Transgressor

“ Nor can the Apostle mean that Eve only sinned; or that she only was Deceiv’d, for if Adam sinn’d wilfully and knowingly, he became the greater Transgressor. ”

“ But, should any one of our nation be questioned about the laws, he would repeat them all more readily than his own name. The result, then, of our thorough grounding in the laws from the time when we first had any sensations whatever, is that we have them as it were engraven on our souls. A transgressor is a rarity and to elude punishment by entreaty an impossibility.—c. Ap. II. 16-18 (164-178) .
(62) A Future Life—for the Law-abiding With us the death penalty is imposed for most offences, for instance, if a man commit adultery.... ”

“ But the whole order of society has been transformed. Revenge is now under the ban of the state, which has made itself responsible for the infliction of corporal punishment on individual transgressors. ”

“ If ever there was a cold-blooded villain, Lax is the man."
"His acts were those of charity compared to some of the Transgressors," observes Nevins, before he continues to announce the list. "Is the bankrupting of men to be compared with the heinous crime of enslaving children?
"The Cotton King, Herod Butcher of Fall River, who thrives on the life's blood of ten thousand minors—pitiable slaves of his looms, is one of the transgressors who must atone for a life-long career as a merciless infanticide.
"No man is so base that he would stand by and see a child ruthlessly slain. ”

“ It must be the spirit not of judgment but of mercy. She must not say in her heart, 'I am holier than thou'; but must rather keep in perpetual remembrance that 'all have sinned,' and that, therefore, great pity is due from us even to the greatest transgressors among our fellow-creatures, and that in meekness and love we ought to labor for their restoration. The good principle in the hearts of many abandoned persons may be compared to the few remaining sparks of a nearly extinguished fire. ”

“ The Transvaal, when we annexed it, was in the position of a man with a knife at his throat, who is suddenly rescued by some one stronger than he, on certain conditions which at the time he gladly accepts, but afterwards, when the danger is passed, wishes to repudiate. ”

“ He could feel her form pressed against him, her milky palm against his face; then just as he swung her into destruction, he awoke with a violent start, gasping for breath, with a hammering heart and a sweating body. ”

“ She has seen me throw off the baleful influence of The Bodymaster when a wild fit of passion seized me. She probably fears that I will again rise against him and that he will blast me where I stand.
“My hands are tied. In turning myself over to The Bodymaster I have betrayed the woman I love. May Heaven have mercy on my soul!” ”

“ We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We were in a trap, you see--a trap of our own making. If we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no longer be invincible. ”

“ Who are you, what are you, menacing mass? Under her influence, I saw it, I felt it — all sank into nothingness, all was dumb. . . . A putrefying, pestilential chill came from it. At this chill breath the heart turned sick, and the eyes grew dim, and the hair stood up on the head. It was a power moving; that power which there is no resisting, to which all is subject, which, sightless, shapeless, senseless, sees all, knows all, and like a bird of prey picks out its victims, like a snake, stifles them and stabs them with its frozen sting. . . .
'Alice! ”

“ As he dashed into the baize door that cut the passage in two, and—forgetting that it opened towards him—beat against it with all the force in him, he felt a soft ineffectual tearing at his back which, all the same, seemed to be growing in power, as if the hand, or whatever worse than a hand was there, were becoming more material as the pursuer's rage was more concentrated. ”

“ The landlady stealthily crossed herself under her neckerchief.
'The old enemy is adamant! A . . . da . . . mant! A . . . da . . . mant!' the religious maniac repeated several times, gnashing his teeth. 'The old serpent! But God will arise! Yes, God will arise and scatter His enemies! I will call up all the dead! I will go against His enemy. . . . Ha-ha-ha! Tfoo!'
'Have you any oil?' said another voice, hardly audible; 'let me put some on the wound. . . . I have got a clean rag.'
I peeped through the chink again; the woman in the jacket was still busied with the vagrant's sore foot. ”

“ Let the offender stand forth:
'Tis the duke's pleasure that impartial doom
Shall take fast hold of his unclean attempt.
A rape! why 'tis the very core of lust—
Double adultery.
Y. Son. So, sir.
2nd Judge. And which was worse,
Committed on the Lord Antonio's wife,
That general-honest lady. Confess, my lord,
What moved you to't?
Y. Son. Why, flesh and blood, my lord;
What should move men unto a woman else?
Lus. O, do not jest thy doom! trust not an axe
Or sword too far: the law is a wise serpent,
And quickly can beguile thee of thy life. ”

“ The Revenger's Tragedy is an entangled web of lust, incest, fratricide, rape, adultery, mutual suspicion, hate, and bloodshed, through which runs, like a thread of glittering copper, the vengeance of a cynical plague-fretted spirit. Vendice emerges from the tainted crew of Duke and Duchess, Lussurioso, Spurio and Junior, Ambitioso and Supervacuo, with a kind of blasted splendour. They are curling and engendering, a brood of flat-headed asps, in the slime of their filthy appetites and gross ambitions. He treads and tramples, on them all. ”

“ See him then hastily rising, at dead of night, in the utmost horror from his own thoughts, being terrified in his sleep by the dreadful phantoms of an affrighted imagination, seizing on his sword, by way of defence against the foe his disordered fancy presents to him. So great is his agitation, that every nerve and muscle is in action, and even the ring is forced from his finger. When the heart is affected, how great is its influence on the human frame!—it communicates its sensibility to the extreme parts of the body, from the centre to the circumference ”

“ I felt the sickening impact of a blow and the bludgeon flew from my hold; then he was upon me, belabouring me with both fists, but twining my legs in his, I clung to those merciless arms, while above his fierce snarling and the painful shock of his blows, I heard the girl calling out to me:
"Fight him—fight! Don't cling like a woman—stand away—hit him back—fight!" ”

“ But every agitation revives in me the sense of my loss; even those of a pleasurable kind. I am like a man who bears in his breast the weapon which has wounded him, and who, when quite still, does not always feel it, but the least movement makes it a torment. ”

“ When a Wild One fell, perhaps suffering from only a minor wound, all feminine adversaries within sword-thrust were upon him in an instant, his body was literally hacked to bits before it was abandoned. But when a Woman fell—then it was a different story! Attackers surged forward en masse, with a sort of savage desperation, recklessly braving death in order to take, unharmed, their prisoner! ”

“ She had seen him flying from the house without waiting for the girl to recover consciousness. What finer scheme of vengeance could any woman hope for—and she had always heard that women were revengeful—than that which had been placed within her reach? ”

“ The impulses of the flesh would lead them to crush the tyrants who have drenched the earth with their blood, and to bruise their heads like serpents, but their Captain has said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." ”

“ For if a man once went down amid that yelling, struggling throng, he never got up again—he was trampled out of shape. Trench had seen such victims dragged from the prison each morning; and he was a small man. Therefore he fought for his corner in a frenzy like a wild beast, kicking with his fetters, thrusting with his elbows, diving under this big man's arm, burrowing between two others, tearing at their clothes, using his nails, his fists, and even striking at heads with the chain which dangled from the iron ring about his neck. ”

“ Yet, strangely enough, the facility of his triumph in no way chilled him, but led him on to become more and more resolutely, more and more painfully, attached, and that though she was a woman in whom, even after she had made the great surrender, there still remained something as immutably veiled, as radically intangible, as before—something which no one had yet succeeded in penetrating. ”

“ A crowd of frightened and angry men hastily retreating towards this death-trap were suddenly confronted by a woman, who like an heavenly messenger, stood with uplifted hand, her hair streaming in the wind. ”

“ There the great black creature lay, his face sullenly turned to the wall. What should I do? My instinct told me what. And here I recall the complexity of feelings I experienced: the shrinking from him at the recollection of his brutal rage; the thought that I had calmed that rage somewhat, and could still more if I could conquer my repugnance. Then came the recognition that I could only do it by exerting my power as a woman over him—the [Pg 303] discovery of a power that shortly before had made me sick with remorse. ”

“ He clasped her close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down on him, like metal sinking on a mould. ”

“ In that world, the crack of the trapper's rifle, the snap of the cruel steel jaws in his trap, seem the only harsh discords in the harmony of an existence that riots with a very fulness of life. But such a world is only a dream. The reality is cruel as death. Of all the creatures that prey, man is the most merciful. ”

“ Vengeance on Power, vengeance ample and complete, was what he craved for. He understood, in some furtive and perverted way, that he could not strike a mortal blow at a man of Power’s temperament by using the bludgeons of the law to expiate an offense against society. ”

“ Covered with rags, fearfully thin, with face as black as a coal, blear-eyed and for ever grinning, she would stay whole hours in one place in the road, stamping with her feet, pressing her fleshless hands to her breast, and slowly shifting from one leg to the other, like a wild beast in a cage. ”

“ THE JAWS OF THE TRAP
IF EYES alone possessed the power to kill, his would have done the deed, but the face with which I confronted him was sufficiently grim to make him realize the danger of a movement. ”

“ So at length after a tedious struggle and inhumane butchery, the fitt is solv'd, the matter is imperfectly extinguish'd, the poor Sufferer crawls out of the shambles for a while, as by a day-rule of the Fleet, till the merciless tormentor summons him again to equal misery. ”

“ Yielding to this rising tumult, the men drew back a little, signifying to the females that they left the captive, for a time, in their hands, it being a common practice on such occasions for the women to endeavor to throw the victim into a rage by their taunts and revilings, and then to turn him suddenly over to the men in a state of mind that was little favorable to resisting the agony of bodily suffering. ”

“ The transgressions or short-comings of a servant vary from the trivial to the grave, and the evils which discharge may bring range through countless degrees from slight to serious. The penalty may be inflicted for a very small offense, and then there is wrong done, or, after numerous grave offenses, it may not be inflicted, and again there is wrong done. How shall be determined the degree of transgression beyond which to discharge is less wrong than not to discharge? ”

“ And unless the trapper thoroughly acquaints himself with the habits of his various game, the sagacity and cunning of his intended victim will often outwit his most shrewd endeavors, much to his chagrin. ”

“ She believed, as women do, that every shell tore hundreds of human beings limb from limb. In silent revolt against the frenzy which seemed to possess the world, she closed her eyes and buried her head in the hay ”

“ And when I fly, I keep feeling as though some one were sucking at it, or as it were drawing something out of it — as the spring sap is drawn out of the birch-tree, if you stick an axe into it. I 'm sorry, though. And Alice too. . . . She is playing cat and mouse with me . . . still she can hardly wish me harm. I will give myself up to her for the last time — and then. . . . But if she is drinking my blood? That's awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I 'm told, on the railways, it 's against the law to go more than one hundred miles an hour. ”

“ Many lay on their knees and wrung their hands and beat their breasts in unextinguishable remorse. Others lay motionless, as though dead, only their eyes moved slowly in their sockets, following the direction of the light. ”

“ By the time they finished the rapes and began a general beating, she could no longer control her reactions; she fought and screamed and wept, to no effect, until she felt consciousness starting to depart, and welcomed it. ”

“ I, on the contrary, felt conscious that I was pale, and my hands, to my intense vexation, were trembling slightly;... my throat was dry... Never, up to that time, had I fought a duel. "O God!" I thought; "if only that sneering gentleman does not take my agitation for timidity!" I inwardly consigned my nerves to all the fiends; but on glancing, at last, straight at the Prince's face, and catching on his lips an almost imperceptible smile, I suddenly became inflated with wrath, and immediately recovered my equanimity. ”

“ On the slightest provocation the fingers of his right hand would curve and clutch, and a fierce longing seize him to compass the extinction of life in some animate being—to feel the slackening of the muscles in some victim—an emotion elemental, barbarous, cruel, but keen, masterful and pervading. ”

“ The string then started to run, dragging, rolling in the dust, the fallen one, who howled and begged to be killed; but perchance he succeeded in getting on his feet and then went along crying like a child and cursing the hour he was born.
The human cluster halted at times while the guards drank, and then the prisoners continued on their way with parched mouths, darkened brains, and hearts full of curses. ”