The Sport of the Gods quotes

What the less fortunate negroes of the community said of them and their offspring is really not worthwhile.

Envy has a sharp tongue, and when has not the aristocrat been the target for the plebeian’s sneers?

Joe and Kit were respectively eighteen and sixteen at the time when the preparations for Maurice Oakley’s farewell dinner to his brother Francis were agitating the whole Hamilton household. All of them had a hand in the work: Joe had shaved the two men;

The evening papers had a full story of the crime, which closed by saying that the prisoner had amassed a considerable sum of money, it was very likely from a long series of smaller peculations.

It seems a strange irony upon the force of right living, that this man, who had never been arrested before, who had never even been suspected of wrongdoing, should find so few who even at the first telling doubted the story of his guilt.

Many people began to remember things that had looked particularly suspicious in his dealings. Some others said, “I didn’t think it of him.” There were only a few who dared to say, “I don’t believe it of him.”

The A.M.E. church, of which he had been an honest and active member, hastened to disavow sympathy with him, and to purge itself of contamination by turning him out. His friends were afraid to visit him and were silent when his enemies gloated.

On every side one might have asked, Where is charity? and gone away empty.

In the black people of the town the strong influence of slavery was still operative, and with one accord they turned away from one of their own kind upon whom had been set the ban of the white people’s displeasure.

He thought, though, that after the training he had received from the superior “Tonsorial Parlours” where he had been employed, he had but to ask for a place and he would be gladly accepted.

It is strange how all the foolish little vaunting things that a man says in days of prosperity wax a giant crop around him in the days of his adversity.

Berry Hamilton’s son found this out almost as soon as he had applied at the first of the coloured shops for work.

The hardest thing that he had to bear was the knowledge that he had shut himself out of all the chances that he now desired. He remembered with a pang the words of an old negro to whom he had once been impudent,

“Nevah min’, boy, nevah min’, you’s bo’n, but you ain’t daid!”

It was too true. He had not known then what would come. He had never dreamed that anything so terrible could overtake him. Even in his straits, however, desperation gave him a certain pluck.

After it is all over, after he has passed through the first pangs of strangeness and homesickness, yes, even after he has got beyond the stranger’s enthusiasm for the metropolis, the real fever of love for the place will begin to take hold upon him.

The subtle, insidious wine of New York will begin to intoxicate him.

Then, if he be wise, he will go away, anyplace—yes, he will even go over to Jersey. But if he be a fool, he will stay and stay on until the town becomes all in all to him;

Well, thought he, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and somehow, with a guilty underthought, he forgot to feel the natural pity for his father, toiling guiltless in the prison of his native State.

Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

The first sign of the demoralisation of the provincial who comes to New York is his pride at his insensibility to certain impressions which used to influence him at home.

Sadness turned his mournful eyes upon the speaker. “I won’t,” he replied. “

Being respectable is very nice as a diversion, but it’s tedious if done steadily.

” Joe did not quite take this, so he ordered another drink.

The truth about the young reporter was that he was born and reared on a Vermont farm, where his early life was passed in fighting for his very subsistence. But this never troubled Skaggsy.

He was a monumental liar, and the saving quality about him was that he calmly believed his own lies while he was telling them, so no one was hurt, for the deceiver was as much a victim as the deceived.

The boys who knew him best used to say that when Skaggs got started on one of his debauches of lying, the Recording Angel always put on an extra clerical force.

What Joe Hamilton lacked more than anything else in the world was someone to kick him.

Many a man who might have lived decently and become a fairly respectable citizen has gone to the dogs for the want of someone to administer a good resounding kick at the right time.

It is corrective and clarifying.

Then he said: “For a fellow who has had for a full year the advantage of the education of the New York clubs, you are strangely young. Let me see, you are nineteen or twenty now—yes. Well, that perhaps accounts for it.

It’s a pity you weren’t born older. It’s a pity most men aren’t.

They wouldn’t have to take so much time and lose so many good things learning. Now, Mr. Hamilton, let me tell you, and you will pardon me for it, that you are a fool.

Oh, it’s a fine, rich life, my lad. I know you’ll like it. I said you would the first time I saw you. It has plenty of stir in it, and a man never gets lonesome. Only the rich are lonesome.

It’s only the independent who depend upon others.

”

Where now was the philosophy of Sadness? Evidently Minty had not been brought under its educating influences, and thought about the whole matter in the old, ignorant way. He began to think of it too.

Somehow old teachings and old traditions have an annoying way of coming back upon us in the critical moments of life, although one has long ago recognised how much truer and better some newer ways of thinking are.

But Joe would not allow Minty to shatter his dreams by bringing up these old notions. She must be instructed.

“Go on now,” said Minty’s young man; and he looked menacing.

Joe, what little self-respect he had gone, slunk out of the room and needed several whiskeys in a neighbouring saloon to give him courage to go to the theatre and wait for Hattie, who was playing in vaudeville houses pending the opening of her company.

The closing act was just over when he reached the stage door. He was there but a short time, when Hattie tripped out and took his arm.

“

Oh, yes, this world is full of jays. Lots of ’em have seen enough to make ’em wise, but they’re still jays, and don’t know it.

That’s the worst of it. They go around thinking they’re it, when they ain’t even in the game. Go on and get the beer.”

Five years is but a short time in the life of a man, and yet many things may happen therein.

For instance, the whole way of a family’s life may be changed. Good natures may be made into bad ones and out of a soul of faith grow a spirit of unbelief.

She looked at him in silent contempt for a while as he sat nursing his aching head.

“Well, you’re a beauty,” she said finally with cutting scorn. “You ought to be put under a glass case and placed on exhibition.”

He groaned and his head sunk lower. A drunken man is always disarmed.

He groaned and his head sunk lower.

A drunken man is always disarmed.

His helplessness, instead of inspiring her with pity, inflamed her with an unfeeling anger that burst forth in a volume of taunts.

“I tell you, Sadness,” he said impulsively, “dancing is the poetry of motion.”

“Yes,” replied Sadness, “and dancing in ragtime is the dialect poetry.”

The reporter did not like this. It savoured of flippancy, and he was about entering upon a discussion to prove that Sadness had no soul, when Joe, with bloodshot eyes and dishevelled clothes, staggered in and reeled towards them.

His lips drooped pathetically, and hard treatment had given his eyes a lowering look. His hair, that had hardly shown a white streak, was as white as Maurice Oakley’s own. His erstwhile quick wits were dulled and imbruted.

He had lived like an ox, working without inspiration or reward, and he came forth like an ox from his stall.

All the higher part of him he had left behind, dropping it off day after day through the wearisome years.