Juliana Horatia Ewing

“ Jackanapes' death was sad news for the Goose Green, a sorrow justly qualified by honorable pride in his gallantry and devotion. Only the Cobbler dissented, but that was his way. He said he saw nothing in it but foolhardiness and vainglory. They might both have been killed, as easy as not, and then where would ye have been? A man's life was a man's life, and one life was as good as another. No one would catch him throwing his away. And, for that matter, Mrs. Johnson could spare a child a great deal better than Miss Jessamine. ”

“ And though Phoebe did not suffer from "fainty feels" like her mother, she and her little playmates took posies to Sunday School, and refreshed their nerves in the stream of question and answer, and hair oil and corduroy, with all the airs of their elders.
One day she lost her posy on her way to school, and her loss was Jack's opportunity. He had been waiting half-an-hour among the ivy, when he saw her just below him, fuzzling round and round like a kitten chasing its tail. He sprang to the top of the wall. ”

“ Free in the sweet sunshine--beating down the evening air with silver wings and their feathers like gold--ignorant of cold eggs and callow young dead in deserted nests--sped on their way by such a roar as rarely shook the village in its body corporate--they flew straight home--to Daddy Darwin's Dovecot. ”

“ It was strangely like watching the rising and falling of Daddy Darwin's pigeons, as they tossed themselves by turns upon their homeward flight.
After the fashion of the piece and period, the chorus was repeated, and the singers rose to supreme effort. The choirmaster's hands flashed hither and thither, controlling, inspiring, directing. He sang among the tenors.
Jack's voice nearly choked him with longing to sing too. Could words of man go more deeply home to a young heart caged within workhouse walls? ”

“ From the top of an old walnut-tree at the top of a field at the back of the Vicarage, you could see a hill, and on the top of the hill some farm buildings. And it was here (so the old pauper had told him) that those pretty pigeons lived, who, though free to play about among the clouds, yet condescended to make an earthly home--in Daddy Darwin's Dovecot. ”

“ And at the end of the garden was a set bush of rosemary. "For," said the hermit, "to this we must all come." Because rosemary is the herb they scatter over the dead. And he knew where almost everything grew, and what he did not know the boy told him.
Yet for all this, and though he had embraced poverty and solitude with joy, in the service of GOD and man, yet so bitter was blindness to him, that he bewailed the loss of his sight, with a grief that never lessened. ”

“ One afternoon the black mare was stepping gently up and down the grass, with her head at her master's shoulder, and as many children crowded on to her silky back as if she had been an elephant in a menagerie; and the next afternoon she carried him away, sword and sabre-tache clattering war-music at her side, and the old Postman waiting for them, rigid with salutation, at the four cross roads. ”

“ As to his keen sense of Jack's industry and carefulness, it was part of the incompleteness of Daddy Darwin's nature, and the ill-luck of his career, that he had a sensitive perception of order and beauty, and a shrewd observation of ways of living and qualities of character, and yet had allowed his early troubles to blight him so completely that he never put forth an effort to rise above the ruin, of which he was at least as conscious as his neighbors. ”

“ When the last snow avalanche has slipped from the high-pitched roof, and the gentian is bluer than the sky, and Baldur's Eyebrow blossoms in the hot Spring sun, pious folk are wont to come to church some time before service, and to bring their spades, and rakes, and watering-pots with them, to tend the graves of the dead. The Kyrkegrim sits on the Lych Gate and overlooks them. ”

“ She's a sensible woman, and can use a mop as well as myself."
"Hoot, hoot!" cried the church owl, pushing his head out of the ivy-bush. "And shall she be Kyrkegrim when thou art turned preacher, and the preacher sits on the judgment seat? Not so, little Miss! Dust thou the pulpit, and leave the parson to preach, and let the Maker of souls reckon with them."
"If the preacher cannot keep the people awake, it is time that another took his place," said the Kyrkegrim.
"He is not bound to find ears as well as arguments," retorted the owl, and he drew back into his ivy-bush. ”

“ I wish I could get you to appreciate Johnson."
"This is not an easy moment, Jackanapes."
"Let me tell you, sir--he never will--that if he could have driven me from him, he would be lying yonder at this moment, and I should be safe and sound."
The Major laid his hand over his mouth, as if to keep back a wish he would have been ashamed to utter.
"I've known old Tony from a child. He's a fool on impulse, a good man and a gentleman in principle. And he acts on principle, which it's not every--some water, please! Thank you, sir. It's very hot, and yet one's feet get uncommonly cold. ”

“ There has been bereavement in the miller's family."
"Men are a strange race," thought the Kyrkegrim; but he went to the priest and said--"The farmer is not afraid of death. You must find some subject of which men really stand in awe."
So when Sunday came round again, the preacher preached of judgment--that dread Avenger who dogs the footsteps of trespass, even now! That awful harvest of whirlwind and corruption which they must reap who sow to the wind and to the flesh! Lightly regarded, but biding its time, till a man's forgotten follies find him out at last. ”

“ Daddy Darwin's Dovecot was freehold, and when he inherited it from his father there was, still attached to it a good bit of the land that had passed from father to son through more generations than the church registers were old enough to record. But the few remaining acres were so heavily mortgaged that they had to be sold. So that a bit of house property elsewhere, and the old homestead itself, were all that was left. And Daddy Darwin had never been the sort of man to retrieve his luck at home, or to seek it abroad. ”

“ That Jack was not the neatest creature breathing, one look at him, as he stood with pigeons on his head and arms and shoulders, would have been enough to prove. As the first and readiest repudiation of his workhouse antecedents he had let his hair grow till it hung in the wildest elf-locks, and though the terms of his service with Daddy Darwin would not, in any case, have provided him with handsome clothes, such as he had were certainly not the better for any attention he bestowed upon them. As regarded the Dovecot, however, Daddy Darwin had not done more than justice to his bargain. ”

“ There is nothing else that you want, I suppose?"
"I want a horse," said the boy, "a real black charger. My father ought to know that I am too old for a hobby-horse. It vexes me to look at it."
"I must wait for the charger, I see," said the Dog. "Nothing vexes you but the hobby-horse, I hope?"
"Aldegunda vexes me more than anything," answered the boy, with an aggrieved air; "and it's very hard when I am so fond of her. She always tumbles down when we run races, her legs are so short. ”

“ If you run away when you see danger, you can come back when all is safe. Run quickly, return slowly, hold your head high, and gabble as loud as you can, and you'll preserve the respect of the Goose Green to a peaceful old age. Why should you struggle and get hurt, if you can lower your head and swerve, and not lose a feather? Why in the world should any one spoil the pleasure of life, or risk his skin, if he can help it? ”

“ Aldegunda thought to herself--"We are so happy, and have so much, that I do not like to take the Blind Man's dog from him;" but she did not dare to say so. One--if not two--must bear and forbear to be happy even on one's wedding day.
By-and-bye they rode under the crab-tree, but the seat was empty. "What has become of the Blind Man?" the Mayor's son asked of a peasant who was near.
"He died two days ago," said the peasant. "He is buried to-day, and the priest and chanters are now returning from the grave." ”

“ The big Miss Jessamine's objection to him was that he was a soldier, and this prejudice was shared by all the Green. "A soldier," as the speaker from the town had observed, "is a bloodthirsty, unsettled sort of a rascal; that the peaceable, home-loving, bread-winning citizen can never conscientiously look on as a brother, till he has beaten his sword into a ploughshare, and his spear into a pruning-hook." ”

“ To one thing the supremely afflicted are entitled in their sorrow--to be obeyed--and yet it is the last kindness that people commonly will do them. But Miss Jessamine did. Steadying her voice, as best she might, she read on, and the old soldier stood bareheaded to hear that first Roll of the Dead at Waterloo, which began with the Duke of Brunswick, and ended with Ensign Brown. ”

“ My father was a soldier, a brave soldier. He died at Waterloo. When I grow up I want to be a soldier too." "So you shall, my boy. So you shall."
"Thank you, grandfather. Aunty doesn't want me to be a soldier for fear of being killed."
"Bless my life! Would she have you get into a feather-bed and stay there? Why, you might be killed by a thunderbolt, if you were a butter-merchant!"
"So I might. I shall tell her so. What a funny fellow you are, sir! I say, do you think my father knew the Gipsy's secret? The Postman says he used to whisper to his black mare." ”

“ She put out her Sunday clothes, and her Bible and Prayer-book, and class-book and pencil, on the oak chest at the foot of the bed. She brushed and combed the silver-haired terrier, who looked abjectly depressed whilst this was doing, and preposterously proud when it was done. She washed her own hair, and studied her Sunday-school lesson for the morrow whilst it was drying. She spread a colored quilt at the foot of her white one for the terrier to sleep on--a slur which he always deeply resented. ”

“ Ginger beer, a penny (I was so thirsty!) two shillings. And then the Shooting-gallery man gave me a turn for nothing, because, he said, I was a real gentleman, and spent my money like a man."
"So you do, sir, so you do!" cried the General. "Why, sir, you spend it like a prince--And now I suppose you've not got a penny in your pocket?"
"Yes I have," said Jackanapes. "Two pennies. They are saving up." And Jackanapes jingled them with his hand.
"You don't want money except at fair-times, I suppose?" said the General.
Jackanapes shook his mop. ”

“ In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some robuster virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars. And the robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on the other hand, Jackanapes (who had a boy's full share of the little beast and the young monkey in his natural composition) was none the worse, at his tender years, for learning some maidenliness--so far as maidenliness means decency, pity, unselfishness and pretty behavior. ”

“ Daddy Darwin had made the first breach in his solitary life of his own free will, but it was fated to widen. The parson's daughter soon heard that he had got a lad from the workhouse, the very boy who sang so well and had climbed the walnut-tree to look at Daddy Darwin's pigeons. ”

“ The General talked to the Gipsy, and Jackanapes fondled Lollo's mane, and did not know whether he should be more glad or miserable if his grandfather bought him.
"Jackanapes!"
"Yes, sir!"
"I've bought Lollo, but I believe you were right. He hardly stands high enough for me. If you can ride him to the other end of the Green, I'll give him to you." ”

“ The following evening, as the hermit sat on the side of the hill, he overheard two boys disputing about the theft.
"It must either have been a very big man, or a small boy to do it," said one. "So I say, and I have my reason."
"And what is thy reason, Master Wiseacre?" asked the other.
"The fruit is too high to be plucked except by a very big man," said the first boy. "And the branches are not strong enough for any but a child to climb."
"Canst thou think of no other way to rob an apple-tree but by standing a-tip-toe, or climbing up to the apples, when they should come down to thee?" ”