Charlotte Elizabeth

“ Yet, of all these things what sunk deepest into my very soul were the sobs and cries of my fond little brother, and the lamentable tones of his soft voice, pleading through the closed door, "O, papa, don't whip Charlotte. O forgive poor Charlotte."
It is sweet to know we have a Brother indeed who always pleads, and never pleads in vain for the offending child; a Father whose chastisements are not withheld, but administered in tender love; judgment being his strange work, and mercy that wherein he delights, and the peaceable fruits of righteousness the end of his corrections. ”

“ Never did a sister more fondly love a brother; never was a brother more formed to be the delight, the pride, the blessing of a sister. He was of most rare beauty from the cradle, increasing in loveliness as he grew up, and becoming the very model of a splendid man; very tall, large, commanding, with a face of perfect beauty, glowing, animated, mirthful—a gait so essentially military, that it was once remarked by an officer, "If B—— were disguised as a washerwoman, any soldier would give him the salute." ”

“ A grave old cat, sitting in the sunshine, with her eyes half shut, and a merry little kitten, playing with her tail, bounding over her back, and comically boxing her ears, is a sight that I cannot help stopping to admire. But how much to be pitied is a kitten in the hands of children too young to know, or too cruel to care what pain they may put it to! ”

“ The first I now knew to be no poverty of soil, of natural resources, of mind, talent, or energy, but the effect of a blight, permitted to rest alike on the land and people, through the selfishness of an unjust, crooked policy, that made their welfare of no account in its calculations, nor would stretch forth a hand to deliver them from the dark dominion of Popery. Their turbulence was the natural fruit of such poverty, and of their being wholly under the influence of a party necessarily hostile to the interests of a Protestant state, and bent on subverting its ascendency. ”

“ But in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a dog’s savageness is the fault of those who have brought him up: and few things are more wicked than to teach or encourage a dog to fight his own race, or to bark and fly at human beings. When the world was as God made it, there was no hatred in it, no quarrelling, no wish in any living creature to frighten or hurt any other living creatures; but when Adam became a sinner, his sin broke through all this beautiful order, and peace, and love, and set the animals against each other, and against himself. ”

“ I viewed the matter through the lying medium of romance: glory, fame, a conqueror's wreath or a hero's grave, with all the vain merit of such a sacrifice as I must myself make in sending him to the field—these wrought on me to stifle in my aching bosom the cry of natural affection, and I encouraged the boy in his choice, and helped him to urge on our parents this offering up of their only son, the darling of all our hearts, to the Moloch of war. ”

“ What pleasure in the world can a parcel of little eggs afford you, compared with the delight that the poor harmless mother takes in them as she sits in her warm house, of her own making, listening for the first faint chirp of the tiny creature within? Birds only bring up one family in a year; and if you take from them the eggs that are to produce that one, you rob them of all the happiness for which they took so much trouble. You are not enough of a hen to hatch the eggs, though you may be enough of a goose to try: then think, and be too much of a man to do such a silly, cruel thing. ”

“ These warm affections of the heart are among the sweetest relics of a lost Eden, and I would sooner tear up the flowers that God has left to smile in our daily path through a sin-blighted wilderness, far sooner than I would cease to cherish, to foster, to delight in the brighter, sweeter flowers of domestic love, carried to the full extent of all its endearing capabilities.
The Lord knoweth our frame; he deals with us not according to what we are not, but according to what we are. ”

“ I thought Bronti would have seized the boys, he was so angry. I could not help thinking how awful would be the state of those boys, if they were cut off by death in such wickedness. Alas! the agonies of one hour hereafter, would be worse than all the tortures that could be inflicted on God’s creatures during their whole lives. But instead of an hour, it is for ever and ever that all who go to that dreadful place of punishment must remain. It made me very miserable to see the poor lambs so cruelly hurt, and to think what judgment those boys were bringing on themselves. ”

“ It was the recollection of my short encounter with the Socinian that satisfied me respecting the Athanasian creed. I felt that had I taken up its bold assertions and established every one of them, as now I did, by scripture, no sophistry could have staggered my faith, though it had been but a reasoning, not a saving faith, in that high doctrine of the coexistent, coequal Trinity. I did not then know—for of all church history I was ignorant—that its original object was not so much to establish a truth, as to detect and defeat a falsehood. ”

“ Now, I always observed that a dog, when kindly treated and taken care of, will show his concern for the troubles of his master or mistress, in a wonderful way. Indeed, I never, in my life, had a dog that would not do so; and seeing this has convinced me that it is worse than cruel to treat a dog ill—it is most ungrateful. It does sometimes happen that a dog has a bad and violent temper, even from a puppy; and if very careful treatment does not soon cure this, I should say that such a dog ought to be destroyed, by a quick and easy death; not making the poor brute suffer for what it cannot help. ”

“ I would not have made the slightest effort to escape from death in any form; and though I was not senseless enough to prefer an eternity of untried wretchedness to the fleeting sorrows of mortal life, yet as my conscience was lulled to rest by the self-delusion that I suffered more than I deserved, and had therefore a claim on divine justice, and as I was willing to receive the supposed balance of such debtor and creditor account in the world to come, I was perfectly content to be summoned to my reward. Blessed be God that I was not taken away in that hour of blind willingness. ”

“ There, in a very delicious garden, full of all manner of rich fruit and bright flowers, with soft warm air, and calm sunshine, was the first and only man in all the world! He was righteous and good, without any malice, or cruelty, or covetousness, or pride in his heart, looking with delight upon the creatures that came about him as their rightful ruler, to receive their names. ”

“ The pride of ancestry took strong hold of my mind, and such an ancestry accorded but too well with my romance, innate and acquired. It stood me, many a time, in the stead of better things, when nerving myself to endure affliction and wrong; and therefore I notice it, to warn you against exposing your own children to the same snare.
Next to the fashion, if not in an equal or superior degree, I think my grandmother most abhorred the French. Indeed her strongest denunciations against the reigning modes were usually clinched with the triumphant assertion that they were "French fashions." ”

“ Now, if Jack has said, or fancied, that he loved God, and had at the same time been cruel, or lived in any other sin, it would have proved that he was mistaken, and he would have had no real peace. If you pass by a garden and see clusters of fine ripe grapes hanging from the boughs of a tree, and anybody should say to you, “That’s a fine vine,” you would agree with him at once; but if he pointed to a tree where horse-chestnuts were growing, and called it a vine, you would laugh at him; you know the difference between a sweet juicy grape, and a hard, bitter, uneatable horse-chestnut. ”

“ I do firmly believe that it is a gift from God to man, to be prized, cherished, cultivated. I believe that the man whose bosom yields no response to the concord of sweet sounds, falls short of the standard to which man should aspire as an intellectual being; and though Satan does fearfully pervert this solace of the mind to most vile purposes, still I heartily agree with Martin Luther, that, in the abstract, "the devil hates music." ”

“ You know what a terrible thing the bite of a mad dog is. The wound may be so small as hardly to leave a scar, and it may heal, and be forgotten, perhaps for weeks and months; still, the deadly poison is in the person’s blood, and when it breaks out, a most fearful death follows, after such sufferings as nobody, who has not seen them, can have an idea of. But, perhaps, you do not know that the angry bite of a dog, when teased or hurt, has often produced the same awful madness. ”

“ It was a subject of continual sorrow to me that he was residing in the heart of an exclusively Popish country, far from every means of grace; not even a place of worship within many leagues, and wholly shut out from Christian intercourse. I knew that he had been equally dark with myself on the subject of religion; and truly can I say, that from the very hour of my being enabled to see the truth as it is in Jesus, my life had been a constant prayer for him, that God would make him a partaker in the like precious faith. ”

“ Often, when standing on the lawn, feeding my chickens, I have been surprised by finding her gently rubbing her horns against my shoulder, and asking to be petted, as every animal will ask when encouraged. She gave a great deal more milk than any one expected—for kind usage is a wonderful help in making any creature thrive; and I never shall forget the joyful looks of Jack, when, one morning, he came jumping and skipping to me, spelling as fast as he could, “Cow baby—cow baby.” He did not know the right name for a calf, and our cow had a very pretty one, born in the night. ”

“ The very checks of conscience render the fretted mind more restive; and the longer restrained, the more headlong is the wild gallop into which the chafed spirit at last breaks. He who trembled at a profane word, becomes an accomplished swearer; he whose modesty was most retiring is foremost to glory in early depravity; he whose hand was ever ready to relieve the poor, while his heart sympathized in their sorrows, becomes the wanton spoiler and marauder for the sake of a bold vaunt ”

“ It is too often the custom to punish a dog when he does not do just what you like; and you may like things quite different at different times. Now, the poor brute cannot tell exactly what you wish; and if he is used to get a blow, or an angry scolding, he will be so afraid of doing wrong, that what little sense he has left will fail him, and he will be so confused as to make him do wrong. An animal, or a boy either, living in constant fear of ill-usage whether he deserves it or not, will get either so stupid or so careless, as seldom to do what is required. ”

“ George Sandford, now Lord Mountsandford, who, from our first acquaintance, entered with a father's interest into all that concerned me. Thus encouraged, I held on my way, and tasted the sweets that I hope to enjoy to the end of my days—those of the original curse brightened by the irreversible blessing: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread;" "Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor shall not be in vain in the Lord." ”

“ This sad curse was on the animals too; not by their fault, poor things! but by man’s dreadful sin. For, you see, it was God who made them subject to man; and when man became a rebel and traitor to God, the creatures turned against him, and against each other. Oh, it is sad to think of all the misery and crime brought into the world by the ungrateful disobedience of man to his heavenly King and Father! ”

“ I was amazed and utterly at a loss, and said, "Two angels? What? Mam not know; what?" He looked at me with a laugh of wonder; pointed to my head and the wooden table, and replied—his usual way of calling me stupid— "Doll mam! Two small boys, dead, Portugal." My brother had lost two babes in Portugal; and thus exquisitely, thus in all the beauty of true sublimity, had the untaught deaf and dumb boy pictured the welcome they had given their father on approaching the gate of heaven. ”

“ It costs the parent-birds a great deal of trouble; and if you leave a nest untouched from one year to another, neither disturbing the eggs nor the nestings, you will find it the next spring nicely repaired and new lined, and a new family in it. Oh! I do wish that boys, remembering how, by the goodness of our equal laws, a poor man’s house is his castle, would let a poor bird’s little nest be its castle too! He is the bravest boy who will defend the weak from the strong; and he is the best boy who loves and is kind to the least of God’s creatures for the sake of the glorious Creator. ”

“ Into private domestic History no person possessed of a particle of delicacy can wish to intrude. It is melancholy to witness the prying spirit that some are but too ready to cater to, for filthy lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity which makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace of the English noble, a castle—which so fences his domestic hearth that no man may set foot within his door without his consent, or proclaim an untruth concerning him without being legally compelled to render compensation, should be withdrawn from his grave. ”

“ He soon began to bark like Fid, and to growl like Bronti; to cackle like the hens, and to imitate every loud noise that he heard. We hoped, if he had a good teacher, he would learn to sing, instead of making such a riot, as he whistles uncommonly well after his master. So we went to buy a Canary bird, and you may be sure we bought two; for it is very cruel to shut up a bird alone in a cage. The cockatoo is not in a cage, but on a stand, dancing and chattering all day. We put our canaries into a very large cage, with a good-sized pan of fresh water every day, clean gravel, and plenty of seed. ”

“ It was then that I came to the resolution of being a perfect devotee in religion: I thought myself marvellously good; but something of monastic mania seized me. I determined to emulate the recluses of whom I had often read; to become a sort of Protestant nun; and to fancy my garden, with its high stone-walls and little thicket of apple-trees, a convent enclosure. I also settled it with myself to pray three or four times every day, instead of twice; and with great alacrity entered upon this new routine of devotion. ”