Jean Ingelow

“ You are always giving."
"But you know, John," she answered, as if excusing herself, "we are not at all sure that we shall have any possessions, anything of our own, in the future life—anything, consequently, to give away. Perhaps it will all belong to all. So let us have enough of giving while we can, and enjoy the best part of possession."
"Dear Emily," said Miss Fairbairn kindly, "you should not indulge in these unauthorised fancies."
"But it so chances that this is not for a poor person," observed Emily, "but for dear Aunt Christie." ”

“ John answered, "but I often feel offended with authors who lack imagination to see that a group of their own creations would not look in one another's eyes just what they look in his own. The author's pretty woman is too often pretty to all; his wit is acknowledged as a wit by all. The difference of opinion comes from the readers. They differ certainly."
"Even I," observed Valentine, "if I were an author's wit, might be voted a bore, and how sad that would be, for in real life it is only right to testify that I find little or no difference of opinion." ”

“ Shall I not soon be able to make you feel differently?" thought Emily. "You still remember Janie; you will never let her be disparaged. I think none the worse of you for that, my beloved—my hope."
He was silent till she glanced up at him again, with a sweet wistfulness, that was rather frequent with her; turning half round—for he stood at her side, not quite enough at his ease to look continually in her face—he was much surprised to find her so charming, so naive in all her movements, and in the flitting expressions of her face. ”

“ John was silent.
"For," continued Valentine, "no one feels more keenly than she does that it is not charity, not a good work, in a man to leave from his own family what he does not want and can no longer use, thinking that it is just as acceptable to God as if he had given it in his lifetime, when he liked it, enjoyed it—when, in short, it was his own."
"You alienate it with no such thoughts."
"Oh, no, God forbid! But she will think I must have done. There is hardly any one living who cares for me as much as she does. ”

“ Then snow came and covered all.
Madam Melcombe had been heard to say that she liked her garden best in winter. She could wish to leave it for good when it was lapped up under a thick fall of snow. Yet she saw the snow melt again and the leaves break forth, and at last she saw the first pale-green spires shoot up out of the bed of lilies.
But the longest life must end at last, the best little boys will sometimes be disobedient.
It appears strange to put these things together; but if they had anything to do with one another, Peter did not know it. ”

“ Valentine loved comfort and luxury, and finding himself established quite as if he had been a younger son in the house—a horse kept for him to ride, and a small sitting-room set aside in which he could see his friends—he experienced a glow of pleasure at first, and he soon perceived that his presence was a real pleasure to his old uncle; so, settling himself with characteristic ease in his place, he felt hourly more and more content with his new home. ”

“ E.B. BROWNING. The shade of twilight was but just fleeting, a faint glow waxed over the eastern hills, and the great orchard of pear-trees that pressed up to one end of Melcombe House showed white as an army of shrouded ghosts in the dim solemnities of dawn. The house was closely shut up, and no one met Valentine, as, tired after a night journey, he dismissed a hired fly at the inn, and came up slowly to those grand old silent trees.
Without sunshine, white in nature is always most solemn. Here stillness was added; not a bird was yet awake, not a leaf stirred. ”

“ And, John, if love is really the sacred, strong, immortal passion made out by all the poets and novelists, I cannot see, somehow, that putty ought to stand in its light. It ought to have a soul above putty."
"With all my heart," said John; "but you see in this case it hadn't."
"It would be an astonishingly disadvantageous thing for our family if she ran away and married him just now, when Valentine has been making himself so ridiculous. But there is no doubt we could bring it on again, and have it done if we chose," said Emily. ”

“ It has harboured here a long time."
"Now, wait a minute," answered John. "Stop—no more. You asked me to be considerate to you. Be also considerate to me. If, in case of your death, there is left on earth no wrong for me to right, I desire you to be silent for ever."
He took Valentine by the arm and helped him to the sofa, for he was trembling with excitement and surprise.
"There is no wrong that can be righted now," Valentine presently found voice enough to say; "there never has been from the first, unless I am mistaken." ”

“ Melcombe turned her thoughts to Laura's swain, and excited such hopes of pleasure from the visit to Paris in the mind of her sister-in-law, that Joseph's devotion began to be less fascinating to her, besides which there was something inexpressibly sweet to her imaginative mind in the notion of being thwarted and watched. She pictured to herself the fine young man haunting the lonely glen, hoping to catch a sight of her, and smiting his brow as men do in novels, sighing and groaning over his lowly birth and his slender means. ”

“ Was it strange that Valentine, looking back, should not with any special keenness of pain have rued his mistake in taking Melcombe?
No. That was a part of himself. It arose naturally out of his character, which, but for that one action, he felt he never might have fully known.
So weak, so longing for pleasure and ease, so faintly conscious of any noble desire for good, so wrapped up in a sense as of the remoteness of God, how could it be otherwise?
If a man is a Christian, he derives often in such thoughts a healing consciousness of the Fatherhood and Humanity of God. ”

“ All the cherry-trees were in full flower; the pear-trees were coming out, and the young thickets in the garden were bending low with lilac-blossom, but Peter was miserable.
He was leaning his arms over the balustrade, and the great red peonies and loose anemones were staring up at him so that he could see down into their central folds; but what is April, and what is a half-holiday, and what indeed is life itself when one has lost perhaps the most excellent top that boy ever spun, and the loudest hummer? ”

“ Then Giles came in with some purple and some orange crocuses, which he laid upon his wife's plate. He said nothing about his note, but went and fetched Dorothea, who was also evidently surprised to see Valentine.
How lovely and interesting she looked in his eyes that morning, so serene herself, and an object of such watchful solicitude both to her husband and his old step-sister!
"Any man may feel interested in her now," thought Valentine, excusing himself to himself for the glow of admiring tenderness that filled his heart. "Sweet thing! Oh! what a fool I have been!" ”

“ I think that for myself I have expressed no opinion but this one, that Joe Swan deserves your respect for the manly care he has taken to shield you from blame, spare you anxiety, and terminate the matter properly."
"Terminate!" repeated Laura; "yes, that is where you are so unkind."
"Am I expected to help her to bring it on again?" thought Brandon. "No; I have a great respect for fools, and they must marry like other people; but oh, Joey, Joey Swan, if you are one, which I thought you the other day (and the soul of honour too!) ”

“ We almost always think of Canada as a cold country. Its summer counts for little; nor meadow-grass waist deep, over which swarms of mosquitoes hover, tormenting man and horse; nor sunshine that blisters the face, nor natural strawberry-grounds as wide as Yorkshire, nor a sky clearer, purer, and more intensely blue than any that spans Italian plains. No; Canada means winter, snow, quivering northern lights, log-fires, and sledge-bells!
Brandon found Canada hot, but when he had finished his work there, he left it, and betook himself to the south, while it became the Canada of our thought. ”

“ Peter sobbed, "and really, really I didn't take any nests or lilies or anything at all, but only that bit of stuff. I'll never do it again."
As he spoke he saw his mother and aunt coming up with looks of grief and awe, and on looking into his grandmother's face he beheld, child that he was, a strange shadow passing over it, the shadow of death, and he instinctively knew what it was.
"Can't you move poor grandmother out of the sun?" he sobbed. "Oh do! I know she doesn't like it to shine in her eyes." ”

“ It seemed to her so right and natural and proper that she should wish to marry again herself, and so ridiculous of Laura to fancy that she wished to marry also.
On Valentine's day, however, Laura had a letter, flushed high, and while trying to look careless actually almost wept for joy; for the moment Mrs. Melcombe was thrown off her guard, and she asked a question.
Laura, in triumph, handed the valentine to her sister-in-law. "It's strange," she said tremulously, "very strange; but what is a woman to do when she is the object of such a passion?" ”

“ All the fresh fancies of impassioned tenderness and doubt and fear, all the devotion and fealty that youth wastes often and almost forgets, woke up in his heart to full life at once, unworn and unsoiled. The strongest natures go down deepest among the hidden roots of feeling, and into the silent wells of thought.
It had not seemed unnatural heretofore to stand alone, but now he longed for something to lean upon, for a look from Emily's eyes, a touch from her hand.
But she vouchsafed him nothing. She was not so unconscious of the kiss she had bestowed as he had believed she would be ”

“ Old Daniel Mortimer had no such following as had attended the funeral of his mother, and no such peaceful sunshine sleeping on a landscape all blossom and growth. The wind raged, and the snow whirled all about his grave and in it. The coffin was white before the first clod of earth was thrown on it, and the mourners were driven out of the churchyard, when the solemn service was over, by such gusts of storm and whirling wind as they could hardly stand against. ”

“ The intelligent mind, it may be taken for granted, is able to grasp the thought that one may be a very fair, and even copious, letter-writer, and yet show nothing like diffusiveness in writing to an ancient aunt.
The leaves were all dropping when Laura came home, and was received into the spirit of the autumn, breathing in that sense of silence that comes from absence of the birds, while in still mornings, unstirred of any wind, the leaves let themselves go, and the flowers give it up and drop and close. ”

“ The life of to-day would sometimes spend itself in gazing over the life in her whole day. Her life, as she felt it, yearning and passioning, would appear to overflow the little cup of its separation, or take reflections from other lives, till it was hardly all itself, so much as a small part of the great whole, God's immortal child, the wonderful race of mankind, held in the hand of its fashioner, and conscious of some yearning, the ancient yearning towards its source.
Emily moved slowly home again, and felt rather sensitive about the proposed luncheon at John Mortimer's house. ”

“ Hugh appeared to be cogitating over Emily's proposal; his little grave face was the image of his father's. "You may if Mrs. Nemily says so," answered Gladys. "You always want to do what Mrs. Nemily pleases, don't you?"
"Oh yes," said the sprite, dancing round the room; and off they set into the garden.
"And so do we all," said Barbara.
Gladys was sitting at Emily's feet now, and had a little covered basket in her hand, which rustled as if it contained some living thing.
"Janie and Bertie don't know—none of the little ones know," said
Barbara; "we thought we had better not tell them." ”

“ He had only to move these to Emily's house, and so without trouble enter another home.
It was not yet nine o'clock when Valentine entered the dining-room in his brother's house.
The gloom was over, the sun had burst forth, lumps of snow, shining in the dazzle of early sunlight, were falling with a dull thud from the trees, while every smaller particle dislodged by a waft of air, dropped with a flash as of a diamond.
First Mrs. Henfrey came in and looked surprised to see Valentine; wondered he had left John; had never seen a man so overcome at his father's funeral. ”

“ She advanced gazing at herself, at the rich folds of her black silk gown made heavy with crape, and at the frail gossamer she carried on her head, and which, as she came on, let its long appendages float out like pennons in her wake. Emily had such a high, almost fantastic notion of feminine dignity (fantastic because it left too much out of view that woman also is a human creature) , that till this day it might almost have been said she had not taken even her own self into her confidence. ”

“ Why should we write of children as if they were just like grown-up people? They are not in the least like, any more than they are like one another; but here they are, and if we can neither love nor understand them, woe betide us!
"No more crying, my dear," John had said that morning to his youngest daughter.
He had just administered a reproof to her as he sat at breakfast, for some infantile delinquency; and she, sniffing and sobbing piteously, testified a desire to kiss him in token of penitence. ”

“ Amelia had not made game of her, and there had been such a scene. Laura enjoyed a scene; and Amelia had pleaded so hard and so long with her for that promise. At last she had given it. If she had not been such a remarkably foolish woman, she would have known she was glad on the whole that the promise had been extorted from her. As it was she thought she was sorry, but after a little more urging and pleading she gave up the precious valentine, and saw it devoured by the flames. It had a Birmingham postmark, and Mrs. Melcombe heard with pleasure that Joseph would be away at least a fortnight. ”

“ I have three hundred pounds of honest money in hand, besides the two thousand your father gave me. But, John, Emily is my favourite sister."
"There!" said John, "I was afraid this would come."
"If I should die young—if she should find that I have left every shilling and every acre away from you and her, two of the people I love most, and thrown it into the hands of strangers, I could not bear to know that she would think meanly of my good sense and my affection after I am gone." ”

“ Emily wondered.
John was trying to speak in a very matter-of-fact way, as merely laying down his views.
"Equally advantageous," he said at last; and not without difficulty.
"John," said Emily, rallying a little, and speaking with the least little touch of audacity,—"John, you are always fond of advancing your abstract theories. Now, I should have thought that if a man had felt any want in his first marriage, he would have tried for something more in a second, rather than have determined that there was no more to be had." ”

“ Laura spent many happy hours with Liz and the Mortimer children, now huddled into an old tub of a punt, eating cakes and curd for lunch, now having a picnic in the wood, and boiling the kettle out of doors, and at other times welcomed into the long loft called "Parliament;" but she seldom saw John Mortimer himself, for Lizzie was always anxious to be back in good time for dinner. She valued her place at the head of the table, and the indulgent old Grand perceived this plainly. He liked Laura well enough; but Liz was the kind of creature whom he could be fond of. They were both foolish girls. ”