Adam Bede quotes

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past.

This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr.

He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is not thick and straight, like Adam’s, but thin and wavy, allowing you to discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very decidedly over the brow.

The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they scarcely ever spoke to Adam.

The concert of the tools and Adam’s voice was at last broken by Seth, who, lifting the door at which he had been working intently, placed it against the wall, and said, “There! I’ve finished my door to-day, anyhow.”

“Nay, Seth, lad; I’m not for laughing at no man’s religion. Let ’em follow their consciences, that’s all. Only I think it ’ud be better if their consciences ’ud let ’em stay quiet i’ the church—there’s a deal to be learnt there.

And there’s such a thing as being oversperitial; we must have something beside Gospel i’ this world.

Look at the canals, an’ th’ aqueduc’s, an’ th’ coal-pit engines, and Arkwright’s mills there at Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I reckon.

Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man’s arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock’s fairly struck, just as if he’d never a bit o’ pride and delight in ’s work.

The very grindstone ’ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.

”

He saw instead a foreground which was just as lovely—the level sunlight lying like transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining the bushy hedgerows.

It was that moment in summer when the sound of the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.

He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned a little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge’s pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of the Hall Farm;

The men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith’s shop. But do not imagine them gathered in a knot.

Villagers never swarm: a whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as incapable of an undertone as a cow or a stag.

Your true rustic turns his back on his interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as if he meant to run away from the answer, and walking a step or two farther off when the interest of the dialogue culminates.

“A sweet woman,” the stranger said to himself, “but surely nature never meant her for a preacher.”

Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and psychology, “makes up,” her characters, so that there may be no mistake about them.

But Dinah began to speak.

We have been brought up in poor cottages and have been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven’t been to school much, nor read books, and we don’t know much about anything but what happens just round us.

We are just the sort of people that want to hear good news.

For when anybody’s well off, they don’t much mind about hearing news from distant parts;

“Let us leave that, Seth.

It’s good to live only a moment at a time, as I’ve read in one of Mr. Wesley’s books.

It isn’t for you and me to lay plans; we’ve nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell.”

He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what it is to love—to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself.

Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling.

What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music.

Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible—thank Heaven!—to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings.

The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.

Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.

Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.

Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah, so like our mother’s!—averted from us in cold alienation;

Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next hour.

But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man.

Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice very piteous, she burst out into words.

Adam noticed Gyp’s mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as usual for his dog.

We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?

“Go, Gyp; go, lad!” Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed Lisbeth into the house-place.

“It’s partly truth thee speak’st there, Mother,” said Seth, mildly; “Adam’s far before me, an’s done more for me than I can ever do for him. God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee mustna undervally prayer.

Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us what no money can buy—a power to keep from sin and be content with God’s will, whatever He may please to send.

If thee wouldst pray to God to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy about things.”

In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam’s tools.

The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at twelve o’clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep.

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diorama:

There’s a text wants no candle to show’t; it shines by its own light. It’s plain enough you get into the wrong road i’ this life if you run after this and that only for the sake o’ making things easy and pleasant to yourself.

A pig may poke his nose into the trough and think o’ nothing outside it; but if you’ve got a man’s heart and soul in you, you can’t be easy a-making your own bed an’ leaving the rest to lie on the stones.

Nay, nay, I’ll never slip my neck out o’ the yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father’s a sore cross to me, an’s likely to be for many a long year to come. What then?

Some people think they get a sight on’t too, but they’re mostly folks whose eyes are not much use to ’em at anything else.

For my part, I think it’s better to see when your perpendicular’s true than to see a ghost.

”

Seth’s chief feeling was awe and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father’s soul; but Adam’s mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.

When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

A melancholy morning—because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded.

But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would never think of but for the rain.

If it had not been a wet morning, Mr. Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at chess with his mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass some cloudy hours very easily by their help.

Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair and said, “Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you’ve come over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!”

It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill dusk.

Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to his mother that our loving memory of a friend’s face often bears to the face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the expression heartier.

“Better not, better not, Joshua.

Let evil words die as soon as they’re spoken.

Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his wife, they told me; now he’s thrifty and decent, and he and his wife look comfortable together.

and if Will Maskery doesn’t like to join you, but to go to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him; that’s no business of yours, so long as he doesn’t hinder you from doing what you like.

And as to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.

Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does his wheelwright’s business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does that he must be let alone.”

Irwine, smiling. “Don’t you remember how it was with Juno’s last pups? One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three of its father’s tricks notwithstanding.

Nature is clever enough to cheat even you, Mother.

”

He lingered a moment, looking at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently—he had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs.

Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.

And Mr. Irwine’s sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women! It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such commonplace daughters.

but no such story had either been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer.

Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world.

It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life.

And now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk.

Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.

Put your face to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor; at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up;

If we’d got rid o’ the Scantlands, we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if ever anything happens, he’s sure to be gone to the Scantlands.

Things allays happen so contrairy, if they’ve a chance; and it’s an unnat’ral thing to have one bit o’ your farm in one county and all the rest in another.

”

“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, “you wouldn’t like it at all.

As for farming, it’s putting money into your pocket wi’ your right hand and fetching it out wi’ your left.

As fur as I can see, it’s raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your children as you go along.

… noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief—a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

Hetty Sorrel’s was that sort of beauty.

Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to despise all personal attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually gazed at Hetty’s charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself;

… your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue?

I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring day.

Hetty’s was a spring-tide beauty;

I understand there’s been voices raised against it in the Society of late, but I cannot but think their counsel will come to nought.

It isn’t for men to make channels for God’s Spirit, as they make channels for the watercourses, and say, ‘Flow here, but flow not there.’

”

It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul—as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook.

For thoughts are so great—aren’t they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it’s my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words.

That was my way as long as I can remember;

It’s wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil.

I think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at ease.

”

In this state of mind, how could Hetty give any feeling to Adam’s troubles, or think much about poor old Thias being drowned?

Young souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers are as unsympathetic as butterflies sipping nectar; they are isolated from all appeals by a barrier of dreams—by invisible looks and impalpable arms.

While Hetty’s hands were busy packing up the butter, and her head filled with these pictures of the morrow, Arthur Donnithorne, riding by Mr.

“Thank you. It may stand me in good stead some day though I don’t know that I have any present use for it. Bless me! How the brook has overflowed. Suppose we have a canter, now we’re at the bottom of the hill.”

That is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback; it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle.

The two friends were free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled up in the lane behind Adam’s cottage.

for the moments were few and precious now in which she would be able to do the smallest office of respect or love for the still corpse, to which in all her thoughts she attributed some consciousness.

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.

And the aged peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious.

Here Lisbeth began to cry and rock herself again; and Dinah said, “Yes, dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to say that your trouble was not heavy to bear.

God didn’t send me to you to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me.

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things;

“They have a different sort of life, many of ’em,” said Dinah; “they work at different things—some in the mill, and many in the mines, in the villages round about.

But the heart of man is the same everywhere, and there are the children of this world and the children of light there as well as elsewhere.

But we’ve many more Methodists there than in this country.”

As Dinah expressed it, “she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to keep silence and when to speak.”

And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

As Dinah expressed it, “she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to keep silence and when to speak.” And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

And so there was earnest prayer—there was faith, love, and hope pouring forth that evening in the little kitchen.

Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

Adam liked what Dinah had said so much that his mind was directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when Hetty would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done before.

said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, “I’ve a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to ’em because they couldn’t. I can’t help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there’s no need.

But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can’t say half what we feel, with all our words.

”

I couldn’t abide that. I like to go to work by a road that’ll take me up a bit of a hill, and see the fields for miles round me, and a bridge, or a town, or a bit of a steeple here and there.

It makes you feel the world’s a big place, and there’s other men working in it with their heads and hands besides yourself.

”

“God help the lad, and me too,” he thought, as he lifted the board. “We’re like enough to find life a tough job—hard work inside and out.

It’s a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i’ the world.

It’s a mystery we can give no account of; but no more we can of the sprouting o’ the seed, for that matter.”

never crawling, crafty, reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel. “No! I’m a devil of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders.”

Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly expressed wish.

It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme of things that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides himself. He was nothing if not good-natured;

His own approbation was necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never yet forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his own virtues.

No young man could confess his faults more candidly; candour was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of?

But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel. “No!

But I believe there have been men since his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then galloped hastily back lest they should miss it.

It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.

“The cap’n’s been ridin’ the devil’s own pace,” said Dalton the coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe against the stable wall, when John brought up Rattler.

Hetty lifted her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those three moments were while their eyes met and his arms touched her!

Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning.

Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.

It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven.

There was no knowing what would come, since this strange entrancing delight had come.

If a chest full of lace and satin and jewels had been sent her from some unknown source, how could she but have thought that her whole lot was going to change, and that to-morrow some still more bewildering joy would befall her?

“Eh, it’s a poor look-out when th’ ould folks doesna like the young uns,” said old Martin, bending his head down lower, and seeming to trace the pattern of the quarries with his eye.

“Aye, it’s ill livin’ in a hen-roost for them as doesn’t like fleas,” said Mrs. Poyser.

“We’ve all had our turn at bein’ young, I reckon, be’t good luck or ill.”

What’s good for one’s good all round i’ the long run. I’m no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the difference atween a crab an’ a apple; but they may wait o’er long.”

“To be sure,” said Mrs. Poyser; “if you go past your dinner-time, there’ll be little relish o’ your meat. You turn it o’er an’ o’er wi’ your fork, an’ don’t eat it after all. You find faut wi’ your meat, an’ the faut’s all i’ your own stomach.”

Hetty now came back from the pantry and said, “I can take Totty now, Aunt, if you like.”

His soft voice was saying over and over again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was round her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still.

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting, for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer from which she had taken her …

Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration, pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of any pretty woman—if you ever could, without hard head-breaking demonstration, believe evil of the one supremely pretty woman who has bewitched you.

No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.

Arthur Donnithorne, too, had the same sort of notion about Hetty, so far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a dear, affectionate, good little thing.

After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they deserve.

Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don’t know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.

Long dark eyelashes, now—what can be more exquisite?

But if, in the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has been a surprising similarity of result.

One begins to suspect at length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one’s grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us.

No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Hetty’s; and now, while she walks with her pigeon-like stateliness along the room and looks down on her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to perfection on her pink cheek.

The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will have an early ride over the hill and breakfast with him.

One can say everything best over a meal.

The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee.

The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee.

We are more distinctly conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an appetite for muffins.

An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the …

“On Sunday, sir; Mr. Irwine’s coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad when it’s over, for I think my mother ’ull perhaps get easier then.

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they’ve no way o’ working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.

”

I’ve seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what’s wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see.

It’s like a bit o’ bad workmanship—you never see th’ end o’ the mischief it’ll do.

And it’s a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o’ better. But there’s a difference between the things folks call wrong.

“That’s true, sir, but there’s nothing like settling with ourselves as there’s a deal we must do without i’ this life.

It’s no use looking on life as if it was Treddles’on Fair, where folks only go to see shows and get fairings.

If we do, we shall find it different. But where’s the use o’ me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do.”

“Why, sir, you seem to think o’ college something like what Bartle Massey does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ’em.

But he’s got a tongue like a sharp blade, Bartle has—it never touches anything but it cuts.

Here’s the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as you’re going to the rectory.”

I’m not sure that men are the fondest of those who try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure.

You must make it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old boy—popularity or usefulness—else you may happen to miss both.

”

“Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature.

He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.

”

“Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise.”

“Why, yes, a man can’t very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note lies within convenient reach; but he won’t make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way.”

“But surely you don’t think a man who struggles against a temptation into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all?”

“No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis.

Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.

And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion, Arthur?

So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is reason to dread.

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.

The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin—the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion.

… I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles.

Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our houses.

therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things—men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them.

There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes.

I can’t afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities:

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our houses.

But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy.

Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory;

“There’s Father a-standing at the yard-gate,” said Martin Poyser. “I reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It’s wonderful what sight he has, and him turned seventy-five.”

“Ah, I often think it’s wi’ th’ old folks as it is wi’ the babbies,” said Mrs. Poyser; “they’re satisfied wi’ looking, no matter what they’re looking at. It’s God A’mighty’s way o’ quietening ’em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.”

Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching, and held it wide open, leaning on his stick—pleased to do this bit of work;

and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in a tin last year.

And then she talks o’ the weather bein’ i’ fault, as there’s folks ’ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i’ their boots.

”

“Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, “thee dostna know the pints of a woman. The men ’ud niver run after Dinah as they would after Hetty.”

“What care I what the men ’ud run after? It’s well seen what choice the most of ’em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o’ wives you see, like bits o’ gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour’s gone.”

“Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice when I married thee,” said Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; “and thee wast twice as buxom as Dinah ten year ago.”

… all were standing up—the little children on the seats peeping over the edge of the grey pews, while good Bishop Ken’s evening hymn was being sung to one of those lively psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of rectors and choral parish clerks.

Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.

Adam was not in his usual place among the singers to-day, for he sat with his mother and Seth, and he noticed with surprise that Bartle Massey was absent too—all the more agreeable for Mr.

as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from their childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the streets.

The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to discern odours.

But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village nooks in the kingdom—a reason of which I am sure you have not the slightest suspicion.

It spoke briefly and simply of the words, “In the midst of life we are in death”—how the present moment is all we can call our own for works of mercy, of righteous dealing, and of family tenderness.

All very old truths—but what we thought the oldest truth becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the dead face of one who has made a part of our own lives.

For when men want to impress us with the effect of a new and wonderfully vivid light, do they not let it fall on the most familiar objects, that we may measure its intensity by remembering the former dimness?

“That’s true, lad, that’s true,” said Mr. Poyser; “and it’s wrong on us to give way to grief, Mrs. Bede; for it’s like the children cryin’ when the fathers and mothers take things from ’em. There’s One above knows better nor us.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Poyser, “an’ it’s poor work allays settin’ the dead above the livin’. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon—it ’ud be better if folks ’ud make much on us beforehand, i’stid o’ beginnin’ when we’re gone. It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crop.”

“Well, Adam,” said Mr. Poyser, feeling that his wife’s words were, as usual, rather incisive than soothing, and that it would be well to change the subject, “you’ll come and see us again now, I hope.

Martin Poyser held Mr. Craig in honour, as a man who “knew his business” and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he was less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said in confidence to her husband,

“You’re mighty fond o’ Craig, but for my part, I think he’s welly like a cock as thinks the sun’s rose o’ purpose to hear him crow.”

For the rest, Mr. Craig was an estimable gardener, and was not without reasons for having a high opinion of himself.

Notwithstanding Mr. Craig’s prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed itself without having produced the threatened consequences.

“The weather”—as he observed the next morning—“the weather, you see, ’s a ticklish thing, an’ a fool ’ull hit on’t sometimes when a wise man misses; that’s why the almanecks get so much credit. It’s one o’ them chancy things as fools thrive on.”

This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in the meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen;

like those clumsy bells round the cows’ necks, it has rather a coarse sound when it comes close, and may even grate on your ears painfully; but heard from far off, it mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature.

Men’s muscles move better when their souls are making merry music, though their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the merriment of birds.

And perhaps there is no time in a summer’s day more cheering than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning—when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the …

But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this way—making arrangements for an uncertain future—than he checked himself.

“A pretty building I’m making, without either bricks or timber. I’m up i’ the garret a’ready, and haven’t so much as dug the foundation.”

Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition, it took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust.

the strong fibres begin their accustomed thrill, and what was a moment before joy, vexation, or ambition, begins its change into energy.

All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still, creative activity of our thought.

Look at Adam through the rest of the day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome;

Hetty, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently to the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love another.

It was a very old story, but Adam knew nothing about it, so he drank in the sweet delusion.

“That’ll do,” said Hetty, after a little while. “Aunt wants me to leave some on the trees. I’ll take ’em in now.”

Mr. Bede, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you’re i’ the right not. It spoils the flavour o’ the chine, to my thinking.

It’s poor eating where the flavour o’ the meat lies i’ the cruets.

There’s folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t’ hide it.”

Mr. Bede, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you’re i’ the right not. It spoils the flavour o’ the chine, to my thinking. It’s poor eating where the flavour o’ the meat lies i’ the cruets.

There’s folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t’ hide it.

”

… no knowing but what they will—an’ the murrain was to come among the cattle again, an’ everything went to rack an’ ruin, I say we might be glad to get sight o’ Dinah’s cap again, wi’ her own face under it, border or no border.

For she’s one o’ them things as looks the brightest on a rainy day, and loves you the best when you’re most i’ need on’t.

”

I’ll send no man away because he’s stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I’d not refuse to teach him.

But I’ll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn’orth, and carry it away with ’em as they would an ounce of snuff.

So never come to me again, if you can’t show that you’ve been working with your own heads, instead of thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That’s the last word I’ve got to say to you.”

But knowledge isn’t to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you’re to know figures, you must turn ’em over in your heads and keep your thoughts fixed on ’em.

There’s nothing you can’t turn into a sum, for there’s nothing but what’s got number in it—even a fool.

You may say to yourselves, ‘I’m one fool, and Jack’s another; if my fool’s head weighed four pound, and Jack’s three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack’s?’

“Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We’ll not talk about business till we’ve had our supper.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

But,” said Bartle, rising from his chair again, “I must give Vixen her supper too, confound her! Though she’ll do nothing with it but nourish those unnecessary babbies.

“Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don’t you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that’s all.

You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well as in figures.

I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest—you’re overhasty and proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks …

“There’s a good deal o’ sense in what you say, Mr. Massey,” Adam began, as soon as he felt quite serious, “as there always is. But you’ll give in that it’s no business o’ mine to be building on chances that may never happen.

What I’ve got to do is to work as well as I can with the tools and mater’als I’ve got in my hands.

If a good chance comes to me, I’ll think o’ what you’ve been saying; but till then, I’ve got nothing to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece.

“Aye, aye,” muttered the schoolmaster, as Adam disappeared, “there you go, stalking along—stalking along; but you wouldn’t have been what you are if you hadn’t had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you.

The strongest calf must have something to suck at.

There’s plenty of these big, lumbering fellows ’ud never have known their A B C if it hadn’t been for Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is it, what is it? I must go in, must I?

“Ah, my boy, it is not only woman’s love that is ἀπέρωτος ἒρως as old Æschylus calls it.

There’s plenty of ‘unloving love’ in the world of a masculine kind.

But tell me about Adam. Has he accepted the post? I don’t see that it can be much more profitable than his present work, though, to be sure, it will leave him a good deal of time on his own hands.”

“Well, I won’t forgive you if she’s not handsome.

I can’t be put off with amiability, which is always the excuse people are making for the existence of plain people.

And she must not be silly; that will never do, because you’ll want managing, and a silly woman can’t manage you. Who is that tall young man, Dauphin, with the mild face?

“Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles to read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things at a distance.

I suppose if I could live another fifty years, I should be blind to everything that wasn’t out of other people’s sight, like a man who stands in a well and sees nothing but the stars.

”

“Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than married men, because they have time for more general contemplation.

Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling one woman his own.

But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the utmost respect and kindness by them.

“Nay, nay,” said Mrs. Poyser, “it ’ud be unbecomin’. I know the dancin’s nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it’s nonsense, you wonna go far i’ this life.

When your broth’s ready-made for you, you mun swallow the thickenin’, or else let the broth alone.

”

“Nay, nay,” said Mrs. Poyser, “it ’ud be unbecomin’.

I know the dancin’s nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it’s nonsense, you wonna go far i’ this life.

When your broth’s ready-made for you, you mun swallow the thickenin’, or else let the broth alone.”

It might be a bit of her father’s or mother’s, who had died when she was a child, and she would naturally put a bit of her own along with it.

And so Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious web of probabilities—the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.

His last waking thoughts melted into a dream that he was with Hetty again at the Hall Farm, and that he was asking her to forgive him for being so cold and silent.

“

Oh, Your Honour, it’s all right and proper for gentlefolks to stay up by candlelight—they’ve got no cheese on their minds.

We’re late enough as it is, an’ there’s no lettin’ the cows know as they mustn’t want to be milked so early to-morrow mornin’. So, if you’ll please t’ excuse us, we’ll take our leave.”

“Eh!” she said to her husband, as they set off in the cart, “I’d sooner ha’ brewin’ day and washin’ day together than one o’ these pleasurin’ days.

There’s no work so tirin’ as danglin’ about an’ starin’ an’ not rightly knowin’ what you’re goin’ to do next; and keepin’ your face i’ smilin’ order like a grocer o’ market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough.

An’ you’ve nothing to show for’t when it’s done, if it isn’t a yallow face wi’ eatin’ things as disagree.”

For if it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful, unconscious of another?

For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love.

There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature’s mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?

There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature’s mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?

We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of—to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.

It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work, for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was slow to find that person.

then they travelled back affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt on Arthur’s good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have in the virtues of the superior who honours us.

A nature like Adam’s, with a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its happiness on what it can believe and feel about others!

And he had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him.

What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of inflicting it did not mean to hurt us?

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.

Adam at this moment could only feel that he had been robbed of Hetty—robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had trusted—and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones …

“And perhaps I judged you too harsh—I’m apt to be harsh—and you may have acted out o’ thoughtlessness more than I should ha’ believed was possible for a man with a heart and a conscience.

We’re not all put together alike, and we may misjudge one another.

God knows, it’s all the joy I could have now, to think the best of you.”

Arthur did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well.

For sleep comes to the perplexed—if the perplexed are only weary enough.

But at seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.

He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer.

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

And if there were such a thing as taking averages of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on country gentlemen than in late spring and summer.

Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better.

Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences—out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon.

Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And so it was with Arthur:

Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences—out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon.

Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us.

And so it was with Arthur: Adam’s judgment of him, Adam’s grating words, disturbed his self-soothing arguments.

Arthur’s, as you know, was a loving nature.

Deeds of kindness were as easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy.

He didn’t like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of pleasure.

… determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.

There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile him to the change, for this reason—that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right.

The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly …

… common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike.

Europe adjusts itself to a fait accompli, and so does an individual character—until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.

No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at ease, was one of his best safeguards.

He would never have told or acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had excuses, he had.

(Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!)

Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur’s eyes as he thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him to write it;

“Hegh, Totty,” said Adam, “come and ride on my shoulder—ever so high—you’ll touch the tops o’ the trees.”

What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of being seized strongly and swung upward?

I don’t believe Ganymede cried when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove’s shoulder at the end.

But I must put up with it whichever way it is—I’ve only to be thankful it’s been no worse. I am not th’ only man that’s got to do without much happiness i’ this life.

There’s many a good bit o’ work done with a bad heart.

It’s God’s will, and that’s enough for us: we shouldn’t know better how things ought to be than He does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i’ puzzling.

But it ’ud ha’ gone near to spoil my work for me, if I’d seen her brought to sorrow and shame, and through the man as I’ve always been proud to think on. Since I’ve been spared that, I’ve no right to grumble.

When a man’s got his limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two.

”

For I feel it, I feel it—infinite love is suffering too—yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth.

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off.

It is not the spirit only that tells me this—I see it in the whole work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended?

“Nay, but her feelings may grow different.

A woman may get to love by degrees—the best fire dosna flare up the soonest.

I’d have thee go and see her by and by: I’d make it convenient for thee to be away three or four days, and it ’ud be no walk for thee—only between twenty and thirty mile.”

Yes! It was worse—it was more cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter—hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love—all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.

She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.

Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.

Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.

For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.

As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way.

“Strange!” perhaps you will say, “this rush of impulse towards a course that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind, and in only the second night of her sadness!”

Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty’s, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea.

How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the quiet bay!

“The right language!” said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. “

You’re about as near the right language as a pig’s squeaking is like a tune played on a key-bugle.

”

“Indeed, sir, if it’s anything t’ our advantage, it’ll be the first offer o’ the sort I’ve heared on.

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage i’ this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it’s brought to ’em.

”

“I daresay,” said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair—“I daresay it’s true for men as sit i’ th’ chimney-corner and make believe as everything’s cut 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.

How do I know whether the milk ’ull be wanted constant?

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 and expect to carry away the water.

”

“Yes, I know I’ve done it,” said Mrs. Poyser; “but I’ve had my say out, and I shall be th’ easier for’t all my life.

There’s no pleasure i’ 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, if I live to be as old as th’ old squire; and there’s little likelihood—for it seems as if them as aren’t wanted here are th’ only folks as aren’t wanted i’ th’ other world.”

“I’m none for worreting,” said Mr. Poyser, rising from his three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; “but I should be loath to leave th’ old place, and the parish where I was bred and born, and Father afore me.

We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and niver thrive again.

”

“Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor.

She’s quite original in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with proverbs.

I told you that capital thing I heard her say about Craig—that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now that’s an Æsop’s fable in a sentence.”

If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman’s cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips.

For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more?

Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman’s soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.

He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her?

He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large, unselfish, tender.

The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind;

It was about ten o’clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as the sun mounted the cloudless sky.

Bright February days have a stronger charm of hope about them than any other days in the year.

One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the same:

… a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life’s bitterness.

Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob.

No wonder man’s religion has much sorrow in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.

Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob.

No wonder man’s religion has much sorrow in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.

Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think with hope of the …

Her imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he could do nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else would happen—something must happen—to set her free from this dread.

In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die.

But now necessity was pressing hard upon her—now the time of her marriage was close at hand—she could no longer rest in this blind trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes could detect her;

A long, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called by duty, not urged by dread.

What was it then to Hetty?

Here was a new trouble which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of a stile and began to sob hysterically.

The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.

When Hetty recovered from her burst of weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.

but still almost a hundred miles from Windsor, they told her.

Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work for her to find her way in it!

She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon, finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth day that she got to Stony Stratford.

indeed, the effect they would have in that case on the mind of the grocer’s wife had presented itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner.

He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers would decline to make a little gain out of you?

Your landlady is sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as possible.

she was quite welcome. And at eleven o’clock Hetty said “Good-bye” to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles back along the way she had come.

There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last hope has departed.

Despair no more leans on others than perfect contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense of dependence.

There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last hope has departed.

Despair no more leans on others than perfect contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense of dependence.

Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah.

She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards it—fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool she had in her mind.

Yet she took care of her money still; she carried her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong in her.

She craved food and rest—she hastened towards them at the very moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap towards death.

What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?

God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!

Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some reason for doing so.

In our times of bitter suffering there are almost always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything but some trivial perception or sensation.

It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our sleep.

And if their words had taken another turn... if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man’s secrets... it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery.

He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back upon the past.

But every other feeling as it rushed upon him was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man who sat before him—already so bruised, going forth with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon him, …

“Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life.

You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both tasks at our hands.

And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than any you have yet known. But you are not guilty—you have not the worst of all sorrows. God help him who has!”

That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of father and son—the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all other sensibility—and Mr. Irwine was struck with surprise to observe that Mrs. Poyser was less severe than her husband.

We are often startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of traditional impressions.

“I’m willing to pay any money as is wanted towards trying to bring her off,” said Martin the younger when Mr.

“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 and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread.

Men’s lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.

I know, 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.

“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 and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread.

Men’s lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur’s has caused to others;

It seemed to him as if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment’s stroke that had never left a bruise.

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

“O God,” Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at the face of the watch, “and men have suffered like this before... and poor helpless young things have suffered like her....

He’d much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so. And the counsellors—who look as hard as nails mostly—I saw, spared him as much as they could. Mr. Irwine put himself near him and went with him out o’ court.

Ah, it’s a great thing in a man’s life to be able to stand by a neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that.

”

“Aye, aye, he’s good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him, our parson does. A man o’ sense—says no more than’s needful.

He’s not one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it.

I’ve had to do with such folks in my time—in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be a witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her character and bringing up.”

I’ll go into court. It’s cowardly of me to keep away. I’ll stand by her—I’ll own her—for all she’s been deceitful. They oughtn’t to cast her off—her own flesh and blood.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

I used to be hard sometimes: I’ll never be hard again. I’ll go, Mr. Massey—I’ll go with you.”

It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before the knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a signal for silence on every ear.

It is sublime—that sudden pause of a great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all.

Deeper and deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while the jurymen’s names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold up her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict.

“Come, then,” said the elderly gentleman, ringing and gaining admission, “

I know you have a key to unlock hearts.

”

“That doesn’t alter th’ evil: her ruin can’t be undone. I hate that talk o’ people, as if there was a way o’ making amends for everything. They’d more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered.

When a man’s spoiled his fellow-creatur’s life, he’s no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it.

Somebody else’s good doesn’t alter her shame and misery.”

“Well, lad, well,” said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, “it’s likely enough I talk foolishness. I’m an old fellow, and it’s a good many years since I was in trouble myself.

It’s easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

”

We shall all be better in a new country, though there’s some I shall be loath to leave behind. But I won’t part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr. Poyser.

Trouble’s made us kin.

”

But in imagining the meeting he had always seen Arthur, as he had met him on that evening in the Grove, florid, careless, light of speech; and the figure before him touched him with the signs of suffering.

Adam knew what suffering was—he could not lay a cruel finger on a bruised man.

He felt no impulse that he needed to resist. Silence was more just than reproach. Arthur was the first to speak.

and the figure before him touched him with the signs of suffering. Adam knew what suffering was—he could not lay a cruel finger on a bruised man. He felt no impulse that he needed to resist.

Silence was more just than reproach.

Arthur was the first to speak.

Moreover, he had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a rich man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, “The time’s past for that, sir.

A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong; sacrifices won’t undo it when it’s done. When people’s feelings have got a deadly wound, they can’t be cured with favours.

”

“Well, an’ who said you’d ever left off being a comfort to me?” said Mrs. Poyser. “If you didna mean to stay wi’ me, you’d better never ha’ come.

Them as ha’ never had a cushion don’t miss it.

”

Poyser. “She says this country’s too comfortable, an’ there’s too much t’ eat, an’ folks arena miserable enough. And she’s going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will.

It’s allays the way wi’ them meek-faced people; you may’s well pelt a bag o’ feathers as talk to ’em.

But I say it isna religion, to be so obstinate—is it now, Adam?”

“Yes, it’s a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another with a pipe i’ their mouths,” said Mrs. Poyser. “Give Bartle Massey his way and he’d have all the sharpness to himself.

If the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon.

Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what she’s doing, and give her a pretty kiss.”

“That meeting between the brothers, where Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful, notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a mean spirit.

But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in the midst of much that is unlovely.

”

He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his life so, and think what’ll come of it after he’s dead and gone.

A good solid bit o’ work lasts: if it’s only laying a floor down, somebody’s the better for it being done well, besides the man as does it.

”

But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us.

Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering.

For it is at such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations, beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert.

Do any of us? God forbid.

It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness.

Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.

… we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness.

Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.

Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place in Adam yet.

… will no more think these things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of coming spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable something in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptible budding on the hedge-row branches.

Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul’s language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as “light,” “sound,” “stars,” “music”—words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than “chips” or “sawdust.”

It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful.

“Said? Nay, she’ll say nothin’.

It’s on’y the men as have to wait till folks say things afore they find ’em out.

”

… was interrupted by wonder at the strength of his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new love—almost like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for an art which he had laid aside for a space.

How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best?

Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy’s flutelike voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music.

Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?

The boy’s flutelike voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music.

At last, there was Seth, visible at the farthest stile, and Adam hastened to meet him. Seth was surprised, and thought something unusual must have happened, but when Adam came up, his face said plainly enough that it was nothing alarming.

“Nay,” said Seth warmly, “how canst think it?

Have I felt thy trouble so little that I shouldna feel thy joy?

”

Adam did not speak immediately.

They sat looking at each other in delicious silence—for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.

“Then, Dinah,” Adam said at last, “how can there be anything contrary to what’s right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that?

… to me it’s the same with love and happiness as with sorrow—the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people’s lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to ’em, and wishful to help ’em.

The more knowledge a man has, the better he’ll do’s work; and feeling’s a sort o’ knowledge.

”

and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will.

We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar.

”

“To be sure I have,” said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. “

I’m not one o’ those as can see the cat i’ the dairy an’ wonder what she’s come after.

”

“

Well, I aren’t like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me.

I can keep my own counsel when there’s no good i’ speaking.”

“She’s no call to be in a hurry,” observed Mrs. Poyser. “

Scarceness o’ victual ’ull keep: there’s no need to be hasty wi’ the cooking.

An’ scarceness is what there’s the biggest stock of i’ that country.”

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

Even idleness is eager now—eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes.

Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis;