Various

“ Never, since he had galloped in the chase over the Pampas, had Dick Venner felt such a sense of life and power as when he struck the long spurs into his wild horse's flanks, and dashed along the road with the lasso lying like a coiled snake at the saddle-bow. In skilful hands, the silent, bloodless noose, flying like an arrow, but not like that leaving a wound behind it,--sudden as a pistol-shot, but without the tell-tale explosion,--is one of the most fearful and mysterious weapons that arm the hand of man. ”

“ But a man, a man, too, in the stir of the world, has not the time for brooding over the untoward events of his destiny that a woman has; his tender memories are forever jostled by cent. per cent.; he meets too many faces to keep the one in constant and unchanging perpetuity sacredly before his thought. And so it happened that Mr. Raleigh became at last a silent, keen-eyed man, with the shadow of old and enduring melancholy on his life, but with no certain sorrow there. ”

“ What scholar, what lover of learning, can now picture to himself such efforts without emotion,--without an almost oppressive sense of the contrast between the wealth of his own opportunities and the penury of the earlier scholar? On the shelves within reach of his hand lie the accumulated riches of time. Compare our libraries, with their crowded volumes of ancient and modern learning, with the bare cell of the solitary Friar, in which, in a single small cupboard, are laid away a few imperfect manuscripts, precious as a king's ransom, which it had been the labor of years to collect. ”

“ But the chief interest of Bacon's works lies in their exhibition to us of himself, a man foremost in his own time in all knowledge, endowed by Nature with a genius of peculiar force and clearness of intuition, with a resolute energy that yielded to no obstacles, with a combination so remarkable of the speculative and the practical intellect as to place him in the ranks of the chief philosophers to whom the progress of the world in learning and in thought is due. ”

“ Like that American philosopher who looks upon one of his own neophytes as a man of great and profound mind because the latter carefully remembers and repeats to him his own carelessly uttered wisdom, I saw in these misty and disjointed reflections of my own thoughts the precious revelation of departed and purified spirits.
How a passion for the unknown and unattainable takes hold of men is illustrated by the search for the universal solvent, by the mysteries of the Rosicrucians, by the patronage of fortune-tellers, even. ”

“ Every throb of the panting engines they answered with waiting heart-beats, as it sent them farther from the fearful wonder, now blazing in multiplex lines of fire against the gray horizon. Mr. Raleigh gazed after it as one watches the conflagration of a home. Marguerite left her quiet weeping to gaze with him. An hour silently passed, and as the fiery phantom faded into dawn and distance she sang sweetly the first few lines of an old French hymn. Another voice took up the measure, stronger and clearer; those who knew nothing of the words caught the spirit of the tune ”

“ I was wanted to go up to Boston about a marvellous piece of carpet which had appeared from our mills. It had lain in the warehouse some time, had at last been taken to Boston, and a large portion of it had been sold, the pattern being a favorite one. But suddenly there had been a change. In opening one of the rolls and spreading it broadly in the show-room of Messrs. Gobelin's warehouse, it had appeared the most wonderful carpet that ever was known. A real sunlight gleamed over the leaves and flowers, seeming to flicker and dance among them as on a broad meadow. ”

“ Whirring insects seemed to be suddenly born in its beam. The stream flowed more gayly, the flowers on its brim were richer in color. A voice startled me. It was only that of one of my fellow-workmen, as he shouted, "Look at Gloomy Robert!--there's a sunbeam in his way, and he stumbles over it!" It was really so. I had stumbled over a beam of sunlight. I had never observed the sunshine before. Now, what life it gave, as it gleamed under the trees! I kept on my way, but the thought of it followed me all up the weary stairs into the high room where the great machines were standing silently. ”

“ The westering moon went to bury herself in banks of cloud; the wind increasing piped and whistled in strident threatening through the rigging; the ship vibrated to the concussive voice of the minute-gun. No murmurs but those of wind and water were heard among the throng; they drove forward in awful, pallid silence. Suddenly the shriek of one voice, but from fourscore throats, rent the agonized quiet. A red light was running along the deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the forecastle, a spire shooting aloft. Marguerite hid her face in Mr. Raleigh's arm ”

“ Raleigh shut up the note-book in which he had been writing, and restored it to his pocket. She turned about and broke off her song.
"There is the moon on the other side," she said, "floating up like a great bubble of light. She and the sun are the scales of a balance, I think; as one ascends, the other sinks."
"There is a richness in the atmosphere, when sunset melts into moonrise, that makes one fancy it enveloping the earth like the bloom on a plum." ”

“ When, among the innumerable "patines of bright gold" that strew the floor of heaven, we see one part from the sphere of its undistinguished fellows, and, filling its pathway with radiant light, vanish noiselessly into annihilation, we cannot but be reminded of those characters that, with no apparent reason for being segregated from the common herd, are, through some strange conjuncture, hurried from a commonplace life by modes of death that illuminate their memory with immortal fame. ”

“ As we watched a fine landscape by Kensett, a stream of sunshine rested a moment on the canvas, giving motion and color, as it were, to the pictured sunlight.
Miss Stuart turned to me.
"Why will you not imprison sunlight in that way, Mr. Desmond? That would be artistic."
"You forget," I said, "if I could put the real sunlight into such a picture, it would no longer be mine; I should be a borrower, not a creator of light; I should be no more of an artist than I am now." ”

“ Beside the pleasant intoxication of the semi-trance, I felt a rare joy in the knowledge that I was elected above other men to be their interpreter. Let me endeavor to describe the nature of this possession. Sometimes, even before a spirit would be called for, the figure of the person, as it existed in the mind of the inquirer, would suddenly present itself to me,--not to my outward senses, but to my interior, instinctive knowledge. If the recollection of the other embraced also the voice, I heard the voice in the same manner, and unconsciously imitated it. ”

“ By this time I had wholly recovered my consciousness, but remained silent, stupefied by the extraordinary scene.
Presently Miss Fetters became more quiet, and the possession left her. "My friends," said Stilton, in his cold, unmoved voice, "I feel that the spirit has spoken truly. We must obey our spiritual affinities, or our great and glorious mission will be unfulfilled. Let us rather rejoice that we have been selected as the instruments to do this work. Come to me, Abby; and you, Rachel, remember that our harmony is not disturbed, but only made more complete." ”

“ How such a ridiculous tale ever found believers, it is impossible to conceive; but such was the case. All England, with the very small exception of those who united the possession of learning with common sense, was imbued with the frenzy. The price of warrens was abated to a mere song, and for a season a Londoner would as readily have eaten a baked child as a roasted rabbit. The children of men were believed to populate the burrows, and authorities of the highest reputation lent an unhesitating support to the delusion. ”

“ Raleigh, following him, and, meeting Captain Tarbell at the companion-way, the three descended together.
Mr. Raleigh was absent some fifteen minutes, at the end of that time rejoining Mademoiselle Le Blanc.
"I did not mean to make fun of you," said he, resuming the conversation as if there had been no interruption. "I was watching the foam the Osprey makes in her speed, which certainly burns blue. See the flashing sparks! now that all the red fades from the west, they glow in the moon like broken amethysts." ”

“ If the standards of what is truly aristocratic in our language are standards of nobility of thought, they will endure and draw up to them, on to the episcopal thrones and into the Upper House of letters, all that is most worthy. Whatever makes the nation's life will make its speech. War was once the career of the Norman, and he set the seal of its language upon poetry. Agriculture was the Saxon's calling, and he made literature a mirror of the life he led. We in this new land are born to new heritages, and the terms of our new life must be used to tell our story. ”

“ Many years of my life passed away. There were changes in the factories. The machines grew more like human beings, and we men could act more like machines. There were fewer of us needed; but I still held my place, and my steadiness gave me a position.
One day, in the end of May, I was walking early in the morning towards the factories, as usual, when suddenly there fell across my path a glowing beam of sunshine that lighted up the grass before me. I stopped to see how the green blades danced in its light, how the sunshine fell down the sloping, bank across the stream below. ”

“ In every loosened orb that shoots across the face of night the experienced eye may trace the story and the fall of a fellow-being. Youth, beauty, wealth, the humility of indigence and the pride of power, alike find their term revealed in the bright, silent course of the celestial spark; and still new signs succeed to provoke the sympathy or dazzle the philosophy of the observer. ”

“ Though sensible to mesmeric influences, I was not willing that my spiritual nature should be the instrument of another's will,--that a human being, like myself, should become possessed of all my secrets and sanctities, touching the keys of every passion with his unhallowed fingers. In the phenomena of clairvoyance I saw only other and more subtile manifestations of the power which I knew to exist in my own mind. Hence, I soon grew weary of prosecuting inquiries which, at best, would fall short of solving my own great and painful doubt,--Does the human soul continue to exist after death? ”

“ Half the night is gone."
"I remember reading of some pirates once, who, driving forward to destruction on fearful breakers, drank and sang and died madly. I wish the whole ship's company would burst out in one mighty chorus now, or that we might rush together with tumultuous impulse and dance,--dance wildly into death and daylight."
"We have nothing to do with death," said Mr. Raleigh. "Our foe is simply time. You dance, then?" ”

“ Was I too weak to be the medium for the promised revelations? I threw myself again and again into the trance, with a recklessness of soul which fitted me to receive any, even the darkest impressions, to catch and proclaim every guilty whisper of the senses, and, while under the influence of the excitement, to exult in the age of license which I believed to be at hand. But darker, stronger grew the terror which lurked behind this spiritual carnival. ”

“ We have our own artists in the mills, artists who must work under severe limitations. Within a certain space their fancy revels, and then its lines are suddenly cut short. Nature scatters her flowers as she pleases over the field, does not measure her groups to see that they stand symmetrically, nor count her several daisies that they may be sure to repeat themselves in regular order. But our artist must fit his stems to certain angles so that their lines may be continuous, constantly repeating themselves, the same group recurring, yet in a hidden monotony. ”

“ From the presence of dangerous rivals in the house, an element of determination blended with her manner, and she moved with a certain conscious power, as if wonderful energies were but half-latent with her, as if there were kingdoms to conquer and crowns to win, and she the destined instrument You would have selected her, at this time of her lavish devotion to Marguerite, as the one woman of complete capability, of practical effective force, and have declared that there was nothing beyond her strength. ”

“ In the flesh I was a martyr to the Truth, and I am permitted to communicate only with those whom the Truth has made free. You are the heralds of the great day; you have climbed from sphere to sphere, until now you stand near the fountains of light. But it is not enough that you see: your lives must reflect the light. ”