Quirt

“ Such a little creature, so white, so beautiful, so wonderfully young—almost like a child, with the soft rings of silver hair wreathing the border of the snowy cap, and the little arms which always had been so strong for burdens, and the little, little hands, which always had been so busy for everybody but herself, resting now—as still and cold as snowflakes—on the deep blue of the old quilt. ”

“ The poor eyes were closed, hard, and wrinkled round; one wasted arm lay on the quilt, the hand bent up at the wrist, the fingers clutched yet flabby, and as cold as death. It was a sight for human pride to cower at, and be quelled. ”

“ In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with spittle, and conversation audible through the thin partition from the next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay covered with a quilt, a body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the middle. ”

“ She sprang from bed, hastily put on her dressing-gown, and raised the window-shades. What a beautiful morning! It was one of those days at the end of August in which summer seems to pause, reluctant to depart. There was a stillness in the warm air, and a certain autumnal tranquillity in the light; the sun sent down his rays in unclouded splendor, and the blue of the firmament shone with a limpid brightness; one could breathe more freely, and the passers-by did not manifest the depressing languor that had ushered in the summer. ”

“ Deftly the dirty quilt was slipped back and the girlish form rolled into the creaking bed. The muttering went on for a few minutes whilst the old woman sat watching the flushed face and the tumbled hair on the pillow. The girl's right arm was thrown carelessly abroad over the quilt, the shoulder gleaming white in the deeper shadow thrown by the old woman who sat with her back to us, looking down intently at this waiting morsel of humanity. ”

“ The snowflakes, which had fallen from time to time, and kept themselves busy making a patchwork quilt for mother Earth, now melted away, and the white quilt was torn into shreds. The bare ground was all there was to be seen, except now and then a dot of the white coverlet. It was Spring, and everything began to wake up. The sun wasn't half so sleepy, and didn't walk off over the western hills in the middle of the afternoon to take a nap. ”

“ No: two, three, four—many footprints: prints of a naked human foot: right foot, left foot, both naked, and blood in each print—a little smear.
It had come, then. He was mad for certain. He saw them: he put his fingers in them; touched the frozen blood. The snow before the door was trodden thick with them—some going, some returning.
"The latch . . . lifted . . ." Suddenly he recalled the figure he had seen moving upon the hummock, and with a groan he set his face northward and gave chase. Oh, he was mad for certain! He ran like a madman— floundering, slipping, plunging in his clumsy moccasins. ”

“ But it is not pleasant, even in the prettiest country, to cling on to a pack-saddle with a saturated quilt below you and the water slowly soaking down through your wet clothes into your boots, knowing all the time that when you halt you must sleep on a wet bed, and change into damp clothes, and put on the wet ones again the next morning. ”

“ An old quilt made a pallet on the hard floor. I found myself being pressed gently down from the low creepie to the floor. I pretended to sleep. Her hot tears fell on my face. Her dear toil-worn fingers were run gently through my hair. She was on her knees by my side. The tender mysticism of her youth came back and expressed itself in prayer. ”

“ In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which, advancing gently over my breast, came almost up to my chin, when, bending my eyes downward, I perceived it to be a human creature, not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. ”

“ Now, my knowledge of the human body teaches me that this quivering of the flesh a very wise provision of nature to keep the blood in motion, and in this way to save the human body from perishing from the cold; but why should we quiver when we are happy, little baron? All pleasure is the thought, and yet at the moment when we should keep our bodies in as perfect repose as possible, we begin this ridiculous shivering. ”

“ The whole is then covered with a thick wadded quilt, under which the family, ranged round, place their knees, to allow the hot vapour to insinuate itself into every fold of their clothing. When very cold, they draw the borders of the quilt up as high as their chins, and form a group something resembling our ideas of a wizard incantation. This mode of warming is very disagreeable and often dangerous, owing in the first place to the immovable position necessary to receiving the full benefit of the glowing embers ”

“ The first sound that met his ears in the morning—as he half opened his eyes, and, finding himself so unusually near the ceiling, entertained a drowsy idea that he must have been transformed into a fly or blue-bottle in the course of the night,—was that of a stifled sobbing and weeping in the room. Peeping cautiously over the side of his hammock, he descried Mrs Quilp, to whom, after contemplating her for some time in silence, he communicated a violent start by suddenly yelling out—‘Halloa!’
‘Oh, Quilp!’ cried his poor little wife, looking up. ”

“ But in the long chill nights of winter, when the snow sifts in through the partly raised window and all mankind snuggles deeper into the bed clothes, then all quilts may be truly said to do their duty. ”

“ I delighted to spell out the album quilt until I knew almost every line by heart; while the curious medley which these different scraps of poetry presented reminded me very much of a play, in which one person repeats a line, to which another must find a rhyme. When Aunt Henshaw died, which was just about the time that I was grown up, she left the quilt to me in her will ”

“ Quarle, in a dismal condition, remained the succeeding night in the clift, being continually beaten with the dashing back of the sea, and being both bruised and numbed, pulled off his clothes, which were dripping wet, and spread them in the sun; and being over-fatigued, lays himself down on the smoothest place of the rock he could find, being quite spent with the hardships he had undergone, and slept while his clothes were drying. ”

“ I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a curious sort of a monument—'bout as perishable as the sweepin' and scrubbin' and mendin'. But if folks values things rightly, and knows how to take care of 'em, there ain't many things that'll last longer'n a quilt. Why, I've got a blue and white counterpane that my mother's mother spun and wove, and there ain't a sign o' givin' out in it yet. I'm goin' to will that to my granddaughter that lives in Danville, Mary Frances' oldest child. ”

“ A dimpled arm and one naked foot have escaped from the gay patch-work quilt, which some fond hand has closely tucked about the little form; and the breath comes and goes quickly, as if the folded eyes were feasting on visions of beauty and delight. ”

“ Sleigh-bells were heard at a distance, and the illuminated snow which lay beneath the windows was peopled with shadows moving over it, as one group after another passed out, anxious to obtain a view up the lane.
A knock at the nearest front door put us to flight. Three young gentlemen entered and found us sitting primly around the quilt, each with a thimble on and earnestly at work, like so many birds in a cherry-tree. Again the knocker resounded through the house, as if the lion’s head that formed it were set to howling by the huge mass of iron belabouring it so unmercifully. ”

“ Minute follow'd minute, and left me still descending, six inches at a time, and looking neither above nor below, but always at the grey wall that seem'd sliding up in front of me. The first dizziness was over, but a horrible aching of the arms had taken the place of it. 'Twas growing intolerable, when suddenly my legs, that sought to close round the rope, found space only. ”

“ All the while they keep up a cheerful chirping, as if to express their appreciation of the pleasant winter weather.
Strangest of all is their wading about in the snow. It makes me shiver to see their little bare feet sinking into the icy crystals, and I feel disposed to offer them my warm rubber boots; only I know they would decline the proposal with scorn. “I am no tenderfoot!” one of them seems to say, with cunning literalness. Their dainty tracks in the snow are suggestive, and give to the thoughtful observer more than one clew to bird cerebration. ”

“ Sir LUCIUS
Pray, sir, be easy; the quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; we should only spoil it by trying to explain it. However, your memory is very short, or you could not have forgot an affront you passed on me within this week. ”

“ Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, flossy hair all clean from the Saturday's night bathing, their souls excited by their bodies' cleanliness. ”

“ Thou! why thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or less in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat ”

“ So she took the letter and returning with it to the schoolmaster, said to him, ‘What moved thee to deal thus with me?’ And she repeated to him what her neighbour had told her of her husband’s well-being and of his having sent her a quilt and an extinguisher. ‘Thou art in the right,’ answered he. ‘But excuse me, good woman; Night cccciv.for I was, at the time, troubled and absent-minded and seeing the extinguisher wrapped in the quilt, thought that he was dead and they had shrouded him.’ The woman, not smoking the cheat, said, ‘Thou art excused.’ and taking the letter, went away. ”

“ Many of the natives put the head and shoulders under the quilt at night; but if the fuel have not been previously charred to the proper height, suffocation is the usual effect, and the incautious sleepers are found dead in the morning. ”

“ The night was dark but exquisitely calm—perfectly still, yet full of those mysterious whisperings which come from the bosom of the plain, the flutter of birds' wings, snug in their night's lodgings amongst the drooping branches of pollarded willows, the quiver of the plumed heads of maize, touched by some fairy garment as it brushed by, the call of the cricket from among the tall sunflowers and the quiver of the glow-worm on the huge pumpkin leaves. ”

“ No strip of vapor lay on the moors that stretch'd—all bathed in the most wonderful bright colors—to the lip of the horizon. The air was like a sounding board. I heard the bleat of an old wether, a mile off, upon the tors; and was turning away dejected, when, far down in the south, there ran a sound that set my heart leaping.
'Twas the crackling of musketry.
There was no mistaking it. The noise ran like wildfire along the hills: before echo could overtake it, a low rumbling followed, and then the brisker crackling again. ”

“ It is there that the last and first meals of the day are served, and the quilts spread upon which sleep is enjoyed beneath the stars. A strange scene it is when the faint light of morning has broken, and when the recumbent forms commence to stir. ”

“ Over the bed I can make out a pointed shape, like a mounted picture, silhouetted against the curtains, which slightly blacken the window. It is as though the quilt were lifted from underneath by a stick, for my Aunt Josephine is leanness itself. ”

“ The bed is replaced by a matting, and the quilt is put over the body with its ends reversed so that its foot is over the dead man’s breast; and a white cloth is laid over the face to hide it as its exposure is believed to be an obstacle to the soul’s journey on the road to Hades. ”

“ Why, some wintry day when you in overcoat and gloves are tramping comfortably across your fields on which snow is falling, stop and draw off one of your gloves, and holding out your hand, catch one of these little terrors, one of these dread arrows from the unseen quiver of all whiteness. ”

“ In the winter the students are too busy to notice a newcomer, except to make him feel strange and humble by their lofty scorn. But in the autumn, when the men have returned from their long out-of-door rest, with brush and palette, a certain amount of friskiness is developed, which sometimes expends itself upon the luckless “nouveau.” A harmless search for the time-honored “grand reflecteur,” an enforced song and dance, a stern command to tread the mazes of the shameless quadrille with an equally shameless model, is usually the extent of the infliction. ”

“ How long I slept I know not, but I awoke suddenly by feeling a strange touch upon my cheek, soft, almost imperceptible, yet chilly—a peculiar feeling that I cannot adequately describe. The contact, whatever it was, thrilled me, and as I opened my eyes I saw the grey light of dawn was just appearing. My face was towards the window, and as I looked I saw distinctly upon my pillow the silhouette of a dark and shadowy hand—a hand with weird, claw-like fingers. ”