Melting snow in the spring and cloud-bursting rains in the fall poured their floods from the foothills, through the arroyo, and were licked up and lost in the arid lands below. The Mormons came, dammed the outlet in the ridge—and, lo! there was a lake.
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The royal Malay tiger is no gentleman. If he were, the following would never have been told.
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Commercial affaire had engaged me to make a sea voyage. I had got far from the shores of my native country, when a dreadful tempest threw me on an unknown coast; however, I fell into the hands of a very humane people, and soon found they had brought the arts to great perfection, that they practised many virtues, and appeared to me in a state as enlightened as humanity could attain.
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Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new mischief got into his head.
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“There, Simmons, you blockhead! Why didn’t you trot that old woman aboard her train? She’ll have to wait here now until the 1.05 a.m.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
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Everything in Lelechka’s nursery was bright, pretty, and cheerful. Lelechka’s sweet voice charmed her mother. Lelechka was a delightful child. There was no other such child, there never had been, and there never would be.
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For Hubert Lapell this first love-affair was extremely important. “Important” was the word he had used himself when he was writing about it in his diary. It was an event in his life, a real event for a change. It marked, he felt, a genuine turning-point in his spiritual development.
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“Seeing,” they said, “that old-time Pan is dead, let us now make a tomb for him and a monument, that the dreadful worship of long ago may be remembered and avoided by all.”
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The Berceau de Dieu was a little village in the valley of the Seine.
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A Judge said to a Convicted Assassin:
“Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why the death-sentence should not be passed upon you?”
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It was long after the midnight hour in the dimly lighted wards of the field hospital back of the English battle line at Ypres, and pretty, white-capped Nydia, the nurse best beloved by the wounded soldiers—Nydia, with the face of a Madonna and voice as soft and soothing as that of a mother crooning a lullaby to a sleeping babe—was flitting about among the cots, adjusting a bandage or pillow here, and giving a swallow of water or medicine there, and doing everything possible for the comfort of her charges.
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Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane until nine in the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and I determined to make my way down to the Embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching the variegated lights upon the river.
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At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.
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We always did pity a man who does not love childhood. There is something morally wrong with such a man. If his tenderest sympathies are not awakened by their innocent prattle, if his heart does not echo their merry laughter, if his whole nature does not reach out in ardent longing after their pure thoughts and unselfish impulses, he is a sour, crusty, crabbed old stick, and the world full of children has no use for him. In every age and clime the best and noblest men loved children.
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One fine evening, a no less fine government clerk called Ivan Dmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls, gazing through an opera glass at the Cloches de Corneville. He gazed and felt at the acme of bliss.
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They had been playing “cut-in” Bridge until the Charltons went home, at midnight. Instead of following them Norris returned to the library with Steuler and his wife. In the old days Barclay Norris had asked Barbara to marry him; but Steuler’s impetuous love-making appealed to her imagination, and Norris had remained their loyal friend. In the library, Steuler yawned—without apology. Extracting a suit-case from the coat-closet, he started for the stairs.
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A Wicked Old Man finding himself ill sent for a Physician, who prescribed for him and went away.
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When the Penny-farthing Shop began to fill Gregorio disappeared quietly by the back door. He muttered a half-unintelligible answer to the men who were playing cards in the dim parlour through which he had to pass, who called to him to join them.
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Meeting a fat and patriotic Statesman on his way to Washington to beseech the President for an office, an idle Tramp accosted him and begged twenty-five cents with which to buy a suit of clothes.
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There is a dreadful place in Persia called the “Valley of the Angel of Death.” That terrific minister of God’s wrath, according to tradition, has resting-places upon the earth and his favourite abodes. He is surrounded by ghools, horrid beings who, when he takes away life, feast upon the carcasses.
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