Elenchus

“ Is it the injustice of men that hath taught thee to deny the providence of the gods?'
'Alas!' answered Olinthus: 'thou, not I, art the true Atheist, for thou deniest the sole true God—the Unknown One—to whom thy Athenian fathers erected an altar. It is in this hour that I know my God. He is with me in the dungeon; His smile penetrates the darkness; on the eve of death my heart whispers immortality, and earth recedes from me but to bring the weary soul nearer unto heaven.'
'Tell me,' said Glaucus, abruptly, 'did I not hear thy name coupled with that of Apaecides in my trial? ”

“ On our way back Bichri wounded a gigantic stag, which Chamai succeeded in killing by stabbing it just below the shoulder-blade. It was of a kind which Gisgo said was not often seen by the Celts, and he called it an elenn or eland. Elenns are considerably larger than horses, and as a general rule feed upon the lower branches of trees, their necks being so short and rigid that unless they can graze upon soft soil into which they can sink nearly to their knees, they cannot get their heads down sufficiently low to reach the grass ”

“ I obey your harsh commands; and, by endeavouring to live, give you a more convincing proof of that respect and submission I shall always have for your will.
I expected no less from your courage and generosity, said Arabella, with a look of great complacency; and since you so well know how to imitate the great Lysimachus in your obedience, I shall be no less acknowledging than the fair Parisatis; but will have for you an esteem equal to that virtue I have observed in you. ”

“ They came from Manark and Velantia and Chickladoria and Alsakan and Vandemar, from the worlds of Canopus and Vega and Antares, from all over the Galaxy. Human, near-human, nonhuman, monstrous; there even appeared briefly quite large numbers of frigid-blooded Lensmen, whose fiercely laboring refrigerators chilled the atmosphere for yards around their insulated and impervious suits. All those various beings came with a united purpose, with a common thought—to congratulate Kinnison of Tellus and to wish his Lensman-mate all the luck and all the happiness of the universe. ”

“ That sure would tell the bronchos where we are."
"But if we are to eat here?" questioned Lennon. "I don't fancy the company of this sweet wiggler—not that I believe the wild yarns about them. All lizards are non-poisonous. No poison glands have ever been found in the mouth of these so-called monsters."
"Just look and see," rejoined the girl. "But look in the lower jaw. Trouble is, you science sharps expected to find hollow fangs and the sacs above, like a rattler's. Do you know why a Gila monster flops on his back when he bites? ”

“ He was, in truth, the father of the second school of Latin poetry, the only school of which the works have descended to us. But from Ennius himself we learn that there were poets who stood to him in the same relation in which the author of the romance of Count Alarcos stood to Garcilaso, or the author of the Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode to Lord Surrey. Ennius speaks of verses which the Fauns and the Bards were wont to chant in the old time, when none had yet studied the graces of speech, when none had yet climbed the peaks sacred to the Goddesses of Grecian song. ”

“ Wherever he goes, throughout the Universe of Civilization, he not only carries the law with him—he is the law.
How are these Lensmen chosen? An Earthman myself, and proud of the fact that Tellus was the cradle of Galactic Civilization, I will describe only how Tellurian Lensmen are selected. Upon other planets the methods and means vary widely; but the results are the same: Wherever he may be found or however monstrous he may appear, a Lensman is always a Lensman. ”

“ Lennon watched until his enemy had sat down on the sand opposite the Navahos. He then lifted his head.
The first rays of the sun had begun to warm the snake. At Lennon's movement it stirred sluggishly. The dull eyes began to brighten with the glare of returning life and anger. Lennon dropped his head forward.
Enraged by the feigned attack, the snake struck. The long fangs came so near their mark that Lennon felt them or the snout pass through his hair. Spurts of venom from the overcharged poison glands sprayed in against his scalp. ”

“ At the bidding of the goddess Truth, Parrhesiades descends into Athens, accompanied by Elenchos— "Examination"—for the purpose of distinguishing the true philosophers from the false. They are authorised to bestow an olive-crown on any thinker who deserves it; while those who fail to pass the scrutiny of Elenchos are to be branded in the forehead with the stamp of a fox or an ape. ”

“ Leñas is a single house, situated in a small plain surrounded entirely by rugged rocky eminences, amongst which Alfredo and the two mozos had great sport hunting “biscachas,” a lively little animal that makes its home in the holes of the rocks, and is so much like them in colour, a dark bluish grey, that a very sharp look-out is wanted to distinguish them. In shape they appear to be a cross between a squirrel and a rabbit, having the tail and ears of the former, and head and body of the latter, to which, when cooked, they assimilate greatly in flavour. ”

“ The veteran Mohawk chief looked at young Lennox, and again his gaze was one of approval, also of comprehension.
"My young white friend is already a great warrior," he said. "What he did with Tayoga and the Great Bear proves it, but great as he is he is even greater in the council. The words of the son of Onontio, St. Luc, may drip from his lips like honey, but the speech of Lennox is the voice of the south wind singing among the reeds. Lennox will be a great orator among his people."
Robert blushed, and yet his heart was beating at the praise of Dayohogo, obviously so sincere. ”

“ He was not given to bravado, and even without her assertion that the reptile was deadly poisonous, he would have loathed to touch so repulsive a creature.
But there is no spur so galling as the derisive smile of a comely young woman. Lennon dropped his rifle, walked in beside the Gila monster, and suddenly clutching the lizard in mid-body, flung it several yards out upon the sun-scorched sand. ”

“ For every mind has some weakness, each intellect some trait of which it does not care to boast, each Achilles his heel. That is true even of Gray Lensmen—and the Onlonians, with their heredity and environment of Boskonianism, were in no sense material from which Lensmen could be made. ”

“ They shouted and romped in the silences, and they did not dream but that they had the wilderness all to themselves. The fact that one night Lennox's keen eyes had seen what looked like the glow of a camp fire in the distance didn't affect this belief of theirs at all. It was evidently just the phosphorus glowing in a rotten log from which the winds had blown the snow.
Once or twice they caught glimpses of wild life: once a grouse that had buried in the snow flushed from their path and blew the snow-dust from its wings ”

“ The first sensation Elinor knew after her fall was a rushing of water over face and neck, a gurgling in her ears and a gasping as of some dying animal near by, then a curious realization that the gasping animal was herself, and that a sound of voices rang far and vague around her. ”

“ Lentiscus (a very beautiful evergreen) refuses not our climate, protected with a little shelter, amongst other exposed shrubs, by suckers and layers: It is certainly an extraordinary astringent and dryer, applicable in the hernia, strangury, and to stop fluxes; closes and cures wounds, being infus’d in red-wine, is also us’d to tinge hairs of that colour, to black and brown. Not forgetting the best tooth-pickers in the world, made of the wood; but above all, the gum for fastning loose-teeth in the gums; the mastick, gather’d from this profitable bush in the Island of Scio ”

“ Chapter 3
1 It came to pass, when Enoch had told his sons, that the angels took him on to their wings and bore him up on to the first heaven and placed him on the clouds. And there I looked, and again I looked higher, and saw the ether, and they placed me on the first heaven and showed me a very great Sea, greater than the earthly sea.
Chapter 4
1 They brought before my face the elders and rulers of the stellar orders, and showed me two hundred angels, who rule the stars and (their) services to the heavens, and fly with their wings and come round all those who sail. ”

“ No man's appearance could be graver or more gentlemanlike than that of Lentulus as we walked along the Mall while he delivered these observations, understood by himself to have a regenerative bearing on human society. His wristbands and black gloves, his hat and nicely clipped hair, his laudable moderation in beard, and his evident discrimination in choosing his tailor, all seemed to excuse the prevalent estimate of him as a man untainted with heterodoxy, and likely to be so unencumbered with opinions that he would always be useful as an assenting and admiring listener. ”

“ Does this man, so plain and simple in life, in garb, in mien—does he too, like Arbaces, make austerity the robe of the sensualist? Does the veil of Vesta hide the vices of the prostitute?'
Olinthus, accustomed to men of all classes, and combining with the enthusiasm of his faith a profound experience of his kind, guessed, perhaps, by the index of the countenance, something of what passed within the breast of the priest. He met the survey of Apaecides with a steady eye, and a brow of serene and open candour. ”

“ He was not dead, because he detected a faint beat, but it was quite evident that the wound from a big musket bullet had come near to cutting the thread of life.
For a moment or two Lennox was in despair, while his heart continued to swell with grief and rage. It was unthinkable that the noblest young Onondaga of them all, one fit to be in his time the greatest of sachems, the very head and heart of the League, should be cut down by a mere skulker. And yet it had happened. Tayoga lay, still wholly unconscious, and the sounds of firing to the eastward were increasing. A battle had begun there. ”

“ They sat in the library now, and Henry Lennox spoke to his uncle, with his eye on the window, waiting for the sight of the doctor's car.
"They'll want to tear the place down, very likely. They'll certainly have no mercy on the stones and mortar, any more than they will on us."
"They can spare themselves that trouble, and you your fears," declared Septimus May, who had joined them. "It is impossible that they will be here until to-morrow. Meantime—"
"It is easy to see what they will do," proceeded young Lennox, "and what they will think also. Nor can we prevent them, even if we wanted to. ”

“ The light livens them up."
The advice was needless. Lennon felt quite ready to sit down beside the girl and start eating, though he first rubbed his hands thoroughly in the sand. Neither had much to say. They were alike intent upon satisfying their keen hunger and keeping a sharp lookout against the chance of an attack.
After a time Lennon noticed that the Gila monster had crawled up on a little sand ridge in the full glare of the mid-day sun. It was viciously snapping its jaws and twitching its thick head from side to side. Carmena gave no heed to the angered reptile. ”

“ Let’s see. (He strikes him on the cheek. Androcles makes a wild movement to rise and interfere; but Lavinia holds him down, watching Ferrovius intently. Ferrovius, without flinching, turns the other cheek. Lentulus, rather out of countenance, titters foolishly, and strikes him again feebly) . You know, I should feel ashamed if I let myself be struck like that, and took it lying down. But then I’m not a Christian: I’m a man. (Ferrovius rises impressively and towers over him. Lentulus becomes white with terror; and a shade of green flickers in his cheek for a moment) . ”

“ Men of science seeing him at their lectures doubtless flattered themselves that he came to learn from them; the philosophic ornaments of our time, expounding some of their luminous ideas in the social circle, took the meditative gaze of Lentulus for one of surprise not unmixed with a just reverence at such close reasoning toward so novel a conclusion; and those who are called men of the world considered him a good fellow who might be asked to vote for a friend of their own and would have no troublesome notions to make him unaccommodating. ”

“ You scored a clean miss and the bird has flown. All safe around here now, but may be dangerous on the trail ahead. Happens I know that a bunch of bronchos are loose over this way. They're looking for trouble."
"Bronchos? You mean wild horses—mustangs?"
"No—Apaches. Renegades are called bronchos. What do you figure on doing now, with your burro dead? Out prospecting, I noticed by your outfit. What were you heading up this way for, anyhow? The agents don't want prospectors on the Moqui or Navaho reservations."
"But I didn't intend to cross the boundary," explained Lennon. ”

“ After what had passed about the poets, it did not seem likely that Lentulus had all systems by heart; but who could say he had not seized that thread which may somewhere hang out loosely from the web of things and be the clue of unravelment? We need not go far to learn that a prophet is not made by erudition. Lentulus at least had not the bias of a school ”

“ All that is material to say further concerning the book of Enoch is, that it is a Gnostic book, containing the age of the Emims, Anakims, and Egregores, supposed dependents of the sons of God, when they fell in love with the daughters of men, and had sons who were giants. These giants do not seem to have been so charitable to the sons and daughters of men, as their fathers had been. For, first, they began to eat all the beasts of the earth, they then fell upon the birds and fishes, and ate them also ”