Ben Hur quotes

It may be doubted if the people of the West ever overcome the impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert.

Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little.

At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the Bedouin, the Western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful;

The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen.

As is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so that of the desert to its creature.

It clothes him with all its mysteries; in such manner, too, that while we are looking at him we are thinking of them: therein is the wonder. The animal which now came out of the wady might well have claimed the customary homage.

neither was his manner that of a fugitive; not once did he look behind him. In such situations fear and curiosity are the most common sensations; he was not moved by them.

When men are lonely, they stoop to any companionship; the dog becomes a comrade, the horse a friend, and it is no shame to shower them with caresses and speeches of love.

The camel received no such token, not a touch, not a word.

Alas! the books themselves closed all the gates of progress. Under pretext of care for the creature, their authors imposed the fatal principle that a man must not address himself to discovery or invention, as Heaven had provided him all things needful.

When that condition became a sacred law, the lamp of Hindu genius was let down a well, where ever since it has lighted narrow walls and bitter waters.

“These allusions, brethren, are not from pride, as you will understand when I tell you that the Shastras teach a Supreme God called Brahm; also, that the Puranas, or sacred poems of the Up-Angas, tell us of Virtue and Good Works, and of the Soul.

“

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.

I could not rest. Brahm had filled the world with so much wretchedness. The Sudra appealed to me, so did the countless devotees and victims. The island of Ganga Lagor lies where the sacred waters of the Ganges disappear in the Indian Ocean.

Such, my brothers, was the religion of the first family; such was the religion of our father Mizraim, who could not have been blind to the formula of creation, nowhere so discernible as in the first faith and the earliest worship.

Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone.

”

The Hindu here drew a long sigh, as he said, “

The enemy of man is man, my brother.

”

In Solomon’s day there was great traffic at the locality, shared in by traders from Egypt and the rich dealers from Tyre and Sidon. Nearly three thousand years have passed, and yet a kind of commerce clings to the spot.

A pilgrim wanting a pin or a pistol, a cucumber or a camel, a house or a horse, a loan or a lentil, a date or a dragoman, a melon or a man, a dove or a donkey, has only to inquire for the article at the Joppa Gate.

Sometimes the scene is quite animated, and then it suggests, What a place the old market must have been in the days of Herod the Builder! And to that period and that market the reader is now to be transferred.

“That would be to make me a Jew. No, nothing but the grapes.

Never waters mixed so sweetly as the blood of the Greek and the blood of the grape.

”

Joseph told the story of the Philistines surprised in their camp there by David. He was tedious in the narrative, speaking with the solemn countenance and lifeless manner of a dull man. She did not always hear him.

Wherever on the land men go, and on the sea ships, the face and figure of the Jew are familiar.

The physical type of the race has always been the same; yet there have been some individual variations. “Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.” Such was the son of Jesse when brought before Samuel.

In appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs sitting with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tenderhearted; effects due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless.

They rested and talked, and their talk was all about their flocks, a dull theme to the world, yet a theme which was all the world to them.

If in narrative they dwelt long upon affairs of trifling moment; if one of them omitted nothing of detail in recounting the loss of a lamb, the relation between him and the unfortunate should be remembered:

In a verse of the Shema they found all the learning and all the law of their simple lives—that their Lord was One God, and that they must love him with all their souls.

And they loved him, and such was their wisdom, surpassing that of kings.

While they talked, and before the first watch was over, one by one the shepherds went to sleep, each lying where he had sat.

The night, like most nights of the winter season in the hill country, was clear, crisp, and sparkling with stars. There was no wind.

The atmosphere seemed never so pure, and the stillness was more than silence; it was a holy hush, a warning that heaven was stooping low to whisper some good thing to the listening earth.

By the gate, hugging his mantle close, the watchman walked; at times he stopped, attracted by a stir among the sleeping herds, or by a jackal’s cry off on the mountainside. The midnight was slow coming to him; but at last it came.

What would it be? They were in Jerusalem at last; they had asked at the gate for Him they sought; they had borne witness of his birth; it remained only to find him; and as to that, they placed all trust in the Spirit.

Men listening for the voice of God, or waiting a sign from Heaven, cannot sleep.

While they were in this condition, a man stepped in under the arch, darkening the lewen.

points which, in connection with the round chin, full eyes, and oval cheeks reddened with a wine-like glow, gave his face the softness, strength, and beauty peculiar to his race.

The comeliness of the Roman was severe and chaste, that of the Jew rich and voluptuous.

“Did you not say the new procurator is to arrive tomorrow?”

Seriously, O my friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the greatest logician in the world. His subject was Disputation. One saying I remember—‘

Understand your antagonist before you answer him.

’ Let me understand you.”

but a Jew never. To him there is no backward, no forward; he is what his ancestor was in the beginning. In this sand I draw you a circle—there! Now tell me what more a Jew’s life is?

Round and round, Abraham here, Isaac and Jacob yonder, God in the middle.

And the circle—by the master of all thunders! the circle is too large. I draw it again—” He stopped, put his thumb upon the ground, and swept the fingers about it. “See, the thumb spot is the Temple, the finger-lines Judea.

‘Go,’ said my teacher, in his last lecture—‘Go, and, to make your lives great, remember Mars reigns and Eros has found his eyes.’ He meant love is nothing, war everything. It is so in Rome. Marriage is the first step to divorce.

Virtue is a tradesman’s jewel.

Cleopatra, dying, bequeathed her arts, and is avenged; she has a successor in every Roman’s house. The world is going the same way; so, as to our future, down Eros, up Mars! I am to be a soldier;

The Roman studied him; then replied, “

Why not the truth in a jest as well as a parable?

The great Fulvia went fishing the other day; she caught more than all the company besides. They said it was because the barb of her hook was covered with gold.”

“You are a boy; I am a man; let me talk like one.”

The complacency of the Roman was superb. Mentor lecturing the young Telemachus could not have been more at ease.

“Do you believe in the Parcae? Ah, I forgot, you are a Sadducee: the Essenes are your sensible people; they believe in the sisters. So do I. How everlastingly the three are in the way of our doing what we please! I sit down scheming.

“Do you believe in the Parcae? Ah, I forgot, you are a Sadducee: the Essenes are your sensible people; they believe in the sisters. So do I.

How everlastingly the three are in the way of our doing what we please!

I sit down scheming. I run paths here and there. Perpol! Just when I am reaching to take the world in hand, I hear behind me the grinding of scissors. I look, and there she is, the accursed Atropos!

Messala offered him his hand; the Jew walked on through the gateway. When he was gone, the Roman was silent awhile; then he, too, passed through, saying to himself, with a toss of the head,

“Be it so. Eros is dead, Mars reigns!”

“What you please, Amrah.

I am not sick, but indifferent. Life does not seem as pleasant as it did this morning.

A new ailment, O my Amrah; and you who know me so well, who never failed me, may think of the things now that answer for food and medicine. Bring me what you choose.”

nor would she have accepted it, for the boy she was attending was her life. She had nursed him through babyhood, tended him as a child, and could not break the service.

To her love he could never be a man.

He spoke but once during the meal.

“Roman!” she continued, half to herself. “

To all the world the word means master.

How long has he been away?”

but the years in Rome have been too much for him. I do not wonder at the change; yet”—her voice fell—“he might have dealt tenderly at least with you.

It is a hard, cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves.

”

She hesitated, thinking she might all this time have mistaken his object. The information he sought might have been for more than satisfaction of wounded vanity.

Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.

She trembled under a perception that this might be the supreme moment come to him;

“There never has been a people,” she began, “who did not think themselves at least equal to any other; never a great nation, my son, that did not believe itself the very superior.

When the Roman looks down upon Israel and laughs, he merely repeats the folly of the Egyptian, the Assyrian, and the Macedonian; and as the laugh is against God, the result will be the same.

”

“The simplest of all the signs is the daily life of the people. Of this I will only say,

Israel has at times forgotten God, while the Roman never knew him; consequently comparison is not possible.

“Your friend—or your former friend—charged, if I understood you rightly, that we have had no poets, artists, or warriors; by which he meant, I suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next most certain of the signs.

by which he meant, I suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next most certain of the signs. A just consideration of this charge requires a definition at the commencement.

A great man, O my boy, is one whose life proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by God.

A Persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carried them into captivity; another Persian was selected to restore their children to the Holy Land;

Because the world has adopted the idea, be not you deceived. That we must worship something is a law which will continue as long as there is anything we cannot understand.

The prayer of the barbarian is a wail of fear addressed to Strength, the only divine quality he can clearly conceive; hence his faith in heroes.

What is Jove but a Roman hero? The Greeks have their great glory because they were the first to set Mind above Strength. In Athens the orator and philosopher were more revered than the warrior.

The prayer of the barbarian is a wail of fear addressed to Strength, the only divine quality he can clearly conceive; hence his faith in heroes. What is Jove but a Roman hero?

The Greeks have their great glory because they were the first to set Mind above Strength.

In Athens the orator and philosopher were more revered than the warrior. The charioteer and the swiftest runner are still idols of the arena; yet the immortelles are reserved for the sweetest singer. The birthplace of one poet was contested by seven cities.

“To the excellences of other peoples the egotism of a Roman is a blindfold, impenetrable as his breastplate.

Oh, the ruthless robbers! Under their trampling the earth trembles like a floor beaten with flails.

Along with the rest we are fallen—alas that I should say it to you, my son! They have our highest places, and the holiest, and the end no man can tell;

Bend lower, my son! These that come next are the first of their kind, and the last. Their faces are raised, as if they heard a voice in the sky and were listening.

Their lives were full of sorrows. Their garments smell of tombs and caverns.

Hearken to a woman among them—‘Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously!’ Nay, put your forehead in the dust before them!

Yet there was no sign, nothing to indicate that he had undergone a change, except that when he raised his head, and held his arms out to be bound, the bend of the Cupid’s bow had vanished from his lips.

In that instant he had put off childhood and become a man.

A trumpet sounded in the courtyard. With the cessation of the call, the gallery was cleared of the soldiery;

“It matters but little.

We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers.

”

All night as master of the feast he had sat at table drinking and playing; yet the odor of the sea returned him to the mood of the sailor, and he would not rest until he knew his ship.

Knowledge leaves no room for chances.

Having begun with the chief of the rowers, the sailing-master, and the pilot, in company with the other officers—the commander of the marines, the keeper of the stores, the master of the machines, the overseer of the kitchen or fires—he passed through the several quarters.

Day after day they filled their places without speech; in hours of labor they could not see each other’s faces; their short respites were given to sleep and the snatching of food. They never laughed; no one ever heard one of them sing.

What is the use of tongues when a sigh or a groan will tell all men feel while, perforce, they think in silence?

Existence with the poor wretches was like a stream under ground sweeping slowly, laboriously on to its outlet, wherever that might chance to be.

They never laughed; no one ever heard one of them sing. What is the use of tongues when a sigh or a groan will tell all men feel while, perforce, they think in silence?

Existence with the poor wretches was like a stream under ground sweeping slowly, laboriously on to its outlet, wherever that might chance to be.

O Son of Mary! The sword has now a heart—and thine the glory! So now;

“

Pride is never so loud as when in chains.

”

I have seen them on the water walking. Oh, never anything so true as my mother’s love! And Tirzah—her breath was as the breath of white lilies. She was the youngest branch of the palm—so fresh, so tender, so graceful, so beautiful!

She made my day all morning. She came and went in music.

And mine was the hand that laid them low! I—”

“The horrible day is three years gone,” he continued—“three years, O tribune, and every hour a whole lifetime of misery—a lifetime in a bottomless pit with death, and no relief but in labor—and in all that time not a word from anyone, not a whisper.

Oh, if, in being forgotten, we could only forget!

If only I could hide from that scene—my sister torn from me, my mother’s last look! I have felt the plague’s breath, and the shock of ships in battle; I have heard the tempest lashing the sea, and laughed, though others prayed:

on the other hand, if it were real, the Jew’s innocence might not be doubted; and if he were innocent, with what blind fury the power had been exercised! A whole family blotted out to atone an accident! The thought shocked him.

There is no wiser providence than that our occupations, however rude or bloody, cannot wear us out morally; that such qualities as justice and mercy, if they really possess us, continue to live on under them, like flowers under the snow.

The tribune could be inexorable, else he had not been fit for the usages of his calling; he could also be just; and to excite his sense of wrong was to put him in the way to right the wrong.

A short while after Ben-Hur was upon his bench again.

A man’s task is always light if his heart is light.

Handling the oar did not seem so toilsome to Judah. A hope had come to him, like a singing bird. He could hardly see the visitor or hear its song; that it was there, though, he knew; his feelings told him so.

A man’s task is always light if his heart is light. Handling the oar did not seem so toilsome to Judah.

A hope had come to him, like a singing bird.

He could hardly see the visitor or hear its song; that it was there, though, he knew; his feelings told him so. The caution of the tribune—“Perhaps I do but play with thee”—was dismissed often as it recurred to his mind.

Meantime Ben-Hur kept his bench, relieved every six hours. The rest in the Bay of Antemona had freshened him, so that the oar was not troublesome, and the chief on the platform found no fault.

People, generally, are not aware of the ease of mind there is in knowing where they are, and where they are going.

The sensation of being lost is a keen distress; still worse is the feeling one has in driving blindly into unknown places. Custom had dulled the feeling with Ben-Hur, but only measurably.

but he could not sleep. Three years of night, and through the darkness a sunbeam at last! At sea adrift and lost, and now land! Dead so long, and, lo! the thrill and stir of resurrection. Sleep was not for such an hour.

Hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants that wait on her with impulse and suggestive circumstance.

Starting from the favor of the tribune, she carried him forward indefinitely. The wonder is, not that things so purely imaginative as the results she points us to can make us so happy, but that we can receive them as so real.

The throes of recovery from drowning are more painful than the drowning.

These Arrius passed through, and, at length, to Ben-Hur’s delight, reached the point of speech.

Or was he a debtor or a debtor’s son? Or had he been sentenced and sold for theft? These thoughts, as they passed, in nowise disturbed the growing respect for the merchant of which he was each instant more and more conscious.

A peculiarity of our admiration for another is that it is always looking for circumstances to justify itself.

At length a man approached and spoke to him.

now, in this sleep in the day’s broad glare—this sleep at the feet of Daphne—he read a further chapter to which only the vaguest allusion is sufferable.

The law of the place was Love, but Love without Law.

And this was the sweet peace of Daphne!

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.

In this instance, happily, Malluch was an exception to the rule. The affair he had just witnessed raised Ben-Hur in his estimation, since he could not deny him courage and address;

I do not know what became of them. But, Malluch, the man in the chariot yonder was present at the separation; he gave us over to the captors; he heard my mother’s prayer for her children, and he laughed when they dragged her away.

Hardly may one say which graves deepest in memory, love or hate.

Today I knew him afar—and, Malluch—”

“

That would have been to put him past serving me forever. I would have had to kill him, and Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.

”

… fell but for ships in endless procession, gliding with the current, tacking for the wind, or bounding under the impulse of oars—some coming, some going, and all suggestive of the sea, and distant peoples, and famous places, and things coveted on account of their rarity.

To the fancy there is nothing so winsome as a white sail seaward blown, unless it be a white sail homeward bound, its voyage happily done.

And down the shore the friends went continuously till they came to a lake fed by backwater from the river, clear, deep, and without current. An old palm-tree dominated the angle of the inlet;

“Each ring upon its trunk marks a year of its life. Count them from root to branch, and if the sheik tells you the grove was planted before the Seleucidae were heard of in Antioch, do not doubt him.”

One may not look at a perfect palm-tree but that, with a subtlety all its own, it assumes a presence for itself, and makes a poet of the beholder.

This is the explanation of the honors it has received, beginning with the artists of the first kings, who could find no form in all the earth to serve them so well as a model for the pillars of their palaces and temples;

Something in the utterance attracted his attention; it might have been the tone, it might have been the wish.

The smallest bird cannot light upon the greatest tree without sending a shock to its most distant fibre; every mind is at times no less sensitive to the most trifling words.

“You wish him to come, Esther?” he asked.

Does he limit it to the few who did him the wrong, or does he take in the many? And more—is his feeling but the vagary of a sensitive boy, or has it the seasoning of suffering manhood to give it endurance?

You know, Malluch, the vengeful thought that has root merely in the mind is but a dream of idlest sort which one clear day will dissipate; while revenge the passion is a disease of the heart which climbs up, up to the brain, and feeds itself on both alike.

”

“Of what are you thinking, Esther?” he said, in his common homelike way. “If the thought have the form of a wish, give it me, little one, while the power remains mine.

For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight.

”

… sufficient that she should enter upon her young womanhood a servant, but she must carry to her master her affections, the truth and tenderness and delicacy of which he the father so well knew, because to this time they had all been his own undividedly.

The fiend whose task it is to torture us with fears and bitter thoughts seldom does his work by halves.

In the pang of the moment, the brave old man lost sight of his new scheme, and of the miraculous king its subject. By a mighty effort, however, he controlled himself, and asked, calmly, “Not go into the Circus, Esther? Why, child?”

“By the splendor of Solomon, yes!” Ilderim answered. “

Betrayal of self is at times as base as the betrayal of a tribe.

”

and then, in the perishing moment, out of the depths of thy life thrill them to one exertion the mightiest of all? The gift, my son, is not to everyone. Ah, by the splendor of God!

I knew a king who governed millions of men, their perfect master, but could not win the respect of a horse.

Mark! I speak not of the dull brutes whose round it is to slave for slaves—the debased in blood and image—the dead in spirit; but of such as mine here—the kings of their kind;

Ilderim listened, combing his beard the while. At the end he said, with a laugh, “I think better of thee, son of Israel.

We have a saying in the Desert, ‘If you will cook the meal with words, I will promise an ocean of butter.’

Thou shalt have the horses in the morning.”

“Thy wisdom, good sheik, is of the world; and thou dost forget that it is from the ways of the world we are to be redeemed.

Man as a subject is the ambition of a king; the soul of a man for its salvation is the desire of a God.

”

then he gathered his robe about him, gave a last look at the scene, and, without a word, departed for his quarters.

Cicero could not have retired with more gravity from a nightlong senatorial debate.

Three hours afterwards two couriers entered his room, and from his own hand received each a despatch, sealed and in duplicate, and consisting chiefly of a letter to Valerius Gratus, the procurator, still resident in Caesarea.

cooled and purified himself in the lake; exchanged the field garb for his customary vestments, all white, as became a Sadducean of the pure blood; supped early; and, thanks to the strength of youth, was well recovered from the violent exertion he had undergone.

It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence.

The story of Pygmalion and his statue is as natural as it is poetical. Beauty is of itself a power; and it was now drawing Ben-Hur.

It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence. The story of Pygmalion and his statue is as natural as it is poetical.

Beauty is of itself a power; and it was now drawing Ben-Hur.

The Egyptian was to him a wonderfully beautiful woman—beautiful of face, beautiful of form. In his thought she always appeared to him as he saw her at the fountain;

her look would make illumination for him. And then, as everybody knows, given youth and such companionship, there is no situation in which the fancy takes such complete control as upon tranquil waters under a calm night sky, warm with summer.

It is so easy at such time to glide imperceptibly out of the commonplace into the ideal.

“Give me the rudder,” he said.

“

Love lives by loving.

”

now he arose and said, “Son of Arrius, it is for me to beg thy pardon. Read the paper by thyself. When thou art strong enough to give the rest of it to me, send word, and I will return.”

He went out of the tent, and nothing in all his life became him better.

Ben-Hur flung himself on the divan and gave way to his feelings. When somewhat recovered, he recollected that a portion of the letter remained unread, and, taking it up, he resumed the reading.

The moment was one of absorbing interest to all present. Simonides crossed his hands upon his breast again; Esther was anxious; Ilderim nervous.

A man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good-fortune.

Taking the roll, Ben-Hur arose, struggling with emotion.

“I give first thanks to the Lord, who has not abandoned me, and my next to thee, O Simonides.

Thy faithfulness outweighs the cruelty of others, and redeems our human nature.

‘There is nothing I cannot do:’ be it so. Shall any man in this my hour of such mighty privilege be more generous than I? Serve me as a witness now, Sheik Ilderim. Hear thou my words as I shall speak them—hear and remember.

“So I said, and kept saying. Finally, O my master, finally I came to be of your opinion—God was in it—and, like you, I asked, What can his purpose be?

Intelligence is never wasted; intelligence like God’s never stirs except with design.

I have held the question in heart, lo! these many years, watching for an answer.

All who heard it were amazed like me. In time I forgot the circumstance, though there was much talk of it as a presage of the Messiah. Alas, alas!

What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.

You have seen Balthasar?”

The spark dropped upon the inflammable passion; the man’s eyes gleamed; his hands shook; he answered, quickly, “

Revenge is a Jew’s of right; it is the law.

”

“

A camel, even a dog, will remember a wrong,

” cried Ilderim.

“It is well enough, Simonides,” said Ben-Hur. “

A man bears a hard doom better, knowing there is pity for him.

Let me go on.”

the hopelessness of contention with Caesar; the uncertainty veiling everything connected with the King and his coming; the ease, honors, state, purchasable like goods in market; and, strongest of all, the sense newly acquired of home, with friends to make it delightful.

Only those who have been wanderers long desolate can know the power there was in the latter appeal.

Let us add now, the world—always cunning enough of itself; always whispering to the weak, Stay, take thine ease; always presenting the sunny side of life—the world was in this instance helped by Ben-Hur’s companion.

He was, in fact, started home; his tents were all folded; the douar was no more; in twelve hours all would be out of reach, pursue who might.

A man is never safer than when he is under the laugh; and the shrewd old Arab knew it.

Neither he nor Ben-Hur overestimated the influence of Messala; it was their opinion, however, that he would not begin active measures against them until after the meeting in the Circus;

And why not on that?

Good reader, they cannot find anybody who will hazard so much as a denarius with them against Messala.

There are no colors in the saloon but his.

The chalked line up again, the gatekeepers called their men; instantly the ushers on the balcony waved their hands, and shouted with all their strength, “Down! down!”

As well have whistled to stay a storm.

Forth from each stall, like missiles in a volley from so many great guns, rushed the six fours; and up the vast assemblage arose, electrified and irrepressible, and, leaping upon the benches, filled the Circus and the air above it with yells and screams.

finally, along with chariots, drivers, horses, let the reader see the accompanying shadows fly; and, with such distinctness as the picture comes, he may share the satisfaction and deeper pleasure of those to whom it was a thrilling fact, not a feeble fancy.

Every age has its plenty of sorrows; Heaven help where there are no pleasures!

The competitors having started each on the shortest line for the position next the wall, yielding would be like giving up the race; and who dared yield? It is not in common nature to change a purpose in mid-career;

There could be no other accounting for the confidence with which Messala pushed his four forward the instant his competitors were prudentially checking their fours in front of the obstruction—no other except madness.

It is one thing to see a necessity and another to act upon it.

Ben-Hur yielded the wall for the time.

Forward they sprang as with one impulse, and forward leaped the car.

Past question, every experience is serviceable to us.

Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the sea?

but for that reason it was more accordant with the audacious genius of his enemy. The atrium underwent a change; with all its elegance and beauty, it was no more than a trap.

Apprehension always paints in black.

There were many doors on the right and left of the atrium, leading, doubtless, to sleeping-chambers; he tried them, but they were all firmly fastened. Knocking might bring response. Ashamed to make outcry, he betook himself to a couch, and, lying down, tried to reflect.

will he at least try to measure it—let him recall her as she discoursed to her son of God and nations and heroes; one moment a philosopher, the next a teacher, and all the time a mother.

Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

With quickened remembrance of these unfortunates—remembrance of them as they were—let us go down and see them as they are.

The light, slanting upwards, strikes them with ghastly effect, and we cannot avoid seeing they are without vesture or covering. At the same time we are helped to the knowledge that love is there yet, for the two are in each other’s arms.

Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. Love is God.

Where the two are thus grouped the stony floor is polished shining smooth.

How often their thoughts passed each other in the endless search, his coming, theirs going! It was such sweet flattery for them to say to each other, “While he lives, we shall not be forgotten; as long as he remembers us, there is hope!”

The strength one can eke from little, who knows till he has been subjected to the trial?

Our recollections of them in former days enjoin us to be respectful; their sorrows clothe them with sanctity. Without going too near, across the dungeon, we see they have undergone a change of appearance not to be accounted for by time or long confinement.

A man grimed with mortar and stone-dust stepped in, and stopped, holding a torch over his head. Two or three others followed with torches, and stood aside for the tribune to enter.

Respect for women is not all a conventionality, for it is the best proof of their proper nature.

The tribune stopped, because they fled from him—not with fear, be it said, but shame; nor yet, O reader, from shame alone! From the obscurity of their partial hiding he heard these words, the saddest, most dreadful, most utterly despairing of the human tongue:

“Unclean, unclean!” came from the corner again, a slow tremulous wail exceedingly sorrowful.

With such a cry we can imagine a spirit vanishing from the gates of Paradise, looking back the while.

So the widow and mother performed her duty, and in the moment realized that the freedom she had prayed for and dreamed of, fruit of scarlet and gold seen afar, was but an apple of Sodom in the hand.

“Unclean, unclean!” came from the corner again, a slow tremulous wail exceedingly sorrowful. With such a cry we can imagine a spirit vanishing from the gates of Paradise, looking back the while.

So the widow and mother performed her duty, and in the moment realized that the freedom she had prayed for and dreamed of, fruit of scarlet and gold seen afar, was but an apple of Sodom in the hand.

Possibly the reader does not know all the word means. Let him be told it with reference to the Law of that time, only a little modified in this.

The torches flashed redly through the dungeon, and liberty was come. “God is good,” the widow cried—not for what had been, O reader, but for what was.

In thankfulness for present mercy, nothing so becomes us as losing sight of past ills.

The tribune came directly; then in the corner to which she had fled, suddenly a sense of duty smote the elder of the women, and straightway the awful warning—

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake.

Dreaming is the relief of labor, the wine that sustains us in act.

We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no dreams.

Dreaming is the relief of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy.

Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no dreams.

Let no one smile at Ben-Hur for doing that which he himself would have done at that time and place under the same circumstances.

The mother stooped and raised her tenderly, saying, “We have nothing to fear. Let us go on.”

Indeed, lifting their empty hands, they could have run upon a legion and put it to flight.

And, creeping in close to the rough wall, they glided on, like two ghosts, till they came to the gate, before which they also paused.

Back in the shade of the wall there, they retired and knelt, looking at him, waiting for him to wake—waiting some revelation, they knew not what.

Nobody has yet given us a measure for the patience of a love like theirs.

By-and-by, the sleep being yet upon him, another woman appeared at the corner of the palace. The two in the shade saw her plainly in the light;

Under that name were comprehended the four tribes—Asher, Zebulon, Issachar, and Naphthali—and the districts originally set apart to them. The Jew born in sight of the Temple despised these brethren of the north; but the Talmud itself has said,

“The Galilean loves honor, and the Jew money.”

Hating Rome fervidly as they loved their own country, in every revolt they were first in the field and last to leave it. One hundred and fifty thousand Galilean youths perished in the final war with Rome.

The Jew born in sight of the Temple despised these brethren of the north; but the Talmud itself has said, “The Galilean loves honor, and the Jew money.”

Hating Rome fervidly as they loved their own country, in every revolt they were first in the field and last to leave it.

One hundred and fifty thousand Galilean youths perished in the final war with Rome. For the great festal days, they went up to Jerusalem marching and camping like armies; yet they were liberal in sentiment, and even tolerant to heathenism.

And, besides, he was going to Jerusalem, just then of all the world the place where such intelligence possessed by an enemy might be most dangerous to him, his associates, and the cause. But was she an enemy?

It is well for us that, while writing is slow, thought is instantaneous.

When the cup was fairly cooled, he filled it and arose, saying, with indifference well affected,

“See now, I pray you, that which is to be saved to us.

“For my part, speaking with the holiness of truth, I would not give one hour of life as a Soul for a thousand years of life as a man.”

Here the Egyptian seemed to become unconscious of companionship and fall away into abstraction.

“

Sleep is for old people and little children, and I came out to look at my friends, the stars in the south⁠—those now holding the curtains of midnight over the Nile.

But confess yourself surprised!”

“I might have been”—and she laughed low—“I might have been had I seen what he has. I may be when I get old like him.

There should be no religion for youth, only poetry and philosophy; and no poetry except such as is the inspiration of wine and mirth and love, and no philosophy that does not nod excuse for follies which cannot outlive a season.

My father’s God is too awful for me. I failed to find him in the Grove of Daphne. He was never heard of as present in the atria of Rome. But, son of Hur, I have a wish.”

“

Perfect love means perfect faith,

” she replied. “But never mind—you will know me better.”

He answered, with a dubious smile, “

A man drowning may be saved; not so a man in love.

”

But for the sun she would not have been the horror she was to herself, nor been waked so cruelly from dreams of Tirzah as she used to be.

The gift of seeing can be sometimes a dreadful curse.

Does one ask why she did not make an end to her sufferings?

She did not question the performance, for her own son was the witness testifying through the servant; but she strove to comprehend the power by which work so astonishing could be done by a man.

Well enough to make inquiry as to the fact; to comprehend the power, on the other hand, it is first necessary to comprehend God; and he who waits for that will die waiting.

With her, however, the hesitation was brief. To Tirzah she said,

“I am that, and better; I am a disciple of the Christ who teacheth daily by word and example this thing which I have done unto you.

The world hath long known the word charity without understanding it.

Again I say peace and good cheer to thee and thine.”

and though Ben-Hur asked himself what the vanities of the world were to such a one, his ambition was obdurate and would not down.

He persisted as men do yet every day in measuring the Christ by himself.

How much better if we measured ourselves by the Christ!

and though Ben-Hur asked himself what the vanities of the world were to such a one, his ambition was obdurate and would not down. He persisted as men do yet every day in measuring the Christ by himself.

How much better if we measured ourselves by the Christ!

Naturally, the mother was the first to think of the cares of life.

The pillars were not more still than we.

Ha, ha, ha! I fancied I heard the axles of the mighty Roman machine begin to crack.

Ha, ha, ha! O prince, by the soul of Solomon, your King of the World drew his gown about him and walked away, and out by the farthest gate, nor opened his mouth to say a word; and—the Roman machine is running yet!”

“

Thou drinker of lees, feeder upon husks! To think I could love thee, having seen Messala!

Such as thou were born to serve him. He would have been satisfied with release of the six talents; but I say to the six thou shalt add twenty—twenty, dost thou hear?

Here was the betrayer, there the betrayed; and these with clubs and staves, and the legionaries, were brought to take him.

A man may not always tell what he will do until the trial is upon him.

This was the emergency for which Ben-Hur had been for years preparing. The man to whose security he had devoted himself, and upon whose life he had been building so largely, was in personal peril; yet he stood still.

This was the emergency for which Ben-Hur had been for years preparing. The man to whose security he had devoted himself, and upon whose life he had been building so largely, was in personal peril; yet he stood still.

Such contradictions are there in human nature!

To say truth, O reader, he was not entirely recovered from the picture of the Christ before the Gate Beautiful as it had been given by the Egyptian;

The heart the young man carried to his couch beat so heavily he could not sleep; for now clearly his renewed Judean kingdom resolved itself into what it was—only a dream.

It is bad enough to see our castles overthrown one after another with an interval between in which to recover from the shock, or at least let the echoes of the fall die away; but when they go altogether⁠—go as ships sink, as houses tumble in earthquakes⁠—the spirits which endure it calmly are made of stuffs sterner than common, and Ben-Hur’s was not of them.

Through vistas in the future, he began to catch glimpses of a life serenely beautiful, with a home instead of a palace of state, and Esther its mistress.