Cross-pollination

“ In the first place, it dominates the whole countryside. A patch or knoll, 520 feet above the sea, the culminating point of the plateau, is within a few yards of the cross-roads. Standing there, a few steps to the west of the highway, you look in every direction over a rolling plain, of which you occupy the highest point for some miles around.
Now, this position of the “Quatre Bras” or “Cross Roads” can be easily defended against a foe coming from the south, as were the two corps under Ney. In 1815 its defence was easier still. ”

“ To cross-lift a gun, or carriage, is to move it in a direction nearly perpendicular to its axis. Heavy guns, mounted, or dismounted, require a long lever, and a fulcrum, for cross-lifting. Guns of medium weight may be cross-lifted by means of handspikes. ”

“ For some distance, the drift, like the cross-cut, was lined with timbers, then the lining ceased, as they neared the end of the drift, where the miners were hard at work, drilling for fresh blasts, or tearing out the ore loosened by the last explosion, and loading it into the little car which stood ready to be run down the track to the station. ”

“ Then five more followed the first shell. Had I gone on I could not possibly have missed collecting [pg 112] most of the fragments. The German gunners had spotted me in the first position and decided that a lone man on a motor cycle must be either an officer or despatch rider. So they tried to get him. The shells were shrapnel and the time was calculated splendidly. They had taken into consideration the speed of my motor cycle. Cross-roads are particularly attended to, for there is a double chance of hitting something, and in consequence it is always unhealthy to linger on a crossroad. ”

“ Pontoon bridges will be thrown across the river on both sides of the loop. The pontonners will set to work on them when it is dark. I fancy the real attack will be through Champigny, and that on the other side will be more of the nature of a false alarm; so we will go with the main force. There are some strong batteries erected in the loop which will prepare the way for us and a big train of field-guns. The troops will begin to cross at early daylight, so we can't do better than remain where we are until five o'clock. ”

“ With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales.
But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from they own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest.
Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd they powers,
And they clear aims be cross and shifting made:
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,
Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours. ”

“ He who made the granite may dissolve it, or reduce the solid mountain to dust! And is there any guilt or misery from which the Mighty to save cannot deliver the soul that trusts in him? Your sin may be great, but his mercy is greater. Your enemies may threaten, but has he not conquered them and nailed them to his cross? To whom, then, will you apply for help, but to your divine and all-sufficient Saviour? Go not to human philosophy,
"Which leads to bewilder and dazzles to blind,"
but cannot satisfy the mind nor tranquillize the conscience. ”

“ Christ is divine charity incarnate; and to be like him is to love as he loved—with the ardor, the intensity, the self-forgetfulness, which drew him to the manger and led him to the cross. Christ is immaculate holiness made visible to men; and to be like him is to be as spotless, as faultless, as free from iniquity, perversity, hypocrisy, impurity, as He who could challenge the world with the demand—"Which of you convinceth me of sin?" Christ is every moral excellence combined and blended in human character ”

“ How shall we arrest the long carnival of crime, and error, and delusion, and infidelity, if we bestir not all our Christian energies, occupying every available position, evoking every beneficent agency of the Church, barricading with Bibles and Prayer-Books the teeming way to ruin, and bridging with the blessed cross the mouth of the flaming pit? ”

“ What a surprise it was to find in this interesting pamphlet the origin of the “Charity Stamp,” as it is called, and still more of a surprise—a welcome surprise—to discover that its invention is due to our own “Sanitary Commission”—that precursor of the Red Cross. The Swedish report says: “The honor of having invented the Charity Stamp must be given to America—that land of inventions.” In the year 1862 the first Charity Stamps were sold at a great charity festival in Boston. ”

“ Stricken by one of the great and mysterious forces of nature, thousands of her people were destroyed and thousands were left homeless, suffering, and in dire distress. Our people, overwhelmed by her misfortune, were glad, in the spirit of brotherly love, to take some share in her assistance.
That the Italian government selected as a token of gratitude an object around which clusters the great traditions of ancient Rome moves us deeply, and will be an inspiration for our Red Cross to continue constant in its efforts to conquer suffering and be worthy of such recognition. ”

“ Sometimes the soul will discern in itself the mountain flowers — the fullness, grandeur, and beauty of God — intermingled with the lilies of the valley — rest, refreshment, and defense; and again among them, the fragrant roses of the strange islands — the strange knowledge of God; and further, the perfume of the water lilies of the roaring torrents — the majesty of God filling the whole soul. ”

“ Or the advent of the last enemy may be a sudden surprise, unexpected as the crash of a ship under full sail upon some sunken rock; launching the poor soul, all unprovided, with a shudder and a shriek into an unsounded sea. ”

“ After this manner, by this mystical theology and secret love, the soul continues to rise above all things and above itself, and to mount upward to God. For love is like fire, which ever rises upward with the desire to be absorbed in the centre of its sphere. ”

“ Not only is the beauty of the soul crowned with admirable flowers, but its strength also, flowing from the harmonious order of the flowers, intertwined with the emeralds of its innumerable graces, is terrible: "Terrible as the army of a camp set in array." ”

“ An unspeakable animation swelled in me; and through all the excited, burning frame seemed to run living fire that formed one thought in my brain, one loved word on my lips—Lucia! Like two planets, at the end of each dark street I turned, I seemed to see her eyes. To her, to her my feet seemed carrying me. I was only returning to my empty room, but no matter! A few days more and then England and Lucia!
I was glad now of everything I had suffered, every emotion repressed, every weakness vanquished. Strange, wonderful power that lies in that slight, grey tissue which we call brain! ”

“ Here, in the still, moonlight evenings, with the canvas sides of the awning rolled up and their steam tug pulling them swiftly upstream against the ripple and the light, floating airs of the Nile, Everest would lie, while she played to him, or they would sit together, watching the golden sand—golden to deep orange, even in the moonlight—of the banks speed past them. ”

“ As I walked about my small apartment I felt a pride and joy in my strength such as a woman feels, I suppose, in her beauty when she surveys it in the mirror—a wild elation, a sense of triumph, as she realises in it her power. The thought of the approaching meeting with Viola danced before my mind, filling it with superb delight. All my veins seemed filled with fire instead of blood. My limbs and muscles flew to do the bidding of the eager, impatient brain. ”

“ At the touch of the fire, by which You stir up the soul, and by the spiced wine with which You do so lovingly inebriate it, the soul pours forth the acts and movements of love which are Your work within it. ”

“ If the soul had but one single glimpse of the majesty and beauty of God, not only would it desire to die once in order to see Him for ever, as it desires now, but would most joyfully undergo a thousand most bitter deaths to see Him even for a moment, and having seen Him would suffer as many deaths again to see Him for another moment. ”

“ As the sun when it shines upon the sea illumines its great depths, and reveals the pearls, and gold, and precious stones therein, so the divine sun of the Bridegroom, turning towards the bride, reveals in a way the riches of her soul, so that even the angels behold her with amazement and say: "Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as the army of a camp set in array." ”

“ As the approach of the triumphal procession is made manifest by the sweet perfume scattered far and wide by incense-bearers in the conqueror's train, so the heavenly Victor makes use of his vanquished to herald the victories of his grace and diffuse like fragrant odors the saving knowledge of his name. It is the triumph of grace over sin, the triumph of truth over error, the triumph of faith over unbelief, the triumph of divine love over human selfishness. ”

“ It had been so far a dream of enchantment, their life on board that boat. Day by day, and night by night, this floating up and up the magical, golden river, between ever-changing vistas of loveliness, of palm grove and date plantations, of rose and azure-tinted hills, of deep green bands of the cultivated fields, of burnished stretches of glittering desert, brought to the girl's mind sometimes a sense of unreality.
"One never is so perfectly happy in one's life, for long," she often thought. "The gods must begin to envy me soon, as the Greeks would say, and strike me down." ”

“ Before her rose the palm-grove, distinct in all its beauty of feathery-topped trees, against the gorgeous starlit sky. By her side gleamed now the line of the river, silver in the starlight; smooth and lovely, studded with its fierce black rocks, flanked by its orange sand, and here and there, on its edge in the radiant darkness, rose a lofty palm lifting its swaying branches towards the jewelled sky. Silka looked at the river curiously. Now she was keenly alive; life was sharp and alert in every fibre, but it was the last. ”

“ A faint scuffling noise came from a gully beside her, deep down between two black faces of rock and overgrown with stunted thorn and the disk-leaved cactus. Down, down through these, one step at a time, silently, holding her heavy rifle above her head to avoid the catching thorn, she descended. The moon, that had been obscured by a tiny cloud, broke suddenly again into full brilliance and she saw she was at the mouth of the cave. ”

“ PART FIVE THE WHITE NIGHT CHAPTER XII THE FLAMES OF LIFE'S FURNACE A large room with open windows shewing a great square of hot blue sky and a palm branch that swayed in front of them, bright gold in the vivid light, was before my eyes as I lay alone, stretched out on my bed, the mosquito-curtains draped round me, and raised on the side next the windows.
How many weary days and nights had gone slowly by since that night which hung veiled in crimson mists in my memory! Horrible night of anger, of struggle, of death, of blood! ”

“ As she said, the firm brown plain of glistening sand stretched behind us and before us with not another footfall to disturb its silence, the wide white sand-dunes were deserted, the palms tossed their greeting to the sea through the glory of calm evening light.
"Let us lie under those palms now; I am tired," she said as I kissed her. And we went together and lay down under the palms on a ragged tussock of grass, and the light fell and grew deeper in tone round us and the amethystine sea, flushed with colour, swayed and heaved, murmuring its low eternal song by our side. ”

“ As a result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a cruel spiritual death, even as if it had been swallowed by a beast and felt itself being devoured in the darkness of its belly, suffering such anguish as was endured by Jonas in the belly of that beast of the sea. ”

“ The fires of many stars, the whole brilliance of the purple nights of Asia were mirrored in them. Above them rose the dark, arching span of the eyebrows on the soft warm-tinted forehead, cut in one line of severest beauty with the delicate nose. Beneath, the curling lips were like the flowers of the pomegranate, a living, vivid scarlet, and the rounded chin had the contour and bloom of the nectarine. ”

“ One after another, all sensuous enjoyments pall upon the taste; and fluttering like butterflies from flower to flower, and sipping like honey-bees every sweet of field and forest, we learn at length with a sated Solomon that all is vanity. The gilding of an empty cup can never satisfy the thirsty soul. "We were made for God," says St. Augustine, "and our hearts are restless till they repose in him." ”

“ Everest rose after one last strenuous passionate embrace, and as she saw him standing above her, his brilliant face flushed and smiling, his dark eyes kindling with elation, she felt that this life had given her her due, if it gave no more. ”

“ For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had blossomed for them suddenly—a perfect spring in winter. The girl's wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless existence. ”