Twice-told tales

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F. DeFau & Company, 1902

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Page 198 - Man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity. He must feel, that, when he shall knock at the gate of Heaven, no semblance of an unspotted life can entitle him to entrance there. Penitence mu»t kneel, and Mercy come from the footstool of the th'one, or that golden gate will never open ! DR.
Page 45 - Helwyse," said the voice, — and as it spoke the figure contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face, — " look not now on the woman you once loved ! The curse of Heaven hath stricken me, because I would not call man my brother, nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in PRIDE as in a MANTLE, and scorned the sympathies of nature ; and therefore has nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful sympathy.
Page 2 - ... despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the redcoats of the Governor's Guard, and made their appearance in the streets of Boston.
Page 123 - Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but, when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers...
Page 126 - ... finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation ! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then, Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart, and die.
Page 124 - For many years it was the watering-place, and, as it were, the wash bowl of the vicinity — whither all decent folks resorted, to purify their visages, and gaze at them afterwards — at least, the pretty maidens did — in the mirror which it made.
Page xvii - ... to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or an unconquerable reserve, the Author's touches have often an effect of tameness ; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor; the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see anything in it, requires...
Page 8 - ... at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was. And who was the Gray Champion?
Page vii - Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in days gone by Here I have written many tales — many that have been burned to ashes, many that have doubtless deserved the same fate.
Page 208 - They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved armchair holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats — the more readily because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were. "My poor Sylvia's...

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