Hundred Days

“ The confusion of the twenty-eight-day month, or season, with the later introduced year of more than three hundred and fifty days is responsible for the traditions of such long human lives. There are records of a man who lived over nine hundred "years." ”

“ A true Englishman never jokes when he has a stake depending on the matter. I bet twenty thousand against any of you that I will make the tour of the world in eighty days or less; that is to say, in nineteen hundred and twenty hours, or a hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred minutes. ”

“ Take away sickness, pining, bereavement, mourning, anxieties, and calamities, the times when, in any of these, one can open his mouth and laugh, are only four or five days in a month. Heaven and earth have no limit of duration, but the death of man has its (appointed) time. ”

“ Thus, from the six days of creation and the Sabbath-day of rest, since we are told that a day is with the Lord as a thousand years, it was inferred that the duration of the world will be through six thousand years of suffering, and an additional thousand, a millennium of rest. ”

“ Whatever they had must be made to do for three months yet, and three months meant ninety days, a goodly number for which to provide.
Slowly the days wore on, every one so much like the others that it seemed impossible to tell them apart. Sunday was the one day they observed through it all. ”

“ But, happily, the invisible powers of evil had not got it all their own way, even on that morning of August 5. Out of the very shadow of battle great things were already being born among the children of men, and chief among them were the spirits of sacrifice and brotherhood. ”

“ Well, well, since one must die, one may as well die in the spring. But isn't it absurd to begin a diary a fortnight, perhaps, before death? What does it matter? And by how much are fourteen days less than fourteen years, fourteen centuries? Beside eternity, they say, all is nothingness--yes, but in that case eternity, too, is nothing. ”

“ As we grow older the years seem to run to months, the months to weeks, the weeks to days, the days to hours, the hours to moments, until time, like an exhalation, appears to dissolve in the inane, and become the nothing it was and is and will be for eternity. ”

“ Further, if we view the narrative as the description of a series of visions, while we find it to be perfectly reconcileable with the statement in other parts of Scripture, that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, we remove, with other difficulties, the only strong objection to the opinion of those who regard the 'six days' as periods of undeflnable duration, and who may even believe that we are now in the 'seventh day,'—the day of rest or of cessation from the work of creation. ”

“ But time has a way of hurling ridicule back as effectively as a boomerang. For we have seen and marvelled at the shattering not only of the mythical eighty-day record but even the ten-day record, as progress wends its ceaseless, ambitious, difficult and almost fantastic way through the years. ”

“ If we must count by days, the time thus spent was five months only; if we may count by the innumerable sensations, thoughts, dreams, glances, opening flowers, realized hopes, unceasing joys, speeches interrupted, renewed, abandoned, frolic laughter, bare feet dabbling in the sea, hunts, childlike, for shells, kisses, surprises, clasping hands,—call it a lifetime; death will justify the word. ”

“ Perhaps the morning is a bright one, and the sun is shining in dusty sheets of dancing light through the clerestory windows on to the altar ablaze with gold, twinkling behind its yellow candles and the bowed heads of the priests. ”

“ A day of years, and a night of years, are each 360 years along; for as a day in symbolic time represents a year, or 360 days; so if the decorum of the symbol require it, each of these days may represent a year. ”

“ THE FIGHT
IT was not so many hours, so many days, so many weeks, so many months—it was a numberless succession of periods so loosely defined one from the other that they merged without perceptible demarcation into a single whole that, in itself intangible, held no concrete idea of time. ”

“ One sleeps through nearly a third of them, which leaves three months of conscious waiting. Hearts do not count fractions. Three months—and now they begin to drag. It is July, and that month has so many days, and the days have so many hours in them, and the hours are so long. ”

“ Yet, cruel as Nature seemed to be at the beginning of the spring, it was not so cruel as man. With the better weather our enemies began to devise and put into operation new and more devilish methods of warfare. ”

“ And if five years are added together the sun has an overplus of thirty days, and all the days which accrue to it for one of those five years, when they are full, amount to 364 days. 11. And the overplus of the sun and of the stars amounts to six days: in 5 years 6 days every year come to 30 days: and the moon falls behind the sun and stars to the number of 30 days. 12. And the sun and the stars bring in all the years exactly, so that they do not advance or delay their position by a single day unto eternity; but complete the years with perfect justice in 364 days. ”

“ But 'length of days' does not 'satisfy' all old people who attain to it, and that 'satisfaction' necessarily implies something more than the prolongation of the physical life to old age. The idea contained in this promise may be illustrated by the expression which is used in reference to a select few of the Old Testament saints, of whom it is recorded that they died 'full of days.' That does not merely mean that they had many days, but that, whatever the number, they had as many as they wished, and departed unreluctantly, having had enough of life. ”

“ Fifty years ago and more, when I was at Longford Castle with my two companions, who are no more with us, we found there a pleasant, motherly old housekeeper, or attendant of some kind, who gave us a draught of home-made ale and left a cheerful remembrance with us, as, I need hardly say, we did with her, in a materialized expression of our good-will. It always rubbed very hard on my feelings to offer money to any persons who had served me well, as if they were doing it for their own pleasure. ”

“ First Edition, in regard to Andrew Lang's Introduction. Scarce. Lang item.
[Pg 4]
16 Amatory. The Thousand and One Days. Persian Tales. Edited by Justin Huntley McCarthy. Frontispiece. 2 vols. Post 8vo. original boards, vellum backs, uncut. London, 1892. $5.00
If the Thousand and One Days are not such splendid stories as The Thousand and One Nights, what stories in the world are so splendid? We may love the (The Thousand and One Nights) with all our hearts, and yet be willing to welcome The Thousand and One Days for the sake of that enchanted and enchanting Orient of which they tell. ”

“ You have no idea, unless you have tried it, how endlessly long is a summer's day, that you measure out only by hunger, and bring to an end only when you are drowsy. I know a village where there are hardly any clocks, where no one knows more of the days of the week than by a sort of [Pg 167] instinct for the fête on Sundays, and where only one person can tell you the day of the month, and she is generally wrong ”

“ Wait a week and I myself will give you some."
"A week is too long. I must find them within three days."
"Three days are a short time and France is large."
"No matter; you know the word must; with that word great things are done." ”

“ Time to me is so precious, that with great difficulty can I steal one hour in eight days, either to satisfy myself, or to gratify my friends. I have been in continual travel since the day of appointment;422 and, notwithstanding the fevers have vexed me, yet have I travelled through the most part of this realm, where (all praise to His blessed Majesty!) men of all sorts and conditions embrace the truth. ”

“ The length of the day is equal to our lunar month, for all that time is included in one revolution round her axis. Her days and nights, therefore, will constantly be of the same length, or almost fifteen of our days each. ”

“ A day of twenty-four hours is not the kind of day referred to in the scriptural account of the creation; the word days, in the Scriptures, seems oftentimes to refer to some indefinite period of time. The Lord, in speaking to Adam in the garden, says, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;" ”

“ Ruskin would not wish to live in a land where there are no old ruins of castles and monasteries. Man will not live on bread only; he wants a great deal more, if he can get it,--frosted cake as well as corn-bread; and the New World keeps the imagination on plain and scanty diet, compared to the rich traditional and historic food which furnishes the banquets of the Old World. ”

“ It is the Small Hours of the Year, when none of all that sleep will wake,
Howe’er the legion storms of heaven their deep and hidden fastness shake.
It is the Dark Hour ere the Dawn, when, through the growing rifts of sleep,
The wistful-eyed and moaning dreams of other days begin to peep.
But when, amid the softening rain, aloft, so mellow and so clear,
The first flute of the robin sounds, it is the Daybreak of the Year!
[Pg 70]
[Pg 71]
III
SOME OF THEIR FRIENDS
[Pg 72]
[Pg 73]
THE YOUNG OF SPRING
There are so many, many young! ”

“ And years - That is, those grand divisions of time by which all succession in the vast lapse of duration is distinguished. This refers principally to a complete revolution of the earth round the sun, which is accomplished in 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 48 seconds; for though the revolution is that of the earth, yet it cannot be determined but by the heavenly bodies. ”

“ I have not yet recovered from the uncomfortable sensation of living in a Sundayless world,—a world which being so elaborate in its upholstery, is supposed to have required the full seven days to complete it, leaving no rest or hallowing for anybody. ”

“ Day broke on a city in the wildest excitement and confusion, a whole nation having up in long hissing swells of storm. Superficially all was quiet; hundreds of thousands of people retired at a prudent hour, got up early, and went to work. ”

“ A month, a little month of thirty days! Only a month. I know many men think the month before they receive the hand they court a century. To me it seems but an hour, a moment. I am not a child, impatient to possess a new toy. I am a man who has set his heart on obtaining a noble object, and I am so profoundly grateful for my success I can think of nothing but that some day soon you will be mine. The fact that you will be mine is everything. I could have waited for you years. But as you said, the sooner the better.--I am, my darling love, your own sweetheart,
George. ”

“ CHAPTER XI. FRED ASKS A QUESTION
Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness and grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from our own experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as long as a century. The love or the suffering of those who can tell just how long they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is only moderate and reasonable. ”

“ For when we announce a space of days in these terms, “after so many days,” sometimes we do not include in the number the day on which we speak, or the day on which the thing itself which we intimate beforehand or promise is declared to take place, but reckon only the intervening days, on the real and full and final expiry of which the incident in question is to occur. ”

“ But presently he took up the word, and asked her how long a while she deemed they would be away, and she answered, smiling on him for thanks, and having reckoned the days on her fingers: If all go better than well, they may be back in ten days’ time. Said the chaplain: There be longer whiles of waiting in most men’s lives. Yea, she said, but this is the delay at the best; it may be far longer; for how may we tell what haps may be?
Yea, said Leonard, shall we then call it twenty days, or thirty? Forsooth, that may be long for thee ”

“ A million days are 2730 years; a little more than two million days ago Adam was walking alone in the garden of Eden, and Eve was not yet formed. So large a number is two million days. But as many souls die without the gospel every three months. ”

“ The reckoning of time by weeks is derived from nothing in nature, but owes its existence to the divine appointment of the seventh day to a [31] holy use in memory of the Lord’s rest from the six days’ work of creation. [43] This period of time is marked only by the recurrence of the sanctified rest-day of the Creator. That the patriarchs reckoned time by weeks and by sevens of days, is evident from several texts. [44] That they should retain the week and forget the Sabbath by which alone the week is marked, is not a probable conclusion. ”

“ So days grew into weeks, weeks into months, and summer came once more, once more to gladden men and women and children’s hearts, with long days of golden sunshine, and soft cool dewy nights. Yes, summer came once more, and with it came a change in my life, my self-inflicted, lonely life. One morning I received a letter from my Cousin Arthur, saying that his mother and Lucy were going to spend the next three months with some friends in Scotland ”

“ One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' How long will that day be of which a thousand years are but as the morning twilight? Brethren, you have need of patience. ”

“ There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. ”