Scavenging

“ As the condemned draw nigh unto death—the scaffold—the gibbet—it would be natural to suppose, that every avenue to the heart would be effectually closed, against the entrance of all impressions, but those of terrible solemnity; yet no common truth is more clearly established, than that ill-timed levity, vanity, pride, and an almost inexplicable pleasure, arising from a consciousness of being the observed of all observers, have been exhibited, by men, on their way to the scaffold, and even with the halter about their necks. ”

“ He turned and left us for a little, we wandered without end; like a beast of prey which is trained by blandishments and by fear, but if so be that men turn from it, rebels and strays and becomes savage in the midst of peace. ”

“ Lady, this speech and majesty are twain;
Pure shame is of one counsel with the gods.
HIPPOLYTUS.
Man is as beast when shame stands off from him.
PHÆDRA
Man, what have I to do with shame or thee?
I am not of one counsel with the gods.
I am their kin, I have strange blood in me,
I am not of their likeness nor of thine:
My veins are mixed, and therefore am I mad,
Yea therefore chafe and turn on mine own flesh,
Half of a woman made with half a god.
But thou wast hewn out of an iron womb
And fed with molten mother-snow for milk.
A sword was nurse of thine ”

“ Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead. ”

“ Give me no answer yet, but reflect on the alternative should you refuse one who has but to speak her will, and a thousand fierce savages are on your track by day and by night, till your heart is haunted to death by its own fears, or is crushed beneath the blow which sooner or later some dark hand will deal in the requital of the disgrace which you have put upon the daughter of a Shawnee. ”

“ The rude charm which, in the hour of danger or distress, the savage clasps so confidently to his breast, the sacred picture which is believed to shed a hallowing and protecting influence over the poor man's cottage, can bestow a more real consolation in the darkest hour of human suffering than can be afforded by the grandest theories of philosophy. ”

“ He folds her to his bosom for an instant, looks into her eyes with tenderness—then bowing his head he passes on and never glances back. It is enough. She falls insensible, and a savage, rushing upon her, tears the scalp from her head. ”

“ The Savage loves his own.—His wind-rocked babe
That rudely cradled 'mid the fragrant boughs,
Or on its toiling mother's shoulders bound
Shrinks not from sun or rain; his hoary sire,
And hunting-spear, and forest sports are dear.
The Heathen loves his own.—The faithful friend
Who by his side the stormy battle dares,
The chieftain, at whose nod his life-blood flows,
His native earth, and simple hut are dear. ”

“ This was the reasoning of the simple savage—a reasoning that reached the hitherto unsounded depths of passion and pathos in her nature. The young man, who bore in his heart a bitter recollection of the scornful repulse offered by one beautiful girl, could not resist the matchless tenderness so freely given by another. ”

“ Instead of knocking our friends on the head and eating them as they had purposed, the savages came crouching down before them in the most abject manner, as if they were beings altogether of a different nature. ”

“ The untutored savage is only a romance at a distance—the reality of their presence a disgusting fact. They are wild, untamable, and wicked, without sentiment or sympathy, cruel and murderous; disgusting in their habits and brutal in their passions."
"And yet, sir, the stories which come down to us of these so quietly sleeping here are full of romance and poetry. Their intercourse with the French impressed that mercurial people with exalted notions of their humanity, chivalry, and nobleness of nature. ”

“ How little does that savage, the demon of the place, mind your sweet, small voices, that give forth a piteous wail, like the last notes of the dying swan, every time he lays his merciless hands on you. ”

“ If the discernment of the savage is little, his discrimination is less. All his sensuous perceptions are confused; but the confusion of confusion is that universal habit of savagery—the confusion of the objective with the subjective—so that the savage sees, hears, tastes, smells, feels the imaginings of his own mind. ”

“ But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure, and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume him. ”

“ A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire;
Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame.
But from thy feet now death has washed the mire,
Love reads out first at head of all our quire,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. ”

“ Used as she was to the prayers and the despairs of men, blunted through many triumphs to the delicate reserves that had once been hers, the quick, purposeful savagery of this frightened her more than she guessed. ”

“ It is therefore no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savage's life should so long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints and fragments and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy tales. ”

“ One wishes one could live as a savage,—naked in the heat. One burns with a thirst impossible to assuage—feels a desire for stimulants, a sense of difficulty in breathing, occasional quickenings of the heart's action so violent as to alarm. ”

“ The savage was at last emboldened to come down the tree, and receive the roots and fishes; but the woman then enticing her from the tree, by retiring insensibly, gave time to the men who were lying in wait for her, to advance and seize her. She never mentioned any thing of the grief and anxiety she felt on being taken, nor of the efforts she made to escape ”

“ Puzzled are the savages now, and for the first time—since it is the first time for them to have such an experience. For the moment it even mystifies them, and thoughts of the supernatural come creeping into their minds. ”

“ A savage has outraged me even in the very manner of punishing me! He has inflicted upon me that chastisement, the first effect of which is to shock one’s modesty; that most humiliating of chastisements, which takes one back to one’s childhood. ”

“ By the dread wherewith life was astounded and shamed out of sense of its trust,
By the scourges of doubt and repentance that fell on the soul at thy nod,
Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth against thee, O God.
Thy slave that slept is awake; thy slave but slept for a span;
Yea, man thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee lord over man. ”

“ If his spirit of vengeance was justified, the spirit which had involved him in it was vile. Yet assuredly, sinner as he was, he had atoned a hundredfold. His back (he showed it me) was scored with ineffaceable marks of that discipline. His soul (and he showed me that too) was still deeper scored. He was delivered, had delivered himself, a fearful brand of retribution into my hand. ”

“ What, then, must we think of the diabolical savage who exercises the worst of all cruelties, because the most lasting and affecting to both body and mind, on the most beautiful and amiable of all creatures on this side heaven, made expressly for his happiness, solace, and delight, by first corrupting and betray­ing her, and then basely abandoning her to perish in want, pain, wretchedness, and misery? ”

“ Nay, is there help in heaven? it may be
All things and lords of things shall cease.
The stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes;
The bronzèd brims are deep in ashes;
The pale old lips of death are fed.
Shall this dust gather flesh hereafter?
Shall one shed tears or fall to laughter,
At sight of all these poor old dead?
Nay, as thou wilt; these know not of it;
Thine eyes' strong weeping shall not profit,
Thy laughter shall not give thee ease;
Cry aloud, spare not, cease not crying,
Sigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing,
Thou shalt not raise up one of these. ”

“ Who would not weep for me, with voice and wailing? for before the days of full moon I was chaste and crowned; and after the days of full moon, I was uncovered and made bare.
25. My chaste daughters of the chambers, wander in the fields; for the wrath that makes all drunken, has caused my honourable women to be despised. Let Thy mercy which gives peace to all, restore these beloved ones to honour!
26. My elder daughters and my younger, lo! they cry before Thee; the damsels with their voices, they that are aged with their tears; my virgins with their fasts, my chaste ones with their sackcloth! ”

“ Savages—those that are truly stunted or depraved—dedicate nearly all their tales and sayings to the subject of physical kinship, of a curse on this or that tribe, of a taint in this or that family, of the invincible law of blood, of the unavoidable evil of places. ”

“ Very often, a savage would spring from the ground, with a sharp exclamation, as some coal pierced through his moccasin, and now and then another could be seen, slapping his fingers against his person, after he had hastily dropped some object. ”

“ Whether you tell in the end or not,—ain’t he had his “life for a life”?
..Was that a shake?....Thank God, it wasn’t! Shakes turn me silly wi’ fright,
For then’s your chance, if you’ve got a grudge, to spit him up into the light. ”

“ Between the savage and the gentleman is but a good night's lodging. Give the savage a peaceful hearth to sit by, a roof to his head, and a copious well-cooked supper, and his savagery will surrender itself to the sleek content of a Dutch merchantman. ”

“ Scapin's false nose is its next-door neighbor. All the uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are there engulfed, but they display themselves there. ”

“ But thou, if thou hast haply heard that the Demon has cured anyone, straightway forsakest thy Master; O more unreasoning than the dogs!
But, saith one, the harlots are a pleasure to look upon. What sort of pleasure are they? yea rather what infamy are they not? Thy house has become a brothel, madness, and fury; and art thou not ashamed to call this pleasure? If then it be allowed to use them, [18] greater than all pleasure is the shame, and the discomfort which arises from the shame, to make one’s house a brothel, like hogs in wallowing in the mire? ”

“ The savage, at the same time, believing the strangers around her to be so many enemies, who intended to murder her, or dreading, perhaps, punishment for what she had done, sprang out of their hands towards a window, thro' which she had a view of trees and a river, intending to jump from it, and so make her escape ”

“ Savage of some actions which scarcely any provocation will be thought sufficient to justify, such as seizing what he had in his lodgings, and other instances of wanton cruelty, by which he increased the distress of Savage without any advantage to himself. ”

“ ROSAMUND.
Weep not, maiden. Dost not thou,
Man, that we thought her bridegroom sealed of love,
Love her?
ALMACHILDES.
No saint loved ever God as I
Her.
ROSAMUND.
And betray her to shame thou wouldst not?
See,
My lord, the silent answer flash aloud
From cheek and eye a goodly witness. Thou,
My maiden, dost thou love not him? Nay, speak.
HILDEGARD.
I cannot say it—I cannot strive to say.
ROSAMUND.
Thou shalt. Are all we not fast bound in love—
My lord and thine, my maiden and her queen,
A fourfold chain of faith twice linked of love?
Speak: let not shame find place where shame is none. ”

“ I call him a foolish fugitive, because he has placed himself in our hands, and through ours in yours, sheltering himself under our gray hair and our Priesthood (for which you have often professed your veneration) as if it were under some Imperial Image. See, this sacrificing and unbloodstained hand leads this man to you; a hand which has written often in your praise, and will I am sure write yet more, if God continue your term of government—yours, I mean, and that of your colleague Themis. ”

“ The tale which I have based upon several such historical instances in real life endeavours briefly to hint at the modes of feeling likely to accompany such a relapse into barbarism in an essentially fine and sensitive savage nature. To most European readers, no doubt, such a sheer fall from the pinnacle of civilization to the nethermost abysses of savagery, would seem to call for the display of no other emotion than pure disgust and aversion ”

“ Send not these savage messengers into the world, to feast upon it and to prey upon reality. For they will bring you word of bones and skin and flesh. They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such things are beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. ”

“ The dark forms of the savages crowded the door-way, their eyes glared madly at us, and their painted features working into a hundred malignant and fiendish expressions, which, together with their horrid yells, and the more heart-rending cries of women and children, all formed a scene of the most harrowing description. ”

“ But when the crisis is over he takes his revenge, swaggering as the breadwinner, and speaking of Woman's "sphere" with condescension, even with chivalry, as if the kitchen and the nursery were less important than the office in the city. When his swagger is exhausted he drivels into erotic poetry or sentimental uxoriousness ”

“ Our animal spirits have so decreased that we take little pleasure in the rough-and-tumble exploits of a Scapin or a Sbrigani, beatings and clysters, vulgar exhibitions, and above all in the brutal harshness of the often cruel vigor that is directed against weak and strong alike, sparing neither age nor infirmity, nor anything deserving of pity. ”