Bellevite

“ The approach to Belleville, both from the east and west, is down a very steep hill, the town lying principally in the valley below. These hills command a beautiful prospect of wood and water, and of a rich, well-cleared, and highly cultivated country. Their sides are adorned with fine trees, which have grown up since the axe first levelled the primeval forests in this part of the colony; a circumstance which, being unusual in Canada round new settlements, forms a most attractive feature in the landscape. ”

“ When Don Juan Belvidero reached the age of sixty he settled in Spain, and there in his old age he married a young and charming Andalusian wife. But of set purpose he was neither a good husband nor a good father. He had observed that we are never so tenderly loved as by women to whom we scarcely give a thought. Dona Elvira had been devoutly brought up by an old aunt in a castle a few leagues from San-Lucar in a remote part of Andalusia. ”

“ Twilight was beginning to spread its soft, dim wings over the picturesque banks of the Segre, when after a fatiguing day’s travel we reached Bellver, the end of our journey.
Bellver is a small town situated on the slope of a hill, beyond which may be seen, rising like the steps of a colossal granite amphitheatre, the lofty, enclouded crests of the Pyrenees.
The white villages that encircle the town, sprinkled here and there over an undulating plain of verdure, appear from a distance like a flock of doves which have lowered their flight to quench their thirst in the waters of the river. ”

“ I should think that Belleville has nearly four thousand inhabitants; and, as it is the outlet of a rich back country, and on the main road from Kingston to Toronto, it will increase most rapidly. The worst feature about Belleville in 1837 was that it was the focus of American saddle-bag preachers, teachers, and rebelliously disposed folks; but I am told that most of these uneasy loafers have left it, and that its character has improved wonderfully. What a nuisance are peddling, meddling, politicians of the lowest grade? Wherever they plant their feet, a moral pestilence follows. ”

“ Belverton, the third cleverest woman in Australia, as she lowered the window-blind of her brougham on the way home from the Bishop’s Court garden party, “I’ve been thinking.”
“And how does the result affect me?” asked her husband, who understood his wife’s ways. “Do we give the Olway-Belton couple silver entrée dishes and our best wishes, or apostle spoons and serviette rings?”
“Don’t be silly! I’ve been thinking that a man of your ability is utterly wasted in a little pettifogging colony like this.” ”

“ Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach, congested with thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men. This immense mass of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea Valley and across Chilkoot. It was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished only on the backs of men. Despite the fact that the Indian packers had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the major portion of the outfits on the wrong side of the divide. ”

“ By the time he reached Willcox, Belleville was his name. No tramp should be called what his mother had named him.
Such his life had been; dust, thirst, hunger, repulse—and onward to more. Existence shook her head at him with a changeless “No.” Latterly, in Tucson, a pretty woman had shown him kindness which she should not, since he was not her husband and she had one. She fell in love with the April bloom of his years and with his hard luck—and this was the single instance of human interest in him which had touched his life in fifteen months. ”

“ Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand,
"I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!"
Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.
Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square. ”

“ William Belverton as receiving the honour of knighthood.
One morning when Lady Belverton had perused her English mail she sat buried in deepest thought. At length she turned from the fire.
“William, sometimes I feel tempted to believe that it is possible for a woman to control fate.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” said her husband. “Am I to assist you in any way?”
“I think so; I am not quite sure. What are your opinions regarding the representative of this colony in London?”
“I think we are represented by a thoroughly capable and hard-working man.” ”

“ It'll be a good thing for the children too, when they begin to grow up. England's overcrowded. They'll have better prospects in Canada."
"What's the place like? Are there great forests and lakes and rivers and Red Indians?" asked Lesbia, calling to mind any stories she had read of the Dominion.
[57] "No, Belleville's not at all romantic. It's quite a new city, and it's on the plains, not near any forests or rivers, I believe." ”

“ The Votaress had no time to fly to Share-spoil and confer with her sisters. In time of real trouble people don’t hold conferences. But she flew straight to her brother, the thunder-voiced bird Belleroo.
Belleroo’s nest was in a little bog on the Mountain, close to the furrow which ran round the Holy Lake. As he was an ill-tempered bird, he too could not cross the furrow, but the evil Things of the Mountain had appointed his place here on the boundary, so that he might trouble the peace of the Lake with his booming. ”

“ Not yet wholly extinct in Vivenza, were its aboriginal people, a race of wild Nimrods and hunters, who year by year were driven further and further into remoteness, till as one of their sad warriors said, after continual removes along the log, his race was on the point of being remorselessly pushed off the end.
Now, Bello was a great geographer, and land surveyor, and gauger of the seas. Terraqueous Mardi, he was continually exploring in quest of strange empires. Much he loved to take the altitude of lofty mountains, the depth of deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles. ”

“ We did not know how she first came to the colony, and no one remembered not having seen her there.
On my return from quite a long journey, I inquired from one of the members of our colony about her. "I've not seen her for months. It is an age since she has been here. She must be dead."
Nothing more was said or thought of her. Artists are careless fellows, we must admit, and women make a sorry mistake to love them.
One morning about the beginning of May, 1855, I was walking through the grand Avenue of Neuilly. ”

“ All this is sweetly placed in a valley ever green, and waterd with a river, which having taken its rise from among the mountains, flows through the vales and meadows in a winding stream to the sea.
Baldivia, who built this town in the year 1544, to serve as a resting place between Chili and Peru, pleased with the beauty of the scituation, and the happiness of the climate, calld it la Serena; signifying tranquillity and mildness; which name it deserved 295 more than any place in the world. The whole country puts one in mind of the poets golden age: there the sharp north winds never blow ”

“ For Bellerivre, walled in between the river Eisen and the [12] snowy capped Pyrenees, was a fertile valley on which, in spite of the tragedy of national warfare, the sun seemed ever to shine. It was a mere dot of a place, with a vine-covered chapel, a low white convent tucked away among the hills, and a scattering of houses. In the centre of the town stood La Maison de Sainte Genevieve, the home of Monsieur le Curé, the much loved parish priest, who although bent and white-haired was the friend, counselor, and teacher of both young and old. ”

“ Get up, Belviso, let us take counsel together. What is your opinion?"
Belviso, thus adjured, rose to his feet and stood humbly before me. He was agitated—if by fear, then curiously; but it did not seem to be fear which put the slurred accents into his voice.
"Senta, Don Francesco," he began, "what Virginia has done was all for love. She has acted according to her nature—as many would act—as all would act towards you, who knew your worth. O Dio!" cried the lad suddenly, gripping his chest with both hands, "O Dio! ”

“ Farther on we passed a little roadside hamlet, and beyond it, crossing a swampy rivulet by a masonry bridge, entered low hills. Passing over these, we entered the Kangawár valley, and turning westward along a hill skirt blooming with flowers and whole fields of wild [433] hollyhock, and at 8.20 A.M. arrived at Kangawár post-house.
The valley is rich in crops, and covered with villages. Most of them are more or less depopulated, and the people have yet a month to wait before the growing corn will be ready for the sickle. Meanwhile, how many must perish! ”

“ Tears before, the whole Bellsmith tribe—colored valet, ladies'-maids, old aunts, and all, a company of never less than eight or ten souls—had been accustomed, once every year, to descend upon the Massapauk in a majestic caravan headed, patriarchally, by Arnold Bellsmith the senior and remain there for two or three weeks to escape the nervous ordeal of spring cleaning with its accompanying horrors of scaffoldings and plasterers. ”

“ Belviso was at one and the same time the most affectionate, the shrewdest, and the most candid boy that ever was conceived in sin and nurtured in vice. No shameful dealing had left a mark upon him, he was fine gold throughout. But so I have found it always in this dear country of my adoption, that it takes prosperity, never misery, to corrupt its native simplicity. The lower you descend in the scale of human attainment the greater the hopes you may conceive of what humanity may be permitted to attain. ”

“ But it had nearly become extinguished when, one evening in the third week of my stay, on entering the hotel in a very discouraged mood, the office-clerk handed me a letter post-marked Belleville, Illinois. It was the expected answer. For some time I did not dare to open it, lest its contents should prove disappointing. It turned out to be a letter from my great-uncle Theodor, couched in cautious language, and telling me, in response to the intimation of my intention to visit Belleville, that my relatives did not desire to see me until they clearly understood the reason why I came to America. ”

“ Your words convince me. Go in peace. Take money, take what you choose—my love, my gratitude—-"
"I choose nothing but your confidence, and a kiss of your noble hand," said Belviso.
"You shall grasp, not kiss, my hand," I told him. "You are a man, or will be one, as I am. Let us love, trust, meet, part, as men."
I held out my hand, he took it, pressed it, seemed unable to let it go. Suddenly he dropped down and kissed my knee—but with ardour, with reverence, indescribable devotion; then sprang to his feet, and was gone.
I made all preparations for my journey to Florence. ”

“ The weather here was bitterly cold, owing to the blasts of the north-west wind that swept the plain. At midday the ground was hard frozen, as were all the lesser irrigation streams. This village is crown property, and is the most prosperous-looking one we have seen since entering Afghanistan. It is surrounded by a wide extent of cultivated and freely irrigated land, but not a tree is to be seen anywhere about it. Its people are a mixture of various races and tribes, who hold their lands on condition of rendering one half the produce to government. ”

“ He stood still in the ringers’ loft where the pussy-furry caterpillary bell-robes hung, and from the belfry above he heard the noise of strong fighting, and mixed with it the sound of voices angry and desperate, but with a noble note that thrilled the soul of the hearer like the sound of the trumpet in battle. And the voices cried:
Down, down—away, away,
When good has come ill may not stay,
Out, out, into the night,
The belfry bells are ours by right! ”

“ And soon we ourselves shall have fallen in with the rank and file of our sires. At a blow, annihilate some distant tribe, now alive and jocund—and what would we reck? Curiosity apart, do we really care whether the people in Bellatrix are immortal or no? ”

“ When we are an old country, we will, no doubt, sigh for relics. In 1666, this was called 'Neworke or Pesayak towne;' and a little more than a hundred years ago this Gully was made the dividing line between the towns. There are many historic spots in Belleville, and an old copper mine that once made a great addition to her prosperity. But my quest ends here. I don't know as I have a hero exactly, Miss Hanny, yet my friend, Frank Forrester, has had a varied and eventful life. ”

“ How vividly can I recall the scene which this march so often presented! the waning sunlight of the cold winter evenings, a few bright streaks just tinging the horizon, my hackery slowly wending its way over the plain, and my scattered servants crawling behind it, in a cloud of dust; the mango groves—villages—mud huts, and all the accompaniments of a country life in Upper India!
I must not here omit to mention that, prior to my leaving Cawnpore, I received a letter from my friend and patron Captain Marpeet, with whom I occasionally corresponded ”