Various

“ Felipa's foot was well again, and spring had come. Soon we must leave our lodge on the edge of the pine barren, our outlook over the salt marsh, our river sweeping up twice a day, bringing in the briny odors of the ocean: soon we should see no more the eagles far above us or hear the night-cry of the great owls, and we must go without the little fairy flowers of the barren, so small that a hundred of them scarcely made a tangible bouquet, yet what beauty! ”

“ For she was a sybaritic lover of the fine linens of life, that friend of mine—a pre-Raphaelite lady with clinging draperies and a mediæval clasp on her belt. Her whole being rebelled against ugliness, and the mere sight of a sharp-nosed, light-eyed woman on a cold day made her uncomfortable for hours.
"Have we not feet, too?" I replied sharply.
But I knew what she meant. Bare feet are not pleasant to the eye now-a-days, whatever they may have been in the days of the ancient Greeks; and Felipa's little brown insteps were half the time torn or bruised by the thorns of the chapparal. ”

“ Whatever she has done, I shall always love her as much as I do now."
"You are faithful," replied Sebastian, "but trust me, boy, no woman that ever lived was worth so much fidelity. I will protect you against your own wish, and be your friend in spite of yourself. You shall not know where she is, and you shall not throw yourself away on her. As she has elected to be effaced, she shall be effaced—blotted out for ever."
"Then I will consecrate my life to finding her," cried Alick warmly.
Mr. Dundas shrugged his shoulders. "Who can persuade a willful man against his folly?" ”

“ Jenny go short to save to-day's baking of havre-bread, in skimping Tim's bowl of porridge—his appetite being a burden on her estate which she often declared would break her—she had more than once given a hundred pounds at a blow to build a raft for a poor drowning wretch who must otherwise have sunk. In fact, she was one of those people who are small with the small things of life and great with the great—who will grudge a daily dole of a few threshed-out stalks of straw, but who sometimes, when rightly touched, will shower down with both hands full sheaves of golden grain. ”

“ I am a man ashamed. Let us talk no more of it. I have ill kept my faith," returned Wholesome impatiently.
"You may believe God doth not honor an honest man," said Schmidt; "which is perhaps a God Quaker, not the God I see to myself."
I had so far kept my peace, noting the bitter self-reproach of Wholesome, and having a lad's shyness before an older man's calamity; but now I said indignantly, "If it be Friends' creed to see the poor and old and feeble hurt without raising a hand, let us pray to be saved from such religion." ”

“ No one knew what had become of her, and no one knew where to look for her; for the sole information gathered by the scared neighbors was, that Leam Dundas was missing and no one had seen her go.
She was thought by some to have simply run away after the manner of undisciplined youth aiming at mock heroism; but where, or with whom? for, said the keen-eyed women and large-mouthed men, incredulous of maiden meditation fancy free, a pretty young thing of nineteen would never have left her comfortable home, her father, friends and good name, without some lover stirring in the matter. ”

“ Only here and there a lonely convent with a few black cypress spires clustered round it, or a solitary cross which the peasants choose as their midday resting-place, cuts the pellucid sky. Here in these great uplands, where all is so immense, the very sky itself seems more full of space than elsewhere: it is not the deep blue of the South, but so soft and aërial that it looks as if it were indeed the very heaven itself, only very far away. ”

“ She wept bitterly, and even bent herself to entreaty; but Alick, to whom North Aston had become a dungeon of pain since Leam went, held pertinaciously to his plan—not without sorrow, but surely without yielding. He was fascinated by the idea of a cure where he might be sole master, not checked by rectorial ridicule when he wished to establish night schools or clothing clubs, penny savings banks, or any other of the schemes in vogue for the good of the poor; thinking too, not unwisely, that the best heal-all for his sorrow was to be found in change of scene and more arduous work together. ”

“ After a pause he added suddenly, "You would be really glad of a small living, no matter where situated, nor how desolate and unimportant, where you would be sole master?"
"Yes," said Alick. "If I could win over one soul to the higher life, I should count myself repaid for all my exertions. We must all have our small beginnings."
"I am an odd old fellow, as you know, Mr. Corfield," laughed Emmanuel Gryce. "Give me your hand: I can sometimes see a good deal of the future in the hand." ”

“ For my part, my verandah is the comfort of my life. When more than four or five people at a time chance to come to afternoon tea, we overflow into the verandah. It runs round three sides of the four rooms called a house, and is at once my day-nursery, my lumber-room, my summer-parlor, my place of exercise—everything, in fact. And it is an incessant occupation to train the creepers and wage war against the legions of brilliantly-colored grasshoppers which infest and devour the honeysuckles and roses. Never was there such a place for insects! ”

“ I am, however, bound to say that the nights—at all events, up here—are cooler, and I begin even to think of a light shawl for my solitary walks in the verandah just before bedtime. When the moon shines these walks are pleasant enough, but when only the "common people of the skies" are trying to filter down their feebler light through the misty atmosphere, I have a lurking fear and distrust of the reptiles and bugs who may also have a fancy for promenading at the same time and in the same place. ”

“ She carried Felipa to her own room—for we each had a little cell opening out of the main apartment—and as white-robed Charity she shone with new radiance. "Shone" is the proper word, for through the open door of the dim cell, with the dark little face of Felipa on her shoulder, her white robe and skin seemed fairly to shine, as white lilies shine on a dark night. The old grandmother left the child in our care and watched our proceedings wistfully, very much as a dog watches the human hands that extract the thorn from the swollen foot of her puppy. ”

“ Blindly walking or with our eyes wide open, our steps determine our destiny, and our goal is reached by our own endeavors. We ourselves are the artificers of our lives, and mould them according to our own pattern."
"But that part of our lives which is under the influence of another? How can we manipulate that?" said Alick. "Love and loss are twin powers which create or crush without our co-operation." ”

“ The bustle of getting underway at daylight this morning woke me, and I went on deck in time to take a farewell look. The first rays of the sun were just touching the top of the Galata Tower and lighting up the dark cypresses in the palace-grounds above us. The tall minarets and the blue waves of the Bosphorus caught the golden light, while around Olympus the rosy tint had not yet faded and the morning mists looked golden in the sunlight. ”

“ The gulf that separated them, dug by her own ineffaceable crime, was so deep, the distance so wide!
A painful silence fell between them: then Edgar, not looking at her, said in a constrained voice, "I will keep your dreadful secret, Leam, sacredly for ever. You feel sure of that, I hope. But, as you say, we must part. I do not pretend to be better than other men, but I could not take as my wife one who had been guilty of such an awful crime as this." ”

“ But if no awe of the mighty past prevents the speculator and contractor of our day from marching his army of excavators in an undeviating and unyielding line impartially athwart the temples, the palaces, the theatres, the baths of the perished world beneath their feet, yet in these days of ours the work is done reverently, at least so far as not only to respect, but to gather up with the most scrupulous care, every available fragment of the art, and even of the common life, of those vanished generations. ”

“ Alick blushed, shifted his place and looked uneasy. And again, as so often before, it came across him: had he done right, judged by the highest law, to conceal the truth as he knew it about Leam?
"Hoot, man! there's no call for you to sit on pins and needles in that fashion," said Keziah. "It's a daft body that cannot hear a word of praise without turning as red as a turkey-cock and fidging like a parched pea on a drum-head. I've not turned much of you over yet, and maybe I'll come to what I'll have no mind to praise; so keep your fidges till you are touched up with the other end of the stick. ”

“ We never saw Felipa without Drollo. "They look a good deal alike," observed Christine—"the same coloring."
"For shame!" I said.
But it was true. The child's bronzed yellow skin and soft eyes were not unlike the dog's, but her head was crowned with a mass of short black curls, while Drollo had only his two great flapping ears and his low smooth head. Give him an inch or two more of skull, and what a creature a dog would be! For love and faithfulness even now what man can match him? ”

“ It was on the cold and rainy evening of a cold and rainy summer's day that Alick arrived at Monk Grange—an evening without a sunset or a moon, stars or a landscape; painful, mournful, as those who dwell in the North Country know only too well as the tears on its face of beauty. ”

“ Suddenly there was an ominous sound in front of Van Cleve's division, which was in the main line next on the right of Palmer.
Hazen leaped upon his horse. "Now Van Cleve is in for it!" he exclaimed. "They're coming for him!"
Quickly getting the men under arms, Hazen moved his brigade behind Van Cleve to act as a support, and awaited the coming attack. It came like a whirlwind, and Van Cleve's lines were scattered like fallen leaves. On came the triumphant enemy in heavy masses, while Van Cleve's disordered horde swept back with it Hazen's supporting regiments. All but one. ”

“ He is followed closely and with great empressement by his "tail," all "ringed" men also—that is, men of some substance and weight in the community. They carry bundles of sticks, and keep up with the ambling nag, and are closely followed by some of his wives bearing heavy loads on their heads, but stepping out bravely with beautiful erect carriage, shapely bare arms and legs; and some sort of coarse drapery worn across their bodies, covering them from shoulder to knee in folds which would delight an artist's eye and be the despair of a sculptor's chisel. ”

“ Gryce. "It will do you no harm to have a dash of rose-color in your rather sombre life; and Hope, if it tells flattering tales, does not always tell untrue ones."
"I fear my hope has flattered me untruly," said Alick, his faithful heart still on Leam.
Mr. Gryce captured a caterpillar wandering across the road. "Conduct is fate," he said. "If this poor fellow had not been troubled with a fit of restlessness, but had been content to lie safely hidden among the grass-roots where he was born, he would not have been caught. Yes, conduct is fate for a captive caterpillar as well as for man." ”

“ Our first night after leaving Gap was spent at Embrun. As we approached the town, which surmounts an extraordinary platform of rock, its walls looking like part of the smooth, brown tufa precipice that rises abruptly out of the valley, we seemed to see in its picturesque and impressive aspect something of the grandeur and gloom of its long history. The cathedral where so many archbishops have ministered preserves little trace of its former splendors: even architecturally it is without attraction. ”

“ I can never be pretty, child; but if you will try to be more gentle, I could teach you how to dress yourself so that no one would laugh at you again. I could make you a little bright-barred skirt and a scarlet bodice: you could help, and that would teach you to sew. But a little girl who wants all this done for her must be quiet and good."
"I am good," said Felipa—"as good as everything." ”

“ Wholesome, after buying him a large and very brown horse gingerbread, two doughnuts and a small pie, "when you think it worth while to hit a fellow, never slap his face, because then he will strike you hard with his fist, which hurts, Reuben. Now, mind: next thee strikes first with thee fist, my lad, and hard, too." If I had seen our good Bishop White playing at taws, I could not have been more overcome, and I dare say my face may have shown it, for, glancing at me, he said demurely, "Thee has seen in thy lifetime how hard it is to get rid of what thee liked in thy days of boyhood." ”

“ He stood a moment near her, as if irresolute, while Schmidt threw himself down on the sward, and, half turning over, tossed roses into the gray lap of Mistress White, saying, "How prettily the God of heaven has dressed them!"
Mistress White took up the flowers, not answering the challenge, but glancing under her long lashes at the ex-captain, to whom presently the overseer turned, saying, "Would thee give me a word or two with thee by ourselves, Richard?"
"There are none in the parlor," said Priscilla, "if thee will talk there." ”

“ It is indeed impossible to doubt that this Master Stephen of Bergamo, the carpenter, whose wife was to have half a crown a month for doing the washing and cooking for all the family living in the rooms assigned to them in the monastery for a workshop and living-rooms, was a man of education and culture, and in every sense of the word an artist. The difference between his social position and that of any artist of corresponding eminence in our day would seem to consist wholly in that greater degree of personal and material luxury which civilization and increased wealth have brought with them. ”

“ Then the first of Hazen's regiments was brought to its feet and poured its volley straight into the faces of the oncoming foe. The next regiment, and the next, and then the last, followed in quick succession. The echoes of the last volley had hardly died away before the enemy, who came on so confident and so strong, had disappeared, crushed and broken, into the forest, leaving the hillside strewn with his dead and wounded.
So ended the fighting. Night came down and shrouded the fierce combatants from each other's sight.
The dusky ranks take up the unfamiliar march with faces from the foe. ”