Sacking

“ Some say in your world that sack is a word used in all tongues, and justly admitted in the same sense among all nations; for, as Aesop’s fable hath it, all men are born with a sack at the neck, naturally needy and begging of each other; neither can the most powerful king be without the help of other men, or can anyone that’s poor subsist without the rich, though he be never so proud and insolent; as, for example, Hippias the philosopher, who boasted he could do everything. Much less can anyone make shift without drink than without a sack. ”

“ Damme, boy; you're jumping about like an old woman looking for a flea in a bed. Move, boy, move; the ball's the flea, and you're the old trout. Bite it, boy, bite it; stamp on it; take out your fork and stick it with that." The ball came to rest; the new arrival mopped his brow. "Did I ever tell you how to kill a man with your dinner fork, by sticking it into his neck? I will some day; it's a good death for a Hun."
"Did you catch that there swine, sergeant?" Another voice from the squad took up the tale. ”

“ People do sometimes tie up a sack even when it is not full.” So he took it on his back, and went away with his comrades.
When the King now saw how one single man was carrying away the entire wealth of the country, he became enraged, and bade his horsemen mount and pursue the six, and ordered them to take the sack away from the strong one. Two regiments speedily overtook the six, and called out, “You are prisoners. Put down the sack with the gold, or you will all be cut to pieces!” ”

“ It’s the only thing to do.”
On the morrow an alert watch was kept by the conspirators behind half-closed doors, and when Wilfrid, clad in a gorgeous bath-robe, had made his way to the bath-room, there was a swift and furtive rush by two excited individuals towards the principal guest-chamber. Mrs. Peter kept guard outside, while her husband first made a hurried and successful search for the keys, and then plunged at the portmanteau with the air of a disagreeably conscientious Customs official. The quest was a brief one; a silver cream jug lay embedded in the folds of some zephyr shirts. ”

“ Death was into the sack in a moment, and the soldier leapt from his bed well and strong, tied up the sack with two double knots, flung it over his shoulder and set out for the deep forest of Brian, which is the thickest in all the world. ”

“ But by sack they came, and by sack they did depart. It is wonderful how a great nature has a love of sack. Yet I have but my nose to show for my passion. Do you observe its prominent hue, which by night is so luminous that it flames like a beacon to forewarn the honest mariner? Yet to Fortune will we wet our beards, good Spaniard, for we of England court her like a maiden with a dimple in her cheek.”
Having concluded this declamation, Sir Richard Pendragon called the landlord in a tone like thunder, bade him bring a cup of sherry for my use, and fill up his own, which was passing empty. ”

“ But you, Murrey, you are young, you can fight. Are you going to be a fighter, or the very humble servant of the fait accompli?”
“I shall never be the servant of the fait accompli,” said Yeovil. “I loathe it. As to fighting, one must first find out what weapon to use, and how to use it effectively. One must watch and wait.”
“One must not wait too long,” said the old woman. “Time is on their side, not ours. It is the young people we must fight for now, if they are ever to fight for us. ”

“ The sacci are interesting, for English nurses frighten children with a threat that the chimney-sweep (here as in the May-game inheriting the tradition on account of his black face) will put them in his sack. The beneficent Christmas wanderers use the sack to bring presents in; cf. the development of the sack in the Mummers’ play (p. 215) . ”

“ If in coming down the dark and slippery lane at night somebody with a heavy sack stepped out from the shadow at the stile, and if the contents of the sack were rapidly transferred to the shoulder-sticks, or the bag itself bodily taken along—why, there was nobody there to see. ”

“ In the first place there are easier ways of terminating one’s life; in the second place a man can jump into the river with perfect ease without going to the trouble [Pg 337] of sewing himself in a sack; and in the third place it is exceedingly difficult for a man to sew himself into a sack. It is almost impossible.
To sew himself into a sack a man must have no little skill, and he must have a large, roomy sack. He takes, let us say, a sack-needle, threaded with a good length of twine ”

“ Falstaff. ’Tis no matter for Hercules, but, God’s pity for ’t, to be unacquainted with sack is to have lived as a dead man liveth. Sack, good Launce, is the prince of roystering blades; the pearl of price; the nonpareil of the world, the—nay, there’s no fit comparison to be made. Ambrosia and nectar together were but ashes i’ the mouth to ’t.
Trinculo [coming forward] You speak nothing aside the matter, sir, as I’m a true man. There’s nought to be named i’ the world before sack, and herein, of all places i’ the world, there’s no inn, no sack, no sack within. ”

“ As the unravelled mouse gave a wild leap to the floor, the rug, slipping its fastening at either end, also came down with a heart-curdling flop, and almost simultaneously the awakened sleeper opened her eyes. With a movement almost quicker than the mouse's, Theodoric pounced on the rug, and hauled its ample folds chin-high over his dismantled person as he collapsed into the further corner of the carriage. ”

“ I feel for you a tenderness which renders it impossible for me to leave you without help.
GER. Be sure that I will reward you for it, Scapin, and I promise you this coat of mine when it is a little more worn.
SCA. Wait a minute. I have just thought, at the proper moment, of the very thing to save you. You must get into this sack, and I....
GER. (thinking he sees somebody) . Ah!
SCA. No, no, no, no; 'tis nobody. As I was saying, you must get in here, and must be very careful not to stir. I will put you on my shoulders, and carry you like a bundle of something or other. ”

“ I got up at six this morning to write out my notes, and have been writing for five hours, and there is shortly the prospect of another savage séance. The distractions, as you can imagine, are many. At this moment a savage is taking a cup of saké by the fire in the centre of the floor. He salutes me by extending his hands and waving them towards his face, and then dips a rod in the saké, and makes six libations to the god—an upright piece of wood with a fringe of shavings planted in the floor of the room. ”

“ The scared mob of servants burst in on his heels, the gardener still clutching the sickle with which he had been trimming hedges, and the impetus of their headlong haste carried them, slipping and sliding, over the smooth parquet flooring towards the chair where their mistress sat in panic-stricken amazement. ”

“ Opening the sack he called aloud, "Every one out!" whereat one soldier after another came forth until there was a great and formidable army. Then the tailor ordered them to pursue the giants and return with his table-cloth. The soldiers obeyed, overtook the twelve men, and, after a fearful struggle, succeeded in slaying them and in recovering the precious article. The little man was well pleased; holding out his sack, he cried, "Every one in!" whereupon the entire army disappeared in the sack. So the tailor went home, contented with his good luck. ”

“ ZER. (to SCAPIN) . But we shall want you.
SCA. Oh, yes! but I shall soon be with you again. It shall never be said that a man has with impunity put me into a position of betraying myself, and of revealing secrets which it were better should not be known.
SCENE II.—GÉRONTE, SCAPIN.
GER. Well! Scapin, and how have we succeeded about my son's mischance?
SCA. Your son is safe, Sir; but you now run the greatest danger imaginable, and I sincerely wish you were safe in your house. ”

“ The tail of the animal is previously cut short, and well soaped, and in this condition he is turned out for the populace to run after him; and he who can catch him with one hand, and hold him by the stump of the tail without touching any other part, obtains him for his pains.
Sack Running, that is, men tied up in sacks, every part of them being enclosed except their heads, who are in this manner to make the best of their way to some given distance, where he who first arrives obtains the prize. ”

“ When I came to, he was circling slowly round and round the buoy in his sailing-boat, lounging indifferently beside the tiller, and watching me with an expression of mockery I can't reproduce in words. I lost my head then; I leapt up and shook the bars of my cage and screamed to him to let me out. I can hear now in my ears the futility of my own voice screaming across the placid emptiness of the water. I must have looked like a trapped ape—the kind of ape that is most like a man. ”

“ And they had rifled and despoiled his portmanteau! Husband and wife looked blankly and desperately at one another. It was Mrs. Peter who arrived first at an inspiration.
“How dreadful to think there are thieves in the house! We keep the drawing-room locked up at night, of course, but anything might be carried off while we are at breakfast.”
She rose and went out hurriedly, as though to assure herself that the drawing-room was not being stripped of its silverware, and returned a moment later, bearing a cream jug in her hands. ”

“ A warm, creeping movement over his flesh betrayed the unwelcome and highly resented presence, unseen but poignant, of a strayed mouse, that had evidently dashed into its present retreat during the episode of the pony harnessing. Furtive stamps and shakes and wildly directed pinches failed to dislodge the intruder, whose motto, indeed, seemed to be Excelsior; and the lawful occupant of the clothes lay back against the cushions and endeavoured rapidly to evolve some means for putting an end to the dual ownership. ”

“ They adjust it by drawing it close to one side of the body, and by making folds on the other side of all the extra width in proportion to their body. This sack, which by day is a garment—so shameful to decency, because it so ill satisfies it—serves at night for mattress, sheets, and curtain. For on retiring they ungird the sack, and the part which they doubled about the knees they put up to the head. That is all the opulence and comfort that their beds can boast of, which are made of a thin mat. ”

“ The Eternal Saki from the bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and shall pour.
Nature ruthlessly tears up her replicas age after age, but she is slow to destroy the plates. Her lovely forms are all safely housed in her memory, and beauty and goodness sleep secure in her heart, in spite of all the arrows of death. ”

“ But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his self-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets the sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will have to pawn his old cherry-briar. ”

“ So he didn’t care so much as to peep into the sack again, but carried it straight to her mother as fast as he could, and when he got to the cottage door he threw it in through the door, and bawled out:
“Here you have meat and drink from your daughter; she wants for nothing.”
Now, when the girl had been in the hill a while longer, she did the very same thing with her other sister. She put her head on her shoulders, smeared her with ointment out of the flask, brought her to life, and stuffed her into the sack ”

“ Most of his life has been spent in streets and squares, with occasional migrations to the esplanades of fashionable watering-places or the gravelled walks of country house gardens. Now that noblesse is about to impose its obligations on him, quite a new catalogue of wants has sprung into his mind. There are things that a plain esquire may leave undone without causing scandalised remark, but a fiercer light beats on a baron. Trigger-pulling is one of the obligations. ”

“ One of the boys had curiously poked at it with his stick, bringing it nearer to the shore, when it appeared to be a heavy, almost formless, mass sewn up in a rough sack. The boys, being frightened, had run home with their story, and a member of the local police force, going to the spot, had found the children's suspicions confirmed. The unclothed body of a man, partially consumed by fire and lacking the head, as well as otherwise mutilated in a seemingly aimless way, had been doubled up and sewn in the sack. ”

“ I should certainly have committed a great crime.’
Meantime the golden lad dreamt that he was out hunting and was giving chase to a noble stag, and when he woke he said to his bride: ‘I must go off and hunt.’ She felt very anxious, and begged he would stay at home, adding: ‘Some mishap might so easily befall you,’ but he answered, ‘I must and will go.’
So he went off into the forest, and before long a fine stag, such as he had seen in his dream, stopped just in front of him. He took aim, and was about to fire when the stag bounded away. ”

“ A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow; it could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away from him; in the thickly-growing vegetation that the picture suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. ”

“ The farm, she soon found out, had that faculty common to farmyards of swallowing up and losing its human population. The poultry followed her in interested fashion, and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of their styes, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and dairy, gave no reward to her search. Then, as she retraced her steps towards the kitchen, she came suddenly on her cousin, young Mr. Jim, as every one called him, who divided his time between amateur horse-dealing, rabbit-shooting, and flirting with the farm maids. ”

“ The aunt maintained the frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag. ”