John A. Roebling

“ But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter, Said, in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" ”

“ Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way. ”

“ Don Roderick remained for some time lost in thought after the departure of the men: he then dismissed all his court, excepting the venerable Urbino, at that time archbishop of Toledo. The long white beard of this prelate bespoke his advanced age, and his overhanging eye-brows showed him a man full of wary counsel.
‘Father,’ said the king, ‘I have an earnest desire to penetrate the mystery of this tower.’ The worthy prelate shook his hoary head: ‘Beware, my son,’ said he; ‘there are secrets hidden from man for his good. ”

“ Well, quoth Friar John, as good sit still as rise up and fall; what cannot be cured must be endured. ”

“ but then to run risks for chivalry's sake was not in Robespierre's nature, and no man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character. ”

“ Sir John’s temper since he has taken seriously to politics has become quite unbearable. Really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm. ”

“ The sportsman has no need to urge a well-broken desert horse—it will turn into the hot trail and stretch out in pursuit till the speed sends a gale whistling past the ears of the rider and the dust from his heels lingers above the mesa like the smoke from a flying express. ”

“ The twilight is brief in Japan. The night is velvety; and the moonlight and the starlight transfigure the dolls' house architecture, the warped pine-trees, the feathery bamboo clumps and the pagoda spires.
From a downstair room there came the twang of cousin Sadako's koto, a kind of zither instrument, upon which she played interminable melancholy sonatas of liquid, detached notes, like desultory thoughts against a background of silence. ”

“ Witnessing the rate at which he did intellectual execution on the general spectacle of European life, Rowland at moments felt vaguely uneasy for the future; the boy was living too fast, he would have said, and giving alarming pledges to ennui in his later years. But we must live as our pulses are timed, and Roderick's struck the hour very often. He was, by imagination, though he never became in manner, a natural man of the world; he had intuitively, as an artist, what one may call the historic consciousness. ”

“ A wan, craven look comes over his face as he raises his eyes beseechingly to the superb young monarch who has taken his place—so miserable an object, that whatever have been his crimes it seems impossible he can now inspire anything but pity. But Don Roderich thinks otherwise; he contemplates the wretched figure before him with a stern glance. Then, turning to the assembled chiefs and addressing himself more especially to Julian, standing as sword-bearer at the right of the throne, he speaks in a hard, resonant voice:
“In this man you behold the butcher of my father. ”

“ The most rational of men was for an hour the most passionate. He reviled himself with transcendent bitterness, he accused himself of cruelty and injustice, he would have lain down there in Roderick's place to unsay the words that had yesterday driven him forth on his lonely ramble. Roderick had been fond of saying that there are such things as necessary follies, and Rowland was now proving it. At last he grew almost used to the dumb exultation of the cliff above him. He saw that Roderick was a mass of hideous injury, and he tried to understand what had happened. ”

“ Rowland took a generous pleasure in all these facilities and felicities; Roderick was so much younger than he himself had ever been. Surely youth and genius hand in hand were the most beautiful sight in the world. Roderick added to this the charm of his more immediately personal qualities. The vivacity of his perceptions, the audacity of his imagination, the picturesqueness of his phrase when he was pleased—and even more when he was displeased—his abounding good-humour, his candour, his unclouded frankness, his unfailing impulse to share with his friend every emotion and impression ”

“ They are forever glancing and whispering, bursting at times into wild peals of laughter which lack the authentic ring of gladness. They are a people of shadows blown by the harsh winds of destiny across the face of a land where they can find no permanent resting place. ”

“ Roderick had changed his sky, but he had not changed his mind; his humor was still that of which he had given Rowland a glimpse in that tragic explosion on the Lake of Como. He kept his despair to himself, and he went doggedly about the ordinary business of life; but it was easy to see that his spirit was mortally heavy, and that he lived and moved and talked simply from the force of habit. In that sad half-hour among the Italian olives there had been such a fierce sincerity in his tone, that Rowland began to abdicate the critical attitude. ”

“ He must and will understand that there is no honour in a connection with the son of his father; this is the only way in which he can be influenced."
Raoul was silent, but his manner showed that he did not share in this view of the case. Further conversation was impossible, for Lieutenant Rodenberg was at that moment announced, and the general gave orders that he should be admitted. "Leave me," he said in an undertone to Raoul; "I wish to speak with him alone." ”

“ If secret ambition ever spurred him to indulge that dream—which seems incredible—sober reflection at the looking glass should have corrected the strabismus. Mr. Rowell is not a leader of men, in action ”

“ He could but promise himself to be their stubborn even if disdained support. Preoccupied as he was, he could still observe how expectation, with Roderick, took a form which seemed singular even among his characteristic singularities. If redemption—the brilliant youth appeared to reason—was to arrive with his mother and his affianced bride, these last moments of error should be worth redeeming. He only idled, but he idled with intensity. He laughed and whistled and went often to Mrs. Light's; though Rowland could but wonder to what issue events had brought his relations with Christina. ”

“ Roderick cried. "What am I to do now?" he went on. "I have n't an idea. I think of subjects, but they remain mere lifeless names. They are mere words—they are not images. What am I to do?"
Rowland was a trifle annoyed. "Be a man," he was on the point of saying, "and don't, for heaven's sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous voice." But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the studio a loud, peremptory ring at the outer door.
Roderick broke into a laugh. "Talk of the devil," he said, "and you see his horns! If that 's not a customer, it ought to be." ”

“ Rowland blushed; he desired to justify himself in the most veracious manner. "The truth is," he said, "that I am afraid I care only in the second place for Roderick's holding up his head. What I care for in the first place is your happiness." ”

“ Roderick said frankly that Switzerland made him less miserable than Italy, and the Alps seemed less to mock at his enforced leisure than the Apennines. He indulged in long rambles, generally alone, and was very fond of climbing into dizzy places, where no sound could overtake him, and there, flinging himself on the never-trodden moss, of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging away the hours in perfect immobility. Rowland sometimes walked with him; though Roderick never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his society. ”

“ She eyed him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned to her as a feature of Roderick's establishment. It was the challenge, Rowland felt, which the vigilant and ambitious mother of a beautiful daughter has always at her command for well-appointed young men. Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory. "Are you also an artist?" she inquired with an almost affectionate inflexion. It was clear that what she meant was something of this kind: "Be so good as to assure me without delay that you 're really the rather manageable young man of fortune that you appear." ”

“ He asked the young man several questions about his cousin, but Roderick, throwing discretion to the winds on so many points, seemed to have reasons of his own for being reticent on this one. His measured answers quickened Rowland's curiosity, for the girl, with her irritating half-suggestions, had only to be a subject of guarded allusion in others to become a secret obsession. He learned from Roderick that she was the daughter of a country minister, a far-away cousin of his mother, settled in another part of the state ”

“ Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland said, "Remember it yourself!"
"They are horribly good!" said Roderick.
Rowland solemnly shrugged his shoulders; it seemed to him that he had nothing more to say. But as the others were going, a last light pulsation of the sense of undischarged duty led him to address to Roderick a few words of parting advice. "You 'll find the Villa Pandolfini very delightful, very comfortable," he said. "You ought to be very contented there. Whether you work or whether you loaf, it 's a place for an artist to be happy in. I hope you will work." ”

“ The chances of war! Nichevo!” He pressed Rouletabille’s hand, and Matrena Pétrovna took, as was her habit, Féodor Féodorovitch on her back and lugged him to his chamber. In that also she refused aid from anyone. The general clung to his wife’s neck during the ascent and laughed like a child. Rouletabille remained in the hallway, watching the garden attentively. Ermolai walked out of the villa and crossed the garden, going to meet a personage in uniform whom the young man recognized immediately as the grand-marshal of the court, who had introduced him to the Tsar. ”

“ He is now a member of the law firm of Noble, Estabrook & McHarg. He is a member of the State and National Bar Associations. He belongs to the Union League, the Lawyers', the Lotos, the Metropolitan, the Republican, the Auto (of America) , the Magnetic, the Pilgrims, Sleepy Hollow, Country (New York City) , and the Marquette of Chicago (honorary member) Clubs. He married, at Omaha, Oct. 23, 1880, Clara Campbell ; they have one daughter : Mrs. Blanche Deuel Roebling, of Trenton, N.J. His only sister was the late wife of R. C. Clowry, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company. ”

“ Rowland was half a dozen times on the point of asking him what was the matter with him; he was afraid he was going to be ill. Roderick had taken a great fancy to the Villa Mondragone, and used to declaim fantastic compliments to it as they strolled in the winter sunshine on the great terrace which looks toward Tivoli and the iridescent Sabine mountains. He carried his volume of Ariosto in his pocket, and took it out every now and then and spouted half a dozen stanzas to his companion. ”

“ His tone and his hand-shake seemed to constitute a promise, and upon this they parted.
Roderick’s bust of his mother, whether or no it was a discharge of what he called the filial debt, was at least a most admirable production. Rowland, at the time it was finished, met Gloriani one evening, and this unscrupulous genius immediately began to ask questions about it. “I am told our high-flying friend has come down,” he said. “He has been doing a queer little old woman.”
“A queer little old woman!” Rowland exclaimed. “My dear sir, she is Hudson’s mother.” ”

“ Rickety trams jolt past, crowded to overflowing, so crowded that humanity clings to the steps and platforms in clots, like flies clinging to some sweet surface. Thousands of little shops glitter, wink or frown at the passer-by. Many of them have western plate-glass windows and stucco fronts, hiding their savagery, like a native woman tricked out in ridiculous pomp. Some, still grimly conservative, receive the customer in their cavernous interior, and cheat his eyes in their perpetual twilight. ”

“ If Rowell were less of an orator he would be more of a power as a public man. Carrying around loaded blank pistols is not nearly so congenial to most men as a cigar in the left hand vest pocket. There is in most of us a strain of buncombe which we exhibit often when others are not looking. I think Rowell exhibits most of his in solemn form in public. If one has not what is called savoir faire he must make his abstractions and silences confoundedly interesting. Rowell packs all his power into a speech. ”

“ He is seated at his desk and, thinking I do not see him, is looking at me with an expression of benevolent and melancholy pity—the look with which he always regarded any one whom the Roebuck God Almighty had commanded Roebuck to destroy. He and his God were in constant communication; his God never did anything except for his benefit, he never did anything except on the direct counsel or command of his God. Just now his God is commanding him to destroy me, his confidential agent in shaping many a vast industrial enterprise and in inducing the public to buy by the million its bonds and stocks. ”

“ If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil, Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local influence. More than once he declared to his companion that he meant to live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter's, and that he cared little if he never again drew breath in American air. "For a man of my temperament, Rome is the only possible place," he said; "it 's better to recognize the fact early than late. ”