Beorminster

“ The Beorminster police declared that this network of lanes and alleys and malodorous cul-de-sacs was as dangerous a neighbourhood as any London slum, and they were particularly emphatic in denouncing the public-house known as The Derby Winner, and kept by a certain William Mosk, who was a sporting scoundrel and a horsey scamp. This ill-famed hostel was placed at the foot of the hill, in what had once been the main street, and being near the Eastgate, caught in its web most of the thirsty passers-by who entered the city proper, either for sight-seeing or business. ”

“ The bishop, his son and his scheming chaplain were actors in a comedy of life which—in the opinion of the last—might easily end up as a tragedy. No wonder their behaviour was constrained, no wonder they avoided one another. They were as men living over a powder magazine which the least spark would explode with thunderous noise and damaging effect.
Baltic was the deus ex machinâ to strike the spark for ignition, but he seemed in no hurry to do so. Punctual to his promise he returned to Beorminster, and heard Sir Harry's report about the pistol with grave attention. ”

“ Beorn said. "We have obtained the freedom of our lord and have gained his approbation and that of Duke William; though, indeed, it matters not greatly as to the duke."
"I don't know, Beorn; one cannot look into the future, and there is no saying what may happen. Anyhow, even now it may be of advantage to us. Honourably as the duke is treating Harold, the earl is still wholly in his power, and until we hear something of his intentions we are all just as much prisoners as we were to Conrad, although I admit the captivity is a very much more pleasant one." ”

“ At this speech the Signora flushed angrily, for she was indeed no longer young, and the Dwarf had a childish face. She thought he mocked her; her eyes flashed. Lord George’s twinkled rather maliciously.
“Great is the experience of youth,” he laughed. “Pray, are you stricken with more than twenty summers?”
“With more than I can count,” said the Dwarf. “To the health of your lordship!” and he drained his long glass of wine. Lord George replenished it, and asked by what means or miracle he had acquired his mastery of the bow. ”

“ With breathless haste she told her sad errand, and Brewster quickly explained her words to the Chief, Mooanam seized his arms, and rushed from the lodge, calling, in a loud and commanding voice, on his people to arm themselves and accompany him in the pursuit of the cruel and vindictive Nausetts. All was hurry and excitement throughout the village, and every swarthy warrior pressed forward, and desired to share in the expedition to save their young English favorite. ”

“ Guy Firminger laughed, but he looked worried, and he evidently was puzzled. "You must act as if you had jilted me."
"You're not the sort of person, unfortunately, that people jilt."
Lord Beaupré appeared to accept this statement as incontestable; not with elation, however, but with candid regret, the slightly embarrassed recognition of a fundamental obstacle. "Well, it's no one's business, at any rate, is it?"
"No one's, and that's what I shall say if people question me. Besides," Mary added, "they'll see for themselves." ”

“ It is true that several representations of warriors wearing boar-helmets have been found in Scandinavia. But the only certainly Anglo-Saxon {351}helmet yet found in England has a boar-crest [737] ; and this is, I believe, the only actual boar-helmet yet found. How then can the boar-helmets of Beowulf show Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon origin?
"The prevalence of ring-corslets." It is true that only one trace of a byrnie, and that apparently not of ring-mail, has so far been found in an Anglo-Saxon grave. ”

“ Beorn's appearance here will excite no surprise. He will say that having nought in particular to occupy him he had ridden north to be at the wedding, and finding that he was too late, would at any rate ride back with the king. With him and me and Osgod ever on the watch, methinks there will be little fear of a surprise; and it is by surprise only that they can succeed, for Harold himself is a match for any four or five ordinary men if he has but time to draw his sword. ”

“ Beorn said, "but would it not be prudent to send off at once to Gurth, to let him know that though we are masters of the castle at present, we may in a few hours be surrounded by a swarm of angry Welshmen?"
"That certainly is most desirable," Wulf agreed. "The question is, who are we to send? It would be a terribly dangerous enterprise. Even now there are a score of men from the village watching our movements from the wood above. At any rate we must wait until nightfall." ”

“ Turning round, he perceived on the sill a creature like to himself, but very different--a creature who, despite the pretensions of a red waistcoat in the worst possible taste, belonged evidently to the ranks of the outcast and the disinherited. In previous winters the sill had been strewn every morning with bread-crumbs. This winter, no bread-crumbs had been vouchsafed; and the canary, though he did not exactly understand why this was so, was glad that so it was. He had felt that his poor relations took advantage of the Berridges' kindness. ”

“ In all versions he resists his adversary in an empty house or castle, after his comrades have failed. In most versions of the folk-tale this is the third attack, as it is in the case of Grettir at Sandhaugar and of Bjarki: in Beowulf, on the contrary, we gather that Heorot has been raided many times. The adversary, though vanquished, escapes; in one version after the loss of an arm (Scheldt) : they follow his track to the hole into which he has vanished, sometimes, as in Beowulf, marking traces of his blood (Iceland, Faroe, Schleswig) . ”

“ But having built what he conceives to be an adequate number of bouerin-hauses, he plants in each of these a bouerman, and pays him for tilling the ground. These bouerin-hauses, again, are all clustered together into villages, so that the bouerman is never without an abundant society adapted to his tastes; and very happily, albeit very rudely, his days and nights appear to be spent.
The land in Bohemia does not, however, belong exclusively to any one order in the community. Many bouermen are owners of their farms, some of them to the extent of one hundred acres and more ”

“ BOURMONT—COMPANY A
Bourmont, France, Nov. 24, 1917.
My village has red roofs. When I first came to France and saw that the villages were two kinds; those with red roofs and those with grey, I prayed le bon Dieu that mine should be a red-roofed one. Heaven was kind. Every little house in town is covered with rose-colored tiles. We came here yesterday from Paris. Our orders, which were delivered to us in great secrecy, read: Report to Mr. T——, Divisional Secretary, Bourmont, Haute Marne; then followed a schedule of trains. ”

“ For Bourmont Hill is sheeted with ice, and it is fairly as much as one’s life is worth to attempt to go up or down. Every morning I stand and look at that dizzying slide aghast, and wonder if I may possibly reach the foot alive; then assistance comes, sometimes in the shape of a French lad in sabots, sometimes as a stalwart doughboy with a sharp-pointed staff, and together the two of us go slipping, slithering down the hill-side. ”

“ Here are eight versions of one folk-tale taken as representatives from a much larger number current in the countries in touch with the North Sea: from Iceland, the Faroes, Norway, Jutland, Zealand, Schleswig, Hanover, and the Scheldt. The champion is a bear-hero (as Beowulf almost certainly is, and as Bjarki quite certainly is) ; he is called, in Iceland, Bjarndreingur, in Jutland, Bjørnøre, in Hanover, Peter Bär, on the Scheldt Jean l'Ourson. Like Beowulf, he is despised in his youth (Faroe, Scheldt) . ”

“ I was able to return the service several times, but had the Welsh been imps they could not have been more active or more fierce. There must be a hundred lying slain along here or in the courtyard. I do not wonder that Oswald's men were all killed by them, though after our previous fights I held them in but small respect."
"It is a different thing, Osgod," Beorn said. "In the field we have always had the advantage from our order and our discipline; but here it was man against man. We had the advantage of position and they of numbers ”

“ Behringen used to torment the young men of a large school by obliging them to go out with him collecting petrifactions; and the young rogues, in revenge, spent a whole winter in counterfeiting specimens, which they buried in a hill which the good man meant to explore, and imposed them upon him for most wonderful lusus naturæ. ”

“ Thence, however, he was driven in 789 when Beorhtric obtained in marriage the hand of Offa’s daughter, Eadburh. Ethelred of Northumbria having soon after married another daughter of the same house, there was evidently no safe resting-place in England for the fugitive prince, who betook himself to the court of Charles the Great and there abode for thirteen years till the death of his rival. In 802, Beorhtric died, and Egbert, returning to England, seems to have been without opposition raised to the West Saxon throne. ”

“ It was all but finished and read, “S. Behrman, Real Estate, Mortgages, Main Street, Bonneville, Opposite the Post Office.” On the horse-trough that stood in the shadow of the tank was another freshly painted inscription: “S. Behrman Has Something To Say To You.”
As Presley straightened up after drinking from the faucet at one end of the horse-trough, the watering-cart itself laboured into view around the turn of the Lower Road. Two mules and two horses, white with dust, strained leisurely in the traces, moving at a snail's pace, their limp ears marking the time ”

“ BETTY [hands Beermann a calling card] . The gentleman says it is very urgent.
BEERMANN [reads] . "Assessor Stroebel." [Frightened; to Betty.] Tell him I am out of town. [Betty about to leave.] No, tell him I am sick—or, Betty, show the gentleman up. [Betty goes out.]
WASNER. At what time shall the Executive Committee meet?
BEERMANN [excited] . Oh, leave me alone with your Executive Committee.
WASNER. You must not desert us in our hour of peril. A leader's fate is bound up with his followers according to German tradition.
BEERMANN [as before] . It is all your fault anyway. ”

“ Whether she were able to walk five or ten miles a day; for that then we would beg our way to Hamburg, to my departed wife her stepbrother, Martin Behring, who is a great merchant in that city.
This at first sounded strange to her, seeing that she had very seldom been out of our parish, and that her departed mother and her little brother lay in our churchyard. She asked, "Who was to make up their graves and plant flowers on them? ”

“ And her constantly reiterated catch-phrase—"Well, this is rather queer!"—was the most distressing thing of all.
The Duke blushed to think what these men thought of her. Would love were blind! These her lovers were doubtless judging her. They forgave her—confound their impudence!--because of her beauty. The banality of her performance was an added grace. It made her piteous. Damn them, they were sorry for her. Little Noaks was squatting in the front row, peering up at her through his spectacles. Noaks was as sorry for her as the rest of them. Why didn't the earth yawn and swallow them all up? ”

“ The picture which the heathen English have drawn of themselves in Beowulf is one of savage pirates, clad in shirts of ring-armour, and greedy of gold and ale. Fighting and drinking are their two delights. The noblest leader is he who builds a great hall, throws it open for his people to carouse in, and liberally deals out beer, and bracelets, and money at the feast. The joy of battle is keen in their breasts. The sea and the storm are welcome to them. They are fearless and greedy pirates, not ashamed of living by the strong hand alone. ”

“ Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loth to regard his doom as trivial.
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic. ”

“ "There is only one place you can go," von Schoenvorts sent word to me, "and that is Kiel. You can't land anywhere else in these waters. If you wish, I will take you there, and I can promise that you will be treated well."
"There is another place we can go," I sent back my reply, "and we will before we'll go to Germany. That place is hell." ”

“ He held, too, in his enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right to exist. But he did often find himself wishing Mr. Rhodes had not enabled them to exercise that right in Oxford. ”

“ It, one suspects, must have had much to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxford spirit—that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear to them who as youths were brought into ken of it, so exasperating to them who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this mild, miasmal air, not less than the grey beauty and gravity of the buildings, that has helped Oxford to produce, and foster eternally, her peculiar race of artist-scholars, scholar-artists. ”

“ "Then he was wrong to have been born at all. Cheek-eek-eek-eek, oo, hoo!" chuckled Rinkitink, his fat body shaking with merriment. "But it's hard to prevent oneself from being born; there's no chance for protest, eh, Bilbil?" ”