Hide-and-seek

“ If they who are hidden can escape the vigilance of the seekers and get home uncaught, they go out to hide again; but so many of them as are caught, on the contrary, become seekers, and those who caught them have the privilege of hiding themselves. ”

“ First, that God sets a high price and valuation on the souls of his servants, in that he is pleased to hide them; none will hide toys and trifles, but what is counted a treasure. Secondly, the word hide, as a relative, imports that some seek after our souls, being none other than Satan himself, that roaring lion, who goes about seeking whom he may devour. ”

“ I am very excitable, and, though I did not know whose hide was to be warmed, nor why anyone was to be killed, I shot off in front of the howling masses, shouting "Kill him!" and "Warm his hide!" as loudly as the loudest, all the time looking out for the victim. ”

“ The destiny which you will accept, if you go forth with me, is to be tracked by spies, to hide yourself under a false name, to follow the desperate pretences and perhaps share the fate of a murderer with a price upon his head. ”

“ The stranger rules us, the shackles are on our wrists;—what can we do?" Then would follow a shrug of the shoulders, a wink of the eye, and a hasty return to the sort of manner which a careless observer might easily mistake for the external proof of content, but which is, in fact, a disguise put on to hide feelings directly the reverse. ”

“ To-morrow I shall breathe the air of intrigue, shall hear footsteps of spies behind me wherever I go; shall know that even the roses in the garden have ears; that the ground under my feet will telegraph my thoughts. Shall I be true? Shall I at last whisper, and follow, and evade, believe in no one, much less in myself, steal in and out of men's confidences to use them for my own purposes? Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation or of the daily pressure of the life around him? ”

“ Here too, might be found in secret hideouts more than a few fugitives from justice—men who had fled from the long arm of the law and lived the lives of hermits, their hand against all others and compelled by necessity to play the part of desperadoes. ”

“ The instinct to hide, to trust himself in no man’s sight, had deformed his whole nature so that the bold leader of men halted, trembling and white-faced, at the sight of an ordinary farm-house. He forced himself to go on, to pass those sleeping homes, but after he had passed each one with his silent, stealthy wood-dweller’s tread, he quickened his pace and looked fearfully over his shoulder, expecting to see men run out after him with warrants for his arrest. ”

“ The fact that your only chance against a hidden enemy is also to hide makes your desires subservient to necessity. In fact, both the enemy and ourselves are continually burrowing deeper and deeper in each other's direction. ”

“ The real danger was simply that this excellent hiding place might be located, and every hiding place which was discovered, narrowed their resources for escape and hiding when they should next be pressed by the man hunters. ”

“ Perhaps I shall be fortunate enough to point out the inutility of those perpetual agents destined to prevent attempts which are "few and far between,"—crimes which they have never foreseen,—plots which they have never detected when they were real, or only discovered when they themselves had concocted them. I will develope all these things without disguise, without fear, without temper ”

“ To hide successfully in such a neighborhood he must be one of those who dwelt here and dodged the law and defied it, knowing the manners and the codes of the underworld. Yet he must have some place to hide away, to sleep, to wait the coming of the morning and the announcement of the newspapers. ”

“ They are also remarkably knowing and cunning, and soon discover when an enemy is bent on their destruction, when they manage unaccountably to disappear. Nay, even without attack made, they will hide themselves during the day, conscious that they will get a good feed during the night. ”

“ Not that it is difficult to account for the deception itself. No instinct is more fundamental and irresistible than that of concealment. The primary fear of molestation or harm in which it originates becomes, in a social state of sophistication and artifice, fear of exposure. With increased development, such complex and opposing factors as pride and shame, avarice and generosity, ostentation and modesty, lead us to hide things. We hide all sorts of things, good and bad; faults, virtues, deficiencies, accomplishments, hoardings, and charities. We hide from ourselves as well as from others. ”

“ They have instincts of curiosity like the rest of us. How can I be made sure that they won't yield to the temptation of their position and climb the fences they are detailed to guard?"
"And would this be so fatal to your peace, judge?" A smile tempered the suggestion.
"It would be a breach of trust which would greatly disturb me. I want nobody on my grounds, nobody at all. Has not my long life of solitude within these walls sufficiently proved this? I want to feel that these men of yours would no more climb my fence than they would burst into my house without a warrant." ”

“ Every hedge he scrutinizes with a careful eye; behind it may lurk an assassin. Every division wall is watched for suspicious indications, his alertness being quickened by the knowledge that he is guarding his own life. ”

“ To lie awake at night, listening from hour to hour for the stealthy creeping of the murderer, for the laying of the damned mine! You are all spies! You are all spies! You worst of all—you, my own son! ”

“ After giving him some three or four minutes in which to hide, the rest of the group go after him. They must go out singly, not even two people being allowed to hunt together. The reason for this is soon apparent. As soon as a hunter finds the one who is hiding, instead of setting up an alarm, he hides with him. ”

“ I bent myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval of peace and security. ”

“ These secure alarmists and dreaming guardians of the state are like superannuated watchmen enclosed in a sentry-box, that never hear ‘when thieves break through and steal.’ They put an oil-skin over their heads, that the dust raised by the passions and interests of the countless, ever-moving multitude, may not annoy or disturb the clearness of their vision. ”

“ I have often seen, subsequently, this species of tactics employed, the success of which is always founded on atrocious calumnies and measures, revolting, because unjust; clumsy, because they produce an effect entirely contrary to that which is expected; for those persons who would exert themselves personally in the apprehension of a thief, are prevented from fear of struggling with a man whom the feeling of crime and the prospect of a scaffold, drives probably to despair. ”

“ Then the Man said: ‘Come with me and learn to be a Thief.’
‘No,’ answered he, ‘that is no longer considered an honest trade; and the end of that song would be that I should swing as the clapper in a bell.’
‘Oh,’ said the Man, ‘you need not be afraid of the gallows. I will only teach you how to take things no one else wants, or knows how to get hold of, and where no one can find you out.’
So he allowed himself to be persuaded, and under the Man’s instructions he became such an expert thief that nothing was safe from him which he had once made up his mind to have. ”

“ Driven from the society to which you have been accustomed, you would soon become criminal, like the wretches with whom you would associate: a robber inevitably, and, if necessary, an assassin. There is your future life. ”

“ The idea of an invisible Judge, to whom alone they pretend to be accountable for their actions, should inspire them with terror! But does this terror render them more equitable, more humane, less avaricious of the blood and the goods of their subjects, more moderate in their pleasures, more attentive to their duties? ”

“ Within an hour, I warrant you, there will be spies out in every quarter of the city to try and find your hiding-place. You are safe so long as you remain here. What an advantage it is to have such a reputation for empty-headedness as I have. ”

“ Any other robber and murderer, who was known to be on the watch to attack our houses, would be the subject of free discourse: his habits, his haunts, his usual plans, his successful and his baffled assaults in former cases, would be talked over, and thus a salutary fear would be kept alive, influencing us to bolt and bar, and watch and ward with unfailing vigilance, to avert a surprise. ”

“ You don't know how I suffer—of all the terror—all the dread that haunts me night and day. Each ring at the door I fear may be the police—every man who passes the house I fear may be a detective watching. ”

“ Only, time is so pressing, and the danger is so urgent and close, that there is not a moment to spare. I must be quick. Somewhere, in some secret place on this great estate, there are hidden certain papers—papers that in the hands of an enemy would mean my ruin, the life- long unhappiness of my husband and the destruction of my son’s future. An enemy is seeking these papers—they were hidden in a place which he himself named, and even if he has not already possessed himself of them, at any moment an agent of his may come to take them from the hiding place. ”

“ When a dreadful object is presented, or when life as a whole turns up its dark abysses to our view, then the worthless ones among us lose their hold on the situation altogether, and either escape from its difficulties by averting their attention, or, if they cannot do that, collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear. The effort required for facing and consenting to such objects is beyond their power to make. ”

“ Had you a right, even with complaints to make, to sneak here like a band of jackals, in the dead of night? Why do you not come in the bright open light of the day and then in numbers only equaling those against whom you are going to make complaints, and not with a horde as if to intimidate them. ”

“ Each may turn back to happenings of years before, which may be more or less interesting, but which must be swept aside to make room for what is vital and necessary. Or each may in his haste plunge incoherently into the midst of the actual scene of the crime and omit information that is important in showing motive and connecting a logical sequence of events leading up to the climax. Each must thoughtfully decide upon a point of attack—a beginning. ”

“ The timid recoil into themselves, yielding most of their faculties to a tormenting imagination, that augments the causes of alarm and diminishes the means of security, while the firm of mind rally and condense their powers to the point necessary to exertion. ”

“ To inherit his broad land;
And you come here but to question
If detection is at hand.
Do you dream to cheat a wizard,
As you cheated that poor lad?
Yes, detection dogs your footsteps,
You shall see the murdered lad. ”

“ We have but one more process to undergo, and the attendant already stands at the head of our couch. This is the course of passive gymnastics, which excites so much alarm and resistance in the ignorant Franks. It is only resistance that is dangerous, completely neutralizing the enjoyment of the process. Give yourself with a blind submission into the arms of the brown Fate, and he will lead you to new chambers of delight. ”

“ For, during pursuit,—whether retreating or attacking, in hiding or fleeing,—it displays a something which seems more than instinct: calculation and cunning,—a sort of malevolent intelligence. It knows how to delude, how to terrify;—it has marvellous skill in feinting;—it is an abominable juggler.... ”

“ Do our enemies object to some being frightened away from here by the glass of truth being held before them to enable them to see themselves as God sees them, and have become frightened at their own moral deformities and left? ”

“ If he were able to look upon the Hunt as an abstract problem, he might arrive at certain more or less valid conclusions. But the typical Hunted, no matter how great his intelligence, cannot divorce emotion from reasoning. After all, he is being hunted. He becomes panic-stricken. Safety seems to lie in distance and depth. ”

“ Fear and the predatory impulse, the sexual and display motive, play or the hunting activity as a pleasure for its own sake, with a desire perhaps to practice deception and to exercise intelligence, presumably introduced some kind and degree of definite warfare among primitive groups of men at a very early stage of human life, although of course such a conclusion can be only speculative. ”

“ However, to shew what the nature of such event-working is, namely, how infamous human beings, making a profession of pneumatic chemistry, and pneumatic magnetism, hire themselves as spies ; and by impregnating persons, singled out by them as objects for interfering with, obtaining their secrets, actuating them in various ways, in thought, word and deed, as well as they can, to model their conduct, ideas or measures to favour the ends of assassin spies or event-workers, or their employers, &c. ”

“ From the very moment you possess the box and parchment, do not consider yourself safe on earth. Tremble, keep vigils, start in your sleep, trust no man. Treachery will bristle on all sides and spies will track you, to despoil you of the treasure. ”

“ To pry into secrets, to open or even read the letters of others, to play the spy upon their words and looks and actions—what habits more inconvenient in society? what habits, of consequence, more blameable? ”