Five

“ The generation which was from fifteen to twenty years of age, at the brilliant but fleeting epoch of which I am speaking, is now between fifty-five and sixty. It will be asked whether this generation has realised the unbounded hopes which the ardent spirit of our great preceptor had conceived. ”

“ Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. ”

“ Still more. When I was three, and four, and five years of age, I was not yet I. I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit not yet cooled solid in the mould of my particular flesh and time and place. In that period all that I had ever been in ten thousand lives before strove in me, and troubled the flux of me, in the effort to incorporate itself in me and become me. ”

“ Three, or the triad, is the image of the attributes of God.191 Four, or the tetrad, is the most perfect of numbers and the root of all things. It is holy by nature. Five, or the pentad, is everything; it stops the power of poisons, and is dreaded by evil spirits. ”

“ Personally I have found it not only possible, but by a curious and entirely fortuitous combination of circumstances almost affectionately unavoidable, to hold three, four—even as many as five and six—women in regard or the emotional compass of myself, at one and the same time, not all to the same degree, perhaps, or in the same way, but each for certain qualities which the others do not possess. ”

“ It thus sometimes happens that a person, man or woman, who was by no means remarkable in life, may have five, or seven, or ten—two fives, for the number must always be unequal—erected in their honour. ”

“ It is doubtful whether a more entertaining lot of boys ever before appeared in a story than the "Big Five," who figure in the pages of these volumes. From cover to cover the reader will be thrilled and delighted with the accounts of their many adventures. ”

“ Of these twenty-one, five have been strangled, three have been deposed, and three have died of excess; of the remaining ten, four only have attained the age of man, and these come together in the course of the last century ”

“ On the divergence of the basis itself and the confusion caused—for it is five, or it is six, or ten or twelve, or sixty or a hundred, or three hundred and sixty or the double hundred, the thousand. The reason, not clearly understood by the people, is that Six and the Dozen are first, and Sixty is a compromise in condescending to the people. ”

“ Did you go to't so young? Were you a gamester at five or at seven?
MARINA. Earlier, too, sir, if now I be one. ”

“ Another man has to sit down, and count "three and two are five, five and two are seven, seven and four are eleven, and eleven and six are seventeen;" and so he will calculate, and unless he has so many dimes, he has not faith enough to draw the first rock, or the first adobie, or get the first foot of lumber, or do the first thing. ”

“ Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. ”

“ It ought to be remembered that the repetition of a group is an easier thing to deal with than the combination of two groups, that is, six is a name for two threes and eight for two fours, but five and seven have not so definite a meaning. ”

“ Ten is the farthest number; if half ten
⁠Belongs to each woman, then
⁠Each woman may take half us men;
Or—if this will not serve their turn—since all
Numbers are odd, or even, and they fall
First into five, women may take us all. ”

“ Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.
Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six:
[136] Sitting down to lessons—no more time for tricks.
Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven:
Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven!
Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen:
Each young man that calls, I say “Now tell me which you mean!” ”

“ The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand. ”

“ From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. ”

“ From the earliest days these were used chiefly by women and children, who used five at a time, which they threw into the air and then tried to catch on the back of the hand, their irregular form making the success the result of considerable skill. ”

“ Five will make five times as many changes as four; for there are five times four figures to be had out of five, and not twice four the same figures, which are to be produced as before, by casting away each of the five figures by turns. ”

“ It will not surprise those acquainted with human nature that, as we will allow him to tell in a letter to a relative, he soon had a class of some twenty young ladies between the unusual hours of five and seven in the morning! ”

“ This, however, is more germane, that the number five has a divisory virtue, and Nature divides most things by five. In |F| ourselves are five senses, and there are five parts of the soul, those of growth, sense, appetite, passion, reason. ”

“ It is composed of three individuals—a man, boy, and girl, their respective ages being about twenty-five, fifteen, and ten. The oldest—the man—is not much above five feet in height, the other two short in proportion. ”

“ The mountain torrent is a boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge wash-tub. ”

“ At the third decade life soars grand and high;
But with the fourth its heyday passes by.
The fifth comes on,—a century's half is told;
The sixth,—our little girl is growing old.
Another half-score milestone passed, and then
We've reached the allotted three-score years and ten.
Years may be added; should they come to thee
May Faith and Wisdom their companion be;
Hope thy sure anchor; Peace with thee abide,
And Love still be thy light at eventide. ”

“ Make believe that you are the messenger from Ceres. Make the deep bow that he made when he saw the king. Tell the king what is happening on the earth. Give him the message from Ceres.
3. You and two classmates should now play the story. Would it be a good plan to have some one play the dog?
Group Exercise. 1. Now three other pupils [67] should play the story, and then three others. Each group will try to show the class exactly how everything happened [Pg 150] in the story. Each player will try to look and act and speak exactly as he thinks the person in the story did. ”

“ Children leaped forward, and old people unconsciously assumed a lightsome vigour.
The Park rose in terraces from the railway station to a street of small villas almost on the ridge of the hill. From its gilded gates to its smallest geranium-slips it was brand-new, and most of it was red. The keeper's house, the bandstand, the kiosks, the balustrades, the shelters—all these assailed the eye with a uniform redness of brick and tile which nullified the pallid greens of the turf and the frail trees. ”

“ The first one came probably at twelve, if we may trust our statistics; the second stronger, at fourteen, and then the third—perhaps a good many don't feel the first one or second—the third perhaps at sixteen. The one which comes over him at sixteen will affect heart and intellect and will, and everything, and he will stay converted probably. ”

“ Now the numbers into which it is divided, when put together, make seven, and one is wanting to its completion, not being in all points harmonious with itself, like six, which has reference to the Son of God, who came from the fulness of the Godhead into a human life. ”

“ I have an industrious and neat companion, and four dear children—the oldest a girl of nine years, and three fine boys, the oldest eight, the next six, and the youngest four years old. The three oldest are now going regularly to school—two can read and write, and the other can spell, with tolerable correctness, words of two syllables. ”

“ I've said my "seven times" over and over,
Seven times one are seven.
I am old, so old, I can write a letter;
My birthday lessons are done;
The lambs play always, they know no better;
They are only one times one. ”

“ Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come into our mind at the same time. Whence, then, we are forced to ask, do the Many come? This question is unanswerable by the consciousness which pictures the Many as a primary datum, and-treats the One as only one among the Many. ”

“ What are these facts by which we are to guide our lives, of which, indeed, our lives are to consist? One of the simplest, one that has come to have the force of a proverbial expression, is the fact that two and two make four, and this is one of the first things we teach our children. ”

“ The splendid insanity seizes you. The lights, the colours, the explosions, the shrieks, the feathered hats, the pretty faces as they fly past, the gilding, the statuary, the August night, and the mingling of a thousand melodies in a counterpoint beyond the dreams of Wagner—these things have stirred the sap of life in you, have shown you how fine it is to be alive, and, careless and free, have caught up your spirit into a heaven from which you scornfully survey the year of daily toil between one Wakes and another as the eagle scornfully surveys the potato-field. ”

“ You stand fixed in the multitude listening to a thousand orchestras and whistles, with the roar of machinery and the merry din of car-bells, and the popping of rifles for a background of noise. Your eyes are charmed by the whirling of a million lights and the mad whirling of millions of beautiful girls and happy youths under the lights. ”

“ Seven and nine are important numbers in transformation. When seven girls are born of one marriage, one is [Pg 7] thought to turn into a wer-wolf and the seventh child of the seventh child is predestined to the same fate. The spell is said to last nine days. ”

“ In the multitude of my thoughts within me, which are noisy like a multitude, crowding and jostling one another like a multitude, and very unruly and ungovernable, in the multitude of my sorrowful, solicitous, timorous thoughts, thy comforts delight my soul ”

“ We find that seven is often used in Scripture as the number of perfection, to signify the superlative or most perfect degree of anything, which probably arose from this, that on the seventh day God beheld the works of creation finished, and rested and rejoiced in them, as being complete and perfect. ”

“ Roused by the feet of running men, dazed by the lantern glare.
Unbar and let them away for their lives—the levels drown as they stand,
Where the flood-wash forces the sluices aback and the ditches deliver inland. ”

“ It is helpful to inhale while we count seven, exhale while we count seven, then rest and breathe naturally while we count seven, and to repeat the series of three for seven times; but to be strict with ourselves and see that we only do it seven times, not once more nor once less. ”

“ So he told me, and made me know the interpretation of the things.
17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, that shall arise out of the earth.
18 But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.
19 Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was diverse from all of them, exceeding terrible, whose teeth were of iron, and its nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet ”

“ I could see him straining along endless cinder-paths and highroads under hot suns, his great knees going up and down like treadles amid the plaudits and howls of vast populations. And all that now remained of that glory was these debased and vicious shapes, magnificently useless, grossly ugly, with their inscriptions lost in a mess of flourishes. ”

“ If there be a greater number of children a longer verse is used; but generally the number of words is greater than the number of children, so that the leader begins the round of the group a second time, giving to each child one word of the doggerel. ”

“ To the older children some of the great cycle stories are presented by telling one story each week. High adventure and romance, as depicted in these hero tales, have a special appeal to the boy and girl from ten to fifteen, and at this age interest is easily sustained. ”

“ A mother tells her infant, that two and two make four; the child remembers the proposition, and is able to count four to all the purposes of life, till the course of his education brings him among philosophers, who fright him from his former knowledge, by telling him, that four is a certain aggregate of units ”

“ This is the reason that, instead of the sixteen I had last year, I have this year, you see, eleven, already plucked -- twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Ah, I miss three, they were here last night, sir -- I am sure they were here -- I counted them. ”