Dorado

“ In quick and ready sympathy; in alertness to see; in watchfulness to note the needs of the hour; in the constant, instinctive attitude of mind which spontaneously saw and felt every opportunity to give—whether it were service or sympathy, silence or speech, presence or absence—in short every attribute of character defining utter selflessness, rounded and molded the strong individuality of YERMAH, THE DORADO.
When the recluse began to mingle freely with the Brotherhood, he was quickly made aware of all that was transpiring, not only in the pueblo of Cholula, but also among outside colonies. ”

“ So far as I can see, Señor, and as many others think with me, this much-boasted city of El-Dorado hath been little better than a gold-baited death-trap to us. True we eat and drink from vessels of gold, yet we are dying of famine by inches. ”

“ The quest of "El Dorado" begins with the history of man, and in pursuit of the glittering phantom have "many souls of heroes gone down into Hades," only that others might step into their empty places in the ranks. ”

“ We neither act nor speak, much less decide a question concerning ourselves, except we have a motive.”
“My motive is simple enough. Thou hast told me that love is the first triad. I love with all my heart.”
“No need of words to assure me of this. I have foreseen it from the first.”
“And thou hast not opposed me? Then thou wilt favor it?” The Dorado was as impulsive as a boy.
“I will not oppose it. The great secret of initiation lies in the magnetic warmth of love. It is a threefold principle, the lowest phase of which is sex love. ”

“ More than that; there is, among the lower classes, an attitude almost of deference towards the man in any way connected with the El Dorado across the sea, as if every breast harbored the vague hope that this favored of the gods might be moved to carry home on his return a pocketful of his admirers. ”

“ In addition to a copper wheel and the necessary tools, there was a vessel filled with a carbonate of a brownish-green, opaque color, porous like pumice, and as hard as a diamond, which he used for polishing and cutting. An emery-wheel and a ewer of olive oil were also at hand.
The Dorado spent a portion of each day in this work-shop, and while employed at his labors of love, he either hummed or whistled the plaintive melody Kerœcia had sung for him. ”

“ Picking it up, he noticed that the reverse side had a circle for the sun, a crescent for the moon, a winged caduceus for Mercury, a sword for Mars, a hieroglyph for Venus, and a scythe for Saturn. The glyph was in the center, and interlaced with it was the word “Azoth.”
A scrap of paper catching the Dorado’s eye, he stooped and picked up Akaza’s will. After giving minute directions about finding the manuscript and sacred relics hidden in the cave at Ingharep, it said:
I who am old and weary of the world sink into its dust. ”

“ This the barbarian thought a more magnificent and costly attire than could be afforded by any other potentate in the world, and hence the Spaniards called him El Dorado, or the Gilded One. A history of all the expeditions which were undertaken for the conquest of his kingdom would form a volume not less interesting than extraordinary." R. Southey, History of Brazil, volume 1, chapter 12. The most tragical and thrilling of the stories of the seekers after El Dorado is that which Mr. ”

“ Alcamayn presented him with a cushion of purple silk on which lay the seven rings.
“A sapphire set in gold, worn on the first finger, brings the blessing of the sun,” said the Dorado, slipping the ring on her finger. “Beside it I place a bloodstone set in tin, to enlist Jupiter in thy welfare; the cautious guardianship of Saturn is in the turquoise and lead, with which I encircle thy middle finger; Venus, the goddess of love, governs the third finger, and for an amulet demands an amethyst set in copper ”

“ Will Para-combe tired, as well he may be, of wandering about savage America in search of El Dorado, blindly refuses to see that it is his chief end as man to continue wandering until El Dorado is found and the captain has glutted his heart with vengeance on the Spaniards ”

“ It shall be in the third place.”
“The first gem for the blue square is a topaz,” said Alcamayn, “which rules the Lion, thy house of nativity.”
“This pale pink coral, with its delicate leaf-work, shall be its companion. It is of our common country, and will out-tongue my feeble words in its own behalf,” the Dorado continued.
“Here is a dewdrop laden with sunbeams,” said the little jeweler enthusiastically, as he opened a 257square of maguey fiber, and disclosed a first-water brilliant.
“Equilibrated love could have no better exponent,” assented Yermah, sharing his enthusiasm. ”

“ The Dorado found all the wall entrances locked from the outside, which accounted for the absence of guards at the doors. Escape was only possible through the north-gate, and there more than a dozen warrior-priests were waiting for him.
Man and beast knew there was desperate work before them, but they were nerved for the encounter. As he dashed past Oghi, Yermah saw with a sinking heart that the poor creature was writhing in its death agony.
Cibolo laid back his ears, and tried to take a piece out of the arm put forward to seize the bridle. ”

“ The population consisted chiefly of about four hundred dare-devil spirits who had started to wander westwards in search of the El Dorado and had finally settled there, too tired, too disgusted to go any farther, and lacking money enough to return to their homes. ”

“ "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts." ”

“ Bright El Dorado, land of gold,
We have so sought for thee,
There's not a spot in all the globe
Where such a land can be. ”

“ So far as I could make out El Dorado was about twenty miles from Kuboos. As we proceeded the track improved. The guide now calmly informed me that we had passed the worst of it. Therefore all the trouble and expense of hiring the pack-oxen and their owners was unnecessary. Here evaporated another illusion; these people had developed business instincts; the serpent of guile had found its way even to the Richtersveld paradise. I scribbled a note asking Andries to follow on our spoor with the wagon. This note I sent back by one of the camp followers. ”

“ Directly from the records we have the final facts in the afterlife of one of La Salle's murderers. In the true story of El Dorado that is to say, The Gilded Man there is settled definitely a matter that has undergone indeterminate dispute through three hundred years. ”

“ When Yermah ceased speaking, he crossed over to the southern altar, and laid a small wreath of jasmine on Akaza’s veil, saying:
“Thou hast quashed the will-o’-the-wisp of doubtful spirits. Thou hast crossed the Bridge of Kinevat [17] and art come into bliss.”
The congregation followed the example of the Dorado, and for the remainder of the day made offerings upon the different altars. They deposited palms in the eastern niche; on the north, cypress and aloes; on the south, quantities of white flowers ”

“ This design was used until January, 1849, and then Doyle made the alterations which distinguish this sixth wrapper from the one now in use and which has been used ever since.
16.—TO TERRIFY THE ENEMY. 1852.
A little boy's advice to his grandfather is illustrated by Leech in No. 15, and No. 16 suggests an added horror of war. The humorous prospectus in No. 17 concludes with the words:—
Something turns up every day to justify the most sanguine expectation that an El Dorado has really been discovered. ”

“ he wanted to know in what manner they prayed to God in El Dorado.
"We do not pray to Him," said the worthy sage; "we have nothing to ask of Him; ”

“ As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself—something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. ”

“ It has the eyes of a devil."
"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.
Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. "My God! If it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. ”

“ DORA’S SURPRISE. Midnight found the night calm, quiet, lovely.
The roaring winds had ceased, and the clouds had been suddenly swept aside by a master-hand, and the blue-vaulted heavens, studded with their sparkling gems, looked serenely down upon earth and sea. Our weary travelers lay wholly unconscious of the change without, their eyelids heavy with the weight of sleep, and their bodies cumbered with its powerful influence. ”

“ Come with me, darling Dorel!" I never before saw any one who was hungry. Come with me! I live in a country where there is food enough for everybody."
"Where is that?" said Dorel, eagerly.
"I do not quite know, little girl; but it is not in the bosom of the earth, and it is not in the sun-bright deep: so I suppose it is over the hills, and far away."
"Now I know who you are," said Dorel. "You are the lost sylphid; and people say you have travelled all over the world. But, if you do not know the way home, pray how can you tell which road to take?" ”

“ We have no power to remove one spot from our souls;” the eyes of Miss Clare chanced to rest, as she spoke, on the embroidery, stained and destroyed; “but there is the Lord’s promise to comfort the broken and contrite heart, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow—though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool.’”
Dora and her aunt knelt down together and together prayed, but in silence. When Dora rose from her knees, though [259] she was still very sad and subdued, there was a peace in her heart, a sense of sin forgiven, which she had not experienced for months. ”

“ Dora sat by her father's bedside, her head buried in the pillows, vainly striving to choke down her tears and sobs. It seemed as if her heart must break. The Major lay back on his pillow, white and still, with a peaceful smile on his calm face. Dora could not understand it, could not take it in, but she knew it. Her father was gone to join her mother in heaven. ”

“ There was a slight movement in the bed, and the nurse, standing beside the boy, looked up and made a quick sign to the mother. What she and Dora saw was only a gesture as of one settling for sleep. Without struggle and without fear, the little lad who had never lived enough to know the cost of dying, went the way of all flesh.
'They die so easily, this sort,' said the nurse to Dora, as she tenderly closed the patient eyes; 'it's like a plant that's never rooted.'
A few minutes later Dora was blindly descending the long stairs. ”

“ His heart, as far as love was concerned, lay in the tomb, and to judge by his present frame of mind, there was no likelihood the sight of woman would ever again move him as it had when Dora was the guiding star of his existence. ”

“ But I have seen caverns enough elsewhere, and this does not interest me. I am no archæologist," said Lady Estelle--"besides, where is Dora?" she added, looking somewhat blankly up the ladder of steps in the cliff, by which we were to return: and she speedily became much less alive to the beauty of the scenery than to a sense of danger and awkwardness in her position.
There was no appearance of Dora Lloyd, and we heard no sound in that secluded place, save the chafing of the surf, the equally monotonous pouring of the waterfall, and the voices of sea-birds as they skimmed about us. ”

“ Dora, for heaven's sake, do speak!"
Dora had been trying to speak, but she could not get in a word edgewise. At last she said timidly,
"It was an arrow!"
A flood of lamentations followed. Aunt Ninette flew up and down the room wringing her hands and crying, "An arrow! an arrow! You have been shot! Shot in the arm! You will have a stiff arm all your life! You will be a cripple! You can never sew any more, nor do anything else! You will come to want! We shall all have to suffer for it! How unlucky we are! ”

“ Very quietly the simple cortege proceeded to the Catholic burying ground; and when the last shovelful of earth was thrown on the coffin Dora stepped forward and laid upon the mound the flowers such as Ben once joyed to collect and place at the shrine of “that good woman who was the Mother of God.”
They were scarcely outside the graveyard, when the Rector addressed them:
“You have all had too much of tragedy these last days for your tender years. Dora is a free agent; Clarence is simply our guest; they have a right to a holiday. ”