Zaidie

“ Zeresh
Parshandatha, why do you taunt me thus?
Have I not proved your friend? Do I deserve
Your mockery?
Parshandatha
I do but speak to sting
You to revenge.
Zeresh
Let fly your venom then.
The Persian empire is in arms. To-night
The king does hold a great carouse. The Jew
Will sit in state beside the profligate.
This blade I have prepared against that hour.
The queen, I understand, will be a blaze
Of gems. Ahasuerus boasts this night
Would all but wreck a petty kingdom.
Parshandatha
He
Should never live to see the rising sun.
[58] Zeresh
The rising sun! ”

“ So were all things for good and for the best, and it was a marvel to all that Persis, the wife of Harold, looked still to be as young and beautiful as when she came from the sea to be her husband's bride. Her life was full of gentleness and charity, and all folk blessed her. But never in all these years spake she aught to any one of the fair velvet skin; and through all the years that skin lay hid in the hollow of the oak-tree, where the raven croaked and croaked and croaked. ”

“ I'm a man, and I could snap my fingers at them; but I'd mind it for you, Persis, for I'm enough in love with you to be very, very jealous, indeed, for your honour. I couldn't bear to think people should say, 'There's that pretty American girl, Persis Remanet that was, you know; she's thrown herself away upon that good-for-nothing Irishman, Justin O'Byrne, a regular fortune-hunter, who's married her for her money.' So for your sake, Persis, I'd rather not ask you; I'd rather leave you for some better man to marry. ”

“ The morning after his return from his voyage, Persis, passing her brother, would be arrested by an inarticulate command, and would pause while he dragged out his old leather bag, heavy with his hard-earned coins. Then Persis would hold up her apron by the two lower corners, and he would pour in a goodly portion of his wealth, while his face looked more smiling and animated than she ever saw it at any other time. “'Twill buy you something as good as anybody when you go among the grand folk,” he would say, with a half-chuckle, when Persis thanked him. ”

“ This much told Persis, the Pagan princess, unto Harold, and then, furthermore, she said: "The place wherein I was put by the king, my father, was hard by the sea, and oftentimes I went thereon in my little boat, and once, looking down from that boat into the sea, I saw the face of a fair young man within a magic mirror that was held up in the waters of the sea by two ghostly hands, and the fair young man moved his lips and smiled at me, and methought I heard him say: 'Come, be my bride, O fair and gentle Persis!' But, vastly afeared, I cried out and put back again to shore. ”

“ It came over Persis with maddening vividness that she had made a ruin of her happiness. All the wealth was nothing but mockery. Even the hats and the multitudes of dresses were wasted splendor, weapons of conquest to be left in an armory.
The night grew more and more wonderful. The moon was like a white face flung back with unappeased desire. The wind across the waves tugged amorously at her hair and whimpered and caressed her. And she was with Willie Enslee, the unlovable, the hideously uninteresting, the intolerable. She was handcuffed to Willie Enslee for life. ”

“ And, in truth, when he did look up, and saw Persis close before him in a pew at the side of the pulpit, a tremor ran over him, his lips twitched, and all the color left his face. His aunt pressed her bottle of salts into his hand, and he pressed it back almost sharply, and turned red as a girl to the roots of his black hair. Then he sat up straight and looked over almost defiantly at Persis. Her face in her blue satin bonnet, with its drooping blue plume and lace veil thrown to one side, was fair enough to stir the heart of any mortal man who looked at her. ”

“ We have had only our common marches to make from Lahore, and no break except that afforded by Shere Singh and little Pertâb, who were again sent with us by the Maharajah, to see us safe across the river, and who were by way of being very sentimental at parting with us. I believe, however, our dear friend Shere is as great a rogue as may well be—at least, like all courtiers under a despotic king, he is full of intrigue and falseness, being always on the watch to provide for his own safety. He is also very extravagant, and has to go through a course of constant makeshifts to keep himself afloat. ”

“ It is in order to win and keep their favour, to avert their displeasure and wrath, in short to propitiate them, that the Herero bring their many offerings; they do so not out of gratitude, but out of fear, not out of love, but out of terror. Their religion is a worship of ancestors with here and there touches of fetishism.”480 “Thus among the Herero, as among all Bantu tribes, there exists a religious dualism: they know the highest, the true God, but they worship their ancestors.”481 And among the worshipful [pg 187] ancestors “the old dead chiefs of every tribe take the first place. ”

“ He wished that some of those clever fellows on the India Council were listening to him.
"Why?" asked Shere Ali. "Why back there does one forget the discomfort of India?"
He asked the question less in search of information than to discover whether the feelings of which he was conscious were shared too by his companion.
"Why?" answered Dewes wrinkling his forehead again. "Because one misses more than one thought to miss and one doesn't find half what one thought to find. Come along here!"
He led Shere Ali up to the top of the stand. ”

“ Thus Adam de Perseigne, an ecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to live in a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, and to be moderate in dress. ”

“ You have seen, yourself, Sir, the sinful way in which the Forester and Monsieur Pierre kill the time. They clean out nothing but the cellars; and when I say a word of what is needful to be done, the villains turn upon their heels, and I might as well have spoken to the walls. I myself am old, and my eyes get worse and worse, so that I can hardly see to cleanliness and order as I should do. But pray, come in, Sir, and take a bite of something, and talk to me of my dear Count Ernest, of whom now I can only talk to empty rooms and pictures. ”

“ But, Persis, I've cared a great deal for you—a great, great deal—and had hard work many times to prevent myself from asking you. And I'll tell you the plain reason why I haven't asked you. I'm a man about town, not much good, I'm afraid, for anybody or anything; and everybody says I'm on the look-out for an heiress—which happens not to be true ”

“ As for Persis, as she carried the new arrival down-stairs to make the acquaintance of his brothers and sisters, her comely face was radiant. Weariness was forgotten. The hours of uncertainty, the long hours when Life and Death matched forces in that old duel renewed with each new existence, had all been forgotten. For a man was born. ”

“ Knowst thou not that the folk would suspect us and we should lose our lives? If I teach thee this craft, thou must practise it but once a year; for that will suffice thee from year to year.’ ‘True, O my lord,’ answered Hassan, and sitting down, threw charcoal on the fire and set on the melting-pot. Quoth the Persian, ‘What wilt thou, O my son?’ And Hassan replied, ‘Teach me this craft.’ ‘There is no power and no virtue but in God the Most High, the Supreme!’ cried the Persian, laughing. ”

“ It is related from Abú Bakr that he said, 'When news reached the Apostle of God that the people of Persia had made a daughter of Kisra, queen over them, he said, "The people who make a woman their ruler will never prosper."'—Al Bukhárí. ”

“ Now, by some mischievous spirit of intuition or contrariety, Justice Hare was spending this evening at home, a thing he did not do once in six months unless he had friends with him. Things in real life do mostly go by the rules of contrary, as children say in their play, holding the corners of the handkerchief, “Here we go round and round by the rules of contrary; if I tell you to hold fast, you must loose; if I tell you to loose, you must hold fast.” ”

“ Many a brave hunter who had a score of scalps to dangle from his belt, sought, but sought in vain, a kind glance from some beautiful maiden of his tribe, who before the pale faces came would have deemed great indeed the honour of becoming the spouse of a warrior so distinguished. Jealousy began to fill the hearts of the Crees, but the mothers and wives, and the daughters too, were constant mediators, and never ceased to exert themselves for peace. ”

“ To the actual observer of the Seri in his prime there is an indefinable but none the less impressive harmony between the intense regimen and the trenchant structural development characteristic of the tribe—a harmony like unto that felt by naturalist and artist alike in viewing at once the clean-cut form and vigorously easy mobility of tiger or thoroughbred horse; and simple inspection of the lithe limbs and body-muscles stirs into living realization a half-felt inference from many facts—the obvious and indubitable inference that they are stress-shaped structures. ”

“ But when human dignity is really in danger, John Bull has to use the same old argument as John Ball. He tells Lady Clara Vere de Vere that 'the gardener Adam and his wife smile at the claim of long descent'; their own descent being by no means long. ”

“ At this time |c. 145 B.C.| there were three sects of Jews, holding different opinions about human actions; the first was called the sect of the Pharisees, the second that of the Sadducees, and the third that of the Essenes.
The Pharisees assert that some, but not all, events are the work of Fate, and some are under our own control, to be or not to be. The followers of the Essenes affirm that Fate is all-powerful, and that nothing befalls men except in accordance with her decree. ”

“ The hardly conceivable fleetness of the Seri is conformable with their habitual rovingness and their ability as burden-bearers; and this faculty is established by cumulative evidence so voluminous and consistent as to outweigh the presumption arising from the standards attained among other peoples. ”

“ The demotic characters of the Seri, like those of other peoples, may be classed as (1) esthetic, (2) industrial, (3) institutional, (4) linguistic, and (5) sophic; and in this order the essentially human attributes of the tribe (except the last named) may be described. It is a matter of deep regret that the data concerning the demotic characters of the tribe are too meager to afford more than a mere outline of their activities, and that their suggestive mythology must be passed over for the present. ”

“ In the Greater City men thought only of themselves; but with Sa'-zada it was different. The animals were his children—his friends; so he had contrived that all of the Peace-kind—the Grass-feeders and others—should come from their cages and corrals and meet each evening in front of the iron-bound homes which contained those of the Blood-kind, to tell stories of their past life. ”

“ Summarily, the Seri are characterized by noble physique, by peculiarly swift and lightsome movements, by great endurance coupled with capacity for vigorous action, by animal-like symmetry and slowness of maturation, and by various minor attributes combining with the major features to form a distinctive race-type; and they are still more conspicuously characterized by an acute race-sense which holds them apart from all aliens. ”

“ The ox in his pasture is as free and as much at his ease as the proprietor of the soil, and the days of the first are not more shorten’d to feed the intemperance of others, than the rich landlord’s by the indulgence of his own. I look upon the goddess Ceres as a much less impartial and universally kind deity. The antients thought they did her honour by ascribing to her the invention of laws. ”

“ I am now at the age at which the Savior of men began his ministry, and at which John the Baptist called a nation to repentance. Hitherto I have made my youth and insignificance an excuse for sloth and imbecility, now let me have a character and act boldly for God.
"March 5. Feerog, a Parsee who is considered the most learned man here, called to converse about religion. He spoke Persian and seemed familiar with Arabic. He began by saying that no one religion had more evidences of its truth than another, for that all the miracles of the respective founders depended upon tradition. ”

“ I gave the preference to a mule, because, after mature deliberation, I had determined to abandon the character of a sahib shemshir, or a man of the sword, in which, for the most part, I had hitherto appeared in life, and adopt that of a sahib calem, or a man of the pen, for which, after my misfortunes, and the trial which I had in some measure made of it at Kom, I now felt a great predilection. ”

“ At this juncture Persis felt a most unchristian reluctance to act the part of ministering angel in any sick room. Nothing adds to a woman's apparent age so rapidly as working by day and caring for the sick at night. ”

“ Just when the alcalde was rising to pronounce our sentence, the monk gravely approached the tribunal, snatched off the neckerchief which encircled his head, and showed the Indian magistrate his tonsure. This was truly a theatrical stroke. The man who, scarcely a second before, was affecting to look upon us with such stubborn pride, threw himself trembling and confused at the feet of the Franciscan.
"Ah! holy father," cried the Indian, "why did you not discover yourself sooner? Taking every thing into consideration, one can be an honest man without knowing the virtues of matlalquahuitl." ”