S. Baring-Gould

“ For a moment every one held his breath. Thomasine limped away from the doomed cottage. All heard the young fellow’s voice shouting to Mrs. Kite.
Then, suddenly, the whole chimney came down with a rush. It was as though it had closed into itself like a telescope. A dull, heavy thud, muffled by the dense enveloping fog of dust, was heard, and then volumes of yellow smoke-like fumes poured out in gushes and spirals, and rose in a column above the cottage. ”

“ Do we not love and venerate the little mermaid, because, instead of howling or whining, and holding up her bleeding soles to extract commiseration from all, she dropped her skirts over them, and danced and warbled, and flushed as the rose, so that none supposed she leaped with pain, and sang to still her heart, and flushed with stress of anguish? So is it with all who have gone through the great discipline of culture, they no more expose their wounds and cry out for sympathy than they expose deformities. ”

“ Arminell was by no means easy in mind about Jingles’ assurance that he would not speak. He had given the same assurance as Mrs. Saltren had told her, to his mother, and had broken his promise. She resolved to exert her powers of persuasion on him to deepen this determination to be silent.
It was unfortunate that Lord Lamerton had not been able to cultivate more freely his daughter’s society, but a nobleman has ten thousand calls on his time; he is prevented from living that close life of familiar association with his children which is the privilege of those in an inferior station. ”

“ After a flood we find backwaters where promiscuous matter drifts in circles—straw, snags of wood, a dead sheep, a broken chair; so was it in the mind of Stephen Saltren. His ideas were thrown into confusion; thoughts and fancies, most varied and incongruous, jostled each other, without connection. The discovery that his wife had lied to him in the matter of the parentage of Giles and the guilt of Lord Lamerton, following on the excitement in which he had been through the encounter with his enemy, had sufficed to paralyse his judgment, and make his thoughts swerve about incoherently. ”

“ When a man has been struck on the head by a hammer, he falls. Jingles had received three stunning blows, and recovery could not be immediate. His sanguine hopes of living by his pen had been upset, and that was a blow to his self-esteem. Then his belief in his noble parentage had been knocked over. And lastly he had heard of Lord Lamerton’s death—and whether that were accidental or not, he could hardly doubt that he had brought it about, for his lordship would not have left his guests to go to Chillacot, had he not been impelled to do so by learning of the elopement. ”

“ Our consciences are as easily satisfied when heavy burdened as the stupid camel. One straw—nay, the semblance, the shadow of a straw—taken from them contents us; we rise, draw a long breath, shake our sides, and amble on our way well pleased.
Lord Lamerton had been doomed by heaven for his guilt in the matter of Archelaus Tubb. ”

“ We are both of us too ordinary in our ways, in our ideas, in our submission to the social laws, in our arm-in-arm plod along the road of duty, to satisfy her. She wants some one with great ideas to guide her; with high-flown sentiment; to such an one alone will she look up. She is young, this will wear off, and she will sober down and come to regard hum-drum life with respect.”
“In the meantime much folly may be perpetrated,” said Lady Lamerton sadly. “Do look how much has been spent in the restoration of Orleigh. ”

“ A RALLY. Giles Inglett Saltren had left the cab at Cumberland Gate, when the momentary faintness had passed. He wished to be alone, in the fresh air, and with his own thoughts. His uncle had detained the cab till he saw that his nephew was better. He left him on a bench in the park and bade him remain there till his return from the interview with Arminell.
The young man felt the relief of being alone. The vibration of the carriage, his uncle’s voice, his own self-reproach, had, combined with the shock of the news of his lordship’s death, brought about the slight fit of unconsciousness. ”

“ Round and round our ring we go, now at an amble, then at a canter, and at last at a gallop, but always under restraint; the only liberty allowed and taken is now and again to make our hoofs sound against the barriers, and to send a little sawdust in the faces of the lookers-on, who clap hands and laugh or scream. We dance in our arena to music, and spin about, and balance ourselves on precarious bases, take a five-barred gate at a leap and go over a score of white poles, dexterously lowered to allow of a leap without accident. ”

“ The discipline of life, many a painful experience, and some humiliation, serve to train the moral faculty to nice distinction, and teach it to shrink from the smallest sources of falsehood, to avoid the rank and gross, and to acquire the strictest love of justice. It learns to enjoy the soft velvety port, and to pass the brandied logwood untouched.
Lord Lamerton was a man of double culture. He was not a man of brains, but he was thoroughly scrupulous and honourable, eminently a fair man, and essentially truthful. As such he was incapable of meeting Welsh. ”

“ If, by chance, a sudden gleam of sun, a puff of pure air, stir the curtain and reveal the mystery, with what haste we fly to duplicate the veils, to blind the windows, to nail the curtains to the gilded sideposts, and weight them with lead. How we redouble our prostrations, and make more dense the cloud of incense; 297how we elaborate our ceremonial, and when the hippopotamus within yawns, or the ibis chatters, we clash our symbals, boom our drums, peal our trumpets to drown the utterance of the god.
There was in Alexandria no god like unto Serapis, whose temple was the wonder of the world. ”

“ James Welsh. “Lord Lamerton innocently—I will not say, sheepishly—asks, Is that all? No, I reply, and I reply as the mouth-piece of all present, as the shout of the democracy of England. It is not all. It is very far from being all. Is that all? he asks, standing before you, out of whose mouths he has snatched the crust of bread, the staff of life. Is that all? When he closes the manganese mine, and throws almost the entire population of Orleigh out of employ, and scatters them everywhere, hungry, homeless, forlorn.” ”

“ Probably you would not have been alive at all had he not sent you to the South of France.” Mr. Welsh became sarcastic. “No doubt you owe his lordship a grudge because he didn’t let you go at once to kingdom come instead of detaining you here in this Vale of Tears. Mind you, Giles—there is no escape from this fact, that you owe your life to him. To him also you owe your education. To him you owe it that, supposing you had lived, you are not now a horny-handed ploughboy, that you know how to use a pocket-handkerchief, and don’t put your knife in your mouth.” ”

“ There is no god, no idol, like the ideal self within the veil; but it does not chance to every one as it chanced to Giles Inglett Saltren, to have its head knocked off and see the vermin scamper out of it. When that does happen, that is a moment never to be forgotten. It is a moment of infinite importance in the life-history, it is a moment determinative of the future. The worshippers of Serapis, after that terrible spectacle, which was also extremely laughable, stood in consternation ”

“ We would rapidly degenerate on the moorside into uncouth, shaggy creatures, destitute of gloss and grace, and forget all our circus manners.
That which the grooming and breaking-in are to a horse, that culture is to a man, a sacrifice of freedom. The lower classes of men, the great undisciplined, or imperfectly disciplined bulk of mankind look on at the easy motions and trained grace of the higher classes, with much the same puzzlement as would a cluster of wild ponies stand and watch the passing of a cavalcade of elaborately trained horses. ”

“ I sent Macduff down, but he could effect nothing. I believe, on my very soul, that there is no man on earth but yourself who can move your father. He is a stubborn man, eh, Saltren? I would go myself and see him about it, but Macduff tells me your father is ruffled about the manganese. It is the deuce of a pity, but I cannot help myself. I wish he could be persuaded to sell. Why, Saltren, between you, me and the piano, I believe if I chose to dispute your father’s right to Chillacot I could beat him. ”

“ One can look back and see one’s faults, but looking forward one is still in ignorance what road to pursue. It really seems to me, Lamerton, that on life’s way all the direction posts are painted so as to show us where we have diverged from the right way and not whither we are to go.”
“Julia, I exercise as little control over Armie as yourself. It is a painful confession for a father to make, that he has not won the respect of his child—of his daughter, I mean; as for Giles—dear monkey—” his voice softened and had a slight shake in it. ”

“ Everyone knows that you are nothing of the kind. Should it leak out that you are not Captain Saltren’s son, how will it mend matters if it be shown that you are the bastard brat of old blear-eyed, one-handed, limping Samuel Ceely? ”

“ She entertained no particular admiration for young Saltren, no great affection for him, only a girlish eagerness to see a misunderstood and ill-used man put in his proper place and acknowledged by the world. When she met Jingles at breakfast in the coffee-room, there was mutual restraint between them of which both were conscious; and in Arminell’s heart a little welling up of wrath against him. She knew that the feeling was ungenerous. He was less to blame than herself—that is, she had proposed the elopement ”

“ Look at children, they accept as their due everything given them, all care shown them, and pay no regard to the sacrifices made for them. There is no conscious gratitude in children. I should not be surprised if it were the same with young Saltren. I do not altogether trust him. There is a something in him I do not like. He does his duty by Giles. He is respectful to you and me—and yet—I have no confidence in him.”
63“Julia,” said Lord Lamerton with a laugh. “I know what it is, you mistrust him because he is not a gentleman by birth.” ”