Sylvie and Bruno quotes

“Oh, that’s nothing!” the Chancellor replied, modestly, with downcast eyes. “

Most orators are born, you know.

”

“What was the matter—but I hope he’s all right now—was lumbago, and rheumatism, and that kind of thing. He’s been curing himself, you know: he’s a very learned doctor.

Why, he’s actually invented three new diseases, besides a new way of breaking your collarbone!

”

Bruno looked puzzled. “I’s had the same night oo’ve had,” he replied. “

There’s only been one night since yesterday!

”

“So, either I’ve been dreaming about Sylvie,” I said to myself, “and this is the reality. Or else I’ve really been with Sylvie, and this is a dream!

Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?

”

“It’s far more exciting than some of the modern ghosts, I assure you! Now there was a Ghost last month—I don’t mean a real Ghost in—in Supernature—but in a Magazine. It was a perfectly flavourless Ghost. It wouldn’t have frightened a mouse!

It wasn’t a Ghost that one would even offer a chair to!

”

“ ‘Perturbed’ referring, no doubt,” she rejoined, “to the sensational booklets peculiar to the Rail.

If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature!

”

“It may, if it likes!” Bruno said with a slight yawn. “

I don’t like eating worms, one bit. I always stop in bed till the early bird has picked them up!

”

To which Bruno wisely replied “

Oo don’t want a face to tell fibs wiz⁠—only a mouf.

”

“

But it’s ever so much shorter, going back, you know!

”

“Pretty often, I’m afraid,” the Professor candidly confessed. “Now, for instance, there’s the rabbit-hutch and the hall-clock.” The Professor pointed them out. “One gets a little confused with them—both having doors, you know. Now, only yesterday—would you believe it?—

I put some lettuces into the clock, and tried to wind up the rabbit!

”

“Never, my child!” the Professor replied emphatically. “He’ll go on doubling it, till he dies.

You see it’s always worth while waiting another year, to get twice as much money!

And now what would you like to do, my little friends? Shall I take you to see the Other Professor? This would be an excellent opportunity for a visit,” he said to himself, glancing at his watch:

“All extremes are bad,” the Professor said, very gravely. “

For instance, Sobriety is a very good thing, when practised in moderation: but even Sobriety, when carried to an extreme, has its disadvantages.

”

“Not always,” Bruno said thoughtfully. “

Sometimes, when I’s too happy, I wants to be a little miserable.

Then I just tell Sylvie about it, oo know, and Sylvie sets me some lessons. Then it’s all right.”

At last the Professor ventured on a gentle suggestion. “Why not try the large one?

I have often observed that a door unlocks much more nicely with its own key.

”

“Well, well!” said the good-natured old man. “Perhaps I’ll come after you, some day soon. But I must go back now.

You see I left off at a comma, and it’s so awkward not knowing how the sentence finishes!

Besides, you’ve got to go through Dogland first, and I’m always a little nervous about dogs. But it’ll be quite easy to come, as soon as I’ve completed my new invention—for carrying one’s-self, you know. It wants just a little more working-out.”

“Well, no, my child.

You see, whatever fatigue one incurs by carrying, one saves by being carried!

Goodbye, dears! Goodbye, Sir!” he added to my intense surprise, giving my hand an affectionate squeeze.

“There was no hope to leave,” Arthur firmly replied, though his eyes glittered with tears as he gazed upwards into the midnight sky, from which one solitary star, the glorious “Vega,” blazed out in fitful splendour through the driving clouds. “

She was like that star to me⁠—bright, beautiful, and pure, but out of reach, out of reach!

”

“Yet is it wise to leave it unasked?

You must not waste your life upon an ‘if’!

”

“There, there! You needn’t cry so much about it.

You’re not killed yet⁠—though if you were, you couldn’t cry, you know, and so it’s a general rule against crying, my dear!

And how did you come to tumble over? But I can see well enough how it was—I needn’t ask you that—walking over sandpits with your chin in the air, as usual. Of course if you go among sandpits like that, you must expect to tumble.

“But I know you didn’t! You never do! You always walk with your chin up—you’re so dreadfully conceited. Well, let’s see how many legs are broken this time. Why, none of them, I declare!

And what’s the good of having six legs, my dear, if you can only kick them all about in the air when you tumble?

Legs are meant to walk with, you know. Now don’t begin putting out your wings yet; I’ve more to say. Go to the frog that lives behind that buttercup—give him my compliments—Sylvie’s compliments—can you say ‘compliments’?”

“Bruno,” the little fellow answered, very readily. “

Why didn’t oo say ‘please’ before?

”

“Why, it’s to measure with!” cried Bruno. “How ever would oo do a garden without one?

We make each bed three mouses and a half long, and two mouses wide.

”

“

What’s the use of a fox when oo’ve got it?

” said Bruno. “I know oo big things hunt foxes.”

Bruno ran his hand once or twice up and down the flowers, like a musician trying an instrument, producing a most delicious delicate tinkling as he did so.

I had never heard flower-music before⁠—I don’t think one can, unless one’s in the “eerie” state⁠—and I don’t know quite how to give you an idea of what it was like, except by saying that it sounded like a peal of bells a thousand miles off.

When he had satisfied himself that the flowers were in tune, he seated himself on the dead mouse (he never seemed really comfortable anywhere else), and, looking up at me with a merry twinkle in his eyes, he began.

Sylvie was crying too by this time, and she said nothing but “Bruno, dear!” and “I never was so happy before,” though why these two children who had never been so happy before should both be crying was a mystery to me.

I felt very happy too, but of course I didn’t cry: “big things” never do, you know⁠—we leave all that to the Fairies. Only I think it must have been raining a little just then, for I found a drop or two on my cheeks.

After that they went through the whole garden again, flower by flower, as if it were a long sentence they were spelling out, with kisses for commas, and a great hug by way of a full-stop when they got to the end.

I felt very happy too, but of course I didn’t cry: “big things” never do, you know—we leave all that to the Fairies. Only I think it must have been raining a little just then, for I found a drop or two on my cheeks.

After that they went through the whole garden again, flower by flower, as if it were a long sentence they were spelling out, with kisses for commas, and a great hug by way of a full-stop when they got to the end.

“Doos oo know, that was my river-edge, Sylvie?” Bruno solemnly began.

“

Well then, I’ll unkiss you!

” And he threw his arms round her neck for this novel, but apparently not very painful, operation.

“That’s one of the miseries of Society!” said Arthur. “

Why can’t people let one enjoy the beauties of Nature without having to say so every minute? Why should Life be one long Catechism?

”

“I’ve no doubt of it,” Lady Muriel replied. “

There’s nothing a well-regulated child hates so much as regularity. I believe a really healthy boy would thoroughly enjoy Greek Grammar⁠—if only he might stand on his head to learn it!

And your carpet-dinner certainly spared you one feature of a picnic, which is to me its chief drawback.”

“He doesn’t like snakes!” she said, in a stage whisper. “Now, isn’t that an unreasonable aversion?

Fancy not liking such a dear, coaxingly, clingingly affectionate creature as a snake!

”

… be there—and how I came to be there—and how the glass of champagne came to be there—all these were questions which I felt it better to think out in silence, and not commit myself to any statement till I understood things a little more clearly.

“First accumulate a mass of Facts: and then construct a Theory.”

That, I believe, is the true Scientific Method. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and began to accumulate Facts.

“Surely, surely!” said the Earl.

“An argument doesn’t depend for its logical force on the size of the creature that utters it!”

She tossed her head indignantly. “I would not argue with any man less than six inches high!” she cried. “I’d make him work!”

“Yes, that’s it,” Bruno assented.

“Sylvie tells me the words, and then, when I jump about, they get shooken up in my head⁠—till they’re all froth!”

I expressed myself as perfectly satisfied with this explanation. “But aren’t you going to pick me any dindledums, after all?”

Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child.

“Oh, my darling, my darling!” she moaned, over and over again. “And God meant your life to be so beautiful!”

Sometimes, but always keeping her face hidden on the ground, she would reach out one little hand, to stroke the poor dead thing, and then once more bury her face in her hands, and sob as if her heart would break.

The old man sighed. “And so it is,” he said, “look at it as you will. Life is indeed a drama; a drama with but few encores—and no bouquets!” he added dreamily.

“We spend one half of it in regretting the things we did in the other half!”

“And the secret of enjoying it,” he continued, resuming his cheerful tone, “is intensity!”

“No indeed!” I exclaimed earnestly. And indeed I felt as if one could not easily tire of the sweet sadness of that gentle voice.

“It is, that we should learn to take our pleasures quickly, and our pains slowly.”

“But why? I should have put it the other way, myself.”

“Yes, a course!” said Bruno.

“When there’s no fighting to be done, the soldiers doos any little odd jobs, oo know.”

I was amused at the idea of its being a “little odd job” to find the Royal Baby. “But how did you come to lose it?” I asked.

“I think so,” Sylvie replied doubtfully.

“There generally is a Moral, only he puts it in too soon.”

“And will he say all the Bits of Shakespeare?”

“I think not,” Sylvie whispered in reply.

“He generally turns head-over-heels when he doesn’t know any more words.”

Bruno had meanwhile settled the question by disappearing from the stage; and the Frogs instantly began inquiring the name of the next Character.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know there was any Rule about it.”

“I think oo’ve got a right to eat me,” said the little fellow, looking up into my face with a winning smile. “But I’m not pruffickly sure. Oo’d better not do it wizout asking.”

It did indeed seem reasonable not to take so irrevocable a step as that, without due enquiry. “I’ll certainly ask about it, first,” I said. “Besides, I don’t know yet whether you would be worth eating!”

“Oh Bruno! You know you can, if you like.”

“Course I can, if I like,” the pale student replied; “but I can’t if I don’t like!”

Sylvie had a way—which I could not too highly admire—of evading Bruno’s logical perplexities by suddenly striking into a new line of thought; and this masterly stratagem she now adopted.

“Two heads are better than one, Bruno,” I said, but with no very distinct idea as to what I meant by it.

“I shouldn’t mind having two heads,” Bruno said softly to himself: “one head to eat mine dinner, and one head to argue wiz Sylvie⁠—doos oo think oo’d look prettier if oo’d got two heads, Mister Sir?”

The case did not, I assured him, admit of a doubt.

“Why, it’s raining cats and dogs!” I said.

“And all the dogs has come down first,” said Bruno: “there’s nothing but cats coming down now!”

In another minute the pattering ceased, as suddenly as it had begun. I stepped out from under the tree, and found that the storm was over; but I looked in vain, on my return, for my tiny companions.

No doubt it has also heralded—for many of us—some sudden news of joy; but this, I think, is less common: human life seems, on the whole, to contain more of sorrow than of joy.

And yet the world goes on. Who knows why?

This time, however, there was no shock of sorrow to be faced: in fact, the few words it contained (“Could not bring myself to write. Come soon. Always welcome. A letter follows this. Arthur.”)

But I would say, generally, that a man who gratifies every fancy that occurs to him—denying himself in nothing—and merely gives to the poor some part, or even all, of his superfluous wealth, is only deceiving himself if he calls it charity.”

“But, even in giving away superfluous wealth, he may be denying himself the miser’s pleasure in hoarding?”

“I grant you that, gladly,” said Arthur. “Given that he has that morbid craving, he is doing a good deed in restraining it.”

“Then what is your test of a good act?”

“That it shall be our best,” Arthur confidently replied.

“And even then ‘we are unprofitable servants.’ But let me illustrate the two fallacies. Nothing illustrates a fallacy so well as an extreme case, which fairly comes under it. Suppose I find two children drowning in a pond.

“Bruno’s World!” I pondered.

“Yes, I suppose every child has a world of his own⁠—and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that’s the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?”

“That must be Hunter’s farm!” said Sylvie, pointing to a house on the brow of the hill, led up to by a cart-road. “There’s no other farm in sight, this way; and you said we must be nearly there by this time.”

“The wrong trees!” laughed Sylvie. “Trees can’t do wrong! There’s no such things as wrong trees!”

“Then there’s no such things as right trees, neither!” cried Bruno.

And Sylvie gave up the point.

“Come to me, my little gentleman,” said our hostess, lifting Bruno into her lap, “and tell me everything.”

“I can’t,” said Bruno. “There wouldn’t be time. Besides, I don’t know everything.”

The good woman looked a little puzzled, and turned to Sylvie for help. “Does he like riding?” she asked.

“Ah, Nero’s a grand dog, isn’t he? Were you ever outside a horse, my little man?”

“Always!” Bruno said with great decision. “Never was inside one. Was oo?”

Here I thought it well to interpose, and to mention the business on which we had come, and so relieved her, for a few minutes, from Bruno’s perplexing questions.

“And you’re as wrong as ever!” Bruno exclaimed triumphantly.

“It’s just the four I can be sure about; ’cause they’re here, grubbling under the window! It’s the thousand I isn’t pruffickly sure about!”

“But some of them have gone into the sty,” Sylvie said, leaning over him to look out of the window.

“None whatever!” she replied, with the joyous laugh of a child. “

We give people what they haven’t got: we wish for something that is yet to come.

For me, it’s all here! It’s all mine! Dear friend,” she suddenly broke off, “do you think Heaven ever begins on Earth, for any of us?”

“I see!” said Lady Muriel, as she deftly executed the order. “And a very twisted, uncomfortable, uncanny-looking bag it makes! But the moral is a lovely one.

Unlimited wealth can only be attained by doing things in the wrong way!

And how are we to join up these mysterious—no, I mean this mysterious opening?” (twisting the thing round and round with a puzzled air.) “Yes, it is one opening. I thought it was two, at first.”

“Well, of course, when you hear anyone talk fluently—you, for instance—you can see how desperately un-shy she is—not to say saucy! But the shyest and most intermittent talker must seem fluent in letter-writing.

He may have taken half-an-hour to compose his second sentence; but there it is, close after the first!

”

“I mean that you should be able, when you don’t mean a thing to be taken seriously, to express that wish.

For human nature is so constituted that whatever you write seriously is taken as a joke, and whatever you mean as a joke is taken seriously!

At any rate, it is so in writing to a lady!”

“It’ll make very little difference to the authors,” I suggested. “

Instead of saying ‘what book shall I write?’ an author will ask himself ‘which book shall I write?’

A mere verbal distinction!”

“

That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the running-short⁠—not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of conversation.

”

“There are reasons,” Mein Herr gently replied, “reasons which I am not at liberty to explain, for not mentioning definitely any Persons, Places, or Dates.

One remark only I will permit myself to make⁠—that the period of life, between the ages of a hundred-and-sixty-five and a hundred-and-seventy-five, is a specially safe one.

”

“Well, they do object, a little. They say it comes so expensive, in the long run. But the thing’s as clear as daylight, by their own rules.

If I send a parcel, that weighs a pound more than nothing, I pay threepence: so, of course, if it weighs a pound less than nothing, I ought to receive threepence.

”

“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all!

We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!

”

“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight!

So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.

Now let me ask you another question. What is the smallest world you would care to inhabit?”

“My scientific friend found out a better plan than that. He pointed out that, if only the bullets were sent the other way round the world, they would hit the enemy in the back.

After that, the worst marksmen were considered the best soldiers; and the very worst of all always got First Prize.

”

“They were indeed! Perhaps their method of government was the strangest of all.

In this planet, I am told, a Nation consists of a number of Subjects, and one King: but, in the little planet I speak of, it consisted of a number of Kings, and one Subject!

”

“Just so,” said Mein Herr. “That’s the way it begins. Well, we were at that stage some eighty years ago—or was it ninety?

Our favourite teacher got more obscure every year; and every year we admired him more⁠—just as your Art-fanciers call mist the fairest feature in a landscape, and admire a view with frantic delight when they can see nothing!

Now I’ll tell you how it ended. It was Moral Philosophy that our idol lectured on. Well, his pupils couldn’t make head or tail of it, but they got it all by heart; and, when Examination-time came, they wrote it down;

We pumped our wells dry before they were a quarter full—we stripped our orchards while the apples were still in blossom—we applied the severe logic of arithmetic to our chickens, while peacefully slumbering in their shells!

Doubtless it’s the early bird that picks up the worm⁠—but if the bird gets up so outrageously early that the worm is still deep underground, what then is its chance of a breakfast?

”

The old man bowed, with a gratified smile, and proceeded. “At that time, no one had hit on the much more rational plan of watching for the individual scintillations of genius, and rewarding them as they occurred.

As it was, we made our unfortunate pupil into a Leyden-jar, charged him up to the eyelids⁠—then applied the knob of a Competitive Examination, and drew off one magnificent spark, which very often cracked the jar!

What mattered that? We labeled it ‘First Class Spark,’ and put it away on the shelf.”

“They calculate accordingly. When a man appears to be getting alarmingly ignorant, or stupid, they will sometimes refuse to supply him any longer.

You have no idea with what enthusiasm a man will begin to rub up his forgotten sciences or languages, when his butcher has cut off the supply of beef and mutton!

”

“Why, of course!” cried Sylvie. “A leaf’s a leaf, and everybody can see it; but Bruno’s Bruno, and they can’t see him, unless they’re eerie, like you.”

Then I understood how it was that one sometimes sees⁠—going through the woods in a still evening⁠—one fern-leaf rocking steadily on, all by itself.

Haven’t you ever seen that? Try if you can see the fairy-sleeper on it, next time; but don’t pick the leaf, whatever you do; let the little one sleep on!

“I’ve had no walk today. It will do me good, and I have more to say to you. Shall we go through the wood? It will be pleasanter than over the common, even though it is getting a little dark.”

We turned aside into the shade of interlacing boughs, which formed an architecture of almost perfect symmetry, grouped into lovely groined arches, or running out, far as the eye could follow, into endless aisles, and chancels, and naves, like some ghostly cathedral, fashioned out of the dream of a moonstruck poet.

“Always, in this wood,” she began after a pause (silence seemed natural in this dim solitude), “I begin thinking of Fairies! May I ask you a question?” she added hesitatingly. “Do you believe in Fairies?”

We believe in our own immaterial essence—call it ‘soul,’ or ‘spirit,’ or what you will. Why should not other similar essences exist around us, not linked on to a visible and material body?

Did not God make this swarm of happy insects, to dance in this sunbeam for one hour of bliss, for no other object, that we can imagine, than to swell the sum of conscious happiness?

And where shall we dare to draw the line, and say ‘He has made all these and no more’?”

“Nasty?” said the Professor. “Why, of course it is!

What would Medicine be, if it wasn’t nasty?

”

The Professor examined the papers carefully. “They are not dated, I find,” he said with a slightly dejected air: “so I fear I can’t tell you. But they both happened: there’s no doubt of that.

The Medicine’s the great thing, you know. The Diseases are much less important.

You can keep a Medicine, for years and years: but nobody ever wants to keep a Disease! By the way, come and look at the platform. The Gardener asked me to come and see if it would do.

“

In Science⁠—in fact, in most things⁠—it is usually best to begin at the beginning. In some things, of course, it’s better to begin at the other end.

For instance, if you wanted to paint a dog green, it might be best to begin with the tail, as it doesn’t bite at that end. And so—”

“Yes, but not through a Megaloscope!” the Professor eagerly replied. “

You know you can’t see a Flea, properly, without a magnifying-glass⁠—what we call a Microscope. Well, just in the same way, you can’t see an Elephant, properly, without a minimifying-glass.

There’s one in each of these little tubes. And this is a Megaloscope! The Gardener will now bring in the next Specimen. Please open both curtains, down at the end there, and make way for the Elephant!”

“Oo doosn’t know nuffin about it!” Bruno replied. “Oo wasn’t there to see.

Nobody can’t go among my bones. There isn’t room!

”

“Another advantage of dinner-parties,” the Professor cheerfully explained, for the benefit of anyone that would listen, “is that it helps you to see your friends.

If you want to see a man, offer him something to eat. It’s the same rule with a mouse.

”

“Then I’s welly glad I is a singular boy!” Bruno said with great emphasis. “

It would be horrid to be two or three boys! P’raps they wouldn’t play with me!

”

But this difficulty, also, had evidently not been lost sight of in the exhaustive ethical discussion just concluded. “It said—” (the orator constantly omitted, as superfluous, his own share in the dialogue, and merely gave us the replies of the Cat) “It said ‘

Dead Mouses never objecks to be eaten.

’ It said ‘There’s no use wasting good Mouses.’ It said ‘Wifful—’ sumfinoruvver. It said ‘And oo may live to say “How much I wiss I had the Mouse that then I frew away!” ’ It said—.”