Mincing Lane

“ Its home is the battle-field of black roaring tempests; the red lightnings play among its roots ; all night seamless snow-drifts are woven around its heart; no bee ever rises to it from the valley below where the green spring is kneeling; no morning bird ever soars past it with observant song ”

“ The few noises of the little town grew very faint, the droning of the bumblebee on the purple tufts of the weed overhead very loud, and louder still the beating of his heart against the green grass as he lay on his side, with his head on his blue cap and his cheek in his hand. ”

“ Lane who in 1893 placed [229] the now wonderful Great Boulder Mine before London investors. The Boulder Perseverance Mine shares could at that time be bought for a few shillings, now they are of high value, and Mr. Lane has made a large fortune out of his various mining transactions. Among the properties in Western Australia turning out among them the enormous quantities of gold of which we know, the properties partly controlled by Mr. Lane have turned out nearly half. Western Australia has no truer friend than he; he battled on behalf of the colony for years before prosperity came ”

“ He had been at work in his quarry on the vestiges of creation; the quarry lay at an outcrop of that northern hill overlooking the valley in which she lived. Near by was a woodland, and she had come out for some work of her own in which he guided her. They lay on the grass now side by side.
"I am working on the plan of our house, Pansy. I expect to begin to build in the autumn. I have chosen this spot for the site. How do you like it?"
"I like it very well. For one reason, I can always see the old place from it."
"My father left his estate to be equally divided between Rowan and me. ”

“ Never before had America witnessed such a brave display, the parade of floats upon the river, the fireworks, the tournaments, the dazzling costumes, the sumptuous banquet and the brilliant ball to conclude it all ”

“ Perhaps caught in the raging, roaring tempest, perhaps having lost its way, some bird of brilliant-red plumage flew round and round like a wandering ball of fire, uttering its cry of bewilderment, of helplessness, of its fate—the prophetic note of the fate of everything. ”

“ As he stood looking at her facing him thus in cold half-shadowy anger—at the spinning wheel with its trailing flax—at, the table with its iron shears—at her hands stretched forth as if about to grasp the one and to lay hold on the other—he shudderingly thought of the ancient arbitress of Life and Death—Fate the mighty, the relentless. ”

“ The foliage of the Kentucky trees is not thin nor dishevelled, the leaves crowd thick to the very ends of the boughs, and spread themselves full to the sky, making, where they are close together, under-spaces of green gloom scarcely shot through by sunbeams. ”

“ Lightly covered over by drag or harrow, under the rolled earth now they lie, those mighty, those inert seeds. Down into the darkness about them the sun rays penetrate day by day, stroking them with the brushes of light, prodding them with spears of flame. ”

“ As he lay looking out upon the bluff, whereon sat the village, and down on the broad meadow, he admired the location with the eye of a young pioneer. What a delightful spot for a plantation! His boyish imagination pictured a home like “The Hall” on the bluff overlooking the creek. Back of that he would have the negro cabins and the stables, for he would have fine horses like Nat. With such a home he would be as important a man as Squire Danesford and his father need be under obligations to no man. Had Lisbeth married her cousin and gone to England? ”

“ The snow of Christmas Eve was falling softly on the old: whose eyes are always seeing vanished faces, whose ears hear voices gentler than any the earth now knows, whose hands forever try to reach other hands vainly held out to them. ”

“ Thus, everywhere, under her feet, over her head, and beyond the reach of vision, because inhabiting that realm into which the spirit alone can send its aspiration and its prayer, was one influence, one spell: the warmth of the good wholesome earth, its breath of sweetness, its voices of peace and love and rest, the majesty of its flashing dome ”

“ The light of day is dying over the forests of the upper Mississippi.
The silence of high space falls upon the vast stream. On a
thunder-blasted tree-top near the western bank sits a lone, stern
figure waiting for its lordliest prey—the eagle waiting for the swan. ”

“ March is a month when the needle of my nature dips towards the country. I am away, greeting everything as it wakes out of winter sleep, stretches arms upward and legs downward, and drinks goblet after goblet of young sunshine. ”

“ The very landscape, barren and dead, but framing the simple picture of a home, spoke to the beholder the everlasting poetry of the race.
But Sister Dolorosa, standing on the brow of the hill whence the whole picture could be seen, yet saw nothing of it. Out of the western sky there streamed an indescribable splendor of many-hued light, and far into the depths of this celestial splendor her steadfast eyes were gazing. ”

“ For the last half of this light-and-shadow month, when the clouds, like schools of changeable lovely creatures, seem to be playing and rushing away through the waters of the sun, life to me has narrowed more and more to the red-bird, who gets tamer and tamer with habit, and to Georgiana, who gets wilder and wilder with happiness. ”

“ For a world of living-men and women see kindled there the same ancient flame that has been the light of all earlier stations on that solitary road of faith which runs for a little space between the two eternities—a road strewn with the dust of countless wayfarers bearing each a different cross of burden but with eyes turned toward the same Cross of hope. ”

“ Drawn by the tranquillity of this retreat—its trees and flowers and dews—all singing-birds of the region come here to build and brood. No other sounds than their pure cadencies disturb the echoless air except the simple hymns around the altar, the vesper bell, the roll of the organ, the deep chords of the piano, or the thrum of the harp. ”

“ But the finest music in the room is that which streams out to the ear of the spirit in many an exquisite strain from the hanging shelf of books on the opposite wall. Every volume there is an instrument which some melodist of the mind created and set vibrating with music, as a flower shakes out its perfume or a star shakes out its light. ”

“ During these October nights the moon has reached its fulness and the earth been flooded with beauty.
Our bed is placed near a window; and as the planet sinks across the sky its rays stream through the open shutter and fall upon Georgiana in her sleep. Sometimes I lie awake for the sole chance of seeing them float upon her hair, pass lingeringly across her face, and steal holily downward along her figure. How august she is in her purity! The whiteness of the fairest cloud that brushes the silvering orb is as pitch to the whiteness of her nature. ”

“ As the chorus swelled from shadowy shrubs and vines to the sparkling tree-tops I listened for some sound from Georgiana’s room, but over there I saw only the soft, slow flapping of the white curtains like signals of distress.
Towards ten o’clock, wandering restless, I snatched up a book, which I had no wish to read, and went to the arbor where I had so often discoursed to Sylvia about children’s cruelty to birds. Through the fluttering leaves the sunlight dripped as a weightless shower of gold, and the long pendants of young fruit swayed gently in their cool waxen greenness. ”

“ The longer I live here, the better satisfied I am in having pitched my earthly camp-fire, gypsylike, on the edge of a town, keeping it on one side, and the green fields, lanes, and woods on the other. Each, in turn, is to me as a magnet to the needle. At times the needle of my nature points towards the country. On that side everything is poetry. I wander over field and forest, and through me runs a glad current of feeling that is like a clear brook across the meadows of May. At others the needle veers round, and I go to town—to the massed haunts of the highest animal and cannibal. ”

“ At John's request they had moved his bed across the doorway of his cabin; and stretched there, he could see the sun spring every morning out the dimpled emerald ocean of the wilderness; and the moon follow at night, silvering the soft ripples of the multitudinous leaves lapping the shores of silence: days when the inner noises of life sounded like storms; nights when everything within him lay as still as memory.
His wounds had behaved well from the out-set. ”

“ There to him was the poetry and the religion of life—the linked hands of lovers; the twining arms of childhood; health and joyousness; and a quiet walk over familiar fields in the evening air from peaceful church to peaceful home. And so, thinking of this as he walked on alone, and thinking also of her, the two thoughts blended, and her image stood always before him in the pathway of his ideal future. ”

“ Generations of the wind-borne seeds of wild flowers have lodged in low crevices and have sprouted and blossomed, and as seeds again have been blown further on—harbingers of vines and mosses already on their venerable way. ”

“ All along the dark chimneys of the brain, clinging like myriads of swallows deep-buried and slumbrous in quiet and in soot, are the countless thoughts which lately winged the wide heaven of conscious day. ”

“ If you were nothing but a spirit, Anna, and could float in here some night, perhaps you would see a mysterious radiance streaming upward from this shelf of books like the northern lights from behind the world—starting no one knows where, sweeping away we know not whither—search-light of the mortal, turned on dark eternity. ”

“ Constantly since darkness came on I have been watching Georgiana's window for the light of her candle, but there has been no kindly glimmer yet. The only radiance shed upon the gloom outside comes from the heavens. Great cage-shaped white clouds are swung up to the firmament, and within these pale, gentle, imprisoned lightnings flutter feebly to escape, fall back, rise, and try again and again, and fail. ”

“ Gazing deep into their eyes, we are reminded of the light of dim churches; hearing their voices, we dream of some minstrel whose murmurs reach us imperfectly through his fortress wall; beholding the sweetness of their faces, we are touched as by the appeal of the mute flowers ”

“ The long, slow action of water has further moulded everything into symmetry, so that the low ancient hills descend to the valleys in exquisite folds and uninterrupted slopes. The whole great plain undulates away league after league towards the distant horizon in an endless succession of gentle convex surfaces—like the easy swing of the sea—presenting a panorama of subdued swells and retiring surges. ”

“ We press our half-frozen cheeks together, as red as wine-sap apples, and grope for each other's hand through our big lamb's-wool mittens, and warm our hearts with the laughter in each other's eyes. One evening she feigned to be mounted on guard, pacing to and fro inside the gate, against which rested an enormous icicle. ”

“ There is the sun-struck brook of the field, underneath the thin ice of which drops form and fall, form and fall, like big round silvery eyes that grow bigger and brighter with astonishment that you should laugh at them as they vanish. But most I love to see Nature do her spring house-cleaning in Kentucky, with the rain-clouds for her water-buckets and the winds for her brooms. ”

“ Summer would never rage and he have no conflicts nor passions. Autumn would not pass and he with idle hands neither give nor gather. And winter should not end without extinguishing his tormenting fires, and leaving him the peace of eternal cold. ”

“ Walters does not get into our best society; so that the town is to her like a pond to a crane: she wades round it, going in as far as she can, and snatches up such small fry as come shoreward from the middle. ”

“ Under this act, on February 9, 1907, the Land Company made application in the Land Department to purchase the land, claiming to be the assignee of a bona fide purchaser of the lands from the railroad company. The state of Minnesota protested against the issuance of a patent to the Immigration Land Company, and claimed the land under the act of August 3, 1892, under which undisposed-of lands of the United States, situated in certain sections and townships, were granted to the state for a public park. ”

“ To be alone with the pestilential dead at night—is not that a test of imperial courage? To live for weeks braving swift death itself—is not that the fierce and ungovernable flaring up of the soul in heroism? ”

“ And there are days with such Arcadian colors in air and cloud and sky—days with such panoramas of calm, sweet pastoral groups and harmonies below, such rippling and flashing of waters through green underlights and golden interspaces, that the shy, coy spirit of beauty seems to be wandering half sadly abroad and shunning all the haunts of man. ”

“ It was an hour when the heart, surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before has lived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past and forlorn with the inevitableness of change—the cruelty of all change. ”

“ That is, under the influence of the warmth of your planetary fire, it has returned to its youth. For snow is the old age of water. Cloud, mist, rain, dew—these all are young: their old age is ice. When a dewdrop arranges itself for perpetuity, disposes itself in orderly fashion never to change again, stretches itself out in its rigor mortis, it has become a crystal. ”

“ She began to walk away from him, her beautiful head suddenly arched far forward, her bosom rising and falling under her clasped hands, her eyes filling with wonderful light. Then regaining composure because losing consciousness of herself in the thought of him, she turned and with divine simplicity of soul advanced to meet him. ”