Short Fiction quotes

Now this being the best she could do, it was a sign she was a low creature.

Think of it⁠—to kick at kindness, and kneel from terror.

But the sternness on the face of the wise woman came from the same heart and the same feeling as the kindness that had shone from it before.

At the same time the princess awaked, and popping her head out between the folds of the wise woman’s cloak—a very ugly little owlet she looked—saw that they were entering the wood.

Now there is something awful about every wood, especially in the moonlight; and perhaps a fir-wood is more awful than other woods.

For one thing, it lets a little more light through, rendering the darkness a little more visible, as it were;

… to feel for her parents, and the trust she had begun to place in the wise woman, it seemed to her as if her soul had grown larger of a sudden, and she had left the days of her childishness and naughtiness far behind her.

People are so ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is changed!

Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be ill-tempered when it rains: their selves are just the same both days; only in the one case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other the rainy.

But the wood-ashes flew about so, that it seemed useless to attempt getting rid of them, and she sat down again to think what was to be done.

But there is very little indeed to be done when we will not do that which we have to do.

Her first thought now was to run away at once while the sun was high, and get through the forest before night came on. She fancied she could easily go back the way she had come, and get home to her father’s palace.

for through that smile she could see lying at the root of it the worm that made it.

For some smiles are like the ruddiness of certain apples, which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping thing, coiled up at the heart of them.

Only her worm had a face and shape the very image of her own; and she looked so simpering, and mawkish, and self-conscious, and silly, that she made the wise woman feel rather sick.

As time went on, this disease of self-conceit went on too, gradually devouring the good that was in her.

For there is no fault that does not bring its brothers and sisters and cousins to live with it.

By degrees, from thinking herself so clever, she came to fancy that whatever seemed to her, must of course be the correct judgment, and whatever she wished, the right thing;

and grew so obstinate, that at length her parents feared to thwart her in anything, knowing well that she would never give in.

But there are victories far worse than defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of the poorest.

So long as she was left to take her own way and do as she would, she gave her parents little trouble.

“You should not have offered it to her if you did not mean her to have it,” said the mother, siding with the devil in her child against the wise woman and her child too.

Some foolish people think they take another’s part when they take the part he takes.

The wise woman said nothing, but fixed her eyes upon her, and soon the mother hid her face in her apron weeping.

there is nothing fine in that. Some are too stupid to be afraid: there is nothing fine in that. Some who are not easily frightened would yet turn their backs and run, the moment they were frightened: such never had more courage than fear.

But the man who will do his work in spite of his fear is a man of true courage.

The fearlessness of Agnes was only ignorance: she did not know what it was to be hurt; she had never read a single story of giant, or ogress or wolf; and her mother had never carried out one of her threats of punishment.

By this time her old disposition had begun to rouse again. She had been doing her duty, and had in consequence begun again to think herself Somebody.

However strange it may well seem, to do one’s duty will make anyone conceited who only does it sometimes.

Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would.

but all their wisdom goes off in talking, and there is none left for doing what they have themselves said.

There is one road talk never finds, and that is the way into the talker’s own hands and feet.

And such never seem to know themselves—not even when they are reading about themselves in print. Still, not being specially blinded in any direction but their own, they can sometimes even act with a little sense towards children who are not theirs.

But the moment she would have moved a step farther from the cottage, there he was it front of her, growling, and showing his teeth. She saw it was of no use, and went back with him.

Thus was the princess provided with a dog for a private tutor⁠—just the right sort for her.

Presently the shepherdess appeared at the door and called her. She would have disregarded the summons, but Prince did his best to let her know that, until she could obey herself, she must obey him.

… she would, indeed, have set out long before, but that her foot had somehow got hurt when Prince gave her his last admonition, and she had never since been able for long walks, which she sometimes blamed as the cause of her temper growing worse.

But if people are good-tempered only when they are comfortable, what thanks have they?

—Her foot was now much better; and as soon as the shepherdess had thus spoken, she resolved to set out at once, and work or beg her way home.

“Nobody can be a real princess—do not imagine you have yet been anything more than a mock one—until she is a princess over herself, that is, until, when she finds herself unwilling to do the thing that is right, she makes herself do it.

So long as any mood she is in makes her do the thing she will be sorry for when that mood is over, she is a slave, and no princess.

A princess is able to do what is right even should she unhappily be in a mood that would make another unable to do it.

For instance, if you should be cross and angry, you are not a whit the less bound to be just, yes, kind even—a thing most difficult in such a mood—though ease itself in a good mood, loving and sweet.

Whoever does what she is bound to do, be she the dirtiest little girl in the street, is a princess, worshipful, honorable.

Nay, more; her might goes farther than she could send it, for if she act so, the evil mood will wither and die, and leave her loving and clean.—Do you understand me, dear Rosamond?”

All the gentle creatures of a forest were there, but no creatures that killed, not even a weasel to kill the rabbits, or a beetle to eat the snails out of their striped shells.

As to the butterflies, words would but wrong them if they tried to tell how gorgeous they were.

The princess’s delight was so great that she neither laughed nor ran, but walked about with a solemn countenance and stately step.

“

If, to call them yours, you must kill them, then they are not yours, and never, never can be yours.

They are nobody’s when they are dead.”

“If, to call them yours, you must kill them, then they are not yours, and never, never can be yours.

They are nobody’s when they are dead.

”

“Dear princess!” said the little girl, “the flowers will not always wither at your touch. Try now—only do not pluck it.

Flowers ought never to be plucked except to give away.

Touch it gently.”

No; there are many things in you yet that must be changed before that can be. Now, however, you will seek me.

Every time you feel you want me, that is a sign I am wanting you.

There are yet many rooms in my house you may have to go through; but when you need no more of them, then you will be able to throw flowers like the little girl you saw in the forest.”

And the goblin, making as much of a bow as he could with only half his neck above ground, disappeared under it.

No mortal, or fairy either, can tell where Fairyland begins and where it ends.

But somewhere on the borders of Fairyland there was a nice country village, in which lived some nice country people.

One rosy summer evening, when the wall opposite her window was flaked all over with rosiness, she threw herself down on her bed, and lay gazing at the wall.

The rose-colour sank through her eyes and dyed her brain, and she began to feel as if she were reading a storybook.

She thought she was looking at a western sea, with the waves all red with sunset. But when the colour died out, Alice gave a sigh to see how commonplace the wall grew. “I wish it was always sunset!” she said, half aloud.

“I will take you where the sun is always setting, if you like, Alice,” said a sweet, tiny voice near her. She looked down on the coverlet of the bed, and there, looking up at her, stood a lovely little creature.

It seemed quite natural that the little lady should be there; for many things we never could believe, have only to happen, and then there is nothing strange about them.

She was dressed in white, with a cloak of sunset-red—the colours of the sweetest of sweet-peas. On her head was a crown of twisted tendrils, with a little gold beetle in front.

Before they reached the bottom, they were walking over the loveliest meadow-grass.

A little stream went cantering down beside them, without channel or bank, sometimes running between the blades, sometimes sweeping the grass all one way under it.

And it made a great babbling for such a little stream and such a smooth course.

From every leaf and petal of these, from every branch-tip and tendril, dropped bright water. It gathered slowly at each point, but the points were so many that there was a constant musical plashing of diamond rain upon the still surface of the lake.

As they went on, the moon rose and threw a pale mist of light over the whole, and the diamond drops turned to half-liquid pearls, and round every treetop was a halo of moonlight, and the water went to sleep, and the flowers began to dream.

“Look,” said the fairy; “those lilies are just dreaming themselves into a child’s sleep. I can see them smiling. This is the place out of which go the things that appear to children every night.”

“

The farther you go, the nearer home you are.

”

A great turkey-cock went gobbling behind them, driving them all down a lane towards the forest. Richard thought with himself, “There is more in this than I can account for.

But an umbrella that could lay eggs would be a very jolly umbrella.

” So by the time the people were beginning to laugh at each other, Richard was halfway down the lane at the heels of the geese.

This hall they began to cross in a straight line, hoping to reach one side, and intending to walk along it till they came to some opening. They kept straight by going from pillar to pillar, as they had done before by the trees.

Any honest plan will do in Fairyland, if you only stick to it. And no plan will do if you do not stick to it.

It was very silent, and Alice disliked the silence more than the dimness—so much, indeed, that she longed to hear Richard’s voice. But she had always been so cross to him when he had spoken, that he thought it better to let her speak first;

Richard walked straight through it; and from the greater fear of being left behind, Alice faced the lesser fear of going on. In a moment they were in total darkness. Alice clung to Richard’s arm, and murmured, almost against her will, “Dear Richard!”

It was strange that fear should speak like love; but it was in Fairyland.

It was strange, too, that as soon as she spoke thus, Richard should fall in love with her all at once. But what was more curious still was, that, at the same moment, Richard saw her face.

All about her and her path he could see, and every minute saw better; but to his own path he was blind. He could not see his hand when he held it straight before his face, so dark was it.

But he could see Alice, and that was better than seeing the way⁠—ever so much.

At length Alice too began to see a face dawning through the darkness. It was Richard’s face; but it was far handsomer than when she saw it last. Her eyes had begun to give light too.

For he had never yet seen anyone who even approached his idea of spiritual at once and physical attraction.

He was content to live and wait, without even the notion that he was waiting for anything.

He went on writing his verses, and receiving the reward, such as it was, of having placed on record the thoughts which had come to him, so that he might at will recall them.

It was almost suddenly opened by the cook, and at once the storm of her misery was assuaged in a rising moon of hope, and the night became light about her.

Ah, through what miseries are not even frail hopes our best and safest, our only true guides indeed, into other and yet fairer hopes!

“Did you want to see the mistress?” asked the jolly-faced cook, where she stood on the other side of the threshold; and, without waiting an answer, she turned and led the way to the parlor.

… ever descend upon a man, accompanied by a deeper sense of the being and the presence of God, and a stronger desire to do the will of the Father, which is surely the best thing God himself can kindle in the heart of any man.

For what good is there in creation but the possibility of being yet further created? And what else is growth but more of the will of God?

Something fresh began to stir in his mind;

He who has chosen the good remains in the law of liberty, free to choose right again. He who always chooses the right, will at length be free to choose like God himself, for then shall his will itself be free.

Freedom to choose and freedom of the will are two different conditions.

Before the lovers, which it wanted no moment to make them, left the room, they had agreed that Annie must at once leave the house. Hector took her to her mother’s door, and when he returned he found that his father and mother had retired.

The fact was that Mrs. Macintosh’s natural vulgarity had been so pampered by what she regarded as wealth, and she had grown so puffed up, that her very person seemed to hold the door wide for the devil.

For self-importance is perhaps a yet deeper root of all evil than even the love of money.

Any deep, honest affection might have made it too hot for the devil, but in her heart there was little room for such a love. She seemed to believe in nothing but mode and fashion, to care for nothing but what she called “the thing.”

It is no wonder, he said, if such a manuscript be at once tossed aside with an imprecation.

Legibility is the first and intelligibility the only other thing rendered due by the submission of a manuscript to any publisher.

Hector spent a day or two in remodeling and modifying the passages remarked upon by his wife and his friend, and then, with hope reviving in both their hearts, the manuscript was sent in, acknowledged, and the day appointed when an answer would be ready.

His lip quivered, and, seeking with a watery smile to reassure her, he gave way and burst into tears. Unmanly of him, no doubt, but what is a man to do when he cannot help it?

And where is a man to weep if not on his wife’s bosom?

Call this behavior un-English, if you will; for, indeed, Hector was in many ways other than English, and, I protest, English ways are not all human. But I will not allow that it manifested any weakness, or necessarily involved shame to him;

It is sure to come. Sooner or later, what does that matter? ‘The readiness is all,’ as Hamlet says. Death, or the pawnshop, signifies nothing. ‘Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes?’

We do but forestall the grave for one brief hour with the pawnshop.

”

“What! to part with my pretty chemise. Hector, dear, you must not be foolish! What does it matter, so long as we are not cheating anybody?

The pawnshop is a most honorable and useful institution.

No one is the worse for it, and many a one the better. Even the tradespeople will be a trifle the better. I shall be quite proud to know that I have a pawn-ticket in my pocket to fall back upon.

“Ah, then, indeed! But, in the meantime, we will go to bed and wait there for tomorrow.

Is it not a lovely thing to know that God is thinking about you?

He will bring us to our desired haven, Hector, dearest!”

It would have been to tell God to his face that I knew he would not help me. I am sure now that he is never forgetting, though he seems to have forgotten.

There was that letter lying in the dark through all the hours of the long night, while we slept in the weariness of sorrow and fear, not knowing what the light was bringing us.

God is good!”

Yet the shadowy recollections which hung about it gave an air of homeliness to the place, which, along with the grandeur, occasioned a sense of rare delight.

For what can be better than to feel that you are in stately company, and at the same time perfectly at home in it?

I am grateful to this day for the lesson I had from the sense of which I have spoken—that of mingled awe and tenderness in the aspect of the old hall as I entered it for the first time after fifteen years, having left it …

“I was cordially received by my old uncle and my new aunt.

But the moment Kate Thornbury entered I lost my heart, and have never found it again to this day. I get on wonderfully well without it, though, for I have got the loan of a far better one till I find my own, which, therefore, I hope I never shall.

”

“She rose at once, with a white-rose blush—so delicate I don’t believe anyone saw it but myself.

But the shadow of a stray ringlet could not fall on her cheek without my seeing it.

“When we got into the hall, the wind was roaring loud, and the few lights were flickering and waving gustily with alternate light and shade across the old portraits which I had known so well as a child—for I used to think what each would …

but before he reached the place, he had begun to doubt whether the old Adam had not overcome him in the matter of boxing the boy’s ears; and the following interviews appeared in consequence less satisfactory than usual.

Disappointed with himself, he could not be so hopeful about others.

As he was descending a stair so narrow that it was only just possible for two people to pass, he met the same young woman ascending. Glad of the opportunity, he stepped aside with his best manners and said:

… are offended by rags, whose ears cannot distinguish between vulgarity and wickedness, and who think the first duty is care for self, must be excused from believing that Sara Coulter passed through all that had been decreed for her without losing her simplicity and purity.

But God is in the back slums as certainly as⁠—perhaps to some eyes more evidently than⁠—in Belgravia.

That which was the burden of her life—namely, the care of her brother—was her salvation.

But God is in the back slums as certainly as—perhaps to some eyes more evidently than—in Belgravia.

That which was the burden of her life⁠—namely, the care of her brother⁠—was her salvation.

After hearing her story, which he had to draw from her, because she had no impulse to talk about herself, Stephen went home to turn the matter over in his mind.

Nor was this inactivity the result of defective animal spirits either, for sometimes his mirth and boyish frolic were unbounded; but it seemed to proceed from an over-activity of the inward life, absorbing, and in some measure checking, the outward manifestation.

He had so much to do in his own hidden kingdom, that he had not time to take his place in the polity and strife of the commonwealth around him.

Hence, while other boys were acting, he was thinking. In this point of difference, he felt keenly the superiority of many of his companions;

but doubtless a natural shrinking from danger, there being no excitement to deaden its influence, and no hope of victory to encourage to the struggle, seeing victory was dreadful to him as defeat, had its part in the sad result.

Many men who have courage, are dependent on ignorance and a low state of the moral feeling for that courage; and a further progress towards the development of the higher nature would, for a time at least, entirely overthrow it.

Nor could such loss of courage be rightly designated by the name of cowardice. But, alas! the colonel happened to fix his eyes upon him as he passed along the file; and this completed his confusion.

nor could any effort of the captain, or others on board, induce him to go on deck till night came on, when, under the starlight, he ventured into the open air. The sky soothed him then, he knew not how.

For the face of nature is the face of God, and must bear expressions that can influence, though unconsciously to them, the most ignorant and hopeless of His children.

Often did he watch the clouds in hope of a storm, his spirit rising and falling as the sky darkened or cleared; he longed, in the necessary selfishness of such suffering, for a tumult of waters to swallow the vessel;

… the season, that for three successive weeks he was able to travel thus without inconvenience, lying down when the sun grew hot in the forenoon, and generally waking when the first faint stars were hesitating in the great darkening heavens that covered and shielded him.

For above every cloud, above every storm, rise up, calm, clear, divine, the deep infinite skies; they embrace the tempest even as the sunshine; by their permission it exists within their boundless peace: therefore it cannot hurt, and must pass away, while there they stand as ever, domed up eternally, lasting, strong, and pure.

Several times he attempted to get agricultural employment;

And there was room for hope in his new endeavour. As his bodily strength increased, and his health, considerably impaired by inward suffering, improved, the trouble of his soul became more endurable—and in some measure to endure is to conquer and destroy.

In proportion as the mind grows in the strength of patience, the disturber of its peace sickens and fades away.

At length, one day, a widow lady in a village through which his road led him, gave him a day’s work in her garden.

The poor youth rose but to kneel, and cry, from a bursting heart, “Hast Thou not, O Father, some care for me? Canst Thou not restore my lost honour? Can anything befall Thy children for which Thou hast no help?

Surely, if the face of Thy world lie not, joy and not grief is at the heart of the universe.

Is there none for me?”

If the law be a weariness, we must escape it by taking refuge with the spirit, for not otherwise can we fulfil the law than by being above the law.

To escape the overhanging rocks of Sinai, we must climb to its secret top.

“Is thy strait horizon dreary? Is thy foolish fancy chill? Change the feet that have grown weary For the wings that never will.”

Because of our need and aspiration, the snowdrop gives birth in our hearts to a loftier spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose most complete in form, colour, and odour.

The rose is of Paradise⁠—the snowdrop is of the striving, hoping, longing Earth.

Perhaps our highest poetry is the expression of our aspirations in the sympathetic forms of visible nature. Nor is this merely a longing for a restored Paradise;

Because of our need and aspiration, the snowdrop gives birth in our hearts to a loftier spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose most complete in form, colour, and odour. The rose is of Paradise—the snowdrop is of the striving, hoping, longing Earth.

Perhaps our highest poetry is the expression of our aspirations in the sympathetic forms of visible nature.

Nor is this merely a longing for a restored Paradise; for even in the ordinary history of men, no man or woman that has fallen, can be restored to the position formerly held.

Indeed, by the time he had returned with the first medicine, she was insensible; and she continued so through the whole of the following week, during which time he was constantly with her.

That action produces feeling is as often true as its converse; and it is not surprising that, while he smoothed the pillow for her head, he should have made a nest in his heart for the helpless girl.

Slowly and unconsciously he learned to love her. The chasm between his early associations and the circumstances in which he found her, vanished as he drew near to the simple, essential womanhood. His heart saw hers and loved it;

but not a few whom most of us would judge quite unsuited to each other do yet get on pretty well from, the first, and better and better the longer they are together, and that with mutual advantage, improvement, and development.

Essential humanity is deeper than the accidents of individuality; the common is more powerful than the peculiar; and the honest heart will always be learning to act more and more in accordance with the laws of its being.

It must be of much more consequence to any lady that her husband should be a man on whose word she can depend than that he should be of a gracious presence.

And no one either ever said of him that he was a good man, or a generous.

He was about forty years of age, looking somehow as if he had never been younger.

He had had a fair education—better than is generally considered necessary for mercantile purposes—but it would have been hard to discover any signs of it in the spending of his leisure.

Dempster could be so comfortable in his own mind that he never wanted to get out of it, even at the risk of being beside himself; but no doubt the dimness of its twilight had a good deal to do with his content.

And then there is that in every human mind which no man’s neighbour, nay, no man himself, can understand.

My neighbour may in his turn be regarding my mind as a gloomy place to live in, while I find it no undesirable residence—though chiefly because of the number of windows it affords me for looking out of it.

For already he had begun to keep his vow, already his greater keenness in business was remarked in the City. But it boded little good for either that the gift of God should stir up in him the worship of Mammon.

More sons are damned by their fathers’ money than by anything else whatever outside of themselves.

There was the excuse to be made for Mrs. Dempster that she continued far from strong—and her husband made it: he would have made it more heartily if he had himself ever in his life known what it was to be ill.

He had no word for it but hers that he was now in India! They had only been waiting till—By heaven, that child was none of his! And therewith rushed into his mind the conviction that everything was thus explained.

No man ever yet entertained an unhappy suspicion, but straightway an army of proofs positive came crowding to the service of the lie.

It is astounding with what manifest probability everything will fall in to prove that a fact which has no foundation whatever! There is no end to the perfection with which a man may fool himself while taking absolute precautions against being fooled by others.

No man ever yet entertained an unhappy suspicion, but straightway an army of proofs positive came crowding to the service of the lie. It is astounding with what manifest probability everything will fall in to prove that a fact which has no foundation whatever!

There is no end to the perfection with which a man may fool himself while taking absolute precautions against being fooled by others.

Every fact, being a living fact, has endless sides and relations; but of all these, the man whose being hangs upon one thought, will see only those sides and relations which fall in with that thought.

Not one of those who knew him best would have believed him capable of being so moved, nor did one of them now know it, for he hid his suffering with the success of a man not unaccustomed to make a mask of his face.

There are not a few men who, except something of the nature of a catastrophe befall them, will pass through life without having or affording a suspicion of what is in them.

Everything hitherto had tended to suppress the live elements of Duncan Dempster; but now, like the fire of a volcano in a land of ice, the vitality in him had begun to show itself.

Some small degree of congestion, and the consequent pressure on some portion of the brain, had sent certain faculties to sleep, and, perhaps, roused others into morbid activity.

That it is impossible to tell where sanity ends and insanity begins, is a trite remark indeed; but like many things which it is useless to say, it has the more need to be thought of.

If I yield to an impulse of which I know I shall be ashamed, is it not the act of a madman?

The misery had all the time been growing upon her, and must have had no small share in the subversion of her microcosm. When that was effected, the evil thing that lay at the root of it all rose and pounced upon her.

Wrong is its own avenger.

She had been doing wrong, and knowingly for years, and now the plant of evil was blossoming towards its fruit. If one say the evil was but a trifle, I take her judgment, not his, upon that.

He only thought what a foolishness it all was; that thus it would go on to the end of the book; that youth after youth would have his turn of such a wooing, and such a disappointment. Sunsets, indeed!

The suns of man’s happiness never did anything but set!

Out of money even—and who could say there was any poetry in that?—there was not half the satisfaction to be got that one expected. It was all a mess of expectations and disappointments mashed up together—nothing more. That was the world—on a fair judgment.

He was never at a loss when anything had to be done. Somehow, he always blundered into the straight road to his end, while another would be putting on his shoes to look for it.

And yet all the time that he was busiest working, he was busiest building castles in the air. I think the two ought always to go together.

And so Colin was never overworked, but had plenty of time to himself. In winter he spent it in reading by the fireside, or carving pieces of wood with his pocket knife; and in summer he always went out for a ramble.

His great delight was in a little stream which ran down the valley from the mountains above. Up this burn he would wander every afternoon, with his hands in his pockets. He never got far, however—he was so absorbed in watching its antics.

Sometimes he would sit on a rock, staring at the water as it hurried through the stones, scolding, expostulating, muttering, and always having its own way.

Sometimes he would stop by a deep pool, and watch the crimson-spotted trouts, darting about as if their thoughts and not their tails sent them where they wanted to go.

“People in fairy stories,” he said, “always find what they want. Why should not I find this Carasoyn? It does not seem likely.

But the world doesn’t go round by likely.

So I will try.”

But how was he to begin?

When Colin did not know what to do, he always did something.

So as soon as his father was gone to the hill, he wandered up the stream down which the fairies had come.

and all at once found that he had forgotten the way back. At the same instant he saw the hut right before him. And then he remembered it was when he had lost himself that he saw it the former time.

“It seems the way to find some things is to lose yourself,” said he to himself.

He went up to the cottage, which was like a large beehive built of turf, and knocked at the door.

And Colin since that time had wandered so much all over the moor, wide as it was, that lay above his father’s cottage, that he did not believe he was able to lose himself there any more.

He had yet to learn that it did not so much matter where he lost himself, provided only he was lost.

Just at this time Colin’s purse was nearly empty, and he set out to borrow the money of a friend who lived on the other side of Dartmoor. When he got there, he found that he had gone from home.

The hours of this day went heavily.

The storm was gone, but the rain was left; the passion had departed, but the tears remained behind.

Dull and dark the low misty clouds brooded over the castle and the lake, and shut out all the neighbourhood.

Often, too, he might have been seen directing a heaven-searching telescope to catch the rapid transit of a fiery shooting-star, belonging altogether to the earthly atmosphere, and not to the serene heavens.

He had to learn that the signs of the air are not the signs of the skies.

Nay, once, his brother surprised him in the act of examining through his longest tube a patch of burning heath upon a distant hill.

At length she lifted her head, and seeing the night around her, gave a little broken cry of dismay.

The minutes had swept over her head, not through her mind, and she did not know that the dark had come.

Hearing her cry, Karl rose and approached her. She heard his footsteps, and started to her feet. Karl spoke—

Lilith rose and left the room. Wolkenlicht now understood that Lilith was a frozen bud, and could not blossom into a rose.

But pure love lives by faith. It loves the vaguely beheld and unrealised ideal.

It dares believe that the loved is not all that she ever seemed. It is in virtue of this that love loves on.

For her sake he would bear anything—bear even with calmness the torments of his own love; he would stay on, hoping and hoping.—

The text, that we know not what a day may bring forth, is just as true of good things as of evil things; and out of Time’s womb the facts must come.

But with the birth of this resolution to endure, his suffering abated; his face grew more calm; his love, no less earnest, was less imperious; and he did not look up so often from his work when Lilith was present.

She could have loved him if he had only lived: she did love him, for he was dead. But even in the midst of the remorse that followed—for had she not killed him?—life seemed a less hard and hopeless thing than before.

For it is love itself and not its responses or results that is the soul of life and its pleasures.

Two hours passed ere she could again show herself to her father, from whom she seemed in some new way divided by the new feeling in which he did not, and could not share.

and going nearer and staring harder, she saw the door, far in, with a knocker of iron upon it, a great many yards above her head, and as large as the anchor of a big ship.

Now, nobody had ever been unkind to Tricksey-Wee, and therefore she was not afraid of anybody.

For Buffy-Bob’s box on the ear she did not think worth considering. So spying a little hole at the bottom of the door which had been nibbled by some giant mouse, she crept through it, and found herself in an enormous hall.

Giant was busy darning. For it was Saturday night, and her husband would wear nothing but white stockings on Sunday.

To be sure he did eat little children, but only very little ones; and if ever it crossed his mind that it was wrong to do so, he always said to himself that he wore whiter stockings on Sunday than any other giant in all Giantland.

At the same instant Tricksey-Wee heard a sound like the wind in a tree full of leaves, and could not think what it could be; till, looking up, she found that it was the giantess whispering to her;

It is best to change its place, you know, lest my enemies should scent it out.

But, dear Doodlem, it’s a fretting care to have a heart of one’s own to look after.

The responsibility is too much for me. If it were not for a bite of a radish now and then, I never could bear it.”

But the lark was out of sight.

His song was all that was left of him. That was everywhere, and he was nowhere.

“Selfish bird!” said Buffy. “It’s all very well for larks to go hunting the sun, but they have no business to despise their neighbours, for all that.”

He ought to have read with her the books she did like, for by them only could he make her think, and from them alone could he lead her to better.

It is but from the very step upon which one stands that one can move to the next.

Besides these books, there was nothing in her scheme of the universe but fashion, dress, calls, the park, other-peopledom, concerts, plays, churchgoing—whatever could show itself on the frosted glass of her camera obscura—make an interest of motion and colour in her darkened chamber.

Looking down into the pond of her being, whose surface was, not yet ruffled by any bubbling of springs from below, he saw the reflection of himself and was satisfied.

An able man on his hobby looks a centaur of wisdom and folly; but if he be at all a wise man, the beast will one day or other show him the jade’s favour of unseating him.

Meantime Augustus Greatorex was fooled, not by poor little Letty, who was not capable of fooling him, but by himself. Letty had made no pretences; had been interested, and had shown her interest;

Neither did Augustus see that, having, by his own blunder, married a mere child, he was bound to deal with her as one, and not let the child suffer for his fault more than what could not be helped.

It is not by pressing our insights upon them, but by bathing the sealed eyelids of the human kittens, that we can help them.

And all the time poor little Phosy was left to the care of Alice, a clever, careless, good-hearted, self-satisfied damsel, who, although seldom so rough in her behaviour as we have just seen her, abandoned the child almost entirely to her own resources.

“I mean, ma’am—an’ I see no reason as I shouldn’t say it, for it’s the truth—there’s a worm at the root of society where one yuman bein’ ’s got to do the dirty work of another.

I don’t mind sweepin’ up my own dust, but I won’t sweep up nobody else’s.

I ain’t a goin’ to demean myself no longer! There!”

“Goodbye, Alice,” he said, taking the hand she did not refuse. “

Ye’re throwin’ from ye what all yer money won’t buy.

”

Greatorex had been indulging his intellect at the expense of his heart.

A man may have light in the brain and darkness in the heart.

It were better to be an owl than a strong-eyed apteryx. He was on the path which naturally ends in blindness and unbelief. I fancy, if he had not been neglectful of his child, she would ere this time have relighted his Christmas-candles for him;

Greatorex had been indulging his intellect at the expense of his heart. A man may have light in the brain and darkness in the heart.

It were better to be an owl than a strong-eyed apteryx.

He was on the path which naturally ends in blindness and unbelief. I fancy, if he had not been neglectful of his child, she would ere this time have relighted his Christmas-candles for him;

He never thought once of the Christ-child, or even of the Christ-man, as the giver of anything. Birth is the one standing promise-hope for the race, but for poor John this Christmas held no promise.

With all his humour, he was one of those people, generally dull and slow⁠—God grant me and mine such dullness and such sloth⁠—who having once loved, cannot cease.

During the fortnight he had scarce had a moment’s ease from the sting of his Alice’s treatment. The honest fellow’s feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but the pleasure and the pain of them;

Her own poverty of spirit and lack of worth achieved, she knew as little of as she did of the riches of Michael the archangel.

One must have begun to gather wisdom before he can see his own folly.

That evening she was seated alone in the drawing-room, her husband having left her to smoke his cigar, when the butler entered and informed her that Alice had returned, but was behaving so oddly that they did not know what to do with her.

The creature takes such good care of its golden key, always flitting from place to place, lest anyone should find it! But in Fairyland it is quite different.

Things that look real in this country look very thin indeed in Fairyland, while some of the things that here cannot stand still for a moment, will not move there.

So it was not in the least absurd of the old lady to tell her nephew such things about the golden key.

“

Perhaps it is the rainbow’s egg.

”

“I have no time to grow old,” said the lady. “I am too busy for that.

It is very idle to grow old.

—But I cannot have my little girl so untidy. Do you know I can’t find a clean spot on your face to kiss?”

The lady then showed Mossy into just such another chamber as that of Tangle; and in the morning he found a suit of clothes laid beside him. He looked very handsome in them.

But the wearer of Grandmother’s clothes never thinks about how he or she looks, but thinks always how handsome other people are.

Tangle was very unwilling to go.

About the middle of the plain they sat down to rest in the heart of a heap of shadows.

After sitting for a while, each, looking up, saw the other in tears: they were each longing after the country whence the shadows fell.

“We must find the country from which the shadows come,” said Mossy.

She hurried out, and fell, tired and happy, upon the yellow sand of the shore.

There she lay, half asleep with weariness and rest, listening to the low plash and retreat of the tiny waves, which seemed ever enticing the land to leave off being land, and become sea.

And as she lay, her eyes were fixed upon the foot of a great rainbow standing far away against the sky on the other side of the sea. At length she fell fast asleep.

But the smile never came, and the moonlight lay there unbroken.

For the heart of the child was too deep for any smile to reach from it to his face.

“Are you the oldest man of all?” Tangle at length, although filled with awe, ventured to ask.

The storm died away. A lovely day and a lovelier night followed. A cool wind blew over the wide plain of the quiet ocean. And still Mossy journeyed eastward. But the rainbow had vanished with the storm.

Day after day he held on, and he thought he had no guide. He did not see how a shining fish under the water directed his steps.

He crossed the sea, and came to a great precipice of rock, up which he could discover but one path. Nor did this lead him farther than halfway up the rock, where it ended on a platform.

She seemed about five and twenty, lithe and small. Her long fingers kept clutching and pulling nervously at her skirts as she went. Her face was very gray in complexion, and very worn, but delicately formed, and smooth-skinned.

Her thin nostrils were tremulous as eyelids, and her lips, whose curves were faultless, had no colour to give sign of indwelling blood.

What her eyes were like he could not see, for she had never lifted the delicate films of her eyelids.

for the red glow of the little oil-lamp covered all the strangeness of her complexion. But as soon as he met a stolen glance out of those eyes unveiled, his soul shuddered within him.

Lovely face and craving eyes alternated fascination and repulsion.

The mother placed the bowl in his hands. He drank sparingly, and passed it to the girl. She lifted it to her lips, and as she tasted—only tasted it—looked at him. He thought the drink must have been drugged and have affected his brain.

There was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind.

She cared for nothing in itself⁠—only for knowing it.

She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.

But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself—only for knowing it.

She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.

She was tall and graceful, with a white skin, red hair, and black eyes, which had a red fire in them.

There was once a witch who desired to know everything.

But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it.

Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself—only for knowing it. She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.

She would sit for an hour together gazing up at the lamp, and her heart would swell as she gazed.

She would wonder what had hurt her, when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it.

She never looked thus at the lamp except when she was alone.

She had never seen a stair before, and found going-up a curious sensation. Just as she reached what seemed the top, the firefly ceased to shine, and so disappeared. She was in utter darkness once more.

But when we are following the light, even its extinction is a guide.

If the firefly had gone on shining, Nycteris would have seen the stair turn, and would have gone up to Watho’s bedroom;

She followed the firefly, which, like herself, was seeking the way out.

If it did not know the way, it was yet light; and, because all light is one, any light may serve to guide to more light.

If she was mistaken in thinking it the spirit of her lamp, it was of the same spirit as her lamp—and had wings. The gold-green jet-boat, driven by light, went throbbing before her through a long narrow passage.

Still less did she know of the air alive with motion—of that thrice blessed thing, the wind of a summer night. It was like a spiritual wine, filling her whole being with an intoxication of purest joy.

To breathe was a perfect existence.

It seemed to her the light itself she drew into her lungs. Possessed by the power of the gorgeous night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and glorified.

And now she grew thoughtful. She must hoard this splendour! What a little ignorance her gaolers had made of her!

Life was a mighty bliss, and they had scraped hers to the bare bone!

They must not know that she knew.

The courage he had had was in no sense his own—he had only had courage, not been courageous; it had left him, and he could scarcely stand—certainly not stand straight, for not one of his joints could he make stiff or keep from trembling.

He was but a spark of the sun, in himself nothing.

The beast was behind him—stealing upon him! He turned. All was dark in the wood, but to his fancy the darkness here and there broke into pairs of green eyes, and he had not the power even to raise his bow-hand from his side.

A beautiful moth brushed across the great blue eyes of Nycteris. She sprang to her feet to follow it—not in the spirit of the hunter, but of the lover.

Her heart⁠—like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away⁠—was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw.

But as she followed the moth, she caught sight of something lying on the bank of the river, and not yet having learned to be afraid of anything, ran straight to see what it was. Reaching it, she stood amazed. Another girl like herself!

She looked on him as a painter might upon a picture, or a poet, upon a poem, which he had only succeeded in getting into an irrecoverable mess.

In the hearts of witches, love and hate lie close together, and often tumble over each other.

And whether it was that her failure with Photogen foiled also her plans in regard to Nycteris, or that her illness made her yet more of a devil’s wife, certainly Watho now got sick of the girl too, and hated to know her about the …

she who all night long had tended and protected him like a child, was now in his arms, borne along like a baby, with her head lying on his shoulder.

But she was the greater, for, suffering more, she feared nothing.

At the very moment when Photogen caught up Nycteris, the telescope of Watho was angrily sweeping the tableland. She swung it from her in rage, and running to her room, shut herself up. There she anointed herself from top to toe with a certain ointment;

The day drew near when the infant must be christened. The king wrote all the invitations with his own hand. Of course somebody was forgotten.

Now it does not generally matter if somebody is forgotten, only you must mind who.

Unfortunately, the king forgot without intending to forget; and so the chance fell upon the Princess Makemnoit, which was awkward. For the princess was the king’s own sister; and he ought not to have forgotten her.

and he ought not to have forgotten her. But she had made herself so disagreeable to the old king, their father, that he had forgotten her in making his will; and so it was no wonder that her brother forgot her in writing his invitations.

But poor relations don’t do anything to keep you in mind of them.

Why don’t they? The king could not see into the garret she lived in, could he?

She was a sour, spiteful creature.

The wrinkles of contempt crossed the wrinkles of peevishness, and made her face as full of wrinkles as a pat of butter.

If ever a king could be justified in forgetting anybody, this king was justified in forgetting his sister, even at a christening. She looked very odd, too.

She looked very odd, too. Her forehead was as large as all the rest of her face, and projected over it like a precipice. When she was angry her little eyes flashed blue. When she hated anybody, they shone yellow and green.

What they looked like when she loved anybody, I do not know; for I never heard of her loving anybody but herself, and I do not think she could have managed that if she had not somehow got used to herself.

But what made it highly imprudent in the king to forget her was—that she was awfully clever. In fact, she was a witch; and when she bewitched anybody, he very soon had enough of it;

The baby, on the contrary, began to laugh and crow; while the nurse gave a start and a smothered cry, for she thought she was struck with paralysis: she could not feel the baby in her arms. But she clasped it tight and said nothing.

Her atrocious aunt had deprived the child of all her gravity.

If you ask me how this was effected, I answer, “In the easiest way in the world. She had only to destroy gravitation.”

“I beg your pardon, my love; I did not hear you.—John! bring the steps I get on my throne with.”

For he was a little king with a great throne, like many other kings.

The throne-steps were brought, and set upon the dining-table, and John got upon the top of them. But he could not reach the little princess, who lay like a baby-laughter-cloud in the air, exploding continuously.

yet it would be endless to relate all the odd incidents resulting from this peculiarity of the young princess. But there never was a baby in a house, not to say a palace, that kept the household in such constant good-humour, at least below-stairs.

If it was not easy for her nurses to hold her, at least she made neither their arms nor their hearts ache.

And she was so nice to play at ball with! There was positively no danger of letting her fall. They might throw her down, or knock her down, or push her down, but couldn’t let her down.

Indeed, the most complete knowledge of the laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable body, sharing all the other properties of the ponderable.

Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in love. But how a princess who had no gravity could fall into anything is a difficulty⁠—perhaps the difficulty.

As for her own feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a beehive of honey and stings to be fallen into. But now I come to mention another curious fact about her.

But at the same time she seemed more sedate than usual.

Perhaps that was because a great pleasure spoils laughing.

At all events, after this, the passion of her life was to get into the water, and she was always the better behaved and the more beautiful the more she had of it. Summer and winter it was quite the same;

In his wanderings he had come across some reports about our princess; but as everybody said she was bewitched, he never dreamed that she could bewitch him.

For what indeed could a prince do with a princess that had lost her gravity?

Who could tell what she might not lose next? She might lose her visibility, or her tangibility; or, in short, the power of making impressions upon the radical sensorium; so that he should never be able to tell whether she was dead or alive.

One day he lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes.

In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun.

I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.

One day he lost sight of his retinue in a great forest.

These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran.

Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.

for her anger made her more charming than anyone else had ever beheld her; and, as far as he could see, which certainly was not far, she had not a single fault about her, except, of course, that she had not any gravity.

No prince, however, would judge of a princess by weight.

The loveliness of her foot he would hardly estimate by the depth of the impression it could make in the mud.

And having plenty to keep him alive for the present, he would not think of wants not yet in existence.

Whenever Care intruded, this prince always bowed him out in the most princely manner.

When he returned from his breakfast to his watch-cave, he saw the princess already floating about in the lake, attended by the king or queen—whom he knew by their crowns—and a great company in lovely little boats, with canopies of all the colours of the …

All the pent-up crying of her life was spent now. And a rain came on, such as had never been seen in that country. The sun shone all the time, and the great drops, which fell straight to the earth, shone likewise.

The palace was in the heart of a rainbow.

It was a rain of rubies, and sapphires, and emeralds, and topazes. The torrents poured from the mountains like molten gold; and if it had not been for its subterraneous outlet, the lake would have overflowed and inundated the country.

Old Ralph Rinkelmann made his living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems.

So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies, for in Fairyland the sovereignty is elective.

“Can that be true that loves the night?” said the king.

“The darkness is the nurse of light,” answered the Shadow.

“Can that be true which mocks at forms?” said the king.

“Can that be true which mocks at forms?” said the king.

“Truth rides abroad in shapeless storms,” answered the Shadow.

“Ha! ha!” thought Ralph Rinkelmann, “it rhymes. The Shadow caps my questions with his answers. Very strange!” And he grew thoughtful again.

The diamond of the king’s sceptre shot out a vivid flame of violet light, and the king stared at the Shadow in silence, and his lip quivered. He never told what he saw then; but he would say:

“Just fancy what it might be if some flitting thoughts were to persist in staying to be looked at.”

“It is only,” resumed the Shadow, “when our thoughts are not fixed upon any particular object, that our bodies are subject to all the vagaries of elemental influences.

The whole chamber was full of mystery. So it generally was, but now it was more mysterious than ever. After all that he had seen in the Shadow-church, his own room and its Shadows were yet more wonderful and unintelligible than those.

This made it the more likely that he had seen a true vision; for instead of making common things look commonplace, as a false vision would have done, it had made common things disclose the wonderful that was in them.

“The same applies to all arts as well,” thought Ralph Rinkelmann.

and so they thickened and thickened till they vanished out of our world. They are now condemned to walk the earth, a man and a woman, with death behind them, and memories within them.

Ah, brother Shades! let us love one another, for we shall soon forget.

We are not men, but Shadows.”

Happy Shades! for we only remember our tales until we have told them here, and then they vanish in the shadow-churchyard, where we bury only our dead selves. Ah! brethren, who would be a man and remember? Who would be a man and weep?

We ought indeed to love one another, for we alone inherit oblivion; we alone are renewed with eternal birth; we alone have no gathered weight of years.

I will tell you the awful fate of one Shadow who rebelled against his nature, and sought to remember the past. He said, ‘I will remember this eve.’

“No chance of that,” returned the former. “Misers never do.

The love of money has less in it to cure itself than any other wickedness into which wretched men can fall.

What a mercy it is to be born a Shadow! Wickedness does not stick to us. What do we care for gold!—Rubbish!”

“They are but Shadows that sing thus; for a Shadow can see but Shadows.

A man sees a man where a Shadow sees only a Shadow.

”

and the sentences he could utter were few; yet the tone, and even the words of his limited vocabulary, were sufficient to express gratitude and some measure of love towards those who were kind to him, and hatred of those who teased and insulted him.

He lived a life without aim, and apparently to no purpose; in this resembling most of his more gifted fellow-men, who, with all the tools and materials necessary for building a noble mansion, are yet content with a clay hut.

Elsie, on the contrary, had been born in a comfortable farmhouse, amidst homeliness and abundance. But at a very early age she had lost both father and mother;

… if, by the fact of being subject to them, the patient were removed into another realm of existence, from which, like the dead with the living, she can hold communion with those around her only partially, and with a mixture of dread pervading the intercourse.

Thus some of the deepest, purest wells of spiritual life, are, like those in old castles, choked up by the decay of the outer walls.

But what tended more than anything, perhaps, to keep up the painful unrest of her soul (for the beauty of her character was evident in the fact that the irritation seldom reached her mind), was a circumstance at which, in its present connection, some of …

In fact, if she could have framed the undefinable need of her childlike nature into an articulate prayer, it would have been—“

Give me someone to love me stronger than I.

” Any love was helpful, yes, in its degree, saving to her poor troubled soul;

… fires are blazing joyously, and the voice and laughter of young unfrozen children are heard, and nothing belongs to winter but the grey hairs on the heads of the parents, within whose warm hearts childlike voices are heard, and childlike thoughts move to and fro.

The kernel of winter itself is spring, or a sleeping summer.

It was no wonder that the fool, cast out of the earth on a far more desolate spot than this, should seek to return within her bosom at this place of open doors, and should call it “home.”

and again she heard the faint Aeolian sound of the bell, and the voice of the prophet-fool who interpreted the oracle; and the inward weariness was soothed by the promise of a long sleep.

Who can tell how many have been counted fools simply because they were prophets; or how much of the madness in the world may be the utterance of thoughts true and just, but belonging to a region differing from ours in its nature and scenery!

But to Elsie looking out of her window came the mocking tones of the idle boys who had chosen as the vehicle of their scorn the very words which showed the relation of the fool to the eternal, and revealed in him an element higher …

They turned his glory into shame, like the enemies of David when they mocked the would-be king.

And the best in a man is often that which is most condemned by those who have not attained to his goodness.

The words, however, even as repeated by the boys, had not solely awakened indignation at the persecution of the old man: they had likewise comforted her with the thought of the refuge that awaited both him and her.

He left the fool, and, springing at Elsie, seized her by the arm above the elbow with such a grip that, in the midst of her agony, she fancied she heard the bone crack.

But she uttered no cry, for the most apprehensive are sometimes the most courageous.

Just then, however, her former lover was coming along the street, and, catching a glimpse of what had happened, was on the spot in an instant, took the dog by the throat with a gripe not inferior to his own, and having thus compelled him …