Various

“ In two minutes, the hum of conversation had ceased on deck, and all the little world of the Severn was bending forward its head eagerly to catch the liquid notes that floated with such delicious clearness upon the quiet breathless evening air. Instinctively everybody recognised at once the obvious fact that the man in the stern to whom they were all listening was an accomplished and admirable violin-player.
Just at first, the thing that Marian and Nora noticed most in the stranger’s playing was his extraordinary brilliancy and certainty of execution. ”

“ Let us not fear to express our tenderness in word and deed for those who share life’s burdens with us, and the glow of the Golden Age will be round the hearth again. As for simplicity, it is already the lifelong dower of many of the most gifted minds; it is almost a characteristic of the intellectual men of noblest life. Why should we use long words when short ones are kinder; why go roundabout ways when we only need openly do our best? Wonderful as it may seem, simplicity is the most imitable part of childhood. The absence of self-consciousness is the grand key to it. ”

“ The want of a perspective to their world gives to children’s grief its intensity; they cannot look beyond; they cannot understand its passing away. But it also gives to joys their shallowness; and there are manifold meanings in the saying, that unless we have suffered we cannot rejoice. Therefore, in sighing for life’s Golden Age again, the sigh means a wish, not for childhood as childhood is, but for childhood with the added consciousness and experience of after-years. To have freedom from care, and to know what a burden care can be; to have freshness, and to know what ennui means ”

“ Dr Whitaker turned upon her a puzzled pair of simple, honest, open eyes, whose curious glance of mute inquiry could be easily observed even in the dim moonlight. ‘I don’t think of practising for money,’ he said simply, as if it were the most ordinary statement in the world. ‘My father has happily means enough to enable me to live without the necessity for earning a livelihood. I want to be of some use in my generation, and to help my own people, if possible, to rise a little in the scale of humanity. ”

“ Surely this is some comfort to us wayfarers who must ‘move on!’ We cannot have life over again; but it can be made to lengthen in worth by intensity of purpose, and of working, of loving. These, and not time, are the true measure of life. We envy freedom from responsibility; the child has his tasks as we have ours; his lesson may be as hard as our duty, and harder; he is happily resigned to tasks in obedience to the will of others; our buckling down to duty will bring us our playtime too. Freshness comes next. ”

“ Beyond the home circle who were part of our existence, the grown-up people of the Golden Age were a mysterious race. They cared no more for games or playthings; though we refused to believe that any length of years would make us cease to care for hide-and-seek among the gorse and the billows of fern, and for the mustering of tin armies or the acquisition of new toys. Not only were the grown-up people in a dried-up state of indifference to games and plays, but they actually laughed at things that were not in the least funny. ”

“ There is another quality that must crown this development of the childlike character—it is sympathy—that wide and warm sympathy which knows no growing old, and which is the fruition of our childhood’s eager freshness. Best of all, in picking up those old treasures that we carelessly dropped by the way when the Golden Age was ending, we may yet be, all unconsciously, very near the paradise-garden where once we walked, not knowing our good-fortune, and but half able to enjoy it. ”

“ How, why is childhood called the happiest time of life? And if it be life’s Golden Age, why cannot we keep the gold?
The reasons why that period is envied seem to be these: First, and most subtly underlying all envy of childhood, is the knowledge that it is the time when we have our whole life before us. Often it is not the return of the state itself that is desired, but its anticipation of a life which we feel to be swift and short, and of a past which is irrevocable. ”

“ A great educator in his day was wont to say that he dreaded receiving a boy whom the parents presented with pride as faultless; he dreaded that the faults were within, ready to break out as childhood disappeared. But all lovers of children will acknowledge the manifold imperfection that is a part of their being; and perhaps we should not love them so well if it was not craving our sympathetic care. Again, this Golden Age is not an entirely happy time. It is true that the outbursts of sobbing are forgotten sooner than we can forget our sorrows ”

“ Another key to freshness is the custom of being easily pleased. The smallest gift pleases a child; in later life, we look more at the love of the giver than at the gift; but why should not the manifold growth of small kindnesses refresh us? And how shall we get habitual joy? It is a precious treasure; the home is rich where there is one member of the household brimful of sunshine. A merry word at home is magic for brightening life ”

“ Certainly many anglers, doting over their favourites, feel that if they were salmon, this or that ‘grand fly’ would be irresistible. We have heard an old enthusiast assert, as he hurried into a favourite pool, that he had on ‘a hook this morning that a fish canna lie below.’ And yet the fastidiousness of the fish seems to keep pace with the advances of the angler’s art and knowledge. ”

“ Wordsworth, after mourning that the glory and the dream were gone, acknowledged that he could receive from the meanest flower thoughts too deep for tears; so we strongly suspect that the glory and the dream were remaining, and that he saw till the last the earth ‘apparelled in celestial light.’ The love of the open-air world of beauty is a great key to lifelong freshness of soul. ”

“ To an outsider, it must often be a huge joke to see a party of salmon anglers mounted cap-à-pie with such a wealth of fishing paraphernalia—silver-mounted rods and reels, creels of vast dimensions, waterproof coats, wading boots and ‘breeks,’ luncheon-bags and landing-nets equally capacious, and great telescopic-mounted gaffs of glittering steel and brass, formidable-looking enough to grapple a seal—marching down the glen with their gillies in the morning ”

“ Our delight in the sunshine or the deep-bladed grass might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.’
A yearning for that Golden Age of life has come in earnest moments to half the world ”

“ But if it be impossible to carry back to a new start in life the experience life has given us, while we are thinking with a sad fascination of that Golden Age, and feeling the ‘momentary bliss’ of recollection, we shall not find it impossible to reverse our aspirations, and to combine with later life some part, and perhaps the best part, of our young life’s treasures. ”

“ I made up my mind, from the intense sort of way he played the violin, that he must be a Spaniard or an Italian, or at least a South American. English people seldom play with all that depth and earnestness and fervour.’
‘Hush, hush!’ Marian answered under her breath. ‘Don’t talk while he’s singing, please, Nora—it’s too delicious.’
They listened till the song was quite finished, and the last echo of that magnificent voice had died away upon the surface of the still, moonlit waters; and then Nora said eagerly to Edward: ‘Oh, do find out who he is, Mr Hawthorn! Do go and get to know him! ”

“ One piece of reliable good advice we can give to those who have not already learned it. Though an angler in a general way can form a notion as to what are the likely parts of a river, it is only by repeated observations that some of the best ‘lies’ are found out; and as there are favourite ‘lies’ occupied all the year round, and year after year, by the finest river-trout, sea-trout, and salmon, it is best to observe where the anglers who have long frequented a river, fish most persistently, as there the fish will certainly be found. ”

“ Salmon anglers as a class are shrewd and observant; many of them are men of education; not a few are men of distinction in literature, science, and art; and certainly few follow the business of their lives with such an ardent zeal, watching and calculating all the chances of success; yet, strangely enough, the anglers of to-day know little more than was known generations ago as to the habits of the fish, and how or when they are most likely to succeed in capturing them. It is asserted that the salmon fly is essentially the same lure as was used two centuries ago ”

“ Is it possible to have hay-battles, now that there seem to be so many painful stubble-fields to traverse in this world of ours? Who will give us back the heart-thrill of our first sight of the mountains? ”

“ Young Grant’s love of horses was a great hindrance to his progress at school. Ever more ready to go afield with the teams than to take his place in class, it is little wonder that, with the many opportunities for indulging his propensities which his father’s business afforded him, he did not achieve any marked success. As a child of seven he harnessed a young colt that had never before been harnessed, though, from his diminutive stature, he had to stand on an inverted corn-measure to fix the bridle. At nine, he astonished his father by asking if he might buy a horse—to be his own. ”

“ Even supposing our friends only get half, surely that is better than nothing. It’s the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is to say to the lady: “Miss Wakefield, Mr Morton left you his money. You cannot find the money. Mrs Seaton knows where it is. The money, we admit, is yours, though in justice it should belong to her. In a word, my dear lady, divide;”’ and Mr Slimm leant back in his chair whistling a little air from Princess Ida, as if the whole thing was settled to the satisfaction of all parties.
Mr Carver looked at him as a connoisseur eyes a bad copy of an old master. ”

“ But in variety of fine feathers, in silks and wools of wondrous dyes, in gold and silver tinsels, and in the great manipulating skill now devoted to the production of salmon flies, there must have been advances. Many of these lures are jewel-like enough to be worn as bonnet and dress ornaments by ladies of fashion; and looking into a well-stocked angling book, one cannot but conclude that any salmon knowing a good thing could not fail to jump at some of the dazzling beauties got up for the delectation of its kind. ”

“ Again, a salmon may be got by a less skilled angler fishing immediately behind a redoubtable fisherman; but whether it was the particular hook that caught the eye of the fish, its particular movement at the moment, the accidental proximity of the fish, or all these temptations combined, what man can tell? It seems certain that salmon often follow a hook or watch it from their ‘lie’ without rising to it; and undoubtedly at times their decision ‘to fight or flee’ is determined by the motion of the lure at the critical moment. ”

“ This willingness to take risks was a keynote of Grant’s character, and many of his after-successes were due to it.
Schooldays over, Ulysses served for a while in his father’s tanyard; but he took a violent aversion to the business, and an equally strong craving for ‘an education.’ It was probably this desire for education, rather than any keen thirst for military life or glory, that caused him to seek admission to West Point—the Sandhurst of the United States—where a good general education was added to the necessary military course at little or no cost to the student. ”

“ We had that ‘strangely perspectiveless view of life’ which prevented us from enjoying our happiness as we enjoy it now, when we know its value better, through experience and through a wider view of the world. ”

“ Still, after a while the subject palled a little; and on the second evening out, in calm and beautiful summer twilight weather, they were all sitting in their own folding-chairs on the after-deck, positively free from any doubts or guesses upon the important question, and solely engaged in making the acquaintance of their fellow-passengers. By-and-by, as the shades began to close in, there was a little sound of persuasive language—as when one asks a young lady to sing—at the stern end of the swiftly moving vessel ”

“ It is amusing enough to hear with what perceptions fish are credited as to coming changes of weather, and the like; and one is apt to wonder how they in the river know so much more of the outer atmosphere, and ‘what fools these mortals be’ who live in it and can tell so little. There are points on which there is some agreement; but if laid down as rules, it must be stated that these have so many exceptions, that it is about as difficult for the average man to draw reliable conclusions from them as from ‘the weather-glass.’ Salmon rise best to the fly when there is a little colour in the water ”

“ Against the minnow theory it is said: ‘Why do not salmon prefer the natural or the artificial minnow, the latter of which even, is so much more like the real fish?’ To this it is argued that the motion of the fly is much more minnow-like than either of these lures, while the wings are closely held in minnow-like shape in the heavy currents where salmon are commonly found, let the rod be played as it may. In some rivers, few salmon can be induced to take any lure, and in many rivers the majority of those fish never rise to a fly; but we doubt if any man yet knows the cause thereof. ”