Johann Wilhelm Hittorf

“ Perhaps another woman, with a strong will and vivid intellect, might have set herself to work, backed by that very vow that defied poor Hitty, and, by sheer resolution, have dragged her husband up from the gulf and saved him, though as by fire; or a more buoyant and younger wife might have passed it by as a first offence, hopeful of its being also the only one. But an instinctive knowledge of the man bereft Hitty of any such hope ”

“ In an hour's time or so I saw Thiodolf and the young scald Harek coming along the wharf and towards our ship, which lay clear of Harald's vessels, and next the harbour mouth. They came over the gang plank, and I welcomed them, but I saw that they had somewhat special to say to me.
They sat down under the after awning with me, and at once Thiodolf said:
"That was an unlucky speech of your comrade's just now. No man dares name himself king in Harald's presence--not even his own sons. It is the one thing that he will not bear." ”

“ All men's hearts rose high as he sang, and when he had ended arose the clang of sword and shield and went ringing down the meadow, and the mighty shout of the Markmen's joy rent the heavens: for in sooth at that moment they saw Thiodolf, their champion, sitting among the Gods on his golden chair, sweet savours around him, and sweet sound of singing, and he himself bright-faced and merry as no man on earth had seen him, for as joyous a man as he was. ”

“ Atter I come in, you say to Dainty dat she better gimme a dram because I’s so crippled up. Of co’se, she will hab to be manners an’ gib you some, too.”
“Dar, now!” Hitch boomed. “You shore is a smart boy, Dude. Dat plan is accawdin’ to de Bible, wise as suppents an’ harmless as ducks. But”——
Here Hitch broke off and looked down at his clothes.
“It ’pears to me it ain’t proper to call on a lady when I is barefooted an’ ain’t got nothin’ on but a pair of pants an’ a red undershirt,” he mourned. ”

“ They appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. ”

“ Dude assured him. “All de niggers wucks in de big mill dresses jes’ like you is now. Dainty will figger dat you is a sawmill hand. Talk right up to her, Revun”——
“I ain’t no preacher!” Hitch interrupted, growling like an angry bear. “I’s a prize-fighter.”
“Dat won’t do,” Dude chuckled, as he looked at the giant’s mighty arms and shoulders. “Dainty is powerful sot on preachers. I ’speck you better be one as long as you is hangin’ aroun’ her.”
“All right,” Hitch said reluctantly, as he started away. “I ain’t none too good or too proud to piddle wid dat job—ef I got to.” ”

“ A trifle gay for father's crowd was Miss Hitty, but they didn't dast to say a word. She belonged to one of our best families, and her brother-in-law, who could be as ungodly a man under provocation as you ever see, held a mortgage on the church. He'd 'a' dumped the outfit into the snows of winter, and never a second thought, if they didn't treat Miss Hitty right. So they overlooked things and gave her the Bible class to run. Mighty nice to us boys she was; she certainly was. Curious mix of part child and part horse-sense woman. ”

“ Here, my men, seize the rascal, and hang him to the highest gallows.”
“The power to do so is on your side,” answered Wittich, “but bethink you, my lord, whether such a deed would not bring dishonour on your fair fame.”
And Hildebrand said, “Sire, this is Wittich, son of Wieland, the celebrated smith. He is no mean man, or secret traitor, but well worthy of a place in the ranks of your comrades.”
“Very well, master,” replied the king, “I will fight him as he desires, but should he be conquered, I will deliver him to the hangman. ”

“ But he knows what a sea king is--no king at all, so to speak. He need not grudge the old title."
"That is not all," Thiodolf said. "It is in his mind that he has to guard yet against risings of men of the old families of the kings, and thinks you are likely to give him trouble. Maybe the portent of the blow that spread from Sigurd's tomb to us has seemed much to him. 'Here,' he says, 'is one who will gather masterless men to him in crowds because he wears Sigurd's sword and ring, and has gained with them the name of a hero. Already he has two of Einar's best men at his heels. ”

“ And the dog knew its death in that clutch, and when the man moved on, was left broken-necked under the stars. In this manner Hitchcock made the chief's lodge. For long he lay in the snow without, listening to the voices of the occupants and striving to locate Sipsu. Evidently there were many in the tent, and from the sounds they were in high excitement. At last he heard the girl's voice, and crawled around so that only the moose-hide divided them. Then burrowing in the snow, he slowly wormed his head and shoulders underneath. ”

“ In his present quandary, with French's fate literally in his hands, and with no idea how to preserve it, the clever and capable face of Miss Hitchen came as a light to a man in darkness.
They had parted in amity. In fact, the last words Miss Hitchen had said to him were of a nature almost [Pg 226] prophetic. "Bobby," she said, "if your irresponsibility ever gets you into any scrape, and I can help you, let me know, for you are just the sort of boy that gets into scrapes that only women can help a man out of." ”

“ The creatures may be supposed to have the body of a lion, though the general pose is stiff, and the position of the front legs even suggests a bird, corresponding to the wings above; the further details of the monster, however, do not bear out this suggestion. The treatment of the head and details of this sculpture again fails to suggest anything distinctively Hittite, but only here and there the survival of Hittite feeling and tradition. Probably this art corresponds to an early phase of Semitic influence, such as was illustrated with more completeness in the excavations of Sinjerli. ”

“ He laughed a little, and answered:
"One has to fill in what a warrior will not tell of himself."
Now the men shouted when I gave Thiodolf the bracelet, and Harald looked quickly at me. Then I thought that maybe I had overdone the gift, though Einar had ever told me that a good scald deserved good reward, and Thiodolf was well known as the best in Norway. It was a heavy ring, silver gilt, and of good design, that I took from the same viking whose sword I gave to Sigurd. ”

“ Following the sphinx there comes the figure of a man who, from his position, is the most important human being of the series, and must be deemed therefore to be the priest-dynast of the locality. The figure itself faces naturally to our left, following the direction of the leading sculptures, looking, that is, towards the outside of the palace. In the treatment of this sculpture there is revealed an interesting mixture of original Hittite motive with the change brought about, as we suppose, by Semitic infusion. ”

“ They made stay at last on the rising ground, all trampled and in parts bloody, where yesterday Thiodolf had come on the fight between the remnant of Otter’s men and the Romans: there they opened their ranks, and made a ring round about a space, amidmost of which was a little mound whereon was set the bier of Thiodolf. The wains and their warders came up with them and drew a garth of the wains round about the ring of men with the banners of the kindreds in their due places. ”

“ Then it seemed that Einar had been right, and that Harald would lay a fine on the islands for Halfdan's slaying, and so give them back to Einar to hold for him. The messenger was Thiodolf, Harald's own scald, and he put the matter very plainly before the jarl, so that he thought well of the offer, but would nevertheless not trust himself in the king's power before all was certain, and confirmed by oath. Whereon Thiodolf said that one must see the king on the Jarl's part, and so I seemed the right man to go, as the jarl's foster son and next in command to him. ”

“ So the winter passed by. The noises and lights that had awoke Hitty at midnight in the house at Greenfield had become so far an institution in this lonely dwelling that now they disturbed her sleep no more; for it was a received custom, that, whenever Abner Dimock's two visitors should appear, the cellar should resound all night with heavy blows and clinking of metal, and red light as from a forge streamed up through the doorway; but it disturbed Hitty no more; apathy settled down in black mist on her soul, and she seemed to think, to care, for nothing. ”

“ Thialf—a mythologic personage too, though represented as a peasant’s son, his name signifying thought—is exceeded in the race. The mighty thunderer himself is vanquished in three successive trials. Though he is the sun, the greatest drinker surely in all nature, he cannot much lessen a large horn of liquor that is presented to him: he cannot lift a huge tom-cat from the floor: he cannot, in wrestling, throw a toothless old woman, who brings him on one knee. ”

“ When Hitch Diamond emerged from the plum-thicket 56 which had served for a dressing-room, his seconds behind him, and stalked through the crowd to the ring, a wild burst of greeting and applause went up from his waiting fellow townsmen, all of whom, except Skeeter Butts and Figger Bush, had backed him to the limit at any odds.
Hitch bowed right and left, waved his giant arms at the people on the edge of the crowd, and listened with hungry ears to their pleas:
“We’re bettin’ on you, Hitch; don’t make us lose our money!”
“Knock him out, Hitchey! Den us’ll all be rich!” ”

“ I find that the name of Hittite was confined to that portion of the race which lived eastward and southward of the Taurus. In Asia Minor itself, their first cradle and home, they called themselves Kas or Kasians; it was the kingdom of Kas over which the Hittite lords of Boghaz Keui claimed to rule, and it is still as kings of Kas that they are entitled on the monuments of Carchemish, though here they also acknowledge the name of Hittite. ”

“ Hitch stood up and scratched his woolly head.
“Boss,” he said, in a sad tone, “one time when yo’ leetle gal got sick an’ you lived out on yo’ plantation in de country, I done you a leetle favor. Does you remember, boss?”
Haddan looked straight at Hitch Diamond while his nervous fingers drummed upon the arms of his chair. ”

“ HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY.
THE Hittites shone as much in the arts of peace as in the arts of war. The very fact that they invented a system of writing speaks highly for their intellectual capacities. It has been granted to but few among the races of mankind to devise means of communicating their thoughts otherwise than by words; most of the nations of the world have been content to borrow from others not only the written characters they use but even the conception of writing itself.
We know from the ruins of Boghaz Keui and Eyuk that the Hittites were no mean architects. ”

“ How far a war-duke of the Goths would have felt the compensatory sense that he was gaining immortality through the effect of his deeds on the destiny of his people was probably not in his mind. He himself, despite his constitutional horror of death, would perhaps not have been sorry at this time to lay off his hauberk if he could have been certain of the victory. Throughout the history of Thiodulf runs an elevated ethical intention absent from Morris’s later romances. ”

“ Sigmund and the men on the bearskin greeted her as "Sipsu," with the customary "Hello," but Hitchcock made room on the sled that she might sit beside him.
"And how goes it, Sipsu?" he asked, talking, after her fashion, in broken English and bastard Chinook. "Is the hunger still mighty in the camp? and has the witch doctor yet found the cause wherefore game is scarce and no moose in the land?"
"Yes; even so. There is little game, and we prepare to eat the dogs. Also has the witch doctor found the cause of all this evil, and to-morrow will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp." ”

“ Never again, it would seem, could the Hittite leaders call up in their special enterprise so many allies drawn from such varied peoples.
The dynasty of the Hatti none the less retained the throne; Hattusil, brother of the ill-starred leader, whose end we have described, now became Great King, and Putukhipa, Princess of Qizwadna, was his queen. As daughter of the city of Arinna, the home of the sun-god, this lady was probably the foremost of the land, and her union with the Prince of the Hatti was one of the events that contributed to restore the prestige of his house. ”

“ At the Hen-Scratch saloon they found Hitch Diamond, Prince Total, and Pap Curtain.
“Whut ails you-alls?” Hitch inquired curiously as he gazed into the frightened faces of his three friends. “You niggers look like you is jes’ foun’ out you wus borned to die!” 243
“Dat’s a fack, Hitch,” Skeeter sighed, as he and his two companions seated themselves on a bench. “Us is all had bad dreams.” ”

“ No long while had worn by in Heriulf's Storm, and though men's hearts were nothing daunted, but rather angered by what had befallen, yet would Thiodolf wear away the time somewhat more, since he hoped for succour from the Wain-burg and the Wood; and he would not that any of these Romans should escape us, but would give them all to Tyr, and to be a following to Heriulf the Old and the Great. ”