Various

“ Minola said to herself in scorn and melancholy—"they are; we are. I am shaken to the very soul, because a young man, for whose opinion on any other subject I should not care anything, chooses to look at me with pity!"
The night was melancholy. When the outer world was shut out, and the gas was lighted, and the two women sat down to work and talk, nothing seemed to Minola quite as it had been. The evident happiness and passing high spirits of the little poetess oppressed her. Mary Blanchet was so glad to be making acquaintances, and to have some prospect of seeing the inside of a London home. ”

“ You are a lover of the human race, I know."
"I hope I love my neighbors," Mary said earnestly.
"I hope you do, dear. All good little women like you ought to do that. Do you love your neighbor, Miss Grey?"
"I don't care much for any one," Miss Grey answered decisively, "except Mary Blanchet. But I have no particular principle or theory about it, only that I don't care for people." ”

“ For, as he was speaking scorn of the human race, she was saying to herself, "This man, I do believe, has suffered deeply. He has found people cold, and mean, and selfish—as I have—and he feels it, and cannot hide it. I did him wrong; he is not a fribble or sham cynic, only a disappointed dreamer." The sympathy which she felt showed itself only too quickly in her very eloquent eyes.
Herbert Blanchet rose after an instant of silence and took his leave, asking permission to call again, which Miss Grey would have gladly refused if she could have stood up against the appealing looks of Mary. ”

“ Heron coolly took Miss Grey's hand and conducted her in and out, talking all the while as if they were crossing a ball-room floor. Minola made it a point of honor not to hesitate, or start, or show that she had nerves. But when he began to run into politics he always pulled himself up, for he politely remembered that young ladies did not care about politics, and so he tried to find some prettier subject to talk about. Miss Grey understood this perfectly well, and was amused and contemptuous. ”

“ AN EVENING PARTY AMONG THE COSSACKS OF THE DON. Sunset on the Lower Don; a dim waste of gray, unending steppe, looking vaster and drearier than ever under the fast falling shadows of night; a red gleam far away to the west, falling luridly across the darkening sky and the ghostly prairie; a dead, grim silence, broken only by the plash and welter of our laboring steamer, or the shrill cry of some passing bird; an immense, crushing loneliness—the solitude not of a region whence life has died out, but of one where it has never existed. ”

“ Heron was entering into conversation with Mrs. Money and her elder daughter. That, too, was just what a man ought to be—a young man—silly in his devotion to women, unless, perhaps, where the devotion was to be accounted for otherwise than by silliness, as in a case like the present, where the unmarried women might be presumed to have large fortunes. So Miss Grey liked the whole scene. It was as good as a play to her, especially as good as a play which confirms all one's own theories of life. ”

“ Jane leaned from the window as she spoke and toyed with some running vine that clambered to the casement. The grace and beauty of her figure were made conspicuous by the movement, and Harding paused a moment before he replied:
"People like to be cheerful, I suppose, and people like others to be like themselves, I know. It is true that I have been unhappy—that my life has been morose and solitary. ”

“ Only then can we reconcile the making of a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids him to seek the only reparation.
—That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of honor, as to which code there seems to be a very general misapprehension. The purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman shall offer a personal indignity to another except with the certainty of its being at the risk of his life. ”

“ The wrench is so sudden from a Greek sculptor to a French sculptor, from Athenian dresses to Parisian, that the main interest of the play lies in the identification of the ancient characters in the new dress, and the very fanciful absurdity of the plot lends it an air of reality essentially dramatic. The end is illusion, and illusion it is.
There is little more clear and positive to be said about the first act. Study of the best models will reveal many points inherent in all, but no general rules so clear as those of brevity, action, and suspense. ”

“ It has been suggested that a criminal on his second conviction be deemed a professional, and incarcerated for life. It would no doubt be cheaper for the public to shut him up thus and support him permanently. But there is the objection that the punishment would generally be out of proportion to the crime, if it were a punishment at all; and if it were not a punishment, we would be offering a greater premium on vice than we now are. To punish petty larceny as if it were as great a crime as manslaughter or murder would be too unjust to be long possible. ”

“ We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a personal indignity to another. ”

“ When women sing for a listening company, they sing conventionally, and in the way that some teacher has taught, or in what they believe to be the manner of some great artist; or they sing to somebody or at somebody, and in any case they are away from that truthfulness which in art is simply the faithful expression of real emotion. With Minola Grey singing was an end rather than a means; a relief in itself, a new mood in itself ”

“ In former times, especially two centuries ago, the task of writing a good acting play was far easier than now. Scenery was simple, access behind the scenes easier—there was not such a wall of separation as now exists between actors and audience in a first-class city theatre. Even in those days, however, the writing of plays was confined chiefly to actors, managers, and those men of fashion who were given to haunting the green room. In the present day no amount of talent in a writer seems capable of overcoming the difficulties of technical construction of a drama. ”

“ In going out Gagin begged her to take care that the soup should not be too watery. Assja promised to oversee it in the kitchen. Gagin reached a dell which I already knew, sat down upon a stone, and began to sketch an old, hollow, wide-branched oak. I lay down in the grass and took out a book, but my reading did not advance beyond the second page, nor did he blacken much paper. We chatted a great deal, and, if my memory does not deceive me, we discoursed very subtly and profoundly about work: what one should avoid, what strive for, and in what consisted the real merit of the artists of our day. ”

“ If for Constantinople we read not merely the city itself, but that half of Turkey in Europe bordering upon the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and understand the real point to be, Shall or shall not Russia have it? we have the whole Eastern Question in a nutshell. Russia is bound by every consideration of policy and interest to get it if she can. Great Britain is bound by every consideration of interest, and even of self-preservation, to prevent it if she can. ”

“ Does it seem an invidious task to recall the unhappy readings that I have mentioned—readings abandoned by Wordsworth long ago, and unknown to many of his younger students? To do it with slighting intent, or from mere curiosity, would be unworthy; nor will the routine mind be persuaded that there is anything more than a merely curious interest in the comparison of editions. We, thinking that Wordsworth cannot really be understood in a single edition, must leave the routine mind to its conviction that one text contains all that there is of value in his poetry. ”

“ If society would provide a remedy or preventive that would operate like this risk, the code would soon pass absolutely out of practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed that the code is a very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge it and act upon it are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of fighting, revengeful and implacable, and that the code gives them the means of gratifying their murderous or combative propensities. No notion of it could be more erroneous; the misconception is like that which supposes military men to be desirous of using arms on slight provocation ”

“ No rule is so safe in dramatic writing, as also in acting. The end is—illusion.
The rule of putting only suspensory and preparatory action in the first act is universally followed by Shakespeare and all other successful writers of plays, and is better settled than any other. The first act occupies the office of the first volume of a novel, explaining all the story. Very frequently, in the modern French drama especially, it assumes the form of a prologue, the action transpiring at an interval of several years, sometimes a whole generation, before the rest of the play. ”

“ The cannibal may dance around the living victims who are soon to appear upon his table, and the prisoner may be made to grace his conqueror's triumph, or the altar of his conqueror's god, at any cost of suffering to himself, but no other race, savage or civilized, has ever been shown to cultivate cruelty for its own sake as the American Indian does. It is not from fear, revenge, hate, or any other extraneous cause that he studies so fondly and long over the means of giving pain. Cruelty is a thing to be enjoyed for itself. ”

“ I am not worse than my neighbors. But if you ask me, do I admire my fellow man, I answer frankly, no. Not I. What should I admire him for?"
"One must live for something," the poetess pleaded, much perplexed in her heart as to what Miss Grey's opinion might be about all this.
"Of course one must live for art; for music and poetry, and colors and decoration."
"And Nature?" Mary Blanchet gently insinuated.
"Nature—no! Nature is the buxom sweetheart of ploughboy poets. We only affect to admire Nature because people think we can't be good if we don't. ”

“ If Hamilton had offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in his family relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to the weight of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The whole world recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose breeding and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the full sense of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the duellist who fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, does not feel a certain sympathy with him. ”

“ The praise a poet wins too late Who starves from earth into a star;
The lies that serve great parties well, While truths but give their Christs a cross The loves that send warm souls to hell, While cold-blood neuters live on loss ”

“ Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at full gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's neck—their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black eyes gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean faces thrust forward like vultures scenting prey—shooting a sharp, hungry glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron age which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. ”

“ All poets and painters are full of the autumnal charms of the country; but to certain oddly constituted minds some street views in London on a fine autumn day have an unspeakable witchery. Miss Grey walked round and round one of the squares, and had to remind herself of her purpose on Mary Blanchet's behalf in order to impel herself on. ”

“ We indeed do not think that the possession of her Indian empire adds anything to the power of Great Britain. She has never derived any direct revenue from it. The Indian expenditures to-day exceed, and are likely in the future to exceed, the revenues. All the vast amounts of plunder and "loot" which individuals, the East India Company, or the Crown have gained, have cost to get them more than they were worth. Unlike Australia and the Dominion of Canada, India offers no field for colonization for men of British blood, where they or their children may build up a new Britain under strange stars. ”

“ But it is surprising that he leaves out his favorite Germany, perhaps the most important factor of all.
We can conceive of a partition of Turkey between Russia and Austria which would be so manifestly and equally advantageous to both that they might agree to it. And the line of division is clearly indicated by nature. Austria, like every other great civilized nation, desires to be a maritime power; but she touches the sea only at one point, the head of the Adriatic, with the narrow strip known as Dalmatia, running half way down its eastern coast. ”

“ A painter would revel in the third-class deck about sunrise, when the miscellaneous hash of heads and limbs begins to animate itself, like a coil of snakes at the approach of spring—when mothers of families look anxiously about for the little waddling bundles of clothes that are already thrusting their round faces and beady black eyes into every place where they ought not to go ”

“ In the centre of the courtyard, under the full splendor of the moonlight, stand some twenty tall, sinewy figures, in the high sheepskin cap, wide trousers, and huge knee-high boots of the Cossack irregular. They salute the Ataman as he appears by drawing their long knives and waving them in the air, again uttering their shrill war cry; and then begin to move in a kind of measured dance, advancing and retreating by turns, to the sound of a low, dirge-like chant. Presently the music grows quicker, the motion faster and fiercer ”

“ We all feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to bear; we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by law; and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as it is called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with which human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot expect all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. ”

“ Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking public contempt for the man that fights it. ”

“ It is noble for the law to withhold its hand when one who has taken a wrong step can be won back to a good life by other means; and if the wretches hopelessly saturated with vice can be intimidated by anything milder than flogging, by all means be mild; but when we find one who cannot, why not acknowledge the fact and act on it? ”