Taint

“ If there be any symptoms by which it is possible to distinguish the chronic diseases of the body politic from its passing inflammations, all those symptoms82 exist in the present case. The taint has been gradually becoming more extensive and more malignant, through the whole lifetime of two generations. ”

“ A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the Indian ocean. ”

“ Taintor only imagined that he loved Cynthia, and that they were happier separated; but I hate to spoil idyls in that way. To me it [307] is very beautiful, the thought of that dear old lady in Connecticut, who runs the farm and writes loving letters to her expatriated spouse and sends him a share of the profits, but who cannot overcome her antipathy to the unstable sea. And when I think of Mr. Taintor as he appeared that evening in Bloomsbury, with his honest Yankee traditions, and his ardent love far his absent wife, I say, "Hurrah for both of them!" ”

“ The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the irregularities of the mental mirror,—all these haunting nightmares of the Church are expressed as strongly by the Gothic cathedral as though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. ”

“ Some time after the men had gone, Ais-kaw-ba-wis, who lived by himself in a little lodge, pretending to be too holy to go into a common house, or to mingle with men in their ordinary pursuits, sent for the wife of Gish-kau-ko, and when she came to him, he said, “The Great Spirit is not pleased that you should abandon and lose your property. Go, therefore, and get the kettle that you have left at the sugar camp.” The woman obeyed, and he, soon after she had left the camp, took his gun, and under the pretence of going to hunt, went out in a different direction. ”

“ She felt an alien in it; and as she looked round it she thought of how her little room at Les Solitudes where, with such an untroubled heart, she had slept and waked for so many years.
Three large photographs of Tante hung on the walls, and their eyes met hers as if with an unfaltering love and comprehension. And on the dressing-table was a photograph of Gregory; the new thing in her life; the thing that menaced the old. She went and took it up, and Gregory's face, too, was suddenly strange to her; cold, hard, sardonic. ”

“ The little man's voice was dry as lava ash, dry as the wastes between and beyond the cities. Tanter, was the name he'd given—Mr. Tanter. His contact lenses were so thick they made his eyes seem to bulge grotesquely. ”

“ How? no one can get in! And who shall stab him? For why?”
He examined the wounded man, after a gravely courteous salute to Winter; and frowned and sighed. “What did it?” said he; “did who stabbed, take it ’way, he must give stlong pull!”
“Whoever did it,” said the colonel, “must have put a knee on the man’s back and pulled a strong pull, as you say.” In speaking the words he felt a shiver, for he seemed to see that red smear above Mercer’s knee.
He felt the shiver again when Mercer returned and he glanced at him; there was not a stain on [252] his shining white cuffs; he had changed them ”

“ It happened that Ba-po-wash had dried the choice parts of a fat bear, intending in the spring to make a feast to his medicine, and a few days previous to this time, while we were absent at our hunting camp, Ais-kaw-ba-wis had said to the old woman, the mother of Ba-po-wash’s wife, “The Great Spirit has signified to me that all things are not as they should be. Send out and see, therefore, if the fat bear which your son has hung up for a feast to his medicine is all where it was left.” ”

“ Taine to meet the artist. The figure in the picture, standing with uplifted glass and drunken pose at the head of the table--with bestial, lust-worn face, disease-shrunken limbs, and dying, licentious eyes fixed upon the beautiful girl musician--might easily have been Mr. Taine himself. The distinguished writers, and critics; the representatives of the social world and of wealth; Conrad Lagrange with cold, cynical, mocking, smile; Mrs. Taine with her pretense of modest dress that only emphasized her immodesty ”

“ She did not return that night; but the next day, towards evening, as we were all lying down inside the lodge, she came in, and shaking Wa-me-gon-a-biew by the shoulder, said to him, “get up, my son, you are a great runner, and now let us see with what speed you will go and bring the meat which the Great Spirit gave me last night. Nearly all night I prayed and sung, and when I fell asleep near morning, the Spirit came to me, and gave me a bear to feed my hungry children. You will find him in that little copse of bushes in the prairie. ”

“ But one night, instead of the usual cheerful stir about the house, she found the Swede girl alone in the kitchen, weeping over the potatoes. To Pauline’s inquiries she returned a burst of woe. “They all tooken to chail—all!” she wailed. “I don’t know what to do if I get supper. The mans come, the police mans, and tooken them all away. I hela verlden! who ever know such a country? Such nice peoples sent to chail for play on the organ—their own organ! They say they not play right, but I think to send to chail for not play right on the organ that sha’n’t be right!” ”

“ The white gown, which was her constant wear in the sick-room, defined her figure clearly against a clump of Japan plum-trees. Their purplish red foliage rustled; and an unseen fountain beyond made a delicate tinkle of water splashing a marble basin. Her face was hidden; only the moonlight gently drew the oval of her cheek. She was standing still, except that one foot was groping back and forth as if trying to find something. ”

“ Hastily summoned, they had not the meagre comfort of a toilet. The father looked about the court, a perplexed frown replacing at intervals a perplexed grin. When he was not studying the court-room, he was polishing the bald spot on his head with a large red handkerchief, or rubbing the grimy palms of his hands on the sides of his trousers. ”

“ Before our arrival here we had been joined by Wa-ge-tote with sixty men. After we had rested and eaten at our encampment near Ta-bush-shish’s lodge, and were about to start, we saw him come out naked, but painted and ornamented as for a war, and having his arms in his hands. He came stalking up to us with a very angry face, but none of us fully [157] comprehended his design, until we saw him go up and present the muzzle of his gun to Wa-me-gon-a-biew’s back. “My friend,” said he, “we have lived long enough, and have given trouble and distress enough to each other. ”

“ One of the scholars is Mrs. Tanner's son, and I like him. He's crude, of course, but he has a brain, and he's been helping me this afternoon. We made a bookcase for my books, and it looks fine. I wish you could see it. I covered it with the green burlap, and the books look real happy in smiling rows over on the other side of the room. Bud Tanner got me some wonderful cactus blossoms for my brass bowl. I wish I could send you some. They are gorgeous! ”

“ In the morning she said to her son and Waw-be-be-nais-sa, “Go and hunt, for the Great Spirit has given me some meat.” But Wa-me-gon-a-biew objected, as he said the weather was too cold and calm, and no moose could be approached so near as to shoot him. “I can make a wind,” answered Net-no-kwa, “and though it is now still and cold, the warm wind shall come before night. Go, my sons, you cannot fail to kill something, for in my dream I saw Wa-me-gon-a-biew coming into the lodge with a beaver and a large load of meat on his back.” ”

“ Rather grimly the soldier’s eyes were noting marble wainscoting and tiled floors, and contrasting this academic environment with his own at West Point. A caustic comment rose to his lips, but it was not uttered, for he heard the sharp bark of a pistol, followed by a thud, and a crackle as of breaking glass.
“Do you fellows amuse yourselves shooting up [2] the dormitory?” said he. The boy halted; he had gone white.
“It came from Mercer’s room!” he cried, and ran across the corridor to a door with the usual labeling of two visiting cards. ”

“ On the bank of this lake was the small log hut of Pe-shau-ba, where he had lived, with the three men I have mentioned, for some years. He had left his wife at Lake Huron; and the other men, if they had ever been married, had no women with them. Immediately on his arrival, he opened his sun-je-gwun, and took out large quantities of beaver skins, dried meat, dressed skins, etc. etc. all of which he delivered to the women, saying, “We have long been our own squaws, but we must be so no longer. It must now be your business to dress our skins, dry our meat, make our moccasins, etc.” ”

“ Four men are coming this way, all well armed; their visit, I am sure, is for no good or friendly purpose.” Hearing this, I placed my packs in the middle of the floor, and taking a beaver trap in my hand, sat down on them. When the clerk came in, accompanied by three young men, he asked me for my packs. “What right have you,” said I, “to demand them?” “You are indebted to me,” said he. “When did I owe the North West any thing, that was not paid at the time agreed on?” “Ten years ago,” said he, “your brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew, had a credit from me, which he paid all but ten skins. ”

“ Gregory was very happy.
"Even Tante doesn't always remember enough about Mrs. Talcott," she went on. "That is of course because Mrs. Talcott is so much a part of her life that she sometimes hardly sees her. She is, for her, the dear old restful chair that she sinks back into and forgets about. Besides, some people have a right not to see things. One doesn't ask from giants the same sort of perception that one does from pygmies." ”

“ TANTE ROSE Over the way lived Tante Rose. We children liked best to go to her house by means of the subterranean passage. It was pitch-dark, and we felt a fearful delight as we galloped through it at full speed, and then beat loudly upon the door at the other end, so that old Kerandraon should not keep us waiting for a moment in the blackness. In the salon, between the windows, her tame magpie hopping near her, we would find Tante Rose spinning at her wheel. There were pink ribbons on her distaff, and her beautiful, rounded arms moved gently to and fro drawing out the fine white linen thread. ”

“ It will raise you more in the estimation of the woman you would marry to see you bring home a load of meat early in the morning than to see you dressed ever so gaily, standing about the village after the hunters are all gone out.” I could make her no answer, but putting on my moccasins, took my gun and went out. Returning before noon, with as heavy a load of fat moose meat as I could carry, I threw it down before Net-no-kwa, and with a harsh tone of voice said to her, “Here, old woman, is what you called for in the morning.” She was much pleased, and commended me for my exertion. ”

“ Tanner replied absently. He was thinking that a man who departed on foot from an hotel without leaving an address might not be so easy to trace. And the best description of his appearance he could get was too vague to be of much use. The porter had not noticed the colour of the man’s eyes, if there was any scar or mark on his face or hands, the shape of his ears, any peculiarity in his gait—none of the matters on which identification depends. Tanner could only remind himself that a general hazy notion was better than no notion at all. ”

“ But I don't think it is saints and geniuses that Tante misses here; she misses minds that are able to recognise genius." Her quick ear had caught the involuntary irony of his quotation.
"Ah, but, dear, you mustn't expect to find the average nice person able to pay homage at a dinner-party. There is a time and a place for everything, isn't there."
"It was not that I meant, Gregory, or that Tante meant. There is always a place for intelligence. It wasn't an interesting dinner, you must have felt that as well as I, not the sort of dinner Tante would naturally expect. ”

“ The mug with the broken handle had sped against the weather-boarding.
“Now what was that?” cried Ike, jumping up. Before he was on his feet a broken soap-dish had followed the mug. Up flew the sash, and Ike was out of the window. “What are you doing that for? What do you mean by that?” he yelled, to which the dark and silent house opposite naturally made no reply. ”

“ He came accidentally into the room between Mrs. Winter’s and Mr. Keatcham’s suites. Standing in that room, trying to stanch the bleeding of a sudden hemorrhage of the nose, he overheard me and my friend—”
“You?” asked the colonel laconically of the young Harvard man.
“I,” smilingly confessed the latter. “I am ready to own up. You are a decent fellow, and you are shrewd. You ought to be on our side, not fighting us. I tell you, you don’t want to have the boy turn up safe and sound any more than I [167] do. Mr. Mercer was talking to me, and the kid overheard. ”