Reeves

“ Reeves says he is the most eligible match in the city, his family are so aristocratic. There isn't a single mechanic or working person in the whole line, for she spent an entire season in tracing back their ancestry, finding but one blot, and that an unfortunate marriage of a Miss Ellen Bellenger with some ignorant country loafer she met at boarding-school, and who she says was hung, or sent to State prison, I forgot which. ”

“ The defeated fear would be a trophy. She would understand. She wanted a man to be strong in every way. She frankly admired the daring of Reeves. Reeves, inclined to be a will o' the wisp in love, sought out by other girls, attached himself to Alouise. ”

“ Reeves could follow the uncouth tongue with very little difficulty—the question of language troubled him but slightly. The two boys, being familiar with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, found that Walter's speech was more intelligible to them than that of the man who had first hailed them, and who seemed to be a person of position. "Therefore," concluded the former, "I cannot tell you."
"I wish I had something to smoke," said Reeves to the lads. "A good meal without a smoke to finish up with is like a concert without the National Anthem—you feel as if something, is wanting." ”

“ Madame Gras and Reeves were recalled frantically four or five times, and they both deserved it.
“Reeves is a priceless discovery for Jullien; his voice is exquisite in quality, he is a good musician, has an expressive face, and plays with judgment.”
“14th January.—Jullien has landed us all in a dreadful bog, but don’t mention it in Paris, as we must not spoil his credit. ”

“ The words of Reeves and the unhappy fate of young Prescott recurred to my recollection, and though I could assign no tangible reason for it, a vague, dim fear and distrust of the woman took possession of me. It may be that this was foolish prejudice and superstition upon my part, and that I involuntarily contorted her future doings and sayings to fit into some half-formed wild theory of my own. This has been suggested to me by others as an explanation of my narrative. They are welcome to their opinion if they can reconcile it with the facts which I have to tell. ”

“ Reeves had to score deep to ensure the proper fall of the top when he sawed-in opposite his cut. He had to judge every blow to a nicety; to gauge the wind, the symmetry of the crown, things instinctive enough to any experienced feller but assuming an acuter problem when tackled a hundred and fifty feet from the ground. The top would fall before he had sawed clean through, it would leave more or less of a nub that Spider, with due pride in turning out a perfect job, would clear away before he went down for his light block and tackle. ”

“ The priest told me afterwards I was bound not to disclose to anybody what I’d heard.”
“He didn’t know you, anyhow, Carmichael,” suggested Reeves.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve never mentioned what he said to anybody, though it was sufficiently curious.”
“It’s impossible,” resumed Reeves, “not to make inferences; the mistake is to depend on them. In ordinary life, you have to take risks; you have to sit down in the barber’s chair, although you know it is just as easy for him to cut your throat as to shave you. But in detection one should take no chances, give no one the benefit of the doubt. ”

“ In the final success of Reeves, it is the man himself who confronts one in the unique transcendency and victoriousness of personal merit. On the other hand, a million times the personal merit of Reeves combined with his own could have availed Douglass absolutely nothing in the United States, legal and social proscript that he was, with public opinion generally on the side of the laws and usages against him. The very little countries of the world are proverbial for the production of very great men. ”

“ Deucedly mean of Reeves, you know, if he has backed out of it, for she was an uncommonly nice girl."
"I've seen her," I said; "but I don't know her name."
"She is a Miss Northcott, and lives with an old aunt of hers in Abercrombie Place. Nobody knows anything about her people, or where she comes from. Anyhow, she is about the most unlucky girl in the world, poor soul!"
"Why unlucky?"
"Well, you know, this was her second engagement," said young Brodie, who had a marvellous knack of knowing everything about everybody. "She was engaged to Prescott—William Prescott, who died. ”

“ Russell, of Times renown, is in China with her husband."
Mrs. Reeves is essentially a domestic woman. She cares comparatively but little for society, and is never [Pg 80] as happy as when at home, with her husband sitting on the other side of the fire-place, like "Darby and Joan." She is excellent company, and a brilliant conversationalist. She possesses that good gift, a low, sweet voice, which glides on from topic to topic—now gay, with flashes of wit and mirth, now subdued to gravity or pathos. Albeit, she is a good listener, and has the happy knack of drawing out talk. ”

“ You’ve made up yore minds to go through with this thing. A fool could see that. Far as Tolliver goes, I reckon I’ll go it alone an’ not do any beefin’ about him. He threw me down hard, but he was considerable strung up about June. Wouldn’t do any good for me to tell what I know.”
“Not a bit,” assented Reeves. “Might as well game it out.”
Houck’s hard, cold eye looked at him steadily. “Who said anything about not gaming it out? If you’re expectin’ me to beg an’ crawl you’ve got hold of the wrong man. I’m a damned tough nut an’ don’t you forget it. Whenever you’re ready, gents.” ”

“ The thralls were severely punished for their misdeeds, but if one man took into his own hands the punishment of the thralls of another, it was held to be an affront which could be, and usually was, promptly revenged by their master. It was this right of revenge for such an affront, which led Eric the Red to kill Eyiolf Saur, who had punished Eric's thralls for a crime committed against Eyiolf's kinsman, Valthiof. ”

“ Emma, aged ten, stood about 4 feet 6 inches in her socks. Four years later, when she began to earn by carrying men’s dinners backwards and forwards to them [186] at work, she measured 4 feet 10 inches. At ten she was a queer little figure, the eldest of six, with a baby always in her arms out of school-hours. She was not highly intelligent, but had a soothing way with children. Her short neck and large face gave the impression of something dwarf-like. But she was sturdy and tough to all appearance, and could scrub a floor or wring out a tubful of clothes in a masterly way. ”

“ Seen in the clear sunny air, these columns of water and white foam, mounting, swaying, blown by the wind into silver spray, and with attendant rainbows glittering in the light, are sights which silence even the chattering tourist for a while. ”

“ Foul with mud and sulphur, they seethe and splutter in their dark pits, sending up clouds of steam and sulphurous fumes. Others are of the clearest green or deepest, purest blue, through which thousands of silver bubbles shoot up to the surface, flash, and vanish. ”

“ There stood Long Sin, who had disguised himself as a Chinese laundryman.
"On time—good!" growled Clutching Hand surlily as he closed the door with equal care.
No time was wasted in useless formalities.
"This is a bomb," he went on, pointing to the package. "Carry it carefully. On no account let it slip, or you are a dead man. It must be in Kennedy's laboratory before night. Understand? Can you arrange it?"
Long Sin looked the dangerous package over, then with an impassive look, replied, "Have no fear. I can do it. It will be in the laboratory within an hour. Trust me." ”

“ Pattering raindrops chill enthusiasm. The mazy paradise is filled with “the terror of unending trees.” The silence grows unnatural, the rustle of a chance bird startles. Anything from a python to a jaguar might be hidden in labyrinths that look so tropical. ”

“ Though pale and delicate, the tints of the rock are not their least beauty. Grey, yellow, brown, fawn, terra-cotta, even pale orange are to be noted. No photograph can give the charm of the drapery that clothes these cliffs. Photographs give no light or colour, and New Zealand scenery without light and colour is Hamlet with Hamlet left out. How could a photograph even hint at the dark, glossy green of the glistening karaka leaves, the feathery, waving foliage of the lace bark, or the white and purple bloom of the koromiko? ”

“ From the south-west, Aorangi, with the ridge attached to it, resembles the high-pitched roof of a Gothic church with a broad, massive spire standing up from the northern end. When, under strong sunlight, the ice glitters on the steep crags, and the snow-fields, unearthly in their purity, contrast with the green tint of the crawling glaciers, the great mountain is a spectacle worthy of its fame. ”

“ To the lover of beautiful Nature the work of our race in New Zealand seems more akin to that of the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor, when they swept away population, buildings and agriculture, and Byzantine city and rural life together, in order to turn whole provinces into pasture for their sheep. Not that my countrymen are more blind to beauty than other colonists from Europe. ”

“ The Australian woods, too, are park-like: their trees, though interesting, and by no means without charm, have a strong family likeness. Their prevailing colours are yellow, brown, light green, and grey. Light and heat penetrate them everywhere.
The cool, noiseless forests of New Zealand are deep jungles, giant thickets, like those tropic labyrinths where traveller and hunter have to cut their path through tangled bushes and interlacing creepers. Their general hue is not light but dark green, relieved, it is true, by soft fern fronds, light-tinted shrubs, and crimson or snow-white flowers. ”

“ Round about the homestead you will still see the traditional features of colonial station life, the long wool-shed with high-pitched roof of shingles or corrugated iron, and the sheep-yards which, to the eye of the new chum, seem such an unmeaning labyrinth. Not far off will stand the men’s huts, a little larger than of yore, and more likely nowadays to be frame cottages than to be slab whares with the sleeping-bunks and low, wide chimneys of days gone by. ”

“ Vegetables flourish; goats, pigs, and cattle thrive. So far are the valleys and hill-sides from being barren that their plant-life is a joy to the New Zealand botanists, who pray for nothing so much as that settlement may hold its hand and not molest this floral paradise. Pleurophyllums, celmisias, gentians, veronicas, grass-trees, spread beside the sea-gulfs as though in sub-alpine meadows. The leaves are luxuriant, the flowers richer in colour than on our main islands. The jungle of crouching rata tinges the winding shores with its summer scarlet. ”

“ But the leafy roof is lofty enough, and the air cool and pure enough, to save you from the sweltering oppressiveness of an equatorial jungle. The dim entanglement is a quiet world, shut within itself and full of shadows. ”

“ After a storm the snow will lie powdering the green beech trees, making the rocks gleam frostily and sharpening the savage ridges till they look like the jagged edges of stone axes. Only at nightfall in summer do the mountains take a softer aspect. ”

“ It is as different to the sharp dry air of the Canterbury ranges as velvet is to canvas; it soothes, and in hot weather relaxes. The black birch with dark trunk, spreading branches, and light leaves, is now mingled with the queenly rimu, and the stiff, small-leaved, formal white pine. Winding and hanging plants festoon everything, and everything is bearded with long streamers of moss, not grey but rich green and golden. Always some river rushes along in sight or fills the ear with its noise. ”

“ There is nothing extraordinary in the way of beauty there. Still, it is high and shapely, with enough foliage to feather the rocks and soften the outlines. Botanists know it as one of the few spots away from the sea-beach where the crimson-flowering pohutu-kawa has deigned to grow. In any case, the scene of the legend of Hinemoa is sure of a warm corner in all New Zealand hearts. The story of the chief’s daughter, and her swim by night across the lake to join her lover on the island, has about it that quality of grace with which most Maori tales are but scantily draped. ”

“ Its scenery is marked by height and steepness; its mountain ranges and bold sea-cliffs impress the new-comer by size and wildness. The clear air, too, enables the eye to travel far; and where the gazer can hold many miles of country in view—country stretching away, as a rule, to lofty backgrounds—the adjective “small” does not easily occur to the mind. ”

“ Then the lover of ferns—and they have many lovers in New Zealand—has there a whole realm to call his own. Not that every fern will grow in every garden. Among distinct varieties numbering scores, there are many that naturally cling to the peace and moisture of deep gullies and overshadowing jungle. There, indeed, is found a wealth of them—ferns with trunks as thick as trees, and ferns with fronds as fine as hair or as delicate as lace ”

“ It is difficult, perhaps, for those living in the cool and abundantly watered British Islands to sympathise with dwellers in hotter climates, or to understand what a blessing and beauty these continual and never-failing watercourses of New Zealand seem to visitors from sultrier and drier lands. The sun is quite strong enough to make men thankful for this gift of abundant water, and to make the running ripple of some little forest rivulet, heard long before it is seen through the green thickets, as musical to the ears of the tired rider as the note of the bell-bird itself. ”