The Sword of Damocles quotes

Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher’s voice was heard: “

Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men and you best show your love to God.

”

But—” and here he surveyed him with a wistful look, “I wish you were entering into this new line from love of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy.

It is an awful thing to stake one’s future upon a single chance and that chance a woman’s faith.

If she should fail you after you had compassed your fortune, should die—well you could bear that perhaps; but if she turned false, and married someone else, or even married you and then—”

Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not eloquent or expressive. But this child’s countenance was exceptional.

It made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.

As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not speak.

Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him.

The lily and the cactus abloom on one stalk!

How could that be? and for a moment he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough to be called such, soon passed.

“Yet the road has its companionships,” she murmured. “

In the city one thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude compels you.

”

“Compels you,” he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it, remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. “

Not everyone has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not reach so far.

Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care and anxiety.

“And it is granted,” said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow that had enveloped him. “You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom. I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I—since my early youth I should say.

And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow long and chilly at mine.

One thing can illumine them though, and that is a child’s happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile, then, before I go.”

She has a soul above her surroundings, that girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me.

In the recesses of her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy.

”

I shall look on great men and touch the garments of thoughtful women.

I shall see life in its fullness as I have felt nature in its mightiness, and my heart will be satisfied at last.

”

“All life has its petty side,” said she, with a sweet arch look. “

The eagle that cleaves the thundercloud, must sometimes stop to plume its wings.

I should be sorry to lose the small things out of existence. Even we in the face of that great sunset appealing to us from the west, have to pile up the firewood on the hearth and set the table for supper.”

Fashion is a sort of obstinate step-dame I imagine, whom it is less trouble to obey than to oppose.

I don’t believe I shall quarrel with Fashion if she will only promise to keep her hands off my soul.

”

“I understand,” said she, “I know what you mean.

I will remember that the most engaging beauty is nothing without a pure mind and a good heart.

”

“

It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!

” exclaimed she at the conclusion. “I can hear the cry of a righteous struggle all through the sublime harmony.”

“I thought I detected the flashing of steel,” returned she. “

O what a world lies in those simple bits of ivory!

”

“Do you think the beauty I have seen has made me forget the kindness that has brought me here?

I love fine and noble objects, glory of color and harmony of shape, but more than all these do I love a generous soul without a blot on its purity, or a flaw in its integrity.

”

“I have heard a great preacher! What shall I say? At first it seems as if nothing could express my joy and satisfaction.

The sapling that is shaken to its root by the winds of heaven, keeps silence I imagine.

But O Aunty, if my smallness makes me quake, it also makes me feel. What gates of thought have been opened to me! What shining tracks of inquiry pointed out! I feel as if I had been shown a path where angels walked.

… life for the coming and going of the messengers of God, all have been made real to me, real as the voice of the Saviour to his disciples as they walked in the fields or started back awestricken from the stupendous vision of the cross.

It is a solemn thing to see one’s humble thoughts caught by the imagination of a great mind and carried on and up into regions you never realized existed.

“I was so burdened with joy that I could not forbear asking Mr. Sylvester if he did not feel as if the whole face of the world had changed since we entered those holy doors.

I did not know which to admire most, the military bearing and vivid conversation of the great soldier, or the ease and dignity with which Mr. Sylvester met his remarks and answered each glowing sentence. General ⸻ spoke a few words to me.

How gentle these lion-like men can be when they stoop their tall heads to address little children or young women!

”

Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. “I did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two,” said she, fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. “

Such cheerfulness is infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed in sunshine.

”

“

The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies.

” Then as he caught sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin, some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him …

Life was so joyous to me this morning—” a flush swept over her cheek but he did not notice it—“I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black and—”

Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an and!

“And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow,” murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, “the inevitable shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been accumulating from the foundation of the world?”

“Paula,” said he after a space of pregnant silence, “it had to come. The veil of the temple must be rent in every life.

Evil is too near us all for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders that hide beneath them.

You had to have your first look into the cells of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps are for men’s eyes as well as the starry heavens.”

You had to have your first look into the cells of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now.

The deeps are for men’s eyes as well as the starry heavens.

”

“I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you,” he went on in a strange pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her memory forever, “what evil underlies the whole strata of life!

At home and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking devil sits.

You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could tell.

“You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of perfect innocence.

If evil walks the world, God’s ministers walk it also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the hand, that ministry will speak.

”

With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. “I am glad I have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your life.

Great sins make great sufferers.

Side by side came the two dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the bottomless pit.

Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the bottomless pit.

When you turn your back on a man who has committed a crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit.

”

“And they shall not be lacking,” said she. “

When a treasure-box of thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad, but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God.

”

“Yes;” and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose before her at the word. “

With the right side of my heart do I love the spot where nature speaks and man is dumb.

”

“The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king.

The perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten.

”

“But I warn you,” continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, “that we have no fondness for the model beau of the period.

A dish of milk makes a very good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table.

”

“I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me and give a slight start.”

Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!

“I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in search of a man with whom I had pressing business,” observed Mr. Sylvester at last.

But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the shipwrecked mariner on a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea.

Life may touch, but eternity enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.

Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such notes as had arrived during her absence.

Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up somewhere out west which reads, “A treasure of gold concealed here; don’t dig!”

Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the detective service.

“I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.

Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me.

I could not meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in the position you were once kind enough to procure for me.

“The experiences of this last week could never be written—or told,” returned Paula with a droop of her head. “

Upon some things our better wisdom places a stone which only the angels can roll away.

The future lies all open before us; do not let us disturb the past.”

The print of deeper thoughts and holier yearnings was there, but no sign of blighted hopes or uncomprehended passions.

A passing wind had blown the froth from off the cup, but had not disturbed the sparkle of the wine.

She had looked in the face of grief, but had not as yet been clasped in her relentless arms. Only two things could vitally disturb her;

Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest if not their mystery.

The aged lady who now for many years had been seen at every nightfall to leave her home, traverse the village streets, enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then reissue with tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight …

“You are looking at the shadows of things that were,” exclaimed the old lady in thrilling tones. “

It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the ghost of a vanished past, is it not?

That chair by your side has not been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is waiting.

“

There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate degree.

Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned gentleman.

Hush!’ she cried, seeing me about to speak. ‘You talk of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his young wife die, yet himself consented to live?

Is love a sitting by the fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.

Love!’ she half laughed; ‘O, it takes a soul that has never squandered its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see that star?’ It was night as I have said and we were standing near an open window.

He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken in his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days when she was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of the house.

Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at an angle, the whole direction of their nature changes.

“Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have had something to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline’s perfidy had slain her lover. Mr.

she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in a circle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher’s voice has no charm for her; good men’s advice is but empty air.

God’s love must be mirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up.

Where shall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as great as her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as her suffering. Child—”

Sin is a hideous thing; the gulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those who trust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owe something to humanity.

Love stops not because of the gulf; love follows the sinner with wilder and more heartbreaking longing, the deeper and deeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness.

Ten years have passed since we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas, and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of his speedily to be forsaken mansion.

Thus it is with us.

We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of the most demanding instincts of our nature.

In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice.

In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on the hills.

Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy.

Then the day itself was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were so full of splendor.

Through this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep and pure within her. “Lonely!” she whispered; “I will not be lonely.

To some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser share?

I will remember my one day and be glad.”

“

Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body.

I am not uncomfortable, Miss Fairchild.” Then as he stooped to relieve her of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a matter-of-fact tone, “Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I admire her greatly.”

the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives. And I am eager,” she said. “

The flower blooms on the mountain, and its perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of its wheels is music in my ears.

”

The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days, weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet of hurrying masses.

The story of the world is being written on pavement, corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read.

One realizes he is alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.

The universe jars under the feet of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement, corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is alive; the unit is part of the multiple.

To those who are tired, God gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.

And I am eager,” she said. “The flower blooms on the mountain, and its perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of its wheels is music in my ears.”

He bit his lip and his brow grew lighter.

After all, great souls frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and unflawed.

He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. “You are, then, one of the few women who believe in friendship?”

A climb over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to himself. It was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they approached the house and entered Miss Belinda’s presence.

There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with them wherever they go.

Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was bright and enjoyable in others.

“

No one else can fill the place once given to a friend.

Each one has his own niche.”

A flush, delicate as it was fleeting, swept over the dew of Paula’s cheek. She rose to her feet and met her aunt’s eye, with a look of gentle dignity. “No,” said she, “I wish to test myself.

Birds that are prisoned will caress any hand that offers them freedom.

I wish to see if the lure holds good when my wings are in mid-heaven.”

Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the mounting structure before its time.

When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he thought the struggle was over and the victory won.

“Yes,” said she, with a distressed blush. “Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly there.”

It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes.

He succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to be waged in the recesses of his own breast.

He is certainly a most notable gallant. His “Good day, lady!” and his “Good even to you!” are flavored with the cream of perfectest courtesy.

But gallantry while it sits well upon a man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the cap it adorns.

For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness, but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy.

You have the true generosity, lady; you give away what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings! Convince me it is not.

Your pardon, but that would take words, and words would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would refute all my arguments on the face of them.

Still retreating.

So it be not from hate I am contented.

To be contented with little, proves you a man of much virtue.

When I have you, I am contented with much.

I am too young to wear a jewel of so much pretension.

Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy speeder of time.

But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth time, I’ll live a maid and die one. The days run swift enough without goading, Signior Martino.

Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy speeder of time.

But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth time, I’ll live a maid and die one.

The days run swift enough without goading, Signior Martino.

“Fool! fool!” he muttered between his teeth, “to halt on the threshold of Paradise till the door closed in my face, when a step would have carried me where—” He grew dizzy as he contemplated.

The goal looks never so fair as when just within reach of a rival’s hand.

A vigorous clapping, followed by a low gush of music, woke him at last to the realization that the little drama had terminated.

life had flashed and glimmered with a thousand lights and colors since she knew him; his very laugh made her want to sing. With him she would move in sunshiny paths, open to the regard of all the world, giving and receiving good.

Life would need no veils and love no check.

A placid stream would bear her on through fields of smiling verdure. Dread hopes, strange fears, uneasy doubts and vague unrests, would not disturb the heart that rested its faith upon his frank and manly bosom.

While she lived, he must ever seem the man of men to charm the eye, affect the heart, and move the soul. Yet she hesitated. Why?

There is nothing so hard to acknowledge to ourselves as the presence of a blemish in the character of those we love and long to revere.

It was like giving herself to the rack to drag from its hiding-place and confront in all its hideous deformity, the doubt which, unconfessed perhaps, had of late mingled with her great reverence and admiring affection for this not easily to be comprehended man.

Miss Belinda blushed, and drew her niece fondly towards her. “You are right,” said she, “and my great desire for your happiness has led me into error.

Honesty is the noblest adjunct of all true love, and must never be sacrificed to considerations of selfish expediency.

The refusal which you contemplate bestowing upon Mr. Ensign, must be forwarded to him at once.”

If a vote had been cast among those who knew him best, as from what especial passion common to humanity he would soonest recoil, it would have been unanimously pronounced shame, and his own hand would have emphasized the judgment of his fellows.

But shame which is open to the gaze of the whole world, differs from that which is sacred to the eyes of one human being, and that the one who lies nearest the heart.

As Paula’s retreating footsteps died away on the stairs, and he awoke to the full consciousness that his secret was shared by her whose love was his life, and whose good opinion had been his incentive and his pride, his first sensation was one of …

“And I, but circumstances admit of no other course.

The innocent must not suffer for the guilty, even so far as an unfounded suspicion would lead.

”

At the stroke of the clock, she rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly upstairs. “Watch for me,” she had said to Aunt Belinda, “for I fear I shall need your care when I come down.”

What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain!

As Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto afflicted her.

The name which he had just read, was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the address given, was 63 Baxter Street.

Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich, and the narrow alleys of the poor.

In the reeking slums of Baxter Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that makes day’s dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers.

“

A man’s honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before he will consent to part from them.

But a citizen of a great town like this, owes something to his fellows, and submitting to blackmail is but a poor precedent to set. You will have to proceed as you will, Mr. Holt;

“I am only beginning to realize the worth of the man who has hitherto been a mystery to me,” she declared. Then as he shook his head, added with a serious air, “

The question with all true hearts must ever be, not what a man has been, but what he is.

He who for the sake of shielding the innocent from shame and sorrow, would have taken upon himself the onus of a past disgrace, is not unworthy a woman’s devotion.”

The eyes which were fixed on his, deepened passionately. “No,” she whispered, “no; not if your remorse for the past is all that separates us.

The man who has conquered himself, has won the right to conquer the heart of a woman.

I can say no more—” She timidly held out her hand.

The head which had fallen on her breast, rose as at the call of a clarion. “And is it at the noblest moment of your life that you would shut me away from your side? No, no.

Heaven does not send us a great and mighty love for trivial purposes.

The simple country maid whom you have sometimes declared was as the bringer of good news to you, shall not fail you now.” Then slowly and with solemn assurance, “If you go to Mr.

Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon his arm.

“Whatever comes,” said she, “truth, honor and love remain.”

And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a lightning’s flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible …