Various

“ The paper-cutting was not wholly laid aside though; in the early morning, and in the evening, and often late into the night, the thin, wan fingers were busy about their task; but the middle of the day was snatched like an hour of sleep in the midst of pain—garnered up like a fountain of sweet waters in the wilderness; for then it was that little Jessie came for her Latin lesson, which she used to learn so well, and take such pleasure in, and be doubly diligent about, because poor Herbert Lawson was ill, and vexation would do him harm. ”

“ We cannot ignore it without fatal results when studying history, science, art, human nature, or any conceivable object of inquiry. Thus, in forming our opinion of the actions of others, there is no more mischievous absurdity, it has been remarked, than to judge them from the outside as they look to us, instead of from the inside as they look to the actors; nothing more irrational than to criticise deeds as though the doers of them had the same hopes, fears, desires, and restraints with ourselves. ”

“ When the moon is at her full, the gatherer of worms enters a neighbouring wood, and selects a young palmiste tree. This is a tree of the palm order, exceedingly stately and graceful, growing sometimes to the extraordinary height of eighty feet. From the roots upwards, it has not a single branch or shrubby excrescence, but grows beautifully smooth and straight, tapering towards the top. At its top, an abundance of the richest and most beautiful leaves spread out in graceful symmetry, and bend down on all sides, forming a figure like an umbrella ”

“ They seemed to speak of such long years of heart-loneliness—such loving impulses strangled by the chill hand of solitude—such weary familiarity with that deadness of life wherein no sympathy is bestowed, no love awakened—that I felt as one witnessing a dead man recalled to life, after all that made life pleasant had fled. ”

“ A good dinner, provided in the back-shop, completes the illusion—and when once the Chinese has established his hold, he employs all the resources of a skilful and utterly unprincipled knavery. He keeps his victim in his house, eating, drinking, and smoking one day after another, until his subordinates have sold all the poor man's cattle, or whatever else he has to sell, and bought for him in return the commodities he requires, at prices double and treble the market value. ”

“ One could not help thinking of all those two hapless people must have gone through before they could have summoned courage to leave their own dear village, where they had lived so many years in that local honourableness of the clergyman's family; throwing themselves out of the society which knew and loved them, that they might enter a harsh world, where they must make their own position, and earn their own living, unaided by sympathy, honour, or affection. ”

“ The usual stillness of the night, and the solitude of the wilderness—the croaking of the night-birds, the movement of every leaf, animated as it is by the myriads of nocturnal insects that fill [pg 128] the atmosphere—the brilliant and fleeting fire-flies traversing the gloom—the strange animals wandering in their nightly prowlings—the approach of the grunting hogs, and the incidents of the hunt: all these things, combined with the idea of isolation when a man finds himself alone in the wilds of a scarcely pervious forest, create an inexpressible feeling of mingled fear, pleasure, and anxiety. ”

“ They seemed to be very tenderly attached one to the other, and to supply to each all that was wanting in each: the mother's gentleness soothing down her boy's excitability, and the boy's nervousness rousing the mother to exertion. They were interesting people—so lonely, apparently so unfit to 'rough it' in the world; the mother so gentle in temper, and the son so frail in constitution—two people who ought to have been protected from all ill and all cares, yet who had such a bitter cup to empty, such a harsh fate to fulfil. ”

“ Longfellow reminds his brethren of the lyre, that whatever is best in the great poets of all countries, is not what is national in them, but what is universal: their roots are in their native soil, but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language to all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. ”

“ While this bustling, vivacious personage, who approaches us with such a springy step, and rapid merry glance, has never known a day's illness—is indebted to hearsay for his belief in nerves—and is ready to challenge Europe to beat him at a hearty guffaw—he is perplexed by the shadow of a long face, marvels with all his might at a heavy eye, and cannot unriddle the philosophy of a bent brow. When shall we learn that the result of looking depends on the state of the eye—that the vision is modified by the position of the seer—that he who stands on one side, sees one side only? ”

“ A contest of a very remarkable kind is now going on, one which is pregnant with important results in respect to commerce, to naval architecture, to geographical discovery, to colonisation, to the spread of intelligence, to the improvement of industrial art, and to the balance of political power among nations. The nature of this contest cannot be better made intelligible than by giving the words of a challenge recently put forth: 'The American Navigation Company challenge the ship-builders of Great Britain to a ship-race, with cargo on board, from a port in England to a port in China and back. ”

“ Though the heart be large, yet the mind—as Nathaniel Hawthorne somewhere observes—is often of such moderate dimensions, as to be exclusively filled up with one idea; and thus, when a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of beneficence, to one species of reform, he is apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but that selfsame good to which he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own conceptions. ”

“ It takes but a word of love, a glance of pity, a gentle kiss of affection—it takes but an hour of our day, a prayer at night, and we may walk through the sick world and the sorrowful as angels dropping balm and comfort on the wounded. ”

“ So many inducements are now afforded to merchants to transact their dealings rapidly, [pg 115] that the ship-builders are beset on all sides with demands for more speed—more speed; and it is significant to observe that, in almost every recent newspaper account of a ship-launch, we are told how many knots an hour she is expected to attain when fitted. Every ship seems to beat every other ship, in the glowing language employed; but after making a little allowance for local vanity, there is a substratum of correctness which shews strongly how we are advancing in rate of speed. ”

“ One reflection arises at the conclusion of this trivial investigation, and it is this—If so much doubt and obscurity have already settled on circumstances which took place scarcely beyond the recollection of living people, can we wonder at that which invests the events of a more remote epoch? If editors in our enlightened time have contrived so soon to give the history of Burns a mythical character, what safety have we in trusting to such ancient narrations as those of Plutarch or Thucydides? ”

“ There is, first, the 'ship's draughtsman,' whose duties are somewhat analogous to those of the architect of a house, or the engineer of a railway, or the scientific cutter at a fashionable tailor's: he has to shape the materials out of which the structure is to be built up, or at least he has to shew others how it is to be done. ”

“ When the ship-builder has received an order, we will say, to construct a ship, and has ascertained for what route, and for what purpose, and of what size it is to be, he and his ship's draughtsman 'lay their heads together' to devise such an arrangement of timbers as will meet the requirements of the case. Here it is that a science of ship-building would be valuable; the practical rules followed are deductions not so much from general principles as from accumulated facts which are waiting to be systematised ”

“ In China, the emperor's laws do not allow this; it is only done with the Tartars. Well, they don't pay the money, and the interest goes on until there is a good sum owing, worth the coming for. When we come for it, we take all the cattle and sheep and horses we can get hold of for the interest, and leave the capital debt and future interest to be paid next time, and so it goes on from one generation to another. Oh, a Tartar debt is a gold-mine!'
The yearly settlement of accounts amongst the Chinese furnishes another curious chapter in their commercial life. ”

“ It may appear strange, that in the tropics, especially, where nature provides so abundantly for the wants of man, such creatures should be resorted to as articles of consumption; but while we on this side of the Atlantic are shocked at the idea of eating worms, the West Indian consumer in his turn expresses surprise that human beings can use things which resemble snakes so much as eels, and pronounces it to be the height of uncleanness to eat frogs, as some of the continentals do. ”

“ Read the haughty language in which Plato and the Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions.' If genius is liable to such one-sidedness, the greater the need of educational correctives to common-place minds. Hence the overpursuit of any one subject may be hurtful, unless duly balanced by countervailing forces. As the author of Friends in Council says, a human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all quarters. ”

“ Mrs Lawson, the widow, was a mild, lady-like person, whose face bore the marks of recent affliction, and whose whole appearance and manners were those of a loving, gentle, unenergetic, and helpless woman, whom sorrow could well crush beyond all power of resistance. ”

“ Monomania is sometimes simply the exaggerated regard to one side of many-sided truth. It is not absolute, but only relative delusion. It is in its degree true; but by affecting to be the whole truth, it becomes untrue. ”

“ Well, then; the draughtsman, gathering up all the crumbs of knowledge obtainable from various quarters, puts his wisdom upon paper in the form of drawings and diagrams, to represent not only the dimensions of the vessel, but the sizes and shapes of the principal timbers which are to form it, on the scale, perhaps, of a quarter of an inch to a foot. Then this very responsible personage goes to his 'mould-loft,' on the wide-spreading floor of which he chalks such a labyrinth of lines as bewilder one even to look at. ”

“ Let us own, however, that one-idea'd people are often amusing as well as mischievous—or rather, when not mischievous. The rapt devotion they pay to their idola specûs oscillates between the sublime and the ridiculous. ”

“ But even these visitations, unsatisfactory as most lodging-house keepers would consider them, are few and far between; for somehow the people who come and go never seem to have any friends or relations whereby Miss Spong may improve her 'connection.' You never see the postman stop at that desolate door; you never hear a visitor's knock on that rusty lion's head; no unnecessary traffic of social life ever takes place behind those dusty blinds ”

“ Who first gave the name of clipper to a ship, or what the name means, we do not know; but a clipper is understood to be a vessel so shaped as to sail faster than other vessels of equal tonnage. It is said that these swift sailers originated in the wants of the salmon shippers, and others at our eastern ports. A bulky, slow-moving ship may suffice for the conveyance to London of the minerals and manufactures of Northumberland and Durham; but salmon and other perishable articles become seriously deteriorated by a long voyage; and hence it is profitable in such case to sacrifice bulk to speed. ”

“ On the last day of the year, disorder attains its height; people rush in all directions with anything they can scratch together to raise money upon at the broker's or pawnbroker's—the shops of which tradesmen are absolutely besieged throughout the day with profferers of clothes, bedding, furniture, cooking utensils, and movables of every description. ”

“ The good old planter at his table presents you with a dish of worms, with as much pride as an epicure in England introduces you to cod-sounds, eels, or high venison. Nor does it appear that there is any peculiarity in the taste of those who relish the insects; because it very frequently happens, that the stranger, who manifested on his arrival the greatest disgust at the idea of eating worms, becomes immediately converted into an extravagant lover of them. ”

“ Moreover, powerful truth, being the rich grape-juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating quality when imbibed by any but a powerful intellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in his cups.' Even a saint with one idea may be a plague to his neighbourhood ”

“ In the enthusiasm of its impulses, it thinks it can afford to sneer at political economy, and that it is right to wander at its own sweet will, benevolently defying the remonstrances of all who have a method to propound, a science to explain, a system to uphold. ”