F

“ His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song. ”

“ In an agony of concentration ANTHONY tries to recall the name. After a struggle of parturition his memory gives up the fragment "Fred," around which he hastily builds the sentence "Glad you did, Fred!" Meanwhile the slight hush prefatory to an introduction has fallen upon the company. ”

“ The frequent letters of “F. H.” to “The Nation” are read with great interest and valued very highly, I am sure, by all American students of modern English. Nevertheless, there is something in these letters (if it may be said) that would be pleasanter if it were different. A reader of a half-dozen of them cannot help wondering whether “F. H.” has ever made a mistake,—the master is so masterful, his censure is so pungent. ”

“ Now, had I been anything but a preposterous ass, my answer would have been different; but then I was not myself, and I could not help noticing how tenderly her finger traced out those two letters "F. S.," so I laughed rather brutally and answered:
"Follow the instinct of your sex and stick to the Paris hats and things." ”

“ Though young in years, F. could scarcely, in the length and breadth of Europe, have fallen upon one with a more thorough insight into every phase and form of those mysteries by which the F. category of men exist. Mr L. was an actual amateur in this way, and was no more the man to be angry with F. for being a swindler, than with Ristori for being Medea or Macready being Macbeth. Not that he had the slightest suspicion at the time of F.‘s quality, as he assured him that there were no letters for that name. ”

“ Another sigh came from the window—quite a resigned sigh.
“She's life and hope and happiness, my whole world now.”
He felt the quiver of a tear on his eyelid. ”

“ Until your letter came, dear, I'd been sitting here in the half dark and thinking where I could go and ever forget you; abroad, perhaps, to drift through Italy or Spain and dream away the pain of having lost you where the crumbling ruins of older, mellower civilizations would mirror only the desolation of my heart—and then your letter came. ”

“ Her sigh was a benediction—an ecstatic surety that she was youth and beauty now as much as she would ever know. For another instant life was radiant and time a phantom and their strength eternal—then there was a bumping, scraping sound as the rowboat scraped alongside. ”

“ Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. ”

“ I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” ”

“ In many instances it even accentuates them. Thus, it displays more genius for order: it is more systematic; more intellectual; more firmly set in opinions, and more intuitional. “F” frequently leaves work uncompleted ”

“ "Talk English to me, Tommy."
"Parlez français avec moi, Nicole."
"But the meanings are different--in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. ”

“ When I was in America last there were girls who would tear you apart with their lips, tear themselves too, until their faces were scarlet with the blood around the lips all brought out in a patch--but nothing further. ”

“ Look at me, with the best o’ my days behind me, and wi’ only one arm left—and I’m a deal more awkward and helpless with that one arm than you’d think, sir,—look at me, and then tell me how could such a man dare to speak his mind to—such a woman. What right has—such a man to even think of speaking his mind to—such a woman, when there’s part o’ that man already in the grave? ”

“ His eyes were of a bright, hard blue. His nose was somewhat pointed and there was never any doubt at whom he was looking or talking--and this is a flattering attention, for who looks at us?--glances fall upon us, curious or disinterested, nothing more. ”

“ Sir H. A very good jest, i'faith—ha! ha! ha!
Clinch. jun. Ay, sir; but the best jest of all is, he knocked out his brains with a hammer—and so he is as dead as a door-nail! ha! ha! ha!
Lady D. And do you laugh, wretch?
Clinch. jun. Laugh! ha! ha! ha! let me see e'er a younger brother in England, that won't laugh at such a jest! ”

“ Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him—as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread. ”

“ For a moment François was silent; then the voice which came from his stolid visage was monotonously solemn, and the words dropped from it one by one, as if they were the mechanical product of some machine without interest in the results of its own action. One long, lean forefinger traversed the abbé's palm, and paused. "An easy life thou hast had. A woman has troubled it." The two pupils were delighted; the crowd laughed. "The line of life is broken—broken"—François's hands went through the pantomime of the snapping of a thread—"like that." ”

“ GARDEN
(MARGARET on FAUST'S arm. MARTHA and MEPHISTOPHELES walking up and down.)
MARGARET
I feel, the gentleman allows for me,
Demeans himself, and shames me by it;
A traveller is so used to be
Kindly content with any diet.
I know too well that my poor gossip can
Ne'er entertain such an experienced man.
FAUST
A look from thee, a word, more entertains
Than all the lore of wisest brains. ”

“ "You are mine—you know you're mine!" he cried wildly . . . the moonlight twisted in through the vines and listened . . . the fireflies hung upon their whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes. ”

“ The Babe’s tender Parents with tears in their eyes,
With joy they embrac’d their darling young Son,
Saying, Child, hadst thou left us, we had been undone.
Now I’ll leave the court full of joy and great mirth,
To love one another while God gives them breath:
And now by the Factor we may see indeed,
No mortal can prevent what Fate has decreed. ”

“ Sir W. I see you still retain your old antipathy to answering questions, so I shall ask none—Have you been in France, or among the savages? Hey! I remember you had a daughter at school—is she alive? is she merry or miserable? Is she married?
Falk. Zounds what a medley! France and savages! marriage and misery!
Sir W. Ods life, I’m happy to see you! I haven’t been so cheerful or happy for many a day.
Falk. How’s your wife?
Sir W. Hey! thank ye, sir! why that excellent good woman is in high health, in astonishing health! ”

“ Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. ”

“ And when thou yield'st to night thy wide domain,
Let rays of truth enlight his sleeping brain.
For brutish Pan in vain might thee assay
⁠With tinkling sounds to dash thy nervous verse,
Sound without sense; yet in his rude affray,
⁠ (For Ignorance is Folly's leasing nurse,
⁠And love of Folly needs none other's curse;) ”

“ But Beauty and Judgment are so far yet from being Inseparable, that they seem Effectually to Require, More or Less, a Diversity of Temperament: Beside that More Care is taken to Cultivate the Advantages of the Body than those of the Mind. To Wrap up all in a Word, the World it self is but a Great Shop of Carv'd Heads; and the Fox's Conceit will hold as well in the Life, as in the Fiction. ”

“ MAURY: Oh, yes.
(Silence, and then:)
ANTHONY: (With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous. ”

“ Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind. ”

“ "You know, you're a little complicated after all."
"Oh no," she assured him hastily. "No, I'm not really--I'm just a--I'm just a whole lot of different simple people." ”

“ They waited impatiently for the three bent figures to move off, and then she kissed him until the sky seemed to fade out and all her smiles and tears to vanish in an ecstasy of eternal seconds. ”

“ The picture of a human waking in the cool dawn and groping for them in vain, of a soft, toothless breakfast, of a strange, hollow, lisping voice calling the police station, of weary, dispirited visits to the dentist, roused a great fatherly pity in him. ”

“ He desired her and, so far as her virginal emotions went, she contemplated a surrender with equanimity. Yet she knew she would forget him half an hour after she left him--like an actor kissed in a picture. ”

“ Crouching in the depths of a dug-out, some thirty feet below the surface, a dug-out which shook and quivered as shells rained above it, Henri's comrades of the platoon smoked grimly, while that young fellow himself, once a Paris elegant, crouched in what was left of a fire-trench, now a mere shattered pit—and peered somewhat anxiously towards the open. ”

“ The Countess de Noailles is really a great poet—the greatest that the Twentieth Century has as yet produced in France, perhaps in Europe. In her the romantic Nineteenth Century has its last echo: her ardent magnificence, her sense of the wild beauty of natural things, her lyric cries, her vast horizons magically evoked, her summits and her tempests, and then her sudden bursts of simple, friendly homeliness, recall the genius of Victor Hugo. ”

“ To-day one sees only the ornate space, the voitures and automobiles, the tricolour floating high on the Louvre, and this forgetful Paris, brilliant with sunlight, green with trees, beautified by good government, which offers in its kiosks, cafés, and theatres the fulness of the moment at every turn. Paris itself truly forgets, if one does not. ”

“ Or I'll hang ev'ry mother's son!"
"Be quiet, father," said the boy,
"We are all decent fellows here;
So be appeas'd and do not fear;
We would not in the least annoy:
We leave the bad ones for your sake,
'Tis only sound ones that we take." ”

“ On my word, sir, that fetched me, I never drank since that night;
And I prays as I’ll follow Flo up to her ’ome ’o light.
For as that child forgave me, I believes by and by
As He’ll forgive me too, sir, who came for sinners to die.
So little Flo’s life warn’t lost, she showed me the way to live ”

“ For here thou may thy fellow find,
Whether thou wilt, at long or short.
FOLLY. Come, look and thou darest, arise and assay.
MANHOOD. Yea, sir, but yet Conscience biddeth me nay.
FOLLY. No, sir, thou darest not in good fay,
For truly thou failest no [w] , false heart.
MANHOOD. What sayest thou? have I a false heart?
FOLLY. Yea, sir, in good fay.
MANHOOD. Manhood will not that I say nay.
Defend thee, Folly, if that you may,
For in faith I purpose to wete what thou art.
How sayest thou now, Folly, hast thou not a touch? ”

“ The fable of the Fox and the Grapes is admirably represented in Freitag’s Mythologia Ethica (p. 127) , to the motto, “Feigned is the refusal of that which cannot be had,”—
Ficta eius quod haberi nequit
recusatio.
Freitag, 1579.
Fatuus statim indicat iram suam: qui autem dissimulat iniuriam, callidus est.
Prouerb. 12, 16.
“A fool’s wrath is presently known: but a prudent man covereth shame.” The fable itself belongs to an earlier work by Gabriel Faerni, and there exemplifies the thought, “to glut oneself with one’s own folly,”—
“Stultitia sua seipsum saginare.” ”

“ But the real life, the only beauty of the country, is set on the top of all the hills, where moor joins moor from Yorkshire into Lancashire, a coiled chain of wild free places. White with snow in winter, black at midsummer, it is only when spring dapples the dark heather-stems with the vivid green of the sprouting wortleberry bushes, only when in early autumn the moors are one humming mass of fragrant purple, that any beauty of tint lights up the scene. But there is always a charm in the moors for hardy and solitary spirits. ”

“ She was making great amusement for the young man on her left and the portly person on her right, and even for the old fellow opposite her, for the latter from time to time uttered the shocked and mildly reproachful cackles of another generation. ”

“ Bon. Coming, coming—a coach and six foaming horses at this time o'night! some great man, as the saying is, for he scorns to travel with other people.
Enter Sir Charles Freeman.
Sir C. What, fellow! a public house, and abed when other people sleep?
Bon. Sir, I an't abed, as the saying is.
Sir C. I see that, as the saying is! ”

“ Come, come, this is no Time for Fooling, says the Fox; set me upon Terra Firma first, and then I'll tell ye the History.
The Moral.
When a Man is in Misery, there must be no Trifling in the Case. 'Tis a Barbareus Humour to stand Bantering out of Season. 'Tis no Time or Place for Raillery, when a Life's at Stake. ”

“ Beneath our Lady Folly's tread?
Why has she left us, wise in woe,
⁠Shrewd, practical, uncomforted?
We cannot love or dream or sing,
⁠We are too cynical to pray,
There is no joy in anything
⁠Since Lady Folly went away. ”