Dormouse

“ The dormouse is also a half-wild animal, and the same person2117 made warrens for them in large casks, who first formed parks for wild boars. In relation to this subject, it has been remarked that dormice will not mate, unless they happen to be natives of the same forest; and that if those are put together that are brought from different rivers or mountains, they will fight and destroy each other. These animals nourish their parents, when worn out with old age, with a singular degree of affection. ”

“ Alice gently remarked; “they’d have been ill.”
“So they were,” said the Dormouse; “very ill.”
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary way of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: “But why did they live at the bottom of a well?”
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice. ”

“ They live either among bushes or in trees, and make a neat nest for the reception of their young, which are born blind. The species inhabiting cold climates construct a winter nest in which they hibernate, waking up at times to feed on an accumulated store of nuts and other food. Before retiring they become very fat, and at such times the edible dormouse is a favourite article of diet on the Continent. At the beginning of the cold season the common dormouse retires to its nest, and curling itself up in a ball, becomes dormant. ”

“ It is often impossible to thread one's way into the dormitory without treading on half the people who are sleeping among the bundles of clothing that cover the floor; but aggressions of that sort, being of common occurrence, are borne with stoical indifference. I slept as usual in the tarantass, and was lulled to sleep by the harmony of a howling wind, and the loud murmur of the waves of the lake that washed the sandy beach within a few yards of me. ”

“ DORMER (from Lat. dormire, to sleep) , in architecture, a window rising out of the roof and lighting the room in it: sometimes, however, pierced in a small gable built flush with the wall below, or corbelled out, as frequently in Scotland. In Germany, where the roofs are very lofty, there are three or four rows of dormers, one above the other, but it does not follow that the space in the roof is necessarily subdivided by floors. ”

“ The King and Queen, who had just come home and had stepped into the hall, went to sleep, and all their courtiers with them. The horses went to sleep in the stable, the dogs in the yard, the doves on the roof, the flies on the wall; yes, even the fire flickering on the hearth grew still and went to sleep, and the roast meat stopped crackling; the cook, who was pulling the scullion’s hair because he had made some mistake, let him go and went to sleep. The wind dropped, and on the trees in front of the castle not a leaf stirred. ”

“ Dormer. Mr. Thorndyke, I am without the smooth tongue of my class. I find you in a woman's house, where you are a guest by night as well as by day. I bid you begone. You are a soldier lacking chivalry—a man who makes war upon weakness —you are a coward! (step) Eric. A coward, Mr. Dormer, is one who, under the cover of his age and profession, uses language for which a younger and a braver man would be chastised, (goes up stage toward fire-place) Kate. (crosses to Dormer R.) Parson, you don't guess the truth. If you knew! (crosses to C. Eric drops R.) Dormer. ”

“ The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o'clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household drudgery.
The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world? ”

“ The entrances shall be closed until morning with a large stone, on which I will have engraven this inscription: 'These are the dormitories invented by Gordian, bailiff of Saturninus, a nobleman, for the reception of refractory slaves.'
'Your plan is ingenious; but I suspect your slaves (so insensible to hardships are the brutal herd) will sleep as unconcernedly in their new dormitories as in their old.'
'Sleep! It will be a most original species of repose that they will taste there! The stench of the sulphur lake will breathe Sabian odours for them over a couch of mud! ”

“ This upper chamber, the common dormitory, for all but Thomas, who sleeps down stairs, has a thin partition at one end of it, to screen off the humble truckle-bed where Grace Acton forgets by night the troubles of the day; and the remainder of the little apartment, sordid enough, and overhung with the rough thatch, black with cobweb, serves for the father and mother with their recent nursery. Each room has its shattery casement, to let in through linchened panes, the doubtful light of summer, and the much more indubitable wind, and rain, and frost of wintry nights. ”

“ Ida, you have saved my life."
"Yes, and I fancy I have saved my reason at the same time. Take me back to my room, please; I am so tired, so tired."
Ida closed her eyes and slept again. But it was the dreamless sleep of the child, the nurse said with a smile, and there would be no more anxiety now. All the same, Mr. Cheriton must go away at once. As to his wife, it was a mere matter of time; Nature would do the rest.
*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*
People who know the story of the dormer window are many, but of all those who speak with authority not one can explain what lies beyond the veil. ”

“ Alone, among all the people in the castle, the Queen had realised immediately she awoke from her charmed sleep, exactly what had happened. She remembered the words of the fairy godmother, and she knew that what she had foretold had come to pass, and that the sleep from which she and everybody else in the castle had just awakened had lasted a hundred years. ”

“ Opening into the school-room is a smaller room, a class-room separated from it by three folding-doors. Ascending the staircase, we visit the dormitories. The east dormitory for the senior boys is fitted with English iron bedsteads, the junior dormitory has wooden bedsteads painted blue, and wide enough for two little fellows to sleep in each; the front dormitory, which is the largest of them all, is hung with hammocks,—there is sleeping accommodation altogether for about sixty- five boys. ”

“ Elizabeth, wife of Mr James Bernard, of Whitechapel, hatter, died 21st January 1769, aged forty-four, and was buried in the Huguenot cemetery. An important name in the parish is Dormay, probably French; it is associated with the building of the tower of All Saints’ Church and many other serviceable acts. “Mrs. Jane Dormay, wife of Peter Dormay, died 14th March 1808, aged thirty-six.” ”

“ The moonlight streaming in through the window filled the room with silvery radiance. The silence of death reigned around, unbroken even by the watch-dog's bark. The dull, heavy roar of the waves, breaking on the shore like far-off thunder, was the only sound to be heard. And at last, with this eerie, ghostly lullaby, Willard Drummond fell into a feverish sleep. ”

“ The long, long rows of little white-counterpaned beds in the dormitories were an eloquent comment on the old lady's indictment of my sex, and I am glad it was a man who thought of making a home for the babies. If Thomas Coram's ghost walks, it must sometimes pay a visit to the little sleepers who have no mothers to tuck them up. Those long dormitories, too, must often be haunted at nights by ghosts of the living women, who, in their dreams, look for one round face on its pillow—the one who is theirs. To visit them in the flesh is not allowed. ”

“ Anton Dormeur sits alone in the grim old house. Cook and housekeeper have gone to market for the means of providing supper. Not a footfall sounds in the street; only the wailing voice of the watchman calling the hour at a distance breaks the dead silence, amidst which the old man can hear the ticking of the gold repeater in his pocket, the tinkle of the ashes that stir in the old wide grate, where a fire has been lighted, and the gnawing of a mouse behind the wainscot. ”

“ The wonder is, that this community of Dormilhouse should cling to their mountain eyrie so long after the necessity for their living above the clouds has ceased; but it is their home, and they have come to love it, and are satisfied to live and die there. Rather than live elsewhere, they will walk, as some of them do, twelve miles in the early morning, to their work down in the valley of the Durance, and twelve miles home again, in the evenings, to their perch on the rocks at Dormilhouse. ”

“ Now, when all the dormitory is asleep; when the lighted windowpanes have ceased to cast their gleams upon the snow; when the streets are deserted, the pool-rooms closed, and the last good-fellow has gone to bed, and only oneself is awake, then we have the full enjoyment of our quiet study lamp-light. We may yawn once or twice, a creak on the stair may startle us,—but we do not go to bed. We reach out our hand for some favorite volume, Stevenson's Garden of Verses, Underwoods, or Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: and read far on into the night towards cock-crow. ”

“ The region was a wilderness, but soon—the day after that in which we issued from the labyrinth, in fact—we sighted our first habitation of man in this world of Drome. The next day we reached a village, where we passed the night. We were much struck by the deep respect with which Drorathusa was received. As for our own reception—well, that gave us something to think about.
Not that there was any sign of menace. It was the looks, the very mien of those Hypogeans that puzzled and worried Rhodes and myself. ”

“ As a child Lord Northam had had peculiar dreams when sleeping in the older parts of the castle, and had acquired a constant habit of looking back through his memory for half-amorphous scenes and patterns and impressions which formed no part of his waking experience. He became a dreamer who found life tame and unsatisfying; a searcher for strange realms and relationships once familiar, yet lying nowhere in the visible regions of earth. ”

“ Billy and I slept in the same dormitory and our beds were side by side. Both of us were bad sleepers, and many a deep affinity did our souls discover in the silent watches of the night. As a place to observe the workings of telepathy I know of no spot on earth to compare with the dormitory of a boarding-school. The atmosphere of our dormitory was, if I may say so, in a state of chronic telepathic saturation, and the area where the currents ran strongest was in the space between Billy's bed and mine. ”

“ I would have liked to pull them right over my head that I might get warm again, but I was too tired to make the effort. At last, however, the cold was more than I could bear. So I put out both hands to pull up the blankets—but could find none anywhere. God! I wasn't in bed at all, but was standing!
The horror of that moment! A wild heart beat lawlessly at my side. One more touch of terror, and it would rebel in utter panic. Why was the dormitory so dark? Why had the little night-lamp gone out? And the wooden floors were stone-cold like the window-sill in my dream. ”

“ Dormer talk the slang of the studio—like that phrase just now: it is a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one must [512] crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must bring her in a hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham; I want to talk with Mr. Dormer; he must drive with me to the theatre. His situation's full of interest." Miriam led the way out of the room as she continued to chatter, and when she reached the house-door with the four men in her train the carriage had just drawn up at the garden-gate. ”

“ They left me in the cabin, that I might rest. Blessed be sleep! It visiteth all alike, descending as the dews of heaven on the bond and free. Soon it nestled to my bosom, driving away the troubles that oppressed it, and bearing me to that shadowy region, where I saw again the faces, and listened to the voices of my children, who, alas, for aught I knew in my waking hours, had fallen into the arms of that other sleep, from which they never would arouse. ”

“ But sleep, like all the pleasant things of life, will not come for much seeking. In vain he shut his eyes; the grey light of dawn found its way between the lashes, sounds were heard in the castle, showing that some of the inferior attendants had risen; and the night watch was relieved under the window of the tower in which he slept. ”

“ And so it was that we reached, there in the palace of the Droman queen, our journey's end—certainly a stranger journey than any I ever have heard of and one that ought to prove of even greater interest to science than to the world in general. If, however, what they tell of the region is true, an expedition to the mysterious land that the Dromans call Grawngrograr would make our fearful journey to Drome look like a promenade to fairyland. ”

“ Again she shivered, then turning, tiptoed down the narrow passageway to carry out her original intention of going out of the building by way of the back stairs.
Her room was only a half block away in a dormitory on the corner of the campus nearest the library. Having reached the dormitory, she went to her room and began disrobing for the night. In the bed near her own, wrapped in profound sleep, lay her roommate. She wished to waken her, to tell her of the strange event of the night. For a moment she stood with the name “Florence” quivering on her lips. ”