Umzilikazi

“ The arm of Dingane was stretched out against us no more, and Umzilikazi, our king, who had meditated moving farther northward, had decided to sit still in the great kraal, Kwa’zingwenya, yet a little longer. But though we had peace from our more powerful enemies, the King would not suffer the might of our nation to grow soft and weak for lack of practice in the arts of war—oh, no. The enrolling of warriors was kept up with unabated vigour, and the young men thus armed were despatched at once to try their strength upon tribes within striking distance, and even far beyond the limits of the same. ”

“ They howl for the blood of him who has insulted their nation and chief. Have you ever done a bolder act?”
“I have, indeed—an act which has won me the isicoco I wear—also this”—holding forth the King’s Assegai. “If they howl now, what will they do when the ‘word’ of Umzilikazi, the mighty King, is not obeyed. Never does he send forth his ‘word’ twice. Now, when wilt thou konza to the Elephant, O Tauane? The sooner the better!”
The howl that went up now was terrible to hear. The dense lines of armed warriors sprang to their feet and hurled themselves upon us, spears uplifted. ”

“ It was a sight to live in a man’s memory. By the red light of a thousand huge fires there was assembled the whole might of a nation, of a new nation, of a nation of warriors. The King sat in the midst of his indunas, an open space before him. On either side stretched a monster crescent of armed men, the glint of their spears, the sheen of their great hide shields, flickering in the wavy glow. Up the middle of this space our impi advanced, singing a battle-song, even the war-song of Umzilikazi ”

“ She is as much afraid of her servants as an Englishwoman who lives in dread of a trial in the divorce-court. This woman—so free at a ball, so attractive out walking—is a slave at home; she is never independent but in perfect privacy, or theoretically. She must preserve herself in her position as a lady. This is her task.
“For in our day a woman repudiated by her husband, reduced to a meagre allowance, with no carriage, no luxury, no opera-box, none of the divine accessories of the toilet, is no longer a wife, a maid, or a townswoman; she is adrift, and becomes a chattel. ”

“ That is the veil question, and this is the way it stands at present.
Such things may seem trifling and ridiculous. But it is a well-known fact that a silly woman is sometimes able to exercise a powerful influence over a man not half as silly, and the class of “unconquered” above described is undoubtedly in a great measure composed of individuals that are apt to be influenced by silly women. It has frequently been said that, had it not been for the spirit of Southern women, the rebellion would have broken down long ago, and there is, no doubt, a grain of truth in it. ”

“ What do married women do to men to make them their slaves as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don’t want to? And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month’s wages to be allowed to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. ”

“ Can you, in all the tiers of the circus or the theatre, find a single honest woman? Women love the stage; if you marry a wife it will be to make a father of some harpist or flute-player. Or perhaps, like Eppia, the Senator's wife, she will run off to Egypt with a gladiator, leaving home and husband and sister, and brave all the perils of the deep. Had her husband bidden her go on board a ship, she would have deemed it an act of cruelty; no woman has boldness but for acts of shame! ”

“ A most dangerous weapon, when employed by one of this sex against a sister, is Ridicule. Not only does it rob her who indulges it of the rich joys of admiration, but it poisons the depths of her own spirit, and breaks the peace of her associates. Few are they, who have not some foible or personal defect, on which this vice may fix itself. One is an object of taunts for her ignorance; another for a plain face; a third for an impediment in her speech; and how many suffer this infliction for some article of dress proscribed by that mistress called fashion. ”

“ Some bright, brave gesture jumped up from his bosom to his eyes; a word, a smile, a tone, her charming indignation, her lovely anger against himself and politics, her frank impertinence, her amazing candour, and above all, her apartness from the common herd of women—elegant but featureless. To be explicit, that was how she held poor man. A woman quite unlike her sisters, yet as feminine as anything that ever fibbed and trailed a petticoat. The lords of creation mostly deign to take us women to themselves the moment they can be persuaded that they have caught an entirely new variety. ”

“ See’st thou in snowy dishabille the lovely woman? [146] with what heart-felt glee the frolicking, half-naked child, with chubby arms, almost suffocates in its little embrace her neck, its golden ringlets mingling like streams of light ’mid her dark tresses,—with what ecstasy she enfolds him in her embraces, with maternal lips pressing in exquisite delight the plump alabaster shoulders? Lady, such scenes, not gloomy walls, invite thee—nay ’tis not the voice of the Tempter—’tis not, as they will tell thee, the poisonous breath of the many-coloured serpent stealing o’er thy senses. ”

“ In costume white and shining, the Lady Elise moved through the graceful numbers, her slender supple figure now poised, now swaying, from head to foot responsive to the rhythm of that "pastime of little steps." Her lips, too, were busy, but such was the witchery of her motion—all fire and life!—the silk-stockinged cavaliers whom she thus regaled with wit, mockery, or jest, could, for the most part, respond only with admiring glances or weakly protesting words. ”

“ Coolidge. “I don’t understand much of lady’s dress, but that much I do. Nothing I hate so much as to see a woman in dirty finery; and pure fresh white is the prettiest thing she can wear. If you ladies dressed to please us gentlemen, you would never appear in any thing else. However, I don’t mean to interfere in what you’ll say, Emily, I don’t understand; only, Lucy, whatever you do decide on, let it be fresh and clean.”
“There Lucy, now I have your husband on my side, you have nothing to say,” cried Emily. “And to be fresh and clean, things must be new. ”

“ Isolda’s motherhood, you see, had become so important—no, not important, but inevitable—that it had quite obscured her womanhood in her own mind, and now she was surprised and delighted to find that she was a woman after all, and she felt rather naughty about it, as though she had found something unusually flippant in herself. Or maybe it is that a woman naturally becomes more liable to passion at thirty or so, but—it is absurd to generalize about these things. ”

“ My sisters were rapidly developing into remarkably handsome fine young women, especially Mary, who, having the advantage of a year and a half over Lizzie, was naturally more filled out and formed, although Lizzie promised in the end to be, and in fact became, the finest woman, and had also by far the hotter temperament of the two. We passed the night in orgies the most refined, interspersed with tears of regret at our parting, and soft endearments leading to perfect furies of lubricity, until I was nearly fainting with exhaustion. ”

“ The Question I shall at present handle is, whether the time an ingenious Gentleman spends in the Company of Women, may justly be said to be misemploy’d, or not. I put the question in general terms; because whoever holds the affirmative must maintain it so, or the Sex is no way concern’d to oppose him. On the other side I shall not maintain the Negative, but with some Restrictions and Limitations; because I will not be bound to justifie those Women, whose Vices and ill Conduct expose them deservedly to the Censure of the other Sex, as well as of their own. ”

“ Many women have, unhappily, made some such discovery as this, but for most women there is some distracting occupation. Had it been Sylvia's fate to live in the midst of fashion and society, she would have found relief in the conversation of the witty, or the homage of the distinguished. ”

“ Oh, this eternal babble of the sexes! [Throws book down.] Why can’t a woman be content to be a woman? What does she want to make a beastly man of herself for?
SYLVESTER.
But my wife isn’t a woman.
COLONEL.
None of them are, my boy. A woman, who is a woman, doesn’t want to be anything else. These people are a sex of their own, Sylvester. They have invented a new gender. And to think my nephew’s one of them!
[Strides up and down, seizes another antimacassar and flings it into another corner.
[Pg 10]
SYLVESTER.
Oh, he’s young. Don’t despair! ”

“ It is to this frightful dilemma of feminine life that all the strange inconsistencies of women’s conduct is to be attributed. In this lies the origin of all their lies, all their perfidies; here is the secret of all their mysteries. It is something to make one shudder. Moreover, even as simply based upon cold-blooded calculations, the conduct of a woman who accepts the unhappiness which attends virtue and scorns the bliss which is bought by crime, is a hundred times more reasonable. ”

“ She had used all the art of a logician to impress upon me the conviction that Sylvia was a life sister, and could be nothing else. Was it possible—I scarcely dared to ask myself the question—that she had used the arts of a woman to intimate to me that she might be something else? It did not cross my mind for an instant that anything that Mother Anastasia had said to me, or anything that could be deduced from her manner, was in the slightest degree out of the way. A woman has a right to indicate her position in regard to a fellow-being, and in this age she generally does indicate it. ”

“ French began to show to Isabella that she was anything but a pleasant and agreeable mistress. What social virtues are possible in a society of which injustice is a primary characteristic,—in a society which is divided into two classes, masters and slaves? Every married woman at the South looks upon her husband as unfaithful, and regards every negro woman as a rival. ”

“ It is dangerous for women, however wise it be for men, “to commune with their own hearts, and to be still!” Continuing to pursue the follies of the world had been to Emily more prudent than to fly them; to pause, to separate herself from the herd, was to discover, to feel, to murmur at the vacuum of her being; and to occupy it with the feelings which it craved, could in her be but the hoarding a provision for despair. ”

“ She must await the despot’s will, and spend hours or days excited and unhappy, fearing that the dress will not be finished in season for the party. And when at last it comes, look at it! We could laugh, were we not ashamed to think that women can be so absurd. What can be more uncouth, ungraceful, or deforming than a lady dressed in the extreme of fashion, or indeed with but half the absurdities that are daily seen. ”

“ Emily started and looked aghast, and then that delicate feeling, that sensitiveness for the dignity of woman's nature, which none, I suspect, but woman's heart can clearly comprehend, caused her cheek to glow like a rose with shame at the very thought of a woman loving unloved, and seeking unsought. ”

“ Isabel, my darling, I want to talk very seriously to you to-day. The crisis has come in our lives, and I am to find out to-day whether you are the true woman I believe you to be, or only a pretty little village coquette, who has fooled me to the top of my bent, and who can whistle me off and let me down the wind to prey at fortune directly I become a nuisance. Izzie, I want you to answer a serious question to-day, and all the happiness of my future life depends upon your answer. ”

“ Fainter sounded the warning of the jestress in the ears of the duke's fool; so faint it became but a weak admonition. More and more he abandoned himself to the pleasure of the moment.
"To make the most of the day," the princess had said.
How? By denying himself the sight of her ever-varying grace; by refusing to yield to the charm of her voice. He raised his head more boldly; through her drooping lashes a lazy light shot forth upon him, and the shadow of a smile seemed to say: "That is better. When the mistress is indulgent, a fool should not be unbending. ”

“ The fairness of Isabella's complexion was regarded with envy by the servants as well as by the mistress herself. This is one of the hard features of slavery. To-day a woman is mistress of her own cottage; tomorrow she is sold to one who aims to make her life as intolerable as possible. And let it be remembered that the house-servant has the best situation a slave can occupy. ”

“ I believe in woman’s suffrage, I even argue in approval of window-smashing. I believe that women ought to earn their own living, and be independent and free from any man’s control. I am a divorced woman—I left my husband because I wasn’t happy with him, what’s more, I believe that any woman has a right to do the same—I’m liable to teach such ideas to Sylvia, and to urge her to follow them. ”