Revelry

“ We will not need to leave our rooms, for it is all here—in the deep gleam of polished strength of the hickory axe-handle, in the low light of the blade, in stone wall and oaken sill, in leather and brass and pottery, in the respiration of the burning wood, and veritably massed upon the sweeping distance from the window. It is because we are coarse and fibrous and confined in the sick weight of flesh that we do not stand in a kind of creative awe before the lowliest mystery of our physical sight. ”

“ However, continued my uncle Toby, to make them sure, we generally choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to extend them beyond the fossé or ditch:—The common men, who know very little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon together,— tho' they are very different things;—not in their figure or construction, for we make them exactly aliks in all points;—for they always consist of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges, not straight, but in form of a crescent.—Where then lies the difference? ”

“ Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere. ”

“ Now I shoe my feet with the toughest hides, hard as iron; no rock can cut them, no branches can tear them. Yet more than one pair of these have I outworn, and many more shall I outwear ere my journeys are ended. ”

“ Its bare branches are not clean-cut against the sky but swollen and distorted like knotted hands of toil—horny, crooked fingers upraised to the heavens. What rude strength is their portion who stand thus alone and derive from the earth as befits the stalwart—buffeting, solitary and unyielding, the winter gales. ”

“ I can't begin to tell all the secrets of the curls and puffs, and reinforcements, hygienic rolls, transformations, fluffy puffers, and all that, or of the complexions. Why, you can choose a complexion, like wall-paper or upholstery. They can make you as pale as a sickly heroine or they can make you as yellow as a bathing girl. There is nothing they can't do. ”

“ But, to go down into that black gaping pit, and then to find oneself bereft of the strength to rise from it! to cling on, deep, deep in a blind and noisome night, and to feel stealing slowly over one that paralysis whose inevitable culmination must be the sobbing fall into what choking and unspeakable gulf! ”

“ With mouldering ruins loads the unfrequented earth.
Ye minstrel throng,
In whose bold breasts once glow'd the tuneful fire,
No longer struck by you shall breathe the plaintive lyre:
The walls, whose trophied sides along
Once rung the harp's energic sound,
Now damp and moss-ymantled load the ground ”

“ If we build a woman out of that literal clay, she would be square-shouldered, big-limbed, stout-bodied, sharp-boned, and pachydermatous, with a skin of bronzed leather tightened over knobs of cheek-bones, hairs woven in a wire-mill, and eyebrows like two heavy dashes from the circus charcoal. ”

“ Everywhere the strong, rich, vigorous growths unfolded to the sun. The leaves were thick in the woods, the shadows were dark and cool, and rivulets glanced in the midst of them like live leaping crystal. ”

“ And down, indeed, it went; at first, slowly—moving like a great unbroken wave; then growing more hurried as it neared the edge of the precipice, thickening and swelling with fresh masses: it rose around him—now, circling his waist, now, enclosing his shoulders: he had but time to grasp the little wooden cross, the emblem of hope and succour, when the mass glided over the brink, and fell thundering into the dark abyss. ”

“ You will find under your pillow in the morning a looking-glass, a red handkerchief, and an embroidered scarf. Take these three things, but show them to no one, and go to the forest. In that forest you will find a rivulet. Walk by the side of this rivulet until you come to its source; there you will see a girl, as bright as the sun, with long hair streaming down her shoulders. Take care that she does you no harm. Say not a word to her; for if you utter a single syllable, she will change you into a fish, or some other creature, and eat you. Should she ask you to comb her hair, obey her. ”

“ That swaying head! It was loaded with the wisdom of the serpent that harkens to the wind, swaying with the marsh grass, winding its golden coils, curving its neck to the sun—Hark! The rattle!
. . .Red is the sun. ”

“ In accordance with some strange law of nature, feasts of this description always begin with parts of the interior economy of the victim, the revellers slowly working their way outwards through the ribs and winding up with the larger limbs. ”

“ As I toiled along, my useless limb causing me each day more trouble, I felt I should like to lie down on the grass, with stones 'twixt head and shoulders for my pillow, and repose, as Nature was reposing, in sovereign strength. ”

“ AS we are on the subject of leverage, we will take some examples of levers in Art and Nature, without, however, even attempting to exhaust the topic.
On the right hand of the illustration is shown a very familiar example of a lever, namely, nut-crackers, with a nut between them. This useful implement is simply an adaptation of levers of the second kind, the power being represented by the human hand, the weight by the nut, and the fulcrum being the joint of the instrument. ”

“ How systematically they rise, one veil after the other. The mountains are just becoming perceptible—do you see their shadowy outline behind that last thin veil? It is rising—slowly—slowly. Little fragments of mist are floating everywhere. ”

“ How should the reveller, issuing worn and wasted from the haunts where the violent seize joy by force to find her perish in their arms—how should such reveller, I say, break forth and sing with the sons of the morning, when the ocean of light bursts from the fountain of the east? As little canst thou, with thy mind full of petty cares, or still more petty ambitions, understand the groaning and travailing of the creation. ”

“ A second’s consideration showed that in the search that must ensue this would afford no refuge, so I at once opened the sash, and endeavoured to ascertain at what height I was above the ground beneath me; the night was so dark that I could see nothing, but judging from the leaves and twigs that reached to the window, that it was a garden beneath, and auguring from the perfumed smell of the shrubs, that they could not be tall trees, I resolved to leap, a resolve I had little time to come to, for the step of the soldiers was already heard upon the stair. ”

“ All nature is so still that the tinkling murmur of the tiny rivulets, which thread the lawns and flower-beds, falls distinctly on the ear. In faint but rhythmic cadence they drip and ripple, gurgle and splash, the summer night through. ”

“ No trace of shading is perceptible, and the drawing, with exception of the outline, is limited to the indication of the almond-shaped eyes, and to slight suggestions of the knees, elbows, and nails. The forms are heavy and without dignity, the motions stiff, and the step as though climbing, with the arms thrown violently upward, as if running in the greatest haste. ”

“ The creatures of the woods, standing quite still, are difficult enough to see; but I have a notion that the eye, unknown to itself, catches the sum total of little flexings of the muscles, movements of the skin, winkings, even the play of wind and light in the hair of the coat, all of which, while impossible of analysis, together relieve the appearance of dead inertia. ”

“ The unhappy men crawled on with trembling limbs and chattering teeth till the snow, collecting round their feet in hard lumps, like stones, some scattered fragment, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their companions, made them stagger and fall. ”

“ Beneath the skeleton of a peepul-tree hard by, whence the branches had been stripped for fodder, some elders were at work over gymnastic exercises, swinging clubs, or--supported on palms and feet--touching the dust with their foreheads, and then rising again like a strung bow. ”

“ Every one knows what provoking things are certain chance resemblances, how disturbing to the right current of thought, how subverting to the free exercise of reason. Now, this creature before me, in his deeply indented temples, high narrow forehead, aquiline nose, and resolute chin, was marvellously like a certain great field-marshal with whose features, notwithstanding the portraits of him, we are all familiar. It was not of the least use to me that I knew he was not the illustrious general, but simply a mountebank. There were the stern traits, haughty and defiant ”

“ As soon as thy feet are on the moss, cut the rope, stop not to untie it, fall on thy breast, and crawl into that hole—my finger shows it now—where slab of stone leans unto stone, and the body of a large heart may lie hidden. ”

“ But before he is aware, the time slips by, the clay gets set and there, in front of his eyes, is the figure as his fancy made it—brittle, easily broken into dust, but impossible of being moulded afresh until it shall again go back into the water of oblivion and become the shapeless mass that once it was. ”

“ Imagine, then, a meagre old man, about five feet two, whose head was a wedge with the thin side foremost, the nose standing abruptly out, like the cut-water of a man-o’-war gig; a large mouth, forming a bold semicircle, with the convexity downwards, the angles of which were lost in a mass of wrinkles on his withered cheeks ”

“ He remembers, he says, that at each bound he was a yard over his back; but as he was a heavy man, and kept his legs open, he had the luck to come down in the same place, and a sore place it must have been! for he let a screech out of him each time that would have pierced the heart of a stone. ”

“ The earth, as it was turned by the plow, lay black, and shone with moisture and fatness, and the man at the plow was happy in the thought of soon being able to sow his rye. "Why is it that I feel so discouraged at times and think life so hard?" ”

“ They were holding hands; and without looking at one another, their eyes fixed upon the tender blue of the sky between the branches of the leafless trees, they kept silence. The flood of their thoughts intermingled by way of their hands. ”

“ Under matted sheds, which are so many temporary stages without footlights, groups with life-sized figures are arranged, whose faces and hands are of wax or composition, but whose clothes, the accessories, and scenery are made of living flowers, trained so closely over a framework that the mechanism is not even suspected. ”

“ The descent into the valley was perilous enough even for us. For the greater part of the way we had to swing ourselves down by the trees, many of which threatened to break under our weight and hurl us headlong to the bottom. ”

“ The man who entered, scarcely more than four feet and a half high, might be about sixty years of age. His head, enormously disproportioned to the rest of his figure, presented a number of flat surfaces, as though nature had originally destined it for a crystal. ”

“ It needs but a moment for the conversation to become general,—about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. ”

“ Delving, even in the most favorable circumstances, is a fairly stern test of wind and muscle. In the pitch blackness, under such nerve-thrilling conditions, it was an ordeal. Both men, fortunately, were in hard training. The heavy soil flew steadily and fast. ”

“ He watched the citizen, a pillar of society, a model, saw the stiff goat's legs, which have become almost stiffened to wood in the desire to make them puppet in their action, he saw the trousers formed to the puppet-action: man's legs, but man's legs become rigid and deformed, ugly, mechanical. ”

“ In each of which Peals, the changes that are made from the time that the whole hunt leaves the trebles place hunting up, until it comes down into that place again, are all made in one and the same manner, so that the only difference in these Peals, consists in making the changes when the whole hunt leads. ”

“ A figure seems to move only when the body, advanced before the centre of its two supports, throws the greatest part of its weight upon the forward leg, and thus relieves the hinder foot, which, with uplifted heel, touches the ground with the toes, in readiness to be removed. ”

“ With plenty of brains, sensual, dry and passionate, observing everything, calculating everything, unweariable, unbreakable, fragile, yes, like a willow that bends and—bing!—comes lashing back, made of solid cement under the friable enamel. ”

“ And as the clay curved and hollowed beneath his moulding hand a puzzled look came to the light eyes, which, usually so shifty, were now fixed with a sort of fascination upon that strange figure in the riding-habit. ”

“ He ought to have been crushed under such a load of emotions, but it weighed no more on the elastic adolescent than a bird weighs on a branch. The bird flies away, the branch swings back and sways in the wind. ”

“ My companion and I struggled desperately against the branches which were cutting our faces. At length we emerged on a large platform, where at first we saw no one among the tall grass and the moss-grown rocks. ”

“ And there is the shape of a man who wrapped his face in a veil to keep out the fumes, and died so. The veil is there, reproduced with a fidelity no sculptor could duplicate, and through its folds you may behold the agony that made his jaw to sag and his eyes to pop from their sockets. ”