things and let us be off to the palace to see the Adonis. I hear the
Queen’s decorations are something splendid.
_Praxinoë._ “In grand people’s houses everything is grand.” What things
you have seen in Alexandria! What a deal you will have to tell to anybody
who has never been there!
_Gorgo._ Come, we ought to be going.
_Praxinoë._ “Every day is a holiday to people who have nothing to do.”
Eunoë, pick up your work; and take care, you lazy girl, how you leave
it lying about again; the cats find it just the bed they like. Come,
stir yourself, fetch me some water, quick! I wanted the water first,
and the girl brings me the soap. Never mind; give it me. Not all that,
extravagant! Now pour out the water—stupid! Why don’t you take care of my
dress? That will do. I have got my hands washed as it pleased God. Where
is the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here—quick!
_Gorgo._ Praxinoë, you can’t think how well that dress, made full, as
you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how much did it cost—the dress by
itself, I mean?
_Praxinoë._ Don’t talk of it, Gorgo: more than eight guineas of good hard
money. And about the work on it, I have almost worn my life out.
_Gorgo._ Well, you couldn’t have done better.
_Praxinoë._ Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put my hat properly on my
head—_properly_. No, child (_to her little boy_,) I am not going to take
you; there’s a bogey on horseback who bites. Cry as much as you like;
I’m not going to have you lamed for life. Now we’ll start. Nurse take
the little one and amuse him; call the dog in, and shut the street door.
(_They go out._) Good heavens! what a crowd of people! How on earth are
we ever to get through all this? They are like ants: you can’t count
them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become of us? Here are the Royal Horse
Guards. My good man, don’t ride over me! Look at that bay horse rearing
bolt upright; what a vicious one! Eunoë, you mad girl, do take care!—that
horse will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How glad I am
now, that I left the child safe at home.
_Gorgo._ All right, Praxinoë, we are safe behind them; and they have gone
on to where they are stationed.
_Praxinoë._ Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From the time I was a
little girl I have had more horror of horses and snakes than of anything
else in the world. Let us get on; here’s a great crowd coming this way
upon us.
_Gorgo_ (_to an old woman_). Mother, are you from the palace?
_Old woman._ Yes, my dears.
_Gorgo._ Has one a tolerable chance of getting there?
_Old woman._ My pretty young lady, the Greeks got to Troy by dint of
trying hard; trying will do anything in this world.
_Gorgo._ The old creature has delivered an oracle and disappeared.
_Praxinoë._ Women can tell you everything about everything, even about
Jupiter’s marriage with Juno!
_Gorgo._ Look, Praxinoë, what a squeeze at the palace gates.
_Praxinoë._ Tremendous! Take hold of me, Gorgo; and you, Eunoë, take hold
of Eutychis!—tight hold, or you’ll be lost. Here we go in all together.
Hold tight to us, Eunoë! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Gorgo, there’s my scarf torn
right in two. For heaven’s sake, my good man, as you hope to be saved,
take care of my dress!
_Stranger._ I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t depend upon me.
_Praxinoë._ What heaps of people! They push like a drove of pigs.
_Stranger._ Don’t be frightened, ma’am, we are all right.
_Praxinoë._ May you be all right, my dear sir, to the last day you live,
for the care you have taken of us! What a kind, considerate man! There is
Eunoë jammed in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push! Capital! We are all of
us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom said when he had locked
himself in with the bride.
_Gorgo._ Praxinoë, come this way. Do but look at that work, how delicate
it is!—how exquisite! Why, the gods might wear it in heaven.
_Praxinoë._ Goddess of Spinning, what hands were hired to do that work?
Who designed those beautiful patterns? They seem to stand up and move
about, as if they were real—as if they were living things, and not
needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature! And look, look, how
charming _he_ lies there on his silver couch, with just a soft down on
his cheeks, that beloved Adonis—Adonis, whom one loves even though he is
dead!
_Another stranger._ You wretched women, do stop your incessant chatter!
Like turtles, you go on for ever.
_Gorgo._ Lord, where does the man come from? What is it to you if we
_are_ chatterboxes? Order about your own servants!
_Praxinoë._ Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than
the one we’ve got! We don’t the least care for _you_; pray don’t trouble
yourself for nothing.
_Gorgo._ Be quiet, Praxinoë! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman’s
daughter, is going to sing the _Adonis_ hymn. She is the same who was
chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something
first-rate from _her_. She is going through her airs and graces ready to
begin.
THEOCRITUS (_Fifteenth Idyll_).
This is Matthew Arnold’s translation of a _poem_ by Theocritus,
who lived in the Third Century B.C., 2,200 years ago, (see
Arnold’s Essay on _Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment_). I
have altered a few words and also omitted part because of its
length.
Gorgo, a lady of Alexandria, calls on her friend Praxinoë, to
take her to the Festival of Adonis. Greek ladies were allowed
to go out on Festival days if veiled and attended, and,
therefore, Gorgo and Praxinoë take with them their respective
maids, Eutychis and Eunoë, who would no doubt be slave-girls.
Some curious facts may be noted. The wife is kept in seclusion
and the husband does the marketing, buying among other things
her _rouge_. Observe how perfunctory are the pretty lady’s
ablutions (the soap, by the way, is in the form of paste).
The little boy represents the ruling sex and will be removed
at an early age from her control. She is disposed to rebel
against her lord and master, but takes the utmost care of the
important boy-child. While the ladies with their slaves make
up their own dresses, the designs and the finest needlework
are done by men. The Greek woman in Athens was practically
uneducated and regarded as an inferior being; but these ladies
were Dorian Greeks and would no doubt be better treated and
have somewhat more freedom—especially in Alexandria, which was
a colony and, therefore, probably less conservative. Although
no doubt veiled, their eyes would be visible and, as seen in
the East to-day, a pretty woman can always manage to show
her beauty, if she chooses. It will be seen that one man is
polite to the two young, pretty, richly-dressed ladies, and
saves them from being crushed by the crowd, while another is a
crusty, grumpy person, who treats them with some rudeness and,
in the original, ridicules their Dorian pronunciation. Praxinoë
is most grateful to the polite man for what would now be an
ordinary act of courtesy.
As regards the conversation Andrew Lang says: “Nothing can be
more gay and natural than the chatter of the women, which has
changed no more in two thousand years than the song of birds.”
* * * * *
I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.
WORDSWORTH (_The Excursion_).
* * * * *
Marriage is a desperate thing; the Frogs in Aesop were extreme wise: they
had a great mind to some Water, but they would not leap into the Well,
because they could not get out again.
* * * * *
’Tis reason a Man that will have a Wife should be at the Charge of her
Trinkets, and pay all the Scores she sets on him. He that will keep a
Monkey, ’tis fit he should pay for the Glasses he breaks.
SELDEN (_Table Talk_).
* * * * *
When you’re a married man, Samivel, you’ll understand a good many things
as you don’t understand now; but vether it’s worth while goin’ through so
much to learn so little, as the charity-boy said wen he got to the end of
the alphabet, is a matter o’ taste. _I_ rayther think it isn’t.
CHARLES DICKENS (_Pickwick Papers_).
* * * * *
Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favour.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
A man, who admires a fine woman, has yet no more reason to wish himself
her husband, than one, who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to
wish himself the dragon that kept it.
ALEXANDER POPE.
* * * * *
You wish, Paula, to marry Priscus. I am not surprised;
You are wise; Priscus will not marry you and he is wise.
MARTIAL, IX, 5.
* * * * *
IN THE TWILIGHT.
Men say the sullen instrument,
That, from the Master’s bow,
With pangs of joy or woe,
Feels music’s soul through every fibre sent,
Whispers the ravished strings
More than he knew or meant;
Old summers in its memory glow;
The secrets of the wind it sings;
It hears the April-loosened springs;
And mixes with its mood
All it dreamed when it stood
In the murmurous pine-wood,
Long ago!
The magical moonlight then
Steeped every bough and cone;
The roar of the brook in the glen
Came dim from the distance blown;
The wind through its glooms sang low,
And it swayed to and fro
With delight as it stood
In the wonderful wood,
Long ago!
O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,
But made us all feeling and voice?
When we went with the winds in their blowing,
When Nature and we were peers,
And we seemed to share in the flowing
Of the inexhaustible years?
Have we not from the earth drawn juices
Too fine for earth’s sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen
All I feel and I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago?
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odour from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendour that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!
And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs in my brain
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak and show it,
This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should not lack a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long ago.
J. R. LOWELL.
* * * * *
I am especially pleased with their _freundin_ (the German word meaning
a female friend), which unlike the _amica_ of the Romans, is seldom
used but in its best and purest sense. Now I know it will be said that
a friend is already something more than a friend, when a man feels an
anxiety to express to himself that this friend is a female; but this I
deny—in that sense at least in which the objection will be made. I would
hazard the impeachment of heresy, rather than abandon my belief that
there is a sex in our souls as well as in their perishable garments; and
he who does not feel it, never truly loved a sister—nay, is not capable
even of loving a wife as she deserves to be loved, if she indeed be
worthy of that holy name.
S. T. COLERIDGE (_Biographia Literaria_, Letter to a Lady).
Coleridge also says: “The qualities of the sexes correspond.
The man’s courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again
is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by
her infallible tact. Can it be true what is so constantly
affirmed, that there is no sex in souls?—I doubt it, I doubt it
exceedingly.”—_Table Talk._
But surely Coleridge might have found the best proof of his
contention in the nature of children, the small boy who fights
with his fists, plays with tin soldiers and despises “girls,”
and the girl-child who loves her doll and her pretty clothes.
See next quotation.
* * * * *
O thou most dear!
Who art thy sex’s complex harmony
God-set more facilely;
To thee may love draw near
Without one blame or fear.
Unchidden save by his humility:
Thou Perseus’ Shield wherein I view secure
The mirrored Woman’s fateful-fair allure!
Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity,
As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free;
With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind
The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind.
Wild Dryad, all unconscious of thy tree,
With which indissólubly
The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole;
Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole
Who wear’st thy femineity
Light as entrailèd blossoms, that shalt find
It erelong silver shackles unto thee.
Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;—
As hoarded in the vine
Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine,
As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze;—
In whom the mystery which lures and sunders;
Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges,
—The dragon to its own Hesperides—
Is gated under slow-revolving changes,
Manifold doors of heavy-hingèd years.
So once, ere Heaven’s eyes were filled with wonders
To see Laughter rise from Tears,
Lay in beauty not yet mighty,
Conchèd in translucencies,
The antenatal Aphodrite,
Caved magically under magic seas;
Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.
FRANCIS THOMPSON (_Sister Songs_).
Francis Thompson is one of the “difficult” poets who repay
study. Here he says that, in the young girl, sex appears in
a less complex form than in the woman and, just as Perseus
could safely look at the reflection on his shield of the
fatal Medusa’s head, so we can freely view womanhood in the
girl-child. Nothing conceals her open, innocent, feminine
nature. She is the Dryad, the Nymph who lives in the tree and
is born and dies with it, but is as yet unconscious of the
tree, that is, of her sex. Her “young sex is yet but in her
soul,” and is like the juice of the grape which has not yet
fermented into wine, or the calm air which sleeps undisturbed.
The mystery of womanhood, which attracts and yet, in its own
protection, repulses man, will not come to her until after
the changes of years. It is the Aphrodite lying in unawakened
beauty before she rises as a goddess from the sea. (“Facilely”
appears to have the strained meaning “easy to understand” or
“simply”; the word “gated,” “confined,” is a curious use of a
university word: the Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate, who
has misbehaved, may be “gated” for a period, _i.e._, confined
to the precincts of his own college.) “The dragon to its
own Hesperides”—the Hesperides were maidens who guarded the
golden apples of love and fruitfulness, which Earth had given
to Hera on her marriage to Zeus. The maidens were protected
by a dragon. Here the dragon is the maiden’s own sensitive
reserve and self-protecting nature, which enable her to protect
herself. (“Conchèd,” Aphrodite is lying in her shell.)
* * * * *
Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally
resemble them in this, that they please us no longer when once we know
them.
ALEXANDER POPE.
* * * * *
Compare the ancient with the modern world; “Look on this picture, and
on that.” One broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself
into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there
were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet
“holy.” In other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who
besides being virtuous in their actions were possessed with an unaffected
enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a
vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian
countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has
existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the
truth is, that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country
since the time of Christ where a century has passed without exhibiting a
character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and
made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of God
Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die?
SIR J. R. SEELEY (_Ecce Homo_).
The quotation from Hamlet should read, “Look here, upon this
picture, and on this.”
* * * * *
DAY
Waking one morning
In a pleasant land,
By a river flowing
Over golden sand:—
Whence flow ye, waters,
O’er your golden sand?
We come flowing
From the Silent Land.
Whither flow ye, waters,
O’er your golden sand?
We go flowing
To the Silent Land.
And what is this fair realm?
A grain of golden sand
In the great darkness
Of the Silent Land.
JAMES THOMSON (“B.V.”)
* * * * *
For there is not a lie, spite of God’s high decree,
But has made its nest sure on some branch of our tree,
And has some vested right to exist in the land:
And many will have it the tree could not stand,
If the sticks, straws, and feathers, that sheltered the wrong,
Were swept from the boughs they have cumbered so long.
W. C. SMITH (_Borland Hall_).
* * * * *
I shall be old and ugly one day, and I shall look for man’s chivalrous
help, but I shall not find it. The bees are very attentive to the flowers
till their honey is done, and then they fly over them.
OLIVE SCHREINER (_The Story of an African Farm_).
* * * * *
There are some of us who in after years say to Fate “Now deal us your
hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we
suffered when we were children.”
OLIVE SCHREINER (_The Story of an African Farm_).
* * * * *
Il n’a jamais fait couler larmes à personne sauf à sa mort.
(He never caused any one to shed tears, except at his death.)
_B. Seebohm’s Life of Grellet._
Epitaph on Pétion, President of Hayti about 1816.
* * * * *
... that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of
circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single
momentous bargain.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).
* * * * *
If there are two things not to be hidden—love and a cough—I say there
is a third, and that is ignorance, when one is obliged to do something
besides wagging his head.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Romola_—Nello speaking).
George Eliot is quoting the Latin proverb, _Amor tussisque
non celantur_. It is also found in George Herbert’s _Jacula
Prudentum_, 1640. The same proverb appears with all sorts of
variations, “love and a sneeze,” “love and smoke,” “love and
a red nose,” “love and poverty,” etc., being the things that
cannot be hidden. “Love and murder will out” (Congreve, _The
Double Dealer_, Act IV, 2). (I took these instances from some
collection of proverbs.)
* * * * *
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;—be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour:
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.
WORDSWORTH (_After-Thought_).
* * * * *
You can’t turn curds to milk again,
Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then;
And, having tasted stolen honey,
You can’t buy innocence for money.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Felix Holt_).
* * * * *
The gods are brethren. Wheresoe’er
They set their shrines of love or fear
In Grecian woods, by banks of Nile,
Where cold snows sleep or roses smile,
The gods are brethren. Zeus the Sire
Was fashioned of the self-same fire
As Odin, He, whom Ind brought forth,
Hath his pale kinsman east and north;
And more than one, since life began,
Hath known Christ’s agony for Man.
The gods are brethren. Kin by fate,
In gentleness as well as hate,
’Mid heights that only Thought may climb
They come, they go; they are, or seem;
Each, rainbow’d from the rack of Time,
Casts broken lights across God’s Dream.
R. BUCHANAN (_Balder the Beautiful_).
* * * * *
“You remember Tom Martin, Neddy? Bless my dear eyes,” said Mr. Roker,
shaking his head slowly from side to side, and gazing abstractedly out
of the grated window before him, as if he were fondly recalling some
peaceful scene of his early youth; “it seems but yesterday that he
whopped the coal-heaver down Fox-under-the-hill, by the wharf there.
I think I can see him now, a-coming up the Strand between the two
street-keepers, a little sobered by his bruising, with a patch o’ winegar
and brown paper over his right eyelid, and that ’ere lovely bull-dog, as
pinned the little boy arterwards, a-following at his heels. What a rum
thing Time is, ain’t it, Neddy?”
CHARLES DICKENS (_Pickwick Papers_).
Mr. Roker is a turnkey in the Fleet prison.
* * * * *
THE COURTIN’
God makes sech nights, all white an’ still
Fur’z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,
All silence an’ all glisten.
Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown
An’ peeked in thru’ the winder,
An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
’Ith no one nigh to hender.
A fireplace filled the room’s one side
With half a cord o’ wood in—
There warn’t no stoves (till comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin’.
The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her,
An’ leetle flames danced all about
The chiny on the dresser....
The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin’,
An’ she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin’....
He was six foot o’ man, A1,
Clear grit an’ human natur’;
None couldn’t quicker pitch a ton
Nor dror a furrer straighter.
He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,
He’d squired ’em, danced ’em, druv ’em,
Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells—
All is, he couldn’t love ’em.
But long o’ her his veins ’ould run
All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o’ sun
Ez a south slope in Ap’il.
She thought no v’ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;
My! when he made Ole Hundred ring,
She _knowed_ the Lord was nigher.
An’ she’d blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin’-bunnet
Felt somehow thru’ its crown a pair
O’ blue eyes sot upon it.
Thet night, I tell ye, she looked _some_!
She seemed to ’ve gut a new soul,
For she felt sartin-sure he’d come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.
She heered a foot, an’ knowed it tu,
A-raspin’ on the scraper,—
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin’ o’ l’itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o’ the sekle, sequel.
His heart kep’ goin’ pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle.
An’ yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An’ on her apples kep’ to work,
Parin’ away like murder.
“You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?”
“Wal ... no ... I come designin’”—
“To see my Ma? She’s sprinklin’ clo’es
Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”
To say why gals acts so or so,
Or don’t, ’ould be presumin’;
Mebby to mean _yes_ an’ say _no_
Comes nateral to women.
He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t’other,
An’ on which one he felt the wust
He couldn’t ha’ told ye nuther.
Sez he, “I’d better call agin;”
Sez she, “Think likely, Mister;”
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An’ ... Wal he up an’ kist her.
When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kin’ o’ smily roun’ the lips
An’ teary roun’ the lashes....
The blood clost roun’ her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin’,
Till mother see how metters stood,
An’ gin ’em both her blessin’.
Then her red come back like the tide,
Down to the Bay o’ Fundy,
An’ all I know is they was cried
In meetin’ come nex’ Sunday.
J. RUSSELL LOWELL
* * * * *
What is the life of man? Is it not to turn from side to side? From sorrow
to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation and unbutton another?
STERNE (_Tristram Shandy_).
* * * * *
I know thy heart by heart.
P. J. BAILEY (_Festus_).
* * * * *
HERBERT SPENCER’S “FIRST PRINCIPLES.”
Mr. Spencer’s genesis of the universe from chaos to the Crimean War ...
For our own part, we must confess that this new book of Genesis appears
to us no more credible than the old.
J. MARTINEAU (_Science, Nescience, and Faith_).
* * * * *
JAMES MILL.
Did the facts of consciousness stand, as he represents them, his method
would work. He satisfactorily explains—the wrong human nature.
J. MARTINEAU (_Essay on John Stuart Mill_).
* * * * *