Scold

“ The brank or scold’s bridle was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit. ”

“ It is easy to scold, hard alike to salve and save; [Pg 180] but the salving and saving must be done. The scolding has been coming to some for a long, long time; particularly to self-nominated lay reformers, and “uplifters,” who mostly reform and uplift after the fashion the frog jumped out of the slime-coated well, which is to say: farther down to slime at every attempted leap to light. ”

“ It has been suggested that probably the woman, who became so violent that this punishment was thought necessary, was suffering from some kind of excited brain; it is also possible that domestic misfortunes may have ruined a woman’s temper, a bodily pain, or excessive work.357 When life is easy, and there are no vexations or sufferings, there are few scolds. In the year 1640, or thereabouts, one, John Willis, deposed that he had seen a scold driven through the streets of Newcastle with a brank upon her head. ”

“ These are what we commonly call Scolds, who imitate the Animals of which they were taken, that are always busy and barking, that snarl at every one who comes in their Way, and live in perpetual Clamour. ”

“ Mock, deride, jeer, scoff at. Scoff, v. n. Mock, jeer, jibe, sneer. Scoff, n. 1. Sneer, jibe, jeer, taunt, flout, biting jest. 2. Derision, ridicule, mockery, raillery, scoffing, jeering. Scoffer, n. Scorner, mocker, ridiculer, railer, derider, despiser, jeerer. Scold, v. a. Berate, rate, censure, reprimand, blame, chide, scold at, BLOW UP. Scold, n. Vixen, shrew, termagant. Scold at, Rebuke, chide, reprimand, reprove, censure, condemn, denounce, blame, declaim against, inveigh against, exclaim against, rail at. Scolding, a. Chiding, berating, abusive, vituperative. ”

“ It will be noted that the brank is universally spoken of as a punishment for women; but men also were sentenced to wear it—paupers, blasphemers, railers.
I am glad John Winthrop and John Carver did not bring cumbrous and cruel iron branks to America. There are plenty of other ways to shut a woman’s mouth and to still her tongue, as all sensible men know; on every hand, if gossips were found, a simple machine could be shaped, one far simpler than a scold’s bridle. A cleft stick pinched on the tongue was as temporarily efficacious as the iron machine, and could be speedily put in use. ”

“ The ducking-stool was not always an effectual punishment. It appears from the records of the King's Bench that in the year 1681 Mrs. Finch, a notorious scold, who had been thrice ducked for scolding, was a fourth time sentenced for the same offence, and sentenced to be fined and imprisoned. Other measures were occasionally taken which were deemed safer, but which were hardly less cruel. The "branks," or bridle, for gossips and scolds, was often preferred to the ducking-stool, which endangered the health, and, moreover, gave the culprit's tongue free play between each dip. ”

“ Would I were a worm, that I might creep into the earth, and thatch my habitation with a single straw; or rather a wasp or a viper, that I might make the rascally world feel my resentment. But why do I talk of rascality? folly, folly, is the scourge of life! Give me a scoundrel, so he be a sensible one, and I will put him in my heart of hearts! but a fool is more mischievous than famine, pestilence, and war. The idiotical hag that writes, or causes to be writ, this same letter, has ruined her family, and broke her husband's heart, by ignorance and mismanagement ”

“ In some the scowl is very pronounced, and in one he looks not unlike a professional prize-fighter. They betray a mind jaundiced, but defiant. A restless, fiery soul, his temper, never of the best, had grown daily more gnarled and perverse. ”

“ No; by all the ingratitude which I have repaid—by all the wrongs which I have sustained—by my imprisonment, my stripes, my chains, I will wrestle down my feelings of rebellious humanity—I will not be the fool I have been, to swerve from my principles whenever there was an appeal, forsooth, to my feelings, as if I, towards whom none show sympathy, ought to have sympathy with any one. ”

“ If we are doomed to die"———
"For God's sake," said Ellieslaw, "spare us your folly at present, Mareschal."
"Well, then," said his kinsman, "I'll bestow my wisdom upon you instead, such as it is. If we have gone forward like fools, do not let us go back like cowards. We have done enough to draw upon us both the suspicion and vengeance of the government; do not let us give up before we have done something to deserve it.—What, will no one speak? ”

“ The throng swept by, and caught her in its swirl;
There was no lip to soothe the sobbing girl,
No kindliness to aid her. A great fear
Clutched at her breast; she knew the stabbing jeer,
The pitiless blows that waited her when she
Told the ill outcome of her errandry.
Then through her brain there flashed a sudden word
That in the hive-like purlieus she had heard,
And filled her mind with sunshine. No affright
Touched her with chill at thought of death’s dim night,
For she recalled how once the preacher said
That in white lily-gardens walk the dead. ”

“ Slowly, and with a dread which no man might measure, the glances which had just devoured his young but virile countenance passed to that of the father. They did not leave it again. "Son?" With what tenderness he spoke, but with what a ring of desolation. "I understand your effort and appreciate it; but it is a useless one. You cannot deceive these friends of ours—men who have known my life. If you were in the ravine that night, so was I. If you handled John Scoville's stick, so did I, AND AFTER YOU! Let us not struggle for the execration of mankind; let it fall where it rightfully belongs. ”

“ I offer my gage to heaven and hell, and will maintain the combat with him that shall call it true. Thou hast been spellbound by an evil eye, my darling, and the fainting which you call cowardice is the work of magic. ”

“ To the desperate determination of the boy, weakness became as contemptible as crime. What was a man worth who worked from morning until night and yet achieved nothing? Of what account was the farmer whom the crows outwitted and the weather made a mockery? Did not the very crops cry out as they rotted that his father was a fool, and the unploughed land proclaim him a coward? ”

“ What hast thou, or thine, todo with my waking thoughts?"
"Your waking thoughts, sir," said the second of Miss Vere's companions, with a sort of mock gravity, "are fixed, doubtless, upon wisdom; folly can only intrude on your sleeping moments."
"Over thine," retorted the Dwarf, more splenetically than became a philosopher, or hermit, "folly exercises an unlimited empire, asleep or awake."
"Lord bless us!" said the lady, "he's a prophet, sure enough."
"As surely," continued the Recluse, "as thou art a woman—a woman!—I should have said a lady—a fine lady. ”

“ The purpose of life seemed suddenly clear to him, and the large patience of the sky passed into his own nature as he sat facing the white dawn. At rare intervals in the lives of all strenuous souls there comes this sense of kinship with external things—this passionate recognition of the appeal of the dumb world. ”

“ That, as he was certified of the rascally intent of his ambuscade by undoubted intelligence, he would treat him, not with a retaliation of his own treachery, but with such indignity as a scoundrel deserves to suffer, unless he would make one effort to maintain the character he assumed in life. ”

“ The wistful patience in her face, like the look he had seen in the eyes of overworked farm animals, aroused in him a desire to prod her into actual revolt—into any decisive rebellion against fate. To accept life upon its own terms seemed to him, at the instant, pure cowardliness—the enforced submission of a weakened will ”

“ But when I have known that certain scholars were breaking rules and defying authority with malicious perverseness, I have felt more than resentment or anger—I have felt sorrow. When I have seen, as has sometimes happened of late, my boys banding together at night upon street corners, behaving offensively, moving surreptitiously, betraying by unmistakeable signs that they were engaged in stealthy and secret purposes, my alarm and distress has overcome both anger and sorrow. ”

“ No more men on the earth after me, ye Powers! To you the question may be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of your aërial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness—the deep, deep pain—of that bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... ”

“ The two friends cast a look in the direction of the wood that sufficiently expressed their sentiments toward the scoundrel who had gained his freedom by such base means, while their hearts were stirred with feelings of deepest compassion for the poor devil whom he had made his victim, a guzzler and a toper, who certainly did not amount to much, but a merry, good-natured fellow all the same, and nobody’s fool. ”

“ The desire was an unwise one, for Elizabeth was in ill health; but the divines were not bold enough to dissuade her. But Clod, the Queen’s fool, was also present, and he had the courage which the others lacked. “Madam,” said he, “Heaven dissuades you, for it is cold and wet; and earth dissuades you, for it is damp and dirty. Heaven dissuades you, too, by this heavenly man, Archbishop Whitgift; and earth dissuades169 you, by me, your fool, Clod, lump of clay as I am. ”

“ Sister Slocum's emotions forbid her saying more. She concludes, and buries her face in her cambric. Then an outpouring of consoling words follow. "He cometh like a thief in the night: His works are full of mystery; truly, He chasteneth; He giveth and taketh away." Such are a few of the sentiments lisped, regrettingly, for the departed.
How vain are the hopes with which we build castles in the air; how strange the motives that impel us to ill-advised acts. We leave untouched the things that call loudest for our energies, and treasure up our little that we may serve that which least concerns us. ”

“ When this villain came to the gate, accused by his own evil conscience, and crying out he had murdered thee, I thought that the pillar of our main aisle had fallen; no more shall a life so precious be exposed to such risks as occur in this border country; no longer shall one beloved and rescued of Heaven hold so low a station in the church as that of a poor sub-prior ”

“ The scoffers are such as walk after their own lusts and serve their own bellies, and the proud such as set God himself at defiance and had a high opinion of themselves; they trampled on God's people, thinking they magnified themselves by vilifying them. ”

“ While I trust that humanity will lead to every effort to assuage suffering and save life, I must also warn you that strict inquisition will soon be made. There is nothing that we resent more bitterly than wrongs to or neglect of such of our wounded as must be left behind."
"It would seem, sir, that you hold me responsible for evils which I cannot prevent."
"No, sir. I only suggest that you employ your whole influence and power to avert future evils. I am offering a word to the wise, I trust. Ah, Scoville, you have news?" ”

“ Also, in a rage, I hanged a poor man for a horse with many other wicked deeds, for whilk I ask my God mercy. It is not marvel I have been wicked, considering the wicked company that ever I have been in, but specially within the seven years by-past, in which I never saw two good men or one good deed, but all kind of wickedness, and vet God would not suffer me to be lost.'—See the whole confession in the State Trials. ”

“ Much have I feared, but am no more afraid, When some chaste beauty by some wretch betrayed, Is drawn away with such distracted speed, That she anticipates a dreadful deed. Not so do I—Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around; Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel; With not a single note the purse supply, And when she begs, let men and maids deny; Be windows there from which she dare not fall, And help so distant, ‘tis in vain to call ”

“ And he said unto me, "This mire slough is such a place as cannot be mended: it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond; for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place. And this is the reason of the badness of the ground.
"It is not the pleasure of the King that this place should remain so bad. ”

“ Show me a living traitor, and here are my hand and my weapon; but when life is out, hatred should not live longer.—But here, I fancy, we come upon the village, where I hope to show you that neither ducking nor disgust have spoiled mine appetite for my breakfast. ”

“ The last that I notice, two very old women, wrapped in swathings of rags, their faces black from the dust of the roads where they prostrate themselves at times, sing one of those plaints broken with long sighs and hiccoughs, which are the professional expressions of despair among these outcasts. ”

“ Are my ears turned rebels, that they deceive me with sounds so extraordinary?—And yet it is no wonder that, having conversed so long with rebellion, they should now force its language upon my understanding. Say I am mistaken, my lords—say, for the honour of yourselves and the Scottish nobility, that my right trusty cousins of Lindesay and Ruthven, two barons of warlike fame and ancient line, have not sought the prison-house of their kind mistress for such a purpose as these words seem to imply. ”

“ I have heard—dreadful thought!—of men who, for various reasons, have been trepanned into the custody of the keepers of private madhouses, and whose brain, after years of misery, became at length unsettled, through irresistible sympathy with the wretched beings among whom they were classed. ”