Exciseman

“ He quickened his horse’s speed, and cried out as he neared the Squire,–
“Well met, Atheling! You are the very man I wished to see! Do you remember Exham?”
There was a little complimentary speaking, and then the Duke said earnestly: “Squire, if there is one thing above another that at this time the landed interest ought to do, it is to stand together. The country is going to the devil; it is on the verge of revolution. We must have a majority in the next Parliament; and we want you for the borough of Asketh. Exham has come back from Italy purposely to take Gaythorne. ”

“ But, mon dou, when a man gets along too quickly, the others will talk, you know. They say he has the devil's own luck in all he undertakes. He has three of the fastest chasse-marées in the Islands, and they say he's never lost a cargo yet. And they say he has dealings with the devil and Bonaparte and all the big merchants in Havre and Cherbourg. But of late he's gone in for privateering, and the streak's growing a fat one, I can tell you. He's got the finest schooner in these waters, and, ma fé, broth and soup are both alike to him, I trow! ”

“ In this way, for instance, he is killing off the chough in Cornwall, the Bath white butterfly, the Queen of Spain Fritillary; and can plume himself upon the extermination of the Great Auk, and a hundred other rare birds and plants and insects. All that is the work of the collector and his glory alone. In the name of Science. And this is right and as it should be; eccentricity, in fact, is immorality—think over it again if you do not think so now—just as eccentricity in one's way of thinking is madness (I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of either) ”

“ Thy slaughterings,—thy treacheries,—thy thefts,—
Thy broken pacts,—thy honour in the mire,—
Thy poor humanity cast off to sate thy pride;—
'Twere better thou hadst never lived,—or died
Ere come to this.
Thou art the man! The scales were in thy hand.
For this vast wrong I hold thy soul in fee.
Seek not a scapegoat for thy righteous due,
Nor hope to void thy countability.
Until thou purge thy pride and turn to Me,—
As thou hast done, so be it unto thee!"
The shining eyes, so stern, and sweet, and sad,
Searched the hard face for sign of hopeful grace. ”

“ You did well for her when you placed her in the Beteta's hands, my boy."
"Poor little Kattie!" said Jim. "I'm glad she came to me that night."
And here this chronicle may end. The more one ponders this strange and complex coil of life, with its broken hopes and unexplained mysteries, its short-cut strands and long-spun ropes, the more one draws to simple hope and trust in the Higher Powers. The knots and tangles twisted by man's ill doing defy at times all human efforts at their straightening. ”

“ This, the last riddle in the Exeter book, is unhappily the most difficult. The text is complete but almost certainly corrupt, and any attempt to translate it is only a desperate hope, even after the experts have done their best with emendations.
I am a lordly, thing known to nobles,
and often I rest, famous among peoples,
the mighty and the lowly; I travel widely
and to me first a stranger remains to my friends
the delight of plunderers, if I am to have
success in the cities or bright reward.
Now wise men exceedingly love
my presence. To many I shall
declare wisdom. ”

“ And Jim felt it almost an insult be so warm and hearty and well-fed, with that dumb witness of the dreadful misery of the night lying silent at his feet.
And the thought of it all bore sorely on him and brought the lump into his throat. To pull through the bad times at Varna; to come all that way across the sea, indomitable spirit overcoming all the weaknesses of the flesh; to land at last in the high flush of hope,--and then to die like dogs of cold and misery, on the wet shingle, before their hope had smallest chance of realisation! ”

“ While pulling on the ropes side by side with Esquimaux, I was strongly reminded of the opinion many civilized persons have of their savage and cruel nature. Why, instead of that, they are glorious good fellows. As for eating a man up, they would sooner let a hungry man eat them out of all, without saying a word, unless it was, "Welcome, stranger! as long as I have, you shall share with me." This is just their nature. The time I was at Holsteinborg I saw much of the inhabitants, and my opinion as to their honesty, good-nature, good-will, and genuine hospitality is strong and unmixed. ”

“ Or do you hope to be victorious over the lions?”
“I hope nothing, for I know that the short dagger is little better than a toy. But so long as my arm can wield it, I have no right to drop it out of self-conceit. If Providence has so willed, even that puny weapon will avail to fell the foe....”
“You are mad—or rather, I see now your creed is indeed the creed for slaves. It treads the pride of man into the dust.”
“True pride is that, which raises a man above all prejudice—which teaches him to despise scorn and look down on contempt. ”

“ Nothing short of the highest degree of infatuation and madness could ever have prevailed with us to introduce unwholesome Exoticks. The voice of reason crys louder than ever for their perpetual banishment ”

“ Like nine boys out of every ten, whose chief concern in life had so far been themselves and their own troubles and enjoyments, there was a streak of natural selfishness in him, any implication of which he would have hotly resented. ”

“ Considering that every individual thus brings into the stock of the world so vast a share of intelligence, it cannot but excite our wonder to find that Oxenstiern is popularly held to be right when he said, "See, my son, how little wisdom it requires to govern States,"—that is, Men! ”

“ Not only is it eccentric itself—often grandiosely so; it also tolerates and even encourages eccentricity in others. The eccentricities of the artist and the new-fangled thinker don’t inspire it with that fear, loathing, and disgust which the burgesses instinctively feel towards them. ”

“ Jim wandered out, and we cannot find any trace of him."
"Hm! . . . Ah! . . ." And the grim old head nodded thoughtfully over another pinch of snuff. "Well, I don't really see what we can do to-night, Mr. Eager. If, as you suggest, he is lying hurt somewhere in the sand-hills, it would take an army to find him, even in the daytime. We must wait and see. If we don't find him"--hopefully--"if he is gone for good, I shall feel myself under deepest obligation to him or to whoever is concerned in the matter. It leaves us only one boy to deal with--the wrong one, of course--but still, only one." ”

“ Do not suppose, Gentlemen, that putting aside wretched views of self-love, the Eschevin would applaud such a result. He shows himself, on the contrary, deeply humiliated. And he will not fail in future to oppose every undertaking that might turn out to the honour of science. Crowds of such incidents occur to the mind. Are we to infer thence, that we ought to be afraid of seeing the administration of a town given up to the stationary, and exclusive spirit of the old Eschevinage—to people who have learnt nothing and studied nothing? ”

“ Perhaps,” she said, following up a side thought, “it is nature’s way of softening the blow if he should not come back to us. The parting is beginning even now.”
“Hmph!” grunted Mr Dare resentfully. “He’s getting out of hand, that’s certain. I asked him to see to something the other day ... I really forget what it was,—some small thing that he’d have done in a moment two months ago,—and he simply let it slide,—never gave it another thought apparently——”
“Boys are very thoughtless when their minds are full of their own concerns. ”

“ I gave my promise to the Secretary—you know him, man who smiles upside down. My friends, that man is the most utterly unhappy man that was ever human. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or his nerves, or his philosophy of the universe, but he's damned, he's in hell! Well, I can't turn on a man like that, and hunt him down. It's like whipping a leper. I may be mad, but that's how I feel; and there's jolly well the end of it."
"I don't think you're mad," said Syme. "I knew you would decide like that when first you—"
"Eh?" said Dr. Bull.
"When first you took off your spectacles." ”

“ An eye is like a chestnut bur; it doesn't open till it is ripe, and up to this time mine has been green in ignorance. Don't call me eccentric. I would rather be called a thief than eccentric. What is eccentricity but a loose joint, a flaw in the machinery? I am not so much out of the common. The trouble is that I show effects more plainly perhaps than other men. ”

“ Yet you yourself, Ottmar, with all your sensitiveness to this kind of behaviour in others, often lay yourself open to be accused of very distinct eccentricity.
"I happen to remember a man whose eccentricities were so extreme that half his fellow-citizens considered him a lunatic, although no one really less deserved to be so characterized. ”

“ If it may be conceived to have been possible that their feeble and degraded reason, in the absence of divine light and of sound human discipline, might by earnest exertion have attained in some small degree to judge better that exertion was precluded by indolence, by the immediate wants and unavoidable employments of life, by sensuality, by love of amusement, by subjection, even of the mind, to superiors and national institutions, and by the tendency of human individuals to fall, if we may so express it, in dead conformity and addition to the lump. ”

“ Who's the wretched person who is turning me out of here?"
"It is two leddies. They wrote to the Vicar, and he asked John Philip and he told my man."
"Two ladies! Then I can't possibly have my meals in here. You'd better let me join you in the kitchen,"—a consummation he had been striving after for some time past, in fact ever since his literary instincts had shaken off the thrall and got their heads above the mists,—with a view, of course, of turning a more intimate knowledge of his surroundings to profitable account. ”

“ Living in a world where every event that springs from a cause differing from those common ones whence arise the routine of human action, is censured as romance or eccentricity,—the appellation of enthusiast might be given to him, in seeking, as might be supposed, to soar and exalt himself above the rest of humanity ”

“ His last week’s experience on board the Ossipee had taught him that instant obedience and unquestioning submission is the whole duty of a foremast hand. He is looked upon as a slave, a beast of burden, an unreasoning brute, who has no right to any desires, feelings, or will of his own. If he receives a blow from a handspike that would brain an ox, he has no business to become insensible or get sick over it, but must jump up at once and resume his work with cheerfulness and alacrity. Guy, however could not do this, for he had not yet been sufficiently hardened. ”

“ I can do my share."
"You'll be wanted if they come. I doubt if we can muster more than thirty men at most, and there may be more than that left of them, and madmen at that."
"We won't let them land."
"You can't close every door with thirty men, mon gars."
"One at the Coupée, if they make for Gorey. Three at Dos d'Ane. Three at Havre Gosselin. Half a dozen at the Creux—"
"Ta-ta! What about Eperquerie and Dixcart, my boy? Those are the open doors, and they know it just as well as you do. They're not going to climb one by one when they can come all in a heap. Mon Dieu, non!" ”

“ I wake and something make me all glad––and I go to the door to look at the whiteness, and then I am sorry, because of Sir Kildene, then I see before me––while that I stand on one foot, and hop––hop––hop––so, I see the crutch lie in the snow. Oh, Mr. ’Arry, now so pale you are! It is that you have worked in the night to make them––Is not? That is sorrowful to me. But now will I do for you pleasant things, because I can move to do them on these, where before I must always sit still––still––Ah, how that is hard to do! One good thing comes to me of this hurt. It makes the old shoes to last longer. ”

“ We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good in all things. It is good for us at certain times that ourselves should be like a mere window--as clear, as luminous, and as invisible. ”

“ In the first instance, daily experience shows us that general eccentricity, and even delusion upon particular subjects, may exist in union with the most acute perception of personal interests; in the second, it is equally clear that the moral sense may be perverted upon one or more points without being destroyed, and indeed without any other indication of mental disease. ”

“ The rest look like convicts, but they’ll be all right when they’re decently dressed.”
“Well, I tell you,—we want every man of them, and as quickly as possible. Our long thin line is terribly pressed, and our losses are heavier in consequence. ”

“ Mary Walker or any other individual who believes that eccentricity, serving no purpose but to make one conspicuous, is interesting. There are certain general rules of conduct that must be observed or the world would go to wreck like a wild freight train. ”

“ Asceticism, a definitive characteristic of which is renunciation of the world and all earthly pleasures, springs from various roots. Sometimes it grows out of a dualistic world philosophy, which, holding matter to be an evil creation and “the corruptible body a load upon the soul,” teaches the meritoriousness of the suppression, in the interest of the spirit, of all bodily impulses and appetites. ”