Doctor Syn quotes

But the sexton would immediately fly into a rage with: “Waggetts’ coffin rottin’, did you say, Missus Waggetts? Not mine.

I undertook Waggetts, I’d have you remember, and I don’t undertake to rot.

I loses money on my coffins, Missus Waggetts. I undertakes, ma’am, undertakes to provide a suitable affair wot’ll keep out damp and water, and cheat worm, grub, slug, and slush.”

“Throw your tea to the devil,” snarled the sexton. “

One ’ud think you was a diamond duchess the way you consumes good tea.

When shall I knock into your skull that tea’s a luxury—a drink wot’s only meant for swells? Perhaps you don’t know what a power of money tea costs!”

When I feels regular out and out, and gets fits of the morbids, you know, the sort of time when you feels you may grow up to be the hanged man and not the hangman, I always takes to myself a thimble of neat rum.

Rum’s the drink for Britons, Mister Cobtree. Rum’s wot’s made all the best sailors and hangmen in the realm.

”

“Don’t try to,” replied the youngster, “don’t try to. You’ll get it in time. The Marsh’ll show you.

She takes her own time, but she’ll get you out of the green some day and ooze you up through the sluices, and then you’ll be a man of Kent, and no mistaking you.

”

“Ah, well,” said Denis finally, “it’s no odds to me; but let me tell you this:

Your King George may rule Whitehall, but my father rules Romney Marsh

,” and humming an old royalist tune, much to the annoyance of the captain, the young man sauntered out of the inn.

“No, with the Shah of Persia.” Then in a tone of supreme condescension he added: “

I believes vicars lives in vicarages!

”

“Not at the price of my happiness; and, besides, I’m not so sure that I do want all those things so desperate.

I’m afraid the wife of Mister Rash would be too genteel a job for me.

”

and you can hope your children, if you’re ever cursed with any, will be able to say the same, for I doubt it very greatly, Mister Schoolmaster. And as to your threats, I set no store on them, for from my heart I despise you;

I despise you because you would be willing to betray your fellows, but I despise you more because I know you are too great a coward to do it.

”

and murders, too. Why, we’d never heard of murders, except, of course, in church we’d heard as how there was such things.

We was as happy and contented a pleasant-going little village as you could have wished, we was; but now, so help me God! you fellows have turned our little spot into a regular witches’ kitchen, that you have.

Two days you’ve been here, and two murders we’ve had—one a day—and if you stays here for a year, as you can calculate for yourself, we’ll have three hundred and sixty-five, at the present rate.

but with all his watching and wondering he didn’t forget to eat, and eat heartily, too, for Jerry’s maxim was, “

Eat when you can, and only think when you’ve got to.

”

… that his story would be disbelieved, “but if you’ll excuse me saying so, who are you, Doctor Syn, and for the matter of that who am I, to say what the laws of nature are, or to dare to affirm just how far they extend?

For my own part, I should prefer to question my own ignorance rather than the laws of nature.

”

… then, for all the ghost tales he had heard, for all the ghostly things those not in the secret had seen upon the Marsh, and a very clever scheme Jack thought it was, and a very good way of clearing the ground of the curious.

For there is no power like superstition, and nothing that spreads quicker or is more grossly exaggerated than tales of horror and fear.

So on they rode in wild circles round and round the pack-ponies. Beelzebub was the actual leader.

The mildewed sacking, wet with the dense mist, had severed in the fall; the threads had rent at a hundred points, and from the fragments of scattered debris the dead face of Rash looked up with protruding eyes that stared from the blood-streaked flesh.

Jerk’s gallows had borne fruit.

For minutes they stood looking. The cloak had fallen from the girl’s shoulders, and the shrieking wind flapped in her rough dress and tore at her streaming hair. Jerk, with his ambitions fulfilled, found himself most uncomfortably scared. For minutes neither of them spoke.

One of the papers was a letter of instructions telling her the easiest way of setting about the rescue of the squire’s son, and she knew the advice to be sound, for the signature bore the great name of the Scarecrow.

What’s in a name, eh? More than Mr. Shakespeare gave credit for

, because as the name of Robespierre had carried terror and power in France, and as the name of Napoleon was changed to Boney for the frightening of children by tyrannical nurses in England, so the title of the Scarecrow bore the like qualities on …

“You must really make an effort, sir, to keep awake, for the sake of your country, you really must, sir, for you will make as great a statesman as you have a soldier. You cannot help it, sir.

Talent such as yours, genius such as yours, is like murder, sir⁠—it will out.

”

Hurry up, my good fellow! No, you dolt, I am not on duty. What do I want my sword for?

Swords get most damnably between your legs at the wrong moment.

They really are positively useless lumber. I cannot think why they are not abolished. Damned clanky things, always in the wrong place, and tripping one up when least on one’s guard. I’ll take my cane.

And if young men won’t join the navy—well, we have to make ’em, you see, and that’s what the press gang’s for, don’t you know?

If you cannot get a thing done for love, you know, you must get it done by force.

Do you follow me?”

there was Doctor Syn holding the pulpit with a long brassbound pistol in each hand. And there was also Mr. Mipps, the sexton, leaning over his desk and pointing a great blunderbuss at the captain’s head.

“I must beg of you, sir, not to take the words of God out of my mouth!”

The Doctor spoke the words in just the same tones as the rest of his sermon, and continued as if nothing had happened—continued his sermon in mild tones, with two pistols grinning over the red-cushioned desk.