Devizes

“ Thus it is with poor weak mortals; they seldom know how to appreciate the most inestimable blessings, till they are in danger of being deprived of them! In this sad state I soon reached Devizes, a distance of nineteen miles, on my return, scarcely having noticed any of the objects which I had passed. I called upon Mr. Clare, and left a note for him, to be ready by six o'clock in the morning, and I ordered four of the best post horses at the Bear to be in waiting at Mr. ”

“ The mention of Stockbridge proves that the besieged must have fled by the Salisbury road, their line of retreat by Andover being now barred at Wherwell. After crossing the Test, the fugitive Empress must have turned northwards, and made her way, by country lanes, over Longstock hills, to Ludgershall. So great was the dread of her victorious foes, now in full pursuit, that though she had ridden more than twenty miles, and was overwhelmed with anxiety and fatigue, she was unable to rest even here, and, remounting, rode for Devizes, across the Wiltshire downs. ”

“ The king, although he had long ago sworn to the king of France that he would accept his sister as a consort, whom his father King Henry had provided for him, and for a long time had taken care of, because he was suspicious of the custody had of her, contemplated marrying the princess his mother had engaged. ”

“ At the door he undid his burden, and, when he came in, said: ‘I smell a man; who has come hither?’ His mother tried to hide the truth, but her son would not leave her alone, so at last she said: ‘If thou wilt promise not to eat thy wife’s brothers, I will show them to thee.’ The devi promised, and the old woman brought in the three brothers.
A little while after, the devi said to his wife’s brothers: ‘Come, let us prepare supper.’ They all came and began to skin the game the devi had brought. ”

“ In Dyfed there are many who do think as we, and who will scarcely permit the new-fangled faith to show its head. It is not too late, O King, to throw off the yoke of the Romanizers. Ye are all the world yet to your own people; they hate to see you idle and dispossessed. There are many men of my country eager to rise at your bidding: I know their minds. ”

“ When the king had celebrated the praises of the goddess to this extent, a voice issued from the temple of Devi, saying, ‘King! I am well pleased with thee; ask any boon that thou may’st desire.’ The king said, ‘Mother! if thou art pleased with me, grant me a son.’ Devi replied, ‘King! thou shalt have a son (who shall be) very powerful and very glorious.’ Then the king made offerings of sandal, unbroken rice, flowers, incense, lamps and consecrated food, and paid adoration. ”

“ Devils with British accents were probably untrustworthy. "Why don't you go back to hell where you came from?" she asked pettishly.
"I wish," the devil said with a shade of annoyance in his beautifully modulated voice, "that you would stop using those terminal 'l's', I'm a Devi, not a devil—and my homeworld is Hel, not hell. One 'l', not two. I'm a species, not a spirit."
"It makes no difference," Miss Twilley said. "Either way you're disconcerting, particularly when you come slithering out of my T.V. set."
"It might give your television industry a bad name," the Devi agreed. ”

“ We have the glorious privilege of being always in hot water if we like. We are a shareholder in a Great Parochial British Joint Stock Bank of Balderdash. We have a Vestry in our borough, and can vote for a vestryman - might even BE a vestryman, mayhap, if we were inspired by a lofty and noble ambition. Which we are not.
Our Vestry is a deliberative assembly of the utmost dignity and importance. ”

“ He had, with one ear, however, been drinking in every word of the conversation, and now he rose from his chair with such suddenness that he all but upset the little finger-print expert standing in front of him.
“Yes, cold,” repeated Deweese, the perspiration dripping from his brow, “cold and clammy.”
“Dame!” cried the Frenchman, breathing on his hand as if to test the temperature of his breath. “Think well, my friend, of what you are saying. The breath of living things is warm. Perhaps it was not the breathing of a monster that you heard. ”

“ And then—Vesty? Well, will you not speak to me? Is it to be life and honor, with your love at last, or despair and death? You were promised to me once. In spite of all, you cannot hold yourself your own; you are mine; the wife God meant for me. O Vesty! ”

“ The goddess Devi is the tutelary deity of the caste, as of all those who ply a disreputable profession. Animals are sacrificed to her or let loose to wander in her name. The offerings are appropriated by the village washerman. In Bombay the rendezvous of the Bhāmtis is the temple of Devi at Konali, in Akalkot State, near Sholapur, and here the gangs frequently assemble before and after their raids to ask the goddess that luck may attend them and to thank her for success obtained.4 They worship their rope-making implements on the Dasahra day. They both bury and burn the dead. ”

“ So it seems that, at the Basin, even one poor and afflicted may have good hope to be sustained!
There was a woman once, beautiful and high, who, spurning me, would have married me for my wealth and name.
But pity is sweet and true. I am not ashamed of pity. Some time—if all things failed her—should I even say, "Vesty, could you marry me, for pity—for pity, Vesty?" For it was the thought of the Basins that compassion was greater than love, in some way the diviner side of love.
Then should I turn on her and say, sly as Captain Leezur—alas! so much slyer: "My lady! ”

“ The days most holy to Devi are the first nine days of the moon in the months of Chait and Kuâr. Some persons will fast in the name of Devi on the eighth lunar day (ashtami) of every month, and perform special ceremonies on that day. Sometimes they will light lamps of flour, and when a Brâhman has read the Devipâtha, will prostrate themselves before the lamps. Sometimes it is customary to distribute rice and sweetmeats on this day to unmarried girls; and goldsmiths will often close their shops in honour of the day. ”

“ Little did I think the last time I withdrew from thy tender passionate embrace, that between thy throbbing sheath and my sword there were waiting for me, in glowing India, all unknown and unsuspected, other voluptuous women, whose beautiful naked charms were to form my couch, and whose lovely limbs were to bind me in ecstatic embrace, before I should once more find myself again between thy tender, loving thighs! ”

“ O Devi, Mahadevi—Mother of Gods and Monster-slayer—before whom all the divinities bow down, thou hast delivered the earth from its burdens! thou hast delivered those that worshiped thee from a thousand misfortunes! Now I pray thee, O Mother Devi, that thou wilt be my helper also, and fulfill the desire of my heart. And if by thy favor I be enabled to marry that loveliest of women, O Devi, verily I will make a sacrifice of my own head to thee. ”

“ Every petty shopkeeper who has two thousand francs in the savings-bank—every peasant who has a little plot of land, will say to himself: ‘This fellow sticks at nothing. Poor devil though I am, I may be the next to be plundered.’ If you carry out this project of yours, it will not be with my assistance. I will help you take an Empire very willingly, but not to plunder a strong-box. ”

“ He winked at me; fearing that I had not understood, he winked still broader; then, moving his back toward his two companions, he directed full upon me a wink so vast and expressive that I endeavored at once to signify my enlightenment by replying in kind; but, unpractised as I was in the art, I could only infer what the unlovely aspect of my features must have been from the look of sorrowful disgust which immediately thereafter overspread Vesty's own. ”

“ The alcoholic veins in Veazie's cheeks swelled with venomous rage. “I rather think you will! If you don't—well, things 'll happen to you. I'll give you just two weeks from to-day—that 'll be Saturday, April 2, get me?—to turn the trick, get the cash settlement, and divvy with your darling first husband. You've got to get busy, old girl, and work quick!” ”

“ Veazie looked up sharply at his victim. “To find out anything more may require considerable labor and expense.”
“What, for God's sake, are labor and expense to me?” The old man's voice almost cracked into a falsetto of eagerness. “Go on with your search, professor! Spare nothing! Only find her!”
“I can guarantee nothing, you understand. The astral forces are not to be coerced; and I am hampered, in one way, by not having any material object connected with the—ah—the abduction.” Veazie got up and began pacing the floor, as if in mental agitation. ”

“ Are you sure that the Dey ordered her to be strangled?" "Why," I replied, "there was a report that an English slave had been strangled; but there is no relying on anything we hear as to what takes place in the seraglio, even if it comes from the eunuchs themselves; there is so much deception carried on in respect of the Dey's women." ”

“ Good wives, as I journeyed hither from the Holy City, I traversed the land of Lycia, where they have a winter more bitter than any winter we English know. And one evening came one to our fellowship, saying that yonder, beneath the roof of an holy hermit, lay a man of the north, they thought of the Island of the Angles, sick unto death. ”

“ What will you have? I have growing fame, prosperity, an accomplished society woman for my wife. Was not that what you wished for me?" His words stung.
Vesty had her dim look; she had turned cold; her speech groped pitifully. "But I think I saw—I think I understood a little, after all—because I loved you—what are you doing it for, Notely?"
"Ah, there, indeed!—what for? I have lost my object, you know, Saint Vesta. For fame and frolic and the devil, I suppose—since we are talking face to face with an immortal Basin—and to fill up the time generally." ”

“ Before dawn great preparations were being made for a grand festival in honour of the great idol Devi. Hundreds of banners waved, hundreds of drummers drummed, hundreds of singers chanted chants, hundreds of priests, well washed and anointed, performed their sacred rites, whilst the rajah sat, nervous and ill at ease, amongst hundreds of courtiers and servants, wishing it were all well over. At last the time came for the sacrifice to be offered, and the poor bâdshah was led out bound, to have his head chopped off. ”

“ The guide received the compliment quietly, and resumed:
“Arroyo bends ter the right jest thar, an’ every one o’ them red devils is a-crawlin’ round ter sneak in ter us. Call the men hyar an’ giv’ ’em a volley when they come in sight. We kin pick off the lot.”
The men were called just in time. Just as the savages rounded the bend and arrived in full view each man chose a savage and all fired simultaneously. ”

“ Had she been in a settled country, she would only have experienced vexation and discontent at being forced to spend the night on the prairie; but here she was, far from any settlement, lost from her companions, and in a hostile Indian country. ”

“ The privileges, too, of the Vestals were very highly prized, and of late years their table had been luxuriously appointed, and their life had been one of ease and refinement, so that the change to a more ordinary manner of living would have been far from acceptable to many who had severed the ties of earlier years, and who would have found themselves adrift in the great city, outside the walls of the Vestals’ House. ”

“ This was the bait; and the devil who laid the snare prompted me, as if he had spoke, for I remember, and shall never forget it, 'twas like a voice spoken over my shoulder, 'Take the bundle; be quick; do it this moment.' It was no sooner said but I stepped into the shop, and with my back to the wench, as if I had stood up for a cart that was going by, I put my hand behind me and took the bundle, and went off with it, the maid or fellow not perceiving me, or any one else. ”

“ The woman came and told these things to the king. After a little he saw the vezir in the dress of an Arab, and he came and fell at the king’s feet and mourned and wept. The king said, ‘O vezir, I wronged thee and took thy wealth and deposed thee; ah! the past is past, the gone is gone. Befriend me as much as in thee lies, and if God most high raise me to my throne, I know the honor I will do thee.’ The vezir said, ‘O king, if thou tookest my wealth, it was thine own wealth; if thou didst depose me, I was thy slave and had done wrong ”

“ Some absurd and dangerous persons have represented, on the other hand, that though our Vestry may be able to 'beat the bounds' of its own parish, it may not be able to beat the bounds of its own diseases ”

“ Every human being in the audience was staring at the amazing spectacle of a Vestal virgin, clad only in her thin, clinging tunic, standing over a fallen retiarius and facing an appalled and dumbfounded secutor. ”

“ Then the men, leaving their bows, women, and children behind them, came down to the English with presents and gifts. While the men were gift giving, the women cried and shrieked piteously, tore their cheeks with their fingernails until the blood flowed, tore off the single covering from the upper parts of the body, and, holding their hands high, cast themselves on the ground with great violence, regardless of consequences. ”

“ And, to descend to modern times, the hind-leg of a toad dried, placed in a silk bag, and worn round the neck, is in Devonshire the common charm for the king’s evil. White witches and Wise-men supply these charms for a fee of five shillings. ”