Sill

“ Silly people never do understand!
Now that night a strange thing happened to Silly Will. I can’t explain how or why it happened. But in the middle of the night, all the animals did leave Silly Will. Not only the cow and the sheep and the horse but all the animal kingdom! He was sound asleep in his flannel nightgown snuggled under warm wool blankets. Suddenly he felt a jerk. What was happening? He sat up in bed just in time to see his blankets whisk off him and disappear. He looked down. His night shirt was gone! He heard a faint sound almost like the bleating of the old woman’s sheep. ”

“ "Oh, silly woman! Leave your stove, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the river in the distance!" ”

“ Bushes grew up level with the sills of the vacant downstairs windows. Trees on either side and beyond the house extended trailing branches down over the roof. A shutter hung by one hinge from an upstairs window, and banged with every passing gust of wind. ”

“ But now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and difficulties could be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little and talk about the child, and words of interest were always ready for him: "Ah, Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon and easy!"—or, "Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take up with a little un like that: but I reckon the weaving makes you handier than men as do out-door work—you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning." ”

“ I tell you, Silas, folks are too busy.
SILAS: Too busy!' Too busy bein' nothin'? If it's true that we created ourselves out of the thoughts that came, then thought is not something outside the business of life. Thought— (with his gift for wonder) why, thought's our chance. I know now. Why I can't forget the Indians. We killed their joy before we killed them. We made them less, (to FEJEVARY, and as if sure he is now making it clear) I got to give it back—their hill. ”

“ Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works follow them. [23] 14 And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ”

“ Frown above the waterfalls
⁠Silver and cold;
⁠Timelessly old:
⁠Not that way.
Not toward Death, who, stranger, fairer,
Than any siren turns his head—
Than sea-couched siren, arched with rain-bows,
Where knell the waves of her ocean bed. ”

“ Let any one of these wonderful children—wonderful as you thought Sisty himself—stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its body thinner and thinner—Eh, Mr Squills?—till the mind take all nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly the mind. ”

“ Moving with extreme caution, I clasped the spire in my arms—I slid down inch by inch. The cold sweat poured off my brow, and the blood curdling in my veins, rushed back in thick and suffocating throbs upon my heart. I grasped the steeple tighter in my agony—my nails were clenched in the wood—but in vain; slip—slip—the steeple enlarged as I descended—my hold relaxed—the flat palms of my hands pressed the sides, as I slid down with frightful rapidity. ”

“ Direach sin, it was a fine day I started to drive the back-calvers and stots, and the sun red wi' a fine-weather haze, and the roads hard and dry, and it was maybe two hours I was on the road and the beasts settled, when there came a woman on the road and a shawl about her head, and I kent her for a devil's black bairn that could be telling her ain folk when the rain would come in the harvest, and when the butter would come on at the kirning. ”

“ Ay, bodies and beasts I have seen the good words working a cure on, but wae's me, Hamish, I will never be hearing the cuckoo again. I am loath to part wi' this bonny place, calm and peaceful for a body's old age, and I will be missing the fine smell of the grass when it will be newly cut, and the clink of the stones on the cutting-hooks. ”

“ With masks of glass the night has stained with wine,
Hair lifted like a vine;—
And all the coloured curtains of the air
Were fluttered. Passing there,
The sounds seemed warring suns; and music flowed
As blood; the mask’d lamps showed
Tall houses light had gilded like despair:
Black windows, gaping there.{92}
Through all the rainbow spaces of our laughter
Those pageants followed after ”

“ Men who had lain together in the darkness and silence, keeping themselves alive by the water which seeped from the rocks overhead, taking turns lying face upwards where the drops fell, or wetting pieces of their clothing and sucking out the moisture! ”

“ Station.
* * * A silo is a place where fodder is preserved in a succulent condition. It may be a pit, a box, a mow, a tank, a building, or a trench in the earth. Silage is the word denoting the fodder so preserved. Ensilage is the term applied to the process or system. Ensile is the verb expressive of the action of making silage. Ensilor stands for the person using the silo to ensile fodder for silage by the process of ensilage. ”

“ Look, Silas, look! crimson flowers are already peeping red through the greenery of cornfields, drowsy-looking cows are wading knee-deep in grass and buttercups, the braelands are snowed over with the gowan’s bloom. Birds are singing in meadow and copse, the yellow furze is blossoming on heathy moorlands. Great black spruces raise their tall heads skywards, and their every branch is tipped with a tassel of tender green; rowan-trees seem studded with roses of a pearly hue, and the feathery larches are hung round with a fringe-work of darkest crimson. Is it not glorious, Silas? ”

“ Now, sisters, go to forthwith and get you an acre of land, and get, the Bishops and the brethren to fence it, and prepare it for the reception of the trees, and go and help them; but, be sure to wear a wide brimmed hat while doing it, so as not to get tanned with the sun and the wind. Go to and raise silk. You can do it, and those who cannot set themselves to work we will set them to work gathering straw, and making straw hats and straw bonnets; we will set others to gathering willows, and others to making baskets ”

“ It may seem a very nice thing for a child or young person to be placed near a frame and have nothing to do but knot the threads of silk as they break; but, if we take into consideration that they are to remain close by that frame for twelve hours per day, and never sit down, our astonishment at the great number of silk mill cripples will vanish. ”

“ SILAS: There's other land for my own children. This is for all the children.
GRANDMOTHER: What's all the children to you?
SILAS: (derisively) Oh, mother—what a thing for you to say! You who were never too tired to give up your own bed so the stranger could have a better bed.
GRANDMOTHER: That was different. They was folks on their way.
FEJEVARY: So are we.
(SILAS turns to him with quick appreciation.)
GRANDMOTHER: That's just talk. We're settled now. Children of other old settlers are getting rich. I should think you'd want yours to.
SILAS: I want other things more. ”

“ SILAS: A day in the hayfield is a day's hayin'—but a night on the hill—
FELIX: We don't have them often, do we, Uncle Silas?
SILAS: I wouldn't 'a' had that one but for your father, Felix. Thank God they drove you out o' Hungary! And it's all so dog-gone queer. Ain't it queer how things blow from mind to mind—like seeds. Lord A'mighty—you don't know where they'll take hold. ”

“ He allowed him no other nourishment than salt herrings; the torments of thirst soon drove the poor wretch to the verge of insanity, and he vainly sought relief by licking the moisture impregnated with saltpetre from the walls of his dungeon. ”

“ In autumn, when the leaves have fallen, you may sometimes see skeins of silk and hanks of thread hanging about the starling's nest, but so woven up and entangled in it that they are good for nothing. Now, boys, before this [Pg 210] country was settled by people from Europe, where do you suppose the starling got silk and thread for his nest?"
"Why, Uncle Philip, are you sure he got them at all?"
"A very sensible question, boys. When you are asked why a thing is so, it is always well, first to be satisfied that it is so, before you begin to look for a reason. ”

“ So, Silvy, if you prefer a life of idleness and ease to living with me in the forest, I must say good-bye to you."
"But there is nothing to hurt us, my dear Nimble—no racoons, no foxes, nor hawks, nor owls, nor weasels; if I see any hungry-looking birds or beasts, I have a safe place to run to, and never need be hungry!" ”

“ Only, still the sleeplessness, no rest, no shutting of the eyelid, but tossings till the morning, and not poppy nor mandragoras shall medicine me now, I think. Oh, Percival, how happy is the obscure good man, the upright heart and pure, kept unspotted from the world! Down yonder in Ritching parish my garden grew wild, the vicarage was holey and ruined, but very pretty, very homely, and ever for me there was one sweetest, secret cruse of water from Siloa's brook, and my morsel of dry bread was like coriander seed, man, I tell you, and the taste of it like wafers made with honey. ”

“ Now far behind me is left the gardens' and hedges' sure escort, Every trace of man's hand also remains far behind. Only the matter I see piled up, whence life has its issue, And the raw mass of basalt waits for a fashioning hand. ”

“ There is faith in the plowing of each furrow, faith in the sowing of the seed, faith in the planting of each tree, and faith in the purchase of each machine. The farmer who builds a silo has faith that the products of the summer will bring joy and health to the winter. ”

“ Silas was in the chair, formal as a funeral.
“The idear, as I understand it,” says Silas, when the meeting was open, “is to get some Charity going. We’d ought to organize.”
“And then what?” asks Mis’ Toplady.
“Why, commence distributin’ duds and victuals,” says Silas.
“Well-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, “and keep on distributing them all our lives?”{32}
“Sure,” says Silas, “unless you’re goin’ to be weary in well-doing. Them folks’ll keep right on being hungry and nekked as long as they live.”
“Why will they?” says Mis’ Toplady, puzzled.
“Well, they’re poor folks, ain’t they?” says Silas, scowling. ”

“ Stream could not so perversely wind
But corn of Guy's was there to grind:
The siroc found it on its way,
To speed his sails, to dry his hay;
And the world's sun seemed to rise
To drudge all day for Guy the wise. ”

“ When I told him about breaking in from the moor, he hummed and hawed and gloomed at me. "This will mean the less sheep," says he.
"There's a wean coming," said I, and felt the blood rise in my face to be saying it. "Has he to be put in the heather, and die maybe in a sheuch like a braxy ewe."
"Tut," says he, his colour rising a bit; "these are no words to be in the mouth of a boy," but I kent I had him on the soft side. "A man must be dacent to his ain blood," said he, and that was the last of it. ”

“ In the early ages of the world, we know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity. ”

“ I should jest as soon take up a handful of this sile and treasure it up and try to see how it come to nourish so sweet a life as I would to grope back amongst the dust of them old Poltroons. Though to be sure it is nateral that a posy should strike some clingin’ roots down into the sile it grew on, it is nater and can’t be helped. ”

“ For an actual breathing woman of flesh and blood to carry water in a real ordinary sieve of rush-fibres, or linen thread or horsehair or metal wire, in such a sieve as pastry-cooks use to sift their finest flour; for that to happen in broad daylight under the open sky before a crowd of onlookers, that requires the special intervention of the blessed gods, or of the most powerful of them. ”

“ To teach him how to build a load of hay——"
"I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself."
"He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books. ”

“ And there are wines, and opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and bivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients. I will be restless and turbulent in my territories: and again, I will be languishing and fond. I will say to my soul: "Be Full."'
I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in a test-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle. ”

“ I asked, apprehensively. "He must be a very energetic person. Do tell me about it. What are 'little 'uns'?"
I must confess to a degree of perplexity when the the whole family burst into further roars of laughter at my simple question.
"Scud energetic? Why, he is the easiest, the slowest, the sleepiest, the most lovable, good-natured fellow on the whole coast. He makes the surest and perhaps the best living of any of the fishermen around here. If he didn't get up early he wouldn't do even that. As it is, Salt does most of the work. Salt is his oldest boy," explained my cousin. ”