Ebony

“ In the alcove whose curtains are cloth-of-gold, and whose pillars are fluted sapphire, reclines the emperor Chan, on his couch of ebony set with opals and rubies, and cushioned with the furs of unknown and gorgeous beasts. With implacable and weary gaze, from beneath unmoving lids that seem carven of purple-veined onyx, he stares at the crystal windows, giving upon the infinite fiery azures of a tropic sky and sea. ”

“ With similar judgment, in holding the balance evenly between form and colour, André Charles Boulle conceived his wonderful work in tortoiseshell and brass and ebony and silver, forming a brilliant marquetry of colour, the colour effect being further heightened with a reddish-brown and sometimes a bluish-green ground beneath the semi-transparent tortoiseshell. Riesener and David Roentgen, in equally masterful technique, produced marquetry of tulip-wood, holly, rosewood, purple wood, and laburnum. ”

“ Oppressive as nightmare, a formless, nameless fatigue, heavier than any burden the slaves of the mines must bear, lies forever at his heart: All deliriums of love and wine, the agonizing ecstasy of drugs, even the deepest and the faintest pulse of delight or pain—all are proven, all are futile, for the outworn but insatiate emperor. Even for a new grief, or a subtler pang than any felt before, he thinks, lying on his bed of ebony, that he would give the silver and vermilion of all his mines, with the crowded caskets, the carcanets and crowns that lie in his most immemorial treasure-vault. ”

“ Then reaching out the gold to the eunuch, let us have your interposition, said she, to accommodate our matters: upon which the eunuch fell a laughing, and, calling me aside, made me weigh the gold. While I was weighing, the eunuch whispered in my ear, I know by your eyes that you love this lady, and am surprised to find you have not the assurance to disclose your love to her: she loves you more passionately than you do her. Do you imagine that she has any real occasion for your stuffs? She only makes an errand to come hither, because you have inspired her with a violent passion. ”

“ IN COCAIGNE
It was a windless afternoon of April, beneath skies that were tender as the smile of love, when we went forth, you and I, to seek the fabulous and fortunate realm of Cocaigne. Past leafing oaks with foliage of bronze and chrysolite, through zones of yellow and white and red and purple flowers, like a landscape seen through a prism, we fared with hopeful and tremulous hearts, forgetting all save the dream we had cherished.***At last we came to the lonely woods, the pines with their depth of balmy, cool, compassionate shadow, which are sacred to the genius of that land. ”

“ Pendulous by their toes of tarnished bronze,
Usurp the shadowy interval of lamps
That hang from ebon arches. Like a ripple,
Borne by the wind from pool to sluggish pool
In fields where wide Cocytus flows his bound,
A crackling smile around that circle runs,
And all the stone-wrought gibbons stare at me
With eyes that turn to glowing coals. ”

“ Take my advice, Eugene, marry early; form family ties; then your old age will not be lonely as mine is.'
'O my dear master!' cried I, safe under my disguise, 'no son could love you as dearly as I do. A son would leave you to win a place for himself in the world; but your faithful Eugene will cling to you through life; he only asks to remain with you always—always.'
'My good Eugene!' said my master, grasping my hand warmly, 'your words make me happy. ”

“ Indeed, the other is not fit to be his servant.'
Then they went out to the eunuch and finding him asleep, awoke him, and he started up in alarm. Quoth they, 'How comes it that thou art guardian of the palace and yet men come in to us, whilst we are asleep?' When the eunuch heard this, he sprang in haste to his sword, but found it not, and fear took him and trembling. Then he went in, confounded, to his mistress and seeing the prince sitting talking with her, said to the former, 'O my lord, art thou a man or a genie?' 'O it on thee, O unluckiest of slaves!' replied the prince. ”

“ Is the woolly-witted son of opulence, so abundant in our colleges to-day, who is boosted through by hook or by crook, of superior eugenical value to the alert eager boy—and his name is legion—destined for economic reasons to go to work at or before the completion of his high-school course, perhaps because of the very fact of an unlimited fecundity in his own family which necessitates his help for the general support? ”

“ You talk as though our abbess were almost a hundred years old, like Father Bonaik—she who rides like a warrior, who hunts with falcons, and whose upper lip is shaded by a slight reddish moustache neither more nor less than that of a youth of eighteen! ”

“ You are an interrupter by nature, and that is the most incurable kind. But, as I was telling you, Ebenezer was bound to be a boy, and no amount of talk on our part could convince him that he was a Weasel. Well, Lefty and I were very young then, and up to the time of which I am speaking we had always made our little trips in the Fairy Country or in Giantland all by ourselves, and we had lots of fun together I can warrant. ”

“ When power was once his, he would build her a beautiful, cosy nest with his share of the booty. She must leave Zorrillo, leave him to-morrow. The little nest should belong to her and him alone, entirely alone, and when his soul longed for peace, love, and quiet, he would rest there with her, recall with her the days of his childhood, cherish and care for her, make her forget all her sins and sufferings, and enjoy to the full the happiness of having her again, calling a loving mother’s heart his own. ”

“ On the whole, I feel inclined to risk another epithet in this preliminary skirmishing round Reggie. Yes—indubitably boyish. By boyish, I mean the power of enjoying life without thinking about it. Such a gift—the gift of serene receptiveness, of complete irresponsibility—is rare, fascinating and, at times, intensely irritating. The majority of ordinary work-a-day folk have, as Eva said, a certain capacity for doing their duty, and forming theories about it. ”

“ She went on through the wood. And, at every step, more anemones appeared. They stood in thick bevies around the roots of the beech and modestly bowed their round heads to the ground.
"Look up freely," said Dame Spring, "and rejoice in Heaven's bright sun. Your lives are but short, so you must enjoy them while they last."
The anemones did as she told them. They stretched themselves and spread their white petals to every side and drank as much [Pg 94] sunshine as they could. They pushed their heads against one another and twined their stalks together and laughed and were wonderfully happy. ”

“ There are inherent differences of character and modifications of temperament which can be best understood by studying the very earliest manifestations of human life when we examine the sperm of the male and the ovum of the female as seen under the microscope. These characteristics are not imaginary, but inherent, and are manifestly designed and intended by the all-wise Creator. ”

“ For in a word, youth, with all its vivid vigour, its capacity for growth and expansion, had returned to him in a way unprecedented; his face, as Evelyn had noticed, had grown younger, and in a hundred merely corporeal ways he had stepped back into early manhood. Again, and this was more inexplicable, he had somehow established, without meaning to, a certain communion with birds and beasts, of which the “nightingale trick” had been a small instance, which seemed to him must be a direct and hitherto unknown effect of his conscious absorption of himself in Nature. ”

“ Sir, said the princess, your majesty shall soon understand that I am not in the wrong. That ape you see before you, though he has the shape of an ape, is a young prince, son of a great king; he has been metamorphosed into an ape by enchantment. A genie, the son of the daughter of Eblis, has maliciously done him this wrong, after having cruelly taken away the life of the princess of the isle of Ebone, daughter to the king of Epitimarus. ”

“ Alas! in the heart of the garden is a tomb—a tomb so trellised and embowered with vine and blosssom, that the sunlight reveals the ghastly gleam of its marble to no careless or incurious scrutiny. But in the night, when all the flowers are still, and their perfumes are faint as the breathing of children in slumber—then, and then only, the serpents bred of corruption crawl from the tomb, and trail the fetor and phosphorescence of their abiding-place from end to end of the garden. ”

“ He then rose; and, embracing me most affectionately, added, "I see, I see that thou art all kindness, softness, and tenderness; I need not have feared thee, thou art all the fondest father could wish, and I will try to frame my mind to less painful sensations at thy sight. ”

“ Our days were spent in roaming through the ruins of lone and immemorial cities, whose palaces of fretted copper, and streets that ran between lines of carven golden obelisks, lay dim and ghastly with the dead light, or were drowned forever in seas of stagnant shadow; cities whose vast and iron-builded fanes preserved their gloom of primordial mystery and awe, from which the simulacra of century-forgotten gods looked forth with unalterable eyes to the hopeless heavens, and saw the ulterior night, the ultimate oblivion. ”

“ If she could only get that into her voice!
“I’ve been at it two years, with Vignorol—you know him? I’ve learnt Italian and German, and nearly all the great mezzo rôles. And the polite ones say what you say, and the ones who don’t care about your feelings say ‘A good enough voice, but no temperament.’” She gave her body a vicious jerk and the stool twirled her round to me. “How in heaven’s name can I get temperament?”
“Well—er—time—and—er—experience and sorrow—” I had come up-stairs to give advice, but not on the best manner of acquiring temperament. ”

“ Apart from his strength and health, his well-formed body, his noble birth, his faith in the love of his betrothed bride—at this hour he forgot how much these things were—he found nothing in his lot which seemed worth desiring. ”

“ My mother’s solicitude concerning good manners and perfection in speaking French, which so easily renders children mere dolls, fortunately could not deprive us of our natural freshness and freedom from constraint. But if any peril to the character does lurk in being unduly mindful of external forms, we three brothers were destined to spend a large portion of our boyhood amid surroundings which, as it were, led us back to Nature. ”

“ A study of the portraits of royal, noble, and other historical personages shows that the bony framework of the face, especially about the nose and eyes, has changed rapidly since the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In explaining the rise and fall of nations, gametic and personal causes can be measured and marked. All the evidence of history points to the power and importance of a very few great personalities—they themselves the product of inborn forces. ”

“ Does not our hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not already eugenists—that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright eyes, the motionless faces, and all that presence of something that is dead and yet sleepless? ”

“ Presently up came a number of eunuchs with staves in their hands, followed by nigh thirty women, and amongst them a lady as she were a willow-wand or a thirsty gazelle, perfect in beauty and elegance and amorous grace. When she came to the mouth of the passage where I stood, she turned right and left and calling one of the eunuchs, whispered in his ear; whereupon he came up to me and laying hold of me, bound me with a rope and haled me along after him, whilst another eunuch took my ass and made off with it. ”

“ Evelyn enjoyed the gentle imposition of his will. Obedience became a delight, and in its intellectual sloth life floated as in an opium dream without end, dissolving as the sunset dissolves in various modulations. Obedience is a divine sensualism ”

“ Eugenia, with fervour, protested such wickedness was impossible.
'I am unwilling, my dear child,' he answered, 'to adulterate the purity of your thoughts and expectations, by inculcating suspicions; but, though nature has blessed you with an uncommon understanding, remember, in judgment you are still but fifteen, and in experience but a child. ”

“ And through the skill and knowledge of the boy, the hermit was in no wise hindered from preparing his accustomed remedies, for he knew the names and virtues of the herbs, and where every plant grew. And when the sun shone, the boy would guide his master's steps into the garden, and would lead him up to certain flowers; but to those which had a perfume of their own the old man could go without help, being guided by the scent. ”

“ All the rest I can take is watching by her side, guarding her from any desecrating approach; all refreshment, that which her cold, calm presence can afford. Strong language did you call it, Eugene? Can your mother's son think any language too strong to express his hatred—abhorrence—against her mighty wrongs? ”

“ Let us suppose a class of persons, called A, who are afflicted with some form and some specified 82degree of degeneracy, as inferred from personal observations, and from family history, and let class B consist of the offspring of A. We already know only too well that when the grade of A is very low, that of the average B will be below par and mischievous to the community, but how mischievous will it probably be? ”