Various

“ In Dosia's world so far it was a matter of course that some people were married—their household life went unnoticed; the fact had no relation to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of her indifference; the room choked her. George Sutton's neckties, not to speak of his shoes——! ”

“ The Southerner knew better than the Northerner how to treat the negro as a slave, but it did not follow that he knew best how to treat the negro as a freeman; and just there was the rub. It was perhaps too much to expect of the Southern slaveholders, or of Southern society generally, that a clear judgment of the new order of things should have come to them at once. The total overturning of the whole labor system of a country, accomplished suddenly, without preparation or general transition, is a tremendous revolution, a terrible wrench, well apt to confuse men's minds. ”

“ Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia's bidding, to alter the shade, and she moved a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next instant moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his range of vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not her imagining—she felt the strong play of unknown forces: the gaze of those two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most obviously so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little closer to Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. ”

“ The beach stretched in a yellow bow on either hand, fringed with bush and palms, receding to where the ultimate jaws of the bay stood black and thin against the sunrise. Once upon it, they could be seen by whoever should look from the town, and there was peremptory occasion for haste. Scott had counted on forcing the journey into a little over an hour, but he was not prepared for the eccentricities of a pack adjusted on a donkey's back by an amateur. There is no art in the world more arbitrary than that of tying a package on a beast. ”

“ Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely out of her deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly raised to his, her red lips quivering, was distractingly lovely. Fear gave to her quick, uncalculated movements the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of his solid good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between his thumb and forefinger, a little nearer to her—a little nearer yet. There is a type of bucolic mind to which the causeless, palpitating fear of a woman is an exquisitely funny joke. ”

“ I think most men expect too much from their wives," said George. "I don't think they've got the right to ask it. And I don't think a man has any right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to have—that's my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did me the honor of accepting my hand,"—Mr. Sutton's voice faltered with honest emotion,—"I'd spend my life trying to make her happy; I would indeed, Miss Dosia. ”

“ He spat at the parapet upon the memory of that face, where the plague had done its worst.
"So," remarked Incarnacion gaily. "Then we stop, Jock; we stop here, eh?"
"There'll be something broken first," retorted Scott. "It's all bloomin' rot, Incarnacion; you can't have a town this size without a man in it that can handle a boat—a seaport, too. It isn't sense. It don't stand to reason." ”

“ To attain the end she desired it was necessary to keep fifty or sixty thousand people working as if the church were the first object in their lives; to encourage hundreds of these to adopt church-work as their profession and make it their only chance of worldly success; and yet to hold all this devotion and energy in absolute subservience to Mrs. Eddy herself and to prevent any one of these healers, or preachers, or teachers from attaining any marked personal prominence and from acquiring a personal following. ”

“ Everything is all beginning—and then it ends—there is nothing more. And now I can never be really nice again!"
"Nonsense! You'll feel very differently about it all after a while," said Lois sensibly.
"I don't want to go down-stairs again." Dosia began to shake violently. "If he were to come back——"
"Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your dinner," said Lois humoringly. "I must go down now; I hear Justin. Only, you'll have to promise me to be quiet, Dosia, and not begin going wild again the moment I'm out of the room."
"No, I'll be good," murmured Dosia submissively. ”

“ To judge from the tone of her orders to the waiter, she was evidently impatient to finish her dinner. When she reached for a dish of pickles standing on the table at a little distance from her, the lieutenant got up and, with a polite bow, took it and offered it to her. She withdrew her hand as if it had touched something loathsome, her eyes flashed fire, and in a tone of wrathful scorn and indignation she said: "So you think a Southern woman will take a dish of pickles from a hand that is dripping with the blood of her countrymen?" ”

“ Afar a peacock calls from a ruined tomb, and through all the jungle concert runs the continuous screech of the cicada.
A loud signal from a treed scout suddenly tells us my tiger is located. Relentlessly, foot by foot, the man-eater is tracked. We are guided always by the scouts in the trees; for that terrible bamboo-like grass swallows even elephants, swaying noisily to their moving bulk. At length we emerge in a little clearing; and even as we glance around, the stalks part harshly, and the tiger leaps forth at an unarmed beater, burying fangs in a soundless throat. ”

“ Scott fought with himself for mastery of the horror that rose in him like a tide of fever, and when the leper had put back the sheet and stood again a figure of the grave, he told him of the boat and how others knew of it besides himself. In quick, panting sentences he bade him get forthwith to the creek where the boat lay, directing him to it through the paths of the night with the sure precision of a man trained to the trek. He himself would go and fetch Incarnacion and beat up some provisions, and thus they might get afloat before the Italian and his mate came on the scene. ”

“ Leverich isn't so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can't stand Martin havin' a finger in any concern I have a hold of."
"He's clever enough to make what he touches pay," said Justin.
Cater's eyebrows contracted. "You say he's clever; because he's tricky—because he's sharp. He isn't clever enough to make money honestly; he isn't big enough. You and me, we're honest, or try to be; but we haven't the brain to give every man his just due, and get ahead, too. It's the greatest game there is, but you got to be a genius to play it. ”

“ In a sense, she had rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly solve many difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia—if Dosia could——! Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without loving him would have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a physical impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or support were outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with cold disapproval:
"Dosia, you don't know what you are doing. You don't love George Sutton."
Dosia's face took on the well-known obstinate expression. ”

“ Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, but she felt that Alice Wayne's state of mind would be more sympathetic, even if unconsciously so, than Lois'. [pg 110]
As she walked along now, she thought of George with a deeply grateful affection. How good he was to her! He had been unexpectedly nice when he had asked her to marry him; the very force of his feeling had given him an unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan on the words:
"I have never known any one with such a beautiful nature as yours, Miss Dosia! I just worship you! I only want to live to make you happy." ”

“ Down the long clay road which led from living and now pitying Fairville to the little cemetery where slept its quiet dead, Hope Carolina was running.
A mile and a half is a long way for a wee fat maiden to go when the August sun is beating down upon bare heads and necks, and red clay roads spread sun-baked ruts and furrows as sharp as knives. As many times as her years, Hope Carolina fell by the way; oftener, indeed. But the good folk in the scattered blind-closed houses along the way—who, too, a half-hour ago had whispered tremulously, "There won't be a white face"—saw no sign of tears. ”

“ Save to the east, where the blank white walls of the house overlooked the water, there was on all sides a shadowy prospect of parapets, for in Superban the houses are close together and folk live intimately upon their roofs. As she sat, Incarnacion could hear a voice that quavered and choked as some stricken man labored with his prayers against the plague that was laying the city waste. ”

“ General Washington declared that the people or the militia was the Army of the Constitution or the Army of the United States, and as soon as it is practicable the original design of the Government must be resumed and the Government administrated upon the principles of the great chart of freedom handed down to the people by the founders of the Republic. The people must be trusted with their Government, and, if trusted, my opinion is they will act in good faith and restore their former Constitutional relations with all the States composing the Union. ”

“ The beloved Prestons, so nobly proud in their fallen fortunes,—so right and proper in their politics,—had once owned all the lovely grounds alongside the bald yard that inclosed the child's own hired house; grounds where peacocks were as much at home as in story-books—peacocks with tails more ravishing than fly-brushes; where magnolia-trees flung down big scented petals as fascinating as sheets of letter-paper, and tall poplars stood like angels with half-closed wings against the sky. ”

“ That an overwhelming majority of them, grown up in the traditional darkness of slavery, should at first not have been able to grasp the duties of their new condition, together with its rights, was but natural. It was equally [pg 50] natural that the Southern whites, who had known the negro laborer only as a slave, and who had been trained only in the habits and ways of thinking of the master class, should have stubbornly clung to their traditional prejudice that the negro would not work without physical compulsion. ”

“ To allay that distrust and, in many cases, to secure their just dues, they stood much in need of an adviser in whom they had confidence and to whom they could look for protection, while, on the other hand, the employers of negro labor stood in equal need of some helpful authority to give the colored people sound instruction as to their duties as freemen and to lead them back to the path of industry and good order when, with their loose notions of the binding force of agreements, they broke their contracts, or indulged themselves otherwise in unruly pranks. ”

“ The heart of six is full of mystery. All that first morning, with a piteous earnestness, a piteous heartlessness, Hope Carolina played funeral in the front yard, in the place where the stone fort had once been and where the peach-pits were now planted. Every now and then she would stop patting the little mounds of earth—mounds of earth covered with sweet flowers, in a place as beautiful as any garden, were the chief thing in her idea of funerals—and, standing tiptoe, she would stare over the paling fence, hoping the Radical Judge would [pg 71] come by. ”

“ What, one might ask, is the purpose in having an "executive" body which can do nothing—they are not even allowed to be present at the business meetings of the church—elected by a Board of Directors who have to elect "unanimously" whomsoever Mrs. Eddy names? Why go through the form of "electing" them, when they are simply appointed? Why, indeed, [pg 29] elect the church officers, since, behind this brave showing of boards and bodies, Mrs. Eddy, in reality, simply appoints?
One reason is that Mrs. Eddy likes the play of making boards and committees; she loves titles and loves to distribute them. ”