Various

“ There were some peasants coming in from the country driving cows; some burghers in their carts with fat, slow horses; some little children were at play under the poplars and the elms; great dogs were lying about on the grass: everything was happy and at peace except the poor throbbing heart of little Findelkind, who thought the soldiers were coming after him to lock him up as mad, and ran and ran as fast as his trembling legs would carry him, making for sanctuary, as in the old bygone days that he loved many a soul less innocent than his had done. ”

“ The trees, like the dogs, seemed like friends: it was the human creatures that were cruel.
At that moment there came out of the barrack-gates, with great noise of trumpets and trampling of horses, a group of riders in gorgeous uniforms, with sabres and chains glancing and plumes tossing. It looked to Findelkind like a group of knights—those knights who had helped and defended his namesake with their steel and their gold in the old days of the Arlberg quest. ”

“ Drink deadened their restlessness, benumbed their energies, made them forget their dangers, sleep through their durance. So that even Adam could not always hold out against a solace which helped to shorten the frightful monotony of those weary days, dragged out for the most time in solitude and darkness. With no occupation, no resources, no companion, ever dwelling on self and viewing each action, past and present, by the light of an exaggerated (often a distorted) vision, Adam grew irritable, morose, suspicious.
Why hadn't Joan come? Surely there couldn't be anything to keep Eve away? ”

“ The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and lofty, like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right across that road which, if you follow it long enough, takes you on through Zirl to Landeck—old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where Frederic of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to his people—and so on, by Bludenz, into Switzerland itself, by as noble a highway as any traveller can ever desire to traverse on a summer's day. ”

“ Putnam lingered after she was gone. He found his way to his old bench under the cedars and sat there for a while. He had not occupied this seat since his first meeting with Miss Pinckney in the summer-house, and the initials which he had whittled on its edge impressed him as belonging to some bygone stage of his history. This was the first time that she had questioned him about himself. His sympathy had won her confidence, but she had treated him hitherto in an impersonal way, as something tributary to her brother's memory, like the tombstone or the flowers on his grave. ”

“ He lay weak and wasted and almost motionless a long time, but slowly, as the spring-time drew near, and the snows on the lower hills loosened, and the abounding waters coursed green and crystal-clear down all the sides of the hills, Findelkind revived as the earth did, and by the time the new grass was springing and the first blue of the gentian gleamed on the Alps he was well.
But to this day he seldom plays, and scarcely ever laughs. His face is sad and his eyes have a look of trouble. Sometimes the priest of Zirl says of him to others, "He will be a great poet or a great hero some day." ”

“ These people go to Europe cased in a triple armor of self-assertion, prepared to poohpooh everything and everybody that may come under their notice, and above all to vindicate under all circumstances their independence as free-born American citizens by giving the world around them the benefit of their opinions upon all topics both in and out of season. They stand before a chef-d'œuvre of some old master and declare in a loud, aggressive voice that they see nothing whatever to admire in it, that the bystanders may know that the judgment of centuries will not weigh with them. ”

“ The bergschrund with its fragile lip of ice, the crevasse with its treacherous bridges, and the avalanche which an ill-timed footstep starts with overwhelming havoc, do not threaten the explorer of the Western mountains; and ordinarily he passes from height to height—from the base with its wreaths of evergreens to the zone where vegetation is limited to the gnarled dwarf-pine, from the foot-hills to the basin of the crisp alpine lake far above the life-limits—without once having to scale a cliff, supposing, of course, that he has chosen the best path. ”

“ As some little familiar trait will sometimes give a fresher insight into a great man than the more important facts of his biography, so the ploughing, harvesting and singing of a Portuguese peasant, with their bucolic simplicity, bring the life of the ancients a little nearer to us than the sight of their great aqueducts and columns. But the nineteenth century is striking the death-blow of the bucolic very fast, the world over, and Portugal is awake and bestirring herself—not the less effectively that she is making no noise about it. ”

“ Oh, little fool! little fool! what was amiss with Martinswand that you must leave it?"
Findelkind slowly and feebly rose and sat up on the pavement, and looked up, not at his father, but at the knight Theodoric. "I thought they would help me to keep the poor," he muttered feebly as he glanced at his own wallet. "And it is empty, empty!"
"Are we not poor enough?" cried his father with paternal impatience, ready to tear his hair with vexation at having such a little idiot for son. "Must you rove afield to find poverty to help, when it sits cold enough, the Lord knows, at our own hearth? ”

“ Major Powell named the spot Disaster Falls.
The cliffs are so high that the twilight is perpetual, and the sky seems like a flat roof pressed across them. As the worn men stretched themselves out in their blankets [Pg 401] they saw a bright star that appeared to rest on the very verge of the eastern cliff, and then to float from its resting-place on the rock over the cañon. At first it was like a jewel set on the brink of the cliff, and as it moved out from the rock they wondered that it did not fall. ”

“ There was the snow, indeed, and there were the mountains, as in the fourteenth century, but there were no travellers lost. The diligence did not go into Switzerland after autumn, and the country-people who went by on their mules and in their sledges to Innspruck knew their way very well, and were never likely to be adrift on a winter's night or eaten by a wolf or a bear.
When spring came Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure water amongst the flowering grasses and felt his head heavy. ”

“ It is now no longer kept alive by even the typical American traveller such as he was when five-and-twenty years ago a familiar sight at every railway-station, in every steamer and in every picture-gallery, museum and ruin of every town in Europe. Now-a-days everybody in America who lays any claim to the right of being called "somebody," however small a "somebody" it may be, has been to Europe at least once in his or her life—on a three months' Cook-excursion tour, if in no other way. ”

“ There were times during these hours of dreary loneliness when Adam's whole nature seemed submerged by the billows of love—cruel waves, which would toss him hither and thither, making sport of his hapless condition, to strand him at length on the quicksands of fear, where a thousand terrible alarms would seize him and fill him with dread as to how these disasters might end. What would become of him? how would it fare with Eve and himself? ”

“ Findelkind was alone, wide awake, watching the big white moon sail past his little casement and hearing Katte bleat. Where were her poor twin lambs? The night was bitterly cold, for it was already far on in autumn; the river had swollen and flooded many fields; the snow for the last week had fallen quite low down on the mountain-sides. Even if still living the little lambs would die, out on such a night without the mother or food and shelter of any sort. ”

“ It was a little cluster of houses at the head of a bay or inlet of the sea, where the lovely transparent water was green as grass, and stood in the opening of a valley enclosed by high, steep mountain-walls, with sharp ridges down their sides clothed with rich forests. All around us grew delicate, luxuriant ferns, of which there are one hundred and fifty varieties in the islands. Along the shores of the bay some women were wading, their dresses held above their knees, picking shellfish and green sea-moss off the rocks for supper. ”

“ All the others, men and women, had but one voice to express how immeasurably more to their taste was everything in Europe—the climate, the life, the people, the country, the food, the manners, the institutions, the customs—than anything in America.
However, all Americans in Europe are not of this class, although it includes the majority. There is a comparatively small number who are as much impressed with the perfection of everything American as the most ardent patriotism could desire. ”

“ Wherever she goes, as soon as she arrives in a city its chief personages hasten to meet her; when she leaves the theatre five or six hundred persons await her exit with lighted torches; every leaf that falls from her laurel-wreaths is quarrelled over; crowds escort her to her hotel; and serenades are organized under her windows. At Paris, when once the curtain falls the emotion is over, the artist no longer exists. A serenade! Who ever saw such a thing outside of the Barber of Seville? It is in bad taste to do anything singular. ”

“ And he answered with a sob in his voice, "I want to do like Findelkind of Arlberg."
And then the crowd laughed, not knowing at all what he meant, but laughing just because they did not know, as crowds always will do.
And only the big dogs, that are so very big in this country, and are all loose and free and good-natured citizens, came up to him kindly and rubbed against him and made friends; and at that tears came into his eyes and his courage rose, and he lifted his head.
"You are cruel people to laugh," he said indignantly: "the dogs are kinder. People did not laugh at Findelkind. ”

“ Never anything else. So the dreary winter months went by, while the deep snow filled up valleys and meadows and covered the great mountains from summit to base, and all around Martinswand was quite still, save that now and then the post went by to Zirl, and on the holy days the bells tolled: that was all. His mother sat between the stove and his bed with a sore heart; and his father, as he went to and fro between the walls of beaten snow from the wood-shed to the cattle-byre, was sorrowful, thinking to himself the child would die and join that earlier Findelkind whose home was with the saints. ”

“ Meanwhile, in the heart of the child there remains always a weary pain that lies on his childish life as a stone may lie on a flower. "I killed them," he says often to himself, thinking of the two little white brothers frozen to death on Martinswand that cruel night; and he does the things that are told him, and is obedient, and tries to be content with the humble daily duties that are his lot, and when he says his prayers at bedtime always ends them so: "Dear God, do let the little lambs play with Findelkind that is in heaven." ”

“ A cold wind made a sound in the pine-tops like the beating of surf on a distant shore. A flock of little winter birds flew suddenly up from the ground into one of the trees, like a flight of gray leaves whirled up by a gust. As Putnam turned to look at them he saw, against the strip of sunset along the horizon, the slim figure of a girl walking rapidly toward the opposite side of the common. His heart gave a great leap, and he started after her on a run. At a corner of the open ground the figure vanished, nor could Putnam decide into which of two or three small streets she had turned. ”

“ The Eilwagen rolled on through the autumn mud, and that was one chance lost. He was sure that the first Findelkind had not felt ashamed when he had knocked at the first castle-gate.
By and by, when he could not see Martinswand by turning his head back ever so, he came to an inn that used to be a post-house in the old days when men travelled only by road. A woman was feeding chickens in the bright clear red of the cold daybreak. Findelkind timidly held out his hand. "For the poor," he murmured, and doffed his cap. ”

“ Play goes on at the Casino of Monte Carlo the livelong day, the only relaxation from the couleur gagnante or tiers et tout being when the gamblers step across the way to take a shot at the pigeons or a bet on the birds; for they must bet on something, if it is but on the number of the box from which the next victim will fly. And when in the evening the players have returned to Nice it is only to indulge the fierce passion again in playing baccarat—the terrible Parisian baccarat—at the Massena Club or at the Mediterranean, where the betting is even higher than at Monaco. ”

“ Every Sunday we crossed the bridge that spanned Waialua River near the ford, and made our way to the huge old-fashioned mission-church, which stood in an open field surrounded by prickly pears six or eight feet high. The thorny prickly pears were stiff and ungraceful, but a delicate wild vine grew all over them and hung in festoons from the top. While Pai-ku-li, the native minister, preached a sermon in Hawaiian, I, not understanding a word, looked at the side pews where the old folks sat, and tried to picture the life they had known in their youth, when the great Kamehameha reigned. ”

“ One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. ”

“ The history of Portugal, when it separates from that of Spain, is the history of a single stupendous achievement. A small nation raising itself in a short time to the power of a great empire, reaching a height which to gain was incredible, to keep impossible, and at the first relaxation of effort suddenly falling with a disastrous crash,—that is the drama of Portugal's greatness. ”

“ Jonathan's relish for spirit once excited, he made himself tolerably free of the permission, and before long had helped himself to such purpose that, stretched in a heavy sleep, unless some one roused him he was not likely to awake for some hours to come.
Then Adam got up and with cautious movements stole down the ladder, undid the small hatch-door which opened out on the mill-stream, fastened it after him, and leaping across stood for a few moments asking himself what he had come out to do. ”

“ I shall now be able to study near at hand this singular woman, whom Paris has never possessed, but whose reputation, fostered at first in Germany under the auspices of Meyerbeer, has attained in England such proportions that upon her arrival in a certain city the bells were rung and the archbishop went out to meet her and to invite her to his house. She is a noble-hearted creature, and her munificence is royal: she founds hospitals and colleges. In her blue eyes glows the flame of genius. Deprived of her voice, she would still be a remarkable woman. ”

“ The people who inveigh the most fiercely against the pretensions of blue blood are generally, the world over, the ones who are devoured by the most ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step removed from those among their neighbors who boast of no such property. ”