Various

“ If Neckart had waited on this girl, he was an infernal scoundrel, no matter what his political rank. He knew she was as good as betrothed to Van Ness.
Jane watched all these brilliant women flutter around Neckart, giving him messages to their friends abroad. His cloak was thrown loosely back from his broad shoulders: he bent to listen to them. She knew nothing of this world of theirs. She was like a poor limp rag of humanity, blown aside into a corner. She had her fantastic passion: all the world besides was orderly, moved in the grooves of common sense and duty. ”

“ There are more unfavorable places for growth of mutual confidence than a table d'hôte. Amidst a hum of voices and clatter of dishes, with many lights twinkling before his dazzled eyes, Mr. Nibby became aware that the Fräulein had an aunt living in America, whom she desired to visit, although her ideas of distance were of the vaguest. Poor Fräulein! belonging to that vast army of educated women teeming in every land and needing to coin money out of their accomplishments, she must wait on the whimsical old baroness a while longer before making a journey to distant America. ”

“ Captain Mason was one of those elegant do-nothings whom statisticians grub out and sentimentalists wail over, as if I were to shed a few ink-drops because the morning-glory at my porch will not make an edible potato of its root, like its first cousin the yam in the near field. He was portly, rosy in the jowls, with fat blue eyes of a tendency to get bloodshot in the corners, and curly brown hair. He wore sumptuous waistcoats, lawn fronts, much irrigation of vest-chain and jewels, like her of Banbury Cross; after which it is superfluous to add skill in billiards and games of chance. ”

“ Sissy saw it: "Percival, is that some one's carte? May I look?"
"What!" said Godfrey Hammond, sticking a glass in his eye and peering short-sightedly, "Percy taking to carrying photographs about with him! Wonders will never cease! What fair lady may it be?—Come, man, let us have a look at her."
Percival colored very slightly, and then, as it were, contradicted his blush by tossing the envelope and its contents across to Godfrey: "No fair lady. Ask Sissy what she thinks of him."
"Why, it's young Lisle!" said Hammond. Mr. Thorne looked up with sudden interest. ”

“ Sissy was perplexed for a few moments, and then their talk on the terrace a month before flashed into her mind—"Jael, or Judith, or Charlotte Corday," and she remembered the very intonation with which Percival had repeated "Judith." "Ah!" said the girl half aloud, with a sudden intuition, "he was thinking of her when he talked of heroic women!—Why wasn't I born noble and heroic as well as others? Is it my fault if I can't bear people to be angry with me—if I always stop and think and hesitate, and then the moment is gone? ”

“ Men who can't do anything else may as well do that, for it is nice to be rich. But if you have enough, why should you spend your time over it—the best years of your life which will never come back?"
"Never!" said Percival. "You are right."
There was a long pause. Lottie pulled a bit of fern, and looked at him again. There was a line between his dark brows, as if he were pursuing some thought which her words had suggested, but he held his head down and was silent. She threw the fern away and pressed her hands together: "But, Percival, you do care for money, after all. ”

“ In the farmhouse kitchen you sometimes find a girl rare, now-a-days, outside of old portraits, and one seen only in spots as sequestered as the haunts of the deer and wild-duck. She has hair of a burnished copper color, eyes so fair they reflect crystal sparkles of light from their lashes, a pure skin, round cheeks, a delicate cocked-up nose, a chin all weakness and a look of wistful propitiation. Another girl peculiar to country kitchens, not so rare, but delicious, is a fresh, dark nymph of a temperament both gay and imperturbable. ”

“ If any aspect of Nature could lure forth a man into the balmy beauty of a perfect day, it must be such a vision of loveliness as this one—the garden blooming with a Southern warmth of color and richness of perfume, that margin of palms affording views of the sea—a crystal shield—and on the other side a reach of orange plantation, the boughs powdered with snowy blossoms.
The weak human clay asserted itself instead, and Mr. Nibby merely groaned. ”

“ The whole valley would be swept clean of them, and sweetened and restored to the lovers of Nature in her most delicious aspect. Baden, emerging from the cold plunge-bath of its first dismay, determined that it should be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging-house-keepers, the livery-stable-keepers, the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their courage to the sticking-place and determined to go in for virtue, early hours and moderate prices. Well, yes! moderate prices! This was the severest cut of all. But there was no help for it. Virtue does prefer moderate prices. ”

“ Honest Jane went straight to him and gave him her hand. She could not keep the hot color from her face or the water from her eyes. She had told him once that she loved him. With her, done was done. Death itself, coming between, would not give her love back again.
Mr. Neckart took the frank hand and let it fall. "I came to you for this one evening," he said, "before—before I go. One evening surely can import nothing. It can make no difference to you."
Mr. Neckart was a fluent speaker in public: he had been used to talk to Jane by the hour with the lazy freedom of thinking aloud. ”

“ Many an Indian maiden has beheld her brown visage and sparkling eyes mirrored in its crystals. Yet let no one trust the quiet of that river: a short space farther and the tranquil stream becomes a rushing mountain-torrent, the friendly vale grows wildly romantic, full of gloomy, mysterious beauty. How like is this water to many a human soul, which lives as serene and shut within itself as if it scarce knew what it is to feel, until passion sweeps over it and the whole being is changed and uplifts its voice loud and tumultuous! ”

“ There are no more studies to be made on the men and women around you of all the expressions which eager avarice, torturing suspense and leaden despair can impart to the human countenance. The utmost you can hope to read on one of those placidly stolid German burgher faces is the outward and visible sign of the inward oppression caused by too copious a repast at the one-o'clock table d'hôte. It is the less disagreeable and less unhealthy subject of contemplation of the two. But the truth remains that virtuous Baden does look somewhat dowdy. ”

“ She censures the rage for adornment of the women of the working-classes, and the unfitness of a woman who is maid-of-all-work, whether in her own house or that of an employer, appearing in the street arrayed with pretensions to style and elegance which belong to people of very different means and scale of living. Frau Migerka had heard of the extravagance, love of luxury and idleness of our women in all classes, but inclines to disbelieve the last charge, and to give them credit for working much harder than they themselves admit. ”

“ He was épris of little Sudie Brown, his employer's daughter, one of those merry little romps no one thinks of as a grown woman until she surprises society by marrying. Bob was a shy, modest little fellow, with scrubby poll, pug nose, stubby palms, like leather, from base ball, and with a habit of laughing in the nose, called sniggering. He had merry gray eyes and hair of a pure tow color, which I take to be the true plebeian tint, without a sanguine shade in it—just the last man you would think of as engaging in a duel. ”

“ The fat poodle blinked and the Fräulein yawned. In the large, gloomy house at Bonn was a florid portrait of the shrivelled old creature before her, there represented in slim youth, in blue velvet, with state jewels clasped about her throat. Outside, the garden still glowed with vivid patches of flowers, but the sky was dull and the piercing mistral swept clouds of dust over the boundary-wall occasionally. Again did the chef stroll down that remote path in the shrubbery, where the boundary of his dominions seemed marked by the forcing-beds of the kitchen-garden. ”

“ And, ah, too rarely, she beholds an eagle on the dry branch of a tall pine. He, like the owl, encounters with nonchalance the insolent hate of the crows, who caw, flap their wings about his head and perch around him in myriads. When he rises, as he waves his broad and long wings in the leisurely movements that plunge him so swiftly through the blazing sky, the eagle will grasp a crow in his talons and drop it dead on the plain, where the girl picks it up, a mass of crushed feathers. ”

“ If it were not grossly indiscreet I should risk an allusion to the particular banquet which was the occasion of my becoming acquainted with the Greenwich cuisine. I should say that it is very pleasant to sit in a company of clever and distinguished men before the large windows that look out upon the broad brown Thames. The ships swim by as if they were part of the entertainment and put down in the bill: the afternoon light fades ever so slowly. We eat all the fish of the sea, and wash them down with liquids that bear no resemblance to salt water. ”

“ But what is the use of a critic who praises what is worthless, and has no word of encouragement for what is good and deserving of praise? The value of a man like Doudan is that he rises above the common herd by the exactest discrimination: he never follows the multitude in adoring false gods, but is true to his own delicate taste. If common sense is the power of applying the judgment to trifles as well as to important matters, good taste in literature is the habit of applying the judgment to slight as well as to serious questions. Doudan's taste is most refined ”

“ While the girl gathers skokeweed, milkweed, dock and dandelion from the fields, deerweed from the corners of the fence that runs around the woods, cowslip from the fragrant swamp, and adder's tongue and crinkle-root from the black forest earth, to make a dish loved by women and hated by men, she sees the airy attacks of crows upon a hawk, and his escape from them by sailing up, up, in circles delightful to contemplate for their height and immensity to altitudes his enemies cannot attain. ”

“ The baroness, dumb as if her features were frozen in a mask, lay in impotent and awful silence, staring back at them.
That night Mr. Nibby formed two resolutions: one was to ask the Fräulein Rottenhöfer to marry him, and the other never to eat another of the chef's beefsteaks.
In the garden of the Hôtel des Jasmins the flowers still bloom, the palms rustle and the orange trees change their snowy blossoms to balls of gold. Madame has occasion to be dissatisfied with her celebrated artist of the kitchen. He seasons his sauces savagely with excess of fiery condiments ”

“ There will be a fitful soughing of the wind in the forest. There will be a carpeting of dry, pale-brown oak-leaves on all the paths which "will make your steps vocal." Again and again, when slowly and musingly climbing the steep homeward path up the valley in the dark hour, when the sun has set and before the moon has yet risen, you will fancy that you hear the tread among the leaves of a sandalled foot behind you. ”

“ Let the rich see here the ruin of the mighty: let the poor thank his poverty, which has been a safe asylum, a waveless harbor, a sure defence. To rich and poor, to high and low, to bond and free, here is a lesson to benefit all. Have not I softened your hearts and cast out your anger, extinguished your inhumanity and led you to compassion? Your faces show it, and your streaming tears. Let us pray to the God of mercy to soften the emperor's heart. ”

“ It was Aunt Fanny Brown who caused the duel between Captain Mason and Bob Nettles. Aunt Fanny was a high-nosed, aristocratic dowager, of a pretty taste in old china, who put her wig in curl papers and came down to breakfast in the roseate bloom of sixty summers, as if defying perfidy to call it paint. A Washington, New Orleans and Louisville belle, she had received from her husband five hundred acres of blue-grass land and the finest racing stables in that part of the State. ”

“ Norbert's monks paced, looking on the scenes of beauty on which they gazed, and casting your mind for the nonce into the mould of the minds of those who so looked and mused. You may do so, indeed, thanks to Herr Mittenmeyer, with greater comfort, materially speaking, than the old inmates of the valley could have done. For the most charming and delicious walks have been made through the woods on either side of the narrow valley, and skilfully planned so as to show you all the very remarkable beauties of it. ”

“ The sacred vessels—the chalices, the flagons, the patens—were of the same metal; the hangings of the altar were of cloth of gold embroidered with gems; the candlesticks on the altar, the ambo, in the women's gallery and elsewhere, six thousand in number, were all of gold, as were the crosses on the bema, the covers of the holy books, the pillars of the iconostasis screening off the bema. In the altar itself pious ingenuity had surpassed itself. ”

“ There are indeed a great many steep banks in Greenwich Park, which tumbles up and down in the most picturesque fashion. It is a charming place, rather shabby and footworn, as befits a strictly popular resort, but with a character all its own. It is filled with magnificent dwarfish chestnut trees, planted in long, convergent avenues, with trunks of extraordinary girth and limbs that fling a dusky shadow far over the grass; there are plenty of benches, and there are deer as tame as sleepy children ”