Masson

“ His ‘Philosophic Whim; or, Astronomy a Farce,’ 1774, 4to, full of grotesque expressions, he hawked about among his friends at the rate of half-a-crown or half-a-guinea as opportunity served. According to Professor Masson, he has the merit of inventing the word ‘impecuniosity.’ Among his expedients for raising money was a pretence of coaching candidates for the stage, on the terms of a guinea as entrance fee, another for instruction, and two guineas on engagement. ”

“ I feel that it is really quite impossible to do justice to the chivalry, the unselfishness, the constant readiness to espouse the unpopular cause, and to fight in its foremost ranks, which characterized Professor Masson, and it would take far too much of your space to say even a fraction of what could be said of the aid he gave us in that great battle. ”

“ It was at this crisis that the elderly lady again made her appearance. She came bustling into Masson’s back, crying aloud, “She’s gone! She’s gone with the other young man! Oh, dear” (as she perceived Masson) , “what is happening? Where is my brother?”
102“In there,” said Masson, and let go.
“Reginald!” she cried, as the squire came bouncing through. “Stop! It’s not this young man. It’s another young man; and Judith’s gone. She got out of her bedroom window, and they’re driving off now!”
“What?” cried the squire.
“Perhaps,” said Masson politely, “you will now believe what I said.” ”

“ The stream ‘excites itself by the declivity which it obeys’ is one of M. Masson’s finest achievements in this genre, and it is an admirable instance of the influence of schoolboys on their masters. However, it would be tedious to make a complete ‘catalogue of slips,’ so we will content ourselves by saying that M. Masson’s translation is not merely quite unworthy of himself, but is also quite undeserved by the public. Nowadays, the public has its feelings.
George Sand. By the late Elmé Marie Caro. Translated by Gustave Masson, B.A., Assistant Master, Harrow School. ”

“ Now, sir, gently, if you please.”
The last words were addressed to Masson, and he guessed, from the tone of reluctant respect, that the speaker was some house-servant. Probably the butler.
“All right,” he said. “Only, if you’re going to carry me, for Heaven’s sake be careful. If you drop me, it’s murder, mind. You’ll be hanged for it.”
“No fear, sir,” said Mr. Board genially. “We won’t hurt you, never fear. What the squire’ll do is another matter, sir, as I dessay you guess. Ready, Jenkins?”
“Ah,” said Jenkins, and moved forward with Masson’s head. Mr. ”

“ It confirms the stories of both Moran and Rawson. It makes the indications point all the stronger toward Masson.
“Now, I’ll give you something stronger than that. Ten minutes after Ethel Romney drove away from home, Eric Masson called at the Constant residence, asking to see Mrs. Constant. ”

“ But, good heavens, I couldn't help it."
"A woman expects too much," I replied, warmed even then by the recollection. "In the first place, no woman has any business running a car——"
"That's dead right."
"But as long as she's in the game she ought to take her chances with the rest."
"Sure!"
"But of course you couldn't help it—in her case."
Bill slapped his leg.
"Couldn't for a minute!" he said. "Ain't she a peach? Mighty few girls have got a chassis like that."
"That's so," said I with enthusiasm.
Then I squared round.
"Look here, Bill," I said. "Are you stuck on that girl?" ”

“ I pushed open the window wider.
"You see," he went on, "I have felt guilty at times, because—well, I fixed that car of hers so she'd have to come in often, so's I could see her—not to break down exactly, but it's easy to change your mixture and have the car get to missing and clouding up the plug, and there you are, only I never charged her for the time. That would have been rubbing it in, wouldn't it?"
At this moment the telephone bell rang—a long steady peal. Bill wearily reached for the earpiece.
"I knew it," he muttered. "There's no rest for the weary. Hello! Miss Caston. Oh, yes. ”

“ He meandered on while she and I listened. 'How is your car actin'?' says he. 'Isn't it giving you lots of trouble?' says he. 'I'll be glad to go over it for you,' says he. 'A woman by herself has no show,' says he. 'You ought to get a good man to take care of it,' says he. Then he saw her looking at my hands, and the game was all off. 'I'm doing the best I can,' says I. 'Mr. Stavey is in the business,' says she. 'He keeps me going,' says she. And all the time I felt—well, sort of sad at her confidence in me."
Bill puffed more furiously than ever. ”

“ Once, indeed, recommended by Nichol, the mathematical schoolmaster of whom we have already heard, he did call on a gentleman who wanted mathematical coaching for some friend; but the result was that the gentleman,—whom he describes in the letter as “a stout, impudent-looking man with red whiskers,”—thought two guineas a month “perfectly extravagant,” and would not engage him. ”

“ Among foreign powers and potentates a mere curious amazement, a feeling that the strange Islanders had gone mad, too mad to be meddled with: in France perhaps, where Mazarin had his own notions, even a pleasure in the sense of being unable to interfere and a willingness to see the English fury burn itself out in its own way. The French Ambassador in England had, indeed, conveyed a letter from Queen Henrietta Maria, addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons ”

“ There was a quaver in Bill's voice.
"No, it wasn't," he said. "Of course I couldn't help those pins shearing off. That wasn't on me. But I did monkey with that car a little, just to keep her coming here, and I ought to have got it in the neck. You see I couldn't explain. She wouldn't have believed me, anyway. It pays to be honest, even with a girl you're gone on, don't it? If I'd been square I might stand a chance with Jenks. ”

“ I am persuaded that, setting aside the Jesuits' acting for themselves and way, you Five have acted for yourselves and way, both by yourselves and by your instruments, both upon the stage and behind the curtain, considering circumstances and laying all things together, more than any five men have done in so short a time this sixty years. And, if it be not so, whence have come all these swarms and troops of Independents in Ministry, Armies, City, Country, Gentry, and amongst the Common People of all sorts, men, women, servants, children? ”

“ Through all this storm, as it shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians, while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an adjoining room. ”

“ Stavey. I'll have to let you. Then I'll ride home in a trolley. Only—I wish Mr. Jenks was here!"
An hour later, when once more we stood in the cluttered garage. Bill, who had been silent all along, shook his head, half to himself, as he coiled up the rope that had been used to tow Miss Gaston's runabout in.
"Game's up," he said sorrowfully. "I'm the dub. I swear I thought I knew the real thing. But I've got a lot to learn after all."
"But, look here! old man," I said, my gathering indignation getting the best of me, "why didn't you protest? Why did you let her stand there and abuse you? ”

“ These two exercised me in colloquy for four days; and chiefly the former, that Eagle of the North (Aquila Aquilonius) . He inquired into the foundations of both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, so searchingly that it was unlike anything that had been done before by any of my learned critics. In the first two days he examined the Didactics, with at length this conclusion: 'From an early age,' said he, 'I perceived that our Method of Studies generally in use is a harsh and crude one [violentum quiddam] ”

“ And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at it?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one with the grave seriousness of spirit, and also the political thoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up.—Towards the end come the specific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they were resolved to enforce. ”

“ The philosophers were to be allowed to play at bowls and chess, and walk—presumably two and two—in the garden paths. And Mrs. Evelyn, paragon of wives, had cheerfully consented to go and live there, and allow her husband to be a Carthusian, while she, located apparently in solitary glory in the Pavilion, reigned over the refectory and the domestic staff. This last was to consist of “a chaplain well qualified,” an “ancient woman to dress the meat,” a man to buy provisions and keep the garden and stable, and a boy to run about doing everything else. ”

“ The considerable stock of knowledge which he had taken abroad with him when he left his native Hampshire, eight years before, a pushing boy of fifteen, had been increased by his studies at foreign Universities, his readings with Hobbes in Paris, his commercial dealings, and his inquisitiveness into the processes of all trades and handicrafts by which men earn their livings. ”

“ And so, round our fair universe, newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. ”

“ One almost begins to wonder if it was altogether right that an old man should go on, morning after morning, and evening after evening, in such a fashion, talking about art and science and literature as if they were the only interests in the world, taking his guests into corners to have quiet discussions with them on these subjects, and always finding something new and nice to be said about them. ”

“ I gave an assumed name at the hospital. Do not try to find me. There is nothing left worth finding. I want to be remembered as I was when we parted. Good-bye.
“John.”
The Finale
An October moon shone through the scarlet leaves of a Canadian forest. Shadows from the thinning branches fell across the clearing where John Blake’s cabin clung to the side of a mountain. The light from a shaded lamp, within, fell upon a typewriter with its singular attachment for depressing the shift key.
Before the machine John sat, bowed in thought, his right sleeve hanging empty. ”

“ Held forth in a Sermon, &c. [occasion and date as in Hill's] ; wherein is discovered the great failings that the best are liable unto, upon which God is provoked sometimes to take vengeance. The whole is applyed specially to a more carefull observance of our late Convenant, and particularly against the ungodly Toleration pleaded for under pretence of Liberty of Conscience. By, &c., London: Printed by G.M. for Th. Underhill at the Bible in Wood Street, 1644." Neither sermon impresses one now very favourably in respect of either spirit or ability. I expected Palmer's to be better.] ”

“ Had her offer to England been "Presbytery with a Toleration," who knows what a different shaping subsequent events might have assumed? What if Henderson, in whose natural disposition one sees more of room and aptitude for the idea than in that of any other Presbyterian leader, had actually become possessed with the idea and had proclaimed it? Would he have carried the mass of the Presbyterians with him? or would they have deposed him from the leadership? It is useless to inquire. The idea never occurred even to Henderson ”

“ It is not in the spirit of a philanthropist that he has accumulated his information; it is in the spirit of a devil. It is not with the benevolent motive of a Duchatelet that he has descended into the lurking-places of iniquity; it is because he delights in knowing the whole extent of human misery. The doing of evil being his function, it is but natural that he should have a taste for even the minutest details of his own profession. ”

“ One might say of Swift that he had far less of belief in a God than of belief in a Devil. He is like a man walking on the earth and among the busy haunts of his fellow-mortals, observing them and their ways, and taking his part in the bustle, all the while, however, conscious of the tuggings downward of secret chains reaching into the world of the demons. Hence his ferocity, his misanthropy, his sæva indignatio, all of them true forms of energy, imparting unusual potency to a life, but forms of energy bred of communion with what outlies nature on the lower or infernal side. ”

“ It was Shakespeare’s use, as it seems to us, to revert, when he was alone, to that ultimate mood of the soul in which one hovers wistfully on the borders of the finite, vainly pressing against the barriers that separate it from the unknown; that mood in which even what is common and under foot seems part of a vast current mystery, and in which, like Arabian Job of old, one looks by turns at the heaven above, the earth beneath, and one’s own moving body between, interrogating whence it all is, why it all is, and whither it all tends. ”

“ Accordingly, in all great poets there may be discerned this familiarity of the imagination with the world figured as a poor little ball pendent in space and moving forward out of a dark past to a future of light or gloom. But in this respect Shakespeare exceeds them all; and in this respect, therefore, no poet is more religious, more spiritual, more profoundly metaphysical, than he. Into an inordinate amount of that outward pressure of the soul against the perimeter of sensible things, infuse the peculiar moral germ of Christianity, and you have the religion of Shakespeare. ”