Laura Spencer Portor

“ The entire universe is in flux. As for the man who can maintain the boast of a fixed belief, I can make nothing of him. Let him live in his barred safety, sleep in a hutch and feed upon his chosen carrots. We are sworn from our birth to the unbound, the unaccountable; and he who tries to stand fixed in a swirling universe, and who binds himself stubbornly to any fixed conviction, condemnation, creed, or behavior, has foregone his destiny; has set himself out of harmony with his stars, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and allied himself with guinea-pigs. ”

“ She always knew! She always understood! Everything! Had he ever begged for anything in vain? Was she not swift as a swallow to hear! Was she not just as quick as a bird to listen! Why, that was one of the most lovely things about her, that you put out your hand and found hers—there! He had done that in the dark hundreds of times. She was a mother you could count on! But now!—And Toni, Enrico, Giovanni, waiting there below in the snow! The shame of that! And that they should want a Christmas and that she should sleep on! His mother! His own mother! ”

“ The glamour of her presence no longer colors and impedes the white truth. She was not the most beautiful young lady in the world, as I so generously took her to be. She was not the only person in the world who could play dazzling accompaniments, and sing to melt one's soul, and make one a stranger to one's self. She was not the only one in the universe who knew the dim and lovely secret chambers of a little child's nature. She was after all, only, indeed, by courtesy, Miss Lou Brooks. ”

“ Taunton asked.
"Oh dear, mercy, no!" Mrs. Hastings spoke with sorrowful impatience. "They disagreed as to nothing, my dear. They loved each other. They adored each other. They were the only perfectly mated people I ever saw. What in the world had they to do with old hatreds of sects and creeds. Nothing, nothing. They could afford to leave all that to smaller minds. When people love as they did—well, I don't believe hatred for anybody could find a particle of place in their lives."
"Would you mind telling me—in her case—just what was the tragedy?" ”

“ We offer them praise, approval, affection, all that they hold dearest in the world—in a word, fellowship in its fullest sense; but we offer it in the name of obscurity, on the condition of mystification and opacity. Let them renounce their love of exactness, eschew their early devotion to exploration, throw over and abandon the soul's persistent, godlike, ingrained, primordial desire to know, and accept in place of all these the humble willingness to be taught of those who have usurped by ancient apostolic or unapostolic claim the rights and copyrights of wisdom. ”

“ Looking up at them, the earth seemed to fall away on all sides. The night bent over him like a woman whose quiet look searches the face of a loved sleeper. Above him was the girl who was, to him, Italy—above him, only a few feet away, a few stone steps to be climbed—that was all. The nearness of her was a real thing that laid hold on his senses, and made nothing of time. If he could have remained there always near her in the starlight; never to touch her—he would be content never to touch her—but to hold her dear as one holds one's soul dear, above the flesh. ”

“ She walked away from him. "But aren't we foolish to talk so gloomily! Here, my dear, take your toddy."
He allowed her to put the glass in his hand. He held it on his knee, still looking glazedly into the fire. His mother walked away from him again into the shadows of the big room and up and down slowly, quite apart from him. Once she raised her eyes in a kind of mute horror in the shadows, and put her gaunt hands over her face.
"We mustn't be gloomy," she murmured, "but oh, it would be horrible, horrible!" She began her walk again. ”

“ When one sees the morning star in the dawn, or Hesper in the twilight, hanging limpid, golden, one does not wonder will its glory be long or short; so much it holds one with its immortal loveliness, that little thought is given to the near-by day, or the night which shall quench it.
The other stars, Miss Lou Brooks, Mrs. Rankin, and the rest, shone long and high in the firmament of my childhood; but the mellow light of the gifts of Eugene Ashton, like the more splendid Hesper, hung low, already low on the horizon. ”

“ Darkness! Nothing but the dark. Immediately he could feel the "things," possessed anew of their power, climbing the stairs, pursuing him, an approaching and dreadful company.
He staved them off once more, remembering how his mother loved mystery, oh, yes, loved to be mysterious, for the very delight of clearing the mystery away. He would find her in her room. There she would be waiting to catch him up in her arms. He would say "Mum-Mummy! Where is it?" And she would light the lights and bring all the shadows back and would show him where it was, and he would have a real Christmas once more. ”

“ He who plants and tends and tires not of the tending is destined one day to taste the fruit.
Crayton believed in the underlying soundness and brotherhood of humanity. The outbreak of the war, which had been such a blow to the average man of ideals, overturning his shallow theories, flinging him rudely toward doubt and pessimism, had not really moved Crayton. War was as unthinkable, as hateful to him as to the fondest. He did not believe it would continue; but, even if it should—Crayton could afford to wait. And if you would wait with him you should see humanity triumphing. ”

“ What does any man know of the ample world who, like a guinea-pig, is content with life on so small a scale? What do they know of the vesture and trappings of poverty and danger and the worn out yet still splendid raiment of chance, who go so neatly clothed and content in certainty? The attitude of guinea-pigs, like that of too many men, smacks of the punitive. They would punish us, forsooth! Here would seem to be proof that they have no humor, and I doubt if they have ever heard, much less joined in the "inextinguishable laughter of the gods." ”

“ She need not have been anxious. Not one of them but observed him absorbedly. Even the "Bold-faced One," whom, as a rule, everybody watched, had his eyes now on Alessandro.
The chattering had ceased. There was not a sound. Silence in the Jungle is an impressive thing.
Alessandro turned about again on all-fours and glanced again at those on the branches above him. The old association of fear was strong in him and his heart shook. Yet what had he to fear? Here was no butcher's boy, here no Tonio with dark face, here no chain. He was his own master. They believed in his greatness. ”

“ As soon as the spring opened he was going back to Italy. She would be in Assisi in the spring. He would be there also. He would present himself punctual as the season. There would be—he smiled at the thought—a preordination in their meeting. They would come together in those perfect days with a kind of inevitability, as grape bloom and almond flower, without will of their own, keep inevitable tryst, and meet from far causes, deep as life, without prearrangement. They would come toward each other like stars which from far courses hurry fatefully to their appointed trysting places in the spring. ”

“ Cheered, I seem to see ahead, clearly, a time when, if we do not provide them with guests, we shall think that we have shamefully neglected our children's education; when we will no more deny them visitors, than we would now neglect to have them taught to read.
To love life for ourselves and others; to be forever interested in it; to be loyal to it, and that down to the grave; to dwell helpfully and appreciatively with one's kind; to understand others as generously as is possible to faulty human nature, and to make ourselves understood as much as is consistent with courtesy ”

“ He looked solemnly into the fire. "No other woman on earth will ever give me such love as that."
She groped her other hand along the chair-arm and put it on top of his own. The little act was greatly demonstrative in a woman of her type.
"Oh, I didn't mean, my dear, that she doesn't love you better than she loves any one in the world," she said, insistingly.
"But, Mummy, how could she love me as well as you do? Everybody knows what a mother's love is. That is a thing you don't even have to talk about. Everybody knows." ”

“ It was at a reception when Crayton, seated at one side of a screen of palms, heard Frazier at the other side speaking with his customary enthusiasm, flinging his sentences down boldly and no doubt with that fine lift of the head which was to Crayton, in itself, a very considerable testimonial.
"I tell you life modifies your opinions and beliefs, or ought to, all the time," gave out Frazier. "I can't conceive of clinging to one idea, one form of belief, year in and year out, once life has begun to teach you better. I've found life to be so infinitely larger than creed. ”

“ Have I assumed I could search the heart of an entire people? I have denied them benevolence; yet they may have it—who knows?—under some other name. I have called them stupid and have thus denied them implicitly many qualities that may be secure enough, though well hid, in their possession. Let me yield at the most difficult point. I have said they lacked humor. It is one of my favorite tenets that the wise are forever, also, the gay, the debonair. It has been farthest from me, in all my observations of guinea-pigs, to suppose that they possess a single atom of gaiety. ”

“ He knew a thing or two about the crudeness and disappointment of the world. It seemed to him to be his duty—as it was perhaps appreciably, too, his pleasure of a kind—to correct the absurd optimism of others; to show them the obvious if dark sign-posts and put them upon the right road that would lead them to grim facts and reality.
"But there will be!" the boy said. Palumbo had not looked up; Mr. Dietrick had not heard him; Martin, even Martin, had not been aware of him; but surely it was not possible that these three boys did not know him. He felt so at home with them. ”