Subdeacon

“ The equivalent of the alb in the ancient Churches of the East is the sticharion (στιχάριον) of the Orthodox Church (Armenian shapik, Syrian Kutina, Coptic stoicharion or tuniah.) It is worn girdled by bishops and priests in all rites, by subdeacons in the Greek and Coptic rites. By deacons and lectors it is worn ungirdled in all the rites. The colour of the vestment is usually white for bishops and priests (this is the rule in the Coptic Church) ; for the other orders there is no rule, and all colours, except black, may be used. ”

“ The dread and trouble of the times filling all minds, men wished to be forehanded with the decrees of Providence. Into this brooding silence the low, vibrating tones of this mysterious voice entered, and this is what we heard:
“Doom! doom! For him—the one—the betrayer—the passing bell is tolling. Hear it, ye weak ones and grow strong. Hear it, ye mighty and tremble. Not alone for him will it ring. For ye! for ye! if the decree of the linked rings goes forth—-”
Here there was a perceptible quiver of the drapery back of the dais. ”

“ The deacon never talked about the bill of a merganser! The deacon never noticed the dainty buff on the breast, inclining to salmon! The deacon never expressed any burning desire to pull out his brushes and paint it! ”

“ Or a darker scene may follow, and some offending magistrate may be required to stand upon a bench, in his worst garments, with a foul linen cap drawn close to his eyes, and acknowledge his sins before the pious people, who reverenced him so lately.
These things done, a deacon says impressively, "Brethren, now there is time for contribution; wherefore, as God hath prospered you, so freely offer." Then the people in the galleries come down and march two abreast, "up one ile and down the other," passing before the desk, where in a long "pue" sit the elders and deacons. ”

“ Tell me, how should one address thee when one would show thee respect? Thou thinkest that I mock thee? But knowest thou that in reality I am indebted to thee? The people's meditated attack was not hidden from me, and yet I came without the escort of warriors which Rome sent for my protection. Thou heldest me in the hollow of thy hand, as thou heldest the stone. Say, why didst thou let it fall? Why hast thou spared me?
JOHN
Sire, even if I spoke thou wouldst not understand me.
HEROD
That is defiance, which I cannot praise. In chains it is easy to be defiant. Take off his chains and go. ”

“ The deacon laughed. “Yes, I don’t like my bed. I’m used to feathers.”
“Well, they say they are going to give you feathers mixed with tar so you won’t lose them so easily.”
“I’ll have company, I reckon,” said the deacon with a wink.
“The funny thing, deacon, is that Major Dameron tells me there isn’t a man in all the crowd of two hundred and fifty arrested who ever went on a raid. It’s too bad you old fellows have to pay for the follies of youth.”
“It is tough. But we can stand it, Preacher.” ”

“ It is certain, the jacobites cursed those tracts and the author, and when they came to read them, being deluded by the titles according to the design, they threw them by with the greatest indignation imaginable. Had the pretender ever come to the throne, I could have expected nothing but death, and all the ignominy and reproach that the most inveterate enemy of his person and claim could be supposed to suffer. ”

“ Never kneel to any man. To do so is to degrade yourself and the man to whom you kneel. Get up, before I speak another word to you," said the duke.
The miserable creature struggled to his feet and stood leaning against the bulwarks of the bridge, for support.
"Now, then, if you are not guilty, if your conscience acquits you in the sight of Heaven of all complicity in your late master's death, why should you feel and show such extreme distress—distress that has worn your frame to a skeleton, and stricken your life with old age?" gravely demanded the duke.
"Why?—oh, your grace! ”

“ I seem to myself so corrupt and rotten that when any one offers me his hand, I almost cry out, 'Don't defile yourself by touching me.' If that was the object of it all, then it has been attained. But is what we are doing now remorse? Tell me that, woman--isn't it, rather, fresh infamy? ”

“ The man who in the hour of danger speaks of abdication is, for me, a venomous animal. I speak with the bluntness of gravity, madam; this is no hour for mincing. The coward, in a station of authority, is more dangerous than fire. ”

“ I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation dreaded, detested, and obeyed—the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success—the arrogance, the presumption, the self-will of unlimited and idolized power, and—more dreadful than all in the plenitude of authority—the restless and incessant activity of guilty but unsated ambition. ”

“ Hate was now this unfortunate man's daily bread, and the hope of vengeance an obsession to his mind. As a madman he went raging up and down the Caribbean seeking his enemy, and in the meantime, as an hors d'œuvre to his vindictive appetite, he fell upon any ship of England or of France that loomed above his horizon. ”

“ The more the deacon pulled the more the great animal felt himself steadied and assisted. And so, the harder the good man tugged at the reins, the more powerfully the machinery of the big animal ahead of him worked, until the deacon got alarmed and began to call upon the horse to stop, crying, "Whoa, Jack, whoa, old boy, I say! ”

“ For the last three quarters of an hour the man’s demeanor and glance were of despotic authority, all-powerful, irresistible, drawn from the same mysterious source from which great generals on fields of battle who inflame an army, great orators inspiring vast audiences, and (it must be said) great criminals perpetrating bold crimes derive their inspiration. At such times invincible influence seems to exhale from the head and issue from the tongue; the gesture even can inject the will of the one man into others. ”

“ Yes! each paper had its paragraph devoted to the one grand sensation of the day—the flight of the beautiful Duchess of Hereward with the young Russian count; and very few dealt with the deplorable case as delicately as the Times had done.
"So my dishonor is the talk of all Paris and London!" groaned the duke, dropping his head upon his chest. "If all the civilization of the nineteenth century had power to stay my arm in its vengeance, it has lost it now! And nothing is left for me to do but to kill the man and divorce the woman." ”

“ I on no account say that I condemn these people. What would become of the world if every one who on looking into the glass discovered a wart on his face, were to cut his throat in despair at the fact? ”

“ They said, “The better the man wuz, the better the buzz saw he would be likely to run.” The fact wuz, they needed some buzz saw mills bad, and wuz very glad to have these deacons lay holt of 'em.
But I threw out this question at 'em, and stood by it—“If bein' set apart as a deacon didn't mean anything? If there wuzn't any deacon-work that they ought to be expected to do—and if it wuz right for 'em to go into any world's work so wild and hazardous and engrossin', as this enterprise?”
And again they sez to me in stern, decided axents, “The better the man, the better the deed. ”

“ Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox hell, and the sinner does not know whether to believe him or not. The deacon may have lied to the sinner some time in a horse trade, or in selling him goods, and beat him, and how does he know but the same deacon is playing a brace game on him on the hereafter, or playing him for a sardine. ”

“ As for your ruin, you have brought it on yourself. This is your signature, not mine. It is your honesty that is at stake, not mine. The villainous old usurer, the devil that is not so black as he is painted, wants only his rights--nothing more. ”

“ Looking into her mind and probing it to the sad depths, she saw clearly that she must spurn low standards and dishonest means, if she was to preserve the power of conjuring up the beautiful and pathetic picture which she delighted to dwell on as the reflection of her soul. "Be noble, let your motives be exalted," a voice said within her; "perish like a vestal who offers up body and soul as a sacrifice. ”

“ I say, raise the value of it at their own expense; give vast presents for a ruinous favour, which is so far from being equal to the price, that nothing will at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own destruction.
I could not, in the height of all this fine doings—I say, I could not be without some just reflection, though conscience was, as I said, dumb, as to any disturbance it gave me in my wickedness. ”

“ People think that there are no fine points for a deacon to know, but I can tell you a deacon's position is a hard one if you want to keep it on such a footing that it will support a man. Before my time people here in the village thought one funeral-song as good as another, but I have arranged things so that I can say to a peasant, "Which hymn will you have? ”

“ In the times in which we now live men are quick enough to discover excuses for changing their saddles. This despatch contains all our secrets: where we are strong, where we are weak, where we want to assume the offensive, where we are obliged to stand on the defensive. Such a despatch would be worth 200,000 florins to the enemy at the very least.'
"'I can assure you, General, that neither I nor this lady will betray it.'
"'You couldn't if you would, for the whole despatch is in cipher. ”

“ The Sadducees, the second of the orders, do away with Fate altogether, and remove God beyond, not merely the commission, but the very sight, of evil. They maintain that good and evil lie open to men’s choice and that it rests with every man’s will whether he embraces the one or the other. ”

“ When in the affliction of my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I have the appearance of a man who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public, unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy. ”

“ Despots and fanatics have exerted their ingenuity to invent torments for their victims—how useless!—the rack, the boot, fire,—all that they have imagined are not to be compared to the torture of extreme thirst. ”

“ But now, after supineness had allowed it to amass supreme and despotic power, and fortify itself by every means of defence, the antagonism of the people began to be energetically manifested. It is the fate of despotism of every form, when it has developed the full strength of its all-blasting power, to awaken another power destined to trample it in the dust. ”

“ The fatal moment was perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. ”

“ All the world! And he thought that even the bare suspicion of such an adversary within his house carried with it a taint and a condemnation. He put both his hands out as if to ward off the reproach of a defiling truth; and, instantly, the appalled conclave of unreal men, standing about mutely beyond the clear lustre of mirrors, made at him the same gesture of rejection and horror. ”

“ They lie of their own prowess, importance and achievement, that thus they may puff themselves up to an apparently greater stature, and they lie maliciously and cruelly concerning the object of their envy, belittling his attainments, slandering the object of their envy, belittling his attainments, slandering him in his private and public life, and smothering his repute in the slime of their foul inventions. ”

“ The despot may plead he lights up the conflagration of empires, and encreases the miseries of human nature to the most horrible climax of anguish, by the command of this necessity. The priest may deceive, the lawyer defraud, and the physician poison, by the same impulse of necessity. ”

“ He must have established deceivers to mislead them with lies, to terrify them with the wrath of God, in case they stir hand or foot, or so much as a thought, to mend their doleful condition; as if the good God was the sanctifier of all villainy, the patron of the worst of all villains! ”

“ Casting a frightened look at me, the man complied. I have seldom seen an expression of deeper astonishment and terror on a man’s face than that which marked the unfortunate operator’s as my despatch came back to him, word after word, ending with the Imperial signature.
‘My God!’ he cried out. ‘Who has done this? I shall be ruined!’
‘Whether you are ruined or not depends entirely on yourself,’ I said sharply. ‘It is in my power to save you, but only upon one condition.’
[23]
“‘My God!’ he cried out. ”

“ Sir Thomas More.—They have an advantage over them, my friend, in this, that rarely can they leave evil works behind them, which either from a mischievous persuasion, or a malignant purpose, may heap condemnation upon their own souls as long as such works survive them. Even if they should manifest pernicious opinions and a wicked will, the venom is in a great degree sheathed by the vehicle in which it is administered. ”

“ The savage eagerness of this plodding multitude, the noise, the sweat and dust, the roar of their voices when they cheered, made her feel that she was watching the workings of an inevitable doom. What could stand against this brown flood of men, this whole people that had risen to smother the hated few? ”