Complete Works, Volume 5

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Estes and Lauriat, 1881
 

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Page 268 - I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and highminded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always.
Page 166 - Your neighbor, who has his reading, and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description.
Page 203 - In like manner, the imagination foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated style of some writers. What also if there is an afflated style, — when a writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ...
Page 199 - I own for my part that, in reading pages which this hand penned formerly, I often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the words I see; but that past day; that bygone page of life's history; that tragedy, comedy it may be, which our little home company was enacting; that merrymaking which we shared; that funeral which we followed; that bitter, bitter grief which we buried.
Page 203 - They must go a certain way, in spite of themselves. I have been surprised at the observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult Power was moving the pen. The personage does or says something, and I ask, how the Dickens did he come to think of that...
Page 205 - Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages ; oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again ! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last ; after which, behold Finis itself comes to an end, and the Infinite begins.
Page 203 - ... an incident in every other page, a villain, a battle, a mystery in every chapter. I should like to be able to feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting for more at the end of every monthly meal.
Page 176 - Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard Celestial voices, to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive...
Page 168 - God bade him ; each honest in his life ; just and irreproachable in his dealings ; dear to his friends; honored by his country; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both to give incalculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks- them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such fame.
Page 335 - Stop thief! stop thief! — a highwayman!" Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way did join in the pursuit. And now the turnpike gates again flew open in short space; The tollmen thinking, as before, that Gilpin rode a race.

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