Hint

“ A scene apparently less calculated to furnish food for remark or conversation, can hardly well be conceived. But when the imagination is not altogether asleep, a very trifling hint will set it a working ”

“ Nor were we to imagine less of waking dreams, trances, visions, noises, hints, impulses, and all the waking testimonies of an invisible world, and of the communication that there is between us and them, which commonly entertain us with our open eyes. ”

“ From our modern standpoint we may say, with James Hinton, that the sexual embrace, worthily understood, can only be compared with music and with prayer. ”

“ I will not attempt to describe my sensations when I first distinctly saw the lineaments of my lover. Creation contained nothing so lovely to my sight. To see the soul, the thinking, feeling, immortal soul, flashing with enthusiasm, or darkening with tenderness, looking forth from his eyes, and feel my own mingling with his! No one but those who have once been blind, and now see, can imagine the intensity of my emotions. ”

“ Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. ”

“ Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge. ”

“ Each step has four signs of emotional manifestations. Liking his sight fall on her, dews of perspiration on her fore-head in love, concealing her smile from his glance and disguising her diversion from others - are the four signs in first step. ”

“ It was only that they had found words too blundering a vehicle to express emotions so strong and complex. But where the tongue fails, the glance of the eye and the pressure of a hand says in a moment what many words only darken and confuse. ”

“ Sometimes when we are talking she lays her hand upon mine, and in the eagerness of conversation comes closer to me, and her balmy breath reaches my lips,—when I feel as if lightning had struck me, and that I could sink into the earth. ”

“ Hearing and seeing lie deeper than ears and eyes, down in the purpose, the will, the desire of the heart. Unwillingness dulls, and then deafens the ears. It blurs, and then blinds the eye. An earnest, loving purpose gives peculiar keenness to the ears, and opens the eye of the eye. ”

“ I desire you to speak, little one. If I can believe in the illusion of flesh and eager eyes, then I can believe in the illusion of sound. Come speak. I am at the mercy of my madness. If you speak to me, little one, I will understand. My stupid senses that retain their earthly logic will be ravished at the sound of your voice. ”

“ The image, dimly foreshadowed, is given in the half-consciousness of each note as it appears, and in that sense of coming integration already recognized. The proof is the shock and disappointment when the wrong note is sounded; if we had not some anticipation of the right, the wrong one would not shock. ”

“ If you will be good enough to look back on the one romance in which, like the rest of the world, you probably indulged yourself, you will remember, perhaps more distinctly than any other feature, the presentiment which haunted you from the very beginning. ”

“ Touched by the voice and manner, and by the warm, loving tone—such as for years had not fallen upon their ears—perhaps at that moment, for nearly the first time in their lives, they obtained a glimpse of what life might have been to them, but was not and now never could be ”

“ It was only one lingering glance!
But looks can say so much more than the voice, the eyes surpassing the lips, breaking or revealing what the silence of months, it may be years, has hidden, and leading heart to heart. ”

“ But then, perhaps, would come a letter from some quiet body in some out-of-the-way place, which showed me that I had said something which another had often felt but never said, or told the secret of another's heart in unburdening my own. Such evidences that one is in the highway of human experience and feeling lighten the footsteps wonderfully. ”

“ And know the message written on your brow:
I read between the lines."
My dear to me is cold;
Gone somewhere is the love-light from her eye;
And, when our ways meet, stately she doth hold
Her course. I wonder why. ”

“ It was pale to ghastliness, with a drawn, haggard look about the mouth and eyes that shocked as much as it amazed me; and before commencing to read she crushed the letter in her hands, pressing it to her heart with a gesture which was less of a caress than of a spasm. ”

“ These signs and tokens of a dark futurity the immediate voice, as it were, of fate, speaks so much the more thrillingly to us as they appear to the dull eye only ridiculous or, at least, insignificant, and as every man has his protecting genius, so has he also all the signs, which are peculiarly suited to him, and which are of the highest importance, if he attends to them and knows how to apply to himself their signification. ”

“ Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many's looks, the false heart's history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange. ”

“ They can judge with astounding correctness from a shadow on one's face, a catch in one's breath, a movement of one's hands, how their words or deeds are affecting us. We cannot conceal our feelings from them. ”

“ Her shining eyes are fixed on something invisible that hovers in the room just over your head. Mystery, or the answer to all mystery? A new confidence, a new belief, are coming into her life. It is like being kissed in a dream ”

“ The confusion in the barbaric mind between the objective and the subjective, and between the name [Pg 169] and the person or thing, which has been illustrated in the foregoing pages, will enable us to see more clearly how the like confusion must enter into the interpretation of such occult and compound phenomena as dreams, and all their kind.
They supply the conditions for exciting and sustaining that feeling of mystery which attends man’s endeavour to get at the meaning of his surroundings. ”

“ If we told them that we came from a world, and were to describe the sun to them, saying that it was a bright, hot body which moved round us, they would reply: You have told us something about the sun, but you have also told us something about yourselves. ”

“ Is it but a tale that is told, that soul can communicate to distant soul? That through two sundered hearts without visible communication can spring up, unforewarned, a single desire, a single purpose? ”

“ I'll pretend to recognise an acquaintance;—profound deference; get up a little conversation, eh?' I could not help smiling at the scheme, and, wishing to witness its dénouement, you may imagine my surprise, when a few minutes after you addressed me. I knew your voice; and, as you spoke, it glanced across my mind that it would be pleasant to dance, and better still to punish you with your own device by pretending to remember you. ”

“ But looks have broken the fetters of a lifetime's silence before now, and in that moment the secret of two hearts is revealed as clearly and distinctly as if a trumpet-blast had shouted it to their ears. ”

“ The gentleman, being struck with the vividness of the illusion, relates his dream at breakfast, and, to his surprise, on going to his office, there sits the man, and the dialogue that ensues is precisely that of the dream! I have heard of numerous instances of this kind of dream, where no previous expectation nor excitement of mind could be found to account for them, and where the fulfilment was too exact and literal, in all particulars, to admit of their being explained away by the ready resource of “an extraordinary coincidence.” ”

“ I observe, then, in the first place, that the propriety of this simile is seen in the brevity of life. What more rapid and momentary than a story? It is heard, and passes. Though it beguiles us for the time, it dies away in sound, or melts from before, the eye. ”

“ It was a matter of expression. Every situation in this world has a stamp of its own for the human face, and no stamp is more easily identified than that on the face of lovers who have just found each other out. ”

“ The tone of her voice, which had suddenly changed, expressed impatience and reproach. Once more she perceived that her lover had been only a meditative and solitary spectator, a vigilant and maybe hostile witness.
"Do speak! I prefer the cruel words of the old days to this mysterious silence. What's the matter? Doesn't it please you to be here? Are you unhappy? Are you tired of me? ”

“ One feature—most commonly the eyes—dazes the victim so completely that all the other features are seen but vaguely as in a dream; while the imagination is ever busy in chiselling them into harmony with the fine eyes. And it is only after marriage, or assured possession, that the other features emerge from their blurred vagueness, and are found less perfect than the fond imagination had painted them. ”

“ To solemn and eternal things We dedicate her lips sublime!— As hourly, calmly, on she swings Fanned by the fleeting wings of time!— No pulse—no heart—no feeling hers! She lends the warning voice to fate ”

“ They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue. ”

“ Any attempt at a question, any interpretation of her mutterings, would arouse her to a realization that she was among new people in a strange land, and her lips would shut in a straight line, to be kept shut so long as she was conscious of their presence. ”

“ Chance acquaintances and intimate friends fall alike under its spell, talk is absolutely spontaneous, it flows rapidly or slowly, or dies away altogether. What need for talk when the fire is saying it all—now flaring up in a blaze to interpret our rarest enthusiasms, now popping and snapping with wit or fury, [Pg 229] now burning with the even heat of steady, rational life, now settling into a contemplative glow of meditation. ”

“ He will find her well, doubtless, and all unconscious of his presence and change of destiny, and that will be his first disappointment and grief—to look at her and hear her speaking, yet to be unable to make his presence known. ”

“ Nay more, speech is assuredly subject to the empire of the will, and yet instinct can also dispose of this organ according to its whim, and even of this and of the mind, without consulting beforehand the will, directly a sharp pain, or even an energetic affection, takes us by surprise. ”

“ If you can ever feel one relenting thought in my favor,—if, dissatisfied with another, you think with even momentary regret of me, then, were I at the extremity of the earth, let me but know it, and you shall find that I have been true as the dial to the sun, even though not brightened by its light. ”

“ For often, too often, the tidings you bring,
Cause tears of deep anguish to flow.
Yet we list for the sound of your well known ring
Each day as the time comes round.
Though we know not what tidings your coming will bring,
’Tis ever a welcome sound.
[Pg 45]
THE TRIUMPH OF TRUTH.
The light is breaking! ”

“ Ask yourself if the ear of affection is easily satiated with the communications of a friend, and wonder that you should have repressed your wishes, when they incited you to unfold to me, with minute attention, the feelings of your heart. ”

“ They fall, as they say, into a swoon, and between sleeping and waking hear a conversation, or are sensible of certain impressions, as if a conversation were passing which generally relates to some future event. ”

“ Then I gave her wine and drank a cup myself, and in my happiness sang a few score notes. And these notes turned into a poem, a poem without fixed measure, for the measure followed my irregular tune. In all there were 255 words.
Alas! I am no Sage. I could neither forget past feelings nor show such sensibility as this beast reputed incapable of feeling! Things that happen lay hold of my heart, and when my heart is moved, I cannot control it. ”

“ I know, however, I have scenes to relate full of the wildest romance, and that though what I have written may be childish and commonplace, I have that to relate which will interest, if the development of life's deepest passions have power to do so. ”

“ Now, many of our impulses are directly signs of a relationship in us to a being of which we are not immediately conscious. The feeling of love, for instance, is always directed towards a particular individual ”

“ Some conniving hour has dropped a softer tone into the voice which she never heard from her own tongue before. It surprises her into a faint blush, and surprises him into a sudden observation; as when a new planet steps into the field of view, and startles the watcher with one more world. ”

“ The moment is one of awe—the presence of that mysterious and dreadful-looking object, even while its identity remains doubt, chills the heart—it contracts the expanding thoughts to that one object—all interest in the scene lies centered in that one point. ”