Peebles

“ I have seen John Peebles squeeze your hand when he thought no one was looking, and when you dance with Dick Throck he holds you too close and you dance cheek to cheek. I tell you I do not like it, Flora, and one of these days I shall forget all about the gold and think only of you, and then something will happen and there will not be so many to divide the ingots that I shall bring back from Africa. And Bluber and Kraski are almost as bad; perhaps Kraski is the worst of all, for he is a good-looking devil and I do not like the way in which you cast sheep's eyes at him. ”

“ One of the missing contratenors, bound with a second copy of the supplement, has since been acquired by the British Museum (Addit. MS. 33933) ; it is, unfortunately, defective, but most of the psalter can now be completed by its help, and the result proves Peebles to have possessed great skill in pure diatonic harmony. ”

“ West Linton, on Lyne Water, is a holiday resort The shire combines with Selkirkshire to return one member to parliament, the electors of Peebles town voting with the county Peeblesshire forms a sheriffdom with the Lothians and a sheriff-substitute sits in the county town. There is a high school in Peebles, and one or more schools in the county usually earn grants for secondary education. ”

“ And the Quair burn singing down to the vale o' Tweed,"
may come away steeped in sadness, yet it is a sadness without sting, not wholly unpleasing.
CHAPTER XIV PEEBLES, NEIDPATH, MANOR, LYNE, DRUMMELZIER, DAWYCK Writing336 of Peebles in the year 1847 or 1848, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder speaks of "the singular air of decayed royalty that hangs over it, and which so strangely blends with its perfect simplicity and rurality." ”

“ When the pew is filled to overflowing, then, sometimes, you are crowded out into her pew. Embarrassed of mien, you decorously slide into your new location, she receiving your presence with a shrug and a sniff, and you growing redder and redder as you imagine that all the congregation must be reading your secret. ”

“ I confess that I have some fault to find with your pews, doctor: a pew should never be a symbol of the narrow path that leadeth unto life. Oh, but they are not so bad, though—not so bad. Still, I, now, in Styria, have a church, and the pews are fauteuils. A man begins to cherish these little boons when the hair is getting grey. ”

“ But on my first morning in the grove, what was my dismay—I may almost say despair—to find that the Western wood-pewee led the matins! Now, this bird has a peculiar voice. It is loud, pervasive, and in quality of tone not unlike our Eastern phœbe, lacking entirely the sweet plaintiveness of our wood-pewee. A pewee chorus is a droll and dismal affair. The poor things do their best, no doubt, and they cannot prevent the pessimistic effect it has upon us. ”

“ Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the wilderness, but contributes to the lore that seeks in all the true principle of life—the beautiful—the joyous—the immortal. ”

“ Look when one might, in the hottest sunshine or the heaviest rain, there sat the bird quite up out of the nest, head erect and eyes eagerly watching for intruders. The pewee, for all his tender and melancholy utterances, has a fiery spirit. He hesitates not to clinch with a brother pewee, interpolates his sweetest call into the hot chases, and even when resting between encounters, spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant than her spouse. ”

“ Christmas and New Year’s both coming on Sunday this year, there’ll be a great many out to church, not counting the strangers that’ll come to the special service to-morrow. Instead of putting down my own pew carpet that’ll never be noticed here in the back, I’ll lay it in the old Peabody pew, for the red aisle-strip leads straight up to it; the ministers always go up that side, and it does look forlorn. ”

“ Our ladies glory in having pearls suspended from their fingers, or two or three of them dangling from their ears, delighted even with the rattling of the pearls as they knock against each other; and now, at the present day, the poorer classes are even affecting them, as people are in the habit of saying, that ‘a pearl worn by a woman in public is as good as a lictor walking before her.’ Nay, even more than this, they put them on their feet, and that, not only on the laces of their sandals but all over the shoes ”

“ My wife and I to church in the afternoon, and seated ourselves, she below me, and by that means the precedence of the pew, which my Lady Batten and her daughter takes, is confounded; and after sermon she and I did stay behind them in the pew, and went out by ourselves a good while after them, which we judge a very fine project hereafter to avoyd contention. So my wife and I to walk an hour or two on the leads, which begins to be very pleasant, the garden being in good condition. So to supper, which is also well served in. ”

“ The purpose of this little book is to present the chief features in the strange story of the pebbles; and so of the larger pebble we call the earth. It is hoped that readers of various ages will be entertained, without suspecting that they are being taught. ”

“ Pebbles can be obtained free of expense. Nature’s inexhaustible treasure-house is always open. She invites you to approach and help yourself at will. She offers with unstinting hand stones of imperishable beauty. It is ungracious to scorn her liberality.
We propose, then, to give particulars of British pebbles—how to recognise those worth collecting, where to look for them, and how to cut and polish them for yourselves. No writer for boys, so far as I know, has ever yet given practical instructions about cutting and polishing stones. The best pebble unpolished looks dull and dead. ”

“ One day, while watching the habits of a pair of Pewees at Mill Grove, I looked so intently at their graceful attitudes that a thought struck my mind like a flash of light, that nothing, after all, could ever answer my enthusiastic desires to represent nature, except to copy her in her own way, alive and moving! ”

“ Pepys never wearies of describing to us his fine clothes; he tells us of new suits of silk and cloth trimmed with scarlet ribbons, of velvet coats and cloaks shining with silver buttons, of high-crowned beaver hats adorned with plumes of feathers and worn indoors as well as out, of lace ruffles and rich falling collars of lace, high-heeled shoes, and the introduction into England of the famous wig. This was in the year 1664, when the large periwig or peruke found its way, like all other fashions, from the Court of the French King. One by one men and women succumbed to the prevailing mode. ”

“ But not for me the Royal Pearls to bind about my hair,
"Pearls were too passionless," you said, for one like me to wear,
I must have all the splendour, all the jewels warm as wine,
But pearls so pale and cold were meant for other flesh than mine. ”

“ Then peaches, and melons;—and there are certain pears, too, that taste like heaven. One of my favourite daydreams for the long afternoon of life is to live alone, a formal, greedy, selfish old gentleman, in a square house, say in Devonshire, with a square garden, whose walls are covered with apricots and figs and peaches: and there are precious pears, too, of my own planting, on espaliers along the paths. I shall walk out with a gold-headed cane in the autumn sunshine, and just at the right moment I shall pick another pear. ”

“ And that little pebble brings you face to face with disintegration, the force to which, more than to any other, we owe the aspects of the world which we call picturesque--glen, ravine, valley, hill. It is not necessary that the child should be told anything about disintegration or dicotyledon, only that he should observe the wood and pith in the hazel twig, the pleasant roundness of the pebble; by-and-by he will learn the bearing of the facts with which he is already familiar--a very different thing from learning the reason why of facts which have never come under his notice. ”

“ They embrace a variety of subjects: figures, scrolls, dragons, serpents, etc., and frequently bear the arms of the family who owned the pew. Sometimes they terminate at the top with finials either in the form of heads, bunches of foliage, a chamfered fleur-de-lys and a variety of other ornaments called Poppy-heads, from the French Poupée. No examples [90] are known to exist earlier than the Decorated style, but of Perpendicular date specimens are very numerous, especially in our cathedrals and old abbey churches. ”

“ Once, the children of a man employed about the place oölogized the nest, and the pewees left us for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the Ancient Mariner did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly on the wing.... The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time. ”

“ Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg and thence further unrolled it, in the direction already established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance of fifty feet—Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. ”

“ The shallowness of the wood pewee's saucer-shaped nest, its position upon the branch, and especially its external dress of lichens, [90] all conspire to render it inconspicuous. It is an interesting question whether the owner herself appreciates this, or has merely inherited the fashion, without thought of the reasons for it. The latter supposition, I reluctantly confess, looks to me the more probable. It must often be true of other animals, as it is of men, that they build better than they know. ”

“ Poor pebble as I am, left entangled among slimy weeds, I can yet hear from afar the rushing of the blessed torrent, and rejoice that it is there to bathe and brighten other pebbles less unworthy of the polishing. ”

“ Rumors of our strenuous, and somewhat unique, activities spread through our parish to many others, traveling so far (even over seas) that we became embarrassed at our easily won fame. The book was read and people occasionally came to church to see the old Peabody Pew, rather resenting the information that there had never been any Peabodys in the parish and, therefore, there could be no Peabody Pew. ”

“ There is no lark in the sky, not one; the heaven is clear of wings or twinkling dot——.
Till the heralds come—till the heralds wave like shadows in the bright air, crying, lamenting, fretting forever. Rising and falling and circling round and round, the slow-waving peewits cry and complain, and lift their broad wings in sorrow. They stoop suddenly to the ground, the lapwings, then in another throb of anguish and protest, they swing up again, offering a glistening white breast to the sunlight, to deny it in black shadow, then a glisten of green, and all the time crying and crying in despair. ”

“ Therefore you must give your first basketful to your brother Peppe, as the price of his leave to put your ladder against the tree; and the second basketful to your brother Alfin, for leave to shake his boughs. The rest you can keep for yourself.’
And the brothers were contented, and returned home, saying one to the other, ‘We will each of us send a basket of figs to the king. Perhaps he will give us something in return, and if he does we will divide it faithfully between us.’ So the best figs were carefully packed in a basket, and Peppe set out with it to the castle. ”

“ If any man wished such a private pew for himself and family, he obtained permission from the church and town, and built it at his own expense. Immediately in front of the pulpit was either a long seat or a square inclosed pew for the deacons, who sat facing the congregation. This was usually a foot or two above the level of the other pews, and was reached by two or three steep, narrow steps. On a still higher plane was a pew for the ruling elders, when ruling elders there were. The magistrates also had a pew for their special use. ”

“ And when a certain tract has been searched through, pebble by pebble, and found to be absolutely barren, then they will begin on it again, on the off-chance of a thrown brick or the passing of some human creature in the meantime having left behind it something to eat. ”

“ They make hollow a great fir-tree, leaving only a small slitt down straight in one place, and this they close up again, only leave a little hole, and there the bees go in and fill the bodys of those trees as full of wax and honey as they can hold; and the inhabitants at times go and open the slit, and take what they please without killing the bees, and so let them live there still and make more. ”

“ The play being done, I stole from him and hied home, buying several things at the ironmonger's—dogs, tongs, and shovels—for my wife's closett and the rest of my house, and so home, and thence to my office awhile, and so home to supper and to bed. By my letters from Tangier today I hear that it grows very strong by land, and the Mole goes on. ”

“ By sermon time Justin’s identity had dawned upon most of the congregation. A stranger to all but one or two at first, his presence in the Peabody pew brought his face and figure back, little by little, to the minds of the old parishioners.
When the contribution plate was passed, the sexton always began at the right-wing pews, as all the sextons before him had done for a hundred years. ”