Sherd

“ Chester said musingly.
"Yes! and he was refined, yet never weak. 'Strength,' he said, 'valor, truth, they are the foundations; better be dead than without them. Yet one can have them, in crude form, and still better be dead. The noble, the humane, the chaste, the beautiful, 'tis with them we build the superstructure, the temple, of life--Mr. Chester, if you knew French I could tell you that better." ”

“ I have shown that our shearing by affliction glorifies God, rewards the Shepherd, and benefits ourselves. I have shown that the Lord measures and tempers our affliction, and sends the trial at the right time. I have shown you in many ways that it will be wise to submit ourselves as the sheep does to the shearer, and that the more completely we do so the better. ”

“ I once wore the Lincoln green, and dwelt in Sherwood with good Robin himself, though I do not tell all the world so. But now let's to bed, good harper, for there will be much to do before the week is over. ”

“ I was much impressed by the silence in the shed; not a sound was to be heard except the click of the shears, and the wool-sorter's decision as he flings the fleece behind him, given in one, or at most two words. I was reminded how touchingly true is that phrase, "Like as a sheep before her shearers is dumb." All the noise is outside ”

“ Then, in the sorrowful pause, the King's Jester stepped softly forward, and the little bells upon his patches rang as he came.
"Sire," said he, "I could tell a remedy more potent than this and less savage."
"Speak, Fool!" said the King.
"Not afore folks," answered the Jester, with a smile.
"They understand not your folly," said the King.
"Ay, but they might, for none can tell [pg 141] when words of wisdom may begin to penetrate dull brains. Clear me the room of these philosophers and the others, and let the maidens begone, for I cannot abide a woman's tears." ”

“ Sherwood leaned toward her, his eyes dark and luminous. "'Fore Heaven, thou art wrong," he said. "Thou dost belong to me."
"What o' my soul?" she asked, softly. "What o' my soul, Sir Romeo? Is that thine, too?"
"Nay," he answered, looking into her face, white from some inward rebellion. "Nay, then, sweetheart, for I think that is God's."
"Then, thou hast left me nothing," she cried, moving away. "Oh!"—throwing out her hands—"hark thee, Master Sherwood. 'Tis a far cry since thou did'st leave me by the steps at sundown. A far, far cry. The world hath had time to change. ”

“ Then the weeping maidens and the ladies-in-waiting passed out in a shimmer of gold color, and crimson, and blue, and rich green; and after them, like a shadow, crept the philosophers in garments of black; and then, with a clash of steel and flashing of wrought armor, went the knights-at-arms, and the presence chamber was empty, save for the King on the throne and the Jester, who stood before him in the posture of the philosophers, with folded arms and head bent low.
"Sire," said the Fool, "when women grow wise"—
"The kingdom is lost," said his Majesty. "Little enough comfort is there now." ”

“ Let a foundation be made; let walls arise; let lecturers come. Naught save a university curriculum will avail now to dull the wits and divert the minds and check the thought of women."
"In truth you have a pretty wit," said the King, and he smiled. "But who will take charge of this undertaking and plan me the work that it may avail?"
"I," said the Jester. "Who else? Cap and gown would become me well, and though the King may lose his fool, he will gain My Lord Rector, who will speak bravely in the Latin tongue." ”

“ Come, hear, hear, hear! To-day I speak, and to-morrow I may not: 'tis the chance of a lifetime, and not to be overlooked. Come, hear, hear, hear!"
Now with the rattling of the bags, and the rattling of the man's voice, many people came running hither: squire and 'prentice and count, marchioness and merchant's lady, and the cook from the castle, all hurrying toward the empty sound. Soon a great crowd was gathered, of men and of maidens, of women with white wimples and folded kerchiefs, and of little girls with yellow hair. ”

“ A Shepherd may be as Easy in a Cottage, as a Prince in a Palace, with a Mind Suited to his Station, but if they will be Launching out into Trade, or Bus'ness that they do not understand, they have nothing left them to trust to when they are once Bewilder'd, but the Hope of some Kind Providence to put them in the Right Way Home again. ”

“ As soon as the King was dressed the Shepherd was again brought before him; but he was more angry than ever to think the wild boars had not torn the man to bits, and he said:
"Well, you have learned what it feels to be near ten deaths, now say 'To my good health'!"
But the shepherd broke in with:
"I do not fear a hundred deaths; and I will only say it if I may have the Princess for my wife."
"Then go to a hundred deaths!" roared the King, and ordered the Shepherd to be thrown down the deep vault of scythes. ”

“ There is not a milk-maid, a plough-boy, or a shepherd, of the Lowlands of Scotland, who has not by heart its favourite passages, and can rehearse its entire scenes. There are many of its couplets that, like the verses of Homer, are become proverbial, and have the force of an adage, when introduced in familiar writing, or in ordinary conversation. ”

“ Life went on quietly in the city by the sea. In the gray mornings count and countess talked amicably together in their great hall, and wool-carder and his wife gossiped cheerily as they rolled and carded the white fleece ”

“ Nevertheless, this Sherry is a force to be reckoned with; he is a monster of our creation, and we must treat him well or he will get the better of us, poor Frankensteins that we are. So, then, we cannot blame the wine merchant for writing the creature up, and allowing his imagination to get the better of his veracity or his professional zeal to top his individual integrity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sherer, a Magyar of German extraction, who had successively exercised and failed in the various callings of shoemaker and barber, and who had become a surgeon by dint of great boldness, and by the grace of a rich widow, who had lent him money to pay for his diploma, was deserving of any thing but indignation. ”

“ So it was not long before a tall man in drab went running through the narrow streets on the outskirts of the town, crying and wringing his hands, and the rattling bags of rose [pg 66] color, and purple, and gold were gone from his neck.
"Oh, my vocabulary!" he wailed. "Oh, my bags, my bags, my bags! What am I but a man undone without my bag of adjectives!" ”

“ And he that will Sacrifice all Those Blessings to a Restless Appetite, deserves to be Miserable. Our Shepherd’s Case, in short here, is every Man's Case that Quits a Moral Certainty for an Uncertainty, and Leaps from the Honest Bus'ness he was brought up to, into a Trade he has no Skill in. ”

“ And the squaw rose up and screamed too—something Master Sherry couldn't understand, but that drove terror to the white boy and lent him wings. "Run! run!" he cried as he seized Sherry by the hand, and, hardly knowing where they were going, back went both youngsters tearing like mad down the tortuous trail. ”

“ There were women in velvet and in satin, [pg 59] women in homespun and in blue jean, even women in rags; and there were maidens as many and as lovely as the leaves upon the maple tree when it turns to rosy color in the fall, maidens dull or bright of hair as the case might be, but always bright of eye and of cheek. Far and near they gathered, crowding close together; many stood on bench or on counter, straining white necks forward; and all the windows that looked upon the market were crowded with fair faces. Presently, with long and pensive stride, came the lean man in drab ”

“ Killed most on 'em off, 'cause, havin' nothin' to wag, visitin' people couldn't tell whether they was goin' to bite, or be pleased. Some time ago, a travelin' school-teacher giv' him a plaguy Latin name, but we call him Shed, for short. He knows, just as well as you and I, that he 's in the wrong, latterly, and as soon as you look at him, or touch where the tail ought ter be, he hides and howls. He 's sensitive as a human. ”

“ You will plague many a lonely herdsman in mountain glades, when you come on herds and thick-fleeced sheep, and have a hankering after flesh. But come now, if you would not sleep your last and latest sleep, get out of your cradle, you comrade of dark night. ”

“ THE SHEEP THAT WERE NOT FED I "Of late years," the novel of Shirley begins, "an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England; they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good." ”

“ There's five-and-thirty shearers here a-shearing for the loot,
So stir yourselves, you penners-up, and shove the sheep along --
The musterers are fetching them a hundred thousand strong --
And make your collie dogs speak up ”

“ Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in on their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing them to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. ”

“ Shelby, on the Mississippi river, October 20th, 1839.
Why do I stand so silently,
With folded arms and tearful eye?
Hour after hour thus I spend,
Immers’d in thoughts which know no end.
It was not thus in days gone by,
When heart and hands found full employ,
When earth’s attachments warm’d my breast,
And earth’s engagements shared my rest. ”

“ Her step had the quick movement of a dweller in cities, not the slow pace of those who linger along country roads, keeping step with nature. In the cut and fashion of her gown was evinced a sophistication, and a high seriousness, possibly not her own. ”

“ The ‘Hireling Shepherd’ comes nearest, but the preacher, following his own sheep, has strayed into alien corn, and on cliffs from which is ebbing a tide of nonconformist conscience. Like his own hireling shepherd, too, he has mistaken a phenomenon of nature for a sermon. ”

“ And then rose the sound through the livelong day
Of the constant clash that the shear-blades make
When the fastest shearers are making play;
But there wasn't a man in the shearers' lines
That could shear a sheep with the two Devines. ”

“ The shearer, who was quite a young man, sat upon a box close to the drive, and when he received a sheep it was always the same way—between his knees—and he commenced and finished the shearing of each animal exactly the same way, every clip of the large shears counting to the best advantage. ”

“ Now the Lord whose sheep the Herd-boy looked after had a very lovely daughter, who always smiled and nodded to the youth when she walked with her father in his fields. For a long time the Herd-boy had made up his mind to prepare a surprise for this beautiful creature on her birthday. So when the day approached he put on his invisible belt, took a sack of gold pieces with him, and slipping into her room in the middle of the night, he placed the bag of gold beside her bed and returned to his sheep. ”

“ I wish to cultivate the earth, because Mr. Sherwood says the most respectable men in the world are farmers; and Andrew, mad as fury, comes and drives me away. Suppose I do spoil some of his stupid cabbages ”

“ In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. ”

“ The monk was certainly not in the house any longer, and there were no footprints in the snow outside the house.
“Did he fly away?” asked Sherry in perplexity.
[158]
Justice jumped up with a great exclamation. “The secret passage!” he shouted, “he’s gone down the secret passage!”
They flew back inside the house to the stair landing, half expecting to find it standing open, but it was closed and looked perfectly natural. Sherry grasped the post, the landing slid out and the four went down the ladder. Justice gave a triumphant exclamation when he reached the bottom. ”

“ The shearers are paid by the number of sheep they shear, and they work very fast, every man trying to see if he cannot be the "ringer," as they call the man who has sheared the greatest number of sheep at the close of the shearing. ”

“ The founder of his family lies embalmed in some splendid sarcophagus of Spain, same vinous vat of Xeres; and no man living, no, nor his grandfather neither, remembers when he was born—nor so much as when he was crowned. ”

“ You'd better take him in the shed
And start him shearing straight ahead;
He's one of these here quiet men.
"He never strikes -- that ain't his game;
No matter what the others try
He goes on shearing just the same. ”

“ Chester—Chester—yes, I should think so. A fellow that reads like a minister and writes like a clerk; he is a perfect nuisance in the ward. You have no idea what mischief he does with his gentlemanly airs. ”

“ Chester in farther explanation, “those who seem best fitted for certain lines of work are given opportunity to carry out their tastes and efforts in that direction, varying it during leisure moments with whatever diversion appeals to them or a different kind of work, if they choose, which latter they very often do. ”

“ Then a flame of anger shone out in the lad's face, and he waited.
[pg 199] "My son," said the Bishop tenderly, "thou art young and ignorant, yet will I try to teach thee something of right ways of thought. In judging, all depends upon the point of view, and matters that look often black at first statement grow white or gray when thoroughly understood. Let us look upon this question in another aspect. Dost see yonder great cathedral rising?" ”