Gladstone bag

“ It is easy enough for them to extricate themselves; they can do so almost with a bound. The Spanish Custom-house officers who watch the same frontier, use their cloaks and other wraps, which are far more weighty, and far inferior in warmth and protection to the bags. I described these knapsack bags in 'Vacation Tourists for 1860,' p. 449, and I subsequently had a macintosh bag lined with drugget, made on the same principle. I had a hood to it, and also the means of buttoning it loosely under my chin, to make myself watertight during heavy rain. ”

“ At the bottom of the bag I made a strange discovery. The interior of the bag was fitted with that thin yellow canvas-like material with which nearly all cheap bags, like this one was, are lined. At the bottom of the bag an oblong piece of the lining had apparently been torn clean out. The leather of the bag showed through the slit. Yet the lining round the edges of the gap showed no fraying, no trace of rough usage. On the contrary, the edges were pasted neatly down on the leather. ”

“ And do not jump to conclusions; it is fatal in this business.”
I knew the bag at once when I saw it. Surely no other bag of that size in the city had two straps fastened with steel buckles. The handles of two of the other bags had been cut off, but the heavy leather handle of this one was entire.
“This is the one you mean, of course. Yes, it looks like the one the old lady carried; but there may be others. It is foreign, isn't it?” ”

“ Cut out your two main bag pieces, or top and bottom, to the shape of two large sleeve boards such as tailors use, now cut out two long narrow slips, about twenty inches wide, and long enough to go the whole length of both sides and round the tapered rounded bottom of the bag, and up to the end-borders of the mouth, these strips are sewn in exactly as the leather is attached to the upper and lower boards of a pair of common bellows. Sleeping-bags should be made very strong, in order that they may be used to carry a variety of odd articles in. ”

“ It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded and placed in a long rack. ”

“ When not in use they are folded up and buckled with five buckles into the shape of a somewhat bulky knapsack (p. 152) , which the recent occupant may shoulder and walk away with.
The accompanying sketches are drawn to scale. They were made from the sleeping-bag belonging to a man 5 feet 6 inches in height; the scale should therefore be lengthened for a taller person, but the breadth seems ample. Its weight was exactly seven pounds. The douaniers post themselves on watch more or less immersed in these bags. They lie out in wet and snow, and find them impervious to both. ”

“ Feeling instinctively that Cousin Egbert would not now be dressing for dinner, I omitted evening clothes from my box, including only a morning-suit and one of form-fitting tweeds which I fancied would do me well enough. But no sooner was my box packed than the Tuttle person informed me that I could take no box whatever. It appeared that all luggage would be strapped to the backs of animals and thus transported. Even so, when I had reduced myself to one park riding-suit and a small bundle of necessary adjuncts, I was told that the golf-sticks must be left behind. ”

“ It is a shabby, quaint old bag, about eight inches long, round-bellied, brown with wear. It still contains what was in it when Mr. Patton found it—a cotton handkerchief, marked with a J; two keys—one a house-door key, the other a flat one; a scrawled note in a soiled lavender envelope; a newspaper clipping of a sale of blankets.
It is one of my most painful memories that for a month I examined that newspaper cutting frequently and that I failed entirely to grasp the significance of the reverse side. We all have a mental blind spot. That was mine.
Clare March was missing. That was my case ”

“ If the owner of that bag—a woman, presumably—is the slayer of Joseph Crawford, and made her escape from the scene undiscovered, she is not likely to stay around where she may be found. And the bag itself, and its contents, are hopelessly unindividual.”
“They are that,” I agreed. “Not a thing in it that mightn't be in any woman's bag in this country. To me, that cleaner's advertisement means nothing in connection with Miss Lloyd.” ”

“ A bag filled with earth, or it may be with grass, keeps its shape. Many people use their saddles as pillows; they roll up the flaps and stirrups, and place the saddle on the ground with a stone underneath, at its hindmost end, to keep it level and steady, and then lay their heads on the seat. I prefer using anything else; as, for instance, the stone without the saddle: but I generally secure some bag or other for the purpose, as, without a pillow, it is difficult to sleep in comfort. A bag shaped like a pillow-case, and stuffed with spare clothes, is very convenient. ”

“ He was as boneless as the other was compact and strong-ribbed. Friendship could not have offered a greater physical contrast. The handbag which Gethin carried with ease would have weighed Acheson to the earth. ”

“ The trouble with our style of suitcases and bags is that they are heavy, bulky, and not adaptable. On one occasion they are overcrowded, on another we carry them half empty. My own bags remind me of the way I used to feel about wine bottles in the cheery days when one could afford to regard such things with a somewhat critical eye. ”

“ A bag which was left and not only taken but turned away was not found. The place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged. ”

“ Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. ”

“ Stanley and Lord Gladstone will cling inflexibly to those great fundamental principles, which they understand far better than I do, and I will add that I do not understand anything about any of them whatever in the least—and let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrer money to do it with. ”

“ He no longer cared whether he understood human nature or not; he understood quite as much of it as he wanted; but he found in the "Life of Gladstone" (II, 464) a remark several times repeated that gave him matter for curious thought. "I always hold," said Mr. Gladstone, "that politicians are the men whom, as a rule, it is most difficult to comprehend"; and he added, by way of strengthening it: "For my own part, I never have thus understood, or thought I understood, above one or two." ”

“ Every man carries Two Bags about with him, one in front and one behind, and both are packed full of faults. The Bag in front contains his neighbours' faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others. ”

“ I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don’t know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; ”

“ Besides, if you must run off to town, why do it in that unfinished manner? If you had only looked up the trains before starting you would have seen you would have half an hour's wait at Northallerton, and you could quite easily have packed a bag. It's so much better to do things neatly and thoroughly—even stupid things. ”

“ I appeal to the famous article of Lord Macaulay, [3] who says with truth—
"Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests on this great fundamental proposition, that the propagation of re [Pg 22] ligious truth is one of the principal ends of government, as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition, his system vanishes at once."
This was entirely just. In the protest I addressed to the distinguished Reviewer on a particular point, I took no exception to it whatever. My work had used (as far as I believe and remember) none of the stock arguments for maintaining the Church of Ireland. ”

“ She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big man carried, there were perhaps two or three other children like herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway, and greeted me with a smiling face.
So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first impulse was to stop and buy something, since the man had been called. ”

“ This little bag I hope will prove
To be not vainly made--
For, if you should a needle want
It will afford you aid.
And as we are about to part
T'will serve another end,
For when you look upon the Bag
You'll recollect your friend
To the Memory of Mrs. ”

“ Gladstone’s Study is a singular circle of limes of some 20 feet in diameter, which goes by the name of Sir John Glynne’s Dressing-Room. Mounting the slope towards the old castle is the Broad Walk, terminating in an artificial amphitheatre at the top, made by Sir John Glynne to give employment in a time of distress. The grounds abound in fine trees, [29b] and in rhododendrons which in spring form masses of bloom. ”

“ After all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience, that man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported. ”

“ The inclosures and the plantations on this portion of the estate, called the Warren, were made in 1798, and command some very fine views. The high road through Pentrobin and Tinkersdale offers a pleasant return route to Hawarden.
Everyone has heard of Mr. Gladstone’s prowess as a woodcutter, and to some it may even have been matter of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, [32b] but he attacks them on p. ”

“ At the advanced age he has now attained, it can hardly be expected that Mr. Gladstone can very frequently indulge in what has been his favourite recreation for the past twenty-five years. The present winter [34] however saw the fall of at least one large tree, in which he took a full share—a Spanish chestnut, measuring 10ft. at the top of the face, and those who were present can testify to the undiminished vigour with which the axe was wielded on that occasion.
p. 35Parish and District of Hawarden. ”

“ What could be more natural, than that a name should fasten itself upon her, simply importing that, illustrious as was her motherhood, the fountain-head of her own life and destiny was lost in oblivion? ”

“ But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. “Where am I? What am I doing? What for?” She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. ”

“ The reader need not be told that John Bull never leaves home without encumbering himself with the greatest possible load of luggage. Our companions were no exception to the rule. ”

“ Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking’ the basket. It never is. ”

“ There is the whole music of the human heart, when touched by the hand of the Maker, in all its tones that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear, for every joy and pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude and rest. ”

“ Is it the object of the right honorable gentleman to convert the Irish people, or to dragoon them out of the aspirations which are as deeply lodged in the breasts of millions of men as the blood in their hearts? Does the right honorable gentleman in his wildest hour imagine that he has made one single genuine convert through the length and breadth of Ireland? (Cheers.) Even to take it on the lower and meaner sphere of brute force, I ask the right honorable gentleman to name one single village club that he has effectually stamped out. ”

“ In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester. ”

“ On recovering my senses, I hastened to quit a place where I hoped there was nothing further to detain me. I first filled my pockets with gold, then fastened the strings of the purse round my neck, and concealed it in my bosom. ”

“ A quiet and settled sadness broods over her whole image, and comes out not only when she weeps by the body of Hector, or when her husband’s presence reminds her of her offence, but even under the genial smiles and soothing words of old Priam on the wall. ”