Opie Percival Read

“ Lyman reached the shore of the creek and walked slowly among the large, smooth rocks, that looked like the hip bones of the worn and tired old earth, coming through. As he approached the tree and the grassy slope whereon he was wont to lie and muse, he saw the fluttering of something white, and then from behind the tree a woman stepped. His heart beat faster, for he recognized her, and when he came up, with softened tread, to the tree, he was panting as if he had run a race. ”

“ Gid sat down with a jolt that jarred the windows, and she looked at him in alarm, fearing at the instant that death must have aimed a blow at him. "Camphor bottle!" he gasped. "Merciful heavens, ma'am,' fill up your camphor bottle with my heart's blood!"
At this distress the Major laughed, though more in sympathy than in mirth; and Mrs. Cranceford simply smiled as if with loathness she recognized that there was cause for merriment, but when she had quitted the room and gone to her own apartment, she sat down, and with the picture in her mind, laughed in mischievous delight. ”

“ If a poet would look to his fame, let him die when there is no other news. But some have died in a spread of newspaper glory—Eugene Field, the sweetest lisper of a boy's mischief, the tuner of tenderest lyrics, but with a laugh for man that cut like a scythe. And some of the rich whom he had laughed at, scrambled for a place at his coffin to bear it to the grave—tuneless clay, scuffling over tuneful dust! Oh, hypocrisy, stamp thy countenance with a dollar!"
"It's raining now," said Milford, seeking to draw his mind from the darkness of its wandering. ”

“ A path, so hard and smooth that it shone in the sun, ran down obliquely into the ravine, and at the end of it I saw a large iron kettle overturned, and I knew that this marked the spring. I liked the place, the forest back of it, the steep hills far away, the fields lying near and the meadow down the ravine. I hate a new house, a new field, a wood that looks new; to me there must be the impress of fond association, and here I found it, the spring-house with moss on its roof, the path, a great oak upon which death had placed its beautiful mark—a bough of misletoe. ”

“ DeGolyer—or, rather, Henry Witherspoon, as now he knew himself—walked up and down the deck. And it seemed that at every turn his searching grief had found a new abiding-place for sorrow. His first strong attachment was broken, and he felt that in the years to come, no matter what fortune they might bring him, there could not grow a friendship large enough to fill the place made vacant by his present loss. An absorbing love might come, but love is by turns a sweet and anxious selfishness, while friendship is a broad-spread generosity. ”

“ When the slow years of youth were gone and the hastening time of manhood had come, the first thing that Henry DeGolyer, looking back, could call from a mysterious darkness into the dawn of memory was that he awoke one night in the cold arms of his dead mother. That was in New Orleans. The boy's father had aspired to put the face of man upon lasting canvas, but appetite invited whisky to mix with his art, and so upon dead walls he painted the trade-mark bull, and in front of museums he exaggerated the distortion of the human freak. ”

“ Young hearts may whisper to each other, and that whispering may be music, sir; but in this life there are duties too stern to be melted and turned aside by a melody. And, sir, one of the most sacred duties that can fall to the trust of a man is to see that the family name, which is to survive after he has folded his hands in eternal stillness—pardon my devious methods, for I assure you that my windings proceed from a kindness of heart—I say that my duty now is to those who may bear my name in the future. ”

“ He had been home a number of times while Bob and I were off at school, but I had not seen him. More than once I had half suspected that he sought to marry Miss May, to fasten another grip upon the estate, but it did not seem possible that so gentle a woman could marry so hard a man. Yet, I was wise enough to know that we can never tell. A woman's heart is like a bird, beating upon the window at night, dazzled by the promise of a warmth within a glowing room, and seeing not an icy cruelty sitting beside the fire, lying in wait for a tender victim. ”

“ As Milford arose to follow him, he thought that on the woman's face he saw a sneer at "work shop," and he felt that she and her daughter had learned to look upon it as an idle corner, full of useless lumber. The schemes of this ducking failure of a man were not of serious interest to them. His readiness to talk made him seem light of purpose, and a sigh that came from his heart might have been an unuttered word breathed upon the air, a word in excuse of his poverty. ”

“ The Major whistled as he rode along, not for want of serious reflection, for he could easily have reached out and drawn in trouble, but because the sharp air stirred his spirits. Nowhere was there a cloud—a speckless day in the middle of a week that had threatened to keep the sky besmirched. Roving bands of negro boys were hunting rabbits in the fields, with dogs that leaped high in low places where dead weeds stood brittle. The pop-eyed hare was startled from his bed among brambly vines, and fierce shouts arose like the remembered yell of a Confederate troop. ”

“ I don't know as to her handling of calves, I'm sure; but I know that she can throw a light into dark places; that white clover springs up where she walks; that if she were to sit asleep in a garden the bees would fight over the sweetness of her lips; that her mind is as fresh, as full of bright images as a stream of pure water; that her foot as I saw it upon a rock has grace enough to redeem an awkward world ”

“ A consistent character in fiction is beyond you."
"There are no consistent characters in life," said Richmond, "and a consistent character in fiction is merely a strained form of art. In life the most arrant coward will sometimes fight; the bravest man at times lacks nerve; the generous man may sometimes show the spirit of the niggard. But your character in fiction is different. He must be always brave, or always generous, or always niggardly. He must be consistent, and consistency is not life."
"But inconsistency is life, and you are, therefore, not dead," McGlenn replied. ”

“ We would dim your eye when our own is blurred; we would smother your heart when our own is heavy, and would pierce it with a pain. Upon her children this old world has poured the wisdom of her gathered ages, and could we look from another sphere we might see the minds of great men twinkling like the stars, but the human heart is yet unschooled, yet has no range of vision, but chokes and sobs in its own emotion, as it did when the first poet stood upon a hill and cried [90] aloud to an unknown God. ”

“ All day the clouds had been gathering, hanging low over the fields. At evening came a downpour of rain, and at night a fitful wind was blowing—one moment of silence and then a throb of rain at the windows. In his office the Major sat, looking over the affairs of his estate. It was noted that he preferred a stormy night thus to apply himself; the harshness of figures, the unbending stubbornness of a date, in his mind seemed to find a unity with the sharp whistle of the wind and the lashes of rain on the moss-covered roof. ”

“ I don't believe—"
"But do you believe in a negro-cracy? Do you believe that the ownership of a hundred slaves should open all doors to a coarse and ignorant man?"
"No, I don't. I would not let ignorance own a slave."
"Ah, but slaves are bought with money, not with intelligence. Bob, you are an orator, but after all you are but a fledgling. Now, I want to ask you a question. What has made this country great, the gentility of Virginia or the dogged industry of New England? To whom do we owe most, the silver buckled gentleman or the steeple-hatted puritan?" ”

“ She loved old mills; no country was beautiful without them. Had she seen old mills? No, she had not, but she had read of them and had found them scattered throughout the pages of art. She acknowledged after a time that the lakes were charming, the woods replete with sweet dreaming, the lanes full of a vagabond fancy, tinkers of imagination sleeping under the leaves; but without a ruined mill there could be no perfect rest for the mind. ”

“ I don't believe in waiting for anything; my idea is to go to it at once."
"Yes, that's all very well; but the old soldier was right after all, for life is but waiting for death."
"No," said Warren, "life is a constant fight against death, and we don't wait so long if we are fighting. If I thought as you do, I couldn't wait—I'd have to go out and hunt up death at once. I reckon you are low-spirited today. I'm glad I'm not a writer, Lyman. Writing saps all a man's spirit and leaves him no nourishment."
"I have always regarded the necessity to write as a sad infliction," Lyman replied. ”

“ My heart was freezing, my head was hot, and in a fevered fancy I saw Guinea and that boy playing up and down the rivulet. I saw them wading in the water; heard him tell her that when they grew up she must be his wife, and I saw her, holding her dress about her ankles, look up at him and smile. I knew that he had never been awkward, I knew that he looked like Bentley, knew that he would have made fun of me, and down in my heart there was a poisonous hatred, yellow, green, venomous. I am seeking to hide nothing; I cannot paint myself as a generous and high-minded man. ”

“ Chicago has begun to set the pace of a nervous nation's progress. It is a city whose growth has proved a fatal example to many an overweaning town. Materialistic, it holds no theory that points not to great results; adventurous, it has small patience with methods that slowness alone has stamped as legitimate. Worshiping a deification of real estate, and with a rude aristocracy building upon the blood of the sow and the tallow of the bull, its atmosphere discourages one artist while inviting another to rake up the showered rewards of a "boom" patronage. ”

“ Milford, you must not talk like that. I too am out of the rut, and they may call me unnatural, but I do not like to hear you talk that way."
"Yes, you do. You can't help yourself. If it's the devil that brought us together, then blessed be the name of the devil."
"Hush, Mr. Milford."
"I won't hush. I must talk. I suppose I ought to call you an angel. But you are not. You are a woman—once a hired hand. But you jump on me like a panther; you suck the blood out of my heart. Am I a brute? Yes. So are you. You are a beautiful brute—the panther and the grizzly. ”

“ Happiness will not bear a close inspection; to be flawless it must be viewed from a distance—we must look forward to something longed for, or backward to some time remembered; and my happiness on this night was not perfect, for a sense of loneliness curdled it with regret, but here and there, as I walked along, I found myself in an ecstasy—my nerves thrilled one another like crossed wires, electrified. I knew that it might be a long time before I should hear from Guinea, but I was still drunk with the newness of the feeling that she loved me. ”