“ What good to Boss the World at that price? The Kaiser himself wouldn't pay it. Universally feared as he is already hated—but not bound to live alone. For a while I was thinking to seclude myself that way in self-sacrifice to the general good. I thought of issuing an order to all governments to stop fighting, stop governing and just let real freedom be established—the brotherhood of man, share and share alike, equal wages all round, same kind of houses and grub and clothes, perfect democracy! ”

“ A man should not gibe his job. I must quit. The 'Blessing' is all right for convinced devotees of the mawkish. But if a man thinks sardonically of his daily work, that damns the soul."
"It may be an effect of the soul trying to save itself," said Buntstir, mollified. "Anyway, Renwick, remember your trouble with 'The Reflex.' Avoid the name of a confirmed quitter. Stay here till you can change to your profit. Squealing won't do us any good. A little grain of literary conscience ought not to make you talk sour. It's cynical to satirize our bread and butter—imprudent, too." ”

“ OTTAWA RIVER
Ma'ame Baptiste Larocque peered again into her cupboard and her flour barrel, as though she might have been mistaken in her inspection twenty minutes earlier.
"No, there is nothing, nothing at all!" said she to her old mother-in-law. "And no more trust at the store. Monsieur Conolly was too cross when I went for corn-meal yesterday. For sure, Baptiste stays very long at the shanty this year."
"Fear nothing, Delima," answered the bright-eyed old woman. "The good God will send a breakfast for the little ones, and for us. In seventy years I do not know Him to fail once, my daughter. ”

“ Approaching his landing, a shout drew Bedell's glance ashore to a group of men excitedly gesticulating. They seemed motioning him to watch the American shore. Turning, he saw a boat in midstream, where no craft then on the river, except his own skiff, could be safe, unless manned by several good men. Only two oars were flashing. Bedell could make out two figures indistinctly. It was clear they were doomed,—though still a full mile above the point whence he had come, they were much farther out than he when near the rapids. Yet one life might be saved! ”

“ In stiff white collar, lilac tie, trig grey gown, and faint, fading bloom of countenance, she well represented a notable latter day American type, the Priestess of Business, one born and bred as if to endow office existence with some almost domestic touch of Puritan nicety. That no man might sanely hope to disengage Miss Heartly from devotion to "The Family Blessing" was as if revealed by her unswerving directness of gaze in speech.
"I have called, Mr. Renwick, by instruction of the Sole Proprietress. Miss Minnely wishes me, first, to thank you for this." ”

“ Even to the most worldly it often seems flinging beams of heaven, and to all who love its shining that is a dark day when it yields no reflection of immortal meaning.
To Mini the Cross of Rigaud had as yet been no more than an indistinct glimmering, so far from it did he live and so dulled was he by his sufferings. It promised him no immortal joys, for how was he to conceive of heaven except as a cessation of weariness, starvation, and pain? Not till Angélique had come in the vision did he gain certainty that in heaven she would smile on him always from the mild Mother's arms. ”

“ Ruth Bedell, gazing at the loaded rifle, shuddered, not with dread only, but a sense of having been treacherous to her father. She had not told him all the truth. George Winthrop himself, having made his way secretly through the forest from Lake Ontario, had given her his own letter asking leave from the Squire to visit his newly made cabin. From the moment of arrival her lover had implored her to fly with him. But filial love was strong in Ruth to give hope that her father would yield to the yet stronger affection freshened in her heart. ”

“ Tom went east. The men watched him with horror.
"He's got crazy, looking at de track," said Big Baptiste, "for that's the way,—one is enchanted,—he must follow."
"He was a good boss," said Jawnny, sadly.
As the young fellow disappeared in the alders the men looked at one another with a certain shame. Not a sound except the sough of pines from the neighboring forest was heard. Though the sun was sinking in clear blue, the aspect of the wilderness, gray and white and severe, touched the impressionable men with deeper melancholy. ”

“ What would the Poles do to the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians; or the Armenians to the Turks, if I gave them the Odistor? No—I won't take such risks. If I gave the thing to one Nation the only fair deal would be to give it to all, big and little alike, making the smallest as powerful as the biggest, everyone with power to blow all the others off the footstool. What then? Would mutual fear make them live peaceably? I'm feared not. Probably every one would be so afraid of every other that each would be for getting its Odistors to work first. ”

“ MY LEG IS BROKE Oh, then the up-jumping of big men! Moses, striding forth, ruthlessly shoved Narcisse, who lay and cowered with legs up as a dog trying to placate an angry master. Then Moses carried Davie in as gently as if the young stalwart had been a girl baby, and laid him on the widow's one spare bed.
That night Davie slept soundly for four hours, and woke to consciousness that his leg was greatly swollen. He made no moan, but lay in the darkness listening to the heavy breathing of the teamsters on the floor. They could do nothing for him; why should he awaken them? ”

“ Poor Vassell! Sometimes, to ease his sorrows, he used the sjambok on Matakit, but always too gently. Often he raised his gun to end it all; indeed, he got into a way of thinking that the devil was continually instigating him to kill the Kaffir. And every dopper knows that to yield consciously to the devil is the unforgivable sin."
The ancient burgher paused once more. And again we, whose senses were trained but to the narrow spaces between Canadian woodlands, heard nothing but a sudden louder tumult of gathered horses, the hoofs of the vedettes, and the tinkle of the spruit. ”

“ Sometimes I am tempted to put the Odistor on the small job of blowing him out into Massachusetts Bay. But he is not to blame for being as God made him. Then, again, I think how I could down him by simply showing the thing to Miss Minnely. But the cold fit comes again—what if she thinks me crazy? I'd lose my forty-five dollars a week and might be driven to Bossing the World. It's hard for old men to get new jobs in Boston. They draw the dead-line at fifty. Just when a man's got some experience they put a boy of twenty-six on top of him. ”

“ Sometimes he stops to listen to a frantic brawling of the wagon-train mules, sometimes to the reviving picket-firing. It crackles up to animation for causes that we can but guess; then dies down, never to silence, but warns, warns, as the distant glow of the sky above a volcano warns of the huge waiting forces that give it forth.
I think I hear Barney Donahoe pulling our latch-string that November night when we first heard of the great Thanksgiving dinner that was being collected in New York for the army. ”

“ Peter's conscience accused him every hour, but he was too stubborn to go back to John Pontiac. Indeed, he soon got it into his stupid head that the old boss was responsible for his misfortunes, and he consequently came to hate Mr. Pontiac very bitterly.
After supping on his pipeful of tobacco-dust, Peter sat, straight-backed, leaning elbows on knees and chin on hands, wondering what on earth was to become of them all next day. For a man out of work there was not a dollar of credit at the little village store; and work! ”

“ It was Great Godfrey that was the father to you all," said my cousin.
"Just that, Aleck McTavish. All that he had was ours to use as we would,—his land, money, horses, this room, his learning. Some of us could learn one thing and some of us could learn another, and some could learn nothing, not even how to behave. What I could learn was the playing of the fiddle. Many's the hour Godfrey would play with me while the rest were all happy around. ”

“ It was cold for us in khaki that evening by the Wolwe, though we did not lack overcoats. The spruit tinkled icily along patches of gravel in the blue clay, and late June's high moon seemed pouring down a Canadian wintriness. "No fire," ordered Deschamps, lest far-sighted Boer parties, skilled in surprises, might locate us. But the old burgher showed how to make small glowing heaps of dry offal, which had been plentifully left of old by troops of deer and antelope coming to drink at the spruit. Over one of these tiny smokeless fires our lieutenant sat with the prisoner. ”

“ Ruth had so often seen her father far lower down than they had yet drifted that she did not realize the truth, and George, a stranger in the Niagara district, was unaware of the length of the cataracts above the Falls. He was also deceived by the stream's treacherous smoothness, and instead of half-upward, pulled straight across, as if certainly able to land anywhere he might touch the American shore.
Bedell looked over his shoulder often. When he distinguished a woman, he put on more force, but slackened soon—the pull home would tax his endurance, he reflected. ”

“ Here sat Godfrey, and the kindest look was on his face that ever I saw. He had his fiddle in his hand, and he played about all our lives.
"He played about how we all came down from the North in the big canoe with my father and mother, when we were little children and him a baby. He played of the rapids we passed over, and of the rustling of the poplar-trees and the purr of the pines. He played till the river you hear now was in the fiddle, with the sound of our paddles, and the fish jumping for flies. ”

“ All the rest of the world then know they must do what the English say—Germans, Italians, Russians, Yankees, Canadians. Now I'm a cosmopolitan, I am. All kind of folk look good to me."
"But England ruling the world means universal peace," I said enthusiastically. "Free trade, equal rights, all the grand altruistic English ideals established forever and ever! Adam, let England have it! You'll be remembered as the greatest benefactor of humanity. ”

“ You wonder at that. Is it possible a rough diamond can shine so bright as dangerously to dazzle the eyes? No; Vassell would be glad to stare at it all day. But its setting prevents him. And yet he set it himself."
The old burgher paused and looked about on our puzzled faces with some air of satisfaction at their interest.
"It is quite a riddle," said Deschamps.
"So it is. And I will make it harder. You have been told that we Boers think nothing of killing Kaffirs? But all Swartzdorp could tell you that my cousin Vassell could scarcely bear to let a Kaffir out of his sight. That is mysterious? ”

“ At night, when a high gale happens to be blowing, I listen in wild surmise that Adam was bounced yesterday, and that the slates, bricks and beams of the Family Blessing Building are hurtling about the suburbs as if in signal that he has liberated a large specimen of the mysterious globule and embarked, of necessity, on the woeful business of bossing the world. ”

“ Birds were not stirring when Mini stepped from the dark cabin into gray dawn, with firm resolve to join Angélique on the summit. The Ottawa, with whose flow he went toward Rigaud, was solemnly shrouded in motionless mist, which began to roll slowly during the first hour of his journey. Lifting, drifting, clinging, ever thinner and more pervaded by sunlight, it was drawn away so that the unruffled flood reflected a sky all blue when he had been two hours on the road. But Mini took no note of the river's beauty. ”

“ No, sir. There is no honest, safe, comfortable way for me to get rich out of the Odistor. I have known that for a considerable time."
"Then, why did you wish to consult me?"
"Well, first place, I wanted some friend to know what kind of a self-denying ordinance I'm living under. To be comprehended by at least one person is a human need. Besides that, I want your opinion on a point of conscience. Is the Odistor mine?"
"Yours? Isn't it your exclusive discovery?"
"But isn't it Miss Minnely's property? I experimented in her time." ”

“ Pinnager, crossing a shanty road with the stride of a moose, was hailed by Jamie Stuart with the news:
"Hey, boss, hold on! Davie McAndrews' leg's broke. His load slewed at the side hill—log catched him against a tree."
"Where is he?" shouted Pinnager furiously.
"Carried him to shanty."
"Where are his horses?"
"Stable."
"Tell Aleck Dunbar to go get them out. He must take Davie's place—confound the lad's carelessness!"
"Davie says no; won't let any other man drive his horses."
"He won't? I'll show him!" and Pinnager made a bee-line for his shanty. ”