Weeks

“ One day melts and blends into the other so that you can hardly tell them apart. They stretch along into weeks, and the weeks, perhaps, into months which can neither be called long nor short, but only just a monotonous reach of time. ”

“ She pined for spring and home more than she liked to tell, and felt the need of variety in their monotonous life, where the creeping days appeared like weeks, and the weeks stretched themselves out, and seemed as long as months do in other places. ”

“ So days grew into weeks, weeks into months, and summer came once more, once more to gladden men and women and children’s hearts, with long days of golden sunshine, and soft cool dewy nights. Yes, summer came once more, and with it came a change in my life, my self-inflicted, lonely life. One morning I received a letter from my Cousin Arthur, saying that his mother and Lucy were going to spend the next three months with some friends in Scotland ”

“ As we grow older the years seem to run to months, the months to weeks, the weeks to days, the days to hours, the hours to moments, until time, like an exhalation, appears to dissolve in the inane, and become the nothing it was and is and will be for eternity. ”

“ Some weeks never seem to come to an end, and this, the very longest week of your life, just crawls away. Saturday your fond father has promised to go with you and purchase the athletic goods, while mother attends to the rest. ”

“ It has been thought that the period called a week, which has been used from time immemorial, may have originated from the fact that the interval from new moon to the first quarter and from first quarter to full moon, etc., is very nearly seven days. But the week is as incorrigible as all its sisters in the discordant family of time, and there is no more difficult problem for human ingenuity than that of inventing a system of reckoning, in which the days, the weeks, the months, and the years shall be adjusted to the closest possible harmony. ”

“ The reckoning of time by weeks is derived from nothing in nature, but owes its existence to the divine appointment of the seventh day to a [31] holy use in memory of the Lord’s rest from the six days’ work of creation. [43] This period of time is marked only by the recurrence of the sanctified rest-day of the Creator. That the patriarchs reckoned time by weeks and by sevens of days, is evident from several texts. [44] That they should retain the week and forget the Sabbath by which alone the week is marked, is not a probable conclusion. ”

“ We have all sorts of weeks, don't we! There is Sunday School week, Go to Church week, Boy Scout week, Red Cross week, Social Welfare week, Hospital week, Y.W.C.A. and Y.M.C.A. week. Sometimes we wish we could have one week all to ourselves. ”

“ Great mental changes may at times be wrought in one week, especially when it happens to be one of those not infrequent July weeks, which seem as if the sky were bent upon raining out at once the tears of the whole summer. ”

“ 'For six weeks, I allow Bath is pleasant enough; but beyond that, it is the most tiresome place in the world.' You would be told so by people of all descriptions, who come regularly every winter, lengthen their six weeks into ten or twelve, and go away at last because they can afford to stay no longer.” ”

“ Why do we divide time into weeks of seven days, and call the days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and why are these names of special planets, or of the special gods associated with them, identical, and occur in the same order among so many different nations? ”

“ And Leora made no comments, though for a day or two there was about her a chill air which the busy Martin did not investigate.
CHAPTER XXI.
I. Nautilus was one of the first communities in the country to develop the Weeks habit, now so richly grown that we have Correspondence School Week, Christian Science Week, Osteopathy Week, and Georgia Pine Week.
A Week is not merely a week. ”

“ "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." ”

“ It's only holiday work, but it'll last five weeks. And if you do it all right I can get you the whole of the holiday work on the column. That comes to a good lot in the year. We're always taking odd days off. ”

“ An ordinary or solar day is two days, and an ordinary week is two weeks. This hebdomadal or heptal cycle governs, either in its multiple or submultiple, an immense number of phenomena in animal life in which the number seven has a prominent place. ”

“ How few there are who realize that the Sundays, taken together, fifty-two of them, make seven weeks and a half of vacation in the year. Seven weeks of continuous vacation are usually too much for most people to enjoy properly ”

“ Our time is divided into other sections besides days and years. We have, for instance, weeks and months. The weeks have nothing to do with the earth's movements; they are only made by man [Pg 9] to break up the months ”

“ All Sluggards should get their slates, and calculate how much time they waste every year—weeks that can never be regained. If you only lie in bed two hours later than you should every day, you lose more than one day in a week, or sixty-four days in the course of the year: which, at the end of seventy years, would be awful indeed! ”

“ And as this is the head of all other weeks, so the Great Sabbath is the head of this week. Therefore, in this week, many increase their labours; some adding to their fastings, others to their watchings; others give more liberal alms, testifying the greatness of the Divine goodness by their care of good works, and more intense piety and holy living. ”

“ To those people who believe in the great importance of an exact sequence of 7-day weeks, which they suppose to have been maintained since the christian era, and which must always be maintained, it may be suggested that if they ever are traveling westward their weeks are perforce lengthened to more than the standard 168 hours. ”

“ Men dispute over the natural day, as to which one should be recognized as the true Sabbath. It is a matter of little or no consequence. Whether it is the first day of the week, or the last or the middle one is of no moment, if for no other reason, because the week as a division of time is a human and not a divine institution. I mean by this, that the Lord, although He commanded us to keep each recurring seventh day, issued no ordinance setting forth the division of days into weeks, and instituting this day as the first and that as the last. ”

“ The ימים after שׁבעים does not serve to designate the three weeks as common day-weeks, in contrast to the שׁבעים of Dan 9:24., but is an accusative subordinated to the definition of time which expresses the idea of continuance: three weeks long, or three whole weeks, as Gen 41:1; cf. Gesen. Gramm. §118, 3. For three weeks Daniel mourned and fasted, i.e., abstained from the usual food. חמות לחם, precious food, delicacies; but Häv., v. Leng., Maur., Hitz., and Kran. ”

“ For those who think one ought to fast also on the Saturday, have determined on the observance of six weeks. They therefore fast for six days out of the seven, and this being six times repeated makes up the six and thirty days. ”

“ The great charm and comfort of the system is, that its effects are palpable within a week of trial, which creates a natural stimulus to persevere for a few weeks more, when the fact becomes established beyond question. ”

“ "He has gone, mamma," she said, as she entered the breakfast-room. "And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways; it has been all Sunday for me for the last six weeks." ”

“ Days even in the middle of winter, and sometimes weeks, descend as it were from heaven to fill the soul with delight; and a lovely day in Rome is lovelier than under any other sky on earth. But just when foreigners go away in crowds, the weather is settling into the perfection of spring, and then it is that Rome is most charming. The rains are over, the sun is a daily blessing, all Nature is bursting into leaf and flower, and one may spend days on the Campagna without fear of colds and fever. Stay in Rome during May, if you wish to feel its beauty. ”

“ A funny place that is, too, where the days are only nine hours and a half long--a good thing for the lazy fellows--and the years, would you believe it--last twelve of ours, which is fine for folks who have only six months to live. ”

“ But week slipped into careless and robust week, and when he awoke in a stable, smelling the sweet hay and the horses and the lark-ringing prairie that crept near to the heart of these shanty towns, he cared only for the day's work, the day's hiking, westward toward the sunset. ”

“ A week in which we have done nothing of note, but spent in stationary idleness, how long and tedious it seems, yet in looking back upon it, it appears short as a day; while a week in which we have travelled far, seen several cities and been glad in each, though the gilded moments have danced by on lightning feet, when we look back upon that week it seems as if we have lived a year. ”

“ ADSUMUS. With no pregnant words, that tremble
With awful Purpose, take we leave to come:
Yet, when one enters where one’s friends assemble,
⁠’Tis not good manners to be wholly dumb.
So, the bow made, and hands in kindness shaken,
⁠Accept some lightest lines of rhyme, to speak
Our notion of the work we’ve undertaken,
⁠Our new hebdomadal—our Once a Week. ”

“ You will be able to assume a new part in life once in each week. For the one hour after midnight on each Saturday, that is, for the first hour of the new week, you will remember all you have been and whatever characters you may have chosen for yourself. ”

“ For myself I have almost decided to have a week in each month. The advantage of this is that I shall go away four times instead of once. There is no joy in the world to equal that of strolling after a London porter who is looking for an empty smoker in which to put your golf clubs. To do it four times, each time with the knowledge of a week’s holiday ahead, is almost more than man deserves. ”

“ Sunset is called either the sun has become black, or the sun has entered, or when the fowls go to roost; and the Pleiades are spoken of as a crowd of young women; and the bright star Venus as it draws near the moon is named the wife of the moon.
When you desire to warn a person you tell him to throw his eyes about, and a person who frowns is said to tie his eyebrows. A conceited person who wants the whole path to himself is scornfully asked, “Did you plant the earth?” ”

“ That it has penetrated so profoundly into our natures that even ethnological scholars and travellers are not always able to get away from it, is due to the connexion with the seven-day week, which is regarded as a division of the month, and also to the fact that we so seldom take any notice of the concrete phenomena of the heavens. ”

“ The cycles of Time roll with the procession of seasons. Spring is bloom; summer is growth; autumn is fruition; winter is the shroud, and beneath its cold, yet kindly fold, live the germs of a new life. ”

“ But in the last week all the thoughts, the plans, the ambitions, the discoveries of a new future, seem to be concentrated. The minutes drag by with a laborious and torpid slowness, and there is an intensity of time which seems to crowd sixty hours into one single hour by the clock. ”

“ Where one is utterly powerless—a mere iota in a house—when, whatever one might desire, one's opinion has not a straw's weight with anybody, what is the good of vexing one's self in vain!
I shall content myself with giving a straightforward, succinct account of the week; this week which, I cannot deny, has made a vital difference in our family. Though outwardly all went on as usual—our quiet, monotonous life, unbroken by a single “event,”—breakfast, dinner, tea, and sleep coming round in ordinary rotation; still the change is made. What a long time it seems since Sunday week. ”

“ Wait a week and I myself will give you some."
"A week is too long. I must find them within three days."
"Three days are a short time and France is large."
"No matter; you know the word must; with that word great things are done." ”

“ The week, however, is found in various parts of the world in a form that has nothing to do with astrology or the seven planets, and with such a distribution as to make it pretty certain that it had no artificial origin, but suggested itself independently, and for natural reasons, to different races. In fact, the four quarters of the moon supply an obvious division of the month; and, wherever new moon and full moon are religious occasions we get in the most natural way a sacred cycle of fourteen or fifteen days, of which the week of seven or eight days (determined by half moon) is the half. ”

“ Why is Sunday the strongest day in the week? Because the rest are week days.
Why is a needle one of the most persistent of forces? It always has an eye open for business, and invariably carries its point. ”

“ A person meeting a friend for the first time after a long interval says 'Well, it's a cure for sore eyes to see you.' 'I haven't seen you now for a month of Sundays,' meaning a long time. A month of Sundays is thirty-one Sundays—seven or eight months. ”

“ A few years ago, having occasion to learn the day of the week of certain events that were transpiring at regular intervals on the same day of the same month, but in different years, he was led to investigate the subject more thoroughly, so that he is now able to give rules for finding the dominical letter and the day of the week of any event that has transpired or will transpire, from the commencement of the Christian era to the year of our Lord 4,000, and to explain the principles on which these rules rest. ”

“ If it were not for these Sabbath-day meetings one summer month would be like another summer month, one winter month like another—detached from the goings-on of the world, and solitary throughout; from the time of earliest childhood they will be like landing-places in the memory of a person who has passed his life in these thinly peopled regions; they must generally leave distinct impressions, differing from each other so much as they do in circumstances, in time and place, etc.,—some in the open fields, upon hills, in houses, under large rocks, in storms, and in fine weather. ”