Short Fiction quotes

but a cabriolet, big enough to hold six persons, with rope traces and corresponding appendages, deposited us at the Golden Fleece in something less than six hours. The inward man was duly fortified, and we started for the castle.

It boots not here to describe the effects which gunpowder and grapeshot had had on the walls of Antwerp.

Let the curious in these matters read the horrors of the siege of Troy, or the history of Jerusalem taken by Titus. The one may be found in Homer, and the other in Josephus.

All this having been achieved, they pocketed their plunder and prepared to depart.

There are people who have a wonderful appetite for relics.

A stone with which Washington had broken a window when a boy—with which he had done so or had not, for there is little difference; a button that was on a coat of Napoleon’s, or on that of one of his lackeys;

… proudly on high, determined to be dignified in spite of his misfortunes, and advanced two steps into the room without a remark, as though he were able to show that neither red plush nor black cloth could disarrange the equal poise of his mighty mind!

And after all what are a man’s garments but the outward husks in which the fruit is kept, duly tempered from the wind?

The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

But whether the motherly lady with the somewhat blowsy hair was Mrs. Jones, or Mrs. Green, or Mrs. Walker, I cannot now say. The dumpy female with the broad back was always called Aunt Sally by the young ladies.

Too much sugar spoils one’s tea; I think I have heard that even prosperity will cloy when it comes in overdoses; and a schoolboy has been known to be overdone with jam.

I myself have always been peculiarly attached to ladies’ society, and have avoided bachelor parties as things execrable in their very nature. But on this special occasion I felt myself to be that schoolboy;—I was literally overdone with jam.

They seemed to say, the boots did, “Now, make haste. We at any rate are ready—you cannot say that you were kept waiting for us.”

No mere servant’s hand had ever enabled a pair of boots to laugh at one so completely.

But what was I to do? I rushed at the small portmanteau, thinking that my pumps also might be there. The woman surely could not have been such a fool as to send me those tons of iron for my evening wear! But, alas, alas!

This might be very well for the dinner, but it would be a bad joke for me when the hour for dancing came. And, alas! I felt that I lacked the courage.

It is not every man that can walk down to dinner, in a strange house full of ladies, wearing such boots as those I have described.

Should I not attempt to borrow a pair? This, all the world will say, should have been my first idea. But I have not yet mentioned that I am myself a large-boned man, and that my feet are especially well developed.

Where does one find girls so pretty, so easy, so sweet, so talkative as the Irish girls? And then with all their talking and all their ease who ever hears of their misbehaving?

They certainly love flirting as they also love dancing. But they flirt without mischief and without malice.

I had now quite forgotten my misfortune, and was beginning to think how well I should like to have Fanny O’Conor for my wife.

“Not at all unnatural I think,” said I, looking tenderly and lovingly into her face.

Where does one find girls so pretty, so easy, so sweet, so talkative as the Irish girls?

And then with all their talking and all their ease who ever hears of their misbehaving? They certainly love flirting as they also love dancing. But they flirt without mischief and without malice.

“I don’t think he has got any others,” said Tizzy—“at least none others left.”

On the whole I am glad I did not marry into the family, as I could not have endured that girl to stay in my house as a sister-in-law.

“Where the d⸺ has that other fellow gone to?” said Tom. “Jack, do go out and see what is the matter. If anybody is drunk send for me.”

In the first place the widow was a timid woman, and among other fears feared greatly that she should be thought guilty of setting traps for husbands.

Poor mothers! how often are they charged with this sin when their honest desires go no further than that their bairns may be “respectit like the lave.”

And then she feared flirtations; flirtations that should be that and nothing more, flirtations that are so destructive of the heart’s sweetest essence. She feared love also, though she longed for that as well as feared it;—for her girls, I mean;

On Monday the thing had become of importance to him.

Things always do when they are kept over.

Before tea that evening when he came down Mrs. Bell and Susan only were in the room. He knew Hetta for his foe, and therefore determined to use this occasion.

Hetta, she knew, would be dead against such a lover, and of her mother’s approbation she had hardly more hope. Why they should disapprove of Aaron as a lover she had never asked herself.

There are many nice things that seem to be wrong only because they are so nice.

Maybe that Susan regarded a lover as one of them. “Oh, Mr. Dunn, you shouldn’t.” That in fact was all that she could say.

And then he paused, thinking possibly that in spite of what he had said he might perhaps get some sort of an answer, some inkling of the state of her heart’s disposition towards him.

But Susan had at once resolved to take him at his word when he suggested that an immediate reply was not necessary.

To say that she loved him was of course impossible, and to say that she did not was equally so. She determined therefore to close at once with the offer of silence.

And thus at Cairo there is always to be found a considerable population of French, Americans, and of English. Oriental life is brought home to us, dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the delights of the Arabian Nights are shorn of half their value.

When we have seen a thing it is never so magnificent to us as when it was half unknown.

It is not much that we deign to learn from these Orientals—we who glory in our civilisation. We do not copy their silence or their abstemiousness, nor that invariable mindfulness of his own personal dignity which always adheres to a Turk or to an Arab.

As this is becoming an established profession, setting itself up as it were in opposition to the old world idea that women, like green peas, cannot come to perfection without supporting-sticks, it will be understood at once what were Miss Dawkins’s sentiments.

She considered⁠—or at any rate so expressed herself⁠—that peas could grow very well without sticks, and could not only grow thus unsupported, but could also make their way about the world without any incumbrance of sticks whatsoever.

She did not intend, she said, to rival Ida Pfeiffer, seeing that she was attached in a moderate way to bed and board, and was attached to society in a manner almost more than moderate;

In her dismay she did give away sundry small coins—all, probably, that she had about her; but this only made the matter worse. Money was going, and each man, by sufficient energy, might hope to get some of it.

They were very energetic, and so frightened the poor lady that she would certainly have fallen, had she not been kept on her seat by the pressure around her.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away,” she cried. “I haven’t got any more; indeed I haven’t. Go away, I tell you! Mr. Damer! oh, Mr. Damer!” and then, in the excess of her agony, she uttered one loud, long, and continuous shriek.

This, it will be acknowledged, was bold on the part of Miss Dawkins; but what will not audacity effect?

To use the slang of modern language, cheek carries everything nowadays.

And whatever may have been Miss Dawkins’s deficiencies, in this virtue she was not deficient.

“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Damer, again.

It often does strike an old gentleman as very odd that any man should fall in love with his daughter, whom he has not ceased to look upon as a child.

The case is generally quite different with mothers. They seem to think that every young man must fall in love with their girls.

But when she reached the door she called him. He was at her side in a moment, and then she whispered in his ear—

“And I, also⁠—I will be of the same business.”

When M. Lacordaire regained the table the senior habitué, the junior garçon, and all the intermediate ranks of men at the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs knew that they might congratulate him.

There is nothing so melancholy as a country in its decadence, unless it be a people in their decadence.

I am not aware that the latter misfortune can be attributed to the Anglo-Saxon race in any part of the world; but there is reason to fear that it has fallen on an English colony in the island of Jamaica.

And I must add also in her favour that she did not keep her flirting for sly corners, nor did her admirers keep their distance till mamma was out of the way. It mattered not to her who was present.

Had she been called on to make one at a synod of the clergy of the island, she would have flirted with the bishop before all his priests.

And there have been bishops in the colony who would not have gainsayed her!

one who had struggled with them from his boyhood, and had never been overcome. Now he was unable to conceal the bitterness of his wrath because a little girl had ridden off to look for a green spot for her tablecloth without asking his assistance!

Picnics are, I think, in general, rather tedious for the elderly people who accompany them.

When the joints become a little stiff, dinners are eaten most comfortably with the accompaniment of chairs and tables, and a roof overhead is an agrément de plus. But, nevertheless, picnics cannot exist without a certain allowance of elderly people.

but he could see—and imagine, which was worse. How innocent and inane are, after all, the flirtings of most young ladies, if all their words and doings in that line could be brought to paper!

I do not know whether there be as a rule more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and woman than there is between two thrushes!

They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.

“He shall not make a slave of me, at any rate as yet.” And away she went as madly, more madly than ever, and for the rest of the evening she danced with Captain Ewing and with him alone.

There is an intoxication quite distinct from that which comes from strong drink.

When the judgment is altogether overcome by the spirits this species of drunkenness comes on, and in this way Marian Leslie was drunk that night.

All the buttons of his breeches also were of gold; and there were gold tags to all the buttonholes. His stockings were of the finest silk, and clocked with gold from the knee to the ankle.

Dress any Englishman in such a garb and he will at once give you the idea of a hog in armour.

In the first place he will lack the proper spirit to carry it off, and in the next place the motion of his limbs will disgrace the ornaments they bear. “And so best,” most Englishmen will say. Very likely;

That mouth can speak words of wisdom, of very useful wisdom—though of poetry it has latterly uttered little that was original.

Poetry and romance! They are splendid mountain views seen in the distance.

So let men be content to see them, and not attempt to tread upon the fallacious heather of the mystic hills.

Her eyebrows were serious in their effect, but not so serious as the pair of green spectacles which she always wore under them.

It was thought by those who had analysed the subject that the great secret of Madame Bauche’s power lay in her green spectacles.

Her custom was to move about and through the whole establishment every day from breakfast till the period came for her to dress for dinner.

nor could he by any means withdraw it without losing altogether his position in the establishment of Madame Bauche. Nor indeed did his conscience tell him that such a marriage should be permitted. That would be too much.

If every pretty girl were allowed to marry the first young man that might fall in love with her, what would the world come to?

And it soon appeared that there was not time enough—that the time was growing very scant. In three months Adolphe would be back. And if everything was not arranged by that time, matters might still go astray.

Never was prince or princess expected with more anxiety. Madame Bauche was up and dressed long before the hour, and was heard to say five several times that she was sure he would not come.

The capitaine was out and on the high road, moving about with his wooden leg, as perpendicular as a lamppost and almost as black.

Marie also was up, but nobody had seen her. She was up and had been out about the place before any of them were stirring; but now that the world was on the move she lay hidden like a hare in its form.

And so the marriage was completed, and the watch was at once given to Marie. “Thank you, maman,” said she, as the trinket was fastened to her girdle.

Had it been a pincushion that had cost three sous, it would have affected her as much.

And then there was cake and wine and sweetmeats; and after a few minutes Marie disappeared.

In the same way I dislike having waiters put down in my bill. I find that I pay them twice over, and thus lose money; and as they do not expect to be so treated, I never have the advantage of their civility.

The world, I fear, is becoming too fond of tariffs.

“A tariff!” said I to the consul, feeling that the whole romance of my expedition would be dissipated by such an arrangement. “Then I’ll go alone; I’ll take a revolver with me.”

These Orientals are a people with whom appearances go a long way, and, as a rule, fear and respect mean the same thing with them. A pistol hanging over your loins is no great trouble to you, and looks as though you could bite.

Many a dog goes through the world well by merely showing his teeth.

”

I have had my palate out of order too; but the proper appreciation of flavours has come back to me. Bah—how noisome was that Dead Sea water!”

“The Dead Sea waters are noisome,” he said; “and I have been drinking of them by long draughts.”

“Long draughts!” I answered, thinking to console him. “Draughts have not been long which can have been swallowed in your years. Your disease may be acute, but it cannot yet have become chronic.

“

Oh, women! A woman cries for everything and for nothing. It is the sharpest arrow she has in her quiver⁠—the best card in her hand.

When a woman cries, what can you do but give her all she asks for?”

For a moment I hesitated, and then walked slowly across the yard and opened the door. “Sir William,” I said, as I did so, “

I travelled here with a companion dressed as a man; and I believed him to be what he seemed till this minute.

”

To her, at the moment, it seemed as though I had cruelly deceived her.

In truth, the one person really deceived had been myself.

And here I must explain, on behalf of the lady, that when she first joined me she had no other view than that of seeing the banks of the Jordan in that guise which she had chosen to assume, in order to escape from the …

As to ambition, generally as the world agrees with Mark Antony in stigmatising it as a grievous fault, I am myself clear that it is a virtue; but with ambition at present we have no concern.

Enthusiasm also, as I think, leans to virtue’s side; or, at least, if it be a fault, of all faults it is the prettiest.

But then, to partake at all of virtue, or even to be in any degree pretty, the enthusiasm must be true.

Enthusiasm also, as I think, leans to virtue’s side; or, at least, if it be a fault, of all faults it is the prettiest. But then, to partake at all of virtue, or even to be in any degree pretty, the enthusiasm must be true.

Bad coin is known from good by the ring of it; and so is bad enthusiasm.

Let the coiner be ever so clever at his art, in the coining of enthusiasm the sound of true gold can never be imparted to the fake metal.

And I doubt whether the cleverest she in the world can make false enthusiasm palatable to the taste of man.

To the taste of any woman the enthusiasm of another woman is never very palatable.

We understood at Rome that Mrs. Talboys had a considerable family—four or five children, we were told; but she brought with her only one daughter, a little girl about twelve years of age.

as also there is hardly one who does not now regard that cause as well-nigh triumphant; but, nevertheless, it was almost impossible to sympathise with Mrs. Talboys.

As Mackinnon said, she flew so high that there was no comfort in flying with her.

“Well,” said he, “Brown and the rest of them are down below. Shall we go and join them?”

“And twice as much,” my wife added.

Why is it that women are so spiteful to each other?

Early in the day Mrs. Talboys clambered up to the top of a tomb, and made a little speech, holding a parasol over her head.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Talboys; that will be making too much of him.”

“The greatest hero that lives,” she answered, “may have his house made uninhabitable by a very small insect.”

Mackinnon swore that those were her own words. Consequently a sobriquet was attached to O’Brien of which he by no means approved. And from that day we always called Mrs. Talboys “the hero.”

It is sad to say so, but I fear—I fear that such was the case.

When you have your plaything, how much of the anticipated pleasure vanishes, especially if it be won easily.

He had told none of his family what were his intentions in this second visit to Devonshire, and now he had to bethink himself whether they would be satisfied.

The heart of this country-bred girl had fallen at the first word from his mouth. Had she not so confessed to him? She was very nice—very nice indeed. He loved her dearly. But had he not sold himself too cheaply?

I by no means say that he was not a brute.

But whether brute or no, he was an honest man, and had no remotest dream, either then, on that morning, or during the following days on which such thoughts pressed more quickly on his mind—of breaking away from his pledged word.

“I have watched him for the last four or five days. If you could have kept the truth to yourself and bade him keep off from you, he would have been at your feet now, licking the dust from your shoes.”

“But, dear friend, I do not want a man to lick dust from my shoes.”

“Ah, you are a fool. You do not know the value of your own wealth.”

I could not in the least assist him by translating it into Italian, for I did not speak a word of the language myself; but I suggested that the man would understand French. The waiter, however, had understood English.

Waiters do understand all languages with a facility that is marvellous

; and this one now suggested that Mrs. Greene should follow him upstairs. Mrs. Greene, however, would not move till she had seen that her boxes were all right; and as Mrs.

For myself, I never turn a key anywhere, and no one ever purloins from me even a handkerchief. Cantabit vacuus—, and I am always sufficiently vacuus. Perhaps it is that I have not a handkerchief worth the stealing.

It is your heavy-laden, suspicious, maladroit Greenes that the thieves attack.

I now found out that the accommodating Boots, who already knew my ways, had taken my travelling gear into a dark recess which was intended to do for a dressing-room, and had there spread my portmanteau open upon some table or stool in the corner.

It seemed to me, therefore, that his course was easy. Let him wait at Bellaggio for more money, and when he returned home, let him buy Mrs. Greene more jewels.

A poor man always presumes that a rich man is indifferent about his money. But in truth a rich man never is indifferent about his money, and poor Greene looked very blank at my proposition.

“Do you mean to say that it’s gone forever?” he asked.

… everyone knows, is chiefly to be noted as a new town—so new that many of the streets and most of the palaces look as though they had been sent home last night from the builders, and had only just been taken out of their bandboxes.

It is angular, methodical, unfinished, and palatial.

But there is an old town; and, though the old town be not of surpassing interest, it is as dingy, crooked, intricate, and dark as other old towns in Germany.

“You must wait—as I did,” said Papa Heine. “I was forty before I could marry.”

Papa Heine, however, should not have forgotten to say that his bride was only twenty, and that if he had waited, she had not.

“Isa,” Herbert said to her, when all this had been fully explained to her, “what do you say now?”

“Oh, Isa, is that your love?”

“No, Herbert, that is not my love; that is my discretion;”

and she even laughed with her mild low laughter, as she answered him. “You know you are too impatient to wait four years, and what else therefore can I say?”

“Well, go on. What have you to say? I am not stern; but I have no doubt you will think me unkind.

People are always unkind who do not do what they are asked.

”

A baby had been carried down in a litter strapped on to a mule’s back. A guide at the mule’s head would be necessary, and that was all. When once in her boat the baby would be as well as in her cradle.

What purpose cannot a woman gain by perseverance?

Her purpose in this instance Mrs. Arkwright did at last gain by persevering.

A singular looking man was he, with a huge shaggy beard, and shaggy uncombed hair, but with bright blue eyes, which gave to his face a remarkable look of sweetness.

He was an uncouth man to the eye, and yet a child would have trusted herself with him in a forest.

At this place they remained some two hours. Coffee was prepared here, and Mrs. Arkwright refreshed herself and her child.

I am inclined to think that Miss Garrow was right in saying that the world is changed as touching misletoe boughs.

Kissing, I fear, is less innocent now than it used to be when our grandmothers were alive, and we have become more fastidious in our amusements.

Nevertheless, I think that she made herself fairly open to the raillery with which her brothers attacked her.

But now it would be almost impossible to avoid the subject in conversation. “Dearest Isabella, let it be as though it had never been,” she had said in one of her letters.

But sometimes it is very difficult to let things be as though they had never been.

The first evening passed over very well. The two Coverdale girls were there, and there had been much talking and merry laughter, rather juvenile in its nature, but on the whole none the worse for that. Isabella Holmes was a fine, tall, handsome girl;

I am not at all sure that the French fashion is not the best, and that these things shouldn’t be managed by the fathers and mothers, or perhaps by the family lawyers.

Girls who are so intent upon knowing their own hearts generally end by knowing nobody’s heart but their own; and then they die old maids.

”

Of all the spots on the world’s surface that I, George Walker, of Friday Street, London, have ever visited, Suez in Egypt, at the head of the Red Sea, is by far the vilest, the most unpleasant, and the least interesting.

There are no women there, no water, and no vegetation. It is surrounded, and indeed often filled, by a world of sand. A scorching sun is always overhead;

Of all the spots on the world’s surface that I, George Walker, of Friday Street, London, have ever visited, Suez in Egypt, at the head of the Red Sea, is by far the vilest, the most unpleasant, and the least interesting.

There are no women there, no water, and no vegetation.

It is surrounded, and indeed often filled, by a world of sand. A scorching sun is always overhead; and one is domiciled in a huge cavernous hotel, which seems to have been made purposely destitute of all the comforts of civilised life.

As I passed out, the porter greeted me with a low obeisance, and walking on, I felt that I stepped the ground with a sort of dignity of which I had before been ignorant.

It is not, as a rule, the man who gives grace and honour to the position, but the position which confers the grace and honour upon the man.

I have often envied the solemn gravity and grand demeanour of the Lord Chancellor, as I have seen him on the bench; but I almost think that even Judkins would look grave and dignified under such a wig.

I went to bed early in order to escape the returning party, and was again on the quay at six the next morning. On this occasion, I stepped boldly into the boat the very moment that I came along the shore.

There is nothing in the world like paying for what you use.

I saw myself to the bottle of brandy and the cold meat, and acknowledged that a cigar out of my own case would suit me better than that long stick.

The men and women at first regard each with distrust and ill-concealed dislike. They by no means anticipate the strong feelings which are to arise, and look forward to ten, fifteen, or twenty days of gloom or seasickness.

Seasickness disappears, as a general condition, on the evening of the second day, and the gloom about noon on the fourth.

Then the men begin to think that the women are not so ugly, vulgar, and insipid; and the women drop their monosyllables, discontinue the close adherence to their own niches, which they first observed, and become affable, perhaps even beyond their wont on shore.

He had seen her before on deck, as she lay on one of the benches, vainly endeavouring to make herself comfortable, and had remarked to his companion that she was very unattractive and almost ugly.

Dear young ladies, it is thus that men always speak of you when they first see you on board ship!

She was disconsolate, sick at heart, and ill at ease in body also. She did not like the sea. She did not in the least like the grumpy gentleman in whose hands she was placed; she did not, especially, like the grumpy gentleman’s wife;

“Oh! does he not? Don’t think me uncivil, Miss Viner, if I say that you may be mistaken in that.

You feel your own shoe when it pinches, but do not realise the tight boot of your neighbour.

”

“Ah,” says she, “of course you will condemn me. That is the way in which women are always treated.

They have no choice given them, and are then scolded for choosing wrongly.

”

I cannot make you understand the whole—how it first came about that the marriage was proposed, and agreed to by me under certain conditions. Those conditions have come about, and I am now bound to him. I have taken his money and have no escape.

It is easy to say that a woman should not marry without love, as easy as it is to say that a man should not starve.

But there are men who starve—starve although they work hard.”

“I’m sure I hope everything will be right,” said Amelia, as she absolutely kissed her enemy.

It is astonishing how well young women can hate each other, and yet kiss at parting.

“As to everything being right,” said Miss Viner, “that is too much to hope. But I do not know that anything is going especially wrong.—Goodbye, Sir,” and then she put out her hand to Mr. Grumpy.

“It will not be a quarter of a mite,” she said. “

How can it be anything if I get you!

” Then she kissed him, and hurried away out of the room, before he could again speak to her.

“

Quixotism leads to nothing, but this will lead to twenty pounds’ worth of soup⁠—and to something else too.

”

“There has been no widow’s mite.

It is not easy to be a widow with two mites.

”

“I will; though you are a rebel all the same for that.”

“Washington made a nation;⁠—you are destroying one.”

“We are making another, dear; that’s all. But I won’t talk Secesh to you out here in the cold. Go in, and be good to my father; and remember this, Ada, I’ll be here again next Christmas-eve, if I’m alive.”

Who can say what is a lady?

My intelligent and well-bred reader of either sex will at once declare that he and she knows very well who is a lady. So, I hope, do I. But the present question goes further than that. What is it, and whence does it come?

“You tell me that you wish you had accepted Mr. Hoskins. Why do you not do so?” said I, continuing my cross-examination.

“Because I have a vain ambition⁠—a foolish ambition⁠—a silly, moth-like ambition⁠—by which, if I indulge it, I shall only burn my wings. Because I am such an utter ass that I would fain make myself an Englishwoman.”

“I don’t see that you need burn your wings!”

Then, with scorn in her eye, she swore that she could get it where he durst not venture, and repeated her threat of hamstringing the pony. Barty laughed at her wrath, jeered her because of her wild hair, and called her a mermaid.

“I’ll mermaid you!” she cried. “Mermaid, indeed! I wouldn’t be a man to come and rob a poor girl and an old cripple. But you’re no man, Barty Gunliffe! You’re not half a man.”

Nevertheless, Bartholomew Gunliffe was a very fine young fellow as far as the eye went. He was about five feet eight inches high, with strong arms and legs, with light curly brown hair and blue eyes.

“I aint a doing no harm to none as doesn’t harm me,” said Barty. “The sea’s free to all, Malachi.”

“And the sky’s free to all, but I mustn’t get up on the top of your big barn to look at it,”

said Mally, who was standing among the rocks with a long hook in her hand. The long hook was the tool with which she worked in dragging the weed from the waves.

Poulnadioul she was accustomed to call it; which was supposed, when translated, to mean that this was the hole of the Evil One. Never did Mally attempt to make her own of weed which had found its way into that pot.

But Barty Gunliffe knew no better, and she watched him as he endeavoured to steady himself on the treacherously slippery edge of the pool.

He fixed himself there and made a haul, with some small success. How he managed it she hardly knew, but she stood still for a while watching him anxiously, and then she saw him slip. He slipped, and recovered himself;—slipped again, and again recovered himself.

“An please you, my lord count,” said dame Ulrica, “Euphemuia has fled this morning by the small wicket which leads from beneath the west barbican into the forest, and Alasco the Wise has gone with her.”

Then the Count Grandnostrel stood up in his wrath, and sat down in his wrath, and stood up in his wrath once again.

“That tankard full of gold pieces,” said he, “to him who shall bring me the greybeard’s head!”

“I think it’s a great liberty, Sir,” said I.

“And I think it’s a little one. It’s only in the size of it we differ. But I beg your pardon. There is your brush. I hope it will be none the worse.”

Then he put down the brush, seated himself on one of the two chairs which the room contained, and slowly proceeded to pull off his shoes, looking me full in the face all the while.

And many times when he has, in years since that, but years nevertheless which are now long back, come over and visited me in my English home, he has told the story of the manner in which we first became acquainted.

“When you find a gentleman asleep,” he would say, “always ask his leave before you take a liberty with his clothes-brush.”

But, nevertheless, what Herr Crippel said came true, and on the next Sunday but one he took Lotta Schmidt home to his house as his wife.

“It was all because of the zither,” Lotta said to her old mother-in-law. “If he had not played the zither that night I should not have been here now.”

Hideous, brainless, meaningless idiot! Fred in his fury tore his article into a hundred fragments; and poor Mary was employed, during the whole of the next week, in making another copy of it from the original blotted sheets, which had luckily been preserved.

“Pearls before swine!” Fred said to himself, as he slowly made his way up to the library of the Museum on the last day of that week.

That was in the end of October. He had not then earned a single shilling for many months, and the nearer prospect of that starvation of which he had once spoken so cheerily was becoming awfully frightful to him.

He had thought of starvation, or rather of some high-toned extremity of destitution, which might be borne with an admirable and perhaps sublime magnanimity. But how was a man to bear with magnanimity a poorhouse jacket, and the union mode of hair-cutting?

It is not easy for a man with a wife and baby to starve in this country, unless he be one to whom starvation has come very gradually.

Fred saw it all now. The police would come to him, and take his wife and baby away into the workhouse, and he would follow them.

His wife had threatened to write to his father, but she had not carried her threat into execution.

It is not by such means that a young wife overcomes her husband.

He had looked sternly at her when she had so spoken, and she had known that she could not bring herself to do such a thing without his permission.

This she said with all that caution which everywhere forms so marked a trait in the Italian character.

“Who goes softly goes soundly.”

Half of the Italian nature is told in that proverb, though it is not the half which was becoming most apparent in the doings of the nation in these days. And the Signorina was quite of one mind with her mother.

She complained of nothing, and was only anxious to explain the little eccentricities of her husband. When we alluded to some of his marvellously untrue assertions, she stopped us at once.

“He do lie,” she said. “Certainly he do. How he makes them all out is wonderful. But he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

It was evident to us that she not only loved her husband, but admired him. She showed us heaps of manuscript with which the old drawers were crammed; and yet that paper on the Church of England had been new work, done expressly for us.

If I am fit, I shall succeed. Mr. ⸻ thinks I may succeed.” Many more words of wisdom we spoke to her, and well do we remember her reply when we had run all our line off the reel, and had completed our sermon.

“I shall go on all the same,” she said. “I shall try, and try again⁠—and again.”

Her power over us, to a certain extent, was soon established. Of course we promised to read the MS., and turned it over, no doubt with an anxious countenance, to see of what kind was the writing.

Donne. But even were it certain that such would be your fate, how can that alter the state of things? The world would know nothing of that; and if it did, would the world buy your book out of pity?”

“I want no one to pity me,” she said; “but I want you to help me.”

So we went on helping her. At the end of four months she had not put pen to paper on the absolute body of her projected novel; and yet she had worked daily at it, arranging its future construction.

What consolation was possible? It was simply necessary to admit with frankness that sorrow had come from which there could be no present release. “Yes,” she said.

“Time will cure it⁠—in a way. One dies in time, and then of course it is all cured.”

“One hears of this kind of thing often,” she said afterwards, still leaning forward in her chair, still with something of the old expression in her eyes—something almost of humour in spite of her grief; “but it is the girl who dies.

Nevertheless, he did forgive it. The poor little creature before him had worked hard, and had done her best. To teach her to be less metaphysical in her writings, and more straightforward in her own practices, should be his care.

There is something to a man inexpressibly sweet in the power of protecting the weak; and no one had ever seemed to be weaker than Josephine.

“Miss de Montmorenci,” he said, “we will let bygones be bygones, and will say nothing about the letters. It is no doubt the fact that you did write the novel yourself?”

We measured the importance of the Panjandrum by its significance to ourselves, and by the amount of heart which we intended to throw into it. Ladies and gentlemen who get up magazines in the present day are wiser.

It is not heart that is wanted, but very big letters on very big boards, and plenty of them.

We were all heart. It must be admitted now that we did not bestow upon the matter of literary excellence quite so much attention as that branch of the subject deserves.

My editing was not to go beyond that. If by reason of parity of numbers in voting there should arise a difficulty, the lady was to have a double vote.

Anything more noble, more chivalrous, more trusting, or, I may add, more philanthropic than our scheme never was invented; and for the persons, I will say that they were noble, chivalrous, trusting, and philanthropic;⁠—only they were so young!

Place aux dames. We will speak of the lady first—more especially as our meetings were held at her house. I fear that I may, at the very outset of our enterprise, turn the hearts of my readers against her by saying that Mrs. St.

I think I should have done so had I not felt that he would in some fashion have so turned the tables on me that I should have been the sufferer.

There are men with whom one comes by the worst in any contest, let justice on one’s own side be ever so strong and ever so manifest.

But this is digression. After the little speech, Jack would begin upon the muffins, and Churchill Smith—always seated at his cousin’s left hand—would hang his head upon his hand, wearing a look of mingled thought and sorrow on his brow. He never would eat muffins.

It had been my dream from my youth upwards. I was still young, no doubt, and looking back now I can see how insignificant were the aspirations which were then in question.

But there is no period in a man’s life in which it does not seem to him that his ambition is then, at that moment, culminating for him⁠—till the time comes in which he begins to own to himself that his life is not fit for ambition.

I had believed that I might be the means of doing something, and of doing it in this way. Very vague indeed had been my notions;—most crude my ideas. I can see that now.

It was probable that Mr. Mackenzie had already fitted himself to his present audience. And, even were it not so, we could not promise him forty-five shillings a week, or even that thirty shillings for which he asked.

There is nothing more dangerous than the attempt to befriend a man in middle life by transplanting him from one soil to another.

When Mr. Mackenzie came to us again we endeavoured to explain all this to him. We had in the meantime seen our friend the Doctor, whose beneficence of spirit in regard to the unfortunate man of letters was extreme.

We could not bring ourselves to believe that Mr. Grimes would authorise the proposition.

There is something holy about the bedroom of a married couple; and there would be a special desecration in the continued presence of Mr. Julius Mackenzie.

We thought it better that we should explain something of all this to her. “Do you know,” we said, “this seems to be hardly prudent?”

… that ten minutes would usher him into what folks called eternity, his sense of suffering would be as great as it had been when he conducted that woman out of court and along the streets to his home, amidst the jeering congratulations of his neighbours?

“When you have fallen so low,” said he, “that you can fall no lower, the ordinary trammels of the world cease to bind you.”

Though his words were knocked against each other with the dulled utterances of intoxication, his intellect was terribly clear, and his scorn for himself, and for the world that had so treated him, was irrepressible.

“My friend,” he said, when his walk was over, “a great man underwent the same sorrow. Newton’s manuscript was burned. I will take it home with me, and we will say no more about it.”

I never thought very much of the Doctor as a divine, but I hold him to have been as good a Christian as I ever met.

But that plan of his of saying no more about it could not quite be carried out.

… of scruple—which in men who have risen in public life we may perhaps call adaptability to compromise—was in her so strong, that had she been a man, she would have trimmed her bark to any wind that blew, and certainly have sailed into some port.

But she was a woman⁠—and the ports were not open to her.

Those ports were not open to her which had she been a man would have been within her reach;

She was utterly unscrupulous, dishonest, a liar, cruel, hard as a nether millstone to all the world except Lieutenant Brumby—harder to him than to all the world besides when he made any faintest attempt at rebellion—and as far as we could judge, absolutely without conscience.

Had she been a man and had circumstances favoured her, she might have been a prime minister, or an archbishop, or a chief justice.

We intend no silly satire on present or past holders of the great offices indicated; but we think that they have generally been achieved by such a combination of intellect, perseverance, audacity, and readiness as that which Mrs. Brumby certainly possessed.

You cannot but be aware of the connection which His Royal Highness has long maintained with literature.”

Mrs. Brumby could not write, but she could speak.

The words she had just uttered were absolutely devoid of sense. The absurdity of them was ludicrous and gross. But they were not without a certain efficacy.

and when she left us the manuscript was with us, and we had no doubt undertaken to read it. We are perfectly certain that at that time we had not gone beyond this in the way of promising assistance to Mrs. Brumby.

The would-be author, who cannot make his way either by intellect or favour, can hardly do better, perhaps, than establish a grievance.

Let there be anything of a case of ill-usage against editor or publisher, and the aspirant, if he be energetic and unscrupulous, will greatly increase his chance of working his way into print. Mrs.

… she was really qualified to give us valuable assistance in regard to the magazine, as to which we must own we were sometimes driven to use matter that was not quite so brilliant as, for our readers’ sakes, we would have wished it to be.

We feel ourselves compelled to admit that old and ugly women, taken on the average, do better literary work than they who are young and pretty.

I did not like Mrs. Brumby, but it might be that in her the age would find another De Staël. So thinking, we cut the little string, and had the manuscript open in our own hands.

“

After all, Christmas is a bore!

”

John Thomas was a clerk in the post-office, beloved by all who knew him; but he never did any work, usually had a novel and a bottle of brandy in his desk, and broke the heart of the Junior Assistant Secretary in whose Department he had been placed.

He lived at 19 Finsbury Square, where he paid thirty shillings a week for his board and lodging, washing included, and fell in love with Mary Tomkins, the niece of Mrs. Johnson, the lodging-house keeper.

He lived at 19 Finsbury Square, where he paid thirty shillings a week for his board and lodging, washing included, and fell in love with Mary Tomkins, the niece of Mrs. Johnson, the lodging-house keeper.

If ever there was an angel upon earth, it was Mary Tomkins.

She had long eyes and a short nose, a little mouth and a big chin, silken hair and a satin complexion, a high forehead and a small waist; but her manner was more than her appearance, and she was everything her aunt could wish her.

“

Single fiddlestick! I would it were my chance.

”

“Not a ghost of a swain! not a thread-paper of a man. Would that I had!

Thank God, I could love any man that would ask me.

But to lead apes in hell with two such strings to your bow! ’Tis a sheer wasting of the gifts of Providence.”

“Indeed I will,” said Mary. “Forever and ever, forever and ever.”

And she wore it⁠—till another young man came that way.

When Mr. Brown uttered his unavailing complaints at the two first towns at which they stayed, she did not perhaps quite believe all that he said of his own condition.

We know how prone the strong are to suspect the weakness of the weak⁠—as the weak are to be disgusted by the strength of the strong.

There were perhaps a few words between them on the journey, but the result had hitherto been in favour of the lady. She had succeeded in bringing Mr. Brown as far as Paris.

She dropped the beard very softly—and there on the pillow before her lay the face of a stranger.

She had put the mustard plaster on the wrong man.

Not Priam wakened in the dead of night, not Dido when first she learned that Aeneas had fled, not Othello when he learned that Desdemona had been chaste, not Medea when she became conscious of her slaughtered children, could have been more struck with horror …

Her husband, she thought, would tell his wife, and then the two of them, between them, would—put up with it.

There are misfortunes which, if they be published, are simply aggravated by ridicule.

But she remembered the features of the stranger as she had seen them at that instant in which she had dropped his beard, and she thought that there was a ferocity in them, a certain tenacity of self-importance, which would not permit their owner to …

Swim with the stream.” She looked up into his face, feeling rather than understanding the truth of what he was saying. “

Swim with the stream. It is the easiest and the most useful.

”

Seppel would have gone through fire and water for her. Anything that a man’s strength or courage could do, he would have done. But a threat of going back to the old wages had conquered even Seppel’s gratitude.

Concurrent testimony had convinced her that she must either yield⁠—or go.

But, when she came to think of it in her solitude, she did not wish to go. Schwatz! oh yes; it would be very well to have a quiet place ready chosen for retirement when retirement should be necessary. But what did retirement mean?

She was fond too of the idea of being a government servant, with a sure and fixed salary—bound of course to her work at certain hours, but so bound only for certain hours.

During a third of the day she was, as she proudly told herself, a servant of the Crown. During the other two-thirds she was lord⁠—or lady⁠—of herself.

But there was a quaintness, a mystery, even an awe, about her independence which almost terrified her.

for it was a point of her inner creed, of her very faith of faith, that she was not to depend upon feminine good looks, or any of the adventitious charms of dress for her advance in the world.

“A good strong binding,” she would say of certain dark-visaged books, “that will stand the gas, and not look disfigured even though a blot of ink should come in its way.”

And so it was that she regarded her own personal binding.

Lucy, poor Lucy, was constrained by certain circumstances to disbelieve this false assertion. She feared that Sophy had gone with Alec alone—as was the fact. But yet she forgave her friend.

How are we to live together at all if we cannot forgive each other’s offences?

As there was no immediate repetition of the offence the forgiveness soon became complete, and Lucy found the interest of her life in her endeavours to be good to this weak child whom chance had thrown in her way.

“That’s all very well for talkee-talkee,” said Sophy; “but it doesn’t do for practice. Men are awfully shy. And then though they do marry sometimes, they don’t want to get married particularly—not as we do. It comes like an accident.

But how is a man to fall into a pit if there’s no pit open?

”

“I suppose I understand all about it,” he said somewhat roughly, or, perhaps, gruffly would be the better word. “

I think there is one thing poor people ought never to do. They ought never to be ashamed of being poor among themselves.

”

“A poor thing, are you? Well, yes; there are different ways of being poor. I have been poor enough in my time, but I never thought myself a poor thing. And you must not say it ever of yourself again.”

“My girl must not think herself a poor thing. May I not say, my girl?”

Then there was just a little murmur, a sound which would have been “yes” but for the inability of her lips to open themselves. “And if my girl, then my wife. And shall my wife be called a poor thing? No, Lucy.

I think Launay liked it.

The troubles of our neighbours are generally endurable, and any subject for conversation is a blessing.

Launay liked the excitement; but, nevertheless, felt itself to be compressed into whispers and a solemn demeanour. The Gregory girls were solemn, conscious of the iniquity of their friend, and deeply sensitive of the danger to which poor Philip was exposed.

“Could I give up my love for you, if anybody told me? How can I do it?

Love comes of itself. I did not try to love him.

Oh, if you could know how I tried not to love him! If somebody came and said I was not to love you, would it be possible?”

“Mine has been very holy—to me, myself. For a time I wept; but now I think I am happier than if I had never seen him.

It adds something to one’s life to have been loved once.

”

The power rather was in her hands. She could not punish her boy, even though he had deserved it. She had punished her girl, and from that moment she had been crushed by torments, because of the thing that she had done.

Others besides Mrs. Miles have felt, with something of regret, that they have lacked the hardness necessary for cruelty and the courage necessary for its doing.

“How shall it be, mother?” asked Philip. As she knew not what to answer she rose slowly from her chair, and leaving the room went to the seclusion of her own chamber.

… were she to swear today to him that he was disinherited, were she to make a will before nightfall carrying out her threat, the pangs of conscience would be so heavy during the night that she would certainly change it all on the next morning.

Of what use is a sword in your hand if you have not the heart to use it?

Why seek to be turbulent with a pistol if your bosom be of such a nature that your finger cannot be forced to pull the trigger? Power was in her possession—but she could not use it. The power rather was in her hands.

It used to be said in the village of Beetham that nothing ever went wrong with Alice Dugdale⁠—the meaning of which, perhaps, lay in the fact that she was determined that things should be made to go right.

Things as they came were received by her with a gracious welcome, and “things,” whatever they were, seemed to be so well pleased with the treatment afforded to them, that they too for most part made themselves gracious in return.

Things as they came were received by her with a gracious welcome, and “things,” whatever they were, seemed to be so well pleased with the treatment afforded to them, that they too for most part made themselves gracious in return.

Nevertheless she had had sorrows, as who has not? But she had kept her tears for herself, and had shown her smiles for the comfort of those around her.

In this little story it shall be told how in a certain period of her life she had suffered much;—how she still smiled, and how at last she got the better of her sorrow.

For Mrs. Dugdale was one of those women who succumb to difficulties—who seem originally to have been made of soft material and to have become warped, out of joint, tattered, and almost useless under the wear of the world. But

Alice had been constructed of thoroughly seasoned timber, so that, let her be knocked about as she might, she was never out of repair.

Now the doctor, excellent as he was at doctoring, was not very good at household matters—so that the folk at Beetham had reason to be at a loss when they bethought themselves as to what would happen when Alice should “go away.”

It may be that unless he intended so to be received, he should not have gone. This he felt as he was driven across the park, and was almost minded to return to Beetham.

Sir Walter Wanless was one of those great men who never do anything great, but achieve their greatness partly by their tailors, partly by a breadth of eyebrow and carriage of the body⁠—what we may call deportment⁠—and partly by the outside gifts of fortune.

Taking his career altogether we must say that he had been unfortunate. He was a baronet with a fine house and park—and with an income hardly sufficient for the place.

But it was for her to set matters right, which she could only do by getting husbands for the daughters. That this might be achieved the Wanless prestige must be maintained; and with crippled means it is so hard to maintain a family prestige!

A poor duke may do it, or perhaps an earl; but a baronet is not high enough to give bad wines to his guests without serious detriment to his unmarried daughters.

A beginning to what might be hoped to be a long line of successes had already been made. The eldest girl, Sophia, was engaged. Lady Wanless did not look very high, knowing that failure in such operations will bring with it such unutterable misfortune.

It had been felt that Alice was hardly good enough for their hero—Alice who had been seen about with all the Dugdale children, pushing them in perambulators almost every day since the eldest was born!

We prefer the authority of a stranger to that of one chosen from among ourselves.

As the two Miss Tweeds, and Miss Simkins, with Alice and three or four others, could not divide the hero among them, it was better then that the hero should go from among them, and choose a fitting mate in a higher realm.

“That is just what I cannot answer. Why does he go there?

Why do we do the worst thing so often, when we see the better?

”

On his return home from India he had found himself possessed of a liberal income, and had begun to enjoy himself without thinking much about marrying.

It is not often that a man looks for a wife because he has made up his mind that he wants the article.

He roams about unshackled, till something, which at the time seems to be altogether desirable, presents itself to him; and then he meditates marriage. So it had been with our Major.

Then Georgiana Wanless had been, as it were, thrown at his head.

When one is pelted with sugarplums one can hardly resent the attack.

He was clever enough to feel that he was pelted, but at first he liked the sweetmeats.

But though “She” were so frequently spoken of, still nothing was said which seemed to give him the opportunity required.

It is hard for a man to have to reject a girl when she has been offered⁠—but harder to do so before the offer has in truth been made.

“I am afraid there is a little mistake in your ideas as to me and your daughter.”

“Me! It will not hurt me. Not that I mean to tell a lie to you, father,” she added after a moment. “

A woman isn’t hurt because she doesn’t get a prize in the lottery.

Had it ever come about, I dare say I should have liked him well enough.”

The looped-up dress, fit for the work in hand, had been gratifying. But with it all there had been the show of a thing got up for ornament and not for use.

She was like a box of painted sugarplums, very pretty to the eye, but of which no one wants to extract any for the purpose of eating them. Alice was like a housewife’s store, kept beautifully in order, but intended chiefly for comfortable use.

As he went up to London he began to doubt whether he would go abroad.

Georgiana turned up her nose, as much as to say that the going and coming of Major Rossiter was not a matter of much importance to anyone there, and, least of all, to her.

Except the father, there was not a person in the room who was not aware that Lady Wanless had missed her fish.

But she herself was not quite sure even yet that she had failed altogether. She was a woman who hated failure, and who seldom failed. She was brave of heart too, and able to fight a losing battle to the last.

“I’m not a bit surprised,” said the Baronet angrily.

“I never knew anybody from Wadham behave well.”

“He’s quite a gentleman, if you mean that,” said Lady Wanless; “and he’s sure to do very well in the world; and poor Georgiana is really fond of him—which doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

There was no longer any ground on which to stand and fight. Before she went to bed that night she sent for Georgiana. “My darling child,” she said, “that man is unworthy of you.”

“I always thought he was,” said Georgiana.

And so there was an end to that little episode in the family of the Wanlesses.

But she held her peace, stuck manfully to the perambulator, and was a little colder in her demeanour than heretofore. Whereupon Major Rossiter, as the reader is aware, made two visits to Brook Park.

The bird might peck at the window, but he should never again be taken into the room.

But the bird, from the moment in which he had packed up his portmanteau at Brook Park, had determined that he would be taken in at the window again—that he would at any rate return to the window, and peck at the glass with constancy, …

“There is a something, Alice.” Of course she knew, but she was quite resolved. Resolved! Had not every moment of her life since last she had parted with him been given up to the strengthening this resolution?

Not a stitch had gone through the calico which had not been pulled the tighter by the tightening of her purpose!

And now he was there. Oh, how more than earthly sweet it had been to have him there, when her resolutions had been of another kind! But she had been punished for that, and was strong against such future ills.