Werowance

“ There is to be no sleep for us to-night; to-night we must march. Our legs do so from sheer habit, we accompany them. Here before us is a hill; we ascend it; it is steep. Here now are fields; the earth is very soft; everywhere there are holes which cause one to stumble or to fall prone with all one's weight, which is increased by the weight of the equipment. ”

“ They think that their Werowances and priests which they also esteem quiyoughcosughs, when they are dead do go beyond the mountains towards the setting of the sun, and ever remain there in form of their Okee, with their heads painted red with oil and pocones, finely trimmed with feathers, and shall have beads, hatchets, copper, and tobacco, doing nothing but dance and sing with all their predecessors. ”

“ The body shall become like a watch when the spring is broken, the motion of all the wheels is stopped and they all stand still; the machine is taken to pieces; the heart beats no more, nor does the blood circulate. Some apply this to the ornaments and utensils of life; rich people must, at death, leave behind them their clothing and furniture of silver and gold, and poor people their earthen pitchers, and the drawers of water will have their wheel broken. ”

“ Then the men sat by the fire in the house where the women moved about with surety, and the limbs and the body of the men were impregnated with the day, cattle and earth and vegetation and the sky, the men sat by the fire and their brains were inert, as their blood flowed heavy with the accumulation from the living day. ”

“ One wretch is represented attempting to climb a tree, his brains being picked out by a bird from above, and his feet being torn off by dogs from beneath; another is seated on the ground, while two men are sawing him in halves, right through the head downwards, the blood all the while flowing in gallons! ”

“ The equilibrium of nature is constantly preserved; for in walking, leaping, running, &c., similar precautions are taken. By the flexibility of our bodies in striking, according to the proportionate force meant to be employed, the body is first drawn back, then the limb propelled forward, bringing with it the weight of the body. ”

“ Hence, too, this poverty of blood makes them over-­timid to stand up against the sword, but great heat and fevers they can endure without timidity, because their frames are bred up in the raging heat. ”

“ I remember that terrible broiling march with a shudder, for our men suffered horribly from heat and thirst, often from want of food, while our constant dread was lest any of the poor fellows should go down with sunstroke. ”

“ Repose is made feverish by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and prickling of the whole body-surface. With the approach of morning the air grows cooler, and slumber comes,—a slumber of exhaustion, dreamless and sickly ”

“ From out a boiling pit where place is paid for by furious fighting, where pressure is father of fountains of boiling rock, out from struggle and howling fury, these gases rose into the world of living matter, into the world of wind and water. ”

“ A smothering weight flung itself on me, against which I struggled as hard as I could, shrinking in anticipation from the thirsty plunge of the knives. However, though the weight increased until further struggle was impossible, I was not harmed, and in a few moments found myself, wrists and ankles tied, beside a roaring fire. ”

“ Thou seest, my dear son, in one tub is water of strength, in the other water of weakness. Whoso drinks from the first will be a strong, mighty hero; whoso drinks from the second will grow weak altogether. Whirlwind always drinks the water of strength and puts it on the right side ”

“ Nervous women cried out in alarm as they saw the struggling mass and heap of boyish humanity. There were several times when the play had to be stopped to allow the dashing of cold water over some unlucky chap, to bring him out of a half faint, and the number of lads who lost their wind, and had to have it pumped into them by artificial respiration was many. ”

“ I stretched myself to my full height many times a day. I exercised with weights and broom handles, even though I found it very painful. I gulped in the fresh air when out of the mill, and walked with my chest thrust out, a stiff, self-conscious, growing lad, fighting ever against the impending tragedy of a deformed body. ”

“ On each man's emaciated face, a look of agony, and on the canvas-clad back of one man, a great stain of wet blood from a raw wound caused by the cutting and rubbing of the stone-laden knapsack. Each man wore a fatigue-uniform, filthy beyond description. ”

“ We've been driven from the garden, and must wander over stones and thistles. And when our hands and feet are bruised, we feel we must rub salt in the wounds of the... other one. And then the mill starts grinding. It'll never stop; for there's always water. ”

“ Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a mill—a brewing vat—a tanner’s yard—a crucible, or a retort. You yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right ”

“ After twenty or so kilos had been reeled off physical exhaustion invaded man after man, growling ceased, heads bent forward and the eyes watched unseeing the heels of the man ahead. Mechanical rigidity of monotonous, torturous march again held sway, the old dryness of tongue and aching of burning feet grew more and more acute at each heavy step forward. ”

“ And what a threshing of arms, of strength against strength, there is in the storm wind, every wrench tightening grip, to the rocks, some trees even sending down extra roots like guy ropes for anchorhold. ”

“ The hunger and burst may haunt him as an inevitable condition; but as is the hunger, so is the burst with them—an extravagance this latter that would provoke the envy of many a fast youth, born in a mansion, and who runs through his property as fast as the horse he rides. ”

“ Learned bodies, like the French Academy and the Royal Society of London, have gravely asserted that, in the fall, swallows plunge into the mud of marshes and mill-ponds, become torpid, and hibernate like frogs and snakes. ”

“ The whole face of the earth was perforated with holes ; shafts sunk and being sunk by these men in search of gold, down to the bed-rock. Windlasses stretched across these shafts where great buckets swung, in which men hoisted the earth to the light of the sun by sheer force of muscle. ”

“ We see, then, that the subject of springs comprehends not only the question of comfort in regard to the shock sustained by the body, but also the most serious and interesting factor in relation to the economy of power ”

“ For what does hunger mean except that one of the things which man does naturally, instinctively, is to search for food—that his activity naturally turns that way? Hunger primarily names an act or active process not a motive to an act. It is an act if we take it grossly, like a babe's blind hunt for the mother's breast; it is an activity if we take it minutely as a chemico-physiological occurrence. ”

“ Seeing thirty or forty living skeletons shuffling, leaping as far as their weight of chains and strength would allow, you knew, when one fell, that it was the weakness caused by starvation which had brought him down. ”

“ We first made a large fire near the river, to warm ourselves by whilst packing and saddling the horses, so that the caloric of our bodies should not be all exhausted, as on the last occasion, before we had to make the final struggle, when we should have most need of it. ”

“ We know that if a tree is cut through it will fall, but precisely in what direction will be determined by the inclination of the trunk, the spread of the branches, the impact of the blows, the quarter and force of the wind ”

“ At moments there is a violent tumult; a confused mass of swarming legs, snapping pincers and coiling, clashing tails, threatening or caressing, one does not quite know which. All take part in the scuffle, large and small ”

“ Men fall, tossing their arms; some leap into the air, some plunge headlong, falling like logs of wood or lumps of lead. Some reel, stagger, and tumble; others lie down gently as to a night’s repose, unheeding the din, commotion, and uproar. ”

“ We know, too, that when exhausted by labour, sitting brings a partial return of vigour. And we also know that after the violent exertion of running, a lapse into the less violent exertion of walking, results in a gradual disappearance of that prostration which the running produced. ”

“ Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, that we have to remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. ”

“ Toil and strife, privation and poverty, labour and luck, all the contending forces of life are hushed as in a trance. As in hibernation, the physical and mental attributes appear to rally, to recruit fresh stores of energy. ”

“ It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption—five hundred and seventeen fellow-creatures, of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women, all entirely destitute of clothing, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air and water. ”

“ In each case, too, growth has its conditions and its limits. That any organ in a living being may grow by exercise, there needs a due supply of blood. All action implies waste; blood brings the materials for repair ”

“ We had not yet obtained a drop of water of nature’s thawing, and fuel being rather a scarce article, we sometimes took small kettles of snow under the blanket with us, to thaw it with the heat of our bodies. ”

“ I could tell you of men who'll carry a load of ninety pounds or more every day for a month on end, and then all at once decamp, hundreds of miles away from their home, and with no earthly chance of getting there. ”

“ Where a weight had to be lifted, men lifted it; where a rock had to be quarried, men chipped it out; where a field had to be ploughed, men and oxen ploughed it; the Roman equivalent of the steamship was the galley with its bank of sweating rowers. A vast proportion of mankind in the early civilizations were employed in purely mechanical drudgery. ”

“ We had, let us say, always seen heavy bodies sink when their support was taken away; we had also seen, perhaps, that the sinking of heavier bodies forced lighter bodies upwards. But now we see a lever in action, and we are suddenly struck with the fact that a lighter body is lifting another of much greater weight. ”

“ In the beginning, when man began to plough, when he had cut a furrow from one end to the other, he lifted his plough on to his shoulder, and when he had carried it back to the same end that he had begun from, he began again to plough thence. The Lord, in the form of an old man, passed by and said to him, ‘Not thus, my son, but when you make a furrow, turn your plough round at the same place to which you have cut the furrow, and plough back to the end from which you began.’ And thus the ploughman learnt to plough aright, as people plough at this day. ”

“ Exercise may react upon circulation, breathing, and nutrition so as to develop vigor or strength, but this reservoir is available for specific ends only by use in connection with the material means which accomplish them. Vigor will enable a man to play tennis or golf or to sail a boat better than he would if he were weak. ”

“ Delving, even in the most favorable circumstances, is a fairly stern test of wind and muscle. In the pitch blackness, under such nerve-thrilling conditions, it was an ordeal. Both men, fortunately, were in hard training. The heavy soil flew steadily and fast. ”

“ True, the air was full of thunder and the earth was trembling beneath their feet; and if there is truth in the theory of the conversion of force, these men were storing up energy from every shock that burst its waves upon their bodies. Perhaps this theory may better than another explain the tremendous endurance of men in battle. ”

“ Too weak to rise and struggle, he could only just support himself by clinging to a bough, when his cries were heard. A labourer came and rescued him, and left him sitting in the sunlight to dry his soaking rags. ”

“ These rushes were, and are now, cut in our rivers, preferably in the early autumn, before they begin to rot, and sold by a peculiar measure—a bolt—which is as much as a man can clasp of rushes, when dried, within his arms. ”

“ If the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts hitches up his garment above his knee, the weather will be wet and heavy rains will spoil the harvest. If he lets it trail to his ankle, a drought will be the consequence. But fine weather and heavy crops will follow if the hem of his robe hangs exactly half-way down the calf of his leg. ”

“ Of strength in storm we have had example enough for twenty centuries—such example as is unique in history; of what is more rare, strength in days of fair weather, we are to expect a supreme example today, and in America, in the American Universities let us say, where the cloak of adaptability is most free and seasonable—a supreme example of strength, or of weakness. ”