Frazer

“ Frazer’s mastery of the whole literature of folk-lore and savage life is something remarkable, and is clearly based on a thorough and systematic search through all likely sources (the Dutch reports on their Eastern possessions are a quite unworked field) . One quite envies Mr. Frazer the hours of happy work which must have been passed in compiling this mass of information. He must often have felt the supreme joy of the researcher in finding his chaotic materials slowly rounding themselves into an intelligible whole. ”

“ Your boosting Frazer——"
"Look here," from Carl, "I won't crawl down on my opinion about Frazer. Folks haven't understood him."
"Lord love you, son," soothed Howard Griffin, "we aren't trying to change your opinion of Frazer. We're, your friends, you know. We're proud of you for standing up for him. Only thing is, now that he's practically fired, just tell me how it's going to help him or you or anybody else, now, to make everybody sore by roasting them because they can't agree with you. Boost; don't knock! Don't make everybody think you're a crank." ”

“ The senior vouchsafed: "No, 'me and my Y. M.' didn't like it. Now don't let me keep you, Ericson. I suppose you'll be wanting to join dear Mr. Frazer in a highball; you're such a pet of his. Did he teach you to booze? I understand you're good at it."
"You apologize or I'll punch your face off," said Carl. "I don't understand Professor Frazer's principles like I ought to. I'm not fighting for them. Prob'ly would if I knew enough. But I don't like your face. It's too long. It's like a horse's face. It's an insult to Frazer [94] to have a horse-faced guy listen to him. ”

“ Frazer held himself aloof from the movement of the growing towns and cities, and watched the weak physical fiber of his children, marked by their unambitious Southern strain. Energy for acquirement of any sort was not theirs, and for his family his money meant only the material supply of food and clothes. ”

“ His father, Mr Ferchard Frazer, was born in the north of Scotland, near Stratharig, about the year 1606, and lineally descended of the family of my Lord Lovat, but mediately of the family of Tober, one of the Lairds of the name of Frazer.
After he had taken his degrees at the University, and applied himself to the study of Divinity, he was called by the bishop of the isles (there being then few learned men able to preach in the Irish tongue) to be minister of the Isles of Teree and Coll, (to which charge the deanry of the Isles was annext.) ”

“ In battle, Frazer was always in the thickest spatter of bullets, where he bowed himself to the inevitable and lay prone, though with his face turned to one side to give free passage to the chaff which carried his comrades through so many grim hours. In the presence of danger, his humor never failed him. In those sorrowful hours which followed the cessation of firing, no man was in greater demand than he. Many a brave fellow had died with his hand shut fast over Frazer's long, slim fingers ”

“ And when Frazer asked him why the devil he hadn't stopped to help him down in the village, the other replied that he thought it would make such a wonderful picture with Frazer loading in wounded, with shells breaking on all sides, that he had just gone on about half a mile further, and then turned around and photographed it. I presume Payne is peeved because he did such a crazy childish trick. He certainly ought to be. Almost every day a Boche aviator flies overhead. ”

“ They all greedily discussed Frazer's charge that some member of the corporation owned saloon lots, and tried to decide who it was, but not one of them gave Frazer credit. Twenty times Carl wanted to deny; twenty times speech rose in him so hotly that he drew a breath and opened his mouth; but each time he muttered to himself: "Oh, shut up! You'll only make 'em worse." Students who had attended [95] the lecture declared that Professor Frazer had advocated bomb-throwing and obscenity, and the others believed, marveling, "Well, well, well, well!" ”

“ What will Miss Frazer say?"
Miss Frazer was on the point of collecting her flock in preparation for tea, when two dejected, dripping figures came creeping along the terrace. If they had hoped to reach the side door unobserved, they were soon undeceived; the governess's sharp eyes spied them at once.
"Lindsay and Cicely!" she burst out wrathfully. "You naughty girls! Where have you been? Come at once into the house and change your clothes. You give more trouble than all the rest of the class put together. Miss Russell will have to be told about this." ”

“ Mr Frazer ignored the other's words. Going to the caravan with the parcel in his hand he placed it just inside the door. Then he turned to the girl again, beckoning to her with his hand.
"If you please! You remember what I said about half-an-hour? I shall be so glad if you can make it convenient to be ready."
She hesitated; looking sideways at the stranger. Then she moved to Mr Frazer, who was by the steps which led into the caravan. ”

“ But, as Lossing justly remarks, the life of an officer is no dearer to himself, his wife, and children, than that of a private to his, and that the slaying of Frazer probably saved the lives of hundreds of common soldiers."
"Yes, Papa," returned Max, thoughtfully; "and so I think Morgan deserves all praise for [Pg 24] giving that order to his men. If Frazer did not want to lose his life, he should not have come here to help crush out liberty in this country."
"Papa, do you think he hated the Americans?" asked Lulu. ”

“ Frazer's hypothesis as to the origin of the belief in the divinity of Christ. Unlike several modern speculations, Mr. Frazer's is based on an extraordinary mass of erudition. We are not put off with vague and unvouched-for statements, or with familiar facts extracted from the collections of Mr. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Frazer does not collect knowledge, as his Babylonian kings are supposed by him to have been sacrificed—by proxy. No writer is so erudite, and few are so exact in their references. ”

“ Mr Frazer, with more of naïvete and good-humour than might have been expected—"it was, indeed, an uncommon sight to behold a large and mixed company of men and women, but indifferently clad and ill-assorted, marching over muirs and hill-sides, with a roaring bagpipe at their tail; the piper puffing and blowing, and ever and anon casting a suspicious look behind, towards the pike points, which were occasionally applied to his person in a manner the least ceremonious possible." Might not this group form an appropriate subject for an Allan, a Wilkie, or a Harvey? ”

“ Frazer thinks it unlikely that bad angels delude ‘several men that I have known to be of considerable sense, and pious and good conversation’. He will not hear of angels making bodies of ‘compressed air’ (an old mystic idea) , which they place before men’s eyes. His own hypothesis is more economical of marvel. He has not observed second sight to be hereditary. ”

“ Tell them to start planning to drop a couple of heavy thermo-nucs on this area. Clean out twenty or thirty million people. We'd never miss 'em."
Frazer chuckled wryly. "I wish I had a buck for every time I've heard that suggestion."
"Ever stop to think why you hear it so often? It's because everybody feels the same way—we can't take being hemmed in like this."
"Well, a bomb wouldn't help. You know that." Frazer pursed his lips. "Robertson figured out what would happen, with the chain-reaction."
Harry glanced sideways at his companion as the car started forward once again. ”

“ Frazer's needs, as the Sacæan victim is not regarded as divine, as he is no 'victim' but a criminal, as he is not sacrificed, as the feast is not religious but a secular merrymaking, as no resurrection is mentioned, as the historical date does not fit Eastertide, Mr. Frazer has to invent theories which will prove far more than the facts alleged by Dio Chrysostom, Berosus in Athenæus, Strabo, and Hesychius ”

“ And it was not until the happy-go-lucky Frazer ambled into our apartments an hour later with a broad grin on his face that we learned what was troubling Payne. It seems that the two had been at La Harazee together and Frazer started out for town with two malades and one couché when the relief man came at ten-thirty. He had a close shave at Vienne la Ville where, as usual, the Boches were shelling the main street of the village. He would have gone through at top speed if he had not noticed a poor beggar, with a bad cut in the arm, lying in the gutter. ”

“ Frazer as dying to save the life of the king, who otherwise would have been slain as a god, on Mr. Frazer's hypothesis of religious regicide, as he could not be trusted 'to remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more than a year.' [38] The king was 'slain in his character as a god,' who could not be trusted for more than a year. Nothing was said to indicate that the mock king incarnated any special known god; say Tammuz. That conjecture appeared later, [39] and the date of the sacrifice was in June-July. Nothing was said, even now, about the victim's sacred harlot. ”

“ The crowd began to move hesitatingly, while Professor Frazer hastily picked up his papers and raincoat and hurried out through the door beside the platform. Voices immediately rose in a web of talk, many-colored, hot-colored.
Carl babbled to the man next him, "He sure is broad. [93] He doesn't care whether they're conservative or not. ”

“ FRAZER, ANDREW (d. 1792) , lieutenant-colonel of engineers, son of George Frazer, a deputy surveyor of excise in Scotland, was probably employed on the works at Fort George after the Scottish rebellion of 1745–6. He was appointed practitioner engineer, with rank of ensign in the train, on 17 March 1759, and sub-engineer, with rank of lieutenant, in 1761. ”

“ However, it is the duty of every hypothesiser to push his theory to its furthest extent. Someone has said that the use of philosophical systems is in their weak places. So, too, the strength of an hypothesis is best shown in its weak places. Mr. Frazer’s views have some plausibility, even when stretched and strained to their utmost.
But the merit of Mr. Frazer’s book resides, not so much in his theories, ingenious as they are, as in his facts and in his co-ordinations of them. “The Golden Bough” is really a series of monographs on folk-lore and mythological subjects. ”

“ They were halfway along the passage, and a few seconds more would have seen them safely on the top landing, when (oh, the bad luck of it!) they almost knocked down Miss Frazer, who emerged at exactly the wrong moment from her own bedroom door.
"Gently, girls, gently!" she remonstrated. "Where are you going in such a hurry?"
It was impossible to explain. How could they tell the teacher the nature of their errand? They both stood still, looking very "caught" and dismayed, and said nothing.
"As you have come indoors so early, you had better tidy your drawers," continued Miss Frazer dryly. ”

“ Atoâ immediately leaped forward and seized the knife, and had his arm already raised to stab Mr Knight in the back, when Frazer shot him dead. At almost the same instant, Luerson struck Mr Knight a tremendous blow on the head with his mallet, which felled him to the earth, stunned and lifeless. He next rushed upon Frazer, who had fairly covered him with the muzzle of his piece, and would inevitably have shot him, but just as he pulled the trigger, the man whom I had seen creeping round behind him, sprang upon him, and deranged his aim ”

“ To tell the next day or two in detail would be to make many books about the mixed childishness and heroic fineness of Carl's partisanship; to repeat a thousand rumors running about the campus to the effect that the faculty would demand Frazer's resignation; to explain [96] the reason why Frazer's charge that a Plato director owned land used by saloons was eagerly whispered for a little while, then quite forgotten, while Frazer's reputation as a "crank" was never forgotten, so much does muck resent the muck-raker ”

“ Frazer has recently pointed out, not properly to be called religion [357] . The magical charms by [Pg 103] which he attempts to make the sun burn, and the waters fall, and the wind blow as it pleases him, certainly do not imply that recognition of a quasi-human personality outside himself, which any religious definition may be supposed to require as a minimum. They are rather to be regarded as applications of primitive science, for they depend upon a vague general notion of the relations of cause and effect. ”

“ They moved to where the grass fringed the road, and where, if they spoke in lowered tones, they were out of earshot of the girl at the window. "Are you sure of what you say?"
The two men looked each other in the face. Frazer saw that this man was a wild-looking fellow, whose experience of the police and their methods was probably of a practical kind. So far as he could judge he seemed to be sufficiently in earnest.
"Dead sure. I tell you they're looking out for you for all they're worth. I shouldn't be surprised but what they're looking out for you over the whole countryside. I know 'em?" ”

“ I have; and--I'm rather prepossessed with her. I confess that Frances' ecstasies made me a trifle nervous; but so far as appearance and manner go she strikes me as being distinctly good style, as girls run nowadays. But she--or someone--might have let us know that she was coming, considering, so far as we're concerned, that she's a perfect stranger. She seems to have dropped from the clouds; she doesn't seem as if she were the kind of girl who'd do it. Who's the Mr Frazer she speaks of?"
"Mr Frazer?"
"She says she came with Mr Frazer--Eric Frazer?"
"Eric Frazer? She must mean Strathmoira." ”