Volapük

“ Into expresses motion from the outside to the interior, while in relates wholly to the interior.
This distinction is exprest in Volapük either by putting the noun into the kimifal or by adding -i to the preposition.
In Volapük there are other prepositions subject to the same distinction; when they denote place, where, they govern the kimfal; when they denote direction, whither, they govern the kimifal or take the ending i. ”

“ As far back as 1881, I had made a trip down the Volga to Southern Russia with that most delightful of men, the late Vicomte Eugene Melchior de Vogue, the French Academician and man-of-letters. I absolve Vogue from the accusation of being unable to observe like the majority of his compatriots, nor, like them, was he a poor linguist. He had married a Russian, the sister of General Anenkoff of Central Asian fame; spoke Russian fluently, and very few things escaped his notice. ”

“ Of course the Volga told her not to be so rude, and said that little rivers should know their place and not argue with the great.
But the Vazouza would not keep quiet, and at last she said to the Volga: "Look here, we will lie down and sleep, and we will agree that the one of us who wakes first and comes first to the sea is the wiser of the two." ”

“ So Volga lay down to sleep; down lay Vazuza also. But during the night Vazuza rose silently, fled away from Volga, chose the nearest and the straightest line, and flowed away. When Volga awoke, she set off neither slowly nor hurriedly, but with just befitting speed. At Zubtsof she came up with Vazuza. So threatening was her mien, that Vazuza was frightened, declared herself to be Volga’s younger sister, and besought Volga to take her in her arms and bear her to the Caspian Sea. And so to this day Vazuza is the first to awake in the Spring, and then she arouses Volga from her wintry sleep. ”

“ The space between the Oka and the Volga, in the west, is also flat and forest-grown. The best part of the government is that to the east of the Oka; it is hilly, trenched by deep ravines and better drained, and has patches of fertile black earth in the south. The government is drained by the Volga with its tributaries, the Kerzhenets and the Vetluga on the left, and the Sura (with the Pyana) and the Oka on the right. ”

“ They laugh to the sound of flutes. On their long couches they lie down at last, and sleep comes to kiss their eyelids. None of these things may I see. Wherefore the brightness of my beauty is even as a curse to me, and I would put it from me.' And as he wept, Vulcan said to him, 'I am not the least cunning of the gods, nor the least pitiful. Do not weep, for I will give you that which shall end your sorrow. Nor need you put from you the brightness of your beauty.' And Vulcan made a mask of dull silver and fastened it across his brother's face. ”

“ Breezy, picturesque Yaroslavl, with its dainty, independent cabbies, who object to the mud which must have been their portion all their lives, and reject rare customers rather than drive through it; with its churches never to be forgotten; its view of the Volga, and its typical Russian features! It was a fitting end to our Volga trip, and fully repaid us for our hot-cold voyage with the samovar steamer against the stream, though I had not believed, during the voyage, that anything could make up for the tedium. ”

“ I want to see Volodka become a real man in time, a servant of God and a good subject of the Czar. If God wants him to be a peasant, I should like him to know how to plow, mow, chop wood—a little of everything. ”

“ Bell was informed of a circumstance, while travelling in Kûrdistan, which raises still higher our admiration of the falcon’s courage; for it is trained by the Tartars to fly at foxes and even wolves.
But to return to the Volga: On arriving on the 5th of November at Kazan, they found that the winter had set in, that the Volga was filled with floating ice, and that, therefore, since the nations inhabiting both banks of the river were hostile to Russia, or extremely barbarous in their manners, it would be necessary to defer the prosecution of their journey until the following spring. ”

“ As far as the eye can reach extends the vast alluvial plain, rich with culture, and occasionally dotted with forests; whilst the Volga, flowing down from Tver, [294] looks like a broad blue ribbon stretched over the country from one extremity of the horizon to the other. Much of the plain below is inundated in spring by the overflowing of the river, leaving a fertile deposit which considerably enhances the value of the land. The stationary population of the town does not exceed 30,000 or 40,000, but during the fair the inhabitants swell up to considerably over 200,000 ”

“ From the foot of the column dedicated to Sviataslof Vsevolovitch, on the spot where he vanquished the Swedes and Poles, that rises on one of the highest summits of the great hill on which Novgorod is built, the stranger may50 contemplate a prospect that might serve as a type of a Russian landscape in winter. In the plain below sleeps the Volga, silent and still to the senses in its winter dress; for the frost, one of nature’s forces, the most imposing from its effects, has already congealed the surface of its running stream into the solidity and quiescence of the plain. ”

“ When his comrades slept Volgá slept not. Sometimes he turned himself into a grey wolf and ran and leaped in the dark forest and killed moose-deer and bears and wolves. Martens and panthers were his favourite prey, and he spared neither hares nor foxes. And at other times he turned himself into a bright falcon, flew far away over the blue sea and killed geese and white swans, and the little grey ducks he spared not. [3]
One day when he was at Kiev he called his body-guard:
“My good brave comrades,” said he, “listen to your big brother, your Chief. Bring a rope of silk and make a snare. ”

“ When Volgá was seventeen he called his friends and companions together and formed a bodyguard of thirty youths save one, and Volgá himself was the thirtieth. He was their Chief, and took them with him on his journeys. He provided for them all and gave them abundance of food and drink, and of sugar sweetmeats many kinds. And warm clothes, too, he gave them, fur coats made of the skins of marten and sable and of panther. ”

“ Then spake Volsung the king, "All people and nations shall tell of the word I spake, yet being unborn, wherein I vowed a vow that I would flee in fear from neither fire nor the sword; even so have I done hitherto, and shall I depart therefrom now I am old? Yea withal never shall the maidens mock these my sons at the games, and cry out at them that they fear death; once alone must all men need die, and from that season shall none escape; so my rede is that we flee nowhither, but do the work of our hands in as manly wise as we may ”

“ Here is a case where people are to be pitied; they have only a little land, and in the springtime the Volga overflows its banks, carries away the earth, and lays it upon its own sand-banks. Then others complain that the bed of the Volga is choked up. The springtime streams and summer rains tear up the gulleys, and again earth is carried away to the river. ”

“ The young Volsung grew mightily in valour and in strength, so that when he had come to man's estate his renown was greater than that of his father or grandfather, and all men knew him to be a true son of the race of Odin. ”

“ And even at the present day the common people are in the habit of expressing, by some kind of offering, their thanks to a river on which they have made a prosperous voyage. It is said that Stenka Razin, the insurgent chief of the Don Cossacks in the seventeenth century, once offered a human sacrifice to the Volga. Among his captives was a Persian princess, to whom he was warmly attached. But one day “when he was fevered with wine, as he sat at the ship’s side and musingly regarded the waves, he said: ‘Oh, Mother Volga, thou great river! ”

“ Looked at casually, Tver and Sahara’s plains are level, and it is only in crossing them that one realizes the gentle up and down beneath the horses’ feet.
Soon Steinmetz raised his head and sniffed in a loud Teutonic manner. It was the reek of water; for great rivers, like the ocean, have their smell. And the Volga is a revelation. Men travel far to see a city, but few seem curious about a river. Every river has, nevertheless, its individuality, its great silent interest. Every river has, moreover, its influence, which extends to the people who pass their lives within sight of its waters. ”

“ The Middle Volga, flowing southward from Kazan to Czaritzin, is a remarkable moat not only to Russia but to Europe. The west shore, known as the Hill Bank, in opposition to the Meadow Bank on the other side, is a hill face, some hundred feet high, which overlooks the river for 700 miles; it is the brink of the inhabited plain, here a little raised above the sea level. ”

“ At that time, Volpetti conceived a brilliant idea, that of playing the friend. He lent him a passport bearing a fictitious name and authorizing him to reside in Spandau. The individual has never been able to shuffle off his name. O there is no prison so secure as a name. ”

“ From Tsaritzin to Astrakhan the Volga flows through the Steppe, the great Asiatic grass desert extending from the Caucasus to the frontier of China. The wild tenants of this wilderness, the various tribes of Tartars, once the terror of East and West, were like a vast ocean of human beings swayed to and fro by nomadic and predatory instincts, which for centuries threatened to overwhelm and efface every vestige of the world's civilization. ”

“ The right bank is hilly, and there are many beautiful bits of scenery, but in this respect the Volga cannot compare with the Rhine, nor even with the Danube and Rhône. Its beauty does not lie in its banks, but in its unbounded width and in the extraordinary volume of its waters, which roll down to the sea without any motion. ”

“ During Mystislav’s reign Vsevolod had made no move whatever, and, while Yaropolk was settling with his brothers and nephews, he took no part with the dissatisfied, but when Yaropolk had decided every question, the crafty Vsevolod joined hands with Igor and Sviatoslav, his cousins, sons of David, and attacked Yaropolk on both sides of the Dnieper. Fire and sword swept through those lands on the Ros and the Sula, and west of the Dnieper a great war began in which all men of weapons took part with eagerness. ”

“ When I was staying in Jaroslaf one spring, I had an opportunity of seeing the extent to which the superstition of the people and their reverence for these pictures prevailed.
As soon as the Volga was cleared of ice, hundreds of pilgrims and peasants from all parts of the country poured into the town, and they might have been seen in groups lying asleep on the bare ground, both men and women, there not being lodgings sufficient for their accommodation, but they probably preferred the open air, as they [208] frequently sleep by the roadside on their marches. ”

“ Yaropolk was succeeded in 1150 by his brother, Vyacheslav, a prince “poor in wit, and simple,” as the chronicler assures us, but in fact a person original and most interesting,—one of “God’s fools” in the language of myth tales. Vsevolod’s chance appeared now, and he seized it greedily. He promised Chernigoff to his cousins, Monomach’s descendants, and then pledged to his brothers all the possessions of those same descendants of Monomach, [55] thus promising to men what was not their own, but their neighbors’. ”

“ The boiling water, sputtering, ran from the tap into his mother’s cup.
A light shadow was cast by the little spoon upon the saucer and the tablecloth, and it lost itself in the glass of tea. Volodya watched it intently: the shadows thrown by the tiny little eddies and bubbles recalled something to him—precisely what, Volodya could not say. He held up and he turned the little spoon, and he ran his fingers over it—but nothing came of it.
“All the same,” he stubbornly insisted to himself, “it’s not with fingers alone that shadows can be made. They are possible with anything. ”

“ The idea of a migration en masse did not frighten them. They were nomads and the descendants of nomads, who for ages had been used to fold their tents and flit away.
The Kalmuck villages extended on both sides of the Volga. A large section of the horde would have to cross that great stream, and this could be done with sufficient speed only when its surface was bridged with ice. For this reason midwinter was chosen for the flight, despite the sufferings which must arise from the bitter Russian cold, and the 5th of January was appointed for religious reasons by the leading Lama of the tribe. ”

“ She smiled and followed Volodya.
“Mamma, I’ve thought of a new figure,” said Volodya excitedly, as he placed the lamp in the desired position. “Look.... Do you see? This is the steppe, covered with snow, and the snow falls—a regular storm.”
Volodya raised his hands and arranged them.
“Now look, here is an old man, a wayfarer. He is up to his knees in snow. It is difficult to walk. He is alone. It is an open field. The village is far away. He is tired, he is cold; it is terrible. He is all bent—he’s such an old man.”
Volodya’s mother helped him with his fingers. ”

“ Dougald Anson's mind whirred in desperate speculation. If Volakech had gotten enough guardsmen and soldiers on his side to swing a palace revolution, it was bad. But matters looked worse than that. Why should Volakech's men have assaulted a human? Why should Janazik have to sneak him into a hiding place? How had the revolutionists gotten control in the first place, against King Aligan's new weapons? What powers did they have now?
What had become of the human community in Krakenau? What of his father, his brother and sisters, his friends? What of Masefield Ellen? What of Ellen? ”