Ozias

“ As Ozias Midwinter, Mr. Armadale first knew me; as Ozias Midwinter he shall know me to the end of my days. Whatever may be the result of this interview—whether I win your confidence or whether I lose it—of one thing you may feel sure: your pupil shall never know the horrible secret which I have trusted to your keeping. This is no extraordinary resolution; for, as you know already, it costs me no sacrifice of feeling to keep my assumed name. There is nothing in my conduct to praise; it comes naturally out of the gratitude of a thankful man. ”

“ I also will go with you, for it is right that the governor should do honour to the lady Judith.
HAGGITH. My mistress commanded me to say to the lord Ozias that he should remain in the city to prepare for her a welcome. (She points to the gates and Achior gladly moves forward. She takes Ingur by the ear.) Bestir thy legs, booby!
OZIAS. The subtlety of women is past knowing.
HAGGITH (at the gates, maliciously) . It may be. But would the lord Ozias invite the displeasure of my mistress? It is day. Let my lord sit in the sun. ”

“ OZIAS. It is a day memorable beyond all the days of Bethulia—because Judith, the widow of Manasses, has issued from her house and from her secrecy, and because after long years she has lightened the city with her countenance.
JUDITH (smiling) . We hold converse with words, but the shadow of destruction is over us, and our hearts are darkened, and we hide our hearts in speech. Ozias, governor of Bethulia, show me your heart. ”

“ JUDITH. If there be a God in Israel, and if the Lord has not abandoned us, may not this youth be the messenger of the Most High to bring us comfort, and for a warning to the vainglory of Holofernes?
OZIAS (with irony) . All is possible to the Lord. Yet may his purposes be hidden from us. (To the soldiers.) Until the Lord vouchsafe new wisdom to me, his servant, bind fetters about the feet of Achior, and take him to the house of bondage, and set a guard over him, for a spy is not more dangerous than a fool.
CHARMIS (springing forward) . It shall be done, Ozias. ”

“ FIRST SOLDIER. My lord knows that no drop is left in the gourds.
(Ozias waves him away, and he retires.)
OZIAS (to Haggith, who is busy with the sack) . Woman, has the lady Judith perchance dreamed a dream?
HAGGITH (enigmatically) . My mistress has dreamed no dream. Why does the lord Ozias ask?
OZIAS. It seemed to me— (stops)
HAGGITH. Dreams lift up fools. (Exit into the house.) (Exit Ozias, L.)
(The soldier strolls forward. Twilight begins to fall.)
(Enter Haggith from the house with more baggage.)
HAGGITH (to the soldier; curtly; not looking at him) . So thou hast no water? ”

“ My desires are terrible; they will not be withstood; they consume me daily, but daily I am renewed. I am on fire, but by the fierceness of the fire I am strengthened. I was conceived for greatness and my mother bore me for mastery, and the huge earth shall shake with the terror of my commands.... And I am held between thy fingers.
JUDITH. I deny not thy greatness.
OZIAS. Surely thou canst not. For thou too art great. And my greatness yearns to thine.
JUDITH. Wilt thou listen?
OZIAS. I hear.
JUDITH. With this greatness of thine goes deceit and laxity of mind. ”

“ OZIAS. Has none told you?
CHABRIS. I see nobody but my daughter's granddaughter, and her I forbid to speak to me, because being a woman she has the tongue of a woman, and a woman's tongue is unfavourable to meditation. How should I be told?
OZIAS. I am the governor of this great city of Bethulia.
CHABRIS. You are responsible for this city?
OZIAS. I am.
CHABRIS. Now I understand my misfortune. And the truth was in me when I said to your mother as she lay dying: Better it is to die without children than to have them that are ungodly.
OZIAS. Oh! How comely a thing is the judgment of grey hairs! ”

“ OZIAS. That is what is in my heart! Behold my heart, and the depths of my heart. Look deep, and deeper, and still you will see naught therein but the beauty and the subtlety of Judith.
JUDITH. It is no common man that with the parched tongue of thirst can talk thus while unspeakable calamity assails the city.
OZIAS. It is Ozias.
JUDITH (gently) . I came not to meet Ozias, but the governor of Bethulia. From my tent I hearkened to the words which he spoke to the people, and the Lord said to me: Go down to him, thou, a woman. And I am here.
OZIAS. The Lord reigns! ”

“ But a more multitudinous shipping still swung at anchor low in the west, though the promise of a fair night as yet held fast.
"An' now," said Ozias Crann in conclusion, "all them fellers is a-diggin'."
"Whut's in the box?" demanded Swofford, his big baby-face all in a pucker of doubt.
"The gold an' silver he ought ter hev paid the miners, of course. They always 'lowed they never tuk a dollar off him; they jes' got a long range shot at him! How I wish," Ozias Crann broke off fervently, "how I wish I could jes' git my hands on that money once!" ”

“ If the God of Israel perchance is merciful, and the city is saved at the eleventh hour, then it will be said in Jerusalem that there is none like Ozias of Bethulia for steadfastness, for he alone by his ardour revived the fainting populace and held firm the city; and great will be my recompense.... But that is a dream. Always I have faced the substance of things, and the substance is that Nebuchadnezzar has decreed to rule over the whole earth, and from the east to the west there is no living man that shall not bow down before Nebuchadnezzar. Bethulia will fall. ”

“ Who are you that seek to stand instead of God among the children of men?
OZIAS. Stand instead of God!
JUDITH. Who are you that have tempted God this day? For you cannot find the depth of the heart of man,—how then shall you search out God or comprehend his purpose? Brother, provoke not the Lord our God to anger. For if he will not help us within these five days, he has power to defend us when he will, even every day. Do not bind the counsels of God. For God is not as man that he may be threatened, neither as the son of man that he should be wavering. ”

“ Ozias Crann's lank, angular frame; his narrow, bony face; his nose, long yet not large, sharp, pinched; his light grey eyes, set very closely together; his straggling reddish beard, all were fitting concomitants to accent the degree of caustic contempt he expressed. "Oh, to be sure!" he drawled. "It'll be powerful public up hyar in the mounting in the midnight,—that's a fac'!—an' moonlight is mighty illconvenient to them ez wants ter git spied on through totin' a lantern in cur'ous places." ”

“ While he was engaged in executing for the Duke of Dorset a series of miniatures from family portraits at Knole to decorate a cabinet, his eyesight gave way, and, compelled to abandon miniature work, he turned to crayon drawing. At Knole there is a portrait of the Duke of Dorset, which is inscribed on the back, 'The first portrait in crayons painted by Ozias Humphry, R. A.; it was begun in May and finished early in June 1791.' Humphry quickly became one of the ablest workers in crayons. ”

“ You are valiant men, and women lion-hearted. Without you I am naught, and if I defy Holofernes, my fortitude is yours and my resolve springs from you. Charmis has invoked the holy name of the God of Israel. Let Israel not forget its God, for never has the Most High forsaken Israel. Brethren, be of good courage. Let us yet endure five days. Five short days. And if these days pass and the God of Israel turn not his mercy towards us, then will I do according to the word of Charmis. Such is my oath to you. And so it shall be.
Haggith enters from the house of Judith.
HAGGITH. My lord Ozias! ”

“ Thy fool's face might meet the point of an Assyrian spear. (The gateman slips down quickly.)
(Renewed knocking.)
FIRST SOLDIER (shouting) . None can enter the city till sunrise. And not then if I like not the aspect of his phiz.
HAGGITH (off) . It is Haggith, servant of the lady Judith. Open the gates quickly, for I am become a woman of much consequence.
FIRST SOLDIER. Haggith? It is the voice of Haggith; yet it may also be devils. (To another soldier who has entered.) Run! Rouse the lord Ozias. (Exit soldier.)
HAGGITH. I have water with me. Many gourds! Fresh water! Cool water! ”

“ This is what appeared to me to be the then state of Otaheite. The other islands, that is, Huaheine, Ulietea, and Otaha, were in a more flourishing state than they were when I was there before. Since that time, they had enjoyed the blessing of peace; the people seemed to be as happy as any under heaven; and well they may, for they possess not only the necessaries, but many of the luxuries of life in the greatest profusion; and my young man told me that hogs, fowls, and fruits, are in equal plenty at Bola-bola, a thing which Tupia would never allow. ”

“ Now the Polynesian area, the limits of which I have just pointed out, is of greater extent than the whole of Asia. What would an Asiatic Polynesia be like, if that continent were to sink beneath the waters and leave only the summits of its mountains visible, where some representatives of the present inhabitants might take refuge? Is it not at once evident that each archipelago, and often each island, would have its own race and language? ”

“ The Oriental region comprises all tropical Asia east of the Indus, with the Malay Islands as far as Java, Borneo, and the Philippines. In its actual land-area it is the smallest region except the Australian; but if we take into account the wide extent of shallow sea connecting Indo-China with the Malay Islands, and which has, doubtless, at no distant epoch, formed an extension of the Asiatic Continent, it will not be much smaller than the Ethiopian region. Here we find all the conditions favourable to the development of a rich and varied fauna. ”

“ And now we are approaching the border line between Asia and Africa. It is an invisible line; no snow-capped mountains divide the mighty continents which were the seats of the most ancient civilization; no sea flows between them: the Red Sea terminates over seventy miles from the Mediterranean; even the Suez Canal does not divide Asia and Africa, for it is wholly in Egypt. Nothing marks where Africa ends and Asia begins, but a line in the desert, covered by drifting sands. ”

“ On first acquaintance it is, perhaps, the contrast which the lands of East Asia present to those of the Near East and Central Asia that most forcibly strikes the traveller who is acquainted with those regions. In Japan abundant water and a humid atmosphere have clothed the country with a mantle of tropical luxuriance and created in the Eastern Sea a world of fragrant flowers and riotous vegetation, the very antithesis of the harsh outlines and sun-scorched deserts of Western Asia. Here is a land that is kissed, not scourged, by the sun. ”

“ Ethiopia, when it was better known, became important to the eastern empire for its trade; and the merchants of Abyssinia shared with those of Arabia the commerce of the Indian ocean. From the port of Adulis, on the Red Sea, the ruins of which are still to be seen near the town of Zulla, about thirty miles to the south-east of Massowa, the ships of Auxuma visited the coast of India, and the island of Taprobana, then called by the Indians Sieladiba, and now known by the name of Ceylon. ”

“ THE QUEST FOR O-HORI-SAN
After our melodramatic toast of the night before it would have been only orthodox to have said good-bye to our Occidental inn at sunrise and to have sought the road. But we had a call to make. The fulfilling of the obligation proved to be momentous. There is one never-to-be-broken rule for the foreigner in the Orient: He must consider himself always to be of extreme magnitude in the perspective, and that any action which concerns himself is momentous. If Asia had possessed this supreme self-concern, she might to-day be playing political chess with colonies in Europe. ”

“ Dynak Base had been built well away from Oassi; one of the strict rules of Earth was that no indigenous culture should be subjugated or influenced any more than necessary. Before any contact was made, a study of the more savage tribes had to be made.
Nonetheless, rumors had come out of the jungle that a strange group of aliens had built a fortress near the banks of the Ngong River, and the people of Oassi were aware of the presence of the Earthmen long before any contact had been made by the Earthmen themselves. ”

“ OASIS (Gr. ὄασις, the name given by Herodotus to the fertile spots in the Libyan desert: it probably represents an Egyptian word, cf. Coptic ouahe, ouih, to dwell, from which the Egyptian Arabic wā is derived) , a fertile spot surrounded by desert. For example, where the high plateau of the Libyan desert descends into a longitudinal valley between Syrtis and the Nile delta there are a few spots where the water comes to the surface or is found in shallow wells. It may come to the surface in springs, upon the artesian principle, or it may collect and remain in mountain hollows. ”

“ Towards the north another depression in the plateau on the route to Alexan- dria is occupied by the oasis of Gara, which is inhabited by some forty persons. According to a local tradition this number of forty cannot be exceeded, death inevitably re-establishing the equilibrium whenever disturbed by an excess of births or by too great an inroad of immigrants. Origin of the Oases. ”

“ You have probably had enough of Egypt, and now we will confine our attention to Asia; and we have pleasant Asiatic breezes from the east this morning. The country on your left is Arabia, and nearest to you is the Peninsula of Sinai. It has the Gulf of Suez on its west shore, and the Gulf of Akaba on its east coast. I spoke to you of Brugsch's theory that the Israelites journeyed east, with some diversions by divine command, till they came to the Sarbonic Lake, in which he said that Pharaoh and his host perished. ”