Juliana Horatia Ewing

“ What hours I have wasted, now blinking with sleep, now on the alert at sounds like the revelries of mocking mice.
When I say that I have even risked wet feet, on a damp afternoon, to get there—every cat will understand how wild must have been the infatuation!
I tried to reason myself out of it. "Toots," I would say, "you banished him from your master's room, and you have probably banished him from Terence's. Why pursue the matter farther? So pitiful an object is unworthy of your revenge." ”

“ These other fish are plaice, soles, brill, turbot, and skate. The skate love to lie buried over head and ears in the sand. The faintest outline of tail or a flapping fin betrays the spot, and you long for an umbrella-poke from some Zoological-Garden-frequenting old lady, to stir the lazy creature up; but it is impossible.
Suddenly, when you are as tired of waiting as Jack was when Coomara was "engaged thinking," the fin movement becomes more distinct, a cloud of sand rises into the water, and a grey-coated skate, with two ornamental knobs upon his tail, flaps slowly away across the pool. ”

“ If you have felt what he must suffer if he is poor, and if you know so well how little it makes sure of happiness to be rich—if in a long life you have found out how hard it is to be good, and how rare it is to be happy—if you know what it is to love and lose, to hope and to be disappointed in one's hoping—let him be religious, good mother! ”

“ I am the Children's Owl—their very own—and all my good advice is intended to help them to improve themselves.
It is wonderful how children do sometimes improve! I knew a fine little fellow, much made of by his family and friends, who used to be so peevish about all the little ups and downs of life, and had such a lamentable whine in his voice when he was thwarted in any trifle, that if you had heard without seeing him, you'd have sworn that the most miserable wretch in the world was bewailing the worst of catastrophes with failing breath. ”

“ Trouble and age and the lone company of your own thoughts, my daughter, has a tendency to confuse you; and I am not by any means rightly certain at times about things I sees and hears. I sees Christian's mother when I knows she can't be there, and though I believes now that only one person was calling the child, yet, with the echo that comes from the quarry, and with worse than twenty echoes in my own mind, it seems to me that the wood is full of voices calling him. ”

“ Learning and the confinement of stone walls, my daughter, than which no two things could be more contrary to the nature of those who dwells in the woods and lanes. I will not deny that the clergyman—and especially the young clergywoman—had been very good to him; but for which he would probably have run away long before. But what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. He does pretty well with the learning, and he bears with the confinement of school, though it is worse than that of the clergy-house. ”

“ I have taken the beetles for my brothers, of course. Godfather Gilpin says I should find far more bodies than I do if they were not burying all along. I often wish I could understand them when they hum, and that they knew me.
I wonder if either they or Diggory know that they belong to the order of Fratelli della Misericordia, and that I belong to it too?
But of course it would not be right to ask them, even if either of them would answer me, for if we were "known, even to each other," we should not really and truly be Brothers of Pity. ”

“ Every trifling accident discomposes us; and as the face of waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles itself, that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave: so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us. ”

“ If the wicker work had not been very strong the cage would not have held me.
"He's a Tartar," said the coachman.
"Oh no, Williams!" said Little Miss, "he's only frightened by the light. Give me the cloth, please."
"Take care, Miss. He'll bite you," cried the coachman, as she put the cloth over the cage, and then over her own head.
"No he won't! I don't mind his snapping and hissing. I want him to see me, and know me. Then perhaps he'll get to like me, and be tame, and sit on the nursery clock and look wise. Captain Barton's owl used to sit on his clock. Poor fellow! Dear old owlie! ”

“ He is so handsome dead and in a bottle, that he must be gorgeous to behold alive and in a pool. You should look out for him.
It is a disappointing feature of this water wonderland that some of the "sea-gentlemen" are apt to hide, like hobbledehoy children, when visitors call. Indeed, a good many of them—such as the swimming-crabs, the burrowing-crabs, the sea-scorpions, and the eels—are night-feeders, and one cannot expect them to change their whole habits and customs to be seen of the British public. Anyhow, whether they hide from custom or caprice, they are quite safe from interference. ”

“ But when a rumour has crept out that he is not the son of the clergyman nor of the clergywoman, and he is taunted with being a gipsy and a vagrant, he lays his bare hands on those nearest to him, my daughter, and comes away on his bare feet."
"How did he find you, Mother?"
"He has no fixed intentions beyond running away, my daughter; but as he is sitting in a hedge to bandage one of his feet with his handkerchief, he sees our patteran, and he goes on, keeping it by the left, and sees it again, and so follows it, and comes home." ”

“ Sybil, my daughter—Sybil, I say! Come and stand near me, for I gets confused at times, and I fears I may not explain myself to the noble gentlewoman with all the respect that I could wish. She says a great deal that is very true, my daughter, and she has no vulgar insolence in her manners of speaking. I thinks I shall let her do as she says, if we can get Christian out, which perhaps, if she is cousin to any of the justiciary, she may be able to do.
"The poor tinker-folk returns you the deepest of obligations, my gentle lady. ”

“ It is also well known, my daughter, that when the clergyman collects money after speaking in his church, he doesn't take it for his own use, as is the custom with other people, such as Punch and Judy men, or singers, or fortune tellers; at the same time he is as pleased with a good collection as if it were for his own use; and if some rich person contributes a sovereign for the sick and poor, it is to him as it would be to you, my daughter, if your hand was crossed with gold by some noble gentleman who had been crossed in love. ”

“ Let us hope that it may stir up some sight-seers to be naturalists, and some naturalists to devote their powers to furthering our too limited friendship with the sea-gentry. How much remains to be done may be gathered from the fact that we can as yet keep no deep-sea Merrows in aquaria, only shore-dwellers will live with us, and not all of these. And so insuperable, as yet, are the difficulties of transport, that "distinguished foreigners" are rare indeed.
Still, as it stands, this Great Aquarium is wonderful—wonderful exceedingly. ”

“ The fish were excellent eating, and though the snails were at their wits' end as the refuse rotted, and the water became more stagnant, and the weeds grew, till all the shell-fish in the pond could not have kept the place clean,—I did not mind it myself. As the water got low, I found a nice bit of rockwork above water, where I could sit by day, and at night the lights from the drawing-room gave an indescribable stimulus to my wings, and I sailed in, and flew round and round till I was tired, and (forgetting that no pond, not even a bed of mud, was below me!) ”