Various

“ I have earned more than a million francs for it. What the devil do you do with your money?"—"My dear fellow," quoth Harel, "what do you do with yours?"—"Ah! that's different: I have no account to give to anybody but myself."—"But come, let us not get angry," said Harel: "I will continue to pay you the whole sum, while appearing to give you but half of it. In this way I shall be at liberty to cut down the other salaries, and the theatre can go on." Lemaitre arose, looked Harel straight in the eyes, and answered, "You have the secret of sobering a man by a single phrase. ”

“ A man's mind is not always agape for company, but his mouth is for a good dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. ”

“ A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening, there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes, combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less so than were the official fêtes given under the Empire, when the superb apartments of the Hôtel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. ”

“ Cerro Cora is described as a splendid amphitheatre surrounded by hills, with precipitous sides of red sandstone, and crowned with dark forests. Here and there amid the undulations are grassy knolls flanked by palm trees, and in one of these Lopez, driven to desperation, pitched his tent with a handful of followers. Madame Lynch, his children and his brother were with him. The single pass that led to this hiding-place was guarded with cannon, but the Brazilian horsemen, strangely enough, entered the retreat unperceived and surprised its occupants. ”

“ Already women and coquettes, they would from time to time stretch out their well-gloved hands and pat their ample draperies with a thousand graceful little gestures. They were already mistresses of the art of looking at things without seeing them, of laughing when they were not amused, of showing their white teeth while smoothing their gloves at the wrist, and while modestly looking down of giving a vibration to their voices like the striking of glass, which cannot fail to attract attention. ”

“ Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs, symbols—all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward, when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. ”

“ Brunton was rather preoccupied and taciturn till his sister asked him if he had yet happened to see Lady Louisa Moor.
"No," he said, "I have not had that pleasure."
"Well, it is a pleasure," she said: "I think she is as pretty a girl as I ever saw."
"Pretty!" said he: "why, I saw a girl to-day—a hind's daughter—so beautiful that I can't think how I never heard of her before: her beauty is a thing to be spoken about."
"The style of good looks that pleases one person often does not please another," said Miss Robertson. ”

“ A venerable dowager with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both sexes. ”

“ Not even the average American would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. ”

“ An earl on occasion may fly into a passion, but he may not beat his wife: the earl of Birndale did the one, and didn't do the other, nor was he in the least conscious of the undeveloped coal-heaver he carried about with him. On the contrary, his pride of birth and rank was enormous. His physical strength not having been exercised in carrying loads, it had brought him to his sixtieth year younger and more erect than many men of forty, and even yet he employed it in felling trees: a high civilization goes back for its amusement to what was the toil of primeval times. ”

“ Why—Oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so, for you're not allowed to swear! If I were a man now! To Jamaica! Why don't you know that there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the most frightful hurricanes and earthquakes and large serpents in the woods? To Jamaica! No, you are not going to Jamaica just yet. I don't think you are going to Jamaica just yet."
"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna with a quiet decision. "Nor could I think of getting married in any case at present. But then—don't you see, Mabyn?—Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways—"
"Yes, certainly." ”

“ There in the midst of it was the master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion. Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman, with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions of Vasari have preserved for us. ”

“ Each artist, each workman who attained to praise and excellence in his craft, felt that he was increasing the store of those glories, and was deserving well of a body of compatriots who would lovingly appreciate his works and be the jealous guardian of his fame. Dreadful that men living within walls on the eastern slope of a valley should be bred to hatred of those inhabiting other walls on the opposite slope, and be ever ready at a moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats! ”

“ It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a child's breath might almost blow to the ground. ”

“ Doubtless, Signor Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire to belittle [Pg 620] the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art. But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms than any of her rival cities in the great olden time—that her artistic history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent study—this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an instant. ”

“ No corner of the earth is ignorant of the representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the main chance ”

“ In traveling through continental Europe one sees in the fields certain coarse and blackened creatures who walk somewhat erect, and in that respect resemble human beings. If you regard them with attention, they will stop to offer you some rude but humble mark of respect: if you heed them not, they will go on, as they have always gone on, with the work that is before them, and from which they never cease but to sleep or die. ”

“ At Rosario the Republica takes on passengers, coal and freight, and resumes her voyage. Above the city, the cliffs, increasing in height, attain an altitude of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. They are composed entirely of a hard brown earth having the appearance of pulverized chocolate; and the river, rushing between them, assumes a dirty, brownish hue for many miles. In their shadow, as the steamer passes, lie a Brazilian gunboat and two monitors of the same nationality: one of the latter is deeply dented in places where she was struck by Paraguayan cannon-balls. ”

“ The great genius of the actor finally triumphed over the erratic dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Comédie Française. He made his début at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in Frédégonde et Brunehaut. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who sit in solemn state in the orchestra-stalls of the Française, holding their seats from year to year by subscription, cabaled against Lemaitre, and endeavored to drive him from the stage. ”

“ But if, as you say, a girl may fairly refuse in point of time—"
"Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn plainly: "no girl can get married properly who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in three or four months for a man she was particularly fond of; but if it is a mere stranger, and a disagreeable person, and one who ought not to marry her at all, then six months is the very shortest time. Just you send Mr. Roscorla to me and I'll tell him all about it."
Wenna laughed: "Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think, he's more afraid of you than of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica." ”

“ And at most of our grand entertainments two great rushes take place—the one toward the dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and a snare. ”

“ Whenever in my Transatlantic journeyings I witness, or hear of, or experience any flagrant act of discourtesy, or injustice arising from contempt of the weaker sex, I am reminded by contrast of an incident which occurred to me in early youth, and which I have often related to astonished, almost incredulous, hearers in Europe, as a specimen of the truly chivalrous sentiments and behavior commonly exhibited by men toward women in every part of our great republic. ”

“ Twenty hours later the Republica arrives at Parana, a handsome city, formerly the capital of the confederation. The removal of the seat of government to Buenos Ayres was a great blow to the prosperity of the old capital. Once the diplomatic corps had their residences there. The climate of the place is delicious, and under its balmy influence the orange tree flourishes in the open air and bears fruit of exquisite flavor. The country around Parana is very picturesque, and the town itself, though since it has ceased to be the Argentine capital it presents an appearance of emptiness, is very gay. ”

“ I never saw anything like her—never."
"I have heard of gentlemen picking up pretty girls and sending them to be educated with a view of marrying them," said Miss Robertson.
"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."
"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's shop at least by this time." ”

“ The relative superiority of his own city in arts, in arms and in glory of every kind was the strongest sentiment and most fondly-cherished belief of all those men on whom the world now looks back as forming the diadem by virtue of which Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own city. ”

“ Yet the wild dissipation of the man's life was never so great as at this precise period of his career. Harel, the manager of the theatre where he was now playing (the Porte Saint-Martin) , was obliged almost every night to send emissaries after him to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine. Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. ”

“ Deportment is the great thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly intercourse—even though one may know that feelings are not very deep—by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing things?—so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races, which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. ”

“ But his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which the coddlings of a young English unmarried curate are as nothing. Nor can it be said that the actor was quite an anchorite: few French bachelors are. It is not meet to dwell on this phase of Lemaitre's character at length, perhaps; but I should hardly envy the old man's feelings in these days when, sitting by his lonely hearth, he lets his fancy wander among the ruins of the dead past, if he ever does such a thing. ”

“ Behold, then, our traveler, as, accompanied by the captain of the Republica, he sets foot on the quay, intent on relieving himself of his precious valise, the possession of which is doubly embarrassing because of its very preciousness. He has a hope that he may meet the chargé at the Progreso Club, whither he is going, but whether he is to be met or not, he does not dare to leave behind him the valise, which to him is a veritable Old Man of the Sea. Night has fallen when they leave the steamer. ”