Eleseus

“ Eyah, Herregud, 'twas a good thing, no doubt, to be book-learned. And, by way of humbling himself, Isak determines to give up his plan of making Eleseus a tiller of soil in the wilds; he will never say a word of it again.
Not that the boys made any great business about that matter of the spectacles; far from it. Sivert, the jester, had to say something, of course; it was too much for him. He plucked Eleseus by the sleeve and said: "Here, come along, we'll go back home and throw those scythes on the fire. Father's going to do all the mowing now with his machine!" ”

“ There were small figures moving, over by the house; it was Eleseus and Sivert, keeping watch. Now they came running up. Inger was seized with a sudden cold—a dreadful cold in the head, with sniffing and coughing—even her eyes were all red and watering too. It always gives one a dreadful cold on board ship—makes one's eyes wet and all! ”

“ She is perfectly conscious all the while, keeps an eye on Eleseus, glances at the clock on the wall to see the time. Never a cry, hardly a movement; the struggle is in her vitals—a burden is loosened and glides from her. ”

“ Eleseus watched the pair with a look as if he had lost all; as a ruined man. And his thought, maybe, was like this: There she goes arm in arm with Axel Ström. How she could ever do it I can't think; there was a time when she put her arms round me! ”

“ That was a nasty hit for Eleseus; he turned red, and understood he had offended her.
Nevertheless, he went down to Maaneland again next Sunday, and this time he took his stick. They talked as before, and Axel was out of it altogether, as before. "'Tis a big place your father's got," said he. "And building again, now, it seems."
"Ay, it's all very well for him," said Eleseus, anxious to show off a little. "He can afford it. It's another matter with poor folk like ourselves." ”

“ As for the little ones, they'd get used to the noise in no time. Eleseus was inclined to be ailing somehow, but the other took nourishment sturdily, like a fat cherub, and when he wasn't crying, he slept. A wonder of a child! Isak made no objection to his being called Sivert, though he himself would rather have preferred Jacob. Inger could hit on the right thing at times. Eleseus was named after the priest of her parish, and that was a fine name to be sure ”

“ A thankless creature was Barbro this evening. A new silver ring — she might at least have thanked him nicely for it. It must be that clerk with the town ways that had turned her head. Axel could not help saying: "I'd like to know what that fellow Eleseus keeps coming here for, anyway. What does he want with you?" ”

“ Eleseus rose to his feet.
Very well; she gave him back the letter. But now the tears came into her eyes as she did so; this servant girl was touched; her friend was forsaking her — good-bye for ever!
"You've no need to go," she said. "I don't care for what Axel says."
But Eleseus had the upper hand now, and must use it; he thanked her and said good-bye. "When a lady carries on that way," he said, "there's nothing else to be done."
He left the house, quietly, and walked up homeward, whistling, swinging his stick, and playing the man. Huh! A little while after came Barbro walking up ”

“ There would be plenty of time for him to assert his authority after they were married; until then he ought to have had sense enough to give way.
But — it was too bad, this business with Eleseus, this clerk, who came swaggering about with his walking-stick and all his fine talk. For a girl to carry on like that when she was promised to another man — and in her condition! It was beyond understanding. Up to then, Axel had had no rival to compete with — now, it was different. ”

“ Here's old Sivert calling up his kinsfolk and longing for a sight of his own flesh and blood; ay, he's nearing his end! You can't refuse him, Eleseus; off with you at once this minute and see your uncle while there's life in him. I'm going that way too, we'll go together."
Oline did not leave Sellanraa without taking Inger aside for more whisperings of Barbro. "Not a word I've said — but I could see the signs of it! And now I suppose she'll be wife and all on the farm there. Ay, there's some folk are born to great things, for all they may be small as the sands of the sea in their beginnings. ”

“ All in order now, and Isak gets up. Eleseus calls after him: "You must drive pretty fast, it cuts better that way — it says so here."
Isak drives and drives, and everything goes well, and Brrr! says the machine. There is a broad track of cut grass in his wake, neatly in line, ready to take up. Now they can see him from the house, and all the womenfolk come out; Inger carries little Rebecca on her arm, though little Rebecca has learned to walk by herself long since. But there they come — four womenfolk, big and small — hurrying with straining eyes down towards the miracle, flocking down to see. ”

“ This fairly startled Inger; startled the mother. A telegram? Did he mean to upset her completely with his thoughtfulness? It had been her great sorrow of late that boy Eleseus was away in town — in the evil-minded town; she had written to him about God, and likewise explained to him how his father here was beginning to sink under the work, and the place getting bigger all the time; little Sivert couldn't manage it all by himself, and besides, he was to have money after his uncle one day — all this she had written, and sent him the money for his journey once for all. ”

“ Inger — who could say what was in her mind? Here she was dancing gaily, maybe for the first time in her life; sought after, riotously pursued by thirty men, and she alone, the only one to choose from, no one to cut her out. And those burly telegraph men — how they lifted her! Why not dance? Eleseus and Sivert were fast asleep in the little chamber, undisturbed by all the noise outside; little Leopoldine was up, looking on wonderingly at her mother as she danced.
Isak was out in the fields all the time ”

“ They've just been planting potatoes."
"Oh!" said the mother, smiling, and shaking her head. "Can they plant potatoes already?"
"Why, Eleseus, he gives a hand with this, and little Sivert helps with that," said Isak proudly.
Little Leopoldine was asking for something to eat. Oh, the pretty little creature; a ladybird up on a cart! She talked with a sing in her voice, with a strange accent, as she had learned in Trondhjem. Inger had to translate now and again. She had her brothers' features, the brown eyes and oval cheeks that all had got from their mother ”

“ Ay, just as in the old days. And after the child was born — and it was a little girl — a great big girl, fine-looking and sturdy and sound — after that, Isak must have been a stone and a miserable creature if he had not thanked God. But what was he going to build? It would be more news for Oline to go gadding about with — a new building again at Sellanraa. A new wing of the house — a new house it was to be. And there were so many now at Sellanraa — they had a servant-girl; and Eleseus, he was coming home ”

“ Too many things to think about all at once...." He put something into Inger's hand and off he went.
Ay, off went Geissler, bravely enough to all seeming. Nothing downcast nor anyway nearing his end; he came to Sellanraa again after, and it was long years before he died. Each time he went away the Sellanraa folk missed him as a friend. Isak had been thinking of asking him about Breidablik, getting his advice, but nothing came of it. And maybe Geissler would have dissuaded him there; have thought it a risky thing to buy up land for cultivation and give it to Eleseus ”

“ Theseus might have expected to find Eleusis a holy city, peaceful and quiet. But he had heard, as he travelled, that in Eleusis was a strong bully, named Cercyon; he was one of the rough Highlanders of Arcadia, who lived in the hills of the centre of Southern Greece, which is called Peloponnesus. He is said to have taken the kingship, and driven out the descendants of the king whose daughters were kind to Demeter. The strong man used to force all strangers to wrestle with him, and, when he threw them, for he had never been thrown, he broke their backs. ”

“ When the daughters of Celeus come to conduct her to Eleusis, they come as in a Greek frieze, full of energy and motion and waving lines, but with gold and colours upon it. Eleusis—coming—the coming of Demeter thither, as thus told in the Homeric hymn, is the central instance in Greek mythology of such divine appearances. "She leaves for a season the company of the gods and abides among men;" and men's merit is to receive her in spite of appearances. ”

“ Eleusis, like Delphi, was a centre of Greek religious life, but its Panhellenism was of a later date and a direct consequence of the power of Athens within whose territory it lay. Although the worship of nature’s productivity, under the form of Demeter losing her daughter Persephone within the earth and recovering her again, was indigenous among the early Pelasgic dwellers in Eleusis, and although upon this native cult were grafted religious beliefs and practices imported from Thrace, it is yet true that the Eleusinian Mysteries waxed famous only as Athens waxed great. ”

“ The object of the poem is to explain the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the complete silence of the poet as to Athens and the Athenians, who in after ages took conspicuous part in the festival, renders it probable that the hymn was composed in the far off time when Eleusis was still a petty independent state, and before the stately procession of the Mysteries had begun to defile, in bright September days, over the low chain of barren rocky hills which divides the flat Eleusinian cornland from the more spacious olive-clad expanse of the Athenian plain. ”

“ Then the two went out into the courtyard where many a young man had met his fate, and there they wrestled until the sun went down, and neither could gain aught of advantage over the other. But it was plain that the trained skill of Theseus would, in the end, win against the brute strength of Cercyon. Then the men of Eleusis who stood watching the contest, saw the youth lift the giant king bodily into the air and hurl him headlong over his shoulder to the hard pavement beyond. ”

“ It is, of course, the celebrated Mysteries—the Greater Eleusinia, as they were called—which give to the now wretched village of Eleusis, with its hopeless ruins, so deep an interest. This wonderful feast, handed down from the remotest antiquity, maintained its august splendor all through the greater ages of Greek history, down to the times of decay and trifling—when everything else in the country had become mean and contemptible. ”

“ The Greek word Eleusis means advent, and commemorates the visit of Demeter while wandering in search of her daughter,—which reminds one of the Egyptian story of Isis. Moved by gratitude, Demeter bestowed upon the people of Eleusis the bread-grain and the mysteries. From this city the cult of these two deities spread over all Greece and most of Asia Minor, passed into Italy in modified form, and thus became widely accepted. The people built at Eleusis a temple in pure Doric style and a Mystic House in which the secret festivals were held. ”

“ The Greeks believed in the spiritual value of “conversion” as devoutly as our Christian sects and they went beyond most such sects in their elaborately systematic methods for obtaining it, no doubt for the most part as superficially as has been common among Christians. It is supposed that almost the whole population of Athens must have experienced the Eleusinian initiation. These methods, as we know, were embodied in the Mysteries associated with Dionysus and Demeter and Orpheus and the rest, the most famous and 241typical being those of Attic Eleusis. ”

“ And this resemblance is the more remarkable, as the Demeter of Attica was the Isis of Egypt. We cannot suppose, however, that the plan of all these buildings was even thought of when the worship of Ceres was established at Eleusis. They were the progressive creation of successive ages. ... Under the Roman Empire ... it was fashionable among the higher order of Romans to pass some time at Athens in the study of philosophy and to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence Eleusis became at that time one of the most frequented places in Greece ”

“ The speaker was a young man of slighter make and lower stature than the Athenians, but well shaped, and with features the partial effeminacy of which was elevated by an expression of great vivacity and intelligence. The steed trained for Elis never bore in its proportions the evidence of blood and rare breeding more visibly than the dark brilliant eye of this young man, his broad low transparent brow, expanded nostril and sensitive lip, revealed the passionate and somewhat arrogant character of the vivacious Greek of the Aegean Isles. ”

“ In reality the opposite is true; if and in so far as the Greeks ever received or entertained such a belief in future rewards and punishments the mysteries of Eleusis had nothing whatever to do with the matter. We have only to remember the simple fact that the Eleusinian mysteries admitted to initiation, with the single exception of those stained by the crime of murder, Greeks of all sorts without any inquiry into their past life and actions, or even their character. ”

“ The impression felt in our days by the non-initiated is of the same nature as that felt in former times by those who were not initiated in the mysteries enacted at Eleusis in honour of Ceres. But the mysteries of Eleusis interested the whole of Greece, and whoever had attained some eminence in the society of those days had an ardent wish to take a part in those mysterious ceremonies, while Freemasonry, in the midst of many men of the highest merit, reckons a crowd of scoundrels whom no society ought to acknowledge, because they are the refuse of mankind as far as morality is concerned. ”