Bea

“ On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and wished that the telephone would ring, Bea announced Miss Vida Sherwin.
Despite Vida Sherwin's lively blue eyes, if you had looked at her in detail you would have found her face slightly lined, and not so much sallow as with the bloom rubbed off; you would have found her chest flat, and her fingers rough from needle and chalk and penholder; her blouses and plain cloth skirts undistinguished; and her hat worn too far back, betraying a dry forehead. But you never did look at Vida Sherwin in detail. You couldn't. ”

“ His eloquence soon brought fame and competence; but urged by some hidden impulse, he threw up the prospects open to him; once more left the city, and once more took his way across the Alps and settled at Avranches in Normandy, where many schools were established. He soon found disciples; but the secret yearning of his heart developed itself—the monastery of Bea was not far distant, and to it he bent his steps, hoping to find that peace which the cloister alone could afford. ”

“ Oh, the mill foreman keeps dropping in, and that Danish shoemaker, and one fellow from Elder's factory, and a few Svenskas, but you know Bea: big good-hearted wench like her wants a lot of folks around—likes to fuss over 'em—never satisfied unless she tiring herself out making coffee for somebody.
“Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us with his misinformation on evolution. ”

“ Grigsby heaved her usual sigh over Flea's shortcomings. Good woman and good mother though she was, she would not have been sorry to see Bea in high favor with her rich aunt, even at the expense of her less attractive [Pg 676] sister. Bea would do her mother's training credit anywhere. "Poor Flea," as her mother often lamented, "was nobody's pretty child, and too odd for anything." ”

“ She listened to the village noises common to all the world, jungle or prairie; sounds simple and charged with magic—dogs barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content, children at play, a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of Bea and a grocer's boy in the kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano—not too near.
Twice a week, at least, she drove into the country with Kennicott, to hunt ducks in lakes enameled with sunset, or to call on patients who looked up to her as the squire's lady and thanked her for toys and magazines. ”

“ King Loc turned again to the two betrothed, and showing them the bowls, the flagons, all the splendid plate:
"These," he said, "are the presents of the dwarfs. Take them, Bee, they will recall your little friends; they are given by them and not by me. You will know in a moment what I mean to give you."
There was a long silence. King Loc gazed with a lovely look of tenderness at Bee, whose beautiful radiant head, crowned with roses, rested on the shoulder of her betrothed.
Then he spoke again in these terms:
"Children, it is not enough to love much; you must love well. ”

“ So they made pies, but as Bee did not make hers very well, George hit her on the fingers with his spade. Bee uttered the most piercing shrieks, and the squire, Freeheart, who was walking in the gardens, said to his young Lord:
"It is not a deed worthy of a Count of the White Moor to beat young ladies, your Highness." ”

“ It fell down her shoulders like the splendid mantle of youth and beauty. The good folk looked at her and each said to the other, "What a pretty young lady!"
The master tailor, old John, lifted his grandson Peter in his arms to show him Bee, and Peter asked whether she was alive, or whether she was not really a piece of waxwork. ”

“ If you are a girl wouldn't you like to have a hair-ribbon like Bee's? George and Bee were taught a beautiful lesson that morning, and learnt it, too. I wish we could all describe beautiful scenery as beautifully as the Duchess could--and, by-the-way, look carefully at the iris flower when you meet with one again. Sylphs? Have you another name for them? What a sounding title the old beggar-woman gave herself, and what a well furnished kitchen she had! Have you a pipkin and a caldron at home? What are the duties of Dwarfs? ”

“ Hearing these words of the beautiful maiden, King Loc answered:
"I love you, Bee of the Clarides, princess of the dwarfs; and this is why I have kept you in this our world, so as to teach you our secrets which are more great and wonderful than anything you can learn on earth among men, for men are less clever and less learned than dwarfs." ”

“ Meanwhile days and months passed, years made their round, and still Bee stayed among the dwarfs, incessantly amused and always full of regret for the earth. She was growing into a beautiful young woman. ”

“ He was too much exhausted to take the trouble of cutting any fern or seeking for moss, but just threw himself down under a tree, when exactly above his head he heard a great buzzing as a bumble-bee alighted on a honeysuckle branch. ‘What are you doing here?’ asked the bee in a cross voice; ‘at your age you ought to be safe at home.’
‘I am running away from the mermaid,’ replied the boy; but the bee, like the lion and the bear, was one of those people who never listen to the answers to their questions, and only said: ‘I am hungry. ”

“ If not, get it from the library and read about what one of our poets calls "the lubber-fiend." Dwarf madness seems to be an amiable thing. "A shell of mother-of-pearl irisated." Remember that Iris was the Greek goddess of the rainbow. George was no more happy among the beauties of the sea-world than was Bee among the treasures of the caves, and he learnt the same lesson as she did. You will find it in the sentence which begins: "The years went by." Compare King Loc with the Princess of the Sylphs. Achilles was the Greek hero who fought against Troy and killed their champion, Hector. ”

“ But we are forgetting the hive wherein the swarming bees have begun to lose patience, the hive whose black and vibrating waves are bubbling and overflowing, like a brazen cup beneath an ardent sun. It is noon; and the heat so great that the assembled trees would seem almost to hold back their leaves, as a man holds his breath before something very tender but very grave. The bees give their honey and sweet-smelling wax to the man who attends them; but more precious gift still is their summoning him to the gladness of June, to the joy of the beautiful months ”

“ I must hurry."
"Oh, Bee! why?" came from the group in a chorus. "We've been waiting for you ever so long so that you could go with us to Edna's. Do come! It won't be any fun unless you do."
"I can't," replied Bee. "I'd like to ever so much, but I must finish my letter to father. It has to be written today so that it can reach New York in time for Saturday's steamer."
"Will you come tomorrow then?" asked Edna. "You and Adele too."
"Yes, if Aunt Annie doesn't mind. Now I must go. Good-bye, girls."
"Bee," called one as Beatrice started on at a brisk walk. ”

“ We have a new neighbor in the white house, and the boy brought me home in his pony cart." Bee sank into a chair and began to fan herself, watching him as he carefully removed the butterfly from the bag, and placed it in the poison jar. "Isn't it a beauty?"
"Yes;" replied Doctor Raymond, beginning the perusal of his letter. He looked up suddenly. "Beatrice, I shall be obliged to leave you for a few days. They wish to see me at the university. Would you rather go to your Aunt Annie's than to stay here?"
"I would rather stay here, father," she answered promptly. "There is so much to do." ”

“ Aristotle willeth the Hiues of Bées in the winter time to be placed in a warme place, and in the hotte season of Sommer, in a colde place. Palladius Rutilius in his firste Booke of husbandrie teacheth that the fittest place for bées, is that, whiche is in a Garden, not farre or rather neare to the owners house, which by that meanes suffereth not the windes, nor the accesse of théeues or beastes. ”

“ Each Bee has her home, a house which no one but the owner has the right to enter. A good beating would soon call to order any adventuress Bee who dared to make her way into another’s dwelling. Let each keep to her own place and perfect peace will reign in this new-formed society. ”

“ Nevertheless, how many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining! A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we are about ours: beavers are building and mending dams and huts for winter, and storing them with food; ”

“ When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,
We shall live well--we shall live very well. ”

“ Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted. ”

“ The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees. ”

“ So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing. ”

“ One, and she was the more juvenile in her appearance, though both were young, permitted glimpses of her dazzling complexion, fair golden hair, and bright blue eyes, to be caught, as she artlessly suffered the morning air to blow aside the green veil which descended low from her beaver. ”

“ Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak holds more than his belican.
He takes in his beak
Food enough for a week.
But I'll be darned if I know how the helican. ”

“ He nodded to her, and she came and sat by him, and they had more drink, and then he went upstairs into a room with her, and the wild beast rose up within him and screamed, as it has screamed in the Jungle from the dawn of time. ”

“ Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty. ”

“ He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom! ”

“ July 24th, 1833.—The Beagle sailed from Maldonado, and on August the 3rd she arrived off the mouth of the Rio Negro. ”

“ JULIA.
A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary
To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps;
Much less shall she that hath Love’s wings to fly,
And when the flight is made to one so dear,
Of such divine perfection, as Sir Proteus.
LUCETTA.
Better forbear till Proteus make return.
JULIA.
O, know’st thou not his looks are my soul’s food?
Pity the dearth that I have pined in
By longing for that food so long a time.
Didst thou but know the inly touch of love
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words. ”

“ As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck—as strong a wing as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars. ”

“ And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted do allow,
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young. ”

“ There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, "It is just as I feared!— Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!" ”

“ Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, indeed, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes. ”

“ Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, away, and still away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and great works and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam of shadow an inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. ”

“ This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage,
This dying virtue, this surviving shame,
Whose crime will bear an ever-during blame?
“O, what excuse can my invention make
When thou shalt charge me with so black a deed?
Will not my tongue be mute, my frail joints shake,
Mine eyes forgo their light, my false heart bleed?
The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed;
And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,
But coward-like with trembling terror die. ”