World’s End quotes

It is not generally known that the mighty city of Stirmingham owes its existence to a water-rat.

Stirmingham has a population of half a million, and is the workshop of the earth.

“Very true,” said Sternhold. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

He held on like grim death. Men of genius always do⁠—mark Caesar, and all of them. ’Tis the bulldog that wins.

By-and-by things began to take a turn. The markets looked up. Iron and coal got brisker. The first locomotive was put on the line, then another, and another;

for every penny he got as premium, every penny of ground-rent, every penny from his collieries, iron furnaces, and cut-nail factories, went in bricks and mortar. It was the most magnificent scheme, perhaps, ever started by a single man. The city was proud of it.

Like Augustus, he had found it brick, and left it marble.

Yet, in reality, he was no richer. The largest owner, probably, of house property in the world, he could but just pay his way at his hotel.

Yet this very economy increased the popular belief in his riches. He was a miser. Give a man that name, let it once stick to him, and there is no limit to the fables that will be eagerly received as truth.

Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Call a man a miser, and, if he is so inclined, he can roll in borrowed money, dine every day on presents of game and fish, and marry anyone he chooses. I only wish I had the reputation.

No one listened to Sternhold’s constant reiteration of what was true—that he was really poor. It was looked upon as the usual stock-in-trade language of a miser. His fame spread.

At last the Stirmingham Daily News hit upon a good idea to outdistance its great rival the Stirmingham Daily Post. This idea was a “Life of Sternhold Baskette, the Miser of Stirmingham.”

After the editor had considered a little, he struck out “miser,” and wrote “capitalist”⁠—it had a bigger sound.

The manuscript was carefully got up in secret by the able editor and two of his staff, who watched Sternhold like detectives, and noted all his peculiarities of physiognomy and manner.

“He is certainly mad,” they said. Most of them were in some way disappointed.

“He may be,” said a keener one than the rest; “he may be⁠—but she is not.”

By this way of looking at it, so long as there was a Mayor the Corporation would always have seventy years to look forward to.

Of course all such reasoning was nothing but pure sophistry; but then most law is sophistry, and sophistry when supported by a rich body of men and called Vested Interest, is often much stronger than the highly belauded and really feeble truth.

Here was a tough Gordian knot, to add to the already difficult question of original title. But this was only the preface to the complications to follow.

they were the domains of the successors of the little furred creatures which nibbled down the ancient willow tree. The grey sewer-rat worked and multiplied exceedingly beneath this mighty city.

The grey rat was worse than the water-rat.

He had his human prototypes. What were Marese and Theodore but sewer-rats working in secret, in the dark underground, out of sight, whose presence could hardly be detected by a faint occasional scratching or rustle?

For time, and the rain blown with tremendous force across these open Downs by the wind, had all but obliterated the painted letters upon the cross-arms, and none but those acquainted with the country could have understood the fragmentary inscriptions.

Some mischievous ploughboys or shepherd lads, tired of arranging flints in fanciful rows, or cutting their names upon the turf, had improved the shining hour by climbing up this post, pulling out the arms, and inserting them in the opposite mortices, thereby making the poor post an unwitting liar.

This same section of the population had also energetically pelted all the milestones for far around with flints, till the graven letters upon them were beaten out. Such wooden wit was their only resource in a place where Punch never penetrated;

These two races, the hill and the vale men, must always put up opposing prayers to heaven.

The vale prays for fine and dry weather; the hill prays for wet. How then can they possibly agree?

Not more than three knots of men and half a dozen wenches came up from the vale, and these gave pretty good evidence that they had called en route at the Shepherd’s Bush, for they were singing in chorus the lament of the young woman …

… autumn had blackened the leaves, and the mingling of the grey of the trunk and its lichen with the dark colour of the leaves and the red peggles or berries, under a warm, glowing, mellow sunshine, caused the tree to assume a peculiar bronze-like tint.

It may be that the sun in all his broad domains did not shine that day upon a more lovely being than Violet Waldron.

Aymer Malet, the young man at her side—whose Norman name ill-assorted with his coarse garments, too plainly speaking of poverty—would have sworn that her equal did not walk the earth, and he would have had good warrant for his belief.

The sunshine was warmer, the blue of the sky richer, the yellow mist that hung over the landscape softer, the bee went by with a joyous hum, the crimson-and-gold of the dying leaves was more brilliant than ever it had been before or since.

Love lent his palette to Nature, and the world was aglow with colour.

How delicious it is to see everything through the medium, and in the company of a noble girl just ripening into womanhood! I remember one such summer—

When he had grown a little calmer he leant against a beech-trunk and gazed at the stars. In that short hour upon the solitary Downs he lived a whole lifetime of happiness.

There are some of us who can remember such hours⁠—they occur but once to any human being.

To do the rough residents of the district justice, so soon as it was understood to be settled that they were to be married, then the tone of the place changed, and they no longer insulted and annoyed him. Some wished him joy and happiness:

How suddenly the leaves go in the autumn!

They linger on the trees till we almost cheat ourselves into the belief that we shall escape the inevitable winter; that for once the inexorable march of events will be stayed, till some morning we wake up and look forth, and lo!

Of all that the ancients venerated and feared, necessity alone remains a factor in modern life. What can our brightest flashes of intelligence, our inventions, our steam engine and telegraph, effect when confronted with those “circumstances over which we have no control?”

It is our nineteenth-century euphemism for the Fate of the ancient world.

It is not well that we should scrutinise too closely the state of poor Aymer’s mind. His joy and elation before that terrible day were too great not for the fall to be felt severely. The iron of it entered into his soul.

All these precedents, rules, decisions—these ten thousand subtle distinctions—were much like the laws or rules of a game at chess. They decided in what way a pawn should be moved or a bishop replaced.

The science of law seemed to him like a momentous game at chess, only the pieces were living human creatures.

These subtle distinctions and technical divisions, formalities though they appeared, had a meaning, and a deep one. Following his employer, Mr.

in plain words, like the act of a lunatic with homicidal tendencies. The jury unanimously acquitted the prisoner, and Aymer hastened to send the news to Violet. He could not post with it himself, as Mr. Broughton had other cases to attend to.

Poor Jenkins was free⁠—and lost.

The shock had stunned him, and he was too old and too much weakened by disease to ever recover from it. He could not face his native village, the place where his family, though humble, had for generations borne a good character.

He had an almost childish dread of meeting anyone from Bury Wick or World’s End, and even avoided Aymer, who sought him in the crowd.

How truly was it said that “service is no inheritance!”

After two generations of faithful service, these poor people were practically exiled from home and friends, and this without fault of their own. Violet would have gladly done what she could for the aged couple.

There is but one rank who are free—the few who, whether for wages or as tenants, never have to look to others.

Society is divided into two sections⁠—the first, infinitely numerous, and the second, infinitely few⁠—i.e., the Screwed-down, and the Screwdrivers.

Now, the Corporation and the companies were the screwdrivers, and they twisted the horrible engine up tight.

… this day the merchants who travel upon camels across the deserts of the East, are firmly persuaded that they can hear strange voices calling them from among the sandhills, and that at dusk wild figures may be seen gliding over the ruins of long-lost cities.

It is useless to demonstrate that the curious noises of the desert, are caused by the tension which the dead silence causes upon the nerves of the ear, or by the shifting of the sand, and the currents of air which the heated surface of the sand makes whirl about.

The belief is so natural that it cannot be entirely eradicated. In the olden times in our own fair England, and not so very long ago either, there was not a wild and unfrequented place which had not got its spirit.

… or in the depths of the wood and think of immortality, and all that that word really means, and by-and-by a mysterious awe will creep into the mind, and it will half believe in the possibility of seeing or meeting something—something—it knows not exactly what.

Agnes Lechester went into the desolate places fully expecting to meet her lover, and she met⁠—

A more desolate place than the Kickwell Pot could not easily be found in highly-cultivated England, so near to an inhabited mansion.

It is very easy for those who have got everything, to pray each Sunday against envy, and to repeat with unction the response after the command not to covet thy neighbour’s goods.

It is a different matter when one is practically destitute, when the mere value of the chain that hangs so daintily from my lady’s neck⁠—ay, the price of the muff that warms her delicate hands⁠—would be as a fortune, and lift the heart up out of the mire.

He could not help thinking that if he had but the money, the value, of a single much-despised pony that drew a greengrocer’s cart he should be almost a prince.

He repented his folly very speedily, for the landlady had advanced him half-a-crown two days before for some necessaries, and now asked him for the money.

Not all the hunger and thirst of downright destitution is so hard to bear to a proud spirit as the insults of a petty creditor.

He could not taste his tea; the dry bread—he could not afford butter—stuck in his throat. If he had not spent that shilling, he might have paid a part at least of his debt.

How happy they would be! What books Aymer could write; what countries they could visit together; what pleasures one hundredth part of that wealth would enable them to enjoy! Thinking like this, her mind also became thoroughly saturated with the idea of the Stirmingham estate.

Like a vast whirlpool, that estate seemed to have the power of gradually attracting to itself atoms floating at an apparently safe distance, and of engulfing them in the seething waters of contention.

In the morning came Aymer’s second letter, imputing the worst of all crimes to Marese Baskette, or to his instigation.

(As I cannot return to this matter, it may be as well to state that he did not die—he recovered slowly, but perfectly.) Yet what must the agony of that man’s mind have been while the child lay upon the bed in the lowly cottage?

Let the fire roar and hiss, let rooftree fall and ruin come⁠—life, flickering life more precious than the whole world⁠—only save him this one little life.

In the morning Albert turned like a wild beast at bay, shouting and crying for vengeance. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord;” but when did man ever hearken to that? He marked out Jenkins, the gardener; he pointed him out to all.

and it became one of the pleasures of Agnes’ daily life to point out the beauties of the new mansion, and to show her own sketches for improvements. To such littleness did this once noble and generous nature descend.

The Stirmingham estate seemed to be endowed with the power of degrading every character that came into contact with it.

It was understood that Lady Lechester was to lay the first stone of this grand mansion when they returned from the wedding trip.

The marriage once over and he feared nothing. No scandal could seriously injure him after that. He should be secured with a triple wall of brass—of wealth, power, position.

The property at Stirmingham was falling into his hands like an overripe pear.

Let the companies strive how they might, they could no longer discover any pretext to delay its surrender. The American claimants had vanished into the distance—that great dread had departed.

A grey shadow in the form of a man—a crouching, stealthy, gliding approach—yet the dog Dando made no sign. And Agnes stood with arms extended almost over the mouth of “The Pot.” And the grey shadow reached the hollow oak trunk.

In the left hand of this shadow was a tin whistle.

“I see you. I have read you. You have talent, perhaps genius; but your chin is weak. You know not how to fight men.

You do not comprehend that men are beasts, and that it is necessary to be always fighting them.

Still you are sane, you are young—eat, and get strong—you will do. Your name is familiar to me. Who was your father?”

“Yes; I was then twenty-six, now I am thirty-three. Ah! I blossomed too fast.

It is a bad sign, friend Aymer, when life is all roses too early; the frosts are sure to come.

”

“Why, you have got even the locks and bolts of the doors,” he said, in admiration.

“Yes, I should have made a splendid burglar⁠—what a career lost!”

“But,” said Aymer, “I see here ‘water-canal’ marked. I have seen that canal; why, it runs just outside the high wall just across the courtyard here.”

Science, as illustrated by the printing press, the telegraph, the railway, is a double-edged sword.

At the same moment that it puts an enormous power in the hands of the good man, it also offers an equal advantage to the evil disposed.