The Hunting of the Snark

“ In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away—- For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. ”

“ The world faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the little world of the Snark, freighted with her seven souls and floating on the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world, the great world, became like dreams of former lives we had lived somewhere before we came to be born on the Snark. After we had been out of fresh vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in much the same way I have heard my father mention the vanished apples of his boyhood. Man is a creature of habit, and we on the Snark had got the habit of the Snark. ”

“ Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman, she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which we hard-working men were subject in the course of working the Snark around the world. ”

“ She simply cannot be made to run, that is all.” Well, I wish I’d only had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board the Snark the other night for them to see for themselves their one, vital, unanimous judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one thing the Snark does to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor fast for’ard and a full mizzen flattened down aft. ”

“ Is the thing that one needs with a Snark."
He would joke with hyænas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
"Just to keep up its spirits," he said. ”

“ Snark,” I cried, “for a good man and a true.”
I pressed him to accept a purse of fifty guineas over and above the sum agreed upon.
“No, not a blessed head,” he replied. “Snark’s not a dirty screw, but a man o’ fambly and a proper hartiss at his work. Takes a fair pride in it, he does, which is the reason why his reppitation seizes all Bow Street by the belly.”
Upon this the worthy creature conducted me up the gloomy stairs to the window that commanded the execution ground. The sight that then confronted me I have often met again in dreams. ”

“ Some were rather vague in their own minds concerning the work to be done on the Snark; as, for instance, the one who wrote: "I am taking the liberty of writing you this note to find out if there would be any possibility of my going with you as one of the crew of your boat to make sketches and illustrations." Several, unaware of the needful work on a small craft like the Snark, offered to serve, as one of them phrased it, "as assistant in filing materials collected for books and novels." That's what one gets for being prolific. ”

“ As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sit on the bank and watch him. That is why I am building the Snark. I am so made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments of living. ”

“ He likes your solid hearty buxom face, which is the reason for his kindness. For it’s Snark’s opinion that this young rebel man o’ yours is on’y a beginner, and that his picter won’t be put into the Calendar. But let me see now. The execution is fixed up for the twenty-sixth at ten o’clock in the morning. Well, that’ll suit Snark handsomely. An’ I [Pg 311] daresay it’ll be a pretty fashionable thing. Shall you be present, Miss? ”

“ If we delight in gossip, and are not content unless each neighbor is laid upon the dissecting table, we form a character unenviable indeed, and must be willing to bear the contempt of all the truly good, while we roll our bit of scandal as a sweet morsel under the tongue. ”

“ In his zeal to discover the Snark.
But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
A Bandersnatch swiftly drew nigh
And grabbed at the Banker, who shrieked in despair,
For he knew it was useless to fly. ”

“ Scandals are around us every day, but we pay no heed till the spasm of outraged virtue takes us. Then we pick out some one by mere caprice, hiss him, cut him—make him a whipping-boy to be lashed from our doors. ”

“ Scandal was the breath of her life; to place people in false positions, to divulge secrets and destroy characters, to undermine friendships, and aggravate enmities—these were the sources of enjoyment from which this dangerous woman drew the inexhaustible fund of good spirits that made her a brilliant light in the social sphere. She was one of the privileged sinners of modern society. ”

“ I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty." ”

“ Nothing at times so startles us as our own words. As the girl uttered the word "scandal," she rose frightened as though it faced her and began to walk excitedly backward and forward. Scandal had never touched her life. She had never talked scandal; had never thought scandal. Dwelling under the same roof with it as the master passion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsive ways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence. ”

“ Scandal, you know, is but amusing ourselves with the faults, foibles, follies, and reputations of our friends; indeed, I don't know why we should have friends, if we are not at liberty to make use of them. But no person is so ignorant of the world as to suppose, because I amuse myself with a lady's faults, that I am obliged to quarrel with her person every time we meet: believe me, my dear, we should have very few acquaintance at that rate. ”

“ There are many women who gossip and retail scandal, not out of wickedness or with the intention of hurting anyone, but for the mere sake of being entertaining at the dinner-table or round the tea-tray. ”

“ And let me add that the apocryphal slanderer, the person who never says but hints all sorts of malicious things, is the worst sort of scandal-monger. The cultivated conversationalist who talks gossip in its intellectual form does not indulge in oblique hints and insinuations. ”

“ Let people get hold of a little scandal, and it grew with every pair of lips the tale passed through. Lovers of slander delighted to show the worst side of a character, that they might the more readily find listeners. ”

“ He hangs himself, and at once scandal springs up, bell-mouthed, to shout the thing to the world. The name of an innocent girl is dragged in; my name is dragged in; innocent people suffer for the foolish act of a thoughtless boy. ”

“ I cannot sufficiently express the indignation that I feel against the mischievous spirit of scandal, which destroys happiness at every breath, and which delights in the meanest of all malignant feelings—the triumph over the errors of superior characters. ”

“ If you have ever been uplifted to thoughts of a better, it has come from too much notice from gentle people at 'The Rest,' and from too much reading of poetry books. But for that, there would never have been these meetings in the park, and moonlight flittings about the lake, to scandalize people. Think better of it, Ruth, or worse mischief than the scandal that is in everybody's mouth may come out of it. Nothing but an honest marriage can put an end to it."
"Scandal!" whispered the girl, rising slowly, and turning her white face on the housekeeper. "What scandal?" ”

“ Of course, in a house where there is only one "nark," he tries to ingratiate himself with casual men, for the sake of social company, but they do not encourage his advances, knowing how careful they must be of what they say. They are suspicious of him, in spite of his good-natured offers to oblige them with a shake of pepper. ”

“ Rages like a flood,
Chews her placid hearsays
As a cow her cud.
Scandal hobnobs with the rich
Over purple wine;
Gossip has the vagabonds
In to chat and dine.
Scandal never visits us;
We are far too poor ”

“ They are expected to kiss all flesh that asks them to do so. They are jerked up into the laps of people whom they abhor. They say, "Yes, ma'am," under pain of bread and water for a week, when their unerring nature prompts them to hurl out emphatically, "No." They are sent out of the room whenever a fascinating bit of scandal is to be rehearsed, packed off to bed just as everybody is settled down for a charming evening, bothered about their lessons when their play is but fairly under way, and hedged and hampered on every side. ”

“ many a wretch has rid on hurdles who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged Tales, coiners of Scandal, and clippers of Reputation. ”

“ The slanderer is a pest; an incubus to society, that should be subjected to a slow cauterization, and then be lopped off like a disagreeable excrescence. Like the viper, he leaves a shining trail in his wake. ”

“ Certainly madam—that conversation where the Spirit of Raillery is suppressed will ever appear tedious and insipid— MARIA.
Well I'll not debate how far Scandal may be allowable— but in a man I am sure it is always contemtable.—We have Pride, envy, Rivalship, and a Thousand motives to depreciate each other— but the male-slanderer must have the cowardice of a woman before He can traduce one. ”

“ A learned counsellor in the midst of an affecting appeal in Court on a slander case delivered himself of the following flight of genius. "Slander, gentlemen, like a boa constrictor of gigantic size and immeasurable proportions, wraps the coil of its unwieldy body about its unfortunate victim, and, heedless of the shrieks of agony that come from the utmost depths of its victim's soul, loud and reverberating as the night thunder that rolls in the heavens, it finally breaks its unlucky neck upon the iron wheel of public opinion ”

“ It would be suggestively coarse for a married woman to deliberately select such questionable themes for a public discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary information—are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say analyze it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous details. ”

“ Her rigidity, her self-consciousness, her want of charm, and absence of humour, were a fruitful theme of ridicule to the witty and heartless parasites who crowded her drawing-rooms and made raids on her husband's purse. ”

“ People will think you mad."
"Let them. I don't care—I don't care if you think I'm mad. I only think it's beastly of you to say so."
"You're not madder than I am. We're all mad. Mad as hatters. You and me and Dank and Roddy and Uncle Victor. Poor Charlotte's the sanest of the lot, and she's the only one that's got shut up." ”