Cephas

“ And, whilst Simon Cephas was saying these things to his fellow-apostles, and putting them in remembrance, a mysterious voice was heard by them, and a sweet odour, which was strange to the world, breathed upon them; [10] and tongues of fire, between the voice and the odour, came down from heaven [11] towards them, and alighted and sat on every one of them; and, according to the tongue which every one of them had severally received, so did he prepare himself to go to the country in which that tongue was spoken and heard. ”

“ An hour later, Cephas, son of Cupid, gathering his basketful of chips at the woodpile, beheld his young master approaching by the branch road, and started shrieking for the house. “Hi! hit's Marse Dan! hit's Marse Dan!” he yelled to his father Cupid in the pantry; “I seed 'im fu'st! Fo' de Lawd, I seed 'im fu'st!” and the Major, hearing the words, appeared instantly at the door of his library.
“It's the boy,” he called excitedly. “Bless my soul, Molly, the boy has come!” ”

“ Perhaps nature did not intend that he should. Perhaps squealing for a livelihood twelve hours a day on a crowded, hot, ill-savored cement pavement, and sitting up until midnight do not tend to put flesh on little pigs. In any case, Cephas remained svelte ”

“ This is the account of Clement [6] in the fifth book of his Hypotyposes, in which he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, [7] a man who bore the same name as the apostle Peter, and the one concerning whom Paul says, “When Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to his face.” [8]
3. Matthias, [9] also, who was numbered with the apostles in the place of Judas, and the one who was honored by being made a candidate with him, [10] are likewise said to have been deemed worthy of the same calling with the seventy. ”

“ A poor casual laborer, working on a scaffolding, fell five stories to the ground. As his horrified mates rushed down pell-mell to his aid, he picked himself up, uninjured, from a great, soft pile of sand.
"Say, fellers," he murmured anxiously, "is the boss mad? Tell him I had to come down anyway for a ball of twine."
Cephas is a darky come up from Maryland to a border town in Pennsylvania, where he has established himself as a handy man to do odd jobs. He is a good worker, and sober, but there are certain proclivities of his which necessitate a pretty close watch on him. ”

“ Cephas's belief in the holy state of matrimony as being the only one proper for a man, really ought to have commended him to the opposite (and ungrateful) sex more than it did, and Lucy Morrill held as respectful an opinion of the institution and its manifold advantages as Cephas himself, but she was in a very unsettled frame of mind and not at all susceptible to wooing. She had a strong preference for Philip Perry, and held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might possibly be caught on the rebound. ”

“ CEPHAS was his name. He was a pig. But he was, none the less, a paladin. A porcine St. George when fate at last sounded the call for his great adventure.
Byram owned him. Byram was the man who had mortgaged his up-State farm to buy a half share in the “Trip to Mars” concession at the Pan-Universal Exposition.
Most expositions, or world's fairs, are financial failures. But most of their side-show attractions make money. And—thanks to Cephas—the Trip to Mars was one of these money-makers. ”

“ Her right hand kept moving forward to clutch the rolling-pin, then she would draw it back.
“'Ain't I told ye once horses were the exceptions?” said Cephas, severely. “There has to be exceptions. If there wa'n't any exceptions there couldn't be any rule, an' there bein' exceptions shows there is a rule. Women can't ever get hold of things straight. Their minds slant off sideways, the way their arms do when they fling a stone.”
Cephas brought the rolling-pin down upon the paste again with fierce impetus. “You'll break it,” Sarah murmured, feebly. Cephas brought it down again, his mouth set hard ”

“ At noon the next day Cephas Barnard came home from the store; he had been down to buy some molasses. When he entered his kitchen he set the jug down on the table with a hard clap, then stood still in his wet boots.
Sarah and Charlotte were getting dinner, both standing over the stove. Sarah glanced at Cephas furtively, then at Charlotte; Cephas never stirred. A pool of water collected around his boots, his brows bent moodily under his cap.
“Why don't you set down, Cephas, an' take off your boots?” Sarah ventured at length, timidly.
“Folks are fools,” grunted Cephas. ”

“ Cephas responded gloomily. “It's nip an' tuck 'tween him an' Mark Wilson. That girl draws 'em as molasses does flies! She does it 'thout liftin' a finger, too, no more 'n the molasses does. She just sets still an' IS! An' all the time she's nothin' but a flighty little red-headed spitfire that don't know a good husband when she sees one. The feller that gits her will live to regret it, that's my opinion!” ”

“ Cephas poured some water from the gourd into the bowl of flour and began stirring.
Sarah caught her breath. “He's makin'—paste!” she gasped. “He's jest makin' flour paste!”
“Jest so far as I went I was right,” Cephas resumed, pouring in a little more water with a judicial air. “I said Man was animal, an' he is animal; an' if you don't take anything else into account, he'd ought to live on animal food, jest the way I reasoned it out. But you've got to take something else into account. Man is animal, but he ain't all animal. He's something else. He's spiritual. ”

“ Had Brahma been able to coil himself in his customary way, around the pig, the end might have come quickly. But Cephas' position made this impracticable. So the python merely held such hold as he had caught.
Ophido, and the lecturer, and the attendants, and every one else remained almost as moveless as the combatants; powerless to shake off the primitive spell of battle.
That was the situation when Byram—a rumor of the intended slaughter spectacle having reached him in the distant Agriculture Building—elbowed his way into the hall. ”

“ Cephas took the rolling-pin and brought it heavily down upon the sticky mass on the board. Sarah shuddered and started as if it had hit her. “Now, if we can't eat animal food,” said Cephas, “what other kind of food can we eat? There ain't but one other kind that's known to man, an' that's vegetable food, the product of the earth. An' that's of two sorts: one gets ripe an' fit to eat in the fall of the year, an' the other comes earlier in the spring an' summer. ”

“ Tell me something funny, or if you don't know anything funny, tell me something horrible—anything for a change. I saw Cephas downtown; that child has been trying for days to tell me of his adventures, and I have been dying to hear them. But I keep out of his way ”

“ Always exactly on time, he would come in, walk slowly up the right-hand aisle, mount the pulpit stairs, enter and close the door after him. Then Cephas would give one tremendous pull to warn loiterers on the steps; a pull that meant, “Parson's in the pulpit!” and was acted upon accordingly. Opening the big Bible, the minister raised his right hand impressively, and saying, “Let us pray,” the whole congregation rose in their pews with a great rustling and bowed their heads devoutly for the invocation.
Next came the hymn, generally at that day one of Isaac Watts's. ”

“ Barnard put up her apron and began to weep helplessly.
“Don't, mother,” said Charlotte, in an undertone. But her mother began talking in a piteous wailing fashion.
“You hadn't ought to talk so about Cephas,” she moaned. “He's my husband. I guess you wouldn't like it if anybody talked so about your husband. Cephas ain't any worse than anybody else. It's jest his way. He wa'n't any more to blame than Barney; they both got to talkin'. I know Cephas is terrible upset about it this mornin' ”

“ If you should ever marry, Cephas,—which don't look to me likely without you pick out a dif'rent girl,—I 'd advise you not to keep your stock o' paints in the barn or the shed, for it's altogether too handy to the house and the women-folks. Take my advice and have a place to yourself, even if it's a small one. A shop or a barn has saved many a man's life and reason Cephas, for it's ag'in' a woman's nature to have you underfoot in the house without hectorin' you. Choose a girl same's you would a horse that you want to hitch up into a span ”

“ In John i. 42., the clause which explains the name Cephas is absent from the Syriac version in accordance with the regular and necessary practice of the translators to avoid tautology: "Thou shalt be called Stone; which is by interpretation Stone!" (See the Journal of Sacred Literature for January last, p. 457., for several examples of this.) There is here surely sufficient reason to account for the omission of this clause, which, it {501}appears, is supported by universal MS. authority, as well as by that of the other versions. ”

“ He stirred some salt into the flour very carefully, so not a dust fell over the brim of the bowl.
“Horses don't eat meat, neither, an' they don't chew their cuds,” Mrs. Barnard argued further. She had never in her life argued with Cephas; but sorrel pies, after the night before, made her wildly reckless.
Cephas got a gourdful of water from the pail in the sink, and carried it carefully over to the table. “Horses are the exception,” he returned, with dignified asperity. “There always are exceptions. What I was comin' at was—I'd been kind of wrong in my reasonin'. ”

“ Sarah made an involuntary motion forward, then she stood back with a great sigh.
“But what we can do,” Cephas proceeded, “is to eat the kind of things that won't strengthen the animal nature at the expense of the spiritual. We know that animal food does that; we can see how it works in tigers an' bears. Now, it's the spiritual part of us we want to strengthen, because that is the biggest strength we can get, an' it's worth more. It's what gives us the rule over animals. ”

“ It's astonishin' how the female sect despises bein' trained; it don't hardly seem to be in their nature to make any changes in 'emselves after they once gits started.”
“How are you goin' to live with 'em, then?” Cephas inquired, looking up with interest coupled with some incredulity.
“Let them do the training,” responded his father, peacefully puffing out the words with his pipe between his lips. “Some of 'em's mild and gentle in discipline, like Parson Boone's wife or Mis' Timothy Grant, and others is strict and firm like your mother and Mis' Abel Day. ”

“ I'd like to know what Cephas Barnard has got to say because he's drove a good, likely young man like Barnabas Thayer off an' broke off his daughter's match? It ain't likely she'll ever get anybody now; young men like him, with nice new houses put up to go right to housekeepin' in as soon as they are married, don't grow on every bush. They ain't quite so thick as wild thimbleberries. An' Charlotte ain't got any money herself, an' her father ain't got any to build a house for her. ”

“ He lay staring straight before him with a solemnly reflective air.
“I wish you hadn't brought up 'lection that time, father,” ventured Sarah, with a piteous sniff.
“If the Democratic party had only lived different, an' hadn't eat so much meat, there wouldn't have been any trouble,” returned Cephas, magisterially. “If you go far enough, you'll always get back to that. A man is what he puts into his mouth. Meat victuals is at the bottom of democracy. ”

“ I remember askin' him what his wife's Christian name was (she bein' a stranger to Riverboro) an' he said he didn't know! Said he called her Mis' Bixby afore he married her an' Mis' Pike afterwards!”
“Well, there 's something turrible queer 'bout this marryin' business,” and Cephas drew a sigh from the heels of his boots. “It seems's if a man hedn't no natcheral drawin' towards a girl with a good farm 'n' stock that was willin' to have him! ”

“ I shall walk, talk, row, dance, and sail with none but the girls in all that time. There shall be a cessation of hostilities until to-morrow, and then you must let me know which of the two worthies you are willing to allow me as my lawful prey. You can't take both, and it is perfectly fair that I should have one. I prefer Cephas, but I'll take Kenneth if you discover that you cannot be happy unless you have the steel man for your very own."
"We are taking a good deal for granted," returned Gwen, "when we talk about taking either of them. The taking usually is upon the part of the masculines." ”

“ The Virgin Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, was the representative of Palestina; a long, narrow, rocky strip of land; figuratively called the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really supposing Cepha, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became Cepha-us. ”

“ No sound was heard but the panting breath of Cephyse, and, at intervals, the slight crackling of the charcoal, which began to burn, and already sent forth a faint sickening vapor. Cephyse, seeing the fire completely lighted, and feeling already a little dizzy, rose from the ground, and said to her sister, as she approached her, “It is done!”
“Sister,” answered Mother Bunch, kneeling on the mattress, whilst Cephyse remained standing, “how shall we place ourselves? I should like to be near you to the last.” ”