Midge

“ And then there are tall midges, and clever and good-looking ones, and midges of great personal strength and cunning, who can fly a little faster and a little farther than the rest, and live an hour longer to drink a whole drop more of some other creature's blood ”

“ The male is a beautiful, tiny, two-winged midge, but the female is a wingless, footless, little sack, without eyes or other organs of special sense, which lies motionless under a flat, thin, circular, reddish scale composed of wax and two or three cast skins of the insect itself. ”

“ His father wanted him to marry Mary [37] Melrose, a girl without a penny, but he preferred Violet, an heiress.—H. J. Byron, Our Boys (1875) .
Midge, the miller’s son, one of the companions of Robin Hood. (See Much.)
Midge (The) , a well-born but friendless waif, thrown at the age of thirteen upon the charity of Dr. Peters, an eccentric bachelor. She cares for his house and for him in quaint, womanly fashion, very bewitching, until she is grown. The suit of another and a younger man, makes the doctor know, to his cost, how well he loves her. He holds his peace, and marries Midge to her lover. ”

“ Little Midget is still nurse to baby May, still a bright, tidy, well-shod little girl, and best of all, baby still calls her “sissy Mid’it” and loves her as dearly as when, in the old times, Midget fed her on blue milk and crackers. ”

“ The frowsy head began to look smooth as the clustering curls would permit, the little, active body, always bent upon mischief, had busied itself in new ways, and began to look tidy and neat as the unavoidable rags would allow. Hands and face were clean as soap and water could make them, and Midget actually kept her boots laced since baby’s advent into the family. Granny also noticed that Midget grumbled less at having to go out in the early dawn for sticks,—in fact, the grumbling in course of time ceased altogether; for Midget was bent upon fattening the baby and making it grow. ”

“ General literature is silent on the classification and accomplishments of midgets. Except for Dean Swift's recitals of the Lilliputians—which is pure fiction and the limited paragraphs in the encyclopedias on dwarfs—which is the wrong name for the subject—in literature the midget is the forgotten man. ”

“ Didn’t Midget get tired of selling her flowers all day on the street? O yes, very tired; but the day’s hard work only made her evenings merrier; and the bed-time frolics with baby made Midget grow fat from laughing, if the old adage is true, “Laugh and grow fat.” There had been so many bright days, in Midget’s opinion, since baby came; that the little girl quite forgot that there were such thing as clouds. And so one day, when she went home, it gave her a dreadful shock to find poor old granny faint and ill upon the low bed, and two of the neighbors watching beside her. ”

“ In fact, the mystery of midget existence is further complicated by the added truth that no midget ever gave birth to a midget.
"Midgets never grow bald and are usually vain in the matter of dress, probably due to the fact that in the past they were attachés of royalty. A midget is usually suave in manners and not easily embarrassed in public. ”

“ The warm and humming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous whirring of the great Libellulae, large almost as swallows, and hawking high in air for their food. Swift butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz, grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill notes, sharp as the edges of the sunbeams. Busy bees go humming past, straight as arrows, express-freight-trains from one blossoming copse to another. ”

“ There is young Madge too,—dark-eyed, tall, with a pensive shadow resting on her face,—the very image of refinement and of delicacy. She is thoughtful;—not breaking out, like the hoiden, flax-haired Nelly, into bursts of joy and singing,—but stealing upon your heart with a gentle and quiet tenderness that diffuses itself throughout the household like a soft zephyr of summer.
There are friends too yet left, who come in upon your evening hours, and light up the loitering time with dreamy story of the years that are gone. ”

“ Before he was aware of it, his thoughts returned to Madge. In fancy he saw the gray farmhouse on the lonely mountain-side, with a sweet face at the window, the dark, sympathetic eyes now looking out on the silent, moonlit landscape, and again at the thin, white face of a dying girl. "Poor, poor child!" he thought, reverting to the patient. "Well, for once, at least, she has had a good angel watching over her. I would like to see Madge's face framed by the open window in this witching light. Would to Heaven that Stella was more like her! ”

“ When scarcely an adult, he looked like a little old man, with frail limbs and furrowed face, red at the cheek-bones, yellow at the temples, with worn-out and grimacing mouth, with thin hair brushed over his ears in the form of a greasy spiral. ”

“ Through thorns and thistles ’till his feet are sore,
She bids him stop; he cries to follow more.
Just as a bird must know the limb’s secure
Before she comes to build on it her nest,
So love will nestle when she finds us true,
Deep in our breast.
Just as we bruise a pear to make it sweet,
So love will bruise her victim with her feet ”

“ My mouth is too large, my lips too full, my face is angular and by no means prepossessing, my nose is vulgar, my forehead too low and too wide, these bushy eyebrows become rather a grenadier than a young lady, and these large black eyes look like a couple of sentinels, which, with sharp glances, have to watch the rabble of nose, mouth, ear, and cheek, lest one should try to escape from disgust at the ugliness of the others. ”

“ A large, thin-lipped mouth that, without weakness, suggested patience; the long chin of a man of will; nose, bluntly cut at the tip, yet in the nostril and bridge most delicate; grayish eyes, with a veil of reverie drawn, as it were, momentarily across them, and showing behind the veil a kind of stern sweetness; fair hair low on the brow, which was heavy, and made a massive shelter for the eyes. ”

“ Those nostrils are dilated sometimes with anger, at others with the pleasures of the chase; and the arched neck, the broad muscular chest, the graceful, curving lines of the body, the well-shaped, sinewy limbs, sometimes slender and delicate in their proportions, bear these beautiful creatures over hill and dale almost with the swiftness of a bird; while their long mane and tail float in the air, as if the creature whom they adorn were about to soar to heaven. ”

“ Sunken gray eyes too dull and cold to light up, marked a hard, stony face, the salient features of which was a thin lipped, compressed mouth, with corners drawn down deeply—the mouth which seems the world over to be the index of selfish, cruel, sulky malignance. It is such a mouth as has the school boy—the coward of the play ground, who delights in pulling off the wings of flies. ”

“ The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedge-like lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement, due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth—above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes—culminated in an effect akin to nausea. ”

“ It is a soft autumn evening, and the harvest-moon is red and round over the eastern skirt of woods. You are attending Madge to that little cottage-home where lives that gentle and doting mother, who, in the midst of comparative poverty, cherishes that refined delicacy which never comes to a child but by inheritance.
Madge has been passing the day with Nelly. Something—it may be the soft autumn air, wafting toward you the freshness of young days—moves you to speak as you have not ventured to speak, as your vanity has not allowed you to speak before. ”

“ THE BOY-ARTIST. CHAPTER I. THE PICTURE.
H, Madge, just stay as you are; there—your head a little more turned this way."
"But, Raymond, I can't possibly make the toast if I do."
"Never mind the toast; I shan't be many minutes," said the boy who was painting in the window, while he mixed some colours in an excited, eager manner.
"The fire is very hot. Mayn't I move just to one side?"
"No; it is the way that the firelight is falling on your hair and cheek that I want. Please, Madge; five minutes." ”

“ Madge, however, has found out which of the twain she loves best. I shall resign the Hall to George and his pretty bride, and will come and live with my dear girl and my adopted son—hey Madge! will you give the old man an easy place by your fireside? ”

“ The relentless mouth, with its snag-tooth, the pinched nostrils, the long, sloping nose, the eyes scaled like those of a snake, present a type of extravagant melancholy even more detestable than that of the English king. ”

“ Madge looked frightened, like one who had often found a word to be followed by a blow, and obeyed the call, though reluctantly, casting a parting look of regret, not at Alie, but at her pretty white kitten, and in a few minutes more both the gipsy and child had disappeared down a lane.
“Oh, poor, wretched little Madge!” thought Alie; “no wonder that she took the cake—no wonder if she grow up miserable and wicked! She does not know about God—she does not know that He made her—that He watches over her—that He hates sin, and will punish it! What will become of her in this world? ”

“ It was not tragical beauty, either, but comfortable and comfort loving; there was a beautiful dimple in her white chin—a wicked dimple, suggestive of fun and laughter; another, and even more beautiful dimple, deepened near her lips, and laughed when she laughed. ”

“ There is the “Middy:” a pair of white trousers, a turn-down collar, a round jacket, and a cap with a gold-lace band, being understood to fulfil all the requirements of that costume. The “middy” sneaks about in a most woeful state of sheep-leggedness, or, at most, essays to burst into delirious gymnastics, which end in confusion and contumely. And last, and most abhorrent to me, there is the “Romp.” Romps in their natural state—in a parlour, on a lawn, in a swing, at a game of blind-man’s-buff, or hunt-the-slipper—no honest man need cavil at. ”

“ But the wonder of all is the woman's head; look at that! That, sir, is neither silicious nor carbonaceous, but fleshy—I say, sir, fleshy. It remains in its natural condition; the skin is soft and resilient; you see the naturalness of the colour, of the lips, and, above all, of the eyes. And yet, sir, that head, that flesh is indestructible, unless, indeed, by fire, and strong acids or alkalis. It is embalmed, sir! embalmed according to the new process of this doctor with the unpronounceable Dutch name; and I can tell you, sir, that the man is a chymist such as was never heard of before. ”

“ His mouth also marks a supreme sadness, which depresses the lower lip and seems to weigh upon it, while the upper lip, contracted from the top to the bottom, expresses at once both physical suffering and that of the soul. Under the mouth there is an expression of indignation that seems to protest against an undeserved suffering, and is revealed in the nostrils, which swell out and enlarge and draw upwards. ”

“ The little body lay upon one side, with one soiled cheek upon one soiled hand, the other hand tucked away among the rags to make it warm, the other cheek washed clean and white at last, as for a kiss from one of God's great angels. ”

“ Have you ever seen the tongue of a wildebeest? It is as rough as a rasp, and as hard as a horn. At first I did not think much of his scratching my back with his horny tongue, but he had soon worn through my shirt, which was the only upper garment I had on at the time. Oh Lord! what a sensation it was when first his tongue reached my bare body; it was terrible. But you can easily feel what it was like by taking a coarse rasp and rasping your bare body. ”

“ The masses of hair crowning her well-carried head are light brown, just falling short of golden, and harmonise wonderfully with the smooth tawny skin, and her eyes are large, limpid and blue. The mouth, too, is not the least beautiful feature—full, red and sensuous. ”

“ Mudge, "so much as certain other things. It's seeing people and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and complete shapes, that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters. Horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved; people, trees, children; all that I have considered beautiful in life—everything, from a human face to a cathedral—appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all I have known before. ”

“ What a relief—heaven, what a relief!—when Madge, kind Madge, brought in her canary-bird for the amusement of the patient, who was to be sure and ring the bell—the rope rested on his pillow—if Dicky became too noisy or troublesome. What a temptation for a sick man: ringing would certainly bring Madge back—not ringing—he had her pet-bird to contemplate, with yet the sure prospect of its mistress coming to fetch it in the course of a short time. He determined to wait and make what he could of the bird, still looking forward to another glimpse of kind Madge very soon. ”

“ His face was as round as the full moon, and of the appearance of brawn; his nose was a little fiery pimple; small white whiskers went in a slant in the direction of his nostrils, coming to an end under either eye. ”

“ Sitting there, the candle flickering in the strange draughts which came from nowhere, the gloom outside growing quite black, and the shadows in the little room growing huge and threatening, Madge was trying to read the riddle of her very awkward position.
A sharp knock at the door, one of those knocks which impudent and inconsiderate females give when they have no particular message to convey, and resent the necessity of carrying it.
‘A man in the oak parlour wants to see you, if you ben’t too busy.’
Madge passed her fingers over the aching head. ”