Ortheris

“ Wherefore it would be a grievous wrong that he should suffer in my stead and I escape. Give then the tablet to him. He shall take it to the city of Argos and thou shalt have what thou wilt. But as for me, let them slay me if they will."
"'Tis well spoken, young man. Thou art come, I know, of a noble stock. The gods grant that my brother—for I have a brother, though he be far hence—may be such as thou. It shall be as thou wilt. This man shall depart with the tablet and thou shalt die."
Then Orestes would know the manner of the death by which he must die. ”

“ England seems to cry out to be walked upon, and Orth, like others of the transplanted, experienced to the full the country's gift of foot-restlessness and mental calm. Calm flees, however, when the ego is rampant, and to-day, as upon others too recent, Orth's soul was as restless as his feet. He had walked for two hours when he entered the wood of his neighbor's estate, a domain seldom honored by him, as it, too, had been bought by an American--a flighty hunting widow, who displeased the fastidious taste of the author. ”

“ The light from the deck brought out dazzling scintillations from a beach composed of gigantic crystal pebbles as large as ostrich eggs. On the beach and grouped thickly all about our hull, swarmed a legion of creatures which—
Well, they were the brood of Orcon. They were the creatures who had given Ludwig Leider refuge and allied themselves with him in his attempt to make trouble for Earth. And they were half-bird, half-human! Their faces, bodies, arms, and legs were human. ”

“ The shadow of madness and guilt hanging over Orestes makes a difference. At his first entrance, when danger is still far off, he is a mass of broken nerves; he depends absolutely on Pylades. In the later scenes, when they are face to face with death, the underlying strength of the son of the Great King asserts itself and makes one understand why, for all his madness, Orestes is the chief, and Pylades only the devoted follower. ”

“ Now turned Otter to his folk and made them a sign, which they knew well, that they should get down from their horses; and when they were afoot the leaders of tens and hundreds arrayed them, into the wedge-array, with the bowmen on either flank: and Otter smiled as he beheld this adoing and that the Romans meddled not with them, belike because they looked to have them good cheap, since they were but a few wild men. ”

“ Its wings looked as if they were clipped, the bird itself as if it had been injured, and she inquired what had been done to it, and for the first time heard the tradition which the Egyptians relate about the ostrich.
The race had at one time been beautiful, its wings large and powerful; then, one evening, a mighty forest bird said to it: 'Brother, shall we fly to the river in the morning, if God will, and drink?' And the ostrich replied: 'I will.' When day broke they flew off, at first high up towards the sun—the eye of God—ever higher and higher, the ostrich far before all the others ”

“ Had he shown her the affection of a husband she might have loved him. But he was neither imposing, nor, on the other hand, was he alluring. She wrote very frankly about him in a letter to the Count Orsini:
My tastes are not the same as those of the king, who cares only for hunting and blacksmith work. You will admit that I should not show to advantage in a forge. I could not appear there as Vulcan, and the part of Venus might displease him even more than my tastes.
Thus on the one side is a woman in the first bloom of youth, ardent, eager—and neglected. ”

“ How indeed could an animal so remarkably large, and so wonderfully prolific, and peculiarly suited to the climate as is the ostrich, remain unknown in Africa, and part of Asia, countries peopled from the earliest ages, full of deserts indeed, but where there is not a spot which has not been traversed by the foot of man? The family of the ostrich, therefore, is of great antiquity. Nor in the course of ages has it varied or degenerated from its native purity. It has always remained on its paternal estate; and its lustre has been transmitted unsullied by foreign intercourse. ”

“ The crash of the breakers on the ledges struck terror through Ortho. They sounded like a host of ravenous great beasts roaring for their prey—him. If the boat did not settle under them they would be dashed to pieces on those rocks; death was inevitable one way or the other. He remembered the Portuguese seamen washed in from the Twelve Apostles without heads. He would be like that in a few minutes—no head—ugh!
Jacky’s George, jockeying the bows, improvising a weather cloth from a spare jib, was singing, “Hey, boys, up we go!” This levity in the jaws of destruction enraged Ortho. ”

“ For otherwise men will account lightly of me both in Argos and in Phocis, which is my own land, thinking that I betrayed thee or basely slew thee, that I might have thy kingdom, marrying thy sister, who shall inherit it in thy stead. Not so: I will die with thee and my body shall be burnt together with thine.”
But Orestes answered, “I must bear my own troubles. This indeed would be a shameful thing, that when thou seekest to help me I should destroy thee. But as for me, seeing how the gods deal with me, it is well that I should die. Thou, indeed, art happy, and thy house is blessed ”

“ In one fastness, however, he was content to linger—the headland between the Gull Rock and the Shark's Fin. There he would stay for days together, held by the drear solitude, the supply of fish, and the snug lying in the caves that honeycombed the cliff, where man never came, and where, whether the wind blew from the east or from the west, the otter, who disliked exposure to it as much as any fox, could always find a recess on the lee side to shelter in. ”

“ Always working for the good of his people, he translated the geographical work of Orosius for their benefit, inserting his own priceless additions and comments. Among them is the narrative of an Arctic voyage obtained at first hand from a native of that Halgoland whence Udröst was sometimes visible on the horizon. The explorer, named Ohthere, came to Alfred’s court to tell his story, and so it was saved from oblivion by being inserted in the King’s edition of Orosius. King Alfred describes Ohthere as a very wealthy man, owning 600 reindeer, horned cattle, sheep, and swine ”

“ If an ostrich-feather is held upright, its beautiful form—graceful as the frond-like branch of the cocoa-nut palm, which it somewhat resembles—is at once seen to be perfectly even and equal on both sides, its stem dividing it exactly in the centre; whereas the stems of other feathers are all more or less on one side. The ancient Egyptians, observant of this—as of everything in nature—chose the ostrich-feather as the sacred emblem of truth and justice, setting it upon the head of Thmei, goddess of truth. ”

“ Otters are found in all parts of the world, but they are most plentiful in Europe and America. The Common Otter measures about two feet and a quarter from the tip of the nose to the tail—which is from twelve to fifteen inches in length. The usual color of the fur is brown, shading to darker tints.
In Kamschatka and on the coasts of the North Pacific Ocean, there exists a species of Otter, which differs from all other species in the softness and brilliancy of its fur, and its living almost entirely in the water. It measures more than a yard in length and is very mild in disposition. ”

“ Altogether, ostriches are queer-looking creatures; they are so awkward, so out of proportion, and everything about them, with the exception of their plumage and their big, soft, dark eyes, is so quaintly ugly as to suggest the idea that they have only by some mistake survived the Deluge, and that they would be more in their right place embedded in the fossiliferous strata of the earth than running about on its surface. And how they do run! Only startle an ostrich ”

“ The Orpheus and Eurydice of Drölling is a performance of great merit. The females, floating in the air before Orpheus, are pale as lilies, and beautiful in death. But he need hardly despair, or run wild as he does. He may easily overtake them; and as to vanishing, they have no appearance of it. Their figures are quite solid and determined in their outline. ”

“ The ostrich feather is so unusual an element of ornamental design, especially in woven stuffs, that we may deem it a kind of remembrance of the Black Prince who fought for a Spanish king, Don Pedro the Cruel, at the battle of Navaretta, or Najarra, if not having a significance of the marriage of Catherine of Arragon, first with our Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, and after his death, with his younger brother, Henry VIII, each of whom was in his time Prince of Wales, whose badge became one or more ostrich feathers. ”

“ Dawn was breaking, the mists were rolling up, the hills loomed gigantic in the half-light, studded with granite escarpments, patchworked with clumps of gorse, thorn and bracken—his battlefield.
Ortho had gone again, gone singing to try his fortune in the great world among foreign multitudes. For him the dour grapple with the wilderness—and he was glad of it. He disliked foreigners, disliked taking chances. Here was something definite, something to lock his teeth in, something to be subdued by sheer dogged tenacity. He broke the news that Ortho had gone gypsying again that evening at supper. ”

“ Like the most of the Greek myths in the form in which they have been handed down to us, the Orion myth is without any organic connection with any epic whole. The Orvandel myth, on the other hand, dovetails itself as a part into a mythological epic which, in grand and original outlines, represents the struggle between gods, patriarchs, ancient artists, and frost-giants for the control of the world. ”

“ As Orestes grew up to manhood, his one great all-absorbing desire was to avenge the death of his father. Accompanied by his faithful friend Pylades, he repaired in disguise to Mycenæ, where Ægisthus and Clytemnestra reigned conjointly over the kingdom of Argos. In order to disarm suspicion he had taken the precaution to despatch a messenger to Clytemnestra, purporting to be sent by king Strophius, to announce to her the untimely death of her son Orestes through an accident during a chariot-race at Delphi. ”

“ The farmer gazed with horror upon the lifeless body of the otter and cried out, "This creature which you mistook for an otter, and which you have robbed and killed, is my son, Oddar, who for mere pastime had taken the form of the furry beast. You are but thieves and murderers!" ”

“ Of all remodellings of Greek tragedies, Oreste, the latest, appears the farthest from the antique simplicity and severity, although it is free from any mixture of love-making, and all mere confidants are excluded. That Orestes should undertake to destroy Aegisthus is nowise singular, and seems scarcely to merit such marked notice in the tragical annals of the world. It is the case which Aristotle lays down as the most indifferent, where one enemy knowingly attacks the other. And in Voltaire's play neither Orestes nor Electra have anything beyond this in view: Clytemnestra is to be spared ”

“ The flesh of the young ostrich is very palatable, but that of an old bird is rather tough and rank. Their eggs, however, are esteemed a delicacy, though some think them heavy.
The voice of the ostrich under ordinary circumstances is a deep sonorous chuckle, though at times it gives out a roar resembling that of the lion. When wounded or brought to bay, it hisses like an enraged gander.
So much for the ostrich; and now Hans proceeded, as he had promised, to say a word or two about its relatives. ”

“ The Roman Orcus holds the pallid souls, rapacious Orcus, sparing neither good nor bad. 81Gloomy is the Greek land of Hades, dark dwelling of the images of departed mortals, where the shades carry at once their living features and their dying wounds, and glide and cluster and whisper, and lead the shadow of a life. Like the savage hunter on his ghostly prairie, the great Orion still bears his brazen mace, still chases over the meadows of asphodel the flying beasts he slew of yore in the lonely mountains. ”

“ The Otter is by no means the nearly extinct beast that is commonly imagined; but he who would see it in a wild state must seek it by night along the banks of remote streams or tarns, where there are alder-holts, or in the neighbourhood of the East Anglian Broads. It may sometimes be found by day, by searching the caves on some remote part of our coast where the cliffs are rocky and the shore strewn with boulders. Even so near the congested haunts of men as the upper Thames, Otters are occasionally trapped. ”

“ Pontius Pilate, I have known you long—even loved you, in a way. But I have observed you closely, and though, like Dogberry, you may have everything fine about you, I am impelled sorrowfully to write you down an ass.
The ostrich is one of those birds whose whole command of facial expression is carried in the neck. He can only express himself through his features by offering you different views of his head. This is a great disadvantage. It limits the range. ”

“ She had in the grove of Altis an altar, together with Alpheus;1565 and there was there a popular legend, that Alpheus had once loved Artemis. Now the settlers that went from this district to Syracuse, in their first expedition, confined themselves to the island of Ortygia. Here they built a temple to the river-goddess Artemis; a sanctuary of so great fame, that Pindar calls the whole island “the seat of Artemis, the river-goddess.1566” There was, however, no river in Ortygia, and therefore Artemis was supposed to regret her beloved Alpheus. ”