Nine

“ Seven, or the heptad, is a number very powerful for good or for evil. It belongs especially to sacred things.
“The number Eight, or the octad, is the first cube, that is to say, squared in all senses, as a die, proceeding from its base two, an even number; so is man four-square, or perfect.
“The number Nine, or the ennead, being the multiple of three, should be regarded as sacred. ”

“ Now one and eight make nine beyond all possibility of doubt, and the formula—"man's body is a unity—or one"—composed of harmonies of eight, would give the formula nine meaning man's supremacy is expressed in his body. ”

“ Number Seven.—Seven is deemed extremely lucky, it being the perfect or mystic number which runs the entire scheme of the Universe in matters physical and spiritual. Man's life is popularly divided into seven ages: the product of seven and nine—sixty-three—was regarded as the grand climacteric, and the age was considered as a most important stage of life. ”

“ And how many hours a day did you do lessons?
Mock Turtle
Ten hours the first day, nine the next, and so on.
Alice
What a curious plan!
Gryphon
That’s the reason they’re called lessons, because they lessen from day to day. ”

“ In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was—What sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at thirty-nine we say, “I wish Fate hadn’t made me this sort of man.” ”

“ Margaret is twenty-one, and I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not. ”

“ I. ‘Not a child: I call myself a boy,’
Says my king, with accent stern yet mild,
Now nine years have brought him change of joy; ”

“ With daisies white like silver and buttercups like gold,
And it's oh! for once to play thro' the long, the lovely day,
To laugh before the year grows old!
There is silver moonlight on the breast of the river
Where the willows tremble to the kiss of night,
Where the nine tall aspens in the meadow shiver,
Shiver in the night wind that turns them white.
And the lamps, the lamps are lit, the lamps are glow-worms light,
Between the silver aspens and the west's last gold.
And it's oh! to drink delight in the lovely lonely night,
To be young before the heart grows old! ”

“ And how also rang out the return cheers, which Joe and his mates rendered. Never had applause sounded sweeter in the ears of our hero, for it seemed that the school nine had now begun to live in better days, since the dismissal of Hiram and Luke.
Joe kept at his pitching practice, and he himself knew, even had others, including Tom, not told him, that he was doing well.
"You're better than when you pitched for the Silver Stars," said Tom, "and you were no slouch then."
"Yes, I think I am more sure of myself," admitted Joe. "And I've got more speed and better curves." ”

“ For a moment after the unexpected support of Teeter's ultimatum to Hiram there was a tense silence. The lads who had come in with the bully—his supporting army so to speak—remained grouped around him and Luke. On the other side stood Teeter, Peaches, Tom, Joe and their friends, and a number of the better players of the school nine. Included among them were a number of the substitutes.
Hiram Shell looked around him. He must have been aware that his power might slip very easily from him now, unless something was done. ”

“ The eighteenth century called all things in question; it is the task of the nineteenth to conclude and speak the last word; and the last word of the nineteenth century has been for realities—realities which live however and move. ”

“ The respect for the Sixties was an article of faith, a dogma of dogmas in the Nineties. If the now younger generation write articles and books about the Nineties—those amazing documents in which I scarcely recognise an age I thought I knew by heart—we were still more zealous in writing books about the Sixties. ”

“ At seventy or eighty, our lives are spent in recollections half a century old, but at ninety the privilege may be relaxed, and the unfortunate loiterer on the stage may claim to select a far more recent decade as his Golden Age, even if by weakening memory he confuses his second childhood with his first. ”

“ The word "young," similarly, needs the assistance of another word, for we all know individuals of thirty and forty, sometimes even only twenty, whom it is as absurd to call "young" as it is to call those others of seventy, eighty, or ninety, "old." ”

“ That's all right when you're giving your age in school, but just now I'd rather hear you say that you will be sixteen on your next birthday, because sixteen and three make nineteen, and when you're nineteen you will be quite a grown-up young lady. ”

“ I gathered that this intimate and exclusive little group of friends was really the nucleus, from 1870 to 1880, of the much larger group of the 'eighties and 'nineties, eventually known as the "souls." ”

“ But we are preparing to go on. Ropes are carried out forward over the rocks. More men appear, to aid us. We said there were fifty. We count seventy; we count eighty; there are at least ninety. They come up by a sort of magic. ”

“ In the tenth century, we include the end of the ninth and the beginning of the eleventh, as men who lived at the end of the seventeenth century and the commencement of the nineteenth are considered as belonging to the eighteenth ”

“ THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are in their second century. I am still classed as a primary [he points to his number] ; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second childhood.
THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again resorting to the bollard] Oh! ”

“ County of Alexandria, December 2, 1846.
Signed, Anthony R. Fraser, Wesley Carlin, Henry Hardy, ElCHARD SOTHORON, Nicholas Febrey, Walter S. Alexander, Samuel Birch, Horatio Ball, Wash. T. Harper, Committee of nine, acting by order and in behalf of the citizens of the counttry part of Alexandria county
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ Salter's museum was an astounding assemblage of oddities, such as a petrified crab from China, medals of the Seven Bishops, Laud and Gustavus Adolphus, William the Conqueror's flaming sword, King Henry VIII's coat of mail, Job's tears, of which anodyne necklaces are made, a bowl and ninepins in a box the bigness of a pea, Madagascar lances, and the root of a tree in the shape of a hog. ”

“ And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with the things which exist?
And now the whole world of creatures born alive, and things that grow, revolves in sevens. The first-born princes of the angels, who have the greatest power, are seven. The mathematicians also say that the planets, which perform their course around the earth, are seven; by which the Chaldeans think that all which concerns mortal life is effected through sympathy, in consequence of which they also undertake to tell things respecting the future. ”

“ But to reach twenty-seven—is that a trifling thing?—to pass the meridian of the twenties on one's progress towards thirty?—thirty—that is to say maturity—the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage. ”

“ And as the Prince grew up he was so handsome and so brave, fearing nothing but cats, which, of course, he never saw, though he dreamed of them often and woke screaming, and also so brilliant and good, that, his father’s kingdom, being beyond compare the finest in all the round world, the young daughters of Kings vied with each other as to who should find favour in the eyes of the Queen-Mother, and so get leave to serve in the kitchen, each nursing the hope that some day the Prince would see her and love her, and perhaps even marry her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though the answer is absurdly simple when you see it, many readers will have no little difficulty in discovering it. Take your pencil and see if you can arrange the three nines to represent twenty.
109.—Noughts and Crosses.
Every child knows how to play this game. ”

“ Number, too, is part of the supersensuous world that is thoroughly religious. We can see and touch seven apples, but seven itself, that wonderful thing that shifts from object to object, giving it its SEVENness, that living thing, for it begets itself anew in multiplication—surely seven is a fit denizen of the upper-world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, which used to worry us in our youth, was not half so formidable an affair as the Advance of the Ten Thousand, schoolboys though they be, who just now overrun the land. ”

“ Princess Melisande grew up as beautiful as the sun and as good as gold, but never a hair grew on that little head of hers. The Queen sewed her little caps of green silk, and the Princess’s pink and white face looked out of these like a flower peeping out of its bud. And every day as she grew older she grew dearer, and as she grew dearer she grew better, and as she grew more good she grew more beautiful. ”

“ The last fairy came and kissed the Prince, who was now sobbing sleepily.
“He shall be happy,” she said; “he shall have his heart’s desire.”
Then she too vanished; and the Kings and Queens took their leave when their gold coaches came for them. And presently the King and Queen were left alone with the silver hangings and the strewn daisies and the baby.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” said the Queen; “this is dreadful! A kitchen-maid!—and a lady with four feet and no hands!”
“At least we are not likely to have a kitchen-maid with less than two hands,” said the King. ”

“ How, then, is work perfected in the number forty? The reason, it may be, is, because the law was given in ten precepts, and was to be preached throughout the whole world: which whole world, we are to mark, is made up of four quarters, east and west, south and north, whence the number ten, multiplied by four, comes to forty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ My fairy godmother gave it me for a wedding present, but since then I’ve had nothing to wish for!”
“Thank you, dear,” said the Queen, smiling through her tears.
“I’ll keep the wish till baby grows up,” the King went on. “And then I’ll give it to her, and if she likes to wish for hair she can.”
“Oh, won’t you wish for it now?” said the Queen, dropping mixed tears and kisses on the baby’s round, smooth head.
“No, dearest. She may want something else more when she grows up. And besides, her hair may grow by itself.” ”

“ At forty he looks with a sense of security at the strong men of fifty, and sees behind them the row of sturdy sexagenarians. When fifty is reached, somehow sixty does not look so old as it once used to, and seventy is still afar off. ”

“ Seven, one of the Three Hundred fills up the gap in the Forty, and a man is posted to the vacancy in the rank of the Three Hundred—so that 356 ever continue working in the world, and every spot is blessed by Their auspicious Feet. ”

“ On the other hand, it would seem that, for most educated people, sixteen and seventeen or twenty-six and twenty-seven, and even eighty-six and eighty-seven, are single numbers, just as six and seven are, and are not made up of groups of tens and ones. In other words, the denary scale, though adopted in notation and in numeration, does not arise in the corresponding mental concept until we get beyond 100. ”

“ That's good? and why do you call five a holy
number?
SENI.
Five is the soul of man: for even as man
Is mingl'd up of good and evil, so
The five is the first number that's made up
Of even and odd. ”

“ And then there was that business of the mouse and the kitchen-maids,” said the King; “we’ll have no nonsense about it. I’ll be her godfather, and you shall be her godmother, and we won’t ask a single fairy; then none of them can be offended.”
“Unless they all are,” said the Queen.
And that was exactly what happened. When the King and the Queen and the baby got back from the christening the parlourmaid met them at the door, and said—
“Please, your Majesty, several ladies have called. I told them you were not at home, but they all said they’d wait.” ”

“ MALEVOLA’S DRESS WAS NOT AT ALL THE THING FOR A CHRISTENING.
And the daisies, too, opened their eyes again. Then the good fairies came out from behind the window-curtains, and the poor Queen fell on her knees before them.
“Can’t you do anything?” she asked. “Can’t you undo what she says, and make it untrue?”
“Not even a fairy can make a true thing untrue,” said the good fairies sadly. “Malevola’s words will come true; but the Prince has already many gifts, and our gifts are yet to give, and these you shall choose. Whatever you wish shall be his.” ”

“ The ten were a definite class, brought forward with the beast, in his last actings against the Lamb, for the accomplishment of which God puts it into their heart to get rid of the great whore. The ten kings are never spoken of as committing fornication with the harlot. The kings of the earth and inhabitants of the earth are mentioned as having so conducted themselves. The rising of the ten kings into active power, is a distinctly noticed and subsequent event. ”