George R. Sims

“ On Sunday all Madrid crowded to the great open arena, ‘La Plaza de Toros.’ On Monday all Madrid was coughing and sneezing, and I outcoughed and outsneezed them all. The stone seats of the bull-ring and the boxes open to all the winds of heaven are dear to the hearts of doctors and undertakers. The sun beats down upon an excited multitude, and it is not till nearly sunset that the last bull dies. Then out the great populace pours, and takes a chill at the most dangerous hour of the day. ”

“ It is because its mystery has fascinated me from the beginning, and because the spell has never been weakened, that I have wandered London in every direction night and day in a ceaseless endeavour to know it in every phase and form. In these years of wandering, often far off the beaten track, I have learnt much that is not common knowledge, and every day I am learning more. If I were to say that London has laid its heart bare to me it would be untrue, for that has happened to no man. Many of its inner workings are mysteries even to those whose task in life it is to solve them. ”

“ The evening of her life is far spent, and the night is at hand, but loving hands are ever ready to guide her tottering footsteps to the journey’s end.
Old Mrs. Adrian—dead to the past, dead to the future—dozes her declining days away here in this peaceful cottage, still finding a tongue that can chide for fancied slights, still in her feeble frame finding the strength to oppose and to contradict, but never failing, when she hears a gentle footstep approaching, to brighten into a smile, and to mumble out a loving word to the pale, gentle lady who bends over her and kisses the wrinkled brow. ”

“ I have no faith in human nature except as it is constantly strengthened and purified by struggle. That struggle is an irrepressible conflict existing in all nature, and from which man cannot escape. It is better for mankind that it go on openly and in more or less accord with known rules of warfare than in the secret conspiring chambers of the class which in the end controls popular movement. All serious conflict involves evil, but it is also strengthening to the race. I wish misery could be banished from the world, but I fear that it cannot be so banished. ”

“ Madrid is not a city. It is only a town. But such a town!—such streets! such shops! such horses! such carriages! such drives! such promenades! and over all the everlasting gaiety and insouciance of a people whose grand motto in all things mundane is this, ‘We have only one life—let us make the best of it and worry about nothing.’ Your true Spaniard never hurries and never worries and never frets. He inherits the dignity and the fatalism of the Moors, who have left their mark not only on the architecture of the cities, but upon the character of the citizens. ”

“ Poor little baby-sentinel!—left with a human life in its sole charge at four—neglected and overlooked: what will its girl-life be, when it grows old enough to think? I should like some of the little ones whose every wish is gratified, who have but to whimper to have, and who live surrounded by loving, smiling faces, and tendered by gentle hands, to see the little child in the bare garret sitting sentinel over the sleeping baby on the floor, and budging never an inch throughout the weary day from the place that her mother had bidden her stay in. ”

“ You make it a mystery—nobody knows
Who gave John Tregennith those terrible blows.
Since jealousy’s always a motive for crime,
Your heroine’s loved by two men at a time—
Poor John, who has gone where the good niggers go,
And big Ethelbert Brown, who was always his foe.
It is Ethelbert Brown who is charged with the deed;
There’s a flaw in the evidence—Ethelbert’s freed.
Then he parts with his sweetheart—a heartrending scene—
For she vows that John’s body their love lies between;
And ne’er, till it’s proved to the world far and wide
Who committed the deed, will sweet Grace be a bride. ”

“ There are strange things happening every day in this vast, mysterious world that we call London of which no word will ever be spoken. One or two human beings will know the secret, but it will remain hidden away in their hearts to the end.
Sometimes from the lips of a dying man or woman comes a confession that startles and shocks the few interested relatives gathered round the bedside. Sometimes even in these deathbed revelations—the last despairing effort of the burthened conscience to find relief while still a flicker of life remains—there is still a reticence and a reservation. ”

“ I pity the lad or the lass whose pulse does not beat quicker on a bright spring day, whose heart does not fill to overflowing with love for Nature as he gazes on the young earth quickening into life and beauty beneath the bright smile of the early spring sun.
It was on one of those spring days that Bess and George trod the old road towards the park for the first time since their marriage. ”

“ Lucky little clerk to have managed your life so well! How many of us whose names are known to fame—how many of us who fret and fume, and wear our hearts out in the battle for renown—would fall back into the ranks, and toil on quietly as you did to gain such love and respect and sympathy when our work is done, and we are put to bed to rest through the long dark night that must be passed ere we awaken to that brighter day which no living eyes may see! ”

“ To the gallery people the starvation in the garret, the separation of husband and wife, the wail of the little children for bread, the agony of the mother over the cradle of her sick baby, the struggle with poverty, the heartlessness of the cruel landlord who wants the rent, and the roughness of the officials who are called in to persecute virtue in distress, are all so many items in their own daily life. ”

“ There is a red glow in the sky, the cry of "Fire!" rings out, and the engine rattles past with the thrilling shouts of the men, and instantly sleeping London wakes and pours a half-dressed crowd of men and women into the streets. A city of the dead becomes a city of wild, turbulent life in an instant.
There is no mystery of the City greater than that sudden gathering of vast crowds in the dead of night to see someone else's house on fire. ”

“ There is very little danger to people who live carefully and don’t rush. If people will go to Rome in the blazing heat of summer, and gallop about from place to place like madmen, now sweltering in the sun, and now burrowing into the icy depths of a ruined temple, or wandering in the cold galleries of a church, chills will follow, and fever may ensue; but in nine cases out of ten fear is the great cause of the illness of English travellers. ”

“ Here was a man who had led a roving life, who had been under a cloud for years—a man whom Egerton had known to be in the very depths of poverty—here was this adventurer, Edward Marston, without fortune and without position, boldly aiming at both, and not hesitating to aspire to political fame.
If Marston could do all this with no advantages, what could not he, Gurth Egerton, do with the money at his command?
Here, at last, was an aim in life. He would put all the old foolish fears behind him and be somebody. ”

“ Braver than many a hero who comes back from foreign plains, with a deed of prowess to his credit and a medal on his breast, are some of the ragged rank and file who fight the battle of life against overwhelming odds, and never flinch or falter, but fight on to the end; and the end, alas! is rarely victory or renown—too often the guerdon of these brave soldiers is the workhouse, the hospital, or a miserable death from cold and slow starvation, in a quiet corner of the street, where they have sunk down to rise no more. ”

“ Along the main thoroughfares of London, from the West to the East, from the North to the South, there is never the intense loneliness of the streets that lie off the track. There the late Londoner and early Londoner divide the night between them, and as the late brougham or cab bears the tired pleasure-seeker home to rest, the carts and the wagons begin to wend their way to the markets and the docks and the great railway stations. ”

“ The Moor is everywhere in this part of Spain. The people still dance the Moorish dances and sing the Moorish songs, and the blood of the Moors still lingers in their veins, the features of the Moors still survive, and make the faces that one meets full of Eastern grace and beauty.
The country all round Seville is a garden of Eden. The orange-trees, the palm-trees, and the almond-trees are everywhere. The hedges are the prickly pear and the cactus. The landscape is African in its luxuriance, and the golden sunshine floods the land with glory. ”

“ Who can explain the workings of a woman’s heart? Who can dissect it, and show the complex machinery which governs its marvellous performances? To attempt such a task would be to court ignominious failure. I only know that Ruth Adrian, pure, good, and noble as she was, loved Edward Marston, and trusted him as blindly and devotedly as ever, in spite of the rude shock her faith had once received, in spite of the many doubts with which her heart had been beset since his reappearance on the horizon that bounded her little world. ”

“ This is the dark side of the Dock-labourer's story. It has a brighter and better one inside, where on miles and miles of wharf hundreds of men, package- and bale-laden, are hurrying to and fro, stowing the produce of the world in shed after shed. Thousands of barrels of sugar are lying in one, and the air is perfectly sweet with it. The ground is treacly with it, and one's boots are saturated with it as one walks through a thick slime of what looks like toffee gone wrong in a sweetstuff window on a hot summer day. ”

“ In the next bed lies a young man who is rapidly approaching convalescence. His happy wife bends over him with tender love in her eyes. The sunshine of returning life and the shadow of a dreadful death are separated only by a few inches of polished floor and a little table on which stands a bowl of roses.
The world once rang with the story of the Tichborne Claimant. The romance of that colossal imposture will be told again and again for many a long year to come. ”

“ Fancy being in Rome and going no further than the refreshment-room in the railway-station! And at Bologna I was nearly frozen to death. The snow lay thick everywhere, and the mountain passes looked like seas of ice. When I arrived in Venice there was a dull November fog lying over the city, and my heart went down into my boots. But I recovered myself sufficiently to get into a gondola, which, however graceful it may be on a fine day, looked on this occasion more like a frowning hearse than ever. I asked if I couldn’t have a carriage and drive to the hotel, as it was so foggy on the water. ”

“ Ruth—my poor Ruth—for your dear sake I will forgive him all!’
For a few minutes the old man, a prey to violent emotion, the tears streaming down his face, struggled with himself. The old love he had trampled beneath the heel of supposed duty was beating at his heart and striving to enter. The wall of faith was weak to-night—it gave way, and love marched in a conqueror. ”

“ The hospitals are the heavens-upon-earth of the poor. I have heard little children—their poor pinched faces wrinkled with pain—murmur that they didn't mind it, because if they had been well they would never have come to 'the beautiful place.' Beautiful, indeed, by contrast with their wretched homes are the clean wards, the comfortable beds, and the kind faces of the nurses. Step across from the home of a sick child in the slums of the Borough to the Evelina Hospital, and it is like passing from the infernal regions to Paradise. ”