Various

“ Without making any reply to this question, Rhoneland sat up, and looking him full in the face, asked, in a sad tone: 'Do you think, Harry, that Kate, my own child, has turned her back upon me, and given her heart to a stranger? And do you think that she will desert her father in his old age, and leave him to die alone?'
'Come, come, Rhoneland, this is too bad,' said Harson; 'this is mere nonsense. If the girl should happen to cast a kind glance at Ned, Ned's a fine fellow; and if Ned should happen to think that Kate had not her equal among all whom he knew, he would be perfectly right. ”

“ It will be a sad day for me when it does. I'd rather be in my grave. I cannot tell you all; but if you knew what I do, perhaps you'd think so too. Indeed you would, Harry. There's one who knows more about Somers than either you or I; much that's bad, very bad. I can't tell his name.'
'I know it already,' replied Harson: 'Michael Rust.'
'Ha!' ejaculated Rhoneland, in a faint voice, his cheek growing ghastly pale; 'You know Michael Rust, do you?'
'I know something of him, and but little in his favor. What he says against Somers is not worth thinking of. Let him clear his own name. ”

“ Life is not to me what it once was. It's dull enough, now.'
'And who is this who has such power over you?' inquired Harson, placing his hand on his shoulder; 'Come, be frank with me, Jacob; who is it? Is it Michael Rust?'
Rhoneland started up, looked suspiciously about the room, and said in a quick, husky voice: 'Did I say it was Rust? I'm sure I did not, Harry. Oh! no, not Rust. He's a noble, generous fellow; so frank, and free, and bold. ”

“ I wish you would keep away from his house, Ned. To tell the truth, I'm jealous of you. For in confidence, Ned, I do believe that Kate is a little of a coquette at heart; and I have often said to myself: 'Although I see nothing particularly kind in her manner to Somers, who knows what it may be when they're alone? I'm sure there's nothing in her actions, when others are present, to betray how kind and coaxing she is to me when we are alone. Ah! Ned; she is all tenderness in our moments of privacy. ”

“ He is a man past the prime of life; gray hairs are plentifully sprinkled over his head; his face is somewhat thin and worn, as though with long watching and study; but his frame is upright, and the look which he slowly casts over the expectant congregation, is full of import and solemnity. There is a mild, affectionate light in his eye, and love to God and to all God's creatures beams out from every lineament of his countenance. Calmly he displays, after the good old fashion, his handkerchief of spotless white, and calmly deposits it under the right lid of the book before him. ”

“ When the Justice and his reverend guests had gone back to discuss the question, whether the devil could torment in the shape of a good man, the crowd proceeded to the sheriff's house, the women ranting, roaring, and screaming; the bedevilled Abigail Williams, among the rest, walking as if afflicted by Saint Vitus, screeching in the most painfully distressing tone, and ever and anon falling into apparent convulsions; the mob the while mingling their groans and dolorous wailings, as if Pandemonium had broken loose in good earnest, and Satan had come again upon the earth like a roaring lion. ”

“ There was a sudden and intense conception of the preciousness of life, and the agony of losing it; and persisting in the chase, I felt as one does who labors under a horrid night-mare, and is pursued by phantoms or fiends, while his limbs refuse to do their office, and his shrieks are inaudible murmurs, which die away in the utterance. Oh, my sisters! my fair cousins! dear, and beautiful betrothed! would to God I had never come to Scollop Island! ”

“ We do not lose sight of ourselves, or of the dignity of reflecting beings. We are rather a company so full of the thoughts which we have just received, that we must think them all over again, and have no time to stop and exchange compliments, or to respond to them with laughter equally inane. Not even when we emerge on to the common, and all take our diverging ways toward home, can a voice be heard rising higher than a whisper. ”

“ It makes my heart dance to see you walking so briskly, as if old age and the cares of life left no mark upon you. You're a happy man, Jacob.'
Rhoneland started; for in front of him, bowing, and smirking, and rubbing his hands together, stood Michael Rust, his eyes glowing and glittering, with a glee that was perfectly startling. Rhoneland muttered something of its being a fine day, and of the pleasant weather, which had tempted him abroad, and then stopped abruptly. ”

“ In these Sketches, which are now brought to a close, I have endeavored to represent the condition of South Carolina as I saw it. Of slavery I have said what I believe, and of its white population what I know to be true. There, as elsewhere in a world tainted by evil, injustice too often embitters the cup of life. But it is not the slave only, bending to his irksome task, nor he who toils under the heat of a southern sky alone, who drains it to its dregs. ”

“ It was a bright day, and the warm sunshine was sleeping on roof and wall; on cellar and house-top, warming many a sad heart; lighting up many a heavy eye, and calling forth all that is happy and joyous in earth and man. Strange was it! that under such a sky, with such a glad world about him, an old man, hanging over the grave, should dare to utter curses and imprecations against his fellow man. ”

“ God help her! she knows no better! Ned Somers,' said he, turning to the young man, 'you must leave this house, and come here no more. My daughter is all I have to bind me to life, and I cannot spare her. You must go elsewhere to spread your web. For your vile designs upon her, may God forgive you—I never will!'
'Jacob Rhoneland,' said Somers, 'I have borne more from you than I would have taken from any other man. ”

“ Robert Tyler, the eldest son of the President, is a young man of brilliant genius. As a poet, in high-wrought and vivid imagery, he resembles Shelley, whose likeness he personally resembles; and as an orator, there is not a speaker of his years in our country who has made a greater impression than he made in two extemporaneous efforts before the Irish Association. Bold, eloquent, and manly, he dashes into his subject with his whole soul, while comprehensiveness, energy, and point characterize every thing he says. ”

“ For, beside the fears which might assail one at midnight in such a solitude, it was dismal to hear the winds raving about the house; the bricks tumbling from the chimney and rolling with a hollow noise down the roof; the blast now screaming in your ear and instantly heard afar off, as if it had gone off to join the troops of the winds; the rattling of doors and loosened window-frames, and the creaking on its rusty hinges and slam-banging of the sign of the Devil-Tavern. ”

“ But loudest and merriest, and as it appeared to Kornicker, most diabolical of all, was Michael Rust; helping every one; passing the bottle, and laughing, and yet constantly at work, endeavoring to worm out of his companions something against Kornicker which might render him amenable to the law, and which he might hold over his head; a rod to bend him to his purposes, should he ever prove refractory. ”

“ They are generally men also of liberal learning and generous dispositions; frank, hospitable, and courteous; and, bating a tithe of that hot-blood chivalry upon which they are too apt to pride themselves, noble and humane in all their impulses.
One marks every where at the South the eminently kind relations which exist between master and servant. To every man born and bred upon the plantation, the negro seems essential, in a thousand respects with which a northerner can have no sympathy. I saw nothing of what we call prejudice against color in all my travels. ”

“ In short, the whole country was in an eminently distressed and bedevilled predicament; and Beautiful Hobbes was a decided victim. A universal twitching assailed her joints; a sheeted paleness usurped her smoke-dried cheeks; the purple faded from the tip of her nose, and the color of her eyes became a dingy yellow; and she exclaimed, amid sobs and hiccups, 'Mother, there is a ball in my throat, and Patience Peabody hurts me!' And she continued to roar lustily, and pray for deliverance from her tormentor. ”

“ What is to become of our 'areas and focus,' of our altars and fires? what is to become of the bonds of social faith, the cherished sentiments of domestic communion, the implicit confidence between man and man, if delicate matters of peculiar and single interest are thus to be blurted by an unreflecting conductor of a journal into the face of all mankind and half New-York? ”

“ The President never thinks of making a display of mere official dignity. He never thinks of the President, unless he is fulfilling some presidential duty, or unless some one presumes, from his kindness of manner, to encroach upon his dignity; and then the encroacher instantly discovers how much he has erred. This, more than one senator and representative can tell, who has undertaken the task of dictation to the President. ”

“ Thus, often in life, do we seek to arrive upon the scene of some expansive prospect, but that which seemed a little interval turns out to be a weary distance, to be overcome only by patient determination. The exercise of pulling at the oars sent warmth through our bodies, and made the blood tingle in all our limbs, although the flags upon the shores were glazed, and sharp icicles hung from the banks, which the sun had not yet power to dissolve. ”

“ As you advance inland from Georgetown, and begin to enter the cotton country, the scenery is completely changed. The huge live oaks, draperied with moss, the peculiar characteristic of the sickly lowlands, all disappear, and with them depart nearly all the evidences of wealth or taste or refinement. Instead of princely mansions surrounded by old parks and highly cultivated plantations, one sees nothing but low, piazza'd domicils, in fields bare of vegetation, and the appendage of miserable hovels scattered at short distances here and there for the field-hands. ”

“ Were we pursued by the gang?—or had my fears as well as my ears deceived me. 'Hush!' whispered Tertullian; 'do you hear voices? Here they come! Lie perfectly close; if the worst comes to the worst——' At the instant a clamor was heard behind us, as if a half a dozen men were calling to each other from different points; it came nearer, and ever and anon the oaths of the crew were borne with horrid distinctness to our ears. Floys Boyo's hoarse voice called his men to follow him to the shore. ”

“ Rhoneland moved restlessly in his chair, and then answered: 'No, no, Harry, you're jesting. Kate's eye is bright, and her cheek full and round; her step elastic and firm. I watch that, Harson. Oh! Harry, you don't dream how anxiously I watch her. Her life is mine; her heart's blood is my heart's blood. She's in no danger, no danger, Harry,' said he, taking Harson's hand between his, and looking appealingly in his face. 'Is she in any danger? ”

“ While I sit and suffer these thoughts, like the spontaneous images of a dream, to pass over my mind, the hymn has been read, and my reveries are broken by music from the choir, floating softly down. I am in no mood to criticise, and it is not difficult to imagine that the sounds do not proceed from mere human lips; but that beings who take a deeper interest in man's welfare than he himself takes, are clothing their words of exhortation or comfort in melody, and speaking at once to our heart and understanding. ”

“ I never met in my whole life with so many white persons who could neither read nor write, who had never taken a newspaper, who had never travelled fifty miles from home, or who had never been to the house of God, or heard a sentence read from his Holy Word, as I found in a single season in South Carolina. Like the inhabitants of Nineveh, many of them could not discern between the right hand and the left. What wonder then that the hosts of Yankee pedlers, until driven out by the sumptuary laws, fattened upon the land! ”

“ The air, too, has cast off its timidity, and rises high and shrill; while the alto and tenor, each clear and distinct, fill up the intermediate space, and all four blend together harmoniously, so that no jar or dissonance is perceptible. The tide of song sways up and down, like the breathless rocking of the wave. The whole house is crowded with sound. The voices gush out and swell with measured movement ”

“ However this may be, I am certain that the young damsel in the slip before me, whose face I have not seen, is mingling her voice in the harmony. I can almost hear it. But while I am watching to catch her tones, a universal shutting of books announces that the hymn is ended.
It may be fancy, too, but the preacher seems to me a thought less solemn than in the forenoon; perhaps a little warmer and more animated. Perhaps, too, the hearers are more restless and disposed to be critical. There is not that same hush of breathless listening. ”

“ The appearance of the house, upon a nearer aspect, was eminently cheerless, without tree or dried bush, or enclosure, or domestic animals, or any thing to remind one of life, or cheerfulness, or hope. The wind had blown the white sand to the very threshold of the door, while, scarcely visible in the declining day, the Devil looked down upon us with a malignant leer. ”