Boodles

“ Through every coil, while Walt each night has kept
The tryst alone. Hark! with what windy might
The boughs chant o'er her grave their burial-rite!
And the moon hangs low in the elm.
THE BOBOLINK
How sweetly sang the bobolink,
When thou, my love, wast nigh!
His liquid music from the brink
Of some cloud-fountain seemed to sink,
Far in the blue-domed sky.
How sadly sings the bobolink!
No more my love is nigh:
Yet rise, my spirit, rise, and drink
Once more from that cloud-fountain's brink,—
Once more before I die!
SAILOR'S SONG, RETURNING
The sea goes up; the sky comes down. ”

“ His ears tingled, and his eyes swam, as he listened to the opening sentence of the president's address—"Gentlemen, this is leap year; therefore, it is a year and a day since our last annual meeting."
[55] Every nerve in Boyle's body twanged in agony at the ominous, the well-remembered words. His first impulse was to rise and fly; but then—the sneers! the sneers!
How many in this world, as well as poor Boyle, have dreaded a sneer, and dared the wrath of an almighty and eternal God, rather than encounter the sarcastic curl of a fellow-creature's lip! ”

“ The force of the wind had blown every thought from his head, and now he closed his eyes and his lips as the sand dervishes had bade him and he let himself be guided by their gentle hands. How many hours passed like this he never knew. All around him spun the tireless dancers, torn this way and that by the wind’s screaming fury, and when they came near they whispered words of hope and courage to him.
“When you find the pathway between the winds, you will be saved,” one sand dervish murmured in his ear, and another one whispered:—
“Believe in us. We will show you the way.” ”

“ The hoodoo threw a chip at a great toad that was napping in an old shoe beside the hearth, and, shaking the ashes from her pipe, she refilled it from her pocket. “Hain’t nuffin ter ole Ysbel, gal—her day done ober; she don’ claim no man, dead ner libin’! But I done tole yo’ ’bout dat yaller gal, hain’t I? Yo’ done seed her wid you’ own eyes, hain’t yo’? An’ I done tole yo’ how ter git shet uv her. Hain’t [Pg 17] my keerin’, but if yo’ don’ wanter know no mo’ ’bout her, yo’ des tote dem moon year-bobs back home wid yo’!” ”

“ Francis Boyle spoke on a passionate exclamation.
"'Tis your presence distresses this lady, Lord Lyndwood. With the knowledge you have 'twas an insult that you sought to speak to her to-night, and that you stay is, my lord, insolence!"
The Earl turned at this slightly, with an air of utterly dismissing and despising the speaker. His eyes were wildly bright and daring in a face composed and colourless. He spoke directly to Miss Boyle, with no attempt to disguise the meaning in his voice.
"Will you speak for yourself, madam? Does not the gentleman pretend to overmuch? ”

“ Our common ‘Bowlers’ represent such olden personages as ‘Robert le Bollere’ or ‘Adam le Boloure,’ they who made the cheap wooden ‘bowl’ or ‘boll.’ The old spelling still survives botanically in such a phrase as we find in the Authorized Version, where it speaks of the ‘flax being bolled,’ that is, the seed vessel was forming. ”

“ Boodle colored, and corrected himself, saying he would have them let out. He had two turns of this strange behavior, in one year, during which, he was rather neglectful of his business, pompous in his family, and talked to his wife, who [Pg 173] was a plain, notable woman, of nothing but first principles, and political economy. In the intervals between these attacks, he was perfectly himself again, and it was Abner and Bill, as in former days.
I have often smiled, at my own dullness, in not sooner apprehending the solution of this little enigma. Boodle was a member of the Legislature ”

“ There stands before me as I write Sir John Millais’ great picture of ‘Bubbles.’ Both the picture and the experience that it portrays are wonderfully familiar. The curly head; the upturned face; the entire absorption of the little bubble-blower in the shining balls that he is hurling into space; the half-formed hope that this one, at least, may not sputter out and become an unbeautiful splash of soapsuds on the floor; the wistful half-expectancy that now, at last, he has created a lovely globe that shall float on and on, like a little fairy-world, for ever and for evermore. ”

“ I tried to think of larks and primroses, but my thoughts were dragged back to thick, half-drawn red curtains, black woolen shawls and silver photograph frames. Then I had an idea. "I will buy a balloon," I thought. My spirits rose and my heart leapt. Should I buy a green one like a bad emerald, or a red one like wine and water, or a thick bright yellow one? ”

“ The Bodleian at this moment harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes, some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'? ”

“ She crossed the grade and climbed the steep bluff beyond, searching for a comfortable place to work.
A little higher, she took possession of a great, gray bowlder jutting like a giant table from the gravelly soil. She walked out upon it and looked down—a sheer drop of ten or twelve feet to the barren, yellow slope below.
“I suppose it is perfectly solid,” she soliloquized and stamped one stout, little boot, to see if the rock would tremble. If human emotions are possible to a heart of stone, the rock must have been greatly amused at the test. ”

“ I saw her pulpit in the open air close to the river, with the broad reaches of the Channel and ships sailing in behind it. When she preaches there it must be a very striking scene. Numbers of people crowded round to ask—'Isna Lady Boyle a cooming down?'—and all the little children, 'Is Lady Boyle a cooming? Tell us, Mister, where's Lady Boyle?'
"When we returned to the other village, St. George's, Miss Boyle and her maid were sitting on a well in an old farmhouse garden, singing beautiful revival hymns to a troop of mothers and little children, who listened with delight. ”

“ The careless waters are hurried down a long and sharp descent, over the rough, denuded, bowlder-studded bed-rock of the stream. Breaking and bounding, surging and resurging, flashing and foaming, rushing fiercely upon some huge bowlder, recoiling an instant, then madly leaping entirely over it, rushing on to others huger still, then breaking wildly around them, the troubled waters hurry on until, culminating in their sublimest aspect, they plunge sheer downward in the grandest of cataracts. ”

“ The butler answered. ‘Why did you not attend to my bell?’ said the old gentleman. ‘Because no bell rang,’ answered the butler. ‘Oh, but I have rung very often,’ said the old gentleman; ‘go downstairs again, and I will pull the bell again; watch if it rings.’ So the butler went downstairs, and the old man pulled the bell, but no bell rang. ‘Then,’ said the old gentleman, ‘you must send for the bell-hanger at once; one cannot live with broken bells; that sort of thing cannot he allowed to go on in the house,’—and he dressed and went down to breakfast. ”

“ He lay down outside in the wheat, every muscle twitching. For him, he felt, life had ended, the world had come to a full stop.
Even the manœuvring of a small German plane around the big French observation balloon failed to draw his attention from himself. The little plane would draw away like some game-cock, and then dash for the balloon, spurting [212] a stream of incendiary bullets as it flew, then draw away again and repeat the operation. At last the basket of the balloon was located and the observer was struck by a piece of hot lead. ”

“ But as the day wore on and the gas diffused slowly from the balloon, it sank earthward again, details increased, men became more visible, and he began to hear the whistle and moan of trains and cars, sounds of cattle, bugles and kettle drums, and presently even men's voices. ”

“ Bowles replies, that let the sun but shine, and ‘it is poetical per se,’ in which we think him right. His Lordship decompounds the wind into a caput mortuum of poetry, by making it howl through a pig-stye, instead of
‘Roaming the illimitable ocean wide;’ and turns a water-fall, or a clear spring, into a slop-basin, to prove that nature owes its elegance to art. ”

“ When they came up to the man in the bowler hat, he was standing with his head ducked, his ears pricked, listening beside the iron rail inside which grew big, black holly trees tufted with snow, and old, ribbed, silent English elms.
The policeman and the girl stood waiting. She was peering into the bushes with the sharp eyes of a deaf nymph, deaf to the world’s noises. The man in the bowler hat listened intensely. A lorry rolled downhill, making the earth tremble. ”

“ Accordingly I departed back again, making my way round the isolated pillar of boulders, beginning to feel, as I did so, that I was pretty well done up with excitement and fatigue, and should be more so before I had skinned those three lions. When I had got, as nearly as I could judge, about eighteen yards past the pillar or mass of boulders, I turned to have another look round. I have a pretty sharp eye, but I could see nothing at all. ”

“ Of a truth, Charming Billy Boyle, living his life in the wide land that is too big and too far removed from the man-made world for any but the strong of heart, knew little indeed of women—her kind of women. When he returned with two chickens and found that the floor had been swept so thoroughly as to look strange to him, and that all his scattered belongings were laid in a neat pile upon the foot of the bunk which was unfamiliar under straightened blankets and pitifully plumped pillows, he was filled with astonishment. Miss Bridger smiled a little and went on washing the dishes. ”

“ And when they saw that, they were feared lest they shouldn't have time to work their will; and they caught hold of her, with horrid bony fingers, and laid her deep in the water at the foot of the snag. And the Bogles fetched a strange big stone and rolled it on top of her, to keep her from rising. And they told two of the Will-o-the-wykes to take turns in watching on the black snag, to see that she lay safe and still, and couldn't get out to spoil their sport.
And there lay the poor Moon, dead and buried in the bog, till some one would set her loose; and who'd know where to look for her. ”

“ In the Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home.
Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One mistake, indeed, he made—a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him give his own reasons:
'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed of very unworthy matters—handling such books as one thinks both the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver to any man. ”

“ You know how you 'drive off' at golf, don't you?"
"We do," said Boodle. "We did it with some pin-fire cartridges."
"And then this—'better 1⁄2/T,' is quite a new-way of saying he saw his wife—his better-half—over her tea, or, if you like, bending over her tee on the green, you know. . . ."
"If you say it's very funny, Buster, no doubt it is," was the reply. . . . "Prob'ly most 'scruciating."
"Oh, no! I don't say that," the unhappy youth replied, "but well—it is Tosh, I think." ”

“ After the balloon and the car were in equilibrium, we threw over 19 lbs. of ballast, and we rose in the midst of silence, arising from the emotion and surprise felt on all sides.
“Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. ”

“ Some things I can recall—as that we were ere long enveloped in vapour which froze upon my moustache and whiskers; then comes a memory of sitting for hours and hours in a thick fog, hearing no sound but my own breathing and Arowhena’s (for we hardly spoke) and seeing no sight but the car beneath us and beside us, and the dark balloon above.
Perhaps the most painful feeling when the earth was hidden was that the balloon was motionless, though our only hope lay in our going forward with an extreme of speed. ”

“ While our balloon rapidly approached the earth, we waved our hats and flags, and shouted to the inhabitants, but our voices only increased their terror. The villagers rushed away with cries of terror, leaving their herds, whose bellowings increased the general alarm. When the balloon touched the ground, every man had shut himself up in his own house. ”

“ He felt an alien in the garden, a stranger by her side; yet his fickle taste found this sweet after the noisy life of town, and Miss Boyle, seated before [264] her beehives, even more winning than Miss Boyle, the beauty of the Wells. ”

“ He built a bright fire, and he whistled as he kicked the snow from his boots, busying over the horses and the blankets. “Take a rest,” he said to Bolles. “One man's enough to do the work. Be with you soon to share our little cottage.” Presently Bolles heard him reciting confidentially to his horse, “Twas the night after Christmas, and all in the house—only we are not all in the house!” ”