Henry J. Coke

“ Napier was the audience, and Marryat himself the orchestra—that is, he played on his fiddle such tunes as a ship’s fiddler or piper plays to the heaving of the anchor, or for hoisting in cargo. Everyone was in romping spirits, and notwithstanding the cheery Captain’s signs of fatigue and worn looks, which he evidently strove to conceal, the evening had all the freshness and spirit of an impromptu pleasure.
When I left, Marryat gave me his violin, with some sad words about his not being likely to play upon it more. Perhaps he knew better than we how prophetically he was speaking. ”

“ It was with a sorry heart that I bade farewell to my Vienna friends, my musical comrades, the Legation hospitalities, and my faithful little Israelite. But the colt frisks over the pasture from sheer superfluity of energy; and between one’s second and third decades instinctive restlessness—spontaneous movement—is the law of one’s being. ’Tis then that ‘Hope builds as fast as knowledge can destroy.’ The enjoyment we abandon is never so sweet as that we seek. ‘Pleasure never is at home.’ Happiness means action for its own sake, change, incessant change. ”

“ During their convalescence, I amused myself by shooting alligators in the mangrove swamps at Holland Bay, which was within half an hour’s ride of the bungalow. It was curious sport. The great saurians would lie motionless in the pools amidst the snake-like tangle of mangrove roots. They would float with just their eyes and noses out of water, but so still that, without a glass, (which I had not,) it was difficult to distinguish their heads from the countless roots and rotten logs around them. If one fired by mistake, the sport was spoiled for an hour to come. ”

“ Let no one smile at this infantine credulity, for is it not the basis of that religious trust which helps so many of us to support the sorrows to which our stoicism is unequal? Who that might be tempted thoughtlessly to laugh at the child does not sometimes sustain the hope of finding his ‘plumes’ by appeals akin to those of his childhood? Which of us could not quote a hundred instances of such a soothing delusion—if delusion it be? I speak not of saints, but of sinners: of the countless hosts who aspire to this world’s happiness ”

“ Away in the pretty rural districts, in the little villages amid the woods and the mountains, with their score or so of houses and their little chapel with its tinkling old bell and its poverty-stricken curate, the hard-working, simple-minded men are too proud and too honest to ask for more than a pinch of tobacco for the cigarillo. The maidens are comely, and as chaste as—can reasonably be expected.
Madrid is worth visiting—not for its bull-fights, which are disgusting proofs of man’s natural brutality, but for its picture gallery. ”

“ The blind man could not defend himself from the other’s terrible punishment. His whole face was so swollen and distorted, that not a feature was recognisable. But he evidently had his design. Each time Sayers struck him and ducked, Heenan made a swoop with his long arms, and at last he caught his enemy. With gigantic force he got Sayers’ head down, and heedless of his captive’s pounding, backed step by step to the ring. When there, he forced Sayers’ neck on to the rope, and, with all his weight, leant upon the Englishman’s shoulders. ”

“ They are the beginning of an immense fall in the level, and form a succession of rapids nearly two miles long. The excitement of this passage is rather too great for pleasure. It is like being run away with by a ‘motor’ down a steep hill. The bow of the canoe is often several feet below the stern, as if about to take a ‘header.’ The water, in glassy ridges and dark furrows, rushes headlong, and dashes itself madly against the reefs which crop up everywhere. There is no time, one thinks, to choose a course, even if steerage, which seems absurd, were possible. ”

“ One fancies sometimes that he has more respect for a genuine bad man than for a sham good one. In fact, his ‘Eternal Verities’ come pretty much to the same as Darwin’s ‘Law of the advancement of all organic bodies’; ‘let the strong live, and the weakest die.’ He had no objection to seeing ‘the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, or ants making slaves.’ But he atones for all this by his hatred of cant and hypocrisy. It is for his manliness that we love him, for his honesty, for his indifference to any mortal’s approval save that of Thomas Carlyle. ”

“ Mozely holds, it may be that ‘a miracle is not an anomaly or irregularity, but part of the system of the universe.’ We will not entangle ourselves in the abstruse metaphysical problem which such hypotheses involve, but turn for our answer to what we do know—to the history of this world, to the daily life of man. If the sun rises on the evil as well as on the good, if the wicked ‘become old, yea, are mighty in power,’ still, the lightning, the plague, the falling chimney-pot, smite the good as well as the evil. Even the dumb animal is not spared. ”

“ From England to China round the Cape was a long voyage before there was a steamer in the Navy. It is impossible to describe the charm of one’s first acquaintance with tropical vegetation after the tedious monotony unbroken by any event but an occasional flogging or a man overboard. The islands seemed afloat in an atmosphere of blue; their jungles rooting in the water’s edge. The strange birds in the daytime, the flocks of parrots, the din of every kind of life, the flying foxes at night, the fragrant and spicy odours, captivate the senses. ”

“ But perhaps it is the men themselves, their earnestness, their splendid courage, their noble simplicity, that most inspired one with reverence. It was Huxley’s aim to enlighten the many, and he enlightened them. It was Mill’s lot to help thinkers, and he helped them. Sapere aude was the motto of both. How few there are who dare to adopt it! To love truth is valiantly professed by all; but to pursue it at all costs, to ‘dare to be wise’ needs daring of the highest order. ”

“ But I am impulsive by nature; and now that my father was dead, I fancied myself to a certain extent my own master. I knew moreover, by my father’s will, that I should not be dependent upon a profession. Knowledge of such a fact has been the ruin of many a better man than I. I have no virtuous superstitions in favour of poverty—quite the reverse—but I am convinced that the rich man, who has never had to earn his position or his living, is more to be pitied and less respected than the poor man whose comforts certainly, if not his bread, have depended on his own exertions. ”

“ As with life itself, nothing but the magic powers of youth and ignorance could have cajoled us to face it with heedless confidence and eager zest. These conditions given, with health—the one essential of all enjoyment—added, the first escape from civilised restraint, the first survey of primordial nature as seen in the boundless expanse of the open prairie, the habitat of wild men and wild animals,—exhilarate one with emotions akin to the schoolboy’s rapture in the playground, and the thoughtful man’s contemplation of the stars. ”

“ A saint would have been more heroic, and could besides have promised that sweetest of consolations to suffering millions—the compensation of Eternal Happiness. I could not give them even hope, for I had none to spare. The root-evil I felt to be the overcrowding due to the reckless intercourse of the sexes; and what had Providence to do with a law of Nature, obedience to which entailed unspeakable misery? ”

“ My firm conviction is that the bad man was very little the better; the good man very much the worse. The good man felt the disgrace, and was branded for life. His self-esteem was permanently maimed, and he rarely held up his head or did his best again. Besides which,—and this is true of all punishment—any sense of injustice destroys respect for the punisher. Still I am no sentimentalist; I have a contempt for, and even a dread of, sentimentalism. For boy housebreakers, and for ruffians who commit criminal assaults, the rod or the lash is the only treatment. ”

“ One cannot think heartlessly of a disappointed love. One cannot tear out creeds interwoven with the tenderest fibres of one’s heart. It is better to be silent. Yet is it a place for unwept tears, for the deep sadness and hard resignation borne in upon us by the eternal loss of something dearer once than life. All we who are weary and heavy laden, in whom now shall we seek the rest which is not nothingness? ”

“ Honoured and rewarded as one of the noblest of manly attributes, it is one of the commonest of qualities,—one which there is not a mammal, a bird, a fish, or an insect even, that does not share with us. Such is the esteem in which it is held, such the ignominy which punishes the want of it, that the most cautious and the most timid by nature will rather face the uncertain risks of a fight than the certain infamy of imputed cowardice. ”

“ Still, the gain to science through a devotion of a whole life to a mere group of facts, in a single branch of a single science, may be an incalculable acquisition to human knowledge, to the intellectual capital of the race—a gain that sometimes far outweighs the loss. Even if we narrow the question to the destiny of the individual, the sacrifice of each one for the good of the whole is doubtless the highest aim the one can have. ”

“ Nine Englishmen out of ten with a love of sport—as most Englishmen are—would have done, and have felt, just as I did. I was bruised and still; but so one is after a run with hounds. I had had many a nastier fall hunting in Derbyshire. The worst that could happen did not happen; but the worst never—well, so rarely does. One might shoot oneself instead of the pigeon, or be caught picking forbidden fruit. Narrow escapes are as good as broad ones. The truth is, when we are young, and active, and healthy, whatever happens, of the pleasant or lucky kind, we accept as a matter of course. ”

“ The deathlike stillness was rarely broken by the faintest sound,—though unseen life, amidst the heat and moisture, was teeming everywhere; life feeding upon life. For what purpose? To what end? Is this a primary law of Nature? Does cannibalism prevail in Mars? Sometimes a mocking-bird would pipe its weird notes, deepening silence by the contrast. But besides pestilent mosquitos, the only living things in sight were humming-birds of every hue, some no bigger than a butterfly, fluttering over the blossoms of the orchids, or darting from flower to flower like flashes of prismatic rays. ”

“ Heaven forbid that we should return to such brutality! I cite these passages merely to show how times are changed; and to suggest that with the change there is a decided loss of manliness. Are men more virtuous, do they love honour more, are they more chivalrous, than the Miltons, the Lovelaces, the Sidneys of the past? Are the women chaster or more gentle? No; there is more puritanism, but not more true piety. It is only the outside of the cup and the platter that are made clean, the inward part is just as full of wickedness, and all the worse for its hysterical fastidiousness. ”

“ Fred said nothing, but I saw by his look how this trifling accident helped to depress him. I was ready to cry with vexation. My rifle was my pride, the stag of my life—my alter ego. It was never out of my hands; every day I practised at prairie dogs, at sage hens, at a mark even if there was no game. ”

“ It was a pleasure to be obliged to help to set up the tents, to cut wood, to fetch water, to harness the mules, and work exactly as the paid men worked. The equality in this respect—that everything each wanted done had to be done with his own hands—was perfect; and never, from first to last, even when starvation left me bare strength to lift the saddle on to my horse, did I regret the necessity, or desire to be dependent on another man. ”

“ Gladstone was more or less a Dr. Fell. Neither in his public nor in his private capacity had I any liking for him. Nobody cares a button for what a ‘man in the street’ like me says or thinks on subject matters upon which they have made up their minds. I should not venture, even as one of the crowd, to deprecate a popularity which I believe to be fast passing away, were it not that better judges and wiser men think as I do, and have represented opinions which I sincerely share. ‘He was born,’ says Huxley, ‘to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be a follower of the masses. ”

“ Ye gentle creatures who swoon at the sight of blood, is it not the hero who lets most of it that finds most favour in your eyes? Possibly it may be to the heroes of moral courage that some distant age will award its choicest decorations. As it is, the courage that seeks the rewards of Fame seems to me about on a par with the virtue that invests in Heaven. ”

“ A taste of comfort begets a love of comfort. And this kind of love militates, not impotently, against the other; for self-interest is a persuasive counsellor, and gets a hearing when the blood is cool. Life must be more than possible, it must be endurable; man must have some leisure, some repose, before his brain-needs have a chance with those of his belly. He must have a coat to his back before he can stick a rose in its button-hole. The worst of it is, he begins—in Bethnal Green at least—with the rose-bud ”

“ On the whole, I opined a woman’s heart would be the most suitable for an appeal ad misericordiam. So I pulled out the agony stop, and worked the pedals of despair with all the anguish at my command.
‘It was easy enough for her to revel in luxury and consign me to a life worse than a convict’s. But how would she like to live on salt junk, to keep night watches, to have to cut up her blankets for ponchos (I knew she had never heard the word, and that it would tell accordingly) , to save her from being frozen to death? How would she like to be mast-headed when a ship was rolling gunwale under? ”

“ That the laws of Nature (as argued above) are not violated by miracle, is a mere perversion of the accepted meaning of ‘miracle,’ an ignoratio elenchi. But in the case of prayer that does not ask for the abrogation of Nature’s laws, it ceases to be a miracle that we pray for or expect: for are not the laws of the mind also laws of Nature? And can we explain them any more than we can explain physical laws? A psychologist can formulate the mental law of association, but he can no more explain it than Newton could explain the laws of attraction and repulsion which pervade the world of matter. ”

“ Sayers is good for nothing.’
But now the luck changed. The bull-dog tenacity and splendid condition of Sayers were proof against these violent shocks. The sun was out of his eyes, and there was not a mark of a blow either on his face or his body. His temper, his presence of mind, his defence, and the rapidity of his movements, were perfect. The opening he had watched for came at last. He sprang off his legs, and with his whole weight at close quarters, struck Heenan’s cheek just under the eye. ”

“ My weight sunk the rush bundles a good bit below the surface; and to try my nerves, my crew every now and then with a wild yell dived simultaneously, dragging the raft and me under water. But I sat tight; and with genuine friendliness they landed me safely on the desired shore.
It was quite dark before we set forth. Robinson Crusoe walked on as if he knew exactly where my camp was. Probably the whole catastrophe had by this time been bruited for miles above and below the spot. Five other stalwart young fellows kept us company, each with salmon spear in hand. The walk seemed interminable ”