Various

“ For a moment both stood very still, while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves. ”

“ When a person is naturalized, he takes the oath of allegiance. Does he got nothing in return? Can a State annul all the rights which the Federal Government has conferred? Then, indeed, would it be better for those who come to our shores to remain citizens of the old nations; for they could protect them, but we cannot. Then, to be a citizen of the United States—a privilege we had thought greater than that of Roman citizenship when that empire was in its glory—is a privilege which any State may annul at its pleasure! ”

“ It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are identical, not only in fact, but of necessity. It will teach him that the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can end only in the destruction of one or the other.
This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a solemn sense of responsibility. A sadder book the human hand never wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and conviction. ”

“ Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers, bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy, distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and, turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. ”

“ In truth, I have never seen the American public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North, at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. ”

“ Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance, feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before. Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might ”

“ It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active influence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human hearts. ”

“ Debby always had a look of welcome when he came, always treated him with the kindness of a generous woman who has had an opportunity to forgive, and always watched the serious, solitary man with a great compassion for his loss, a growing admiration for his upright life. More than once the beach birds saw two figures pacing the sands at sunrise with the peace of early day upon their faces and the light of a kindred mood shining in their eyes. ”

“ Born in Boston while we were still in a condition of colonial dependence, he has lived to see his native land emerge from her state of vassalage, pass through a long-protracted struggle for liberty with the most powerful nation on earth, successfully maintain her right to be free and independent, advance with giant strides in a career of unexampled prosperity, assume an undisputed position as one of the great powers of Christendom, and finally put forth the most gigantic efforts to crush a rebellion compared with which the conspiracy of Catiline was but the impotent uprising of an angry dwarf. ”

“ A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and exclaiming, "G—— d——! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a café, nor wonder "what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." ”

“ Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it ever come,—if you should learn that you possessed the power to make this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'? ”

“ It is the journal of a hearty, generous, clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly undeceiving,—of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. ”

“ But it should be remembered that this right has been, to establish Slavery by bringing in slaves from the old States,—not by taking citizens of the United States, and reducing them to slavery. If one such citizen can be enslaved, then can any other; and the very foundations of the Federal Government can be overturned by a State. For a government that cannot protect its own citizens from loss of citizenship by being chattellized is no government at all.
Citizenship is a reciprocal relation. The citizen owes allegiance; the government owes protection. ”

“ Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth and gayety and beauty—and in summer we are all young and gay and beautiful—mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.
Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming exercise which they can adopt. ”

“ Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. ”

“ I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself somehow, you know."
"How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl into a fashionable belle, I wonder?" thought Frank Evan, as he climbed the four flights that led to his "sky-parlor."
"What a curious world this is!" mused Debby, with her nightcap in her hand. "The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure. ”

“ The Rebellion has taught us that the Republic is not safe while Slavery is permitted to exercise any political power. It ought to teach us also, that, as long as Slavery exists in any of the States, it will not cease to exercise political power, and that the only means to make the nation safe is utterly to abolish and destroy Slavery, wherever it is found within its limits. ”

“ The knowledge that can plant batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown great, and done the State service in their generation; but these times demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. ”

“ These, then, are Winthrop's writings,—the literary works of a young man who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his memory green amongst us ”

“ It knows that the people are the Government,—that the spirit of the people is progressive and intelligent,—and that there is no hope for permanent and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself. ”

“ A nobleman has entered whose movements you will do well to follow. He takes his place just at the left of the Lord-Chancellor, but remains seated only for a moment. If you are familiar with the pencil of Punch, you will recognize him at a glance. A thin, wiry, yet muscular frame, a singularly marked and expressive face and mobile features, a nose that defies description, a high cravat like a poultice covered with a black silk bandage, clothes that seem to have been made for a much larger man, and always a pair of old-fashioned checked trousers,—of course, this can only be Lord Brougham. ”

“ Why might not every college be a military normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young, adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions, but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes. Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would so train and harmonize and limber the physical powers, that the superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for whatever deficiency in quantity might result. ”

“ The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights, civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an imperious necessity. ”

“ In the House of Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. ”

“ Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decoration, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral, and the simplest viands are the best. ”

“ Debby ran to her, alarmed at her tragic expression, and Mrs. Carroll, drawing the girl's face into the privacy of her big bonnet, whispered one awful word, adding, distractedly,—
"Dive for them! oh, dive for them! I shall be perfectly helpless, if they are lost!"
"I can't dive, Aunt Pen; but there is a man, let us ask him," said Debby, as a black head appeared to windward. ”