Mrs. Moss

“ Middleton is her guardian," remarked Mrs. Moss, who sympathized with Miss Pritchard, but felt she might remember that she had had to part with Elsie a year ago, after having had her from a child. "He seems like one who would do the right thing," she added, "but of course he was devoted to Elsie's mother." ”

“ John?" asked Mrs. Moss, rather confused by the sudden introduction of new names and people.
"Why she was 'Melia,—Mrs. Smithers, the ringmaster's wife. His name wasn't Montgomery any more'n hers was St. John. They all change 'em to something fine on the bills, you know. Father used to be Senor Jose Montebello; and I was Master Adolphus Bloomsbury, after I stopped bein' a flyin' Coopid and a infant Progidy."
Mrs. Moss leaned back in her chair to laugh at that, greatly to the surprise of the little girls, who were much impressed with the elegance of these high-sounding names. ”

“ She allus wakes hersel', long afore she's called. I'm the cook, sir. Vida, she kem runnin' to me, when she couldn't make Mis' Moss let her in. Oh, what is to pay?”
“It's a trick,” I said sapiently. “Mrs. Moss is doing this to make a sensation, and to fool us into thinking she's asleep. All the time she is sitting on the edge of her bed, chuckling at our scare.”
“Oh, do you think so?” and Edith Wesley looked greatly relieved. “Then beg her to stop fooling and open the door. Here comes Miss Field. You call Marybelle, won't you, Janet?” ”

“ Nature had left the stamp of refinement on her face, perhaps for no other purpose than to show the world that Celeste Moss had not always had a bent back and pricked fingers—the effect of shop duties. Her home was in two rooms, which, in spite of the lack of elegant furniture and rare bric-a-brac, showed signs of culture, if in no other way than the tidiness of the floors, which were without carpets or rugs. ”

“ It so sympathized and rejoiced with the other in her happiness that it was solace and inspiration at once to Elsie Moss, who was living at a high and unhealthy pitch of excitement, and welcomed, indeed craved greedily, anything in the way of approval or sympathy. For the girl feared that if ever she should stop to consider, she should find her heart a black well of wickedness. ”

“ Moss beckoned the little girls out of the room, and gave them both an errand.
"Bab, you run over to Mrs. Barton's, and ask her for any old duds Billy don't want; and Betty, you go to the Cutters, and tell Miss Clarindy I'd like a couple of the shirts we made at last sewing circle. Any shoes, or a hat, or socks, would come handy, for the poor dear hasn't a whole thread on him." ”

“ In these respects a very different man from his brother Marshall, who was a by-no-means bad-looking Hebrew, with a handsome beard and moustache, full scarlet lips, prominent brown eyes, and in face and figure showing a general liking for the flesh-pots and other good things of this life. Where Edward Moss wore dirt, Marshall Moss sported jewelry, and each brother was sufficiently vain of his display. ”

“ Moss, after confirming his supposition as to Estelle's whereabouts, did not wait for the broadside of questions which his father was sure to fire at him, but ran out to the stoop. Should he wait for her? Should he pin the brooch on her night-dress, and then, when she discovered it, overwhelm her with the good news? That would be fine, but it was far too severe a tax upon his patience. The next moment he was on the wing again.
No negroes were allowed to enter the laundry by the front door, or, indeed, by any door, unless employed about the place. ”

“ Moss's court-yard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality. ”

“ THE warmth and comfort inside the ship were a strong contrast to the chill loneliness outside. In the snug lamplight of the wardroom, with a journal to be written up, or a book from the well-stocked shelves behind the door, it was easy to forget that only a few planks and a bank of snow shut out a thousand miles of darkness and deadly cold. ”

“ There is complete silence, but it is broken every now and then by sudden unearthly yells and shrieks from the still moving pack, harsh and loud as a steam siren, but unlike anything else in art or nature. As we return to the ship our attention is caught by a brilliant star, so close to the rough and indistinct horizon that it looks as if some one was carrying a lantern on the floes. ”

“ The measured half-mile is already full of figures tramping along, some singly, some in pairs, some fast, others slowly, but all keeping to the beaten track, for elsewhere the snow is soft and the ice is hillocky. ”

“ For great part of the year the ravines are merely more or less deep grooves in the monotonous undulating whiteness, but in summer they hold brown foaming torrents rushing between steep undermined banks of snow, quite unfordable if deeper than the knee. ”

“ He was neither all-wise, nor all-good, nor all-powerful, and he was only a finite being. And how can it be pretended by sensible persons that a finite man living on the earth, born of a woman, and dying like any other ordinary being, could possibly be the infinite god of the Universe? ”

“ Beautiful it is to see and understand that no worth, or known or unknown, can die even on this earth. The work an unknown good man has done is like a hidden vein of water flowing underground, secretly making the ground green. ”

“ Surely an infinite fiend could not do worse; and if I thought that Nature were intelligent, that Nature knew of the suffering she inflicted on all kinds of living beings and had the power to prevent it, but would not, I would curse Nature even though the curse involved for me a sudden and painful death. ”

“ Is there not poverty to be remedied, pain to be alleviated, ignorance to be removed? The reformer has yet something to inspire his fervid soul; the philanthropist plenty to touch his generous heart. Why even now the wealthy rogue struts pompously upon the stage of life in grand attire, and fares sumptuously every day; while honest poverty in rags lies hungry and fainting at his door. ”

“ Theological faith is sightless. It allures you to the brink of a precipice and precipitates you to the earth beneath. It is a ship without a rudder; the tempestuous waves toss it about recklessly, the wind drives it savagely against the rocks, and to-day this ship called "Theological Faith" is a dreary wreck. ”

“ For centuries man groped about in the dark. Nature was deaf to his appeals and blind to his sufferings, and her daily performances frightened and bewildered him. And yet he did his best to ascertain the causes of the phænomena of the universe. ”

“ A thousand feet below, the blue waters of Foulke Fiord lay, rippled with a breeze, under the richly-coloured cliffs of the opposite shore; further on, the flat expanse at the head of the inlet, with Alida Lake, and Brother John’s Glacier of Kane, shaped like a great paw, closed in the valley. Beyond and above all, a broad white plain, the vast inland ice of Greenland, lay spread before us. Even at first sight, this sea of ice could not be mistaken for a frozen sea, for its distant horizon was sensibly above our level. ”

“ And I say that the world is indebted far more to those who built houses, made clothes, navigated ships, made machinery, wrote books, than to all the gods and their clerical representatives the world has ever known. Belief in god never helped a man to supersede the sailing vessel by the steamship, the old coach by the railroad, the scythe by the reaping machine, nor the fastest locomotion by the telegraph wires. ”

“ One Stephenson is worth a thousand priests—one Edison of more value to the world than all the gods ever pictured by the imagination. And we must not forget the men who freed the human intellect from the fetters of a degrading superstition. ”

“ There must be no delay in taking off our sealskins; they are already moist with condensation, and a cold steam streams from them to the floor. Little lumps of ice on the eyelashes and brows soon melt, but a solid mass cementing beard and moustache together resists even warm water for a time. Hair about the mouth is a nuisance in the Arctic regions, and everyone keeps close cropped. ”

“ While the rudder was being replaced, three more musk oxen were obtained, and, with our larder thus replenished, we entered Robeson Channel. Heavy floes completely filled the strait, moving rapidly north and south with each tide. Sometimes the whole pack would check for a moment against a projecting point of coast, and then rush on again, leaving a lane of eddying water filled with broken fragments between it and the wall-like cliffs. Through this lane, with a precipice of rock and ice-foot on the left, and square-sided floes gliding irresistibly past on the right, the path northward lay. ”

“ In fact he advanced in the road of civilisation only in proportion as he offered ceaseless war against the hurtful forces of nature, using one force to counteract the destructive character of another. Think what the earth must have been without a solitary house upon it, without a man who yet knew how to till the soil! ”

“ On the left rose high cliffs banked with treacherous snow, and on the right rounded and broken ice piled in towers and pinnacles upon the shore. In some places round headlands it was utterly impossible to get the sledge safely past with the man and tent robes lashed on it, and one had to help him round as best he could, while the other held in the eager dogs and tried to guide the sledge. The poor brutes were so anxious to get back to the ship that constant halts were necessary to disentangle their harness, no easy task with frost-bitten fingers. ”

“ When, therefore, they were instructed to slaughter their neighbors who worshipped a different deity, they went to the task with all the ardor of their nature, imagining in their ignorance that the more brutally they executed the deity's will, the more pleasantly would he smile upon them. ”

“ In the course of time man learnt how to keep himself warm, while the beasts of the field perished from cold or parched with thirst and famished with hunger, sunk and died; he learnt how to huddle himself up close to a fire in his mud-hut, out of all danger from the enemy. ”

“ Anyone acquainted with Arctic literature does not need to be told that a polar winter cannot be safely passed without strict discipline. Routine must extend even to the smallest domestic affairs. Some people would never go to bed, and others would never get up if there was nothing special to make them; and constant darkness is so enervating that few, if any, would keep up a steady healthful amount of exercise without routine. ”

“ If a comparatively unbroken ice-cap exists, and if its surface affords better travelling than its broken margin, it is possible that some future expedition may yet find it lying nearer Cape Joseph Henry, and travel over it to 84° or 85°, but certainly not to the Pole. The broken condition of the floes is inexplicable; perhaps a small island or bank exists to the northward. Those who choose to think so have two facts to hang their faith on: a hare track was found thirty miles from the land, and the depth of the Polar Sea at the furthest camp was only seventy fathoms. ”

“ Even now our gaols are filled with society-made criminals, that education and better circumstances might have rescued from a life of misery and crime. Even now youth is stunted and starved, and men and women pine away, racked with some terrible disease which thoughtless and careless parents have transmitted to them. ”

“ The whole ground was covered with footprints of reindeer, but a gentle wind blew up the valley, and left little hope of sighting them. Climbing the hills to the northward to obtain a better view, a broad undulating table-land lay spread out before us, ridges of plutonic rock, like low walls, traversed the country from east to west, and here and there marshy pools, some of them almost deserving the name of lakes, lay in the hollows, and sent little streams winding towards gaps in the coast cliffs. ”

“ Our tall cairn on top of the hill remained in sight for a few minutes longer, then the bend of the coast shut it from view. At full speed we flew past the well-known headlands so often painfully rounded with tired crew and heavy sledge, past the ice-rounded rocks of Cape Rawson, the tower-like buttresses of Half-way Cliffs, and the dark precipices of Black Cape; but before we got to Cape Union our career was cut short—the angle of a floe lay right across [73] our narrow path, and we had to wait in anxious inactivity till the next tide moved it off and let us slip past. ”

“ The colours were laid on in the warmth and candle-light between decks, and verified by repeated trips into the cold. In regions where wind could crush the ice together, or where open water existed to leeward, Arctic ships have more than once been blown to sea with the ice of their winter quarters; and, as a precautionary measure, our ship was secured to shore by chain cables, raised at intervals on casks to prevent them sinking into the ice. ”

“ In my humble opinion the design argument has grown out of the arrogance and conceit of man, who imagines that the earth and all the things existing upon it were treated especially for his benefit.
Suppose that I admit that there is design in Nature, the Theist has then to account for some awkward and many horrible designs. How will he get over the fact that Nature is one vast battle-field on which all life is engaged in warfare? What goodness will he see in the design that gives the strong and cunning the advantage over the weak and simple? ”