Grisha

“ In a few minutes nurse turned off the boulevard and led Grisha into a large courtyard where the snow still lay on the ground. The man with shiny buttons followed them. Carefully avoiding the puddles and lumps of snow, they picked their way across the courtyard, mounted a dark, grimy staircase, and entered a room where the air was heavy with smoke and a strong smell of cooking. A woman was standing over a stove frying chops. This cook and nurse embraced one another, and, sitting down on a bench with the man, began talking in low voices. Bundled up as he was, Grisha felt unbearably hot. ”

“ Hitherto Grisha has known only a rectangular world, where in one corner stands his bed, in the other nurse's trunk, in the third a chair, while in the fourth there is a little lamp burning. If one looks under the bed, one sees a doll with a broken arm and a drum; and behind nurse's trunk, there are a great many things of all sorts: cotton reels, boxes without lids, and a broken Jack-a-dandy. In that world, besides nurse and Grisha, there are often mamma and the cat. Mamma is like a doll, and puss is like papa's fur-coat, only the coat hasn't got eyes and a tail. ”

“ Old Grizzie was bright as the new day, bustling and deedy. Her sense of the awful was nowise to be measured by the degree of her dread: she believed and did not fear—much. She had an instinctive consciousness that a woman ought to be, and might be, and was a match for the devil.
“I am sorry we have no coffee for your lordship,” said the laird, “To tell the truth, we seldom take anything more than our country’s porridge. I hope you can take tea? Our Grizzie’s scons are good, with plenty of butter.” ”

“ A very celebrated person, whom I remembered, when in London before, giving Grisi the most unqualified eulogy, assured the gay admirers in her box last night that she had always said that Grisi had nothing but lungs and fine eyes. She was a great healthy Italian girl, and could sing in tune; but soul or sentiment she never had! Poor Grisi! Hers is the lot of all who are so unhappy as to have been much admired. “Le monde ne hait rien autant que ses idoles quand ils sont à terre,” said the wise La Bruyere. ”

“ Even the days when it was the capital of the famous Pyrrhus seem recent, compared with the really great days when it was a democratic city of free Hellas long before the Persian war. Cropping out from under the shabby houses of the town are walls made of massive blocks which speak of days of greatness. This blooming colony of Corinth, foreordained by its situation to be the principal city of the region, gave its name in antiquity, as now, to the great gulf which it overlooks. ”

“ Griselda, in her flight, had left behind
All but the dress she stood in, too refined,
In her fair righteousness of thought and deed,
To make provision for a future need,
However dire. She was no Israelite
To go forth from her Pharaoh in the night,
With spoils of the Egyptians in her hands,
And had thrown herself on Manton and on France
With a full courage worth a nobler cause,
Grandly oblivious of prudential laws. ”

“ For, as in this sad world all things must pass,
However great and nobly framed and fair:
Griselda, too, is of the things that were.
But while she lived Griselda had no need
Of the world's pity. She was proudly bred
And proudly nurtured. Plenty her full horn
Had fairly emptied out when she was born,
And dowered her with all bounties. She was fair
As only children of the noblest are,
And brave and strong and opulent of health,
Which made her take full pleasure of her wealth. ”

“ With respect,
"'Spiro Rhizares.'
"This letter Spiro sent through the mountain passes by a shepherd boy and awaited an answer. At last one came. It was short.
"'To one Spiro Rhizares, —th, Grecian Infantry.
"'Sir:—Since you are wishing to feel the edge of a Turkish scimiter, come and be killed. When you are dead your friend shall go free. This on the honour of a Turk. I promise because I know you will not come. You thought to work on my heart. I have no heart for Greeks. As we will kill all your men in a few months, you may as well die now if you like. ”

“ What happens at Athens has long concerned them more than what happens at Constantinople; and with Greece occupying the islands in the daily view of many of them, they are coming to regard themselves more and more every day as citizens of Graecia Irredenta. What is to be done with these? What, in particular, with Smyrna, the second city of the Ottoman Empire and the first of ‘Magna Graecia’? Its three and a half hundred thousand souls include the largest Greek urban population resident in any one city. Shall it be united to Greece? Greece herself might well hesitate. ”

“ Rhigas's five companions were secretly drowned, but he himself offered so violent a resistance that he was shot by two Turkish soldiers. His last words are reported as being: “I have sown a rich seed; the hour is coming when my country will reap its glorious fruits.” Rhigas, writing in the popular dialect instead of in classical Greek, aroused the patriotic fervour of his contemporaries and his poems were a serious factor in the awakening of modern Greece. ”

“ Beauty of form did not die out with the ancient Greeks: the Diana of the Louvre and the Medici Venus may be seen any day of any year, on the shores of the far-away islands, by those who know lovely line when they see it, and have not given over their senses, bound and blinded, to the traditions of the schools. If there is any man in the world to-day who can handle a hammer and chisel as Phidias did, let him come to the South Sea Islands and look there for the models that made the ancient Greek immortal. ”

“ After six years of residence in this spot, they were persuaded by some of the indigenous Libyans to abandon it, under the promise that they should be conducted to a better situation: and their guides now brought them to the actual site of Kyrênê, saying, “Here, men of Hellas, is the place for you to dwell, for here the sky is perforated.” [61] The road through which they passed had led through the tempting region of Irasa with its fountain Thestê, and their guides took the precaution to carry them through it by night, in order that they might remain ignorant of its beauties. ”

“ Never mind, the day will come when every Grecian shall arm himself, and the detestable Turks shall be swept from our borders and all Greece shall once more be free!"
Marco's eye kindled and his face flushed.
"Thank you so much for telling me about it, Marco, I hope you'll never have to go to fight, but I wish Greece could have all the land [65] that belongs to her. I am afraid I must go now. Aunt Anna will be displeased if I am late. It is growing dark. Are you not afraid all alone here in the mountains?" ”

“ Politically, Greece has a place among the Powers—she has a constitution and a king. So, as far as material prosperity goes, I wish not to meddle with her, but my aim is to revive her intellectuality, and Crispin’s play was entirely written to illustrate that point. Hellas will never be a modern Roman empire—she never was an all-conquering power, and her strength lay in the brains, not in the hands of her sons. ”

“ When Cyrus invited me, I came to him along with you, in order to make him the best return in my power for his past kindness. But now, since you will no longer march along with me, I am under the necessity either of renouncing you or of breaking faith with him. Whether I am doing right or not, I cannot say; but I shall stand by you, and share your fate. No one shall say of me that, having conducted Greek troops into a foreign land, I betrayed the Greeks and chose the foreigner. You are to me country, friends, allies; while you are with me, I can help a friend, and repel an enemy. ”

“ The Athenian generals, who were waiting in expectation that it would be opened, soon perceived by the delay that their friends within had been baffled, and immediately resolved to make sure of Nisæa, which lay behind them; an acquisition important not less in itself, than as a probable means for the mastery of Megara. They set about the work with the characteristic rapidity of Athenians. Masons and tools in abundance were forthwith sent for from Athens, and the army distributed among themselves the wall of circumvallation round Nisæa in distinct parts. ”

“ The “chain” was placed perpendicularly, so that the weaving was done standing;—the horizontal loom, which had been used in Egypt for centuries, was not yet known in Hellas.
11 As Byssa stood near the verge of the cliff, with the blue sky behind her, there was an excellent opportunity to observe her. She had fastened her dark hair in a knot through which a bronze pin was thrust, and wore around her neck a row of blue glass beads. The rest of her dress consisted merely of a red petticoat, reaching from her hips to her knees. ”

“ In reference to the seats of the ancient Illyrians and Macedonians Grisebach has made another observation of great importance (vol. ii, p. 121) . Between the north-eastern extremity, Mount Ljubatrin, and the Klissoura of Devol, there are in the mighty and continuous chain of Skardus (above seven thousand feet high) only two passes fit for an army to cross: one near the northern extremity of the chain, over which Grisebach himself crossed, from Kalkandele to Prisdren, a very high col, not less than five thousand feet above the level of the sea ”

“ Rightly or wrongly, the Slavs entertain a preference for you, my friend,” to Maurice, “the Greeks for me. I speak roughly, of course, but that is the general idea. The Slavs occupy the high ground in the interior—speaking roughly again—the Greeks the low country nearer the sea. Therefore Emathia is capable of division into two provinces, the population of one predominantly Greek, of the other predominantly Slav. Let us determine to divide her thus. Whichever of us succeeds in the election will be Prince of Emathia, and mouthpiece of the Powers, but he cannot dispense with the other. ”

“ The Balkan peninsula, indeed, and the islands of the Ægean—still called Hellas—were their principal home. But they had numerous settlements on the coast of Italy, Sicily, Thrace, and Asia Minor, and some in more distant parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. These all came to be included under the general name of Hellas, and the Hellenes, wherever they lived, recognised ties of blood, religion, and common principles of conduct.
A system of small states was a characteristic mark of this Hellenism. Each city, with a narrow territory attached, aimed at complete independence. ”

“ Ghresh, or Gresh, is an expression in the Arabic tongue, meaning to expel or drive away, and, as I apprehend, by the repetition of the word, is the expression from which the African gris-gris is derived, consisting of exorcised feathers, cloth, &c., short sentences from the Koran, written on parchment, and enclosed in small ornamented leathern cases, worn about their persons, under the idea that it will keep away evil spirits, and is a species of fetish.
The Mandingos, or book-men, are great fetish makers, many of them being well versed in the Arabic tongue, and writing it in a neat character. ”

“ I shall build a wall. My father subdued all the population of Shoa, and I fear no enemy to the south, in Guráguê, Enárea, or Zingero. None can stand before me. The Adaïel and the people of Geshe (a province on the northern frontier of Shoa) alone contend with me. In Geshe they have large shields, and fight hand to hand. The country of the Adel is difficult of access, and unfortunate for the Amhára. It is an old dependency of the empire of my ancestors; but the men are brave, and stand firm in battle. They will not run away. ”

“ Wherever men of Hellas have planted themselves on barbarian soil, the soil has become Hellas through their presence. The man who goes forth from Athens to Milêtos still remains Greek and Ionian; the man who goes forth from Rhodes to Gela still remains Greek and Dorian. The tie of national brotherhood, the abiding feeling of the oneness of the folk, lives on through physical distance, through political separation, through political rivalry and wasting war. ”

“ Indeed, our [Pg 157] respect for them, and even our disposition to like them, are rather increased by the sight of the big mansions of the lemonade, and bon-bon, and coffee and confectionery lords.
So much in explanation of the big houses we find not only in the Engadin, but more or less in all the Grison valleys. We now come to the valley itself. The sun on this day was unclouded; but we were on the road from the Maloja to St. Moritz ”

“ Oh! could we but bestow this precious gift on our mother-country and her colonies! would the tribes of our native land but forget their Dorian, Ionian or AEolian descent, and, contenting themselves with the one name of Hellenes, live as the children of one family, as the sheep of one flock,—then indeed we should be strong against the whole world, and Hellas would be recognized by all nations as the Queen of the Earth! ”

“ Then they gazed at each other.
"Of course," said Brand. "Of course! Greca, you're marvelous! Wish we had a tank? Why, we've got one! A four-legged mountain of meat that ought to be able to plow through the side of that dome like a battering ram through cardboard!"
"But it's not possible," replied Greca, her head dropping dejectedly. "My people, as driven slaves, till the fields with great animals that were trapped in the surrounding jungles. ”

“ The Greek temperament swings between the dead calm and passionless on the one hand, to the violent and maniacal on the other. The nation is still convalescent, its development is slow, and it is impossible to say how far new Greece will develop. But its strength lies in its serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness in that absence of ideals and in the sudden violence of partizanship which suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and shrewd; what she says is often madness. ”