Village elder

“ All three have come from our village, and all have come about the same business. The taxes are being collected before the New Year, and the old man's samovár, the woman's only sheep, and one of the well-to-do peasant's cows, have been noted down for seizure in case of non-payment. They all ask me to defend them or assist them, or to do both.
The well-to-do peasant, a tall, handsome, elderly man, is the first to speak. He tells me that the Village Elder came, noted down the cow, and demands twenty-seven roubles. ”

“ The village elders struggled to keep the gates closed, but they were overborne by the hot blood of the youth, who were resolved, since they must have it, to give their assailants all the satisfaction they wanted. ”

“ The inhabitants of a village are all one family, belonging to the first, second, third and even fourth generation for they are all descended from the same old man, who is called the "Elder" and who is regarded with esteem and consideration by everybody. ”

“ An elder sister of the teacher was married to a very poor man in a village called the “Tower of the Li Family,” an insignificant hamlet consisting of only four families. In a year of great famine (1878) , both the sister and her husband died, leaving three sons, all married. Of these the second died, and his widow remarried. The wife of the elder nephew of the teacher also died, and this nephew married for his second wife a widow, who had a daughter of her own, twelve years of age. ”

“ Of course, there are quite a number of sturdy old men, who have had ample occasion to do their bit by helping their daughters or their sons' wives on their farms. So in the village itself there remains hardly any one. ”

“ The old man had been born there, and had lived there all the years of his life,—save a few that he had passed in a town as a student,—and he had wedded a neighbor who, like himself, had known no other home than this one village. ”

“ The "elders" are simply the most influential or most respected of the inhabitants, and their number is elastic. When important matters arise, affecting the interests of the whole village, they discuss them in the headman's house, or in a temple, or in the village street under the shade of an old tree. ”

“ There are old men in our village who have seen him half a dozen times, and have helped to bury him. They don’t tell of it—it is a thing to keep to oneself—but they know of it. The whole village knows of it, but they don’t talk. ”

“ Returning to his native village, where the dogs bark at him, and the children laugh at the antique figure, he finds that no one knows him. But an old man in the last stages of senility and decrepitude answers his anxious questions by telling him that, seven or eight centuries ago, a family of his name lived in the village. ”

“ The stroke of death makes a wider space in the village circle, and is an awful event in the tranquil uniformity of rural life. The passing bell tolls its knell in every ear; it steals with its pervading melancholy over hill and vale, and saddens all the landscape. ”

“ In cases of importance, such as war, or any important removal, the elders of the village meet together and deliberate in the presence of the whole population, which last finally decide the question.
"The elders, who possess other authority, and are always in the counsels of the chief, are the oldest members of important families in the village. ”

“ So long is it, and so hard, that by old age thou canst only win back to the sight of the land where thou wast once a child. Be advised, quit the road where thou must always be a seeker. Abandon thy quest, and settle here where the pleasant stream gently flows under the red stone bridge of the village. Thou wilt be lost, but thou wilt sleep and forget, and one morning will find thee once more the happiness lost in leaving the meadow. ”

“ Now I caught the sunlight on the towering greenness of an ancient elm; now a wide view over flat pastures, with a pool fringed deep in rushes, came in sight; now an old manorial farm held up its lichened chimneys above a row of pollarded elms. I came at last, by lanes and byways, to a silent village that seemed entirely deserted. The men, I suppose, were all working in the fields; the cottage doors stood open; near the little common rose an old high-shouldered church, much overgrown with ivy. The sun lay pleasantly upon its leaded roof, and among the grass-grown graves. ”

“ When the starling sang his evening song in the big poplar, the Old Town was white with the bloom of the elder. He left it dyed a deep purple, for he was as fond of elderberries as we were of the soup our mothers made of them, and the stain of them abides. In between the blossoming and the berrying when his youngsters were grown, he took himself off with his wife for several weeks, leaving only the children behind. ”

“ Among the young her beauty excited envy, and they virtuously rejoiced that her pride would yet bring her sorrow. All, young and old, loved an intrigue for itself; and would not have spoiled their sport for the world. The servants at the Grange carried their tales to the village, and the village gossips drew together in the fields, on the road, by the pump, at cottage doors, to roll the sweet morsel of scandal under their tongues. ”

“ This is the subject—the church and trees—all else belongs to that—we see dimly through the leafage—we read, through the gloom and the glimmer, the village histories. The repose of the dead—the piety of the living—all that is necessary for the village home, is introduced—but not conspicuously—and nothing more; here is a house, a farm-house, and a mill—a village stream, over which, but barely seen, is a wooden bridge—the clouds are closing round, and such clouds as "drop fatness," making the shelter the greater—a figure or two in the road. ”

“ So when we walk, nothing impure comes near;
Each field seems Eden, and each calm retreat;
Each village seems the haunt of holy feet.
But that sweet village, where my black-eyed maid
Closes her eyes in sleep beneath night's shade,
Whene'er I enter, more than mortal fire
Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire. ”

“ Here you are, at the age of twenty-two, making up your mind calmly to a long life in this wretched little village, with nothing to break the monotony of it, save the deaths and marriages in your family. ”

“ Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding
The green-growing acres with increase begun.
Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying
Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the field;
Love mingles with love, and no evil is weighing
On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.
From township to township, o’er down and by tillage
Far, far have we wandered and long was the day,
But now cometh eve at the end of the village,
Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.
There is wind in the twilight ”

“ And towards nightfall the dusty road will be thronged with shadowy people and unladen asses and new-laden mules, urging silently into the country again, their backs to the town, glad to get away from the town, to see the cactus and the pleated hills, and the trees that mean a village. In some village they will lie under a tree, or under a wall, and sleep. ”

“ He knew all the old people in the village, if not all the young ones: he would sit chatting in their cottages on a wet day, and on a fine one he would stroll around with some old fellow past his work, and glean old words and sayings, and pick up odds and ends of treasure for the history of the parish which he was going to write some day. ”

“ The wonder is that the elders, officially convened by tuck of drum from village after village and set down to be pumped till both parties were heartily weary of the process, should have told him anything at all—as they undoubtedly did, and much of it, to judge from internal evidence, correct enough. ”

“ At length the villagers, wearied with their exertions, retire to their cottage homes, marching in procession from the scene of their observances; and silence reigns o'er the village for a few short hours, till the sunlight summons them to their daily toil. ”

“ THE LITTLE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW.
There were once an old man, as old as I am, perhaps, and an old woman, his wife, and they lived together in a hut, in a village on the edge of the forest. There were many people in the village; quite a town it was—eight huts at least, thirty or forty souls, good company to be had for crossing the road. But the old man and the old woman were unhappy, in spite of living like that in the very middle of the world. And why do you think they were unhappy? They were unhappy because they had no little Vanya and no little Maroosia. ”

“ The oldest person in the village was a woman—as is often the case—reputed to be over a hundred: a tidy cottager, well tended, feeble in body, but brisk of tongue. She reckoned her own age by the thatch of the roof. ”

“ It is true that I am getting old, but I am not yet prepared for a lodge in the wilderness. My present house has a wall on the village street. The post-office is a matter of crossing the road; the church is at the bottom of a meadow. I like all that, because I like all my neighbours and the sound of their voices. ”

“ The day is over, the day which has been so hard and toilful even for the children,—and with the night comes rest and play. The village, so deserted before, is alive with voices; the elders cluster round the courtyard doors, the little ones whoop through the narrow alleys. ”

“ Those whom I spoke to on the matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told nothing of what I knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside, and goes down to the river in the valley; such another long lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer night, walking to and fro before your house. ”

“ But I love a quiet village for its own sake above most things, and would rather spend my leisure amongst its simple cottage folk, take my rest on the bench at the village alehouse door, and walk amid the smock-frocked peasantry to the grey village church, than mingle with the fashionable, over-dressed, prurient, hollow-hearted, and artificial products of civilisation that [2] constitute themselves society—yea a thousand-fold rather. To me the restfulness of a little village, with its cots nestling among the drowsy trees in a warm summer day, is a foreshadowing of the rest of heaven. ”

“ We sped through village after village—a long street; children in blouses playing strange games, disputing in shrill voices, wagging little eloquent fingers under each other's noses; handsome men clothed in blue, with red sashes and the universal berret on their heads, guiding with their cruel goads patient teams of yoked oxen; a group of persons round a church door—a wedding, perhaps a funeral; old women knitting in the sun, young women smiling from windows—all these impressions follow each other like flickering pictures in a cinematograph ”

“ These columns of the file, therefore, that to a stranger seem a blank, to the old folk and their descendants are like a mirror, in which they can see the faces of the loved ones who passed away a generation since. They are the archives of the hamlets round about: a farmer can find from them when his grandfather quitted the old farm, and read an account of the sale. Men who left the village in their youth for the distant city or the still more distant colonies, as they grow in years often feel an irresistible desire to revisit the old, old place. ”

“ In a village you become forcibly interested in surrounding humanity, and enter into the lives and feelings of others. A young woman died yesterday in child-birth, and was buried to-day. Everybody felt as if the awful shadow that descended upon the lonely house across the river had passed close to him and her, and left a chill in the heart. ”

“ He felt that he had separated himself from human interests, and was henceforth to live in his books with the dead, until he should be numbered with them himself. He had chosen this quiet village as a place where he might pass his days undisturbed, and find a peaceful resting-place in its churchyard, where the gravel was dry, and the sun lay warm, and the glowing woods of autumn would spread their many-colored counterpane over the bed where he would be taking his rest. ”

“ But besides these retired neighbors, their retreat being but five miles from their old farm and whilom cottage chapel, several of the village residents had long been camp meeting and quarterly meeting associates. So, with a dutiful son and near-by church, this superannuated couple, surrounded by congenial society, surrendered their beloved public life and sought an evening of rest, in which to ripen for heaven. ”

“ There was living in this village an old man, a wise man, a man who was held in great respect by the people, for he was a holy man, to whom the Unseen Powers granted knowledge not given to all the people. ”

“ Village after village was passed both on his right hand and on his left, and many were the strange sights that met his gaze. The fields became more verdant, the flowers more beautiful, the scenery more gorgeous, and the people more like nymphs and fairies. The color of the clouds and the atmosphere was of a richer, softer hue; while the breezes which wafted his frail bark were milder and gentler than any he had known before.
Despairing at last of reaching the source he stopped at a village where he saw a maiden spinning and a young man leading an ox to drink. ”

“ She appreciated the homely ease of village life. She liked the old men, farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who when they gossiped sometimes squatted on their heels on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively spat over the curb. ”