Stricture

“ We have but one more process to undergo, and the attendant already stands at the head of our couch. This is the course of passive gymnastics, which excites so much alarm and resistance in the ignorant Franks. It is only resistance that is dangerous, completely neutralizing the enjoyment of the process. Give yourself with a blind submission into the arms of the brown Fate, and he will lead you to new chambers of delight. ”

“ As a past participle of strike, archaic in England, except when there is an implication in it of misfortune; as, “He was stricken with paralysis.” In the United States stricken, in general application, [204] is not so distinctly archaic, and its use in reference to the erasure of words is very frequent; as, “It is ordered that the words objected to be stricken out.” In the best literary usage of both countries struck is preferred to stricken when no implication of misfortune is conveyed in it. Stricken is the appropriate participial adjective; as, “a stricken man” ”

“ In fact, in a country without not only bolts and bars, but any effective system of law and government, this Spartan severity of discipline seemed the only security against the most frightful disorder. ”

“ And the strongest chains may be broken, the thickest wall pierced through,—steep ramparts have been scaled before now,—and you might one day burst your yoke and be again let loose upon society, like an infuriated beast, marking your passage with murder and destruction; for none would be safe from your Herculean strength, or from the sharpness of your knife ”

“ Doubtless it is to this earthward kinship and compliance with Nature in the savage that we are to ascribe his utter unconsciousness of and indifference to what we call offensive and revolting to the senses, — foul odors, uncleanliness, filth, vermin, parasites, etc. Regarding himself as akin to the elements, the soil, and the creatures around him, the savage did not recognize what we call dirt. Dirt has been well defined as valuable matter out of place. ”

“ In doing this there was at once a collision with the interests of several thousand men who regarded public filth as their own private property. These were the chiffoniers or rag-men, who pick their living from the sweepings from houses piled up in dirt heaps in odd corners. With great pointed baskets on their backs and hooked sticks in their hands, these men, with pale and dirty faces, stray through the streets, and know how to find and utilise many objects in these refuse piles. ”

“ In the one case the dirt is on the inside and is what we may call living dirt, because it is kept alive by the soul to which it is allowed to cling. In the other case the dirt is on the outside, and can be washed off with soap and water. Very [Pg 11] few so-called men or women of the world are willing to appear dirty and slovenly in their bodies,—but a great many are willing to be dirty and slovenly in their souls. ”

“ FRANCISCAN. The settlement of your other crimes will have to take place within yourself. But if you as much as touch a hair on the heads of the children, then you shall learn who is their protector, and you shall feel the iron rod. ”

“ And they went and seized him, and bound him, and came with him, and with all the people that were in his house. And he was asked, "Is this your employment, to seize people and bind them in your house, to kill them, and give them to people to eat?" ”

“ How could any real good, any sure intelligent remedies for all this fearful misery, come out of the minds of such people as these, who were rushing so blindly into revolt? I went into saloons full of dockers and stokers, and out of the low harsh hubbub there the word "strike!" ”

“ If you command them, "Bend before the Most High," they will answer: "If he wants to bend us, let him come himself and do it; we, at least, will not bend of our own accord." And, if you threaten them with his wrath and his punishment, they will take it like being threatened with the bogieman. ”

“ The streets however are nasty.
But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells—crack, crack—crack, crack—what a fuss thou makest!—as if it concerned the good people to be informed, that a man with pale face and clad in black, had the honour to be driven into Paris at nine o'clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin, turned up with red calamanco—crack, crack—crack, crack—crack, crack,—I wish thy whip—
—But 'tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack—crack on. ”

“ Its existence, of course, proves that there is some law of nature which society, as now constituted, violates habitually, just as surely as the corn on the foot, which is an abnormal growth of the processes of life, points to the pressure of the boot. ”

“ One would think that if obliged to pronounce such a doom upon any, he would do it with tears—that he would retire into his closet, and throw ashes upon his head, and come forth in sackcloth, overwhelmed at the hard necessity which compelled the stern decree. ”

“ At one time or another in our lives most of us have been the victim of a social condition called a "strike"—horribly inconvenient circumstances, when the mail-man did not come, for instance, or train service was laid off or the electric light went out for a time. ”

“ The third evening, just at the set of the sun, sped the youngest king on the Sun-horse, sped fast, for he had been delayed somewhat; but as a pool of blood crimsoned the ground before the bridge, he halted, and observing it, exclaimed: It has been some unheard-of criminal who has dared to kill a man in my kingdom.” Scarcely had these words escaped his lips when the seer posted himself before him with drawn sword, vigorously urging him to defend himself for having cast a slur upon the honour of a seer. ”

“ One would have imagined, that the old age of the man, and the youth of the girl, would have made such savage precautions unnecessary. But their master, so far as I could learn, had resolved to sell them in a fit of passion, and the chains perhaps were intended more for punishment than security. ”

“ It was the sort of a room any girl would love to lie in bed and study. But I had other things to do, I remembered, besides wriggling my toes over a nest which had been feathered for some other and some much luckier woman. I was only an intruder there, a usurper whose kingdom of grandeur might turn topsy-turvy at the first touch of a bell or the unannounced opening of a door. ”

“ What were the bodiless creatures of my fancy—the pale phantoms of thought, evoked in the solitude of my chamber, and sometimes even midst the hum of busy streets—have suddenly grown into flesh and blood, living people, protected by the laws of society, and having their legal right to actions for slander in any court. ”

“ Here, then, were human beings, children of our common Father, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, classed with the brutes that perish,—nay, degraded below them, and placed under the surveillance of dogs. The horrors of such a system it is impossible to exaggerate. ”

“ We always give loud warning, as you all know, and afterwards strike; for if we did not do this, few of even the strongest would escape our vengeance. But these pestilent, two-footed beasts—by net, trap, falling stake, pit, or noose—are unceasing in their secret malice, and there is no safety in the plain, bush, or rock-fastness against their wiles. ”

“ Some besmear their bodies with ashes, wear their hair dishevelled and uncombed, and in some instances coiled round the head like a snake or rope. They roam about the country in every direction, visiting especially spots [299] of reputed sanctity, and as a class are the pests of society and incorrigible rogues. ”

“ Dirty faces, dirty clothes, dirty houses,—in fine, dirt all over,—are the characteristics of our people; and yet, bad as they are (from necessity generally) , we know that there are worse effects underneath the surface, for where physical dirt is seen, there also presides moral degradation. ”

“ The constitution by a long series of confinement becomes utterly overthrown, all the solids by frequent swellings, pittings and relaxations are weakened, lyable to every descent of humors, all the hinges of the animal frame are subverted, every animal function is vitiated ”

“ And even though you should slip through the hands of the law—and you can't do that—month by month and year by year you'll fall lower and lower, lying and cheating and flimflamming and bunco-steering and scurrying from one warren to another. ”

“ Such an impression of thickness and duskiness as one still gets from fragments of partition and chamber—such a sense of being well behind something, well out of the daylight and its dangers—of the comfort of the time having been security, and security incarceration! ”

“ But what resistance can we count on from those who have long had the habit of stealing from fancy, cupidity, or a desire to gormandize? What resistance can be hoped for, especially when the habit has begun in youth? ”

“ The population is organised in gentes, called touchoum; and every touchoum incurs joint responsibility for the acts of its members. “Consanguinity,” says the professor, “to the remotest degree makes a man jointly responsible.... In case of murder or wounding, not only the trespasser but each one of the members of his touchoum, or gens, has to expect vengeance on the part of the touchoum to which the victim belonged. ”

“ We are told that every one rises from sleep in the morning a different man from him who lay down at night; there having been a waste and repair of the substance of which the bodily man is composed. In the same manner, you may find that your strike is a different thing to-day from what it was at its beginning. ”

“ That ceremonial restraint, preceding other forms of restraint, continues ever to be the most widely-diffused form of restraint, we are shown by such facts as that in all intercourse between societies, civilized, semi-civilized, or barbarous, as well as in all intercourse between members of each society, the decisively governmental actions are usually prefaced by this government of observances. ”

“ When a tree was reached which others had shaken, an unwritten law soon required those who wished to shake it further first to pile up all nuts under the tree, while those who failed to do so were universally regarded as dishonest and every boy's hand was against them. ”

“ See? The ‘strike’ ain’t goin’ to last. It’s a pocket in the hill, an’ it’ll peter out just as dead sure as—well as can be. An’ when it’s petered out there’s going to be jest one feller around here who’s made a profit—an’ it ain’t one of those who used the sluice-boxes. No, you can believe what you like. This ‘strike’ was jest a devil’s laugh at folks who know no better. An’ master Buck has handed you something of devil’s luck when he made you take that gold. ”

“ The principal objects which human punishments have in view, are undoubtedly restraint and example: restraint, or removal, of an individual member, whose vicious habits are likely to be prejudicial to the society. ”

“ And he remembered what Frances had once said to him about criminals in a city like New York, how the careless riot of wealth seemed to breed them, as any uncleanness breeds bacteria; how, in a way, each was only a natural and inevitable agent, taking advantage of organic waste, seizing on the unguarded and the unorderly. ”

“ This virgin is in the power of a wicked sorcerer or prince of darkness, and is imprisoned in a castle of iron; no one who has attempted to set her free has ever yet returned. But what is done cannot be undone: given word is law. Go, try thy fortune, and come home again to me safe and sound.”
The king’s son bade farewell to his father, mounted his horse, and rode away for this bride. And so it befell him to ride through a great wood, and in this wood he rode on and on until at last he quite lost his way. ”

“ But any movement, however foolish and futile, was now; better than mere passivity. To remain longer quiescent was out of the question. Even a rat, she reminded herself, would not die meekly in its corner. ”

“ Exposure to the elements, social disorder and lawlessness, the tyranny of the powerful, and the inroads of enemies, are a stern discipline, allowing brief intervals, or awarding a sharp penance, to sloth and sensuality. The rude food, the scanty clothing, the violent exercise, the vagrant life, the military constraint, the imperfect pharmacy, which now are the trials of only particular classes of the community, were once the lot more or less of all. ”

“ MAURICE. It's like passing on a disease to save one's self-respect.
HENRIETTE. And how vulgar you have become, too!
MAURICE. Yes, I notice it myself, and I hardly recognise myself since that night in the cell. They put in one person and let out another through that gate which separates us from the rest of society. And now I feel myself the enemy of all mankind: I should like to set fire to the earth and dry up the oceans, for nothing less than a universal conflagration can wipe out my dishonour. ”

“ Returning to the great first-mentioned class of savage and barbaric oaths, sworn by gestures or weapons, or by invocation of divine beasts, or rivers, or greater Nature-deities—the question now to be asked is, What is the nature of the penalties? It is, that the perjurer may be withered by disease, wounded, drowned, smitten by the thunderbolt, etc., all these being temporal, visible punishments. ”

“ Useless practical measures are adopted to abate the evil, active proceedings will have to be taken and pushed to the utmost to remove entirely the root and branch and trunk and body of this tree of destruction. ”

“ No consideration arising from feelings of mere pity, or from respect of person or station, shall influence my conduct. When punishment is certain, crime decreases, and then only may the severity of the laws with safety be still further mitigated. ”