Various

“ You are discontented simply because you have nothing to occupy you and no one to care for. I should like very much, Jasper, to see you happily married; I should indeed.’
Jasper stared. His roseate visions of a prompt reappearance in betting-rings and military clubs were fading fast. But this novel anxiety on the part of Sir Sykes as to his son’s matrimonial future might be twisted somehow into the foundation of at least a qualified prosperity. ‘He can’t mean,’ such was Jasper’s inward soliloquy, ‘myself and my wife to be mere pensioners, living indolently here at Carbery. ”

“ If you’ll believe me, sir, I see scenes on the canal sometimes, when some of the worst of them have been paid, as I can’t bear to look at, though not nearly so commonly now as I used to. And then again, it doesn’t always follow as because a man and woman work the same boat that they are married. In fact, in my opinion it would be a good thing if the lasses were not allowed on board after they had grown up to be twelve or thirteen, as it stands to reason that they’re nearly sure to grow up bargewomen. And after all’s said and done, it’s no fitting life for a woman to lead. ”

“ When the honour of a parish is at stake on the ice, the choice of the men who are to play, is a matter of very grave import. In a friendly match between two rinks, a little unskilfulness on the part of one or more of the players is a very common affair and is comparatively unheeded: but in a bonspiel between the two best parishes in a celebrated curling county, the failure or even the occasional uncertainty of any one man may be fraught with direst consequences. ”

“ Sometimes when the ice is partially thawed the players have difficulty in hurling their stones all the way to the tee; and sometimes they fail to get them beyond a transverse mark called the ‘hog-score,’ two-thirds down the rink—in which case the lagging stone is put off the ice and cannot count for that ‘end.’ Besoms, however, with which each man is armed, are here of great account, the laws of the game permitting each player to sweep the ice in front of an approaching stone belonging to his side, so as to accelerate its progress, if necessary. ”

“ I hardly liked the thought of going on the next day; but we were on a time voyage, by which the master was bound to be in Brentford on a certain day, and so we had to go on. But before night little Polly died. All that evening my master tried to get somebody to take his boat on; but it was a busy time just then, and there wasn’t a boatman to be got for love or money. We had some thoughts of going on ourselves; but almost as soon as it was daylight the next morning a policeman came on board and stopped us, saying, as no doctor had attended the child, there’d have to be an inquest. ”

“ The effect of this pernicious system upon the audience is very different, we should think, from what was anticipated when it was first organised; for finding that the applause is supplied by the establishment, just as it supplies programmes or turns on the gas, the audience feel that they are relieved from all obligations in the matter, and unless stirred by an irresistible influence, seldom dream of applauding at all. ”

“ A man might get a new one—and maybe more sightly to look at than the one that’s gone—but dear knows, ’twould be at his peril! As likely as not, she’d fret him and heart-scald him, and make him oneasy day and night, just blistering like new leather! The old wife is like the shoe he’s used to, that will lie into his foot. ”

“ Moved with pity for the child’s hapless lot, the gentleman inquired where the musicians resided, and returned to his hotel to consider how he might best serve the little orphan. After much reflection his resolution was taken. He was a lonely man, with no near relative to claim his love. His heart yearned with pity for the desolate child, whose pleading blue eyes and plaintive voice kept appealing to his compassion, to the exclusion of all other considerations. He determined to adopt her, and provide for her for the rest of her life. ”

“ The stone is raised just for one instant with an easy backward sweep of hand and arm, and delivered with a twist that curls it on and on by degrees towards the spot required. Not just with sufficient strength perhaps, but aligned to the point. In an instant the skip is master of the situation. ”

“ Silence reigns o’er the rink: the sweepers on each side stand in breathless suspense: the wick taken, as given by Andrew in advice to the Laird,{266} may proclaim Broughton beaten and Tweedsmuir the champion parish of the county! ”

“ People seem to think that generally we are a regular bad lot; but I fancy if they knew a little more about us, they’d see that, though there are some bad ones amongst us, take us all in all we are no worse than most of our neighbours. We seem somehow to have got a name for interfering with people as we chance to come across; but you may see for yourself, sir, that we have quite as much as we can do to mind our own business, and a bargeman can no more afford to neglect his business than anybody else, if he means to do any good in the world. ”

“ But while sheep-farmers were thus kept anxiously waiting for fresh weather, curlers were in their glory, as day after day they forgathered on the ice and followed up the ‘roaring game.’
The century was young, and the particular year of our story was that known and spoken of for long afterwards as the ‘bad year.’ In these days, there was no free-trade to keep down the price of corn or beef, which during years of bad harvest in Great Britain, or long periods of frost and snow, rose to famine prices, and were all but unprocurable by the poorer classes. ”

“ The wild bursts of grief and vehement sobbing, even over moss-grown graves whose time-stained headstones bear witness to the length of time their occupants have slept beneath, would surprise those who are unfamiliar with the impulsive and demonstrative Irish nature. ”

“ Standing at one end of the rink the man whose turn it is to play, waits the bidding of his director or ‘skip’ who stands at the other end, and then endeavours to act according to the directions that may be given by that important personage. Each of the four players on one side plays alternately against his antagonist, the main object being to send the stone gliding up the ice so that it may eventually lie within the rings and as near the tee as possible. ”

“ A good ‘lead’ or first player, though he is necessarily debarred from the niceties of the game which fall to the lot of the subsequent players, is a very important man in the game if he can place his stones within the circles that surround the tee, or in familiar parlance, ‘lie within the house.’ Second player’s post is not so important; but ‘third stone’ is a position given usually to an experienced player, as he has frequently to either drive off some dangerous stone belonging to the other side, and himself take its place ”

“ Even strangers will swell the funeral cortège, and will account for doing so by saying: ‘Sure, won’t it come to our turn some day, and isn’t a big following—to do us credit at our latter end—what we’d all like? So why shouldn’t we do what is dacent and neighbourly by one another?’
What a contrast there is between a quiet interment in an English country parish, attended only by the household of the departed, and the well-remembered scenes in the churchyard of Kilkeedy, County Limerick! ”

“ Because, you see, there’s lots of goods as don’t well bear the packing and unpacking as is necessary for railway travelling, as can be put straight on board a barge and never be shaken even, till they are unloaded just at the very place where they are wanted. And lots of other goods there are that we can carry cheaper than the railway, where a day or two more on the road don’t matter. Besides which, there’s plenty of brickfields, collieries, ironworks, and such like just on the canal banks and some distance from railroads, that will always use barges to save the expense of carting ”

“ Well, most of us stick to the barges as long as we can; and when we are obliged to give up, if we haven’t put by enough to keep us comfortable, which I’m sorry to say as there ain’t many of us do, there’s generally a lock to be got or a job of some sort at the docks; all depending on the sort of character we’ve kept.
‘Here we are, sir, at our journey’s end for this time,’ he added, as the boat slowly floated into a small open basin, there to remain for the night. The boatman’s wife, being already shawled and armed with a capacious basket, stepped on shore as soon as the boat came near enough ”

“ Vast as are the forests of the United States, Americans are finding out that they are not inexhaustible. The annual product of ‘lumber,’ which means timber in all its forms, is estimated at ten thousand million feet, a quantity sufficient to make a perceptible gap in the broadest of forests. ”

“ Expressing our surprise that any person could possibly sleep in so cramped a space, our informant continued: ‘Bless you! that’s nothing. When there’s a butty, he sleeps as best he can on the floor.’
‘And pray, what is a butty?’ we inquire.
‘Well, you see, by rights there must be two able-bodied people on board every boat, besides a lad or a lass to take turn about at driving. Generally it’s the man’s wife. But sometimes it happens as she’s sick or what not; and then they have to get a growing lad of sixteen or seventeen to butty with them for a voyage or two ”

“ In a lecture at the Royal Institution, Dr Tyndall has made known the results of a long series of experiments on fog-signals, all involving more or less of noise, and demonstrating that the noisiest are the best. Mariners in a fog are helpless: no lights, no cliffs, no towers can be seen, and they must be warned off the land through their ears. ”

“ The difference between English and Irish as regards the funeral customs of the peasantry in both countries is great. To have a large assemblage at the ‘berrin’ is among the latter an object of ambition and pride to the family; and the concourse of neighbours, friends, and acquaintances who flock from all parts to the funeral is often immense. ”

“ The last end had come to be played, and Broughton having won the previous end, was to lead. The shoemaker’s stone is played, and lies well over the hog-score in good line with the tee, and on the road to promotion. Tweedsmuir’s leading man, the schoolmaster, passes the souter’s stone and lies in ‘the house.’ ‘Well played dominie!’ cries Laird Scott to his lead. And so proceeds the ‘end’ till it comes to our friend the mason’s turn to play; the blacksmith having just played his first stone with but indifferent effect. ”

“ A profound distrust of their fellow-creatures is usually a cardinal point of belief with young men of such tastes and habits as those of Jasper; nor did he find it difficult to accredit Sir Sykes with concealed villainy of some sort, or Miss Willis with not, as in sporting language he pithily paraphrased it, ‘running square.’ But he did desire to find a conceivable motive of some kind ”

“ Thus is his second and last stone unfortunately played for Broughton.
The mason has his second stone still to play for Tweedsmuir, and before doing so Laird Scott thus accosts him: ‘Andrew my man, we are lying shot now; we want but another to be game; and for the honour o’ Tweedsmuir I am going to give you the shot that will give it to us: do ye see this port?’ pointing to an open part of the ice (in curling phraseology a port) to the left of the tee, with a stone on each side. ”