Bangs

“ The appearance of Colonel Bangs is not only imposing, but sometimes it inclines to be almost ferocious. The form in which he wears his whiskers, added to the military nature of his title, would be likely to give to timid strangers an idea not only that the colonel has a raging and insatiable thirst for blood and an almost irresistible appetite for the horrors of war, but that upon very slight provocation he would suddenly grasp his sword, fling away the scabbard, and then proceed to wade through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy on mankind. ”

“ It is very lonely and cold up there, and while the old saw is undoubtedly correct, and there is plenty of room at the top, let it be recorded by one who has more than once been summarily hauled thither as involuntarily as undeservedly, that it is elbow room only, with mighty little solid earth on which to rest one's feet. ”

“ I was granitized, and so I remained, until by a more luminous flicker from the burning wood I perceived that the being wore a flaring red necktie.
"He is human," I thought; and with the thought the tension on my nervous system relaxed, and I was able to feel a sufficiently well-developed sense of indignation to demand an explanation. "This is a mighty cool proceeding on your part," I said, leaving the sideboard and walking into the sanctum. ”

“ Instead of the huge ugly retorts rising up out of the ground, surrounded by a quality of air that one could not breathe with comfort, was as beautiful a garden as anyone could wish to wander through, and at its centre there stood a retort, but not one that looked like a great iron skull cap painted red. ”

“ How goes the world with you?"
"Very well indeed, sir," I replied, rather embarrassed by the old fellow's cordiality. "But I really can't sit down, because, you know, I—I don't want to keep his Majesty waiting, and if you'll excuse me, I'll—"
"Oh, nonsense!" he retorted. "Let the old man wait. Sit down and talk to me. I don't get a chance to talk with mortals very often. This is your first visit to Olympus?"
"Yes, sir," I said, still standing. "And it is wholly unexpected. I stumbled upon the place by the merest chance last night—but you [Pg 178] must let me go, sir. ”

“ It is extraordinary that until my visit to the planet as the guest of Jupiter, this perfectly simple solution of the [Pg 199] various Martian problems was not even guessed.
As we drew up at the pretty little club-house, Jupiter emerged from the door and greeted me cordially. My eyes fell before his smiling gaze, for I must confess I was mighty shamefaced over my experience of the morning, but his manner restored my self-possession. It was very genial and forgiving.
"Glad to see you again," he said. "If you play golf as well as you do synonyms you're a scratch man. ”

“ If mortals were able to do that—well, they'd become immortals, a good many of them."
I realized the justice of this precaution, and we passed on in silence.
"Now," said the Major Domo, after we had traversed the length of the library, "we are almost there. That gorgeous door directly ahead of you is the entrance to Jupiter's [Pg 171] reception-room. Before we enter, however, we must step into the office of Midas, on the left."
"Midas?" I said. "And what, pray, is his function? Is he the registrar?" ”

“ Jupiter had indicated in the afternoon that he would like to learn bridge, and, inasmuch as I never travel anywhere without a text-book upon that fascinating subject, I had volunteered to teach him. The dinner was given largely to enable me to do this, and, moreover, Jupiter was quite anxious to have me meet his family, and promised me that before the evening was over I should hear some music from the lyre of Apollo, meet all the muses, and enjoy a chafing-dish [Pg 217] snack prepared by the fair hand of Juno herself. ”

“ That woman—looking for all the world like a creature from some other part of the universe than this earth, her eyes burning like two huge coals, her checks as yellow and clear as so much wax, and her lips blue-white, with a great flaming red tongue sort of laid between them—worked like a slave cleaning the floor, polishing the range, and scrubbing the table. ”

“ Perhaps at no point is it more lovely than at Wellfleet, where the bluffs curve gently to a promontory and the surf, touched by a stray shaft of sunlight, breaks into crystal and jade. In and out, they trend away again to the north; and the sea at our feet, forward flow and backward clutch, even on a cold day of spring sounds the whole gamut of blue, light, dark, bewilderingly mingled, out to the intense purple of our farthest reach of vision—literally, the Purple Sea. ”

“ A scarf of gray tops the sand bluffs of the opposite shore, and when the land looms, miragelike, scattered villages appear; or on certain clear evenings we may catch the twinkle of friendly lights. And in summer days when the languid creeks threading the marshlands add a brighter blue to the picture that throbs in the sun—water and sky and the dazzling collar of sand that yokes land and sea—the bay, seeming all but landlocked in its honey-colored bluffs, deceives us with a look of inland waters and lies as softly there as Long Pond among the hills. ”

“ But more beautiful are the gray days in winter when earth meets heaven with the justly modulated values of a Japanese print, and the hills, clothed in the soft fur of leafless woods, crouch under a pale sky; when in swamps the lances of dead reeds clash, and by a stagnant pool stands a cluster of brown cat-tails like candles that have lighted some past banquet of the year. ”

“ Here even the words froze on the water ghost's lips and the clock struck one. There was a momentary tremor throughout the ice-bound form, and the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the rigid figure of a beautiful woman sculptured in clear, transparent ice. There stood the ghost of Harrowby Hall, conquered by the cold, a prisoner for all time.
The heir of Harrowby had won at last, and to-day in a large storage house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe and sea-water. ”

“ We can picture such a mass, in imagination, tumbling end over end in its orbit so as to present at one moment the broad sides of both bells, together with their connecting neck, toward the sun, and, at the same time, toward the observer on the earth, and, at another moment, only the end of one of the bells, the other bell and the neck being concealed in shadow. ”

“ Stopping for a moment to look down upon the glorious Hudson, stretching its shimmering length like a bimetallic serpent to the north and south, he suddenly became conscious of a pair of very sharp eyes resting upon him, which a closer inspection showed belonged to a laborer of seemingly diminutive stature, who was engaged in carrying earth in a wheelbarrow from one dirt-pile to another. ”

“ And in summer and winter, from north, south, east, or west, the wind brings us news from the sea: the savor of salt, gray billows of cloud and fog, clear stark bright days following one another through a season. The southwest gales of summer beat down ripe grasses in the field and feather willow and poplar with silver; the great autumn gales go trumpeting through the land; the nor’easter sends surf thundering on the outer shore; and there are the soft moist winds that relax the high-wrought tension of humans, and melt the rigors of winter. ”

“ On the couch in a moment appeared, rigid as in death, the body of Barncastle; the eyes lustreless and staring, the hands characterless and bluish even in the green light, the cheeks sunken and the massive forehead white and cold as marble. The sight chilled Toppleton to the marrow, and he averted his eyes from the horrible spectacle only to see one even more dreadful, for on the other side of the apartment, grinning fiendishly, the source of the wonderful light that flooded the room, he now perceived the fiend, making ready to [215] assume once more the habiliments of mortality. ”

“ I was visited, even as you have been visited, by an invisible being, only my visitor did not remain invisible, for as I sprang to my feet, my whole being palpitant with terror, the lamp on my table sputtered and went out; and then I saw, sitting luminous in the dark, gazing at me with large, gaping, unfathomably deep green eyes, a creature having the semblance of a man, but of a man no longer of this earth. ”

“ The chauffeur grasped the lever, and, turning it swiftly to one side, there in the blue vault of heaven, a thousand miles from anywhere, that machine began executing the most remarkable flip-flaps the mind of man ever conceived. ”

“ I like them just that way,
And truly, maiden half so sweet
You’d not find every day.
And yet, alas! she’s not my choice,
This creature of my rhyme—
Because her soft and rich-toned voice
Is going all the time. ”

“ Was the germ of greatness discoverable in them in their youth? Would the most reckless of prophets have dared assert that the heavy tanner's boy would become the immortal hero of the Wilderness, the saviour of the Republic, the uncrowned ruler of fifty millions of people even with a thousand years of life to live? ”

“ But the sight that greeted my eyes as I passed along that exterior road of Olympus, under the genial auspices of those wonderful gods, appealed to something in my soul which had never before been awakened, and which I shall never be able adequately to describe. The mere act of seeing seemed to be uplifting, and, from the moment I looked downward upon the beloved earth, I ceased to wonder that gods were godlike—indeed, my real wonder was that they were not more so. It seemed difficult to believe that there was anything earthly about earth. ”

“ It's like shaking a sword at nothing and patting yourself on the back afterwards for your courage; still more in this instance is it like batting your poor mortal head against the hard surface of an everlasting rock, and our clergy should be in better business. ”

“ If the magnet be removed the iron falls. The moon, however, cannot be removed from the sea, nor the earth from a heavy falling body, and we can, therefore, make no experiment upon them; but the case is the same.
Let the fourteenth motion be that configuration or position, by which bodies appear to desire a peculiar situation, collocation, and configuration with others, rather than union or separation. ”

“ I sprang from my seat, a sudden inspiration flashing upon me, jumped back of the revolving fan, and turning the full force of the wind it created upon my vindictive visitant, blew him fairly and squarely into the bulging sail.
"There, blast your cockney eyes!" I cried; "take that."
He tried to retort, but without avail. The wind that emanated from the fan fairly rammed his words back into his throat every time he opened his mouth to speak, and there he lay, flat against the canvas, fluttering like a leaf, powerless to escape.
"Hot air doesn't affect you much, you transparent jackass!" ”

“ Whitechoker.
"Now wait, please," said the Idiot. "If science can annihilate degrees of distance, who shall say that before many days science may not annihilate degrees of time? If San Francisco, thousands of miles distant, can be brought within range of the ear, why cannot 1990 be brought before the mind's eye? And if 1990 can be brought before the mind's eye, what is to prevent the invention of a prophetograph which shall enable us to cast a horoscope which shall reach all around eternity and half-way back, if not further?" ”

“ V. The Angle of Reflexion or refraction, is the Angle which the line described by the reflected or refracted Ray containeth with the Perpendicular to the reflecting or refracting Surface at the Point of Incidence.
Defin. VI. The Sines of Incidence, Reflexion, and Refraction, are the Sines of the Angles of Incidence, Reflexion, and Refraction.
Defin. VII. The Light whose Rays are all alike Refrangible, I call Simple, Homogeneal and Similar; and that whose Rays are some more Refrangible than others, I call Compound, Heterogeneal and Dissimilar. ”

“ It angers me to see so much light going to waste in the heavens from the flash of the lightning, when it might be stored up for use instead of these intolerable axle-grease dips that we are forced to use to light us on our way to bed. ”

“ To me the dreadful spirit within my body was apparent from introduction to peroration. The deadly greenness of the fiend shone out through every vein in my body. My eyes, once a beautiful blue, became like the eyes of an adder, and my cheeks took on a pallor that was horrible to look upon, and yet which so fascinated all beholders that they could not take their eyes away from it. The jurors sat petrified, terror depicted on every line of their faces ”

“ If I can get him not only to sit up but to lean forward with his head cocked to one side, much as a horse will cock its ears when something unexpected comes within the range of its vision, I feel that I have scored a triumph. ”

“ May the only shadows that you see before you
Be those caused by the sun of fortune shining
Upon your back, and your only tears those of
Joy and laughter.
May every hour of Christmas Day
Strew life’s best gifts along your way. ”

“ I have lived too long as Barncastle, and every day beyond the day on which I should have left this body has lessened my greatness, my power, until I am become as weak as though I had never put on immortality. It is my craving to be among men, that has been my weakening, if not my ruin. The love of contact with mankind is as strong with me as is the love of drink with others. I cannot give it up."
"And the poor soul whose place you took?" said Toppleton. ”