Clyde

“ Yet softer Clyde's, where subterranean ire
Ne'er darts the bursts of dark sulphureous fire;
Which deep entomb the swarthy peasant's toil,
And parch to ashes all the burning soil.
Yet summer's heat drives frequent to the pool
The active youth, their glowing limbs to cool. 50
They dive, and distant far emerge again,
Or easy float along the liquid plain;
While curling waves around their bodies twine,
Through which their limbs like polished marble shine.
Now with strong arms they strive against the tide ”

“ While circles in their veins their sovereign's blood.
Hence bold Bargenny and Belhaven rose;
Hence, Haddington, thy noble lineage flows;
Hence sprung rich Abercorn, a mighty peer,
And Selkirk, ever to the muses dear.
Yet most the name adorns their native Clyde,
Where frequent shine their domes on every side;
Whence, moving graceful, all the active race 760
Rush with their sprightly chief to urge the chase;
Where slily lurking mid his caverned rocks,
By Clyde's fair banks, slow creeps the crafty fox:
Sagacious hounds his tainted track pursue,
He doubles, winds, and shuns the open view. ”

“ Clyde's ample sea in waves tremendous roars,
To where Kintyre, beneath the evening skies
Stretching a mighty length, among the billows lies.
See towering Ailsa o'er the waters rise;
Beneath the seas his deep foundation lies:
Hoarse round his rugged roots the ocean roars,
And high above the clouds his summit soars:
White wreaths of mist o'er his huge shoulders hang;
Round his strong sides unnumbered sea-fowls clang; 580
The royal falcon, and the bird of Jove,
Dare only scale the steep, and spread their wings above. ”

“ In trade and riches rise, by swift degrees,
To rival London, empress of the seas:
Still may her ships to distant regions run,
Beyond the rising or the setting sun, 270
Till Clyde's broad bosom can no longer greet
The rolling tide that wafts the passing fleet.
Kelvin, a stream that slept inglorious long,
Shall rise to fame, and shine in future song;
Where sable artists match the ancient fame
Of Lemnos, or of Ætna's mightier name;
Who bend the stubborn steel in smouldering fire,
Rend it to rods, or wring to ductile wire:
Enormous tubes, like roaring tempests, sound ”

“ Dead! He, Clyde, had walked so nervously and yet somehow trustingly beside him but a few minutes before—and now he was dead. The law! Prisons such as this. Strong, evil men who scoffed betimes where Clyde had prayed. That confession! Had he decided truly—with the wisdom of God, as God gave him to see wisdom? Had he? Clyde's eyes! He, himself—the Reverend McMillan had all but fainted beside him as that cap was adjusted to his head—that current turned on—and he had had to be assisted, sick and trembling, from the room—he upon whom Clyde had relied. ”

“ It was terribly lacerating to the feelings of the Briton to be so coolly disregarded and ignored. Clyde had the saw, but he had sense enough left to know that any attempt to use it would attract the attention of his jailer, and end in the loss of the implement, with which he could remove a couple of the slats when left alone, or when all hands were asleep at night. Finding that violence accomplished nothing, he seated himself on his stool,—which, however, was far from being the stool of repentance,—and considered the situation more calmly. ”

“ For all that I know, a dweller in Dunbuie might have compasses, like the Lough Crew cairn artist.
If I have established the parallelism between Arunta churinga nanja and the disputed Clyde “pendants,” which Dr. Munro denies, we are reduced to one of two theories. Either the Picts of Clyde, or whoever they were, repeated on stones, usually small, some of the patterns on the neighbouring rocks; or the modern faker, for unknown reasons, repeated these and other archaic patterns on smaller stones. ”

“ The oldest soldier on active service of all the army in India, so strong was Lord Clyde's constitution that from the day he first took the field until the accident which befell him on the Nepaul frontier a few days before the termination of the final campaign, he had never suffered a day's illness. His vigour and energy had been extraordinary; the heat which prostrated so many of his followers was borne lightly by the tough and seasoned veteran, who despised all luxury, lived in a small tent, was content with the rations of the soldiers, and cheerfully bivouacked with them under the stars. ”

“ He had but to seek; confess the miseries and errors of his heart, and express contrition. "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. For what man is there of you whom, if his son ask bread, will give him a stone; or, if he ask fish, will give him a serpent?" So he quoted, beautifully and earnestly.
And yet before Clyde always was the example of his father and mother. ”

“ Unquestionably Clyde was guilty. And yet here, suddenly, Mrs. Griffiths, very lorn and miserable and maintaining her son's innocence. At the same time there was Clyde in his cell doomed to die. Was it possible that by any strange freak or circumstance—a legal mistake had been made and Clyde was not as guilty as he appeared?
The temperament of McMillan was exceptional—tense, exotic. A present hour St. Bernard, Savonarola, St. Simeon, Peter the Hermit. Thinking of life, thought, all forms and social structures as the word, the expression, the breath of God. No less. ”

“ I want to hear from you often, Clyde. Please write and let us know all about you and how you are getting along. Won't you? Of course we love you as much as ever, and will do our best always to try to guide you right. We want you to succeed more than you know, but we also want you to be a good boy, and live a clean, righteous life, for, my son, what matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?
Write your mother, Clyde, and bear in mind that her love is always with you—guiding you—pleading with you to do right in the name of the Lord. ”

“ You are a dear little girl to think of it. And if you really want me to take charge of it, I will. I shall probably see Mr. Clyde sometime, or at least hear from him. But I shall be jealous of Mr. Clyde pretty soon. Here you give me an interesting letter, to be handed on to Mr. Clyde. And Miss Thurston gives me a lovely thick letter--but not for me at all, only for me to hand to Mr. Clyde. Happy Mr. Clyde! ”

“ Blacklock, he encountered Peaks, who no sooner saw him than he laid violent hands upon him.
“Let me alone!” shouted Clyde, struggling to escape from the grasp of his powerful antagonist.
“Not yet, my beauty,” replied the boatswain, as he dragged his victim into his own room, which was near the office. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I want to see my mother,” growled Clyde, when he had exhausted his strength in the fruitless struggle to escape.
“I dare say you do; babies always want to see their mothers.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“Then behave like a man.” ”

“ In vain it was that McMillan now pointed out to Clyde that his awakened moral and spiritual understanding more perfectly and beautifully fitted him for life and action than ever before. He was alone. He had no one who believed in him. ”

“ And in seeing one of these Clyde, for some reason, had thought of the accident at Pass Lake. He did not realize it, but at the moment his own subconscious need was contemplating the loneliness and the usefulness at times of such a lone spot as this. And at one point it was that a wier-wier, one of the solitary water-birds of this region, uttered its ouphe and barghest cry, flying from somewhere near into some darker recess within the woods. And at this sound it was that Clyde had stirred nervously and then sat up in the car. It was so very different to any bird-cry he had ever heard anywhere. ”

“ As a young fellow he had clearly been rather too handsome. That any man with so much of the "beauty of the devil" had been marked by the stars for a tumultuous career was most obvious. There was spiritual tragedy in every lineament. On the other hand, there was no deviltry in the seriously handsome face of the man of to-day. You did not even think first of his good looks, the deeper significance of character had so come to the surface. Certainly, the shadow under which Clyde had lived had fostered the best in him. ”

“ For these services he was raised to the peerage, in 1858, as Lord Clyde; and, returning to England in the next year, he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament and a pension of £2000 a year. He died on the 14th of August 1863.
Though not a great general, and lacking in the dash which won England so many victories in India, Lord Clyde was at once a brave soldier and a careful and prudent leader. The soldiers whom he led were devotedly attached to him; and his courteous demeanour and manly independence of character won him unvarying respect. ”

“ But Clyde cried out, “God forbid! Are you prying when you look at the sun! Master, you need not grudge the Pole. He is nothing.”
“I grudge no man anything he can get of her,” said Senhouse. “He will get precisely what lies within his scope.”
“He has the eyes of a rat,” Glyde said. ”

“ In his uniform—his hair cropped so close, Clyde sat there, trying honestly now to think how it really was (exactly) and greatly troubled by his inability to demonstrate to himself even—either his guilt or his lack of guilt. Was he—or was he not? And the Reverend McMillan—himself intensely strained, muttering: "Wide is the gate and broad the way that leadeth to destruction." ”

“ At once Clyde, who had been so brisk and urgent in establishing this relationship and had given Roberta the impression that he was a sophisticated and masterful youth who knew much more of life than ever she could hope to know, and to whom all such dangers and difficulties as were implied in the relationship could be left with impunity, was at a loss what to do. ”

“ I venture, then, merely for the sake of argument, to date the origin of the Clyde sites in the dark years of unrecorded turmoil which preceded and followed the Roman withdrawal. The least unpractical way of getting nearer to their purpose is the careful excavation of a structure of wood and stone near Eriska, where Prince Charles landed in 1745. Dr. Munro has seen and described this site, but is unable to explain it. Certainly it cannot be a Corporation cairn. ”

“ When his complement is made up he will become visible, and a great battle will be fought on the Clyde.
“When Thomas comes with his horses,
The day of spoils will be on the Clyde.
Nine thousand good men will be slain,
And a new king will be set on the throne.”75
You may walk across the Clyde, the prophecy goes on to relate, on men’s bodies, and the miller of Partick Mill (Muilionn Phearaig) , who is to be a man with seven fingers, will grind for two hours with blood instead of water. After that, sixteen ladies will follow after one lame tailor,76 a prophecy copied from Isaiah iv. 1. ”

“ What creeping, crawling, wretched insects we all are, taken collectively; and, of all of us, the blindest, the most insignificant, and most grub-like, are, so-called men and women “of the world!”
Cold, heartless, in a general sense, and worldly as Mrs Clyde was, I could easily have excused it in her and tried to like her, for, was she not the mother of my darling, whom with all her faults she loved very dearly—her affection being judiciously tempered by those considerations paramount in the clique to which she belonged? But, Mrs Clyde did not like me. ”

“ And as they glided into this, this still dark water seemed to grip Clyde as nothing here or anywhere before this ever had—to change his mood. For once here he seemed to be fairly pulled or lured along into it, and having encircled its quiet banks, to be drifting, drifting—in endless space where was no end of anything—no plots—no plans—no practical problems to be solved—nothing. The insidious beauty of this place! Truly, it seemed to mock him—this strangeness—this dark pool, surrounded on all sides by those wonderful, soft, fir trees. ”

“ And then the temperaments and the philosophy of these boys—Kinsella, short and thick and smooth-faced and a little dull, as Clyde saw it, but good-looking and virile, and reported to be a wizard at gambling, who, throughout the first three days at such times as other matters were not taking his attention, had been good enough to continue Hegglund's instructions in part. He was a more suave, better spoken youth than Hegglund, though not so attractive as Ratterer, Clyde thought, without the latter's sympathetic outlook, as Clyde saw it. ”

“ And it had been Clyde's compulsory duty throughout the years when he could not act for himself to be in attendance at these various meetings. And always he had been more irritated than favorably influenced by the types of men and women who came here—mostly men—down-and-out laborers, loafers, drunkards, wastrels, the botched and helpless who seemed to drift in, because they had no other place to go. And they were always testifying as to how God or Christ or Divine Grace had rescued them from this or that predicament—never how they had rescued any one else. ”

“ And so, on the contrary, he drifted—thinking most idly at times of some possible fake or mock marriage such as he had seen in some melodramatic movie—a fake minister and witnesses combining to deceive some simple country girl such as Roberta was not, but at such expense of time, resources, courage and subtlety as Clyde himself, after a little reflection, was wise enough to see was beyond him. ”

“ And he, almost as much as his son, was jealous, not only of the name, but the general social appearance of the Griffiths before the employees of this factory as well as the community at large. And the sight of Clyde here, looking so much like Gilbert and in an armless shirt and trousers working among these men, tended to impress upon him more sharply than at any time before the fact that Clyde was his nephew, and that he ought not to be compelled to continue at this very menial form of work any longer. ”