Truancy

“ The seductions presented by his new means of creation were irresistible, and he played truant from school for some days, stealing up into a garret, and devoting the time, with all the throbbing wildness of delight, to painting. The schoolmaster called, the truant was sought, and found in the garret by his mother. She beheld what he had done; and instead of reprehending him fell on his neck and kissed him, with tears of ecstatic fondness. How different from the training experienced by the poor, persecuted and tormented “Salvatoriello!” ”

“ If a man among you has a thorn in his foot, will it help him if he change his boots? I tell you, it is the thorn, the thorn itself, that you must get out, wrench out, cut out, if need be. We, the people, how often have we asked our rulers for bread and they have given us a stone? ”

“ Let us start out with the idea that we must have annoyances. It seems to take a certain number of them to keep us humble, wakeful and prayerful. To Paul the thorn was as disciplinary as the shipwreck. If it is not one thing, it is another. If the stove does not smoke, the boiler must leak. If the pen is good, the ink must be poor. If the editorial column be able, there must be a typographical blunder. If the thorn does not pierce the knee, it must take you in the back. Life must have sharp things in it. We cannot make up our robe of Christian character without pins and needles. ”

“ The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make themselves felt as we scramble—for we often do scramble in a very undignified manner—through the thickets of life; and, feeling the thorns, we grumble, and are blind to all but the thorns. ”

“ For that great procession of the UNLOVED, who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown or gray,—under the snowy cap, under the chilling turban,—hide it even from themselves,—perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills them,—there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. ”

“ Let us be taught by these thorns, as Gideon taught the men of Succoth, to hate sin, and be uneasy under it, and to be in love with Jesus Christ, who is here a lily among thorns. If we be at any time afflicted with a thorn in the flesh, let it be our comfort, that our high priest is touched with the feelings of our infirmities, having himself known what thorns in the flesh meant. 3. Are kings attended with the acclamations of their subjects, O king, live for ever? ”

“ But woe to those among them who are driven by some impetuous desire, some mighty passion, straight among rocks and thorns! Then it is very possible that an adhering thorn, which others would hardly have noticed, may become to them a poisoned arrow, and corrode their body and soul till they perish in consequence. ”

“ It is my inmost, my only desire, that the flesh may quickly follow the spirit that has already passed. For the last fifteen days I have been living at Traunkirchen, the pearl of Traunsee.... All the comforts that a man could wish for are here to make my life happy—peace, solitude, beautiful scenery, invigorating air, and everything that could suit the tastes of a hermit like myself. ”

“ The Trunk is as the Father, because both the Branches and Fruit are produc'd from it; the Branches are as the Son, in that they are produc'd from the Trunk as so many Arms or Conveyance for distributing to Mankind, all that proceeds from the Trunk. ”

“ But things had gone so hard with him, the world had become so rough, so ungracious, so full of thorns, the want of means had become an evil so keenly felt in every hour that it cannot be wondered at that his dreams that night should be of a golden elysium. ”

“ Thorns will prick his feet and pitfalls will endanger his life. He will find himself confronted and fenced-in by laws of retribution which God has set about him to admonish him to forsake his rebellious way. For all the pain of body or mind which men suffer, and all the obstacles they meet with in the way of frowardness are intended to keep them from a deeper pain and a heavier punishment. A thorn-hedge is set by the side of the highway to admonish the traveller to keep the path, and so avoid, may be, the precipice or the bog on the other side. ”

“ And not only with the barrenness of our souls can God deal with His quickening breath, but with our difficulties as well: with those things in our surroundings that seem the most unfavourable.
See this bit of gorse-bush. The whole year round the thorn has been hardening and sharpening. Spring comes: the thorn does not drop off, and it does not soften ”

“ In the present volume he proposes a new theory of trance, and considers its bearings on human testimony. Trance—whether natural as somnambulism, or self-produced as by so-called "trance-speakers"—results from activity of a portion of the brain-substance while the remainder sleeps: this is the "Involuntary Life." In this state men see visions, receive revelations, and have ecstasies, after the manner of Mohammed, the mediæval saints, and Swedenborg.
Oriental Religions and their Relations to Universal Religion.—China. By Samuel Johnson. ”

“ Of thorns, I think, and thistles,—a figure of the sins which the soil of the flesh brought forth for us, but which the power of the cross removed, blunting, in its endurance by the head of our Lord, death’s every sting. ”

“ Thorne coming rapidly, accompanied by a stout, middle-aged man, having the dress and appearance of a well-to-do farmer,--"Not the thought, simply, 'Thou must die,'" repeated Clarian, in his plaintive murmur, "but the feeling that all this decay and death is of ourselves, and could be averted by ourselves, had we only self-control, could we only keep ourselves pure, and so be ever near God and of Him. ”

“ Every second, with a long groan, some sturdy fellow would catch at an oar end, the water pouring from his mouth and dripping from his cap. The thin pole would tip up with a jerk, and he would sink gurgling and coughing to his death. ”

“ His body was full of the mere instinct of self-preservation. The legs on which he ran, the arms which pushed aside the forest branches, the furtive eyes which sought for foes, all acted independently of his brain. Nature itself working in him bade him fly. ”

“ Of the thorns in the path of ambitious men all moralists talk, but there are little, scarcely visible, thorns of a peculiar sort that beset the path of an ambitious woman, the venomous prickles of the domestic bramble, a plant not perhaps mentioned in Withering’s Botany, or the Hortus Kewensis, but it is too well known to many, and to me it has been sorely known. ”

“ We left the next day at noon, and on ascending the hill after crossing the Traun, had an opportunity of seeing the portrait on the Traunstein, of which the old landlord told us. I saw it at the first glance—certainly it is a most remarkable freak of nature. The rough back of the mountain forms the exact profile of the human countenance, as if regularly hewn out of the rock. What is still more singular, it is said to be a correct portrait of the unfortunate Louis XVI. The landlord said it was immediately recognized by all Frenchmen. ”

“ Being then with my brother, I asked him to sketch me a plot, and he drew out that of my next novel, called Doctor Thorne. I mention this particularly, because it was the only occasion in which I have had recourse to some other source than my own brains for the thread of a story. How far I may unconsciously have adopted incidents from what I have read,—either from history or from works of imagination,—I do not know. It is beyond question that a man employed as I have been must do so. ”

“ I've opinions the same as you have, but when they don't agree with the rest o' the world, do I go snortin' around a-tryin' to show how the world is wrong an' I am right? Sink me if I do. No, I tries to let the other fellow have a show. I may be right, but if I sees the world is agin me, I—"
"Right ye are, Trunnell. Spoken O.K." said the skipper. "I like to see a man what believes in a few things—even if they's eliphints. ”

“ He came out of it, realizing that not half-a-dozen men in England could have done what he had done, and as the keen air smote upon his face like a blow from the flat of a sword, he realized also that not six men in England, walking the pleasant, happy streets of any town, were so unutterably stained and immeasurably damned as he. ”

“ Lean, brown, old Cerdic was to die. Radiance was waiting for this poor [Pg 238] man, as the sun—how dull beside that greater radiance which was so soon to illuminate him!—clomb up the sky.
They crossed various ditches and water-ways, leaping some and wading breast-high through others, covered with floating scum and weeds. Once or twice a wide pool of black water alive with fish brought them to a check, and they had to swim over it or make a long detour. ”

“ In trance-umbra, on the contrary, the subject is throughout himself. When exhibiting the wildest phenomena he is conscious of what he is doing, and preserves afterwards as accurate a recollection of it as any of the spectators.
Then, how is trance-umbra induced? How is it known that the shadow of trance has enveloped the patient, and that, though quite himself to all appearance, he is in a state to manifest the highest trance-faculties?
The way to induce trance-umbra, is to administer a little dose of mesmerism. One operator, like Dr. ”

“ With all the rabble of Tim Trundell's race
(Bred from the dunghills and adulterous rhymes) ,
Shall live, and thou not superlast all times.
No, no; thy stars have destin'd thee to see
The whole world die and turn to dust with thee.
He's greedy of his life who will not fall
Whenas a public ruin bears down all. ”

“ The thorn and the thistle are obeying God's own law of heredity and affinity by producing only thorns and thistles; they would violate the law of their being if they produced grapes and figs. It is an allegory of our separate selves, of that complex nature which differentiates us from the immanence of God as subconscious mind in the vegetable and the animal. ”

“ And Trunnell went into the forward cabin with the apparition following eagerly in his wake.
What a strange little giant he was, this mate! "Discipline is discipline," he would say, and no man got anything for nothing aboard his ship. ”

“ Thorne's laurels, or how preach indeed at all in such a vanity fair as this now going on at Ullathorne? And then he began to feel a righteous disgust at the wickedness of the doings around him. He had been justly chastised for lending, by his presence, a sanction to such worldly lures. The gaiety of society, the mirth of banquets, the laughter of the young, and the eating and drinking of the elders were, for awhile, without excuse in his sight. ”

“ You see Commodore Trunnion's "logic" was perfect, only it was the logic of seamanship and not of riding to church on horseback. There are a good many people at the present day who are quite unable to get to church in time, for "reasons" as valid as Trunnion's; and when I hear of "the scientific basis of literature" I am always a little reminded of those scarecrows straggling in short tacks from one side of the lane to the other on their way to the wedding. ”

“ Grantly to her son when they were alone together.
"About what property?"
"About this property, or any property; you know what I mean;—something to show that you are interested about his affairs. He is doing the best he can to make things right." After dinner, over the claret, Mr. Thorne's terrible sin in reference to the trapping of foxes was accordingly again brought up, and the archdeacon became beautifully irate, and expressed his animosity,—which he did not in the least feel,—against an old friend with an energy which would have delighted his wife, if she could have heard him. ”

“ I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown.
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They call'd me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns. ”

“ Trunk, "that, as the ladies had so much curiosity, they did not go and see him in his bath."
"Well, the fact is," replied Mr. Parrot, "that they did try, but the monster would only just show them the tip of his nose."
"He has become quite a nuisance to the neighbourhood," said Mr. Trunk.
"I wonder," observed the conveyancer, "if the Alderman could put him down?"
"Put him down!" growled Trunk again; "the fellow's too fat. You might as well try to put down a whale!" ”

“ In the first imperfect trance-waking from initiatory trance, the patient’s apprehension of sensuous impressions177 often appears to have entirely deserted his own body, and to be in relation with the sentient apparatus in his mesmeriser’s frame—for, if you pull his hair, or put mustard in his mouth, he does not feel either; but he is actually alive to the sensations which these impressions excite, if the hair of the mesmeriser is pulled, or mustard placed on the mesmeriser’s tongue. ”

“ Trunnell seldom bragged, and we crowded around, looking for quick results.
"A little bit o' trunk a-breakin' the backs o' a pair o' fellows as has the impudence to say they are men an' question the discipline o' the ship!" he said, with a loud grunt of disgust. "Stan' clear an' let a man have a chanst. If it's gold, an' ye're right, it'll rattle an' jingle fast enough; an' I hopes then ye'll be satisfied." ”

“ In her defense the thorns do sting,
To keep thee out by thorny ring;
Yet the perfumed petals’ show
Thy drowsing soul doth wake and draw:
If thou dost love the beauty alone
Why would’st thou rush to bleed from prickly
thorns? ”

“ Extraordinary junctures and crises in the life of the individual and of the race may rouse slumbering powers into vehement activity. But that such admitted facts will bear the weight of inference thrown upon them, we must stoutly deny. The thorn and the thistle may indeed bloom and fructify, but they will not bear grapes or figs. ”