Scouring

“ Piece Dyeing Machines.--Wherever it is possible it is far more preferable to dye textile fabrics in the form of woven pieces rather than in the yarn from which they are woven. During the process of weaving it is quite impossible to avoid the material getting dirty and somewhat greasy, and the operations of scouring necessary to remove this dirt and grease has an impairing action on the colour if dyed yarns have been used in weaving it. ”

“ In vain he entreated them not to kill themselves, and assured them that heaven would be satisfied, and that human nature could not endure beyond a certain point. No answer but the loud sound of the scourges, which are many of them of iron, with sharp points that enter the flesh. ”

“ Who set our hands to the toiling, our feet in the field of strife?
Darkly they mused, predestined to knowledge of viewless things,
Sowing the seed of wisdom, guarding the living springs.
Little they reckoned privation, hunger or hardship or cold,
If only the life might prosper, and the joy that grows not old.
With sorceries subtler than music, with knowledge older than speech,
Gentle as wind in the wheat-field, strong as the tide on the beach,
Out of their beauty and longing, out of their raptures and tears,
In patience and pride they bore us, to war with the warring years. ”

“ This agony, and not the love I bear thee, is the work of sorcery. It is a forgery—I will never believe it; and yet her signature is there! and after trial, when torture, shame, and agony were past, what could bring forth an avowal such as this? Oh, what but remorse for deceiving one who had loved thee so well! The mother of fiends! she so good, so charitable, so religious, who never missed a mass or festival. I shudder and laugh at the same moment! A sorceress—Jane .... where is the Jane I loved—the good and gentle? ”

“ When he lays the lashes of the scourge on his flesh—it may be on his carious bones—he does it not for his own sins alone, but for the sins of the whole world; and in his searching, self-imposed humiliations, there is a silent, broad out-reaching of sympathetic effort in behalf of all his kind. Sorrow may not depict itself freely on his face. If a suffering invalid, he must manifest no interest in the progress of his malady, feel no concern regarding the result. ”

“ I am lost, spelled; the victim of sorcery I cannot fight against. What am I to do, what am I to do? Surely I can keep my steps from going near her. If I were to swear now that I will never set eyes on her more? ”

“ A sorcerer, I would remind you, is one who knowingly employs a devilish art, or devilish arts, for the attainment of a certain object. Well, these two persons, the man and the woman, I find to be sorcerers both in intention and in fact; the man because, as the evidence states, he gave to this woman the balm of the Witches’ Sabbath, and made his visage like unto Lucifer so as to obtain money from her and the satisfaction of his wanton desires. And the woman also I find to be a sorceress because she submitted herself to the man, taking him for a devil and abandoning herself to his will. ”

“ When the overflowing scourge shall pass through our country, and others shall fall under it, yet it shall not come to us, not reach us, though it extend far, not bear us down, though it is an overflowing scourge." It is the greatest folly imaginable for impenitent sinners to think that either in this world or the other they shall fare better than their neighbours. ”

“ Such was the scorn that fill'd the sage's mind,
Renew'd at every glance on human kind. 70
How just that scorn, e'er yet thy voice declare,
Search every state, and canvass every prayer.
Unnumber'd suppliants crowd Preferment's gate,
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great;
Delusive Fortune hears the incessant call,
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.
On every stage the foes of peace attend,
Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. ”

“ Because, although your outer man is clad in this world's uniform, your hearts are of the livery colours of hell; you are students of sorcery, and no later than to-morrow you are to conjure in your strength. ”

“ But let some chosen and determined men be within call, for should I find him hardened and obdurate, he must forthwith be led out to suffer for his foul sorcery. Meanwhile let all be quiet, let no sound be uttered, until I shall be heard to pronounce, in a loud voice, this terrible malison, ‘Body and soul, to the flames I doom thee!’ Then let them up without delay on him, and he shall be straightway overcome. ”

“ The scourge has left a sad void between friends living and friends gone to eternal rest. Familiar faces pass us on the street, only to remind us of familiar faces passed away forever. The city is astir again. ”

“ I feel no reluctance, my friends to be thus explicit. Time was, when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude, from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would still have maintained their place in my heart, had not my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we ought not to disclose, it is criminal to harbour. ”

“ The victim, however, is not to be terrified out of his senses. What are his enemy's fires and incantations to him? He takes no notice, and continues to live on as though there was not a sorcerer in the world. But that smoke: it meets his eye the first object every morning. That ruddy glare: it is the last thing he sees at night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I said; "I have something else to think about. Listen; if you are ever unlucky enough to tell a single soul of what has happened, I will strangle you."
"Alas! sir, what am I to do?" he replied with a mixture of innocence and malice. "The sorcerer said I was to tell my parents." ”

“ The sorcerer answered: “I want to find out whether you know anything about those three doves that used to bathe in my brother’s pond.”
“Of course I know about them, for I have been driving them before me. They are bathing in the Red Sea now.”
The sorcerer said: “You must take up this man and carry him as far as their gold-roofed palace,” and he took the lad aside and whispered in his ear:
“When the devil asks you how quick he is to take you, if he says: ‘As quickly as the wind blows?’ say ‘No’; and if he says, ‘As quickly as the step goes?’ say ‘No’ again. ”

“ I remarked, in a tone of tender sympathy; “tell me what you would of me, and if it be in my power——“
“If it be in your power!” the young lady said, quickly; “why, nothing is more easy, sir.”
“Explain yourself, madam.”
“Well, sir, I wish to be avenged.”
“In what way?”
“How, you know better than I, sir; must I teach you? You have in your power means to——“
“I, madam?”
“Yes, sir, you! for you are a sorcerer, and cannot deny it.”
At this word sorcerer, I was much inclined to laugh; but I was restrained by the incognita’s evident emotion. ”

“ Evil tidings are a terror and vexation to scorners, but he whose heart is fixed, trusting in God, is not afraid of them; whereas, when the overflowing scourge comes, then all the comforts and confidences of scorners fail them, v. 20. (1.) That in which they thought to repose themselves reaches not to the length of their expectations: The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself upon it, so that he is forced to cramp and contract himself. ”

“ Oh, we can easily find a pretext. After all, this poor man did not ill-use himself in this outrageous way. Some human hand was on the handle of that scourge, if indeed it was a scourge which inflicted the injuries. ”

“ And perhaps it is for the best that you should not know where to seek her, for hers is a wondrous sorcery, and it might be a fatal snare: if it is such a delight of the eyes to me, what might it be to you? It is not well to see anything of a mere human earthly charm so glorious as that. ”

“ Or if, on the other hand, I force my sense to admit what all sober men must reject; if I unschool myself to believe that in what I have just experienced there is no mental illusion; that sorcery is a fact, and a demon world has gates which open to a key that a mortal can forge,—who but a saint would not shrink from the practice of powers by which each passing thought of ill might find in a fiend its abettor? ”

“ A mind that is balked of a great desire, turns on itself like a scorpion. But it did not help my search to picture scenes in which she might be the victim, scenes going on even at that moment and just around the corner perhaps. ”

“ After a circular and startled glance, as of a man waking up abruptly to the sense of danger, he would throw himself back, and under the downward gaze of the old sorcerer take up, wide-eyed, the slender thread of his dream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because, possibly, the image may come into palpable form! I know, while I speak to thee, that this miserable man is calling to his aid the evil sorcery over which he boasts his control. To gain the end he desires, he must pass through a crime. Sorcery whispers to him how to pass through it, secure from the detection of man. The soul resists, but in resisting, is weak against the tyranny of the mind to which it has submitted so long. ”

“ Beneath the scourge, what is there that cannot be wrung from the lips of the sufferer? His agony is over-whelming, and he seeks to escape by speaking falsely. The officials profit by the opportunity, and cause him to say what will best confirm his guilt. ”

“ I noticed one hard-favored fellow, who made a terrible noise, and upon whose features, as he turned the whites of his big eyes up toward heaven, there was a sinister, and, now and then, rather a comical expression, and who, when called to assist in filling up, appeared to throw on the earth, as if he did it from the heart. ”

“ The day was hot enough to overcome a man merely standing that length of time in the sun, and this was going on in the full blaze of it. However, they had a pair of scourgers, who gave each other spell and spell about, and they were bespattered with blood like a couple of butchers. ”

“ Now, though I desire to mention a circumstance which took place at that time, I am in doubt whether to do so or not, lest if it should be looked upon as unimportant, it may appear to take off from the enormity of these great iniquities; but even if it is unimportant in itself, it is nevertheless an indication of no trifling wickedness of disposition. There are different kinds of scourges used in the city, distinguished with reference to the deserts or crimes of those who are about to be scourged. ”

“ The paths in which you tread are dangerous. You are striving to raise the papistical candlestick which Heaven in its justice removed out of its place—to bring back to this hall of sorceries those very sinners who are bewitched with them. ”

“ And after the scourging, after the wild beasts, after the scorching, at last she was placed in a basket, and thrown to a bull; and died, after having been much tossed about by the animal, having no feeling of her sufferings, through her hope and hold of those things which she believed, and her converse with Christ; even the heathen themselves confessing, that no woman ever among them bore such and so numerous tortures. ”

“ The old sorcerer has never given false information, and the language of birds never deceives. Hasten to the river, and let the maiden dry your tears of longing." This gave the young man courage, for he reflected, "Nothing worse can befall me but death, and death is easier than constant weeping." ”

“ Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test—some, it is said, die under it—you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. ”

“ In fine, you have been a constant scourge to the old lecher, and often a terror to the young: you have made concupiscence its own punishment, and extinguished lust with lust, like blowing up of houses to stop the fire. ”

“ The practice of ‘scrying,’ ‘peeping,’ or ‘crystal-gazing,’ has been revived in recent years, and is, perhaps, the only ‘occult’ diversion which may be free from psychological or physical risk, and which it is easy not to mix with superstition. The antiquity and world-wide diffusion of scrying, in one form or other, interests the student of human nature. Meanwhile the comparatively few persons who can see pictures in a clear depth, may be as innocently employed while so doing, as if they were watching the clouds, or the embers. ”

“ When the scourge has spent itself and the minds of the living have become calm again, the relatives of those who have not been burned begin to reflect upon the awful fate that has overtaken the departed souls. ”

“ Every Passion gives a particular Cast to the Countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some Feature or other. I have seen an Eye curse for half an Hour together, and an Eye-brow call a Man Scoundrel. Nothing is more common than for Lovers to complain, resent, languish, despair, and die in dumb Show. ”