Various

“ So that if I were to tell you that in my judgment this last book is on the whole the most moving piece of imaginative writing known to me,—strongest in epic spirit, fullest of inner meaning, the book that touches whatever is deepest and highest in me,—I should merely be saying that it is the last romance in which I have been reading with all the faculties of mind and heart.
I like, at all times and in all moods, the kind of fiction that gets closest to human life, and I value it in proportion as I think it is likely to do the world some good. ”

“ She recoiled out of the girl's embrace as she spoke, and stood staring at her in blank amazement.
"Loyd!" she added faintly; "it is Loyd you wish to marry?"
"Whom else?" answered Romaine, smiling calmly; "you would not doubt it, mother dear, if you knew all. Oh, I am not demented, as perhaps you think. I am myself again, thanks to the magnetism of his great love. Mother, if I thought that he were never to have the right in the sight of God and man to call me wife, I should pray for death—ay, court it as the sweetest boon. ”

“ Meanwhile Romaine and Morton had wandered out of ear-shot of this significant conversation, into the depths of the conservatory. They had paused beneath a luxuriant lapageria, and the girl had raised caressing hands, drawing downward a cluster of its frosty bells to her lips.
The startling likeness in tint between the wan face and the ghostly blossoms, as they gleamed side by side in the moonlight, so painfully suggested the sculptured pallor of death, that Morton caught her hands in his and drew her quickly into his embrace, as he would snatch her from the brink of the grave. ”

“ He uttered some inaudible exclamation of [632] surprise, halted, then advanced a step, staring at the apparition in awed silence.
"Romaine!" he murmured at last, as if fearful of breaking the spell and dissolving the vision by the mere sound of his voice; "Romaine, can it be you—here—at this hour? In heaven's name, where are you going?"
"Home," she faltered, her very utterance paralyzed by amazement and vague fear.
"Home!" he echoed more distinctly, emboldened by the vital voice of the phantom; "you are going in the wrong direction. You are but a few steps from the Lodge. ”

“ I could give you a list of fifty favorite passages, but I would find it hard to say which is my favorite novel. The mood of the moment would have much to do with any judgment made on that head. When I am out of heart Scott suits me well, for his sky is always serene. When I am in high spirits I enjoy Thackeray, for it is only then that I find any humor in the odd and the ugly. Dickens suits me in many moods; there was not a touch of uncharity in that true soul. There are moments when the tenderness of Richardson is not maudlin, and when his morality is more wholesome than that of Goldsmith. ”

“ Loyd Morton shivered as the door closed heavily upon his departing form, and he crept to the window, raised the drapery, and stood staring blindly out upon the darkening landscape.
For the first time since the beginning of his weird experience, the voice of conscience asserted itself, weakening his resolution to the extent of making a partial coward of him.
"God help me!" he mentally ejaculated; "would to heaven that I had foreseen this disastrous complication before I entered into a covenant with death! Far be it from me to interfere with the love and hope of any man. ”

“ If the government is a government of the people and for the people, under the people's Constitution the people have the right to protect themselves. If the possession of millions by any person is a menace to the liberties of the people and to the permanence of their government, the people have the right to legislate upon the matter and to protect themselves. That this Republic belongs to the people, no one can doubt. That it was established, by their blood and treasure, as an asylum for the oppressed of all nations and the perpetual abode of free men, every page of American history attests. ”

“ You must live on until your appointed hour, then come into the courts of heaven with hands unstained, with soul unsullied."
Raised to a pinnacle of exaltation which, in his normal condition, he would have deemed unattainable to one of his stanch rationality, Morton exclaimed:
"I cannot live without you! After what I have just heard, which renders my dreary existence tenfold more dreary, I will not hold myself responsible for what I may do. Oh, Paula, my wife, my wife! if you would not have me commit a crime against myself which may separate us for all eternity, come back to me!" ”

“ Never fear that I shall not abide by my part of the compact! But as there is justice in heaven, I will never rest until I have probed this damnable mystery to the heart! Now, go! before the sight of you reduces me to a ravening beast! Go, before I tear your heart out, and by drawing your blood, deprive you of the power of sorcery! Out of my sight!"
Morton's return to Belvoir was effected at the height of his speed. His interview with Drummond had unmanned him; while the conscience that hung about the neck of his heart seemed to be strangling his life out in its deadly clutch. ”

“ What was the spirit of his wife to Drummond, or Drummond to the spirit of his wife? They had never met upon earth, and now, wrapped in a veil of invisibility, how could that spirit hope for the sympathy and love upon which it had fed, and for the renewal of which it had returned to earth?
Could he in duty, in honor, in love, desert the habitation which that blessed spirit had chosen, and leave it enslaved to a doom beside which total annihilation would seem paradise? ”

“ So bidden, Kate was compelled to go; but she felt a strange reluctance possessing her as she mounted the stairs ahead of Dr. Brett. [497] When they were in the great, wide-reaching, low-ceilinged room so familiar to her, she thought of the paraphernalia of her Ideal, and felt more foolish than she had ever felt yet. What an idiot Dr. Brett would think her if he knew of the impalpable object on which she had lavished so much feeling! She thought of the Ideal that had once been so much to her, and then looked at Dr. Brett. How real he was! how strong, capable, living! ”

“ Yet, let there be no suspicion that Loyd Morton's was an unmanly grief; it was no more a lachrymose distemper than it was a stubborn setting of his face against his lot. His sorrow was far too genuine to be self-conscious, and, if he brooded in his despair, it was simply because something had gone out of his life infinitely more precious than life itself; something that he would have given his life to recover, since absolute annihilation seemed to him preferable to this existing condition of death in life. ”

“ Effingham tremulously replied,
"Come what may, you shall remain in command here. O Loyd, do not desert us in this the eleventh hour of our anxiety! In heaven's name, stand by us until your good work is accomplished! You have dragged Romaine back from the threshold of death; sustain her until the threatening portals are closed and she is safe!"
She rose as she spoke, with outstretched arms, and he hastened to her to receive her embrace. ”

“ Consequently she had recourse to temporization for present safety.
"Colston would be remiss in his duty if he failed to inquire for Romaine before he slept," she remarked nervously. "Whatever may be his faults—and he has as few as any man I know—indifference is not one of them; at least, indifference as regards those he loves."
It was like her valiantly to defend the absent, and she spoke from her heart.
Morton watched her with his soul in his eyes, though he turned a shade more pallid, while the lines about his lips grew more tense as each word of hers broke the silence. ”

“ To recognize the reality of such a character as that of the old pioneer, simple, uneducated, and rude, yet, in the inborn impulses of his nature, nobly delicate, loftily honorable, good in the best and manliest sense—to recognize that such men have lived and do live, is to put aside into the limbo of the vacuous all philosophies of negation and sophistries of pessimism. Abner Clark is unquestionably one of the few grand creations of American fiction. ”

“ She hadn't been to the garret for a long time. There was something that gave her a painful sense of absurdity in the mere thought of the blue velvet coat, and the cocked hat and sword. What could a man do with those things in this day and generation? She thought of Dr. Brett's brown hands encumbered with lace ruffles in the sort of work he had to do, and in her heart of hearts she knew that she preferred the work to the ruffles.
But the more the exterior belongings of her Ideal grated on her now, the more she hugged to her heart his soul and spirit, as expressed in the old blue manuscript. ”

“ These are homes for humanity. Or he will ascend rotten stairways to crowded rooms, heated to suffocation by pestilent air poisoned by over-used breath from men, women, and children, packed in regardless of health, comfort, and decency. These are the so-called homes of thousands and thousands: and the wonder is, not that they die, but that they live. We send millions of money with missionaries to foreign shores: to our own flesh and blood we send—the police. Loving care and patient help are bestowed on distant pagans: poor-houses, prisons, and wrath are the fate awarded to our brothers at home. ”

“ The more his country-made clothes, and sun-burned hands, and awkward, heavy shoes grated on her, the more it came home to [489] her how she would be pleasing some one who wore velvet coats, with rich lace ruffles that bordered tapering white hands, and with shapely feet encased in fine silk stockings and fine diamond-buckled slippers—if he could see her! Hers was quite a happy love affair, and she had no occasion to mourn her lover dead, as she had not known him living—so, as yet, he had brought only pleasure into her life. ”

“ It is the religion of nature, the simple faith of the patriarchs of old, the belief that finds its strongest support in a noble pantheism, in the love of the Creator's handiwork, in a perception of the Omnipotent in the marvellous grandeur of material beauty. And yet this old man is neither superstitious nor weak. In order to save his young son from moral ruin and the clutches of card-sharpers, he can drink and gamble—aye, and play a game of poker like a bunco-steerer, and beat roguery before its very eyes. ”

“ Effingham for the welfare of her daughter, which is being jeopardized by such a tirade as this which you have seen fit to indulge in. I therefore request you—as her physician, I request you to respect Miss Effingham's condition, and leave the room."
Drummond raised his head and dealt Loyd Morton a glance which smote him to the heart.
"I go," he answered. "I leave her in peace; but as God is judge of us both, I fail to understand why you, who have enjoyed one all-absorbing love, and ought to be faithful to it, can have the heart to force yourself between my only love and me!" ”

“ But what care I, since your immortal soul actuates other lips to breathe your love for me, and kindles other eyes with that same deathless love when silence falls between us? O, Paula, my idol! tell me why I should be so infinitely blessed, when other men languish in their bereavement? Thou knowest now that I am as other men are—as full of frailty and sin as any ”

“ The eve of Romaine's wedding-day proved to be one of those rare epochs of spring that are instinct with the genial presage of summer, one of those intense days which May has in her gift, when one involuntarily seeks the shady side of city streets, or wanders into the shadows of the woods to escape the garish splendor of the open fields. Such weather is always premature and ominous of impending inclemency ”

“ When I was a boy "The Last of the Mohicans" was my favorite novel; a young man and in love, "David Copperfield" became my favorite. When I grew to be a man "The Scarlet Letter" took the place of David and the North American Indian; but ever since I can remember I have always been reading "Monte Cristo" with unflagging delight. One's favorite book is a question of mood. Now and then one might be inclined to regard "Adam Bede" as the most companionable of fiction; there are other times when "Pickwick" appeals most to one's fancy, or when one is even in the humor for "L'Homme qui Rit." ”

“ The ignorant poor and the no less ignorant rich may ridicule or sneer at the expression of fear that harm may come to the Republic on account of great wealth; but ridicule never settled any question. [482] Ridicule is always the weapon of the ignorant and the vicious. None but the ignorant will ridicule the subject, for the history of the world reveals the destruction of nations on account of wealth—never from poverty.
What if a man does have millions—is it any of the people's business? is the query of the ignorant. ”