escaped from this they would find themselves unarmed in the midst of a body of spanish soldiers their stout arms and their stout hearts were of no use to them now
+and they were obliged to depend upon their wits if they had any roc had plenty of wit and he used it well there was a slave probably not a negro nor a native
+who came in to bring him food and drink and by the means of this man the pirate hoped to play a trick upon the governor he promised the slave that if he would help him and he told him it would be very easy to do so
+he would give him money enough to buy his freedom and to return to his friends and this of course was a great inducement to the poor fellow who may have been an englishman or a frenchman in good circumstances at home the slave agreed to the proposals
+and the first thing he did was to bring some writing materials to roc who thereupon began the composition of a letter
+when he was coming into the bay roc had noticed a large french vessel that was lying at some distance from the town
+by the hand of roc went on to say that if any harm should come to these brave men who had been taken and imprisoned when they were doing no harm to anybody he would swear in his most solemn manner that never
+for the rest of his life would he give quarter to any spaniard who might fall into his hands and he moreover threatened that any kind of vengeance which should become possible for the buccaneers and french united to inflict upon the spanish ships
+or upon the town of campeachy should be taken as soon as possible after he should hear of any injury that might be inflicted upon the unfortunate men who were then lying imprisoned in the fortress when the slave came back to roc
+the letter was given to him with very particular directions as to what he was to do with it he was to disguise himself as much as possible so that he should not be recognized by the people of the place and then in the night he was to make his way out of the town
+and early in the morning he was to return as if he had been walking along the shore of the harbor when he was to state that he had been put on shore from the french vessel in the offing with a letter which he was to present to the governor the slave performed his part of the business very well
+the next day wet and bedraggled from making his way through the weeds and mud of the coast he presented himself at the fortress with his letter and when he was allowed to take it to the governor no one suspected that he was a person employed about the place
+having fulfilled his mission he departed and when seen again he was the same servant whose business it was to carry food to the prisoners the governor read the letter with a disquieted mind
+he knew that the french ship which was lying outside the harbor was a powerful vessel and he did not like french ships anyway the town had once been taken and very badly treated by a little fleet of french and english buccaneers
+and he was very anxious that nothing of the kind should happen again there was no great spanish force in the harbor at that time and he did not know how many buccaneering vessels might be able to gather together in the bay
+if it should become known that the great pirate roc had been put to death in campeachy it was an unusual thing for a prisoner to have such powerful friends so near by and the governor took roc's case into most earnest consideration
+and he determined to get rid of him as soon as possible he felt himself in the position of a man who has stolen a baby bear and who hears the roar of an approaching parent through the woods
+to throw away the cub and walk off as though he had no idea there were any bears in that forest would be the inclination of a man so situated and to get rid of the great pirate without provoking the vengeance of his friends
+was the natural inclination of the governor now roc and his men were treated well and having been brought before the governor were told that in consequence of their having committed no overt act of disorder they would be set at liberty and shipped to england
+upon the single condition that they would abandon piracy and agree to become quiet citizens in whatever respectable vocation they might select to these terms roc and his men agreed without argument
+they declared that they would retire from the buccaneering business and that nothing would suit them better than to return to the ways of civilization and virtue there was a ship about to depart for spain and on this the governor gave roc and his men free passage to the other side of the ocean
+there is no doubt that our buccaneers would have much preferred to have been put on board the french vessel but as the spanish governor had started his prisoners on the road to reform he did not wish to throw them into the way of temptation
+by allowing them to associate with such wicked companions as frenchmen and roc made no suggestion of the kind knowing very well how greatly astonished the french captain would be if the governor were to communicate with him on the subject
+on the voyage to spain roc was on his good behavior and he was a man who knew how to behave very well when it was absolutely necessary no doubt there must have been many dull days on board ship
+when he would have been delighted to gamble to get drunk and to run amuck up and down the deck but he carefully abstained from all these recreations and showed himself to be such an able bodied and willing sailor
+that the captain allowed him to serve as one of the crew roc knew how to do a great many things not only could he murder and rob but he knew how to turn an honest penny when there was no other way of filling his purse he had learned among the indians
+how to shoot fish with bow and arrows and on this voyage across the atlantic he occupied all his spare time in sitting in the rigging and shooting the fish which disported themselves about the vessel
+these fish he sold to the officers and we are told that in this way he earned no less than five hundred crowns perhaps that many dollars if this account is true fish must have been very costly in those days
+in every way roc behaved so well that for his sake all his men were treated kindly and allowed many privileges but when this party of reformed pirates reached spain and were allowed to go where they pleased
+they thought no more of the oaths they had taken to abandon piracy than they thought of the oaths which they had been in the habit of throwing right and left
+but as soon as they could manage it they sailed back to the west indies and eventually found themselves in jamaica
+not only did roc cast from him every thought of reformation and a respectable life but he determined to begin the business of piracy on a grander scale than ever before he made a compact with an old french buccaneer
+and with a large company of buccaneers he actually set out to take a town having lost everything he possessed and having passed such a long time without any employment more profitable than that of shooting fish with a bow and arrows
+our doughty pirate now desired to make a grand strike and if he could take a town and pillage it of everything valuable it contained he would make a very good fortune in a very short time and might retire if he chose
+from the active practice of his profession
+in yucatan and although this was a bold and rash undertaking the two pirates were bold and rash enough for anything roc had been a prisoner in merida and on account of his knowledge of the town he believed that he and his followers could land upon the coast
+if they could do this it would be an easy matter to rush upon the unsuspecting garrison and having annihilated these make themselves masters of the town but their plans did not work very well they were discovered by some indians
+after they had landed who hurried to merida and gave notice of the approach of the buccaneers consequently when roc and his companions reached the town they found the garrison prepared for them cannons loaded and all the approaches guarded
+still the pirates did not hesitate they advanced fiercely to the attack just as they were accustomed to do when they were boarding a spanish vessel but they soon found that fighting on land was very different from fighting at sea
+in a marine combat it is seldom that a party of boarders is attacked in the rear by the enemy although on land such methods of warfare may always be expected
+and they were therefore greatly dismayed when a party of horsemen from the town who had made a wide detour through the woods suddenly charged upon their rear
+tributor and a great many of the pirates were killed or taken and roc the brazilian had a terrible fall this most memorable fall occurred in the estimation of john esquemeling
+who knew all about the attack on merida and who wrote the account of it but he had never expected to be called upon to record that his great hero roc the brazilian saved his life after the utter defeat of himself and his companions
+by ignominiously running away the loyal chronicler had as firm a belief in the absolute inability of his hero to fly from danger as was shown by the scottish douglas when he stood
+come one come all the bushy browed pirate of the drawn cutlass
+who would even surrender to say nothing of running away that esquemeling could scarcely believe that roc had retreated from his enemies deserted his friends and turned his back upon the principles which he had always so truculently proclaimed
+but this downfall of a hero simply shows that esquemeling although he was a member of the piratical body and was proud to consider himself a buccaneer did not understand the true nature of a pirate under the brutality
+the cruelty the dishonesty and the recklessness of the sea robbers of those days there was nearly always meanness and cowardice roc as we have said in the beginning of this sketch was a typical pirate
+under certain circumstances he showed himself to have all those brave and savage qualities which esquemeling esteemed and revered and under other circumstances he showed those other qualities which esquemeling despised
+but which are necessary to make up the true character of a pirate the historian john seems to have been very much cut up by the manner in which his favorite hero had rounded off his piratical career
+and after that he entirely dropped roc from his chronicles
+chapter ten dropping the stowaway tom's excited announcement startled mister damon and the others as much as if the young inventor had informed them that the airship had exploded
+and was about to dash with them to the earth the men leaped to their feet and stared at the lad a stowaway on board cried mister damon bless my soul how did he are you sure that message is straight asked mister jenks
+did eradicate see the man he says he did answered tom the man is hidden away on board now probably among the stores and supplies bless my tomato sauce exploded mister damon
+we must get him out at once declared mister jenks i knew something would happen on this voyage came from mister parker i predicted it from the first tom thought considerable
+but he did not answer the scientist just then another communication was coming to him by wireless he listened intently father says the lad told his companions that eradicate only had a glimpse of the man at the last moment
+he was looking from the rear storeroom window he's the same man who called on me that time rad remembers him very well bless my shoes what's to be done inquired mister damon looking around helplessly
+decided mister jenks with vigor get him out and drop him overboard drop him overboard cried mister parker in horror not exactly but get rid of him
+that man is one of my enemies he has been sent by the band of diamond makers hidden among the mountains to spy on me and if possible prevent me from seeking to discover their secret
+he tried to work on tom's swift's fears and frighten him from using his airship on this quest then when he failed the man must have sneaked into the shed and hidden himself in the ship we must get rid of him or he may wreck the red cloud
+that's so cried tom we must try to capture him i think we had better the lad paused and again listened to the wireless message father says eradicate saw the man have a gun so we must be careful
+the young inventor translated the dots and dashes bless my powder horn exploded mister damon we shall have to proceed cautiously then spoke mister jenks
+if he is like any others in the gang he is a desperate man better sneak up on him then if we can proposed mister parker there are enough of us to cope with one man even if he is armed
+he inquired of tom yes was the hesitating answer but i don't want to use them if i can help it not only because of the danger and a dislike of shedding blood but
+because a stray bullet might pierce the gas bag and damage the ship that's so agreed mister jenks well i guess if we go at it the right way we can capture him without any shooting but we must talk more quietly
+he may have heard us i don't think so replied tom the storeroom is far enough off so that he couldn't hear us besides the motor makes such a racket that he couldn't distinguish what we were talking about even if he heard our voices
+so unless he heard the wireless working and suspects something from that he probably doesn't know that we are aware of his presence aboard but why do you think he has remained quiet all this while tom asked mister damon
+probably he wants to wait until the ship is farther out west suggested mister jenks then he will be nearer his friends and can get help if he needs it and do you really believe he would destroy the red cloud asked mister parker
+i think that all he is waiting for is a favorable chance declared the diamond seeker he would destroy the craft and us too if he could prevent us from discovering the secret of phantom mountain i believe
+then we must get ahead of him decided tom quietly i have just flashed to dad a message telling him that we will heed his warning now to capture the stowaway
+and while we're about it give him a good scare when we do get him suggested mister jenks how asked tom threaten to drop him overboard perhaps that will make him tell how he happened to get in our ship
+and what are the plans of the gang of diamond makers we may get valuable information that way i don't believe you can scare such fellows much was tom's opinion
+how are you going to capture him asked mister parker if he has a gun it won't be any too easy to go in the storeroom and drag him out we'll have to use a little strategy decided tom and then they discussed several plans
+the one finally adopted was that tom and mister damon should enter the storeroom casually as if in search of food to cook for supper they would discuss various dishes and mister damon was to express a preference for something in the food line
+the box containing which was well back in the room this would give the two a chance to penetrate to the far end of the apartment without arousing the suspicions of the hidden man who doubtless would be listening to the conversation and as soon as we get sight of him
+said tom jump before he has a chance to use his gun mister jenks and mister parker will be waiting outside the room to catch him if he gets away from us i'll have some ropes ready and we'll tie him up and well we'll decide later what to do with him all right
+i'm ready as soon as you are tom said the eccentric man come ahead they went softly to the storeroom and listened at the door there was no sound heard save that made by the machinery i wonder if he's really here
+whispered mister damon we'll soon find out answered tom let's go in they entered and in pursuance of their plan tom and his friend talked of various foods
+i think i'd like some of that canned lobster with french dressing on spoke the eccentric man that's away in the back end of the room said tom in a loud voice it's under a lot of boxes
+then i'll help you get it out bless my frying pan but i am very fond of lobster exclaimed mister damon in as natural tones as was possible under the circumstances
+he and tom moved cautiously back among the boxes and barrels they were glancing about with eager eyes tom switched on an electric light and the instant he did so
+he was aware of a movement in a little space formed by one box which was placed on top of two others the lad saw a dark figure moving as if to get farther out of sight i've got him cried tom making a dive for the shadow
+a moment later the young inventor was bowled over as a dark figure leaped over his head catch him mister damon he cried bless my hatband i i mister damon's voice ended in a grunt he too had been knocked down by the fleeing man
+look out mister jenks cried tom to warn those on guard at the door of the storeroom there was the report of a gun some excited shouts and when tom could scramble to his feet and rush out he beheld mister parker calmly sitting on a struggling man
+while mister jenks held a gun that was still smoking we caught him cried the scientist anybody hurt asked tom anxiously no i knocked up his gun as he fired explained mister jenks where are the ropes tom
+the cords were produced and the man who had now ceased to struggle was tightly bound he uttered not a word but he smiled grimly when mister damon remarked i guess i'll go back in the storeroom tom and see how much food he ate
+he wasn't there long enough well farley munson so it's you is it asked mister jenks as he surveyed the prisoner do you know him asked tom in some surprise
+he was in with the diamond makers said mister jenks he was one of those who took me to the secret cave but it will be the last time he ever goes there how high up are we tom about two miles why
+i guess that will be far enough to let him fall went on the diamond seeker come on mister damon help me throw him overboard you
+throw me over with the airship two miles high are you gasped the man will you tell us what we want to know if we don't asked mister jenks
+how you got aboard and what your object was in coming that's easy enough i had been hanging around the shed for several days watching a chance to get in finally i saw it when that colored man went to feed his mule and i slipped in and
+hid in the airship the stores were all in then and i stowed myself away among the boxes i had food and water so i didn't touch any of yours and he looked at mister damon who seemed much relieved and what was your object
+demanded mister jenks i wanted to prevent you from going to phantom mountain how by destroying the airship if need be but i hoped to accomplish it by other means
+you must keep away from there and if we refuse asked tom then you'll have to take what comes but not from you exclaimed mister jenks we're going to get rid of you
+the man's face showed the alarm he felt oh don't worry said mister jenks quickly we're not going to toss you overboard
+and then go on before you can send any word to your confederates we'll put you off in the most lonesome spot we can find and i guess you'll be some time getting back to civilization by that time we'll have the secret of the diamonds you never will
+declared the man firmly and he would say nothing more though by threats and promises mister jenks tried to get from him something about the men in with him and where the cave of the diamonds was located
+heavily bound with ropes the man was locked in a small closet to be kept there until a favorable spot was reached for letting him go mister jenks plan
+was considered a good one three days later in crossing over a lonely region near the nebraska national forest farley munson which was one of the names the spy went by
+was dropped off the airship when it was sent down to within a few feet of the earth it will take you some time to get to a telegraph office said mister jenks as a package of food and a flask of water was tossed down to the stowaway
+he shook his fist at those in the airship and shouted after them you'll never discover the secret of phantom mountain
+rapidly the airship ascended and when it was high over the town of shopton tom headed the craft due west looking down he tried to descry mary nestor in her carriage but the trees were in the way
+their interlocking branches hiding the girl tom did see crowds of other persons though thronging the streets of shopton for though the young inventor had made many flights there was always a novelty about them that brought out the curious
+complimented mister parker is it always as easy as this starting always is was the answer though as the irishman said coming down isn't sometimes quite so comfortable bless my gizzard that's so
+cried the eccentric mister damon can we vol plane to earth in the red cloud tom yes but not as easily as in the butterfly however i hope we will not have to
+now mister damon if you will just take charge of the steering apparatus for a minute i want to go aft what for i wish to see if everything is all right i can't imagine why eradicate was making those queer motions
+mister damon who knew how to operate the red cloud was soon guiding her on the course while tom made his way to the rear compartments through the motor room where the stores of supplies and food were kept he made a careful examination
+looking from an after window and even going out on a small open platform but could discover nothing wrong i guess rad was just capering about without any special object mused tom
+that the colored man had had a method in his madness on his way back through the motor room tom looked to the machinery and adjusted some of the auxiliary oil feeders the various pieces of apparatus were working well
+though the engine had not yet been speeded up to its limit tom wanted it to warm up first everything all right asked mister damon as tom rejoined them in the pilot house which was just forward of the living room in the main cabin
+yes i can't imagine what made rad act that way but i'll set the automatic steering gear now mister damon and then you will be relieved mister jenks was gazing off toward the west
+to where he hoped to discover the secret of phantom mountain how do you like it asked tom it's great replied the diamond man i've never been in an airship before and it's different than what i expected but it's great
+it's the only craft that will serve our purpose among the towering mountain peaks where the diamond makers are hidden i hope we can find them in a little while the red cloud was skimming along at faster speed
+guided by the automatic rudders so that no one was needed in the pilot house since there was no danger of collisions airships are not quite numerous enough for that yet though they may soon become so
+tom and the others devoted several hours to arranging their staterooms and bunks and getting their clothing stowed away and when this was done mister parker and mister jenks sat gazing off into space it's hard to realize that we are really in an airship
+observed the diamond man at first i thought i would be frightened but i'm not a bit it doesn't seem as if anything could happen something is likely to happen soon said mister parker suddenly
+as he gazed at some weather instruments on the cabin wall bless my soul don't say that cried mister damon what is it i think from my observations that we will soon have a hurricane said the scientific man
+there is every indication of it and he seemed quite delighted at the prospect of his prediction coming true a hurricane cried mister damon i hope it isn't like the one that blew us to earthquake island
+oh i think there will be no danger spoke tom if it comes on to blow we will ascend or descend out of the path of the storm this craft is not like the ill fated whizzer i can more easily handle the red cloud even in a bad storm
+remarked mister jenks it would be too bad to be wrecked before we got to phantom mountain well i predict that we will have a bad storm insisted mister parker
+and tom could not help wishing that the scientist would keep his gloomy forebodings to himself however the storm had not developed up to noon when tom with mister damon's help served a fine meal in the dining room in the afternoon the speed of the ship was increased
+and by night they had covered several hundred miles through the darkness the red cloud kept on making good time tom got up occasionally to look to the machinery
+and an alarm bell would sound in his stateroom when anything went wrong bless my napkin exclaimed mister damon the next morning as they sat down to a breakfast of fruit ham and eggs and fragrant coffee
+and yet we are how far are we above the earth tom he asked turning to the young inventor about two miles now i just sent her up as i thought i detected that storm mister parker spoke of i told you it would come declared the scientist
+that morning but only the lower edge of it caught the red cloud and when tom sent her up still higher she found a comparatively quiet zone where she slid along at good speed
+that afternoon tom busied himself about some wires and a number of complicated pieces of apparatus which were in one corner of the main cabin what are you doing now asked mister jenks who had been talking with mister parker
+and showing that scientist some of the manufactured diamonds getting our wireless apparatus in shape answered the lad i should have done it before but i had so much to do that i couldn't get at it
+dad will want to know how we are doing as he worked away he also made up his mind to send another message in care of his father for there was a receiving station in the swift home and to whom this message was addressed tom did not say
+but we fancy some of our readers can guess finally after several hours of work the wireless was in shape to send and receive messages tom pulled over the lever and a crackling sound was heard
+as the electricity leaped from the transmitters into space then he clamped the receiver on his ear all ready he announced has anybody any messages they wish sent for with the courtesy of a true host
+he was ready to serve his guests before he forwarded his own wireless notes just tell my wife that i'm enjoying myself requested mister damon bless my footstool but this is great we're off the earth yet
+connected with it mister jenks had no one to whom he wanted to send any word but mister parker wish to wire to a fellow scientist the result of some observations made in the upper air tom noted all the messages down
+and then when all was in readiness he began to call his home station he knew that either his father or mister jackson the engineer could receive the wireless
+but no sooner had the young inventor sent off the first few dots and dashes representing s i his home station call than he started and a look of surprise came over his face they're calling us he exclaimed who is
+asked mister jenks my house my father he he's been trying to get us ever since we started but i didn't have the wireless in shape to receive messages oh i hope it's not too late too late bless my soul too late for what
+gasped mister damon somewhat alarmed by tom's manner the lad did not answer at once he was intently listening to a series of dots and dashes that clicked in the telephone receiver clamped to his left ear on his face
+there was a look of worriment father has just sent me a message he said it's a warning flashed through space he's been trying to get it to me since yesterday
+asked mister jenks rising from his seat the mysterious man is aboard the airship hidden away cried tom that's what eradicate was trying to call to our attention as we started off
+are as dualistic as it is possible to be thoughts we all naturally think are made of one kind of substance and things of another consciousness flowing inside of us in the forms of conception or judgment
+or concentrating itself in the shape of passion or emotion can be directly felt as the spiritual activity which it is and known in contrast with the space filling objective content which it envelopes and accompanies
+in opposition to this dualistic philosophy i tried in the first essay to show that thoughts and things are absolutely homogeneous as to their material and that their opposition is only one of relation and of function
+there is no thought stuff different from thing stuff i said but the same identical piece of pure experience which was the name i gave to the materia prima of everything
+can stand alternately for a fact of consciousness or for a physical reality according as it is taken in one context or in another for the right understanding of what follows
+in our pleasures and pains our loves and fears and angers in the beauty comicality importance or preciousness of certain objects and situations we have i am told by many critics
+a great realm of experience intuitively recognized as spiritual made and felt to be made of consciousness exclusively and different in nature from the space filling kind of being which is enjoyed by physical objects
+because i had to be so brief i now return to the subject because i believe that so far from invalidating my general thesis these phenomena when properly analyzed afford it powerful support
+the central point of the pure experience theory is that outer and inner are names for two groups into which we sort experiences according to the way in which they act upon their neighbors
+any one content such as hard let us say can be assigned to either group in the outer group it is strong it acts energetically and aggressively
+here whatever is hard interferes with the space its neighbors occupy it dents them is impenetrable by them and we call the hardness then a physical hardness
+in the mind on the contrary the hard thing is nowhere in particular it dents nothing it suffuses through its mental neighbors as it were and interpenetrates them
+taken in this group we call both it and them ideas or sensations and the basis of the two groups respectively is the different type of interrelation
+the mutual impenetrability on the one hand and the lack of physical interference and interaction on the other that what in itself is one and the same entity should be able to function thus differently in different contexts
+is a natural consequence of the extremely complex reticulations in which our experiences come to her offspring a tigress is tender but cruel to every other living thing
+both cruel and tender therefore at once a mass in movement resists every force that operates contrariwise to its own direction but to forces that pursue the same direction or come in at right angles
+it is absolutely inert it is thus both energetic and inert and the same is true if you vary the associates properly of every other piece of experience
+it is only towards certain specific groups of associates that the physical energies as we call them of a content are put forth in another group it may be quite inert
+it is possible to imagine a universe of experiences in which the only alternative between neighbors would be either physical interaction or complete inertness
+in such a world the mental or the physical status of any piece of experience would be unequivocal when active it would figure in the physical and when inactive in the mental group
+but the universe we live in is more chaotic than this and there is room in it for the hybrid or ambiguous group of our affectional experiences of our emotions and appreciative perceptions
+in the paragraphs that follow i shall try to show one that the popular notion that these experiences are intuitively given as purely inner facts is hasty and erroneous and two
+that their ambiguity illustrates beautifully my central thesis that subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is aboriginally made of but of its classification
+classifications depend on our temporary purposes for certain purposes it is convenient to take things in one set of relations
+in the two cases their contexts are apt to be different in the case of our affectional experiences we have no permanent and steadfast purpose that obliges us to be consistent
+so we find it easy to let them float ambiguously sometimes classing them with our feelings sometimes with more physical realities according to caprice or to the convenience of the moment
+thus would these experiences so far from being an obstacle to the pure experience philosophy serve as an excellent corroboration of its truth first of all then it is a mistake to say
+with the objectors whom i began by citing that anger love and fear are affections purely of the mind
+they are simultaneously affections of the body
+and we are always free to speak of them in objective as well as in subjective terms we can say that we are aware of a painful place filling a certain bigness in our organism
+or we can say that we are inwardly in a state of pain all our adjectives of worth are similarly ambiguous
+or is it a feeling in our mind practically we treat it as both or as either according to the temporary direction of our thought beauty says professor santayana is pleasure objectified
+and in sections ten and eleven of his work the sense of beauty he treats in a masterly way of this equivocal realm the various pleasures we receive from an object
+may count as feelings when we take them singly but when they combine in a total richness we call the result the beauty of the object and treat it as an outer attribute which our mind perceives
+we discover beauty just as we discover the physical properties of things training is needed to make us expert in either line single sensations also may be ambiguous shall we say
+an agreeable degree of heat or an agreeable feeling occasioned by the degree of heat either will do and language would lose most of its esthetic and rhetorical value
+were we forbidden to project words primarily connoting our affections upon the objects by which the affections are aroused the man is really hateful the action really mean the situation really tragic
+all in themselves and quite apart from our opinion we even go so far as to talk of a weary road a giddy height a jocund morning or a sullen sky
+and the term indefinite while usually applied only to our apprehensions functions as a fundamental physical qualification of things in spencer's law of evolution
+and doubtless passes with most readers for all right psychologists studying our perceptions of movement have unearthed experiences in which movement is felt in general
+but not ascribed correctly to the body that really moves thus in optical vertigo caused by unconscious movements of our eyes both we and the external universe appear to be in a whirl
+when clouds float by the moon it is as if both clouds and moon and we ourselves shared in the motion in the extraordinary case of amnesia
+published by sidis and goodhart in their important work on multiple personality we read that when the patient first recovered consciousness and
+noticed an attendant walk across the room he identified the movement with that of his own he did not yet discriminate between his own movements and those outside himself
+in which discriminations afterwards needful have not yet been made a piece of experience of a determinate sort is there but there at first as a pure fact
+motion originally simply is only later is it confined to this thing or to that something like this is true of every experience however complex
+at the moment of its actual presence let the reader arrest himself in the act of reading this article now
+is there and whether there for some one's consciousness or there for physical nature is a question not yet put at the moment it is there for neither later
+we shall probably judge it to have been there for both with the affectional experiences which we are considering the relatively pure condition lasts in practical life no urgent need has yet arisen for deciding whether to treat them as rigorously mental
+or as rigorously physical facts so they remain equivocal and as the world goes their equivocality is one of their great conveniences
+are not coefficients with which experiences come to us aboriginally stamped but are rather results of a later classification performed by us for particular needs
+the common sense stage of thought is a perfectly definite practical halting place the place where we ourselves can proceed to act unhesitatingly on this stage of thought
+things act on each other as well as on us by means of their secondary qualities sound as such goes through the air and can be intercepted
+into the water which it sets a boiling it is the very light of the arc lamp which displaces the darkness of the midnight street et cetera by engendering and translocating just these qualities
+actively efficacious as they seem to be we ourselves succeed in altering nature so as to suit us and until more purely intellectual as distinguished from practical needs had arisen
+no one ever thought of calling these qualities subjective when however galileo descartes and others found it best for philosophic purposes to class sound heat and light along with pain and pleasure as purely mental phenomena
+hardness and softness are effects on us of atomic interactions and the atoms themselves are neither hard nor soft nor solid nor liquid size and shape are deemed subjective by kantians
+are now treated as illusory projections outwards of phenomena of our own consciousness there are no activities or effects in nature for the most intellectual contemporary school of physical speculation
+nature exhibits only changes which habitually coincide with one another
+but only a translocation of experiences from one world to another a grouping of them with one set or another of associates for definitely practical or intellectual ends
+i will say nothing here of the persistent ambiguity of relations they are undeniable parts of pure experience yet while common sense and what i call radical empiricism stand for their being objective
+both rationalism and the usual empiricism claim that they are exclusively the work of the mind' the finite mind or the absolute mind as the case may be
+turn now to those affective phenomena which more directly concern us we soon learn to separate the ways in which things appeal to our interests and emotions from the ways in which they act upon one another
+it does not work to assume that physical objects are going to act outwardly by their sympathetic or antipathetic qualities the beauty of a thing or its value is no force that can be plotted in a polygon of compositions
+nor does its use or significance
+its vicissitudes or destiny at the hands of physical nature chemical affinities are a purely verbal metaphor and as i just said
+even such things as forces tensions and activities can at a pinch be regarded as anthropomorphic projections so far then as the physical world means the collection of contents that determine in each other certain regular changes
+the whole collection of our appreciative attributes has to be treated as falling outside of it if we mean by physical nature whatever lies beyond the surface of our bodies
+why then do men leave them as ambiguous as they do and not class them decisively as purely spiritual the reason would seem to be that although they are inert as regards the rest of physical nature
+they are not inert as regards that part of physical nature which our own skin covers it is those very appreciative attributes of things their dangerousness beauty rarity utility et cetera
+that primarily appeal to our attention in our commerce with nature these attributes are what give emphasis to objects and for an object to be emphatic whatever spiritual fact it may mean
+means also that it produces immediate bodily effects upon us alterations of tone and tension of heart beat and breathing of vascular and visceral action
+the interesting aspects of things are thus not wholly inert physically though they be active only in these small corners of physical nature which our bodies occupy
+that however is enough to save them from being classed as absolutely non objective the attempt if any one should make it to sort experiences into two absolutely discrete groups
+with nothing but inertness in one of them and nothing but activities in the other would thus receive one check it would receive another as soon as we examined the more distinctively mental group
+for though in that group it be true that things do not act on one another by their physical properties do not dent each other or set fire to each other
+they yet act on each other in the most energetic way by those very characters which are so inert extracorporeally it is by the interest and importance that experiences have for us by the emotions they excite
+and the purposes they subserve by their affective values in short that their consecution in our several conscious streams as thoughts of ours is mainly ruled desire introduces them interest holds them
+fitness fixes their order and connection i need only refer for this aspect of our mental life
+is the most natural thing in the world it would however be an unnatural status if the popular opinion which i cited at the outset were correct if physical and mental meant two different kinds of intrinsic nature
+immediately intuitively and infallibly discernible and each fixed forever in whatever bit of experience it qualified one does not see how there could ever have arisen any room for doubt or ambiguity
+but if on the contrary these words are words of sorting ambiguity is natural for then as soon as the relations of a thing are sufficiently various it can be sorted variously
+take a mass of carrion for example
+the sun caresses it and the zephyr wooes it as if it were a bed of roses so the disgustingness fails to operate within the realm of suns and breezes
+it does not function as a physical quality but the carrion turns our stomach by what seems a direct operation it does function physically therefore in that limited part of physics
+and conversely of course we must treat it as non mental or as mental our body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous sometimes i treat my body purely as a part of outer nature
+sometimes again i think of it as mine i sort it with the me and then certain local changes and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings its breathing is my thinking
+its sensorial adjustments are my attention
+its visceral perturbations are my emotions the obstinate controversies that have arisen over such statements as these which sound so paradoxical and which can yet be made so seriously
+prove how hard it is to decide by bare introspection what it is in experiences that shall make them either spiritual or material it surely can be nothing intrinsic in the individual experience
+it is their way of behaving towards each other their system of relations their function and all these things vary with the context in which we find it opportune to consider them i think i may conclude then
+and i hope that my readers are now ready to conclude with me that the pretended spirituality of our emotions and of our attributes of value so far from proving an objection to the philosophy of pure experience does when rightly discussed and accounted for
+and for this the village boys with whom he played used to quarrel with him saying fatherless orphan why do you cheat so one day he asked his mother why they called him that name and whether his father was really dead
+he is alive said she but a long time ago a rhinoceros carried him off on its horn then the boy vowed that he would go in search of his father and made his mother put him up provisions for the journey
+and he started off taking with him an iron bow and a big bundle of arrows he journeyed on all day and at nightfall he came to a village there he went up to the house of an old woman to ask for a bed
+grannie grannie open the door i have no son and no grandchildren to call me grannie grumbled the old woman and went to open the door to see who was there and when she opened the door and saw him she said ho
+you are my grandson yes answered he i am your grandchild so she called him inside and gave him a bed to sleep on the old woman was called hutibudi
+and she and the boy sat up late talking together and then they lay down to sleep but in the middle of the night he heard the old woman crunching away trying to bite his bow to pieces
+he asked her what she was eating some pulse i got from the village headman give me a little to try he begged i am sorry my child i have finished it all
+but really she had none to give however she only hurt her jaws biting so that she began to groan with pain what are you groaning for grannie said the boy
+and in truth her cheeks were badly swollen then he told her that a good cure for toothache was to bite on a white stone and she believed him and the next morning got a piece of white quartz and began to bite on it
+but this only broke her teeth and made her mouth bleed so that the pain was worse than before then the boy jeered at her and said did you think grannie that you could bite my iron bow and arrows so saying he left her
+and continued the search for his father
+he came to a lake and he sat down by it to eat what was left of the provisions he had brought as he sat he suddenly saw some cow bison coming down to the lake at this he caught up his bow and arrows in a hurry
+and climbed up a tall sal tree from the tree he watched the bison go down to the water to drink and then go back into the jungle and after them tigers and bears came down to the water
+the sight of them frightened him and he sang drink your fill tiger i shall not shoot you
+and they drank and went away then various kinds of birds came
+and among them was one which had the dried up body of the boy's father stuck on its horn the boy was rather frightened and sang
+he put an arrow through it and it turned a somersault and fell over dead
+and ran away then the boy climbed down from the tree and pulled the dead body of his father off the horn of the dead animal and laid it down at the foot of a tree and began to weep over it as he wept
+a man suddenly stood before him and asked what was the matter and when he heard said cry no more take a cloth and wet it in the lake and cover your father's body with it
+and then whip the body with a meral twig and he will come to life so saying the stranger suddenly disappeared and the boy obeyed his instructions and behold his father sat up alive and rubbing his eyes said
+i must have been asleep a very long time then his son explained to him all that had happened and gave him some food
+the following letter served as a preface to the first edition of this memoir
+paris june thirtieth eighteen forty gentlemen in the course of your debate of the ninth of may eighteen thirty three in regard to the triennial pension established by madame suard
+you expressed the following wish the academy requests the titulary to present it annually during the first fortnight in july with a succinct and logical statement of the various studies which he has pursued during the year
+which has just expired i now propose gentlemen to discharge this duty
+when i solicited your votes i boldly avowed my intention to bend my efforts to the discovery of some means of ameliorating the physical
+moral and intellectual condition of the mere numerous and poorer classes this idea foreign as it may have seemed to the object of my candidacy you received favorably
+you changed this formal offer into an inviolable and sacred obligation thenceforth i understood with how worthy and honorable a society i had to deal my regard for its enlightenment my recognition of its benefits
+my enthusiasm for its glory were unbounded convinced at once that in order to break loose from the beaten paths of opinions and systems it was necessary to proceed in my study of man and society
+by scientific methods and in a rigorous manner i devoted one year to philology and grammar linguistics or the natural history of speech being of all the sciences that
+seemed to bear the closest relation to the researches which i was about to commence
+if it did not reveal the astonishing success at least bore witness to the thoroughness of my labors since that time metaphysics and moral science have been my only studies
+my perception of the fact that these sciences though badly defined as to their object and not confined to their sphere are like the natural sciences susceptible of demonstration and certainty
+has already rewarded my efforts but gentlemen of all the masters whom i have followed to none do i owe so much as to you
+your co operation your programmes your instructions in agreement with my secret wishes and most cherished hopes have at no time failed to enlighten me and to point out my road this memoir on property
+is the child of your thought
+to what causes must we attribute the continually increasing number of suicides and what are the proper means for arresting the effects of this moral contagion
+thereby it asked in less general terms what was the cause of the social evil and what was its remedy you admitted that yourselves gentlemen
+when your committee reported that the competitors had enumerated with exactness the immediate and particular causes of suicide as well as the means of preventing each of them but that from this enumeration
+chronicled with more or less skill no positive information had been gained either as to the primary cause of the evil or as to its remedy in eighteen thirty nine
+your programme always original and varied in its academical expression became more exact the investigations of eighteen thirty eight had pointed out as the causes or rather as the symptoms of the social malady
+the neglect of the principles of religion and morality the desire for wealth the passion for enjoyment and political disturbances all these data were embodied by you in a single proposition
+the utility of the celebration of sunday as regards hygiene morality and social and political relation in a christian tongue you asked gentlemen
+what was the true system of society a competitor
+dared to maintain and believed that he had proved that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of conditions
+that without equality this institution is an anomaly and an impossibility that equality alone can revive this ancient and mysterious keeping of the seventh day
+this argument did not meet with your approbation since without denying the relation pointed out by the competitor you judged and rightly gentlemen
+that the principle of equality of conditions not being demonstrated the ideas of the author were nothing more than hypotheses finally gentlemen
+this fundamental principle of equality you presented for competition in the following terms
+the economical and moral consequences in france up to the present time and those which seem likely to appear in future of the law concerning the equal division of hereditary property between the children
+instead of confining one to common places without breadth or significance it seems to me that your question should be developed as follows
+can it not render it equal for all his grandchildren and great grandchildren if the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family can it not by the right of heredity
+cease to heed it in the race in the tribe in the nation can equality by the right of succession be preserved between citizens as well as between cousins and brothers
+in a word can the principle of succession become a principle of equality to sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question what is the principle of heredity
+what are the foundations of inequality what is property such gentlemen is the object of the memoir that i offer you to day
+if i have rightly grasped the object of your thought if i succeed in bringing to light a truth which is indisputable but from causes which i am bold enough to claim to have explained
+has always been misunderstood if by an infallible method of investigation i establish the dogma of equality of conditions if i determine the principle of civil law the essence of justice and the form of society
+to you gentlemen will redound all the glory for it is to your aid and your inspiration that i owe it my purpose in this work is the application of method
+to the problems of philosophy every other intention is foreign to and even abusive of it i have spoken lightly of jurisprudence i had the right
+but i should be unjust did i not distinguish between this pretended science and the men who practise it devoted to studies both laborious and severe
+entitled in all respects to the esteem of their fellow citizens by their knowledge and eloquence our legists deserve but one reproach that of an excessive deference to arbitrary laws
+and their unwarranted blunders have disgusted me whoever knowing them pardons them may read them i have severely blamed the learned christian church
+it was my duty this blame results from the facts which i call attention to why has the church decreed concerning things which it does not understand
+the church has erred in dogma and in morals physics and mathematics testify against her it may be wrong for me to say it but surely it is unfortunate for christianity that it is true
+to restore religion gentlemen it is necessary to condemn the church perhaps you will regret gentlemen that in giving all my attention to method and evidence
+i have too much neglected form and style in vain should i have tried to do better literary hope and faith i have none
+that is the reason in my opinion why among so many men of talent france to day counts not one great writer
+in a society like ours to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth
+pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe the most deserving among us is he who plays best this part well
+i no longer aspire to this sad success why should i not confess it gentlemen i have aspired to your suffrages and sought the title of your pensioner hating all which exists and full of projects for its destruction
+and the most precious fruit that i could wish to gather from this memoir would be the inspiration of my readers with that tranquillity of soul which arises from the clear perception of evil and its cause
+and which is much more powerful than passion and enthusiasm my hatred of privilege and human authority was unbounded perhaps at times i have been guilty in my indignation
+of confounding persons and things at present i can only despise and complain to cease to hate i only needed to know
+it is for you now gentlemen whose mission and character are the proclamation of the truth it is for you to instruct the people and to tell them for what they ought to hope
+and what they ought to fear the people incapable as yet of sound judgment as to what is best for them applaud indiscriminately the most opposite ideas provided that in them they get a taste of flattery
+to them the laws of thought are like the confines of the possible to day they can no more distinguish between a savant and a sophist than formerly they could tell a physician from a sorcerer
+inconsiderately accepting gathering together and accumulating everything that is new regarding all reports as true
+they assemble like bees at the sound of a basin
+may you gentlemen desire equality as i myself desire it may you for the eternal happiness of our country become its propagators and its heralds
+may i be the last of your pensioners of all the wishes that i can frame that gentlemen is the most worthy of you and the most honorable for me
+two months after the receipt of this letter the academy in its debate of august twenty fourth replied to the address of its pensioner by a note the text of which i give below
+published last june by the titulary of the suard pension entitled what is property and dedicated by the author to the academy he is of the opinion that the society owes it to justice
+to example and to its own dignity to publicly disavow all responsibility for the anti social doctrines contained in this publication in consequence he demands
+in the most formal manner the work of the suard pensioner as having been published without its assent and as attributing to it opinions diametrically opposed to the principles of each of its members
+in case he should publish a second edition of his book to omit the dedication
+that this judgment of the academy be placed upon the records these three propositions put to vote are adopted
+after this ludicrous decree which its authors thought to render powerful by giving it the form of a contradiction
+i can only beg the reader not to measure the intelligence of my compatriots by that of our academy while my patrons in the social and political sciences were fulminating anathemas against my brochure
+who did not know me who might even have regarded himself as personally attacked by the too sharp judgment which i had passed upon the economists a publicist as learned as he was modest loved by the people whose sorrows he felt
+honored by the power which he sought to enlighten without flattering or disgracing it
+member of the institute professor of political economy defender of property took up my defence before his associates and before the ministry
+and saved me from the blows of a justice which is always blind because it is always ignorant
+a letter as honorable to its author as it is flattering to him to whom it is addressed paris may first eighteen forty one monsieur
+i hasten to thank you for forwarding to me your second memoir upon property i have read it with all the interest that an acquaintance with the first would naturally inspire i am very glad that you have modified somewhat
+the rudeness of form which gave to a work of such gravity the manner and appearance of a pamphlet for you quite frightened me sir and your talent was needed to reassure me in regard to your intentions
+this proposition now coming into notice property is robbery was of a nature to repel from your book even those serious minds who do not judge by appearances had you persisted in maintaining it
+in its rude simplicity but if you have softened the form you are none the less faithful to the ground work of your doctrines and although you have done me the honor to give me a share in this perilous teaching
+i cannot accept a partnership which as far as talent goes would surely be a credit to me but which would compromise me in all other respects i agree with you in one thing only
+namely that all kinds of property get too frequently abused in this world but i do not reason from the abuse to the abolition an heroic remedy too much like death
+which cures all evils i will go farther i will confess that of all abuses the most hateful to me are those of property but once more
+there is a remedy for this evil without violating it all the more without destroying it if the present laws allow abuse we can reconstruct them our civil code is not the koran
+it is not wrong to examine it change then the laws which govern the use of property but be sparing of anathemas for logically where is the honest man whose hands are entirely clean
+do you think that one can be a robber without knowing it without wishing it without suspecting it do you not admit that society in its present state like every man
+has in its constitution all kinds of virtues and vices inherited from our ancestors is property then in your eyes a thing so simple and so abstract that you can re knead and equalize it
+if i may so speak in your metaphysical mill one who has said as many excellent and practical things as occur in these two beautiful and paradoxical improvisations of yours cannot be a pure and unwavering utopist
+you are too well acquainted with the economical and academical phraseology to play with the hard words of revolutions i believe then that you have handled property
+as rousseau eighty years ago handled letters with a magnificent and poetical display of wit and knowledge such at least is my opinion
+that is what i said to the institute at the time when i presented my report upon your book i knew that they wished to proceed against you in the courts you perhaps do not know by how narrow a chance i succeeded in preventing them
+what chagrin i should always have felt if the king's counsel that is to say the intellectual executioner had followed in my very tracks to attack your book and annoy your person
+i actually passed two terrible nights and i succeeded in restraining the secular arm only by showing that your book was an academical dissertation and not the manifesto of an incendiary
+your style is too lofty ever to be of service to the madmen who in discussing the gravest questions of our social order use paving stones as their weapons
+but see to it sir that ere long they do not come in spite of you to seek for ammunition in this formidable arsenal and that your vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the market place
+who might discuss the question in the presence of a starving audience we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration
+but the majestic and imposing order of human societies that i sometimes find myself embarrassed in attacking certain abuses i like to rebuild with one hand when i am compelled to destroy with the other
+in pruning an old tree we guard against destruction of the buds and fruit you know that as well as any one you are a wise and learned man you have a thoughtful mind
+the terms by which you characterize the fanatics of our day are strong enough to reassure the most suspicious imaginations as to your intentions but you conclude
+in favor of the abolition of property you wish to abolish the most powerful motor of the human mind you attack the paternal sentiment in its sweetest illusions with one word you arrest the formation of capital
+and we build henceforth upon the sand instead of on a rock that i cannot agree to and for that reason i have criticised your book so full of beautiful pages
+so brilliant with knowledge and fervor i wish sir that my impaired health would permit me to examine with you page by page the memoir which you have done me the honor to address to me publicly and personally
+i desire also the merit of prudence you know how deep seated is the disease under which the working people are suffering i know how many noble hearts beat under those rude garments
+who rise early in the morning to labor to pay their taxes and to make our country strong i try to serve and enlighten them whereas some endeavor to mislead them
+you have not written directly for them you have issued two magnificent manifestoes the second more guarded than the first issue a third more guarded than the second
+and you will take high rank in science whose first precept is calmness and impartiality farewell sir no man's esteem for another can exceed mine for you blanqui
+i should certainly take some exceptions to this noble and eloquent letter but i confess that i am more inclined to realize the prediction with which it terminates than to augment needlessly the number of my antagonists
+so much controversy fatigues and wearies me the intelligence expended in the warfare of words is like that employed in battle it is intelligence wasted
+i call property
+to each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need knocking off but the operation performed
+an hypothesis admitted in mathematics although not proven while i consider that this figure will be a circle honest people can at least understand one another
+for the rest i allow that in the present state of the question the mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of the abolition of property
+to gain the victory for one's cause it does not suffice simply to overthrow a principle generally recognized which has the indisputable merit of systematically recapitulating our political theories
+it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle and to formulate the system which must proceed from it still further it is necessary to show the method by which the new system
+will satisfy all the moral and political needs which induced the establishment of the first on the following conditions then of subsequent evidence depends the correctness of my preceding arguments
+the discovery of a system of absolute equality in which all existing institutions save property or the sum of the abuses of property
+not only may find a place but may themselves serve as instruments of equality individual liberty the division of power the public ministry the jury system
+administrative and judicial organization the unity and completeness of instruction marriage the family heredity in direct and collateral succession the right of sale and exchange the right to make a will and even birthright
+a system which better than property guarantees the formation of capital and keeps up the courage of all
+the road that he shall traverse will suffice to show the end
+chapter three war bread bread is the staff of life for all nations but bread does not necessarily mean the wheat loaf at one time and place it has been barley cake
+at another oaten cake and at another corn pone bread has always been whatever cereal happened to be convenient even such unbreadlike food as rice is to some races what bread is to us
+why then have we developed our wheat bread habit partly because wheat bread has been easy to get and we have grown to like the taste but chiefly because wheat flour gives the lightest loaf
+to understand why make a dough with a little white flour and water and then gently knead it in cold water the consistency changes the starch is washed out and a rubbery sticky ball is left
+the gluten which is the protein of the wheat it is this gluten in the flour that stretches when bread rises and then stiffens when it is baked making a light porous loaf
+wheat is the only one of the cereals that has much gluten rye has a little and the others practically none gluten seems to be essential to the making of a light yeast raised loaf
+products raised with baking powder for which our standard of lightness is different quick breads like biscuits and muffins and cakes do not require the gluten and can easily be made from substitute cereals
+have been trying to produce a wheatless loaf which is light palatable and sufficiently durable to stand transportation the durability is a very important consideration crumbly corn bread cannot be distributed by bakers nor served to armies
+the bakers regulations victory bread the bakers have co operated loyally probably no other food industry has been more vitally affected by the war
+all bakers using three or more barrels of flour a month have been licensed and so are under the control of the food administration this means practically all the commercial bakers of the country
+and many hotels clubs and institutions about two fifths of the bread in the united states is made in bakeries and three fifths in the home the bakeries have used thirty five million barrels of flour each year
+or if they are pastry and cracker bakers seventy per cent they must make no bread wholly of wheat flour some substitute must be mixed with the wheat when the regulation went into effect in february nineteen eighteen
+twenty per cent was required and later twenty five per cent in pies and cakes there must be at least one third substitute the amounts of sugar and fat used are limited
+even the sizes of the loaves are fixed so that the extravagance of making and handling all sorts of fancy shapes and sizes may be avoided bread must not be sold to the retailer at unreasonable prices
+victory bread is bread made in accordance with these regulations the name victory was chosen as representing the idea underlying the conservation of wheat
+the name is really a present to the food administration having been used by two large firms who gave up all rights to their trade mark
+hotels and restaurants are required to make or serve bread containing at least as much of the wheat substitutes as victory bread they may not serve more than two ounces of bread and other wheat products to a guest at a meal
+that means of course that only through intelligent effort can they serve yeast bread
+until the wheat supply increases and the food administration lessens restrictions use no wheat at all if you can possibly do without remember that you can make delicious muffins and other quick breads from the substitute flours
+and you need no bread at all at some meals an extra potato or a serving of rice can be eaten instead of the usual two slices of bread and the body will be supplied with the same amount of energy do not be the slave of old food habits
+when all europe is eating to keep alive fastidiousness and food notions must play no part in the dietary
+hundreds in crowded city quarters have no facilities of their own for baking women doing their share in factories and workshops cannot get up earlier to make corn bread for breakfast victory bread must be saved for them
+for households which must use wheat
+this includes wheat in the form of bread pastry macaroni crackers noodles and breakfast foods
+the interests and desires of each of us in this war can be translated into service in no more effective way than by conforming our food habits to the needs of the hour flour and bread in the allied countries
+in england there are local regulations on the use of mashed potato in bread their bread must be twelve hours old before it is sold so that people will not be tempted to eat too much the result is seldom palatable
+in france no flour at all may be used to make the delectable pastries and cakes which have long been the delight of the french people and their guests in italy
+must contain forty three per cent substitute and in some places may not be manufactured at all both england and france have subsidized bread the government has set a price below cost
+and itself makes up the difference to the baker england has appropriated two hundred million dollars for the purpose bread rations are in force in both france and italy
+france has recently put her whole people on a rigorous ration which limits them to two thirds of the amount of bread that they have been accustomed to remember that bread is a far more important part of the french diet than of ours
+rations are not a guarantee that the amount mentioned will be forthcoming they only permit one to have it if it can be obtained
+the voluntary ration allows one half pound of bread a day for sedentary and unoccupied women and larger allowances up to a little over a pound for men doing heavy labor
+waste of any kind is very heavily punished one woman was fined five hundred dollars for throwing away stale bread why not send corn abroad
+the answers are many in the first place we are sending corn over our exports of corn during march nineteen eighteen increased one hundred eighty per cent and of corn meal three hundred eighty three per cent
+over the pre war average this they are using as we are using it in our victory bread but they must have enough wheat to make a durable loaf of bread at the bakeshops where for generations all the baking has been done
+and the extra unaccustomed labor of bread making cannot be added to her burdens why we in the united states do not have bread cards some people disturbed either selfishly or patriotically
+by the failure of a neighbor to conserve wheat have asked why the food administration trusts to voluntary methods why it does not ration the country rationing may come yet but any such system bristles with difficulties
+the cost to the government has been variously estimated all the way from ten million dollars to forty five million dollars a year fifty per cent of the population could not be restrained in their consumption by rationing
+but on those with little to spend who might have to change their whole food habits the success that is meeting our method of voluntary reduction of consumption
+in order to economize time and space with a view to giving an account of as many of the travelers as possible it seems expedient where a number of arrivals come in close proximity to each other to report them briefly under one head
+henry anderson alias william anderson in outward appearance henry was uninteresting as he asserted and as his appearance indicated he had experienced a large share of rugged usage
+being far in the south and in the hands of a brutal captain of a small boat chances of freedom or of moderate treatment had rarely ever presented themselves in any aspect
+the thought of having to live under a trader was so terrible he was moved to escape leaving his wife to whom he had only been married three months henry was twenty five years of age
+he fled from beaufort north carolina the system of slavery in all the region of country whence henry came exhibited generally great brutality and cruelty
+charles and his wife were fortunate in managing to flee together their attachment to each other was evidently true they were both owned by a farmer who went by the name of david stewart and resided in maryland
+as he had more of that kind of stock than he had use for he hired them out to another farmer
+how much for the wife they could not tell she however was not blessed with good health though she was not favored any more on that account
+aroused him to seek their freedom by flight he resolved to spare no pains to give himself no rest until they were both free
+charles was twenty eight with a good head and striking face as well as otherwise well made chestnut color and intelligent though unable to read left two sisters in bondage
+the atmosphere throughout the neighborhood where charles and margaret had lived and breathed and had their existence was heavily oppressed with slavery no education for the freeman of color much less for the slave
+the order of the day was literally as far as colored men were concerned no rights which white men were bound to respect chaskey brown wm henry washington james alfred frisley
+and charles henry salter chaskey is about twenty four years of age quite black medium size sound body and intelligent appearance nevertheless he resembled a farm hand in every particular
+his master was known by the name of major james h gales and he was the owner of a farm with eighteen men women and children slaves to toil for him
+the major in disposition was very abusive and profane though old and grey headed his wife was pretty much the same kind of a woman as he was a man one who delighted in making the slaves tremble at her bidding
+chaskey was a member of the still pond church of kent county maryland often chaskey was made to feel the lash on his back notwithstanding his good standing in the church he had a wife and one child
+in escaping he was obliged to leave them both
+charles henry is about thirty years of age of good proportion nice looking and intelligent but to rough usage he was no stranger to select his own master was a privilege not allowed
+privileges of all kinds were rare with him so he resolved to flee left his mother three sisters and five brothers in slavery he was a member of albany chapel at massey's cross roads
+these were all gladly received by the vigilance committee and the hand of friendship warmly extended to them and the best of counsel and encouragement was offered material aid food and clothing were also furnished as they had need
+and they were sent on their way rejoicing to canada stephen taylor charles brown charles henry hollis and luther dorsey stephen was a fine young man of twenty years of age he fled to keep from being sold
+and made up his mind to leave the first opportunity before this watchful and resolute purpose the way opened and he soon found it comparatively easy to find his way from maryland to pennsylvania and likewise into the hands of the vigilance committee
+to whom he made known fully the character of the place and people whence he had fled the dangers he was exposed to from slave hunters and the strong hope he cherished of reaching free land soon
+being a young man of promise stephen was advised earnestly to apply his mind to seek an education and to use every possible endeavor to raise himself in the scale of manhood morally religiously and intellectually
+and he seemed to drink in the admonitions thus given with a relish after recruiting and all necessary arrangements had been made for his comfort and passage to canada he was duly forwarded
+stephen's parents were dead one brother was the only near relative he left in chains charles brown was about twenty five years of age quite black and bore the marks of having been used hard
+though his stout and hearty appearance would have rendered him very desirable to a trader he fled from william wheeling of sandy hook maryland he spoke of his master as a pretty bad man who was always quarreling and would drink swear and lie
+left simply because he never got anything for his labor
+his master he describes thus his face was long cheek bones high middling tall and about twenty six years of age with this specimen of humanity charles was very much dissatisfied
+and in making an effort to reach canada he was quite willing to suffer many things so the first chance charles got he started and providence smiled upon his resolution
+true the thought of his mother and brothers left in the prison house largely marred his joy as it did also the committee's still the committee felt that charles had gained his freedom honorably
+charles henry was a good looking young man only twenty years of age and appeared to possess double as much natural sense as he would require to take care of himself john webster of sandy hook
+and this was what made charles unhappy uneducated as he was he was too sensible to believe that webster had any god given right to his manhood consequently he left because his master did not treat him right
+webster was a tall man with large black whiskers about forty years of age
+charles was sorry for the fate of his sisters but he could not help them if he remained staying to wear the yoke he felt would rather make it worse instead of better for all concerned
+rather smart black well made and well calculated for a canadian he was prompted to escape purely from the desire to be free he fled from a very insulting man by the name of edward schriner from the neighborhood of sairsville mills
+this schriner was described as a low chunky man with grum look big mouth et cetera and was a member of the german reformed church don't swear though might as well he was so bad other ways
+luther was a member of the methodist church at jones hill left his father in chains his mother had wisely escaped to canada years back when he was but a boy
+and his gallant achievements on the delaware chapter one hitherto most venerable and courteous reader have i shown thee the administration of the valorous stuyvesant under the mild moonshine of peace
+or rather the grim tranquillity of awful expectation but now the war drum rumbles from afar the brazen trumpet brays its thrilling note
+and the rude clash of hostile arms speaks fearful prophecies of coming troubles the gallant warrior starts from soft repose from golden visions and voluptuous ease where in the dulcet piping time of peace
+nor through the livelong lazy summer's day chants forth his love sick soul in madrigals to manhood roused he spurns the amorous flute doffs from his brawny back the robe of peace
+and clothes his pampered limbs in panoply of steel o'er his dark brow where late the myrtle waved where wanton roses breathed enervate love he rears the beaming casque and nodding plume grasps the bright shield
+existed in the city of new amsterdam this is but a lofty and gigantic mode in which we heroic writers always talk of war thereby to give it a noble and imposing aspect
+equipping our warriors with bucklers helms and lances and such like outlandish and obsolete weapons the like of which perchance they had never seen or heard of in the same manner that a cunning statuary arrays a modern general or an admiral
+in the accoutrements of a caesar or an alexander the simple truth then of all this oratorical flourish is this that the valiant peter stuyvesant all of a sudden found it necessary
+and prepare himself to undergo those hardy toils of war in which his mighty soul so much delighted methinks i at this moment behold him in my imagination or rather i behold his goodly portrait
+which still hangs in the family mansion of the stuyvesants arrayed in all the terrors of a true dutch general his regimental coat of german blue gorgeously decorated with a goodly show of large brass buttons
+reaching from his waistband to his chin the voluminous skirts turned up at the corners and separating gallantly behind so as to display the seat of a sumptuous pair of brimstone colored trunk breeches
+a graceful style still prevalent among the warriors of our day and which is in conformity to the custom of ancient heroes who scorned to defend themselves in rear
+stuck with a gallant and fiery air over his left eye such was the chivalric port of peter the headstrong and when he made a sudden halt planted himself firmly on his solid supporter
+with his wooden leg inlaid with silver a little in advance in order to strengthen his position his right hand grasping a gold headed cane his left resting upon the pummel of his sword his head dressing spiritedly to the right
+with a most appalling and hard favored frown upon his brow he presented altogether one of the most commanding bitter looking and soldier like figures that ever strutted upon canvas
+proceed we now to inquire the cause of this warlike preparation in the preceding chapter we have spoken of the founding of fort casimir and of the merciless warfare waged by its commander
+upon cabbages sunflowers and pumpkins for want of better occasion to flesh his sword now it came to pass that higher up the delaware at his stronghold of tinnekonk
+who styled himself governor of new sweden if history belie not this redoubtable swede he was a rival worthy of the windy and inflated commander of fort casimir for master david pieterzen de vrie in his excellent book of voyages
+describes him as weighing upwards of four hundred pounds a huge feeder and bouser in proportion taking three potations pottle deep at every meal he had a garrison after his own heart at tinnekonk
+guzzling deep drinking swashbucklers who made the wild woods ring with their carousals no sooner did this robustious commander hear of the erection of fort casimir than he sent a message to van poffenburgh
+warning him off the land as being within the bounds of his jurisdiction to this general van poffenburgh replied that the land belonged to their high mightinesses having been regularly purchased of the natives as discoverers
+from the manhattoes as witness the breeches of their land measurer ten broeck to this the governor rejoined that the land had previously been sold by the indians to the swedes and consequently was under the petticoat government
+of her swedish majesty christina and woe be to any mortal that wore a breeches who should dare to meddle even with the hem of her sacred garment
+i forbear to dilate upon the war of words which was kept up for some time by these windy commanders van poffenburgh however had served under william the testy and was a veteran in this kind of warfare
+governor printz finding he was not to be dislodged by these long shots now determined upon coming to closer quarters accordingly he descended the river in great force and fume and erected a rival fortress
+just one swedish mile below fort casimir to which he gave the name of helsenburg and now commenced a tremendous rivalry between these two doughty commanders striving to outstrut and outswell each other
+like a couple of belligerent turkey cocks there was a contest who should run up the tallest flag staff and display the broadest flag all day long there was a furious rolling of drums and twanging of trumpets in either fortress
+and whichever had the wind in its favor would keep up a continual firing of cannon to taunt its antagonist with the smell of gunpowder on all these points of windy warfare the antagonists were well matched
+but so it happened that the swedish fortress being lower down the river all the dutch vessels bound to fort casimir with supplies had to pass it
+governor printz at once took advantage of this circumstance and compelled them to lower their flags as they passed under the guns of his battery this was a deadly wound to the dutch pride of general van poffenburgh
+and sorely would he swell when from the ramparts of fort casimir he beheld the flag of their high mightinesses struck to the rival fortress to heighten his vexation governor printz who as has been shown was a huge trencherman
+it is possible he may have paid to the dutch skippers the full value of their commodities but what consolation was this to jacobus van poffenburgh and his garrison who thus found their favorite supplies cut off
+and diverted into the larders of the hostile camps for some time this war of the cupboard was carried on to the great festivity and jollification of the swedes while the warriors of fort casimir found their hearts or rather their stomachs
+daily failing them at length the summer heats and summer showers set in and now lo and behold a great miracle was wrought for the relief of the nederlands
+for it came to pass that a great cloud of mosquitos arose out of the marshy borders of the river and settled upon the fortress of helsenburg being doubtless attracted by the scent of the fresh blood of the swedish gormandisers
+nay it is said that the body of jan printz alone
+was sufficient to attract the mosquito from every part of the country for some time the garrison endeavored to hold out but it was all in vain the mosquitos penetrated into every chink and crevice and gave them no rest day nor night
+such was the famous mosquito war on the delaware of which general van poffenburgh would fain have been the hero but the devout people of the nieuw nederlands always ascribed the discomfiture of the swedes
+to the miraculous intervention of saint nicholas as to the fortress of helsenburg it fell to ruin
+from somewhere out on the black heaving atlantic the rapid muffled popping of a speed boat's exhaust drifted clearly through the night
+there was real romance and adventure rum runners seeking out their hidden port with their cargo of contraband from cuba heading fearlessly through the darkness fighting the high seas still running after the storm of a day or so before
+daring a thousand dangers for the sake of the straw packed bottles they carried sea bronzed men with hard flat muscles and fearless eyes ready guns slapping their thighs as they
+absorbed in my mental picture of these modern free booters the sudden alarm of the telephone startled me like an unexpected shot fired beside my ear brushing the cigarette ashes from my smoking jacket i crossed the room and snatched up the receiver
+hello i snapped ungraciously into the mouthpiece it was after eleven by the ship's clock on the mantel and if taylor the voice warren mercer's familiar voice
+get in your car and come down here as fast as possible come just as you are and what's the matter i managed to interrupt him burglars
+i had never heard mercer speak in that high pitched excited voice before his usual speech was slow and thoughtful almost didactic
+if it weren't urgent i wouldn't be calling you you know will you come you bet i said quickly feeling rather a fool for ragging him when he was in such deadly earnest have the receiver snapped and crackled
+usually the very soul of courtesy and consideration
+a moment later i was off the gravelled drive and tearing down the concrete with the accelerator all the way down and the black wind shrieking around the windshield of my little roadster my own shack was out of the city limits
+mercer picked the place up for me at a song the monstrosity was some four miles further out from town and off the highway perhaps a half mile more
+i made the four miles in just a shade over that many minutes and clamped on the brakes as i saw the entrance to the little drive that led toward the sea and mercer's estate
+with gravel rattling on my fenders i turned off the concrete and swept between the two massive stuccoed pillars that guarded the drive both of them bore corroded bronze plates the billows the name given the monstrosity by the original owner
+a newly rich munitions manufacturer the structure itself loomed up before me in a few seconds a rambling affair with square shouldered balconies and a great deal of wrought iron work after the most flamboyant spanish pattern it was ablaze with light
+apparently every bulb in the place was burning just a few yards beyond the surf boomed hollowly on the smooth shady shore littered now i knew by the pitiful spoils of the storm
+as i clamped on my brakes a swift shadow passed two of the lower windows before i could leap from the car the broad front door with its rounded top and circular grilled window was flung wide and mercer came running to meet me
+he was wearing a bathrobe hastily flung on over a damp bathing suit his bare legs terminating in a pair of disreputable slippers fine taylor he greeted me i suppose you're wondering what it's all about i don't blame you but come in come in
+just wait till you see her her i asked startled
+mercer he laughed excitedly you'll see you'll see no i'm not in love and i want you to help and not admire there are only carson and myself here you know and the job's too big for the two of us
+he hurried me across the broad concrete porch and into the house throw the cap anywhere and come on too much amazed to comment further i followed my friend this was a warren mercer i did not know
+his eyes dark and large smiled easily and shone with interest but his almost beautiful mouth beneath the long slim mustache always closely cropped seldom smiled with his eyes but it was his present excited speech that amazed me most
+mercer during all the years i had known him had never been moved before to such tempestuous outbursts of enthusiasm it was his habit to speak slowly and thoughtfully in his low musical voice even in the midst of our hottest arguments and we had had many of them
+the other end of the room was nearly all glass and opened onto the patio and the swimming pool mercer paused a moment with his hand on the knob of the door a strange light in his dark eyes now you'll see why i called you here he said tensely
+you can judge for yourself whether the trip was worth while here she is with a gesture he flung open the door and i stared following his glance down at the great tiled swimming pool it is difficult for me to describe the scene
+the patio was not large but it was beautifully done flowers and shrubs even a few small palms grew in profusion in the enclosure while above through the movable glass roof made in sections to disappear in fine weather
+was the empty blackness of the sky none of the lights provided for the illumination of the covered patio was turned on but all the windows surrounding the patio were aglow and i could see the pool quite clearly the pool and its occupant
+we were standing at one side of the pool near the center directly opposite us seated on the bottom of the pool was a human figure nude save for a great mass of tawny hair that fell about her like a silken mantle
+even in the soft light i could see her perfectly through the clear water her pale body outlined sharply against the jade green tiles i tore myself away from the staring curious eyes of the figure in god's name mercer what is it
+porcelain i asked hoarsely the thing had an indescribably eery effect he laughed wildly porcelain watch look my eyes followed his pointing finger
+the great cloud of corn colored hair floated down about it falling below the knees slowly with a grace of movement comparable only with the slow soaring of a gull she came toward me walking on the bottom of the pool through the clear water as though she floated in air
+fascinated i watched her her eyes startlingly large and dark in the strangely white face were fixed on mine there was nothing sinister in the gaze yet i felt my body shaking as though in the grip of a terrible fear
+i tried to look away and found myself unable to move i felt mercer's tense sudden grip upon my arm but i did not could not look at him she she's smiling i heard him exclaim
+he laughed an excited high pitched laugh that irritated me in some subtle way she was smiling and looking up into my eyes she was very close now within a few feet of us
+and her bosom rising and falling beneath the veil of pale gold hair she was breathing water mercer literally jerked me away from the edge of the pool
+he asked his dark eyes dancing with excitement tell me about it i said shaking my head dazedly she is not human i don't know i think so as human as you or i i'll tell you all i know and then you can judge for yourself
+i think we'll know in a few minutes if my plans work out but first slip on a bathing suit i didn't argue the matter i let mercer lead me away without a word and while i was changing he told me all he knew of the strange creature in the pool
+late this afternoon i decided to go for a little walk along the beach mercer began i had been working like the devil since early in the morning running some tests on what you call my thought telegraph i felt the need of some fresh sea air
+i walked along briskly for perhaps five minutes
+the shore was littered with all sorts of flotsam and jetsam washed up by the big storm and i was just thinking that i would have to have a man with a truck come and clean up the shore in front of the place when in a little sandy pool i saw her
+she was laying face down in the water motionless her head towards the sea one arm stretched out before her and her long hair wrapped around her like a half transparent cloak i ran up and lifted her from the water her body was cold and deathly white
+and took the liquor in a single draught she did not seem to drink it but sucked it out of the glass in a single amazing gulp that's the only word for it
+webbed i asked startled webbed nodded mercer solemnly as are her feet but listen taylor i was amazed and not a little rattled when she came for me
+i ran through the french windows out into the patio for a moment she ran after me rather awkwardly and heavily but swiftly nevertheless then she saw the pool apparently forgetting that i existed she leaped into the water
+i reminded him as he paused apparently lost in thought i tried to find out more about her i put on my bathing suit and dived into the pool well she came at me like a shark quick as a flash her teeth showing her hands tearing like claws through the water
+she managed to claw me just once mercer resumed wrapping the robe about him again then i got out and called on carson for help i put him into a bathing suit and we both endeavored to corner her
+carson got two bad scratches and one rather serious bite that i have bandaged i have a number of lacerations but i didn't fare so badly as carson because i am faster in the water than he is the harder we tried the more determined i became
+we moved out of the room nothing human can live under water and breathe water as she does mercer paused a moment staring at me oddly the human race he said gravely came up out of sea the human race as we know it some may have gone back
+mercer some may have gone back i don't get it mercer shook his head but made no other reply until we stood again on the edge of the pool the girl was standing where we had left her and as she looked up into my face she smiled again
+and in that white bathing suit yes i believe she's taken a fancy to you mercer's eyes were dancing if she has he went on it'll make our work very easy what work i asked suspiciously
+i think i have what you call my thought telegraph perfected experimentally he explained rapidly i fell asleep working on it at three o'clock or thereabouts this morning and some tests with carson seem to indicate that it is a success
+i should have called you to morrow for further test nearly five years of damned hard work to a successful conclusion taylor
+i asked eagerly glancing down at the beautiful pale face that glimmered up at me through the clear water of the pool why try it on her exclaimed mercer with mounting enthusiasm don't you see taylor
+if it will work on her and we can direct her thoughts we can find out her history the history of her people we'll add a page to scientific history a whole big chapter that will make us famous man this is so big it's swept me off my feet
+look and he held out a thin aristocratic brown hand before my eyes a hand that shook with nervous excitement i don't blame you i said quickly
+let's get busy what can i do mercer reached around the door into the laboratory and pressed a button for carson he explained we'll need his help in the meantime we'll look over the set up the apparatus is strewn all over the place
+he had not exaggerated the set up consisted of a whole bank of tubes each one in its own shielding copper box on a much drilled horizontal panel propped up on insulators were half a score of delicate meters of one kind and another
+with thin black fingers that pulsed and trembled behind the panel was a tall cylinder wound with shining copper wire and beside it another panel upright fairly bristling with knobs contact points potentiometers rheostats and switches
+and in the center a switch with four contact points a heavy snaky cable led from this panel to the maze of apparatus further on this is the control panel explained mercer the whole affair you understand is in laboratory form
+nothing assembled put the different antennae plug into these jacks like this he picked up a weird hastily built contrivance composed of two semi circular pieces of spring brass crossed at right angles
+on all four ends were bright silvery electrodes three of them circular in shape one of them elongated and slightly curved with a quick nervous gesture mercer fitted the thing to his head
+so that the elongated electrode pressed against the back of his neck extending a few inches down his spine the other three circular electrodes rested on his forehead and either side of his head
+some ten feet in length ending in a simple switchboard plug which mercer fitted into the uppermost of the three jacks now he directed you put on this one
+he adjusted a second contrivance upon my head smiling as i shrank from the contact of the cold metal on my skin and think he moved the switch from the position marked off to the second contact point watching me intently his dark eyes gleaming
+very nice old chap carson impressive even in his bathing suit mercer was mighty lucky to have a man like carson something seemed to tick suddenly somewhere deep in my consciousness yes that's very true
+the words were not spoken i did not hear them i knew them what i glanced at mercer and he laughed aloud with pleasure and excitement it worked he cried
+i received your thought regarding carson and then turned the switch so that you received my thought and you did rather gingerly i removed the thing from my head and laid it on the table it's wizardry mercer if it will work as well on her it will i know it will
+if we can get her to wear one of these replied mercer confidently i have only three of them i had planned some three cornered experiments with you carson and myself we'll leave carson out of to night's experiment however for we'll need him to operate this switch
+the other two receive when the switch is on the first contact number one sends and numbers two and three receive when the switch is on number two then he sends thoughts and numbers one and three receive them and so on
+i'll lengthen these leads so that we can run them out into the pool and then we'll be ready somehow we must induce her to wear one of these things even if we have to use force i'm sure the three of us can handle her we should be able to i smiled
+she was such a slim graceful almost delicate little thing the thought that three strong men might not be able to control her seemed almost amusing you haven't seen her in action yet said mercer grimly
+then with all three of the devices he called antennae in his hand their leads plugged into the control panel he led the way to the side of the pool
+it was the first time i had seen her move in this fashion she seemed to propel herself with a sudden mighty thrust of her feet against the bottom she darted through the water with the speed of an arrow yet stopped as gently as though she had merely floated there
+as she looked up her eyes unmistakably sought mine and her smile seemed warm and inviting she made again that strange little gesture of invitation with an effort i glanced at mercer
+there was something devilishly fascinating about the girl's great dark searching eyes i'm going in i said hoarsely
+i headed directly towards the heavy bronze ladder that led to the bottom of the pool i had two reasons in mind i would need something to keep me under water with my lungs full of air and i could get out quickly if it were necessary
+i had not forgotten the livid jagged furrows in mercer's side quickly as i shot to the ladder she was there before me a dim wavering white shape waiting i paused holding to a rung of the ladder with one hand
+she came closer walking with the airy grace i had noted before and my heart pounded against my ribs as she raised one long slim arm towards me
+perhaps i thought quickly this was with her a sign of greeting i lifted my own arm and returned the salutation if salutation it were aware of a strange rising and falling sound as of a distant humming in my ears
+the sound ceased suddenly on a rising note as though of inquiry and it dawned on me that i had heard the speech of this strange creature before i could think of a course of action my aching lungs reminded me of the need of air
+and i released my hold on the ladder and let my body rise to the surface
+i looked down the girl was watching me and there was no smile on her face now
+as her face came close to my own i became aware of the humming crooning sound i had heard before louder this time
+i smiled back at her and shook my head
+i pointed upward for i was feeling the need for fresh air again and slowly mounted the ladder this time she did not grasp me but watched me intently as though understanding what i did and the reasons for it
+bring one of your gadgets over here mercer i called across the pool i think i'm making progress good boy he cried and came running with two of the antennae the long insulated cords trailing behind him through the water the girl watched him evident dislike in her eyes
+the salt water would short the antennae you see try to get her to wear one and then you get your head out of water and don yours and remember she won't be able to communicate with us by words we'll have to get her to convey her thoughts by means of mental pictures
+i'll try to impress that on her understand i nodded and picked up one of the instruments fire when ready gridley i commented and sank again to the bottom of the pool i touched the girl's head with one finger and then pointed to my own head
+trying to convey to her that she could get her thoughts to me then i held up the antennae and placed it on my own head to show that it could not harm her my next move was to offer her the instrument moving slowly and smiling reassuringly
+no mean feat under water she hesitated a moment and then her eyes fixed on mine
+i smiled and nodded and pressed her shoulder in token of friendly greeting then gesturing toward my own head again and pointing upward i climbed the ladder all right mercer i shouted start at once before she grows restless
+i've already started he called back and i hurriedly donned my own instrument
+so that my head remained out of water and smiled down at the girl touching the instrument on my head and then pointing to hers i could sense mercer's thoughts now he was picturing himself walking long the shore with the stormy ocean in the background
+i saw him run up to the pool and lift the slim pale figure in his arms
+i visualized them just as i could close my eyes and visualize for example the fireplace in the living room of my own home i looked down at the girl she was frowning and her eyes were very wide
+her head was a little on one side in the attitude of one who listens intently slowly and carefully mercer thought out the whole story of his experiences with the girl until she had plunged into the pool then i saw again the beach
+i was aware of the soft little tick in the center of my brain that announced that the switch had been moved to another contact point i glanced down at her she was staring up at me with her great curious eyes
+and i sensed through the medium of the instrument i wore that she was thinking of me i saw my own features idealized glowing with a strange beauty that was certainly none of my own i realized that i saw myself in short as she saw me
+a dim bluish light filtered down on a scene such as mortal eyes have never seen all around were strange structures of jagged coral roughly circular as to base and rounded on top resembling very much the igloos of the eskimos
+the structures varied greatly in size and seemed to be arranged in some sort of regular order like houses along a narrow street
+around many of them grew clusters of strange and colorful seaweeds that waved their banners gently as though some imperceptible current dallied with them in passing here and there figures moved slim white figures that strolled along the narrow street
+or at times shot overhead like veritable torpedoes there were both men and women moving there the men were broader of shoulder and their hair which they wore to their knees was somewhat darker in color than that of the women both sexes were slim
+and there was a remarkable uniformity of size and appearance none of the strange beings wore garments of any kind nor were they necessary
+the clinging tresses were cinctured at the waist with a sort of cord of twisted orange colored material and some of the younger women wore bands of the same material around their brows nearest of all the figures was the girl who was visualizing all this for us
+she was walking slowly away from the cluster of coral structures once or twice she paused and seemed to hold conversation with others of the strange people but each time she moved on the coral structures grew smaller and poorer
+finally the girl trod alone on the floor of the ocean between great growths of kelp and seaweeds with dim looming masses of faintly tinted coral everywhere once she passed close to a tilted ragged hulk of some ancient vessel
+its naked ribs packed with drifted sand sauntering dreamily she moved away from the ancient derelict suddenly a dim shadow swept across the sand at her feet and she arrowed from the spot like a white slim meteor
+but behind her darted a black and swifter shadow a shark like a flash she turned and faced the monster something she had drawn from her girdle shone palely in her hand it was a knife of whetted stone or bone
+the white figure of the girl shot onward through the scarlet flood blinded she did not see that the jutting ribs of the ancient ship were in her path i seemed to see her crash head on into one of the massive timbers
+and i cried out involuntarily and glanced down at the girl in the water at my feet her eyes were glowing she knew that i had understood hazily then i seemed to visualize her body floating limply in the water it was all very vague and indistinct
+the girl was thinking of her suffering taken out of her native element
+that no doubt was why she hated him
+adjusted to her own ideas of what a man should be i flung the instrument from my head and dropped to the bottom of the pool i gripped both her shoulders gently to express my thanks and friendship my heart was pounding
+there was a strange fascination about this girl from the depths of the sea a subtle appeal that was answered from some deep subterranean cavern of my being i forgot for the moment who and what i was
+her great weirdly blue eyes seemed to bore into my brain i could feel them throbbing there i forgot time and space i saw only that pale smiling face and those great dark eyes
+then strangling i tore myself from her embrace and shot to the surface coughing i cleared my lungs of the water i had inhaled i was weak and shaking when i finished but my head was clear the grip of the strange fantasy that had gripped me was shaken off
+mercer was bending over me speaking softly i was watching old man he said gently i can imagine what happened a momentary psychic fusing of an ancient long since broken link you together with all mankind came up out of the sea
+but there is no retracing the way i nodded my head bowed on my streaming chest sorry mercer i muttered something got into me those big eyes of hers seemed to tug at threads of memory buried i can't describe it
+it helped jerk me back to the normal you've got your feet on the ground again taylor he commented soothingly i think there's no danger of you losing your grip on terra firma again shall we carry on there's more you'd like to learn that you think she can give us
+i asked hesitantly i believe replied mercer that she can give us the history of her people if we can only make her understand what we wish god if we only could
+we can try old timer i said a bit shakenly mercer hurried back to the other side of the pool and i adjusted my head set again smiling down at the girl
+where he was brought up in total ignorance of arms and chivalry he was allowed no weapon
+which was the only thing of all her lordes faire gere that his mother carried to the wood with her in the use of this he became so skilful that he could kill with it
+not only the animals of the chase for the table but even birds on the wing at length however perceval was roused to a desire of military renown by seeing in the forest five knights who were in complete armor
+he said to his mother mother what are those yonder they are angels my son said she by my faith i will go and become an angel with them and perceval went to the road and met them
+tell me good lad said one of them sawest thou a knight pass this way either today or yesterday
+such an one as i am said the knight if thou wilt tell me what i ask thee i will tell thee what thou askest me gladly will i do so said sir owain for that was the knight's name
+and perceval in return gave him such information as he had then perceval returned to his mother and said to her mother those were not angels but honorable knights then his mother swooned away
+and perceval went to the place where they kept the horses that carried firewood and provisions for the castle and he took a bony piebald horse which seemed to him the strongest of them and he pressed a pack into the form of a saddle
+and with twisted twigs he imitated the trappings which he had seen upon the horses when he came again to his mother the countess had recovered from her swoon my son said she desirest thou to ride forth
+yes with thy leave said he go forward then she said to the court of arthur where there are the best and the noblest and the most bountiful of men and tell him thou art perceval the son of pelenore
+and ask of him to bestow knighthood on thee and whenever thou seest a church repeat there thy pater noster
+for thus shalt thou acquire fame yet freely give it to another for thus thou shalt obtain praise if thou see a fair woman pay court to her for thus thou wilt obtain love
+perceiving in one corner of the tent some food two flasks full of wine and some boar's flesh roasted he said my mother told me whenever i saw meat and drink to take it
+and he ate greedily for he was very hungry the maiden said sir thou hadst best go quickly from here for fear that my friends should come and evil should befall you but perceval said
+and he gave the maiden his own ring in exchange for hers then he mounted his horse and rode away perceval journeyed on till he arrived at arthur's court and it so happened
+for when her page was serving the queen with a golden goblet this knight struck the arm of the page and dashed the wine in the queen's face and over her stomacher then he said
+let him follow me to the meadow so the knight took his horse and rode to the meadow carrying away the golden goblet and all the household hung down their heads and no one offered to follow the knight to take vengeance upon him
+for it seemed to them that no one would have ventured on so daring an outrage unless he possessed such powers through magic or charms that none could be able to punish him just then behold
+perceval entered the hall upon the bony piebald horse with his uncouth trappings in the centre of the hall stood kay the seneschal tell me tall man said perceval is that arthur yonder
+what wouldst thou with arthur asked kay my mother told me to go to arthur and receive knighthood from him by my faith said he thou art all too meanly equipped with horse and with arms
+then all the household began to jeer and laugh at him but there was a certain damsel who had been a whole year at arthur's court
+and the king's fool footnote a fool was a common appendage of the courts of those days when this romance was written a fool was the ornament held in next estimation to a dwarf he wore a white dress with a yellow bonnet
+and carried a bell or bawble in his hand though called a fool his words were often weighed and remembered as if there were a sort of oracular meaning in them
+till she had seen him who would be the flower of chivalry now this damsel came up to perceval and told him smiling that if he lived he would be one of the bravest and best of knights truly said kay
+thou art ill taught to remain a year at arthur's court with choice of society and smile on no one and now before the face of arthur and all his knights to call such a man as this the flower of knighthood
+that she fell senseless to the ground then said kay to perceval go after the knight who went hence to the meadow overthrow him and recover the golden goblet and possess thyself of his horse and arms and thou shalt have knighthood
+i will do so tall man said perceval so he turned his horse's head toward the meadow and when he came there the knight was riding up and down proud of his strength and valor and noble mien tell me said the knight
+didst thou see any one coming after me from the court
+and to take from thee the goblet and thy horse and armor for myself silence said the knight go back to the court and tell arthur either to come himself
+and unless he do so quickly i will not wait for him by my faith said perceval choose thou whether it shall be willingly or unwillingly for i will have the horse and the arms and the goblet
+upon this the knight ran at him furiously and struck him a violent blow with the shaft of his spear
+my mother's servants were not used to play with me in this wise so thus will i play with thee and he threw at him one of his sharp pointed sticks and it struck him in the eye and came out at the back of his head so that he fell down lifeless
+verily said sir owain the son of urien to kay the seneschal thou wast ill advised to send that madman after the knight for he must either be overthrown or flee and either way it will be a disgrace to arthur and his warriors
+therefore will i go to see what has befallen him so sir owain went to the meadow and he found perceval trying in vain to get the dead knight's armor off in order to clothe himself with it
+sir owain unfastened the armor and helped perceval to put it on and taught him how to put his foot in the stirrup and use the spur
+and urged on his horse with a stick then owain would have had him return to the court to receive the praise that was his due but perceval said i will not come to the court till i have encountered the tall man that is there
+to revenge the injury he did to the maiden but take thou the goblet to queen guenever and tell king arthur that wherever i am i will be his vassal and will do him what profit and service i can and sir owain
+went back to the court and related all these things to arthur and guenever and to all the household
+and he came to a lake on the side of which was a fair castle and on the border of the lake he saw a hoary headed man sitting upon a velvet cushion and his attendants were fishing in the lake
+when the hoary headed man beheld perceval approaching he arose and went into the castle perceval rode to the castle and the door was open and he entered the hall
+and the hoary headed man received perceval courteously and asked him to sit by him on the cushion when it was time the tables were set and they went to meat and when they had finished their meat the hoary headed man asked perceval
+if he knew how to fight with the sword i know not said perceval but were i to be taught doubtless i should and the hoary headed man said to him i am thy uncle thy mother's brother i am called king pecheur
+footnote the word means both fisher and sinner thou shalt remain with me a space in order to learn the manners and customs of different countries and courtesy and noble bearing and this do thou remember
+if thou seest aught to cause thy wonder ask not the meaning of it if no one has the courtesy to inform thee the reproach will not fall upon thee but upon me that am thy teacher
+while perceval and his uncle discoursed together perceval beheld two youths enter the hall bearing a golden cup and a spear of mighty size with blood dropping from its point to the ground
+and when all the company saw this they began to weep and lament but for all that the man did not break off his discourse with perceval and as he did not tell him the meaning of what he saw he forebore to ask him concerning it
+now the cup that perceval saw was the sangreal and the spear the sacred spear and afterwards king pecheur removed with those sacred relics into a far country one evening
+perceval entered a valley and came to a hermit's cell and the hermit welcomed him gladly and there he spent the night and in the morning he arose and when he went forth behold a shower of snow had fallen in the night and a hawk
+had killed a wild fowl in front of the cell and the noise of the horse had scared the hawk away and a raven alighted on the bird and perceval stood and compared the blackness of the raven and the whiteness of the snow
+to the hair of the lady that best he loved which was blacker than jet and to her skin which was whiter than the snow and to the two red spots upon her cheeks which were redder than the blood upon the snow
+now arthur and his household were in search of perceval and by chance they came that way know ye said arthur who is the knight with the long spear that stands by the brook up yonder lord said one of them
+i will go and learn who he is
+and who he was but perceval was so intent upon his thought that he gave him no answer then the youth thrust at perceval with his lance and perceval turned upon him and struck him to the ground
+and when the youth returned to the king and told how rudely he had been treated sir kay said i will go myself and when he greeted perceval and got no answer he spoke to him rudely and angrily
+and perceval thrust at him with his lance and cast him down so that he broke his arm and his shoulder blade and while he lay thus stunned his horse returned back at a wild and prancing pace then said
+surnamed the golden tongued because he was the most courteous knight in arthur's court it is not fitting that any should disturb an honorable knight from his thought unadvisedly for either he is pondering some damage that he has sustained
+or he is thinking of the lady whom best he loves if it seem well to thee lord i will go and see if this knight has changed from his thought and if he has i will ask him courteously to come and visit thee
+and perceval was resting on the shaft of his spear pondering the same thought
+if i thought it would be as agreeable to thee as it would be to me i would converse with thee i have also a message from arthur unto thee to pray thee to come and visit him
+and two men have been before on this errand that is true said perceval and uncourteously they came they attacked me and i was annoyed thereat then he told him the thought that occupied his mind
+and gawain said this was not an ungentle thought and i should marvel if it were pleasant for thee to be drawn from it then said perceval tell me is sir kay in arthur's court
+and truly he is the knight who fought with thee last verily said perceval i am not sorry to have thus avenged the insult to the smiling maiden then perceval told him his name and said
+who art thou and he replied
+i am right glad to meet thee said perceval for i have everywhere heard of thy prowess and uprightness and i solicit thy fellowship thou shalt have it by my faith and grant me thine said he
+gladly will i do so answered perceval so they went together to arthur and saluted him
+him whom thou hast sought so long welcome unto thee chieftain said arthur and hereupon there came the queen and her handmaidens and perceval saluted them and they were rejoiced to see him and bade him welcome
+the adventure of the cart it befell in the month of may queen guenever called to her knights of the table round and gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a maying into the woods and fields beside westminster
+and i warn you that there be none of you but he be well horsed and that ye all be clothed in green either silk or cloth and i shall bring with me ten ladies and every knight shall have a lady behind him
+and every knight shall have a squire and two yeoman and all well horsed for thus it chanced one morn when all the court green suited but with plumes that mock'd the may had been their wont a maying
+so they made them ready and these were the names of the knights sir kay the seneschal sir agrivaine sir brandiles sir sagramour le desirus
+sir dodynas le sauvage sir ozanna sir ladynas sir persant of inde sir ironside and sir pelleas and these ten knights made them ready
+so upon the morn they took their horses with the queen and rode a maying in woods and meadows as it pleased them in great joy and delight now there was a knight
+son to king brademagus who loved queen guenever passing well and so had he done long and many years now this knight sir maleagans learned the queen's purpose and that she had no men of arms with her
+but the ten noble knights all arrayed in green for maying so he prepared him twenty men of arms and a hundred archers to take captive the queen and her knights
+in the merry month of may in a morn at break of day with a troop of damsels playing the queen forsooth went forth a maying old song so when the queen had mayed
+traitor knight said queen guenever what wilt thou do wilt thou shame thyself bethink thee how thou art a king's son and a knight of the table round and how thou art about to dishonor all knighthood and thyself
+be it as it may said sir maleagans know you well madam i have loved you many a year and never till now could i get you to such advantage as i do now and therefore i will take you as i find you
+then the ten knights of the round table drew their swords and the other party run at them with their spears
+then they lashed together with swords till several were smitten to the earth so when the queen saw her knights thus dolefully oppressed and needs must be slain at the last then for pity and sorrow she cried sir maleagans
+slay not my noble knights and i will go with you upon this covenant that
+madame said maleagans for your sake they shall be led with you into my own castle if that ye will be ruled and ride with me then sir maleagans charged them all that none should depart from the queen
+for he dreaded lest sir launcelot should have knowledge of what had been done then the queen privily called unto her a page of her chamber that was swiftly horsed to whom she said go thou when thou seest thy time
+and bear this ring unto sir launcelot and pray him as he loveth me that he will see me and rescue me and spare not thy horse said the queen neither for water nor for land
+and lightly he took his horse with the spurs and departed as fast as he might and when sir maleagans saw him so flee he understood that it was by the queen's commandment for to warn sir launcelot
+then they that were best horsed chased him and shot at him but the child went from them all then sir maleagans said to the queen madam ye are about to betray me but i shall arrange for sir launcelot that he shall not come lightly at you
+then he rode with her and them all to his castle in all the haste that they might and by the way sir maleagans laid in ambush the best archers that he had to wait for sir launcelot
+and the child came to westminster and found sir launcelot and told his message and delivered him the queen's ring alas said sir launcelot
+unless i may rescue that noble lady then eagerly he asked his armor and put it on him and mounted his horse and rode as fast as he might
+and men say he took the water at westminster bridge and made his horse swim over thames unto lambeth then within a while he came to a wood where was a narrow way and there the archers were laid in ambush
+and they shot at him and smote his horse so that he fell then sir launcelot left his horse and went on foot but there lay so many ditches and hedges betwixt the archers and him that he might not meddle with them
+alas for shame said sir launcelot that ever one knight should betray another but it is an old saw a good man is never in danger but when he is in danger of a coward
+then sir launcelot went awhile and he was exceedingly cumbered by his armor his shield and his spear and all that belonged to him then by chance there came by him a cart that came thither to fetch wood
+carts were little used except for carrying offal and for conveying criminals to execution but sir launcelot took no thought of anything but the necessity of haste for the purpose of rescuing the queen so he demanded of the carter
+that he should take him in and convey him as speedily as possible for a liberal reward the carter consented and sir launcelot placed himself in the cart and only lamented that with much jolting he made but little progress
+he drew near to see who it might be then sir launcelot told him how the queen had been carried off and how in hastening to her rescue his horse had been disabled and he had been compelled to avail himself of the cart rather than give up his enterprise
+then sir gawain said surely it is unworthy of a knight to travel in such sort but sir launcelot heeded him not at nightfall
+but to admit his companion whom she supposed to be a criminal or at least a prisoner it pleased her not
+at supper sir launcelot came near being consigned to the kitchen
+neither would the damsels prepare a bed for him he seized the first he found unoccupied and was left undisturbed next morning he saw from the turrets of the castle a train accompanying a lady whom he imagined to be the queen
+the lady of the castle supplied sir launcelot with a horse and they traversed the plain at full speed they learned from some travellers whom they met that there were two roads which led to the castle of sir maleagans here therefore the friends separated
+sir launcelot found his way beset with obstacles which he encountered successfully but not without much loss of time as evening approached he was met by a young and sportive damsel who gayly proposed to him a supper
+at her castle the knight who was hungry and weary accepted the offer though with no very good grace he followed the lady to her castle and ate voraciously of her supper but was quite impenetrable to all her amorous advances
+suddenly the scene changed and he was assailed by six furious ruffians whom he dealt with so vigorously that most of them were speedily disabled when again there was a change and he found himself alone with his fair hostess
+which she told him would by its changes of color disclose to him all enchantments and enable him to subdue them sir launcelot pursued his journey without being much incommoded except by the taunts of travellers
+who all seemed to have learned by some means his disgraceful drive in the cart one more insolent than the rest had the audacity to interrupt him during dinner and even to risk a battle in support of his pleasantry launcelot
+after an easy victory only doomed him to be carted in his turn at night he was received at another castle with great apparent hospitality but found himself in the morning in a dungeon and loaded with chains
+consulting his ring and finding that this was an enchantment he burst his chains seized his armor in spite of the visionary monsters who attempted to defend it broke open the gates of the tower and continued his journey
+at length his progress was checked by a wide and rapid torrent which could only be passed on a narrow bridge on which a false step would prove his destruction launcelot leading his horse by the bridle and making him swim by his side
+passed over the bridge and was attacked as soon as he reached the bank by a lion and a leopard both of which he slew and then exhausted and bleeding seated himself on the grass and endeavored to bind up his wounds
+offered him his assistance and informed him that the queen was safe in his castle but could only be rescued by encountering maleagans launcelot demanded the battle for the next day and accordingly it took place at the foot of the tower
+and under the eyes of the fair captive launcelot was enfeebled by his wounds and fought not with his usual spirit and the contest for a time was doubtful
+ah launcelot my knight truly have i been told that thou art no longer worthy of me these words instantly revived the drooping knight he resumed at once his usual superiority and soon laid at his feet his haughty adversary
+moved by the entreaties of brademagus ordered him to withhold the blow and he obeyed the castle and its prisoners were now at his disposal launcelot hastened to the apartment of the queen threw himself at her feet
+and was about to kiss her hand when she exclaimed ah launcelot why do i see thee again yet feel thee to be no longer worthy of me after having been disgracefully drawn about the country in a she had not time to finish the phrase
+for her lover suddenly started from her and bitterly lamenting that he had incurred the displeasure of his sovereign lady rushed out of the castle threw his sword and his shield to the right and left ran furiously into the woods and disappeared
+it seems that the story of the abominable cart which haunted launcelot at every step had reached the ears of sir kay who had told it to the queen as a proof that her knight must have been dishonored
+three days elapsed during which launcelot wandered without knowing where he went till at last he began to reflect that his mistress had doubtless been deceived by misrepresentation
+and that it was his duty to set her right he therefore returned compelled maleagans to release his prisoners
+had the satisfaction of meeting him the next day
+we had gone backwards instead of forwards but my uncle rapidly recovered himself aha will fate play tricks upon me will the elements lay plots against me
+shall fire air and water make a combined attack against me well they shall know what a determined man can do i will not yield i will not stir a single foot backwards and it will be seen whether man or nature is to have the upper hand
+erect upon the rock angry and threatening otto liedenbrock was a rather grotesque fierce parody upon the fierce achilles defying the lightning but i thought it my duty to interpose and attempt to lay some restraint upon this unmeasured fanaticism
+just listen to me i said firmly ambition must have a limit somewhere we cannot perform impossibilities we are not at all fit for another sea voyage who would dream of undertaking a voyage of five hundred leagues upon a heap of rotten planks
+with a blanket in rags for a sail a stick for a mast and fierce winds in our teeth we cannot steer we shall be buffeted by the tempests and we should be fools and madmen to attempt to cross a second time
+i was able to develop this series of unanswerable reasons for ten minutes without interruption not that the professor was paying any respectful attention to his nephew's arguments but because he was deaf to all my eloquence
+to the raft he shouted such was his only reply it was no use for me to entreat supplicate get angry or do anything else in the way of opposition
+hans was finishing the repairs of the raft one would have thought that this strange being was guessing at my uncle's intentions with a few more pieces of surturbrand he had refitted our vessel
+a sail already hung from the new mast and the wind was playing in its waving folds the professor said a few words to the guide and immediately he put everything on board and arranged every necessary for our departure
+the air was clear and the north west wind blew steadily what could i do could i stand against the two it was impossible if hans had but taken my side but no it was not to be
+the icelander seemed to have renounced all will of his own and made a vow to forget and deny himself i could get nothing out of a servant so feudalised as it were to his master my only course was to proceed
+i was therefore going with as much resignation as i could find to resume my accustomed place on the raft when my uncle laid his hand upon my shoulder we shall not sail until to morrow he said
+i will not leave it until i have examined it to understand what followed it must be borne in mind that
+we were not really where the professor supposed we were in fact we were not upon the north shore of the sea now let us start upon fresh discoveries i said and leaving hans to his work we started off together
+the space between the water and the foot of the cliffs was considerable it took half an hour to bring us to the wall of rock we trampled under our feet numberless shells of all the forms and sizes which existed in the earliest ages of the world
+i also saw immense carapaces more than fifteen feet in diameter
+and ridged up in successive lines i was therefore led to the conclusion that at one time the sea must have covered the ground on which we were treading on the loose and scattered rocks
+the waves had left manifest traces of their power to wear their way in the hardest stone this might up to a certain point explain the existence of an ocean forty leagues beneath the surface of the globe but in my opinion
+this liquid mass would be lost by degrees farther and farther within the interior of the earth and it certainly had its origin in the waters of the ocean overhead which had made their way hither through some fissure yet
+it must be believed that that fissure is now closed and that all this cavern or immense reservoir was filled in a very short time perhaps even this water subjected to the fierce action of central heat had partly been resolved into vapour
+and the development of that electricity which raised such tempests within the bowels of the earth this theory of the phenomena we had witnessed seemed satisfactory to me for however great and stupendous the phenomena of nature
+fixed physical laws will or may always explain them we were therefore walking upon sedimentary soil the deposits of the waters of former ages the professor was carefully examining every little fissure in the rocks
+wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it to him this was important we had traversed the shores of the liedenbrock sea for a mile when we observed a sudden change in the appearance of the soil it seemed upset contorted
+where the remains of twenty ages mingled their dust together huge mounds of bony fragments rose stage after stage in the distance they undulated away to the limits of the horizon and melted in the distance in a faint
+haze there within three square miles were accumulated the materials for a complete history of the animal life of ages a history scarcely outlined in the too recent strata of the inhabited world
+but an impatient curiosity impelled our steps crackling and rattling our feet were trampling on the remains of prehistoric animals and interesting fossils the possession of which is a matter of rivalry and contention
+a thousand cuviers could never have reconstructed the organic remains deposited in this magnificent and unparalleled collection i stood amazed my uncle had uplifted his long arms to the vault which was our sky
+his mouth gaping wide his eyes flashing behind his shining spectacles his head balancing with an up and down motion his whole attitude denoted unlimited astonishment here he stood facing an immense collection of scattered
+leptotheria mericotheria lophiodia anoplotheria megatheria mastodons protopithecae pterodactyles and all sorts of extinct monsters here assembled together for his special satisfaction
+fancy an enthusiastic bibliomaniac suddenly brought into the midst of the famous alexandrian library burnt by omar and restored by a miracle from its ashes just such a crazed enthusiast was my uncle professor liedenbrock
+but more was to come when
+he laid his hand upon a bare skull and cried with a voice trembling with excitement axel axel a human head a human skull i cried no less astonished
+chapter thirty eight the professor in his chair again to understand this apostrophe of my uncle's made to absent french savants it will be necessary to allude to an event of high importance
+in a palaeontological point of view which had occurred a little while before our departure on the twenty eighth of march eighteen sixty three
+near abbeville in the department of somme found a human jawbone fourteen feet beneath the surface it was the first fossil of this nature that had ever been brought to light not far distant
+were found stone hatchets and flint arrow heads stained and encased by lapse of time with a uniform coat of rust the noise of this discovery was very great not in france alone but in england and in germany
+saw at once the importance of this discovery proved to demonstration the genuineness of the bone in question and became the most ardent defendants in what the english called this trial of a jawbone
+therefore the genuineness of a fossil human relic of the quaternary period seemed to be incontestably proved and admitted it is true that this theory met with a most obstinate opponent
+and agreeing in that with cuvier he refused to admit that the human species could be contemporary with the animals of the quaternary period my uncle liedenbrock along with the great body of the geologists had maintained his ground disputed and argued until
+we knew all these details but we were not aware that since our departure the question had advanced to farther stages other similar maxillaries though belonging to individuals of various types and different nations were found in the loose grey soil
+of certain grottoes in france switzerland and belgium as well as weapons tools earthen utensils bones of children and adults the existence therefore of man in the quaternary period seemed to become daily more certain
+nor was this all fresh discoveries of remains in the pleiocene formation had emboldened other geologists to refer back the human species to a higher antiquity still it is true that these remains were not human bones
+but objects bearing the traces of his handiwork such as fossil leg bones of animals sculptured and carved evidently by the hand of man
+he was a predecessor of the mastodon he was a contemporary of the southern elephant he lived a hundred thousand years ago when according to geologists the pleiocene formation was in progress
+such then was the state of palaeontological science and what we knew of it was sufficient to explain our behaviour in the presence of this stupendous golgotha any one may now understand the frenzied excitement of my uncle when
+twenty yards farther on he found himself face to face with a primitive man it was a perfectly recognisable human body had some particular soil like that of the cemetery saint michel at bordeaux
+preserved it thus for so many ages it might be so but this dried corpse with its parchment like skin drawn tightly over the bony frame the limbs still preserving their shape sound teeth abundant hair
+and finger and toe nails of frightful length this desiccated mummy startled us by appearing just as it had lived countless ages ago i stood mute before this apparition of remote antiquity my uncle usually so garrulous
+was struck dumb likewise we raised the body we stood it up against a rock it seemed to stare at us out of its empty orbits we sounded with our knuckles his hollow frame after some moments silence the professor was himself again
+otto liedenbrock yielding to his nature forgot all the circumstances of our eventful journey forgot where we were standing forgot the vaulted cavern which contained us no doubt he was in mind back again in his johannaeum
+holding forth to his pupils for he assumed his learned air and addressing himself to an imaginary audience he proceeded thus gentlemen i have the honour to introduce to you a man of the quaternary or post tertiary system
+eminent geologists have denied his existence others no less eminent have affirmed it the saint thomases of palaeontology if they were here might now touch him with their fingers and would be obliged to acknowledge their error
+i am quite aware that science has to be on its guard with discoveries of this kind i know what capital enterprising individuals like barnum have made out of fossil men i have heard the tale of the kneepan of ajax
+the pretended body of orestes claimed to have been found by the spartans and of the body of asterius ten cubits long
+i have read the reports of the skeleton of trapani found in the fourteenth century and which was at the time identified as that of polyphemus and the history of the giant unearthed in the sixteenth century near palermo
+you know as well as i do gentlemen the analysis made at lucerne in fifteen seventy seven of those huge bones which the celebrated doctor felix plater affirmed to be those of a giant nineteen feet high
+in the eighteenth century i would have stood up for scheuchzer's pre adamite man against peter campet i have perused a writing
+here my uncle's unfortunate infirmity met him that of being unable in public to pronounce hard words
+he could get no further
+it was not to be done the unlucky word would not come out at the johannaeum there would have been a laugh gigantosteologie at last the professor burst out between two words which i shall not record here
+have recognised in these bones nothing more remarkable than the bones of the mammoth and other mammals of the post tertiary period but in the presence of this specimen to doubt would be to insult science there stands the body you may see it touch it
+it is not a mere skeleton it is an entire body
+i was good enough not to contradict this startling assertion if i could only wash it in a solution of sulphuric acid pursued my uncle i should be able to clear it from all the earthy particles and the shells which are incrusted about it
+but i do not possess that valuable solvent yet such as it is the body shall tell us its own wonderful story here the professor laid hold of the fossil skeleton and handled it with the skill of a dexterous showman
+you see he said that it is not six feet long and that we are still separated by a long interval from the pretended race of giants
+it is evidently caucasian it is the white race our own the skull of this fossil is a regular oval or rather ovoid it exhibits no prominent cheekbones no projecting jaws
+it presents no appearance of that prognathism
+it is nearly ninety degrees but i will go further in my deductions and i will affirm that this specimen of the human family is of the japhetic race which has since spread from the indies to the atlantic don't smile gentlemen nobody was smiling
+but the learned professor was frequently disturbed by the broad smiles provoked by his learned eccentricities yes he pursued with animation this is a fossil man the contemporary of the mastodons whose remains fill this amphitheatre
+how those strata on which he lay slipped down into this enormous hollow in the globe i confess i cannot answer that question
+considerable commotions were still disturbing the crust of the earth the long continued cooling of the globe produced chasms fissures clefts and faults into which very probably portions of the upper earth may have fallen
+but there is the man surrounded by his own works by hatchets by flint arrow heads
+this fossil body was not the only one in this immense catacomb we came upon other bodies at every step amongst this mortal dust and my uncle might select the most curious of these specimens to demolish the incredulity of sceptics
+in fact it was a wonderful spectacle that of these generations of men and animals commingled in a common cemetery then one very serious question arose presently which we scarcely dared to suggest
+had all those creatures slided through a great fissure in the crust of the earth down to the shores of the liedenbrock sea when they were dead and turning to dust or had they lived and grown and died here in this subterranean world under a false sky
+what happened when the raft was dashed upon the rocks is more than i can tell i felt myself hurled into the waves and if i escaped from death and if my body was not torn over the sharp edges of the rocks
+it was because the powerful arm of hans came to my rescue the brave icelander carried me out of the reach of the waves over a burning sand where i found myself by the side of my uncle
+then he returned to the rocks against which the furious waves were beating to save what he could i was unable to speak i was shattered with fatigue and excitement
+i wanted a whole hour to recover even a little but a deluge of rain was still falling though with that violence which generally denotes the near cessation of a storm
+the next day the weather was splendid the sky and the sea had sunk into sudden repose every trace of the awful storm had disappeared
+the exhilarating voice of the professor fell upon my ears as i awoke he was ominously cheerful well my boy he cried have you slept well
+and that i was only just coming down to breakfast and that i was to be married to graeuben that day alas if the tempest had but sent the raft a little more east we should have passed under germany under my beloved town of hamburg
+under the very street where dwelt all that i loved most in the world then only forty leagues would have separated us but they were forty leagues perpendicular of solid granite wall and in reality we were a thousand leagues asunder
+all these painful reflections rapidly crossed my mind before i could answer my uncle's question well now he repeated won't you tell me how you have slept oh very well i said
+i am only a little knocked up but i shall soon be better oh says my uncle that's nothing to signify you are only a little bit tired but you uncle you seem in very good spirits this morning
+but my dear uncle do let me ask you one question of course axel how about returning returning why you are talking about the return before the arrival no
+i only want to know how that is to be managed in the simplest way possible when we have reached the centre of the globe either we shall find some new way to get back or we shall come back like decent folks the way we came
+i feel pleased at the thought that it is sure not to be shut against us but then we shall have to refit the raft of course then as to provisions have we enough to last
+yes to be sure we have hans is a clever fellow and i am sure he must have saved a large part of our cargo but still let us go and make sure
+we left this grotto which lay open to every wind at the same time i cherished a trembling hope which was a fear as well it seemed to me impossible that the terrible wreck of the raft should not have destroyed everything on board
+on my arrival on the shore i found hans surrounded by an assemblage of articles all arranged in good order my uncle shook hands with him with a lively gratitude this man with almost superhuman devotion
+and had saved the most precious of the articles at the risk of his life not that we had suffered no losses for instance our firearms but we might do without them our stock of powder had remained uninjured
+after having risked blowing up during the storm well cried the professor as we have no guns we cannot hunt that's all yes but how about the instruments here is the aneroid the most useful of all
+and for which i would have given all the others by means of it i can calculate the depth and know when we have reached the centre without it
+such high spirits as these were rather too strong but where is the compass i asked here it is upon this rock in perfect condition as well as the thermometers and the chronometer the hunter is a splendid fellow
+there was no denying it we had all our instruments as for tools and appliances there they all lay on the ground ladders ropes picks spades et cetera still there was the question of provisions to be settled and i asked
+how are we off for provisions the boxes containing these were in a line upon the shore in a perfect state of preservation for the most part the sea had spared them and what with biscuits salt meat spirits and salt fish
+four months cried the professor we have time to go and to return
+i ought by this time to have been quite accustomed to my uncle's ways yet there was always something fresh about him to astonish me now said he
+therefore we shall have no reason to fear anything from thirst as for the raft i will recommend hans to do his best to repair it although i don't expect it will be of any further use to us how so i cried an idea of my own my lad
+i don't think we shall come out by the way that we went in i stared at the professor with a good deal of mistrust i asked was he not touched in the brain and yet there was method in his madness and now let us go to breakfast said he
+i followed him to a headland after he had given his instructions to the hunter there preserved meat biscuit and tea made us an excellent meal one of the best i ever remember hunger the fresh air the calm quiet weather
+after the commotions we had gone through all contributed to give me a good appetite whilst breakfasting i took the opportunity to put to my uncle the question where we were now that seems to me i said rather difficult to make out
+yes it is difficult he said to calculate exactly perhaps even impossible since during these three stormy days i have been unable to keep any account of the rate or direction of the raft but still we may get an approximation
+the last observation i remarked was made on the island when the geyser was you mean axel island don't decline the honour of having given your name to the first island ever discovered in the central parts of the globe well said i
+let it be axel island then we had cleared two hundred and seventy leagues of sea and we were six hundred leagues from iceland very well answered my uncle let us start from that point and count four days storm
+surely axel it may vie in size with the mediterranean itself especially i replied if it happens that we have only crossed it in its narrowest part and it is a curious circumstance i added that if my computations are right
+that is a good long way my friend but whether we are under turkey or the atlantic depends very much upon the question
+perhaps we have deviated no i think not
+well replied my uncle we may easily ascertain this by consulting the compass let us go and see what it says the professor moved towards the rock upon which hans had laid down the instruments
+he was gay and full of spirits he rubbed his hands he studied his attitudes i followed him curious to know if i was right in my estimate as soon as we had arrived at the rock my uncle took the compass laid it horizontally
+and questioned the needle which after a few oscillations presently assumed a fixed position my uncle looked and looked and looked again he rubbed his eyes
+and then turned to me thunderstruck with some unexpected discovery what is the matter i asked
+an exclamation of astonishment burst from me the north pole of the needle was turned to what we supposed to be the south it pointed to the shore instead of to the open sea i shook the box examined it again
+it was in perfect condition in whatever position i placed the box the needle pertinaciously returned to this unexpected quarter
+that he should be elected and now he did think it probable that he should get the seat on a petition a scrutiny used to be a very expensive business but under the existing law made as the scrutiny would be in the borough itself
+it would cost but little and that little should he be successful would fall on the shoulders of mister browborough should he knock off eight votes and lose none himself he would be member for tankerville
+he knew that many votes had been given for browborough which if the truth were known of them would be knocked off and he did not know that the same could be said of any one of those by which he had been supported
+but unfortunately the judge by whom all this would be decided might not reach tankerville in his travels till after christmas perhaps not till after easter and in the meantime what should he do with himself
+as for going back to dublin that was now out of the question he had entered upon a feverish state of existence in which it was impossible that he should live in ireland
+he must vanish out of the world
+he would not even endeavour to think how he might in such case best bestow himself for the present he would remain within the region of politics and live as near as he could to the whirl of the wheel of which the sound was so dear to him
+so you're at the old game mister finn said his landlord yes at the old game i suppose it's the same with you now mister bunce had been a very violent politician
+pretty much the same mister finn i don't see that things are much better than they used to be they tell me at the people's banner office that the lords have had as much to do with this election as with any that ever went before it
+perhaps they don't know much about it at the people's banner office i thought mister slide and the people's banner had gone over to the other side bunce mister slide is pretty wide awake whatever side he's on
+not but what he's disgraced himself by what he's been and done now mister slide in former days had been the editor of the people's banner
+but what a man keeps in the way of religion for his own use is never nothing to me as what i keeps is nothing to him i'm afraid you don't keep much mister bunce and that's nothing to you neither is it sir no indeed
+but when we read of churches as is called state churches churches as have bishops you and i have to pay for as never goes into them but we don't pay the bishops mister bunce oh yes we do because if they wasn't paid
+the money would come to us to do as we pleased with it we proved all that when we pared them down a bit what's an ecclesiastical commission only another name for a box to put the money into till you want to take it out again
+just as the theatres are mister finn or the gin shops then i know there's a deal more to be done before honest men can come by their own you're right enough mister finn you are as far as churches go and you was right too when you cut and run off the treasury bench
+i never expected this but i'll do for you mister finn just as i ever did in the old days and it was i that was sorry when i heard of the poor young lady's death so i was mister finn well then i won't mention her name never again
+but after all there's been betwixt you and us it wouldn't be natural to pass it by without one word would it mister finn well yes he's just the same man as ever
+just as he used to do and never got so much out of it
+that i don't know how to bear it well yes that is true mister finn there never was a man better at bringing home his money to his wife than bunce
+if he'd drink it which he never does i think i'd bear it better than give it to that nasty union and young jack writes as well as his father pretty nigh mister finn which is a comfort mister bunce was a journeyman scrivener at a law stationer's
+and keeps his self but he don't bring home his money nor yet it can't be expected mister finn i know what the young uns will do and what they won't and mary jane is quite handy about the house now only she do break things
+which he used to know so well a hundred memories of former days crowded back upon him lord chiltern for a few months had lived with him and then there had arisen a quarrel which he had for a time thought would dissolve his old life into ruin
+now lord chiltern was again his very intimate friend and there had used to sit a needy money lender whom
+alas alas how soon might he now require that money lender's services and then he recollected how he had left these rooms to go into others grander and more appropriate to his life when he had filled high office under the state
+would there ever again come to him such cause for migration and would he again be able to load the frame of the looking glass over the fire with countless cards from countesses and ministers wives he had opened the oyster for himself once
+when the point of his knife had been withdrawn would he be able to insert the point again between those two difficult shells would the countesses once more be kind to him would drawing rooms be opened to him and sometimes opened to him and to no other
+then he thought of certain special drawing rooms in which wonderful things had been said to him since that he had been a married man and those special drawing rooms and those wonderful words had in no degree actuated him in his choice of a wife
+he had left all those things of his own free will as though telling himself that there was a better life than they offered to him but was he sure that he had found it to be better he had certainly sighed for the gauds which he had left
+while his young wife was living he had kept his sighs down so that she should not hear them but he had been forced to acknowledge that his new life had been vapid and flavourless now he had been tempted back again to the old haunts
+would the countesses cards be showered upon him again one card or rather note had reached him while he was yet at tankerville reminding him of old days it was from missus low the wife of the barrister
+with whom he had worked when he had been a law student in london she had asked him to come and dine with them after the old fashion in baker street naming a day as to which she presumed that he would by that time have finished his affairs at tankerville
+intimating also that mister low would then have finished his at north broughton now mister low had sat for north broughton before phineas left london and his wife spoke of the seat as a certainty
+phineas could not keep himself from feeling that missus low intended to triumph over him but nevertheless he accepted the invitation they were very glad to see him explaining that
+as nobody was supposed to be in town nobody had been asked to meet him in former days he had been very intimate in that house having received from both of them much kindness mingled perhaps with some touch of severity on the part of the lady
+but the ground for that was gone and missus low was no longer painfully severe a few words were said as to his great loss missus low once raised her eyebrows in pretended surprise
+when phineas explained that he had thrown up his place and then they settled down on the question of the day and so said missus low you've begun to attack the church it must be remembered that at this moment mister daubeny
+and if her husband could not be said to live by means of the same atmosphere it was because the breath of his nostrils had been drawn chiefly in the vice chancellor's court in lincoln's inn but he no doubt
+would be very much disturbed indeed should he ever be told that he was required as an expectant member of mister daubeny's party to vote for the disestablishment
+you don't mean that i am guilty of throwing the first stone said phineas they have been throwing stones at the temple since first it was built said missus low with energy but they have fallen off its polished shafts in dust and fragments
+i am afraid that missus low when she allowed herself to speak thus energetically entertained some confused idea that the church of england and the christian religion were one and the same thing or at least that they had been brought into the world together
+you haven't thrown the first stone said mister low but you have taken up the throwing at the first moment in which stones may be dangerous no stones can be dangerous said missus low
+the idea of a state church said phineas is opposed to my theory of political progress what i hope is that my friends will not suppose that i attack the protestant church because i am a roman catholic if i were a priest
+it would be my business to do so but i am not a priest mister low gave his old friend a bottle of his best wine and in all friendly observances treated him with due affection but neither did he nor did his wife
+for a moment abstain from attacking their guest in respect to his speeches at tankerville it seemed indeed to phineas that as missus low was buckled up in such triple armour that she feared nothing
+she might have been less loud in expressing her abhorrence of the enemies of the church if she feared nothing why should she scream so loudly between the two he was a good deal crushed and confounded
+and missus low was very triumphant when she allowed him to escape from her hands at ten o'clock but at that moment nothing had as yet been heard in baker street of mister daubeny's proposition to the electors of east barsetshire
+poor missus low we can foresee that there is much grief in store for her and some rocks ahead too in the political career of her husband phineas was still in london hanging about the clubs doing nothing
+discussing mister daubeny's wonderful treachery with such men as came up to town and waiting for the meeting of parliament when he received the following letter from lady laura kennedy dresden november eighteenth
+i have heard with great pleasure from my sister in law that you have been staying with them at harrington hall it seems so like old days that you and oswald and violet should be together so much more natural
+than that you should be living in dublin i cannot conceive of you as living any other life than that of the house of commons downing street and the clubs nor do i wish to do so
+and when i hear of you at harrington hall i know that you are on your way to the other things do tell me what life is like with oswald and violet of course he never writes he is one of those men who on marrying
+assume that they have at last got a person to do a duty which has always hitherto been neglected violet does write
+as the wife of a master of hounds
+as the art is real she told me how poor dear lady baldock communicated to you her unhappiness about her daughter in a manner that made even me laugh and would make thousands laugh in days to come were it ever to be published
+but of her inside life of her baby or of her husband as a husband she never says a word you will have seen it all and have enough of the feminine side of a man's character to be able to tell me how they are living
+i am sure they are happy together because violet has more common sense than any woman i ever knew and pray tell me about the affair at tankerville my cousin barrington writes me word that you will certainly get the seat
+he declares that mister browborough is almost disposed not to fight the battle though a man more disposed to fight never bribed an elector but barrington seems to think that you managed as well as you did by getting outside the traces as he calls it
+we certainly did not think that you would come out strong against the church
+but if it must come why not by your hands as well as by any other it is hardly possible that you in your heart should love a protestant ascendant church but as barrington says a horse won't get oats
+at home as you know not only did he take an active part in politics but he was active also in the management of his own property now it seems to him to be almost too great a trouble to write a letter to his steward
+or to remain here by myself but he will consent to neither in truth the burden of idleness has now fallen upon him so heavily that he cannot shake it off he dreads that he may be called upon to do anything
+to me it is all one tragedy i cannot but think of things as they were two or three years since my father and my husband were both in the cabinet and you young as you were stood but one step below it oswald was out in the cold he was very poor
+papa thought all evil of him violet had refused him over and over again he quarrelled with you and all the world seemed against him then of a sudden you vanished and we vanished an ineffable misery fell upon me and upon my wretched husband
+all our good things went from us at a blow i and my poor father became as it were outcasts but oswald suddenly retricked his beams and is flaming in the forehead of the morning sky he i believe
+he won his wife honestly did he not and he has ever been honest it is my pride to think i never gave him up but the bitter part of my cup consists in this that as he has won what he has deserved so have we
+i complain of no injustice our castle was built upon the sand why should mister kennedy have been a cabinet minister and why should i have been his wife
+there is no one whom i can ask to tell me of him that he did not attend during the last session i do know and we presume that he has now abandoned his seat i fear that his health is bad
+by the gloom of his life i suppose that he lives exclusively at loughlinter from time to time i am implored by him to return to my duty beneath his roof he grounds his demand on no affection of his own
+on no presumption that any affection can remain with me he says no word of happiness he offers no comfort he does not attempt to persuade with promises of future care he makes his claim simply on holy writ and on the feeling of duty which
+thence ought to weigh upon me he has never even told me that he loves me but he is persistent in declaring that those whom god has joined together nothing human should separate
+i have told papa that i should ask you and he would be delighted
+to be able to talk again to one who knows all the errors and all the efforts of my past life as you do dresden is very cold in the winter i do not know whether you would mind that we are very particular about the rooms but my father bears the temperature wonderfully well
+though he complains in march we move down south for a couple of months do come if you can most sincerely yours laura kennedy
+sagacious bold and restless he pushed his way from town to town and pretended to have reached the mysterious mountains of appalache he sent to the fort mantles woven with feathers quivers covered with choice furs
+arrows tipped with gold wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald and other trophies of his wanderings a gentleman named grotaut took up the quest and penetrated to the dominions of hostaqua
+who it was pretended could muster three or four thousand warriors and who promised with the aid of a hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains and subject them and their gold mines to the rule of the french
+a humbler adventurer was pierre gambie a robust and daring youth
+and was now a soldier under laudonniere the latter gave him leave to trade with the indians a privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic became prime favorite with the chief of the island of edelano
+married his daughter and in his absence reigned in his stead but as his sway verged towards despotism his subjects took offence and split his head with a hatchet during the winter
+indians from the neighborhood of cape canaveral brought to the fort two spaniards wrecked fifteen years before on the southwestern extremity of the peninsula
+they told of the king of cabs on whose domains they had been wrecked a chief mighty in stature and in power in one of his villages was a pit six feet deep and as wide as a hogshead
+filled with treasure gathered from spanish wrecks on adjacent reefs and keys the monarch was a priest too and a magician with power over the elements each year he withdrew from the public gaze
+to hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers and each year he sacrificed to his gods one of the spaniards whom the fortune of the sea had cast upon his shores
+the name of the tribe is preserved in that of the river caboosa in close league with him was the mighty oathcaqua dwelling near cape canaveral who gave his daughter a maiden of wondrous beauty
+in marriage to his great ally but as the bride with her bridesmaids was journeying towards calos escorted by a chosen band they were assailed by a wild and warlike race inhabitants of an island called
+in the midst of a lake who put the warriors to flight bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness espoused them all and we are assured
+begged for ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid
+again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance that thus reinforced he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom gold mines of appalache ottigny set forth on this fool's errand
+with thrice the force demanded three hundred thirnagoas and thirty frenchmen took up their march through the pine barrens outina's conjurer was of the number and had wellnigh ruined the enterprise
+with hideous grimaces howlings and contortions he wrought himself into a prophetic frenzy and proclaimed to the astounded warriors
+panic slaughter and a plentiful harvest of scalps but no persuasion could induce outina to follow up his victory he went home to dance round his trophies and the french returned disgusted to fort caroline
+and now in ample measure the french began to reap the harvest of their folly conquest gold and military occupation had alone been their aims
+not a rod of ground had been stirred with the spade their stores were consumed and the expected supplies had not come the indians too were hostile satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies
+and his tribesmen robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers exulted in their miseries yet in these their dark and subtle neighbors was their only hope may day came
+the third anniversary of the day when ribaut and his companions full of delighted anticipation had first explored
+for within the precinct of fort caroline a homesick squalid band dejected and worn dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun scorched area or lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks
+some were digging roots in the forest or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the meadows if they had had any skill in hunting and fishing the river and the woods would have supplied their needs but in this point as in others
+they were lamentably unfit for the work they had taken in hand our miserie says laudonniere was so great that one was found that gathered up all the fish bones that he could finde which he dried
+and beate into powder to make bread thereof the effects of this hideous famine appeared incontinently among us for our bones eftsoones beganne to cleave so neere unto the skinne
+that the most part of the souldiers had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many partes of their bodies yet giddy with weakness they dragged themselves in turn to the top of saint john's bluff straining their eyes across the sea
+to descry the anxiously expected sail had coligny left them to perish or had some new tempest of calamity let loose upon france drowned the memory of their exile
+in vain the watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters a deep dejection fell upon them
+could their eyes have pierced the future the indians had left the neighborhood but from time to time brought in meagre supplies of fish which they sold to the famished soldiers at exorbitant prices
+lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion they would not enter the fort
+beyond gunshot waiting for their customers to come out to them oftentimes says laudonniere our poor soldiers were constrained to give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish if at any time they shewed unto the savages
+the excessive price which they tooke these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly if thou make so great account of thy marchandise eat it and we will eat our fish then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat
+the spring wore away and no relief appeared one thought now engrossed the colonists that of return to france vasseur's ship the breton still remained in the river
+and they had also the spanish brigantine brought by the mutineers but these vessels were insufficient and they prepared to build a new one the energy of reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames
+some gathered pitch in the pine forests some made charcoal
+the maize began to ripen and this brought some relief but the indians exasperated and greedy sold it with reluctance and murdered two half famished frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields
+one astina the plunder of whose villages would yield an ample supply the offer was accepted ottigny and vasseur set out but were grossly deceived led against a different enemy
+and sent back empty handed and half starved they returned to the fort in the words of laudonniere angry and pricked deepely to the quicke for being so mocked
+and joined by all their comrades fiercely demanded to be led against outina to seize him punish his insolence and extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from his gratitude the commandant was forced to comply
+those who could bear the weight of their armor put it on embarked to the number of fifty in two barges and sailed up the river under laudonniere himself having reached outina's landing they marched inland entered his village
+surrounded his mud plastered palace seized him amid the yells and howlings of his subjects and led him prisoner to their boats here anchored in mid stream
+uttered moans and outcries from the strand yet no ransom was offered since reasoning from their own instincts they never doubted that after the price was paid the captive would be put to death laudonniere
+waited two days and then descended the river with his prisoner
+mister woodhouse was fond of society in his own way he liked very much to have his friends come and see him and from various united causes from his long residence at hartfield and his good nature from his fortune his house and his daughter
+he could command the visits of his own little circle in a great measure as he liked he had not much intercourse with any families beyond that circle his horror of late hours and large dinner parties
+and unless he fancied himself at any time unequal to company there was scarcely an evening in the week in which emma could not make up a card table for him real long standing regard brought the westons and mister knightley
+and by mister elton a young man living alone without liking it the privilege of exchanging any vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the elegancies and society of mister woodhouse's drawing room
+and missus goddard three ladies almost always at the service of an invitation from hartfield and who were fetched and carried home so often that mister woodhouse thought it no hardship for either james or the horses
+for a woman neither young handsome rich nor married miss bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour and she had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself
+she loved every body was interested in every body's happiness quicksighted to every body's merits thought herself a most fortunate creature and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother
+and so many good neighbours and friends and a home that wanted for nothing the simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature her contented and grateful spirit were a recommendation to every body
+and a mine of felicity to herself she was a great talker upon little matters which exactly suited mister woodhouse full of trivial communications and harmless gossip missus goddard was the mistress of a school
+and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity but a real honest old fashioned boarding school where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price
+for highbury was reckoned a particularly healthy spot she had an ample house and garden gave the children plenty of wholesome food let them run about a great deal in the summer
+hung round with fancy work whenever she could and win or lose a few sixpences by his fireside these were the ladies whom emma found herself very frequently able to collect
+it was no remedy for the absence of missus weston she was delighted to see her father look comfortable and very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well
+but the quiet prosings of three such women made her feel that every evening so spent was indeed one of the long evenings she had fearfully anticipated as she sat one morning looking forward to exactly such a close of the present day
+to be allowed to bring miss smith with her a most welcome request for miss smith was a girl of seventeen whom emma knew very well by sight and had long felt an interest in on account of her beauty
+a very gracious invitation was returned and the evening no longer dreaded by the fair mistress of the mansion harriet smith was the natural daughter of somebody somebody had placed her several years back at missus goddard's school
+she was short plump and fair with a fine bloom blue eyes light hair regular features and a look of great sweetness and before the end of the evening emma was as much pleased with her manners as her person
+and quite determined to continue the acquaintance she was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in miss smith's conversation but she found her altogether very engaging not inconveniently shy
+not unwilling to talk and yet so far from pushing shewing so proper and becoming a deference seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to hartfield
+and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had been used to that she must have good sense and deserve encouragement encouragement should be given
+those soft blue eyes and all those natural graces should not be wasted on the inferior society of highbury and its connexions the acquaintance she had already formed were unworthy of her
+she would form her opinions and her manners it would be an interesting and certainly a very kind undertaking highly becoming her own situation in life her leisure and powers
+she was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes in talking and listening and forming all these schemes in the in betweens that the evening flew away at a very unusual rate and the supper table which
+always closed such parties and for which she had been used to sit and watch the due time was all set out and ready and moved forwards to the fire before she was aware with an alacrity beyond the common impulse of a spirit
+which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every thing well and attentively with the real good will of a mind delighted with its own ideas did she then do all the honours of the meal
+he loved to have the cloth laid
+and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to every thing
+such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could with thorough self approbation recommend though he might constrain himself while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things to say
+missus bates let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs an egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome
+i would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else but you need not be afraid they are very small you see one of our small eggs will not hurt you
+what say you to half a glass of wine a small half glass put into a tumbler of water i do not think it could disagree with you emma allowed her father to talk but supplied her visitors in a much more satisfactory style
+and on the present evening had particular pleasure in sending them away happy
+emma woodhouse handsome clever and rich with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence
+very fond of both daughters but particularly of emma
+the real evils indeed of emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way and a disposition to think a little too well of herself
+these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments the danger however was at present so unperceived
+sorrow came a gentle sorrow but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness miss taylor married it was miss taylor's loss which first brought grief
+it was on the wedding day of this beloved friend that emma first sat in mournful thought of any continuance the wedding over and the bride people gone her father and herself were left to dine together
+the event had every promise of happiness for her friend mister weston was a man of unexceptionable character easy fortune suitable age and pleasant manners
+and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self denying generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match but it was a black morning's work for her
+the want of miss taylor would be felt every hour of every day she recalled her past kindness the kindness the affection of sixteen years how she had taught and how she had played with her from five years old
+how she had devoted all her powers
+and how nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood a large debt of gratitude was owing here but the intercourse of the last seven years the equal footing and perfect unreserve
+which had soon followed isabella's marriage on their being left to each other was yet a dearer tenderer recollection she had been a friend and companion such as few possessed intelligent
+well informed useful gentle knowing all the ways of the family interested in all its concerns and peculiarly interested in herself in every pleasure every scheme of hers
+only half a mile from them and a miss taylor in the house and with all her advantages natural and domestic she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude she dearly loved her father but he was no companion for her
+rational or playful the evil of the actual disparity in their ages and mister woodhouse had not married early was much increased by his constitution and habits
+for having been a valetudinarian all his life without activity of mind or body
+and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper his talents could not have recommended him at any time her sister though comparatively but little removed by matrimony
+being settled in london only sixteen miles off was much beyond her daily reach
+through at hartfield before christmas brought the next visit from isabella and her husband
+but not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of miss taylor for even half a day it was a melancholy change and emma could not but sigh over it and wish for impossible things till her father awoke
+matrimony as the origin of change was always disagreeable and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter's marrying nor could ever speak of her but with compassion though it had been entirely a match of affection
+when he was now obliged to part with miss taylor too and from his habits of gentle selfishness and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself he was very much disposed to think miss taylor had done
+as sad a thing for herself as for them and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at hartfield emma smiled and chatted as cheerfully as she could to keep him from such thoughts
+but when tea came it was impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner poor miss taylor i wish she were here again what a pity it is that mister weston ever thought of her
+and bear all my odd humours when she might have a house of her own a house of her own but where is the advantage of a house of her own this is three times as large and you have never any odd humours my dear
+you know we have settled all that already
+that was your doing papa you got hannah that good place nobody thought of hannah till you mentioned her james is so obliged to you i am very glad i did think of her
+i am sure she will be an excellent servant
+he will be able to tell her how we all are emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas and hoped by the help of backgammon to get her father tolerably through the evening
+and be attacked by no regrets but her own the backgammon table was placed but a visitor immediately afterwards walked in and made it unnecessary mister knightley a sensible man about seven or eight and thirty
+was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family but particularly connected with it as the elder brother of isabella's husband he lived about a mile from highbury
+was a frequent visitor and always welcome and at this time more welcome than usual as coming directly from their mutual connexions in london he had returned to a late dinner
+mister knightley had a cheerful manner which always did him good and his many inquiries after poor isabella and her children were answered most satisfactorily when this was over mister woodhouse gratefully observed
+i wish you may not catch cold dirty sir look at my shoes not a speck on them
+i have been in no hurry with my congratulations but i hope it all went off tolerably well how did you all behave who cried most ah poor miss taylor tis a sad business
+poor mister and miss woodhouse if you please but i cannot possibly say poor miss taylor i have a great regard for you and emma but when it comes to the question of dependence or independence at any rate
+it must be better to have only one to please than two especially when one of those two is such a fanciful troublesome creature
+i am afraid i am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome my dearest papa
+what a horrible idea oh no i meant only myself mister knightley loves to find fault with me you know in a joke it is all a joke
+it is impossible that emma should not miss such a companion said mister knightley we should not like her so well as we do sir if we could suppose it but she knows how much the marriage is to miss taylor's advantage
+she knows how very acceptable it must be at miss taylor's time of life to be settled in a home of her own and how important to her to be secure of a comfortable provision
+and a very considerable one that i made the match myself i made the match you know four years ago and to have it take place and be proved in the right
+may comfort me for any thing mister knightley shook his head at her her father fondly replied ah my dear i wish you would not make matches and foretell things for whatever you say always comes to pass
+and who seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife so constantly occupied either in his business in town or among his friends here always acceptable wherever he went always cheerful
+mister weston need not spend a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it oh no mister weston certainly would never marry again some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed
+and others of the son and the uncle not letting him all manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject but i believed none of it ever since the day about four years ago
+and borrowed two umbrellas for us from farmer mitchell's i made up my mind on the subject i planned the match from that hour and when such success has blessed me in this instance dear papa
+if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage a worthy employment for a young lady's mind
+your making the match as you call it means only your planning it your saying to yourself one idle day i think it would be a very good thing for miss taylor if mister weston were to marry her
+and have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess i pity you i thought you cleverer for depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck there is always some talent in it
+and a rational unaffected woman like miss taylor may be safely left to manage their own concerns you are more likely to have done harm to yourself than good to them by interference
+understanding but in part but my dear pray do not make any more matches they are silly things and break up one's family circle grievously
+poor mister elton you like mister elton papa i must look about for a wife for him there is nobody in highbury who deserves him and he has been here a whole year and has fitted up his house so comfortably
+that it would be a shame to have him single any longer and i thought when he was joining their hands to day he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him i think very well of mister elton
+and this is the only way i have of doing him a service mister elton is a very pretty young man to be sure and a very good young man and i have a great regard for him but if you want to shew him any attention my dear
+ask him to come and dine with us some day
+i dare say mister knightley will be so kind as to meet him
+but on succeeding early in life to a small independence had become indisposed for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged and had satisfied an active cheerful mind
+and social temper by entering into the militia of his county then embodied captain weston was a general favourite and when the chances of his military life had introduced him to miss churchill of a great yorkshire family
+and miss churchill fell in love with him nobody was surprized except her brother and his wife who had never seen him and who were full of pride and importance which the connexion would offend
+miss churchill however being of age and with the full command of her fortune though her fortune bore no proportion to the family estate
+and it took place to the infinite mortification of mister and missus churchill
+missus weston ought to have found more in it for she had a husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing due to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him but though she had one sort of spirit
+she had not the best she had resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother but not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother's unreasonable anger
+nor from missing the luxuries of her former home
+she did not cease to love her husband but she wanted at once to be the wife of captain weston and miss churchill of enscombe captain weston who had been considered
+and mister and missus churchill having no children of their own nor any other young creature of equal kindred to care for offered to take the whole charge of the little frank soon after her decease
+and he had only his own comfort to seek and his own situation to improve as he could a complete change of life became desirable he quitted the militia and engaged in trade
+having brothers already established in a good way in london which afforded him a favourable opening it was a concern which brought just employment enough he had still a small house in highbury
+where most of his leisure days were spent and between useful occupation and the pleasures of society the next eighteen or twenty years of his life passed cheerfully away he had by that time realised an easy competence
+enough to secure the purchase of a little estate adjoining highbury which he had always longed for enough to marry a woman as portionless even as miss taylor
+and to live according to the wishes of his own friendly and social disposition it was now some time since miss taylor had begun to influence his schemes but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth
+till they were accomplished he had made his fortune bought his house and obtained his wife and was beginning a new period of existence with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through
+he had never been an unhappy man his own temper had secured him from that even in his first marriage but his second must shew him how delightful a well judging and truly amiable woman could be
+on coming of age it was most unlikely therefore that he should ever want his father's assistance his father had no apprehension of it the aunt was a capricious woman and governed her husband entirely
+but it was not in mister weston's nature to imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear and as he believed so deservedly dear he saw his son every year in london and was proud of him
+mister frank churchill was one of the boasts of highbury and a lively curiosity to see him prevailed
+but never achieved now upon his father's marriage it was very generally proposed as a most proper attention
+either when missus perry drank tea with missus and miss bates or when missus and miss bates returned the visit now was the time for mister frank churchill to come among them and the hope strengthened
+when it was understood that he had written to his new mother on the occasion for a few days every morning visit in highbury included some mention of the handsome letter missus weston had received
+i suppose you have heard of the handsome letter mister frank churchill has written to missus weston
+missus weston had of course formed a very favourable idea of the young man and such a pleasing attention was an irresistible proof of his great good sense
+and every expression of congratulation which her marriage had already secured she felt herself a most fortunate woman and she had lived long enough to know how fortunate she might well be thought
+but dear emma was of no feeble character
+and had sense and energy and spirits that might be hoped would bear her well and happily through its little difficulties and privations and then there was such comfort in the very easy distance of randalls from hartfield
+her situation was altogether the subject of hours of gratitude to missus weston and of moments only of regret and her satisfaction her more than satisfaction her cheerful enjoyment was so just
+and so apparent that emma well as she knew her father was sometimes taken by surprize
+taylor when they left her at randalls in the centre of every domestic comfort or saw her go away in the evening attended by her pleasant husband to a carriage of her own
+but never did she go without mister woodhouse's giving a gentle sigh and saying ah poor miss taylor she would be very glad to stay
+there was no recovering miss taylor nor much likelihood of ceasing to pity her but a few weeks brought some alleviation to mister woodhouse the compliments of his neighbours were over
+but still the cake was eaten and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone
+on the morning of the twenty sixth of june i awoke to find that the ice had drifted out to sea in the night eight days after mollie and i had taken our twelve miles trip across the bay and return
+then came hard rain and wind that for several days blew the ice back into the bay first to one side and then to the other so that the steamers waiting to come in could not do so for fear of the drifting floes
+by the thirtieth of june schooners were coming into the bay with passengers and freight and the coast steamers elmore and dora had begun to make regular trips to and from nome with them came mails from the outside
+with newspapers and tidings of friends in the states then our fingers trembled at opening our letters until we found that all our dear ones were well and we heartily thanked the lord
+there were other white women in camp by this time and many strangers at the hotel among others officials and those in authority since the stone throwing episode the marshal had been doing duty as watchman
+sleeping during the day and guarding the house nights the heavy iron bracelets in his inner coat pocket weighing scarcely more than the loaded revolver in his belt
+our little sick girl being obliged now to keep her bed continually with no more playing in the sand and sunshine although her cough had left her was still the same sweet patient child she had been through all her illness
+and my whole time was given to her before one of the sunny south windows of the living room we placed her cot each morning and here she received her numerous friends both eskimo and white and their names were legion
+they came from the east west north and south all sorry to know of her illness and bringing presents with them sometimes it was a little live bird or squirrel a delicious salmon trout
+or wild fowl for her supper sometimes it was candy nuts or fresh fruit from nome and with everything she was well pleased and joyous friends soon came in from the outside bringing city dolls dressed in ribbons and laces
+there were tiny dishes chairs tables a hundred things dear to a little girl's heart and all pleased her immensely but all were laid quickly aside for a basket of wild flowers or mosses
+for a fish bird animal or baby showing plainly her taste for the things of nature in preference to art her love for her birthplace with its hills streams and ocean is a sincere one
+and young as she is and having seen the great city by the golden gate with many of its wonders she is happiest in chinik here lives her dear old grandmother her cousins and aunts
+for which she has a whole heartful of love and the sight of which is better to her than medicine during the month of july we eagerly watched the incoming steamers and welcomed all new comers who landed in chinik
+many were simply passing through on their way up fish river to the mines
+a few remained for the summer here men built boats and rowed away to keechawik and neukluk carrying supplies for hunting or prospecting the captain's vegetable garden in the sand was growing rapidly
+and was watched with eager eyes by everyone we ate lettuce and radishes picked fresh from the garden beds where they had been sown by the captain's own hands and we found ageetuk and mollie to be quite famous cooks
+nothing so delicious as their salads for the french cooks had long ago gone the hotel management being changed and mollie had a nice little kitchen of her own and with fresh salmon trout wild fowl
+fresh meats and vegetables we made up for many months of winter dieting all this time i longed to get away i was going each day to the hill top to watch for the steamers which would bring the letters for which i waited
+affairs connected with my gold claims were with
+arranged as well as possible and when i boarded the steamer i would carry with me at least three deeds to as many claims with a fair prospect of others but i could not decide to remain another winter
+i was determined to go to saint michael up the yukon to dawson and outside and laid my plans accordingly
+the latter now grown wilful but still so bright and pretty i wanted to take both with me but no i could not the little girl's work was not ended
+and she is surely about to fulfill it born as she was in a rough mining camp at the foot of the barren hills she was given the eskimo name of yahkuk meaning a little hill
+and she like an oasis in a desert place is left here to cheer love and help others many times i have seen evidence of the sweet and gentle influences going out from the life of little yahkuk
+as she lies upon her cot of pain a tall brown miner enters the living room goes to the little bed by the window speaks softly and bending over the tiny girl kisses her
+then her big black eyes glance brightly into blue ones looking down from above full red lips part in a cordial smile while the one solitary dimple in the smooth round cheek
+pricks its way still deeper and small arms go up around his neck when the man turns his face wears a soft and tender expression as though he were looking at some beautiful sight far away
+and perhaps he is god grant that the sweet memory of that little child's kiss may be so lasting that all their lives he and others may be purer and better men
+when august came i sailed away the dora had entered the bay in the morning and found my trunk packed and waiting it was then only the work of a little time to make ready to leave
+to my good missionary friends i had already said good bye and the captain and mollie were kindly regretful with tears in my eyes but with real pain in my heart i bade jennie good bye
+and stepped into the little boat which was to carry me to the dora farewell then to chinik the home of the north wind and blizzard farewell to the ice fields of golovin
+so tardy in leaving in summer and to keechawik and chinik whose clear rushing waters so cheered us in spring time farewell to the moss covered hills and paths thickly bordered with blossoms
+farewell to my white faced friends and to the dark skinned ones
+chapter seven going to nome one beautiful day in the spring of nineteen hundred i sailed again for alaska this time for nome from san francisco
+an english family consisting of the mother one son and a daughter were to accompany me and we had spent weeks in making our preparations we were taking supplies of clothing food
+tents and bedding sufficient to last until some of our numerous plans of work after our arrival brought in returns my hope was to meet my father there for he had written that he thought he should go to the new gold fields
+where he could do beach mining i was not above doing any honest work and felt confident that i could make my way if i could gain an entrance into that country the english people were all workers and i had known them for ten years or more
+our steamer was the good ship saint paul belonging to the alaska commercial company and was advertised to sail on may twenty fifth
+when i laughingly called the attention of one of the owners of the ship to the fact that that date fell upon friday and many persons objected to sailing upon that day he postponed the starting of the saint paul to may twenty sixth
+and we left the dock on saturday afternoon amid the cheers and hand waving of thousands of people who had come to see the big boat off for nome the steamer was well fitted out spick and span in fresh carpets and paint
+and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort every stateroom was full each seat at the tables occupied not a foot of space above or below decks was left unused but provision was made for all
+and the ship was well manned i was now much gratified to learn that there were many on board whom i had met before that the steward stewardess and several of the waiters had been on duty on the steamer bertha
+during my trip out from alaska the fall before while i was upon speaking terms with a dozen or more of the passengers with whom i had traveled from the same place of passengers we had all told
+four hundred and eighty seven of these thirty five were women there was only one child on board and that was the little black eyed girl with her eskimo mother and white father from golovin bay
+whom i had seen at saint michael some months before and who was now going back to her northern home she wore a sailor suit of navy blue serge trimmed with white braid and was as coy and cunning as ever
+not speaking often to strangers but laughing and running away to her mother when addressed from the day we sailed from san francisco until we reached nome i missed no meals in the dining salon
+a pace which my english friends and others could not follow for they were uncomfortably ill in the region of their digestive apparatus for several days i slept for hours each day and thoroughly enjoyed the trip
+during the nine days sail from san francisco to unalaska a distance of two thousand three hundred and sixty eight miles i studied well the passengers we had preachers on board
+as well as doctors lawyers merchants and miners and there were women going to nome to start eating houses hotels and mercantile shops there were several swedish missionaries
+one a zealous young woman from san francisco going to the swedish mission at golovin bay this young person was pretty and pleasant and i was glad to make her acquaintance as well as that of three other women speaking the same tongue
+and occupying the next stateroom to mine the last named were going to start a restaurant in nome as they were sociable jolly and good sailors for the most part i enjoyed their society they had all lived in san francisco for years
+and though not related to each other were firm friends of long standing and were uniting their little fortunes in the hope of making greater ones the young missionary was a friend to the other three
+and i found no better or more congenial companions on board the ship than these four honest hard working women so full of hope courage and good sense as well as christianity
+little did i then think that these people placed by a seeming chance in an adjoining stateroom were to be my fellow workers and true friends not only for the coming months in that arctic land to which we were going but
+as the sequel will show perhaps for years to come not many days had passed when we found that we had on board what few steamers can boast of and that was an orchestra of professional musicians among the waiters
+these were men going with all the others to seek their fortunes in the new gold fields working their passage as waiters on the ship to nome where they intended to leave it three evenings in the week these musicians
+with the help of several singers on board gave concerts in the dining salon which though impromptu were very enjoyable a sweet and trained singer was the english girl of our company
+and she sang many times accompanied by the stringed instruments of the musicians much to the delight of the assembled passengers when she sang one evening in her clear sympathetic voice the selection
+oh where is my wandering boy tonight there was not a dry eye in the room and the mind of many a man went back to his old home and praying mother in some far distant state
+making him resolve to write oftener to her that she might be comforted with a knowledge of his whereabouts and welfare these evenings were sometimes varied by recitations from an elocutionist on board
+and a practised clog dancer excited the risibles of the company to the extent that they usually shouted with laughter at his exhibition of flying heels day after day passed
+those who were continually seasick had diversion enough it was useless for us to tell them a pathetic tale of some one who at some time had been more ill than they because they would not believe a word of it
+and it was equally useless to recommend an antidote for mal de mer such as theirs no one was ever so ill before they said they knew they should die and be buried at sea
+and hoped they would if that would put an end to their sufferings we tried at last to give them comfort by recommending out of former experiences ship's biscuit dry toast and pop corn as remedies
+but only received black looks as our reward we then concluded that a diet of tea coffee and soup was exactly such a one as the fishes would recommend could they speak
+these favorite and much used liquids keeping up a continual swishing in one's interior regions and causing one to truthfully speak of the same as infernal instead of internal
+but they were all tree physical as well as free moral agents and decided these things for themselves at last we entered the japan current and the weather was warmer and more enjoyable
+on monday june fourth we saw from the deck a few drifting logs and a quantity of seaweed and these with the presence of gulls and goonies flying overhead convinced us that we were nearing land
+we were not mistaken after eating an excellent six o'clock dinner we went above to find ourselves between high rocky cliffs which loomed up into mountains not far distant
+and we knew we were again at the aleutian islands and in the rough waters of unimak pass as we drew nearer and entered the harbor so well land locked the sun dipped low into yellow red western waters
+thereby casting long shadows aslant our pathway so delicately shaded in greens the little hamlet of dutch harbor nestled cosily at the foot of the mountains which bordered the bay
+and here numbers of ships lay anchored at rest passing along easily beyond another high mountain we were soon at the dock of unalaska beside other great ships in port
+both groups of craft were evidently waiting for the ice to clear from behring sea before proceeding on their way northward and we counted sixteen ships of different kinds and sizes the majority of them large steamers
+all were loaded with passengers and freight for nome scout boats had already been sent out to investigate and find if possible a passage through the ice fields
+and the return of these scouts with good news was anxiously watched and waited for as the most desired thing at that time was a speedy and safe landing on the supposedly golden beach sands of nome
+at unalaska we spent four days taking on fresh water and coal during which time passengers visited back and forth from the waiting steamers many persons having friends on other boats
+and each having a curiosity to see if they were faring as well or ill as he comparing notes as to the expense of traveling with the different companies et cetera passengers on the saint paul agreed that they had no kick comin
+which was one of the commonest slang phrases intended to mean that they had no fault to find with the alaska commercial company and their steamer saint paul all were well cared for and satisfied as well they might be
+with the service of the ship's men leaving unalaska the sun shone clear and cold upon the mountains where in places the sides looked black from the late fires started in the deep tundra by miscreants
+the tops of the mountains were covered with snow down deep gorges dashed mountain waters of melting snow and ice hurrying to leap off gullied and rocky cliffs into the sea their progress was never impeded
+no tree nor shrub obstructed the way with gnarled old trunks twisted roots or low hanging branches for none grow in unalaska
+and the bold dignity and grandeur of the mountains is never diminished by these lesser objects as our ship sailed out into behring sea we were closely followed by the steamer george w elder whose master
+an old friend of our captain had decided to follow in our wake he being less familiar than the latter with alaskan waters
+chapter ten measure ninety seven from the standpoint of the eye a measure is that portion of the staff found between two bars in certain cases this space may be less than a measure
+as e g at the beginning and end of a movement but from the standpoint of the ear a single isolated measure is not possible and the term must therefore be defined in the plural form
+measures are similarly accented groups of evenly spaced beats each group having at least one accented and one non accented beat the strongest accent falls normally on the first beat in the measure
+two essential characteristics are involved in the ordinary musical measure one a group of even beats or pulses always felt though not always actually sounded
+one or more of these beats being stronger than the rest two certain rhythmic figures
+cetera which form the actual musical content of these groups the student will note the essential difference between rhythm and measure rhythm is the regular recurrence of accent in a series of beats or pulses
+while measure is the grouping of these beats according to some specified system in listening to a piece of music two hearers a and b may feel the rhythm equally strongly
+but a may subjectively group the beats into one two one two et cetera while b feels the groups as one two three four one two three four et cetera
+rhythm is thus seen to be a fundamental thing inherent in the music itself while measure is to a certain extent at least an arbitrary grouping which musicians have adopted for practical purposes ninety eight
+in syncopation the normal system of accenting is temporarily suspended and the accented tone falls on the regularly unaccented part of the measure syncopation may therefore be defined as the temporary interruption of a normal series of accents
+and compound a simple measure is one which has but a single accent
+two beat measure and three beat measure a compound measure is as its name implies one made up by combining two or more simple measures or by the elaboration of a single measure in slow tempo
+into several constituent groups the principal compound measures are four beat and six beat both being referred to as compound duple measures five beat seven beat nine beat and twelve beat measures
+are also classified as compound measures an english writer
+classifies measures as duple triple or quadruple specifying that a simple measure is one in which each beat is represented by a note whose value can be divided into halves
+and that a compound measure is one in which each beat is represented by a dotted note whose value can be divided into three parts
+there is thus seen to be considerable difference of opinion as to the meaning of the words simple and compound when applied in this connection the principal question at issue being whether four beat measure is an individual variety
+or whether it is a variety compounded out of two beat measures either by placing two of these in a group or by the elaboration of a single measure into a larger number of beats as is often necessary in slow tempi
+perhaps the easiest way out of the difficulty is to admit that both may be true
+in which there are three beats the first one being accented the second and third unaccented
+three eighth three quarter and three half measure respectively three quadruple in which there are four beats the first and third being accented primary accent on one secondary accent on three
+the second and fourth unaccented
+four sextuple in which there are six beats the first and fourth being accented the others not in rapid tempi this is always taken as compound duple measure a dotted quarter note having a beat
+it will be noted that the two measures
+but these are practically always taken as three beat and four beat measures respectively being equivalent to these if each group of three tones is thought of as a triplet
+quintuple five beat and septuple seven beat measures are occasionally met with but these are rare and will always be sporadic the five beat measure is taken as a combination of three and two
+or of two and three sometimes a mixture of both in the same composition while the seven beat measure is taken in groups of four and three or of three and four
+but usage varies somewhat and the second sign is sometimes used to indicate four half measure
+but an incomplete circle differentiating two beat imperfect measure from three beat perfect measure
+do you know that his eminence has been making fresh complaints against your musketeers
+ah these musketeers of yours are very devils fellows to be hanged no sire replied treville who saw at the first glance how things would go on the contrary they are good creatures as meek as lambs and have but one desire
+i'll be their warranty and that is that their swords may never leave their scabbards but in your majesty's service but what are they to do
+would not one say he was speaking of a religious community in truth my dear captain
+and by and by by and by we will see ah sire it is because i confide in that justice that i shall wait patiently and quietly the good pleasure of your majesty
+the king therefore arose a minute after and putting the money which lay before him into his pocket
+la vieuville said he take my place
+ah i had eighty louis before me put down the same sum so that they who have lost may have nothing to complain of justice before everything
+yes sire as they always do and how did the thing happen let us see for you know my dear captain a judge must hear both sides good lord in the most simple and natural manner possible
+and who have i dare affirm to the king his service much at heart three of my best soldiers i say
+had made a party of pleasure with a young fellow from gascony whom i had introduced to them the same morning the party was to take place at saint germain i believe and they had appointed to meet at the carmes deschaux when they were disturbed by de jussac cahusac
+who certainly did not go there in such a numerous company without some ill intention against the edicts ah ah you incline me to think so said the king there is no doubt they went thither to fight themselves i do not accuse them sire
+but i leave your majesty to judge what five armed men could possibly be going to do in such a deserted place as the neighborhood
+then upon seeing my musketeers they changed their minds and forgot their private hatred for partisan hatred for your majesty cannot be ignorant that the musketeers who belong to the king and nobody but the king
+are the natural enemies of the guardsmen who belong to the cardinal yes treville yes said the king in a melancholy tone and it is very sad believe me to see thus two parties in france two heads to royalty
+but i will not swear to it sire you know how difficult it is to discover the truth and unless a man be endowed with that admirable instinct
+you are right treville but they were not alone your musketeers they had a youth with them yes sire and one wounded man so that three of the king's musketeers one of whom was wounded
+and a youth not only maintained their ground against five of the most terrible of the cardinal's guardsmen but absolutely brought four of them to earth why this is a victory cried the king all radiant a complete victory
+one hardly a young man but who however behaved himself so admirably on this occasion that i will take the liberty of recommending him to your majesty how does he call himself d'artagnan sire
+he is the son of one of my oldest friends the son of a man who served under the king your father of glorious memory in the civil war and you say this young man behaved himself well tell me how treville you know how i delight in accounts of war and fighting
+placing his hand upon his hip sire resumed treville as i told you
+he was dressed as a citizen the guards of the cardinal perceiving his youth and that he did not belong to the corps invited him to retire before they attacked so you may plainly see treville interrupted the king it was they who attacked
+that is true sire there can be no more doubt on that head they called upon him then to retire but he answered that he was a musketeer at heart entirely devoted to your majesty
+brave young man murmured the king well he did remain with them and your majesty has in him so firm a champion that it was he who gave jussac the terrible sword thrust which has made the cardinal so angry
+he who wounded jussac cried the king he a boy
+it is as i have the honor to relate it to your majesty jussac one of the first swordsmen in the kingdom well sire for once he found his master i will see this young man treville i will see him and if anything can be done
+it is useless to let the cardinal know yes sire you understand treville an edict is still an edict it is forbidden to fight after all but this encounter sire is quite out of the ordinary conditions of a duel it is a brawl
+that is true said the king but never mind treville come still by the back staircase treville smiled but as it was indeed something to have prevailed upon this child to rebel against his master
+he saluted the king respectfully and with this agreement took leave of him that evening the three musketeers were informed of the honor accorded them as they had long been acquainted with the king they were not much excited
+but d'artagnan with his gascon imagination saw in it his future fortune and passed the night in golden dreams
+d'artagnan found the musketeer dressed and ready to go out as the hour to wait upon the king was not till twelve he had made a party with porthos and aramis to play a game at tennis
+and although ignorant of the game which he had never played he accepted not knowing what to do with his time from nine o'clock in the morning as it then scarcely was till twelve the two musketeers were already there and were playing together
+although he played with his left hand he found that his wound was yet too recent to allow of such exertion
+and as he declared he was too ignorant of the game to play it regularly they only continued giving balls to one another without counting
+passed so close to d'artagnan's face
+his audience would have been probably lost as it would have been impossible for him to present himself before the king now as upon this audience in his gascon imagination depended his future life he saluted aramis and porthos politely
+declaring that he would not resume the game until he should be prepared to play with them on more equal terms
+look at me as long as you like my little gentleman i have said what i have said
+you're in the wrong there for if you knew my name perhaps you would not be so pressing what is your name
+lest it be observed that we go out together you must be aware that for our undertaking company would be in the way that's true said the guardsman astonished that his name had not produced more effect upon the young man
+that they did not even perceive their young companion go out who as he had told the guardsman of his eminence stopped outside the door an instant after the guardsman descended in his turn
+which was fixed for midday he cast his eyes around and seeing that the street was empty said to his adversary my faith it is fortunate for you although your name is bernajoux to have only to deal with an apprentice musketeer
+never mind be content i will do my best on guard but said he whom d'artagnan thus provoked it appears to me that this place is badly chosen and that we should be better
+bernajoux was not a man to have such a compliment paid to him twice in an instant his sword glittered in his hand and he sprang upon his adversary whom
+he hoped to intimidate but d'artagnan had on the preceding day served his apprenticeship fresh sharpened by his victory full of hopes of future favor he was resolved not to recoil a step so the two swords were crossed close to the hilts
+and as d'artagnan stood firm it was his adversary who made the retreating step but d'artagnan seized the moment at which in this movement the sword of bernajoux deviated from the line he freed his weapon made a lunge and touched his adversary on the shoulder
+in whose service he had a relative
+and pressing him warmly without doubt would soon have completed his work with a third blow when the noise which arose from the street being heard in the tennis court two of the friends of the guardsman who had seen him go out after exchanging some words with d'artagnan rushed sword in hand from the court and fell upon the conqueror
+and the moment the two guardsmen attacked their young companion drove them back bernajoux now fell and as the guardsmen were only two against four they began to cry to the rescue
+at these cries all who were in the hotel rushed out and fell upon the four companions who on their side cried aloud to the rescue musketeers this cry was generally heeded
+to his eminence thus the soldiers of other companies than those which belonged to the red duke as aramis had called him often took part with the king's musketeers in these quarrels
+to the rescue musketeers to the rescue
+who hastened to the succor of their comrades the melee became general but strength was on the side of the musketeers
+the doors of which they closed just in time to prevent their enemies from entering with them as to the wounded man he had been taken in at once and as we have said in a very bad state
+excitement was at its height among the musketeers and their allies and they even began to deliberate whether they should not set fire to the hotel
+domestics in daring to make a sortie upon the king's musketeers the proposition had been made and received with enthusiasm when fortunately eleven o'clock struck
+they succeeded in calming their friends who contented themselves with hurling some paving stones against the gates but the gates were too strong they soon tired of the sport besides those who must be considered the leaders of the enterprise had quit the group and were making their way
+who was waiting for them already informed of this fresh disturbance
+and let us endeavor to see the king before he is prejudiced by the cardinal
+and the two will pass off together
+directed his course toward the louvre but to the great astonishment of the captain of the musketeers he was informed that the king had gone stag hunting in the forest of saint germain
+required this intelligence to be repeated to him twice and each time his companions saw his brow become darker had his majesty asked he any intention of holding this hunting party yesterday no your excellency
+the master of the hounds came this morning to inform him that he had marked down a stag at first the king answered that he would not go but he could not resist his love of sport and set out after dinner and the king has seen the cardinal
+gentlemen i will see the king this evening but as to you i do not advise you to risk doing so this advice was too reasonable and moreover came from a man who knew the king too well to allow the four young men to dispute it
+everyone to return home and wait for news
+with a letter in which he begged of him to eject the cardinal's guardsmen from his house and to reprimand his people for their audacity in making sortie against the king's musketeers
+whose relative as we already know bernajoux was
+but on the contrary for him whose people the musketeers had assaulted and whose hotel they had endeavored to burn now as the debate between these two nobles might last a long time each becoming naturally more firm in his own opinion
+he repaired therefore immediately to his hotel and caused himself to be announced the two nobles saluted each other politely for if no friendship existed between them there was at least esteem both were men of courage and honor
+we fancy that we have each cause to complain of the other and i am come to endeavor to clear up this affair
+and all the fault is with your musketeers
+not to accept the proposal i am about to make to you
+in addition to the sword thrust in his arm which is not dangerous
+of which the doctor says bad things
+perfectly does he talk with difficulty but he can speak
+let us adjure him in the name of the god before whom he must perhaps appear to speak the truth
+then as it was difficult to suggest a more reasonable proposal he agreed to it both descended to the chamber in which the wounded man lay the latter on seeing these two noble lords who came to visit him endeavored to raise himself up in his bed
+placed between life and death as bernajoux was he had no idea for a moment of concealing the truth and he described to the two nobles the affair exactly as it had passed
+returned to his hotel and immediately sent word to the four friends that he awaited their company at dinner
+that his eminence's guardsmen had received
+not only as good comrades but as men who had so often had their turn that they could very well afford him his
+his eyes therefore were fixed in a sort of agony upon the door through which the king must enter
+he found the door of his passage open sprang up the stairs and knocked softly in a manner agreed upon between him and his lackey
+whom he had sent home two hours before from the hotel de ville telling him to sit up for him opened the door for him the reader may ask
+when he was left stiff as a rush in london in the intervening time buckingham perhaps sent him to paris as he did the horses has anyone brought a letter for me asked d'artagnan eagerly
+but one has come of itself what do you mean blockhead i mean to say that when i came in although i had the key of your apartment in my pocket
+i found a letter on the green table cover in your bedroom and where is that letter
+it is not natural for letters to enter people's houses in this manner if the window had been open or even ajar i should think nothing of it but no all was hermetically sealed
+there is certainly some magic underneath meanwhile the young man had darted in to his chamber and opened the letter
+there are many thanks to be offered to you and to be transmitted to you be this evening about ten o'clock at saint cloud
+while reading this letter d'artagnan felt his heart dilated and compressed by that delicious spasm which tortures and caresses the hearts of lovers it was the first billet he had received it was the first rendezvous that had been granted him
+his heart swelled by the intoxication of joy felt ready to dissolve away at the very gate of that terrestrial paradise called love
+did i not guess truly is it not some bad affair
+exactly but it is not the less true that letters which come in this way into shut up houses fall from heaven my friend fall from heaven
+my dear planchet i am the happiest of men
+which the liberality of d'artagnan had not entirely effaced left alone d'artagnan read and reread his billet then he kissed and rekissed twenty times the lines traced by the hand of his beautiful mistress
+at length he went to bed fell asleep and had golden dreams
+i am going out for all day perhaps you are therefore your own master till seven o'clock in the evening but at seven o'clock you must hold yourself in readiness with two horses
+we are going again it appears to have our hides pierced in all sorts of ways you will take your musketoon and your pistols
+ah like the charming journey the other day
+i prefer traveling alone to having a companion who entertains the least fear
+well then i count on you at the appointed hour i shall be ready
+perhaps there is but one at this moment but by this evening there will be four it appears that our journey was a remounting journey then exactly so said d'artagnan and nodding to planchet he went out
+d'artagnan's intention was to go out without speaking to the worthy mercer but the latter made so polite and friendly a salutation that his tenant felt obliged not only to stop but to enter into conversation with him
+besides how is it possible to avoid a little condescension toward a husband whose pretty wife has appointed a meeting with you that same evening at saint cloud
+the conversation naturally fell upon the incarceration of the poor man
+whom he never ceased to designate during his account by the title of the cardinal's executioner and expatiated at great length upon the bastille the bolts the wickets the dungeons the gratings the instruments of torture
+d'artagnan listened to him with exemplary complaisance and when he had finished said and madame bonacieux do you know who carried her off for i do not forget that i owe to that unpleasant circumstance the good fortune of having made your acquaintance
+in a tine of perfect good fellowship what has become of you all these days
+brush off your boots yesterday from the pavement of paris
+far from here oh lord no about forty leagues only
+where my friends still remain and you have returned have you not
+as i see there is no concealing anything from you yes i was expected and very impatiently i acknowledge
+and we are going to be recompensed for our diligence continued the mercer
+so trifling indeed that d'artagnan did not perceive it any more than he had the momentary shade which an instant before had darkened the countenance of the worthy man ah may you be a true prophet said d'artagnan laughing no
+is only that i may know whether i am delaying you why that question my dear host asked d'artagnan do you intend to sit up for me no but since my arrest and the robbery that was committed in my house i am alarmed every time i hear a door open
+particularly in the night what the deuce can you expect i am no swordsman well don't be alarmed if i return at one two or three o'clock in the morning
+that d'artagnan could not help perceiving it and asked him what was the matter
+which seize me all at once and i have just felt a cold shiver pay no attention to it you have nothing to occupy yourself with but being happy then i have full occupation for i am so not yet wait a little this evening you said well
+this evening will come thank god and perhaps you look for it with as much impatience as i do perhaps this evening madame bonacieux will visit the conjugal domicile
+so much the worse for you my dear host so much the worse when i am happy i wish all the world to be so but it appears that is not possible the young man departed laughing at the joke which he thought he alone could comprehend amuse yourself well replied bonacieux
+he certainly would not have remarked it
+his visit of the day before it is to be remembered had been very short and very little explicative he found treville in a joyful mood he had thought the king and queen charming at the ball it is true the cardinal had been particularly ill tempered
+he had retired at one o'clock under the pretense of being indisposed as to their majesties they did not return to the louvre till six o'clock in the morning now said treville lowering his voice and looking into every corner of the apartment to see if they were alone
+now let us talk about yourself my young friend
+the triumph of the queen and the humiliation of his eminence you must look out for yourself what have i to fear replied d'artagnan as long as i shall have the luck to enjoy the favor of their majesties everything believe me
+the cardinal is not the man to forget a mystification until he has settled account with the mystifier and the mystifier appears to me to have the air of being a certain young gascon of my acquaintance do you believe that the cardinal is as well posted as yourself
+and knows that i have been to london the devil you have been to london was it from london you brought that beautiful diamond that glitters on your finger beware my dear d'artagnan a present from an enemy is not a good thing
+are there not some latin verses upon that subject stop yes doubtless replied d'artagnan
+beware of the enemy who makes you presents
+why it is indeed a true royal jewel
+by whom did the queen send you this jewel she gave it to me herself where in the room adjoining the chamber in which she changed her toilet how giving me her hand to kiss
+her majesty did me the honor to grant me that favor and that in the presence of witnesses imprudent thrice imprudent
+oh the women the women cried the old soldier i know them by their romantic imagination everything that savors of mystery charms them so you have seen the arm that was all you would meet the queen and she would not know who you are
+no but thanks to this diamond replied the young man
+shall i give you counsel good counsel the counsel of a friend
+well then off to the nearest goldsmith's and sell that diamond for the highest price you can get from him however much of a jew he may be he will give you at least eight hundred pistoles pistoles have no name young man and that ring has a terrible one
+which may betray him who wears it sell this ring a ring which comes from my sovereign never said d'artagnan then at least turn the gem inside you silly fellow for everybody must be aware that a cadet from gascony
+does not find such stones in his mother's jewel case you think then i have something to dread asked d'artagnan i mean to say young man that he who sleeps over a mine the match of which is already lighted
+the devil said d'artagnan
+the devil what must i do above all things be always on your guard the cardinal has a tenacious memory and a long arm you may depend upon it he will repay you by some ill turn but of what sort
+has he not all the tricks of a demon at his command the least that can be expected is that you will be arrested what will they dare to arrest a man in his majesty's service pardieu
+at all events young man rely upon one who has been thirty years at court do not lull yourself in security or you will be lost but on the contrary and it is i who say it see enemies in all directions if anyone seeks a quarrel with you
+shun it were it with a child of ten years old if you are attacked by day or by night fight but retreat without shame if you cross a bridge feel every plank of it with your foot
+lest one should give way beneath you if you pass before a house which is being built look up for fear a stone should fall upon your head if you stay out late be always followed by your lackey and let your lackey be armed if
+by the by you can be sure of your lackey mistrust everybody your friend your brother your mistress your mistress above all d'artagnan blushed my mistress above all repeated he mechanically
+you are acquainted with the scriptures
+for that very evening but we are bound to say to the credit of our hero
+did not inspire him with the least suspicion of his pretty hostess
+what has become of your three companions
+detained by an accusation of coining
+and how the devil did you escape
+they merit richly that piece of attention on your part
+ah young man young man some flirtation or other
+it is woman who has ruined us still ruins us and will ruin us as long as the world stands take my advice and set out this evening
+ah that's quite another thing but promise me if you should not be killed tonight that you will go tomorrow i promise it do you need money
+but your companions i don't think they can be in need of any we left paris each with seventy five pistoles in his pocket shall i see you again before your departure
+neither of them had returned their lackeys likewise were absent and nothing had been heard of either the one or the other
+as he passed the hotel des gardes he took a glance in to the stables three of the four horses had already arrived
+was busy grooming them and had already finished two
+how glad i am to see you why so planchet asked the young man
+but why this question because while you were talking with him i watched you without listening to you
+two or three times bah preoccupied as monsieur was with the letter he had received he did not observe that but i whom the strange fashion in which that letter came into the house had placed on my guard i did not lose a movement of his features
+and you found it traitorous monsieur indeed
+shut his door and set off at a quick pace in an opposite direction
+heaved a profound sigh and set to work to groom the third horse
+the psychological work of the physician does not begin with his curative efforts therapy is always only the last step diagnosis and observation have to precede and an inquiry into the causes of the disease is essential
+the whole equipment of the modern laboratory ought to be put at its disposal perceptions and associations reactions and expressions ought to be examined with the same carefulness with which the conscientious physician examines the blood and the urine
+and yet no psychical treatment can start successfully so long as the patient is brooding on secret thoughts at the bottom of his mind the desire to hide them may often be itself a part of the disease
+it is surprising how often unsuspected vistas of thoughts and impulses and emotions are opened by an inquiring analysis where the direct report of the patient does not awaken the least suspicion
+the intellectual clearness of the patient too easily tempts one into trusting the sincerity of his story and yet the most important ideas clustering perhaps about love or ambition about vice or crime about business failure or family secrets
+withheld and may frustrate every psychotherapeutic influence where suspicion is awake and mere confidential talk and persuasion seem insufficient
+the physician may feel justified in the interest of his patient in drawing the thoughts out of their hiding place by artificial means skill tact and experience are needed there as a matter of course
+will support the physician and accordingly his examination is not obliged to trap the patient but simply to guide him to important points but then begins the most essential study of diagnostical differentiation
+with all the means not only of psychology but of neurology and internal medicine he has to separate the particular case from similar ones and to examine whether he deals with for instance a hysteric or with a paranoiac
+and he will not forget that there exist almost no symptoms of serious diseases which the nervous system of the hysteric may not imitate for a time
+not ours is the task of analyzing special methods of neurological and mental differential diagnosis such as are used in the psychiatric clinic and in the office of the nerve specialist there the family history with reference to nervous and other diseases
+in a similar way the psychical examination tests the hallucinations and illusions the variations and defects of memory and attention of judgment and reasoning of orientation and self consciousness of emotions and volitions
+but one rule is common to all of them never use psychotherapeutic methods in a schematic way like a rigid pattern schematic treatment is a poor treatment in every department of medicine but in psychotherapeutics it is disastrous
+there are no two cases alike and not only the easily recognizable differences of sex and age and occupation and education and financial means and temperament and capacity are decisive
+but all the subtle variations of prejudices and beliefs preferences and dislikes family life and social surroundings ambitions and prospects memories and fancies
+every element of a man's life history impressions of early childhood his love and his successes his diseases and his distresses his acquaintances and his reading his talent his character his sincerity his energy his intelligence
+everything ought to determine the choice of the psychotherapeutic steps as it is entirely impossible to determine all those factors by any sufficient inquiry
+most of the adjustment of method must be left to the instinct of the physician in which wide experience solid knowledge tact and sympathy ought to be blended even the way in which the patient reacts on the method will often guide the instinct of the well trained psychotherapist
+it is therefore certainly not enough that the knowledge of the physician simply decide beforehand on a definite course of psychical treatment and leave the carrying out to a well meaning minister or any other medical amateur who schematically follows the indicated path
+the finest adjustment has to come in during the treatment itself and the response of the patient often has to suggest entirely new lines of procedure
+more than in any other field of medicine the physician himself has to extend his influence far beyond the office hours and the strictly medical relations and yet on the other hand there is no department of medicine in which the treatment might not profit by the psychotherapeutic influence
+subtle adjustment to the personal needs and to the individual conditions is necessary in every case where the psychical factor is to play an important role
+it cannot be denied that the one great obstacle in the work of the routine physician is the lack of time and patience which is needed for successful treatment to prescribe drugs is always quicker than to influence the mind
+the first method to bring back the psychophysical equilibrium
+namely to remove the external sources of the disturbance external indicates there not only the outer world but also the own body outside the conscious parts of the brain
+if we take it in the widest meaning this would evidently include every possible medical task from filling a painful tooth to operating on a painful appendix as in every case where pain results the mental equilibrium is disturbed by it and the normal mental life of the patient reduced in its efficiency
+growths in the nose may be operated upon the astigmatic or the short sighted eye may be corrected by glasses the child who is hard of hearing may at least be seated near the teacher and the backward children quickly reach the average level
+no doubt in the life of the adult as well often almost insignificant and from a strictly physical point of view unimportant abnormities in the bodily system
+especially in the digestive and sexual spheres are sources of irritation which slowly influence the whole personality
+to be sure the brain disturbance may have reached a point where the mere removal of the original affliction is not sufficient to reinstate the normal balance of mental energies but wherever such a bodily irritation goes on it is never too late to abolish it in the interests of psychotherapy
+however often he may get the impression that such a liberation would stop the source of the mental trouble
+often within a surprisingly short time the brain gathers the energies to overcome the frictions with unavoidable surroundings yet here the physician has to adjust the prescribed dose of outing very carefully to the special case
+we may be guided by the psychological experiments which have been made in the interest of testing the fatigue induced by mental work
+if perhaps four hours of concentrated work are done without pauses experiment shows that the quality of the work deteriorates measured for instance by the number of mistakes in quick calculation
+the instinct of the physician has to find the middle way between a temporary removal of irritation which really allows a development of new energies and a mere interruption which simply damages the acquired relative adjustment
+every cause of friction which can be permanently annihilated for the patient certainly should be removed this negative remedy demands its positive supplement
+the patient must be brought under conditions and influences which give fair chances for the recuperation of his energies too often from the standpoint of the psychologist the prescription is simply rest
+as far as rest involves sleep it is certainly the ideal prescription there is no other influence which builds up the injured central nervous system as safely as sound natural sleep
+and loss of sleep is certainly one of the most pernicious conditions for the brain again rest is a great factor in those systematic rest cures which for a long while were almost the fashion with the neurologist
+it is simply meant that he give up his fatiguing daily work even if that work is made up of a round of entertainments and calls and social engagements the neurasthenic and all similar varieties are sent away from the noise of the city away from the rush of their busy life
+the wild chase for luxury in the higher classes reenforced by the commercialism of our time the hard and monotonous labor in our modern mills and mines for the lower classes
+the over excitement brought to everybody by the sensationalism of our newspapers and of our public life all injure the brain cells and damage the equilibrium
+that is a story which we hear a thousand times nowadays yet it is doubtful whether there is really much truth in such a claim and whether much wise psychotherapy can be deduced from it
+we may begin even with the very justifiable doubt whether nervousness really has increased in our time earlier periods had not so many names for those symptoms and were not able to discriminate them with the same clearness
+even today most people are still without suspicion that a neurasthenic or a psychasthenic or a hysteric disturbance of the nervous system may be in its beginning
+earlier times surely may have treated even the stronger varieties of this kind as troublesome variations in the sphere of the normal
+the progress of scientific hygiene has brought everyone much nearer to a harmonious functioning of the organism and the progress of technique has removed innumerable difficulties from the play of life
+of course we stand today before a much more complex surrounding than our ancestors but still more quickly than the complexity have grown the means to master it
+there is no nation on earth which is more proud of its rush and its hurry than the american people and yet what an
+moreover our life has probably become cooler there is less emotionalism less sentimentality more business like attitude and that all means less inner friction and excitement in public life too less fear of war and less religious struggle
+above all the intensity of mental stimuli is always relative the psychologist knows the experiments which determine that we perceive the difference of impressions as alike when the stimuli are proportional
+if i have a ten pound weight in one hand i may find that i must have one pound more in the other hand to discriminate the difference
+yet that quiet countryman may react in his narrow system not less when the modest changes in his surroundings provoke him the gossip of his neighbor may undermine his nervous system just as much as a political fight or the struggles of the exchange that of the city man
+every effort should be estimated with reference to the standard of the particular case this relativity of the mental reaction on the demands of life must always be in the foreground of the psychotherapeutic regime
+simply to withdraw a patient from the one kind of life
+complete rest for instance for a hard brain worker hardly ought to be recommended unless a high degree of exhaustion has come on if routine prescriptions are to be admitted at all
+they should not be complete rest or complete change of life for any length of time but a continuation of the life for which adjustment has been learned with a reasonable reduction of the demands and stimulations
+the intellectual worker ought to decrease his work the overbusy society woman ought to stay in bed one day in the week the man in the midst of the rush of life ought to cut down his obligations
+but probably each of them does better to go on than simply to swear off altogether their rest ought to have the character of vacation that means interruptions without the usual activity ought to be short periods spent with the distinct feeling
+that they are interruptions of that which must last and that they are not themselves to become lasting states
+strenuosity must not mean an external rush with the gestures of overbusy excitement but certainly the doctrine of the lazy life is wretched psychotherapy as long as no serious illness is in question
+by far the best alteration is therefore even in the periods of interruption not simply rest but new engagements which awaken new interests and stimulate neglected mental factors disburdening the over strained elements of mental life
+the most effective agency for this task is contact with beauty beauty in nature and life beauty in art and literature and music
+to enjoy a landscape ought to be not merely a negative rest for the man of the office building and good literature or music absorbs the mental energies and harmonizes them
+in the second place come games and sport which may enter into their right if fatigue can be avoided harmonious joyful company as different as possible from the depressing company of the sanitariums will add its pleasantness
+while the advice of the physician ought thus to emphasize the positive elements which work not towards rest but toward a harmonious mental activity we must not forget some essential negative prescriptions
+everything is to be avoided which interferes with the night's sleep
+everything was made ready for the wedding the doctor on being consulted declared that it might take place in february it was then december a few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed
+the grandfather was not the least happy of them all he remained for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at cosette the wonderful beautiful girl he exclaimed and she has so sweet and good an air
+she is without exception the most charming girl that i have ever seen in my life later on she'll have virtues with an odor of violets how graceful one cannot live otherwise than nobly with such a creature
+marius my boy you are a baron you are rich don't go to pettifogging i beg of you
+the transition had not been softened and they would have been stunned had they not been dazzled by it do you understand anything about it said marius to cosette no replied cosette but it seems to me that the good god is caring for us
+jean valjean did everything smoothed away every difficulty arranged everything made everything easy
+and apparently with as much joy as cosette herself as he had been a mayor he understood how to solve that delicate problem
+a sure means of not encountering any objections cosette was the only scion of an extinct family cosette was not his own daughter but the daughter of the other fauchelevent two brothers fauchelevent had been gardeners to the convent
+picpus inquiry was made at that convent the very best information and the most respectable references abounded the good nuns not very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions of paternity
+of which of the two fauchelevents cosette was the daughter they said what was wanted and they said it with zeal an acte de notoriete was drawn up cosette became in the eyes of the law mademoiselle euphrasie fauchelevent
+she was declared an orphan both father and mother being dead
+that he was appointed under the name of fauchelevent as cosette's guardian
+as for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs they constituted a legacy bequeathed to cosette by a dead person who desired to remain unknown the original legacy had consisted of five hundred and ninety four thousand francs
+but ten thousand francs had been expended on the education of mademoiselle euphrasie five thousand francs of that amount having been paid to the convent this legacy deposited in the hands of a third party
+was to be turned over to cosette at her majority or at the date of her marriage this taken as a whole was very acceptable as the reader will perceive especially when the sum due was half a million there were some peculiarities here and there it is true
+that the cloud did not last long she had marius the young man arrived the old man was effaced such is life and then cosette had for long years been habituated to seeing enigmas around her
+a mysterious childhood is always prepared for certain renunciations
+it is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant compliments and presents while jean valjean was building up for cosette a normal situation in society and an unassailable status
+nothing so amused him as being magnificent he had given to cosette
+dauphines without a right or wrong side in the piece
+parures in antique goldsmith's work ivory bon bon boxes ornamented with microscopic battles gewgaws and ribbons he lavished everything on cosette cosette amazed
+her wedding basket seemed to her to be upheld by seraphim
+with wings of mechlin lace the intoxication of the lovers was only equalled as we have already said by the ecstasy of the grandfather
+every morning a fresh offering of bric a brac from the grandfather to cosette all possible knickknacks glittered around her one day marius who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his bliss said
+the men of the revolution are so great that they have the prestige of the ages like cato
+thanks marius that is precisely the idea of which i was in search and on the following day a magnificent dress of tea rose colored moire antique was added to cosette's wedding presents
+her heart and the louvre her heart and the grand waterworks of versailles give me my shepherdess and try to make her a duchess fetch me phyllis crowned with corn flowers and add a hundred thousand francs income
+i remember to have seen in the cathedral of strasburg a clock
+which had the kindness to indicate the hour but which had not the air of being made for that and which
+equal to that for my part i am of the opinion of the big clock of strasburg and i prefer it to the cuckoo clock from the black forest
+it ignores the noble in everything it is clean shaven your third estate is insipid colorless odorless and shapeless the dreams of your bourgeois who set up as they express it a pretty boudoir
+freshly decorated violet ebony and calico make way make way the sieur curmudgeon is marrying mademoiselle clutch penny sumptuousness and splendor
+i predict that all was lost
+i grant to this age the device dirty cleanliness
+give me permission to speak i say no evil of the people as you see i am always harping on your people
+i belong to it he who loves well lashes well thereupon i say plainly that now a days
+ah it is true i regret the grace of the ancient manners i regret everything about them their elegance their chivalry
+that joyous luxury which every one possessed music forming part of the wedding a symphony above stairs a beating of drums below stairs the dances the joyous faces round the table
+the fine spun gallant compliments the songs the fireworks the frank laughter the devil's own row the huge knots of ribbon i regret the bride's garter the bride's garter is cousin to the girdle of venus
+on what does the war of troy turn on helen's garter parbleu why did they fight why did diomed
+that great brazen helmet of ten points why did achilles and hector hew each other up with vast blows of their lances because helen allowed paris to take her garter with cosette's garter
+homer would construct the iliad he would put in his poem
+and he would call him nestor my friends in bygone days in those amiable days of yore people married wisely they had a good contract and then they had a good carouse
+gamacho entered but in sooth the stomach is an agreeable beast which demands its due and which wants to have its wedding also
+only moderately concealed oh the large laughing mouths and how gay we were in those days youth was a bouquet
+or a tuft of roses whether he was a shepherd or a warrior and if by chance one was a captain of dragoons
+people thought much of looking well they embroidered and tinted themselves a bourgeois had the air of a flower a marquis had the air of a precious stone people had no straps to their boots they had no boots
+they were spruce shining waved lustrous fluttering dainty coquettish which did not at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides the humming bird has beak and claws
+one of the sides of that century was delicate the other was magnificent and by the green cabbages people amused themselves to day people are serious the bourgeois is avaricious the bourgeoise is a prude
+your century is unfortunate people would drive away the graces as being too low in the neck alas beauty is concealed as though it were ugliness since the revolution
+everything including the ballet dancers has had its trousers a mountebank dancer must be grave your rigadoons are doctrinarian
+and do you know what one arrives at with that majesty at being petty learn this joy is not only joyous it is great but be in love gayly then
+what the deuce marry when you marry with fever and giddiness and tumult and the uproar of happiness be grave in church well and good but as soon as the mass is finished
+you must make a dream whirl around the bride a marriage should be royal and chimerical it should promenade its ceremony from the cathedral of rheims to the pagoda of chanteloup
+be one of the gods ah people might be sylphs games and laughter argiraspides they are stupids
+the empyrean with the swans and the eagles even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the bourgeoisie of the frogs
+do not prune them of their splendors don't scrimp on the day when you beam the wedding is not the housekeeping oh if i were to carry out my fancy it would be gallant violins would be heard under the trees
+receives no impressions either human or pleasant or painful with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes this devotion
+corresponds to a cold in the head you smell nothing of life neither any bad nor any good odor moreover the six hundred thousand francs had settled the elderly spinster's indecision
+somewhat resentful in her inmost soul
+she would have left him poor so much the worse for my nephew he is wedding a beggar let him be a beggar himself but cosette's half million pleased the aunt and altered her inward situation so far
+one owes some consideration to six hundred thousand francs and it was evident that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people since they did not need it
+the finest in the house that will make me young again he said it's an old plan of mine i have always entertained the idea of having a wedding in my chamber
+lady knollys pursued her enquiries and why does not madame make your dresses my dear i wager a guinea the woman's a milliner did not she engage to make your dresses i
+she is my governess a finishing governess missus rusk says finishing fiddle hoity toity and my lady's too grand to cut out your dresses and help to sew them and what does she do
+but she is ill i answered and all this time i was ready to cry for vexation thinking of my dress which must be very absurd to elicit so much unaffected laughter from my experienced relative
+is she up or in bed in her room but not in bed i should so like to see her my dear it is not mere curiosity i assure you in fact curiosity has nothing on earth to do with it
+but she may also be about the most pernicious inmate imaginable she may teach you a bad accent
+and heaven knows what beside send the housekeeper my dear to tell her that i am going to see her i had better go myself perhaps i said fearing a collision between missus rusk and the bitter frenchwoman very well dear
+not sorry somehow to escape before captain oakley returned as i went along the passage i was thinking whether my dress could be so very ridiculous as my old cousin thought it and trying in vain
+to recollect any evidence of a similar contemptuous estimate on the part of that beautiful and garrulous dandy i could not quite the reverse indeed still i was uncomfortable and feverish
+girls of my then age will easily conceive how miserable under similar circumstances such a misgiving would make them it was a long way to madame's room i met missus rusk bustling along the passage with a housemaid
+how is madame i asked quite well i believe answered the housekeeper drily nothing the matter that i know of she eat enough for two to day
+i try to swallow a little to please her and your cold is it better she shook her head languidly her elbow resting on the chair and three finger tips supporting her forehead and then she made a little sigh
+looking down from the corners of her eyes in an interesting dejection
+but i am quaite appy
+and with these words she turned a languid glance of gratitude on me which dropped on the ground lady knollys wishes very much to see you only for a few minutes if you could admit her
+vous savez les malades see never visitors she replied with a startled sort of tartness and a momentary energy besides i cannot converse
+of head and of the ear the right ear it is parfois agony absolutely and now it is here and she winced and moaned with her eyes closed and her hand pressed to the organ affected
+simple as i was i felt instinctively that madame was shamming she was over acting her transitions were too violent and beside she forgot that i knew how well she could speak english and must perceive that she was heightening the interest of her helplessness
+by that pretty tessellation of foreign idiom i there fore said with a kind of courage which sometimes helped me suddenly oh madame don't you really think you might without much inconvenience see lady knollys for a very few minutes
+but it is impossible you must see quite impossible i never you know refuse to take trouble when i am able never never and madame shed some tears which always came at call
+and with her hand pressed to her ear said very faintly be so good to tell your friend how you see me and how i suffer
+since the pain will not allow me to remain longer so with a few words of comfort which could not well be refused
+i returned to the drawing room
+has gone to the billiard room i think
+that then accounted for the rumble and smack of balls which i had heard as i passed the door i have been telling maud how detestably she is got up very thoughtful of you monica said my father
+yes and really austin it is quite clear you ought to marry you want some one to take this girl out and look after her and who's to do it
+and it is really such a pity for she's a very pretty creature and a clever woman could make her quite charming
+eight and twenty years ago or more with a hundred and twenty thousand pounds well you know she has got ever so much now
+and though you would not have her then she has had her second husband since i can tell you i'm glad i was not the first said my father well they really say her wealth is absolutely immense her last husband
+the russian merchant left her everything she has not a human relation and she is in the best set you were always a match maker monica said my father stopping and putting his hand kindly on hers
+but it won't do no no monica we must take care of little maud some other way i was relieved we women have all an instinctive dread of second marriages
+and think that no widower is quite above or below that danger and i remember whenever my father which indeed was but seldom made a visit to town or anywhere else it was a saying of missus rusk
+i shan't wonder neither need you my dear if he brings home a young wife with him so my father with a kind look at her and a very tender one on me went silently to the library as he often did about that hour
+i suppose they did not wish a revolution and all its consequences at knowl and thought it no harm to excite my vigilance but it was impossible long to be vexed with cousin monica
+you know my dear your father is an oddity she said i don't mind him i never did you must not cracky my dear cracky decidedly cracky and she tapped the corner of her forehead with a look so sly and comical
+that i think i should have laughed if the sentiment had not been so awfully irreverent well dear how is our friend the milliner madame is suffering so much from pain in her ear that she says it would be quite impossible to have the honour honour fiddle
+pain in her ear you say poor thing well dear i think i can cure that in five minutes i have it myself now and then come to my room and we'll get the bottles so she lighted her candle in the lobby and with a light and agile step
+she scaled the stairs i following and having found the remedies we approached madame's room together i think while we were still at the end of the gallery madame heard and divined our approach for her door suddenly shut
+and there was a fumbling at the handle but the bolt was out of order
+there was no answer so she opened the door and we both entered madame had rolled herself in the blue coverlet and was lying on the bed with her face buried in the pillow and enveloped in the covering perhaps she's asleep said lady knollys
+getting round to the side of the bed and stooping over her madame lay still as a mouse cousin monica set down her two little vials on the table and stooping again over the bed began very gently with her fingers to lift the coverlet that covered her face
+madame uttered a slumbering moan and turned more upon her face clasping the coverlet faster about her madame it is maud and lady knollys we have come to relieve your ear pray let me see it
+chapter six a walk in the wood two little pieces of by play in which i detected her confirmed my unpleasant suspicion from the corner of the gallery i one day saw her when she thought i was out and all quiet
+with her ear at the keyhole of papa's study
+her eyes were turned in the direction of the stairs from which only she apprehended surprise her great mouth was open and her eyes absolutely goggled with eagerness she was devouring all that was passing there
+indignation however quickly returned and i came back treading briskly as i did so when i reached the angle of the gallery again madame i suppose had heard me for she was half way down the stairs
+i am so glad to find you and you are dress to come out we shall have so pleasant walk at that moment the door of my father's study opened and missus rusk with her dark energetic face very much flushed stepped out in high excitement
+the master says you may have the brandy bottle madame and i'm glad to be rid of it i am madame courtesied with a great smirk that was full of intangible hate and insult better your own brandy if drink you must exclaimed missus rusk
+you may come to the store room now or the butler can take it and off whisked missus rusk for the back staircase there had been no common skirmish on this occasion but a pitched battle madame had made a sort of pet of anne wixted an underchambermaid
+with a brandy bottle under her apron stealing up stairs
+madame had commissioned her to buy it in the town and convey it to her bed room upon this missus rusk impounded the flask and with anne beside her rather precipitately appeared before the master he heard and summoned madame
+madame was cool frank and fluent the brandy was purely medicinal she produced a document in the form of a note doctor somebody presented his compliments to madame de la rougierre and ordered her a table spoonful of brandy
+and some drops of laudanum whenever the pain of stomach returned
+she claimed her medicine man's estimate of woman is higher than woman's own perhaps in their relations to men they are generally more trustworthy perhaps woman's is the juster and the other an appointed illusion
+i don't know but so it is ordained missus rusk was recalled and i saw as you are aware madame's procedure during the interview it was a great battle a great victory madame was in high spirits
+the air was sweet the landscape charming i so good everything so beautiful where should we go this way i had made a resolution to speak as little as possible to madame i was so incensed at the treachery i had witnessed
+but such resolutions do not last long with very young people and by the time we had reached the skirts of the wood we were talking pretty much as usual i don't wish to go into the wood madame and for what poor mamma is buried there
+is there the vault demanded madame eagerly i assented my faith curious reason you say because poor mamma is buried there you will not approach
+how solemn murmured madame what noble tomb
+as i approached i happened to look i can't tell why suddenly over my shoulder i was startled for madame was grimacing after me with a vile derisive distortion she pretended to be seized with a fit of coughing
+but it would not do she saw that i had detected her and she laughed aloud
+do you think your house of knowl down there is what you call haunt my dear why said i flushing and growing pale again i felt quite afraid of madame and confounded at the suddenness of all this because anne wixted
+she says there is ghost how dark is this place and so many of the ruthyn family they are buried here is not so how high and thick are the trees all round and nobody comes near
+and madame rolled her eyes awfully as if she expected to see something unearthly and indeed looked very like it herself come away madame i said growing frightened and feeling that if i were once by any accident
+to give way to the panic that was gathering round me i should instantaneously lose all control of myself oh come away do madame i'm frightened no on the contrary sit here by me
+un gout bizarre vraiment but i love very much to be near to the dead people
+do madame pray speak of something else wat little fool but no you are not afraid i av seen the ghosts myself i saw one for example last night shape like a monkey sitting in the corner
+with his arms round his knees very wicked old old man his face was like and white eyes so large come away madame you are trying to frighten me i said in the childish anger which accompanies fear madame laughed an ugly laugh and said
+wat good man is your father very the kindest darling i don't know why it is madame i am so afraid of him and never could tell him how much i love him this confidential talking with madame strange to say
+doctor bryerly i think they call him yes a doctor bryerly who remained a few days shall we begin to walk towards home madame do pray
+oh no ma foi i have heard nothing but if the doctor came it was not because he was quite well but that doctor is a doctor in theology i fancy i know he is a swedenborgian and papa is so well he could not have come as a physician
+but still you know your father is old man
+oh yes he is old man
+as he made his will my dear every man so rich as he especially so old
+there is no need of haste madame it is quite time enough when his health begins to fail
+but you are not such fool as you feign yourself no no you know everything come tell me all about it is for your advantage you know what is in his will and when he wrote but madame i really know nothing of it
+i can't say whether there is a will or not let us talk of something else
+he will not come to lie here a day sooner by cause of that
+would not that be pity i really don't know anything of his will
+he has never spoken of it to me i know he loves me that is enough
+you do know everything of course
+otherwise i will break your little finger tell me everything i know nothing of papa's will you don't know madame how you hurt me let us speak of something else you do know and you must tell petite dure tete
+with which words she seized that joint and laughing spitefully she twisted it suddenly back i screamed while she continued to laugh will you tell yes yes let me go i shrieked she did not release it immediately however
+but continued her torture and discordant laughter at last she finally released my finger
+what do you cry for little fool you've hurt me very much
+what cross girl i will never play with you again never let us go home madame was silent and morose all the way home she would not answer my questions and affected to be very lofty and offended
+this did not last very long however and she soon resumed her wonted ways and she returned to the question of the will but not so directly and with more art
+as already detailed that i was one night sitting at the great drawing room window lost in the melancholy reveries of night and in admiration of the moonlighted scene i was the only occupant of the room
+hardly reached to the window at which i sat the shorn grass sloped gently downward from the windows till it met the broad level on which stood in clumps or solitarily scattered some of the noblest timber in england
+hoar in the moonbeams stood those graceful trees casting their moveless shadows upon the grass and in the background crowning the undulations of the distance in masses were piled those woods among which lay the solitary tomb
+to me funereal but glorious woods which formed the background of the picture my thoughts recurred to my father's mysterious intimations and the image of the approaching visitor and the thought of the unknown journey saddened me
+in all that concerned his religion from very early association there was to me something of the unearthly and spectral when my dear mamma died i was not nine years old and i remember two days before the funeral
+there came to knowl where she died a thin little man with large black eyes and a very grave dark face he was shut up a good deal with my dear father who was in deep affliction and missus rusk used to say
+and good mister clay ready at call in the village much good that little black whipper snapper will do him with that little black man on the day after the funeral i was sent out for some reason for a walk my governess was ill i know
+and there was confusion in the house and i dare say the maids made as much of a holiday as they could i remember feeling a sort of awe of this little dark man but i was not afraid of him for he was gentle though sad and seemed kind
+he led me into the garden the dutch garden we used to call it with a balustrade and statues at the farther front laid out in a carpet pattern of brilliantly coloured flowers we came down the broad flight of caen stone steps into this
+and we walked in silence to the balustrade the base was too high at the spot where we reached it for me to see over but holding my hand he said
+well you can't but i can see beyond it shall i tell you what i see ever so much i see a cottage with a steep roof that looks like gold in the sunlight
+growing by the walls and windows and two little children are playing among the stems of the trees and we are on our way there and in a few minutes shall be under those trees ourselves and talking to those little children
+yet now to me it is but a picture in my brain and to you but a story told by me which you believe come dear let us be going so we descended the steps at the right
+and there we stood in rich sunlight among the many objects he had described is this your house my little men he asked of the children pretty little rosy boys who assented and he leaned with his open hand against the stem of one of the trees
+the same on which i was now looking in the distance every now and then he made me sit down to rest
+would relate some little story reflecting even to my childish mind a strange suspicion of a spiritual meaning
+and somehow startling in its very vagueness thus entertained though a little awfully i accompanied the dark mysterious little whipper snapper through the woodland glades
+we came to me quite unexpectedly in the deep sylvan shadows upon the grey pillared temple four fronted with a slanting pedestal of lichen stained steps
+the lonely sepulchre in which i had the morning before seen poor mamma laid at the sight the fountains of my grief reopened and i cried bitterly repeating oh mamma mamma little mamma
+and so went on weeping and calling wildly on the deaf and the silent there was a stone bench some ten steps away from the tomb sit down beside me my child said the grave man with the black eyes very kindly and gently
+now what do you see there he asked pointing horizontally with his stick towards the centre of the opposite structure oh that that place where poor mamma is
+yes a stone wall with pillars too high for either you or me to see over but here he mentioned a name which i think must have been swedenborg
+i only know that it sounded to me like the name of a magician in a fairy tale i fancied he lived in the wood which surrounded us and i began to grow frightened as he proceeded but swedenborg sees beyond it over and through it
+and has told me all that concerns us to know he says your mamma is not there she is taken away i cried starting up and with streaming eyes gazing on the building which though i stamped my feet in my distraction
+i was afraid to approach oh is mamma taken away where is she where have they brought her to i was uttering unconsciously very nearly the question with which mary
+in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she stood by the empty sepulchre accosted the figure standing near your mamma is alive but too far away to see or hear us swedenborg standing here can see and hear her
+and tells me all he sees just as i told you in the garden about the little boys and the cottage and the trees and flowers which you could not see
+so i can tell you now as i did then and as we are both i hope walking on to the same place just as we did to the trees and cottage
+how true the description is which i give you i was very frightened for i feared that when he had done his narrative
+and of shadows where the dead were visible he leaned his elbow on his knee and his forehead on his hand which shaded his downcast eyes in that attitude he described to me a beautiful landscape
+radiant with a wondrous light in which rejoicing my mother moved along an airy path ascending among mountains of fantastic height and peaks melting in celestial colouring into the air
+he said the same words he had spoken before come dear let us go oh no no no not now i said resisting and very much frightened home i mean dear
+we cannot walk to the place i have described we can only reach it through the gate of death to which we are all tending young and old with sure steps and where is the gate of death i asked in a sort of whisper as we walked together
+holding his hand and looking stealthily he smiled sadly and said when sooner or later the time comes as hagar's eyes were opened in the wilderness and she beheld the fountain of water
+so shall each of us see the door open before us and enter in and be refreshed for a long time following this walk i was very nervous more so for the awful manner in which missus rusk received my statement
+with stern lips and upturned hands and eyes and an angry expostulation i do wonder at you mary quince letting the child walk into the wood with that limb of darkness it is a mercy he did not show her the devil
+or frighten her out of her senses in that lonely place of these swedenborgians indeed i know no more than i might learn from good missus rusk's very inaccurate talk two or three of them crossed in the course of my early life
+but i grew after a day or two so nervous that i laid it aside it is enough for me to know that their founder either saw or fancied he saw amazing visions which so far from superseding confirmed
+and interpreted the language of the bible and as dear papa accepted their ideas i am happy in thinking that they did not conflict with the supreme authority of holy writ leaning on my hand i was now looking upon that solemn wood
+white and shadowy in the moonlight where for a long time after that ramble with the visionary i fancied the gate of death hidden only by a strange glamour and the dazzling land of ghosts were situate
+and i suppose these earlier associations gave to my reverie about my father's coming visitor
+and the change that had come upon us we had husband and father and children and sisters and friends and relations and house and home and many comforts of this life but now we may say as job
+and he lighted upon that comfortable scripture i shall not die but live and declare the works of the lord
+even as the psalmist says to declare the works of the lord and his wonderful power in carrying us along preserving us in the wilderness while under the enemy's hand and returning of us in safety again and his goodness
+in bringing to my hand so many comfortable and suitable scriptures in my distress but to return
+and in the morning we must go over the river to philip's crew
+which was the first time to my remembrance that i wept before them although i had met with so much affliction and my heart was many times ready to break yet could i not shed one tear in their sight but rather
+by the rivers of babylon there we sate down
+then came one of them and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me and another gave me half a pint of peas which was more worth than many bushels at another time then i went to see king philip he bade me come in and sit down
+and asked me whether i would smoke it a usual compliment nowadays amongst saints and sinners but this no way suited me for though i had formerly used tobacco yet i had left it ever since i was first taken
+it seems to be a bait the devil lays to make men lose their precious time
+when i had taken two or three pipes i was presently ready for another such a bewitching thing it is but i thank god he has now given me power over it surely there are many who
+whereupon they fell to boiling of ground nuts and parching of corn
+during my abode in this place philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy which i did for which he gave me a shilling i offered the money to my master but he bade me keep it and with it i bought a piece of horse flesh
+afterwards he asked me to make a cap for his boy for which he invited me to dinner i went and he gave me a pancake about as big as two fingers it was made of parched wheat beaten and fried in bear's grease
+and bear together and invited my master and mistress to dinner but the proud gossip because i served them both in one dish would eat nothing except one bit that he gave her upon the point of his knife
+hearing that my son was come to this place i went to see him and found him lying flat upon the ground i asked him how he could sleep so he answered me that he was not asleep but at prayer and lay so that they might not observe what he was doing
+i pray god he may remember these things now he is returned in safety at this place the sun now getting higher what with the beams and heat of the sun and the smoke of the wigwams i thought i should have been blind
+who owned that mary thurston came running after me and got it away again
+i put it in my pocket to keep it safe yet notwithstanding somebody stole it but put five indian corns in the room of it which corns were the greatest provisions i had in my travel for one day
+and sell me for powder for so they had sometimes discoursed i was utterly hopeless of getting home on foot the way that i came i could hardly bear to think of the many weary steps i had taken to come to this place the ninth remove
+but instead of going either to albany or homeward we must go five miles up the river and then go over it here we abode a while here lived a sorry indian who spoke to me to make him a shirt when i had done it he would pay me nothing
+but he living by the riverside where i often went to fetch water i would often be putting of him in mind and calling for my pay at last he told me if i would make another shirt for a papoose not yet born he would give me a knife which he did when i had done it
+and i was not a little glad that i had anything that they would accept of and be pleased with when we were at this place my master's maid came home she had been gone three weeks into the narragansett country to fetch corn
+where they had stored up some in the ground
+i turned homeward again and met with my master he showed me the way to my son when i came to him i found him not well and withall he had a boil on his side which much troubled him we bemoaned one another a while as the lord helped us
+and then i returned again when i was returned i found myself as unsatisfied as i was before
+my son was ill and i could not but think of his mournful looks and no christian friend was near him to do any office of love for him either for soul or body and my poor girl i knew not where she was nor whether she was sick or well or alive or dead
+i repaired under these thoughts to my bible my great comfort in that time and that scripture came to my hand cast thy burden upon the lord and he shall sustain thee psalm fifty five
+for fear they would get it from me and there it lay all that day and night in my stinking pocket
+but now that was savory to me that one would think was enough to turn the stomach of a brute creature one bitter cold day i could find no room to sit down before the fire
+and gave me some ground nuts and bade me come again and told me they would buy me if they were able and yet these were strangers to me that i never saw before the tenth remove
+and put it into my pocket and never let her see it afterward then they packed up their things to be gone and gave me my load i complained it was too heavy whereupon she gave me a slap in the face and bade me go
+i lifted up my heart to god hoping the redemption was not far off and the rather because their insolency grew worse and worse but the thoughts of my going homeward for so we bent our course
+much cheered my spirit and made my burden seem light and almost nothing at all but to my amazement and great perplexity the scale was soon turned for when we had gone a little way on a sudden my mistress gives out
+and would have had him gone back also but he would not but said he would go on and come to us again in three days my spirit was upon this i confess very impatient and almost outrageous
+be still and know that i am god psalm forty six
+which were some refreshment to me towards night i gathered some sticks for my own comfort that i might not lie a cold but when we came to lie down they bade me to go out and lie somewhere else for they had company they said come in more than their own
+i told them i could not tell where to go they bade me go look i told them if i went to another wigwam they would be angry and send me home again then one of the company drew his sword and told me he would run me through if i did not go presently then
+was i fain to stoop to this rude fellow and to go out in the night i knew not whither mine eyes have seen that fellow afterwards walking up and down boston under the appearance of a friend indian and several others of the like cut
+i went to one wigwam and they told me they had no room then i went to another and they said the same at last an old indian bade me to come to him and his squaw gave me some ground nuts
+and a good fire we had and through the good providence of god i had a comfortable lodging that night in the morning another indian bade me come at night and he would give me six ground nuts which i did
+we went in the morning to gather ground nuts to the river and went back again that night i went with a good load at my back for they when they went though but a little way would carry all their trumpery with them i told them the skin was off my back
+but i had no other comforting answer from them than this that it would be no matter if my head were off too the thirteenth remove instead of going toward the bay which was that i desired
+where we abode almost a fortnight here one asked me to make a shirt for her papoose for which she gave me a mess of broth which was thickened with meal made of the bark of a tree and to make it the better
+and a few roasted ground nuts i had not seen my son a pretty while
+and asked him when he saw him he answered me that such a time his master roasted him
+as big as his two fingers and that he was very good meat but the lord upheld my spirit under this discouragement
+that makes the least conscience of speaking of truth in this place on a cold night as i lay by the fire i removed a stick that kept the heat from me
+yet upon this and the like occasions i hope it is not too much to say with job
+but when i was without and saw nothing but wilderness and woods and a company of barbarous heathens my mind quickly returned to me which made me think of that spoken concerning sampson who said i will go out and shake myself as at other times
+but he wist not that the lord was departed from him about this time i began to think that all my hopes of restoration would come to nothing i thought of the english army and hoped for their coming and being taken by them but that failed
+i hoped to be carried to albany as the indians had discoursed before but that failed also i thought of being sold to my husband
+as my master spake but instead of that my master himself was gone and i left behind so that my spirit was now quite ready to sink i asked them to let me go out and pick up some sticks that i might get alone and pour out my heart unto the lord
+they all gathered about the poor man asking him many questions i desired also to go and see him and when i came he was crying bitterly supposing they would quickly kill him whereupon i asked one of them whether they intended to kill him he answered me they would not
+he being a little cheered with that i asked him about the welfare of my husband he told me he saw him such a time in the bay and he was well but very melancholy by which i certainly understood though i suspected it before
+that whatsoever the indians told me respecting him was vanity and lies some of them told me he was dead and they had killed him some said he was married again and that the governor wished him to marry and told him he should have his choice
+and that all persuaded i was dead so like were these barbarous creatures to him who was a liar from the beginning as i was sitting once in the wigwam here philip's maid came in with the child in her arms
+i told her i would tear her coat then with that my mistress rises up
+were going to the french for powder but by the way the mohawks met with them and killed four of their company which made the rest turn back again for it might have been worse with him had he been sold to the french
+than it proved to be in his remaining with the indians i went to see an english youth in this place
+he told me he was very sick of a flux with eating so much blood they had turned him out of the wigwam and with him an indian papoose almost dead whose parents had been killed
+belonging to our garrison but none of them would stir though another time if any indian had come to the door they were ready to fly upon him and tear him down the lord hereby would make us the more acknowledge his hand and to see that our help is always in him
+but out we must go the fire increasing and coming along behind us roaring and the indians gaping before us with their guns spears and hatchets to devour us
+in or near the throat fell down dead whereat the indians scornfully shouted and hallowed and were presently upon him stripping off his clothes the bullets flying thick one went through my side and the same as would seem
+through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms one of my elder sisters children named william had then his leg broken which the indians perceiving they knocked him on his head
+standing amazed with the blood running down to our heels my eldest sister being yet in the house and seeing those woeful sights the infidels hauling mothers one way and children another and some wallowing in their blood
+and her elder son telling her that her son william was dead and myself was wounded she said and lord let me die with them which was no sooner said but she was struck with a bullet and fell down dead over the threshold
+i hope she is reaping the fruit of her good labors being faithful to the service of god in her place in her younger years she lay under much trouble upon spiritual accounts till it pleased god to make that precious scripture take hold of her heart and he said unto me
+oh the doleful sight that now was to behold at this house come behold the works of the lord
+and relations lie bleeding out their heart blood upon the ground there was one who was chopped into the head with a hatchet and stripped naked
+as if they would have torn our very hearts out yet the lord by his almighty power preserved a number of us from death for there were twenty four of us taken alive and carried captive i had often before this said that if the indians should come
+i should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive but when it came to the trial my mind changed their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit that i chose rather to go along with those as i may say ravenous beasts
+than that moment to end my days and that i may the better declare what happened to me during that grievous captivity i shall particularly speak of the several removes we had up and down the wilderness the first remove now away we must go with those barbarous creatures
+with our bodies wounded and bleeding and our hearts no less than our bodies about a mile we went that night up upon a hill within sight of the town where they intended to lodge there was hard by a vacant house deserted by the english before for fear of the indians
+i asked them whether i might not lodge in the house that night to which they answered what will you love english men still this was the dolefulest night that ever my eyes saw oh the roaring and singing and dancing and yelling of those black creatures in the night
+some roasting some lying and burning and some boiling to feed our merciless enemies who were joyful enough though we were disconsolate
+and the dismalness of the present night my thoughts ran upon my losses and sad bereaved condition all was gone my husband gone at least separated from me he being in the bay and to add to my grief the indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward
+my children gone my relations and friends gone our house and home and all our comforts within door and without all was gone except my life and i knew not but the next moment that might go too there remained nothing to me but one poor wounded babe
+and it seemed at present worse than death that it was in such a pitiful condition bespeaking compassion and i had no refreshing for it nor suitable things to revive it little do many think what is the savageness and brutishness of this barbarous enemy
+by one eyed john and marlborough's praying indians which captain mosely brought to boston as the indians told me the second remove but now the next morning i must turn my back upon the town and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness
+i knew not whither it is not my tongue or pen can express the sorrows of my heart and bitterness of my spirit that i had at this departure but god was with me in a wonderful manner carrying me along and bearing up my spirit
+that it did not quite fail one of the indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse it went moaning all along i shall die i shall die i went on foot after it with sorrow that cannot be expressed at length i took it off the horse
+and carried it in my arms till my strength failed and i fell down with it then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in my lap and there being no furniture upon the horse's back as we were going down a steep hill we both fell over the horse's head
+at which they like inhumane creatures laughed and rejoiced to see it though i thought we should there have ended our days as overcome with so many difficulties but the lord renewed my strength still and carried me along that i might see more of his power
+by a little fire and a few boughs behind me with my sick child in my lap
+my own wound also growing so stiff that i could scarce sit down or rise up yet so it must be that i must sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground with my sick child in my arms
+and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning the third remove
+one of the indians got up upon a horse and they set me up behind him with my poor sick babe in my lap a very wearisome and tedious day i had of it what with my own wound and my child's being so exceeding sick and in a lamentable condition with her wound
+this day in the afternoon about an hour by sun
+my wounds stink and are corrupt i am troubled i am bowed down greatly i go mourning all the day long i sat much alone with a poor wounded child in my lap which moaned night and day having nothing to revive the body or cheer the spirits of her but instead of that
+in this miserable condition without any refreshing of one nature or other except a little cold water i cannot but take notice how at another time i could not bear to be in the room where any dead person was
+by my master in this writing must be understood quinnapin who was a sagamore and married king philip's wife's sister not that he first took me but i was sold to him by another narragansett indian who took me when first i came out of the garrison
+there was no resisting but go i must and leave it when i had been at my master's wigwam
+when i came i asked them what they had done with it then they told me it was upon the hill
+and there they told me they had buried it
+god having taken away this dear child i went to see my daughter mary who was at this same indian town at a wigwam not very far off
+she was about ten years old and taken from the door at first by a praying indiana and afterward sold for a gun
+and ye will take benjamin also all these things are against me
+and as i was going along my heart was even overwhelmed with the thoughts of my condition and that i should have children and a nation which i knew not ruled over them whereupon i earnestly entreated the lord that he would consider my low estate and show me a token for good and if it were his blessed will
+i had not seen him before since the destruction of the town and i knew not where he was till i was informed by himself that he was amongst a smaller parcel of indians whose place was about six miles off with tears in his eyes he asked me whether his sister sarah was dead
+and told me he had seen his sister mary and prayed me that i would not be troubled in reference to himself the occasion of his coming to see me at this time was this there was as i said about six miles from us a small plantation of indians where it seems he had been during his captivity
+all the company for those that belonged to the other small company came through the town that now we were at but before they came to us oh the outrageous roaring and hooping that there was they began their din about a mile before they came to us
+by their noise and hooping they signified how many they had destroyed which was at that time twenty three
+and every time that the other went over their number these at home gave a shout that the very earth rung again and thus they continued till those that had been upon the expedition were come up to the sagamore's wigwam and then
+i cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of god to me in those afflictions in sending me a bible one of the indians that came from medfield fight had brought some plunder came to me and asked me if i would have a bible he had got one in his basket
+and turn all those curses upon our enemies i do not desire to live to forget this scripture and what comfort it was to me now
+some one way and some another there were now besides myself nine english captives in this place all of them children except one woman
+they being to go one way and i another i asked them whether they were earnest with god for deliverance they told me they did as they were able and it was some comfort to me that the lord stirred up children to look to him
+i wished her not to run away by any means for we were near thirty miles from any english town
+and another child in her arms two years old and bad rivers there were to go over and we were feeble with our poor and coarse entertainment i had my bible with me i pulled it out and asked her whether she would read
+be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart wait i say on the lord the fourth remove and now i must part with that little company i had
+she would be often asking the indians to let her go home they not being willing to that and yet vexed with her importunity gathered a great company together about her and stripped her naked and set her in the midst of them and when they had sung and danced about her in their hellish manner
+as long as they pleased they knocked her on head and the child in her arms with her when they had done that they made a fire and put them both into it
+the children said she did not shed one tear but prayed all the while
+we came about the middle of the afternoon to this place cold and wet and snowy and hungry and weary and no refreshing for man but the cold ground to sit on and our poor indian cheer
+this was a sweet cordial to me when i was ready to faint many and many a time have i sat down and wept sweetly over this scripture at this place we continued about four days the fifth remove
+and then they made a stop and chose some of their stoutest men and sent them back to hold the english army in play whilst the rest escaped and then like jehu they marched on furiously with their old and with their young some carried their old decrepit mothers
+some carried one and some another four of them carried a great indian upon a bier but going through a thick wood with him they were hindered and could make no haste whereupon they took him upon their backs and carried him one at a time till
+upon a friday a little after noon we came to this river
+and were gathered together i thought to count the number of them but they were so many and being somewhat in motion it was beyond my skill in this travel because of my wound i was somewhat favored in my load i carried only my knitting work and two quarts of parched meal
+being very faint i asked my mistress to give me one spoonful of the meal but she would not give me a taste they quickly fell to cutting dry trees to make rafts to carry them over the river and soon my turn came to go over by the advantage of some brush
+which they had laid upon the raft to sit upon i did not wet my foot which many of themselves at the other end were mid leg deep which cannot but be acknowledged as a favor of god to my weakened body it being a very cold time i was not before acquainted with such
+the first week of my being among them i hardly ate any thing the second week i found my stomach grow very faint for want of something and yet it was very hard to get down their filthy trash but the third week
+i told them it was the sabbath day and desired them to let me rest and told them i would do as much more tomorrow to which they answered me they would break my face and here i cannot but take notice of the strange providence of god in preserving the heathen
+they were many hundreds old and young some sick and some lame many had papooses at their backs the greatest number at this time with us were squaws
+if we had been god would have found out a way for the english to have passed this river as well as for the indians with their squaws and children and all their luggage oh that my people had hearkened to me and israel had walked in my ways
+they set their wigwams on fire and went away it was a cold morning and before us there was a great brook with ice on it some waded through it up to the knees and higher but others went till they came to a beaver dam and i amongst them
+we came that day to a great swamp by the side of which we took up our lodging that night when i came to the brow of the hill that looked toward the swamp i thought we had been come to a great indian town
+though there were none but our own company the indians were as thick as the trees it seemed as if there had been a thousand hatchets going at once if one looked before one there was nothing but indians and behind one nothing but indians
+and an exceeding high and steep hill before it before i got to the top of the hill i thought my heart and legs and all would have broken and failed me what through faintness and soreness of body it was a grievous day of travel to me
+some of the scottish emigrants heated with republican enthusiasm and utterly destitute of the skill necessary to the conduct of great affairs employed all their industry and ingenuity
+but he was placed under the control of a committee
+where the expedition should land to appoint officers to superintend the levying of troops to dole out provisions and ammunition all that was left to the general was to direct the evolutions of the army in the field
+and he was forced to promise that even in the field except in the case of a surprise he would do nothing without the assent of a council of war monmouth was to command in england his soft mind had as usual
+taken an impress from the society which surrounded him ambitious hopes which had seemed to be extinguished revived in his bosom he remembered the affection with which he had been constantly greeted by the common people in town and country
+and expected that they would now rise by hundreds of thousands to welcome him he remembered the good will which the soldiers had always borne him and flattered himself that they would come over to him by regiments
+encouraging messages reached him in quick succession from london he was assured that the violence and injustice with which the elections had been carried on had driven the nation mad
+that the prudence of the leading whigs had with difficulty prevented a sanguinary outbreak on the day of the coronation and that all the great lords who had supported the exclusion bill were impatient to rally round him
+wildman who loved to talk treason in parables sent to say that the earl of richmond just two hundred years before had landed in england with a handful of men and had a few days later been crowned on the field of bosworth
+all that was required of him was to promise that he would not assume the regal title
+it was determined that two englishmen
+should accompany argyle to scotland and that fletcher should go with monmouth to england fletcher from the beginning had augured ill of the enterprise but his chivalrous spirit would not suffer him to decline a risk which his friends seemed eager to encounter
+when grey repeated with approbation what wildman had said about richmond and richard the well read and thoughtful scot justly remarked that there was a great difference between the fifteenth century and the seventeenth
+richmond was assured of the support of barons each of whom could bring an army of feudal retainers into the field
+a sum sufficient for the two expeditions very little was obtained from london six thousand pounds had been expected thence but instead of the money came excuses from wildman
+but his intellect and his temper preserved him from the violence of a partisan he had lived on confidential terms with shaftesbury and had thus incurred the displeasure of the court locke's prudence had however
+been such that it would have been to little purpose to bring him even before the corrupt and partial tribunals of that age in one point however he was vulnerable he was a student of christ church in the university of oxford
+but this was not easy locke had at oxford abstained from expressing any opinion on the politics of the day spies had been set about him doctors of divinity and masters of arts
+to the exclusion bill and to the character of the earl of shaftesbury but in vain locke neither broke out nor dissembled but maintained such steady silence and composure as forced the tools of power to own with vexation
+that never man was so complete a master of his tongue and of his passions when it was found that treachery could do nothing arbitrary power was used after vainly trying to inveigle locke into a fault
+the government resolved to punish him without one orders came from whitehall that he should be ejected and those orders the dean and canons made haste to obey
+locke was travelling on the continent for his health when he learned that he had been deprived of his home and of his bread without a trial or even a notice
+the injustice with which he had been treated would have excused him if he had resorted to violent methods of redress but he was not to be blinded by personal resentment he augured no good from the schemes
+but it was apprehended that argyle would shortly appear in arms among his clansmen a proclamation was accordingly issued directing that scotland should be put into a state of defence the militia was ordered to be in readiness
+all the clans hostile to the name of campbell were set in motion john murray marquess of athol
+and at the head of a great body of his followers
+who had long resided in england as ambassador from the united provinces and everard van dykvelt who after the death of charles had been sent by the state general on a special mission of condolence and congratulation
+the king said that he had received from unquestionable sources intelligence of designs which were forming against the throne by his banished subjects in holland some of the exiles were cutthroats
+whom nothing but the special providence of god had prevented from committing a foul murder and among them was the owner of the spot which had been fixed for the butchery
+argyle has the greatest means of annoying me and of all places holland is that whence a blow may be best aimed against me the dutch envoys assured his majesty that what he had said should instantly be communicated to the government
+were at this time most desirous that the hospitality of their country
+james had lately held language which encouraged the hope that he would not patiently submit to the ascendancy of france it seemed probable that he would consent to form a close alliance with the united provinces and the house of austria
+there was therefore at the hague an extreme anxiety to avoid all that could give him offence the personal interest of william was also on this occasion identical with the interest of his father in law
+but the case was one which required rapid and vigorous action and the nature of the batavian institutions made such action almost impossible the union of utrecht
+for the purpose of meeting immediate exigencies had never been deliberately revised and perfected in a time of tranquillity every one of the seven commonwealths
+which that union had bound together retained almost all the rights of sovereignty and asserted those rights punctiliously against the central government
+as the federal authorities had not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the provincial authorities so the provincial authorities had not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the municipal authorities
+holland alone contained eighteen cities each of which was for many purposes an independent state jealous of all interference from without if the rulers of such a city received from the hague an order
+which was unpleasing to them they either neglected it altogether or executed it languidly and tardily in some town councils indeed the influence of the prince of orange was all powerful
+but unfortunately the place where the british exiles had congregated and where their ships had been fitted out was the rich and populous amsterdam and the magistrates of amsterdam were the heads of the faction hostile to the federal government
+and to the house of nassau the naval administration of the united provinces was conducted by five distinct boards of admiralty one of those boards sate at amsterdam was partly nominated by the authorities of that city
+and seems to have been entirely animated by their spirit all the endeavours of the federal government to effect what james desired were frustrated by the evasions of the functionaries of amsterdam and by the blunders of colonel bevil skelton
+then instead of applying as he should have done to the states general who sate close to his own door
+with a request that the suspected ships might be detained the magistrates of amsterdam answered that the entrance of the zuyder zee was out of their jurisdiction and referred him to the federal government it was notorious that this was a mere excuse
+and that if there had been any real wish at the stadthouse of amsterdam to prevent argyle from sailing no difficulties would have been made skelton now addressed himself to the states general they showed every disposition to comply with his demand
+departed from the course which they ordinarily observed in the transaction of business on the same day on which he made his application to them an order drawn in exact conformity with his request
+was despatched to the admiralty of amsterdam but this order in consequence of some misinformation did not correctly describe the situation of the ships they were said to be in the texel
+would in a moment have put an end to his expedition round his little fleet a boat was rowing in which were some persons with telescopes whom he suspected to be spies but no effectual step was taken for the purpose of detaining him
+and on the afternoon of the second of may he stood out to sea before a favourable breeze the voyage was prosperous on the sixth the orkneys were in sight argyle very unwisely anchored off kirkwall
+and allowed two of his followers to go on shore there the bishop ordered them to be arrested the refugees proceeded to hold a long and animated debate on this misadventure
+for from the beginning to the end of their expedition however languid and irresolute their conduct might be they never in debate wanted spirit or perseverance some were for an attack on kirkwall
+some were for proceeding without delay to argyleshire at last the earl seized some gentlemen who lived near the coast of the island and proposed to the bishop an exchange of prisoners the bishop returned no answer and the fleet
+after losing three days sailed away this delay was full of danger it was speedily known at edinburgh that the rebel squadron had touched at the orkneys troops were instantly put in motion
+when the earl reached his own province he found that preparations had been made to repel him at dunstaffnage he sent his second son charles on shore to call the campbells to arms but charles returned with gloomy tidings
+the herdsmen and fishermen were indeed ready to rally round mac callum more but of the heads of the clan some were in confinement and others had fled those gentlemen who remained at their homes were either well affected to the government
+or afraid of moving and refused even to see the son of their chief from dunstaffnage the small armament proceeded to campbelltown near the southern extremity of the peninsula of kintyre
+here the earl published a manifesto drawn up in holland under the direction of the committee by james stewart a scotch advocate whose pen was a few months later employed in a very different way
+in this paper were set forth with a strength of language sometimes approaching to scurrility many real and some imaginary grievances it was hinted that the late king had died by poison
+a chief object of the expedition was declared to be the entire suppression
+is generally believed to be the high priest eliachim called also joachim the transactions herein related most probably happened in his days and in the reign of manasses after his repentance and return from captivity
+it takes its name from that illustrious woman by whose virtue and fortitude and armed with prayer the children of israel were preserved from the destruction threatened them by holofernes and his great army
+swore by his throne and kingdom that he would revenge himself of all those countries
+the two and twentieth day of the first month
+and all the governors and his officers of war
+nabuchodonosor the king called holofernes
+go out against all the kingdoms of the west
+called the captains and officers of the power of the assyrians and he mustered men for the expedition and the king commanded him a hundred and twenty thousand fighting men on foot and twelve thousand archers
+with all provisions sufficient for the armies in abundance and herds of oxen and flocks of sheep
+with the chariots and horsemen and archers
+he came to the great mountains of ange
+and he went up to all their castles
+and pillaged all the children of tharsis
+who were over against the face of the desert
+and he forced all the stately cities that were there from the torrent of mambre
+and stripped them of all their riches and all that resisted him
+and he set all the corn on fire
+judith chapter three
+he destroyeth their cities and their gods
+mesopotamia and syria sobal and libya
+and be subject to thee than to die and to perish
+all mountains and hills and fields and herds of oxen and flocks of sheep and goats and horses and camels
+and made himself master of every city
+that the inhabitants of all the cities both princes and nobles as well as the people
+that he only might be called god by those nations which could be brought under him
+and all apamea and all mesopotamia
+and stayed there for thirty days
+judith chapter four
+lest he should do the same to jerusalem and to the temple of the lord
+wrote to all that were over against esdrelon
+and to all by whom there might be a passage of way that they should take possession of the ascents of the mountains by which there might be any way to jerusalem
+and they humbled their souls in fastings and prayers
+and they caused the little children to lie prostrate before the temple of the lord
+that their children might not be made a prey and their wives carried off and their cities destroyed and their holy things profaned
+know ye that the lord will hear your prayers
+that trusted in his own strength and in his power and in his army and in his shields and in his chariots and in his horsemen not by fighting with the sword
+judith chapter five
+that the children of israel prepared themselves to resist
+or what are their cities and of what sort and how great also what is their power or what is their multitude
+have despised us and have not come out to meet us
+answering said if thou vouchsafe my lord to hear i will tell the truth in thy sight concerning this people that dwelleth in the mountains
+who also commanded them to depart from thence and to dwell in charan and when there was a famine over all the land they went down into egypt and there for four hundred years were so multiplied
+and made slaves of them to labour in clay and brick in the building of his cities they cried to their lord and he struck the whole land of egypt
+and the plague had ceased from them and they had a mind to take them again
+so that the waters were made to stand firm as a wall on either side
+they were so overwhelmed with the waters
+in which never man could dwell
+and of the hethites and of the hevites and of the amorrhites and all the mighty ones in hesebon
+when they had revolted from the way which god had given them to walk therein they were destroyed in battles by many nations and very many of them were led away captive
+from the different places wherein they were scattered they are come together
+if there be any iniquity of theirs in the sight of their god let us go up to them because their god will surely deliver them to thee
+we cannot resist them because their god will defend them
+when achior had ceased to speak these words all the great men of holofernes were angry
+and his armies men unarmed and without force
+let us go up into the mountains and when the bravest of them shall be taken
+and besides him there is no other judith chapter six
+when they had left off speaking that holofernes being in a violent passion
+that the nation of israel is defended by their god
+then thou also shalt die with them by the sword of the assyrians
+and then the sword of my soldiers shall pass through thy sides and thou shalt be stabbed and fall among the wounded of israel
+let not thy countenance sink and let the paleness that is in thy face depart from thee
+behold from this hour thou shalt be associated to their people that when they shall receive the punishment they deserve from my sword
+and to lead him to bethulia
+went through the plains but when they came near the mountains
+and so left him bound with ropes
+and setting him in the midst of the people asked him
+and in the presence of all the people all that he had said being asked by holofernes
+had commanded him to be delivered for this cause to the israelites that when he should overcome the children of israel then he might command achior also himself to be put to death by diverse torments for having said
+all the people fell upon their faces adoring the lord and all of them together mourning and weeping
+o lord god of heaven and earth behold their pride and look on our low condition and have regard to the face of thy saints and shew that thou forsakest not them that trust on thee
+the god of our fathers whose power thou hast set forth will make this return to thee
+let god be with thee also in the midst of us that as it shall please thee so thou with all thine
+after the assembly was broken up received him into his house
+and they refreshed themselves together
+and they prayed all the night long within the church desiring help of the god of israel
+the church that is the synagogue or place where they met for prayer judith chapter seven holofernes besiegeth bethulia
+and two and twenty thousand horsemen besides the preparations of those men who had been taken
+and they came by the hillside to the top which looketh toward dothain from the place which is called belma unto chelmon
+when they saw the multitude of them prostrated themselves upon the ground
+chapter fifteen waiting
+said professor bhaer coming in one day early in january please tell it at once i can't bear to wait fritz cried missus jo dropping her work and standing up as if to take the shot bravely but we must wait and hope heart's dearest come
+and let us bear it together emil's ship is lost and as yet no news of him it was well mister bhaer had taken his wife into his strong arms for she looked ready to drop but bore up after a moment
+and sitting by her good man heard all that there was to tell tidings had been sent to the shipowners at hamburg by some of the survivors and telegraphed at once by franz to his uncle as one boat load was safe
+there was hope that others might also escape though the gale had sent two to the bottom a swift sailing steamer had brought these scanty news and happier ones might come at any hour but kind franz had not added that the sailors reported the captain's boat as undoubtedly wrecked by the falling mast
+even when hope waxed faint and her heart was heavy if anything could comfort the bhaers for the loss of one boy
+franz kept the cable busy with his varying messages nat sent loving letters from leipzig and tom harassed the shipping agents for news even busy jack wrote them with unusual warmth
+dolly and george came often bearing the loveliest flowers and the daintiest bon bons to cheer missus bhaer and sweeten josie's grief while good hearted ned travelled all the way from chicago to press their hands and say with a tear in his eye
+i was so anxious to hear all about the dear old boy i couldn't keep away that's right comfortable and shows me that if i didn't teach my boys anything else i did give them the brotherly love that will make them stand by one another all their lives said missus jo when he had gone
+had they all been true the elders bore it quietly having learned submission in life's hard school but the younger people rebelled some hoped against hope and kept up others despaired at once and little josie emil's pet cousin and playmate was so broken hearted
+nothing could comfort her nan dosed in vain daisy's cheerful words went by like the wind and bess's devices to amuse her all failed utterly to cry in mother's arms and talk about the wreck which haunted her even in her sleep was all she cared to do
+and missus meg was getting anxious when miss cameron sent josie a kind note
+and be like the self sacrificing heroines she loved to act
+for the boy was deeply impressed by this sudden eclipse of the firefly whose light and life all missed when they were gone and lured her out every day for long drives behind the black mare who shook her silvery bells till they made such merry music josie could not help listening to it
+and whisked her over the snowy roads at a pace which set the blood dancing in her veins and sent her home strengthened and comforted by sunshine fresh air and congenial society three aids young sufferers seldom can resist
+some regret for faults that lie heavy on the conscience when the one sinned against is gone and all of them the solemn lesson to be ready when the summons comes a hush lay over plumfield for weeks and the studious faces on the hill reflected the sadness of those in the valley
+then up went the flag out rang the college bells bang went teddy's long unused cannon and a chorus of happy voices cried thank god as people went about laughing crying and embracing one another in a rapture of delight
+for missus jo carried them in her pocket when mister bhaer did not have them in his and both took a look at them when they said their prayers at night now the professor was heard humming like a big bee again as he went to his classes
+and let her romances wait now messages of congratulation flowed in and beaming faces showed everywhere rob amazed his parents by producing a poem which was remarkably good for one of his years and demi set it to music that it might be sung when the sailor boy returned
+teddy stood on his head literally and tore about the neighbourhood on octoo like a second paul revere only his tidings were good but best of all little josie lifted up her head as the snowdrops did and began to bloom again growing tall and quiet
+with the shadow of past sorrow to tone down her former vivacity and show that she had learned a lesson in trying to act well her part on the real stage where all have to take their share in the great drama of life
+there was great scrubbing and dusting among the matrons as they set their houses in order not only for class day but to receive the bride and groom who were to come to them for the honeymoon trip great plans were made gifts prepared and much joy felt at the prospect of seeing franz again
+though emil who was to accompany them would be the greater hero little did the dear souls dream what a surprise was in store for them as they innocently laid their plans and wished all the boys could be there to welcome home their eldest and their casablanca
+while they wait and work so happily let us see how our other absent boys are faring as they too wait and work and hope for better days nat was toiling steadily along the path he had wisely chosen though it was by no means strewn with flowers
+quite thorny was it in fact and hard to travel after the taste of ease and pleasure he had got when nibbling at forbidden fruit but his crop of wild oats was a light one and he resolutely reaped what he had sowed finding some good wheat among the tares he taught by day
+he fiddled night after night in the dingy little theatre and he studied so diligently that his master was well pleased and kept him in mind as one to whom preferment was due if any chance occurred gay friends forgot him but the old ones stood fast
+and cheered him up when heimweh and weariness made him sad as spring came on things mended expenses grew less work pleasanter and life more bearable than when wintry storms beat on his thinly clad back
+and frost pinched the toes that patiently trudged in old boots no debts burdened him the year of absence was nearly over and if he chose to stay herr bergmann had hopes for him that would bring independence for a time at least
+so he walked under the lindens with a lighter heart and in the may evenings went about the city with a band of strolling students making music before houses where he used to sit as guest
+and once minna threw him money which he humbly received as part of his penance being morbid on the subject of his sins his reward came sooner than he expected and was greater than he deserved he thought though his heart leaped with joy when his master one day informed him
+that he was chosen with several other of his most promising pupils to join the musical society which was to take part in the great festival in london the next july here was not only honour for the violinist but happiness for the man as it brought him nearer home
+as the great bergmann seldom praised his pupils these words filled nat's soul with pride and joy and he worked yet more diligently than before to fulfil his master's prophecy he thought the trip to england happiness enough but found room for more when early in june
+kind wishes and comfortable gifts for the lonely fellow who could have fallen on their necks and cried like a girl at seeing his old mates again how glad he was to be found in his little room busy at his proper work not living like an idle gentleman on borrowed money
+how proud he was to tell his plans assure them that he had no debts and receive their praises for his improvement in music their respect for his economy and steadfastness in well doing
+how relieved when having honestly confessed his shortcomings they only laughed and owned that they also had known like experiences and were the wiser for them he was to go to the wedding late in june and join his comrades in london
+as best man he could not refuse the new suit franz insisted on ordering for him and a cheque from home about that time made him feel like a millionaire and a happy one for this was accompanied by such kind letters full of delight in his success
+he had found the little guide book that christian carried in his bosom and love penitence and prayer the three sweet sisters had given him the armour which would keep him safe he had not learned to wear it yet and chafed against it though he felt its value
+thanks to the faithful friend who had stood by him all that bitter year soon he was to be free again worn and scarred in the fray
+when he thought of it dan felt as if he could not wait but must burst that narrow cell and fly away as the caddis worms he used to watch by the brookside shed their stony coffins to climb the ferns and soar into the sky night after night he lulled himself to sleep with planning how
+and the old free life would keep him safe from the temptations that beset him in cities by and by when i'm all right again and have something to tell that i'm not ashamed of i'll go home he said with a quicker beat of the impetuous heart that longed to be there so intensely
+as he remembered what it had done since a certain little white hand had laid in it confidingly i'll make em proud of me yet and no one shall ever know of this awful year i can wipe it out and i will so help me god
+the masterful wind was up and out shouting and chasing the lord of the morning poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish dead leaves sprang aloft and whirled into space and all the clear swept heaven seemed to thrill with sound like a great harp
+it was one of the first awakenings of the year the earth stretched herself smiling in her sleep and everything leapt and pulsed to the stir of the giant's movement with us it was a whole holiday the occasion a birthday it matters not whose
+some one of us had had presents and pretty conventional speeches and had glowed with that sense of heroism which is no less sweet that nothing has been done to deserve it but the holiday was for all the rapture of awakening nature for all
+the various outdoor joys of puddles and sun and hedge breaking for all colt like i ran through the meadows frisking happy heels in the face of nature laughing responsive above the sky was bluest of the blue wide pools left by the winter's floods
+flashed the colour back true and brilliant and the soft air thrilled with the germinating touch that seemed to kindle something in my own small person as well as in the rash primrose already lurking in sheltered haunts out into the brimming sun bathed world i sped free of lessons
+oh he's just playin muffin man as usual said charlotte with petulance fancy wanting to be a muffin man on a whole holiday it was a strange craze certainly but harold who invented his own games and played them without assistance
+always stuck staunchly to a new fad till he had worn it quite out just at present he was a muffin man
+and offering phantom muffins to invisible wayfarers
+to pass along busy streets of your own building for ever ringing an imaginary bell and offering airy muffins of your own make to a bustling thronging crowd of your own creation there were points about the game it cannot be denied though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiant wind swept morning
+only you mustn't say i told you cos it's to be a surprise all right i said magnanimously
+but i could not help feeling that on this day of days even a grizzly felt misplaced and common sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped into the road then ensued shrieks growlings revolver shots and unrecorded heroisms
+and the age of acorns have displaced our hard won civilisation
+do shouted edward valiantly i should i should i should
+he beat the unicorn observed harold dubiously all round the town that proves he was a good lion cried edwards triumphantly but the question is how are you to tell em when you see em i should ask martha said harold of the simple creed
+and i'll run on to that corner and be a lion
+no i won't i swear i won't protested edward i'll be quite a new lion this time something you can't even imagine and he raced off to his post charlotte hesitated then she went timidly on
+at each step growing less charlotte the mummer of a minute and more the anxious pilgrim of all time the lion's wrath waxed terrible at her approach his roaring filled the startled air
+into the vacant meadow spaces
+but the passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood earth to earth that was the frank note the joyous summons of the day and they could not but jar and seem artificial these human discussions and pretences
+the pant and smoke of a distant train all were wine or song was it or odour this unity they all blended into i had no words then to describe it that earth effluence of which i was so conscious nor indeed have i found words since
+i ran sideways shouting i dug glad heels into the squelching soil i splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick i hurled clods skywards at random and presently i somehow found myself singing
+a weary unrhythmic thing of rise and fall and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect humanity would have rejected it with scorn nature everywhere singing in the same key
+recognised and accepted it without a flicker of dissent all the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from where he swung and bellowed in the tree tops
+a belated truant you have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale expressionless moon for company to day why not i the trickster the hypocrite i who whip round corners and bluster relapse and evade then rally and pursue
+i can lead you the best and rarest dance of any for i am the strong capricious one the lord of misrule and i alone am irresponsible and unprincipled and obey no law and for me i was ready enough to fall in with the fellow's humour was not this a whole holiday
+so we sheered off together arm in arm so to speak and with fullest confidence i took the jigging thwartwise course my chainless pilot laid for me a whimsical comrade i found him ere he had done with me
+silent face to face o'er a discreet unwinking stile as a rule this sort of thing struck me as the most pitiful tomfoolery two calves rubbing noses through a gate were natural and right and within the order of things but that human beings
+with salient interests and active pursuits beckoning them on from every side could thus
+and it was with a certain surprise that i found myself regarding these fatuous ones with kindliness instead of contempt as i rambled by unheeded of them there was indeed some reconciling influence abroad which could bring the like antics into harmony with bud and growth and the frolic air
+and presently i came in sight of the village church sitting solitary within its circle of elms from forth the vestry window projected two small legs gyrating hungry for foothold with larceny
+bill's coveted booty too i could easily guess at that it came from the vicar's store of biscuits kept as i knew
+then i passed on my way i protest i was not on bill's side but then neither was i on the vicar's
+and i felt sure as i rambled off in his wake that he had more holiday matter to show me and so indeed he had and all of it was to the same lawless tune like a black pirate flag on the blue ocean of air a hawk hung ominous then plummet wise dropped to the hedgerow
+whence there rose thin and shrill a piteous voice of squealing by the time i got there a whisk of feathers on the turf like scattered playbills was all that remained to tell of the tragedy just enacted yet nature smiled and sang on pitiless gay impartial
+to her who took no sides there was every bit as much to be said for the hawk as for the chaffinch both were her children and she would show no preferences further on a hedgehog lay dead athwart the path nay more than dead decadent distinctly
+a sorry sight for one that had known the fellow in more bustling circumstances nature might at least have paused to shed one tear over this rough jacketed little son of hers for his wasted aims his cancelled ambitions his whole career of usefulness cut suddenly short but not a bit of it
+jubilant as ever her song went bubbling on and death in life and again life in death were its alternate burdens and looking round and seeing the sheep nibbled heels of turnips that dotted the ground their hearts eaten out of them in frost bound days now over and done
+i seemed to discern faintly a something of the stern meaning in her valorous chant my invisible companion was singing also and seemed at times to be chuckling softly to himself doubtless at thought of the strange new lessons he was teaching me
+perhaps too at a special bit of waggishness he had still in store for when at last he grew weary of such insignificant earthbound company he deserted me at a certain spot i knew then dropped subsided and slunk away into nothingness
+stood the ancient whipping post of the village its sides fretted with the initials of a generation that scorned its mute lesson but still clipped by the stout rusty shackles that had tethered the wrists
+had i been an infant sterne here was a grand chance for sentimental output as things were i could only hurry homewards my moral tail well between my legs with an uneasy feeling as i glanced back over my shoulder that there was more in this chance than met the eye
+harold it further appeared greatly coveting tadpoles and top heavy with the eagerness of possession had fallen into the pond this in itself was nothing but on attempting to sneak in
+by the back door he had rendered up his duckweed bedabbled person into the hands of an aunt and had been promptly sent off to bed and this on a holiday was very much
+knit two together knit three make one knit one make one knit three knit two together knit one make one second row
+seamed making a stitch at the beginning third row make one knit one knit two together knit two make one knit three make one knit two
+knit two together knit two fourth row seamed making one at the beginning fifth row make one knit two knit two together knit one make one
+knit one knit two together knit three sixth row seamed making one at the beginning seventh row make one knit three knit two together
+make one knit seven make one knit two together knit four eighth row seamed making one at the beginning ninth row make one knit five
+make one knit three knit two together knit four make one and knit the remainder tenth row seamed making one at the beginning eleventh row
+make one knit two together knit three make one knit one make one knit three
+knit two together twice
+knit three make one knit one make one knit three knit two together knit remainder twelfth row seamed make one at the beginning
+knit two together twice
+make one knit one knit two together
+knit two together knit one make one knit five make one knit one
+knit those left at the end sixteenth row seamed make one at the beginning seventeenth row make one knit three knit two together make one
+knit seven make one knit two together
+knit two together make one knit seven make one knit two together
+knit those left at the end eighteenth row seamed make one at the beginning nineteenth row make one
+knit three knit two together knit four make one knit two together make one knit three knit two together knit four make one knit the rest
+twentieth row seamed make one at the beginning twenty first row same as eleventh
+i can see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these things would have worn a different aspect but to those whose nearest were aunts and uncles a special attitude of mind may be allowed they treated us indeed with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh
+while there grew up in me as in the parallel case of caliban upon setebos a vague sense of a ruling power wilful and freakish and prone to the practice of vagaries just choosing so
+but only a certain blend of envy of their good luck and pity for their inability to make use of it indeed it was one of the most hopeless features in their character when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them which wasn't often
+they were free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun free to fire cannons and explode mines on the lawn yet they never did any one of these things no irresistible energy haled them to church o sundays
+yet they went there regularly of their own accord though they betrayed no greater delight in the experience than ourselves on the whole the existence of these olympians seemed to be entirely void of interests
+even as their movements were confined and slow and their habits stereotyped and senseless to anything but appearances they were blind
+a place elf haunted wonderful simply produced so many apples and cherries or it didn't when the failures of nature were not infrequently ascribed to us
+though the whole place swarmed with such portents they cared not about exploring for robbers caves nor digging for hidden treasure perhaps indeed it was one of their best qualities that they spent the greater part of their time stuffily indoors
+there was an exception in the curate who would receive unblenching the information that the meadow beyond the orchard was a prairie studded with herds of buffalo which it was our delight moccasined and tomahawked to ride down with those whoops that announce the scenting of blood
+he neither laughed nor sneered as the olympians would have done but possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy he would contribute such lots of valuable suggestion
+then too he was always ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of marauding indians on the shortest possible notice in brief a distinctly able man with talents so far as we could judge immensely above the majority
+i trust he is a bishop by this time he had all the necessary qualifications as we knew these strange folk had visitors sometimes stiff and colourless olympians like themselves equally without vital interests and intelligent pursuits
+emerging out of the clouds and passing away again to drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our ken then brute force was pitilessly applied we were captured washed and forced into clean collars
+silently submitting as was our wont with more contempt than anger anon with unctuous hair and faces stiffened in a conventional grin
+how could reasonable people spend their precious time so
+or to hunt bears among the hazels it was incessant matter for amazement how these olympians would talk over our heads during meals for instance of this or the other social or political inanity
+under the delusion that these pale phantasms of reality were among the importances of life we illuminati eating silently our heads full of plans and conspiracies could have told them what real life was
+we had just left it outside and were all on fire to get back to it of course we didn't waste the revelation on them the futility of imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated one in thought and purpose linked by the necessity of combating one hostile fate
+than the kindly beasts who shared our natural existence in the sun the estrangement was fortified by an abiding sense of injustice
+or admit themselves in the wrong or to accept similar concessions on our part for instance when i flung the cat out of an upper window though i did it from no ill feeling and it didn't hurt the cat
+but was the matter allowed to end there i trow not again when harold was locked up in his room all day for assault and battery upon a neighbour's pig an action he would have scorned being indeed on the friendliest terms with the porker in question
+there was no handsome expression of regret on the discovery of the real culprit what harold had felt was not so much the imprisonment indeed he had very soon escaped by the window with assistance from his allies and had only gone back in time for his release as the olympian habit
+well the olympians are all past and gone somehow the sun does not seem to shine so brightly as it used the trackless meadows of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres
+a saddening doubt a dull suspicion creeps over me et in arcadia ego
+around los angeles the greatest and most characteristic moving picture colonies are being built each photoplay magazine has its california letter telling of the putting up of new studios and the transfer of actors
+with much slap you on the back personal gossip this is the outgrowth of the fact that every type of the photoplay but the intimate is founded on some phase of the out of doors being thus dependent
+the plant can best be set up where there is no winter besides this the los angeles region has the sea the mountains the desert and many kinds of grove and field landscape and architecture are sub tropical
+but for a description of california ask any traveller or study the background of almost any photoplay if the photoplay is the consistent utterance of its scenes if the actors are incarnations of the land they walk upon
+as they should be california indeed stands a chance to achieve through the films an utterance of her own will this land furthest west be the first to capture the inner spirit of this newest and most curious of the arts
+already the california sort in the commercial channels has become the broadly accepted if mediocre national form people who revere the pilgrim fathers of sixteen twenty
+have often wished those gentlemen had moored their bark in the region of los angeles rather than plymouth rock that boston had been founded there at last that landing is achieved
+patriotic art students have discussed with mingled irony and admiration the boston domination of the only american culture of the nineteenth century namely literature indianapolis has had her day since then
+chicago is lifting her head nevertheless boston still controls the text book in english and dominates our high schools ironic feelings in this matter on the part of western men are based somewhat on envy and illegitimate cussedness
+but are also grounded in the honest hope of a healthful rivalry they want new romanticists and artists as indigenous to their soil as was hawthorne to witch haunted salem or longfellow to the chestnuts of his native heath
+whatever may be said of the patriarchs from oliver wendell holmes to amos bronson alcott they were true sons of the new england stone fences and meeting houses they could not have been born or nurtured anywhere else on the face of the earth
+some of us view with a peculiar thrill the prospect that los angeles may become the boston of the photoplay perhaps it would be better to say the florence because california reminds one
+yet there is a difference the present day man in the street man about town californian has an obvious magnificence about him that is allied to the eucalyptus tree the pomegranate california is a gilded state
+it has not the sordidness of gold as has wall street but it is the embodiment of the natural ore that the ragged prospector finds the gold of california is the color of the orange the glitter of dawn in the yosemite
+the hue of the golden gate that opens the sunset way to mystic and terrible cathay and hindustan the enemy of california says the state is magnificent but thin
+he declares it is as though it were painted on a brobdingnagian piece of gilt paper and he who dampens his finger and thrusts it through finds an alkali valley on the other side the lonely prickly pear and a heap of ashes from a deserted camp fire
+he says the citizens of this state lack the richness of an aesthetic and religious tradition he says there is no substitute for time but even these things make for coincidence
+as the shadow it throws upon the screen this newness california has in common with all photoplays it is thrillingly possible for the state and the art to acquire spiritual tradition and depth together
+part of the thinness of california is not only its youth but the result of the physical fact that the human race is there spread over so many acres of land they try not only to count their mines and enumerate their palm trees
+but they count the miles of their sea coast and the acres under cultivation and the height of the peaks and revel in large statistics and the bigness generally and forget how a few men rattle around in a great deal of scenery
+they shout their statistics across the rockies and the deserts to new york the mississippi valley is non existent to the californian his fellow feeling is for the opposite coast line
+through the geographical accident of separation by mountain and desert from the rest of the country he becomes a mere shouter hurrahing so assiduously that all variety in the voice is lost
+they will be a different set of virtues from those of new england there is no more natural place for the scattering of confetti than this state except the moving picture scene itself both have a genius for gardens and dancing and carnival
+when the californian relegates the dramatic to secondary scenes both in his life and his photoplay and turns to the genuinely epic and lyric
+he and this instrument may find their immortality together as new england found its soul in the essays of emerson
+through all four seasons fairy beauty overwhelms the lumbering grand stand players the tiniest garden is a jewelled pathway of wonder but the californian cannot shout
+orange blossoms orange blossoms heliotrope heliotrope he cannot boom forth roseleaves roseleaves so that he does their beauties justice
+here is where the photoplay can begin to give him a more delicate utterance and he can go on into stranger things and evolve all the splendor films into higher types for the very name of california is splendor
+the california photo playwright can base his crowd picture upon the city worshipping mobs of san francisco he can derive his patriotic and religious splendors from something older and more magnificent
+than the aisles of the romanesque namely the groves of the giant redwoods the campaign for a beautiful nation could very well emanate from the west coast where with the slightest care
+grow up models for all the world of plant arrangement and tree luxury our mechanical east is reproved our tension is relaxed our ugliness is challenged every time we look upon those garden paths and forests
+it is possible for los angeles to lay hold of the motion picture as our national text book in art as boston appropriated to herself the guardianship of the national text books of literature
+if california has a shining soul and not merely a golden body let her forget her seventeen year old melodramatics and turn to her poets who understand the heart underneath the glory edwin markham
+the dean of american singers clark ashton smith the young star treader george sterling that son of ancient merlin have in their songs the seeds of better scenarios than california has sent us
+there are two poems by george sterling that i have had in mind for many a day as conceptions that should inspire mystic films akin to them these poems are the night sentries and
+miss northwick called upon annie during the week with excuses for her delay and for coming alone she seemed to have intentions of being polite but she constantly betrayed her want of interest in annie and disappointed an expectation of refinement
+which her physical delicacy awakened she asked her how she ever came to take up the social union and answered for her that of course it had the attraction of the theatricals and went on to talk of her sister's part in them
+the relation of the northwick family to the coming entertainment and an impression of frail mottled wrists and high thin cheeks and an absence of modelling under affluent drapery was the main effect of miss northwick's visit when annie returned it
+she met the younger sister whom she found a great beauty she seemed very cold and of a hauteur which she subdued with difficulty but she was more consecutively polite than her sister and annie watched with fascination her turns of the head
+her movements of leopard swiftness and elasticity the changing lights of her complexion the curves of her fine lips the fluttering of her thin nostrils a very new basket phaeton stood glittering at annie's door when she got home
+and missus wilmington put her head out of the open parlour window how d'ye do annie she drawled in her tender voice won't you come in you see i'm in possession
+i've just got my new phaeton and i drove up at once to crush you with it isn't it a beauty you're too late lyra said annie i've just come from the northwicks and another crushing beauty has got in ahead of your phaeton
+oh poor annie lyra began to laugh with agreeable intelligence do come in and tell me about it why is that girl going to take part in the theatricals she doesn't care to please any one does she
+do you mean it lyra demanded annie arrested on her threshold by the charm of this improbability well i don't know they're opposites but upon second thoughts you needn't come in annie
+i want you to take a drive with me and try my new phaeton said lyra coming out annie now looked at it with that irresolution of hers and lyra commanded get right in
+we'll go down to the works you've never met my husband yet have you annie no i haven't lyra i've always just missed him somehow he seems to have been perpetually just gone to town or not got back well
+he's really at home now and i don't mean at the house which isn't home to him but the works you've never seen the works either have you no i haven't well then
+we'll just go round there and kill two birds with one stone i ought to show off my new phaeton to mister wilmington first of all he gave it to me it would be kind of conjugal or filial or something
+you know mister wilmington and i are not exactly contemporaries annie i heard he was somewhat your senior said annie reluctantly lyra laughed
+they came round into the region of the shops and lyra checked her pony in front of her husband's factory it was not imposingly large but as missus wilmington caused annie to observe it was as big as the hat shops and as ugly as the shoe shops
+the structure trembled with the operation of its industry and as they mounted the wooden steps to the open outside door an inner door swung ajar for a moment and let out a roar mingled of the hum and whirl
+and finding its first apartment empty
+where her husband sat writing at a table george i want to introduce you to miss kilburn
+with the habit he had of touching it there with the tip of his tongue made annie think of a cat that had been at the cream i've been hoping to call with missus wilmington to pay my respects but i've been away a great deal this season and and
+we're all very happy to have you home again miss kilburn i've often heard my wife speak of your old days together at hatboro they fenced with some polite feints of interest in each other the old man standing beside his writing table
+and staying himself with a shaking hand upon it lyra interrupted them well i think now that annie is here we'd better not let her get away without showing her the works oh oh decidedly
+i'll go with you with great pleasure ah he bustled about putting the things together on his table and then reaching for the panama hat on a hook behind it there was something pathetic in his eagerness to do what lyra bade him
+i'll show them through he said to his uncle and the old man assented with well perhaps you'd better jack and went back to his room the wilmington stocking mills spun their own threads
+and the first room was like what annie had seen before in cotton factories with a faint smell of oil from the machinery and a fine snow of fluff in the air and catching to the white washed walls and the foul window sashes
+the tireless machines marched back and forth across the floor and the men who watched them with suicidal intensity ran after them barefooted when they made off with a broken thread spliced it and then escaped from them to their stations again
+they looked after lyra and her nephew from under cotton frowsed bangs they all seemed to know her and returned her easy kindly greetings with an effect of liking
+from time to time at lyra's bidding the young fellow explained to annie some curious feature of the processes
+except when jack wilmington curtly ordered them to do this or that in illustration of some point he was explaining she wearied herself as people do in such places in expressing her wonder at the ingenuity of the machinery
+it was a relief to get away from it all into the room cool and quiet where half a dozen neat girls were counting and stamping the stockings with different numbers here's where i used to work said lyra
+and here's where i first met mister wilmington the place is full of romantic associations the stockings are all one size annie
+i don't well they're not dreams exactly annie when all's said and done for them when they left the mill she asked annie to come home to tea with her saying
+as if from a perception of her dislike for the young fellow that jack was going to boston they had a long evening together after mister wilmington took himself off after tea to his study as he called it
+and remained shut in there annie was uneasily aware of him from time to time but lyra had apparently no more disturbance from his absence than from his presence which she had managed with a frank acceptance of everything it suggested
+she talked freely of her marriage not as if it were like others but for what it was she showed annie over the house and she ended with a display of the rich dresses which he was always buying her and which she never wore because she never went anywhere
+annie said she thought she would at least like to go to the seaside somewhere during the summer but no lyra said it would be too much trouble and you know annie i always did hate trouble
+and i don't want to be poked into a hotel so i stay in hatboro she said that she had always been a village girl and did not miss the interests of a larger life as she caught glimpses of them in south hatboro or want the bother of them
+she said she studied music a little and confessed that she read a good deal novels mostly though the library was handsomely equipped with well bound general literature at moments it all seemed no harm
+at others the luxury in which this life was so contentedly sunk oppressed annie like a thick close air yet she knew that lyra was kind to many of the poor people about her and did a great deal of good as the phrase is
+with the superfluity which it involved no self denial to give from but mister peck had given her a point of view and though she believed she did not agree with him she could not escape from it
+ought to be tacit or explicit in the kissing and embracing between romeo and juliet
+oh then said annie perhaps he accounts for her playing juliet
+oh it's at the rehearsals you know that the fun is
+annie lay awake a long time that night she was sure that she ought not to like lyra if she did not approve of her and that she ought not to have gone home to tea with her and spent the evening with her unless she fully respected her
+oh no i don't care anything about him said missus munger touching her pony with the tip of her whip lash he's an odious little creature and i knew that he would go for the dance and supper because mister peck was opposed to them he's one of the anti peck party in his church
+and that is the reason i spoke to him but i meant the other gentlemen you saw how they took it i saw that they both made fun of it said annie yes that's just the point
+it throws a new light on it and if that's the way nice people are going to look at it why we must give up the idea i'm quite prepared to do so but i want to see missus wilmington first missus munger said annie uneasily
+i would rather not see missus wilmington with you on this subject i should be of no use
+and she laid her arm across annie's lap as if to prevent her jumping out of the phaeton as missus wilmington's old friend you will have the greatest influence with her but i don't know that i wish to influence her in favour of the supper and dance i don't know that i believe in them said annie
+cowed and troubled by the affair that doesn't make the slightest difference said missus munger impartially all you will have to do is to keep still i will put the case to her she checked the pony before the bar which the flagman at the railroad crossing had let down
+while a long freight train clattered deafeningly by and then drove bumping and jouncing across the tracks i suppose you remember what over the track means in hatboro oh yes said annie with a smile social perdition at the least
+yes it isn't so bad as it used to be socially mister wilmington has built a very fine house on this side and there are several pretty queen anne cottages going up they drove along under the elms which here stood somewhat at random about the wide grassless street
+between the high windowy bulks of the shoe shops and hat shops the dust gradually freed itself from the cinders about the tracks and it hardened into a handsome newly made road beyond the houses of the shop hands
+the lawn before it sloped down to the road where it ended smoothly at the brink of a neat stone wall a black asphalt path curved from the steps by which you mounted from the street to the steps by which you mounted to the heavy portico
+before the massive black walnut doors the ladies were shown into the music room from which the notes of a piano were sounding when they rang and missus wilmington rose from the instrument to meet them a young man who had been standing beside her turned away
+missus wilmington was dressed in a light morning dress with a watteau fall whose delicate russets and faded reds and yellows heightened the richness of her complexion and hair why annie she said how glad i am to see you
+and you too missus munger how vurry nice her words took value from the thick mellow tones of her voice and passed for much more than they were worth intrinsically
+we had the furnace lighted yesterday and we've been in all the morning and so we hadn't noticed jack won't you shut the register she drawled over her shoulder this is my nephew mister jack wilmington miss kilburn
+mister wilmington and missus munger are old friends the young fellow bowed silently and annie instantly took a dislike to him his heavy jaw long eyes and low forehead almost hidden under a thick bang he sat down cornerwise on a chair
+and having previously committed missus wilmington in favour of the general scheme asked her what she thought of that part mister jack wilmington answered for her i should think you had a right to do what you please about it it's none of the hands business if you don't choose to ask them
+yes that's what any one would think in the abstract said missus munger now little boy
+putting out a silencing hand in the direction of the young man don't you be so fast you let your aunty speak for herself i don't know about not letting the hands stay to the dance and supper missus munger you know i might feel put upon
+i used to be one of the hands myself yes annie there was a time after you went away and after father died when i actually fell so low as to work for an honest living i think i heard lyra said annie
+but i had forgotten the fact in connection with what had been said made her still more uncomfortable well i didn't work very hard and i didn't have to work long but i was a hand
+and there's no use trying to deny it as mister putney says he and i have our record and we don't have to make any pretences and the question is whether i ought to go back on my fellow hands oh
+but missus wilmington said missus munger with intense deprecation that's such a very different thing you were not brought up to it it was just temporary and besides and besides
+but i don't know annie whether i oughtn't to remember my low beginnings i suppose we all like to be consistent answered annie aimlessly uneasily yes missus munger broke in
+but i guess i must oppose the little invited dance and supper on principle we all like to be consistent as annie says even if we're inconsistent in the attempt she added with a laugh
+very well then exclaimed missus munger we'll drop them as i said to miss kilburn on our way here if missus wilmington is opposed to them we'll drop them oh am i such an
+influential person said missus wilmington with a shrug it's rather awful isn't it annie not at all missus munger answered for annie we've just been talking the matter over with mister putney and doctor morrell
+and they're both opposed you're merely the straw that breaks the camel's back missus wilmington oh thank you that's a great relief
+well i must think about that and i must ask mister wilmington jack she called over her shoulder to the young man at the window do you think your uncle would approve of me as juliet's nurse
+you'd better ask him growled the young fellow well said missus wilmington with another laugh i'll think it over missus munger thank you said missus munger and now we must really be going
+she added pulling out her watch by its leathern guard not till you've had lunch said missus wilmington rising with the ladies you must stay annie i shall not excuse you well
+will you join us jack no i'm going to the office said the nephew bowing himself out of the room jack's learning to be superintendent said missus wilmington lifting her teasing voice to make him hear her in the hall
+and he's been spending the whole morning here in the richly appointed dining room a glitter of china and glass and a mass of carven oak the table was laid for two put another plate norah
+said missus wilmington carelessly
+a fathom deep in sleep i lie with old desires restrained before to clamor lifeward with a cry as dark flies out the greying door and so in quest of creeds to share i seek assertive day again
+but old monotony is there endless avenues of rain oh might i rise again might i throw off the heat of that old wine see the new morning mass the sky with fairy towers line on line
+the air became gray and opalescent a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way then another light then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision under his feet a thick iron studded skylight turned yellow
+in the street the lamps of the taxi cabs sent out glistening sheens along the already black pavement the unwelcome november rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence the night
+the silence of the theatre behind him ended with a curious snapping sound followed by the heavy roaring of a rising crowd and the interlaced clatter of many voices the matinee was over
+he stood aside edged a little into the rain to let the throng pass a small boy rushed out sniffed in the damp fresh air and turned up the collar of his coat came three or four couples in a great hurry
+came a further scattering of people whose eyes as they emerged glanced invariably first at the wet street then at the rain filled air finally at the dismal sky last a dense strolling mass
+that depressed him with its heavy odor compounded of the tobacco smell of the men and the fetid sensuousness of stale powder on women after the thick crowd came another scattering a stray half dozen a man on crutches
+finally the rattling bang of folding seats inside announced that the ushers were at work new york seemed not so much awakening as turning over in its bed pallid men rushed by pinching together their coat collars
+a great swarm of tired magpie girls from a department store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter three to an umbrella a squad of marching policemen passed already miraculously protected by oilskin capes the rain gave amory a feeling of detachment
+and the numerous unpleasant aspects of city life without money occurred to him in threatening procession there was the ghastly stinking crush of the subway the car cards thrusting themselves at one leering out like dull bores who grab your arm with another story
+the querulous worry as to whether some one isn't leaning on you a man deciding not to give his seat to a woman hating her for it the woman hating him for not doing it at worst a squalid phantasmagoria of breath
+at best just people too hot or too cold tired worried he pictured the rooms where these people lived where the patterns of the blistered wall papers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green and yellow backgrounds
+and always there was the economical stuffiness of indoor winter and the long summers nightmares of perspiration between sticky enveloping walls dirty restaurants where careless tired people helped themselves to sugar with their own used coffee spoons
+leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl it was not so bad where there were only men or else only women it was when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten it was some shame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor
+it was some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor it was dirtier than any battle field he had seen
+and danger it was an atmosphere wherein birth and marriage and death were loathsome secret things he remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in a great funeral wreath of fresh flowers
+how the smell of it had suddenly cleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow i detest poor people thought amory suddenly i hate them for being poor poverty may have been beautiful once but it's rotten now
+and saying something to his companion with a look of utter disgust probably thought amory what he said was my god aren't people horrible never before in his life had amory considered poor people
+he thought cynically how completely he was lacking in all human sympathy o henry had found in these people romance pathos love hate amory saw only coarseness physical filth and stupidity he made no self accusations
+never any more did he reproach himself for feelings that were natural and sincere he accepted all his reactions as a part of him unchangeable unmoral this problem of poverty transformed magnified attached to some grander
+more dignified attitude might some day even be his problem at present it roused only his profound distaste he walked over to fifth avenue dodging the blind black menace of umbrellas and standing in front of delmonico's hailed an auto bus
+somewhere in his mind a conversation began rather resumed its place in his attention it was composed not of two voices but of one which acted alike as questioner and answerer question well what's the situation answer
+that i have about twenty four dollars to my name question
+i can't imagine not being able to
+really they are the only things i can do question be definite
+i don't know what i'll do nor have i much curiosity to morrow i'm going to leave new york for good it's a bad town unless you're on top of it question do you want a lot of money a
+no i am merely afraid of being poor question very afraid
+just passively afraid question
+don't ask me question don't you care
+rather i don't want to commit moral suicide question have you no interests left
+none i've no more virtue to lose just as a cooling pot gives off heat so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtue that's what's called ingenuousness question an interesting idea
+that's why a good man going wrong attracts people they stand around and literally warm themselves at the calories of virtue he gives off sarah makes an unsophisticated remark and the faces simper in delight how innocent the poor child is
+they're warming themselves at her virtue but sarah sees the simper and never makes that remark again only she feels a little colder after that question all your calories gone
+all of them i'm beginning to warm myself at other people's virtue question are you corrupt
+i think so i'm not sure i'm not sure about good and evil at all any more question is that a bad sign in itself
+not necessarily question what would be the test of corruption
+becoming really insincere calling myself not such a bad fellow thinking i regretted my lost youth when i only envy the delights of losing it
+they don't they just want the fun of eating it all over again the matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood she wants to repeat her honeymoon
+this dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind's most familiar state a grotesque blending of desires worries exterior impressions and physical reactions one hundred and twenty seventh street or one hundred and thirty seventh street
+two and three look alike no not much seat damp are clothes absorbing wetness from seat or seat absorbing dryness from clothes sitting on wet substance gave appendicitis so froggy parker's mother said well he'd had it
+i'll sue the steamboat company beatrice said and my uncle has a quarter interest did beatrice go to heaven probably not he represented beatrice's immortality also love affairs of numerous dead men who surely had never thought of him
+if it wasn't appendicitis influenza maybe what one hundred and twentieth street
+one o two instead of one two seven rosalind not like beatrice eleanor like beatrice only wilder and brainier apartments along here expensive probably hundred and fifty a month maybe two hundred
+uncle had only paid hundred a month for whole great big house in minneapolis question were the stairs on the left or right as you came in anyway in twelve univee they were straight back and to the left what a dirty river
+want to go down there and see if it's dirty french rivers all brown or black so were southern rivers twenty four dollars meant four hundred and eighty doughnuts he could live on it three months and sleep in the park wonder where jill was jill bayne fayne
+sayne what the devil neck hurts darned uncomfortable seat no desire to sleep with jill what could alec see in her
+own taste the best isabelle clara rosalind eleanor were all american eleanor would pitch probably southpaw rosalind was outfield wonderful hitter clara first base maybe
+wonder what humbird's body looked like now if he himself hadn't been bayonet instructor he'd have gone up to line three months sooner probably been killed where's the darned bell
+danglars signature the next morning dawned dull and cloudy during the night the undertakers had executed their melancholy office and wrapped the corpse in the winding sheet
+which whatever may be said about the equality of death is at least a last proof of the luxury so pleasing in life this winding sheet was nothing more than a beautiful piece of cambric
+he sleeps indeed and this is the more strange since the least contradiction keeps him awake all night
+and they both returned thoughtfully to the procureur's study
+grief does not stun me i have not been in bed for two nights but then look at my desk see what i have written during these two days and nights i have filled those papers and have made out the accusation against the assassin benedetto
+oh work work my passion my joy my delight it is for thee to alleviate my sorrows
+no said villefort only return again at eleven o'clock at twelve the the oh heavens my poor poor child and the procureur again becoming a man lifted up his eyes and groaned
+shall you be present in the reception room no i have a cousin who has undertaken this sad office i shall work doctor
+everything and indeed no sooner had the doctor left the room than he was again absorbed in study
+a personage as insignificant in our story as in the world he occupied one of those beings designed from their birth to make themselves useful to others he was punctual dressed in black with crape around his hat
+and presented himself at his cousin's with a face made up for the occasion and which he could alter as might be required at twelve o'clock the mourning coaches rolled into the paved court
+equally pleased to witness the festivities or the mourning of the rich and who rush with the same avidity to a funeral procession as to the marriage of a duchess gradually the reception room filled
+and some of our old friends made their appearance we mean debray
+accompanied by all the leading men of the day at the bar in literature or the army
+less owing to his social position than to his personal merit the cousin standing at the door ushered in the guests and it was rather a relief to the indifferent to see a person as unmoved as themselves
+and who did not exact a mournful face or force tears as would have been the case with a father a brother or a lover
+one of them was made of debray chateau renaud and beauchamp poor girl said debray like the rest paying an involuntary tribute to the sad event poor girl
+so young so rich so beautiful could you have imagined this scene chateau renaud when we saw her at the most three weeks ago about to sign that contract indeed no said chateau renaud did you know her
+the day with the wife of the worthy gentleman who is receiving us who is he
+the gentleman who receives us is he a deputy oh no i am condemned to witness those gentlemen every day said beauchamp but he is perfectly unknown to me have you mentioned this death in your paper
+it has been mentioned but the article is not mine
+he would have interested himself somewhat more about it still said chateau renaud
+but whom are you seeking debray i am seeking the count of monte cristo said the young man
+his banker danglars is his banker is he not asked chateau renaud of debray i believe so replied the secretary with slight uneasiness but monte cristo is not the only one i miss here i do not see morrel
+still he ought to have been here said debray i wonder what will be talked about to night this funeral is the news of the day but hush here comes our minister of justice
+and advanced to meet him with a sad though affable smile well said he extending his hand to monte cristo
+for indeed misfortune has taken possession of my house when i perceived you i was just asking myself whether i had not wished harm towards those poor morcerfs which would have justified the proverb of
+he who wishes misfortunes to happen to others experiences them himself well on my word of honor i answered no i wished no ill to morcerf he was a little proud perhaps for a man who like myself has risen from nothing
+but we all have our faults do you know count that persons of our time of life not that you belong to the class you are still a young man but as i was saying persons of our time of life have been very unfortunate this year
+for example look at the puritanical procureur who has just lost his daughter and in fact nearly all his family in so singular a manner morcerf dishonored and dead
+and then myself covered with ridicule through the villany of benedetto besides besides what asked the count alas do you not know what new calamity my daughter
+eugenie has left us good heavens what are you telling me the truth my dear count oh how happy you must be in not having either wife or children do you think so indeed i do
+she could not endure the insult offered to us by that wretch so she asked permission to travel and is she gone the other night she left
+no with a relation but still we have quite lost our dear eugenie for i doubt whether her pride will ever allow her to return to france still baron said monte cristo
+family griefs or indeed any other affliction which would crush a man whose child was his only treasure are endurable to a millionaire philosophers may well say and practical men will always support the opinion
+that money mitigates many trials and if you admit the efficacy of this sovereign balm you ought to be very easily consoled you the king of finance the focus of immeasurable power
+as though to ascertain whether he spoke seriously yes he answered if a fortune brings consolation i ought to be consoled i am rich
+if you wished to demolish them you could not and if it were possible you would not dare
+that reminds me he said that when you entered i was on the point of signing five little bonds i have already signed two will you allow me to do the same to the others pray do so
+there was a moment's silence during which the noise of the banker's pen was alone heard while monte cristo examined the gilt mouldings on the ceiling are they spanish haitian
+or neapolitan bonds said monte cristo no said danglars smiling
+stay count he added you who may be called the emperor if i claim the title of king of finance have you many pieces of paper of this size each worth a million
+to the governor of the bank please pay to my order from the fund deposited by me the sum of a million and charge the same to my account baron danglars
+one two three four five said monte cristo five millions why what a croesus you are this is how i transact business said danglars it is really wonderful said the count above all
+it is indeed said danglars it is a fine thing to have such credit really it is only in france these things are done five millions on five little scraps of paper it must be seen to be believed
+no said monte cristo folding the five notes most decidedly not the thing is so curious i will make the experiment myself i am credited on you for six millions i have drawn nine hundred thousand francs
+you therefore still owe me five millions and a hundred thousand francs i will take the five scraps of paper that i now hold as bonds with your signature alone and here is a receipt in full for the six millions between us
+and monte cristo placed the bonds in his pocket with one hand
+if a thunderbolt had fallen at the banker's feet
+what he stammered do you mean to keep that money excuse me excuse me but i owe this money to the charity fund a deposit which i promised to pay this morning oh well then said monte cristo
+pay me in a different form i wished from curiosity to take these that i might be able to say that without any advice or preparation the house of danglars had paid me five millions without a minute's delay it would have been remarkable but here are your bonds pay me differently
+that is being wrested from its grasp suddenly he rallied made a violent effort to restrain himself and then a smile gradually widened the features of his disturbed countenance certainly he said your receipt is money
+oh dear yes and if you were at rome the house of thomson and french would make no more difficulty about paying the money on my receipt than you have just done pardon me count pardon me then i may keep this money yes said danglars
+while the perspiration started from the roots of his hair yes keep it keep it monte cristo replaced the notes in his pocket with that indescribable expression which seemed to say come reflect if you repent there is still time
+no decidedly no keep my signatures but you know none are so formal as bankers in transacting business i intended this money for the charity fund and i seemed to be robbing them if i did not pay them with these precise bonds how absurd
+as if one crown were not as good as another excuse me and he began to laugh loudly but nervously certainly i excuse you said monte cristo graciously and pocket them and he placed the bonds in his pocket book but
+there is still a sum of one hundred thousand francs oh a mere nothing said monte cristo the balance would come to about that sum but keep it and we shall be quits count said danglars are you speaking seriously
+i never joke with bankers said monte cristo in a freezing manner which repelled impertinence
+i think i arrived just in time to obtain your signatures or they would have been disputed with me
+who was standing in the waiting room and who was introduced into danglars room as soon as the count had left the count's sad face was illumined by a faint smile as he noticed the portfolio which the receiver general held in his hand
+at the door he found his carriage and was immediately driven to the bank
+we need not say that a smile of condescension was stamped upon his lips good morning creditor said he for i wager anything it is the creditor who visits me
+the charities present themselves to you through me the widows and orphans depute me to receive alms to the amount of five millions from you
+but did you receive my letter yesterday yes i have brought my receipt
+you did see him i think yes well
+how so the count has an unlimited credit upon me a credit opened by thomson and french of rome he came to demand five millions at once which i paid him with checks on the bank my funds are deposited there and you can understand
+that if i draw out ten millions on the same day it will appear rather strange to the governor two days will be a different thing said danglars smiling come said boville with a tone of entire incredulity five millions to that gentleman who just left
+and who bowed to me as though he knew me
+five millions here is his receipt believe your own eyes
+it is one of the best houses in europe said danglars carelessly throwing down the receipt on his desk and he had five millions in your hands alone why this count of monte cristo must be a nabob indeed i do not know what he is
+he has three unlimited credits one on me one on rothschild one on lafitte and you see he added carelessly he has given me the preference by leaving a balance of one hundred thousand francs
+i must visit him he said and obtain some pious grant from him oh you may make sure of him his charities alone amount to twenty thousand francs a month it is magnificent
+i will set before him the example of madame de morcerf and her son what example they gave all their fortune to the hospitals what fortune their own
+for what reason because they would not spend money so guiltily acquired
+upon the mother retires into the country and the son enters the army well i must confess these are scruples i registered their deed of gift yesterday and how much did they possess oh not much
+from twelve to thirteen hundred thousand francs but to return to our millions
+are you then pressed for this money yes for the examination of our cash takes place to morrow to morrow why did you not tell me so before why it is as good as a century at what hour does the examination take place at two o'clock
+now i think of it you can do better said danglars how do you mean
+take it to rothschild's or lafitte's and they will take it off your hands at once
+certainly it will only cost you a discount of five thousand or six thousand francs the receiver started back ma foi he said i prefer waiting till to morrow what a proposition
+that you had a deficiency to make up indeed said the receiver and if that were the case it would be worth while to make some sacrifice thank you no sir then it will be to morrow yes but without fail
+ah you are laughing at me send to morrow at twelve and the bank shall be notified i will come myself better still since it will afford me the pleasure of seeing you they shook hands
+no said the banker i have appeared rather ridiculous since that affair of benedetto so i remain in the background bah you are wrong how were you to blame in that affair
+listen when one bears an irreproachable name as i do one is rather sensitive
+they are gone to seek a very strict convent in italy or spain
+after expressing acute sympathy with the father
+with an energy of action those can alone understand
+fool then enclosing monte cristo's receipt in a little pocket book he added yes come at twelve o'clock i shall then be far away then he double locked his door emptied all his drawers collected about fifty thousand francs in bank notes
+burned several papers left others exposed to view
+as i gazed upon them i wondered to what secret place within their brooding immensities the little metal mysteries had fled and to what myriads it might be of their kind
+of what powers small like these or or quick on the screen of my mind flashed two pictures side by side
+the little four rayed print in the great dust of the crumbling ruin and its colossal twin on the breast of the poppied valley i turned aside crept through the shattered portal and looked over the haunted hollow unbelieving i rubbed my eyes
+then leaped to the very brim of the bowl a lark had risen from the roof of one of the shattered heaps and had flown caroling up into the shadowy sky a flock of the little willow warblers flung themselves across the valley scolding and gossiping
+a hare sat upright in the middle of the ancient roadway the valley itself lay serenely under the ambering light smiling peaceful emptied of horror
+i dropped over the side walked cautiously down the road up which but an hour or so before we had struggled so desperately paced farther and farther with an increasing confidence and a growing wonder
+gone was that soul of loneliness vanished the whirlpool of despair that had striven to drag us down to death the bowl was nothing but a quiet smiling lovely little hollow in the hills i looked back
+even the ruins had lost their sinister shape were time worn crumbling piles nothing more
+a rifle shot rang out above us another and another from the portal scampered chiu ming his robe tucked up about his knees they come he gasped they come
+down it was pouring an avalanche of men i caught the glint of helmets and corselets those in the van were mounted galloping two abreast upon sure footed mountain ponies their short swords lifted high flickered
+after the horsemen swarmed foot soldiers a forest of shining points and dully gleaming pikes above them clearly to us came their battlecries again ventnor's rifle cracked one of the foremost riders went down another stumbled over him fell
+the rush was checked for an instant milling upon the road dick i cried rush ruth over to the tunnel mouth we'll follow we can hold them there i'll get martin chiu ming after the pony quick i pushed the two over the rim of the hollow
+quick mart i shouted up the shattered stairway we can get through the hollow ruth and drake are on their way to the break we came through hurry all right just a minute he called i heard him empty his magazine with almost machine gun quickness
+all my ammunition is on him chiu ming's taking care of that i gasped we darted out of the gateway a good five hundred yards away were ruth and drake running straight to the green tunnel's mouth between them and us was chiu ming urging on the pony
+as we sped after him i looked back the horsemen had recovered were now a scant half mile from where the road swept past the fortress i saw that with their swords the horsemen bore great bows a little cloud of arrows sparkled from them
+fell far short don't look back grunted ventnor stretch yourself walter there's a surprise coming hope to god i judged the time right we turned off the ruined way
+he reached out touched me you're right walter he grinned it does seem like carrying coals to newcastle
+scattered prone among these were men and horses others staggered screaming on the farther side of this stony dike our pursuers were held like rushing waters behind a sudden fallen tree timed to a second cried ventnor hold em for a while
+and holding ruth by the hand race back toward us even as he turned the vine screened entrance through which we had come through which we had thought lay safety streamed other armored men we were outflanked to the fissure shouted ventnor
+drake heard for he changed his course to the crevice at whose mouth ruth had said the little things had lain after him streaked chiu ming urging on the pony shouting out of the tunnel down over the lip of the bowl leaped the soldiers
+we dropped upon our knees sent shot after shot into them they fell back hesitated we sprang up sped on all too short was the check but once more we held them and again now ruth and dick were a scant fifty yards from the crevice i saw him stop
+push her from him toward it she shook her head now chiu ming was with them ruth sprang to the pony lifted from its back a rifle then into the mass of their pursuers drake and she poured a fusillade they huddled wavered broke for cover
+a chance gasped ventnor behind us was a wolflike yelping the first pack had re formed had crossed the barricade the dynamite had made was rushing upon us i ran as i had never known i could
+over us whined the bullets from the covering guns close were we now to the mouth of the fissure if we could but reach it close close were our pursuers too the arrows closer no use said ventnor
+nature's summoning of every reserve to meet that peril my eyes took them in with photographic nicety the linked mail lacquered blue and scarlet of the horsemen brown padded armor of the footmen
+their bows and javelins and short bronze swords their pikes and shields and under their round helmets their cruel bearded faces white as our own where the black beards did not cover them their fierce and mocking eyes
+in this world of ours twenty centuries beyond their time swiftly accurately even as i scanned them we had been drilling into them they advanced deliberately heedless of their fallen their arrows had ceased to fly
+i wondered why for now we were well within their range
+we've saved ruth anyway he said drake ought to be able to hold that hole in the wall he's got lots of ammunition on the pony but they've got us another wild shouting down swept the pack
+we leaped to our feet sent our last bullets into them stood ready rifles clubbed to meet the rush i heard ruth scream what was the matter with the armored men why had they halted
+what was it at which they were glaring over our heads and why had the rifle fire of ruth and drake ceased so abruptly simultaneously we turned within the black background of the fissure stood a shape an apparition
+a woman beautiful awesome incredible she was tall standing there swathed from chin to feet in clinging veils of pale amber she seemed taller even than tall drake
+yet it was not her height that sent through me the thrill of awe of half incredulous terror which relaxing my grip let my smoking rifle drop to earth nor was it that about her proud head a cloud of shining tresses swirled and pennoned
+like a misty banner of woven copper flames no nor that through her veils her body gleamed faint radiance it was her eyes her great wide eyes whose clear depths were like pools of living star fires
+they shone from her white face not phosphorescent not merely lucent and light reflecting but as though they themselves were sources of the cold white flames of far stars and as calm as those stars themselves
+and in that face although as yet i could distinguish nothing but the eyes i sensed something unearthly god whispered ventnor what is she
+the woman stepped from the crevice not fifty feet from her were ruth and drake and chiu ming their rigid attitudes revealing the same shock of awe that had momentarily paralyzed me she looked at them beckoned them
+i saw the two walk toward her chiu ming hang back the great eyes fell upon ventnor and myself she raised a hand motioned us to approach i turned there stood the host that had poured down the mountain road
+horsemen spearsmen pikemen a full thousand of them at my right were the scattered company that had come from the tunnel entrance threescore or more there seemed a spell upon them
+they stood in silence like automatons only their fiercely staring eyes showing that they were alive quick breathed ventnor we ran toward her who had checked death even while its jaws were closing upon us
+before we had gone half way as though our flight had broken whatever bonds had bound them a clamor arose from the host a wild shouting a clanging of swords on shields i shot a glance behind they were in motion advancing slowly
+hesitatingly as yet but i knew that soon that hesitation would pass that they would sweep down upon us engulf us to the crevice i shouted to drake he paid no heed to me nor did ruth
+their gaze fastened upon the swathed woman ventnor's hand shot out gripped my shoulder halted me she had thrown up her head
+from the lifted throat came a low a vibrant cry harmonious weirdly disquieting golden and sweet and laden with the eery minor wailings of the blue valley's night the dragoned chamber
+before the cry had ceased there poured with incredible swiftness out of the crevice score upon score of the metal things the fissures vomited them
+globes and cubes and pyramids not small like those of the ruins but shapes all of four feet high dully lustrous and deep within that luster the myriads of tiny points of light like unwinking staring eyes
+they swirled eddied and formed a barricade between us and the armored men down upon them poured a shower of arrows from the soldiers i heard the shouts of their captains they rushed they had courage those men yes again came the woman's cry
+up from them thrust a thick rectangular column
+eight feet in width and twenty feet high it shaped itself out from its left side from right side sprang arms fearful arms that grew and grew as globe and cube and angle raced up the column's side and clicked into place each upon each after the other
+with magical quickness the arms lengthened before us stood a monstrous shape a geometric prodigy
+a shining angled pillar that though rigid immobile seemed to crouch be instinct with living force striving to be unleashed two great globes surmounted it
+flexing themselves in grotesque imitation of a boxer
+again in gigantic awful parody of the spiked gloves of those ancient gladiators who fought for imperial nero
+preening testing itself like an athlete
+under the darkening sky in the green of the hollow the armored hosts frozen before it and then it struck out flashed two of the arms with a glancing motion with appalling force
+they sliced into the close packed forward ranks of the armored men cut out of them two great gaps sickened i saw fragments of man and horse fly another arm javelined from its place like a flying snake clicked at the end of another
+became a hundred foot chain which swirled like a flail through the huddling mass down upon a knot of the soldiers with a straight forward blow drove a third arm driving through them like a giant punch
+all that host which had driven us from the ruins threw down sword spear and pike fled shrieking the horsemen spurred their mounts riding heedless over the footmen who fled with them the smiting thing seemed to watch them go
+with amusement before they could cover a hundred yards it had disintegrated i heard the little wailing sounds then behind the fleeing men close behind them rose the angled pillar into place sprang the flexing arms and again it took its toll of them
+they scattered running singly by twos in little groups for the sides of the valley they were like rats scampering in panic over the bottom of a great green bowl and like a monstrous cat the shape played with them yes played
+it melted once more took new form where had been pillar and flailing arms was now a tripod thirty feet high its legs alternate globe and cube and upon its apex a wide and spinning ring of sparkling spheres
+out from the middle of this ring stretched a tentacle writhing undulating like a serpent of steel four score yards at least in length
+with the three long prongs of this trident the thing struck swiftly
+it was i think that last touch of sheer horror the playfulness of the smiting thing that sent my dry tongue to the roof of my terror parched mouth and held open with monstrous fascination eyes that struggled to close
+ever the armored men fled from it and ever was it swifter than they teetering at their heels on its tripod legs from half its length the darting snake streamed red rain i heard a sigh from ruth
+wrested my gaze from the hollow turned she lay fainting in drake's arms beside the two the swathed woman stood looking out upon that slaughter calm and still shrouded with an unearthly tranquillity
+viewing it it came to me with eyes impersonal cold indifferent as the untroubled stars which look down upon hurricane and earthquake in this world of ours there was a rushing of many feet at our left a wail from chiu ming
+were they maddened by fear driven by despair determined to slay before they themselves were slain i do not know but those who still lived of the men from the tunnel mouth were charging us they clustered close their shields held before them
+they had no bows these men they moved swiftly down upon us in silence swords and pikes gleaming the smiting thing rocked toward us the metal tentacle straining out like a rigid racing serpent flying to cut between its weird mistress and those who menaced her
+i heard chiu ming scream saw him throw up his hands cover his eyes run straight upon the pikes chiu ming i shouted chiu ming this way i ran toward him
+i saw a spear thrown it struck the chinaman squarely in the breast he tottered fell upon his knees even as he dropped the giant flail swept down upon the soldiers it swept through them like a scythe through ripe grain
+it threw them broken and torn far toward the valley's sloping sides it left only fragments that bore no semblance to men ventnor was at chiu ming's head i dropped beside him there was a crimson froth upon his lips
+i thought that shin je was about to slay us he whispered fear blinded me his head dropped his body quivered lay still we arose looked about us dazedly
+at the side of the crevice stood the woman her gaze resting upon drake his arms about ruth her head hidden on his breast the valley was empty save for the huddled heaps that dotted it
+high up on the mountain path a score of figures crept all that were left of those who but a little before had streamed down to take us captive or to slay
+high up in the darkening heavens the lammergeiers the winged scavengers of the himalayas were gathering the woman lifted her hand beckoned us once more slowly we walked toward her stood before her
+chapter twenty seven the drums of destiny slowly we descended that mount of desolation lingeringly as though the brooding eyes of norhala were not yet sated with destruction
+of human life of green life of life of any kind there was none
+palace temple and home norhala had stamped flat she had crushed them within the rock even as she had promised the tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty
+now in the painful surges of awakening realization of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation i turned to them for strength faintly i wondered again at ruth's scantiness of garb her more than half nudity
+dwelt curiously upon the red brand across ventnor's forehead
+but in the eyes of ruth was none of this sternly coldly triumphant indifferent to its piteousness as norhala herself she scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of living beauty i felt a shock of repulsion after all
+yet mother and blossoming maid youth and oldster all the pageant of humanity within the great walls were now but lines within the stone according to their different lights it came to me there had been
+from norhala of course i looked for no perception of any of this but from ruth my reaction grew
+there was dried blood on the edges a double ring of swollen white flesh rimming the cincture it was the mark of torture martin i cried that ring what did they do to you they waked me with that he answered quietly
+i suppose i ought to be grateful although their intentions were not exactly therapeutic they tortured him ruth's voice was tense bitter she spoke in persian for norhala's benefit i thought then not guessing a deeper reason
+they tortured him they gave him agony until he returned and they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death and me me she raised little clenched hands
+me they stripped like a slave they led me through the city and the people mocked me
+before my eyes they tortured my brother norhala they were evil all evil norhala you did well to slay them she caught the woman's hands pressed close to her
+norhala gazed at her from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying into which the old tranquillity the old serenity was flowing and when she spoke the golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far away faint chimings it is done she said
+and it was well done sister now you and i shall dwell together in peace sister or if there be those in the world from which you came that you would have slain
+then you and i shall go forth with our companies and stamp them out even as i did these my heart stopped beating for from the depths of ruth's eyes shining shadows were rising wraiths answering norhala's calling
+and as they rose steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning drew closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance had banished
+and at last it was twin sister of norhala who looked upon her from the face of ruth the white arms of the woman encircled her the glorious head bent over her flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls
+sister she whispered little sister these men you shall have as long as it pleases you to do with as you will or if it is your wish they shall go back to their world and i will guard them to its gates
+but you and i little sister will dwell together in the vastnesses in the peace shall it not be so with no faltering with no glance toward us three
+lover brother old friend ruth crept closer to her rested her head upon the virginal royal breasts it shall be so she murmured sister it shall be so norhala i am tired norhala i have seen enough of men
+an ecstasy of tenderness a flame of unearthly rapture trembled over the woman's wondrous face hungrily defiantly she pressed the girl to her the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and caressing
+ruth cried drake and sprang toward them she paid no heed and even as he leaped he was caught whirled back against us wait said ventnor
+there was a curious understanding in his voice a curious sympathy too in the patient untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this weirdly exquisite woman who held her wait exclaimed drake wait hell the damned witch is stealing her away from us
+again he threw himself forward recoiled as though swept back by an invisible arm fell against us and was clasped and held by ventnor and as he struggled the thing we rode halted
+like metal waves back into it rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the city we were lifted between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared it widened into a rift
+it was as though norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory or had set it between us as a barrier wider grew the rift
+save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from ruth as though she stood upon another world higher we rose the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away
+quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall the shadow of those walls fell upon us as one we looked back as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast we found it then the precipices hid it
+silently we streamed through the chasm through the canyon and the tunnel speaking no word drake's eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon norhala ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy we passed between the walls of the further cleft
+stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest there came to us as though from immeasurable distances a faint sustained thrumming like the beating of countless muffled drums the thing that carried us trembled the sound died away
+the thing quieted it began its steady effortless striding through the crowding trees but now with none of that speed with which it had come spurred forward by norhala's awakened hate ventnor stirred
+purged not only by suffering but by it came to me some strange knowledge no use drake he said dreamily
+but this i do know only one way or another can the balance fall and if it be one way then you and we shall have ruth back and if it falls the other way then there will be little need for us to care for man will be done martin what do you mean
+it is the crisis he answered we can do nothing goodwin nothing whatever is to be steps forth now from the womb of destiny again there came that distant rolling louder now again the thing trembled
+is it taps for them the drumming died as i listened fearfully about us was only the swishing the sighing of the falling trees beneath the tread of the thing motionless stood norhala
+and as motionless ruth martin i cried once more a dreadful doubt upon me martin what do you mean whence did they come his voice was clear and calm the eyes beneath
+these creatures that when many still are one that when one still are many whence did they come what are they he looked down upon the cubes that held us their hosts of tiny eyes shone up at him enigmatically
+as though they heard and understood i do not forget he said at least not all do i forget of what i saw during that time when i seemed an atom outside space
+as i told you or think i told you speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that seemed eternities away from me the atom who strove to open them
+revelations i know not what to call them and though each seemed equally real of two of them only one i think can be true and of the third that may some time be true but surely is not yet through the air came a louder drum roll
+in it something ominous something sinister it swelled to a crescendo abruptly ceased and now i saw norhala raise her head listen i saw a world a vast world goodwin marching stately through space
+it was no globe it was a world of many facets of smooth and polished planes
+a geometric thought of the great cause of god if you will made material it was airless waterless sunless
+north and south tribe was giving place to tribe language to language for the indian hopelessly unchanging in respect to individual and social development was as regarded tribal relations and local haunts
+mutable as the wind in canada and the northern section of the united states the elements of change were especially active the indian population which in fifteen thirty five cartier found at montreal and quebec
+had disappeared at the opening of the next century and another race had succeeded in language and customs widely different while in the region now forming the state of new york a power was rising to a ferocious vitality which
+but for the presence of europeans would probably have subjected absorbed or exterminated every other indian community east of the mississippi and north of the ohio the vast tract of wilderness from the mississippi to the atlantic
+and from the carolinas to hudson's bay was divided between two great families of tribes distinguished by a radical difference of language a part of virginia and of pennsylvania new jersey southeastern new york new england
+new brunswick nova scotia and lower canada were occupied so far as occupied at all by tribes speaking various algonquin languages and dialects they extended moreover along the shores of the upper lakes
+westward the eries along the southern shore of lake erie and the neutral nation along its northern shore from niagara
+on the whole these savages were favorable specimens of the algonquin stock belonging to that section of it which tilled the soil and was thus in some measure spared the extremes of misery and degradation
+to which the wandering hunter tribes were often reduced they owed much also to the bounty of the sea and hence they tended towards the coast which before the epidemic champlain and smith had seen at many points studded with wigwams
+and waving with harvests of maize fear too drove them eastward for the iroquois pursued them with an inveterate enmity some paid yearly tribute to their tyrants while others were still subject to their inroads
+flying in terror at the sound of the mohawk war cry westward the population thinned rapidly northward it soon disappeared northern new hampshire the whole of vermont and western massachusetts had no human tenants but the roving hunter
+or prowling warrior we have said that this group of tribes was relatively very populous yet it is more than doubtful whether all of them united had union been possible could have mustered eight thousand fighting men to speak further of them is needless
+and the whole of new brunswick were occupied
+to whom agriculture was unknown though the sea prolific of fish lobsters and seals greatly lightened their miseries
+or micmacs of nova scotia closely resembled them in habits and condition from nova scotia to the saint lawrence there was no population worthy of the name from the gulf of saint lawrence to lake ontario the southern border of the great river
+had no tenants but hunters northward between the saint lawrence and hudson's bay roamed the scattered hordes of the papinachois bersiamites and others included by the french under the general name
+when in spring the french trading ships arrived and anchored in the port of tadoussac they gathered from far and near toiling painfully through the desolation of forests mustering by hundreds at the point of traffic
+and setting up their bark wigwams along the strand of that wild harbor
+their ordinary sustenance was derived from the chase though often goaded by deadly famine they would subsist on roots the bark and buds of trees
+and in extremity even cannibalism was not rare among them ascending the saint lawrence it was seldom that the sight of a human form gave relief to the loneliness
+from the verge of the cliff announced that the savage prologue of the american drama was drawing to a close and that the civilization of europe was advancing on the scene ascending farther all was solitude except at three rivers
+a noted place of trade where a few algonquins of the tribe called atticamegues might possibly be seen
+and as the voyager passed some wooded point or thicket covered island the whistling of a stone headed arrow proclaimed perhaps the presence of these fierce marauders at montreal there was no human life save during a brief space in early summer
+when the shore swarmed with savages who had come to the yearly trade from the great communities of the interior
+to morrow all again was solitude and the ottawa was covered with the canoes of the returning warriors along this stream a main route of traffic the silence of the wilderness was broken only by the splash of the passing paddle
+to the north of the river there was indeed a small algonquin band called la petite nation together with one or two other feeble communities but they dwelt far from the banks through fear of the ubiquitous iroquois
+it was nearly three hundred miles by the windings of the stream before one reached that algonquin tribe
+then after many a day of lonely travel the voyager found a savage welcome among the nipissings on the lake which bears their name and then circling west and south for a hundred and fifty miles of solitude
+he reached for the first time a people speaking a dialect of the iroquois tongue here all was changed populous towns rude fortifications and an extensive though barbarous tillage
+indicated a people far in advance of the famished wanderers of the saguenay or their less abject kindred of new england
+true nervous very very dreadfully nervous i had been and am but why will you say that i am mad the disease had sharpened my senses not destroyed not dulled them
+above all was the sense of hearing acute i heard all things in the heaven
+i heard many things in hell how then am i mad hearken and observe how healthily how calmly i can tell you the whole story it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain but once conceived
+it haunted me day and night object there was none passion there was none i loved the old man he had never wronged me he had never given me insult for his gold i had no desire i think it was his eye
+yes it was this he had the eye of a vulture a pale blue eye with a film over it whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold and so by degrees very gradually
+i made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever now this is the point you fancy me mad madmen know nothing but you should have seen me you should have seen how wisely i proceeded
+with what caution with what foresight with what dissimulation i went to work i was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before i killed him and every night about midnight i turned the latch of his door and opened it
+oh so gently and then when i had made an opening sufficient for my head i put in a dark lantern all closed closed that no light shone out and then i thrust in my head
+oh you would have laughed to see how cunningly i thrust it in i moved it slowly very very slowly so that i might not disturb the old man's sleep it took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening
+so far that i could see him as he lay upon his bed ha would a madman have been so wise as this and then when my head was well in the room i undid the lantern cautiously oh so cautiously
+for it was not the old man who vexed me but his evil eye and every morning when the day broke i went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him calling him by name in a hearty tone and inquiring how he has passed the night
+so you see he would have been a very profound old man indeed to suspect that every night just at twelve i looked in upon him while he slept upon the eighth night i was more than usually cautious in opening the door
+never before that night had i felt the extent of my own powers of my sagacity i could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph to think that there i was opening the door little by little
+and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts i fairly chuckled at the idea and perhaps he heard me for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled now you may think that i drew back but no
+his room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness for the shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers and so i knew that he could not see the opening of the door
+steadily i had my head in and was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening and the old man sprang up in bed crying out who's there i kept quite still and said nothing
+for a whole hour i did not move a muscle and in the meantime i did not hear him lie down he was still sitting up in the bed listening just as i have done night after night hearkening to the death watches in the wall
+presently i heard a slight groan and i knew it was the groan of mortal terror it was not a groan of pain or of grief oh no
+when overcharged with awe i knew the sound well many a night just at midnight when all the world slept
+deepening with its dreadful echo the terrors that distracted me i say i knew it well i knew what the old man felt and pitied him although i chuckled at heart
+when he had turned in the bed his fears had been ever since growing upon him he had been trying to fancy them causeless but could not he had been saying to himself it is nothing but the wind in the chimney
+it is only a mouse crossing the floor or it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp yes he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions but he had found all in vain all in vain because death
+in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim and it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel although he neither saw nor heard to feel the presence of my head within the room
+when i had waited a long time very patiently without hearing him lie down i resolved to open a little a very very little crevice in the lantern so i opened it you cannot imagine how stealthily
+stealthily until at length a simple dim ray like the thread of the spider
+and fell full upon the vulture eye it was open wide wide open and i grew furious as i gazed upon it i saw it with perfect distinctness all a dull blue
+with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones but i could see nothing else of the old man's face or person for i had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot
+and have i not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the sense now i say there came to my ears
+such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton i knew that sound well too it was the beating of the old man's heart it increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage
+but even yet i refrained and kept still i scarcely breathed i held the lantern motionless i tried how steadily i could maintain the ray
+meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased it grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant the old man's terror must have been extreme it grew louder i say louder every moment
+do you mark me well i have told you that i am nervous so i am and now at the dead hour of the night amid the dreadful silence of that old house so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror
+yet for some minutes longer i refrained and stood still but the beating grew louder louder i thought the heart must burst and now a new anxiety seized me the sound would be heard by a neighbour the old man's hour had come
+with a loud yell i threw open the lantern and leaped into the room he shrieked once once only in an instant i dragged him to the floor
+to find the deed so far done but for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound this however did not vex me it would not be heard through the wall at length it ceased the old man was dead
+i removed the bed and examined the corpse yes he was stone stone dead i placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes there was no pulsation he was stone dead his eye would trouble me no more
+if still you think me mad you will think so no longer when i describe the wise precautions i took for the concealment of the body the night waned and i worked hastily but in silence first of all i dismembered the corpse i cut off the head
+and deposited all between the scantlings i then replaced the boards so cleverly so cunningly that no human eye not even his could have detected any thing wrong there was nothing to wash out no stain of any kind
+no blood spot whatever i had been too wary for that a tub had caught all ha ha
+it was four o'clock still dark as midnight as the bell sounded the hour there came a knocking at the street door i went down to open it with a light heart for what had i now to fear there entered three men who introduced themselves
+with perfect suavity as officers of the police a shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night suspicion of foul play had been aroused information had been lodged at the police office and they the officers
+had been deputed to search the premises i smiled for what had i to fear i bade the gentlemen welcome the shriek i said was my own in a dream the old man i mentioned was absent in the country
+i took my visitors all over the house i bade them search search well i led them at length to his chamber i showed them his treasures secure undisturbed in the enthusiasm of my confidence
+placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim the officers were satisfied my manner had convinced them i was singularly at ease they sat and while i answered cheerily
+they chatted of familiar things but ere long i felt myself getting pale and wished them gone my head ached and i fancied a ringing in my ears but still they sat and still chatted the ringing became more distinct it continued
+and became more distinct i talked more freely to get rid of the feeling but it continued and gained definiteness until at length i found that the noise was not within my ears no doubt i now grew very pale but i talked more fluently
+and with a heightened voice yet the sound increased and what could i do it was a low dull quick sound much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton i gasped for breath and yet the officers heard it not
+i talked more quickly more vehemently but the noise steadily increased i arose and argued about trifles in a high key and with violent gesticulations but the noise steadily increased why would they not be gone
+i paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides as if excited to fury by the observations of the men but the noise steadily increased oh god what could i do i foamed i raved i swore
+i swung the chair upon which i had been sitting and grated it upon the boards but the noise arose over all and continually increased it grew louder louder louder and still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled
+was it possible they heard not almighty god no no they heard they suspected they knew they were making a mockery of my horror this i thought and this i think
+but anything was better than this agony anything was more tolerable than this derision i could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer i felt that i must scream or die and now again hark louder louder
+fit for drink a country without a fit drink for cheese has no cheese fit for drink greece was the first country to prove its epicurean fitness according to the old saying above for it had wine to tipple
+and sheep's milk cheese to nibble the classical greek cheese has always been feta and no doubt this was the kind
+for her lovers she put further sweetness and body into the stirrup cup by stirring honey and barley meal into it today we might whip this up in an electric mixer to toast her memory
+cheese is on the house at all wine sales for prospective customers to snack upon and thus bring out the full flavor of the cellared vintages but professional wine tasters are forbidden any cheese between sips
+they may clear their palates with plain bread but nary a crumb of roquefort or cube of gruyere in working hours lest it give the wine a spurious nobility and speaking of roquefort
+heavenly marriages are made in burgundy between red and white wines of both cotes
+and de baune and burgundian cheeses such as
+and port salut seem to be made for each other as do chateau margaux
+such notables as sainte maure
+vendome and the loire wines vouvray
+and anjou gruyere mates with chablis
+and any dry red wine most commonly claret is a fit drink for the hundreds of other fine french cheeses every country has such happy marriages an italian standard being provolone and chianti
+then there is a most unusual pair french neufchatel cheese and swiss neuchatel wine from just across the border switzerland also has another cheese favorite at home
+grape cheese named from the neuchatel wine in which it is aged
+is also uniquely suited to the company of any good wine because it is made in the exact shape and size of a wine barrel bung a similar relation is found in brinzas
+that are packed in miniature wine barrels strongly suggesting what should be drunk with such excellent cheeses hungarian tokay other foreign cheeses go to market wrapped in vine leaves the affinity has clearly been laid down in heaven
+only the english seem to have a fortissimo taste in the go with wines according to these matches registered by andre simon in the art of good living red cheshire with light tawny port white cheshire
+with oloroso sherry blue leicester with old vintage port green roquefort with new vintage port to these we might add brittle chips
+with nips of amontillado for an eloquent appetizer the english also pour port into stilton and sundry other wines and liquors into cheddars and such this doctoring leads to fraudulent imitation however
+for either port or stout is put into counterfeit cheshire cheese to make up for the richness it lacks while some combinations of cheeses and wines may turn out palatable we prefer taking ours straight when something more fiery is needed
+de danzig and nibble on legitimate danzig cheese unadulterated goldwasser
+was a favorite liqueur of cheese loving franklin roosevelt and we can be sure he took the two separately another perfect combination if you can take it
+with any caraway seeded cheese or cream cheese with a handy saucer of caraway seeds in the section of france devoted to gin the juniper berries that flavor the drink also go into a local cheese fromage fort
+this is also true of our native jersey lightning and hard cider with their accompanying new york state cheese
+farmers also drink homemade cider
+the english sip pear cider perry with almost any british cheese milk would seem to be redundant but sage cheese and buttermilk do go well together
+would have formed his christian empire in the wilderness but one by one these kindred peoples were uprooted and swept away while the neighboring algonquins to whom they had been a bulwark were involved with them in a common ruin
+from whose conversion it was vain to look for the same solid and decisive results in a measure the occupation of the jesuits was gone some of them went home well resolved writes the father superior
+about twenty in number several soon fell victims to famine
+the guns and tomahawks of the iroquois were the ruin of their hopes could they have curbed or converted those ferocious bands it is little less than certain
+savages tamed not civilized for that was scarcely possible would have been distributed in communities through the valleys of the great lakes and the mississippi ruled by priests in the interest of catholicity and of france
+unmolested by indian enemies and fed by a rich commerce she would have put forth a vigorous growth true to her far reaching and adventurous genius she would have occupied the west with traders settlers and garrisons
+while as yet the colonies of england were but a weak and broken line along the shore of the atlantic and when at last the great conflict came england and liberty would have been confronted
+not by a depleted antagonist still feeble from the exhaustion of a starved and persecuted infancy but by an athletic champion of the principles of richelieu and of loyola liberty may thank the iroquois that by their insensate fury
+and a peril and a woe averted from her future they ruined the trade which was the life blood of new france they stopped the current of her arteries and made all her early years a misery and a terror not that they changed her destinies
+the contest on this continent between liberty and absolutism was never doubtful but the triumph of the one would have been dearly bought and the downfall of the other incomplete
+populations formed in the ideas and habits of a feudal monarchy and controlled by a hierarchy profoundly hostile to freedom of thought would have remained a hindrance and a stumbling block in the way of that majestic experiment
+of which america is the field the jesuits saw their hopes struck down and their faith though not shaken was sorely tried the providence of god seemed in their eyes dark and inexplicable but from the stand point of liberty
+that providence is clear as the sun at noon meanwhile let those who have prevailed yield due honor to the defeated their virtues shine amidst the rubbish of error like diamonds and gold in the gravel of the torrent
+but now new scenes succeed and other actors enter on the stage a hardy and valiant band moulded to endure and dare
+the identity of the final victim
+as an excuse i talked over cases with him but he seldom volunteered an opinion often was obviously uninterested truth to tell i was not there for his opinion but to see his granddaughter a detective in love sounds something like an absurdity
+but such was my case and since zena's manner did not suggest that she was particularly interested in me my love affair seemed rather a hopeless one my association with christopher quarles has however
+led to the solution of some strange mysteries and since my own achievements are sufficiently well known i may confine myself to those cases which single handed i should have failed to solve i know that in many of them i was credited with having unraveled the mystery
+but this was only because professor quarles persisted in remaining in the background if i did the spade work the deductions were his they were all cases with peculiar features in them
+he was often as astonished at my acumen in following a clew as i was at his marvelous theories
+perhaps his curious power was never more noticeable than in the case of the withan murder a farmer returning from medworth the neighboring market town one night in january
+by evening the clouds had gone the moon sailed in a clear sky and looking round to find the cause of his horse's unusual behavior the farmer saw a man lying on a heap of snow under the opposite hedge he was dead more he was headless
+it was not until some days later that the case came into my hands and in the interval the local authorities had not been idle it was noted that the man was poorly dressed that his hands proved he was used to manual labor but there was no mark either on his body or on his clothing
+nor any papers in his pockets to lead to his identification so far as could be ascertained
+and apparently no struggle had taken place footprints nearly obliterated
+soon after the storm began and that snow had hidden the murderer's tracks from the wood that snow had drifted on to the dead body seemed to establish this theory
+and would be found buried in the wood it was not found however and the countryside was in a state bordering on panic for a few days the withan murder seemed unique in atrocities and then came a communication from the french police
+some two years ago an almost identical murder had been committed outside a village in normandy in this case also the head was missing and nothing had been found upon the body to identify the victim he was well dressed and a man who would be likely to carry papers with him but nothing was found
+and the murder had remained a mystery these were the points known and conjectured when the case came into my hands and my investigations added little to them one point however impressed me i felt convinced that the man's clothes which were shown to me had not been made in england
+they were poor worn almost threadbare but they had once been fairly good and the cut was not english that it was french i could not possibly affirm but it might be and so i fashioned a fragile link with the normandy crime
+on this occasion i went to quarles with the object of interesting him in the withan case and he forestalled me by beginning to talk about it the moment i entered the room here i may mention a fact which i had not discovered at first
+whenever he was interested in a case i was always taken into his empty room at other times we were in the dining room or the drawing room it was the empty room on this occasion and zena remained with us
+the foreign cut of the clothes may be of importance he said i am not sure is this wood you mention of any great extent no it runs beside the road for two or three hundred yards toward withan no it was near the withan end of it that the dead man was found
+any traces that the head was carried to the wood the local authorities say yes and not a trace afterward the ground in the wood was searched at the time and i have been over it carefully since through one part of the wood there runs a ditch
+which is continued as a division between two fields which form part of the farm land behind the wood by walking along this the murderer might have left the wood without leaving tracks behind him a good point wigan and where would that ditch lead him eventually to the high road
+which runs almost at right angles to the withan road much water in the ditch asked quarles half a foot when i went there
+there was a moon that night wasn't there full or near it i returned and how soon was the alarm raised along the countryside
+and after going to the village the farmer returned to medworth for the police
+said zena and if he were met on the road carrying a bag he would arrest attention why carrying a bag asked quarles with the head in it she answered that's another good point wigan chuckled quarles of course
+the head may be buried in the wood said zena quarles looked at me inquiringly
+one or two doubtful places i had dug up i think the murderer must have taken the head with him to bury somewhere else asked quarles
+a mad doctor bent on brain experiments is that your theory wigan
+january the seventeenth nearly the same date as the english one said zena two years intervening i returned
+at that date said quarles you have a theory professor an outlandish one which would make you laugh no no i do not like being laughed at i never mention my theories until i have some facts to support them
+i took the trouble to make inquiry whether any similar crime had happened in england in the january of the preceding year and had the same inquiry made in france there was no record of any murder bearing the slightest resemblance to the withan tragedy
+a few days later quarles telegraphed me to meet him at kings cross and we traveled north together wait he said when i began to question him i am not sure yet my theory seems absurd we are going to find out if it is
+we took rooms at a hotel in medworth quarles explaining that our investigations might take some days next morning instead of going to withan as i had expected he took me to the police court
+the next afternoon he arranged a drive i thought we were going to withan but we turned away from the village and presently quarles stopped the carriage
+five or six miles the road winds a lot it's a deal nearer as the crow flies you need not wait for us driver my friend and i are going to walk back the coachman pocketed his money and drove away couldn't keep him waiting all night as we may have to do
+said quarles mind you wigan i'm very doubtful about my theory at least i am not certain that i shall find the facts i want a few hours will settle it one way or the other after walking along the road for about a mile
+quarles scrambled through a hedge into a wood by the roadside
+should we meet anyone blame me say i am a doddering old fool who would walk under the trees
+do you go armed always i answered i do sometimes he said tapping his pocket we might come up against danger if my theory is correct if i tell you to shoot shoot and quickly
+your life is likely to depend upon it and keep your ears open to make sure no one is following us he had become keen like a dog on the trail and old as he was seemed incapable of fatigue
+whether he had studied the topography of the neighborhood i cannot say but he did not hesitate in his direction until he reached a high knoll which was clear of the wood and commanded a considerable view we were trespassers in a private park
+to our right was a large house only partially seen through its screen of trees but it was evidently mellow with age to our left toward what was evidently the extremity of the park was hilly ground which had been allowed to run wild
+to this quarles pointed that is our way he said we'll use what cover we can we plunged into the wood again and were soon in the wilderness forcing our way sometimes with considerable difficulty through the undergrowth
+once or twice the professor gave me a warning gesture but he did not speak he had evidently some definite goal and i was conscious of excitement as i followed him for an hour or more he turned this way and that exploring every little ravine he could discover
+grunting his disappointment each time he failed to find what he was looking for i said i wasn't certain he whispered when our path had led us into a damp hollow which looked as if it had not been visited by man for centuries my theory seems
+and yet this is such a likely place there must be a way he was going forward again the hollow was surrounded by perpendicular walls of sand and chalk it was a pit in fact which nature had filled with vegetation the way we had come seemed the only way into it
+ah this looks promising quarles said suddenly in a corner of the wall or to be more precise filling up a rent in it was a shed roughly built but with a door secured by a very business like lock i think the shed is climbable
+said quarles let's get on the roof i am not so young as i was so help me up it was not much help he wanted in a few moments we were on the roof as i thought he said
+we'll go carefully said quarles there may be worse than poachers traps here without help from me he dropped from the roof and i followed him the natural passage was winding and about fifty yards long and opened into another pit of some size
+a pit i call it but it was as much a cave as a pit part of it running deeply into the earth and only about a third of it being open to the sky the cave part had a rough sandy floor and here was a long shed of peculiar construction
+the back part being closed in the roof was thatched with bark and dried bracken and against one end of the veranda was a notched tree trunk serving as a ladder as i expected said quarles with some excitement we must get onto the veranda for a moment
+i think we are alone here but keep your ears open the shed was evidently used sometimes there was a stone slab which had served as a fireplace and from a beam above hung a short chain on which a pot could easily be fixed we'll get away quickly said quarles
+when in about thirty hours time the professor's sense of direction was marvelous
+i daresay one would be allowed to see over the house
+he was always as secret as the grave until he had proved his theory and then he seemed anxious to forget the whole affair and shrank from publicity
+we go there again this evening he said after lunch next day so a restful afternoon will suit us it was getting dark when we set out and again quarles's unerring sense of locality astonished me he led the way without hesitation
+i think we are first but great care is necessary he whispered we crept forward and concealed ourselves among the scrub vegetation which grew in that part of the pit which was open to the sky it was dark the long shed barely discernible
+but the professor was particular about our position we may have to creep a little nearer presently he whispered from here we can do so silence wigan and don't be astonished at anything the waiting seemed long moonlight was presently above us
+throwing the cave part of the pit into greater shadow than ever i cannot attempt to say how long we had waited in utter silence when quarles touched my arm someone was coming and with no particular stealth
+i heard footsteps on the raised floor of the shed a man's step and only one man's i heard him moving about for some time i think he came down the ladder once and went up again
+then there was a light and sudden tiny flames in the dark he had evidently got fuel and had started a fire on the stone slab as the flames brightened i watched his restless figure he was not a young man
+he was short thick set and quick in his movements
+when he got down again i saw that a bundle was suspended over the fire
+only the smoke curled about it then the man moved the wooden block to the side of the fire and sat down facing us the flickering flames throwing a red glow over him wigan do you see whispered quarles not clearly we'll go nearer carefully
+from our new point of view i looked again the man's face was familiar but just then i could not remember who he was it was the bundle hanging over the fire which fascinated me tied together and secured in a network of string
+were five or six human heads blackened shriveled faces which seemed to grin horribly as they swung deeply from side to side lit up by the flicker of the flames do you see wigan quarles asked again yes
+and the man who is he on the bench yesterday sir henry buckingham
+for an hour two three i don't know how long that horrible bundle swung over the fire and the man sat on his block of wood staring straight before him
+and i waited expecting some further revelation listening for other footsteps none came the fire flickered lower and went out the moon had set and the cold of the early morning got into my bones
+in the darkness before the dawn the man moved about the shed again and presently i heard him go patience whispered quarles as i started up to go after him he will not run away
+my dear wigan he said when at last he condescended to talk it was zena who first set me on the right road when she remarked that a man who had walked in a ditch carrying a bag would arrest attention two points were suggested first
+that the man might not have far to go to reach a place of safety secondly that he had come prepared to take a head away with him a mere speculation you may say
+why should a head be required what kind of man would be likely to want a head
+i sought for some peculiarity in his manner and found none yet his history coincided with my theory you know nothing about him i suppose nothing rather an interesting career but with an hereditary taint in it quarles went on
+his mother was eccentric her husband was rich enough to have her looked after at home had she been a poorer person she would have died in a madhouse religious mania hers was and her son has inherited it in a curious fashion
+how have you learnt all this he is important enough to have some of his doings chronicled and he wrote some interesting articles for a country gentlemen's newspaper about his normandy tour nature studies and such like another point both these murders happened at the time of the full moon
+i am not absolutely sure but i think you will find that for the last half dozen years sir henry has not been in england in january you think i think there would have been other heads missing if he had been quarles answered
+he was sane enough to be somewhere where he was not known when this time of the year came round at the full moon he is always queer witness last night but he is only dangerous in january dangerous i mean without provocation
+to preserve his secret i have little doubt he would go to any length that is why i warned you to be ready to shoot when we went upon our journey of discovery now this year he was in england illness had kept him to his house yonder
+and the insane desire proved irresistible he was cunning too he must know everybody in the neighborhood yet the man he killed was unknown we shall find presently i have no doubt that the victim was some wanderer returning unexpectedly to friends in withan
+sir henry waiting in the wood perhaps for hours may have allowed others to pass before this man came he realized that he was a stranger and attacked him but the head
+was among those hanging over the fire sir henry was for many years in borneo wigan and for a large part of the time was up country helping to put down the head hunting which still existed there and still does exist according to all accounts when the natives think they can escape detection
+the horrible custom proved too much for his diseased brain and fascinated him you see how my theory grew then i looked for the actual proof which we found last night
+the arrest of sir henry buckingham caused an enormous sensation he was subsequently put into a lunatic asylum where he died not many months afterward fortunately he had no children to run the risk of madness in their turn
+however obscure a mystery may be there is always some point or circumstance which if rightly interpreted will lead to its solution even in those crimes which have never been elucidated this point exists only it has never been duly appreciated
+for which the detective first looks and since few crimes if any are committed without some definite reason it is most frequently found in the motive his almost superhuman power of recognizing this key clew was the foundation of christopher quarles's success
+and his solution of the mysterious burglaries which caused such speculation for a time was not the least of his achievements sir joseph maynard the eminent physician of harley street had given a small dinner party one evening the guests left early
+and soon after midnight the household had retired neither sir joseph nor lady maynard nor any of the servants were disturbed during the night but next morning it was found that burglars had entered they had got in by a passage window at the back
+not a very difficult matter and had evidently gone to the dining room and helped themselves to spirits from a tantalus which was on the sideboard three glasses with a little of the liquor left in them were on the table and near them were some biscuit crumbs
+there were several silver articles on the sideboard but these had not been touched the burglars appeared to have given all their attention to sir joseph's room which was in a state of confusion two cupboards and every drawer had been turned out and the contents thrown about in all directions
+but of an old fashioned type presenting little difficulty to experts in it besides papers and about seventy pounds in gold in a canvas bag
+presentations which had been made to him and some unique specimens of the queen anne period all this silver was upon the floor also the bag of money intact
+it looked as if the box had been knocked down and trodden on by mistake for the counters were in a little heap close to the broken fragments it appeared that the burglars must have been disturbed and had made off without securing their booty
+this was the obvious explanation but it did not satisfy me i questioned sir joseph about his papers had he any document which for private or public reasons someone might be anxious to obtain he said he had not
+was inclined to laugh at my question and proceeded to inform me that he had no family skeleton
+had never been in touch with any mysterious society
+but there were certain points against this idea no one had moved about the house during the night
+the silver on the floor was scattered
+and it looked as if it had been thrown aside carelessly as though it were not what the thieves were in search of and surely had they left in a hurry the bag of money would have been taken
+moreover the cigarette ends and the dirty glasses suggested a certain leisurely method of going to work and men of this kind would not be easily frightened the cigarette ends puzzled me they were of a cheap american brand
+had not been taken from sir joseph's box which contained only turkish ones and although they had apparently been thrown down carelessly there was no ash upon the carpet nor anywhere else
+if my idea were correct it would mean that they had been put there on purpose to mislead i examined the three glasses on the dining room table there was the stain of lips at the rim of one but not of the other two only one had been drunk out of
+and probably a little of the liquid had been emptied out of this into the other two on inquiry one of the servants told me that only a very little of the spirit had been taken she also said there was only one biscuit left in the box last night and it was there now
+by doing so i certainly saved one valuable life possibly more than one that he was interested was shown by our adjournment to the empty room
+he said i think there was only one burglar but for some reason he thought it important that it should be believed there were more a very important point and a reasonable conclusion i fancy said quarles if you are right it narrows the sphere of inquiry
+narrows it very much taken with the other facts of the case exactly i answered there is a suggestion to my mind of amateurishness in the affair i grant the safe was not a difficult one to break open but it had not been done in a very expert manner
+the cigarette ends the dirty glasses and the biscuit crumbs seem to me rather gratuitous deceptions and wait said quarles you assume a little too much they would have deceived nine men out of ten you happen to be the tenth man
+amateur or not we have to deal with a very smart man so don't underestimate the enemy wigan assuming this to be the work of an amateur to what definite point does it lead you to this question i replied did sir joseph maynard burgle his own house
+why should you think so his manner was curious then there is only his own statement that nothing has been taken but supposing he wished to get rid of papers or
+would he not have robbed himself of something to make the affair more plausible said quarles the amateur constantly overlooks the obvious i answered the professor shook his head
+i think that would entirely depend on the man's temperament professor
+sir joseph's standing is very high sudden temptation or necessity may subvert the highest character i answered
+when i questioned sir joseph about his papers his manner seemed curious as i have said he at once declared that he had no part in any government secret or mysterious society gratuitous information you understand
+not in answer to any direct question of mine showing that the ideas were in his mind why the explanation would be simple if he were the burglar of his own papers
+i admit the argument is sound wigan but it does not creep into my brain with any compelling influence there is a link missing in the chain somewhere and he looked at zena his often repeated statement that she helped him by her questions had never impressed me very greatly
+when a mystery was cleared up it was easy to say that zena had put him on the right road and i considered it a whim of his more than anything else
+it was so now you do not seem interested in the broken box of counters she said turning toward her grandfather i wonder wigan is that the clew quarles said quickly it creeps into my brain the counters were in a heap i said
+asked quarles no that would have scattered them more they were round and might have fallen over after having been put one upon another as one gathers coppers together when counting a number of them sir joseph picked them up
+did that strike you as significant asked quarles i cannot say it did
+they are significant wigan but i cannot see yet in which direction they lead us we must wait for the moment there is nothing to be done i had become so accustomed to quarles jumping to some sudden conclusion that i was disappointed
+naturally i was not idle during the next few days but at the end of them i had learnt nothing then the unexpected happened on consecutive nights two doctors houses were burgled the first was in kensington
+rather than intended robbery nothing had been stolen but everything in his room was in disorder and a small and unique inlaid cabinet with a secret spring lock had been smashed to pieces several cigarette ends were on the floor
+he had several cabinets in his room containing specimens and everything had been turned on to the floor and damaged more or less in fact although nothing had been taken the damage was considerable on the night of the burglary doctor wood was away from home
+only servants being in the house the cook suffering from faceache had been restless all night but had heard nothing
+for a revolver loaded in every chamber was found on one of the cabinets apparently having put it ready for use he had forgotten to take it away the doctor was furious at the wanton destruction of his specimens
+the unexpected has happened i said no no the expected
+i've read every report but tell me yourself every detail i did so the same brand of cigarettes he asked no but all cheap american ones
+you still think that nothing has happened
+no i hold to the one man theory and you are right he snapped i admit i might not have got upon the right track had you not made that discovery it was clever wigan it did not seem to help you to a theory i answered true
+much depended upon the answer if he had
+if the thief had not found what he wanted he would continue his search i argued for some reason he connected sir joseph maynard with the object of his search
+in the course of ten days i recovered sufficiently from my injuries to attend school where for a little while i was looked upon as a hero on account of having been blown up what don't we make a hero of
+the distraction which prevailed in the classes the week preceding the fourth had subsided and nothing remained to indicate the recent festivities excepting a noticeable want of eyebrows on the part of pepper whitcomb and myself
+in august we had two weeks vacation it was about this time that i became a member of the rivermouth centipedes a secret society composed of twelve of the temple grammar school boys
+this was an honor to which i had long aspired but being a new boy i was not admitted to the fraternity until my character had fully developed itself it was a very select society the object of which i never fathomed
+though i was an active member of the body during the remainder of my residence at rivermouth and at one time held the onerous position of f c first centipede each of the elect wore a copper cent
+some occult association being established between a cent apiece and a centipedes suspended by a string round his neck the medals were worn next the skin and it was while bathing one day at grave point with jack harris and fred langdon
+that i had my curiosity roused to the highest pitch by a sight of these singular emblems as soon as i ascertained the existence of a boys club of course i was ready to die to join it and eventually i was allowed to join
+the initiation ceremony took place in fred langdon's barn where i was submitted to a series of trials not calculated to soothe the nerves of a timorous boy before being led to the grotto of enchantment
+such was the modest title given to the loft over my friend's wood house my hands were securely pinioned and my eyes covered with a thick silk handkerchief at the head of the stairs i was told in an unrecognizable husky voice
+if i felt myself physically too weak to undergo the necessary tortures i replied that i was not too weak in a tone which i intended to be resolute but which in spite of me seemed to come from the pit of my stomach it is well
+a prolonged silence followed this preliminary examination and i was wondering what would come next
+the unknown voice then directed me to take ten steps forward and stop at the word halt i took ten steps and halted stricken mortal said a second husky voice more husky if possible than the first
+if you had advanced another inch you would have disappeared down an abyss three thousand feet deep i naturally shrunk back at this friendly piece of information a prick from some two pronged instrument evidently a pitchfork
+gently checked my retreat i was then conducted to the brink of several other precipices and ordered to step over many dangerous chasms where the result would have been instant death if i had committed the least mistake
+i have neglected to say that my movements were accompanied by dismal groans from different parts of the grotto finally i was led up a steep plank to what appeared to me an incalculable height
+a second pistol shot was heard the something i stood on sunk with a crash beneath my feet and i fell two miles as nearly as i could compute it at the same instant the handkerchief was whisked from my eyes and i found myself standing in an empty hogshead
+surrounded by twelve masked figures fantastically dressed one of the conspirators was really appalling with a tin sauce pan on his head and a tiger skin sleigh robe thrown over his shoulders i scarcely need say
+that there were no vestiges to be seen of the fearful gulfs over which i had passed so cautiously my ascent had been to the top of the hogshead and my descent to the bottom thereof holding one another by the hand and chanting a low dirge
+the mystic twelve revolved about me this concluded the ceremony with a merry shout the boys threw off their masks and i was declared a regularly installed member of the r m c
+i afterwards had a good deal of sport out of the club for these initiations as you may imagine were sometimes very comical spectacles especially when the aspirant for centipedal honors happened to be of a timid disposition
+if he showed the slightest terror he was certain to be tricked unmercifully one of our subsequent devices a humble invention of my own was to request the blindfolded candidate to put out his tongue whereupon the first centipede would say
+in a low tone as if not intended for the ear of the victim diabolus fetch me the red hot iron the expedition with which that tongue would disappear was simply ridiculous
+our meetings were held in various barns at no stated periods but as circumstances suggested any member had a right to call a meeting each boy who failed to report himself was fined one cent
+whenever a member had reasons for thinking that another member would be unable to attend he called a meeting for instance immediately on learning the death of harry blake's great grandfather i issued a call
+by these simple and ingenious measures we kept our treasury in a flourishing condition sometimes having on hand as much as a dollar and a quarter i have said that the society had no special object it is true there was a tacit understanding among us
+that the centipedes were to stand by one another on all occasions though i don't remember that they did but further than this we had no purpose unless it was to accomplish as a body the same amount of mischief which we were sure to do as individuals
+to mystify the staid and slow going rivermouthians was our frequent pleasure several of our pranks won us such a reputation among the townsfolk that we were credited with having a large finger in whatever went amiss in the place one morning
+about a week after my admission into the secret order the quiet citizens awoke to find that the signboards of all the principal streets had changed places during the night people who went trustfully to sleep in currant square opened their eyes in honeysuckle terrace
+jones's avenue at the north end had suddenly become walnut street and peanut street was nowhere to be found confusion reigned the town authorities took the matter in hand without delay
+and six of the temple grammar school boys were summoned to appear before justice clapbam having tearfully disclaimed to my grandfather all knowledge of the transaction i disappeared from the family circle and was not apprehended until late in the afternoon
+when the captain dragged me ignominiously from the haymow and conducted me more dead than alive to the office of justice clapham here i encountered five other pallid culprits who had been fished out of divers coal bins garrets and chicken coops
+to answer the demands of the outraged laws charley marden had hidden himself in a pile of gravel behind his father's house and looked like a recently exhumed mummy there was not the least evidence against us and indeed we were wholly innocent of the offence
+the trick as was afterwards proved had been played by a party of soldiers stationed at the fort in the harbor we were indebted for our arrest to master conway who had slyly dropped a hint within the hearing of selectman mudge to the effect that
+young bailey and his five cronies could tell something about them signs when he was called upon to make good his assertion he was considerably more terrified than the centipedes though they were ready to sink into their shoes at our next meeting
+it was unanimously resolved that conway's animosity should not be quietly submitted to he had sought to inform against us in the stagecoach business he had volunteered to carry pettingil's little bill for twenty four icecreams to charley marden's father
+and now he had caused us to be arraigned before justice clapham on a charge equally groundless and painful after much noisy discussion a plan of retaliation was agreed upon
+there was a certain slim mild apothecary in the town by the name of meeks it was generally given out that mister meeks had a vague desire to get married but being a shy and timorous youth lacked the moral courage to do so
+it was also well known that the widow conway had not buried her heart with the late lamented as to her shyness that was not so clear indeed her attentions to mister meeks whose mother she might have been
+were of a nature not to be misunderstood and were not misunderstood by anyone but mister meeks himself the widow carried on a dress making establishment at her residence on the corner opposite meeks's drug store
+casting destructive glances across the street the artificial roses in her cap and her whole languishing manner saying as plainly as a label on a prescription to be taken immediately but mister meeks didn't take
+the lady's fondness and the gentleman's blindness were topics ably handled at every sewing circle in the town it was through these two luckless individuals that we proposed to strike a blow at the common enemy
+to kill less than three birds with one stone did not suit our sanguinary purpose we disliked the widow not so much for her sentimentality as for being the mother of bill conway we disliked mister meeks not because he was insipid
+like his own syrups but because the widow loved him bill conway we hated for himself late one dark saturday night in september we carried our plan into effect
+on the following morning as the orderly citizens wended their way to church past the widow's abode their sober faces relaxed at beholding over her front door the well known gilt mortar and pestle which usually stood on the top of a pole on the opposite corner
+was recognized at once it spread like wildfire over the town and though the mortar and the placard were speedily removed our triumph was complete the whole community was on the broad grin and our participation in the affair seemingly unsuspected
+chapter ten i fight conway there was one person however who cherished a strong suspicion that the centipedes had had a hand in the business and that person was conway
+his red hair seemed to change to a livelier red and his sallow cheeks to a deeper sallow as we glanced at him stealthily over the tops of our slates the next day in school he knew we were watching him and made sundry mouths
+and scowled in the most threatening way over his sums conway had an accomplishment peculiarly his own that of throwing his thumbs out of joint at will sometimes while absorbed in study or on becoming nervous at recitation
+he performed the feat unconsciously throughout this entire morning his thumbs were observed to be in a chronic state of dislocation indicating great mental agitation on the part of the owner we fully expected an outbreak from him at recess
+but the intermission passed off tranquilly somewhat to our disappointment at the close of the afternoon session it happened that binny wallace and myself having got swamped in our latin exercise
+were detained in school for the purpose of refreshing our memories with a page of mister andrews's perplexing irregular verbs binny wallace finishing his task first was dismissed i followed shortly after
+and on stepping into the playground saw my little friend plastered as it were up against the fence and conway standing in front of him ready to deliver a blow on the upturned unprotected face whose gentleness would have stayed any arm but a coward's
+but on seeing me sweep across the yard whirling my strap of books in the air like a sling he called out lustily lay low conway here's young bailey conway turned just in time to catch on his shoulder the blow intended for his head
+he reached forward one of his long arms he had arms like a windmill that boy and grasping me by the hair tore out quite a respectable handful the tears flew to my eyes
+but they were not the tears of defeat they were merely the involuntary tribute which nature paid to the departed tresses in a second my little jacket lay on the ground and i stood on guard resting lightly on my right leg
+and keeping my eye fixed steadily on conway's in all of which i was faithfully following the instructions of phil adams whose father subscribed to a sporting journal conway also threw himself into a defensive attitude
+and there we were glaring at each other motionless neither of us disposed to risk an attack but both on the alert to resist one there is no telling how long we might have remained in that absurd position had we not been interrupted
+it was a custom with the larger pupils to return to the playground after school and play baseball until sundown the town authorities had prohibited ball playing on the square and there being no other available place
+the boys fell back perforce on the school yard just at this crisis a dozen or so of the templars entered the gate and seeing at a glance the belligerent status of conway and myself dropped bat and ball and rushed to the spot where we stood
+is it a fight asked phil adams who saw by our freshness that we had not yet got to work yes it's a fight i answered unless conway will ask wallace's pardon promise never to hector me in future
+and put back my hair this last condition was rather a staggerer i sha'n't do nothing of the sort said conway sulkily then the thing must go on said adams with dignity
+rodgers as i understand it is your second conway bailey come here what's the row about he was thrashing binny wallace no i wasn't interrupted conway
+but i was going to because he knows who put meeks's mortar over our door and i know well enough who did it it was that sneaking little mulatter pointing at me o by george i cried reddening at the insult
+cool is the word said adams as he bound a handkerchief round my head and carefully tucked away the long straggling locks that offered a tempting advantage to the enemy who ever heard of a fellow with such a head of hair going into action
+muttered phil twitching the handkerchief to ascertain if it were securely tied he then loosened my gallowses braces and buckled them tightly above my hips now then bantam never say die
+conway regarded these business like preparations with evident misgiving for he called rodgers to his side and had himself arrayed in a similar manner though his hair was cropped so close that you couldn't have taken hold of it with a pair of tweezers
+is your man ready asked phil adams addressing rodgers ready keep your back to the gate tom
+and you'll have the sun in his eyes behold us once more face to face like david and the philistine look at us as long as you may for this is all you shall see of the combat
+according to my thinking the hospital teaches a better lesson than the battle field i will tell you about my black eye and my swollen lip if you will but not a word of the fight
+you'll get no description of it from me simply because i think it would prove very poor reading and not because i consider my revolt against conway's tyranny unjustifiable i had borne conway's persecutions for many months with lamb like patience
+i might have shielded myself by appealing to mister grimshaw but no boy in the temple grammar school could do that without losing caste whether this was just or not doesn't matter a pin since it was so a traditionary law of the place
+the personal inconvenience i suffered from my tormentor was nothing to the pain he inflicted on me indirectly by his persistent cruelty to little binny wallace i should have lacked the spirit of a hen if i had not resented it finally
+i am glad that i faced conway and asked no favors and got rid of him forever i am glad that phil adams taught me to box and i say to all youngsters learn to box to ride to pull an oar and to swim
+the occasion may come round when a decent proficiency in one or the rest of these accomplishments will be of service to you in one of the best books
+ever written for boys are these words learn to box then as you learn to play cricket and football not one of you will be the worse but very much the better for learning to box well
+that you have to say yes or no to a challenge to fight say no if you can only take care you make it plain to yourself why you say no it's a proof of the highest courage if done from true christian motives
+it's quite right and justifiable if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger but don't say no because you fear a licking and say or think it's because you fear god for that's neither christian nor honest and if you do fight
+fight it out and don't give in while you can stand and see and don't give in when you can't see for i could stand very little and see not at all having pommelled the school pump for the last twenty seconds
+when conway retired from the field as phil adams stepped up to shake hands with me he received a telling blow in the stomach for all the fight was not out of me yet and i mistook him for a new adversary
+convinced of my error i accepted his congratulations with those of the other boys blandly and blindly i remember that binny wallace wanted to give me his silver pencil case
+the gentle soul had stood throughout the contest with his face turned to the fence suffering untold agony
+escorted by two or three of the schoolfellows i walked home through the pleasant autumn twilight battered but triumphant as i went along my cap cocked on one side to keep the chilly air from my eye
+i felt that i was not only following my nose but following it so closely that i was in some danger of treading on it i seemed to have nose enough for the whole party my left cheek also was puffed out like a dumpling
+i couldn't help saying to myself if this is victory how about that other fellow tom said harry blake hesitating well
+did you see mister grimshaw looking out of the recitation room window just as we left the yard no was he though i am sure of it
+shouldn't wonder no he didn't broke in adams or he would have stopped it short metre
+well it can't be helped now i reflected as the monkey said when he fell out of the cocoanut tree added charley marden trying to make me laugh it was early candle light when we reached the house
+miss abigail opening the front door started back at my hilarious appearance i tried to smile upon her sweetly but the smile rippling over my swollen cheek and dying away like a spent wave on my nose
+produced an expression of which miss abigail declared she had never seen the like excepting on the face of a chinese idol she hustled me unceremoniously into the presence of my grandfather in the sitting room
+captain nutter as the recognized professional warrior of our family could not consistently take me to task for fighting conway nor was he disposed to do so
+for the captain was well aware of the long continued provocation i had endured ah you rascal cried the old gentleman after hearing my story just like me when i was young always in one kind of trouble or another
+i believe it runs in the family i think said miss abigail without the faintest expression on her countenance that a table spoonful of hot dro the captain interrupted miss abigail peremptorily
+directing her to make a shade out of cardboard and black silk to tie over my eye miss abigail must have been possessed with the idea that i had taken up pugilism as a profession for she turned out no fewer than six of these blinders
+they'll be handy to have in the house says miss abigail grimly of course so great a breach of discipline was not to be passed over by mister grimshaw
+he had as we suspected witnessed the closing scene of the fight from the school room window and the next morning after prayers i was not wholly unprepared when master conway and myself were called up to the desk for examination
+as the reader is already familiar with the leading points in the case of bailey versus conway i shall not report the trial further than to say that adams marden and several other pupils testified to the fact
+that conway had imposed on me ever since my first day at the temple school their evidence also went to show that conway was a quarrelsome character generally bad for conway seth rodgers on the part of his friend
+proved that i had struck the first blow that was bad for me if you please sir said binny wallace holding up his hand for permission to speak bailey didn't fight on his own account he fought on my account and if you please sir
+i am the boy to be blamed for i was the cause of the trouble this drew out the story of conway's harsh treatment of the smaller boys as binny related the wrongs of his playfellows saying very little of his own grievances
+i noticed that mister grimshaw's hand unknown to himself perhaps rested lightly from time to time on wallace's sunny hair the examination finished mister grimshaw leaned on the desk thoughtfully for a moment and then said
+every boy in this school knows that it is against the rules to fight if one boy maltreats another within school bounds or within school hours that is a matter for me to settle the case should be laid before me
+i disapprove of tale bearing i never encourage it in the slightest degree but when one pupil systematically persecutes a schoolmate it is the duty of some head boy to inform me no pupil has a right to take the law into his own hands
+if there is any fighting to be done i am the person to be consulted i disapprove of boys fighting it is unnecessary and unchristian in the present instance i consider every large boy in this school at fault
+but as the offence is one of omission rather than commission my punishment must rest only on the two boys convicted of misdemeanor conway loses his recess for a month and bailey has a page added to his latin lessons for the next four recitations
+i now request bailey and conway to shake hands in the presence of the school and acknowledge their regret at what has occurred conway and i approached each other slowly and cautiously as if we were bent upon another hostile collision
+we clasped hands in the tamest manner imaginable and conway mumbled i'm sorry i fought with you i think you are i replied drily and i'm sorry i had to thrash you
+you can go to your seats said mister grimshaw turning his face aside to hide a smile i am sure my apology was a very good one i never had any more trouble with conway
+he and his shadow seth rodgers gave me a wide berth for many months nor was binny wallace subjected to further molestation miss abigail's sanitary stores including a bottle of opodeldoc were never called into requisition
+kletke once upon a time there were three princesses who were all three young and beautiful but the youngest although she was not fairer than the other two was the most loveable of them all
+about half a mile from the palace in which they lived there stood a castle which was uninhabited and almost a ruin but the garden which surrounded it was a mass of blooming flowers
+and in this garden the youngest princess used often to walk one day when she was pacing to and fro under the lime trees a black crow hopped out of a rose bush in front of her
+the poor beast was all torn and bleeding and the kind little princess was quite unhappy about it when the crow saw this it turned to her and said i am not really a black crow
+but an enchanted prince who has been doomed to spend his youth in misery if you only liked princess you could save me but you would have to say good bye to all your own people
+and come and be my constant companion in this ruined castle there is one habitable room in it in which there is a golden bed there you will have to live all by yourself
+and don't forget that whatever you may see or hear in the night you must not scream out for if you give as much as a single cry my sufferings will be doubled
+the good natured princess at once left her home and her family and hurried to the ruined castle and took possession of the room with the golden bed
+when night approached she lay down but though she shut her eyes tight sleep would not come at midnight she heard to her great horror some one coming along the passage and in a minute
+her door was flung wide open and a troop of strange beings entered the room they at once proceeded to light a fire in the huge fireplace then they placed a great cauldron of boiling water on it
+when they had done this they approached the bed on which the trembling girl lay and screaming and yelling all the time they dragged her towards the cauldron she nearly died with fright
+but she never uttered a sound then of a sudden the cock crew and all the evil spirits vanished at the same moment the crow appeared and hopped all round the room with joy
+it thanked the princess most heartily for her goodness and said that its sufferings had already been greatly lessened now one of the princess's elder sisters who was very inquisitive
+that at last the good natured little princess consented but at midnight when the odd folk appeared the elder sister screamed with terror and from this time on the youngest princess
+insisted always on keeping watch alone so she lived in solitude all the daytime and at night she would have been frightened had she not been so brave but every day
+the crow came and thanked her for her endurance and assured her that his sufferings were far less than they had been and so two years passed away when one day the crow came to the princess and said
+in another year i shall be freed from the spell i am under at present because then the seven years will be over but before i can resume my natural form
+and take possession of the belongings of my forefathers you must go out into the world and take service as a maidservant the young princess consented at once and for a whole year
+and had worked her little white hands weary she heard a rustling beside her and a cry of joy then she saw a handsome youth standing beside her who knelt down at her feet
+and kissed the little weary white hands i am the prince he said who you in your goodness when i was wandering about in the shape of a black crow freed from the most awful torments
+come now to my castle with me and let us live there happily together so they went to the castle where they had both endured so much
+it was difficult to believe that it was the same for it had all been rebuilt and done up again
+kletke there was once upon a time a man and woman who had three fine looking sons but they were so poor that they had hardly enough food for themselves let alone their children
+of her and their father the three set forth on their travels the youngest of the three brothers whose name was ferko was a beautiful youth with a splendid figure blue eyes fair hair
+and a complexion like milk and roses his two brothers were as jealous of him as they could be for they thought that with his good looks he would be sure to be more fortunate than they would ever be
+for the sun was hot and they were tired of walking ferko fell fast asleep but the other two remained awake and the eldest said to the second brother what do you say to doing our brother ferko some harm
+he is so beautiful that everyone takes a fancy to him which is more than they do to us if we could only get him out of the way we might succeed better i quite agree with you answered the second brother
+and my advice is to eat up his loaf of bread and then to refuse to give him a bit of ours until he has promised to let us put out his eyes or break his legs his eldest brother was delighted with this proposal
+and the two wicked wretches seized ferko's loaf and ate it all up while the poor boy was still asleep when he did awake he felt very hungry and turned to eat his bread but his brothers cried out
+you ate your loaf in your sleep you glutton and you may starve as long as you like but you won't get a scrap of ours ferko was at a loss to understand how he could have eaten in his sleep but he said nothing
+and fasted all that day and the next night but on the following morning he was so hungry that he burst into tears and implored his brothers to give him a little bit of their bread
+and break one of your legs then we will give you a bit of our bread at these words poor ferko wept more bitterly than before and bore the torments of hunger till the sun was high in the heavens
+then he could stand it no longer and he consented to allow his left eye to be put out and his left leg to be broken when this was done he stretched out his hand eagerly for the piece of bread
+but his brothers gave him such a tiny scrap that the starving youth finished it in a moment and besought them for a second bit but the more ferko wept and told his brothers that he was dying of hunger
+the more they laughed and scolded him for his greed so he endured the pangs of starvation all that day but when night came his endurance gave way and he let his right eye be put out
+and his right leg broken for a second piece of bread after his brothers had thus successfully maimed and disfigured him for life they left him groaning on the ground and continued their journey without him
+poor ferko ate up the scrap of bread they had left him and wept bitterly but no one heard him or came to his help night came on and the poor blind youth had no eyes to close
+and could only crawl along the ground not knowing in the least where he was going but when the sun was once more high in the heavens ferko felt the blazing heat scorch him
+and sought for some cool shady place to rest his aching limbs he climbed to the top of a hill and lay down in the grass and as he thought under the shadow of a big tree
+is there anything the least wonderful or remarkable about this neighbourhood i should just think there was replied the other many things that don't exist anywhere else in the world
+there is a lake down there below us and anyone who bathes in it though he were at death's door becomes sound and well on the spot and those who wash their eyes with the dew on this hill
+become as sharp sighted as the eagle even if they have been blind from their youth well answered the first raven my eyes are in no want of this healing bath for heaven be praised
+they are as good as ever they were but my wing has been very feeble and weak ever since it was shot by an arrow many years ago so let us fly at once to the lake that i may be restored to health and strength again
+and so they flew away their words rejoiced ferko's heart and he waited impatiently till evening should come and he could rub the precious dew on his sightless eyes
+at last it began to grow dusk and the sun sank behind the mountains gradually it became cooler on the hill and the grass grew wet with dew then ferko buried his face in the ground
+till his eyes were damp with dewdrops and in a moment he saw clearer than he had ever done in his life before the moon was shining brightly and lighted him to the lake where he could bathe his poor broken legs
+then ferko crawled to the edge of the lake and dipped his limbs in the water no sooner had he done so
+he had not gone far before he met a wolf who was limping disconsolately along on three legs and who on perceiving ferko began to howl dismally my good friend said the youth
+be of good cheer for i can soon heal your leg and with these words he poured some of the precious water over the wolf's paw and in a minute the animal was springing about sound and well on all fours
+the grateful creature thanked his benefactor warmly and promised ferko to do him a good turn if he should ever need it ferko continued his way till he came to a ploughed field
+here he noticed a little mouse creeping wearily along on its hind paws for its front paws had both been broken in a trap ferko felt so sorry for the little beast
+that he spoke to it in the most friendly manner and washed its small paws with the healing water in a moment the mouse was sound and whole and after thanking the kind physician it scampered away over the ploughed furrows
+ferko again proceeded on his journey but he hadn't gone far before a queen bee flew against him trailing one wing behind her which had been cruelly torn in two by a big bird
+ferko was no less willing to help her than he had been to help the wolf and the mouse so he poured some healing drops over the wounded wing on the spot the queen bee was cured and turning to ferko she said
+i am most grateful for your kindness and shall reward you some day and with these words she flew away humming gaily then ferko wandered on for many a long day
+and at length reached a strange kingdom here he thought to himself he might as well go straight to the palace and offer his services to the king of the country for he had heard that the king's daughter
+they had managed to obtain places in the king's service and when they recognised ferko with his eyes and legs sound and well they were frightened to death for they feared he would tell the king of their conduct
+for she had never seen anyone so handsome in her life before his brothers noticed this and envy and jealousy were added to their fear so much so that they determined once more to destroy him
+they went to the king and told him that ferko was a wicked magician who had come to the palace with the intention of carrying off the princess then the king had ferko brought before him and said
+you are accused of being a magician who wishes to rob me of my daughter and i condemn you to death but if you can fulfil three tasks which i shall set you to do your life shall be spared
+on condition you leave the country but if you cannot perform what i demand you shall be hung on the nearest tree and turning to the two wicked brothers he said suggest something for him to do
+no matter how difficult he must succeed in it or die they did not think long but replied let him build your majesty in one day a more beautiful palace than this and if he fails in the attempt
+let him be hung the king was pleased with this proposal and commanded ferko to set to work on the following day the two brothers were delighted for they thought they had now got rid of ferko for ever
+as he was wandering disconsolately about the meadows round the palace wondering how he could escape being put to death a little bee flew past and settling on his shoulder whispered in his ear
+what is troubling you my kind benefactor can i be of any help to you i am the bee whose wing you healed
+a palace shall be built unlike any that king has dwelt in before just stay here till i come again and tell you that it is finished having said this she flew merrily away and ferko
+be of good cheer and lead the king to the hill just outside the city walls and humming gaily she flew away again ferko went at once to the king and told him the palace was finished
+the whole court went out to see the wonder and their astonishment was great at the sight which met their eyes a splendid palace reared itself on the hill just outside the walls of the city made of the most exquisite flowers
+with sunflowers for knockers and all round hyacinths and other sweet smelling flowers bloomed in masses so that the air was perfumed far and near and enchanted all who were present
+this splendid palace had been built by the grateful queen bee who had summoned all the other bees in the kingdom to help her the king's amazement knew no bounds and the princess's eyes beamed with delight
+on the delighted ferko but the two brothers had grown quite green with envy and only declared the more that ferko was nothing but a wicked magician
+the king although he had been surprised and astonished at the way his commands had been carried out was very vexed
+and turning to the two brothers he said he has certainly accomplished the first task with the aid no doubt of his diabolical magic but what shall we give him to do now
+let us make it as difficult as possible and if he fails he shall die then the eldest brother replied the corn has all been cut but it has not yet been put into barns
+let the knave collect all the grain in the kingdom into one big heap before to morrow night and if as much as a stalk of corn is left let him be put to death
+the princess grew white with terror when she heard these words but ferko felt much more cheerful than he had done the first time and wandered out into the meadows again
+but he could think of no way of escape the sun sank to rest and night came on when a little mouse started out of the grass at ferko's feet and said to him i'm delighted to see you
+my kind benefactor but why are you looking so sad can i be of any help to you and thus repay your great kindness to me then ferko recognised the mouse whose front paws he had healed and replied
+before to morrow night all the grain in the kingdom has to be gathered into one big heap and if as much as a stalk of corn is wanting i must pay for it with my life is that all answered the mouse
+that needn't distress you much just trust in me and before the sun sets again you shall hear that your task is done and with these words the little creature scampered away into the fields
+ferko who never doubted that the mouse would be as good as its word lay down comforted on the soft grass and slept soundly till next morning the day passed slowly
+and the whole court went out to see the wonder
+for in a heap higher than the king's palace lay all the grain of the country and not a single stalk of corn had been left behind in any of the fields and how had all this been done
+the little mouse had summoned every other mouse in the land to its help and together they had collected all the grain in the kingdom the king could not hide his amazement but at the same time his wrath increased
+and he was more ready than ever to believe the two brothers who kept on repeating
+than a wicked magician only the beautiful princess rejoiced over ferko's success and looked on him with friendly glances which the youth returned the more the cruel king gazed on the wonder before him
+the more angry he became for he could not in the face of his promise put the stranger to death he turned once more to the two brothers and said his diabolical magic has helped him again
+but now what third task shall we set him to do no matter how impossible it is he must do it or die the eldest answered quickly let him drive all the wolves of the kingdom on to this hill
+before to morrow night if he does this he may go free if not he shall be hung as you have said at these words the princess burst into tears
+and when the king saw this he ordered her to be shut up in a high tower and carefully guarded till the dangerous magician should either have left the kingdom or been hung on the nearest tree ferko wandered out into the fields again
+and sat down on the stump of a tree wondering what he should do next suddenly a big wolf ran up to him and standing still said i'm very glad to see you again my kind benefactor
+what are you thinking about all alone by yourself if i can help you in any way only say the word for i would like to give you a proof of my gratitude ferko at once recognised the wolf
+whose broken leg he had healed and told him what he had to do the following day if he wished to escape with his life but how in the world he added am i to collect all the wolves of the kingdom on to that hill over there
+if that's all you want done answered the wolf you needn't worry yourself i'll undertake the task and you'll hear from me again before sunset to morrow
+and with these words he trotted quickly away then the youth rejoiced greatly for now he felt that his life was safe but he grew very sad when he thought of the beautiful princess
+and that he would never see her again if he left the country he lay down once more on the grass and soon fell fast asleep all the next day he spent wandering about the fields
+then return at once to me and get on my back and i will help you to drive all the wolves together then ferko went straight to the palace and told the king that he was ready to perform the third task if he would come to the hill and see it done
+ferko himself returned to the fields and mounting on the wolf's back he rode to the wood close by quick as lightning the wolf flew round the wood and in a minute many hundred wolves rose up before him
+increasing in number every moment till they could be counted by thousands he drove them all before him on to the hill where the king and his whole court and ferko's two brothers were standing only the lovely princess was not present
+for she was shut up in her tower weeping bitterly the wicked brothers stamped and foamed with rage when they saw the failure of their wicked designs but the king was overcome by a sudden terror
+when he saw the enormous pack of wolves approaching nearer and nearer and calling out to ferko he said enough enough we don't want any more but the wolf on whose back ferko sat said to its rider
+go on go on and at the same moment many more wolves ran up the hill howling horribly and showing their white teeth the king in his terror called out stop a moment i will give you half my kingdom
+if you will drive all the wolves away but ferko pretended not to hear and drove some more thousands before him so that everyone quaked with horror and fear then the king raised his voice again and called out
+stop you shall have my whole kingdom if you will only drive these wolves back to the places they came from but the wolf kept on encouraging ferko and said go on go on so he led the wolves on
+till at last they fell on the king and on the wicked brothers and ate them and the whole court up in a moment then ferko went straight to the palace and set the princess free and on the same day
+he married her and was crowned king of the country and the wolves all went peacefully back to their own homes and ferko and his bride lived for many years in peace and happiness together
+the pond my friend aldenham's pond stands at a convenient distance from the house and is reached by a well drained gravel path so that in any weather one may walk
+alone or in company dry shod to its brink and estimate roughly how many inches of rain have fallen in the night the ribald call it the hippopotamus pond tracing
+a resemblance between it and the bath of the hippopotamus at the zoo beneath the waters of which if you particularly desire to point the hippopotamus out to somebody he always lies hidden to the rest of us
+it is known simply as the pond a designation which ignores the existence of several neighbouring ponds the gifts of nature and gives the whole credit to the handiwork of man
+for the pond is just a small artificial affair of cement entirely unpretentious there are seven steps to the bottom of the pond and each step
+thus the steps help to make the pond a convenient rain gauge for obviously when only three steps are left uncovered as was the case last monday
+when the pond began to fill to strangers this may seem surprising and it is only fair to tell them the great secret which is that much of the surrounding land
+drains secretly into the pond too this seems to me to give a much fairer indication of the rain that has fallen than do the official figures in the newspapers
+for when your whole day's cricket has been spoilt it is perfectly absurd
+has done the damage the soul yearns for something more startling than that the record of the pond
+soothes us where the record of the ordinary pedantic rain gauge would leave us infuriated it speaks much for my friend aldenham's breadth of view that he understood this
+and planned the pond accordingly a most necessary thing in a country house is that there should be a recognized meeting place
+where the people who have been writing a few letters after breakfast may when they have finished meet those who have no intention of writing any and arrange plans with them for the morning
+i am one of those who cannot write letters in another man's house and when my pipe is well alight i say to miss robinson or whoever it may be let's go and look at the pond
+right oh she says willingly enough having spent the last quarter of an hour with the times financial supplement all of the paper that is left to the women in the first rush for the cricket news
+we wander down to the pond together and perhaps find brown and miss smith there a lot of rain in the night says brown it was only just over the third step after lunch yesterday
+we have a little argument about it miss robinson being convinced that she stood on the second step after breakfast and miss smith repeating that it looks
+by and by two or three others stroll up and we all make measurements together the general opinion is that there has been a lot of rain in the night
+must be a record but anyhow it is fairly fine now and what about a little lawn tennis or golf or croquet or and so the arrangements for the morning are made
+and they can be made more readily out of doors for supposing it is fine the fresh air calls you to be doing something and the sight of the newly marked tennis lawn
+fills you with thoughts of revenge for your accidental defeat the evening before but indoors it is so easy to drop into a sofa after breakfast and once there with all the papers
+to be disinclined to leave it till lunch time a man or woman as lazy as this must not be rushed say to such a one come and play and the invitation
+will be declined say come and look at the pond and the worst sluggard will not refuse such gentle exercise and once he is out he is out
+all this for those delightful summer days when there are fine intervals but consider the advantages of the pond when the rain streams down in torrents
+from morning till night how tired we get of being indoors on these days even with the best of books the pleasantest of companions the easiest of billiard tables
+yet if our hostess were to see us marching out with an umbrella how odd she would think us where are you off to she would ask and we could only answer lamely
+er i was just going to er walk about a bit but now we tell her brightly i'm going to see the pond it must be nearly full won't you come too and with any luck she comes
+to these streaming days to reflect that it all goes to fill the pond for there is ever before our minds that great moment in the future when the pond is at last full
+what will happen then aldenham may know but we his guests do not some think there will be merely a flood over the surrounding paths and the kitchen garden but for myself
+i believe that we are promised something much bigger than that a man with such a broad and friendly outlook towards rain gauges will be sure to arrange something striking when the great moment arrives
+will help to celebrate it i have no doubt with an open air play tank drama or what not at any rate we have every hope that he will empty the pond as speedily as possible
+so that we may watch it fill again i must say that he has been a little lucky in his choice of a year for inaugurating the pond but all the same
+have fallen in the last three weeks
+a household book once on a time i discovered samuel butler not the other two but the one who wrote the way of all flesh the second best novel in the english language
+i say the second best so that if you remind me of tom jones or the mayor of casterbridge or any other that you fancy i can say that of course that one is the best
+well i discovered him just as voltaire discovered habakkuk or your little boy discovered shakespeare the other day and i committed my discovery to the world
+in two glowing articles not unnaturally the world remained unmoved it knew all about samuel butler last week i discovered a frenchman
+who wrote in the early part of last century a book called
+my uncle benjamin i read it in the translation eager as i am to be lyrical about it i shall refrain i think that i am probably safer with tillier than with butler
+but i dare not risk it the thought of your scorn at my previous ignorance of the world famous tillier your amused contempt because i have only just succeeded
+in borrowing the classic upon which you were brought up this is too much for me let us say no more about it
+who has not heard of claude tillier
+who has not read it in french or as i did in american let us pass on to another book for i am going to speak of another discovery
+of a book which should be a classic but is not of a book of which nobody has heard unless through me it was published some twelve years ago the last published book
+of a well known writer when i tell you his name you will say oh yes i love his books and you will mention so and so and its equally famous sequel such and such
+but when i ask you if you have read my book you will profess surprise and say that you have never heard of it is it as good as so and so and such and such you will ask
+hardly believing that this could be possible much better i shall reply and there if these things were arranged properly would be another ten per cent in my pocket but believe me
+i shall be quite content with your gratitude well the writer of my book is kenneth grahame you have heard of him good i thought so the books you have read
+are the golden age and dream days am i not right thank you but the book you have not read my book
+the wind in the willows am i not right again ah i was afraid so the reason why i knew you had not read it is the reason why i call it my book
+for the last ten or twelve years i have been recommending it usually i speak about it at my first meeting with a stranger it is my opening remark just as yours is something futile about the weather
+if i don't get it in at the beginning i squeeze it in at the end the stranger has got to have it some time should i ever find myself in the dock and one never knows
+my answer to the question whether i had anything to say would be well my lord if i might just recommend a book to the jury before leaving mister justice darling
+would probably pretend that he had read it but he wouldn't deceive me for one cannot recommend a book to all the hundreds of people whom one has met in ten years without discovering
+whether it is well known or not it is the amazing truth that none of those hundreds had heard of the wind in the willows until i told them about it
+some of them had never heard of kenneth grahame well one did not have to meet them again and it takes all sorts to make a world but most of them were in your position
+great admirers of the author and his two earlier famous books but ignorant thereafter i had their promise before they left me and waited confidently
+for their gratitude no doubt they also spread the good news in their turn and it is just possible that it reached you in this way but it was to me
+none the less that your thanks were due for instance you may have noticed a couple of casual references to it as if it were a classic known to all in a famous novel
+published last year it was i who introduced that novelist to it six months before indeed i feel sometimes that it was i who wrote the wind in the willows
+and recommended it to kenneth grahame but perhaps i am wrong here for i have not the pleasure of his acquaintance nor as i have already lamented am i financially interested in its sale
+an explanation which suspicious strangers require from me sometimes i shall not describe the book for no description would help it but i shall just say this
+that it is what i call a household book by a household book i mean a book which everybody in the household loves and quotes continually ever afterwards a book which is read aloud
+to every new guest and is regarded as the touchstone of his worth but it is a book which makes you feel that though everybody in the house loves it it is only you
+who really appreciate it at its true value and that the others are scarcely worthy of it it is obvious you persuade yourself that the author was thinking of you
+when he wrote it i hope this will please jones were his final words as he laid down his pen well of course you will order the book at once
+but i must give you one word of warning when you sit down to it don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste
+still less on the genius of kenneth grahame you are merely sitting in judgment on yourself you may be worthy i do not know
+at the bookstall i have often longed to be a grocer to be surrounded by so many interesting things sardines bottled raspberries
+biscuits with sugar on the top preserved ginger hams brawn under glass everything in fact that makes life worth living
+at one moment to walk up a ladder in search of nutmeg at the next to dive under a counter in pursuit of cinnamon to serve little girls
+and lordly people like you and me with a pint of cherry gin is not this to follow the king of trades some day i shall open a grocer's shop and you will find me in my spare evenings
+aproned behind the counter look out for the currants in the window as you come in i have an idea for something artistic in the way of patterns there but as you love me do not offer to buy any
+we grocers only put the currants out for show and so that we may run our fingers through them luxuriously when business is slack i have a good line in shortbreads madam if i can find the box
+but no currants this evening i beg you yes to be a grocer is to live well but after all it is not to see life a grocer
+in as far as it is possible to a man who sells both scented soap and pilchards would become narrow we do not come into contact with the outside world much save through the medium of potted lobster
+and to sell a man potted lobster is not to have our fingers on his pulse potted lobster does not define a man all customers are alike to the grocer provided their money is good
+i perceive now that i was over hasty in deciding to become a grocer that is rather for one's old age while one is young and interested in persons rather than in things
+there is only one profession to follow the profession of bookstall clerk to be behind a bookstall is indeed to see life the fascination of it struck me suddenly
+last monday and wondered who bought the tie clips the answer came to me just as i got into my train ask the man behind the bookstall he would know
+yes and he would know who bought all his papers and books and pamphlets and to know this is to know something about the people in the world
+you cannot tell a man by the lobster he eats but you can tell something about him by the literature he reads for instance i once occupied a carriage on an eastern line
+with among others a middle aged woman as soon as we left liverpool street she produced a bag of shrimps grasped each individual in turn firmly by the head and tail
+and ate him when she had finished she emptied the ends out of the window wiped her hands and settled down comfortably to her paper what paper you'll never guess
+i shall have to tell you the morning post now doesn't that give you the woman the shrimps alone no the paper alone no but the two to gether
+conceive the holy joy of the bookstall clerk as she and her bag of shrimps yes he could have told at once they were shrimps approached and asked for the morning post
+the day can never be dull to the bookstall clerk i imagine him assigning in his mind the right paper to each customer this man will ask for golfing wrong
+he wants cage birds that one over there wants the motor ah well the auto car that's near enough soon he would begin to know the different types he would learn to distinguish
+between the patrons of the dancing times and of the vote the era and the athenaeum delightful surprises would overwhelm him at intervals as when
+a red letter day in all the great stations a gentleman in a check waistcoat makes the double purchase of homer's penny stories and the spectator on those occasions
+and they would be very rare his faith in human nature would begin to ooze away until all at once he would tell himself excitedly that the man was obviously an escaped criminal in disguise
+rather overdoing the part after which he would hand over the winning post and the animals friend to the pursuing detective in a sort of holy awe what a life
+but he has other things than papers to sell he knows who buys those little sixpenny books of funny stories a problem which has often puzzled us others
+he understands by now the type of man who wants to read up a few good jokes to tell them down at old robinson's where he is going for the week end our bookstall clerk doesn't wait to be asked
+as soon as this gentleman approaches he whips out the book dusts it and places it before the raconteur he recognizes also at a glance the sort of silly ass
+who is always losing his indiarubber umbrella ring half way across the station he can see him and he hastens to get a new card out in readiness or we would let you have seven for sixpence sir
+and even when one of those subtler characters draws near about whom it is impossible to say immediately whether they require a fountain pen with case or the life and letters
+of major general clement bulger c b even then the man behind the bookstall is not found wanting if he is wrong the first time he never fails to recover with his second bulger sir
+one of our greatest soldiers i thought of these things last monday and definitely renounced the idea of becoming a grocer and as i wandered round the bookstall thinking
+i came across a little book sixpence in cloth a shilling in leather called proverbs and maxims it contained some thousands of the best thoughts in all languages
+such as have guided men along the path of truth since the beginning of the world from what ho she bumps to ich dien and more the thought occurred to me
+that an interesting article might be extracted from it so i bought the book unfortunately enough i left it in the train before i had time to master it i shall be at the bookstall next monday
+and i shall have to buy another copy that will be all right you shan't miss it but i am wondering now what the bookstall clerk will make of me a man who keeps on buying proverbs and maxims
+one hot night in hindustan a king and queen lay awake in the palace in the midst of the city every now and then a faint air blew through the lattice and they hoped they were going to sleep but they never did presently they became more broad awake than ever
+at the sound of a howl outside the palace listen to that tiger remarked the king tiger replied the queen how should there be a tiger inside the city it was only a jackal i tell you it was a tiger said the king and i tell you that you were dreaming
+if you thought it was anything but a jackal answered the queen i say it was a tiger cried the king don't contradict me nonsense snapped the queen it was a jackal and the dispute waxed so warm that the king said at last very well
+we'll call the guard and ask and if it was a jackal i'll leave this kingdom to you and go away and if it was a tiger then you shall go and i will marry a new wife as you like answered the queen there isn't any doubt which it was
+so the king called the two soldiers who were on guard outside and put the question to them but whilst the dispute was going on the king and queen had got so excited and talked so loud that the guards had heard nearly all they said and one man observed to the other
+mind you declare that the king is right it certainly was a jackal but if we say so the king will probably not keep his word about going away and we shall get into trouble so we had better take his side to this the other agreed
+the king made no remark but sent for a palanquin and ordered the queen to be placed in it bidding the four bearers of the palanquin to take her a long way off into the forest and there leave her in spite of her tears she was forced to obey
+and away the bearers went for three days and three nights until they came to a dense wood
+and started home again now the queen thought to herself that the king could not mean to send her away for good and that as soon as he had got over his fit of temper he would summon her back so she stayed quite still for a long time listening with all her ears for approaching footsteps
+but heard none after a while she grew nervous for she was all alone and put her head out of the palanquin and looked about her day was just breaking and birds and insects were beginning to stir
+but although the queen's eyes wandered in all directions there was no sign of any human being then her spirit gave way and she began to cry it so happened that close to the spot where the queen's palanquin had been set down there dwelt a man who had a tiny farm in the midst of the forest
+where he and his wife lived alone far from any neighbours as it was hot weather the farmer had been sleeping on the flat roof of his house but was awakened by the sound of weeping he jumped up and ran downstairs as fast as he could and into the forest towards the place the sound came from
+and when she had told her story the farmer called his wife who led her to their house and gave her food to eat and a bed to lie on and in the farm a few days later a little prince was born and by his mother's wish named ameer ali
+years passed without a sign from the king his wife might have been dead for all he seemed to care though the queen still lived with the farmer and the little prince had by this time grown up into a strong handsome and healthy youth out in the forest they seemed far from the world
+very few ever came near them and the prince was continually begging his mother and the farmer to be allowed to go away and seek adventures and to make his own living but she and the wise farmer always counselled him to wait until
+at last when he was eighteen years of age they had not the heart to forbid him any longer
+a big brass pot to hold water a few pieces of silver
+many a weary mile he tramped day after day until one morning he saw before him just such a forest as that in which he had been born and bred and he stepped joyfully into it like one who goes to meet an old friend
+presently as he made his way through a thicket he saw a pigeon which he thought would make a good dinner so he fired a pellet at it from his galail but missed the pigeon which fluttered away with a startled clatter at the same instant he heard a great clamour from beyond the thicket
+and on reaching the spot he found an ugly old woman streaming wet and crying loudly as she lifted from her head
+the old woman's face brightened she showed him where to seek the water and when he returned a few minutes later with his pot filled to the brim she led the way without a word and he followed in a short while they came to a hut in the forest
+and as they drew near it ameer ali beheld in the doorway the loveliest damsel his eyes had ever looked on at the sight of a stranger she drew her veil about her and stepped into the hut and much as he wished to see her again
+ameer ali could think of no excuse by which to bring her back and so with a heavy heart he made his salutation and bade the old woman farewell but when he had gone a little way she called after him if ever you are in trouble or danger
+come to where you now stand and cry fairy of the forest fairy of the forest help me now and i will listen to you the prince thanked her and continued his journey but he thought little of the old woman's saying and much of the lovely damsel
+shortly afterwards he arrived at a city and as he was now in great straits
+the king said he had plenty of servants and wanted no more
+and promised that he should enter his bodyguard on the condition that he would undertake any service which was especially difficult or dangerous this was just what ameer ali wanted and he agreed to do whatever the king might wish
+soon after this on a dark and stormy night when the river roared beneath the palace walls the sound of a woman weeping and wailing was heard above the storm the king ordered a servant to go and see what was the matter but the servant falling on his knees in terror
+begged that he might not be sent on such an errand particularly on a night so wild when evil spirits and witches were sure to be abroad indeed so frightened was he that the king who was very kind hearted bade another to go in his stead
+but each one showed the same strange fear then ameer ali stepped forward this is my duty your majesty he said i will go the king nodded and off he went the night was as dark as pitch
+but he made his way down to the ford under the palace walls and stepped into the flooded water inch by inch and foot by foot he fought his way across now nearly swept off his feet by some sudden swirl or eddy now narrowly escaping
+being caught in the branches of some floating tree that came tossing and swinging down the stream at length he emerged panting and dripping wet on the other side close by the bank stood a gallows and on the gallows hung the body of some evildoer
+whilst from the foot of it came the sound of sobbing that the king had heard
+or of the roaring river as for ghosts and witches they had never troubled him so he walked up towards the gallows where crouched the figure of the woman what ails you he said now the woman was not really a woman at all
+but a horrid kind of witch who really lived in witchland and had no business on earth if ever a man strayed into witchland the ogresses used to eat him up and this old witch thought she would like to catch a man for supper
+in hopes that someone out of pity might come to her rescue so when ameer ali questioned her she replied ah kind sir it is my poor son who hangs upon that gallows help me to get him down and i will bless you for ever
+ameer ali thought that her voice sounded rather eager
+and bent so that the old woman could clamber on to his back which she did very nimbly then suddenly he felt a noose slipped over his neck
+but ameer ali gave a sweep upwards with his sharp sword to cut the rope that she had slipped round his neck
+and with a yell of pain and anger she vanished into the darkness ameer ali then sat down to collect himself a little and felt upon the ground by his side an anklet that had evidently fallen off the old witch's foot
+and as the storm had by this time passed over he made his way back to the palace when he had finished his story he took the anklet out of his pocket and handed it to the king who like everyone else was amazed at the glory of the jewels which composed it indeed
+ameer ali himself was astonished for he had slipped the anklet into his pocket in the dark and had not looked at it since the king was delighted at its beauty and having praised and rewarded ameer ali he gave the anklet to his daughter a proud and spoiled princess
+now in the women's apartments in the palace there hung two cages in one of which was a parrot and in the other a starling and these two birds could talk as well as human beings they were both pets of the princess who always fed them herself and the next day as she was
+walking grandly about with her treasure tied round her ankle she heard the starling say to the parrot
+that was the parrot's name how do you think the princess looks in her new jewel think snapped the parrot who was cross because they hadn't given him his bath that morning i think she looks like a washerwoman's daughter with one shoe on and the other off
+why doesn't she wear two of them instead of going about with one leg adorned and the other empty when the princess heard this she burst into tears and sending for her father
+or she would die of shame so the king sent for ameer ali
+or he should be hanged for the princess would certainly die of disappointment poor ameer ali was greatly troubled at the king's command but he thought to himself that he had at any rate a month in which to lay his plans he left the palace at once
+and inquired of everyone where the finest jewels were to be got but though he sought night and day he never found one to compare with the anklet at last only a week remained and he was in sore difficulty when he remembered the fairy of the forest
+therefore away he went and after a day's travelling he reached the cottage in the forest and standing where he had stood when the old woman called to him he cried fairy of the forest fairy of the forest help me help me
+then there appeared in the doorway the beautiful girl he had seen before whom in all his wanderings he had never forgotten what is the matter she asked in a voice so soft that he listened like one struck dumb
+then he told her his story and she went within the cottage and came back with two wands and a pot of boiling water the two wands she planted in the ground about six feet apart and then turning to him she said
+and hold it over the cauldron and every drop of blood that falls from it into the water will become a jewel next you must change the wands so that the one that stood at my head is at my feet and the one at my feet stands at my head and place the severed foot against the wound and it will heal
+and i shall become quite well again as before at first
+at length she persuaded him to do her bidding he nearly fainted himself with horror when he found that after the cruel blow which lopped her foot off she lay as one lifeless but he held the severed foot over the cauldron and as drops of blood fell from it
+and he saw each turn in the water into shining gems his heart took courage very soon there were plenty of jewels in the cauldron and he quickly changed the wands placed the severed foot against the wound and immediately the two parts became one as before
+then the maiden opened her eyes sprang to her feet and drawing her veil about her ran into the hut and would not come out or speak to him any more
+but three rare and beautiful anklets and these he duly presented to the king on the very day that his month of grace was over the king embraced him warmly and made him rich gifts and the next day the vain princess put two anklets on each foot
+and strutted up and down in them admiring herself in the mirrors that lined her room
+and never recovered his temper until after lunch she's got all her beauty at one end of her now if she had a few of those fine gew gaws round her neck and wrists she would look better but now to my mind
+she looks more than ever like the washerwoman's daughter dressed up poor princess she wept and stormed and raved until she made herself quite ill
+and then she declared to her father that unless she had bracelets and necklace to match the anklets she would die again the king sent for ameer ali and ordered him to get a necklace and bracelets to match those anklets within a month or be put to a cruel death
+and again ameer ali spent nearly the whole month searching for the jewels but all in vain at length he made his way to the hut in the forest and stood and cried fairy of the forest fairy of the forest help me
+once more the beautiful maiden appeared at his summons and asked what he wanted
+and her head her words turned ameer ali pale with horror but she reminded him that no harm had come to her before and at last he consented to do as she bade him
+from her severed hands and head there fell into the cauldron bracelets and chains of rubies and diamonds
+then the head and hands were joined on to the body and left neither sign nor scar full of gratitude ameer ali tried to speak to her but she ran into the house and would not come back and he was forced to leave her
+when on the day appointed ameer ali produced a necklace and bracelets each more beautiful and priceless than the last the king's astonishment knew no bounds and as for his daughter she was nearly mad with joy
+the very next morning she put on all her finery and thought that now at least that disagreeable parrot could find no fault with her appearance and she listened eagerly when she heard the starling say
+how do you think our princess is looking now very fine no doubt grumbled the parrot but what is the use of dressing up like that for oneself only she ought to have a husband why doesn't she marry the man who got her all these splendid things
+then the princess sent for her father and told him that she wished to marry ameer ali
+so the king sent for ameer ali and told him that within a month he proposed to do him the honour of marrying him to the princess and making him heir to the throne on hearing this speech
+ameer ali bowed low and answered that he had done and would do the king all the service that lay in his power save only this one thing the king who considered his daughter's hand a prize for any man flew into a passion and the princess was more furious still
+ameer ali was instantly thrown into the most dismal prison that they could find and ordered to be kept there until the king had time to think in what way he should be put to death meanwhile the king determined that the princess ought in any case to be married without delay
+so he sent forth heralds throughout the neighbouring countries proclaiming that on a certain day any person fitted for a bridegroom and heir to the throne should present himself at the palace when the day came all the court were gathered together and a great crowd assembled of men young and old
+who thought that they had as good a chance as anyone else to gain both the throne and the princess as soon as the king was seated he called upon an usher to summon the first claimant but just then a farmer who stood in front of the crowd cried out that he had a petition to offer
+well hasten then said the king i have no time to waste your majesty said the farmer has now lived and administered justice long in this city
+whilst jackals hunt in every place where there is something to be picked up
+no your majesty answered the farmer i would only remind your majesty that there are plenty of jackals gathered to day to try and claim your daughter and kingdom every city has sent them and they wait hungry and eager but do not o king mistake or pretend again
+to mistake the howl of a jackal for the hunting cry of a tiger the king turned first red and then pale there is continued the farmer a royal tiger bred in the forest who has the first and only true claim to your throne where
+growing pale as he listened in prison replied the farmer if your majesty will clear this court of the jackals i will explain clear the court commanded the king and very unwillingly the visitors left the palace now
+then the farmer told the king and his ministers how he had rescued the queen and brought up ameer ali and he fetched the old queen herself whom he had left outside at the sight of her the king was filled with shame and self reproach and wished he could have lived his life over again
+and not have married the mother of the proud princess who caused him endless trouble until her death my day is past said he and he gave up his crown to his son ameer ali who went once more and called to the forest fairy to provide him with a queen to share his throne
+there is only one person i will marry said he and this time the maiden did not run away but agreed to be his wife so the two were married without delay and lived long and reigned happily as for the old woman whose pitcher ameer ali had broken
+she was the forest maiden's fairy godmother and when she was no longer needed to look after the girl she gladly returned to fairyland the old king has never been heard to contradict his wife any more if he even looks as if he does not agree with her
+she smiles at him and says is it the tiger then or the jackal
+things went very smoothly at gore hall after durham had established lucy as its mistress during the absence of bernard the girl herself firmly believed that her cousin was dead and assumed deep mourning
+and felt his loss deeply it was her outspoken affection that provoked a quarrel between her and julius and which led to the breaking of their engagement lucy had a high temper which had been kept in subjection during the life of sir simon
+but now that she tasted the sweets of power she was not disposed to allow julius to treat her as he chose missus gilroy came back from her visit to the lawyer
+she saw that she had gone too far and had given durham an inkling as to the possibility of michael having masqueraded as bernard
+knowing that she had married walter gore and although there was a flaw in the circumstances upon which she built her claim yet she trusted to her own cleverness to conceal this from the too clever lawyer but apart from this
+the fact that he suspected someone of passing himself off as bernard startled her and opened an abyss at her feet on leaving the office she judged it best to lower her crest for the moment and to wait patiently to see what would transpire
+missus gilroy was a well educated woman and very astute therefore she hoped to gain her ends by craft if not by force so far she had failed but she did not intend to abandon her claim
+for one failure as it was she came back to the hall and behaved herself much better than she had ever done before she was respectful to lucy and did not display her impatience of commands that
+she had hitherto done no one could have been meeker and although miss randolph did not like or trust the woman she had no fault to find with her in any way lucy suffered severely from the shock of sir simon's tragic death
+and from the supposed death of sir bernard in fact the matter so preyed on her nerves that she became prostrate and doctor payne had to be called in he was a handsome and popular young doctor who had practiced in hurseton
+he was naturally very pleased and was very attentive a complete rest is what you need he said to miss randolph
+and i will give you a tonic naturally you suffer from the terrible circumstances of sir simon's death he thought a moment
+a cheerful companion would do you good shall i ask miss malleson to come over is she cheerful asked lucy languidly i fear not doctor she was engaged to my cousin and his death has made her sad
+probably but she bears up wonderfully but that she is in mourning one would hardly guess she had sustained such a loss was she very much attached to mister gore yes
+i never saw a more attached couple did you ever meet him once at miss plantagenet's you know i am great friends with the old lady i often visit her not professionally for she is as healthy as a trout in a pond
+is alice miss malleson also well in very good health and appears resigned to her loss i should have thought she would have felt it more said lucy perplexed
+alice has such a tender heart doctor payne was doubtful so far as he saw miss malleson was remarkably cheerful under her sorrow she is philosophic miss randolph
+i think however if you would have her over to see you it would do both her and yourself good i shall write a note to her to day said lucy i am very fond of her and we get on very well together
+poor alice i wish bernard had lived
+rising to take his leave if he was guilty ah said lucy raising herself with animation from the sofa upon which she was lying if he was guilty
+i do not believe he was
+but he could not always control it and was a kind hearted boy he is innocent i am sure how are you sure my dear lucy asked a third voice and she looked up to see julius standing in the doorway
+he came forward forgive me if i heard a few words of your conversation but i have just come in doctor payne i hope i see you well quite well said the doctor who did not like beryl thinking him
+in schoolboy phrase a sneak i am just going mister beryl are you ill lucy asked beryl with affection i have an attack of nerves she replied pettishly
+poor bernard's death has shaken me it is just as well he did die though i have been saying that said payne but i must take my leave i will come and see you again miss randolph and remember what i told you
+rest and cheerful company miss malleson's for choice he departed smiling and they heard him gallop off when the sound of the horse's hoofs died away
+why do you think bernard is innocent he asked because if he is guilty his action gives the lie to his whole life julius she replied raising herself on her elbow i can't believe he killed my uncle
+sir simon is not your uncle said beryl jealously you are only a distant relative perhaps my marriage with you may make me a nearer one
+if we ever do marry said julius gloomily so far as i am concerned i should like to break the engagement julius we were never suited to one another beryl's vanity was hurt
+why did you accept me then what else could i do it was sir simon's wish that we should marry and owing to my circumstances i had no choice in the matter during his life i was merely a puppet
+although you swore for an hour
+you told sir simon about bernard being in love with alice that the poor boy might be disinherited beryl did not deny the charge i believe you are in love with bernard yourself he said
+no bernard and i are like brother and sister but he is dead
+lucy sat up on the sofa and pushed the loose hair back from her forehead why do you say that she asked sharply julius stared at the fire i can't understand durham's attitude he said evasively
+he must know that bernard is dead seeing that the coat and hat were found on the banks of the river no man could have lived in the cold and the fog yet if durham was sure he would not hold the estate against bernard's coming
+mister durham requires proof of the death rejoined lucy sharply and until then he is bound to administer the estate according to the will as bernard's body has not been found
+there is always a chance that he may have escaped i sincerely trust not ah you always hated bernard on the contrary i speak for his good
+what's the use of his coming to life when he must suffer for his crime
+you have no grounds for saying that said julius pale with rage i don't need grounds retorted the genuine woman bernard always was as kind hearted as you were and are the reverse
+i am not hard hearted snapped beryl i always do good
+not always for instance i am down here to get a small boy a post with miss plantagenet as a page that is very good of you said lucy scornfully ah you see i can do a kind action
+this boy is a grandson of lord conniston's housekeeper missus moon at cove castle said lucy with some color in her face i know do you know lord conniston asked julius suspiciously i have met him once
+he seems to be a most delightful fellow what a delightful speech for a lady said beryl conniston is a scamp i heard he enlisted in the lancers it shows how brave he is every man worth calling a man
+should go to the front perhaps you would like me to go sneered julius you would never have the pluck said lucy quickly all your ends in life are gained by cunning
+lucy if you talk to me like that began beryl and then restrained himself with an effort it is no use our quarrelling let me show you that i am not so careless of others or so hard hearted as i seem to be
+miss plantagenet wants a page i found this lad in london selling matches he was a messenger boy at a tobacconist called taberley and lord conniston got him turned out of the situation
+the boy told me himself he will tell you if you like to see him i don't want to see him lord conniston is too kind a man to behave in that way he was fond of bernard
+and that makes him perfect in your eyes said beryl looking savage see here lucy conniston has left the army so you see he is not so brave as you think
+he left so as to seek after bernard said lucy quickly mister durham told me so
+and i believe bernard may be alive after all in which case you would give him up to the police no said julius with an emotion which did him credit i should never betray him
+lucy if you can find out from lord conniston or durham that bernard is alive let me know and i'll see what i can do to help him how can you help him when you believe him guilty i might help him to escape
+i don't want to see him hanged he won't be hanged if lord conniston and mister durham can save him ah julius started to his feet then he is alive
+i can't say i have no reason to think he is but i am hoping against hope said lucy rising i merely state what was said mister durham and lord conniston both told alice that bernard was innocent
+they will find it difficult to prove that sneered beryl with a white face i believe the fellow is alive after all
+and then asked lucy starting up and facing beryl
+ah you would make him pay money to save himself i have a right to a portion of the estate you have not said miss randolph clenching her fists and all her languor gone bernard is the owner of gore hall
+and of all the property and of the title also
+his name will be cleared and then you will throw me over and try to become lady gore i throw you over now said lucy losing her temper and coloring hotly how dare you speak to me like this julius
+i will no longer be bound to you i never loved you but i have always tried to see the best side of you but you have no good side you are a mean cowardly serpent and if bernard is alive i shall do my best to defend him
+from your snares but lucy don't speak to me
+i give you back your ring here it is she wrenched it from her finger now leave the house mister beryl i am mistress here julius looked at the ring which she had thrown at his feet and laughed
+you take a high tone he said sneeringly but remember that if bernard is dead the money goes to charities so much the better you do not get it nor you either
+you will have to turn out of this luxurious home and live on the pittance sir simon left you would i be better off if i married you i think you would i have not much money now but i will have some
+a great deal some day by blackmailing bernard said lucy indignantly julius picked up the ring and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket calmly we don't know that bernard is alive
+but the fact of conniston leaving the army and from durham's attitude i shrewdly suspect he is and in hiding
+and then it depends upon him whether he is hanged or prefers to live abroad on a portion of his money the lesser portion i know the price of your silence said lucy vehemently you will want the hall and a large income
+all i can get rejoined beryl quietly and you have refused to share my fortune with me yes i will have nothing to do with you and remember that if i catch you plotting i will tell mister durham
+you can tell him the whole of this conversation snarled beryl i am not afraid of durham if bernard is alive he'll have to pay up or be hanged he is innocent
+julius shrugged his shoulders and walked to the door there he paused to utter a final insulting speech i don't know whether you intend to marry bernard or lord conniston he said but i wish
+which ever it is joy of a spitfire and an honest woman said miss randolph wrathfully for the reference to conniston touched her nearly
+but you go too fast you can't yet prove that bernard lives i go to do so sneered julius and bowed himself ironically out of the room leaving lucy furious both with him and with herself
+she was angry with herself because she felt that in speaking of conniston she had colored and as a matter of fact she greatly admired the young lord even though they had only met once
+for conniston was one of those irresistible men who appeal to women lucy thought but it matters little what she thought all she knew was that her engagement to julius which had always weighed on her conscience was at an end
+i am free now free she said stretching her hands oh what an escape i have had from that wicked man he has shown his hand too plainly i will put mister durham on his guard and
+here she blushed and lord conniston julius walking towards the bower was also angry with himself as lucy thought he had shown his hand too clearly
+it would have been better he considered to have held my tongue i should have done so had she not goaded me into speech she will tell durham and that interfering conniston and put them on their guard well
+he laughed and looked at the small boy trotting beside him i am equal to both the boy was a handsome innocent looking little fellow rather undersized
+with his clear skin his fair hair and wide blue eyes he looked like the conventional picture of a cherub
+but his mind had not yet had time to work on his face and the mask of his childhood for he was only thirteen concealed his evil nature successfully in a few years when his passions worked their way through the mask his face
+would be wrinkled and sinful his mind would have marked plainly its signet on the smooth surface but at present he looked charmingly innocent although he already knew much more about life than was good for him
+julius in order that the lad might make an impression on miss plantagenet had dressed him in a new suit and pleased with himself for much of the boy remained in this precocious criminal young jerry trotted along smiling
+jerry said beryl looking down mind you are nice to the old lady jerry tossed his fair curls and looked roguish oh that's all right mister beryl all old ladies take to me
+they think i'm a kind of holy bill and i let them think so it pays jerry you are a young scamp of the worst the boy chuckled as though he had received a compliment i like doing things he explained frankly it's fun
+if it hadn't been for victoria
+you know nothing about such things corrected the respectable mister beryl severely i know a jolly sight more than you think said the urchin under his breath and producing a cigarette julius took it from him
+and dull said jerry putting his hands in his pockets lord what a bore stopping with her will be but i can nip over and see victoria when i like and keep an eye on lord conniston as i told you
+i'm fly said master moon and began whistling julius looked at him with satisfaction he intended that the boy should remain in the neighborhood so as to keep watch on conniston
+on durham and on alice malleson for this last reason he was introducing him into the house if bernard were alive as julius began to suspect he would come to one of these three people and then jerry would at once become aware of the fact
+miss berengaria was as usual in the garden looking after the well being of some white chrysanthemums she raised her head when she saw her visitors and a look of annoyance crossed her face when she saw mister beryl
+and but for the sake of alice she would have refused to let him enter the bower as it was and with great diplomacy so great that it deceived even the astute beryl she asked him to come into the house
+luckily alice was out of the way having gone to pay a visit but she was expected back momentarily and miss berengaria wished to get rid of julius before the girl returned she might be able to conceal her real feelings but
+alice being so young and impulsive might show her dislike too plainly and put beryl on his guard who is this you have here asked miss plantagenet putting on her spectacles and surveying jerry with admiration what a pretty lad
+he is a lad i wish you to help said beryl blandly last time we met miss plantagenet you mentioned that you wanted a page not exactly a page said the old dame rubbing her nose
+a sure sign she was perplexed merely a boy to see after the fowls and to wait about the house when necessary i love fowls said jerry sweetly and looking as innocent as a babe and dogs and things like that
+you seem a nice lad who is he mister beryl a poor boy who sold matches in london but i didn't always piped jerry shifting from one leg to the other in feigned embarrassment and playing his part perfectly
+i lived with grandmother at cove castle that's lord conniston's place said miss berengaria more perplexed than ever what were you doing there i lived with grandmother my name is jerry moon
+his lordship got me a situation at a tobacconist's said the child like moon and then he got me turned off why that is not like lord conniston
+it is not to lord conniston's credit but i must know the reason said the old dame sharply if you want me to take the lad into my service jerry in answer to a look of beryl's began to weep ostentatiously
+i saw his lordship dressed as a soldier he snuffled and i told mister beryl his lordship was so angry that he got me turned off saying i was ungrateful
+you should always hold your tongue said miss berengaria angrily you had no right to tell what lord conniston wished kept secret it was only a freak on his part he left the army at my request
+at your request said julius looking at her directly forearmed as she was miss berengaria with the consciousness of bernard's secret flushed through her withered skin
+but turned the conversation defiantly
+yes sweet lady don't talk like that child call me ma'am
+mister beryl such a kind gentleman ma'am said you would help me i will so long as you are honest jerry thrust his tongue in his cheek but julius answered
+i can vouch for his honesty he said but he talks too much he must hold his tongue here said the old dame severely and shaking her trowel at the boy where are his clothes i have none but what's on cried jerry
+the kind gentleman got them for me ma'am you are a better christian than i thought said miss berengaria looking at beryl well you can stay here boy go to the kitchen and tell the servants to give you something to eat
+jerry grinned and ducked towards the door good bye jerry said beryl kindly don't forget me if i do may i be oh no kind lady i mean ma'am i won't swear
+i never did having been to sunday school yes ma'am i'm going and jerry in answer to an imperative wave of his new mistress's hand disappeared miss berengaria turned to beryl
+i must see that he doesn't swear or smoke or indulge in any of those wicked things i hope he will do your recommendation credit mister beryl i hope he will said julius and felt a strong inclination
+then he took his leave and the old lady watched him go
+once upon a time there was an old widow woman who had three sons the first two were clever enough but the third bobo by name was little better than a silly simpleton all his mother's scoldings and beatings
+and she smacked the poor lad soundly a dozen times a day did him no good whatever now it came to pass that one morning princess zenza the ruler of the land happened to pass by the cottage and heard bobo being given a terrible tongue lashing
+curious as to the cause of all the noise the princess drew rein and summoned bobo's mother to come near on hearing her story it occurred to the princess that so silly a lad might amuse her
+now he would be sent to find a white craw's feather or a spray of yellow bluebells now he was ordered to look for a square wheel or a glass of dry water everybody laughed at him and made fun of him that is
+everybody except little tilda the kitchen maid when poor bobo used to return from some wild goose chase tired out mud stained and often enough wet to the skin
+instead of laughing little tilda would find him a glass of warm milk hang his coat by the fire to dry and tell him not to be such a simpleton again thus after a while
+one pleasant mid summer morning when bobo had been nearly a year at the castle princess zenza overslept half an hour and did not come down to breakfast at the usual time when she did get up she found her court waiting for her in the castle gardens
+shall we send bobo in search of the lost half hour said the princess to the courtiers yes yes cried the courtiers bobo shall look for the lost half hour i'll give him a horse said one
+when he returned the good kitchen maid said little for she feared lest some misadventure overtake the poor simpleton but when the chief cook was not looking she tucked a fresh currant bun into bobo's pocket
+good bye bobo cried the assembled courtiers who were almost beside themselves with laughter at the simpleton and his errand don't fail to bring back the lost half hour so bobo rode over the hills and far away
+it was very dignified and wore tortoise shell glasses but bobo had to answer no and the old man wandered on again another day the simpleton encountered a tall dark fierce kind of fellow
+who answered his polite question with a scream of rage a half hour he roared no i have n't seen your half hour i would n't tell you if i had what's more i don't want to see it
+i'm looking for something i've lost myself i've lost my temper
+answer me you silly have you seen a lost temper anywhere it's about the size of a large melon and has sharp little points on bobo's answering no this dreadful person uttered so perfectly awful a screech of rage
+that bobo's horse took fright and ran away with him and it was all that bobo could do to rein him in three miles farther down the road still farther along bobo came to zizz the capital city of the kingdom of the seven brooks and was taken before the king himself
+here the poor old king took out a great green handkerchief and wiped his eyes she was stolen by the fairies on midsummer eve fifteen years ago find her worthy bobo and an immense reward will be yours
+and he continued his way on foot three long years passed and bobo grew into a handsome lad but remained a simpleton still finally after he had wandered all about fairyland he came to the edge of the sea
+bobo asked the sailors if they had seen a lost half hour no said the sailors but we are going to the isles of iron suppose you go with us the lost half hour may be there
+so bobo went aboard the ship and sailed out upon the dark sea for two days the weather was warm and clear but on the third day there came a dreadful storm and on the third night the vessel was driven far off her course into the unknown ocean
+and was wrecked upon a mysterious island of rocks that shone in the night like wet matches a great wave swept the decks and bobo was borne away from his companions and carried toward the shining land
+though pounded and battered by the foaming waves the simpleton at length managed to reach the beach and took refuge in a crevice of the cliff during the stormy night when the dawn broke all sign of the ship had disappeared
+looking about bobo found himself on a lovely island whose heart was a high mountain mass hidden in the fog still sweeping in from the sea there was not a house a road or a path to be seen
+in which were a pair of wooden shoes above the shoes was a card saying simply
+so bobo sat down on a stone by the foot of the tree and put on the wooden shoes which fitted him very nicely now these shoes were magic shoes and bobo had hardly stepped into them before they turned his feet inland
+so bobo obediently let the shoes guide him at corners the shoes always turned in the right direction and if bobo forgot and blundered on the wrong way the shoes swiftly began to pinch his toes
+for two days bobo walked inland toward the great mountain a warm wind blew the clouds and rain away the sun shone sweet and clear on the morning of the third day the simpleton entered a wood of tall silent trees
+and as that day was drawing to a close turrets of a magnificent castle rose far away over the leaves of the forest bobo arrived at twilight
+he found himself in a beautiful garden lying between the castle walls and the rising slopes of a great mountain strange to say not a living creature was to be seen and though there were lights in the castle
+there was not even a warder at the gate suddenly a great booming bell struck seven o'clock bobo began to hear voices and sounds and then before the humming of the bell had died away
+a youth mounted on a splendid black horse dashed at lightning speed out of the castle and disappeared in the wood an old man with a white beard accompanied by eleven young men whom bobo judged from their expressions to be brothers
+stood by the gate to see the horseman ride away plucking up courage bobo came forward fell on his knee before the old man and told his story truly you should thank the storm fairies said the old man
+for had you not been wrecked upon this island never would you have discovered the lost half hour i am father time himself and these are my twelve sons the hours every day one after the other
+they ride for an hour round the whole wide world seven o'clock has just ridden forth yes you shall have the lost half hour but you must look after my sons horses for the space of a whole year to this
+bobo willingly agreed so twelve o'clock who was the youngest of the hours took him to the stables and showed him the little room in the turret that he was to have
+he took such good care of the great black horses of the hours of the night and the white horses of the hours of the day that they were never more proud and strong nor their coats smoother and more gleaming when the year was up bobo again sought out father time
+you have served faithfully and well said father time here is your reward and with these words he placed in bobo's hands a small square casket made of ebony the half hour lies inside
+don't try to peek at it or open the box until the right time has come if you do the half hour will flyaway and disappear forever farewell bobo said kind young twelve o'clock who had been the simpleton's good friend
+i too have a gift for thee drink this cup of water to the last drop and the youth handed the simpleton a silver cup full to the brim of clear shining water now this water was the water of wisdom
+and when bobo had drunk it he was no longer a simpleton and being no longer a simpleton he remembered the man who had lost his reputation the man who had lost his temper and the king whose daughter had been stolen by the fairies
+tell the first said father time that his reputation has been broken into a thousand pieces which have been picked up by his neighbors and carried home if he can persuade his neighbors to give them up
+as for the missing daughter she is the kitchen maid in princess zenza's palace who is known as tilda so bobo thanked father time and at noon
+twelve o'clock placed him behind him on the white charger and hurried away so fast they flew that bobo who was holding the ebony casket close against his heart was in great danger of falling off
+when they got to the seashore the white horse hesitated not an instant but set foot upon the water which bore him up as if it had been not water but earth itself
+bobo with great goodness of heart took along this extraordinary object in the hope of finding its angry possessor farther on the lad encountered tilda's father the unhappy king and delivered his message
+the joy of the monarch knew no bounds and bobo the one time simpleton became on the spot lord bobo of the sapphire hills marquis of the mountains of the moon prince of the valley of golden apples
+in a word the greatest nobleman in all fairyland
+all in splendid silks and soldiers in shining armor the delighted king rode off to claim his missing daughter from princess zenza so on they rode the harnesses jingling the bridle bells ringing
+and the breastplates of the armed men shining in the sun after a week of almost constant progress for the king was so anxious to see his beloved daughter that he would hardly give the cavalcade time to rest
+on the steps of one of the cottages sat an old woman all alone and weeping with all her might what is the matter my good woman said the king
+evil days have fallen upon our unhappy kingdom three days ago a terrible dragon alighted in the gardens of the palace and sent word to princess zenza that if within three days she did not provide him with someone brave enough to go home with him and cook his meals
+and keep his cavern tidy he would burn our fields with his fiery breath yet who i ask you would be housekeeper for a dragon
+that we are mourning at two o'clock she is to be carried off by the dragon it is almost two now alas alas hardly were the words out of her mouth when the town bell struck twice solemnly and sadly
+quick quick cried the king and bobo in the same breath let us hurry to the castle we may save her yet but they knew in their hearts that they were too late and that poor tilda had given herself to the dragon
+and so it proved in spite of his mad dash bobo who had spurred on ahead arrived exactly half an hour late the monstrous dragon with tilda in his claws
+things should be exactly as they were half an hour before he opened the cover of the ebony box something like a winged white flame escaped from it and flew hissing through the air to the sun
+as for the sun itself turning round like a cartwheel and hissing like ten thousand rockets it rolled back along the sky to the east the hands of the clocks which marked half past two whirred back to two o'clock in a twinkling
+and sure enough there was brave little tilda standing alone in a great field waiting for the dragon to come and take her away lumbering heavily along like a monstrous turtle and snorting blue smoke
+the dragon was advancing toward her bobo ran down into the field and stood beside tilda ready to defend her to the end the dragon came nearer and nearer suddenly
+angered by the sight of bobo and his drawn sword he roared angrily but continued to approach bobo struck at him with his sword the blade broke upon his steely scales the dragon roared again now
+just as the dragon's mouth was its widest bobo who had been searching his pockets desperately hurled into it the lost temper there was a perfectly terrific bang as if a million balloons had blown up all at once
+for the dragon had blown up the lost temper had finished him only one fragment of him a tiny bit of a claw was ever found
+the grand cross of the order of the black cat was conferred upon bobo by princess zenza who also asked his pardon for having treated him so shabbily this bobo gave readily
+when the rejoicings were over
+mister shaw came for a short time recently to be regarded less as an author than as an incident in the european war in the opinion of many people it seemed as if the allies were fighting against a combination composed of germany
+and he does express an opinion on everything without making a multitude of people shake their fists in impotent anger his life at least his public life
+he has gone about like a pickpocket of illusions from the world of literature to the world of morals and from the world of morals to the world of politics and everywhere he has gone an innumerable growl has followed him
+not that he has not had his disciples men and women who believe that what mister shaw says on any conceivable subject is far more important than what the times or the manchester guardian says he has never founded a church however
+because he has always been able to laugh at his disciples as unfeelingly as at anybody else he has courted unpopularity as other men have courted popularity he has refused to assume the vacuous countenance either of an idol
+seems like life in ruins are filled at times with a wild lust to denounce and belittle him he has been called more names than any other man of letters alive
+when all the other names have been exhausted and we are about to become inarticulate we even denounce him as a bore but this is only the billingsgate of our exasperation mister shaw is not a bore
+whatever else he may be he has succeeded in the mere business of interesting us beyond any other writer of his time
+probably he was doomed to be a figure just as doctor johnson was if he had not told us legends about himself
+in search of a ghost with its beard on fire his critics often accuse him in regard to the invention of the shaw myth of having designed a poster rather than painted a portrait
+stop advertising myself on the contrary i must do it more than ever look at pears's soap there is a solid house if you like but every wall is still plastered with their advertisements if i were to give up advertising
+my business would immediately begin to fall off you blame me for having declared myself to be the most remarkable man of my time but the claim is an arguable one why should i not say it when i believe that it is true
+he is in the line of all those tramps and stage irishmen who have gone through life with so fine a swagger of words this only means that in his life he is an artist
+until we realize that he is an artist not only in the invention of his own life but in the observation of the lives of other people his broadbent is as wonderful a figure as his george bernard shaw not that his portraiture is always faithful
+he sees men and women too frequently in the refracting shallows of theories he is a doctrinaire and his characters are often comic statements of his doctrines rather than the reflections of men and women
+he observes in one of the many passages in which he justifies himself the audience thinks it is being made fun of in reality i am simply a very careful writer of natural history
+one is bound to contradict him mister shaw often thinks he is presenting true human nature when he is merely presenting his opinions about human nature the human nature of soldiers of artists of women or
+rather when he is presenting a queer fizzing mixture of human nature and his opinions about it this may be sometimes actually a virtue in his comedy certainly from the time of aristophanes onwards
+admirably true both to human nature and to mister shaw's view of the human nature of artists but when he goes on with his last breath to utter his artistic creed i believe in michael angelo velasquez and rembrandt in the might of design
+the redemption of all things by beauty everlasting and the message of art that has made these hands blessed amen amen these sentences are no more natural or naturalistic
+without any admixture of humanity repeating mister shaw's opinion of the nature of the creed of artists there is a similar falsification in the same play in the characterization of the newspaper man who is present at dubedat's death
+because into an atmosphere of more or less naturalistic comedy they simply introduce a farcical exaggeration of mister shaw's opinion of the incompetence and impudence of journalists mister shaw's comedies are repeatedly injured
+by a hurried alteration of atmosphere in this manner comedy as well as tragedy must create some kind of illusion and the destruction of the illusion even for the sake of a joke may mean the destruction of laughter
+the proportion of unreality is not overwhelming it has been enormously exaggerated after all if the character of the newspaper man in the doctor's dilemma is machine made
+the much more important character of b b the soothing and incompetent doctor is a creation of the true comic genius nine people out of ten harp on mister shaw's errors
+it is much more necessary that we should recognize that amid all his falsifications doctrinal and jocular he has a genuine comic sense of character most french critics
+declare that bernard shaw does depict characters
+moliere has never drawn a doctor more comically the doctor than paramore nor more characteristic figures of women than those in the same play the philanderer the character drawing is admirable
+and the characterization in moliere in shaw's plays the characters are less representative of vices or passions than those of moliere and more representative of class profession or sect
+moliere depicts the miser the jealous man the misanthrope the hypocrite whereas shaw depicts the bourgeois the rebel the capitalist the workman the socialist the doctor
+a few only of these latter types are given us by moliere
+of farce and so forth is a suggestive contribution to criticism i am not sure that the comparison would not have been more effectively put in a chapter than a book
+is intended as a biography and general criticism of mister shaw as well as a comparison between his work and moliere's it contains it must be confessed a great deal that is not new to english readers
+mister shaw is made an idol in spite of himself
+is an offering at a shrine the true things it contains however make it worth reading
+for instance what many critics have failed to see that in his dramatic work mister shaw is less a wit than a humorist in shaw's work we find few studied jests few epigrams even
+moliere anticipated mister shaw in outraging the sentiment for instance which has gathered round the family moliere and shaw as he puts it with quaint seriousness appear to be unaware of what a father is what a father is worth
+the defence of mister shaw however does not depend on any real or imaginary resemblance of his plays to moliere's his joy and his misery before the ludicrous spectacle of human life are his own and his expression of them
+is his own he has studied with his own eyes the swollen bellied pretences of preachers and poets and rich men and lovers and politicians and he has derided them as they have never been derided on the english stage before
+he has derided them with both an artistic and a moral energy he has brought them all into a palace of truth where they have revealed themselves with an unaccustomed and startling frankness
+he has done this sometimes with all the exuberance of mirth sometimes with all the bitterness of a satirist even his bitterness is never venomous however he is genial beyond the majority of inveterate controversialists and propagandists
+he does not hesitate to wound and he does not hesitate to misunderstand but he is free from malice the geniality of his comedy on the other hand is often more offensive than malice
+because it is from an orthodox point of view geniality in the wrong place it is like a grin in church a laugh at a marriage service
+that he was not intensely serious in all that he wrote about the war but his seriousness is essentially the seriousness of in the higher sense of the word the comic artist of the disillusionist
+he sees current history from the absolutely opposite point of view say to the lyric poet
+though his attitude to the war was as anti prussian
+a great number of people thought he must be a pro german the fact is in war time more than at any other time people dread the vision of the satirist and the sceptic
+this is not to disparage mister shaw's contributions to the discussion of politics that contribution has been brilliant challenging and humane and not more wayward than the contribution of the partisan
+it may be said of mister shaw that in his politics as in his plays he has sought utopia along the path of disillusion as other men have sought it along the path of idealism
+chapter sixteen much to alter at the same moment constance channing was traversing the boundaries on her way to lady augusta yorke's where she had some days since commenced her duties it took her scarcely two minutes to get there for the houses were almost within view of each other
+constance would willingly have commenced the daily routine at an earlier hour lady augusta freely confessed that to come earlier would be useless for she could not get her daughters up strictly speaking lady augusta did not personally try to get them up
+preparing their lessons fanny came running in her hair in curl papers some bread and butter in her hand carry has not finished her breakfast miss channing quoth she she was lazy this morning i think some one else was lazy also said constance gently drawing the child to her
+why did you come down half dressed my dear i am quite dressed responded fanny my frock's on and so is my pinafore and these said constance touching the curl papers oh martha got up late and said she had no time to take them out
+constance rang the bell martha who was the only maid kept except the cook appeared in answer to it lady augusta was wont to say that she had too much expense with her boys to keep many servants and the argument was a true one
+be so kind as to take the papers out of miss fanny's hair and let it be done in future martha before she comes to me gently as the words were spoken there was no mistaking that the tone was one of authority and not to be trifled with
+martha withdrew with the child and just then caroline came in full of eagerness miss channing mamma says she shall take one of us to the missionary meeting whichever you choose to fix upon mind you fix upon me
+some of the anecdotes are beautiful who told you they were asked caroline mister yorke replied constance a pretty blush rising to her cheek he knows the lecturer well you would be pleased to hear them
+it is not for that i wish to go said caroline i think meetings where there's nothing but talking are the dullest things in the world if i were to listen it would send me to sleep then why do you wish so much to attend this one because i shall wear my new dress
+i have not had it on yet
+i was in such a passion constance wondered where she should begin there was so much to do so much to alter in so many ways to set to work abruptly would never answer it must be commenced gradually almost imperceptibly little by little caroline
+in what way miss channing did i not request you to have that exercise written out i know said caroline with some contrition i intended to write it out this morning before you came but somehow i lay in bed
+would you undertake to get up and be ready for me asked constance caroline drew a long face she did not speak my dear you are fifteen well responded caroline
+deficient in many ways caroline in goodness in thoughtfulness and in other desirable qualities and greatly so in education annabel who is a year younger than you is twice as advanced annabel says you worry her into learning
+annabel is fond of talking nonsense but she is a good loving child at heart
+i have so much to teach you caroline to your mind and heart as well as to your intellect that i feel the hours as at present arranged will be insufficient for me my dear when you grow up to womanhood i am sure you will wish to be loving and loved
+caroline burst into tears i should do better if mamma were not so cross with me miss channing i always do anything that william yorke asks me and i will do anything for you constance kissed her then will you begin by rising early and being ready for me at seven
+are you going to the meeting this afternoon of course not said constance my time now belongs to you but i think mamma wishes you to go with us she said something about it does she i should very much like to go
+lady augusta came in and proffered the invitation to constance to accompany them constance then spoke of giving the children the extra two hours from seven to nine it was really necessary she said if she was to do her duty by them
+you will never put up with our scrambling breakfast miss channing the boys are so unruly and i do not get up to it half my time
+not very early answered constance hitherto i have risen at seven summer and winter dressing and reading takes me just an hour for the other hour i find plenty of occupation we do not breakfast until nine on account of tom and charley i shall rise at six now
+and come here at seven very well said lady augusta i suppose this will only apply to the summer months one of the girls shall go with us to day whichever deserves it best you are not leaving one of them at home to make room for me i hope lady augusta
+not at all answered lady augusta i never chaperon two children to a crowded meeting people might say they took up the room of grown up persons you will let me go not caroline miss channing pleaded fanny when her mother
+no said caroline sharply miss channing will fix upon me i shall obey lady augusta
+it will be only right to do so suppose we are both good and merit it equally suggested fanny
+you must not be disappointed if in that case i give the privilege to caroline as being the elder of the two but i will make it up to you in some other way alas for poor caroline's resolution for a short time an hour or so she did strive to do her best
+but then good resolutions were forgotten and idleness followed not only idleness temper also
+she even forgot herself so far as to be insolent fanny was taken to the meeting you saw her in the carriage when lady augusta drove to mister galloway's office and persuaded hamish to join them caroline was left at home in a state of open rebellion with the lessons to learn
+which she had not learnt in the day how shall you get on with them constance the rev william yorke inquired of her that same evening have the weeds destroyed the good seed not quite destroyed it replied constance though she sighed sadly as she spoke
+there is so much ill to undo caroline is the worst the weeds with her have had longer time to get ahead i think perhaps if i could keep her wholly with me for a twelvemonth or so watching over her constantly a great deal might be effected
+if that anticipated living would fall in which seems very far away in the clouds and you were wholly mine we might have caroline with us for a time laughed mister yorke constance laughed too do not be impatient
+or it will seem to be further off still it will come william they had been speaking in an undertone standing together at a window apart from the rest mister channing was lying on his sofa underneath the other window and now spoke to mister yorke
+replied mister channing i think it is possible that his experience in another line may be of service to you continued mister yorke
+i have heard so his complaint was rheumatism very much as i fancy the same sort of rheumatism that afflicts you he told me he came to europe with very little hope he feared his complaint had become chronic and incurable
+but he has been restored in a wonderful manner and is in sound health again and what remedies did he use eagerly asked mister channing a three months residence at some medicinal springs in germany nothing else when i say nothing else of course i must imply that he was under medical treatment there
+it is the very thing you see sir that has been ordered for you ay sighed mister channing feeling how very faint appeared to be the hope that he should have the opportunity of trying it i was mentioning your case to him observed mister yorke
+the channings themselves were silent they could not see the way at all clear when mister yorke was leaving he beckoned constance and arthur into the hall
+think of all that is at stake renewed health exertion happiness arthur
+arthur did not feel hopeful indeed his heart sank within him the whole time that they were talking hamish and his difficulties were the dark shadow though he could not tell this to mister yorke were mister channing to go abroad and the arrest of hamish to follow upon it
+doctor lamb says the cost was so trifling as scarcely to be credited continued mister yorke in a tone of remonstrance arthur don't you care to help to save him i would move heaven and earth to save my father impulsively spoke arthur
+stung by the implied reproof i should not care what labour it cost me to procure the money so that i succeeded we all would said constance you must know we would william from hamish downwards
+did you think i was lost i was seduced into joining your missionary meeting people and have had to stop late at the office to make up for it
+fresh hope seems to arise daily that those german baths would restore him to health they cured doctor lamb i say hamish that the money must be found for it somehow added mister yorke found of course it shall be found cried gay hamish
+i intend to be a chief contributor to it myself but his joking words and careless manner jarred at that moment upon the spirit both of arthur and constance channing why
+he and another farmer his neighbour had been so often re elected churchwardens that at last they seemed to have gained a prescriptive right to the office and the form of election fell into disuse
+been said about the election of a colleague so little seemed to fall to the duty of the churchwarden that i regarded the neglect as a trifle and was remiss in setting it right i had therefore to suffer as was just indeed mister brownrigg was not the man to have power in his hands unchecked
+i had so far recovered that i was able to rise about noon and go into my study though i was very weak and had not yet been out when one morning missus pearson came into the room and said please sir
+confident there must be a good reason for it and so told missus pearson to show him in oh sir i know you would be vexed if you hadn't been told he exclaimed and i am sure you will not be angry with me for troubling you what is the matter tom i said
+which were necessary and must be done before another winter i confess i was rather pleased for i wanted my people to feel that the church was their property and that it was their privilege if they could regard it as a blessing to have the church to keep it in decent order and repair
+to my churchwarden we must call a vestry before long and have this looked to now my predecessor had left everything of the kind to his churchwardens and the inhabitants from their side had likewise left the whole affair to the churchwardens but mister brownrigg
+who i must say had taken more pains than might have been expected of him to make himself acquainted with the legalities of his office did not fail to call a vestry to which as usual no one had responded whereupon he imposed a rate according to his own unaided judgment this i believe
+he did during my illness with the notion of pleasing me by the discovery that the repairs had been already effected according to my mind nor did any one of my congregation throw the least difficulty in the churchwarden's way and now i must refer to another circumstance in the history of my parish
+there was a little chapel down a lane leading from the main street of the village in which there was service three times every sunday
+amongst whom were the families of two or three farmers of substance while the village and its neighbourhood contributed a portion of the poorest of the inhabitants a year or two before i came their minister died and they had chosen another a very worthy man of considerable erudition
+but of extreme views as i heard upon insignificant points and moved by a great dislike to national churches and episcopacy this i say is what i had made out about him from what i had heard
+and my reader will very probably be inclined to ask but why with principles such as yours should you have only hearsay to go upon why did you not make the honest man's acquaintance in such a small place men should not keep each other at arm's length
+and any reader who says so will say right all i have to suggest for myself is simply a certain shyness for which i cannot entirely account but which was partly made up of fear to intrude or of being supposed to arrogate to myself the right of making advances
+partly of a dread lest we should not be able to get on together and so the attempt should result in something unpleasantly awkward i daresay likewise that the natural shelliness of the english had something to do with it at all events i had not made his acquaintance
+mister templeton then had refused as a point of conscience to pay the church rate when the collector went round to demand it had been summoned before a magistrate in consequence had suffered a default and proceedings being pushed from the first in all the pride of mister brownrigg's legality
+had on this very day been visited by the churchwarden accompanied by a broker from the neighbouring town of addicehead and at the very time when i was hearing of the fact was suffering distraint of his goods the porcine head of the churchwarden was not on his shoulders by accident nor without significance
+but i did not wait to understand all this now it was enough for me that tom bore witness to the fact that at that moment proceedings were thus driven to extremity i rang the bell for my boots and to the open mouthed dismay of missus pearson left the vicarage leaning on tom's arm
+but such was the commotion in my mind that i had become quite unconscious of illness or even feebleness hurrying on in more terror than i can well express lest i should be too late i reached mister templeton's house just as a small mahogany table was being hoisted into a spring cart
+which stood at the door breathless with haste i was yet able to call out put that table down directly at the same moment mister brownrigg appeared from within the door
+i think he had not heard me you see i'm prompt mister walton he said but bless my soul how ill you look without answering him for i was more angry with him than i ought to have been i repeated put that table down i tell you they did so
+now i said carry it back into the house why sir interposed mister brownrigg it's all right yes i said as right as the devil would have it
+i'm not so sure of that i believe i had the right to be chairman at the vestry meeting but instead of even letting me know you took advantage of my illness to hurry on matters to this shameful and wicked excess i did the poor man wrong in this for i believe he had hurried things really to please me
+his face had lengthened considerably by this time and its rubicund hue declined i did not think you would stand upon ceremony about it sir
+before such a thing should have happened i feel so disgraced i am ashamed to look mister templeton in the face carry that table into the house again directly it's my property now interposed the broker i've bought it of the churchwarden and paid for it
+but i tell you the whole affair is illegal and if you carry away that table i shall see what the law will do for me i assure you i will prosecute you myself you take up that money or i will it will go to pay counsel i give you my word if you do not take it to quench strife
+i stretched out my hand but the broker was before me without another word he pocketed the money jumped into his cart with his man and drove off leaving the churchwarden and the parson standing at the door of the dissenting minister with his mahogany table on the path between them now mister brownrigg i said
+lend me a hand to carry this table in again he yielded not graciously that could not be expected but in silence oh sir interposed young tom who had stood by during the dispute let me take it you're not able to lift it
+and so mister brownrigg and i blundered into the little parlour with our burden not a great one
+mister templeton sat in a windsor chair in the middle of the room evidently the table had been carried away from before him leaving his position uncovered the floor was strewed with the books which had lain upon it he sat reading an old folio as if nothing had happened
+but when we entered he rose he was a man of middle size about forty with short black hair and overhanging bushy eyebrows his mouth indicated great firmness not unmingled with sweetness and even with humour he smiled as he rose but looked embarrassed
+glancing first at the table then at me and then at mister brownrigg as if begging somebody to tell him what to say but i did not leave him a moment in this perplexity mister templeton i said quitting the table and holding out my hand
+that you should have been annoyed like this i have mister templeton interrupted me i assure you it was a matter of conscience with me he said on no other ground i know it i know it i said interrupting him in my turn
+i beg your pardon and i have done my best to make amends for it offences must come you know mister templeton but i trust i have not incurred the woe that follows upon them by means of whom they come for i knew nothing of it and indeed was too ill
+mister brownrigg i spoke in heat when i came up to you and i am sure i did you wrong i am certain you had no improper motive in not making me acquainted with your proceedings you meant no harm to me but you did very wrong towards mister templeton i will try to show you that when i am well again
+but but you mustn't talk more now said doctor duncan so i shook hands with mister brownrigg and we parted i fear from what i know of my churchwarden that he went home with the conviction that he had done perfectly right
+and amongst them by mister templeton and here i may as well sketch the result of that strange introduction to the dissenting minister
+the gist of the letter lay in these words i confess it perplexes me to understand how to reconcile your christian and friendly behaviour to one whom most of your brethren would consider as much beneath their notice as inferior to them in social position
+with your remaining the minister of a church in which such enormities as you employed your private influence to counteract in my case are not only possible but certainly lawful and recognized by most of its members as likewise expedient to this i replied
+my dear sir i do not like writing letters especially on subjects of importance there are a thousand chances of misunderstanding whereas in a personal interview there is a possibility of controversy being hallowed by communion
+to missus templeton for not inviting her with you
+how you could belong to a church which authorizes things of which you yourself so heartily disapprove and i answer you i returned that just to such a church our lord belonged i do not quite understand you our lord belonged to the jewish church
+i want if you will allow me to show you the principle upon which he acted with regard to church rates certainly i beg your pardon for interrupting you the pharisees demanded a tribute which it is allowed was for the support of the temple and its worship
+our lord did not refuse to acknowledge their authority notwithstanding the many ways in which they had degraded the religious observances of the jewish church he acknowledged himself a child of the church but said that as a child he ought to have been left to contribute as he pleased
+to the support of its ordinances and not to be compelled after such a fashion there i have you exclaimed mister templeton
+i grant it it is entirely wrong a very unchristian proceeding but our lord did not therefore desert the church as you would have me do he paid the money lest he should offend and not having it of his own he had to ask his father for it
+or what came to the same thing make a servant of his father namely a fish in the sea of galilee
+it is wrong to compel and wrong to refuse the payment of a church rate i do not say equally wrong it is much worse to compel than to refuse you are very generous returned mister templeton
+may i hope that you will do me the credit to believe that if i saw clearly that they were the same thing i would not hesitate a moment to follow our lord's example i believe it perfectly therefore however we may differ we are in reality at no strife
+but is there not this difference that our lord was as you say a child of the jewish church which was indubitably established by god now if i cannot conscientiously belong to the so called english church why should i have to pay church rate or tribute
+shall i tell you the argument the english church might then use the church might say then you are a stranger and no child therefore like the kings of the earth we may take tribute of you so you see it would come to this that dissenters alone should be compelled to pay church rates
+we both laughed at this pushing of the argument to illegitimate conclusions then i resumed but the real argument is that not for such faults should we separate from each other not for such faults or any faults so long as it is the repository of the truth should you separate from the church
+i will yield the point when you can show me the same ground for believing the church of england the national church appointed such by god that i can show you and you know already for receiving the jewish church as the appointment of god
+that would involve a long argument upon which though i have little doubt upon the matter myself i cannot say i am prepared to enter at this moment meantime i would just ask you whether you are not sufficiently a child of the church of england
+having received from it a thousand influences for good if in no other way yet through your fathers to find it no great hardship and not very unreasonable to pay a trifle to keep in repair one of the tabernacles in which our forefathers worshipped together if
+as i hope you will allow in some imperfect measure god is worshipped and the truth is preached in it most willingly would i pay the money i object simply because the rate is compulsory and therein you have our lord's example to the contrary
+a silence followed for i had to deal with an honest man who was thinking i resumed a thousand difficulties will no doubt come up to be considered in the matter do not suppose i am anxious to convince you i believe that our father our elder brother
+and the spirit that proceedeth from them is teaching you as i believe i too am being taught by the same why then should i be anxious to convince you of anything will you not in his good time come to see what he would have you see
+i am relieved to speak my mind knowing he would have us speak our minds to each other but i do not want to proselytize if you change your mind you will probably do so on different grounds from any i give you
+and i haven't been to a university like you but i'm no fool either i hope don't be offended at my question wouldn't you be glad to see me out of your parish now i began to speak but he went on
+don't you regard me as an interloper now one who has no right to speak because he does not belong to the church god forbid i answered if a word of mine would make you leave my parish to morrow i dare not say it
+i do not want to incur the rebuke of our lord for surely the words forbid him not involved some rebuke would it not be a fearful thing that one soul because of a deed of mine should receive a less portion of elevation or comfort in his journey towards his home
+are there not countless modes of saying the truth you have some of them i hope i have some
+who will not hear me preach to them in the name and love of god mister templeton speak that you do know and testify that you have seen you and i will help each other in proportion as we serve the master
+i only say that in separating from us you are in effect and by your conduct saying to us do not preach for you follow not with us i will not be guilty of the same towards you your fathers did the church no end of good by leaving it
+but it is time to unite now once more followed a silence if people could only meet and look each other in the face said mister templeton at length they might find there was not such a gulf between them as they had fancied and so we parted
+now i do not write all this for the sake of the church rate question i write it to commemorate the spirit in which mister templeton met me for it is of consequence that two men who love their master should recognize each that the other does so and thereupon if not before
+and many a time ere his death we consulted together about things that befell once he came to me about a legal difficulty in connexion with the deed of trust of his chapel and although i could not help him myself i directed him to such help as was thorough
+and cost him nothing i need not say he never became a churchman or that i never expected he would all his memories of a religious childhood all the sources of the influences which had refined and elevated him were surrounded with other associations
+than those of the church and her forms the church was his grandmother not his mother and he had not made any acquaintance with her till comparatively late in life but while i do not say that his intellectual objections to the church were less strong than they had been
+i am sure that his feelings were moderated even changed towards her and though this may seem of no consequence to one who loves the church more than the brotherhood it does not seem of little consequence to me who love the church because of the brotherhood of which it is the type and the restorer
+it was long before another church rate was levied in marshmallows and when the circumstance did take place no one dreamed of calling on mister templeton for his share in it but having heard of it he called himself upon the churchwarden mister brownrigg still and offered the money cheerfully
+orphans keseberg and his accusers sensational accounts of the tragedy at donner lake property sold and guardian appointed kindly indians grandpa
+the report of our affliction spread rapidly and the well meaning tender hearted women at the fort came to condole and weep with us and made their children weep also by urging
+now do say something comforting to these poor little girls who were frozen and starved up in the mountains and are now orphans in a strange land without any home or any one to care for them such ordeals were too overwhelming
+i would rush off alone among the wild flowers to get away from the torturing sympathy even there i met those who would look at me with great serious eyes shake their heads and mournfully say you poor little mite
+how much better it would be if you had died in the mountains with your dear mother instead of being left alone to struggle in this wicked world this would but increase my distress for i did not want to be dead and buried up there under the cold deep snow
+and i knew that mother did not want me to be there either had she not sent me away to save me and asked god our heavenly father to take care of me
+intense excitement and indignation prevailed at the fort after captain fallon and other members of his party gave their account of the conditions found at the mountain camps and of interviews had with keseberg whom they now called cannibal
+robber and murderer the wretched man was accused by this party not only of having needlessly partaken of human flesh and of having appropriated coin and other property which should have come to us orphaned children
+but also of having wantonly taken the life of missus murphy and of my mother some declared him crazy others called him a monster keseberg denied these charges and
+he stated that missus murphy had died of starvation soon after the departure of the third relief and that my mother had watched by father's bedside until he died
+after preparing his body for burial she had started out on the trail to go to her children in attempting to cross the distance from her camp to his she had strayed and wandered about far into the night
+and finally reached his cabin wet shivering and grief stricken yet determined to push onward she had brought nothing with her but told him where to find money to take to her children in the event of her not reaching them
+he stated that he offered her food which she refused he then attempted to persuade her to wait until morning and while they were talking she sank upon the floor completely exhausted and he covered her with blankets and made a fire to warm her
+in the morning he found her cold in death
+saved him from personal violence but not from suspicion and ill will women shunned him and children stoned him as he walked about the fort the california star printed in full the account of the fallon party
+and blood curdling editorials increased public sentiment against keseberg stamping him with the mark of cain and closing the door of every home against him
+also of what was said about the alleged murder of our mother still we did hear fragments of conversations which greatly disturbed us and our sisters found it difficult to answer some of our questions meanwhile
+more disappointments for us were brewing at the fort fallon's party demanded an immediate settlement of its claim it had gone up the mountains under promise that its members should have not only a per diem as rescuers
+taken from concealment on keseberg's person and two hundred and seventy five dollars additional taken from a cache that keseberg had disclosed after the captain had partially strangled him
+should be handed over to captain fallon to satisfy the claims of his party and the other half should be put into the hands of a guardian
+notwithstanding these plans for our well being unaccountable delays followed making our situation daily more trying
+they had not fully recovered from the effects of their long privations and physical sufferings in the mountains and the loss of parents and means of support placed upon them responsibilities greater than they could carry
+no matter how bravely they strove to meet the situation how can we provide for ourselves and these little sisters was a question which haunted them by night and perplexed them by day
+they had no way of communicating with our friends in eastern states and the women at the fort could ill afford to provide longer for us since their bread winners were still with fremont and their own supplies were limited
+finally my two eldest sisters were given employment by different families in exchange for food which they shared with us but it was often insufficient and we little ones drifted along forlornly sometimes home
+was where night overtook us often we trudged to the rancheria beyond the pond made by the adobe moulders who had built the houses and wall surrounding the fort there the indian mothers were good to us
+we three were playing near it when a joyous indian girl with a bundle of clothes on her head ran down the bank to the water's edge we following
+merrily up and down in the clear water she lathered them with a freshly gathered soap root and cleansed them according to the ways of the spanish mission teachers as she tied the wet garments in a bundle and turned to carry them to the drying ground frances
+floating near the end of the board and lay down upon it for the purpose of catching them
+saw the poppies drift just beyond her finger tips saw her lean a little farther then slip head first into the deep water such shrieks as terrified children give brought the indian girl quickly to our aid like a flash
+she tossed the bundle from her head sprang into the water snatched frances as she rose to the surface and restored her to us without a word before we had recovered sufficiently to speak she was gone
+not a soul was in sight when we started toward the fort all unconscious of what the inevitable is to be was weaving into our lives
+we were too young to keep track of time by calendar but counted it by happenings some were marked with tears some with smiles and some stole unawares upon us just as on that bright june evening
+when we did not find our sisters and aimlessly followed others to the little shop where a friendly appearing elderly man was cutting slices of meat and handing them to customers
+we did not know his name nor did we realize that he was selling the meat he handed out only that we wanted some so after all the others had gone we addressed him asking grandpa please give us a little piece of meat
+and said that we should sleep at her house that night and see our sisters in the morning she also gave us permission to cook our pieces of liver over her bed of live coals frances offered to cook them all on her stick but
+i being the smallest child was given the shortest stick and allowed to stand nearest the fire soon the three slices were sizzling and browning from the ends of three willow rods and smelled so good that we could hardly wait for them to be done
+then led us to the house where a number of persons had gathered most of them sitting at table laughing and talking and among them elitha and leanna upon our entrance the merriment ceased and all eyes were turned inquiringly toward us
+some one pointed to him who sat beside our eldest sister and gayly said look at your new brother another asked
+tears came also to the child wife's eyes as she clasped her arms about us soothingly assuring us that she was still our sister and would care for us nevertheless
+she and her husband slipped away soon on horseback and we were told that we were to stay at our neighbor's until they returned for us
+and some in their eagerness forgot to roll down their sleeves before they began to talk one triumphantly repeated to each newcomer the motherly advice which she gave the young couple when she first
+noticed his affection for that sorrowing girl who is too pretty to be in this new country without a protector they also recalled how perry mc coon's launch had brought supplies up the river for the second relief to take over the mountains
+and how finally he himself had carried to the bereaved daughter the last accounts from donner camp
+would she take us three to live with her on that cattle ranch twenty five miles by bridle trail from the fort
+captain frisbie wedding festivities the masterpiece of grandma's youth senora vallejo jakie's return his death a cherokee indian who had stood by my father's grave
+captain frisbie spent much time in sonoma after company h was disbanded and observing ones remarked that the attraction was miss fannie vallejo yet not until eighteen fifty one did the general consent to part with his first born daughter
+she anticipated the coming event with interest and pleasure because the prolonged and brilliant festivities would afford her an opportunity to display her fancy and talent in butter modelling for the work she did not charge
+in the evenings after candle light we three gathered her implements were a circular hardwood board a paddle a set of small well pointed sticks
+she talked and modelled and we listening watched the fascinating process saw her take the plastic substance fashion a duck with ducklings on a pond a lamb curled up asleep
+and a couched lion with shaggy head resting upon his fore paws we watched her press beads of proper size and color into the eye sockets skilfully finish the base upon which each figure lay
+then twist a lump of butter into a square of fine muslin and deftly squeeze until it crinkled through the meshes in form of fleece for the lamb's coat
+then use a different mesh to produce the strands for the lion's mane and the tuft for the end of his tail in exuberant delight we exclaimed oh grandma how did you learn to make such wonderful things
+i did not learn it is a gift she replied then she spoke of her modelling in childhood and her subsequent masterpiece which had won the commendation of napoleon and empress josephine at that auspicious time she was but eighteen years of age
+and second cook in the principal tavern of neuchatel switzerland georgia and i sat entranced as with animated words and gestures she pictured the appearance of the buglers and heralds who came weeks in advance
+and empress would arrive in that town and dine at the tavern then the excitement and enthusiastic preparations which followed
+and what a centrepiece it was it required the careful handling of no less than three persons to get it in place on the table where the emperor might see at a glance the groups of figures along the splendid highway
+of the snow white poodle snuggled close in the empress's arms then she told how she heard a heavy thud by the kitchen fire which made her rush back only to discover that the head cook had fallen to the floor in a faint
+she gave the quick call which brought the frau wirthin to the scene of confusion where in mute agony she looked from servant to servant until with hands clasped and eyes full of tears she implored marie
+take the higher place for the day and with god's help make no mistake then she went on to say that while the dinner was being served the emperor admired the butter piece and on hearing that it was the work of a young maidservant in the house
+that she was nervous from added responsibilities and not dressed for presentation cried with quivering lips
+the great emperor asks to see thee and thou must come she told how poor red faced bewildered marie dropped her ladle and stared at the speaker
+then rolled down her sleeves while the frau wirthin tied her own best white apron around her waist at the same time instructing her in the manner in which she must hold her dress at the sides between thumb and forefinger and spread the skirt wide
+yet after it was all over she was informed that the emperor and empress had spoken kindly to her and that she herself had made her bow and backed out of the room admirably for one in her position
+the emperor and the empress she now finished her modelling with a dainty centrepiece for the bride's table and let me go with her when she carried it to the vallejo mansion it gave great satisfaction and while the family and guests were admiring it
+senora vallejo took me by the hand saying in her own musical tongue come little daughter and play while you wait she led me to a room that had pictures on the walls and left me surrounded by toys but i could not play
+my eyes wandered about until they became riveted on one corner of the room where stood a child's crib which looked like gold its head and foot boards were embellished with figures of angels
+and a canopy of lace like a fleecy cloud hovered over them the bed was white but the pillows were covered with pink silk and encased in slips of linen lawn exquisite with rare needlework
+i touched it before i left the room wondering what the little girl dreamed in that beautiful bed and on the way home grandma and i discussed all these things
+the linen pillow slips were as fine as those senorita isabella fitch showed me when she gave me the few highly prized lessons in simple drawn work and her cousin senorita leese had taught me hemming
+these young ladies were related to the vallejos and also lived in large houses facing the plaza and were always kind to georgia and me in fact some of my sweetest memories of sonoma are associated with these three spanish homes
+their people never asked unfeeling questions nor repeated harrowing tales and i did not learn until i was grown that they had been among the large contributors to the fund for the relief of our party
+i have a faint recollection of listening to the chimes of the wedding bells and later of hearing that captain frisbie had taken his bride away but that is all for about that time dear old jakie returned to us in ill health and our thoughts and care turned to him
+i have done my best with the medicines at hand the only thing that remains to be tried is a tea steeped from the nettle root that may give relief as soon as we could get ready after the doctor uttered those words georgia and i equipped with hoe
+while i cut them off and hoed up the roots the plants towered luxuriantly above our heads making the task extremely painful
+no sooner would i commence operations than the branches slipping from under the stick would brush georgia's face and strike my hands and arms with stinging force and by the time we had secured the required number of roots we were covered with fiery welts
+the one in front staggering and his squaw behind making frantic motions to us to hurry over the snake fence near by this we did as speedily as possible and succeeded none too soon for as we reached the ground on the safe side he stopped us
+and angrily demanded the contents of our basket we opened it and when he saw what it contained he stamped his wabbling foot and motioned us to be off we obeyed with alacrity for it was our first experience with a drunken indian
+and greatly alarmed us the tea may have eased jakie's pain but it did not accomplish what we had hoped
+after the lawyer went away grandma told us that jakie had willed us each fifty dollars in gold and the rest of his property to grandpa and herself a few weeks later when the sap ceased flowing to the branches of the trees and the yellow leaves were falling
+grandpa had the grave enclosed with a white paling and we children planted castilian rose bushes at the head and foot of the mound and carried water to them from the house and in time their branches met and the grave was a bed of fragrant blossoms
+one day as i was returning from it with my empty pail a tidy black eyed woman came up to me and said i'm a cherokee indian the wife of one of the three drovers that sold the brunners them long horned cattle that was delivered the other day
+while the settlers and their families were contentedly at work developing the resources of the country the astounding cry gold discovered came through the valley like a blight stopping every industry in its wake
+excited men women and children rushed to town in quest of information it was furnished by
+who had been called away privately two weeks earlier and had just returned in a state of great enthusiasm declaring that gold in dust grains and chunks had been discovered at coloma not more than a day's journey from sutter's fort
+how soon can we get there became the all absorbing problem of eager listeners the only hotel keeper in the town sold his kettles and pans closed his house and departed
+shopkeepers packed most of their supplies for immediate shipment and raised the price of those left for home trade men and half grown boys hardly took time to collect a meagre outfit
+with the long hoped for report of the ratification of the treaty of peace and general mason's proclamation officially announcing it there were not enough men left in the valley outside of the barracks to give a decent round of cheers for the blessing of peace
+grandpa brought the news home california is ours there will be no more war no more trouble and no more need of soldiers yet the women felt that their battles and trials had just begun
+help your neighbor become the watchwords of the day no one was allowed to suffer through lack of practical sympathy from house to house by turns went the strong to help the weak to bridge their troubles
+they went not with cheering words only but with something in store for the empty cupboards
+grandma was in such demand that she had little time to rest for there was not a doctor nor a medicine shop in the valley and her parcels of herbs and knowledge of their uses had to serve for both nights she set her shoes handy
+so that she could dress quickly when summoned to the sick and dawn of day often marked her home coming georgia and i were led into her work early for we were sent with broths and appetizers to the sick on clearings within walking distances
+and she would bid us stay a while at different houses where we could be helpful but to be sure and bring careful reports from each home we entered under such training we learned much about diseases and the care of the suffering anon
+we would find in the plain wooden cradle a dainty bundle of sweetness all done up in white
+then she would mete out to us that hardest of punishments namely that we were not to speak with each other until she should forgive our offence forgiveness usually came before time to drive up the cows
+for she knew that we were nimbler footed when she started us off in happy mood each cow wore a bell of different tone and knew her own name yet it was not an easy task even in pleasant weather to collect the various strings and get them home on time
+they mixed and fed with neighbors cattle on the range and hid themselves behind clumps of trees and other convenient obstructions often grandma would get her string in by the main trail and have them milked
+before we could bring up the laggards that provokingly dawdled along nibbling stray bunches of grass when late on the road we saw coyotes sneaking out for their evening meal and heard the far away cry of the panther
+but we were not much afraid when it was light enough so that imagination could not picture them creeping stealthily behind us our gallant company c officered by captain bartlett and lieutenants stoneman and stone
+to the good will of the people and when captain joe hooker brought him out to visit grandma's dairy she too was greatly pleased by his soldierly bearing after he mentioned that he had heard of her interest in the company which had been called away
+and that he believed she would find company h equally deserving of her consideration she readily extended to the new men the homelike privileges which the others had enjoyed thus more friends came among us
+notable among mine was the old darkey cook at headquarters from whom georgia and i tried to hide the first time she waddled out to our house she searched us out saying now honeys don't yo be so scared of dis ole aunt lucy
+lawd honey yo needn't have no punctions bout takin dis yer book
+now i wants yo to be nice and yo can't lessen yo can read and talk like de captain done tole me yo mudder done i was delighted with the book and told her so and hugged it all the way home
+for it had a beautiful picture near the back showing a little girl with a sprinkling pot watering her garden of stocks sweet williams and hollyhocks her hair was in four long curls and she had trimming on her dress apron and long pantalets
+punctions and quality folks i repeated them over and over to myself so that i should be able to tell them to georgia our last visit to aunt lucy must have been prearranged for as she admitted us she said
+and mus take yos right in to de general i had never seen a general and was shy about meeting one until after she assured me that only cowards and bad men feared him we walked down the corridor and entered a large room
+where an elderly gentleman in uniform sat writing at a table aunt lucy stopped beside him and still holding each by the hand bowed low saying general smith
+then she slipped out he was as courteous to us as though we were grown ladies shook hands asked how we felt begged us to be seated and then stepped to a door and called susan susan
+who called us honeys and dear little girls she sat between us joining with her husband in earnest inquiries about our stay in the mountains and our home with grandma georgia did most of the talking
+i was satisfied just to look at them and hear them speak at the close of our visit with a knowing look she took us to see what aunt lucy had baked the general and she had recently come to pay a last visit to a sick officer
+soldiers dug his grave on the hillside north of town and word came from army headquarters that he would be buried on the morrow at midday with military honors georgia and i wanted to know what military honors were
+and as it came time for the funeral we gathered with others on the plaza where the procession formed we were deeply impressed the emigrants uncovered and bowed their heads reverently but the soldiers in line with guns reversed
+stood erect and motionless as figures in stone while the bier of the dead was being carried through open ranks to the waiting caisson the coffin was covered with a flag and upon it lay his chapeau gauntlets sash and sword
+only soldiers stood close around the grave and heard what was read by the officer who stood at its head with an open book in one hand and a drawn sword in the other
+all the capacities of a daring and skillful soldier
+but as he had never sought distinction for his own sake alone and as his heart remained true to his former lord he preferred to give up the world so he cut off his hair and became a traveling priest taking the buddhist name of kwairyo
+as in other years he had laughed at peril so now also he scorned danger
+so he resigned himself to pass the night under the stars and having found a suitable grassy spot by the roadside he lay down there and prepared to sleep
+he had always welcomed discomfort and even a bare rock was for him a good bed when nothing better could be found and the root of a pine tree an excellent pillow his body was iron and he never troubled himself about dews or rain or frost or snow
+scarcely had he lain down when a man came along the road carrying an axe and a great bundle of chopped wood this woodcutter halted on seeing kwairyo lying down
+and after a moment of silent observation said to him in a tone of great surprise what kind of a man can you be good sir that you dare to lie down alone in such a place as this there are haunters about here many of them are you not afraid of hairy things
+my friend cheerfully answered kwairyo i am only a wandering priest a cloud and water guest as folks call it
+as for lonesome places i like them they are suitable for meditation i am accustomed to sleeping in the open air and i have learned never to be anxious about my life
+to lie down here this place has a bad name a very bad name but as the proverb has it kunshi ayayuki ni chikayorazu the superior man does not needlessly expose himself to peril
+and i must assure you sir that it is very dangerous to sleep here therefore although my house is only a wretched thatched hut let me beg of you to come home with me at once in the way of food i have nothing to offer you but there is a roof at least and you can sleep under it without risk
+accepted this modest offer the woodcutter guided him along a narrow path leading up from the main road through mountain forest it was a rough and dangerous path sometimes skirting precipices sometimes offering nothing but a network of
+slippery roots for the foot to rest upon sometimes winding over or between masses of jagged rock but at last kwairyo found himself upon a cleared space at the top of a hill with a full moon shining overhead and he saw before him a small thatched cottage
+and they must have been taught by some one well acquainted with the rules of propriety then turning to his host the aruji or house master as the others called him kwairyo said
+from the kindness of your speech and from the very polite welcome given me by your household i imagine that you have not always been a woodcutter perhaps you formerly belonged to one of the upper classes smiling the woodcutter answered sir you are not mistaken
+though now living as you find me i was once a person of some distinction my story is the story of a ruined life ruined by my own fault i used to be in the service of a daimyo and my rank in that service was not inconsiderable
+but i loved women and wine too well and under the influence of passion i acted wickedly
+retribution followed me and i long remained a fugitive in the land now i often pray that i may be able to make some atonement for the evil which i did and to reestablish the ancestral home but i fear that i shall never find any way of so doing
+kwairyo was pleased by this announcement of good resolve and he said to the aruji my friend i have had occasion to observe that man prone to folly in their youth may in after years become very earnest in right living
+in the holy sutras it is written that those strongest in wrong doing can become by power of good resolve the strongest in right doing i do not doubt that you have a good heart and i hope that better fortune will come to you
+to night i shall recite the sutras for your sake and pray that you may obtain the force to overcome the karma of any past errors with these assurances kwairyo bade the aruji good night and his host showed him to a very small side room where a bed had been made ready
+then all went to sleep except the priest who began to read the sutras by the light of a paper lantern until a late hour he continued to read and pray
+the night was beautiful there was no cloud in the sky there was no wind and the strong moonlight threw down sharp black shadows of foliage and glittered on the dews of the garden
+and the sound of the neighboring cascade deepened with the night kwairyo felt thirsty as he listened to the noise of the water and remembering the bamboo aqueduct at the rear of the house he thought that he could go there and get a drink without disturbing the sleeping household
+very gently he pushed apart the sliding screens that separated his room from the main apartment and he saw by the light of the lantern five recumbent bodies without heads
+for one instant he stood bewildered imagining a crime but in another moment he perceived that there was no blood and that the headless necks did not look as if they had been cut then he thought to himself
+and remove the body to another place the head will never be able to join itself again to the neck and the book further says that when the head comes back and finds that its body has been moved it will strike itself upon the floor three times bounding like a ball and will pant as in great fear
+and presently die now if these be rokuro kubi they mean me no good so i shall be justified in following the instructions of the book he seized the body of the aruji by the feet pulled it to the window and pushed it out
+gently unbarring the door he made his way to the garden and proceeded with all possible caution to the grove beyond it he heard voices talking in the grove and he went in the direction of the voices stealing from shadow to shadow until he reached a good hiding place
+then from behind a trunk he caught sight of the heads all five of them flitting about and chatting as they flitted they were eating worms and insects which they found on the ground or among the trees
+presently the head of the aruji stopped eating and said ah that traveling priest who came to night how fat all his body is when we shall have eaten him our bellies will be well filled i was foolish to talk to him as i did
+to go near him while he is reciting would be difficult and we cannot touch him so long as he is praying but as it is now nearly morning perhaps he has gone to sleep some one of you go to the house and see what the fellow is doing
+another head the head of a young woman immediately rose up and flitted to the house lightly as a bat after a few minutes it came back and cried out huskily in a tone of great alarm that traveling priest is not in the house he is gone but that is not the worst of the matter
+he has taken the body of our aruji and i do not know where he has put it at this announcement the head of the aruji distinctly visible in the moonlight assumed a frightful aspect its eyes opened monstrously its hair stood up bristling and its teeth gnashed
+since my body has been moved to rejoin it is not possible then i must die and all through the work of that priest
+and there he is behind that tree hiding behind that tree see him the fat coward in the same moment the head of the aruji followed by the other four heads sprang at kwairyo
+but the strong priest had already armed himself by plucking up a young tree and with that tree he struck the heads as they came knocking them from him with tremendous blows four of them fled away but the head of the aruji though battered again and again desperately continued to bound at the priest
+and at last caught him by the left sleeve of his robe kwairyo however as quickly gripped the head by its topknot and repeatedly struck it it did not release its hold but it uttered a long moan and thereafter ceased to struggle it was dead
+but its teeth still held the sleeve and for all his great strength kwairyo could not force open the jaws with the head still hanging to his sleeve he went back to the house and there caught sight of the other four rokuro kubi squatting together
+with their bruised and bleeding heads reunited to their bodies but when they perceived him at the back door all screamed the priest the priest and fled through the other doorway out into the woods eastward the sky was brightening day was about to dawn
+and kwairyo knew that the power of the goblins was limited to the hours of darkness he looked at the head clinging to his sleeve its face all fouled with blood and foam and clay and he laughed aloud as he thought to himself
+after which he gathered together his few belongings and leisurely descended the mountain to continue his journey right on he journeyed until he came to suwa
+seized the priest and took him to jail for they supposed the head to be the head of a murdered man who in the moment of being killed had caught the murderer's sleeve in his teeth as the kwairyo he only smiled and said nothing when they questioned him
+so after having passed a night in prison he was brought before the magistrates of the district then he was ordered to explain how he a priest had been found with the head of a man fastened to his sleeve and why he had dared thus shamelessly to parade his crime in the sight of people
+kwairyo laughed long and loudly at these questions and then he said sirs i did not fasten the head to my sleeve it fastened itself there much against my will and i have not committed any crime for this is not the head of a man it is the head of a goblin
+but the magistrates did not laugh they judged him to be a hardened criminal and his story an insult to their intelligence therefore without further questioning they decided to order his immediate execution all of them except one
+a very old man this aged officer had made no remark during the trial but after having heard the opinion of his colleagues he rose up and said let us first examine the head carefully for this i think has not yet been done
+the old man turned it round and round carefully examined it and discovered on the nape of its neck several strange red characters he called the attention of his colleagues to these and also bade them observe that the edges of the neck nowhere presented the appearance of having been cut by any weapon
+on the contrary the line of leverance was smooth as the line at which a falling leaf detaches itself from the stem then said the elder i am quite sure that the priest told us nothing but the truth this is the head of a rokuro kubi
+there are the characters you can see for yourselves that they have not been painted moreover it is well known that such goblins have been dwelling in the mountains of the province of kai from very ancient time but you sir he exclaimed turning to kwairyo
+perhaps you once belonged to the samurai class
+before becoming a priest i long followed the profession of arms and in those days i never feared man or devil my name then was isogai heidazaemon taketsura of kyushu there may be some among you who remember it
+at the mention of that name a murmur of admiration filled the court room for there were many present who remembered it and kwairyo immediately found himself among friends instead of judges friends anxious to prove their admiration by fraternal kindness
+when kwairyo left suwa he was as happy as any priest is permitted to be in this transitory world as for the head he took it with him jocosely insisting that he intended it for a miyage and now it only remains to tell what became of the head
+a day or two after leaving suwa kwairyo met with a robber who stopped him in a lonesome place and bade him strip kwairyo at once removed his koromo and offered it to the robber who then first perceived what was hanging to the sleeve
+though brave the highwayman was startled he dropped the garment and sprang back then he cried out you
+kwairyo answered i shall let you have the head and the robe if you insist but i must tell you that this is not the head of a man it is a goblin's head so if you buy it and have any trouble in consequence please to remember that you were not deceived by me
+what a nice priest you are exclaimed the robber you kill men and jest about it but i am really in earnest here is my robe and here is the money and let me have the head what is the use of joking
+take the thing said kwairyo i was not joking
+and he then became afraid that the spirit of the rokuro kubi might give him trouble so he made up his mind to take back the head to the place from which it had come and to bury it with its body he found his way to the lonely cottage in the mountains of kai but nobody was there
+and he could not discover the body therefore he buried the head by itself in the grove behind the cottage and he had a tombstone set up over the grave and he caused a segaki service to be performed on behalf of the spirit of the rokuro kubi
+even to day in the courts of certain japanese temples you may see heaps of old bronze mirrors contributed for such a purpose the largest collection of this kind that i ever saw was in the court of a temple of the jodo sect at hakata in kyushu
+who presented her mirror to the temple to be used for bell metal but afterwards she much regretted her mirror she remembered things that her mother had told her about it and she remembered that it had belonged not only to her mother but to her mother's mother and grandmother and she remembered some happy smiles which it had reflected
+but she had not the money necessary whenever she went to the temple she saw her mirror lying in the court yard behind a railing among hundreds of other mirrors heaped there together she knew it by the sho chiku bai in relief on the back of it those three fortunate emblems of pine bamboo and plumflower
+which delighted her baby eyes when her mother first showed her the mirror she longed for some chance to steal the mirror and hide it that she might thereafter treasure it always but the chance did not come and she became very unhappy felt as if she had foolishly given away a part of her life
+a saying mystically expressed by the chinese character for soul upon the backs of many bronze mirrors and she feared that it was true in weirder ways than she had before imagined but she could not dare to speak of her pain to anybody
+evidently the woman who had given that mirror to the temple must have regretted the giving she had not presented her offering with all her heart and therefore her selfish soul remaining attached to the mirror kept it hard and cold in the midst of the furnace
+of course everybody heard of the matter and everybody soon knew whose mirror it was that would not melt and because of this public exposure of her secret fault the poor woman became very much ashamed and very angry and as she could not bear the shame she drowned herself
+after having written a farewell letter containing these words when i am dead it will not be difficult to melt the mirror and to cast the bell but to the person who breaks that bell by ringing it great wealth will be given by the ghost of me
+but the bell proved to be a good bell and it bravely withstood their assaults nevertheless the people were not easily discouraged day after day at all hours they continued to ring the bell furiously caring nothing whatever for the protests of the priests
+so the ringing became an affliction and the priests could not endure it and they got rid of the bell by rolling it down the hill into a swamp the swamp was deep and swallowed it up and that was the end of the bell
+or bell of mugen now there are queer old japanese beliefs in the magical efficacy of a certain mental operation implied though not described by the verb
+the word itself cannot be adequately rendered by any english word for it is used in relation to many kinds of mimetic magic as well as in relation to the performance of many religious acts of faith
+to compare to liken but the esoteric meaning is to substitute in imagination one object or action for another so as to bring about some magical or miraculous result
+for example you cannot afford to build a buddhist temple but you can easily lay a pebble before the image of the buddha with the same pious feeling that would prompt you to build a temple if you were rich enough to build one the merit of so offering the pebble becomes equal or almost equal to the merit of erecting a temple
+you cannot read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy one volumes of the buddhist texts but you can make a revolving library containing them turn round by pushing it like a windlass
+so much will perhaps suffice to explain the religious meanings of nazoraeru the magical meanings could not all be explained without a great variety of examples but for present purposes the following will serve if you should make a little man of straw
+for the same reason that sister helen made a little man of wax and nail it
+that would illustrate one signification of nazoraeru or let us suppose that a robber has entered your house during the night and carried away your valuables if you can discover the footprints of that robber in your garden and then promptly burn a very large moxa on each of them
+the soles of the feet of the robber will become inflamed and will allow him no rest until he returns of his own accord to put himself at your mercy that is another kind of mimetic magic expressed by the term nazoraeru
+after the bell had been rolled into the swamp there was of course no more chance of ringing it in such wise as to break it
+but persons who regretted this loss of opportunity would strike and break objects imaginatively substituted for the bell thus hoping to please the spirit of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble one of these persons was a woman called umegae
+while the pair were traveling together kajiwara one day found himself in great straits for want of money and umegae remembering the tradition of the bell of mugen took a basin of bronze and mentally representing it to be the bell beat upon it until she broke it
+crying out at the same time for three hundred pieces of gold a guest of the inn where the pair were stopping
+afterwards a song was made about umegae's basin of bronze and that song is sung by dancing girls even to this day umegae no chozubachi tataite
+if by striking upon the wash basin of umegae i could make honorable money come to me
+became great and many people followed the example of umegae thereby hoping to emulate her luck
+as it deserves to be answered take therefore this jar so saying she put the jar into his hands and disappeared into his house the happy man rushed to tell his wife the good news he set down in front of her the covered jar which was heavy
+and they opened it together and they found that it was filled up to the very brim with
+jikininki once when muso kokushi
+for a long time he wandered about helplessly and he was beginning to despair of finding shelter for the night when he perceived on the top of a hill lighted by the last rays of the sun one of those little hermitages called
+which are built for solitary priests it seemed to be in ruinous condition but he hastened to it eagerly and found that it was inhabited by an aged priest from whom he begged the favor of a night's lodging
+this the old man harshly refused but he directed muso to a certain hamlet in the valley adjoining where lodging and food could be obtained muso found his way to the hamlet which consisted of less than a dozen farm cottages
+but a little before midnight he was roused from sleep by a sound of loud weeping in the next apartment presently the sliding screens were gently pushed apart and a young man carrying a lighted lantern entered the room respectfully saluted him and said
+the people whom you saw in the next room are the inhabitants of this village
+strange things always happen in the house where a corpse has thus been left so we think that it will be better for you to come away with us we can find you good lodging in the other village
+but i am sorry that you did not tell me of your father's death when i came for though i was a little tired i certainly was not so tired that i should have found difficulty in doing my duty as a priest had you told me i could have performed the service before your departure
+as it is i shall perform the service after you have gone away and i shall stay by the body until morning i do not know what you mean by your words about the danger of staying here alone
+then the other members of the family and the folk assembled in the adjoining room having been told of the priest's kind promises came to thank him after which the master of the house said now reverend sir much as we regret to leave you alone we must bid you farewell
+by the rule of our village none of us can stay here after midnight we beg kind sir that you will take every care of your honorable body while we are unable to attend upon you and if you happen to hear or see anything strange during our absence please tell us of the matter when we return in the morning
+all then left the house except the priest who went to the room where the dead body was lying the usual offerings had been set before the corpse and a small buddhist lamp tomyo was burning
+the priest recited the service and performed the funeral ceremonies after which he entered into meditation so meditating he remained through several silent hours and there was no sound in the deserted village
+but when the hush of the night was at its deepest there noiselessly entered a shape vague and vast and in the same moment muso found himself without power to move or speak
+he saw that shape lift the corpse as with hands devour it more quickly than a cat devours a rat beginning at the head and eating everything the hair and the bones and even the shroud and the monstrous thing having thus consumed the body
+turned to the offerings and ate them also then it went away as mysteriously as it had come when the villagers returned next morning they found the priest awaiting them at the door of the headman's dwelling all in turn saluted him and when they had entered
+and looked about the room no one expressed any surprise at the disappearance of the dead body and the offerings but the master of the house said to muso reverent sir you have probably seen unpleasant things during the night
+all of us were anxious about you but now we are very happy to find you alive and unharmed gladly we would have stayed with you if it had been possible but the law of our village as i told you last evening obliges us to quit our houses after a death has taken place
+and to leave the corpse alone whenever this law has been broken heretofore some great misfortune has followed whenever it is obeyed we find that the corpse and the offerings disappear during our absence perhaps you have seen the cause
+then muso told of the dim and awful shape that had entered the death chamber to devour the body and the offerings no person seemed to be surprised by his narration and the master of the house observed
+what you have told us reverend sir agrees with what has been said about this matter from ancient time muso then inquired does not the priest on the hill sometimes perform the funeral service for your dead what priest the young man asked
+the priest who yesterday evening directed me to this village answered muso i called at his anjitsu on the hill yonder he refused me lodging but told me the way here the listeners looked at each other as in astonishment
+and after a moment of silence the master of the house said reverend sir there is no priest and there is no anjitsu on the hill for the time of many generations there has not been any resident priest in this neighborhood muso said nothing more on the subject
+for it was evident that his kind hosts supposed him to have been deluded by some goblin but after having bidden them farewell and obtained all necessary information as to his road he determined to look again for the hermitage on the hill and so to ascertain whether he had really been deceived
+and this time its aged occupant invited him to enter when he had done so the hermit humbly bowed down before him exclaiming ah i am ashamed i am very much ashamed i am exceedingly ashamed
+you need not be ashamed for having refused me shelter said muso you directed me to the village yonder where i was very kindly treated and i thank you for that favor i can give no man shelter the recluse made answer
+so in that time the bodies of the mountain folk who died used to be brought here sometimes from great distances in order that i might repeat over them the holy service but i repeated the service and performed the rites only as a matter of business
+i thought only of the food and the clothes that my sacred profession enabled me to gain and because of this selfish impiety i was reborn immediately after my death into the state of a jikininki
+since then i have been obliged to feed upon the corpses of the people who die in this district every one of them i must devour in the way that you saw last night now reverend sir
+help me by your prayers i entreat you so that i may be soon able to escape from this horrible state of existence no sooner had the hermit uttered this petition than he disappeared and the hermitage also disappeared at the same instant
+chapter seventeen when wendy grew up i hope you want to know what became of the other boys they were waiting below to give wendy time to explain about them and when they had counted five hundred they went up
+they went up by the stair because they thought this would make a better impression they stood in a row in front of missus darling with their hats off and wishing they were not wearing their pirate clothes they said nothing but their eyes asked her to have them
+but they forgot about him of course missus darling said at once that she would have them but mister darling was curiously depressed and they saw that he considered six a rather large number i must say he said to wendy
+that you don't do things by halves a grudging remark which the twins thought was pointed at them the first twin was the proud one and he asked flushing do you think we should be too much of a handful sir because if so we can go away
+father wendy cried shocked but still the cloud was on him he knew he was behaving unworthily but he could not help it we could lie doubled up said nibs i always cut their hair myself said wendy
+george missus darling exclaimed pained to see her dear one showing himself in such an unfavourable light then he burst into tears and the truth came out he was as glad to have them as she was he said
+but he thought they should have asked his consent as well as hers
+i don't think he is a cypher tootles cried instantly do you think he is a cypher curly no i don't do you think he is a cypher slightly rather not twin what do you think
+it turned out that not one of them thought him a cypher and he was absurdly gratified and said he would find space for them all in the drawing room if they fitted in we'll fit in sir they assured him then follow the leader he cried gaily
+mind you i am not sure that we have a drawing room but we pretend we have and it's all the same hoop la he went off dancing through the house and they all cried hoop la and danced after him searching for the drawing room and i forget whether they found it
+but at any rate they found corners and they all fitted in as for peter he saw wendy once again before he flew away he did not exactly come to the window but he brushed against it in passing so that she could open it if she liked and call to him
+that is what she did hullo wendy good bye he said oh dear are you going away yes you don't feel peter she said falteringly
+that you would like to say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject no about me peter no missus darling came to the window
+would you send me to school he inquired craftily yes and then to an office i suppose so
+very soon i don't want to go to school and learn solemn things he told her passionately i don't want to be a man o wendy's mother if i was to wake up and feel there was a beard peter said wendy the comforter i should love you in a beard
+and missus darling stretched out her arms to him but he repulsed her keep back lady
+but where are you going to live with tink in the house we built for wendy the fairies are to put it high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights how lovely cried wendy so longingly that missus darling tightened her grip i thought all the fairies were dead missus darling said
+because you see when a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies they live in nests on the tops of trees and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are
+i shall have tink tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round she reminded him a little tartly
+tink called out from somewhere round the corner it doesn't matter peter said o peter you know it matters
+may i mummy certainly not i have got you home again and i mean to keep you but he does so need a mother so do you my love oh all right peter said as if he had asked her from politeness merely
+long in coming but this promise sent peter away quite gay again
+i suppose it was because wendy knew this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones you won't forget me peter will you before spring cleaning time comes of course peter promised and then he flew away he took missus darling's kiss with him
+the kiss that had been for no one else peter took quite easily funny but she seemed satisfied of course all the boys went to school
+but it was too late now and soon they settled down to being as ordinary as you or me or jenkins minor
+in time they could not even fly after their hats want of practice they called it but what it really meant was that they no longer believed michael believed longer than the other boys
+though they jeered at him so he was with wendy when peter came for her at the end of the first year she flew away with peter in the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the neverland and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become but he never noticed he had so much to say about himself
+she had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind who is captain hook
+when she spoke of the arch enemy don't you remember she asked amazed how you killed him and saved all our lives i forget them after i kill them he replied carelessly when she expressed a doubtful hope that tinker bell would be glad to see her he said
+who is tinker bell o peter she said shocked but even when she explained he could not remember there are such a lot of them he said i expect she is no more i expect he was right for fairies don't live long
+but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them wendy was pained too to find that the past year was but as yesterday to peter
+but he was exactly as fascinating as ever and they had a lovely spring cleaning in the little house on the tree tops next year he did not come for her she waited in a new frock because the old one simply would not meet but he never came
+perhaps he is ill michael said you know he is never ill michael came close to her and whispered with a shiver perhaps there is no such person wendy and then wendy would have cried if michael had not been crying
+peter came next spring cleaning and the strange thing was that he never knew he had missed a year that was the last time the girl wendy ever saw him for a little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains
+and she felt she was untrue to him when she got a prize for general knowledge but the years came and went without bringing the careless boy and when they met again wendy was a married woman and peter was no more to her
+than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys wendy was grown up you need not be sorry for her she was one of the kind that likes to grow up in the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls
+all the boys were grown up and done for by this time so it is scarcely worth while saying anything more about them you may see the twins and nibs and curly any day going to an office each carrying a little bag and an umbrella
+you see that judge in a wig coming out at the iron door that used to be tootles the bearded man who doesn't know any story to tell his children
+and always had an odd inquiring look
+when she was old enough to ask them they were mostly about peter pan she loved to hear of peter and wendy told her all she could remember in the very nursery from which the famous flight had taken place
+who was no longer fond of stairs missus darling was now dead and forgotten there were only two beds in the nursery now jane's and her nurse's and there was no kennel for nana also had passed away
+she died of old age and at the end she had been rather difficult to get on with being very firmly convinced that no one knew how to look after children except herself once a week jane's nurse had her evening off
+and then it was wendy's part to put jane to bed that was the time for stories it was jane's invention to raise the sheet over her mother's head and her own thus making a tent
+i don't think i see anything to night says wendy with a feeling that if nana were here she would object to further conversation yes you do says jane
+that is a long time ago sweetheart says wendy ah me how time flies does it fly asks the artful child the way you flew when you were a little girl
+why can't you fly now mother because i am grown up dearest when people grow up they forget the way why do they forget the way because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless
+it is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly what is gay and innocent and heartless
+or perhaps wendy admits she does see something i do believe she says that it is this nursery i do believe it is says jane go on
+they are now embarked on the great adventure of the night when peter flew in looking for his shadow
+you have missed a bit interrupts jane who now knows the story better than her mother when you saw him sitting on the floor crying what did you say i sat up in bed and i said boy why are you crying
+yes that was it says jane with a big breath and then he flew us all away to the neverland and the fairies and the pirates and the redskins and the mermaid's lagoon
+yes which did you like best of all i think i liked the home under the ground best of all
+what was the last thing peter ever said to you the last thing he ever said to me was just always be waiting for me and then some night you will hear me crowing yes but alas he forgot all about me
+wendy said it with a smile she was as grown up as that what did his crow sound like jane asked one evening it was like this wendy said
+trying to imitate peter's crow no it wasn't jane said gravely
+jane said ah yes many girls hear it when they are sleeping but i was the only one who heard it awake lucky you said jane and then one night came the tragedy it was the spring of the year
+wendy was sitting on the floor very close to the fire so as to see to darn for there was no other light in the nursery and while she sat darning she heard a crow then the window blew open as of old
+he was exactly the same as ever and wendy saw at once that he still had all his first teeth he was a little boy and she was grown up she huddled by the fire not daring to move helpless and guilty
+a big woman hullo wendy he said not noticing any difference for he was thinking chiefly of himself and in the dim light her white dress might have been the nightgown in which he had seen her first hullo peter
+she replied faintly squeezing herself as small as possible something inside her was crying woman woman let go of me hullo where is john he asked suddenly missing the third bed
+john is not here now she gasped is michael asleep he asked with a careless glance at jane
+that is not michael she said quickly lest a judgment should fall on her peter looked hullo is it a new one yes boy or girl girl now surely he would understand but not a bit of it
+peter she said faltering are you expecting me to fly away with you of course that is why i have come he added a little sternly have you forgotten that this is spring cleaning time
+she knew it was useless to say that he had let many spring cleaning times pass i can't come she said apologetically i have forgotten how to fly i'll soon teach you again o peter don't waste the fairy dust on me
+what is it he cried shrinking
+for almost the only time in his life that i know of peter was afraid don't turn up the light he cried she let her hands play in the hair of the tragic boy she was not a little girl heart broken about him
+she was a grown woman smiling at it all
+then she turned up the light and peter saw he gave a cry of pain and when the tall beautiful creature stooped to lift him in her arms he drew back sharply what is it he cried again she had to tell him
+i am old peter i am ever so much more than twenty i grew up long ago you promised not to i couldn't help it
+no you're not yes and the little girl in the bed is my baby no she's not
+of course he did not strike
+and wendy did not know how to comfort him though she could have done it so easily once she was only a woman now and she ran out of the room to try to think peter continued to cry and soon his sobs woke jane
+boy she said why are you crying peter rose and bowed to her and she bowed to him from the bed hullo he said hullo said jane my name is peter pan he told her
+yes i know i came back for my mother he explained to take her to the neverland yes i know jane said i have been waiting for you when wendy returned diffidently she found peter sitting on the bed post crowing gloriously
+while jane in her nighty was flying round the room in solemn ecstasy she is my mother peter explained and jane descended and stood by his side with the look in her face that he liked to see on ladies when they gazed at him
+he does so need a mother jane said yes i know wendy admitted rather forlornly no one knows it so well as i good bye said peter to wendy and he rose in the air and the shameless jane rose with him
+it was already her easiest way of moving about wendy rushed to the window no no she cried it is just for spring cleaning time jane said he wants me always to do his spring cleaning
+if only i could go with you wendy sighed you see you can't fly said jane of course in the end wendy let them fly away together
+our last glimpse of her shows her at the window
+as you look at wendy you may see her hair becoming white and her figure little again for all this happened long ago
+and every spring cleaning time except when he forgets peter comes for margaret and takes her to the neverland where she tells him stories about himself to which he listens eagerly when margaret grows up she will have a daughter who is to be peter's mother in turn
+clean the fish dip in flour then in beaten egg then in crumbs and fry in plenty of fat drain and garnish with lemon and parsley
+season with salt and pepper dip in egg and corn meal and fry in deep fat
+strain the liquid thicken with butter and flour season to taste pour over the fish and serve boiled perch with oyster sauce prepare and clean the fish and simmer until done in salted and acidulated water
+drain and serve with oyster sauce perch a l'allemande put two large cleaned perch into a saucepan with two chopped carrots a sprig of parsley a celery root a sliced onion and a pinch of salt
+cover with white wine and simmer for twenty minutes drain and keep warm take out the onion parsley and celery root add half a cupful of chopped mushrooms and cook for five minutes
+cook with a tablespoonful each of butter and flour thickened together take from the fire add a tablespoonful of butter and the juice of two lemons pour over the fish and serve
+to which has been added chopped cooked carrots and mushrooms and a tablespoonful of minced parsley add also to the sauce a tablespoonful of butter and grated nutmeg
+and put into a stewpan with a chopped onion a bunch of parsley a pinch of salt and enough white wine to cover simmer for fifteen minutes
+put into a saucepan one tablespoonful of malt vinegar one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar a teaspoonful of minced parsley a small chopped onion a bay leaf and four pepper corns
+boil for ten minutes strain and cool cook together four tablespoonfuls of butter and two of flour when brown add a pint of beef stock and cook until thick stirring constantly take from the fire
+add the strained vinegar the beaten yolks of six eggs and two tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish bring to the boil pour over the fish and serve perch a la stanley
+take from the fire add the yolks of four eggs beaten with the juice of a lemon and three tablespoonfuls of butter bring to the boil add a dozen parboiled oysters pour over the fish and serve baked perch
+prepare and clean the fish stuff with seasoned crumbs
+bake with a little white wine and melted butter perch salad
+before the sittings of the great assembly had come to an end a young statesman destined to play the leading part in the government of the dutch republic during two decades had already made his mark
+his readiness and persuasiveness of speech his industry and his gifts at once of swift insight and orderly thoroughness
+but the old sores remained open moreover the refusal of the states general to receive the parliamentary envoys the murder of doreslaer and the protection afforded to royalist refugees had been additional causes of resentment
+but the english council had not felt strong enough to take action the death of the prince of orange
+appeared at first to open out a prospect of friendlier relations between the two neighbouring republics in january sixteen fifty one the great assembly formally recognised the commonwealth
+and determined to send back to his old post in london the veteran ambassador joachimi who had been recalled the english government on their part anticipated his return by despatching in march oliver saint john and walter strickland
+and saint john and strickland greeted with loud cries of regicides and many abusive epithets remembering the fate of doreslaer were in fear of their lives
+on april fourth a conference was opened between the envoys and six commissioners appointed by the states to consider the proposals of the english government for a more strict and intimate alliance and union between the two states the dutch quickly perceived
+that what the english really wanted was nothing less than such a binding alliance or rather coalition as would practically merge the lesser state in the greater but the very idea of such a loss of the independence that they had only just won was to the netherlanders unthinkable
+the negotiations came to a deadlock
+foremost amongst them prince edward son of the queen of bohemia the parliament threatened to recall the envoys but consented that they should remain on the undertaking of the estates of holland to protect them from further attacks and to punish the offenders
+new proposals were accordingly made for an offensive and defensive alliance without any suggestion of a union coupled with the condition that both states should bind themselves not to allow the presence within their boundaries of avowed enemies of the other in other words
+the expulsion of the members and adherents of the house of stewart including the princess royal and the queen of bohemia with their children
+even the estates of holland dared not consider such terms and the states general would have angrily rejected them after some further parleying therefore about fisheries and trade restrictions it was felt that no agreement could be reached
+and saint john and strickland returned to england on july thirty first sixteen fifty one their failure created a very bad impression upon the parliament all the old complaints against the dutch were revived and
+as they had refused the offer of friendship that had been made to them it was resolved that strong measures should be taken to obtain redress for past grievances and for the protection of english trade interests at the instance of saint john
+the famous navigation act was passed by the parliament october ninth sixteen fifty one this act struck a mortal blow at the dutch carrying trade by forbidding the importation of foreign goods into english ports except in english bottoms or in those of the countries which had produced the goods
+scarcely less injurious was the prohibition to aliens to fish in british waters and the withdrawal of the rights based on the magnus intercursus for the maintenance of which dutch statesmen had so long and strenuously fought
+there was consternation in holland and the states general determined to send a special embassy to london
+a man in whose ripe judgment they had confidence to the office of council pensionary
+who having been given letters of marque to prey upon french commerce
+the english government however met the dutch complaints by raking up the long list of grievances that had stirred up a bitter feeling of popular hatred against the united provinces in england and by demanding reparation
+they further demanded that dutch commanders should acknowledge england's sovereignty by striking flag and sail and by firing a salute whenever any of their squadrons met english ships in the narrow seas it was these last two questions
+the right of search and the striking of the flag that were to be the real causes of the outbreak of a war that was desired by neither of the two governments but popular feeling and the course of events was too strong for them the news of the seizure of their vessels
+not merely by privateers but by an english squadron under ayscue in the west indies had caused intense indignation and alarm in holland and especially in amsterdam pressure was brought to bear on the states general and the admiralties
+who in pursuance of economy had reduced the fleet to seventy five ships it was resolved therefore on february twenty second
+the council of state on hearing of this began also to make ready for eventualities negotiations were still proceeding between the two countries when martin tromp the victor of the battle of the downs
+now lieutenant admiral of holland was sent to sea with fifty ships and instructions to protect dutch merchantmen from interference and to see that the states suffered no affront nothing was actually said about the striking of the flag
+it came suddenly through a misunderstanding the dutch admiral while cruising past dover met on may twenty ninth fifteen english ships under blake
+tromp declared that he had given orders to strike the flag but that blake again fired before there was time to carry them out be this as it may the two fleets were soon engaged in a regular fight and the english being reinforced tromp withdrew at nightfall
+to the french coast having lost two ships great was the anger aroused in england where the dutch were universally regarded as the aggressors in the netherlands where the peace party was strong many were disposed to blame tromp despite his protests
+adrian pauw himself left hastily for london john de witt being appointed to act as his deputy during his absence pauw's strenuous efforts however to maintain peace were all in vain despite the strong leanings of cromwell towards a peaceful solution
+but popular feeling on both sides was now aroused
+if humiliating terms were submitted to stiffened their attitude the result was that the envoys left london on june thirtieth sixteen fifty two and war was declared the dutch statesmen who sought to avoid hostilities were right
+all the advantages were on the side of their enemies the dutch merchant fleets covered the seas and the welfare of the land depended on commerce the english had little to lose commercially
+was superior in almost all other respects the stuarts had devoted great attention to the fleet and would have done more but for lack of means charles much abused ship money was employed by him for the creation of the first english professional navy
+it had been largely increased by the parliament after sixteen forty eight and its generals blake penn and ayscue had already acquired much valuable experience in their encounters with the royalist squadron under prince rupert
+and in long cruises to the west indies for the purpose of forcing the english colonies to acknowledge parliamentary rule the crews therefore were well trained and the ships were larger stronger and better armed than those of the dutch
+the position of england lying as it did athwart the routes by which the dutch merchant fleets must sail was a great advantage even more important was the advantage of having a central control
+whereas in the netherlands there were five distinct boards of admiralty to some extent jealous of each other and now lacking the supreme direction of an admiral general the war began by a series of english successes and of dutch misfortunes
+early in july sixteen fifty two blake at the head of sixty ships set sail for the north to intercept the dutch baltic commerce and to destroy their fishing fleet off the north of scotland
+he left ayscue with a small squadron to guard the mouth of the thames tromp meanwhile had put to sea at the head of nearly a hundred ships ayscue succeeded in intercepting a fleet of dutch merchantmen near calais
+all of them being captured or burnt while blake with the main force off the north coast of scotland destroyed the dutch fishing fleet and their convoy after these first blows against the enemy's commerce good fortune continued to attend the english
+tromp was prevented from following blake by strong northerly winds he then turned upon ayscue whose small force he must have overwhelmed but for a sudden change to a southerly gale the dutch admiral now sailed northwards and july twenty fifth
+found the english fleet off the shetlands a violent storm arose from the force of which blake was protected while the dutch vessels were scattered far and wide on the following day out of ninety nine ships tromp could only collect thirty five
+and to meet and convoy back the home coming ships
+ayscue had previously sailed up channel with forty men of war and five fireships for a similar purpose the two fleets met on august sixteenth and despite his inferiority of force de ruyter forced ayscue to withdraw into plymouth and was able to bring his convoy home to safety
+the ill success of tromp though he was in no way to blame for it caused considerable alarm and discontent in holland his enemies of the states party in that province took advantage of it to suspend the gallant old seaman from his command he was an orangist
+and as the orange partisans were everywhere clamorously active the admiral was suspect in his place cornelisz witte de with was appointed a capable sailor but disliked in the fleet as much as tromp was beloved de with effected a junction with de ruyter
+and with joint forces they attacked blake on october eighth near the shoal known as the kentish knock the english fleet was considerably more powerful than the dutch and the desertion of de with by some twenty ships decided the issue the dutch had to return home with some loss
+but they were deceived in thinking that the struggle in the channel was over for the winter the deserters at the kentish knock were punished
+full of resentment though he was at the bad treatment he had received tromp was too good a patriot to refuse at the end of november the old admiral at the head of one hundred warships put to sea for the purpose of convoying some four hundred fifty merchantmen through the straits
+stormy weather compelled him to send the convoy with an escort into shelter but he himself with sixty ships set out to seek the english fleet which lay in the downs after some manoeuvring the two fleets met on december tenth off dungeness
+while many english prizes were captured this state of things was however not to last long towards the end of february sixteen fifty three blake put to sea with nearly eighty ships and on the twenty fifth off portland met tromp at the head of a force nearly equal to his own in number
+and he had moreover been at sea without replenishment of stores ever since the fight at dungeness while the english had come straight from port the fight
+had lasted for two whole days when tromp found that his powder had run out and that on the third day more than half his fleet were unable to continue the struggle but inspiring his subordinates de ruyter evertsen and floriszoon with his own indomitable courage
+tromp succeeded by expert seamanship in holding off the enemy and conducting his convoy with small loss into safety
+meanwhile both nations had been getting sick of the war the dutch were suffering terribly from the serious interference with their commerce and carrying trade and from the destruction of the important fisheries industry
+while the english on their side were shut out from the baltic where the king of denmark as the ally of the united provinces had closed the sound and from the mediterranean where admiral van galen
+destroyed a british squadron off leghorn march twenty third in both countries there was a peace party
+and was averse to war in the dutch republic the states party especially in holland the chief sufferer by the war was anxious for a cessation of hostilities and it found its leader in the youthful john de witt
+had been appointed council pensionary cromwell took pains to let the estates of holland know his favourable feelings towards them by sending over in february a private emissary
+thus early did the new council pensionary initiate a form of diplomacy in which he was to prove himself an adept this first effort was not a success the parliament published the letter with the title humble supplication of the states of holland
+he induced the states general by a bare majority four provinces to three to send a conciliatory letter the date of which april thirtieth sixteen fifty three coincided with cromwell's forcible dissolution of the rump parliament and the assumption by him
+with the support of the army of dictatorial powers
+and their insistence now on the full satisfaction of all the english demands made a continuation of hostilities inevitable tromp after successfully bringing in two large convoys of merchantmen encountered june twelfth
+near the gabbard the english fleet under monk and deane each fleet numbered about one hundred sail but the dutch ships were inferior in size solidity and weight of metal for two days the fight was obstinately and fiercely contested
+tromp was obliged to retreat having lost twenty ships he complained bitterly as did his vice admirals de ruyter and de with to the board of admiralty of the inferiority of the vessels of his fleet as compared with those of the adversary
+the english now instituted a blockade of the dutch coast which had the effect of reducing to desperate straits a land whose welfare and prosperity depended wholly on commerce amsterdam was ruined in these circumstances direct negotiation was perforce attempted
+four envoys were sent representing the three maritime provinces at first it seemed impossible that any common ground of agreement could be found cromwell was obsessed with the idea of a politico religious union between the two republics which would have meant the extinction of dutch independence
+una respublica which nothing but sheer conquest and dire necessity would ever induce the dutch people to accept accordingly the war went on though the envoys did not leave london hoping still that some better terms might be offered
+but in order to gain breathing space for the efforts of the negotiators one thing was essential the breaking of the blockade the admiralties made a supreme effort to refit and reinforce their fleet but it lay in two portions eighty five sail under tromp in the maas
+monk with about one hundred ships lay between them to prevent their junction on august fourth tromp sailed out and after a rearguard action off katwijk out manoeuvred the english commander and joined de with he now turned and with superior numbers attacked monk off scheveningen
+the old hero fell mortally wounded at the very beginning of what proved to be an unequal fight
+the states though much perplexed to find a successor to martin tromp were so far from being discouraged that great energy was shown in reorganising the fleet
+meanwhile negotiations had been slowly dragging on the accession of cromwell to supreme power in december sixteen fifty three with the title of lord protector
+for the new ruler of england had always professed himself an opponent of the war which had shattered his fantastic dream of a union between the two republics many conferences took place but the protector's attitude and intentions were ambiguous and difficult to divine
+at last cromwell formulated his proposals in twenty seven articles the demands were those of the victor and were severe all the old disputes were to be settled in favour of england an annual sum was to be paid for the right of fishing
+compensation to be made for the massacre of amboina and the officials responsible for it punished the number of warships in english waters was to be limited the flag had to be struck when english ships were met and the right of search to be permitted these demands
+article twelve stipulated that the prince of orange should not at any time hold any of the offices or dignities which had been held by his ancestors or be appointed to any military command
+was perfectly aware that it would be useless to present such proposals to the states general not only would they indignantly reject them but he had not the slightest hope of getting any single province even holland to allow a foreign power to interfere with their internal affairs
+and to bid them to treat with harsh ingratitude the infant heir of a family to which the dutch people owed so deep a debt there was nothing for it but to prepare for a vigorous resumption of the war strong efforts were therefore made at de witt's instigation
+to increase the fleet and secure the active co operation of denmark and france both friendly to the states but cromwell really wanted peace and showed himself ready to yield on certain minor points but he continued to insist on the exclusion of the prince of orange
+not till the dutch envoys had demanded their passports did the protector give way so far as to say he would be content to have the exclusion guaranteed by a secret article what followed forms one of the strangest chapters in the history of diplomacy
+he was able to reach the private ear of cromwell and to enter into clandestine negotiations with him the council pensionary knew well the hopelessness of any attempt to get the assent of the states general to the proposed exclusion even in a secret article
+of the state of public feeling on this point with the result that the protector gave the envoy to understand that he would be satisfied if the estates of holland alone would affirm a declaration that the prince should never be appointed stadholder or captain general whether this concession was offered by cromwell proprio motu
+in any case the council pensionary being convinced of the necessity of peace resolved to secure it by playing a very deep and dangerous game not only must the whole affair be kept absolutely from the cognisance of the states general
+but also de witt was fully aware that the assent of the estates of holland to the proposed exclusion article could only be obtained with the greatest difficulty he was to prove himself a very past master in the art of diplomatic chicanery and intrigue
+the council pensionary first set to work to have the treaty from which the exclusion article had been cut out ratified rapidly by the states general
+the estates adjourned for a recess on april twenty first sixteen fifty four on the following day he presented the treaty to the states general
+and such was his persuasive skill that he accomplished the unprecedented feat of getting this dilatory body to accept the conditions of peace almost without discussion
+the treaty ratified and signed was sent back to london only one article aroused opposition
+the so called temperament clause but cromwell had insisted upon it by this article
+or commander of military or naval forces
+addressed to the estates of holland not at the moment in session
+the cleverness and skill now shown by the council pensionary were truly extraordinary a summons was sent out to the estates to meet on april twenty eighth without any reason being assigned the members on assembly were sworn to secrecy
+and then the official letter from london was read to them
+to the act of exclusion came upon the estates like a thunder bolt the sudden demand caused something like consternation and the members asked to be allowed to consider the matter with their principals before taking so momentous a decision three days were granted
+but as it was essential to prevent publicity it was settled that only the burgomasters should be consulted again under oath of secrecy at the meeting on may first
+that the act should be placed in his hands within two days after the ratification of the treaty was peremptory and threatening unless he received the act he would consider the treaty as not binding upon him using all his powers of advocacy
+de witt succeeded after an angry debate in securing a majority for the act five towns however obstinately refused their assent and claimed that it could not be passed without it but de witt had made up his mind to risk illegality
+and overruled their protest the act was declared to have been passed and was on may fifth sent to van beverningh and nieuwpoort with instructions not to deliver it until circumstances compelled them to do so
+but for some five weeks the existence of the act was unknown to the states general and during that period
+early in june a bribe induced one of de witt's clerks to betray the secret to count william frederick the news soon spread and loud was the outcry of the orange partisans and of the two princesses who at once addressed a remonstrance to the states general
+all the other provinces strongly protested against the action of the estates of holland and of the council pensionary de witt attempted to defend himself and the estates by vague statements avoiding the main issue but insisting that nothing illegal had been done his efforts were in vain
+all the secret instructions they had received from holland and the act of exclusion meanwhile the estates of holland themselves frightened at the clamour which had been aroused began to show signs of defection
+they went so far as to pass a vote of thanks to the envoys for not having delivered the act to cromwell de witt's position appeared hopeless
+his efforts to prevent the resolution of the states general from taking immediate effect proving unavailing he put forward the suggestion that on account of its importance the despatch should be sent to the envoys in cipher
+this was agreed to and on june seventh the document was duly forwarded to london by the council pensionary
+informing them that the estates of holland assented to the request made by the states general and that they were to send back the secret correspondence and also the act if it were still undelivered the result answered to his expectations
+while the clerk was laboriously deciphering the despatch the envoys read between the lines of de witt's letter and without a moment's delay went to whitehall and placed the act in cromwell's hands the states general had thus no alternative between acceptance of the fait accompli
+and the risk of a renewal of the war no further action was taken and the protector professed himself satisfied with a guarantee of such doubtful validity it is impossible to withhold admiration from de witt's marvellous diplomatic dexterity
+and from the skill and courage with which he achieved his end in the face of obstacles and difficulties that seemed insurmountable but for the course of double dealing and chicanery by which he triumphed the only defence that can be offered is that the council pensionary
+really believed that peace was an absolute necessity for his country and that peace could only be maintained at the cost of the act of exclusion
+there is however every reason to believe that de witt was prompted to take the risks he did by purely patriotic motives and not through spite against the house of orange
+not merely by the orange partisans but by popular opinion generally in the united provinces
+in the time of clovis the country now called bulgaria was inhabited by goths one day a poor shepherd boy about sixteen years of age left his mountain home in that country to go to the city of constantinople which was many miles away
+but he was determined to go even though he should have to walk every step of the road and live on fruits that he could gather by the way he was a bright clever boy who had spent his life hitherto in a village but was now eager to go out into the world
+to seek his fortune some years before this boy's uncle who was named justin had gone to constantinople and joined the roman army he was so brave and so good a soldier that he soon came to be
+commander of the imperial guard which attended the emperor the poor shepherd boy had heard of the success of his uncle and this was the reason why he resolved to set off for the big city so he started down the mountain
+and trudged along the valley in high hope feeling certain that he would reach the end of his journey in safety
+and to cross rivers and high hills but at last one afternoon in midsummer he walked through the main gate of constantinople proud and happy that he had accomplished his purpose he had no trouble in finding his uncle justin
+and gave him the best education that could be had in the city
+richly dressed he was well liked at the emperor's court and was respected by everybody on account of his learning two one day a great change came for both uncle and nephew the emperor died
+in ruling the empire justinus agreed to this proposal for he was now old and in feeble health and not able himself to attend to the important affairs of government
+justinian reigned for nearly forty years and did so many important things that he was afterwards called justinian the great he had many wars during his reign but he himself did not take part in them
+he was fortunate enough however to have two great generals to lead his armies one of them was named belisarius and the other narses belisarius was one of the greatest soldiers that ever lived
+he gained wonderful victories for justinian and conquered some of the old roman provinces that had been lost for many years the victories of these two generals largely helped to make the reign of justinian remarkable in history
+that were carried on a fleet of six hundred ships it took this fleet three months to make the voyage from constantinople to africa the same voyage may now be made in a very few days but in the time of belisarius there were no steamships
+and nothing was known of the power of steam for moving machinery the ships or galleys were sailing vessels and when there was no wind they could make no progress except by rowing when belisarius reached africa
+he left five men as a guard in each vessel and with the body of his army he marched for some days along the coast the people received him in a friendly way for they had grown tired of the rule of the vandals
+and preferred to be under the government of the romans about ten miles from carthage he met a large army led by the brother of gelimer a battle immediately took place and the vandals were utterly defeated
+gelimer gave himself up to belisarius who took him to constantinople justinian set apart an estate for him to live upon and the conquered king passed the rest of his life in peaceful retirement
+after conquering the vandals justinian resolved to conquer italy which was then held by the ostrogoths a large army was got together and put under the command of belisarius and narses who immediately set out for italy
+when they arrived there they marched straight to rome and after some fighting
+but in a few months vit'i ges king of the goths appeared with an army before the gates and challenged belisarius and narses to come out and fight the roman generals however
+laid siege to the city thinking that he would compel the romans to surrender but instead of having any thought of surrender belisarius was preparing his men for fight and when they were ready he attacked vitiges and defeated him
+vitiges retired to ravenna and belisarius quickly followed and made such an assault on the city that it was compelled to surrender the ostrogoth army was captured
+for a long time the grandest church structure in the world the great temple still exists in all its beauty and grandeur
+the work for which he is most celebrated was the improving and collecting of the laws he made many excellent new laws and reformed many of the old laws so that he became famous as one of the greatest of the world's legislators
+for a long time the roman laws had been difficult to understand there was a vast number of them and different writers differed widely as to what the laws really were and what they meant justinian employed a great lawyer named
+trib o'ni an to collect and simplify the principal laws the collection which he made was called the code of justinian it still exists and is the model according to which most of the countries of europe have made their laws
+justinian also did a great deal of good by establishing a number of manufactures in constantinople it was he who first brought silk worms into europe to the last year of his life justinian was strong and active
+and a hard worker he often worked or studied all day and all night without eating or sleeping
+when he was but twenty one years of age he was lame in one leg and looked as if he were a very ordinary person like most of the vandals he was a cruel and cunning man but he had great ability in many ways
+but a plot was formed against him
+and that he was going to make war against rome at the same time he wrote secretly to count boniface and told him that if he came to rome the empress would put him to death boniface believed this story
+he also sent a letter to genseric inviting him to come to africa with an army genseric was greatly delighted to receive the invitation from boniface he had long wanted to attack rome and take from her some of the rich countries she had conquered
+and marched into other parts of the coast and captured towns and cities by this time boniface had learned all about the wicked plot of aetius he now regretted having invited the vandals to africa and tried to induce them to return to spain
+but genseric sternly refused never he said shall i go back to spain until i am master of africa then cried boniface i will drive you back soon afterwards there was a battle between the romans and vandals and the romans were defeated
+they were also defeated in several other battles at last they had to flee for safety to two or three towns which the vandals had not yet taken one of these towns was hippo genseric captured this town
+destroys valuable property a great many of the natives of africa joined the army of genseric they had for a long time been ill treated by the romans and were glad to see them defeated
+he built great fleets and sailed over the mediterranean capturing trading vessels for many years he plundered towns along the coasts
+after ruling several years valentinian had just been murdered by a roman noble named maximus who had at once made himself emperor when the messenger entered the room where genseric was he said great king
+i bring you a message from the empress eudoxia she begs your help she and her two beautiful daughters are in danger in rome she wishes you to protect them against maximus she invites you to come with an army to rome and take the city
+she and her friends will help you as much as they can with a cry of joy genseric sprang to his feet and exclaimed tell the empress that i accept her invitation i shall set out for rome immediately
+i shall set out for rome immediately i shall protect eudoxia and her friends genseric then got ready a fleet and a great army and sailed across the mediterranean
+to the mouth of the tiber when the emperor maximus heard that the vandals were coming he prepared to flee from the city and he advised the senate to do the same the people were so angry at this
+it was only forty five years since alaric had been there
+but since then rome had become again grand and wealthy so there was plenty for genseric and his vandals to carry away they spent fourteen days in the work of plunder they sacked the temples
+and public buildings and private houses
+some years after the capture of rome by genseric there was a roman emperor named ma jo'ri an he was a good ruler and a brave man the vandals still continued to attack and plunder cities in italy
+and other countries belonging to rome and majorian resolved to punish them so he got together a great army and built a fleet of three hundred ships to carry his troops to carthage
+but he first marched his men across the alps through gaul and down to the seaport of carthagena in spain where his fleet was stationed he took this route because he expected to add to his forces
+as he went along before sailing with his army for carthage he wished very much to see with his own eyes what sort of people the vandals were and whether they were so powerful at home as was generally believed
+and entertained him hospitably not knowing that he was the emperor majorian of course peace was not made the emperor left carthage after having got as much information as he could
+but genseric did not wait for the roman fleet to come to attack him in his capital when he got word that it was in the bay of carthagena he sailed there with a fleet of his own and in a single day burned or sank nearly all the roman ships
+after this the vandals became more than ever the terror of the mediterranean and all the countries bordering upon it every year their ships went round the coasts from asia minor to spain attacking and plundering cities on their way
+and carrying off prisoners all the efforts of the romans failed to put a stop to these ravages the emperor leo who ruled over the eastern division of the empire fitted out a great fleet at constantinople
+to make another attempt to suppress the pirates there were more than a thousand ships in this fleet and they carried a hundred thousand men
+the brother of emperor leo's wife basilicus sailed with his ships to africa and landed the army not far from carthage genseric asked for a truce for five days to consider terms of peace and the truce was granted
+but the cunning vandal was not thinking of peace he only wanted time to carry out a plan he had made to destroy the roman fleet one dark night during the truce he filled the largest of his ships
+in among the roman ships towing behind them large boats filled with material that would easily burn these boats were set on fire and floated against the roman vessels which also were soon on fire the flames quickly spread
+and in a very short time a great part of the roman fleet was destroyed basilicus fled with as many ships as he could save and returned to constantinople this was the last attempt of the romans to conquer the vandals
+the huns had a famous king named at'ti la he was only twenty one years old when he became their king but although he was young he was very brave and ambitious and he wanted to be a great and powerful king not far from attila's palace
+there was a great rocky cave in the mountains in this cave lived a strange man called the hermit of the rocks
+he was very old with wrinkled face and long gray hair and beard many persons believed that he was a fortune teller so people often went to him to inquire what was to happen to them
+one day shortly after he became king attila went to the cave to get his fortune told wise man said he look into the future and tell me what is before me in the path of life the hermit thought for a few moments and then said
+o king i see you a famous conqueror the master of many nations i see you going from country to country defeating armies and destroying cities until men call you the fear of the world you heap up vast riches
+but he was young and full of spirit and very soon he remembered only what had been said to him about his becoming a great and famous conqueror and began to prepare for war he gathered together the best men
+from the various tribes of his people and trained them into a great army of good soldiers two about this time one of the king's shepherds while taking care of cattle in the fields
+noticed blood dripping from the foot of one of the oxen the shepherd followed the streak of blood through the grass and at last found the sharp point of a sword sticking out of the earth he dug out the weapon carried it to the palace
+as long as i fight with the sword of tiew as soon as his army was ready he marched with it into countries which belonged to rome he defeated the romans in several great battles and captured many of their cities
+the roman emperor theodosius had to ask for terms of peace attila agreed that there should be peace but soon afterwards he found out that theodosius had formed a plot to murder him
+he was so enraged at this that he again began war
+and at last the emperor had to give him a large sum of money
+this made peace but the peace did not last long in a few years attila appeared at the head of an army of seven hundred thousand men with this great force he marched across germany and into gaul
+he attacked and destroyed towns and killed the inhabitants without mercy the people had such dread of him that he was called the scourge of god and the fear of the world three
+attila and his terrible huns marched through gaul until they came to the city of orleans here the people bravely resisted the invaders they shut their gates and defended themselves in every way they could
+in those times all towns of any great size were surrounded by strong walls there was war constantly going on
+who lived by robbing their neighbors so the towns and castles in which there was
+were not safe without high and strong walls attila tried to take orleans but soon after he began to attack the walls he saw a great army at a distance coming towards the city
+the army which attila saw was an army of three hundred thousand romans and visigoths it was led by a roman general
+the visigoths after the death of
+had settled in parts of gaul and their king had now agreed to join the romans against the common enemy the terrible huns so the great army of the romans and visigoths
+thor'is mond the son of theodoric
+when his father was killed and now he led them on to fight they were all eager to have revenge for the death of their king so they fought like lions and swept across the plain with great fury the huns were soon beaten on every side
+and attila himself fled to his camp it was the first time he had ever been defeated thorismond the conqueror was lifted upon his shield on the battle field and hailed as king of the visigoths
+when attila reached his camp he had all his baggage and wagons gathered in a great heap he intended to set fire to it and jump into the flames if the romans should come there to attack him
+here i will perish in the flames he cried rather than surrender to my enemies
+very soon however he was again on the war path this time he invaded italy
+and they had no army strong enough to send against him rome would have been again destroyed if it had not been for pope leo
+and persuaded him not to attack the city it is said that the barbarian king
+they enclosed his body in three coffins one of gold one of silver and one of iron
+when the funeral was over they killed the slaves who had dug the grave
+a great number of people in asia and africa and much of those in turkey in europe profess the mo ham'me dan religion they are called mohammedans mus'sul mans or moslems
+and the proper name for their religion is islam which means obedience or submission
+a city of arabia his parents were poor people though it is said they were descended from arabian princes they died when mohammed was a child
+and brought him up when the boy grew old enough he took care of his uncle's sheep and camels sometimes he went on journeys with his uncle to different parts of arabia to help him in his business as a trader on these journeys mohammed used to ride on a camel
+and he soon became a skillful camel driver mohammed was very faithful and honest in all his work he always spoke the truth and never broke a promise i have given my promise he would say and i must keep it
+that people gave him the name of el amin which means the truthful at this time he was only sixteen years of age but the rich traders had so much confidence in him that they gave him important business to attend to and trusted him with large sums of money
+and sold there the goods carried by the camels
+and faithfully paid over to the owners of the goods the money he had received mohammed had no school education he could neither read nor write but he was not ignorant he knew well how to do the work intrusted to him and
+this woman was a widow who was carrying on the business left her by her husband as soon as the camel driver saw mohammed he stopped him and said my mistress wishes to see you before noon i think she intends to engage you to take charge of her caravans
+as quickly as possible he went to the house of khadijah for he was well pleased at the thought of being employed in so important a service
+she said i have heard much of you among the traders
+are you willing to take charge of my caravans and give your whole time and service to me mohammed was delighted
+khadijah then engaged him as the manager of her business and he served her well and faithfully she thought a great deal of him
+and soon they came to love one another and were married as he was now the husband of a rich woman he did not need to work very hard he still continued to attend to his wife's business but he did not make so many journeys as before
+and christianity but he was not satisfied with either of them
+worshiped idols very few of them were christians
+in a cave on mount hira near mecca he spent several weeks every year in prayer and religious meditation he declared that while praying in his cave he often had visions of god and heaven
+he said that many times the angel gabriel appeared to him and revealed to him the religion which he afterwards taught his followers as he himself could not write he committed to memory all that the angel told him and had it written in a book
+this book is called the koran which means like our own word bible the book
+three when mohammed returned home after the angel had first spoken to him he told his wife of what he had seen and heard she at once believed and so became a convert to the new religion
+she fell upon her knees at the feet of her husband and cried out there is but one god mohammed is god's prophet mohammed then told the story to other members of his family some of them believed and became his first followers
+soon afterwards he began to preach to the people he spoke in the market and other public places
+laughed at what he told them but some poor people and a few slaves believed him and adopted the new religion others said he was a dreamer and a fool mohammed however paid no heed to the insults he received
+he went on telling about the appearance of gabriel and preaching the doctrines which he said the angel had ordered him to teach the people
+at such times his face grew pale as death his eyes became red and staring he spoke in a loud voice and his body trembled violently then he would tell what he had seen in his vision
+people came from distant parts of arabia and from neighboring countries to hear him one day six of the chief men of me di'na
+about this time mohammed's uncle and wife died and he had then hardly any friends in mecca he therefore resolved to leave that city and go to medina numbers of the people there believed his doctrines
+and wished him to come and live among them so he secretly left his native town and fled from his enemies with a few faithful companions he made his escape to medina
+that mohammed fled from mecca this event is very important in mohammedan history it is called the flight of the prophet or the hej'i ra
+the remainder of his life a splendid church was built for him in medina it was called a mosque and all mohammedan churches or places of worship
+he gained many victories he marched against mecca with an army of ten thousand men and the city surrendered with little resistance the people then joined his religion and destroyed their idols
+he was buried in the mosque in which he had held religious services for so many years
+that the body still lies in the coffin in the same state as when it was first buried
+that the coffin of mohammed rests somewhere between heaven and earth suspended in the air but this fable was invented by enemies to bring ridicule on the prophet and his religion
+every mussulman is bound by his religion to make a visit or pilgrimage to mecca at least once in his life
+of the mosque and chanting in a loud voice such words as these come to prayer come to prayer there is no god but god he giveth life and he dieth not i praise his perfection god is great in mecca
+there is a mosque called the great mosque it is a large enclosure in the form of a quadrangle or square
+it its wall at one corner is the celebrated black stone moslems regard this stone with the greatest reverence they say that it came down from heaven it is said to have been once white
+but has become dark from being wept upon and touched by so many millions of pilgrims it really is reddish brown in color before the time of mohammed the ka'a ba was a pagan temple
+but when he took possession of mecca he made the old temple the centre of worship for his own religion after mohammed died a person was appointed to be his successor as head of the moslem church
+and this title has been borne ever since by the religious chief of the mohammedans in modern times the sultans or rulers of turkey
+the family at the locusts had slept or watched through all the disturbances at the cottage of birch in perfect ignorance of their occurrence the attacks of the skinners were always made with so much privacy as to exclude the sufferers
+but frequently through a dread of future depredations from the commiseration of their neighbors also additional duties had drawn the ladies from their pillows at an hour somewhat earlier than usual and captain lawton
+notwithstanding the sufferings of his body had risen in compliance with a rule from which he never departed of sleeping but six hours at a time this was one of the few points in which the care of the human frame was involved on which the trooper and the surgeon of horse were ever known to agree
+the doctor had watched during the night by the side of the bed of captain singleton without once closing his eyes occasionally he would pay a visit to the wounded englishman who being more hurt in the spirit than in the flesh
+tolerated the interruptions with a very ill grace and once for an instant he ventured to steal softly to the bed of his obstinate comrade and was near succeeding in obtaining a touch of his pulse when a terrible oath sworn by the trooper in a dream
+startled the prudent surgeon and warned him of a trite saying in the corps that captain lawton always slept with one eye open this group had assembled in one of the parlors as the sun made its appearance over the eastern hill dispersing the columns of fog which had enveloped the lowland
+miss peyton was looking from a window in the direction of the tenement of the peddler and was expressing a kind anxiety after the welfare of the sick man when the person of katy suddenly emerged from the dense covering of an earthly cloud whose mists were scattering before the cheering rays of the sun
+and was seen making hasty steps towards the locusts there was that in the air of the housekeeper which bespoke distress of an unusual nature and the kind hearted mistress of the locusts opened the door of the room with the benevolent intention of soothing a grief
+that seemed so overwhelming a nearer view of the disturbed features of the visitor confirmed miss peyton in her belief and with the shock that gentle feelings ever experience at a sudden and endless separation from even the meanest of their associates she said hastily
+katy is he gone no ma'am replied the disturbed damsel with great bitterness he is not yet gone but he may go as soon as he pleases now for the worst is done
+and those he has on are none of the best i can tell you how exclaimed the other astonished could anyone have the heart to plunder a man in such distress hearts repeated katy catching her breath men like them have no bowels at all plunder and distress indeed
+why ma'am there were in the iron pot in plain sight fifty four guineas of gold besides what lay underneath which i couldn't count without handling and i didn't like to touch it for they say that another's gold is apt to stick so judging from that in sight there wasn't less than two hundred guineas
+besides what might have been in the deerskin purse but harvey is little better now than a beggar and a beggar miss jeanette is the most awfully despisable of all earthly creatures
+the countenance of katy changed from the natural expression of concern to the set form of melancholy as she answered he is happily removed from the cares of the world the chinking of the money made him get out of his bed and the poor soul found the shock too great for him
+he died about two hours and ten minutes before the cock crowed as near as we can say she was interrupted by the physician who approaching inquired with much interest the nature of the disorder glancing her eye over the figure of this new acquaintance katy instinctively adjusting her dress
+replied twas the troubles of the times and the loss of property that brought him down he wasted from day to day and all my care and anxiety were lost for now harvey is no better than a beggar and who is there to pay me for what i have done
+god will reward you for all the good you have done said miss peyton mildly yes interrupted the spinster hastily and with an air of reverence that was instantly succeeded by an expression that denoted more of worldly care
+but then i have left my wages for three years past in the hands of harvey and how am i to get them my brothers told me again and again to ask for my money but i always thought accounts between relations were easily settled were you related then to birch asked miss peyton observing her to pause
+why returned the housekeeper hesitating a little i thought we were as good as so i wonder if i have no claim on the house and garden though they say now it is harvey's it will surely be confiscated turning to lawton who had been sitting in one posture with his
+piercing eyes lowering at her through his thick brows in silence perhaps this gentleman knows he seems to take an interest in my story madam said the trooper bowing very low both you and the tale are extremely interesting katy smiled involuntarily
+but my humble knowledge is limited to the setting of a squadron in the field and using it when there i beg leave to refer you to doctor archibald sitgreaves a gentleman of universal attainments and unbounded philanthropy the very milk of human sympathies and a mortal foe to all indiscriminate cutting
+the surgeon drew up and employed himself in whistling a low air as he looked over some phials on a table but the housekeeper turning to him with an inclination of the head continued i suppose sir a woman has no dower in her husband's property unless they be actually married
+it was a maxim with doctor sitgreaves that no species of knowledge was to be despised and consequently he was an empiric in everything but his profession at first indignation at the irony of his comrade kept him silent but suddenly changing his purpose
+he answered the applicant with a good natured smile i judge not if death has anticipated your nuptials i am fearful you have no remedy against his stern decrees to katy this sounded well although she understood nothing of its meaning but death and nuptials
+to this part of his speech then she directed her reply i did think he only waited the death of the old gentleman before he married said the housekeeper looking on the carpet but now he is nothing more than despisable or what's the same thing a peddler without house pack or money
+it might be hard for a man to get a wife at all in such a predicary don't you think it would miss peyton i seldom trouble myself with such things said the lady gravely during this dialogue captain lawton had been studying the countenance and manner of the housekeeper with a most ludicrous gravity
+and fearful the conversation would cease he inquired with an appearance of great interest you think it was age and debility that removed the old gentleman at last and the troublesome times trouble is a heavy pull down to a sick bed
+but i suppose his time had come and when that happens it matters but little what doctor's stuff we take let me set you right in that particular interrupted the surgeon we must all die it is true but it is permitted us to use the lights of science in arresting dangers as they occur until
+we can die secundem artem cried the trooper to this observation the physician did not deign to reply but deeming it necessary to his professional dignity that the conversation should continue he added perhaps in this instance judicious treatment might have prolonged the life of the patient
+who administered to the case no one yet said the housekeeper with quickness i expect he has made his last will and testament the surgeon disregarded the smile of the ladies and pursued his inquiries it is doubtless wise to be prepared for death but under whose care was the sick man during his indisposition
+under mine answered katy with an air of a little importance and care thrown away i may well call it for harvey is quite too despisable to be any sort of compensation at present the mutual ignorance of each other's meaning made very little interruption to the dialogue
+i doctored him mostly with yarbs said the housekeeper smiling as if conscious of error with simples returned the surgeon they are safer in the hands of the unlettered than more powerful remedies but why had you no regular attendant
+i'm sure harvey has suffered enough already from having so much concerns with the rig'lars replied the housekeeper he has lost his all and made himself a vagabond through the land and i have reason to rue the day i ever crossed the threshold of his house
+doctor sitgreaves does not mean a rig'lar soldier but a regular physician madam said the trooper oh cried the maiden again correcting herself for the best of all reasons there was none to be had so i took care of him myself
+for my part i am clear for doctoring though harvey says i am killing myself with medicines
+therein you show your sense said the surgeon approaching the spinster who sat holding the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet to the genial heat of a fine fire making the most of comfort amid all her troubles
+you appear to be a sensible discreet woman and some who have had opportunities of acquiring more correct views might envy you your respect for knowledge and the lights of science although the housekeeper did not altogether comprehend the other's meaning she knew he used a compliment
+and as such was highly pleased with what he said
+it was always said of me that i wanted nothing but opportunity to make quite a physician myself so long as before i came to live with harvey's father they called me the petticoat doctor more true than civil i dare say returned the surgeon losing sight of the woman's character in his admiration of her respect for the healing art
+in the absence of more enlightened counselors the experience of a discreet matron is frequently of great efficacy in checking the progress of disease under such circumstances madam it is dreadful to have to contend with ignorance and obstinacy
+harvey is as obstinate about such things as a dumb beast one would think the care i took of his bedridden father might learn him better than to despise good nursing but some day he may know what it is to want a careful woman in his house though now i am sure he is too despisable himself to have a house
+indeed i can easily comprehend the mortification you must have felt in having one so self willed to deal with returned the surgeon glancing his eyes reproachfully at his comrade but you should rise superior to such opinions and pity the ignorance by which they are engendered
+the housekeeper hesitated a moment at a loss to comprehend all that the surgeon expressed yet she felt it was both complimentary and kind therefore suppressing her natural flow of language a little she replied
+i tell harvey his conduct is often condemnable and last night he made my words good but the opinions of such unbelievers is not very consequential yet it is dreadful to think how he behaves at times now when he threw away the needle
+what said the surgeon interrupting her does he affect to despise the needle but it is my lot to meet with men daily who are equally perverse and who show a still more culpable disrespect for the information that flows from the lights of science
+the morning found them all restored in some measure to their former ease of body with the exception of the youthful captain of dragoons who had been so deeply regretted by dunwoodie the wound of this officer was severe though the surgeon persevered in saying that it was without danger
+and doctor sitgreaves removed all further apprehensions by confidently pronouncing that he would be a well man within a fortnight
+he breakfasted in his own room and notwithstanding certain significant smiles of the man of science
+and the latter advanced promptly and laid his fingers on the pulse of the youth beckoning to him to be silent while he muttered growing symptoms of a febrile pulse no no my dear george you must remain quiet and dumb though your eyes look better and your skin has even a moisture
+nay my dear sitgreaves said the youth taking his hand you see there is no fever about me look is there any of jack lawton's hoarfrost on my tongue no indeed said the surgeon clapping a spoon in the mouth of the other forcing it open and looking down his throat as if disposed to visit the interior in person
+the tongue is well and the pulse begins to lower again ah the bleeding did you good phlebotomy is a sovereign specific for southern constitutions
+why george your case is becoming singular continued the doctor instinctively throwing aside his wig your pulse even and soft your skin moist but your eye fiery and cheek flushed oh i must examine more closely into these symptoms
+softly my good friend softly said the youth falling back on his pillow and losing some of that color which alarmed his companion i believe in extracting the ball you did for me all that is required i am free from pain and only weak i do assure you captain singleton said the surgeon with heat
+it is presumptuous in you to pretend to tell your medical attendant when you are free from pain if it be not to enable us to decide in such matters of what avail the lights of science for shame george for shame even that perverse fellow john lawton could not behave with more obstinacy
+his patient smiled as he gently repulsed his physician in an attempt to undo the bandages and with a returning glow to his cheeks inquired
+if anyone interferes with my patients cried the doctor hastily i will teach them spirit or no spirit what it is to meddle with another man's concerns tut my dear fellow there was no interference made nor any intended see exhibiting the bandages
+everything is as you left it but it glided about the room with the grace of a fairy and the tenderness of an angel
+as he inquired with a brevity that would have honored lieutenant mason had it petticoats george i saw nothing but its heavenly eyes its bloom its majestic step its grace replied the young man with rather more ardor than his surgeon thought consistent with his debilitated condition
+hem with something of the kind of step you speak of a very complacent eye and as to the bloom i dare say offices of charity can summon as fine a color to her cheeks as glows in the faces of her more youthful nieces nieces has she nieces then
+the angel i saw may be a daughter a sister or a niece but never an aunt hush george hush your talking has brought your pulse up again you must observe quiet and prepare for a meeting with your own sister who will be here within an hour what isabella and who sent for her
+the major considerate dunwoodie murmured the exhausted youth sinking again on his pillow where the commands of his attendant compelled him to remain silent even captain lawton had been received with many and courteous inquiries after the state of his health
+from all the members of the family when he made his morning entrance but an invisible spirit presided over the comforts of the english colonel sarah had shrunk with consciousness from entering the room yet she knew the position of every glass and had with her own hands supplied the contents of every bowl that stood on his table
+at the time of our tale we were a divided people and sarah thought it was no more than her duty to cherish the institutions of that country to which she yet clung as the land of her forefathers but there were other and more cogent reasons for the silent preference she was giving to the englishman
+it is true he wanted the personal excellence of peyton dunwoodie but his pretensions were far from contemptible sarah had moved about the house during the morning casting frequent and longing glances at the door of wellmere's apartment anxious to learn the condition of his wounds and yet ashamed to inquire
+conscious interest kept her tongue tied until her sister with the frankness of innocence had put the desired question to doctor sitgreaves colonel wellmere said the operator gravely is in what i call a state of free will madam he is ill or he is well as he pleases
+his case young lady exceeds my art to heal and i take it sir henry clinton is the best adviser he can apply to though major dunwoodie has made the communication with his leech rather difficult frances smiled but averted her face while sarah moved with the grace of an offended juno from the apartment
+her own room however afforded her but little relief and in passing through the long gallery that communicated with each of the chambers of the building she noticed the door of singleton's room to be open the wounded youth seemed sleeping and was alone
+and possibly dreaming that these little feminine offices were performed for another her natural bloom was heightened by the insinuation of the surgeon nor was the luster of her eye in any degree diminished the sound of the approaching footsteps of sitgreaves hastened her retreat down a private stairway to the side of her sister
+the sisters then sought the fresh air on the piazza and as they pursued their walk arm in arm the following dialogue took place there is something disagreeable about this surgeon of dunwoodie said sarah that causes me to wish him away most heartily
+frances fixed her laughing eyes on her sister but forbearing to speak the other readily construed their expression and hastily added but i forget he is one of your renowned corps of virginians and must be spoken of reverently as respectfully as you please my dear sister
+there is but little danger of exceeding the truth
+but i think mister dunwoodie has taken a liberty that exceeds the rights of consanguinity he has made our father's house a hospital we ought to be grateful that none of the patients it contains are dearer to us your brother is one true true interrupted frances blushing to the eyes
+but he leaves his room and thinks his wound lightly purchased by the pleasure of being with his friends if she added with a tremulous lip this dreadful suspicion that is affixed to his visit were removed i could consider his wound of little moment you now have the fruits of rebellion brought home to you
+a brother wounded and a prisoner and perhaps a victim your father distressed his privacy interrupted and not improbably his estates torn from him on account of his loyalty to his king frances continued her walk in silence while facing the northern entrance to the vale
+her eyes were uniformly fastened on the point where the road was suddenly lost by the intervention of a hill and at each turn as she lost sight of the spot she lingered until an impatient movement of her sister quickened her pace to an even motion with that of her own
+at length a single horse chaise was seen making its way carefully among the stones which lay scattered over the country road that wound through the valley and approached the cottage
+the color of frances changed as the vehicle gradually drew nearer and when she was enabled to see a female form in it by the side of a black in livery her limbs shook with an agitation that compelled her to lean on sarah for support in a few minutes the travelers approached the gate
+it was thrown open by a dragoon who followed the carriage and who had been the messenger dispatched by dunwoodie to the father of captain singleton miss peyton advanced to receive their guest and the sisters united in giving her the kindest welcome
+still frances could with difficulty withdraw her truant eyes from the countenance of their visitor she was young and of a light and fragile form but of exquisite proportions her eyes were large full black piercing and at times a little wild her hair was luxuriant
+and as it was without the powder it was then the fashion to wear it fell in raven blackness a few of its locks had fallen on her cheek giving its chilling whiteness by the contrast a more deadly character
+doctor sitgreaves supported her from the chaise and when she gained the floor of the piazza she turned an expressive look on the face of the practitioner your brother is out of danger and wishes to see you miss singleton said the surgeon the lady burst into a flood of tears
+frances had stood contemplating the action and face of isabella with a kind of uneasy admiration but she now sprang to her side with the ardor of a sister and kindly drawing her arm within her own led the way to a retired room
+the feeling was communicated to all the spectators and they dispersed in pursuit of their usual avocations isabella yielded to the gentle influence of frances without resistance
+and having gained the room where the latter conducted her wept in silence on the shoulder of the observant and soothing girl until frances thought her tears exceeded the emotion natural to the occasion
+the sobs of miss singleton for a time were violent and uncontrollable until with an evident exertion she yielded to a kind observation of her companion and succeeded in suppressing her tears raising her face to the eyes of frances she rose
+more composed than her previous agitation had given reason to expect isabella found her brother looking better and in less danger than her sensitive imagination had led her to suppose her spirits rose in proportion from despondency she passed to something like gayety
+her beautiful eyes sparkled with renovated brilliancy and her face was lighted with smiles so fascinating that frances who in compliance with her earnest entreaties had accompanied her to the sick chamber sat gazing on a countenance that possessed so wonderful variability
+impelled by a charm that was beyond her control the youth had thrown an earnest look at frances as soon as his sister raised herself from his arms and perhaps it was the first glance at the lovely lineaments of our heroine
+when the gazer turned his eyes from the view in disappointment he seemed bewildered rubbed his forehead like a man awaking from a dream and mused where is dunwoodie isabella he said the excellent fellow is never weary of kind actions after a day of such service as that of yesterday
+he has spent the night in bringing me a nurse whose presence alone is able to raise me from my couch the expression of the lady's countenance changed
+but isabella the meeting has been too much for you you tremble isabella made no reply she stretched her hand towards the table which held the nourishment of the captain and the attentive frances comprehended her wishes in a moment a glass of water in some measure revived the sister who was enabled to say
+doubtless it is his duty twas said above a royal party was moving on the river though i passed the troops but two miles from this spot the latter part of the sentence was hardly audible and it was spoken more in the manner of a soliloquy than as if for the ears of her companions
+on the march isabella eagerly inquired her brother no dismounted and seemingly at rest was the reply the wondering dragoon turned his gaze on the countenance of his sister who sat with her eye bent on the carpet in unconscious absence but found no explanation
+his look was changed to the face of frances who startled by the earnestness of his expression arose and hastily inquired if he would have any assistance if you can pardon the rudeness said the wounded officer making a feeble effort to raise his body i would request to have captain lawton's company for a moment
+frances hastened instantly to communicate his wish to that gentleman and impelled by an interest she could not control she returned again to her seat by the side of miss singleton lawton said the youth impatiently as the trooper entered hear you from the major
+the eye of the sister was now bent on the face of the trooper who made his salutations to the lady with ease blended with the frankness of a soldier his man has been here twice he said to inquire how we fared in the lazaretto and why not himself
+that is a question the major can answer best but you know the redcoats are abroad and dunwoodie commands in the county these english must be looked to true said singleton slowly as if struck with the other's reasons but how is it that you are idle when there is work to do
+my sword arm is not in the best condition and roanoke has but a shambling gait this morning besides there is another reason i could mention if it were not that miss wharton would never forgive me
+speak i beg without dread of my displeasure said frances returning the good humored smile of the trooper with the archness natural to her own sweet face the odors of your kitchen then cried lawton bluntly forbid my quitting the domains until i qualify myself to speak with more certainty concerning the fatness of the land
+oh aunt jeanette is exerting herself to do credit to my father's hospitality said the laughing girl and i am a truant from her labors as i shall be a stranger to her favor unless i proffer my assistance
+frances withdrew to seek her aunt musing deeply on the character and extreme sensibility of the new acquaintance chance had brought to the cottage the wounded officer followed her with his eyes as she moved with infantile grace through the door of his apartment and as she vanished from his view he observed
+a good motherly lady but as to love that is a matter of taste a few years younger with deference to her prudence and experience would accord better with my fancy she must be under twenty said the other quickly it depends on the way you count if you begin at the heel of life well
+but if you reckon downward as is most common i think she is nearer forty you have mistaken an elder sister for the aunt said isabella laying her fair hand on the mouth of the invalid you must be silent your feelings are beginning to affect your frame
+the entrance of doctor sitgreaves who in some alarm noticed the increase of feverish symptoms in his patient enforced this mandate and the trooper withdrew to pay a visit of condolence to roanoke who had been an equal sufferer with himself in their last night's somersault
+to his great joy his man pronounced the steed to be equally convalescent with the master and lawton found that by dint of rubbing the animal's limbs several hours without ceasing he was enabled to place his feet in what he called systematic motion
+orders were accordingly given to be in readiness to rejoin the troop at the four corners as soon as his master had shared in the bounty of the approaching banquet
+and by his sympathy succeeded in restoring the colonel to his own good graces
+wharton knew that their misfortune as they both termed their defeat was owing to the other's rashness but he forbore to speak of anything except the unfortunate accident which had deprived the english of their leader and to which he good naturedly ascribed their subsequent discomfiture
+in short wharton said the colonel putting one leg out of bed it may be called a combination of untoward events your own ungovernable horse prevented my orders from being carried to the major in season to flank the rebels very true replied the captain kicking a slipper towards the bed
+had we succeeded in getting a few good fires upon them in flank we should have sent these brave virginians to the right about aye and that in double quick time cried the colonel making the other leg follow its companion then it was necessary to rout the guides you know and the movement gave them the best possible opportunity to charge
+yes said the other sending the second slipper after the first and this major dunwoodie never overlooks an advantage i think if we had the thing to do over again continued the colonel raising himself on his feet we might alter the case very materially though the chief thing the rebels have now to boast of is my capture
+they were repulsed you saw in their attempt to drive us from the wood at least they would have been had they made an attack said the captain throwing the rest of his clothes within reach of the colonel
+true true cried the colonel with animation had i been there to have improved that advantage we might have turned the table on the yankees saying which he displayed still greater animation in completing his toilet and he was soon prepared to make his appearance fully restored to his own good opinion and fairly persuaded that his capture was owing to casualties absolutely beyond the control of man
+the greater portion of the calendar springtime of utah has been winter in all the upper canyons of the mountains the snow is now from five to ten feet deep or more and most of it has fallen since march
+almost every other day during the last three weeks small local storms have been falling on the wahsatch and oquirrh mountains while the jordan valley remained dry and sun filled but on the afternoon of thursday the seventeenth ultimo
+wind rain and snow filled the whole basin driving wildly over valley and plain from range to range bestowing their benefactions in most cordial and harmonious storm measures
+with billows of dust and sand
+the beginning of the outpouring of the treasured wrath of the lord upon the gentiles for the killing of joseph smith to me it seemed a cordial outpouring of nature's love but it is easy to differ with salt latter days in everything storms wives
+politics and religion about an hour before the storm reached the city i was so fortunate as to be out with a friend on the banks of the jordan enjoying the scenery clouds with peculiarly restless and self conscious gestures
+were marshaling themselves along the mountain tops and sending out long overlapping wings across the valley and even where no cloud was visible an obscuring film absorbed the sunlight giving rise to a cold bluish darkness nevertheless
+and their marvelous profusion of ornate sculpture were most impressively manifest one would fancy that a man might be clearly seen walking on the snow at a distance of twenty or thirty miles while we were reveling in this rare ungarish grandeur
+turning from range to range studying the darkening sky and listening to the still small voices of the flowers at our feet some of the denser clouds came down crowning and wreathing the highest peaks and dropping long gray fringes
+whose smooth linear structure showed that snow was beginning to fall of these partial storms there were soon ten or twelve arranged in two rows while the main jordan valley between them lay as yet in profound calm at four thirty p m
+a dark brownish cloud appeared close down on the plain towards the lake extending from the northern extremity of the oquirrh range in a northeasterly direction as far as the eye could reach its peculiar color and structure
+excited our attention without enabling us to decide certainly as to its character but we were not left long in doubt for in a few minutes it came sweeping over the valley in a wild uproar a torrent of wind thick with sand and dust
+advancing with a most majestic front rolling and overcombing like a gigantic sea wave scarcely was it in plain sight ere it was upon us racing across the jordan over the city
+and up the slopes of the wahsatch eclipsing all the landscapes in its course the bending trees the dust streamers and the wild onrush of everything movable giving it an appreciable visibility that rendered it grand and inspiring
+the crystal flakes falling in the foul streets was a pitiful sight notwithstanding the vaunted refining influences of towns purity of all kinds pure hearts pure streams pure snow
+must here be exposed to terrible trials city creek coming from its high glacial fountains enters the streets of this mormon zion pure as an angel but how does it leave it
+even roses and lilies in gardens most loved are tainted with a thousand impurities as soon as they unfold i heard brigham young in the tabernacle the other day warning his people that if they did not mend their manners angels would not come into their houses
+though perchance they might be sauntering by with little else to do than chat with them possibly there may be salt lake families sufficiently pure for angel society but i was not pleased with the reception they gave the small snow angels that god sent among them the other night
+only the children hailed them with delight the old latter days seemed to shun them i should like to see how mister young the lake prophet would meet such messengers but to return to the storm
+toward the evening of the eighteenth it began to wither the snowy skirts of the wahsatch mountains appeared beneath the lifting fringes of the clouds and the sun shone out through colored windows producing one of the most glorious after storm effects i ever witnessed
+looking across the jordan the gray sagey slopes from the base of the oquirrh mountains were covered with a thick plushy cloth of gold soft and ethereal as a cloud not merely tinted and gilded like a rock with autumn sunshine but deeply muffled beyond recognition
+surely nothing in heaven nor any mansion of the lord in all his worlds could be more gloriously carpeted other portions of the plain were flushed with red and purple and all the mountains and the clouds above them were painted in corresponding loveliness
+earth and sky round and round the entire landscape was one ravishing revelation of color infinitely varied and interblended i have seen many a glorious sunset beneath lifting storm clouds on the mountains
+but nothing comparable with this i felt as if new arrived in some other far off world the mountains the plains the sky all seemed new other experiences seemed but to have prepared me for this as souls are prepared for heaven
+trailed their lustrous fringes through the pines as if taking a last view of their accomplished work then came darkness and the glorious day was done
+they are covered with common sunshine down here on the banks of the jordan larks and redwings are swinging on the rushes the balmy air is instinct with immortal life the wild flowers the grass
+and the farmers grain are fresh as if like the snow they had come out of heaven
+as one strolls in the woods about the logging camps most of the lumbermen are found to be interesting people to meet kind and obliging and sincere full of knowledge concerning the bark and sapwood and heartwood of the trees they cut and how to fell them without unnecessary breakage
+a very different man seen now and then at long intervals but usually invisible is the free roamer of the wilderness hunter prospector explorer seeking he knows not what lithe and sinewy he walks erect
+making his way with the skill of wild animals all his senses in action watchful and alert looking keenly at everything in sight his imagination well nourished in the wealth of the wilderness coming into contact with free nature in a thousand forms
+hungry at times and weary he has corresponding enjoyment in eating and resting and all the wilderness is home some of these rare happy rovers die alone among the leaves
+others half settle down and change in part into farmers each making choice of some fertile spot where the landscape attracts him builds a small cabin where with few wants to supply from garden or field he hunts and farms in turn
+until night begins to draw near and like forest shadows thickens into darkness and his day is done in these washington wilds living alone all sorts of men may perchance be found poets philosophers
+and even full blown transcendentalists though you may go far to find them indians are seldom to be met with away from the sound excepting about the few outlying hop ranches to which they resort in great numbers during the picking season
+nor in your walks in the woods will you be likely to see many of the wild animals however far you may go with the exception of the douglas squirrel and the mountain goat the squirrel is everywhere and the goat you can hardly fail to find if you climb any of the high mountains the deer
+to make their escape by plunging into the water and swimming to the islands off shore the elk and perhaps also the moose still exist in the most remote and inaccessible solitudes of the forest but their numbers have been greatly reduced of late
+and even the most experienced hunters have difficulty in finding them of bears there are two species the black and the large brown the former by far the more common of the two on the shaggy bottom lands where berries are plentiful
+and along the rivers while salmon are going up to spawn the black bear may be found fat and at home many are killed every year both for their flesh and skins the large brown species likes higher and opener ground
+he is a dangerous animal a near relative of the famous grizzly and wise hunters are very fond of letting him alone the towns of puget sound are of a very lively progressive and aspiring kind
+and these two are keen active rivals to all appearances well matched tacoma occupies near the head of the sound a site of great natural beauty it is the terminus of the northern pacific railroad and calls itself the city of destiny
+seattle is also charmingly located about twenty miles down the sound from tacoma on elliott bay it is the terminus of the seattle lake shore and eastern railroad now in process of construction and calls itself the queen city of the sound
+among the trees and stumps and brush which hide a good many of the houses and the stakes which mark the lots so that without being as yet very large towns they seem to fade away into the distance
+putting on airs as some would say like boys in haste to be men they are already towns with all modern improvements first class in every particular as is said of hotels they have electric motors and lights
+paved broadways and boulevards substantial business blocks schools churches factories and foundries the lusty titanic clang of boiler making may be heard there
+and plenty of the languid music of pianos mingling with the babel noises of commerce carried on in a hundred tongues the main streets are crowded with bright wide awake lawyers ministers merchants agents for everything under the sun
+ox drivers and loggers in stiff gummy overalls back slanting dudes well tailored and shiny and fashions and bonnets of every feather and color bloom gayly in the noisy throng and advertise london and paris
+vigorous life and strife are to be seen everywhere the spirit of progress is in the air still it is hard to realize how much good work is being done here of a kind that makes for civilization the enthusiastic exulting energy displayed in the building of new towns
+railroads and mills in the opening of mines of coal and iron and the development of natural resources in general to many especially in the atlantic states washington is hardly known at all it is regarded as being yet a far wild west
+a dim nebulous expanse of woods by those who do not know that railroads and steamers have brought the country out of the wilderness and abolished the old distances it is now near to all the world and is in possession of a share of the best of all that civilization has to offer
+while on some of the lines of advancement it is at the front notwithstanding the sharp rivalry between different sections and towns the leading men mostly pull together for the general good and glory
+building buying borrowing to push the country to its place keeping arithmetic busy in counting population present and to come ships towns factories tons of coal and iron feet of lumber miles of railroad
+therefore however extravagant and high the brag ascending from puget sound in most cases it is likely to appear pardonable and more seattle was named after an old indian chief who lived in this part of the sound
+he was very proud of the honor and lived long enough to lead his grandchildren about the streets the greater part of the lower business portion of the town including a long stretch of wharves and warehouses built on piles
+the people however are in no wise discouraged and ere long the loss will be gain inasmuch as a better class of buildings chiefly of brick are being erected in place of the inflammable wooden ones which with comparatively few exceptions were built of pitchy spruce
+some go boating on the sound or on the lakes and rivers or with their families make excursions at small cost on the steamers others will take the train to the franklin and newcastle or carbon river coal mines for the sake of the thirty or forty mile rides through the woods
+and a look into the black depths of the underworld others again take the steamers for victoria fraser river or vancouver the new ambitious town at the terminus of the canadian railroad thus getting views of the outer world in a near foreign country
+green river is a small rocky stream with picturesque banks and derives its name from the beautiful pale green hue of its waters among the most interesting of all the summer rest and pleasure places is the famous hop ranch on the upper snoqualmie river
+thirty or forty miles eastward from seattle
+half prairie level and fertile and beautifully diversified with outstanding groves of spruces and alders and rich flowery fringes of spiraea and wild roses the river meandering deep and tranquil through the midst of it
+on the portions most easily cleared some three hundred acres of hop vines have been planted and are now in full bearing yielding it is said at the rate of about a ton of hops to the acre they are a beautiful crop these vines of the north
+pillars of verdure in regular rows seven feet apart and eight or ten feet in height the long vigorous shoots sweeping round in fine wild freedom and the light leafy cones hanging in loose handsome clusters perhaps enough of hops
+might be raised in washington for the wants of all the world but it would be impossible to find pickers to handle the crop most of the picking is done by indians and to this fine clean profitable work they come in great numbers in their canoes old and young
+still more striking are their queer camps on the edges of the fields or over on the river bank with the firelight shining on their wild jolly faces but woe to the ranch should fire water get there but the chief attractions here are not found in the hops
+but in trout fishing and bear hunting and in the two fine falls on the river formerly the trip from seattle was a hard one over corduroy roads now it is reached in a few hours by rail along the shores of lake washington and lake squak
+and fine views of the fall may be had on that side both from above and below it is situated on the main river where it plunges over a sheer precipice about two hundred and forty feet high in leaving the level meadows of the ancient lake basin
+the pool is of considerable depth as is shown by the radiating well beaten foam and mist which is of a beautiful rose color at times of exquisite fineness of tone and by the heavy waves that lash the rocks in front of it
+set in a romantic dell thatched with dripping mosses and ferns and embowered in dense evergreens and blooming bushes
+the road leads through majestic woods with ferns ten feet high beneath some of the thickets and across a gravelly plain deforested by fire many years ago orange lilies are plentiful
+and handsome shining mats of the kinnikinic sprinkled with bright scarlet berries from a place called hunt's at the end of the wagon road a trail leads through lush dripping woods never dry
+where never a dust particle floated and where all the flowers fresh with mist and spray are wetter than water lilies the pool at the foot of the fall is a place surpassingly lovely to look at with the enthusiastic rush and song of the falls
+the majestic trees overhead leaning over the brink like listeners eager to catch every word of the white refreshing waters
+you may walk the deserts of the great basin in the bloom time of the year all the way across from the snowy sierra to the snowy wahsatch and your eyes will be filled with many a gay malva and poppy and abronia and cactus
+but you may not see a single true lily and only a very few liliaceous plants of any kind not even in the cool fresh glens of the mountains will you find these favorite flowers though some of these desert ranges almost rival the sierra in height
+nevertheless in the building and planting of this grand territory the lilies were not forgotten far back in the dim geologic ages when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book
+and when these sediments became dry land and were baked and crumbled into the sky as mountain ranges when the lava floods of the fire period were being lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters
+when the ice of the glacial period was laid like a mantle over every mountain and valley throughout all these immensely protracted periods in the throng of these majestic operations nature kept her flower children in mind she considered the lilies
+and while planting the plains with sage and the hills with cedar she has covered at least one mountain with golden erythroniums and fritillarias as its crowning glory as if willing to show what she could do in the lily line even here
+looking southward from the south end of salt lake the two northmost peaks of the oquirrh range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky without any marked character excepting only their snow crowns
+and a few weedy looking patches of spruce and fir the simplicity of their slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated gray sagey plains circle around their bases and up to a height of a thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple
+and over all the smooth crown of snow while standing at their feet the other day shortly after my memorable excursion among the salt waves of the lake i said now i shall have another baptism
+i will bathe in the high sky among cool wind waves from the snow from the more southerly of the two peaks a long ridge comes down bent like a bow one end in the hot plains the other in the snow of the summit
+after carefully scanning the jagged towers and battlements with which it is roughened i determined to make it my way though it presented but a feeble advertisement of its floral wealth this apparent barrenness however made no great objection just then
+i was animated by a mountaineer's eagerness to get my feet into the snow once more and my head into the clear sky after lying dormant all winter at the level of the sea but in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks
+i had not gone more than a mile from lake point ere i found the way profusely decked with flowers mostly compositae and purple leguminosae a hundred corollas or more to the square yard with a corresponding abundance of winged blossoms above them moths and butterflies
+two liliaceous plants in particular erythronium grandiflorum and fritillaria pudica are marvelously beautiful and abundant
+never before in all my walks have i met so glorious a throng of these fine showy liliaceous plants the whole mountainside was aglow with them from a height of fifty five hundred feet to the very edge of the snow
+on the upper side where the bushes were more open but a company composed of the two lilies i have mentioned were blooming on the lower side and though they were as yet out of sight i suddenly changed my mind and went down to meet them
+as if attracted by the ringing of their bells they were growing in a small nestlike opening between the rock and the bushes and both the erythronium and the fritillaria were in full flower these were the first of the species i had seen
+and i need not try to tell the joy they made they are both lowly plants lowly as violets the tallest seldom exceeding six inches in height so that the most searching winds that sweep the mountains scarce reach low enough to shake their bells
+the petals being strongly recurved like those of lilium superbum occasionally a specimen is met which has from two to five flowers hung in a loose panicle people oftentimes travel far to see curious plants like the carnivorous darlingtonia
+the fly catcher the walking fern et cetera i hardly know how the little bells i have been describing would be regarded by seekers of this class but every true flower lover who comes to consider these utah lilies will surely be well rewarded however long the way
+pushing on up the rugged slopes i found many delightful seclusions moist nooks at the foot of cliffs and lilies in every one of them not growing close together like daisies but well apart with plenty of room for their bells to swing free and ring
+i found hundreds of them in full bloom within two feet of the snow in winter only the bulbs are alive sleeping deep beneath the ground like field mice in their nests then the snow flowers fall above them lilies over lilies
+until the spring winds blow and these winter lilies wither in turn then the hiding erythroniums and fritillarias rise again responsive to the first touches of the sun i noticed the tracks of deer in many places among the lily gardens
+and at the height of about seven thousand feet i came upon the fresh trail of a flock of wild sheep showing that these fine mountaineers still flourish here above the range of mormon rifles in the planting of her wild gardens
+nature takes the feet and teeth of her flocks into account and makes use of them to trim and cultivate and keep them in order as the bark and buds of the tree are tended by woodpeckers and linnets the evergreen woods consist as far as i observed of two species
+a spruce and a fir standing close together erect and arrowy in a thrifty compact growth but they are quite small say from six to twelve or fourteen inches in diameter and bout forty feet in height among their giant relatives of the sierra
+snowy ice sculptured ranges bounded the horizon all around while the great lake eighty miles long and fifty miles wide lay fully revealed beneath a lily sky
+and the wide prairie of water glowing in the gold and purple of evening presented all the colors that tint the lips of shells and the petals of lilies the most beautiful lake this side of the rocky mountains utah lake
+lying thirty five miles to the south was in full sight also and the river jordan which links the two together may be traced in silvery gleams throughout its whole course
+the grandest i had carried in many a day i reached the hotel on the lake about dusk with all my fresh riches and my first mountain ramble in utah was accomplished on my way back to the city the next day
+i shook my big handful of lilies in his face and shouted here are the true saints ancient and latter day enduring forever
+he said they are nice
+are two species of zigadenas fritillaria atropurpurea
+and three or four handsome alliums one of these lilies the calochortus several species of which are well known in california as the mariposa tulips has received great consideration at the hands of the mormons
+for to it hundreds of them owe their lives during the famine years between eighteen fifty three and eighteen fifty eight great destitution prevailed especially in the southern settlements on account of drouth and grasshoppers
+and throughout one hungry winter in particular thousands of the people subsisted chiefly on the bulbs of the tulips called sego by the indians who taught them its use liliaceous women and girls are rare among the mormons
+often curiously freckled like the petals of fritillaria atropurpurea they are fruit rather than flower good brown bread but down in the san pitch valley at gunnison i discovered a genuine lily happily named lily young
+she is a granddaughter of brigham young slender and graceful with lily white cheeks tinted with clear rose she was brought up in the old salt lake zion house but by some strange chance
+has been transplanted to this wilderness where she blooms alone the lily of san pitch pitch is an old indian who i suppose pitched into the settlers and thus acquired fame enough to give name to the valley
+here i feel uneasy about the name of this lily for the compositors have a perverse trick of making me say all kinds of absurd things wholly unwarranted by plain copy and i fear that the lily of san pitch will appear in print as the widow of sam patch
+the motive of propaganda which began to work much the earliest of the three concerned religions and also certain racial enthusiasms or political doctrines which by their sincerity and readiness for sacrifice had half the force of religions
+men found that the great papers in their final phase refused to talk about anything really important in religion they dared do nothing but repeat very discreetly the vaguest ethical platitudes they hardly dared do even that they took for granted a sort of invertebrate common opinion
+and there was an end of it great bodies of men who cared intensely for a definite creed found that expression for it was lacking
+the organs of opinion professed a genteel ignorance of that idea which was most widespread most intense and most formative
+there was nothing to distinguish a large daily paper owned by a jew from one owned by an agnostic or a catholic necessity of expression compelled the creation of a free press in connection with this one motive of religion men came across very little of this in england
+because england was for long virtually homogeneous in religion and that religion was not enthusiastic during the years in which the free press arose but such a free press in defence of religion the pioneer of all the free press arose in ireland and in france and elsewhere
+but it asserted the necessity of specially emphasizing its particular point of view in its own columns for religion affects all life
+a generation ago and more great numbers of men were persuaded that a solution for the whole complex of social injustice was to be found in what they called nationalizing the means of production distribution and exchange
+that is of course in plain english putting land houses and machinery and stores of food and clothing into the hands of the politicians for control in use and for distribution in consumption
+this creed was held with passionate conviction by men of the highest ability in every country of europe and a socialist press began to arise which was everywhere free and soon in active opposition to the official press
+again of a religious temper in their segregation conviction and enthusiasm there began to appear when the oppressor was mild the small papers defending the rights of oppressed nationalities
+religion then and cognate enthusiasms were the first breeders of the free press it is exceedingly important to recognize this because it has stamped the whole movement with a particular character to which i shall later refer when i come to its disabilities
+felt no particular animosity against the debats for instance his particular catholic enthusiasm recognized itself as exceptional and was content to accept the humble or at any rate inferior position which admitted eccentricity connotes later
+these founders of the free press seemed to say we may convert the mass to our views but for the moment we are admittedly a clique an exceptional body with the penalties attaching to such
+they said this although the whole life of france is at least as catholic as the life of great britain is plutocratic or the life of switzerland democratic and they said it because they arose after the capitalist press neutral in religion as in every vital thing
+had captured the whole field the first propagandists then did not stand up to the official press as equals they crept in as inferiors or rather as open ex centrics
+for victorian england and third empire france falsely proclaimed the representative quality of the official press to the honour of the socialist movement the socialist free press was the first to stand up as an equal against the giants
+to papers like the daily telegraph or the times with the epithet capitalist put after them in brackets i thought then it was the giving of an abnormal epithet to a normal thing
+but i now know that these small socialist free papers were talking the plainest common sense when they specifically emphasized as capitalist the falsehoods and suppressions of their great contemporaries
+from the socialist point of view the leading fact about the insincerity of the great official papers is that this insincerity is capitalist just as from a catholic point of view the leading fact about it was and is that it is anti catholic
+though however certain of the socialist free papers thus boldly took up a standpoint of moral equality with the others their attitude was exceptional
+the great dailies were thought grey not wicked only general and vague the free press in its beginnings did not attack as an enemy it only timidly claimed to be heard it regarded itself as a speciality it was humble and there went with it a mass of ex centric stuff
+if one passes in review all the free press journals which owed their existence in england and france alone to this motive of propaganda one finds many side shows as it were beside the main motives of local or race patriotism religion or socialist conviction
+you have the single tax papers you have the teetotal papers and really it is a wonder that you have not yet also had the iconoclasts and the diabolists producing papers the rationalist and the atheist propaganda i reckon among the religious
+we may take it then that propaganda was in order of time the first motive of the free press and the first cause of its production now from this fact arises a consideration of great importance to our subject
+i mean that the free press has had stamped upon it the character of disparate particularism
+but i know that wherever i get hold of such an organ it will be very strongly coloured with the opinion or even fanaticism of some minority the free press as a whole
+if you add it all up and cancel out one exaggerated statement against another does give you a true view of the state of society in which you live the official press to day gives you an absurdly false one everywhere
+no one of them is in any sense general or really national the free press gives you the truth but only in disjointed sections for it is disparate and it is particularist it is marked with isolation and it is so marked because its origin lay in various and most diverse propaganda
+because it came later than the official press of capitalism and was in its origins but a reaction against it b the second motive that of indignation against falsehood came to work much later than the motive of propaganda
+men gradually came to notice that one thing after another of great public interest sometimes of vital public interest was deliberately suppressed in the principal great official papers and that positive falsehoods were increasingly suggested or stated
+there was more than this for long the owner of a newspaper had for the most part been content to regard it as a revenue producing thing the editor was supreme in matters of culture and opinion true the editor being revocable and poor could not pretend to full political power
+but it was a sort of dual arrangement which yet modified the power of the vulgar owner i myself remember that state of affairs the editor who was a gentleman and dined out the proprietor who was a lord and nervous when he met a gentleman
+the editor became and now is a mere mouthpiece of the proprietor editors succeed each other rapidly of great papers to day the editor's name of the moment is hardly known
+but not a cabinet minister that could not pass an examination in the life vices vulnerability fortune investments and favours of the owner the change was rapidly admitted it came quickly but thoroughly at last like most rapid developments it exceeded itself
+men owning the chief newspapers could be heard boasting of their power in public as an admitted thing and as this power was recognized and as it grew with time and experiment it bred a reaction
+why should this or that vulgarian men began to say exercise and boast of the power to keep the people ignorant upon matters vital to us all to distort
+to lie the sheer necessity of getting certain truths told which these powerful but hidden fellows refused to tell was a force working at high potential and almost compelling the production of free papers side by side with the big official ones
+that is why you nearly always find the free press directed by men of intelligence and cultivation of exceptional intelligence and cultivation and that is where it contrasts most with its opponents c
+but only a little later than this second motive of indignation against falsehood and acting with equal force though upon fewer men was the third motive of freedom of indignation against arbitrary power
+but it is intolerable that similar power should reside in the hands of obscure nobodies about whom no illusion could possibly exist whose tyranny is not admitted or public at all who do not even take the risk of exposing their features and to whom no responsibility whatever attaches
+the knowledge that this was so provided the third and perhaps the most powerful motive for the creation of a free press
+unfortunately it could affect only very few men with the mass even of well educated and observant men the feeling created by the novel power of the great papers was little more than a vague ill ease
+they had a general conception that the owner of a widely circulated popular newspaper could and did blackmail the professional politician make or unmake the professional politician by granting or refusing him the limelight
+dispose of cabinets nominate absurd ministers but the particular vivid concrete instances that specially move men to action were hidden from them only a small number of people were acquainted with such particular truths
+but that small number knew very well that we were thus in reality governed by men responsible to no one and hidden from public blame
+let us halt at this phase in the development of the thing to consider certain other changes which were on the point of appearance and why they were on the point of appearance in the first place if advertisement had come to be the stand by of a newspaper
+the capitalist owning the sheet would necessarily consider his revenue from advertisement before anything else he was indeed compelled to do so unless he had enormous revenues from other sources and ran his paper as a luxury costing a vast fortune a year
+for in this industry the rule is either very great profits or very great and rapid losses
+where a great daily paper is concerned he was compelled then to respect his advertisers as his paymasters to that extent therefore his power of giving true news and of printing sound opinion was limited even though his own inclinations should lean towards such news and such opinion
+an individual newspaper owner might for instance have the greatest possible dislike for the trade in patent medicines he might object to the swindling of the poor which is the soul of that trade he might himself have suffered acute physical pain
+but he certainly could not print an article against them nor even an article describing how they were made without losing a great part of his income directly and perhaps indirectly the whole of it from the annoyance caused to other advertisers who would note his independence
+and fear friction in their own case he would prefer to retain his income persuade his readers to buy poison and remain free personally from touching the stuff he recommended for pay
+the proprietor was always at the choice of publishing matter which did not affect him and saving his fortune or refusing it and jeopardizing his fortune he chose the former course in the second place there was an even more serious development advertisement
+having become the stand by of the newspaper the large advertiser
+could not but regard his giving of an advertisement as something of a favour there is always this psychological or if you will artistic element in exchange in pure economics exchange is exactly balanced by the respective advantages of the exchangers
+just as in pure dynamics you have the parallelogram of forces in the immense complexity of the real world material friction and a million other things affect the ideal parallelogram of forces and in economics other conscious passions
+besides those of mere avarice affect exchange there are a million half conscious and sub conscious motives at work as well the large advertiser still mainly paid for advertisement according to circulation
+he would not advertise in papers which he thought might by their publication of opinion ultimately hurt capitalism as a whole still less in those whose opinions might affect his own private fortune adversely stupid like all people given up to gain
+he was muddle headed about the distinction between a large circulation and a circulation small but appealing to the rich he would refuse advertisements of luxuries to a paper read by half the wealthier class if he had heard in the national liberal club
+or some such place that the paper was in bad taste not only was there this negative power in the hands of the advertiser that of refusing the favour or patronage of his advertisements there was also a positive one though that only grew up later
+the advertiser came to see that he could actually dictate policy and opinion and that he had also another most powerful and novel weapon in his hand which was the suppression of news
+we must not exaggerate this element for one thing the power represented by the great capitalist press was a power equal with that of the great advertisers for another there was no clear cut distinction between the capitalism that owned newspapers and the capitalism that advertised
+the same man who owned the daily times was a shareholder in jones's soap or smith's pills the man who gambled and lost on the howl was at the same time gambling and winning on a bucket shop advertised in the howl
+there was no antagonism of class interest one against the other and what was more they were of the same kind and breed
+was exactly the same kind of man as he who bought a peerage out of a combine in music halls or cut his throat when his bluff in indian silver was called the type is the common modern type parliament is full of it and it runs newspapers only as one of its activities
+all of which need the suggestion of advertisement the newspaper owner and the advertiser then were intermixed but on the balance the advertising interest being wider spread was the stronger and what you got was a sort of imposition
+often quite conscious and direct of advertising power over the press and this was as i have said not only negative that was long obvious but at last positive
+both combatants are of a low cunning and unintelligent type minor friction due to the same cause is constantly taking place sometimes the victory falls to the newspaper proprietor more often to the advertiser never to the public
+so far we see the growth of the press marked by these characteristics one it falls into the hands of a very few rich men and nearly always of men of base origin and capacities two it is in their hands a mere commercial enterprise
+three it is economically supported by advertisers who can in part control it but these are of the same capitalist kind in motive and manner with the owners of the papers their power does not therefore clash in the main with that of the owners
+but the fact that advertisement makes a paper has created a standard of printing and paper such that no one save at a disastrous loss can issue regularly to large numbers news and opinion which the large capitalist advertisers disapprove
+there would seem to be for any independent press no possible economic basis because the public has been taught to expect for
+the difference being paid by the advertisement subsidy
+it is the advent of the great newspaper owner as the true governing power in the political machinery of the state superior to the officials in the state nominating ministers and dismissing them imposing policies and in general usurping sovereignty
+all this secretly and without responsibility it is the chief political event of our time and is the peculiar mark of this country to day its full development has come on us suddenly and taken us by surprise in the midst of a terrible war
+it was undreamt of but a few years ago it is already to day the capital fact of our whole political system a prime minister is made or deposed by the owner of a group of newspapers not by popular vote or by any other form of open authority
+no policy is attempted until it is ascertained that the newspaper owner is in favour of it few are proffered without first consulting his wishes many are directly ordered by him we are if we talk in terms of real things as men do in their private councils at westminster
+mainly governed to day not even by the professional politicians nor even by those who pay them money but by whatever owner of a newspaper trust is for the moment the most unscrupulous and the most ambitious
+i say that the few newspaper controllers govern and govern abominably i am right but they only do so as do all new powers by at once alliance with and treason against the old witness harmsworth and the politicians
+this connection has developed in the great capitalist papers a certain character which can be best described by the term official under certain forms of arbitrary government in continental europe ministers once made use of picked
+and rare newspapers to express their views and these newspapers came to be called the official press it was a crude method and has been long abandoned even by the simpler despotic forms of government nothing of that kind exists now of course in the deeper corruption of modern europe
+least of all in england what has grown up here is a press organization of support and favour to the system of professional politics which colours the whole of our great capitalist papers to day in england this gives them so distinct a character of parliamentary falsehood
+and that falsehood is so clearly dictated by their connection with executive power that they merit the title official the regime under which we are now living is that of a plutocracy which has gradually replaced the old aristocratic tradition of england
+this plutocracy a few wealthy interests in part controls in part is expressed by is in part identical with the professional politicians and it has in the existing capitalist press an ally similar to that official press
+which continental nations knew in the past but there is this great difference that the official press of continental experiments never consisted in more than a few chosen organs
+the character of which was well known and the attitude of which contrasted sharply with the rest but our official press for it is no less covers the whole field it has in the region of the great newspapers no competitor indeed it has no competitors at all
+if any one doubts that this adjective official can properly be applied to our capitalist press to day let him ask himself first what the forces are which govern the nation and next whether those forces that government or regime
+could be better served even under a system of permanent censorship than it is in the great dailies of london and the principal provincial capitals is not everything which the regime desires to be suppressed suppressed is not everything which it desires suggested suggested
+and is there any public question which would weaken the regime and the discussion of which is ever allowed to appear in the great capitalist journals there has not been such a case for at least twenty years
+never deals with matters vital to its prestige on the contrary it deliberately side tracks any vital discussion that sincere conviction may have forced upon the public and spoils the scent with false issues
+one paper not a little while ago was clamouring against the excess of lawyers in government its remedy was an opposition to be headed by a lawyer another was very serious upon secret trading with the enemy
+it suppressed for months all reference to the astounding instance of that misdemeanour by the connections of a very prominent professional politician early in the war and refused to comment on the single reference made to this crime in the house of commons
+another clamours for the elimination of enemy financial power in the affairs of this country and yet says not a word upon the auditing of the secret party funds
+i say that the big daily papers have now not only those other qualities dangerous to the state which i have described but that they have become essentially official that is insincere and corrupt in their interested support of that plutocratic complex which in the decay of aristocracy governs england
+they are not independent where power is concerned they do not really criticize they serve a clique whom they should expose and denounce and betray the generality that is the state for whose sake the salaried public servants should be perpetually watched with suspicion and sharply kept in control
+the result is that the mass of englishmen have ceased to obtain or even to expect information upon the way they are governed they are beginning to feel a certain uneasiness they know that their old power of observation over public servants has slipped from them
+they suspect that the known gross corruption of public life and particularly of the house of commons is entrenched behind a conspiracy of silence on the part of those very few who have the power to inform them but as yet they have not passed the stage of such suspicion
+they have not advanced nearly as far as the discovery of the great newspaper owners and their system they are still for the most part duped
+is a very great evil it warps and depletes public information it prevents the just criticism of public servants above all it gives immense and irresponsible power to a handful of wealthy men
+and especially to the one most wealthy and unscrupulous among them whose wealth is an accident of speculation whose origins are repulsive and whose characters have as a rule the weakness and baseness developed by this sort of adventures
+there are among such gutter snipes thousands whose luck ends in the native gutter half a dozen whose luck lands them into millions one or two at most who on the top of such a career go crazy with the ambition of the parvenu and propose to direct the state
+even when gambling adventurers of this sort are known and responsible as they are in professional politics their power is a grave danger possessing as the newspaper owners do every power of concealment and at the same time
+no shred of responsibility to any organ of the state they are a deadly peril the chief of these men are more powerful to day than any minister nay they do as i have said and it is now notorious make and unmake ministers and they may yet in our worst hour decide the national fate
+now to every human evil of a political sort that has appeared in history to every evil that is affecting the state and proceeding from the will of man not from ungovernable natural forces outside man there comes a term and a reaction
+side by side with what i have called the official press in our top heavy plutocracy there has arisen a certain force for which i have a difficulty in finding a name but which i will call for lack of a better name the free press i might call it the independent press
+were it not that such a word would connote as yet a little too much power though i do believe its power to be rising and though i am confident that it will in the near future change our affairs
+i am not acquainted with any other modern language than french and english but i read this free press french and english colonial and american regularly and it seems to me the chief intellectual phenomenon of our time
+in france and in england and for all i know elsewhere there has arisen in protest against the complete corruption and falsehood of the great capitalist papers a crop of new organs which are in the strictest sense of the word organs of opinion
+the new age was i think the pioneer in the matter
+scotland one or two their number will increase with this i pass from the just denunciation of evil to the exposition of what is good
+the stirring of the powers rebecca's visit to milltown was all that her glowing fancy had painted it except that recent readings about rome and venice disposed her to believe that those cities might have an advantage over milltown
+in the matter of mere pictorial beauty so soon does the soul outgrow its mansions that after once seeing milltown her fancy ran out to the future sight of portland for that having islands and a harbor and two public monuments
+must be far more beautiful than milltown which would she felt take its proud place among the cities of the earth by reason of its tremendous business activity rather than by any irresistible appeal to the imagination
+i tell you harriet beecher stowe herself couldn't a done it better justice i took it all in responded mister cobb who was pleased that mother agreed with him about rebecca i ain't sure but she's goin to turn out somethin remarkable
+land no mother there ain't no home'path bout miss parks she drives all over the country i can't see rebecca as a lady doctor somehow mused missus cobb her gift o gab is what's goin to be the makin of her
+or recite pieces like that portland elocutionist that come out here to the harvest supper i guess she'll be able to write down her own pieces said mister cobb confidently she could make em up faster n she could read em out of a book
+rebecca made a poor hand at composition writing at this time miss dearborn gave her every sort of subject that she had ever been given herself cloud pictures abraham lincoln nature philanthropy slavery intemperance joy and duty
+solitude but with none of them did rebecca seem to grapple satisfactorily write as you talk rebecca insisted poor miss dearborn who secretly knew that she could never manage a good composition herself
+now in your last one on solitude you haven't said anything very interesting and you've made it too common and every day to sound well there are too many yous and yours in it you ought to say one now and then to make it seem more like good writing one opens a favorite book
+one's thoughts are a great comfort in solitude and so on i don't know any more about solitude this week than i did about joy and duty last week grumbled rebecca you tried to be funny about joy and duty said miss dearborn reprovingly so of course you didn't succeed
+of recollection joy and duty had been the inspiring subject given to the older children for a theme to be written in five minutes rebecca had wrestled struggled perspired in vain when her turn came to read
+she was obliged to confess she had written nothing you have at least two lines rebecca insisted the teacher for i see them on your slate
+read what you have good or bad little or much i am excusing nobody rebecca rose overcome with secret laughter dread and mortification then in a low voice she read the couplet
+and the training of the young idea seldom appealed to the sense of humor you must stay after school and try again rebecca she said but she said it smilingly your poetry hasn't a very nice idea in it for a good little girl who ought to love duty
+it wasn't my idea said rebecca apologetically i had only made the first line when i saw you were going to ring the bell and say the time was up i had clash written and i couldn't think of anything then but hash or rash or smash i'll change it to this
+having been instructed in the use of the indefinite pronoun one as giving a refined and elegant touch to literary efforts rebecca painstakingly rewrote her composition on solitude giving it all the benefit of miss dearborn's suggestion
+it then appeared in the following form which hardly satisfied either teacher or pupil solitude it would be false to say that one could ever be alone when one has one's lovely thoughts to comfort one
+one sits by one's self it is true but one thinks one opens one's favorite book and reads one's favorite story one speaks to one's aunt or one's brother fondles one's cat
+does one ever feel bereft when one picks up one's chips to light one's fire for one's evening meal or when one washes one's milk pail before milking one's cow one would fancy not r r r
+don't you think calling supper one's evening meal is pretty and isn't bereft a nice word yes that part of it does very well it is the cat the chips and the milk pail that i don't like
+yes i don't like a cow in a composition said the difficult miss dearborn
+for the next week minnie smellie's mother told miranda sawyer that she'd better look after rebecca for she was given to swearing and profane language that she had been heard saying something dreadful that very afternoon saying it before emma jane and living perkins who only laughed
+don't be ugly and obstinate but think real hard when did they chase you up the road and what were you doing a sudden light broke upon rebecca's darkness
+emma jane living and i were walking along and i was ahead i saw the water streaming over the road towards the ditch and it reminded me of uncle tom's cabin at milltown when eliza took her baby and ran across the mississippi on the ice blocks pursued by the bloodhounds
+we couldn't keep from laughing after we came out of the tent because they were acting on such a small platform that eliza had to run round and round
+and part of the time she had to pursue the dog i knew living would remember too so i took off my waterproof and wrapped it round my books for a baby
+just like that the same as eliza did in the play then i leaped from puddle to puddle and living and emma jane pursued me like the bloodhounds it's just like that stupid minnie smellie who doesn't know a game when she sees one and eliza wasn't swearing when she said my god the river
+it was more like praying well you've got no call to be prayin any more than swearin in the middle of the road said miranda but i'm thankful it's no worse you're born to trouble as the sparks fly upward
+an i'm afraid you allers will be till you learn to bridle your unruly tongue i wish sometimes that i could bridle minnie's murmured rebecca as she went to set the table for supper i declare she is the beatin'est child said miranda
+but whether it's for the better or the worse i can't hardly tell till she grows up she's got the making of most anything in her rebecca has but i feel sometimes as if we were not fitted to cope with her stuff an nonsense said miranda
+the banquet lamp there had been company at the brick house to the bountiful thanksgiving dinner which had been provided at one o'clock the burnham sisters who lived between north riverboro and shaker village and who for more than a quarter of a century
+had come to pass the holiday with the sawyers every year rebecca sat silent with a book after the dinner dishes were washed and when it was nearly five asked if she might go to the simpsons
+can't you set still for once and listen to the improvin conversation of your elders
+what under the canopy did they want of a lamp and where did they get the money to pay for it if abner was at home i should think he'd been swappin again said miss miranda the children got it as a prize for selling soap replied rebecca
+what have you got in the pocket of that new dress that makes it sag down so it's my nuts and raisins from dinner replied rebecca who never succeeded in keeping the most innocent action a secret from her aunt miranda they're just what you gave me on my plate why didn't you eat them
+they were your own rebecca interposed aunt jane and if you chose to save them to give away it is all right we ought never to let this day pass without giving our neighbors something to be thankful for instead of taking all the time to think of our own mercies
+the burnham sisters nodded approvingly as rebecca went out and remarked that they had never seen a child grow and improve so fast in so short a time there's plenty of room left for more improvement as you'd know if she lived in the same house with you answered miranda
+one of them must have said miss ellen burnham
+it must have been clara belle and i should never call her remarkable answered miss miranda has adam been home again yes he's been staying a few days with his aunt there's no limit to the money he's making they say and he always brings presents for all the neighbors
+this time it was a full set of furs for missus ladd and to think we can remember the time he was a barefoot boy without two shirts to his back it is strange he hasn't married with all his money and him so fond of children that he always has a pack of them at his heels
+there's hope for him still though said miss jane smilingly for i don't s'pose he's more than thirty he could get a wife in riverboro if he was a hundred and thirty remarked miss miranda adam's aunt says he was so taken with the little girl that sold the soap clara belle did you say her name was
+that he declared he was going to bring her a christmas present continued miss ellen well there's no accountin for tastes exclaimed miss miranda clara belle's got cross eyes and red hair but i'd be the last one to grudge her a christmas present
+for this one couldn't have been cross eyed i remember missus ladd saying adam remarked about this child's handsome eyes he said it was her eyes that made him buy the three hundred cakes missus ladd has it stacked up in the shed chamber
+three hundred cakes ejaculated miranda well there's one crop that never fails in riverboro what's that asked miss lydia politely the fool crop responded miranda tersely
+and changed the subject much to jane's gratitude for she had been nervous and ill at ease for the last fifteen minutes what child in riverboro could be described as remarkable and winning save rebecca what child had wonderful eyes except the same rebecca
+and finally was there ever a child in the world who could make a man buy soap by the hundred cakes save rebecca meantime the remarkable child had flown up the road in the deepening dusk but she had not gone far before she heard the sound of hurrying footsteps
+and saw a well known figure coming in her direction in a moment she and emma jane met and exchanged a breathless embrace something awful has happened panted emma jane don't tell me it's broken exclaimed rebecca no oh no not that
+our selling the three hundred cakes corrected rebecca you did as much as i no i didn't rebecca randall i just sat at the gate and held the horse yes but whose horse was it that took us to north riverboro
+but what's the trouble the simpsons have no kerosene and no wicks i guess they thought a banquet lamp was something that lighted itself and burned without any help seesaw has gone to the doctor's to try if he can borrow a wick and mother let me have a pint of oil but she says she won't give me any more
+we never thought of the expense of keeping up the lamp rebecca no we didn't but let's not worry about that till after the party i have a handful of nuts and raisins and some apples i have peppermints and maple sugar said emma jane they had a real thanksgiving dinner
+the doctor gave them sweet potatoes and cranberries and turnips father sent a spare rib and missus cobb a chicken and a jar of mince meat at half past five one might have looked in at the simpsons windows and seen the party at its height
+missus simpson had let the kitchen fire die out and had brought the baby to grace the festal scene
+on it stood the sacred the adored the long desired object almost as beautiful and nearly half as large as the advertisement the brass glistened like gold and the crimson paper shade glowed like a giant ruby
+in the wide splash of light that it flung upon the floor sat the simpsons in reverent and solemn silence emma jane standing behind them hand in hand with rebecca there seemed to be no desire for conversation the occasion was too thrilling and serious for that
+the lamp it was tacitly felt by everybody was dignifying the party and providing sufficient entertainment simply by its presence being fully as satisfactory in its way as a pianola or a string band i wish father could see it said clara belle loyally
+murmured susan sagaciously at the appointed hour rebecca dragged herself reluctantly away from the enchanting scene
+and oh i'm so glad you both live where you can see it shine from our windows i wonder how long it will burn without bein filled if i only keep it lit one hour every night
+mister tubbs brought it over from north riverboro and said somebody sent an order by mail for it rebecca squeezed emma jane's arm and emma jane gave a rapturous return squeeze
+it was mister aladdin whispered rebecca as they ran down the path to the gate seesaw followed them and handsomely offered to see them apiece down the road but rebecca declined his escort with such decision that he did not press the matter
+but went to bed to dream of her instead in his dreams flashes of lightning proceeded from both her eyes and she held a flaming sword in either hand rebecca entered the home dining room joyously the burnham sisters had gone and the two aunts were knitting
+it was a heavenly party she cried taking off her hat and cape go back and see if you have shut the door tight and then lock it said miss miranda in her usual austere manner
+and oh aunt jane aunt miranda if you'll only come into the kitchen and look out of the sink window you can see the banquet lamp shining all red just as if the simpsons house was on fire and probably it will be before long observed miranda i've got no patience with such foolish goin's on
+jane accompanied rebecca into the kitchen although the feeble glimmer which she was able to see from that distance did not seem to her a dazzling exhibition she tried to be as enthusiastic as possible rebecca who was it
+that sold the three hundred cakes of soap to mister ladd in north riverboro mister who exclaimed rebecca mister ladd in north riverboro is that his real name queried rebecca in astonishment i didn't make a bad guess and she laughed softly to herself
+i asked you who sold the soap to adam ladd resumed miss jane adam ladd then he's a ladd too what fun answer me rebecca oh excuse me aunt jane i was so busy thinking emma jane and i sold the soap to mister ladd
+he needed the soap dreadfully as a present for his aunt miss jane still looked a little unconvinced though she only said i hope your aunt miranda won't mind but you know how particular she is rebecca and i really wish you wouldn't do anything out of the ordinary without asking her first for your actions are very queer
+there can't be anything wrong this time rebecca answered confidently emma jane sold her cakes to her own relations and to uncle jerry cobb and i went first to those new tenements near the lumber mill and then to the ladds mister ladd bought all we had and made us promise to keep the secret until the premium came
+rebecca's hair was loosened and falling over her forehead in ruffled waves her eyes were brilliant her cheeks crimson there was a hint of everything in the girl's face of sensitiveness and delicacy as well as of ardor
+there was the sweetness of the mayflower and the strength of the young oak but one could easily divine that she was one of the souls by nature pitched too high by suffering plunged too low
+the third man from the end oh patty did you bring us some wedding cake did you have any adventures
+with the dexterity of practice sprang upon the rear step of the hearse as it turned in at the school gate and rolled up the curving drive to the porte cochere the hearse was the popular name for the black varnished wagonette which conveyed the pupils of saint ursula's from church and station
+it was planned to accommodate twenty patty and her suit case alone in the capacious interior were jolting about like two tiny peas in a very big pod
+as they came to a stop they were besieged by a crowd of blue coated girls it was afternoon recreation and the whole school was abroad the welcome that she received would have led an onlooker to infer that patty had been gone three months instead of three days she and her two
+postilions descended and martin gathered up his reins come on youse all who wants a ride to the stables was his hospitable invitation it inundated him with passengers they crowded inside twice as many as the hearse would hold
+they swarmed over the driver's seat and the steps and two equestriennes even perched themselves on the horses backs what's the adventure demanded conny and priscilla in a breath as the cavalcade rattled off patty waved her hand toward the suit case
+there it is take it upstairs i'll be with you as soon as i've reported but that isn't your suit case patty shook her head mysteriously if you tried a thousand years you'd never guess who owns it who patty laughed
+just a little souvenir that i picked up i'll tell you as soon as i've interviewed the dowager hurry and slip in while jelly isn't looking they cast a quick glance over their shoulders toward the gymnasium instructor who was arguing fat irene mc cullough into faster movements on the tennis court
+miss jellings was insistent that recreation should be actively pursued out of doors the two could easily have obtained permission to greet patty's return inside but it was the policy of the trio never to ask permission in minor matters it wasted one's credit unnecessarily
+priscilla and conny turned upstairs lugging the suit case between them while patty approached the principal's study ten minutes later she joined her companions in seven paradise alley they were sitting on the bed their chins in their hands
+studying the suit case propped on a chair before them well they inquired in a breath she says she's glad to see me back and hopes i didn't eat too much wedding cake
+the man with the black eyebrows and the dimple in his chin who sang the funny songs third from the end on the right hand side jermyn hilliard junior priscilla asked breathlessly not really conny laid her hand on her heart with an exaggerated sigh
+truly and honest patty turned it over and pointed to the initials on the end
+is it locked yes patty nodded but my key will open it
+and things where'd you get it well said patty languidly it's a long story
+i think you're beastly well the glee club was last thursday night
+when we got in it was cram full of men the entire yale glee club was going to the station there were so many of them that they were sitting in each other's laps the whole top layer rose and said perfectly gravely and politely madame take my seat
+mam'selle was outraged she said in french which of course they all understood that she thought american college boys had disgraceful manners but i smiled a little i couldn't help it they were so funny and then two of the bottom ones offered their seats and we sat down
+and you'll never believe it but the third man from the end was sitting right next to me not really oh patty is he as good looking near to as he was on the stage better are those his real eyebrows or were they blacked
+she was as flustered as an old hen with one chicken she put me in charge of the conductor with so many instructions that i know he felt like a newly engaged nursemaid the glee club men rode in the smoking car
+except jermyn hilliard junior and he followed me right into the parlor car and sat down in the chair exactly opposite patty they cried in shocked chorus you surely didn't speak to him
+oh conny murmured disappointedly then what happened priscilla asked nothing at all i got out at coomsdale and uncle tom met me with the automobile the chauffeur took my suit case from the porter and i didn't see it near to at all we reached the house just at tea time
+and i went straight in to tea without going upstairs the butler took up my suit case and the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack that house is simply running over with servants i'm always scared to death
+all the ushers and bridesmaids were there and everything was very jolly only i couldn't make out what they were talking about half the time because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes i couldn't understand
+conny nodded feelingly that's the way they acted at the seaside last summer i think grown people have horrid manners i did feel sort of young patty acknowledged
+he was trying to obey louise and amuse little cousin but he was thinking all the time
+i told you to put it up said priscilla just wait said patty portentously when i went upstairs to dress for dinner the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her head beg pardon miss patty she said but is that your suit case yes i said of course it's my suit case
+what's the matter with it she just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word and there it was wide open patty took a key from her pocket unlocked the suit case and threw back the lid a man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top with a pipe a box of cigarettes some collars
+and various other masculine trifles filling in the interstices oh they gasped in breathless chorus they belong to him conny murmured fervently patty nodded and when i showed uncle tom that suit case he nearly died laughing
+he telephoned to the station but they didn't know anything about it
+uncle tom lives five miles from town and there simply wasn't anything we could do that night and just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert and found patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top suggested priscilla oh patty
+just like all my dancing dresses nine inches off the floor with elbow sleeves and a silly sash i hated it anyway you must remember you are a school girl conny quoted and until just wait till i tell you patty triumphed
+the man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that i hadn't been out for years and you know he tried to flirt with me he did really and he was getting awfully old he must have been almost forty i felt as though i were flirting with my grandfather you know patty added it isn't so bad being grown up
+before patty resumed her chronicle and uncle tom made me tell about the suit case at the dinner table everybody laughed it made a very exciting story i told them about the whole school going to the glee club and falling in love in a body with the third man from the end
+and how we all cut his picture out of the program and pasted it in our watches and then about my sitting across from him in the train and changing suit cases mister harper the man next to me said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life that louise's marriage was nothing to it
+but you didn't leave it i came on the other road i'm going to send it down and what did you wear at the wedding louise's clothes it didn't matter a bit my not matching the other bridesmaids because i was maid of honor and ought to dress differently anyway i've been grown up for three days
+talking to men did you tell the dowager yes i told her about getting the wrong suit case i didn't mention the fact that it belonged to the third man from the end what did she say she said it was very careless of me to run off with a strange man's luggage
+and she hoped he was a gentleman and would take it nicely she telephoned to the baggage man that it was here but she couldn't send martin with it this afternoon because he had to go to the farm for some eggs recreation was over and the girls came trooping in to gather books and pads and pencils for the approaching study hour
+everyone who passed number seven dropped in to hear the news each in turn received the story of the suit case and each in turn
+doesn't it smell tobaccoey and bay rummish said rosalie patton sniffing oh there's a button loose cried florence hissop the careful housewife where's some black silk patty she threaded a needle and secured the button then she daringly tried on the coat
+eight others followed her example and thrilled at the touch it was calculated to fit a far larger person than any present even irene mc cullough found it baggy he had awfully broad shoulders said rosalie stroking the satin lining
+they peered daintily at the other garments oh squealed mae mertelle he wears blue silk suspenders and something else blue chirped edna hartwell peering over her shoulder they're pajamas and to think of such a thing happening to patty
+sighed mae mertelle why not bristled patty you're so
+young wait till you see me with my hair done up
+the end said mae unkindly will be that the baggage man will deliver the suit case and jermyn hilliard junior will never know a maid appeared at the door if you please she murmured her amazed eyes on irene who was still wearing the coat
+missus trent would like to have miss patty wyatt come to the drawing room and i am to take the suit case down the gentleman is waiting oh patty a gasp went around the room do your hair up quick priscilla caught patty's twin braids and wound them around her head
+while the others in a flutter of excitement thrust in the coat and relocked the suit case they crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a perilous angle straining their ears in the direction of the drawing room nothing but a murmur of voices floated up
+punctuated by an occasional deep bass laugh when they heard the front door close with one accord they invaded harriet gladden's room which commanded the walk and pressed their noses against the pane a short thick set man of german build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car
+they gazed with wide horrified eyes and turned without a word to meet patty as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit case a glance told her that they had seen and dropping on the top step she leaned her head against the railing and laughed
+the evening passed on madame de villefort expressed a desire to return to paris which madame danglars had not dared to do notwithstanding the uneasiness she experienced on his wife's request m de villefort
+was the first to give the signal of departure he offered a seat in his landau to madame danglars that she might be under the care of his wife
+as for m danglars absorbed in an interesting conversation with m cavalcanti he paid no attention to anything that was passing
+he had noticed the approach of villefort to madame danglars and he soon guessed all that had passed between them though the words had been uttered in so low a voice
+without opposing their arrangements he allowed morrel chateau renaud and debray to leave on horseback and the ladies in m de villefort's carriage danglars more and more delighted with major cavalcanti
+had offered him a seat in his carriage andrea cavalcanti found his tilbury waiting at the door the groom in every respect a caricature of the english fashion
+was standing on tiptoe to hold a large iron gray horse andrea had spoken very little during dinner he was an intelligent lad and he feared to utter some absurdity before so many grand people
+amongst whom with dilating eyes he saw the king's attorney then he had been seized upon by danglars who with a rapid glance at the stiff necked old major and his modest son
+and taking into consideration the hospitality of the count made up his mind that he was in the society of some nabob come to paris to finish the worldly education of his heir
+he contemplated with unspeakable delight the large diamond which shone on the major's little finger for the major like a prudent man in case of any accident happening to his bank notes had immediately converted them into an available asset
+then after dinner on the pretext of business he questioned the father and son upon their mode of living and the father and son previously informed that it was through danglars the one was to receive his forty eight thousand francs
+were so full of affability that they would have shaken hands even with the banker's servants so much did their gratitude need an object to expend itself upon one thing above all the rest heightened the respect
+nay almost the veneration of danglars for cavalcanti the latter faithful to the principle of horace nil admirari had contented himself with showing his knowledge
+by declaring in what lake the best lampreys were caught then he had eaten some without saying a word more
+danglars therefore concluded that such luxuries were common at the table of the illustrious descendant of the cavalcanti who most likely in lucca fed upon trout brought from switzerland and lobsters sent from england
+by the same means used by the count to bring the lampreys from lake fusaro and the sterlet from the volga thus it was with much politeness of manner that he heard cavalcanti pronounce these words
+to morrow sir i shall have the honor of waiting upon you on business and i sir said danglars shall be most happy to receive you
+if it would not be depriving him of the company of his son to this cavalcanti replied by saying that for some time past his son had lived independently of him that he had his own horses and carriages
+and that not having come together it would not be difficult for them to leave separately the major seated himself therefore by the side of danglars
+who was more and more charmed with the ideas of order and economy which ruled this man and yet who being able to allow his son sixty thousand francs a year
+as for andrea he began by way of showing off to scold his groom who instead of bringing the tilbury to the steps of the house had taken it to the outer door thus
+giving him the trouble of walking thirty steps to reach it the groom heard him with humility took the bit of the impatient animal with his left hand and with the right held out the reins to andrea
+who taking them from him rested his polished boot lightly on the step at that moment a hand touched his shoulder the young man turned round
+and had returned just as they were starting but instead of either of these he saw nothing but a strange face sunburnt and encircled by a beard with eyes brilliant as carbuncles
+and a smile upon the mouth which displayed a perfect set of white teeth pointed and sharp as the wolf's or jackal's a red handkerchief encircled his gray head
+torn and filthy garments covered his large bony limbs which seemed as though like those of a skeleton they would rattle as he walked and the hand with which he leaned upon the young man's shoulder
+and which was the first thing andrea saw seemed of gigantic size did the young man recognize that face by the light of the lantern in his tilbury
+or was he merely struck with the horrible appearance of his interrogator we cannot say but only relate the fact that he shuddered and stepped back suddenly
+he asked pardon me my friend if i disturb you said the man with the red handkerchief but i want to speak to you you have no right to beg at night
+said the groom endeavoring to rid his master of the troublesome intruder i am not begging my fine fellow said the unknown to the servant with so ironical an expression of the eye and so frightful a smile that he withdrew
+i only wish to say two or three words to your master who gave me a commission to execute about a fortnight ago come said andrea with sufficient nerve for his servant not to perceive his agitation what do you want
+speak quickly friend the man said in a low voice i wish i wish you to spare me the walk back to paris i am very tired and as i have not eaten so good a dinner as you
+i can scarcely stand the young man shuddered at this strange familiarity tell me he said tell me what you want well then
+i want you to take me up in your fine carriage and carry me back andrea turned pale but said nothing
+yes said the man thrusting his hands into his pockets and looking impudently at the youth i have taken the whim into my head do you understand master benedetto
+at this name no doubt the young man reflected a little for he went towards his groom saying this man is right i did indeed charge him with a commission the result of which he must tell me walk to the barrier
+there take a cab that you may not be too late the surprised groom retired let me at least reach a shady spot said andrea oh as for that
+i'll take you to a splendid place said the man with the handkerchief and taking the horse's bit he led the tilbury where it was certainly impossible for any one to witness the honor that andrea conferred upon him
+don't think i want the glory of riding in your fine carriage said he oh no it's only because i am tired and also because i have a little business to talk over with you
+come step in said the young man it was a pity this scene had not occurred in daylight for it was curious to see this rascal throwing himself heavily down on the cushion beside the young and elegant driver of the tilbury
+andrea drove past the last house in the village without saying a word to his companion who smiled complacently as though well pleased to find himself travelling in so comfortable a vehicle
+andrea looked around in order to assure himself that he could neither be seen nor heard and then stopping the horse and crossing his arms before the man he asked now
+let me ask you why you deceived me how have i deceived you how do you ask
+but instead of that you come to paris how does that annoy you it does not on the contrary i think it will answer my purpose so said andrea
+you are speculating upon me what fine words he uses
+that you are mistaken well well don't be angry my boy you know well enough what it is to be unfortunate and misfortunes make us jealous
+i thought you were earning a living in tuscany or piedmont by acting as facchino or cicerone and i pitied you sincerely as i would a child of my own you know i always did call you my child
+come come what then patience patience i am patient but go on
+you must have discovered a mine or else become a stockbroker so that as you confess you are jealous no i am pleased so pleased that i wished to congratulate you
+i chose my opportunity that i might not compromise you
+you speak to me before my servant how can i help that my boy i speak to you when i can catch you you have a quick horse a light tilbury
+you are naturally as slippery as an eel if i had missed you to night i might not have had another chance
+you are lucky i wish i could say as much for i do conceal myself and then i was afraid you would not recognize me but you did
+with his unpleasant smile it was very polite of you come said andrea what do you want you do not speak affectionately to me benedetto my old friend
+that is not right take care or i may become troublesome this menace smothered the young man's passion he urged the horse again into a trot
+as you said just now you are a native of marseilles i am do you know then now what you are no but i was brought up in corsica you are old and obstinate
+i am young and wilful between people like us threats are out of place everything should be amicably arranged is it my fault if fortune
+has been kind to me fortune has been kind to you then your tilbury your groom your clothes are not then hired good
+his eyes sparkling with avarice oh you knew that well enough before speaking to me said andrea becoming more and more excited if i had been wearing a handkerchief like yours on my head
+rags on my back and worn out shoes on my feet you would not have known me you wrong me my boy now i have found you nothing prevents my being as well dressed as any one knowing as i do
+the goodness of your heart if you have two coats you will give me one of them i used to divide my soup and beans with you when you were hungry true said andrea
+what an appetite you used to have is it as good now oh yes replied andrea laughing
+he is not a prince simply a count a count and a rich one too eh yes but you had better not have anything to say to him for he is not a very good tempered gentleman
+oh be easy i have no design upon your count and you shall have him all to yourself but
+you must pay for it you understand well
+i think that with a hundred francs a month well i could live upon a hundred francs come you understand me
+but that with with with a hundred and fifty francs i should be quite happy here are two hundred said andrea
+there now again you degrade me how so by making me apply to the servants when i want to transact business with you alone well be it so then
+take it from me then and so long at least as i receive my income you shall be paid yours come come i always said you were a fine fellow and it is a blessing when good fortune happens to such as you
+but tell me all about it why do you wish to know asked cavalcanti what do you again defy me no the fact is i have found my father what
+a real father yes so long as he pays me you'll honor and believe him that's right what is his name major cavalcanti
+so far i have appeared to answer his purpose and who found this father for you the count of monte cristo
+the man whose house you have just left yes
+since he holds the money chest well i will mention you to him meanwhile what are you going to do
+yes you it is very kind of you to trouble yourself about me since you interest yourself in my affairs i think it is now my turn to ask you some questions ah true
+well i shall rent a room in some respectable house wear a decent coat shave every day and go and read the papers in a cafe then in the evening i shall go to the theatre
+i shall look like some retired baker that is what i want come if you will only put this scheme into execution and be steady nothing could be better
+do you think so m bossuet and you
+a peer of france ah said andrea who knows major cavalcanti is already one perhaps but then hereditary rank is abolished
+and now that you have all you want and that we understand each other jump down from the tilbury and disappear
+how not at all why just think for a moment with this red handkerchief on my head with scarcely any shoes
+what was there before making in all about two hundred francs why i should certainly be arrested at the barriers then to justify myself i should say that you gave me the money
+this would cause inquiries it would be found that i left toulon without giving due notice and i should then be escorted back to the shores of the mediterranean then i should become simply
+and good by to my dream of resembling the retired baker no no my boy i prefer remaining honorably in the capital andrea scowled certainly
+as he had himself owned the reputed son of major cavalcanti was a wilful fellow he drew up for a minute threw a rapid glance around him and then his hand fell instantly into his pocket
+where it began playing with a pistol but meanwhile
+who had never taken his eyes off his companion passed his hand behind his back and opened a long spanish knife which he always carried with him to be ready in case of need
+the two friends as we see were worthy of and understood one another andrea's hand left his pocket inoffensively and was carried up to the red mustache which it played with for some time
+he said how happy you will be i will do my best said the inn keeper of the pont du gard shutting up his knife well then we will go into paris
+but how will you pass through the barrier without exciting suspicion it seems to me
+we shall see he then took the great coat with the large collar which the groom had left behind in the tilbury and put it on his back then he took off cavalcanti's hat which he placed upon his own head and finally
+he assumed the careless attitude of a servant whose master drives himself but tell me said andrea
+it is so windy that your hat can easily appear to have blown off come come enough of this said cavalcanti
+i hope i am not the cause hush said andrea they passed the barrier without accident at the first cross street
+well said andrea
+you would not like me to risk taking cold but what am i to do you oh you are young while i am beginning to get old au revoir benedetto
+and running into a court he disappeared alas said andrea sighing
+right off i observed a cluster of mountains about two thousand feet high whose shapes were very whimsically sculpted after our position fix i reentered the lounge and when our bearings were reported on the chart i saw that we were off the island of ceylon
+that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the indian peninsula i went looking in the library for a book about this island one of the most fertile in the world sure enough i found a volume entitled ceylon and the singhalese
+reentering the lounge i first noted the bearings of ceylon on which antiquity lavished so many different names
+its length is two hundred seventy five miles its maximum width one hundred fifty miles its circumference nine hundred miles its surface area twenty four thousand four hundred forty eight square miles
+in other words a little smaller than that of ireland just then captain nemo and his chief officer appeared the captain glanced at the chart then turning to me the island of ceylon he said
+is famous for its pearl fisheries would you be interested professor aronnax
+certainly captain fine it's easily done only when we see the fisheries we'll see no fishermen
+and we'll arrive there late tonight
+who went out immediately soon the nautilus reentered its liquid element and the pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty feet with the chart under my eyes
+i found it by the ninth parallel off the northwestern shores of ceylon
+to reach it we had to go all the way up ceylon's west coast professor captain nemo then told me there are pearl fisheries in the bay of bengal the seas of the east indies
+the seas of china and japan plus those seas south of the united states the gulf of panama and the gulf of california but it's off ceylon that such fishing reaps its richest rewards no doubt we'll be arriving a little early
+only during the month of march and for thirty days some three hundred boats concentrate on the lucrative harvest of these treasures from the sea each boat is manned by ten oarsmen and ten fishermen the latter divide into two groups
+dive in rotation and descend to a depth of twelve meters with the help of a heavy stone clutched between their feet and attached by a rope to their boat you mean i said
+that such primitive methods are still all that they use all
+although these fisheries belong to the most industrialized people in the world the english
+yet it strikes me that diving suits like yours could perform yeoman service in such work yes since those poor fishermen can't stay long underwater on his voyage to ceylon
+the englishman percival made much of a kaffir who stayed under five minutes without coming up to the surface but i find that hard to believe
+i know that some divers can last up to fifty seven seconds and highly skillful ones to eighty seven but such men are rare
+i believe the average time underwater that these fishermen can tolerate is thirty seconds during which they hastily stuff their little nets with all the pearl oysters they can tear loose
+their vision weakens ulcers break out on their eyes sores form on their bodies and some are even stricken with apoplexy on the ocean floor yes i said it's a sad occupation
+and one that exists only to gratify the whims of fashion but tell me captain how many oysters can a boat fish up in a workday
+it's even said that in eighteen fourteen when the english government went fishing on its own behalf its divers worked just twenty days and brought up seventy six million oysters
+the fishermen are well paid aren't they hardly professor in panama they make just one dollar per week in most places they earn only a penny for each oyster that has a pearl and they bring up so many that have none
+only one penny to those poor people who make their employers rich that's atrocious on that note professor captain nemo told me
+and if by chance some eager fisherman arrives early well we can watch him at work that suits me captain by the way professor aronnax you aren't afraid of sharks are you sharks i exclaimed
+this struck me as a pretty needless question to say the least well captain nemo went on i admit captain i'm not yet on very familiar terms with that genus of fish we're used to them
+the rest of us captain nemo answered and in time you will be too anyhow we'll be armed and on our way we might hunt a man eater or two it's a fascinating sport so professor i'll see you tomorrow
+bright and early this said in a carefree tone captain nemo left the lounge if you're invited to hunt bears in the swiss mountains you might say oh good i get to go bear hunting tomorrow
+if you're invited to hunt lions on the atlas plains or tigers in the jungles of india you might say ha now's my chance to hunt lions and tigers but if you're invited to hunt sharks in their native element
+you might want to think it over before accepting as for me i passed a hand over my brow where beads of cold sweat were busy forming let's think this over i said to myself and let's take our time
+hunting otters in underwater forests as we did in the forests of crespo island is an acceptable activity
+that's another story i know that in certain countries particularly the andaman islands negroes don't hesitate to attack sharks dagger in one hand and noose in the other
+but i also know that many who face those fearsome animals don't come back alive besides i'm not a negro and even if i were a negro in this instance i don't think a little hesitation on my part would be out of place
+and there i was fantasizing about sharks envisioning huge jaws armed with multiple rows of teeth and capable of cutting a man in half i could already feel a definite pain around my pelvic girdle
+and how i resented the offhand manner in which the captain had extended his deplorable invitation
+thank heavens i said to myself conseil will never want to come along and that'll be my excuse for not going with the captain as for ned land i admit i felt less confident of his wisdom
+danger however great held a perennial attraction for his aggressive nature i went back to reading sirr's book but i leafed through it mechanically between the lines i kept seeing fearsome wide open jaws
+just then conseil and the canadian entered with a calm even gleeful air little did they know what was waiting for them ye gods sir ned land told me your captain nemo the devil take him
+has just made us a very pleasant proposition oh i said you know about with all due respect to master conseil replied the nautilus's commander has invited us together with master
+for a visit tomorrow to ceylon's magnificent pearl fisheries he did so in the most cordial terms and conducted himself like a true gentleman he didn't tell you anything else nothing sir the canadian replied
+he said you'd already discussed this little stroll indeed i said but didn't he give you any details on not a one mister naturalist you will be going with us right me
+why yes certainly of course i can see that you like the idea mister land yes it will be a really unusual experience and possibly dangerous i added in an insinuating tone
+dangerous ned land replied a simple trip to an oysterbank assuredly
+for my part i stared at them with anxious eyes as if they were already missing a limb or two should i alert them yes surely but i hardly knew how to go about it would master
+conseil said to me give us some background on pearl fishing on the fishing itself i asked or on the occupational hazards that on the fishing the canadian replied before we tackle the terrain it helps to be familiar with it
+all right sit down my friends
+ned and conseil took seats on a couch and right off the canadian said to me sir just what is a pearl exactly my gallant ned i replied for poets a pearl is a tear from the sea
+for orientals it's a drop of solidified dew for the ladies it's a jewel
+necks and ears that's oblong in shape glassy in luster and formed from mother of pearl for chemists it's a mixture of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate with a little gelatin protein
+and finally for naturalists it's a simple festering secretion from the organ that produces mother of pearl in certain bivalves branch mollusca conseil said class
+acephala order testacea correct my scholarly conseil now then those testacea capable of producing pearls include rainbow abalone
+turbo snails giant clams and saltwater scallops briefly all those that secrete mother of pearl in other words that blue azure violet or white substance
+lining the insides of their valves are mussels included too the canadian asked yes the mussels of certain streams in scotland wales ireland saxony bohemia and france
+good the canadian replied from now on we'll pay closer attention to em but i went on for secreting pearls the ideal mollusk is the pearl oyster meleagrina margaritifera
+that valuable shellfish pearls result simply from mother of pearl solidifying into a globular shape either they stick to the oyster's shell or they become embedded in the creature's folds
+on the valves a pearl sticks fast on the flesh it lies loose but its nucleus is always some small hard object say a sterile egg or a grain of sand
+around which the mother of pearl is deposited in thin concentric layers over several years in succession can one find several pearls in the same oyster conseil asked yes my boy
+they even mention one oyster about which i remain dubious
+ned land yelped did i say sharks i exclaimed hastily i meant one hundred fifty pearls sharks wouldn't make sense indeed conseil said
+but will master now tell us how one goes about extracting these pearls one proceeds in several ways and often when pearls stick to the valves fishermen even pull them loose with pliers
+thus they die in the open air and by the end of ten days they've rotted sufficiently next they're immersed in huge tanks of salt water then they're opened up and washed at this point the sorters begin their twofold task
+first they remove the layers of mother of pearl which are known in the industry by the names legitimate silver bastard white or bastard black
+then they remove the oyster's meaty tissue boil it and finally strain it in order to extract even the smallest pearls do the prices of these pearls differ depending on their size conseil asked not only on their size i replied
+but also according to their shape their water in other words their color and their orient in other words that dappled shimmering glow that makes them so delightful to the eye the finest pearls are called virgin pearls or paragons
+they form in isolation within the mollusk's tissue they're white often opaque but sometimes of opalescent transparency and usually spherical or pear shaped the spherical ones are made into bracelets
+the pear shaped ones into earrings and since they're the most valuable they're priced individually the other pearls that stick to the oyster's shell are more erratically shaped and are priced by weight finally classed in the lowest order
+the smallest pearls are known by the name seed pearls they're priced by the measuring cup and are used mainly in the creation of embroidery for church vestments but it must be a long hard job sorting out these pearls by size
+the canadian said no my friend that task is performed with eleven strainers or sieves that are pierced with different numbers of holes those pearls staying in the strainers with twenty to eighty holes are in the first order
+those not slipping through the sieves pierced with one hundred to eight hundred holes are in the second order finally those pearls for which one uses strainers pierced with nine hundred to one thousand holes make up the seed pearls
+how ingenious conseil said to reduce dividing and classifying pearls to a mechanical operation and could master tell us the profits brought in by harvesting these banks of pearl oysters according to sirr's book i replied
+these ceylon fisheries are farmed annually for a total profit of three million man eaters francs conseil rebuked yes francs three million francs i went on
+but i don't think these fisheries bring in the returns they once did similarly the central american fisheries
+but now they bring in only two thirds of that amount all in all it's estimated that nine million francs is the current yearly return for the whole pearl harvesting industry but conseil asked
+haven't certain famous pearls been quoted at extremely high prices yes my boy
+i've even heard stories the canadian said about some lady in ancient times who drank pearls in vinegar cleopatra conseil shot back it must have tasted pretty bad ned land added abominable ned my friend
+conseil replied but when a little glass of vinegar is worth one million five hundred thousand francs its taste is a small price to pay
+ned land married to cleopatra conseil exclaimed but i was all set to tie the knot conseil the canadian replied in all seriousness
+i even bought a pearl necklace for my fiancee kate tender but she married somebody else instead
+but you can absolutely trust me on this professor its pearls were so big
+my gallant ned i replied laughing those were artificial pearls ordinary glass beads whose insides were coated with essence of orient wow
+that essence of orient must sell for quite a large sum as little as zero it comes from the scales of a european carp it's nothing more than a silver substance that collects in the water and is preserved in ammonia it's worthless
+maybe that's why kate tender married somebody else replied mister land philosophically but i said getting back to pearls of great value i don't think any sovereign ever possessed one superior to the pearl owned by captain nemo
+this one conseil said pointing to a magnificent jewel in its glass case exactly and i'm certainly not far off when i estimate its value at two million uh francs
+conseil said quickly yes i said two million francs and no doubt all it cost our captain was the effort to pick it up ha ned land exclaimed during our stroll tomorrow who says we won't run into one just like it
+conseil put in and why not what good would a pearl worth millions do us here on the nautilus here no ned land said but elsewhere oh elsewhere conseil put in
+shaking his head in fact i said mister land is right and if we ever brought back to europe or america a pearl worth millions it would make the story of our adventures more authentic and much more rewarding that's how i see it
+the canadian said but said conseil who perpetually returned to the didactic side of things is this pearl fishing ever dangerous no i replied quickly especially if one takes certain precautions
+what risks would you run in a job like that ned land said swallowing a few gulps of salt water whatever you say ned then trying to imitate captain nemo's carefree tone i asked
+by the way gallant ned are you afraid of sharks
+the canadian replied i'm a professional harpooner it's my job to make a mockery of them it isn't an issue i said of fishing for them with a swivel hook hoisting them onto the deck of a ship
+opening the belly ripping out the heart and tossing it into the sea so it's an issue of yes precisely in the water in the water ye gods just give me a good harpoon
+you see sir these sharks are badly designed they have to roll their bellies over to snap you up and in the meantime ned land had a way of pronouncing the word snap
+well how about you conseil what are your feelings about these man eaters me conseil said i'm afraid i must be frank with master good for you i thought
+chapter four i am by no means sure that if the good people of milby had known the truth about the countess czerlaski they would not have been considerably disappointed to find that it was very far from being as bad as they imagined
+nice distinctions are troublesome it is so much easier to say that a thing is black than to discriminate the particular shade of brown blue or green to which it really belongs
+besides think of all the virtuous declamation all the penetrating observation which had been built up entirely on the fundamental position that the countess was a very objectionable person indeed
+and which would be utterly overturned and nullified by the destruction of that premiss missus phipps the banker's wife and missus landor the attorney's wife had invested part of their reputation for acuteness
+had no compensating superiority in virtue to set against the other lady's manifest superiority in personal charms miss phipps's stumpy figure and unsuccessful attire
+instead of looking down from a mount of virtue with an aureole round its head would then be seen on the same level and in the same light as the countess czerlaski's diana like form and well chosen drapery
+miss phipps for her part didn't like dressing for effect she had always avoided that style of appearance which was calculated to create a sensation
+then what amusing innuendoes of the milby gentlemen over their wine would have been entirely frustrated and reduced to nought if you had told them that the countess had really been guilty of no misdemeanours which demanded her exclusion from strictly respectable society
+had subsequently given dancing lessons in the metropolis that mister bridmain was neither more nor less than her half brother who by unimpeached integrity and industry
+had won a partnership in a silk manufactory and thereby a moderate fortune that enabled him to retire as you see to study politics the weather and the art of conversation at his leisure
+mister bridmain in fact quadragenarian bachelor as he was felt extremely well pleased to receive his sister in her widowhood and to shine in the reflected light of her beauty and title
+every man who is not a monster a mathematician or a mad philosopher is the slave of some woman or other mister bridmain had put his neck under the yoke of his handsome sister and though his soul was a very little one
+of the smallest description indeed he would not have ventured to call it his own he might be slightly recalcitrant now and then as is the habit of long eared pachyderms under the thong of the fair countess's tongue
+and there was always the possibility that mister bridmain's first nuptials might occur before the countess was quite sure of her second as it was however he submitted to all his sister's caprices
+as personages on the debatable ground between aristocracy and commonalty instead of settling in some spot where his five hundred a year might have won him the definite dignity of a parochial magnate
+whom he initiated into the mysteries of the pas de bas and the lancers quadrilles she had had seven years of sufficiently happy matrimony with czerlaski who had taken her to paris and germany
+not indeed any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom but much external polish and certain practical conclusions of a very decided kind
+one of these conclusions was that there were things more solid in life than fine whiskers and a title and that in accepting a second husband
+was difficult to be met with at watering places which were already preoccupied with abundance of angling beauties and were chiefly stocked with men whose whiskers might be dyed and whose incomes were still more problematic
+so she had determined on trying a neighbourhood where people were extremely well acquainted with each other's affairs and where the women were mostly ill dressed and ugly
+and give him at least a sort of cousinship to the quarter sessions all this which was the simple truth would have seemed extremely flat to the gossips of milby who had made up their minds to something much more exciting
+there was nothing here so very detestable it is true the countess was a little vain a little ambitious a little selfish a little shallow and frivolous a little given to white lies but
+who considers such slight blemishes such moral pimples as these disqualifications for entering into the most respectable society indeed
+the severest ladies in milby would have been perfectly aware that these characteristics would have created no wide distinction between the countess czerlaski and themselves and since it was clear there was a wide distinction
+why it must lie in the possession of some vices from which they were undeniably free hence it came to pass that milby respectability refused to recognize the countess czerlaski
+in spite of her assiduous church going and the deep disgust she was known to have expressed at the extreme paucity of the congregations on ash wednesdays
+so she began to feel that she had miscalculated the advantages of a neighbourhood where people are well acquainted with each other's private affairs
+and shuns a coldly satirical eye as she would shun a gorgon and she was especially eager for clerical notice and friendship not merely because that is quite the most respectable countenance to be obtained in society
+and had an uneasy sense that she was not altogether safe in that quarter she had serious intentions of becoming quite pious without any reserves when she had once got her carriage and settlement
+the countess did not quote sophocles but she said to herself only this little bit of pretence and vanity and then i will be quite good and make myself quite safe for another world
+for you have already perceived that there was one being to whom the countess was absorbingly devoted and to whose desires she made everything else subservient namely caroline czerlaski nee bridmain
+thus there was really not much affectation in her sweet speeches and attentions to mister and missus barton
+still their friendship by no means adequately represented the object she had in view when she came to milby and it had been for some time clear to her that she must suggest a new change of residence to her brother
+my father had such a skirmishing cutting kind of a slashing way with him in his disputations thrusting and ripping and giving every one a stroke to remember him by in his turn
+for that the taylor in ripping them up in order to turn them had found they had been turn'd before then turn them again brother said my father rapidly for there will be many a turning of em yet before all's done in the affair
+they are as rotten as dirt said the corporal then by all means said my father bespeak a new pair brother for though i know continued my father turning himself to the company
+that widow wadman has been deeply in love with my brother toby for many years and has used every art and circumvention of woman to outwit him into the same passion yet now that she has caught him her fever will be pass'd its height
+into a corps no matter whether he loves the service or no being once in it he acts as if he did and takes every step to shew himself a man of prowesse
+the hypothesis like the rest of my father's was plausible enough and my uncle toby had but a single word to object to it in which trim stood ready to second him but my father had not drawn his conclusion
+for this reason continued my father stating the case over again notwithstanding all the world knows that missus wadman affects my brother toby and my brother toby contrariwise affects missus wadman
+and no obstacle in nature to forbid the music striking up this very night yet will i answer for it that this self same tune will not be play'd this twelvemonth
+we have taken our measures badly quoth my uncle toby looking up interrogatively in trim's face i would lay my montero cap said trim
+now trim's montero cap as i once told you was his constant wager and having furbish'd it up that very night in order to go upon the attack it made the odds look more considerable
+i would lay an please your honour my montero cap to a shilling was it proper continued trim making a bow to offer a wager before your honours there is nothing improper in it said my father
+that widow wadman an please your worship cannot hold it out ten days and whence cried slop jeeringly hast thou all this knowledge of woman friend
+by falling in love with a popish clergy woman said trim twas a beguine said my uncle toby doctor slop was too much in wrath to listen to the distinction
+and my father taking that very crisis to fall in helter skelter upon the whole order of nuns and beguines a set of silly fusty baggages slop could not stand it and my uncle toby having some measures to take about his breeches
+and perhaps it is as well for thee tho not so well for me that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon that head and that i am able to write it to thee had it been the good pleasure of him who disposes of our lots
+missus shandy being now close beside me preparing for bed i have thrown together without order and just as they have come into my mind such hints and documents as i deem may be of use to thee
+though i perceive from a glow in my cheek that i blush as i begin to speak to thee upon the subject as well knowing notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy how few of its offices thou neglectest
+yet i would remind thee of one during the continuance of thy courtship in a particular manner which i would not have omitted and that is never to go forth upon the enterprize whether it be in the morning or the afternoon
+without first recommending thyself to the protection of almighty god that he may defend thee from the evil one shave the whole top of thy crown clean
+once at least every four or five days but oftner if convenient lest in taking off thy wig before her thro absence of mind she should be able to discover how much has been cut away by time how much by trim
+whatever thou hast to say be it more or less forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice silence and whatever approaches it weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain
+for this cause if thou canst help it never throw down the tongs and poker avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with her
+they are all books which excite laughter and thou knowest dear toby that there is no passion so serious as lust stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt before thou enterest her parlour
+there is nothing further for thee which occurs to me at present unless the breaking out of a fresh war so wishing every thing dear toby for best i rest thy affectionate brother walter shandy
+whilst my father was writing his letter of instructions my uncle toby and the corporal were busy in preparing every thing for the attack as the turning of the thin scarlet breeches was laid aside at least for the present
+there was nothing which should put it off beyond the next morning so accordingly it was resolv'd upon for eleven o'clock
+but the account of this is worth more than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth alluding to the first edition volume of such a work as this
+s'death cried my great grandfather clapping his hand upon his nose
+now my great grandfather's nose was for all the world like unto the noses of all the men women and children whom pantagruel found dwelling upon the island of ennasin
+by the way if you would know the strange way of getting a kin amongst so flat nosed a people you must read the book find it out yourself you never can
+you must mean your uncle's replied my great grandmother my great grandfather was convinced he untwisted the paper and signed the article
+so that my father had the jointure to pay a hundred and fifty pounds half yearly on michaelmas and lady day during all that time no man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my father
+as soon as ever he enter'd upon the odd fifty he generally gave a loud hem
+inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of his wig look'd at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds without pulling out his handkerchief and wiping his temples
+and feel pity for the force of education and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors for three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses
+so that the whimsicality of my father's brain was far from having the whole honour of this as it had of almost all his other strange notions for in a great measure he might be said to have suck'd this in with his mother's milk
+that he did not conceive how the greatest family in england could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses and for the contrary reason he would generally add
+that it must be one of the greatest problems in civil life where the same number of long and jolly noses following one another in a direct line
+i mean the external organ of smelling or that part of man which stands prominent in his face and which painters say in good jolly noses and well proportioned faces should comprehend a full third that is measured downwards from the setting on of the hair
+did he read such books and observe such facts and think such thoughts as would eternally be making him change sides now my father as i told you last year detested all this he pick'd up an opinion sir
+as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple it becomes his own and if he is a man of spirit he would lose his life rather than give it up
+the apple is as much frank's apple as john's pray mister shandy what patent has he to shew for it and how did it begin to be his was it when he set his heart upon it or when he gathered it
+or when he chew'd it or when he roasted it or when he peel'd or when he brought it home or when he digested or when he for tis plain sir if the first picking up of the apple made it not his that no subsequent act could
+brother didius tribonius will answer now tribonius the civilian and church lawyer's beard being three inches and a half and three eighths longer than didius his beard
+that the sweat of a man's brows and the exsudations of a man's brains are as much a man's own property as the breeches upon his backside
+they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting as in the case above so that they might well and truly be said to be of his own goods and chattels accordingly he held fast by em both by teeth and claws
+would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on and in a word would intrench and fortify them round with as many circumvallations and breast works as my uncle toby would a citadel
+by the trotting of my lean horse the thing is incredible and i am quite lost in my understanding when i am considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects
+what was to be had however he set the greater store by and though my father would oft times sport with my uncle toby's library which by the bye was ridiculous enough
+but that was not thy transgression my dear uncle here but why here rather than in any other part of my story i am not able to tell but here it is my heart stops me
+whilst i am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee and veneration for the excellency of thy character that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew's bosom
+devouredst no man's bread gently with faithful trim behind thee didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures jostling no creature in thy way for each one's sorrows thou hadst a tear
+for each man's need thou hadst a shilling whilst i am worth one to pay a weeder thy path from thy door to thy bowling green shall never be grown up
+could have vented such an insinuation he was however frank and generous in his nature and at all times open to conviction so that he had scarce got to the last word of this ungracious retort
+when his conscience smote him my mother was then conjugally swinging with her left arm twisted under his right in such wise that the inside of her hand rested upon the back of his
+she raised her fingers and let them fall it could scarce be call'd a tap or if it was a tap
+whether twas a tap of remonstrance or a tap of confession my father who was all sensibilities from head to foot
+conscience redoubled her blow he turn'd his face suddenly the other way and my mother supposing his body was about to turn with it in order to move homewards by a cross movement of her right leg
+a thin blue chill pellucid chrystal with all its humours so at rest the least mote or speck of desire might have been seen at the bottom of it had it existed
+my mother madam was so at no time either by nature by institution or example a temperate current of blood ran orderly through her veins in all months of the year
+which having little or no meaning in them nature is oft times obliged to find one and as for my father's example twas so far from being either aiding or abetting thereunto
+that twas the whole business of his life to keep all fancies of that kind out of her head nature had done her part to have spared him this trouble and what was not a little inconsistent my father knew it
+and here am i sitting this twelfth day of august seventeen sixty six in a purple jerkin and yellow pair of slippers without either wig or cap on a most tragicomical completion of his prediction
+for certainly key holes were made for other purposes and considering the act as an act which interfered with a true proposition and denied a key hole to be what it was
+it became a violation of nature and was so far you see criminal it is for this reason an please your reverences that key holes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness than all other holes
+though the corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle toby's great ramallie wig into pipes yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign trunk
+twould have cost her ladyship a smile it curl'd every where but where the corporal would have it and where a buckle or two in his opinion would have done it honour he could as soon have raised the dead
+such it was or rather such would it have seem'd upon any other brow but the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle toby's assimilated every thing around it so sovereignly to itself
+and nature had moreover wrote gentleman with so fair a hand in every line of his countenance that even his tarnish'd gold laced hat and huge cockade of flimsy taffeta became him
+in a period of fifteen or sixteen years since they had been made by a total inactivity in my uncle toby's life for he seldom went further than the bowling green
+and to shorten all description they shone so bright against the sun that morning and had so metallick and doughty an air with them that had my uncle toby thought of attacking in armour nothing could have so well imposed upon his imagination
+and with his hair tuck'd up under his montero cap which he had furbish'd up for the occasion
+a whiff of military pride had puff'd out his shirt at the wrist and upon that in a black leather thong clipp'd into a tassel beyond the knot hung the corporal's stick my uncle toby carried his cane
+like a pike it looks well at least quoth my father to himself
+my uncle toby turn'd his head more than once behind him to see how he was supported by the corporal and the corporal as oft as he did it gave a slight flourish with his stick
+but not vapouringly and with the sweetest accent of most respectful encouragement bid his honour never fear now my uncle toby did fear and grievously too
+infinite was his pity nor would the most courteous knight of romance have gone further at least upon one leg to have wiped away a tear from a woman's eye
+and yet excepting once that he was beguiled into it by missus wadman he had never looked stedfastly into one and would often tell my father in the simplicity of his heart
+she cannot quoth my uncle toby halting when they had march'd up to within twenty paces of missus wadman's door she cannot corporal take it amiss
+your honour replied the corporal knows of tom's misfortunes but this affair has nothing to do with them any further than this
+that if tom had not married the widow or had it pleased god after their marriage that they had but put pork into their sausages the honest soul had never been taken out of his warm bed and dragg'd to the inquisition
+when once a poor creature is in he is in an please your honour for ever tis very true said my uncle toby looking gravely at missus wadman's house as he spoke nothing
+said my uncle toby musing whilst a man is free cried the corporal giving a flourish with his stick thus
+a thousand of my father's most subtle syllogisms could not have said more for celibacy my uncle toby look'd earnestly towards his cottage and his bowling green
+in all the meadow there was nobody who could tell such interesting stories as the old tree frog even the garter snake who had been there the longest and the old cricket who had lived in the farm yard could tell no such exciting tales as the tree frog
+all the wonderful things of which he told had happened before he came to the meadow
+none of his friends had known him then but he was an honest fellow and they were sure that everything he told was true besides they must be true for how could a body ever think out such remarkable tales from his own head
+when he first came to his home by the elm tree he was very thin and looked as though he had been sick the katydids who stayed near said that he croaked in his sleep and that you know is not what well and happy frogs should do
+one day when many of the meadow people were gathered around him he told them his story when i was a little fellow he said i was strong and well and could leap farther than any other frog of my size
+i was hatched in the pond beyond the farm house and ate my way from the egg to the water outside like any other frog perhaps i ought to say like any other tadpole for of course i began life as a tadpole
+i played and ate with my brothers and sisters and little dreamed what trouble was in store for me when i grew up we were all in a hurry to be frogs
+oh how happy we were then i remember the day when my hind legs began to grow and how the other tadpoles crowded around me in the water and swam close to me to feel the two little bunches that were to be legs
+my fore legs did not grow until later and these bunches came just in front of my tail your tail cried a puzzled young cricket
+i did have when i was a tadpole said the tree frog i had a beautiful wiggly little tail with which to swim through the waters of the pond but as my legs grew larger and stronger my tail grew littler and weaker until there wasn't any tail left
+the knobs on the ends of my toes were sticky so that i could climb a tree and then i was ready to start on my travels some of the other frogs started with me but they stopped along the way and at last i was alone
+i was a bold young fellow and when i saw a great white thing among the trees up yonder i made up my mind to see what it was there was a great red thing in the yard beside it but i liked the white one better
+i hopped along as fast as i could for i did not then know enough to be afraid i got close up to them both and saw strange big creatures going in and out of the red thing the barn as i afterward found it was called
+the largest creatures had four legs and some of them had horns the smaller creatures had only two legs on which to walk and two other limbs of some sort with which they lifted and carried things
+the queerest thing about it was that the smaller creatures seemed to make the larger ones do whatever they wanted them to they even made some of them help do their work you may not believe me but what i tell you is true
+as you may guess i stayed there a long time watching these strange creatures work
+there were some bright colored flowers near the house and i crawled in among them there i rested until sunset and then began my evening song while i was singing one of the people from the house came out and found me
+she picked me up and carried me inside oh how frightened i was my heart thumped as though it would burst and i tried my best to get away from her she didn't hurt me at all but she would not let me go
+she put me in a very queer prison at first when she put me down on a stone in some water i did not know that i was in prison i tried to hop away and bump went my head against something
+wonderful indeed and at the top continued the tree frog was something white over the doorway into my prison in the bottom were water and a stone and from the bottom to the top was a ladder
+i had enough to eat but anybody who has been free cannot be happy shut in i watched my chance and three times i got out when the little door was not quite closed twice i was caught and put back
+in the pleasant weather of course i went to the top of the ladder and when it was going to rain i would go down again every time that i went up or down those dreadful creatures would put their faces up close to my prison
+and i could hear a roaring sound which meant they were talking and laughing the last time i got out
+after they stopped hunting the wind blew the door open and i hopped out you don't say exclaimed a grasshopper
+but for a long time i could not sleep without dreaming that i was back in prison and i would croak in my sleep at the thought of it i heard you cried the katydid and i wondered what was the matter matter enough said the tree frog
+it makes my skin dry to think of it now and friends the best way i can ever repay your kindness to me is to tell you to never never never never go near the farm house and they all answered
+the dignified walking sticks three walking sticks from the forest had come to live in the big maple tree near the middle of the meadow nobody knew exactly why they had left the forest where all their sisters and cousins and aunts lived
+perhaps they were not happy with their relatives but then if one is a walking stick you know one does not care so very much about one's family these walking sticks had grown up the best way they could with no father or mother to care for them
+they had never been taught to do anything useful or to think much about other people when they were hungry they ate some leaves and never thought what they should eat the next time that they happened to be hungry when they were tired they went to sleep
+and when they had slept enough they awakened they had nothing to do but to eat and sleep and they did not often take the trouble to think they felt that they were a little better than those meadow people who rushed and scrambled and worked from morning until night and they showed very plainly how they felt
+they said it was not genteel to hurry no matter what happened one day the tree frog was under the tree when the large brown walking stick decided to lay some eggs he saw her dropping them carelessly around on the ground and asked
+do you never fix a place for your eggs a place said the brown walking stick waving her long and slender feelers to and fro a place oh no i think they will hatch where they are it is too much trouble to find a place
+some mothers do not think it too much trouble to be careful where they lay eggs that may be said the brown walking stick but they do not belong to our family she spoke as if those who did not belong to her family might be good but could never be genteel
+she had once told her brother the five legged walking stick that she would not want to live if she could not be genteel she thought the meadow people very common the five legged walking stick looked much like his sister he had the same long slender body
+the same long feelers and the same sort of long slender legs if you had passed them in a hay field you would surely have thought each a stem of hay unless you happened to see them move the other walking stick their friend was younger and green
+he knew just what to expect so when the nuthatch set him down on the bark to look at him he unhooked his feet from the bark and tumbled to the ground the nuthatch tried to catch him and broke off one of his legs but she never found him again although she looked and looked and looked and looked
+that was because he crawled into a clump of ferns and kept very still his sister came and looked at him and said now if you were only a spider it would not be long before you would have six legs again
+of course you know spiders never do have a hundred and a walking stick wouldn't be walking without any but that was just his way of speaking and it showed what kind of insect he was his relatives all waved their feelers one at a time and said
+ah he has the true walking stick spirit then they paid no more attention to him and after a while he and his sister and their green little friend left the forest for the meadow on the day when the grass was cut they had sat quietly in their trees and looked genteel
+their feelers were held quite close together and they did not move their feet at all only swayed their bodies gracefully from side to side now they were on the ground hunting through the flat piles of cut grass for some fresh and juicy bits to eat
+the ants were scrambling around as busy as ever and life went on quite as though neither men nor horses had ever entered the meadow see cried a spider who was busily looking after her web there comes a horse drawing something and the farmer sitting on it and driving
+when the horse was well into the meadow the farmer moved a bar and the queer looking machine began to kick the grass this way and that with its many stiff and shining legs a frisky young grasshopper kicked in the same way and happened just happened of course
+then there was a great scrambling and the crickets frolicked with them the young walking stick thought it looked like great fun and almost wished herself some other kind of insect so that she could tumble around in the same way she did not quite wish it you understand
+and would never have thought of it if she had turned brown ah said the five legged walking stick what scrambling how very common yes indeed said his sister why can't they learn to move slowly and gracefully
+perhaps they can't help being fat but they might at least act genteel what is it to be genteel asked a grasshopper suddenly he had heard every word that the walking stick said why said the five legged walking stick
+it is just to be genteel to act as you see us act and to just here the hay tedder passed over them and every one of the walking sticks was sent flying through the air and landed on his back
+the walking sticks looked very uncomfortable and the brother and sister could not think of anything to say it was the young green one who spoke at last
+the dance of the sand hill cranes one fine day in spring a great flock of sand hill cranes came from the south they were flying high and quietly because the weather was bright if it had been stormy
+or if they had been flying by night as they usually did they would have stayed nearer the ground and their leader would have trumpeted loudly to let his followers know which way he was going they would also have trumpeted but more softly to tell him that they were coming after
+they were a fine company to look upon orderly strong and dignified their long necks were stretched out straight ahead their long legs straight behind and they beat the air with slow regular strokes of the strong wings
+as they came near the pond they flew lower and lower until all swept down to the earth and alighted tall and stately by the edge of the water they had eaten nothing for several days and were soon hunting for food some on land
+and some in the water for they had stopped to feed and rest those who hunted in the water did so very quietly a crane would stand on one leg with his head against his breast so quietly that one might think him asleep but as soon as anything eatable came near
+he would bend his body stretch out his neck open his long slender bill and swallow it at one gulp then he would seem to fall asleep again while most of the cranes were still feeding some of them were stalking through the woods and looking this way and that
+they were those who thought of staying there for the summer when the flock arose to fly on again eight cranes stayed behind they watched their friends fly away and stood on the ground with their necks and bills uplifted and mouths open
+while they trumpeted or called out good bye stop for us in the fall the flying cranes trumpeted back we will don't forget us that night they slept near together as they had done when with the large flock
+and one crane kept awake to watch for danger while the others tucked their heads under their wings they were fine looking even when they slept and some people never look well unless they are awake they were brownish gray with no bright markings at all
+and their long legs gave them a very genteel look the tops of their heads were covered with warty red skin from which grew short black feathers that looked more like hairs one morning when the cranes awakened
+a fine young fellow began to strut up and down before the rest bowing low and leaping high into the air and every now and then whooping as loudly as he could the gulls who had spent the winter by the pond screamed to each other the crane dance has begun
+even the frogs who are afraid of cranes crept quietly near to look on it was not long before another young crane began to skip and hop and circle around drooping his wings and whooping as he went
+every crane danced brothers and sisters and all and as they did so they looked lovingly at each other and admired the fine steps and enjoyed the whooping this went on until they were so tired they could hardly stand and had to stop to eat and rest
+when they were eating the young fellow who had begun the dance stalked up to the sister of one of his friends as she stood in the edge of the pond gracefully balanced on one leg she did not turn her head towards him although having such a long and slender neck
+she stood with her head on her breast and looked at the water after a while he trumpeted softly as though he were just trying his voice then she gave a pretty little start and said oh are you here how you did frighten me
+i am sorry he said i did not want to frighten you and he looked at her admiringly it was just for a minute she answered
+then they stood and fished for a long time without saying anything when she flew away she said that is a very pleasant fishing place he stood on the other leg for a while and thought how sweet her voice sounded as she said it
+then he thought that if she liked the place so well she might come there again the next day he wondered why he could not come too although everybody knows that a crane catches more if he fishes alone the next morning when the cranes danced
+he bowed to her oftener than to any of the rest and he thought she noticed it they danced until they were almost too tired to move
+as she stalked off toward the pond she passed him and she said over her shoulder i should think you would be hungry i am almost starved after she had gone he wondered why she had said that
+if he had been an older crane and understood the ways of the world a little better he would have known that she meant aren't you coming to that fishing place i am going now
+still although he was such a young crane and had never danced until this year he began to think that she liked him and enjoyed having him near so he flew off to the fishing place where he had seen her the day before and he stalked along to where she was
+he pitied short necked people then he said pooh i can take bigger mouthfuls than that you ought to see what big mouthfuls i can take she changed and stood on her other leg i saw you dancing this morning she said
+for all the eight cranes had danced together but he thought it very wonderful did you notice to whom i bowed he asked he was so excited that his knees shook and he had to stand on both legs at once to keep from falling
+when a crane is as much excited as that it is pretty serious to my sister she asked carelessly as she drew one of her long tail feathers through her beak no said he i bowed to her sister
+and she said she couldn't remember that she never could remember what she had forgotten it made him feel very badly to have her leave him so he wanted a chance to tell her something yet whenever he tried to it seemed to stick in his bill he began to fear that she didn't like him
+and the next time the cranes danced he didn't bow to her so much but he strutted and leaped and whooped even more and she strutted and leaped and whooped almost as loudly as he when they were all tired out and had stopped dancing she said to him i am so tired
+let us go off into the woods and rest you may be very sure he was glad to go and as he stalked off with her he led the way to a charming nesting place he didn't know just how to tell what he wanted to but he had seen another crane bowing to her
+and was afraid she might marry him if he was not quick now he pointed with one wing to this nesting place and said how would you like to build a nest there she looked where he had pointed i she said why
+it is a lovely place but i could never have a nest alone let me help you he said i want to marry and have a home why said she as she preened her feathers that is a very good plan
+when did you think of it so they were married and missus sand hill crane often told her friends afterward that mister crane was so much in love with her that she just had to marry him they were very very happy and after a while
+the clever water adder none of the pond people were alone more than the water adders the snapping turtle was left to himself a great deal until the day when he and belostoma drove away the boys after that
+his neighbors began to understand him better and he was less grumpy so that those who wore shells were soon quite fond of him belostoma did not have many friends among the smaller people and only a few among the larger ones they said that he was cruel
+and that he had a bad habit of using his stout sucking tube to sting with still belostoma did not care he said a giant water bug does not always live in the water i shall have my wings soon and leave the water and marry
+after that i shall fly away on my wedding trip missus belostoma may go with me if she feels like doing so after laying her eggs here i shall go anyway and i shall flutter and sprawl around the light and sting people who bother me and have a happy time
+that was belostoma's way he would sting people who bothered him but then he always said that they need not have bothered him and perhaps that was so with the water adders it was different they were good natured enough
+yet the mud turtles and snapping turtle were the only ones who ever called upon them and found them at home the small people without shells were afraid of them and the clams and pond snails never called upon any one the minnows said they could not bear the looks of the adders
+they had such ugly mouths and such quick motions the larger fishes kept away on account of their children who were small and tender one might think that the sand hill cranes the fish hawks and the other shore families would have been good friends for them but when they called
+the adders were always away people said that the adders were afraid of them the yellow brown frog wished that the adders could be scared badly scared some time so scared that a chilly feeling would run down their backs from their heads clear to the tips of their tails
+i wish said he that the chilly feeling would be big enough to go way through to their bellies their bellies are only the front side of their backs anyway he added because they are so thin of course this was a dreadful wish to make
+but people said that one of the adders had frightened the yellow brown frog so that he never got over it and this was the reason he felt so the water adders were certainly the cleverest people in the pond
+she could do almost anything and she knew it she talked about it too and that showed bad taste and was one reason why she was not liked better she could swim very fast could creep glide
+catch hold of things with her tail hang herself from the branch of a tree lift her head far into the air leap dart bound and dive all her family could do these things but she could do them a little the best one day she was hanging over the pond in a very graceful position
+with her tail twisted carelessly around a willow branch the snapping turtle and a mud turtle father were in the shallow water below her her slender forked tongue was darting in and out of her open mouth
+it is useful in feeling of things she said and then i have always thought it quite becoming she could see herself reflected in the still water below her and she noticed how prettily the dark brown of her back shaded into the white of her belly
+you see she was vain as well as clever the snapping turtle felt cross to day and had come to see if a talk with her would not make him feel better the mud turtle was tired of having the children sprawl around him
+and of missus mud turtle telling about the trouble she had to get the right kind of food the clever water adder spoke first of the weather it must be dreadfully hot for the shore people she said
+and fly around in the sunshine to find food for their children ah yes said the mud turtle how they must wish for shells humph said the snapping turtle what for to fly with
+let them come in swimming with their children if they are warm and tired the water adder laughed in her snaky way and showed her sharp teeth i have heard she said that when the wild ducks bring their children here to swim
+they do not always take so many home as they brought the snapping turtle became very much interested in his warty right foreleg and did not seem to hear what she said the mud turtle smiled i have heard she went on
+that when young ducks dive head first they are quite sure to come up again but that when they dive feet first they never come up
+asked the snapping turtle and he was snappy about it oh nothing replied the water adder swinging her head back and forth and looking at the scales on her body i know what you mean said the snapping turtle
+and you know what you mean but i have to eat something and if i am swimming under the water and a duckling paddles along just above me and sticks his foot into my mouth i am likely to swallow him before i think the water adder saw that he was provoked by what she had said so she talked about something else
+i think the ducks spoil their children said she they make such a fuss over them and they are not nearly so bright as my children why mine hatch as soon as the eggs are laid and go hunting at once they are no trouble at all
+i never worry about mine said the mud turtle although their mother thinks it is not safe for them all to sleep at once as they do on a log in the sunshine it isn't said the adder decidedly i never close my eyes
+most of them remarked the turtles all of them she said except us adders and the turtles i even think that some of the turtles are a little queer don't you we have thought so said the mud turtle
+they certainly are agreed the snapping turtle who was beginning to feel much better natured what did you say asked the adder who like all her family was a little deaf ouch exclaimed the snapping turtle
+ouch ouch what is the matter asked the mud turtle then he began to slap the water with his short stout tail and say ouch
+two naughty young water boatmen had swum quietly up on their backs and stung the turtles on their tails then they swam away pushing themselves quickly through the water with swift strokes of their hairy oar legs
+and he backed into the mud knowing that fine soft mud is the best thing in the world for stings
+if i could only reach my tail with my head or even with one of my hind feet
+asked the water adder in her sweetest voice nothing is easier and she wound herself around the willow branch in another graceful position and took the tip of her tail daintily between her teeth humph said the snapping turtle
+and he pulled his tail out of the mud and swam away
+said the mud turtle and he swam away with the snapping turtle what a rude person she is they said always trying to show how much more clever she is than other people we would rather be stupid and polite after a while the snapping turtle said
+but then you know we are not stupid of course not replied the mud turtle
+a contemporary poet of the country king merriwig the first rode back from war as many other kings had done before five hundred men behind him were in sight left right left right left right left right left right
+so far as is known this was her only work but she built up some reputation on it and belvane who was a good judge had a high opinion of her genius to be exact there were only four hundred and ninety nine men
+henry smallnose a bowman of considerable promise had been left behind in the enemy's country the one casualty of war while spying out the land in the early days of the invasion
+he had been discovered by the chief armourer of barodia at full length on the wet grass searching for tracks the chief armourer a kindly man
+henry having caught a glimpse of the chief armourer's daughter had accepted without any false pride and had frequently dropped in to supper thereafter now that the war was over he found that he could not tear himself away
+with king merriwig's permission he was settling in barodia and with the chief armourer's permission he was starting on his new life as a married man as the towers of the castle came in sight merriwig drew a deep breath of happiness home again
+were in his pocket days of honoured leisure were waiting for him he gazed at each remembered landmark of his own beloved country his heart overflowing with thankfulness never again would he leave euralia how good to see hyacinth again
+poor little hyacinth left all alone but there she had had the countess belvane a woman of great experience to help her belvane should he risk it how much had she thought of him while he was away
+hyacinth would be growing up and getting married soon life would be lonely in euralia then unless should he risk it
+he must be longing to tell you that oh he'll have a hundred things to tell you first but then when he says and what's been happening here while i've been away nothing much i suppose then you can say
+then i shall say nothing much only coronel and such a clever oh i have my ideas said coronel well i'll be out of the way somewhere i think i'll go for a walk in the forest
+or shall i stay here in the countess's garden and amuse myself with udo anyhow i'll give you an hour alone together first the cavalcade drew up in front of the castle handkerchiefs fluttered to them from the walls trumpets were blown hounds bayed
+down the steps came hyacinth all blue and gold and flung herself into her father's arms my dear child said merriwig as he patted her soothingly there there it's your old father come back again h'r'm there there
+he patted her again as though it were she and not himself who was in danger of breaking down my little hyacinth my own little girl oh father i am glad to have you back there there my child
+he took a step forward and addressed his troops men of euralia cheers we have returned from a long and arduous conflict cheers to the embraces loud cheers
+of our mothers and wives and daughters prolonged cheering as the case may be hear hear
+in honour of our great victory i decree that from now onwards to morrow shall be observed as a holiday throughout euralia terrific cheering
+here he turned and embraced his daughter again and if his eye travelled over her shoulder in the direction of belvane's garden it is a small matter and one for which the architect of the castle no doubt was principally to blame
+there was another storm of cheers the battle cry of euralia ho ho merriwig was shouted from five hundred throats and the men dispersed happily to their homes hyacinth and merriwig went into the palace
+now father said hyacinth later on when merriwig had changed his clothes and refreshed himself you've got to tell me all about it i can hardly believe it's really over yes yes it's all over
+said merriwig heartily we shan't have any trouble in that direction again i fancy do tell me did the king of barodia apologise he did better than that he abdicated why
+well said merriwig remembering just in time i er killed him oh father how rough of you i don't think it hurt him very much my dear
+see i have brought these home for you he produced from his pocket a small packet in tissue paper oh how exciting whatever can it be merriwig unwrapped the paper and disclosed a couple of ginger whiskers
+neatly tied up with blue ribbon father he picked out the left one fons et origo if he had known any latin of the war and held it up for hyacinth's inspection there you can see the place where henry smallnose's arrow bent it
+by the way he added henry is marrying and settling down in barodia it is curious he went on how after a war one's thoughts turn to matrimony he glanced at his daughter to see how she would take this
+but she was still engrossed with the whiskers
+i can't plant them in the garden i thought we might run them up the flagstaff as we did in barodia isn't that a little unkind now that the poor man's dead merriwig looked round him to see that there were no eavesdroppers
+can you keep a secret he asked mysteriously of course said hyacinth deciding at once that it would not matter if she only told coronel well then listen
+he told her of his secret journey to the king of barodia's tent he told her of the king of barodia's letter
+and his boyish pleasure in it all was so evident and so innocent
+to hyacinth he seemed the dearest of fathers and the most wonderful of kings and by and by the moment came of which coronel had spoken and now said merriwig
+nothing much i suppose he waited nervously wondering if hyacinth would realise that all was meant to include more particularly belvane hyacinth drew a stool up to her father's chair and sat down very close to him
+father she said stroking his hand where it rested on his knee i have got some news for you nothing about the coun nothing serious i hope said merriwig in alarm
+it's rather serious but it's rather nice father dear would you mind very much if i got married soon my dear you shall get married as soon as you like let me see there were six or seven princes who came about it only the other day
+i sent them off on adventures of some kind but dear me yes they ought to have been back by now i suppose you haven't heard anything of them no father said hyacinth with a little smile ah well no doubt they were unsuccessful
+no matter dear we can easily find you plenty more suitors indeed the subject has been very near my thoughts lately we'll arrange a little competition and let them know in the neighbouring countries there'll be no lack of candidates
+let me see there's that seven headed bull he's getting a little old now but he was good enough for the last one we might i don't want a suitor said hyacinth softly i have one merriwig leant forward with eagerness
+my dear this is indeed news tell me all about it upon what quest did you send him hyacinth had felt this coming
+what is his income a man must prove his worth in some way i haven't sent him away at all yet she said he's only just come he's been very kind to me and i'm sure you'll love him well well we'll arrange something for him
+by the way who is he he comes from araby and his name is udo of course why didn't i think of him an excellent arrangement my dear it isn't udo i'm afraid father it's coronel
+and who might coronel be said the king rather sternly he's he's well he's here he is father she ran up to him impulsively as he came in at the door
+oh coronel you're just in time do tell father who you are coronel bowed profoundly to the king before i explain myself your majesty he said
+may i congratulate your majesty on your wonderful victory over the barodians from the little i have gathered outside it is the most remarkable victory that has ever occurred but of course i am longing to hear the full story from your majesty's own lips
+is it a fact that your majesty made his way at dead of night to the king of barodia's own tent and challenged him to mortal combat and slew him there was an eagerness very winning in his eyes as he asked it
+he seemed to be envying the king such an adventure an adventure after his own heart merriwig was in an awkward position he wondered for a moment whether to order his daughter out of the room leave us my child
+he would say these are matters for men to discuss but hyacinth would know quite well why she had been sent out and would certainly tell coronel the truth of the matter afterwards it really looked as if coronel would have to be let into the secret too
+there are certain state reasons he said with dignity why that story has been allowed to get about pardon your majesty i have no wish to but as you know so much you may as well know all
+it happened like this once more he told the story of his midnight visit and of the king's letter to him but your majesty cried coronel
+so you like it said merriwig trying to look modest i love it i knew he'd love it put in hyacinth it's just the sort of story that coronel would love
+tell him about how you fought the king at the beginning of the war and how you pretended to be a swineherd and how could any father have resisted in a little while hyacinth and coronel were seated eagerly at his feet
+and he was telling once more the great story of his adventures well well said the king at the end of it when he had received their tribute of admiration those are just a few of the little adventures that happen in war time he turned to coronel
+and so you i understand wish to marry my daughter does that surprise your majesty well no it doesn't and she i understand wishes to marry you yes please father
+that said coronel simply is much more surprising merriwig however was not so sure of that he liked the look of coronel he liked his manner
+and he saw at once that he knew a good story when he heard one of course he said you'll have to win her anything your majesty sets me to do it's as well he added with a disarming smile
+that you cannot ask for the whiskers of the king of barodia there is only one man who could have got those truly an excellent young man well we'll arrange something said merriwig looking pleased
+perhaps your prince udo would care to be a competitor too hyacinth and coronel interchanged a smile alas father she said his royal highness is not attracted by my poor charms
+wait till he has seen them my dear said merriwig with a chuckle he has seen them father what you invited him here
+he came to stay with you and he never his royal highness put in coronel has given his affections to another aha so that's the secret now i wonder if i can guess who she is
+what do you say to the princess elvira of tregong i know his father had hopes in that direction hyacinth looked round at coronel as if appealing for his support he took a step towards her
+no it's not the princess elvira said hyacinth a little nervously the king laughed good humouredly ah well you must tell me he said
+hyacinth put out her hand and coronel pressed it encouragingly his royal highness prince udo she said
+and now said coronel we'd better decide what to do but i don't mind what we do now said hyacinth happily she may have the throne and father and udo and
+that's what makes it so jolly we can do what we like and it doesn't matter if it doesn't come off so just for fun let's think of something to pay her out i feel i don't want to hurt anybody to day all right we won't hurt her we'll humour her
+we will be her most humble obedient servants she shall have everything she wants including prince udo smiled hyacinth that's a splendid idea we'll make her have udo
+it will annoy your father but one can't please everybody oh i can see myself enjoying this they got up and wandered back along wiggs's path hand in hand i'm almost afraid to leave the forest said hyacinth
+in case something happens what should happen i don't know but all our life together has been in the forest and i'm just a little afraid of the world
+be very close coronel she whispered and then they walked out together if any of the servants at the palace were surprised to see coronel they did not show it after all that was their business
+prince coronel will be staying here said the princess prepare a room for him and some refreshment for us both and if they discussed those things in the servants halls of those days
+no doubt they told each other that the princess hyacinth bless her pretty face had found her man at last
+but i get no assistance from roger at this point he pretends that he has a mind far above the gossip of the lower orders i say said coronel as they went up the grand staircase i am not a prince you know don't say i have deceived you
+you are my prince said hyacinth proudly my dear i am a king among men to day and you are my queen but that's in our own special country of two if you are so particular said hyacinth with a smile
+father will make you a proper prince directly he comes back will he that's what i'm wondering you see he doesn't know yet about our little present to the countess but it is quite time we got back to belvane we have left her alone too long
+it was more than udo did just now he was with her in her garden telling her for the fifth time an extraordinarily dull story about an encounter of his with a dragon apparently in its dotage to which belvane was listening with an interest which surprised even the narrator
+and then said udo i jumped quickly to the right and whirling my no wait a bit that was later i jumped quickly to my left yes i remember it now it was my left i jumped quickly to my left and whirling my
+he stopped suddenly at the expression on belvane's face she was looking over his shoulder at something behind him why whoever is this she said getting to her feet before udo had completely cleared his mind of his dragon
+the princess and coronel were upon them ah countess i thought we should find you together said hyacinth archly let me present to you my friend the duke coronel
+udo is one of my oldest friends he turned and clapped that bewildered highness on the back aren't you udo and i can think of no one more suitable in every way he bowed again and turned back to the prince well udo you're looking splendid
+a different thing countess from when i last saw him
+ah what a miracle worker true love is i think one of the things which made belvane so remarkable was that she was never afraid of remaining silent when she was not quite sure what to say
+meanwhile udo of course blundered along gaily we aren't exactly princess i mean what are you doing here coronel i didn't know princess that you
+the countess and i were just having a little i was just telling her what you said about how did you get here coronel shall we tell him said coronel with a smile at hyacinth hyacinth nodded
+i rode said coronel it's a secret he added
+explained hyacinth and hearing that there was to be a wedding added coronel belvane made up her mind coronel was evidently a very different man from udo if he stayed in euralia as adviser
+more than adviser she guessed to hyacinth her own position would not be in much doubt and as for the king it might be months before he came back and when he did come would he remember her
+we didn't want it to be known yet she said shyly but you have guessed our secret your royal highness she looked modestly at the ground and feeling for her reluctant lover's hand went on
+udo and i here she squeezed the hand and finding it was coronel's took udo's boldly without any more maidenly nonsense udo and i love each other say something udo
+prompted coronel er yes said udo very unwillingly and deciding he would explain it all afterwards whatever his feelings for the countess he was not going to be rushed into a marriage oh i'm so glad
+said hyacinth i felt somehow that it must be coming because you've seen so much of each other lately wiggs and i have often talked about it together what has happened to the child thought belvane she isn't a child at all she's grown up
+there's no holding udo once he begins volunteered coronel he's the most desperate lover in araby my father will be so excited when he hears said hyacinth
+you know of course that his majesty comes back to morrow with all his army she did not swoon or utter a cry she did not plead the vapours or the megrims
+she took unflinching what must have been the biggest shock in her life then perhaps i had better see that everything is ready in the palace she said if your royal highness will excuse me
+and with a curtsey she was gone coronel exchanged a glance with hyacinth i'm enjoying this he seemed to say well she announced i must be going in too there'll be much to see about
+and now said the prince tell me what you are doing here coronel put his arm in udo's and walked him up and down the flagged path your approaching marriage
+he said is the talk of araby naturally i had to come here to see for myself what she was like my dear udo she's charming i congratulate you don't be a fool coronel i haven't the slightest intention of marrying her
+there hasn't been a single word about it mentioned until you pushed your way in just now
+yes i think you may take our word for it that it's true i haven't the slightest intention what do you keep clinging to my arm like this for
+oh very well if you're going to drop all your former friends go on then but when i'm married there will always be a place for understand once and for all said udo angrily that i am not getting married no don't take my arm
+we can talk quite well like this i am sorry udo said coronel meekly we seem to have made a mistake but you must admit we found you in a very compromising position it wasn't in the least compromising
+protested udo indignantly
+ah and who would listen to a hopeless story like that
+once more i am not going to marry her well you must please yourself but you have compromised her severely with that story poor innocent girl well let's forget about it and now tell me how do you like euralia
+said udo stiffly well perhaps you're right i hope that nothing will happen to you on the way udo who was about to enter the palace turned round with a startled look what do you mean
+you never told me your precious countess whom you expect me to marry how very unkind of her a nasty person to annoy he was silent for a moment and then added thoughtfully
+udo evidently hadn't thought of this he tried to show that he was not in the least frightened she couldn't do anything
+yes but of course the chance might come again you'd have the thing hanging over you always she's clever you know and i should never feel quite safe if she were my enemy lovely flowers aren't they what's the name of this one
+udo dropped undecidedly into a seat this wanted thinking out the countess what was wrong with her after all and she evidently adored him of course that was not surprising the question was
+was it fair to disappoint one who had perhaps some little grounds for after all he had been no more gallant than was customary from a prince and a gentleman to a beautiful woman it was her own fault if she had mistaken his intentions
+of course he ought to have left euralia long ago but he had stayed on and well decidedly she was beautiful perhaps he had paid rather too much attention to that and he had certainly neglected the princess a little
+after all again why not marry the countess it was absurd to suppose there was anything in coronel's nonsense but one never knew not that he was marrying her out of fear no certainly not it was simply a chivalrous whim on his part
+the poor woman had misunderstood him and she should not be disappointed she seems fond of flowers said coronel you ought to make the palace garden look beautiful between you now understand clearly coronel
+i'm not in the least frightened by the countess my dear udo what a speech for a lover of course you're not after all what you bore with such patience and dignity once you can bear again
+i must ask you not to refer to it if i marry the countess you'll be a very lucky man put in coronel i happen to know that the king of euralia however she's chosen you it seems
+personally i can't make out what she sees in you what is it i should have thought it was quite obvious said udo with dignity well coronel i think perhaps you are right and that it's my duty to marry her
+coronel shook him solemnly by the hand i congratulate your royal highness i will announce your decision to the princess she will be much amu much delighted and he turned into the palace
+chapter sixteen shortage of air consequently above below and around the nautilus there were impenetrable frozen walls we were the ice bank's prisoners the canadian banged a table with his fearsome fist
+conseil kept still i stared at the captain his face had resumed its usual emotionlessness he crossed his arms he pondered the nautilus did not stir the captain then broke into speech gentlemen
+he said in a calm voice there are two ways of dying under the conditions in which we're placed this inexplicable individual acted like a mathematics professor working out a problem for his pupils the first way he went on
+is death by crushing the second is death by asphyxiation i don't mention the possibility of death by starvation because the nautilus's provisions will certainly last longer than we will
+therefore let's concentrate on our chances of being crushed or asphyxiated as for asphyxiation captain i replied that isn't a cause for alarm because the air tanks are full true
+but they'll supply air for only two days now then we've been buried beneath the waters for thirty six hours and the nautilus's heavy atmosphere already needs renewing in another forty eight hours our reserve air will be used up
+well then captain let's free ourselves within forty eight hours we'll try to at least by cutting through one of these walls surrounding us which one i asked borings will tell us that
+i'm going to ground the nautilus on the lower shelf then my men will put on their diving suits and attack the thinnest of these ice walls can the panels in the lounge be left open without ill effect we're no longer in motion
+hissing sounds soon told me that water was being admitted into the ballast tanks the nautilus slowly settled and rested on the icy bottom at a depth of three hundred fifty meters the depth at which the lower shelf of ice lay submerged
+my friends i said we're in a serious predicament but i'm counting on your courage and energy sir the canadian replied this is no time to bore you with my complaints
+he can use me any way he wants he won't turn down your assistance come along ned i led the canadian to the room where the nautilus's men were putting on their diving suits i informed the captain of ned's proposition
+which was promptly accepted the canadian got into his underwater costume and was ready as soon as his fellow workers
+after ned was dressed i reentered the lounge whose windows had been uncovered stationed next to conseil i examined the strata surrounding and supporting the nautilus some moments later we saw a dozen crewmen set foot on the shelf of ice
+before digging into the ice the captain had to obtain borings to insure working in the best direction long bores were driven into the side walls but after fifteen meters the instruments were still impeded by the thickness of those walls
+more than four hundred meters high
+there we were separated from the sea by a ten meter barrier that's how thick the iceberg was from this point on it was an issue of cutting out a piece equal in surface area to the nautilus's waterline this meant detaching about
+six thousand five hundred cubic meters to dig a hole through which the ship could descend below this tract of ice work began immediately and was carried on with tireless tenacity instead of digging all around the nautilus which would have entailed even greater difficulties
+then his men simultaneously staked it off at several points around its circumference soon their picks were vigorously attacking this compact matter and huge chunks were loosened from its mass
+these chunks weighed less than the water and by an unusual effect of specific gravity each chunk took wing as it were to the roof of the tunnel
+but this hardly mattered so long as the lower surface kept growing thinner after two hours of energetic work ned land reentered exhausted he and his companions were replaced by new workmen including conseil and me
+the nautilus's chief officer supervised us the water struck me as unusually cold but i warmed up promptly while wielding my pick my movements were quite free although they were executed under a pressure of thirty atmospheres
+and the nautilus's atmosphere which was already charged with carbon dioxide the air hadn't been renewed in forty eight hours and its life giving qualities were considerably weakened meanwhile
+after twelve hours had gone by we had removed from the outlined surface area a slice of ice only one meter thick hence about six hundred cubic meters assuming the same work would be accomplished every twelve hours
+before the nautilus could return to the surface of the waves couldn't we all die of asphyxiation were this ship and everyone on board doomed to perish in this tomb of ice it was a dreadful state of affairs but we faced it head on
+each one of us determined to do his duty to the end during the night in line with my forecasts a new one meter slice was removed from this immense socket but in the morning wearing my diving suit
+when i noted that little by little the side walls were closing in on each other the liquid strata farthest from the trench not warmed by the movements of workmen and tools were showing a tendency to solidify in the face of this imminent new danger
+there was no point in dampening the energy they were putting into our arduous rescue work but when i returned on board
+i know he told me in that calm tone the most dreadful outlook couldn't change it's one more danger but i don't know any way of warding it off our sole chance for salvation
+is to work faster than the water solidifies we've got to get there first that's all get there first by then i should have been used to this type of talk for several hours that day i wielded my pick doggedly
+the work kept me going besides working meant leaving the nautilus which meant breathing the clean oxygen drawn from the air tanks and supplied by our equipment which meant leaving the thin foul air behind
+near evening one more meter had been dug from the trench when i returned on board i was wellnigh asphyxiated by the carbon dioxide saturating the air oh if only we had the chemical methods that would enable us to drive out this noxious gas
+there was no lack of oxygen all this water contained a considerable amount
+this life giving elastic fluid could have been restored to us i had thought it all out but to no avail because the carbon dioxide produced by our breathing permeated every part of the ship to absorb it we would need to fill containers with potassium hydroxide
+and shake them continually but this substance was missing on board and nothing else could replace it
+without this precaution we wouldn't have awakened the following morning the next day march twenty sixth i returned to my miner's trade working to remove the fifth meter the ice bank's side walls and underbelly had visibly thickened
+obviously they would come together before the nautilus could break free for an instant i was gripped by despair my pick nearly slipped from my hands what was the point of this digging if i was to die smothered and crushed by this water turning to stone
+a torture undreamed of by even the wildest savages i felt like i was lying in the jaws of a fearsome monster jaws irresistibly closing supervising our work
+working himself captain nemo passed near me just then i touched him with my hand and pointed to the walls of our prison the starboard wall had moved forward to a point less than four meters from the nautilus's hull
+the captain understood and gave me a signal to follow him we returned on board my diving suit removed i went with him to the lounge professor aronnax he told me this calls for heroic measures
+or we'll be sealed up in this solidified water as if it were cement yes i said but what can we do oh he exclaimed
+if only my nautilus were strong enough to stand that much pressure without being crushed well i asked not catching the captain's meaning don't you understand he went on that the congealing of this water
+could come to our rescue don't you see that by solidifying it could burst these tracts of ice imprisoning us just as its freezing can burst the hardest stones aren't you aware that this force could be the instrument of our salvation rather than our destruction
+i know it sir so we can't rely on nature to rescue us only our own efforts we must counteract this solidification we must hold it in check not only are the side walls closing in
+but there aren't ten feet of water ahead or astern of the nautilus all around us this freeze is gaining fast how long i asked will the oxygen in the air tanks enable us to breathe on board the captain looked me straight in the eye
+it was now the twenty sixth we had lived off the ship's stores for five days and all remaining breathable air had to be saved for the workmen even today as i write these lines my sensations are so intense
+that an involuntary terror sweeps over me and my lungs still seem short of air meanwhile
+boiling water i exclaimed yes sir we're shut up in a relatively confined area if the nautilus's pumps continually injected streams of boiling water into this space wouldn't that raise its temperature and delay its freezing
+it's worth trying i said resolutely so let's try it professor
+captain nemo led me to the galley where a huge distilling mechanism was at work supplying drinking water via evaporation the mechanism was loaded with water and the full electric heat of our batteries was thrown into coils awash in liquid
+in a few minutes the water reached one hundred degrees centigrade it was sent to the pumps while new water replaced it in the process the heat generated by our batteries was so intense that after simply going through the mechanism water drawn cold from the sea arrived
+boiling hot at the body of the pump the steaming water was injected into the icy water outside and after three hours had passed
+that was one degree gained
+after i monitored the operation's progress double checking it with many inspections i told the captain it's working i think so he answered me we've escaped being crushed now we have only asphyxiation to fear
+the injections couldn't get it to go a single degree higher
+i was finally assured that there was no danger of it solidifying by the next day march twenty seventh six meters of ice had been torn from the socket only four meters were left to be removed that still meant forty eight hours of work
+the air couldn't be renewed in the nautilus's interior accordingly that day it kept getting worse an unbearable heaviness weighed me down near three o'clock in the afternoon this agonizing sensation affected me to an intense degree
+yawns dislocated my jaws my lungs were gasping in their quest for that enkindling elastic fluid required for breathing now growing scarcer and scarcer my mind was in a daze i lay outstretched strength gone
+nearly unconscious my gallant conseil felt the same symptoms suffered the same sufferings yet never left my side he held my hand he kept encouraging me and i even heard him mutter
+to leave more air for master it brought tears to my eyes to hear him say these words since conditions inside were universally unbearable
+picks rang out on that bed of ice arms grew weary hands were rubbed raw but who cared about exhaustion what difference were wounds life sustaining air reached our lungs we could breathe we could breathe
+and yet nobody prolonged his underwater work beyond the time allotted him his shift over each man surrendered to a gasping companion the air tank that would revive him
+when his time was up he yielded his equipment to another and reentered the foul air on board always calm unflinching and uncomplaining that day the usual work was accomplished with even greater energy
+over the whole surface area only two meters were left to be removed only two meters separated us from the open sea but the ship's air tanks were nearly empty the little air that remained had to be saved for the workmen not an
+atom for the nautilus when i returned on board i felt half suffocated what a night i'm unable to depict it such sufferings are indescribable the next day i was short winded
+headaches and staggering fits of dizziness made me reel like a drunk my companions were experiencing the same symptoms some crewmen were at their last gasp
+and he decided to crush this layer the man had kept his energy and composure he had subdued physical pain with moral strength he could still think plan and act at his orders the craft was eased off
+in other words it was raised from its icy bed by a change in its specific gravity when it was afloat the crew towed it leading it right above the immense trench outlined to match the ship's waterline next the ballast tanks filled with water
+the boat sank and was fitted into its socket just then the whole crew returned on board and the double outside door was closed by this point the nautilus was resting on a bed of ice only one meter thick
+we listened we forgot our sufferings we hoped once more we had staked our salvation on this one last gamble despite the buzzing in my head i soon could hear vibrations under the nautilus's hull we tilted
+the ice cracked with an odd ripping sound like paper tearing and the nautilus began settling downward we're going through conseil muttered in my ear i couldn't answer him i clutched his hand
+i squeezed it in an involuntary convulsion all at once carried away by its frightful excess load the nautilus sank into the waters like a cannonball in other words dropping as if in a vacuum
+our full electric power was then put on the pumps which instantly began to expel water from the ballast tanks after a few minutes we had checked our fall the pressure gauge soon indicated an ascending movement
+brought to full speed the propeller made the sheet iron hull tremble down to its rivets and we sped northward but how long would it take to navigate under the ice bank to the open sea another day i would be dead first
+my muscles had no power to contract i'm unable to estimate the hours that passed in this way but i was aware that my death throes had begun i realized that i was about to die suddenly i regained consciousness
+a few whiffs of air had entered my lungs had we risen to the surface of the waves had we cleared the ice bank no ned and conseil my two gallant friends were sacrificing themselves to save me
+instead of breathing it themselves they had saved it for me and while they were suffocating they poured life into me drop by drop i tried to push the device away they held my hands and for a few moments i could breathe luxuriously
+my eyes flew toward the clock it was eleven in the morning it had to be march twenty eighth the nautilus was traveling at the frightful speed of forty miles per hour it was writhing in the waters
+had he perished had his companions died with him
+separating us from the open air was a mere tract of ice could we break through it
+from cape horn to the amazon how i got onto the platform i'm unable to say perhaps the canadian transferred me there but i could breathe i could inhale the life giving sea air
+next to me my two companions were getting tipsy on the fresh oxygen particles poor souls who have suffered from long starvation mustn't pounce heedlessly on the first food given them we on the other hand didn't have to practice such moderation
+we could suck the atoms from the air by the lungful and it was the breeze the breeze itself that poured into us this luxurious intoxication ahhh conseil was putting in
+what fine oxygen let master have no fears about breathing there's enough for everyone as for ned land he didn't say a word but his wide open jaws would have scared off a shark
+and what powerful inhalations the canadian drew like a furnace going full blast our strength returned promptly and when i looked around i saw that we were alone on the platform no crewmen
+those strange seamen on the nautilus were content with the oxygen circulating inside not one of them had come up to enjoy the open air the first words i pronounced were words of appreciation
+and gratitude to my two companions ned and conseil had kept me alive during the final hours of our long death throes but no expression of thanks could repay them fully for such devotion
+good lord professor ned land answered me don't mention it what did we do that's so praiseworthy not a thing it was a question of simple arithmetic your life is worth more than ours so we had to save it
+and you my gallant conseil you suffered a great deal not too much to be candid with master i was lacking a few throatfuls of air but i would have gotten by
+it took my breath away in a manner of confounded by this lapse into banality conseil left his sentence hanging my friends i replied very moved
+we're bound to each other forever and i'm deeply indebted to you which i'll take advantage of the canadian shot back
+conseil put in yes ned land went on you can repay your debt by coming with me when i leave this infernal nautilus by the way conseil said are we going in a favorable direction
+yes i replied because we're going in the direction of the sun and here the sun is due north sure ned land went on but it remains to be seen whether we'll make for the atlantic or the pacific
+but if we returned to the pacific far from every populated shore what would happen to ned land's plans we would soon settle this important point the nautilus traveled swiftly
+soon we had cleared the antarctic circle plus the promontory of cape horn
+by then all our past sufferings were forgotten the memory of that imprisonment under the ice faded from our minds we had thoughts only of the future
+now then that evening it became obvious much to my satisfaction that we were returning north by the atlantic route i shared the results of my observations with the canadian and conseil
+that's good news the canadian replied but where's the nautilus going i'm unable to say ned after the south pole
+we'll never regret having known him especially once we've left him ned land shot back the next day
+when the nautilus rose to the surface of the waves a few minutes before noon we raised land to the west
+the land of fire a name given it by early navigators after they saw numerous curls of smoke rising from the natives huts this land of fire forms a huge cluster of islands over thirty leagues long and eighty leagues wide
+its coastline looked flat but high mountains rose in the distance i even thought i glimpsed mt sarmiento
+a pyramid shaped block of shale with a very sharp summit which depending on whether it's clear or veiled in vapor predicts fair weather or foul as ned land told me a first class barometer my friend
+yes sir a natural barometer that didn't let me down when i navigated the narrows of the strait of magellan just then its peak appeared before us standing out distinctly against the background of the skies this forecast fair weather
+bulb bearing seaweed of which the open sea at the pole had revealed a few specimens with their smooth viscous filaments they measured as much as three hundred meters long genuine cables more than an inch thick and very tough
+it served as both nest and nourishment for myriads of crustaceans and mollusks for crabs and cuttlefish here seals and otters could indulge in a sumptuous meal mixing meat from fish
+with vegetables from the sea like the english with their irish stews the nautilus passed over these lush luxuriant depths with tremendous speed
+in these waterways our nets brought up fine samples of algae in particular certain fucus plants whose roots were laden with the world's best mussels
+as for fish i specifically observed some bony fish belonging to the goby genus especially some gudgeon two decimeters long sprinkled with whitish and yellow spots
+i likewise marveled at the numerous medusas including the most beautiful of their breed the compass jellyfish unique to the falkland seas
+some of these jellyfish were shaped like very smooth semispheric parasols with russet stripes and fringes of twelve neat festoons others looked like
+upside down baskets from which wide leaves and long red twigs were gracefully trailing they swam with quiverings of their four leaflike arms letting the opulent tresses of their tentacles dangle in the drift
+shadows illusions melting and evaporating outside their native element when the last tips of the falkland islands had disappeared below the horizon
+between twenty and twenty five meters and went along the south american coast
+didn't put in an appearance
+keeping to its northerly heading it followed the long windings of south america by then we had fared sixteen thousand leagues since coming on board in the seas of japan
+near eleven o'clock in the morning we cut the tropic of capricorn on the thirty seventh meridian passing well out from cape frio much to ned land's displeasure
+captain nemo had no liking for the neighborhood of brazil's populous shores because he shot by with dizzying speed
+i was i think of the planetara's officers the most expert handler of the mathematical calculators the locating of our position and charting the trajectory of our course was under ordinary circumstances about all i had to do
+and it took only a few minutes every twelve hours i had a moment with carter in the isolation of his chart room this voyage gregg i'm getting like you too fanciful we've a normal group of passengers apparently
+but i don't like the look of any of them that ob hahn at your table snaky looking fellow i commented he and the englishman are great on arguments did you have princes cabin searched my breath hung on his answer yes
+nothing unusual among his things we searched both his room and his sister's i did not follow that up instead i told him about the burn on miko's thick arm he stared i wish we were at ferrok shahn gregg
+tonight when the passengers are asleep come here to me snap will be here and doctor frank we can trust him he knows about about the grantline treasure yes and so do balch and blackstone balch and blackstone were our first and second officers
+we'll all meet here gregg say about the zero hour we must take some precautions then he dismissed me i found venza seated alone in a starlit corner of the secluded deck a porthole
+with the black heavens and the blazing stars was before her there was an empty seat nearby she greeted me with the venus form of jocular intimate greeting hola lo gregg sit here with me
+i have been wondering when you would come after me i sat down beside her why are you going to mars venza i'm glad to see you many thanks but i am glad to see you gregg so handsome a man do you know from venus to earth
+no man will please me more
+don't be silly venza i enjoyed her i gazed at her small slim figure reclining in the deck chair her long gray robe parted by design i have no doubt to display her shapely satin sheathed legs
+her black hair was coiled in a heavy knot at the back of her neck her carmine lips were parted with a mocking alluring smile the exotic perfume of her enveloped me she glanced at me sidewise from beneath her sweeping black lashes
+be serious i added i am serious sober intoxicated by you but sober i said what sort of a contract a theater in ferrok shahn good money gregg
+she sat up to face me there's a fellow here on the planetara rance rankin he calls himself at our table a big good looking blond american he says he is a magician ever hear of him
+that's what he told me no i never heard of him nor did i and i thought i had heard of everyone of importance he is listed for the same theater i am nice sort of fellow she paused then added
+if he's a professional entertainer i'm a motor oiler it startled me why do you say that instinctively my gaze swept the deck an earth woman and child
+but not within earshot why do you look so furtive she retorted gregg there's something strange about this voyage
+so you must know it as well as i do rance rankin i prompted she leaned closer toward me he could fool you but not me i've known too many magicians she grinned i challenged him to trick me
+do you know ob hahn i interrupted she shook her head never heard of him but he told me plenty at breakfast by satan what a flow of words that devil driver can muster he and the englishman don't mesh very well do they
+she stared at me i had not answered her grin my mind was too busy with queer fancies halsey's words things are not always what they seem were these passengers masqueraders were they put here by george prince
+i parried i mean a lot of things what we've just been talking about and what was the excitement you were in just before breakfast this morning excitement gregg you may trust me for the first time she was wholly serious
+they anyone something's going on you know it you are in it i saw you this morning gregg wild eyed chasing a phantom you and i heard the phantom a man's footsteps a magnetic
+deflecting invisible cloak you couldn't fool an audience with that it's too commonplace if rance rankin tried i gripped her don't ramble venza you saw me yes my stateroom door was open i was sitting with a cigarette
+i saw the purser in the smoking room he was visible from wait venza that prowler went through the smoking room i know he did i could hear him
+the purser looked up followed the sound with his gaze i thought that was queer he never made a move and then you came along and he acted innocent why what's going on that's what i want to know i held my breath venza
+where did the prowler run to can you she whispered calmly
+i saw the door open and close i even thought i could see his blurred outline she added why should george prince be sneaking around with you after him and the purser acting innocent
+i well i do trust you really i do but the whole thing isn't mine to tell the somber pools of her eyes were shining
+here's something i can tell you now we've two high class gold leaf gamblers aboard do you know that who are they shac and dud ardley every detective in greater new york knows them
+they had a wonderful game with that englishman sir arthur this morning stripped him of half a pound of eight inch leaves a neat little stack a crooked game of course those fellows are more nimble fingered than rance rankin ever dared to be
+i sat staring at her she was a mine of information this girl and gregg i tried my charms on shac and dud nice men but dumb whatever's going on they're not in it
+they wanted to know what kind of a ship this was why because shac has a cute little eavesdropping microphone of his own he had it working last night he overheard george prince and that
+i gasped venza softer against all propriety of this public deck she pretended to drape herself upon me her hair smothered my face as her lips almost touched my ear
+something about treasure on the moon shac couldn't understand what and they mentioned you then the purser joined them her whispered words tumbled over one another
+a hundred pounds of gold leaf that's the purser's price he's with them whatever it is he promised to do something or other for them she stopped well i prompted that's all
+shac's current was interrupted tell him to try it again venza i'll talk with him no i'd better let him alone can you get him to keep his mouth shut
+he's a man find out what you can she drew away from me abruptly there's anita and george prince they came to the corner of the deck but turned back venza caught my look and understood it
+she turned solemn you may be interested to know she loves you i could see it i knew it when i mentioned you to her this morning me why we've hardly spoken is it necessary
+i told him what snap and i had learned the rays from the moon proving that grantline had concentrated a considerable ore body i also told him of grantline's message we'll stop on the way back as he directs gregg he bent closer to me
+at ferrok shahn i'm going to bring back a cordon of interplanetary police the secret will be out of course when we stop at the moon we have no right even now to be flying this vessel as unguarded as it is he was very solemn
+and he was grim when i told him of the invisible eavesdropper you think he overheard grantline's message who was it you seem to feel it was george prince i told him i was convinced the prowler went into a twenty
+when i mentioned the purser who seemed to have been watching me earlier in the night and again was sitting in the smoking room when the eavesdropper fled past carter looked startled johnson is all right gregg does he know anything about this grantline affair no
+but why didn't johnson hear that eavesdropper and what was he doing there anyway at that hour of the morning the captain ignored my questions i'm going to have that prince suite searched we can't be too careful go to bed gregg you need rest
+i went to my cabin it was located aft on the stern deck near the stern watch tower a small metal room with a chair a desk and a bunk i made sure no one was in it i sealed the lattice grill and the door
+set the alarm trigger against any opening of them and went to bed the siren for the midday meal awakened me i had slept heavily i felt refreshed i found the passengers already assembled at my table when i arrived in the dining salon
+it was a low vaulted metal room with blue and yellow tube lights at its sides the oval windows showed the deck with its ports on the dome side through which a vista of the starry firmament was visible we were well on our course to mars
+the moon had dwindled to a pin point of light beside the crescent earth and behind them our sun blazed visually the largest orb in the heavens it was some sixty eight million miles from the earth to mars
+a flight ordinarily of some ten days there were five tables in the dining salon each with eight seats snap and i had one of the tables we sat at the ends with the passengers on each of the sides
+gregg this is sero ob hahn i met the keen somber gaze of a venus man of middle age a small slim graceful man with sleek black hair his pointed face accentuated by the pointed beard was pallid
+upon his breast was a huge platinum ornament a device like a star and cross entwined i am happy to meet you sir his voice was soft and deep ob hahn i repeated
+i should have heard of you no doubt but a smile plucked at his thin gray lips
+my mission is that all the universe shall hear of me he's preaching the religion of the venus mystics snap explained and this enlightened gentleman said ob hahn ironically nodding to the man
+has just termed it fetishism
+protested the man at ob hahn's side
+and as a matter of fact we've an argument gregg laughed snap this is sir arthur coniston an english gentleman lecturer and sky trotter that is he will be a sky trotter he tells us he plans a number of voyages
+the tall englishman in his white linen suit bowed acknowledgement my compliments mister haljan i hope you have no strong religious convictions else we will make your table here very miserable
+the third passenger had evidently kept out of the argument snap introduced him as rance rankin an american a quiet blond fellow of thirty five or forty i ordered my breakfast and let the argument go on
+i deal in tricks how to fool an audience his keen amused gaze was on ob hahn this gentleman from venus and i have too much in common to argue
+i like to eat in quiet arguing passengers always annoy me there were still three seats vacant at our table i wondered who would occupy them i soon learned the answer for one seat at least rankin said calmly
+his glance went to the empty seat at my right hand the venza isn't that her name she and i are destined for the same theater in ferrok shahn so venza was to sit beside me it was good news
+ten days of a religious argument three times a day would be intolerable but the cheerful venza would help she never eats the midday meal said snap she's on the deck having orange juice i guess it's the old gag about diet eh
+as a man who looked hardly twenty five he was at this moment evidently in a gay mood his clean cut handsome profile with its poetic dark curls
+there seemed little of the villain about him and i saw anita prince now as a dark haired black eyed little beauty in feature resembling her brother very strongly she presently finished her meal she rose with him after her
+i answered her greeting and met george prince's casual gaze he too smiled as though to signify that his sister had told him of the service i had done her or was his smile an ironical memory of how he had eluded me this morning when i chased him
+i gazed after his small white suited figure as he followed anita from the salon and thinking of her i prayed that carter and halsey might be wrong whatever plotting against the grantline expedition might be going on
+my attention was brought suddenly back to the reality of our table i heard ob hahn's silky voice we passed quite close to the moon last night mister dean yes said snap we did didn't we always do
+it's a technical problem of the exigencies of interstellar navigation explain it to them gregg you're an expert i waved it away with a laugh there was a brief silence i could not help noticing sir arthur coniston's queer look
+and i have never seen so keen a glance as rance rankin shot at me were all three people aware of grantline's treasure on the moon it suddenly seemed so i wished fervently at that instant that the ten days of this voyage were over captain carter was right
+coming back we should have a cordon of interplanetary police aboard sir arthur broke the awkward silence magnificent sight the moon from so close though i was too much afraid of pressure sickness to be up to see it
+when another incident shocked me the two other passengers at our table came in and took their seats a martian girl and man the girl had the seat at my left with the man beside her all martians are tall
+the girl was about my own height that is six feet two inches the man was seven feet or more both wore the martian outer robe the girl flung hers back her limbs were encased in pseudomail
+she looked as all martians like to look a very warlike amazon but she was a pretty girl she smiled at me with a keen eyed direct gaze mister dean said at breakfast that you were big and handsome you are
+the martian equivalent of mister and miss
+not spindly like most martians this fellow for all his seven feet in height was almost heavy set he wore a plaited leather jerkin beneath his robe and knee pants of leather out of which his lower legs showed as gray hairy pillars of strength
+he had come into the salon with a swagger his sword ornament clanking a pleasant voyage so far he said to me as he started his meal his voice had the heavy throaty rasp characteristic of the martian he spoke perfect english
+both martians and venus people are by heritage extraordinary linguists
+had a touch of martian accent worn almost away by living for some years in greater new york the shock to me came within a few minutes
+inadvertently pushed back his robe to bare his forearm an instant only then it dropped to his wrist but in that instant i had seen upon the gray flesh a thin sear turned red a very recent burn
+as though a pencil ray of heat had caught his arm my mind flung back only last night in the city corridor snap and i had been followed by a martian i had shot at him with a heat ray i thought i had hit him on the arm
+doctor frank's face had gone white snap stood like a statue of horror the deck here was patched as always with silver radiance from the deck ports the empty deck chairs stood about the scream
+was stilled but now we heard a commotion inside the rasp of opening cabin doors questions from frightened passengers i found my voice anita anita prince come on
+he was dashing for the lounge archway doctor frank and i followed i realized that we passed the deck door and window of a twenty two but they were dark and evidently sealed on the inside
+passengers standing at their cabin doors i shouted go back to your rooms we want order here keep back we came to the twin doors of a twenty two and a twenty both were closed doctor frank was in advance of snap and me now
+he paused at the sound of captain carter's voice behind us was it from in there wait a moment carter dashed up he had a large heat ray projector in his hand he shoved us aside let me in first is the door sealed
+doctor frank went back into the room and banged the cabin door upon snap and me i was unarmed weapon in hand snap forced the panic stricken passengers back to their rooms snap reassured them glibly
+moa with a nightrobe drawn tight around her thin tall figure edged up to me what has happened set haljan
+i could see only carter but i heard the murmuring voice of doctor frank
+the captain rasped get out haljan
+he admitted the older officer and slammed the door upon me again and immediately reopened it gregg keep the passengers quieted tell them everything's all right miss prince got frightened that's all then go to the turret
+tell blackstone what's happened but i don't know what's happened carter was grim and white
+i don't mean that tell snap to watch his radio room arm yourselves and guard our weapons i stammered if if she dies will you flash us word he stared at me strangely
+i'll be there presently gregg he slammed the door upon me i followed his orders but it was like a dream of horror the turmoil of the ship gradually quieted snap went to the radio room
+blackstone and i sat in the tiny chart room how much time passed i do not know i was confused anita hurt she might die murdered
+but why by whom had george prince been in his own room when the attack came i thought now i recalled hearing the low murmur of his voice in there with doctor frank
+doctor frank and her brother are with her they're doing all they can he told us what had happened anita and george prince had both been asleep each in his respective room someone unknown
+had opened anita's corridor door wasn't it sealed yes but the intruder opened it burst it
+it wasn't broken the assailant opened it somehow and assaulted miss prince shot her in the chest with a heat ray her left lung shot her yes but she did not see who did it
+nor did prince her scream awakened him
+i was glad enough to get away i would lie down for an hour and then go to anita's stateroom i'd demand that doctor frank let me see her i went to the stern deck where my cubby was located my mind was
+it had only a bunk my tiny desk a chair and clothes robe there was no evidence of any intruder here i set my door and window alarm then i audiphoned to the radio room snap yes
+i told him about anita carter cut in on us from the chart room stop that you fools we cut off fully dressed i flung myself on my bed anita might die i must have fallen into a
+tortured sleep i was awakened by the sound of my alarm buzzer someone was tampering with my door then the buzzer ceased the marauder outside must have found a way of silencing it but it had done its work awakened me
+someone outside trying to unseal the door in the darkness cylinder in hand i crept softly from the bunk crouched at the door this time i would capture or kill this night prowler
+the sizzling was faintly audible my door seal was breaking upon impulse i reached for the door jerked it open no one there
+was empty but i leaped and struck a solid body crouching in the doorway a giant man
+his electronized metallic robe burned my hands i lunged against him i was almost as surprised as he i shot but the stab of heat evidently missed him the shock of my encounter short circuited his robe he materialized in the starlight a brief
+savage encounter he struck the weapon from my hand he had dropped his hydrogen torch and tried to grip me but i twisted away from his hold so it's you quiet gregg haljan i only want to talk without warning a stab of radiance shot from a weapon in his hand
+it caught me ran like ice through my veins seized and numbed my limbs i fell helpless to the deck nerves and muscles paralyzed my tongue was thick and inert i could not speak nor move
+and hear him i don't want to kill you haljan we need you he gathered me up like a bundle in his huge arms carried me swiftly across the deserted deck
+his warning siren rang out to alert the ship his spotlight clung to us miko ran with me a few steps then he cursed and dropped me fled away i fell like a sack of carbide to the deck
+my tongue was thick but it moved yes i was soon revived i sat up with doctor frank vigorously rubbing me i'm all right i told them what had happened
+she told us before she died died i leaped to my feet she died yes gregg an hour ago
+miko got into her stateroom and tried to force his love upon her she repulsed him he killed her it struck me blank and then with a rush came the thought
+we must get him i gathered my wits a surge of hate swept me a wild desire for vengeance why by god where is he
+doctor frank gripped me the captain said gently we know how you feel gregg she told us before she died i'll bring him in here to you but i'll kill him i tell you no you won't lad
+we don't want him killed not attacked even not yet we'll explain later they sat me down calming me anita dead
+the door of the shining garden was closed a brief glimpse given to me and to her of what might have been and now
+far away in north america where the red indians dwell
+many of the young braves sought her in marriage but she would listen to one only a handsome chief who had taken her fancy some years before so they were to be married and great rejoicings were made
+but from sunrise to sunset he sat by the place where she was laid thinking of his happiness that was buried there at last after many days a light seemed to come to him out of the darkness
+he remembered having heard from the old old people of the tribe that there was a path that led to the land of souls that if you sought carefully you could find it
+so the next morning he got up early and put some food in his pouch and slung an extra skin over his shoulders for he knew not how long his journey would take nor what sort of country he would have to go through only one thing he knew
+one of the old men say that the land of souls lay to the south and so filled with new hope and courage he set his face southwards for many many miles the country looked the same as it did round his own home
+but grew less and less the farther he went south till it disappeared altogether soon the trees put forth their buds and flowers sprang up under his feet and instead of thick clouds there was blue sky over his head and everywhere the birds were singing
+and on the top of these he found a hut or wigwam an old man clothed in skins and holding a staff in his hand stood in the doorway
+rest in my hut as she also rested and i will tell you what you ask and whither you should go on hearing these words the young man entered the hut but his heart was too eager within him
+to suffer him to rest and when he arose the old man rose too and stood with him at the door look he said
+at the water which lies far out yonder and the plains which stretch beyond
+but no man enters it without leaving his body behind him
+instead of hiding as he approached and birds circled round him
+very soon he noticed with wonder that neither rocks nor trees barred his path he passed through them without knowing it for indeed they were not rocks and trees at all but only the souls of them for this was the land of shadows
+when to his joy and wonder he saw following him in another canoe exactly like his own the maiden for whose sake he had made this long journey but they could not touch each other for between them rolled great waves which looked as if they would sink the boats
+only the children had no fear and reached the other side in safety still though the chief and the young girl quailed in terror at these horrible sights and sounds no harm came to them for their lives had been free from evil
+so they reached unhurt the shore of the happy island and wandered through the flowery fields and by the banks of rushing streams and they knew not hunger nor thirst neither cold nor heat
+but in the murmur of the wind he heard the master of life saying to him return whither you came for i have work for you to do and your people need you and for many years you shall rule over them
+at the gate my messenger awaits you and you shall take again
+one of them said to the others if we are caught we shall be hanged on the gallows how shall we set about it the other said do you see that large cornfield there
+if we were to hide ourselves in that no one could find us the army cannot come into it and to morrow it is to march on they crept into the corn but the army did not march on but remained encamped close around them
+they sat for two days and two nights in the corn and grew so hungry that they nearly died but if they were to venture out it was certain death they said at last
+what use was it our deserting we must perish here miserably whilst they were speaking a fiery dragon came flying through the air
+said they then the dragon seized them in his claws took them through the air over the army and set them down on the earth a long way from it he gave them a little whip saying
+then he put a book before them which he made all three of them sign i will then give you a riddle he said if you guess it you shall be free and out of my power the dragon then flew away
+and they journeyed on with their little whip they had as much money as they wanted wore grand clothes and made their way into the world wherever they went they lived in merrymaking and splendour drove about with horses and carriages ate and drank but did nothing wrong
+they went into a field sat down and the two pulled long faces an old woman passed by and asked them why they were so sad
+only confide your trouble in me
+and how he had given them money as plentifully as blackberries but as they had signed their names they were his unless when the seven years had passed they could guess a riddle the old woman said
+if you would help yourselves one of you must go into the wood and there he will come upon a tumble down building of rocks which looks like a little house he must go in and there he will find help the two melancholy ones thought
+that won't save us and they remained where they were but the third and merry one jumped up and went into the wood till he found the rock hut in the hut sat a very old woman who was the dragon's grandmother
+she asked him how he came and what was his business there he told her all that happened and because she was pleased with him she took compassion on him
+i will tell you this in the north sea lies a dead sea cat that shall be their roast meat and the rib of a whale that shall be their silver spoon and the hollow foot of a dead horse that shall be their wineglass
+i know enough and can help myself splendidly then he went by another way through the window secretly and in all haste back to his comrades he told them how the dragon had been outwitted by his grandmother
+and how he had heard from his own lips the answer to the riddle then they were all delighted and in high spirits took out their whip and cracked so much money that it came jumping up from the ground when the seven years had quite gone the fiend came with his book and
+pointing at the signatures said i will take you underground with me you shall have a meal there if you can tell me what you will get for your roast meat you shall be free
+then said the first soldier
+the dragon made a face and growled again three times hum
+do you know what your wineglass shall be an old horse's hoof shall be our wineglass
+to his astonishment he found an old woman who begged him to help her out of the ditch the prince bent down and lifted her out of her living grave asking her at the same time how she had managed to get there my son
+answered the old woman i am a very poor woman and soon after midnight i set out for the neighbouring town in order to sell my eggs in the market on the following morning but i lost my way in the dark
+over there at the edge of the forest in the little hut you see in the distance replied the old woman the prince lifted her on to his horse and soon they reached the hut where the old woman got down and turning to the prince said
+just wait a moment and i will give you something and she disappeared into her hut but returned very soon and said you are a mighty prince but at the same
+which deserves to be rewarded would you like to have the most beautiful woman in the world for your wife most certainly i would replied the prince so the old woman continued
+who has been captured by a dragon if you wish to marry her you must first set her free and this i will help you to do i will give you this little bell if you ring it once
+the king of the eagles will appear if you ring it twice the king of the foxes will come to you and if you ring it three times you will see the king of the fishes by your side
+and intended setting out on the following day into the wide world in search of the maid so the next morning the prince mounted his fine horse and left his home
+and his horse had died of exhaustion while he himself had suffered much from want and misery but still he had come on no trace of her he was in search of at last one day he came to a hut in front of which sat a very old man
+no i do not answered the old man
+the prince thanked him for his information and continued his journey for a whole year along the same road and at the end of it came to the little hut where he found a very old man
+he asked him the same question and the old man answered no
+with diamond windows he opened the big gate leading into the courtyard
+when seven dragons rushed on him and asked him what he wanted the prince replied
+would like to enter her service this flattering speech pleased the dragons and the eldest of them said well you may come with me and i will take you to the mother dragon
+they entered the castle and walked through twelve splendid halls all made of gold and diamonds in the twelfth room they found the mother dragon seated on a diamond throne she was the
+and added to it all she had three heads her appearance was a great shock to the prince and so was her voice which was like the croaking of many ravens she asked him
+very well
+we will eat you up the prince undertook the task and led the mare out to the meadow
+and at last in despair sat down on a big stone and contemplated his sad fate as he sat thus lost in thought he noticed an eagle flying over his head then he suddenly bethought him of his little bell
+and taking it out of his pocket he rang it once in a moment he heard a rustling sound in the air beside him and the king of the eagles sank at his feet
+the bird said you are looking for the mother dragon's mare who is galloping about among the clouds i will summon all the eagles of the air together and order them to catch the mare and bring her to you and with these words the king of the eagles flew away
+towards evening the prince heard a mighty rushing sound in the air and when he looked up he saw thousands of eagles driving the mare before them they sank at his feet on to the ground and gave the mare over to him then the prince rode home to the old mother dragon
+who was full of wonder when she saw him and said
+she gave him at the same time a cloak made of copper
+here too was the flower queen's beautiful daughter her dress was woven out of the most lovely flowers in the world and her complexion was like lilies and roses as the prince was dancing with her he managed to whisper in her ear
+the ball came to an end at midnight and early next morning the prince again led the mother dragon's mare out into the meadow but again she vanished before his eyes then he took out his little bell and rang it twice
+and again she led him to the ball room the flower queen's daughter was delighted to see him safe and sound and when they were dancing together she whispered in his ear if you succeed again to morrow wait for me with the foal in the meadow
+after the ball we will fly away together on the third day the prince led the mare to the meadow again but once more she vanished before his eyes then the prince took out his little bell and rang it three times
+in a moment the king of the fishes appeared and said to him i know quite well what you want me to do and i will summon all the fishes of the sea together
+she said to him you are a brave youth and i will make you my body servant but what shall i give you as a reward to begin with
+the prince begged for a foal of the mare which the mother dragon at once gave him and over and above a cloak made of gold for she had fallen in love with him because he had praised her beauty so in the evening he appeared at the ball in his golden cloak
+the prince and she flew like the wind till they reached the flower queen's dwelling but the dragons had noticed their flight and woke their brother out of his year's sleep he flew into a terrible rage when he heard what had happened
+and determined to lay siege to the flower queen's palace but the queen caused a forest of flowers as high as the sky to grow up round her dwelling through which no one could force a way
+when the flower queen heard that her daughter wanted to marry the prince she said to him i will give my consent to your marriage gladly but my daughter can only stay with you in summer in winter when everything is dead and the ground covered with snow
+she must come and live with me in my palace underground the prince consented to this and led his beautiful bride home where the wedding was held with great pomp and magnificence the young couple lived happily together till winter came
+when the flower queen's daughter departed and went home to her mother
+and lasted till the approach of winter when the flower queen's daughter went back again to her mother
+once there lived a king who had no children for many years after his marriage at length heaven granted him a daughter of such remarkable beauty that he could think of no name so appropriate for her as fairer than a fairy
+than they resolved to gain possession of her who bore it and either to torment her cruelly or at least to conceal her from the eyes of all men the eldest of their tribe was entrusted to carry out their revenge this fairy was named lagree
+she was so old that she only had one eye and one tooth left
+she was also so spiteful that she gladly devoted all her time to carrying out all the mean or ill natured tricks of the whole body of fairies with her large experience added to her native spite
+she felt a little reassured and was further cheered when she discovered that her pet cat and dog had followed her
+at the same time giving her the strictest orders never to let out the fire which was burning brightly in the grate she then gave two glass bottles into the princess's charge desiring her to take the greatest care of them
+and having enforced her orders with the most awful threats in case of disobedience she vanished leaving the little girl at liberty to explore the palace
+several years passed during which time the princess grew accustomed to her lonely life obeyed the fairy's orders and by degrees forgot all about the court of the king her father
+she noticed that the sun's rays fell on the water in such a manner as to produce a brilliant rainbow she stood still to admire it when to her great surprise she heard a voice addressing her which seemed to come from the centre of its rays
+the voice was that of a young man and its sweetness of tone and the agreeable things it uttered led one to infer that its owner must be equally charming but this had to be a mere matter of fancy for no one was visible
+the beautiful rainbow informed fairer than a fairy that he was young the son of a powerful king and that the fairy lagree who owed his parents a grudge
+had revenged herself by depriving him of his natural shape for some years that she had imprisoned him in the palace where he had found his confinement hard to bear for some time but now he owned
+he no longer sighed for freedom since he had seen and learned to love fairer than a fairy he added many other tender speeches to this declaration and the princess to whom such remarks were a new experience
+could not help feeling pleased and touched by his attentions the prince could only appear or speak under the form of a rainbow and it was therefore necessary that the sun should shine on water so as to enable the rays to form themselves
+lagree on her return soon found out the neglect and seemed only too pleased to have the opportunity of showing her spite to her lovely prisoner
+for fire with which to relight the one she had allowed to go out now this locrinos was a cruel monster who devoured everyone he came across and especially enjoyed a chance of catching
+and eating any young girls our heroine obeyed with great sweetness and without having been able to take leave of her lover
+as to certain death as she was crossing a wood a bird sang to her to pick up a shining pebble which she would find in a fountain close by and to use it when needed
+she took the bird's advice and in due time arrived at the house of locrinos luckily she only found his wife at home who was much struck by the princess's youth and beauty and sweet gentle manners
+she readily let fairer than a fairy have the fire
+convenient way of meeting than by the garden fountain and fairer than a fairy carried out his plan daily with entire success every morning she placed a large basin full of water on her window sill and as soon as the sun's rays fell on the water
+the rainbow appeared as clearly as it had ever done in the fountain by this means they were able to meet without losing sight of the fire or of the two bottles in which the old fairy kept her eye and her tooth at night
+and for some time the lovers enjoyed every hour of sunshine together one day prince rainbow appeared in the depths of woe he had just heard that he was to be banished from this lovely spot but he had no idea where he was to go
+the poor young couple were in despair and only parted with the last ray of sunshine and in hopes of meeting next morning alas next day was dark and gloomy and it was only late in the afternoon that the sun broke through the clouds for a few minutes
+fairer than a fairy eagerly ran to the window but in her haste she upset the basin and spilt all the water with which she had carefully filled it overnight no other water was at hand except that in the two bottles
+it was the only chance of seeing her lover before they were separated and she did not hesitate to break the bottle and pour their contents into the basin when the rainbow appeared at once their farewells were full of tenderness
+the prince made the most ardent and sincere protestations and promised to neglect nothing which might help to deliver his dear fairer than a fairy from her captivity and implored her to consent to their marriage as soon as they should both be free
+the princess on her side vowed to have no other husband and declared herself willing to brave death itself in order to rejoin him they were not allowed much time for their adieus the rainbow vanished and the princess resolved to run all risks
+started off at once taking nothing with her but her dog her cat a sprig of myrtle and the stone which the wife of locrinos gave her when lagree became aware of her prisoner's flight
+as she did so the sprig of myrtle she carried touched the ground and immediately a green and shady bower sprang up round her in which she hoped to sleep in peace but lagree had not given up her pursuit
+and arrived just as fairer than a fairy had fallen fast asleep this time she made sure of catching her victim but the cat spied her out
+she flew at lagree's face and tore out her only eye thus delivering the princess for ever from her persecutor
+but no sooner had lagree been put to fight than our heroine was overwhelmed with hunger and thirst she felt as though she should certainly expire and it was with some difficulty that she dragged herself as far
+which stood at no great distance here she was received by a beautiful lady dressed in green and white to match the house which apparently belonged to her and of which she seemed the only inhabitant
+she gave her a nut desiring her only to open it in the most urgent need after a long and tiring journey fairer than a fairy was once more received in a house and by a lady exactly like the one she
+here again she received a present with the same injunctions
+that they wished their houses and garments to be equally alike their occupation consisted in helping those in misfortune and they were as gentle and benevolent as lagree had been cruel and spiteful the third fairy comforted the poor traveller
+begged her not to lose heart and assured her that her troubles should be rewarded she accompanied her advice by the gift of a crystal smelling bottle with strict orders only to open it in case of urgent need
+fairer than a fairy thanked her warmly and resumed her way cheered by pleasant thoughts after a time her road led through a wood full of soft airs and sweet odours and before she had gone a hundred yards she saw a wonderful silver castle
+fairer than a fairy felt a strong desire to enter this castle but besides being hung a little above the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows she had no doubt though really i cannot think why
+that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her she opened it and out came a diminutive hall porter
+you ever saw the princess climbed up one of the silver chains holding in her hand the little porter who in spite of his minute size opened a secret door with his golden key and let her in
+she entered a magnificent room which appeared to occupy the entire castle and which was lighted by gold and jewelled stars in the ceiling
+who now saw him for the first time in his real shape
+on opening it found that all the seeds were as many little violins which flew up in the vaulted roof and at once began playing melodiously
+the prince was not completely roused but he opened his eyes a little and looked all the handsomer impatient at not being recognised fairer than a fairy now drew out her third present and on opening the crystal scent bottle a little syren flew out
+at the same moment the walls of the room expanded and opened out revealing a golden throne covered with jewels
+in the first and most splendid of these carriages sat prince rainbow's mother she fondly embraced her son after which she informed him that his father had been dead for some years that the anger of the fairies was at length appeased
+and that he might return in peace to reign over his people who were longing for his presence the court received the new king with joyful acclamations which would have delighted him at any other time
+he was just about to present her to his mother and the court
+charms would win all hearts when the three green and white sisters appeared they declared the secret of fairy than a fairy's royal birth and the queen taking the two lovers in her carriage set off with them for the capital of the kingdom
+camp cloudcrest september twelfth nineteen fourteen dear missus coney
+but i've a chance to day so i will not let it pass unused we are in the last camp right on the hunting ground in the midst of the fray we have said good bye to dear elizabeth and i must tell you about her because she really comes first
+to begin with the morning we left the holts elizabeth suggested that we three women ride in the buckboard so i seated myself on a roll of bedding in the back part
+the sky was clear blue
+the mountains on one side were crested great crags and piles of rock crowned them as far as we could see timber grew only about halfway up the trunks of the quaking aspens shone silvery in the early sunlight and their leaves were shimmering gold
+and the stately pines kept whispering and murmuring it almost seemed as if they were chiding the quaking aspens for being frivolous on the other side of the road lay the river bordered by willows and grassy flats
+there were many small lakes and the ducks and geese were noisily enjoying themselves among the rushes and water grasses beyond the river rose the forest covered mountains hill upon hill elizabeth dressed with especial care that morning
+and very pretty she looked in her neat shepherd's plaid suit and natty little white canvas hat very soon she said i hope neither of you will misunderstand me when i tell you that if my hopes are realized i will not ride with you much longer
+i never saw such a country as the west
+and i never saw such people you are just like your country you have fed me cared for me and befriended me a stranger
+missus o'shaughnessy said tut tut tis nothing at all we've done tis a comfort you've been hasn't she missus stewart i could heartily agree and elizabeth went on the way i have been received and the way we all treated missus holt
+will be the greatest help to me in becoming what i hope to become a real westerner i might have lived a long time in the west and not have understood many things if i had not fallen into your hands years ago
+before i was through school i was to have been married but i lost my mother just then and was left the care of my paralytic father if i had married then i should have had to take father from his familiar surroundings because wallace came west in the forestry service
+i felt that it wouldn't be right poor father couldn't speak but his eyes told me how grateful he was to stay we had our little home and father had his pension and i was able to get a small school near us
+i could take care of father and teach also we were very comfortably situated and in time became really happy although i seldom heard from wallace his letters were well worth waiting for and i knew he was doing well
+eighteen months ago father died gently went to sleep i waited six months and then wrote to wallace but received no reply
+i could bear it no longer and have come to see what has become of him if he is dead may i stay on with one of you and perhaps get a school i want to live here always but darlint said missus o'shaughnessy
+supposin it's married your man is wallace may have changed his mind about me but he would not marry without telling me if he is alive he is honorable then i asked
+if he is stationed in the bridges reserve they would be sure to know of him at any of these little places i just didn't have the courage to i should never have told you what i have only i think i owe it to you and it was easier because of the holts
+i am so glad we met them so we drove along talking together we each assured the girl of our entire willingness to have her as a member of the family after a while i got on to the wagon with mister stewart and told him elizabeth's story
+and we held our breath until we emerged on the other side mister sorenson is a very capable and conscientious game warden and a very genial gentleman he rode down to meet us
+to inspect our license and to tell us about our privileges and our duties as good woodsmen he also issues licenses in case hunters have neglected to secure them before coming missus o'shaughnessy had refused to get a license when we did
+she said she was not going to hunt she told us we could give her a small piece of ilk and that would do so we were rather surprised when she purchased two licenses one a special which would entitle her to a bull elk
+as we were starting mister stewart asked the game warden can you tell me if wallace white is still stationed here oh yes mister sorenson said wallace's place is only a few miles up the river and can be plainly seen from the road we drove on
+happiness had taken a new clutch upon my heart i looked back expecting to see elizabeth all smiles but if you will believe me the foolish girl was sobbing as if her heart was broken missus o'shaughnessy drew her head down upon her shoulder
+and was trying to quiet her the road along there was very rough staying on the wagon occupied all my attention for a while several miles were passed when we came in sight of a beautiful cabin half hidden in a grove of pines beyond the river
+mister stewart said we might as well noon as soon as we came to a good place and then he would ride across and see mister white just as we rounded the hill a horseman came toward us a splendid fellow he was
+manly strength and grace showing in every line the road was narrow against the hillside and he had to ride quite close so i saw his handsome face plainly as soon as he saw elizabeth he sprang from his saddle and said liz'beth liz'beth
+she held her hands to him and said oh just riding with friends then to missus o'shaughnessy she said this is my wallace mister stewart is the queerest man
+instead of letting me enjoy the tableau he solemnly drove on saying he would not want any one gawking at him if he were the happy man anyway he couldn't urge chub fast enough to prevent my seeing and hearing what i've told you
+besides that i saw that elizabeth's hat was on awry her hair in disorder and her eyes red it was disappointing after she had been so careful to look nicely missus o'shaughnessy came trotting along and we stopped for dinner
+we had just got the coffee boiling when the lovers came up elizabeth in the saddle learning to ride and he walking beside her holding her hand how happy they were the rest of us were mighty near as foolish as they
+they were going to start immediately after dinner on horseback for the county seat to be married after we had eaten elizabeth selected a few things from her trunk and mister stewart and mister white drove the buckboard across the river to leave the trunk in its new home
+while they were gone we helped elizabeth to dress all the while missus o'shaughnessy was admonishing her to name her first girul mary ellen or she said
+which was me name before i was married to me man god rest his soul dear elizabeth she was glad to get away i suspect she and her wallace made a fine couple as they rode away in the golden september afternoon
+i believe she is one happy bride that the sun shone on if the omen has failed everywhere else well we felt powerfully reduced in numbers but about three o'clock that afternoon we came upon mister struble and mister haynes
+waiting beside the road for us they had come to pilot us into camp for there would be no road soon such a way as we came over such jolting and sliding i begged to get off and walk
+but as the whole way was carpeted by strawberry vines and there were late berries to tempt me to loiter i had to stay on the wagon i had no idea a wagon could be got across such places mister struble drove for missus o'shaughnessy
+and i could hear her imploring all the saints to preserve us from instant death i kept shutting my eyes trying not to see the terrifying places and opening them again to see the beauty spread everywhere until mister stewart said
+it must make you nervous to ride over mountain roads don't bat your eyes so fast and you'll see more so then i stiffened my back and kept my eyes open and i did see more it had been decided to go as far as we could with the wagons and then set camp
+from there the hunters would ride horseback as far up as they could and then climb it was almost sundown when we reached camp all the hunters were in and such a yowling as they set up
+look who's here see who's come they yelled they went to work setting up tents and unloading wagons with a hearty good will we are camped just on the edge of the pines back of us rises a big pine clad mountain
+our tents are set under some big trees on a small plateau and right below us is a valley in which grass grows knee high and little streams come from every way trout scurry up stream whenever we go near
+we call the valley paradise valley because it is the horses paradise and as in the early morning we can often see clouds rolling along the valley we call our camp cloudcrest we have a beautiful place it is well sheltered
+there is plenty of wood water and feed and looking eastward down the valley snow covered crag topped mountains delight the eye the air is so bracing that we all feel equal to anything
+mister struble has already killed a fine spike elk for camp eating we camped in a bunch and we have camp stoves so that in case of rain or snow we can stay indoors just now we have a huge camp fire
+around which we sit in the evening telling stories singing and eating nuts of the pinon pine then too the whole country is filled with those tiny little strawberries we have to gather all day to get as much as we can eat
+but they are delicious yesterday we had pie made of wild currants there are a powerful lot of them here there is also a little blueberry that the men say is the rocky mountain huckleberry the grouse are feeding on them
+altogether this is one of the most delightful places imaginable the men are not very anxious to begin hunting a little delay means cooler weather for the meat it is cool up here but going back across the desert it will be warm for a while yet still
+when they see elk every day it is a great temptation to try a shot one of the students told me professor glenholdt was here to get the tip end bone of the tail of a brontosaurus
+as he had heard they were fine eating having strata of fat alternating with strata of lean mister haynes is a quiet fellow just interested in hunting mister struble is the big man of the party
+he is tall and strong and we find him very pleasant company then there is doctor teschall he is a quiet fellow with an unexpected smile he is so reserved that i felt that he was kind of out of place among the rest until i caught his cordial smile
+not to mention carrying the heavy gun they are using the largest caliber sporting guns murderous looking things that is all except mister harkrudder the picture man
+he looks to be about forty years old but whoops and laughs like he was about ten i don't need to tell you of the good mon do i he is just the kind quiet good mon that he has always been since i have known him
+he told mister haynes he was too tam seek in de bel so we had to come without him
+and are all willing to help i don't think i shall be able to tell you of any great exploits i make with the gun i fired one that mister stewart carries and it almost kicked my shoulder off i am mystified about missus o'shaughnessy's license
+i know she would not shoot one of those big guns for a dozen elk besides that she is very tender hearted and will never harm anything herself although she likes to join our hunts i think you must be tired of this letter so i am going to say good night my friend
+camp cloudcrest october sixth nineteen fourteen dear missus coney it seems so odd to be writing you and getting no answers
+i haven't one thing i told her i owed you more love than i could ever pay in a lifetime and she said writing such long letters is a mighty poor way to show it i have been neglecting you shamefully i think
+one of the main reasons i came on this hunt was to take the trip for you and to tell you things that you would most enjoy so i will spend this snowy day in writing to you on the night of september thirtieth there was the most awful thunderstorm i ever witnessed
+flash after flash of the most blinding lightning followed by deafening peals of thunder and as it echoed from mountain to mountain the uproar was terrifying i have always loved a storm the beat of hail and rain and the roar of wind
+always appeal to me but there was neither wind nor rain just flash and roar before the echo died away among the hills another booming report would seem to shiver the atmosphere and set all our tinware jangling
+we are camped so near the great pines that i will confess i was powerfully afraid had the lightning struck one of the big pines there would not have been one of us left i could hear missus o'shaughnessy murmuring her prayers when there was a lull
+we had gone to bed but i couldn't remain there so i sat on the wagon seat with jerrine beside me something struck the guy ropes of the tent and i was so frightened i was too weak to cry out i thought the big tree must have fallen
+in the lulls of the storm i could hear the men's voices high and excited they too were up it seemed to me that the storm lasted for hours but at last it moved off up the valley the flashes grew to be a mere glimmer
+and the thunder mere rumbling the pines began to moan and soon a little breeze whistled by so we lay down again next morning the horses could not be found the storm had frightened them and they had tried to go home
+the men had to find them and as it took most of the day we had to put off our hunt we were up and about next morning in the first faint gray light while the men fed grain to the horses and saddled them we prepared a hasty breakfast
+we were off before it was more than light enough for us to see the trail dawn in the mountains how i wish i could describe it to you if i could only make you feel the keen bracing air the exhilarating climb
+greenish amber light and a blue gray sky far ahead of us we could see the red rim rock of a mountain above timber line the first rays of the sun turned the jagged peaks into golden points of a crown in oklahoma
+even at this season but here there are no song birds and only the snapping of twigs as our horses climbed the frosty trail broke the silence we had been cautioned not to talk but neither missus o'shaughnessy nor i wanted to
+the sun was well up when we reached the little park where we picketed our horses then came a long hard climb it is hard climbing at the best and when there is a big gun to carry it is very hard
+then too we had to keep up with the men and we didn't find that easy to do at last we reached the top and sat down on some boulders to rest a few minutes before we started down to the hunting ground which lay in a cuplike valley far below us
+we could hear the roar of the gros ventre as it tumbled grumblingly over its rocky bed to our right rose mile after mile of red cliffs as the last of the quaking asp leaves have fallen there were no golden groves
+in their places stood silvery patches against the red background of the cliffs high overhead a triangle of wild geese harrowed the blue sky i was plumb out of breath but men who are most gallant elsewhere are
+absolutely heartless on a hunt i was scarcely through panting before we began to descend we received instructions as to how we should move so as to keep out of range of each other's guns then mister haynes and myself started one way
+and mister struble and missus o'shaughnessy the other we were to meet where the valley terminated in a broad pass we felt sure we could get a chance at what elk there might be in the valley we were following fresh tracks and a little of the hunter's enthusiasm seized me
+we had not followed them far when three cows and a spike came running out of the pines a little ahead of us instantly mister haynes's gun flew to his shoulder and a deafening report jarred our ears he ran forward
+but i stood still fascinated by what i saw our side of the valley was bounded by a rim of rock over the rim was a sheer wall of rock for two hundred feet to where the gros ventre was angrily roaring below on the other side of the stream
+rose the red cliffs with their jagged crags at the report of the gun two huge blocks of stone almost as large as a house detached themselves and fell at the same instant one of the quaking asp groves
+began to move slowly i couldn't believe my eyes i shut them a moment but when i looked the grove was moving faster it slid swiftly and i could plainly hear the rattle of stones falling against stones until with a muffled roar
+the whole hillside fell into the stream mister haynes came running back what is the matter are you hurt why didn't you shoot he asked i waved my hand weakly toward where the great mound of tangled trees and earth blocked the water
+not an earthquake you are as white as a ghost come on up here and see my fine elk i sat on a log watching him dress his elk we have found it best not to remove the skin
+but the elk have to be quartered so as to load them on to a horse missus o'shaughnessy and mister struble came out of the woods just then they had seen a big bunch of elk headed by a splendid bull but got no shot and the elk went out of the pass
+they had heard our shot and came across to see what luck what iver is the matter with ye asked missus o'shaughnessy mister haynes told her they had heard the noise but had thought it thunder mister haynes told me that if i would chirk up
+he would give me his elk teeth though i don't admire them they are considered valuable however his elk was a cow and they don't have as nice teeth as do bulls we had lunch and the men covered the elk with pine boughs
+to keep the camp robbers from pecking it full of holes next day the men would come with the horses and pack it in to camp we all felt refreshed so we started on the trail of those that got away
+for a while walking was easy and we made pretty good time then we had a rocky hill to get over we had to use care when we got into the timber there were marshy places which tried us sorely
+and windfall so thick that we could hardly get through we were obliged to pick our way carefully to avoid noise and we were all together not having come to a place where it seemed better to separate
+we had about resolved to go to our horses when we heard a volley of shots that is somebody bunch shooting said mister struble they are in brewster lake park by the sound that means that the elk will pass here in a short time and we may get a shot
+the elk will be here long before the men since the men have no horses so let's hurry and get placed along the only place they can get out we'll get our limit we hastily secreted ourselves along the narrow gorge through which the elk must pass
+we were all on one side and mister haynes said to me rest your gun on that rock and aim at the first rib back of the shoulder if you shoot haphazard you may cripple an elk and let it get away to die in misery so make sure when you fire
+it didn't seem a minute before we heard the beat of their hoofs and a queer panting noise that i can't describe first came a beautiful thing with his head held high
+his eyes were startled and his shining black mane seemed to bristle i heard the report of guns and he tumbled in a confused heap he tried to rise but others coming leaped over him and knocked him down some more shots
+and those behind turned and went back the way they had come mister haynes shouted to me shoot shoot why don't you shoot so i fired my krag but next i found myself picking myself up
+and wondering who had struck me and for what i was so dizzy i could scarcely move but i got down to where the others were excitedly admiring the two dead elk that they said were the victims of missus o'shaughnessy's gun
+she was as excited and delighted as if she had never declared she would not kill anything sure it's many a meal they'll make for little hungry mouths she said she was rubbing her shoulder ruefully
+i thought old goliar had hit me a biff with a blackthorn shilaley she remarked mister haynes turned to me and said you are a dandy hunter you didn't shoot at all until after the elk were gone
+and the way you held your gun it is a wonder it didn't knock your head off instead of just smashing your jaw the men worked as fast as they could at the elk and we helped as much as we could but it was dark before we reached camp
+supper was ready but i went to bed at once they all thought it was because i was so disappointed but it was because i was so stiff and sore i could hardly move and so tired i couldn't sleep next morning my jaw and neck were so swollen
+that i hated any one to see me and my head ached for two days it has been snowing for a long time but clyde says he will take me hunting when it stops
+and go back empty handed and partly to get a rest from mister murry's everlasting accordion mister murry is an old time acquaintance of missus o'shaughnessy's he has a ranch down on the river somewhere missus o'shaughnessy has not seen him for years
+didn't know he lived up here he had seen the game warden from whom she had procured her license and so hunted up our camp he is an odd looking individual with sad eyes and a drooping mouth which gives his face a most hopeless reproachful expression
+his nose however seems to upset the original plan for it is long and thin and bent slightly to one side his neck is long and his adam's apple seems uncertain as to where it belongs at supper jerrine watched it
+as if fascinated until i sent her from the table and went out to speak to her about gazing why mamma she said i had to look he has swallowed something that won't go either up or down and i'm fraid he'll choke
+although i can't brag about mister murry's appearance i can about his taste for he admires missus o'shaughnessy it seems that in years gone by he has made attempts to marry her as he got up from supper the first night he was with us he said
+mary ellen i have a real treat and surprise for you just wait a few minutes an i'll bet you'll be happy we took our accustomed places around the fire while mister murry hobbled his cayuse and took an odd looking bundle from his saddle
+he seated himself and took from the bundle an accordion he set it upon his knee and began pulling and pushing on it he did what mister struble said was doling a doleful tune every one took it good naturedly
+but we have to listen to run nigger run and the old gray hoss come a tearin out the wilderness i'll sing them to you when i come to denver
+chapter twenty four home again the major was at the station to meet them
+the girl caught sight of him outside the gates his face red and beaming as a poppy in bloom and his snowy moustache bristling with eagerness at once she dropped her bundles and flew to the major's arms
+leaving the little man in her wake to rescue her belongings and follow after he could hardly see patsy at all the major wrapped her in such an ample embrace but bye and bye she escaped to get her breath and then her eyes fell upon the meek form holding her bundles
+on which account said the major grasping the little man's hand most cordially i'll love uncle john like my own brother and surely he added his voice falling tenderly my dear violet's brother must be my own
+welcome sir now and always to our little home it's modest sir but wherever patsy is the sun is sure to shine i can believe that said uncle john with a nod and smile
+and the old fellow rattled away with the eagerness of a boy telling every detail in the most whimsical manner and finding something humorous in every incident oh but it was grand patsy he exclaimed and the colonel wept on my neck when we parted and stained the collar of me best coat
+his face grew grave but how about the money patsy dear he asked did you get nothing out of jane merrick's estate not a nickle dad twas the best joke you ever knew
+i fought with aunt jane like a pirate and it quite won her heart when she died she left me all she had in the world look at that now said the major wonderingly which turned out to be nothing at all continued patsy
+for another will was found made by mister thomas bradley which gave the money to his own nephew after aunt jane died did you ever wonderful said the major with a sigh so i was rich for half a day and then poor as ever it didn't hurt you did it
+not at all daddy then don't mind it child like as not the money would be the ruination of us all eh sir appealing to uncle john
+in your case it won't matter our house is yours and there's plenty and to spare thank you said uncle john his face grave but his eyes merry oh major cried patsy suddenly
+there's danny reeves's restaurant let's get off and have our dinner now i'm as hungry as a bear so they stopped the car and descended lugging all the parcels into the little restaurant where they were piled into a chair while the proprietor and the waiters all gathered around patsy to welcome her home
+my how her eyes sparkled she fairly danced for joy and ordered the dinner with reckless disregard of the bill ah but it's good to be back said the little bohemian gleefully the big house at elmhurst was grand and stately major but there wasn't an ounce of love in the cupboard
+danny reeves himself came instead and made a nice little speech saying that patsy had always brought good luck to the place and this dinner was his treat to welcome her home so the major thanked him with gracious dignity and patsy kissed danny on his right cheek
+it's no palace said patsy entering to throw down the bundles as soon as the major unlocked the door but there's a cricket in the hearth and it's your home uncle john as well as ours uncle john looked around curiously
+the place was so plain after the comparative luxury of elmhurst and especially of the rose chamber patsy had occupied that the old man could not fail to marvel at the girl's ecstatic joy to find herself in the old tenement again
+there was one good sized living room with an ancient rag carpet partially covering the floor a sheet iron stove a sofa a table and three or four old fashioned chairs that had probably come from a second hand dealer
+opening from this were two closet like rooms containing each a bed and a chair with a wash basin on a bracket shelf on the wails were a few colored prints from the sunday newspapers and one large and fine photograph of a grizzled old soldier
+that uncle john at once decided must represent the colonel having noted these details patsy's uncle smoothed back his stubby gray hair with a reflective and half puzzled gesture it's cozy enough my child and i thank you for my welcome said he
+but may i enquire where on earth you expect to stow me in this rather limited establishment where have you no eyes then she asked in astonishment it's the finest sofa in the world uncle john and you'll sleep there like a top
+where indeed ah i see said uncle john and you can wash in my chamber added the major with a grand air and hang your clothes on the spare hooks behind my door i haven't many said uncle john looking thoughtfully at his red bundle
+the major coughed and turned the lamp a little higher you'll find the air fine and the neighborhood respectable he said to turn the subject our modest apartments are cool in summer and warm in winter and remarkably reasonable in price
+may i smoke of course but don't spoil the lace curtains dear answered patsy mischievously
+but just to keep him out of mischief and busy he can't hang around all day and be happy i suppose i'll look around answered the major briskly as if such a job was the easiest thing in the world to procure and meantime
+meantime said uncle john smiling at them i'll look around myself to be sure agreed the major between the two of us and patsy we ought to have no trouble at all there was a moment of thoughtful silence after this and then patsy said
+by the bye added the major if you have any money about you which is just possible sir of course you'd better turn it over to patsy to keep and let her make you an allowance that's the way i do it's very satisfactory the major's extravagant exclaimed patsy
+and if he has money he wants to treat every man he meets uncle john shook his head reproachfully at the major a very bad habit sir he said
+but patsy is fast curing me and after all it's a wicked city to be carrying a fat pocketbook around in as i've often observed my pocketbook is not exactly fat remarked uncle john but you've money sir for i marked you squandering it on the train said patsy severely
+uncle john laughed and drew his chair up to the table then he emptied his trousers pockets upon the cloth and patsy gravely separated the keys and jackknife from the coins and proceeded to count the money seven dollars and forty two cents she announced any more
+uncle john hesitated a moment and then drew from an inner pocket of his coat a thin wallet from this when she had received it from his hand the girl
+good gracious she cried delightedly all this wealth and you pleading poverty i never said i was a pauper returned uncle john complacently you couldn't and be truthful sir declared the girl why this will last for ages
+he smokes observed the major significantly bah a pipe said patsy and bull durham is only five cents a bag and a bag ought to last a week and every saturday night sir
+thank you patsy said uncle john meekly and gathered up his forty two cents you've now a home and a manager sir with money in the bank of patsy and company limited
+you ought to be very contented sir
+chapter twenty three patsy adopts an uncle uncle john and mister watson did not appear at dinner being closeted in the former's room
+being served by the old servants as a mere matter of routine indeed the arrangements of the household had been considerably changed by the death of its mistress and without any real head to direct them the servants were patiently awaiting the advent of a new master or mistress
+but there were few tears shed for jane merrick and the new regime could not fail to be an improvement over the last
+but being unaware of its import gave it but passing attention the main subject of conversation was aunt jane's surprising act in annulling her last will and forcing patricia to accept the inheritance when she did not want it
+when alone with the three cousins protested that it would not be right for patsy to give him all the estate but as she was so generous he would accept enough of his uncle tom's money to educate him as an artist and provide for himself an humble home
+louise and beth having at last full knowledge of their cousin's desire to increase their bequests were openly very grateful for her good will although secretly they could not fail to resent patsy's choice of the boy as the proper heir of his uncle's fortune
+the balance of power seemed to be in patricia's hands however
+to offend her altogether they were all better provided for than they had feared would be the case so the little party spent a pleasant evening and separated early beth and louise to go to their rooms and canvass quietly the events of the day
+and then she went to bed and slept peacefully
+lawyer watson and uncle john were there looking as grave as the important occasion demanded
+and the subsequent finding of the will
+was made subsequent to the one under which jane merrick inherited and therefore supercedes it
+of the estate during her lifetime
+mister bradley having provided for that most fully for this reason the will i read to you yesterday is of no effect and kenneth forbes inherits from his uncle through his mother all of the estate blank looks followed mister watson's statement
+good by to my five thousand said uncle john with his chuckling laugh but i'm much obliged to jane nevertheless don't we get anything at all asked beth with quivering lip no my dear answered the lawyer gently your aunt owned nothing to give you
+patsy laughed she felt wonderfully relieved wasn't i the grand lady though with all the fortune i never had she cried merrily but twas really fine to be rich for a day and toss the money around as if i didn't have to dress ten heads of hair in ten hours to earn my bread and butter
+louise smiled it was all a great farce she said i shall take the afternoon train to the city what an old fraud our dear aunt jane was and how foolish of me to return her hundred dollar check i used mine said beth bitterly
+it's all i'll ever get it seems and then the thought of the professor and his debts overcame her and she burst into tears the boy sat doubled within his chair so overcome by the extraordinary fortune that had overtaken him that he could not speak
+nor think even clearly as yet patsy tried to comfort beth never mind dear said she we're no worse off than before we came are we and we've had a nice vacation
+i'm going home today said beth angrily drying her eyes we'll all go home said patsy cheerfully for my part remarked uncle john in a grave voice i have no home
+i'm wondering that myself said the little man meekly
+no replied uncle john the merricks are out of elmhurst now and it returns to its rightful owners you owe me nothing my lad
+louise smiled rather scornfully and beth scowled my mother and i live so simply in our little flat said one that we really haven't extra room to keep a cat but we shall be glad to assist uncle john as far as we are able
+father can hardly support his own family said the other but i will talk to my mother about uncle john when i get home and see what she says oh you don't need to indeed cried patsy in great indignation uncle john is my dear mother's brother and he's to come and live with the major and me as long as he cares to
+no no say nothing at all sir come you shall if i have to drag you and if you act naughty i'll send for the major to punish you
+thank you my dear said he but where's the money to come from money bah she said doesn't the major earn a heap with his bookkeeping and haven't i had a raise lately why we'll be as snug and contented as pigs in clover can you get ready to come with me today uncle john
+and he said he hoped to see all the girls again
+the lawyer who had consented to stay at the mansion for a time
+that may be answered the boy
+chapter twenty five uncle john acts queerly
+to pass the time he turned into a small restaurant and had coffee and a plate of cakes in spite of the fact that patsy had so recently prepared coffee over the sheet iron stove and brought some hot buns from a near by bakery he was not especially hungry but in sipping the coffee and nibbling the cakes
+he passed the best part of an hour he smiled when he paid out twenty five cents of his slender store for the refreshment with five cents for car fare he had now but twelve cents left of the forty two patsy had given him
+another hour was spent in looking in at the shop windows then suddenly noting the time uncle john started down the street at a swinging pace and presently paused before a building upon which was a sign reading isham
+uncle john walked in although the uniformed official at the door eyed him suspiciously mister marvin in he inquired pleasantly not arrived yet said the official who wore a big star upon his breast i'll wait announced uncle john and sat down upon a leather covered bench
+another hour passed presently uncle john jumped up and approached the official hasn't mister marvin arrived yet he enquired sharply an hour ago was the reply then why didn't you let me know i want to see him
+he's busy mornings has to look over the mail he can't see you yet well he will see me and right away tell him john merrick is here your card sir i haven't any my name will do
+the official hesitated and glanced at the little man's seedy garb and countryfied air but something in the angry glance of the shrewd eye made him fear he had made a mistake he opened a small door and disappeared
+in a moment the door burst open to allow egress to a big red bearded man in his shirtsleeves who glanced around briefly and then rushed at uncle john and shook both his hands cordially
+a great surprise and pleasure sir thomas i'm engaged this last was directed at the head of the amazed porter who as the door slammed in his face nodded solemnly and remarked
+uncle john had been advised by patsy where to go for a good cheap luncheon but he did not heed her admonition instead he rode in a carriage beside the banker to a splendid club where he was served with the finest dishes the chef could provide on short notice
+moreover mister marvin introduced him to several substantial gentlemen as mister john merrick of portland and each one bowed profoundly and declared he was highly honored yet uncle john seemed in no way elated by this reception
+he talked with easy familiarity of preferred stocks and amalgamated interests and invested securities and many other queer things that the banker seemed to understand fully and to listen to with respectful deference
+but he didn't go away quietly you may be sure mister marvin and mister isham both escorted their famous client to the door
+in a moment the great broadway crowd had swallowed up john merrick and five minutes later he was thoughtfully gazing into a shop window again by and bye he bethought himself of the time and took a cab uptown
+besides the check book which was carefully hidden away in an inside pocket so the cost of the cab did not worry him
+danny reeves's restaurant a block away patsy was standing in the doorway anxiously watching for him oh uncle john she cried as he strolled i've been really worried about you it's such a big city and you a stranger
+i'm sorry he said humbly but it's a long way here from downtown didn't you take a car no my dear why you foolish old uncle come in at once
+the major has been terribly excited over you and swore you should not be allowed to wander through the streets without someone to look after you but what could we do i'm all right declared uncle john cordially shaking hands with patsy's father have you had a good day fine said the major
+they'd missed me at the office and were glad to have me back
+i've got a raise really said uncle john seeing it was expected of him for a fact it's patsy's doing i've no doubt she wheedled the firm into giving me a vacation and now they're to pay me twelve a week instead of ten is that enough asked uncle john doubtfully
+more than enough sir i'm getting old and can't earn as much as a younger man but i'm pretty tough and mean to hold onto that twelve a week as long as possible what pay do you get patsy asked uncle john almost as much as daddy
+we're dreadfully rich uncle john so you needn't worry if you don't strike a job yourself all at once any luck today sir asked the major tucking a napkin under his chin and beginning on the soup uncle john shook his head of course not said patsy quickly it's too early as yet
+don't hurry uncle john except that it'll keep you busy there's no need for you to work at all you're older than i am suggested the major and that makes it harder to break in but there's no hurry as patsy says uncle john did not seem to be worrying over his idleness
+and issued a string of orders in a voice not nearly so meek and mild as it was when he was in patsy's presence
+exceedingly you must be nearly bankrupt by this time said patsy on tuesday evening it's an expensive city to live in sighed uncle john
+your expenses are nothing at all declared the major with a wave of his hand but my dinners at danny reeves place must cost a lot protested uncle john
+and we sleep till eight o'clock don't we patsy asked the major of course and the eggs for breakfast i've bought them already three for a nickle you don't care for more than one do you uncle john no my dear
+and shiny top boots his long legs enabled him to outstrip the others and in an almost breathless voice he begged uncle john to choose his carriage the besta carrozza ina town we don't want to ride was the answer the cabman implored
+certainly they must make the amalfi drive
+or at least il deserto the others stood by to listen silently to the discussion yielding first place to the victor in the race uncle john was obdurate all we want to day is to see the town he declared we're not going to ride but walk
+ah but the amalfi road signore surely you will see that
+to morrow signore it is good at what hour to morrow illustrissimo oh don't bother me we may as well drive to amalfi to morrow suggested beth it is the proper thing to do uncle all right we'll go then you take my carrozza signore
+let us see it instantly the crowd scampered back to the square followed more leisurely by uncle john and the girls there the uniformed vetturio stood beside the one modern carriage in the group it was new it was glossy
+it had beautiful carefully brushed cushions it was drawn by a pair of splendid looking horses is not bellissima signore asked the man proudly
+be ready to start at nine o'clock to morrow morning the man promised whereat his confreres lost all interest in the matter and the strangers were allowed to proceed without further interruption they found out all about the amalfi drive that evening and were glad indeed they had decided to go
+they had an early breakfast and were ready at nine o'clock but when they came to the gate of the garden they found only a dilapidated carriage standing before it do you know where my rig is
+i must not ruin a nice dress when i work answered the man smiling unabashed but the carriage what has become of the fine carriage and the good horses sir ah it is dreadful it is horrible signore
+it do not remain good for a long ride so i leave him home for i am kind i do not wish the signorini bella to tire and weep but see the fine vetture you now have is he not easy like feathers an strong
+it may be a bird but it don't look it said uncle john doubtfully
+hop in my dears they entered the crazy looking vehicle and found the seats ample and comfortable despite the appearance of dilapidation everywhere prevalent the driver mounted the box cracked his whip and the lean nags ambled away at a fair pace
+it was standing just as it had before and beside it was another man dressed in the splendid uniform his driver had claimed that he had left at home
+we've been swindled my dears he said swindled most beautifully but i suppose we may as well make the best of it better agreed patsy
+this rig is all right uncle it may not be as pretty as the other but i expect that one is only kept to make engagements with when it comes to actual use we don't get it that's true enough he returned
+indeed the sun did come out but only to give a discouraged look at the landscape and retire again
+they had sunshine rain hail snow and a tornado and then rain again and more sunshine sunny italy seemed a misnomer that day as indeed it does many days in winter and spring
+when the climate is little better than that prevailing in the eastern and central portions of the united states and perhaps one suffers more in italy than in america owing to the general lack of means to keep warm on cold days the italian
+for he will permit no reproach to lie on his beloved land but the traveller frequently becomes discouraged and the american contingent especially
+exaggerated the conditions by apostrophizing the country as sunny italy and for more than a century uttered such rhapsodies in its praise that the whole world credited them until it acquired personal experience of the matter
+italy is beautiful it is charming and delightful but seldom is this true in winter or early spring the horses went along at a spanking pace that was astonishing they passed through the picturesque lanes of sorrento climbed
+the further slope and brought the carriage to the other side of the peninsula where the girls obtained their first view of the gulf of salerno with the lovely isles of the sirens lying just beneath them
+and has no duplicate in all the known world
+rising straight from the sea which the highway overhangs at an average height of five hundred feet the traveller being protected only by a low stone parapet from the vast gulf that yawns beneath
+and on the other side of the road the cliffs continue to ascend a like distance toward the sky
+pilgrims when it rained they put up the carriage top which afforded but partial shelter
+from that distance the boats drawn upon the sheltered beach seemed like mere toys then they would span a chasm on a narrow stone bridge or plunge through an arch dividing the solid mountain
+when the great adventure of the day overtook them without warning the wind came whistling around them in a great gale which speedily increased in fury until it drove the blinded horses reeling against the low parapet
+and pushed upon the carriage as if determined to dash it over the precipice as it collided against the stone wall the vehicle tipped dangerously hurling the driver from his seat to dive headforemost into the space beneath
+at this critical moment a mounted horseman who unobserved had been following the party dashed to their rescue the rider caught the plunging steeds by their heads and tried to restrain their terror at his own eminent peril
+while the carriage lay wedged against the wall and the driver screamed pitifully from his dangerous position midway between sea and sky
+weight just above was a slight ledge he could reach it now and then she had him by the arm so that another instant found him clinging to the parapet and drawing himself into a position of safety
+the horses as soon as the strain upon their bits was relaxed were easily quieted
+the adventure was accomplished the peril was past and all was well again uncle john leaped from the carriage followed by louise and patsy
+so opportunely was none other than count ferralti
+he was sitting upon his horse and staring with amazement at beth
+by every saint in the calendar that the girl had saved him from a frightful death and he would devote his future life to her service it is wonderful murmured ferralti
+she kept her wits while the rest of us were scared to death uncle john had been observing the count one of the young man's hands hung limp and helpless are you hurt sir he asked ferralti smiled and his eyes rested upon louise
+we'd better get back to sorrento said uncle john abruptly
+that is if you permit me to accompany you
+as if they had never known a moment's fear in their lives so the girls and their uncle climbed into the vehicle again and the driver mounted the box and cracked his whip with his usual vigor
+the wind had subsided as suddenly as it had arisen and as they passed through positano which is four hundred feet high
+count ferralti rode at the side of the carriage but did not attempt much conversation
+now a hotel much favored by the tourist count ferralti promised to join them later and rode on to the town to find a surgeon to look after his injured hand while the others slowly mounted the long inclines leading in a zigzag fashion up to the old monastery
+which was founded in the year twelve twelve from the arbored veranda of this charming retreat is obtained one of the finest views in europe and while the girls sat enjoying it uncle john arranged with a pleasant faced woman
+who had once lived in america for their luncheon an hour later and just as they were sitting down to the meal count ferralti rejoined them
+in spite of his courage he could eat no luncheon but merely sipped a glass of wine so uncle john alarmed at his pallor insisted that he take a seat in the carriage on the return journey
+and beth mounted the box and rode beside her friend the driver
+which contains births marriages and deaths whatever becky's private plan might be by which dobbin's true love was to be crowned with success
+the little woman thought that the secret might keep and indeed being by no means so much interested
+she had a great number of things pertaining to herself to consider and which concerned her a great deal more than major dobbin's happiness in this life
+she found herself suddenly and unexpectedly in snug comfortable quarters surrounded by friends kindness and good natured simple people
+and say his prayers in the mosques
+she picketed her steed hung up her weapons and warmed herself comfortably by his fire the halt in that roving restless life was inexpressibly soothing and pleasant to her
+of amelia he drove out with becky in his open carriage he asked little parties and invented festivities to do her honour tapeworm
+came to dine with jos and then came every day to pay his respects to becky poor emmy who was never very talkative and more glum and silent than ever after dobbin's departure was quite forgotten
+there heard of her fascinations and were quite curious to know her when it became known that she was noble of an ancient english family that her husband was a colonel of the guard
+and the ladies were even more ready to call her du
+than they had been to bestow the same inestimable benefits upon amelia love and liberty are interpreted by those simple germans in a way which honest folks
+she brought everybody to the house and she made jos believe that it was his own great social talents and wit
+as for emmy who found herself not in the least mistress of her own house except when the bills were to be paid becky soon discovered the way to soothe and please her
+she talked to her perpetually about major dobbin sent about his business and made no scruple of declaring her admiration for that excellent high minded gentleman
+and to such an angel as him whom she had had the good fortune to marry was married forever but she had no objection to hear the major praised
+and indeed brought the conversation round to the dobbin subject a score of times every day means were easily found to win the favour of georgy and the servants amelia's maid
+it has been said was heart and soul in favour of the generous major having at first disliked becky for being the means of dismissing him from the presence of her mistress
+she was reconciled to missus crawley subsequently because the latter became william's most ardent admirer and champion and in those nightly conclaves in which the two ladies indulged after their parties
+and while miss payne was brushing their airs
+and as she looked at her husband's portrait of nights it no longer reproached her perhaps she reproached it now william was gone emmy was not very happy after her heroic sacrifice
+she was very distraite nervous silent and ill to please the family had never known her so peevish she grew pale and ill
+was one of them that tender love song of weber's which in old fashioned days young ladies and when you were scarcely born showed that those who lived before you knew
+too how to love and to sing certain songs i say to which the major was partial
+she would break off in the midst of the song
+rummaging his mother's desk some time afterwards found the gloves neatly folded up
+during which rebecca was left to the society of mister joseph
+in a way which even made the boy smile she told him that she thought major william was the best man in all the world the gentlest and the kindest the bravest and the humblest
+over and over again she told him how they owed everything which they possessed in the world to that kind friend's benevolent care of them how he had befriended them all through their poverty and misfortunes
+watched over them when nobody cared for them how all his comrades admired him though he never spoke of his own gallant actions how georgy's father trusted him beyond all other men
+and had been constantly befriended by the good william why when your papa was a little boy she said he often told me that it was william who defended him against a tyrant at the school where they were
+and their friendship never ceased from that day until the last when your dear father fell did dobbin kill the man who killed papa
+when i'm in the army won't i hate the french that's all
+as rawdon in his evening costume which he had now worn two days passed by the scared female who was scouring the steps and entered into his brother's study lady jane
+in her morning gown was up and above stairs in the nursery superintending the toilettes of her children and listening to the morning prayers which the little creatures performed at her knee
+every morning she and they performed this duty privately and before the public ceremonial at which sir pitt presided and at which all the people of the household were expected to assemble
+rawdon sat down in the study before the baronet's table
+and the letters the neatly docketed bills and symmetrical pamphlets the locked account books desks and dispatch boxes the bible the quarterly review and the court guide
+on the study table and awaiting his judicious selection and by the sermon book was the observer newspaper damp and neatly folded and for sir pitt's own private use
+he had read in the journal a flaming account of festivities at gaunt house
+invited by the marquis of steyne to meet his royal highness
+and her niece as they were taking early tea and hot buttered toast in the former lady's apartment and wondered how the rawding crawleys could git on the valet had damped and folded the paper once more
+so that it looked quite fresh and innocent against the arrival of the master of the house poor rawdon took up the paper and began to try and read it until his brother should arrive
+otherwise he would by no means permit the introduction of sunday papers into his household the theatrical criticisms the fight for a hundred pounds a side between the barking butcher
+punctually as the shrill toned bell of the black marble study clock began to chime nine sir pitt made his appearance fresh neat smugly shaved
+his scanty hair combed and oiled trimming his nails as he descended the stairs majestically in a starched cravat and a grey flannel dressing gown a real old english gentleman in a word
+a model of neatness and every propriety he started when he saw poor rawdon in his study in tumbled clothes with blood shot eyes and his hair over his face
+he thought his brother was not sober
+don't be frightened pitt i'm not drunk shut the door i want to speak to you pitt closed the door and came up to the table where he sat down in the other arm chair
+that one placed for the reception of the steward agent or confidential visitor who came to transact business with the baronet and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever pitt
+even the hundred pounds that jane took you last night were promised to my lawyer to morrow morning and the want of it will put me to great inconvenience
+i don't mean to say that i won't assist you ultimately but as for paying your creditors in full i might as well hope to pay the national debt
+went through the court last week and was what they call whitewashed i believe lord ragland would not pay a shilling for him and it's not money i want rawdon broke in i'm not come to you about myself
+never mind what happens to me what is the matter then said pitt somewhat relieved it's the boy said rawdon in a husky voice
+i want you to promise me that you will take charge of him when i'm gone that dear good wife of yours has always been good to him and he's fonder of her than he is of his damn it look here pitt
+but for this i might have been quite a different man i didn't do my duty with the regiment so bad you know how i was thrown over about the money and who got it
+i wish i was rawdon replied if it wasn't for little rawdon i'd have cut my throat this morning and that damned villain's too
+sir pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that lord steyne was the person whose life rawdon wished to take the colonel told his senior briefly and in broken accents
+the circumstances of the case it was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her he said the bailiffs were put upon me i was taken as i was going out of his house when i wrote to her for money
+she said she was ill in bed and put me off to another day and when i got home i found her in diamonds and sitting with that villain alone
+he then went on to describe hurriedly the personal conflict with lord steyne to an affair of that nature of course he said there was but one issue
+and after his conference with his brother he was going away to make the necessary arrangements for the meeting which must ensue
+rawdon said with a broken voice and as the boy has no mother i must leave him to you and jane pitt only it will be a comfort to me if you will promise me to be his friend
+the elder brother was much affected and shook rawdon's hand with a cordiality seldom exhibited by him rawdon passed his hand over his shaggy eyebrows
+thank you brother said he i know i can trust your word i will upon my honour the baronet said and thus and almost mutely
+and i've always felt ashamed of having taken the poor old woman's money and here's some more i've only kept back a few pounds which becky may as well have
+to get on with as he spoke
+but his hands shook and he was so agitated that the pocket book fell from him and out of it the thousand pound note which had been the last of the unlucky becky's winnings
+pitt stooped and picked them up amazed at so much wealth not that rawdon said i hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongs to
+to wrap a ball in the note and kill steyne with it after this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted
+and was waiting for her husband in the adjoining dining room with female instinct auguring evil the door of the dining room happened to be left open and the lady of course was issuing from it
+as the two brothers passed out of the study she held out her hand to rawdon and said she was glad he was come to breakfast though she could perceive by his haggard unshorn face
+and the dark looks of her husband that there was very little question of breakfast between them rawdon muttered some excuses about an engagement squeezing hard the timid little hand
+any explanation the children came up to salute him and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner the mother took both of them close to herself and held a hand of each of them
+as they knelt down to prayers which sir pitt read to them and to the servants in their sunday suits or liveries ranged upon chairs on the other side of the hissing tea urn
+breakfast was so late that day in consequence of the delays which had occurred that the church bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal and lady jane was too ill she said
+to go to church though her thoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion rawdon crawley meanwhile hurried on from great gaunt street and knocking at the great
+brought out the purple silenus in a red and silver waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace the man was scared also by the colonel's dishevelled appearance
+and say that colonel crawley would be all day after one o'clock at the regent club in saint james's street not at home the fat red faced man looked after him with astonishment
+as he strode away so did the people in their sunday clothes who were out so early the charity boys with shining faces the greengrocer lolling at his door
+and the publican shutting his shutters in the sunshine against service commenced the people joked at the cab stand about his appearance as he took a carriage there
+barracks all the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place
+had he been looking out troops of schools were on their march to church
+were thronged with people out upon their sunday pleasure but the colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena and arriving at knightsbridge
+speedily made his way up to the room of his old friend and comrade captain macmurdo who crawley found to his satisfaction was in barracks captain macmurdo
+a veteran officer and waterloo man greatly liked by his regiment in which want of money alone prevented him from attaining the highest ranks was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed
+and a number of ladies of the corps de ballet and old mac who was at home with people of all ages and ranks and consorted with generals dog fanciers opera dancers bruisers
+and every kind of person in a word was resting himself after the night's labours and not being on duty was in bed his room was hung round with boxing sporting and dancing pictures
+he had a singular museum he was one of the best shots in england and for a heavy man one of the best riders indeed he and crawley
+and the barking butcher which has been before mentioned a venerable bristly warrior with a little close shaved grey head with a silk nightcap a red face and nose and a great
+dyed moustache when rawdon told the captain he wanted a friend the latter knew perfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act and indeed had conducted scores of affairs
+for his acquaintances with the greatest prudence and skill his royal highness the late lamented commander in chief had had the greatest regard for macmurdo on this account
+captain marker it's about about my wife crawley answered casting down his eyes and turning very red the other gave a whistle
+i always said she'd throw you over he began indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubs regarding the probable fate of colonel crawley
+think of his only finding her out now the captain thought to himself and remembered a hundred particular conversations at the mess table in which missus crawley's reputation
+had been torn to shreds there's no way but one out of it
+and there's only a way out of it for one of us mac do you understand i was put out of the way arrested i found em alone together
+i told him he was a liar and a coward and knocked him down and thrashed him serve him right macmurdo said who is it rawdon answered it was lord steyne
+the deuce a marquis they said he that is they said you what the devil do you mean roared out rawdon do you mean that you ever heard a fellow doubt about my wife
+it was damned unfriendly mac said rawdon quite overcome and covering his face with his hands he gave way to an emotion the sight of which caused the tough old campaigner
+i gave up everything i had to her i'm a beggar because i would marry her by jove sir i've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything she fancied and she
+she's been making a purse for herself all the time and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod he then fiercely and incoherently and with an agitation
+under which his counsellor had never before seen him labour told macmurdo the circumstances of the story his adviser caught at some stray hints in it
+she may be innocent after all he said she says so
+this is what he gave her mac and she kep it unknown to me and with this money in the house she refused to stand by me when i was locked up
+rawdon dispatched captain macmurdo's servant to curzon street with an order to the domestic there to give up a bag of clothes of which the colonel had great need and during the man's absence
+captain macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the marquis of steyne on the part of colonel rawdon crawley and begged to intimate that he was empowered by the colonel
+to make any arrangements for the meeting which he had no doubt it was his lordship's intention to demand and which the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable
+in the most polite manner to appoint a friend with whom he captain m m might communicate and desired that the meeting might take place with as little delay as possible
+in curzon street but without the carpet bag and portmanteau for which he had been sent and with a very puzzled and odd face they won't give em up
+said the man there's a regular shinty in the house and everything at sixes and sevens the landlord's come in and took possession the servants was a drinkin up in the drawingroom they said
+the man added after a pause one of the servants is off already
+the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed says nothing shall go out of the house until his wages is paid up the account of this little revolution in may fair astonished
+but about going home next saturday when his father would certainly tip him and perhaps would take him to the play he's a regular trump that boy the father went on still musing about his son
+i say mac if anything goes wrong if i drop i should like you to to go and see him you know and say that i was very fond of him and that
+mister macmurdo had also occasion to take off his silk night cap and rub it across his eyes go down and order some breakfast he said to his man in a loud cheerful voice what'll you have crawley
+let's say and clay lay out some dressing things for the colonel we were always pretty much of a size rawdon my boy and neither of us ride so light as we did when we first entered the corps
+with which and leaving the colonel to dress himself macmurdo turned round towards the wall and resumed the perusal of bell's life until such time as his friend's toilette was complete
+he waxed his mustachios into a state of brilliant polish and put on a tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat so that all the young officers in the mess room whither crawley had preceded his friend
+chapter sixteen the juniors forever when the four classes assembled thursday morning every girl with the exception of eleanor was in her seat
+after conducting opening exercises miss thompson pronounced sentence on the culprits they were to forfeit their recess library and all other privileges until the end of the term
+they must turn in two themes every week of not less than six hundred words on certain subjects to be assigned to them if during this time any one of them should be reported for a misdemeanor they were to be suspended without delay
+their penalty was far from light but they had not been suspended and so they resolved to endure it as best they might grace harlowe felt a load lifted from her mind when miss thompson publicly announced that she had not received any information from either mabel allison or the phi sigma tau
+thank goodness none of us were concerned in that affair she told the members of her basketball team at recess there are two girls on the sophomore and three on the freshman team whose basketball ardor will have to cool until after the mid year exams
+twas many and many a year ago in an age beyond recall that nora the freshman lowly sat
+what a delicate way of reminding me that i once was a freshman she exclaimed anne has a new accomplishment said grace she can spout poetry without trying small credit is due me said anne smiling anyone can twist annabel lee to suit the occasion
+by the way anne said grace as you are a poet you must compose a basketball song to day and i'll see that the juniors all have copies it's time we had one let me see what would be a good tune rally round the flag suggested miriam nesbit that has a dandy swing to it
+grace hummed a few bars the very thing she exclaimed now anne get busy at once you'd better sing the tune to yourself all the time you're writing it
+i have been practising a most encouraging howl hippy david and reddy have a new one too reddy says it's marvelously extraordinary and appallingly great
+wasn't it nice of miss thompson to exonerate us publicly asked anne she is always just replied grace i can't understand how eleanor could be so rude and disagreeable to her she has disliked miss thompson from the first i wonder whether she apologized to miss thompson last night mused grace
+i feel sure that she didn't and i am just as sure that she won't get back until she does we shall manage to exist if she doesn't said jessica dryly
+she felt a personal grudge against eleanor for her accusation against mabel who had grown very dear to her and whom she mothered like a hen with one chicken she'll probably appear at the game in all her glory said miriam nesbit
+the recess bell cut short the conversation and the girls returned to their desks with far better ideas of the coming game than of the afternoon's lessons saturday december twelfth dawned cold and clear and the girls on both teams were in high spirits as they hustled into their respective locker rooms
+and rapidly donned their gymnasium suits the spectators had not yet begun to arrive as it was still early so the girls indulged in a little warming up practice did a few stunts and skipped about overflowing with animal spirits
+julia crosby and grace took turns sprinting around the gymnasium three times in succession while miriam nesbit timed them grace finishing just two seconds ahead of julia by a quarter of two the gallery was fairly well filled and by five minutes of two it was crowded
+the juniors with the exception of eleanor savell's faction arrived in a body gave the high school yell the moment they spied their team
+a tall junior who stood up and beat time with both hands anne had composed the song the week before the juniors had all received copies of the words and had learned them by heart they now sang with the utmost glee and came out particularly strong on the chorus which ran
+the juniors forever hurrah fans hurrah our team is a winner our
+shouting the war cry of the juniors there was a great clapping of hands from the admirers of the juniors at this effort but the seniors promptly responded from the other end of the gallery to the tune of dixie with the seniors are the real thing hurrah hurrah our gallant team now takes its stand
+and all the baskets soon will land we shout we sing the praises of the seniors hardly had the last notes died away when the referee blew the whistle and the teams hustled to their positions grace and julia crosby faced each other beamed amiably and shook hands
+then stood vigilant eyes on the ball that the referee balanced in her hands up it went the whistle sounded and the two captains sprang straight for it grace captured it however
+and sent it flying toward miriam who was so carefully guarded that she dared not attempt to make the basket and after a feint managed to throw it to nora who tried for the basket at long range and missed there was a general scramble for the ball and for five minutes neither team scored
+then marian barber dropped a neat field goal and soon after grace scored on a foul the junior fans howled joyfully at the good work of their team the seniors did not intend to allow them to score again in a hurry
+they played such a close guarding game that try as they might the juniors made no headway then julia crosby scored on a field goal making the score three to two this spurred the junior team on to greater effort and miriam made a brilliant throw to basket that brought forth an ovation from the gallery
+this ended the first half with the score five to two in favor of the juniors they'll have to work to catch up with us now said nora o'malley triumphantly to the members of the team who sat resting in the little side room off the gymnasium we have the lead but we can't afford to boast yet replied grace
+we shall win said miriam nesbit confidently i feel it in my bones let's hope that your bones are true prophets laughed marian barber o girls exclaimed eva allen from the open door in which she had been standing looking up at the gallery eleanor is here
+where asked nora going to the door oh yes i see her she looks as haughty as ever it's a wonder she'd condescend to come and watch her mortal enemies play
+then we'll see that she goes away in a gloomy frame of mind said nora for we're going to win and don't you forget to remember it
+then the seniors scored twice on fouls tying the score the juniors set their teeth and waded in with all their might and main setting a whirlwind pace that caused their fans to shout with wild enthusiasm and fairly dazed their opponents grace alone netted four foul goals
+and the sensational playing of nora and miriam was a matter of wonder to the spectators who conceded it to be the fastest most brilliant half ever played by an oakdale team
+whose loyal supporters swooped down upon them the moment the whistle blew and pranced about whooping like savages that was the greatest game i ever saw played under this roof cried david wringing grace's hand while hippy hopped about uttering little yelps of joy
+reddy circled about the victors almost too delighted for words he was filled with profound admiration for them the boys crack team couldn't have played a better game he said solemnly and the girls knew that he could pay them no higher compliment for this team was considered invincible by the high school boys
+perhaps we'll challenge you some day reddy said grace mischievously i believe you'd win at that he said so earnestly that every one laughed it was a great triumph said jessica proudly as she stood with mabel and anne in the locker room while the girls resumed street clothing and my new howl was a success too
+glad to know that said grace there were so many different kinds of noises i couldn't distinguish it there was one noise that started that was promptly hushed said anne you heard it too didn't you jessica oh yes girls i intended telling you before this replied jessica
+just before the last half started miss thompson and miss kane came in and walked to the other end of the gallery well eleanor and her crowd saw them
+hard to tell said nora they hissed miss thompson very softly you may be sure continued jessica but it was hissing just the same
+they were sitting down front on the same side as eleanor's crowd you know what a temper ruth deane has and how ferocious she can look
+she talked for a moment to edna and eleanor they tossed their heads but they didn't hiss any more what did ruth say to them asked grace curiously
+chapter seven parry
+and lending an ear to the various noises
+the stranger did not pay them the least attention
+whispered monsieur the diamond has been valued ah said the traveler well well monsieur the jeweler of s a r gives two hundred and eighty pistoles for it have you them i thought it best to take them monsieur
+nevertheless i made it a condition of the bargain that if monsieur wished to keep his diamond it should be held till monsieur was again in funds oh no not at all i told you to sell it
+pay yourself added the unknown i will do so monsieur since you so positively require it a sad smile passed over the lips of the gentleman place the money on that trunk said he turning round and pointing to the piece of furniture
+after having taken from it the amount of his reckoning
+dinner has already been refused
+the unknown asked for a glass of wine broke off a morsel of bread and did not stir from the window whilst he ate and drank
+cries arose in the distance a confused buzzing filled the lower part of the city and the first distinct sound that struck the ears of the stranger was the tramp of advancing horses
+with cropole were mingled and jostled on the staircase
+the cortege advanced slowly lighted by a thousand flambeaux in the streets and from the windows
+drawn like a carriage by four black horses
+her gentlemen on horseback at both sides the king then appeared mounted upon a splendid horse of saxon breed with a flowing mane
+the young prince exhibited when bowing to some windows from which issued the most animated acclamations a noble and handsome countenance illuminated by the flambeaux of his pages by the side of the king though a little in the rear
+and twenty other courtiers followed by their people and their baggage closed this veritably triumphant march the pomp was of a military character
+wore traveling dresses but all the rest were clothed in warlike panoply
+when the king passed before him the unknown who had leant forward over the balcony to obtain a better view and who had concealed his face by leaning on his arm felt his heart swell and overflow with a bitter jealousy the noise of the trumpets excited him
+the popular acclamations deafened him for a moment he allowed his reason to be absorbed in this flood of lights tumult and brilliant images he is a king murmured he in an accent of despair then before he had recovered from his sombre reverie
+all the noise all the splendor had passed away at the angle of the street there remained nothing beneath the stranger but a few hoarse discordant voices shouting at intervals vive le roi
+how good looking the king is how strongly he resembles his illustrious father a handsome likeness said pittrino
+cropole was feeding their gossip with his own personal remarks without observing that an old man on foot but leading a small irish horse by the bridle was endeavoring to penetrate the crowd of men and women which blocked up the entrance to the medici but at that moment the voice of the stranger was heard from the window
+make way monsieur l'hotelier to the entrance of your house
+the window was instantly closed pittrino pointed out the way to the newly arrived guest who entered without uttering a word the stranger waited for him on the landing he opened his arms to the old man and led him to a seat
+never parry cried the gentleman i beg you will you come from england you come so far ah it is not for your age to undergo the fatigues my service requires rest yourself i have my reply to give your lordship in the first place
+my lord said the old man do not hasten to alarm yourself all is not lost i hope you must employ energy but more particularly resignation parry said the young man i have reached this place through a thousand snares and after a thousand difficulties
+can you doubt my energy i have meditated this journey ten years in spite of all counsels and all obstacles have you faith in my perseverance
+i do not despair parry have you faith in my resignation the old man raised his trembling hands towards heaven let me know said the stranger disguise nothing from me what has happened my recital will be short my lord
+but in the name of heaven do not tremble so it is impatience parry come what did the general say to you at first the general would not receive me
+yes my lord but i wrote him a letter well he read it and received me my lord did that letter thoroughly explain my position and my views oh yes said parry with a sad smile it painted your very thoughts faithfully well then parry
+then the general sent me back the letter by an aide de camp informing me that if i were found the next day within the circumscription of his command he would have me arrested
+what arrest you my most faithful servant yes my lord and notwithstanding you had signed the name parry to all my letters my lord
+the young man leaned forward thoughtful and sad ay that's what he did before his people said he endeavoring to cheat himself with hopes but privately between you and him what did he do answer
+these cavaliers conducted me in great haste to the little port of tenby threw me rather than embarked me into a little fishing boat about to sail for brittany and here i am oh sighed the young man clasping his neck convulsively with his hand and with a sob
+parry is that all is that all yes my lord that is all after this brief reply ensued a long interval of silence broken only by the convulsive beating of the heel of the young man on the floor
+the old man endeavored to change the conversation it was leading to thoughts much too sinister
+what is the meaning of all the noise which preceded me what are these people crying vive le roi for what king do they mean
+ah parry replied the young man ironically
+all these trumpets are his all those gilded housings are his all those gentlemen wear swords that are his his mother precedes him in a carriage magnificently encrusted with silver and gold happy mother
+and conducts him to a rich bride then all these people rejoice they love their king
+well well my lord said parry more uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken than at the other you know resumed the unknown that my mother and my sister whilst all this is going on in honor of the king of france have neither money nor bread you know that i myself shall be poor and degraded within a fortnight
+parry are there not examples in which a man of my condition should himself my lord in the name of heaven
+no no i have two arms parry and i have a sword and he struck his arm violently with his hand and took down his sword which hung against the wall
+what am i going to do parry what every one in my family does my mother lives on public charity my sister begs for my mother i have somewhere or other brothers who equally beg for themselves and i the eldest will go and do as all the rest do i will go and ask charity
+and with these words which he finished sharply with a nervous and terrible laugh the young man girded on his sword took his hat from the trunk
+my good parry said he order a fire drink eat sleep and be happy let us both be happy my faithful friend my only friend we are rich as rich as kings
+chapter fifteen a would be lark
+the majority however appeared to be highly delighted over what they heard one group standing near one of the windows of which eleanor was the center laughed so loudly that they were sent to their seats
+and as the morning advanced they became fully aware that something unusual was in the wind several times they caught sight of a folded paper being stealthily passed from one desk to another but as to its contents they had no idea as it was not handed to any one of them
+at recess there was more grouping and whispering and grace was puzzled and not a little hurt over the way in which she and her friends were ignored such a thing had not happened since the basketball trouble the previous year
+eleanor started that paper whatever it is said nora o'malley to the phi sigma tau who stood in a group around her desk she was here when i came in this morning and i was early too it
+here comes mabel said jessica maybe she has seen the paper
+mabel nodded what was written on it mabel asked grace curiously mabel looked distressed for a moment then she said
+but i gave my word of honor before i read it that i wouldn't mention the contents to any one then of course we won't ask you said anne pierson quickly but tell us this much is it about any of us no replied mabel it isn't it is something i was asked to sign
+and did you sign it asked jessica i certainly did not responded mabel it was she stopped then flushed
+i can't bear to have secrets and not tell you
+we don't want you to tell if it doesn't concern us we don't care do we girls no indeed was the reply just then the bell sounded and the girls returned to their seats with the riddle still unsolved
+on wednesday aside from a little more whispering and significant glances exchanged among the pupils not a ripple disturbed the calm of the study hall it was therefore a distinct and not altogether pleasant surprise when miss thompson walked into the room
+dismissed the senior class and requested the three lower classes to remain in their seats after the seniors had quietly left the study hall miss thompson stood gravely regarding the rows of girls before her her eyes wandered toward where eleanor sat looking bored and indifferent
+and then she looked toward grace whose steady gray eyes were fixed on the principal's face with respectful attention i don't believe grace is guilty at any rate thought miss thompson then she addressed the assembled girls something has come to my ears girls said the principal
+that i find hard to credit but before you leave here this afternoon i must know who is innocent and who is guilty miss thompson paused and a number of girls stirred uneasily in their seats while a few glanced quickly toward eleanor who was looking straight ahead the picture of innocence
+that it is strictly forbidden for any pupil to absent herself from school for the purpose of attending a circus matinee or any public performance of this nature i have so severely disciplined pupils for this offence that for a long time no one has disobeyed me
+i was therefore astonished to learn that a number of girls regardless of rules have taken matters into their own hands and have decided to absent themselves from school to morrow in order to attend the matinee to be given in the theatre
+such a decision is worse than disobedience it is lawlessness
+the standard of the school will be lowered therefore i intend to sift this matter to the bottom and find out what mischievous influence prompted this act of insubordination report says that this movement originated in the junior class
+and that a paper has been circulated and signed by certain pupils who pledged themselves to play truant and attend the matinee to morrow the eyes of grace and her chums turned questioningly toward mabel allison who nodded slightly in the affirmative so that was what all the whispering and mystery had meant
+grace inwardly congratulated herself on having kept clear of the whole thing none of her friends were implicated either even mabel had refused to sign
+what i insist upon knowing now is who are the real culprits beginning with the girl who originated the paper to the last one who signed it
+her example was followed until two thirds of the girls present were standing the principal stood silently regarding them with an expression of severity that was decidedly discomfitting that will do she said curtly
+after they had stood for what seemed to them an age but was really only a couple of minutes you may be seated the girl who composed and wrote that agreement will now rise and explain herself without hesitating eleanor rose and regarded the principal with an insolent smile
+i wrote it miss thompson she said clearly i wrote it because i wished to
+because it has spoiled all our fun there was a gasp of horror at eleanor's assertion no one had ever before spoken so disrespectfully to their revered principal miss savell said the principal quietly although her flashing eyes and set lips showed that she was very angry
+if you have that paper in your possession bring it to me at once and never answer me again as you did just now you are both disrespectful and impertinent but miss thompson's anger toward eleanor was nothing compared with the tempest that the principal had aroused in eleanor
+the latter flushed then turned perfectly white with rage still standing she reached down
+words cannot express my contempt for them and right here i accuse grace harlowe and her sorority of getting the information from mabel allison yesterday and carrying it to you they are all tale bearers and sneaks
+with these words eleanor angrily flung the book she held on the desk and walked down the aisle toward the door but miss thompson barred her way stop miss savell she commanded
+i will not tolerate such behavior eleanor glared at the principal whose face was rigid in its purpose then sank into the nearest vacant seat saying defiantly you may keep me here all night if you like
+nevertheless she did not again attempt to leave the room she had met with a will stronger than her own and she realized it ignoring eleanor's final remark miss thompson once more turned her attention to the matter in hand
+those girls who are not in any way implicated in this matter are dismissed she said about one third of the girls arose and prepared to leave the study hall the phi sigma tau being among the number
+grace motioned the girls to hurry she wished to leave the room with her friends before miss thompson noticed them she knew the principal would insist on an apology from eleanor and neither she nor her friends wished it for the first time since eleanor had chosen to cut their acquaintance
+grace was thoroughly angry with her she could not forgive eleanor for having accused her and her friends of carrying tales before almost the entire school therefore a forced apology would not appease her wounded pride
+she drew a breath of relief when the eight girls were safely outside the study hall door hurry up she said we'll talk when we get outside school don't stop for a minute if miss thompson notices that we are gone she'll send after us
+the girls silently donned their wraps and fled from the building like fugitives from justice once on the street a lively confab ensued all talking at once let's take turns talking cried grace laughing we shall understand each other a little better
+she has certainly shown her true colors this time i never heard of anything more unjust than the way she accused us when we knew nothing about her old plan said marian barber it was abominable said eva allen the other girls expressed their disapproval in equally frank terms
+i suppose it did look as though i told you girls said mabel allison who had joined them at the gate you know i was with you at recess right after the paper had been passed to me
+it was passed to me by mistake very likely agreed grace i wonder who did tell miss thompson i saw several girls with the paper
+there will be weeping and wailing in the skull and crossbones crowd exclaimed nora they are all in this mix up and if they aren't suspended they'll be lucky
+no said grace shortly she deserves to be punished the things she said to miss thompson were disgraceful and i shall never forgive her for the way she spoke of us i wouldn't say that grace remarked anne you can never tell what may happen to change your views
+it will have to be something remarkable in this instance replied grace grimly as she bade the girls good bye remember girls basketball practice again to morrow and the rest of the week miss thompson has promised me the gymnasium please make it a point to be on hand
+good bye grace chorused her friends and went on down the street discussing the probable fate of the would be truants to return to those youthful transgressors they were spending a most uncomfortable half hour with miss thompson she was merciless in her denunciation of their conduct
+and the terror of suspension arose in more than one mind as they listened to her scathing remarks
+but there was nothing funny about it now when with the exception of eleanor the principal dismissed them they filed decorously out very uneasy in mind miss thompson had taken their names but had not stated their punishment and it was certain that they would be made to feel the full weight of her displeasure
+when the last girl had disappeared the principal turned to eleanor
+do you intend to obey me miss savell asked miss thompson still there was no answer very well continued miss thompson your silence indicates that you are still insubordinate you may therefore choose between two things
+you may apologize to me now and to morrow to the girls you have accused of treachery
+chapter nine count ferralti
+at dinner it was announced that the famous tarantella would be danced in the lower hall of the hotel at nine o'clock and the girls told uncle john that they must not miss this famous sight which is one of the most unique in sorrento or indeed in all italy
+as they entered the pretty circular hall devoted to the dance louise gave a start of surprise
+a goodly audience had already assembled in the room and among them the girl seemed to recognize an acquaintance for after a brief hesitation she advanced and placed her hand in that of a gentleman who had risen on her entrance and hastened toward her
+he was a nice looking young fellow beth thought and had a foreign and quite distinguished air presently louise turned with cheeks somewhat flushed and brought the gentleman to her party
+introducing him to uncle john and her cousins as count ferralti whom she had once met in new york while he was on a visit to america
+the count twirled his small and slender moustaches in a way that patsy thought affected and said in excellent english
+new york adopts a good many said uncle john drily it has even been thoughtless enough to adopt me the dancers entered at that moment and the americans were forced to seat themselves hastily so as not to obstruct the view of others
+count ferralti found a place beside louise but seemed to have little to say to her during the course of the entertainment the dances were unique and graceful being executed by a troup of laughing peasants dressed in native costume
+who seemed very proud of their accomplishment and anxious to please the throng of tourists present the tarantella originated in ischia but sorrento and capri have the best dancers
+afterward uncle john and his nieces stood upon the terrace and watched the volcano rolling its dense clouds mingled with sparks of red hot scoria toward the sky
+the count clung to louise's side but also tried to make himself agreeable to her cousins
+and beth replied that his manners were so like those of their cousin louise that the two ought to get along nicely together uncle john liked his nieces to make friends and encouraged young men generally to meet them
+but there was something in the appearance of this callow italian nobleman that stamped his character as artificial and insincere he resolved to find out something about his antecedents before he permitted the young fellow
+to establish friendly relations with his girls next morning after breakfast he wandered through the lobby and paused at the little office where he discovered that the proprietor of this hotel was a brother of that floriano who managed the hotel du vesuve
+that gave him an excuse to talk with the man who spoke very good english and was exceedingly courteous to his guests especially when they were american
+count ferralti the young man standing by the window yonder i i did not know he said hesitatingly the gentleman arrived last evening and i had not yet learned his name let me see
+he turned to his list of guests who register by card and not in a book and continued
+he has given his name as ferralti but added no title a count did you say yes replied uncle john the proprietor looked curiously toward the young man whose back only was visible
+then he remarked that the eruption of vesuvius was waning and the trouble nearly over for this time
+that i cannot tell you signor merrick oh perhaps you know little about the nobility of your country i i know little of the nobility answered floriano indignantly
+my dear signor there is no man better posted as to our nobility in all italy yet you say you don't know the ferralti family
+observe signor here is our record of nobility it is the same as the blue book or the peerage of england either fortunately or unfortunately i cannot say you have no need of such a book in america
+he turned the pages and ran his finger down the line of fs find me if you can a count ferralti in the list uncle john looked he put on his glasses and looked again
+and no such noble family signor merrick uncle john whistled softly and walked away to the window the young man greeted him with a smile and a bow i misunderstood your name last evening he said i thought you were count ferralti
+and that is right sir was the prompt reply allow me to offer you my card uncle john took the card and read conte leonardi ferralti milano italia
+he carefully placed the card in his pocket book thank you said he it's a fine morning count charming mister merrick uncle john walked away he was glad that he had not suspected the young man unjustly
+when an imposture is unmasked it is no longer dangerous he joined his nieces who were all busily engaged in writing letters home and remarked casually you've been deceived in your italian friend louise
+he is neither a count nor of noble family although i suppose when you met him in new york he had an object in posing as a titled aristocrat the girl paused examining the point of her pen thoughtfully
+has never before heard of him how singular exclaimed louise i wonder why he has tried to deceive us oh the world is full of impostors but when you are on to their game they are quite harmless
+uncle john hardly knew what to say further he felt he was in an awkward position for louise was the most experienced in worldly ways of his three nieces and he had no desire to pose as a stern guardian
+or to deprive his girls of any passing pleasure they might enjoy moreover louise being in love with that young weldon her mother so strongly objected to
+she would not be likely to care much for this italian fellow and missus merrick had enjoined him to keep her daughter's mind from dwelling on her entanglement oh well my dear he said to her you must act as you see fit
+i do not imagine we shall see much of this young man in any event and now that you are well aware of the fact that he is sailing under false colors you will know how to handle him better than i can advise you
+said louise slowly as she resumed her writing well then girls what do you say to a stroll around the village asked their uncle i'm told it's a proper place to buy silk stockings and inlaid wood work they come assorted i suppose
+i am not without a lurking suspicion i bemoaned my unlucky fate i could almost allege it as a supreme example
+i was extremely perplexed i will permit myself the liberty of saying i would fain believe
+impartial and exacting judgment impatience of despotic influence impelled by strong conviction
+imperiled in a restless age
+impromptu parades of noisy patriotism in a diversity of application in a fever of apprehension
+in a frenzy of fussy excitement in a frowning abstraction in a great and fruitful way in a high degree culpable
+in a kind of confused astonishment in a most commendable fashion in a most impressive vein in a position of undisputed supremacy
+in a tone of uneasy interrogation in a transport of ambitious vanity in a whirlwind of feeling and memory
+in accents embarrassed and hesitating in alliance with steady clearness of intellect in amazed ejaculation
+in an eminent and unique sense in an eminent degree in deference to a unanimous sentiment
+in extenuation of the past in high good humor
+in language terse yet familiar in moments of the most imminent peril in quite incredible confusion
+in seasons of difficulty and trial in spite of plausible arguments in terms of imperishable beauty
+in the dim procession of years in the highest conceivable degree in the local phrase in the nature of things
+in the ordinarily accepted sense in the realm of conjecture in the scheme of things in the tone of one who moralizes in the twinkling of an eye
+in the world of letters in tones of genuine admiration incapable of flashy make believe incited by a lust for gain
+incomparable lucidity and penetrativeness inconceivable clumsiness of organization indulge a train of gentle recollection
+indulging a sickly and nauseating petulance ineffably dreary and unpicturesque infected with a feverish dissatisfaction
+insatiably greedy of recognition insensibility to moral perspective and proportion insolent and riotous excess
+inspired by a vague malevolence inspirited by approval and applause
+instantly alive to the slightest breach of decorum insufferable violence to the feelings intense and stubborn dogmatism
+intense sensitiveness
+invincible jealousy and hate involuntary thrill of gratified vanity involved in profound uncertainty
+involving ourselves in embarrassments
+it assumes the shape of malignity it betrays a great want of prudence and discernment it defies description
+it dissipates every doubt and scruple it enslaves the imagination it extorted from him expressions of irritability
+it gives one a little grip at the throat it has been stigmatized as irrelevant it has more than passing interest
+it has seldom been surpassed it imposes no constraint it is a capital blunder it is a common error among ignorant people
+it is a consoling reflection it is a mark of great instability it is a staggering thought it is always something vicious
+it is an odd jealousy it is an intolerable idea it is impossible to resist acknowledging this
+it is little more than a platitude it is not consistent with elevated and dignified character it is not wholly insignificant
+it is notoriously easy to exaggerate it is the common consent of men it is unnecessary to multiply instances
+it makes life insupportable it must be a matter of conjecture it occasions suspicion and discontent
+it runs counter to all established customs it was a matter of notoriety it wears a ragged and dangerous front
+it would be superfluous to say it would not seem an improbable conclusion
+easy going
+enforced by coercive measures enormities of crime and anomalies of law entangled in theological controversy
+entirely futile and negligible
+and sophistries espoused with extraordinary ardor essentially one sided and incomplete eternally fruitful and stimulating
+evidently malicious and adroit evinces a hardened conscience and an insensibility to shame
+exact and resolute allegiance examples of terrific and explosive energy exasperating to the last degree
+excruciating cruelty and injustice exposed to damaging criticism exposing his arrogance and folly to merited contempt
+expressions of unrestrained grief exquisite lucidity of statement extraordinarily subtle and penetrating analysis
+fanatical and dangerous excesses far off and incredibly remote fastidious correctness of form
+fate had turned and twisted a thousand ways fed by many currents from the long stream of human experience
+feigning a virtuous indignation fertility of argumentative resource
+fictitious and adventitious aid finely touched to the fine issues fit to stand the gaze of millions
+fits and starts of generosity fixed convictions of mankind flouted as unpractical
+fresh and unsuspected loveliness from the standpoint of expediency and effectiveness full and tuneful diction
+full of ardent affection and gratitude full of presentiments of some evil full of singular freshness insight and power
+full of speculation and a deep restrained excitement
+generous to a pathetic and touching degree give vent to his indignation giving an ear to a little neighborly gossip
+glances and smiles of tacit contempt gnawing at the vitals of society grace and gentleness of manner
+graceful succession of sentences
+greeted with unalloyed satisfaction grooves of intellectual habit growing sense of bewilderment and dismay
+habitual self possession and self respect happy and gracious willingness hard souled and joyously joyous
+haunted by blank misgivings
+he had the habit of self engrossed silences
+he poured bitter and biting ridicule on his discomfited opponents he spoke with sledgehammer directness
+he suffers nothing to draw him aside he took his courage in both hands
+he turned on me a glance of stored intelligence he was disheveled and untidy
+he was inexhaustibly voluble
+her voice had a wooden resonance and a ghost of a lisp
+and undiscouraged hope high handed indifference to all restraint
+his first zeal was flagging his general attitude suggested an idea that he had an oration for you
+his gestures and his gait were untidy his mood was one of pure exaltation
+laid down in a most unflinching and vigorous fashion lamentable instances of extravagance lash themselves into fury
+lax theories and corresponding practises lay hold of the affections leaden mood of dulness
+lend a critical ear lest the requirements of courtesy be disregarded links in the chain of reasoning
+little less than scandalous lofty and distinguished simplicity long sighted continuity of thought and plan
+looking at the matter by and large
+lucidity and argumentative vigor
+by a jealous hate maintained with ingenuity and vigor manifestly harsh and barbarous marvelous copiousness of illustration
+marvelously suggestive and inspiring
+microscopic analysis of character mingled distrust and fear ministering to mere pleasure and indulgence
+minutely and rationally exposing their imperfections morbid and subjective brooding more or less severe and prolonged
+naturally prone to believe necessity thus imposed by prudence nerveless and faithless folly
+no more than brief palliatives or mitigations noble and sublime patience noisy torrent of talk
+not averse to a little gossip not so much polished as varnished noted for their quixotic love
+obsessed with an overweening pride obstacles that are difficult but not insuperable obviously at variance with facts
+often employed promiscuously ominous and swift days omitting all compliments and commonplaces
+on a noble and commanding scale on sure ground of fact on the edge of great irritability
+one of life's ironical adjustments one of the foreseen and inevitable results
+one tissue of rashness folly ingratitude and injustice
+oppressed by some vague dread organs of party rage and popular frenzy our opinions were diametrically opposed
+palpably and unmistakably commonplace parading an exception to prove a rule paralyzed by infirmity of purpose
+paralyzing doubts and scruples paramount obligation and righteousness partial and fragmentary evidence
+passionately addicted to pleasure patently inimical to liberty patience under continual provocation
+peculiarly liable to misinterpretation peddling and pitiful compromises pelting one another with catchwords
+perfectly illustrated and exemplified perpetually excite our curiosity pierced to the quick
+pitiful shifts of policy plainly dictated by a lofty purpose
+polished beauty of diction political storm and stress position of titular command
+predict the gloomiest consequences pregnant with a lesson of the deepest import presented with matchless vigor and courage
+princely generosity of praise prodigious and portentous events protracted to a vexatious length
+chapter thirteen a resurrected pirate
+that he had come back a comparative pauper surprised no one for this was a common thing to happen to a pirate but the wonder was that he got back at all he had no money but by the exercise of his crafty abilities
+he managed to get possession of a ship which he manned with a crew of about a score of impecunious dare devils who were very anxious to do something to mend their fortunes having now become very fond of land fighting
+he did not go out in search of ships but directed his vessel to a little village called de los cayos on the coast of cuba for here he thought was a chance for a good and easy stroke of business
+so that large ships could not approach very near and thus the villagers were kept busy carrying goods and supplies in small boats backwards and forwards from the town to the vessels at anchor
+here was a nice little prize that could not get away from him and l'olonnois had plenty of time to make his preparations to seize it as he could not sail a ship directly up to the town
+he cruised about the coast at some distance from de los cayos endeavoring to procure two small boats in which to approach the town but although his preparations were made as quietly as possible the presence of his vessel was discovered by some fishermen
+informing the governor of the island that the cruel pirate l'olonnois was in a ship a short distance from their village which he undoubtedly intended to attack when the governor heard this astonishing tale
+it was almost impossible for him to believe it the good news of the death of l'olonnois had come from campeachy to havana and the people of the latter town also rejoiced greatly to be now told that this scourge of the west indies was alive
+and was about to fall upon a peaceful little village on the island over which he ruled filled the governor with rage as well as amazement and he ordered a well armed ship with a large crew of fighting men to sail immediately for de los cayos
+by the time the war vessel had arrived at de los cayos l'olonnois had made his preparation to attack the place he had procured two large canoes and in these he had intended to row up to the town and land with his men
+but now there was a change in the state of affairs and he was obliged to alter his plans the ordinary person in command of two small boats who should suddenly discover that a village which he supposed almost defenceless was protected by a large man of war
+with cannon and a well armed crew would have altered his plans so completely that he would have left that part of the coast of cuba with all possible expedition but the pirates of that day seemed to pay very little attention to the element of odds
+if they met an enemy who was weak they would fall upon him and if they met with one who was a good deal stronger than themselves they would fall upon him all the same when the time came to fight they fought
+but no intention of giving up his project entered his mind as the spanish vessel was in his way he would attack her and get her out of his way if the thing could be done in this new state of affairs he was obliged to use stratagem
+and he also needed a larger force than he had with him and he therefore captured some men who were fishing along the coast and put them into his canoes to help work the oars then by night he proceeded slowly in the direction of the spanish vessel
+the man of war was anchored not very far from the town and when about two o'clock in the morning the watch on deck saw some canoes approaching they supposed them to be boats from shore
+for as has been said such vessels were continually plying about those shallow waters the canoes were hailed and after having given an account of themselves they were asked if they knew anything about the pirate ship upon the coast
+but their way was a very different one from any which could have been expected by the captain of the ship they rowed off into the darkness instead of going toward the town and waited until nearly daybreak then they boldly made for the man of war
+one canoe attacking her on one side and the other on the other before the spanish could comprehend what had happened there were more than twenty pirates upon their decks the dreaded l'olonnois at their head
+and they fought each scoundrel of them like three men and the savage fight ended by every spanish sailor or officer who was not killed or wounded being forced to stay below decks where the hatches were securely fastened down upon them
+l'olonnois now stood a proud victor on the deck of his prize and being a man of principle he determined to live up to the distinguished reputation which he had acquired in that part of the world
+baring his muscular and hairy right arm he clutched the handle of his sharp and heavy cutlass and ordered the prisoners to be brought up from below one at a time and conducted to the place where he stood
+he wished to give spain a lesson which would make her understand that he was not to be interfered with in the execution of his enterprises and he determined to allow himself the pleasure of personally teaching this lesson
+this man who was not a soldier was desperately frightened and begged piteously for his life l'olonnois finding that the man was willing to tell everything he knew questioned him about the sending of this vessel from havana
+and when the poor fellow had finished by telling that he had come there not of his own accord but simply for the purpose of obeying his master to hang all the pirates except their leader that great buccaneer laughed and finding he could get nothing more from the negro
+cut off his head likewise and his body was tumbled into the sea after those of his companions now there was not a spaniard left on board the great ship except one man
+who had been preserved from the fate of the others because l'olonnois had some correspondence to attend to and he needed a messenger to carry a letter the pirate captain went into the cabin where he found writing materials ready to his hand
+and there he composed a letter to the governor of havana a part of which read as follows i shall never henceforward give quarter unto any spaniard whatsoever
+when this message was received by the dignified official who filled the post of governor of cuba he stormed and fairly foamed at the mouth to be utterly foiled and discomfited by this resurrected pirate
+and to be afterwards addressed in terms of such unheard of insolence and abuse was more than he could bear and in the presence of many of his officials and attendants he swore a terrible oath that after that hour he would never again give quarter to any buccaneer
+but when the inhabitants of havana and the surrounding villages heard of this terrible resolution of their governor they were very much disturbed they lived in constant danger of attack especially those who were engaged in fishing or maritime pursuits
+and they feared that when it became known that no buccaneer was to receive quarter the spanish colonists would be treated in the same way no matter where they might be found and taken
+consequently it was represented to the governor that his plan of vengeance would work most disastrously for the spanish settlers for the buccaneers could do far more damage to them than he could possibly do to these dreadful brethren of the coast
+and that unless he wished to bring upon them troubles greater than those of famine or pestilence they begged that he would retract his oath when the high dignitary had cooled down a little he saw that there was a good deal of sense in what the representative of the people had said to him
+and he also discovered much to his surprise that there were very few provisions on board for when the vessel was sent from havana it was supposed she would make but a very short cruise
+a sputtering of musketry was always to be heard later the cannon had entered the dispute in the fog filled air their voices made a thudding sound the reverberations were continual
+this part of the world led a strange battleful existence the youth's regiment was marched to relieve a command that had lain long in some damp trenches the men took positions behind a curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up like a large furrow
+he could see the low line of trenches but for a short distance a few idle flags were perched on the dirt hills
+always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the front and left and the din on the right had grown to frightful proportions the guns were roaring without an instant's pause for breath
+it seemed that the cannon had come from all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle it became impossible to make a sentence heard the youth wished to launch a joke a quotation from newspapers he desired to say
+all quiet on the rappahannock but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar he never successfully concluded the sentence but at last the guns stopped and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew
+like birds but they were now for the most part black creatures who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope the men's faces grew doleful from the interpreting of omens
+stories of disaster were borne into their minds with many proofs this din of musketry on the right growing like a released genie of sound expressed and emphasized the army's plight the men were disheartened and began to mutter
+and it could always be seen that they were bewildered by the alleged news and could not fully comprehend a defeat before the gray mists had been totally obliterated by the sun rays the regiment was marching in a spread column that was retiring carefully through the woods
+the disordered hurrying lines of the enemy could sometimes be seen down through the groves and little fields they were yelling shrill and exultant at this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and became greatly enraged he exploded in loud sentences
+observed a man his friend recently aroused was still very drowsy he looked behind him until his mind took in the meaning of the movement then he sighed oh well i s'pose we got licked
+he remarked sadly the youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for him to freely condemn other men he made an attempt to restrain himself but the words upon his tongue were too bitter
+he presently began a long and intricate denunciation of the commander of the forces mebbe it wa'n't all his fault not all together
+it's our luck t git licked often said his friend in a weary tone he was trudging along with stooped shoulders and shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and kicked well don't we fight like the devil
+don't we do all that men can demanded the youth loudly he was secretly dumfounded at this sentiment when it came from his lips for a moment his face lost its valor and he looked guiltily about him
+but no one questioned his right to deal in such words and presently he recovered his air of courage he went on to repeat a statement he had heard going from group to group at the camp that morning the brigadier said he never saw a new reg'ment fight the way we fought yestirday didn't he
+in his reply the friend's voice was stern a course not he said
+but still still we don't have no luck well then if we fight like the devil an don't ever whip it must be the general's fault said the youth grandly and decisively
+and i don't see any sense in fighting and fighting and fighting yet always losing through some derned old lunkhead of a general
+the speech pierced the youth inwardly he was reduced to an abject pulp by these chance words his legs quaked privately he cast a frightened glance at the sarcastic man why no he hastened to say in a conciliating voice
+i don't think i fought the whole battle yesterday but the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning apparently he had no information it was merely his habit oh he replied in the same tone of calm derision
+the youth nevertheless felt a threat his mind shrank from going near to the danger and thereafter he was silent the significance of the sarcastic man's words took from him all loud moods that would make him appear prominent
+he became suddenly a modest person there was low toned talk among the troops the officers were impatient and snappy their countenances clouded with the tales of misfortune
+the troops sifting through the forest were sullen in the youth's company once a man's laugh rang out a dozen soldiers turned their faces quickly toward him and frowned with vague displeasure
+the noise of firing dogged their footsteps sometimes it seemed to be driven a little way but it always returned again with increased insolence the men muttered and cursed throwing black looks in its direction
+in a clear space the troops were at last halted regiments and brigades broken and detached through their encounters with thickets grew together again and lines were faced toward the pursuing bark of the enemy's infantry
+increased to a loud and joyous burst and then as the sun went serenely up the sky throwing illuminating rays into the gloomy thickets it broke forth into prolonged pealings the woods began to crackle as if afire
+said a man here we are everybody fightin blood an destruction
+who were lying down behind whatever protection they had collected a battery had trundled into position in the rear and was thoughtfully shelling the distance the regiment unmolested as yet
+awaited the moment when the gray shadows of the woods before them should be slashed by the lines of flame there was much growling and swearing good gawd the youth grumbled we're always being chased around like rats it makes me sick
+nobody seems to know where we go or why we go we just get fired around from pillar to post and get licked here and get licked there and nobody knows what it's done for it makes a man feel like a damn kitten in a bag
+now i'd like to know what the eternal thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow unless it was to give the rebs a regular pot shot at us we came in here and got our legs all tangled up in these cussed briers
+and then we begin to fight and the rebs had an easy time of it don't tell me it's just luck i know better it's this derned old the friend seemed jaded but he interrupted his comrade with a voice of calm confidence
+oh the devil it will you always talk like a dog hanged parson don't tell me i know
+at this time there was an interposition by the savage minded lieutenant who was obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction upon his men you boys shut right up
+you've been jawin like a lot a old hens
+less talkin an more fightin is what's best for you boys i never saw sech gabbling jackasses he paused ready to pounce upon any man who might have the temerity to reply
+the day had grown more white until the sun shed his full radiance upon the thronged forest a sort of a gust of battle came sweeping toward that part of the line where lay the youth's regiment the front shifted a trifle to meet it squarely
+there was a wait in this part of the field there passed slowly the intense moments that precede the tempest a single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment in an instant it was joined by many others
+there was a mighty song of clashes and crashes that went sweeping through the woods the guns in the rear aroused and enraged by shells that had been thrown burr like at them suddenly involved themselves in a hideous altercation with another band of guns
+the battle roar settled to a rolling thunder which was a single long explosion in the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted in the attitudes of the men
+they were worn exhausted having slept but little and labored much
+when the little fleet of spanish vessels including the one which had been captured by bartholemy portuguez and his men were on their way to campeachy they met with very stormy weather so that they were separated and the ship which contained bartholemy and his companions arrived first at the port for which they were bound
+the captain who had bartholemy and the others in charge did not know what an important capture he had made he supposed that these pirates were ordinary buccaneers and it appears that it was his intention to keep them as his own private prisoners
+for as they were all very able bodied men they would be extremely useful on a ship but when his vessel was safely moored and it became known in the town that he had a company of pirates on board
+and who had heard of his various exploits he therefore went to the captain of the vessel and informed him that he had on board one of the very worst pirates in the whole world whose wicked deeds were well known in various parts of the west indies
+and who ought immediately to be delivered up to the civil authorities this proposal however met with no favor from the spanish captain who had found bartholemy a very quiet man and could see that he was a very strong one
+and he did not at all desire to give up such a valuable addition to his crew but the merchant grew very angry for he knew that bartholemy had inflicted great injury on spanish commerce and as the captain would not listen to him he went to the governor of the town and reported the case
+when this dignitary heard the story he immediately sent a party of officers to the ship and commanded the captain to deliver the pirate leader into their charge the other men were left where they were
+but he did not lose heart and immediately set to work to free himself from his irons which were probably very clumsy affairs at last caring little how much he scratched and tore his skin
+he succeeded in getting rid of his fetters and could move about as freely as a tiger in a cage to get out of this cage was bartholemy's first object it would be comparatively easy because in the course of time some one would come into the hold
+and the athletic buccaneer thought that he could easily get the better of whoever might open the hatch but the next act in this truly melodramatic performance would be a great deal more difficult for in order to escape from the ship it would be absolutely necessary for bartholemy to swim to shore
+and he did not know how to swim which seems a strange failing in a hardy sailor with so many other nautical accomplishments in the rough hold where he was shut up our pirate peering about anxious and earnest
+he was satisfied that this unwieldy contrivance would support him in the water among other things he had found in his rummagings about the hold was an old knife and with this in his hand he now sat waiting for a good opportunity to attack his sentinel
+this came soon after nightfall a man descended with a lantern to see that the prisoner was still secure let us hope that it was not the soldier who had kindly informed him of his fate and as soon as he was fairly in the hold bartholemy sprang upon him
+there was a fierce struggle but the pirate was quick and powerful and the sentinel was soon dead then carrying his two jars bartholemy climbed swiftly and noiselessly up the short ladder
+for a moment he sank below the surface but the two air tight jars quickly rose and bore him up with them there was a bustle on board the ship there was some random firing of muskets in the direction of the splashing which the watch had heard
+but none of the balls struck the pirate or his jars and he soon floated out of sight and hearing kicking out with his legs and paddling as well as he could with one hand while he held on to the jars with the other he at last managed to reach the land
+and ran as fast as he could into the dark woods beyond the town bartholemy was now greatly in fear that when his escape was discovered he would be tracked by bloodhounds
+which was what he wished to do if the hounds should get upon his trail he was a lost man the desperate pirate therefore determined to give the bloodhounds no chance to follow him and for three days he remained in a marshy forest in the dark recesses of which he could hide
+and where the water which covered the ground prevented the dogs from following his scent he had nothing to eat except a few roots of water plants but he was accustomed to privation and these kept him alive often he heard the hounds baying on the dry land adjoining the marsh
+and sometimes he saw at night distant torches which he was sure were carried by men who were hunting for him but at last the pursuit seemed to be given up and hearing no more dogs and seeing no more flickering lights bartholemy left the marsh and set out on his long journey down the coast
+which was forty leagues away but where he had reason to suppose he would find some friends when he came out from among the trees he mounted a small hill and looked back upon the town the public square was lighted and there in the middle of it he saw the gallows which had been erected for his execution
+and this sight doubtless animated him very much during the first part of his journey the terrible trials and hardships which bartholemy experienced during his tramp along the coast were such as could have been endured only by one of the strongest and toughest of men
+but after a diet of roots shellfish must have been a very agreeable change and they gave him all the strength and vigor he needed very often he found streams and inlets which he was obliged to ford
+when he had made for himself what seemed to be a free passage he would dash in and hurry across at other times great forests stretched down to the very coast and through these he was obliged to make his way
+although he could hear the roars and screams of wild beasts all about him any one who is afraid to go down into a dark cellar to get some apples from a barrel at the foot of the stairs can have no idea of the sort of mind possessed by bartholemy portuguez
+the animals might howl around him and glare at him with their shining eyes and the alligators might lash the water into foam with their great tails
+this was a wide river flowing through the inland country into the sea he made his way up the shore of this river for a considerable distance but it grew but little narrower and he could see no chance of getting across he could not swim
+and he had no wine jars now with which to buoy himself up
+but a man in his situation would not be likely to give up readily
+now a piece of good fortune happened to him although to an ordinary traveller it might have been considered a matter of no importance whatever on the edge of the shore where it had floated down from some region higher up the river
+bartholemy perceived an old board in which there were some long and heavy rusty nails greatly encouraged by this discovery the indefatigable traveller set about a work which resembled that of the old woman who wanted a needle
+and who began to rub a crow bar on a stone in order to reduce it to the proper size bartholemy carefully knocked all the nails out of the board and then finding a large flat stone he rubbed down one of them until he had formed it into the shape of a rude knife blade
+which he made as sharp as he could then with these tools he undertook the construction of a raft working away like a beaver and using the sharpened nails instead of his teeth
+he cut down a number of small trees and when he had enough of these slender trunks he bound them together with reeds and osiers which he found on the river bank so after infinite labor and trial he constructed a raft which would bear him on the surface of the water
+gathering up his legs so as to keep out of reach of the alligators and with a long pole pushed himself off from shore sometimes paddling and sometimes pushing his pole against the bottom he at last got across the river and took up his journey upon dry land
+even if he could not walk no athlete of the present day no matter if he should be a most accomplished circus man could reasonably expect to perform the feat which this bold pirate successfully accomplished for five or six leagues he went through that mangrove forest
+never once setting his foot upon the ground by which is meant mud water and roots but swinging himself by his hands and arms from branch to branch as if he had been a great ape only resting occasionally drawing himself upon a stout limb where he might sit for a while and get his breath
+by mac a'rony you do ill to teach the child such words he teaches him to kick and to hack which they'll do fast enough of themselves and to call horum fye upon you
+merry wives of windsor frequently since crossing the mississippi pod had received letters from proud parents informing him that they had named their latest boy after him
+at that time in cripple creek several boys ranging from a day to six weeks old whose destinies were thought to be promising were afflicted with my master's ponderous name
+a little green eyed irish girl five days old was named pythagorina podina mulgarry
+the happy father called personally on pod and asked him to act as godfather at the baptismal service sunday afternoon the impressive ceremony took place at the cabin of miss pythagorina
+as the aged grandmother wished to witness it pod said he was somewhat embarrassed about attending since he had forgotten almost all his latin
+but he arranged with one of the pall bearers to give him nudges and kicks when it was expected of him to make a response and so he got through fairly well better than the kid did he said the babe was an unruly child
+and kicked so frantically when the priest took her in his arms that two flatirons were tied to its feet to keep them down it was simply nervousness because the high altitude affected the child's nerves
+there was great excitement and surprise because the flatirons didn't float and the undertaker or what you call em overturned the barrel of water and set everybody afloat drenching the sponsors and guests
+pod said the scene was without a parallel he was soaked to his equator the half christened half drowned pythagorina podina was picked up from the flood with a tablespoon and the ceremony finished
+then she was rolled on the barrel to get all the water out of her and put to bed with hot flatirons at her feet to prevent croup and mumps then the wake broke up i don't believe the child understood a word that the priest said
+pod didn't that night he got up a fine supper and invited some old friends he bought a big porterhouse steak thick and tender and personally broiled it on his patent folding stove
+just when everything was on the table and the guests were finding stones and tin plates to sit on don not having had a thing to eat for an hour coolly pulled the hot steak off the platter and dropped it on the ground
+pod didn't say anything though but just forked it on to the platter and scraped off some dry grass and a sliver and a bug and carved it up
+the ladies looked at the dog and then at pod not knowing which to thank then feeling sensitive about accepting the best part of the steak insisted upon pod's having one of their pieces and coonskin the other
+after supper don feasted on the tougher parts of the steak and we donks were fed the scraps of potatoes and bread and tin tomato and peach cans when the banquet was over the guests went home
+about six o'clock we went into camp on the margin of a famous petrified forest pod objected at first because of the scarcity of fire wood
+lots of petrified wood chips lying around i remarked and they'll last ordinary wood burns up too fast bright idea exclaimed pod and coonskin went to work gathering petrified wood for the supper fire
+the only trouble will be in starting the fire said pod just as soon as it's once going it ought to burn smoothly enough
+coonskin's opinion didn't benefit pod much his hard wood fire wasn't very satisfactory but with some dry brush the men got the meal under way next morning we visited the noted petrified stump
+measuring upwards of forty five feet in circumference several saws were imbedded in it for many futile attempts had been made to take off some slices for the denver exposition
+it has been estimated by various ornithologists botanists and entomologists that the stump is millions of years old i think they were guessing at it for i couldn't see the rings
+several times i had a suspicion that we had been misdirected when we came to the end of a narrow wood road i was sure of it
+best to go through the woods said the valet so we were headed for the timber our tramp through the forest i cannot soon forget up and down the rocky heights through thickets of quaking asp and pine
+and realized we were lost coonskin said he was an experienced woodman and would blaze the trees so we would get out again wonderful the amount of learning he had gleaned from dime novels
+he lagged behind to do the blazing and pretty soon i smelt smoke the professor snuffed smells as if the woods were on fire somewhere hinted pod look behind you they are i exclaimed
+and pod caught that erudite valet back woodsman in the act of setting a tree on fire with oil and matches fortunately for us the wind wasn't blowing strong
+but we had to change our course some and hustle faster for the blazing trail chased us coonskin learned a new lesson and turned down the corner of the page so he'd recollect it
+a board sign informed us it was simply turkey creek i couldn't see any turkeys but there was good pasturage around the hot trip through the timber made us all hungry
+it was three o'clock when we donks were picketed and allowed to graze then coonskin went fishing he said he had seen some trout in the stream by supper time he had caught a nice mess
+pod said he would fry the fish and went at it so enthusiastically that he forgot to put the bag of corn meal back in its place after the meal was over he began to look around for the bag it was nowhere to be found
+i had eaten the corn meal and bag it was comical how those two men puzzled their brains about that missing commodity when coonskin detected some meal stamped in the ground pod pointed at me and said
+that's the thief there next morning coonskin was the first to return from fishing and looked much excited when pod returned he told him he had seen huge bear tracks he was going bear hunting pod laughed at him
+that was my experience in the woods of wisconsin the men at the saw mill said we should see bear in this forest
+its skin would fetch fifty dollars or more let's look for bear what would you do if you saw a bear pod asked well now leave that to me said coonskin
+in the first place it would be worth a hairbreadth escape to see one wild i've only seen bears in circuses or traveling chained to italians in the second place i can run i've plenty of medals for sprinting
+pod went fishing that afternoon with a gun and took the whole arsenal along with him including the axe somewhere about five o'clock pod came into camp with a good mess of trout after cleaning the fish he took off his guns
+and laid down on the grass and wondered if that crazy valet had run across any more bear tracks he wasn't there long when suddenly i heard yells issuing from the canyon down stream round the bend
+the shouting sounded nearer every second and i soon distinguished coonskin's voice pod got up from the ground excitedly coonskin's in trouble plain enough said pod aloud to himself i must run to his aid
+so he started on a trot down stream to the bend and then quickly turned falling all over himself and ran toward the cabins faster than i ever saw him run before or since
+and immediately coonskin came flying into view with the biggest bear at his heels i ever want to see
+their sharp cur like barks used often to rouse us and of a dark evening we would hear them out in the fields mousing around the stone heaps making a queer squeaking sound like a mouse
+to call the real mice out of their grass nests inside the stone heaps this indeed is a favorite trick of reynard at the time of my story my friend tom edwards ten years of age
+and myself were in the turkey business equal partners we owned a flock of thirty one turkeys these roosted by night in a large butternut tree in front of tom's house in the very top of it
+and by day they wandered about the edges of the clearings in quest of beech nuts which were very plentiful that fall all went well till the last week in october when on taking the census one morning a turkey was found to be missing
+the thirty one had become thirty since nightfall the previous evening it was the first one we had lost we proceeded to look for traces our suspicions were divided
+tom thought it was the twombly boys nefarious sam in particular i thought it might have been an owl but under the tree in the soft dirt where the potatoes had recently been dug we found fox tracks
+and two or three ominous little wads of feathers with one long tail feather adrift thereupon we concluded that the turkey had accidentally fallen down out of the butternut had a fit perhaps
+and a casualty such as turkey raisers are unavoidably heirs to and we bore our loss with resignation we were glad to remember that turkeys did not often fall off their roosts
+this theory received something of a check when our flock counted only twenty nine the next morning there were more fox tracks and a great many more feathers under the tree this put a new and altogether ugly aspect on the matter
+no algebra was needed to figure the outcome of the turkey business at this rate together with our prospective profits in the light of this new fact it was clear that something must be done and at once too
+or ruin would swallow up the poultry firm rightly or wrongly we attributed the mischief to a certain silver gray that had several times been seen in the neighborhood that autumn
+it would take far too much space to relate in detail the plans we laid and put in execution to catch that fox during the next two weeks i recollect that we set three traps for him to no purpose
+had succeeded in getting two more of the turkeys heroes it is said are born of great crises this dilemma of ours developed tom's genius i'll have that fox he said when the traps failed
+each a wad of fine dry grass as large as a quart box these were gathered up and filled the great basket there said he triumphantly don't them smell mousey they did certainly
+they savored as strongly of mice as tom's question of bad grammar and don't foxes catch mice demanded tom confidently yes but i don't see how that's going to catch the fox i said
+well look here then i'll show ye said he
+and you was prowling around the fields go off now out there by that stump full of wonder and curiosity i retired to the stump tom meantime turned out the mass of nests
+and with it completely covered himself the pile now resembled an enormous mouse nest or rather a small hay cock
+inside the nest evidently there were mice in it and feeling my character as fox at stake i at once trotted forward then crept up and as the rustling and squeaking continued made a pounce into the grass
+as i had heard it said that foxes did when mousing instantly two spry brown hands from out the nest clutched me with a most vengeful grip as a fox i struggled tremendously
+then in dumb show knocked my head with a stone d'ye see now he demanded i saw but a fox would bite you i objected let him bite said tom
+with the dusk we stole out into the field where the stone heaps were and where we had oftenest heard foxes bark selecting a nook in the edge of a clump of raspberry briars which grew about a great pine stump
+tom lay down and i covered him up completely with the contents of the big basket he then practiced squeaking and rustling several times to be sure that all was in good trim his squeaks were perfect successes
+made by sucking the air sharply betwixt his teeth now be off said tom and don't come poking around nor get in sight till you hear me holler
+and being amidst nice cozy straw i presently went to sleep quite unintentionally i must have slept some time though it seemed to me but a very few minutes what woke me was a noise a sharp suppressed yelp
+it took me a moment to understand where i was and why i was there a sound of scuffling and tumbling on the ground at some distance assisted my wandering wits and i rushed out of the barn and ran toward the field
+as i ran two or three dull whacks came to my ear got him tom i shouted rushing up tom was holding and squeezing one of his hands with the other and shaking it violently
+he said not a word and left me to poke about and stumble on the limp warm carcass of a large fox that lay near bite ye i exclaimed after satisfying myself that the fox was dead some said tom
+and that was all i could get from him that night we took the fox to the house and lighted a candle it was the silver gray tom washed his bite in cold water and went to bed
+his left hand was bitten through the palm and badly swollen there was also a deep bite in the fleshy part of his right arm just below the elbow several minor nips in his left leg above the knee and a ragged grab
+these numerous bites however were followed by no serious ill effects the next day tom told me that the fox had suddenly plunged into the grass that he had caught hold of one of its hind legs
+i just determined to have it out with him considering the fact that a fox is a very active sharp biting animal and that this was an unusually large male i have always thought tom got off very well
+i do not think that he ever cared to make a fox trap of himself again however we sold the fox skin in the village and received thirteen dollars for it whereas a common red fox skin is worth no more than three dollars
+how or by what wiles that fox got the turkeys out of the high butternut is a secret
+much pomp and several circumstances from willoughby we went to cleveland my route through the beautiful city lay along one of the finest residence streets in america the famous euclid avenue
+from there we marched to superior street where cheers greeted us on every hand the papers had heralded my advent and as in the other towns and cities
+the newspaper artists had taxed their imaginations to picture pod and mac
+and when i rode out on to the stage the house shook with laughter and cheers i made a short address and announced that i would sell photos of mac a'rony and his master at the door
+that theatre put me way ahead financially thursday morning i called on the mayor mark hanna and senator garfield and added the autographs of all three to my album
+mister garfield invited me to attend the weekly dinner and reception of the beer and skittles club that evening i went and enjoyed myself
+only making thirteen miles
+a mile beyond two men reminded me it was a very wintry day then a woman drove past and tossed me the comforting reminder don't you find it awfully cold i did not reply to the last two
+twenty minutes later a boy from a cozy home yelled to me i had passed to some distance and did not understand it sounded like
+i hesitated a moment in the biting wind then retraced my steps and called to the lad what's that you said
+yelled the scamp i was mad enough to unload my winchester but i didn't
+rubbed my ears and continued my journey like an ice covered volcano a mile beyond a wagon with a family in it passed me and the man said cold my friend at dusk a farmer inquired
+i shouted several times before the rig stopped a fur clad head stuck out to one side and a male voice called
+i ambled up put a foot on the hub of a wheel and said i simply want to say it's a cold day you as soon as he had finished i said by way of civil explanation
+my dear sir do you know a hundred people have stopped me to day and told me it is cold i have tramped nearly twenty miles without stopping to warm or eat
+and i resolved to let the next fellow have the same dose i have been taking half hourly all day now if you are satisfied that it is a cold day i will bid you good night
+with this i returned to my companions somewhat warmer physically but cooler in spirit the hotel in cuyahoga falls received us most hospitably
+i never shall forget the kindnesses of its landlady the village dates back to pioneer days it is built on the hunting grounds of the old cuyahoga indians monday march first at twelve thirty p m
+waving hats and arms and calling to me to be their guest i was puzzled to know which invitation to accept while deliberating one of the landlords approached and taking my arm led me to his comfortable hostelry
+where he royally entertained me and my animals the pageant that celebrated the departure of william mc kinley to the seat of government was a fair estimate of the regard in which his fellow citizens held him
+canton did him honor i witnessed the leave taking at his house his ride to the train in the coach drawn by four greys under escort of a band
+and heard him deliver his farewell address from the rear platform of his private car i spent wednesday night in massillon and next morning returned to canton to take some interior photographs of mc kinley's home
+i was successful beyond my hopes and expectations securing fine pictures of his study and parlor the president's inauguration at washington called forth a deafening demonstration
+cannon boomed steam whistles shrieked and the citizens shouted and hurrahed and i was glad mac was not with me to add his salute
+i saw a meadow lark on the first of march this day i heard blue birds and robins singing gaily it looked as though spring had come to stay i expected that day to reach dalton only eight miles distant
+that once i was compelled to crawl along the top of a rail fence two hundred feet and more and drag my jackass at dusk i had covered only three miles then i sought lodgings
+a store loomed into view shortly i was elated according to the sign over the entrance the younger generation was the ruling power it read hezekiah brimley and father
+i made for hez he said the town hadn't reached the hotel stage of development yet but that he would gladly take me in provided i'd sleep with his clerk in the garret
+i found the store full of loungers who patronized the chairs soap and starch boxes mackerel kits and counter forming a silent circle round a towering stove in the center
+the village treasurer wore a boiled shirt and brass collar buttons but no collar or coat his companions were generally attired in flannel shirts of different hues and patterns
+and felt boots encased in heavy overshoes these rural men eyed me with suspicion until i mentioned mac a'rony then there was a rush to the door as it swung open in leaped my great dog
+came several queries in a bunch no i said he has killed a bull chewed up a ram made thanks giving mince meat of several dogs chased a pig up a tree
+and only this morning ate two chickens and a duck and chased a farmer into his hay loft but he doesn't bite my statement had a sensational effect on the assembly who one by one sneaked out of the door
+leaving hez and his odd guest alone as soon as the junior member hez's father came in hez took my animals to the shed and fed them and told me to help myself to the best in the store
+a pint of corned oysters light weight some crackers and leaf lard to take the place of butter and a cake of bitter chocolate i left a few things unmolested such as soap
+to be good chocolate must be well dissolved no pot was to be had save a flower pot with a hole in the bottom a great idea popped into my head
+did you ever try it if not don't let your curiosity get the better of you chocolate belongs to the bean family and the bean is a very treacherous thing
+chocolate bean castor oil bean pork bean and all kinds i first ate the cake of chocolate then some sugar and drank two dippersful of hot water then shook myself
+that mixture might suit my stomach i thought but it doesn't delight my palate i felt i had eaten a heavy meal unwittingly and sat down to digest it i hadn't sat long before i felt myself swelling
+something within was sizzling and brewing and steaming gas and steam choked me i was sure there was going to be a demonstration in my honor that i had not bargained for the yeast cake came to mind then i knew the cause
+after which i excused myself to the clerk and went to bed and dreamed i was being cremated alive
+chapter four minus five plus one
+still great as was this omnipotence a murmur arose
+he resumed haughtily let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so the murmurs redoubled
+you would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs
+entered the tap room they emerged thence a moment later
+come said he you must have a little pity do you know what the question is here it is a question of women see here are there women or are there not are there children or are there not
+ah you want to get yourselves killed so do i i who am speaking to you
+die if you will but don't make others die suicides like that which is on the brink of accomplishment here are sublime but suicide is narrow and does not admit of extension
+and as soon as it touches your neighbors suicide is murder think of the little blond heads think of the white locks
+on the fifth floor and on the pane the quivering shadow of the head of an old woman who had the air of having spent the night in watching perhaps she is the mother of some one of you
+let him feel at ease the task here will be performed all the same when one supports one's relatives by one's toil one has not the right to sacrifice one's self
+that is deserting one's family and those who have daughters what are you thinking of you get yourselves killed you are dead that is well and tomorrow young girls without bread that is a terrible thing
+who sing and prattle who are like a living perfume who prove the existence of angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth
+those adorable and honest creatures who are your blessings and your pride ah good god they will suffer hunger what do you want me to say to you
+think of the shops past which women go and come with necks all bare and through the mire these women too were pure once think of your sisters those of you who have them
+you are no longer on hand that is well you have wished to release the people from royalty and you deliver over your daughters to the police friends have a care have mercy
+we prevent their occupying themselves with politics will you prevent them from going to the dead house this evening and recognizing your bodies let us see those who have families must be tractable
+and shake hands with us and take themselves off and leave us here alone to attend to this affair i know well that courage is required to leave that it is hard but the harder it is the more meritorious
+you say i have a gun i am at the barricade so much the worse i shall remain there so much the worse is easily said my friends there is a morrow you will not be here to morrow
+but your families will and what sufferings see here is a pretty healthy child with cheeks like an apple who babbles prattles chatters who laughs who smells sweet beneath your kiss
+and do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned i have seen one a very small creature no taller than that his father was dead poor people had taken him in out of charity
+and whose pipe you know was of mastic and yellow clay his breathing was hoarse his face livid his limbs flaccid his belly prominent he said nothing if you spoke to him he did not answer
+he is dead he was taken to the necker hospital where i saw him i was house surgeon in that hospital
+that poor brat i remember and i seem to see him now when he lay nude on the dissecting table how his ribs stood out on his skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery
+statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty five per cent i repeat it is a question of women it concerns mothers it concerns young girls it concerns little children
+but you are not alone in this world there are other beings of whom you must think you must not be egoists all dropped their heads with a gloomy air
+strange contradictions of the human heart at its most sublime moments combeferre who spoke thus was not an orphan he recalled the mothers of other men and forgot his own
+he was about to get himself killed he was an egoist marius fasting fevered having emerged in succession from all hope and having been stranded in grief the most sombre of shipwrecks
+and classified by science and which is to suffering what voluptuousness is to pleasure despair also has its ecstasy marius had reached this point
+he beheld men going and coming as through a flame he heard voices speaking as at the bottom of an abyss but this moved him there was in this scene a point which pierced and roused even him
+he had but one idea now to die and he did not wish to be turned aside from it but he reflected in his gloomy somnambulism that while destroying himself
+it is your duty rather retorted the man you have two sisters whom you maintain and an unprecedented controversy broke forth
+this is the republic and universal suffrage reigns do you yourselves designate those who are to go they obeyed after the expiration of a few minutes five were unanimously selected
+and stepped out of the ranks there are five of them exclaimed marius there were only four uniforms well began the five one must stay behind
+and then a struggle arose as to who should remain and who should find reasons for the others not remaining the generous quarrel began afresh you have a wife who loves you
+do you designate who is to remain yes said the five choose we will obey you marius did not believe that he was capable of another emotion
+which one beholds in the depths of history hovering over thermopylae
+and marius stupidly counted them there were still five of them then his glance dropped to the four uniforms at that moment a fifth uniform fell as if from heaven upon the other four
+the fifth man was saved
+thanks to his dress of a national guardsman he had made his way without difficulty the sentinel stationed by the insurgents in the rue mondetour had no occasion to give the alarm for a single national guardsman
+and he had silently removed his coat and flung it on the pile with the rest the emotion aroused was indescribable
+the plenitude of the revolution he was incomplete however so far as the absolute can be so he had too much of saint just about him and not enough of anacharsis cloots
+still his mind in the society of the friends of the a b c had ended by undergoing a certain polarization from combeferre's ideas for some time past he had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogma
+and had allowed himself to incline to the broadening influence of progress and he had come to accept as a definitive and magnificent evolution
+a sort of stifled fire darted from his eyes which were filled with an inward look all at once he threw back his head his blond locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars
+they were like the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo
+old men blessing children the past loving the present thinkers entirely at liberty believers on terms of full equality for religion heaven god the direct priest
+human conscience become an altar no more hatreds the fraternity of the workshop and the school for sole penalty and recompense fame work for all right for all
+peace over all no more bloodshed no more wars happy mothers to conquer matter is the first step to realize the ideal is the second reflect on what progress has already accomplished
+and the talons of a tiger fearful beasts which were above man man nevertheless spread his snares consecrated by intelligence and finally conquered these monsters
+on the day when this promethean task shall be accomplished and when man shall have definitely harnessed to his will the triple chimaera of antiquity the hydra the dragon and the griffin
+courage and onward citizens whither are we going to science made government to the force of things become the sole public force
+we are advancing to the unity of man no more fictions no more parasites the real governed by the true that is the goal civilization will hold its assizes at the summit of europe
+europe will have her amphictyons the globe will have its amphictyons france bears this sublime future in her breast this is the gestation of the nineteenth century
+i revere you yes you clearly behold the future yes you are right you had neither father nor mother
+you adopted humanity for your mother and right for your father you are about to die that is to say to triumph here citizens whatever happens to day through our defeat as well as through our victory
+where two or three of these sovereignties are combined the state begins but in that association there is no abdication each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity of itself for the purpose of forming the common right
+this quantity is the same for all of us this identity of concession which each makes to all is called equality common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on the right of each
+this protection of all over each is called fraternity the point of intersection of all these assembled sovereignties is called society this intersection being a junction this point is a knot
+hence what is called the social bond some say social contract which is the same thing the word contract
+a society of great blades of grass and tiny oaks a proximity of jealousies which render each other null and void legally speaking it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity
+politically it is all votes possessed of the same weight religiously it is all consciences possessed of the same right equality has an organ gratuitous and obligatory instruction
+an identical society will spring yes instruction light light everything comes from light and to it everything returns citizens the nineteenth century is great but the twentieth century will be happy
+then there will be nothing more like the history of old we shall no longer as to day have to fear a conquest an invasion a usurpation a rivalry of nations
+arms in hand an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings on a birth in hereditary tyrannies a partition of peoples by a congress a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty
+from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events one might almost say there will be no more events we shall be happy
+as the planet around the light friends the present hour in which i am addressing you is a gloomy hour but these are terrible purchases of the future a revolution is a toll
+oh the human race will be delivered raised up consoled we affirm it on this barrier whence should proceed that cry of love if not from the heights of sacrifice
+a heap of ideas and a heap of woes here misery meets the ideal the day embraces the night and says to it i am about to die and thou shalt be born again with me
+from the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality this agony and this immortality are about to join
+and constitute our death brothers he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn
+his lips continued to move silently as though he were talking to himself which caused them all to gaze attentively at him in the endeavor to hear more there was no applause
+javert laconic
+let the reader recall the state of his soul we have just recalled it everything was a vision to him now his judgment was disturbed
+marius let us insist on this point was under the shadow of the great dark wings which are spread over those in the death agony he felt that he had entered the tomb
+it seemed to him that he was already on the other side of the wall and he no longer beheld the faces of the living except with the eyes of one dead
+what had he come there to do marius did not address all these questions to himself besides since our despair has this peculiarity that it envelops others as well as ourselves
+and had not even the air of hearing him when marius raised his voice to say i know him
+and if such a word can be used for such impressions we should say that it pleased him he had always felt the absolute impossibility of addressing that enigmatical man who was in his eyes
+both equivocal and imposing moreover it had been a long time since he had seen him
+the five chosen men left the barricade by way of mondetour lane
+one of them wept as he took his leave before setting out they embraced those who remained when the five men sent back to life had taken their departure
+he entered the tap room
+javert replied when are you going to kill me wait we need all our cartridges just at present then give me a drink said javert
+they added to the system of ligatures which rendered every attempt at escape impossible that sort of bond which is called in prisons a martingale which starting at the neck
+forks on the stomach and meets the hands after passing between the legs while they were binding javert a man standing on the threshold was surveying him with singular attention
+and june eighteen forty eight knew a great deal more about it than june eighteen thirty two so the barricade of the
+and an embryo compared to the two colossal barricades which we have just sketched but it was formidable for that epoch
+all sorts of rubbish brought and added from all directions complicated the external confusion the redoubt had been cleverly made over into a wall on the inside and a thicket on the outside
+the staircase of paving stones which permitted one to mount it like the wall of a citadel had been reconstructed the barricade had been put in order the tap room disencumbered
+the kitchen appropriated for the ambulance the dressing of the wounded completed the powder scattered on the ground and on the tables had been gathered up
+which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely they had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house the greater part of the wounded were able and wished to fight still
+on a litter of mattresses and trusses of straw in the kitchen which had been converted into an ambulance there were five men gravely wounded two of whom were municipal guardsmen
+in the interior of this hall barely lighted by a candle at one end the mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar
+and mabeuf lying prone the pole of the omnibus although snapped off by the fusillade was still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag to it
+the fifty men in the barricade had speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the wine shop during the sixteen hours which they had passed there
+they had then reached the first hours of that spartan day of the sixth of june when in the barricade saint merry jeanne surrounded by the insurgents who demanded bread replied to all combatants crying something to eat
+with why
+as they could no longer eat
+he interdicted wine and portioned out the brandy they had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed
+and in order that no one might touch them he had them placed under the table on which father mabeuf was lying about two o'clock in the morning they reckoned up their strength there were still thirty seven of them
+the day began to dawn the torch which had been replaced in its cavity in the pavement had just been extinguished the interior of the barricade that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from the street
+that torch flickering in the wind annoyed me it had the appearance of being afraid the light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards it gives a bad light because it trembles
+dawn awakens minds as it does the birds all began to talk joly perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter extracted philosophy from it what is the cat he exclaimed
+it is a corrective the good god having made the mouse said hullo i have committed a blunder and so he made the cat the cat is the erratum of the mouse
+harmodius and aristogiton brutus chereas stephanus cromwell charlotte corday sand have all had their moment of agony when it was too late
+our hearts quiver so and human life is such a mystery that even in the case of a civic murder even in a murder for liberation if there be such a thing
+the remorse for having struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race and such are the windings of the exchange of speech that a moment later by a transition brought about through jean prouvaire's verses
+combeferre was comparing the translators of the georgics
+cournand with delille pointing out the passages translated by malfilatre particularly the prodigies of caesar's death and at that word caesar the conversation reverted to brutus
+caesar said combeferre fell justly cicero was severe towards caesar and he was right that severity is not diatribe
+when maevius insults virgil when vise insults moliere when pope insults shakspeare when frederic insults voltaire it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out
+the blade but antiquity admitted it caesar the violator of the rubicon conferring as though they came from him the dignities which emanated from the people not rising at the entrance of the senate
+committed the acts of a king and almost of a tyrant
+caesar is stabbed by the senators christ is cuffed by lackeys one feels the god through the greater outrage
+he had made his way out through mondetour lane gliding along close to the houses the insurgents we will remark were full of hope
+than as to their cause moreover succor was evidently on the way to them they reckoned on it with that facility of triumphant prophecy which is one of the sources of strength in the french combatant
+they divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases
+at noon the insurrection of all paris at sunset revolution
+which resembled the warlike hum of a hive of bees
+he returned from his sombre eagle flight into outer darkness he listened for a moment to all this joy with folded arms and one hand on his mouth then
+fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of the dawn he said the whole army of paris is to strike a third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are
+as for the populace it was seething yesterday to day it is not stirring there is nothing to expect nothing to hope for neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment you are abandoned
+a moment of indescribable silence ensued in which death might have been heard flitting by this moment was brief
+so be it let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet and let us all remain in it citizens let us offer the protests of corpses
+it was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation no one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus he was some unknown blouse wearer a stranger
+at a given moment utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute in a lightning flash the people and god
+let us get ourselves killed here to the very last man