Iowa Press and Authors' Club

“ Nourmahal. We cannot appeal to our ancestors. We cannot appeal to anything, and nothing can be undone. As the Persian poet says, "The moving finger writes," and what is written must be.
King Nasrulla. And if what is written is beautiful, and if you are to be a king's throne-mate, if all the treasures of all the world are to be sought out for you——
Nourmahal. It is nothing, nothing, if you must have another wife, if you must have two other wives, three.
King Nasrulla. My prime minister will choose the others. I choose you. ”

“ Yuki looked into the hard black eyes staring at her, fascinating her, taking all the life from her, and she said slowly as if under a spell:
"Yes—if he confesses—if it was he—I know it will be done. But—if the gods take him, they will also take me."
The uncle shook her roughly by the arm.
"No! Listen to me. Your work is not yet done. You must live. It would be too much happiness to have your spirit travel with him the lonely road. He must walk the path alone, without love to guide him. ”

“ I have never been there, but a horse makes me think of Paris. I don't know London, but a horse makes me think of London too. A horse could take me there. I could ride and ride, and every day there would be something new and something wonderful. There are cities beyond the water, too, marvelous cities, full of things more than we dream of here. A horse is swift, and the tapping of his feet on the stones is distance. When he lifts his head, when he curves his neck, already in his heart he is going on and on.
King Nasrulla. ”

“ Margaret watched them until they stopped beside a flowerbed along the sidewalk where the first tulips of the season were unfolding. Elaine bent over to examine them. Margaret reproached herself that, though Elaine had spoken but once, it was her image that lingered uppermost. Why should she add even the weight of her preference to that child in whose favor the dice were already so heavily loaded? For in Margaret's eyes, beauty was always the chief gift of the gods.
As she resumed her sewing, a sudden, fantastic fear shot across her thoughts—the fear that Elaine would die. ”

“ The poet only thought of doing what somewhere men have done. Here a thousand years are but as yesterday and ten thousand as a watch in the night. I am not I, but an echo of the mad desires of dead men whose dust has been blown across the desert for countless centuries. Why should I not think of my own desires before my dust, too, flies forgotten before the passing caravans?
King Nasrulla. But you are to be my queen. Nothing more can anyone give you in Saranazett.
Nourmahal. And to-morrow or next week your ambassador to the King of the East comes back with letters and pledges of friendship. ”

“ The moon set, the darkness deepened, cool, odorous, musical with lulling songs of insects; and still he lingered, imploring solace, seeking relief from self-reproach. At last, just before dawn, the spirit of his dead Rachel stepped from the shadow. She approached him and bending above him softly said:
"Dear heart, it is true I am not within the graven image. You have no need of it. Go home. There I am, always near thee and the child. I am not for others; I am thine. Return. Make thy peace with the elders. Thee must not live solitary and sad. ”

“ It is the oasis lifted up into the sky that guides the thirsty traveler across the desert.
Nourmahal (rising in agitation) . When I am your queen, will you follow the voices of other nightingales?
King Nasrulla. You will be my first queen.
Nourmahal. I must be your only queen.
King Nasrulla. Always my first queen, and in your garden the fountains shall murmur day and night with a fuller flow of water than any others. The flowers there shall be more beautiful than anywhere else in all the world, and a hundred maidens shall serve you. ”

“ Queen!—in a world where the flowers that bloom to-day died centuries ago! Queen—in a world where queens may look out of grated windows and never walk the streets! Queen—in a world where My Lord the King may not come to my door too often lest the daughter of the King of the South put poison in the nectar that her slaves offer him to-morrow!
King Nasrulla. The world is the world, and its enduring is forever and ever. We are but shadows that change and break on the surface of running water. We may stand for a moment in the sun, but we cannot stop the rain that fills the stream. ”

“ I believe in our commonwealth, yet young, and in the process of making, palpitant with energy and faring forth with high hope and swift step; and I covenant with the God of my fathers to give myself in service, mind and money, hand and heart, to explore and develop her physical, intellectual and moral resources, to sing her praises truthfully, to keep her politics pure, her ideals high, and to make better and better her schools and churches, her lands and homes, and to make her in fact what she is by divine right, the queen of all the commonwealths. ”

“ He was trying to shape his own vague perception that the show of dainty thinking and the pomp of refinement are in truth amiable and lovely things, yet are they no more than the husks of life; not only under them, but under ungracious and sordid conditions, may be the human semblance of that "beauty most ancient, beauty most new," that the old saint found too late. He felt the elusive presence of something in love higher than his youthful dream; stronger than passion, fairer than delight. To this commonplace man and woman had come the deepest gift of life. ”

“ He had known that it somewhat resembled Ruth, for Ruth indeed resembled Rachel—but that it was verily in every line and shadow a portrait of the living and not of the dead he now realized for the first time.
"The sculptor has deceived me!" he cried. "He loves Ruth and with the craft of a lover has wrought out his design deliberately and with cunning. He has carved the cold stone to the form of his own desire. How blind I have been."
In complete comprehension he addressed the statue: "Thee is but a symbol of this artist's love for another after all. Nicholas Asche was right. ”

“ Nearly all the people in the room were the dead music teacher's personal friends; they had heard the story of all these things; they knew who had sent him the stuffed brown prairie chicken that perched like a raven above the door—the little old-fashioned decanter and wine glasses of gilded glass—the artificial begonias—that clever imitation that goes far toward making one forswear begonias forevermore. There were lamps of various shapes and sizes, there was a kit of burglarious looking tools for piano tuning, there was a little globe—"Who wants the earth?" said the auctioneer. ”

“ Oh, well, we're uninteresting old-timers now. And it used to be that I knew everyone in town—even the transient baker whose family had no garden and chickens but lived up over the furniture store, and the temporary telephone man who sat out in front of the hotel evenings with the pale-faced traveling man. That hotel—haunted with an atmosphere that was brought in from the outside world! Remember how you used to walk past it with awe, the hot sun on the plank sidewalk burning your bare feet, and your eyes wistful as you heard the bus man on the steps call a train? ”

“ I have heard stories of places where the king has only one queen.
King Nasrulla. It has never been so in Saranazett.
Nourmahal. It has not been so in Saranazett, but does nothing change?
King Nasrulla. I must be king in the way of my ancestors.
Nourmahal (dropping down by the railing again) . And we must live in the way of our ancestors, over and over again, sunrise and noon-glare and star-shine, as it was before our stars rose in the heavens, as it always will be?
King Nasrulla. Our ancestors have taught us that a king should not live too meanly. ”

“ Nourmahal puts her foot into Nasrulla's hand, and he lifts her into the saddle. When she is comfortably seated, he stands beside her and in front of her, back of the horse, leaning against the horse's neck and caressing his shoulder.
King Nasrulla. Now we are on the road, and all the world is moving across the horizon. If it is all a dream, let me be in the dream.
Nourmahal (looking out and away from him and pausing a moment) . Stories! Dreams!—What I have heard is only a whisper, but it seems so true and so beautiful. Somewhere a man loves one woman always and no other. ”

“ If we could make Saranazett over into a new world.
Mehrab. A new world somewhere else, Nourmahal. The packs are being made ready for the camels. Have your women tie up your clothes as if they were bundles of figs. Day after to-morrow or the next day or the next, we shall take horse and follow. We shall go to a world that is an old, old world, wiser than our world, a world where men's thoughts are free and their women's eyes look wherever they will. ”

“ King Nasrulla. The Lord of the Sky rises to look on the gardens where the nightingales have been singing.
Nourmahal. But when he finds that the nightingales are silent, he passes to other gardens.
King Nasrulla. Following the song, as I follow the lisp of spring in your voice, the flutter of the wings of birds in the branches when buds are swelling.
Nourmahal. It is the flutter of wings and the song that you care for; it is not the bird. ”

“ I want to see Daddy and the boys and the horses and the cattle, and I want to watch the sun go down over the edge of the world, not just tumble down among the dirty houses, and I want to gallop over the prairie where there aren't any roads, and smell the grass and watch the birds and the sky. You ought to see the sky down there at night, Miss Carewe. ”

“ Well, here was something quite as good, which, if it did not render me invisible to the world, made the world invisible to me. Who of you would not be glad to have the old world with its "everyday endeavors and desires," its folly, its pride and its tears, drop out of sight for a while, leaving you in a flowery zone of perfect quiet and beauty, hedged in by a wall of grass!
There were many "afterwards." And the marvel of it all was that, for all I could do, the field retained its virgin splendor and kept the secret of my goings-in and comings-out most completely. ”

“ Above the gleaming white of the wall's sun-baked clay there is the deep green of the trees—the plane, the poplar, the acacia, and, beyond the garden, mountains are visible through the purple mist of the hour that waits for dawn, slowly turning to rose as the rising sun warms their snowy heights. At the left the wall extends out of sight behind a clump of trees, but at the right it ends in a tower topped by a turret with a rounded dome passing into a point. The space under the dome is open, except for a railing, and is large enough for one or more persons. ”

“ As always, Fate ran true to form. She was a woman; a little tired, as a woman might well be who had come a thousand miles; a little out of breath from the two flights of stairs. Her old-fashioned draperies clung about her; her hair was looped away from her face in a "Book of Beauty" style. The man who stood aside to let her pass was talking. "Of course," he was saying, "he was a side-tracked man. But I believe he stands the biggest chance of being remembered of any man in Iowa." ”

“ Its fruit-trees breathed out of the unfolding whiteness of their bosoms the sweetest of those perfumes that drifted across to Margaret. The girl on the porch pushed the wicker chairs about for a moment, then, disdaining them all, sat down on the cement steps and rested her chin in her palm.
After a quick look and smile Margaret sewed busily, affecting not to see the other. She felt a little sympathetic flutter of pleasure and suspense. "Jean is waiting for Frank," she said to herself.
A piano began to play in a house up the street. Through the open windows rang joyous, vibrant music. ”

“ Of the robin, who makes of the grove a sanctuary? He doubtless has his opinions concerning every one of them, for he views them all with interest. Hearing all the other birds singing their love and seeing them winning favor with their brilliant colors, does he envy them?
On the theory of compensation, his sterling qualities render accomplishments and decorative raiment unnecessary. With no song in which to tell his story, and no garments gay to captivate the eye, the crow must needs live his love—and he does—to the end. Seriously he wins the mate to whom he remains true forever. ”

“ She had lived her life and it had been a good life, happy, well-nourished, satisfying as her own bread had been. And so, when they came back from leaving Martha beside the brother who had died so many years before, the last loaf of her last baking was cut and eaten around the kitchen table—the youngsters biting eagerly into the thick slices, the elders tasting with thoughts not on the bread at all, and old John crumbling the bread in his fingers and thinking of long past years. ”