Various

“ Some brilliant scarlet berries—the cassena—were growing along the roadside, and on every hand we saw the live-oak with its moss-drapery. The palmettos disappointed me; stiff and ungraceful, they have a bristling, defiant look, suggestive of Rebels starting up and defying everybody. The land is low and level,—not the slightest approach to a hill, not a rock, nor even a stone to be seen. It would have a desolate look, were it not for the trees, and the hanging moss and numberless vines which festoon them. ”

“ The honeyed bitter of lilac and apple blossoms in the garden below steeped the air; and as I inhaled the scent, and beheld the rich green crowns of the oaks which grew at the base of the rocks, I appreciated the wisdom of Sergius and Herrmann that led them to pick out this bit of privileged summer, which seems to have wandered into the North from a region ten degrees nearer the sun. It is not strange if the people attribute miraculous powers to them; naturally mistaking the cause of their settlement on Valaam for its effect. ”

“ When I read such a book as this of Whately's,—so informed and leavened as it is by an elegant taste,—I am most painfully impressed by the shortcomings of very much which is called good landscape-gardening with us. As if serpentine walks, and glimpses of elaborated turf-ground, and dots of exotic evergreens in little circlets of spaded earth, compassed at all those broad effects which a good designer should keep in mind! We are gorged with petit-maître-ism, and pretty littlenesses of all kinds. We have the daintiest of walks, and the rarest of shrubs, and the best of drainage ”

“ Science and art give up their treasures only to him who is capable of enthusiasm and devotion. He alone who magnifies his office makes it honorable. Whether he work in marble, canvas, or iron, the man who is content simply to follow his occupation, and is not possessed by it, may be an artificer, but will not be an artist, nor ever wear the laurel on his brow. He should be so enamored of his calling as to court it for its own charms. Invention is a capricious mistress, and does not always bestow her favors on the most worthy. ”

“ Invest in pretty table-linen, in delicate napkins, have your vase of flowers, and be guided by the eye of taste in the choice and arrangement of even the every-day table-articles, and have no ugly things when you can have pretty ones by taking a little thought. If you are sore tempted with lovely china and crystal, too fragile to last, too expensive to be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and comfort yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining-room beauty that will not break or fade, that will meet your eye from year to year, though plates, tumblers, and tea-sets successively vanish. ”

“ I touch now upon the most comprehensive and effectual invention for labor-saving in this respect,—namely, the Felt Machine. This ingenious creation, which is, in all particulars, original, and quite distinct from those already mentioned, performs, with accuracy and speed, all the work of composing, justifying, leading, and distributing types. It was invented by Mr. Charles W. Felt, of Salem, Massachusetts, a man of superior genius, whose energy in overcoming obstacles and working out the practical success of his idea is scarcely less remarkable than the idea itself. ”

“ The restless devil which lurks in the human brain was quieted for the time, and we dreamed—knowing all the while the vanity of the dream—of a pastoral life in some such spot, among as ignorant and simple-hearted a people, ourselves as untroubled by the agitations of the world.
We had scarce inhaled—or, rather, insuded, to coin a paradoxical word for a sensation which seems to enter at every pore—the profound quiet and its suggestive fancies for the space of half an hour, when the wind fell at the going down of the sun, and the humming mist of mosquitoes arose again. ”

“ Thus the links in the chain of progress are complete, from Laurentius Coster, walking in the woods of Holland, in 1430, and winning, from an accidental shower-bath, the art of making movable types, down to the wide-awake Massachusetts Yankee, whose genius will make printing as cheap as writing, and therefore a thousand times more available for all purposes of civilization,—besides lightening the burdens of toil, and blessing the jaded worker with a bright prospect of health, competence, and ease. ”

“ She hardly knows when she does the things that make them grow,—but she gives them a minute a hundred times a day. She moves this nearer the glass,—draws that back,—detects some thief of a worm on one,—digs at the root of another, to see why it droops,—washes these leaves, and sprinkles those,—waters, and refrains from watering, all with the habitual care of love. Your mother herself doesn't know why her plants grow; it takes a philosopher and a writer for the 'Atlantic' to tell her what the cause is. ”

“ The chimes pealed out quick and joyously, and soon a burst of banners and a cloud of incense issued from the great gate. All the pilgrims—nearly two thousand in number—thronged around the double line of chanting monks, and it was found necessary to inclose the latter in a hollow square, formed by a linked chain of hands. As the morning sun shone on the bare-headed multitude, the beauty of their unshorn hair struck me like a new revelation. Some of the heads, of lustrous, flossy gold, actually shone by their own light. ”

“ There are few of those grand bursts which will always justify Luther's reputation, nothing of that rich poetical vein of Luther's, finding its twofold course in music and in poetry: Huss was comparatively dry, and unenriched by those overflowings of a deep inner nature. He is, therefore, rather the exponent of an age than a brilliant mark,—rather a type than a great, restless, creative power. ”

“ Subtile as thought, rejoicing in power, no touch is too delicate for his perception, no service too mighty for his strength. Tales of faërie, feats of magic, pale before the simple story of his every-day labor, or find in his deeds the facts which they but faintly shadowed forth. And waiting upon his transformation, a tribe becomes a nation, a race of savages rises up philosophers, artists, gentlemen. ”

“ A few vases of flowers in a room, a few blooming, well-kept plants, a few prints framed in fanciful frames of cheap domestic fabric, a statuette, a bracket, an engraving, a pencil-sketch, above all, a few choice books,—all these arranged by a woman who has the gift in her finger-ends often produce such an illusion on the mind's eye that one goes away without once having noticed that the cushion of the arm-chair was worn out, and that some veneering had fallen off the centre-table. ”

“ But this is only a farmer's criticism,—a Crispin feeling the bunions on some Phidian statue. And do I think the less of Goldsmith, because he wantoned with the literalism of the country, and laid on his prismatic colors of romance where only white light lay? Not one whit. It only shows how Genius may discard utter faithfulness to detail, if only its song is charged with a general simplicity and truthfulness that fill our ears and our hearts. ”

“ I am not traducing velvet or Brussels or Axminster. I admit that more beautiful effects can be found in those goods than in the humbler fabrics of the carpet-rooms. Nothing would delight me more than to put an unlimited credit to Marianne's account, and let her work out the problems of harmonious color in velvet and damask. All I have to say is, that certain unities of color, certain general arrangements, will secure very nearly as good general effects in either material. ”

“ That it will at no distant day supersede those processes in the art of printing is, as you will presently see, a fixed fact.
Machinery now does nearly every sort of labor,—economizing health, strength, time, and money, in all that it does. We tread upon beautifully figured carpets that are woven by machinery from single threads. We wear clothes that are made by machinery at the rate of two thousand stitches a minute. We hear in every direction the whistle of the locomotive, which saves us almost incalculable time, in the safe and convenient transportation of our persons and our property. ”

“ The vintage was very small and inferior in quality, as they had had no experience in making wine from such a grape as California produced. Numberless difficulties were met with, and it was only the indomitable energy of the gentlemen engaged in the enterprise, sustained by a firm faith in its ultimate success, which brought them triumphantly out of the slough of despond that seemed at times almost to overwhelm them. They have to-day the satisfaction of being the pioneers in what is soon to be one of the most important branches of industry in California. ”

“ Commerce, science, warfare have their progress and their vicissitudes; but underneath them all, unnoted, it may be, or treated to a superficial and perhaps supercilious glance, yet mainspring and regulator of all, runs an iron thread, true thread of Fate, coiling around the limbs of man, and impeding all progress, till he shall have untwisted its Gordian knot, but bidding him forward from strength to strength with each successive release. No romance of court or camp surpasses the romance of the forge. A blacksmith at his anvil seems to us a respectable, but not an eminently heroic person ”

“ The next morning, although it was cloudy and raw, R. and I rose betimes, and were jolted on a droshky through the long streets to the Valamo's landing-place. We found a handsome English-built steamer, with tonnage and power enough for the heaviest squalls, and an after-cabin so comfortable that all our anticipations of the primitive modes of travel were banished at once. As men not ashamed of our health, we had decided to omit the sheets and pillow-cases, and let the tooth-brush answer as an evidence of our high civilization ”

“ Margaret's face always came between.
This bantering a single man is very common. I often wonder that people dare do it. How does the world know what early disappointment he may be mourning over? Is it anything to laugh about, that he has nobody to love him,—nobody he may call his own,—no home? ”

“ The history of iron is the history of civilization. The rough, shapeless ore that lies hidden in the earth folds in its unlovely bosom such fate and fortune as the haughtier sheen of silver, gleam of gold, and sparkle of diamond may illustrate, but are wholly impotent to create. ”

“ No mother, weeping over the coffin of her child, dreams that we have pity and sorrow in our hearts for her.
Thus the world shuts us out from all sympathy with its joys or afflictions. But the world doesn't know everything,—least of all what is passing in the heart of an old bachelor.
Jamie and Mary are old folks now. He never went to sea after his marriage. Father set him up in a store. I should make it my home with them, but they live at the old place, and I am always better away from there. ”

“ No long Sacramento Valley, stretching away to the south and west of the quartzite upheavals, has here retained and preserved the spoils of those long ages of attrition and denudation. The alluvial gold has mostly been carried, by the action alluded to, into the sands and beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean; and it is only at the bottom of the numerous little lakes which dot the surface of the country, that the precious metal, in this, its most obvious and attractive form, has ever been found in any remunerative quantity in Nova Scotia. ”

“ The steamer ran so near the rocky walls that the trailing branches of the birch almost swept her deck; every ledge traversing their gray, even masonry, was crowded with wild red pinks, geranium, saxifrage, and golden-flowered purslane; and the air, wonderfully pure and sweet in itself, was flavored with delicate woodland odors. On the other side, under the monastery, was an orchard of large apple-trees in full bloom, on a shelf near the water; above them grew huge oaks and maples, heavy with their wealth of foliage ”

“ One room in the house is selected, and every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing makes a room so home-like, so companionable, and gives it such an air of refinement, as the presence of books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a transient call, and give it the air of a room where one feels like taking off one's things to stay. ”

“ Those philosophers are not far wrong, if at all, who assert that the rectitude of the human race has gained strength, as by a tonic, from the contemplation of the severe, arrowy railroad,—iron emblem of punctuality, directness, and despatch.
In the interest, therefore, of education no less than health, it becomes imperative that machinery should be substituted for hand-labor in composition. At present, our printing-offices are by no means the sources whence to draw inspirations of order, fitness, and wholesome toil. ”

“ I involuntarily turned to one of the young Finnish sailors, with his handsome, tanned face, quick, decided movements, and clean, elastic limbs, and felt, instinctively, that what we most value in every man, above even culture or genius, is the stamp of sex,—the asserting, self-reliant, conquering air which marks the male animal. ”

“ We borrowed a boat from the monks, and impressed a hardy fisherman into our service. I supposed we had already seen the extent of the inlet, but on reaching its head a narrow side-channel disclosed itself, passing away under a quaint bridge and opening upon an inner lake of astonishing beauty. The rocks were disposed in every variety of grouping,—sometimes rising in even terraces, step above step, sometimes thrusting out a sheer wall from the summit, or lying slant-wise in masses split off by the wedges of the ice. ”

“ The record of iron is at once a record of our glory and of our humiliation,—a record of marvellous, inborn, God-given genius, reaching forth in manifold directions to compass most beneficent ends, but baffled, thwarted, fiercely and persistently resisted by obstinacy, blindness, and stupidity, and gaining its ends, if it gain them at all, only by address the most sagacious, courage the most invincible, and perseverance the most untiring. ”