From Chicago westward they traversed the rich prairies of Illinois and Iowa—a broad expanse of flat country, which wearied them with its monotony. At Omaha they crossed the Missouri River on a long bridge; and while they were crossing, Frank wrote some lines in his note-book to the effect that the Missouri was the longest river in the world, and was sometimes called the "Big Muddy," on account of its color. It looked[Pg 40] like coffee after milk has been added; and was once said by Senator Benton to be too thick to swim in, but not thick enough to walk on. "They are the vehicles in which the Japanese used to travel, and which are still much employed in various parts of the country. We shall see them before long, and then we shall have an excellent opportunity to know what they are. We shall probably be travelling in them in a few days, and I will then have your opinion concerning them. The wedding procession that our boys encountered consisted of the bride and her mother, with a servant to hold an umbrella to protect them[Pg 138] from the sun. Mother and daughter were richly attired, and their heads were covered with shawls heavily embroidered. Weddings in Japan do not take place in the temples, as might naturally be expected, but a part of the ceremonial is performed at the house of the bride, and the remainder at that of the bridegroom. After the wedding the bride accompanies her mother to the temple to say her prayers for a happy life, and this was the occasion which our young adventurers happened to witness. A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy, compassion and applause, while Camille and Cécile, pink with weeping, stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned Ferry's horse and mine.
At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of the battle opening behind us. "That's Fisher's battery!" joyously cried the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. "Well, thank the Lord, this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I saw her, just now, combing its hair." We descended into a woody hollow, the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds. Balmayne nodded and turned. He knew only too well what that threat meant. So far as he could see there was no way out of it whatever. He had come to the end of his resources. If he could only get away from this! Arrived at Riempst I found the pretty village church in its full glory and the vicar engaged in performing his religious functions; the vicar of Sichem was also still at home. The only part of the report that was true was that various burgomasters from the environs had been sent to Tongres and had not returned since. The burgomaster of Riempst, with whom I had been imprisoned already once, was being searched for by the Germans everywhere, but could not be found. In several places I heard also that the Belgians were lying in the woods round about, and that something was being prepared at Riempst; but no one knew what. So I decided to go and inquire.
"Lies, gossip." Consistency is, indeed, the one word which, better than any other, expresses the whole character of Socrates, and the whole of philosophy as well. Here the supreme conception153 of mind reappears under its most rigorous, but, at the same time, its most beneficent aspect. It is the temperance which no allurement can surprise; the fortitude which no terror can break through; the justice which eliminates all personal considerations, egoistic and altruistic alike; the truthfulness which, with exactest harmony, fits words to meanings, meanings to thoughts, and thoughts to things; the logic which will tolerate no self-contradiction; the conviction which seeks for no acceptance unwon by reason; the liberalism which works through free agencies for freedom; the love which wills another’s good for that other’s sake alone.98 It was the intellectual passion for consistency which made Socrates so great and which fused his life into a flawless whole; but it was an unconscious motive power, and therefore he attributed to mere knowledge what knowledge alone could not supply. A clear perception of right cannot by itself secure the obedience of our will. High principles are not of any value, except to those in whom a discrepancy between practice and profession produces the sharpest anguish of which their nature is capable; a feeling like, though immeasurably stronger than, that which women of exquisite sensibility experience when they see a candle set crooked or a table-cover awry. How moral laws have come to be established, and why they prescribe or prohibit certain classes of actions, are questions which still divide the schools, though with an increasing consensus of authority on the utilitarian side: their ultimate sanction—that which, whatever they are, makes obedience to them truly moral—can hardly be sought elsewhere than in the same consciousness of logical stringency that determines, or should determine, our abstract beliefs.
“Gast—was it somebody named Gaston?” asked Jeff. The literature of this period is more distinguished for learning and cleverness than for genius. There are a few names that rise above the smartness and mere accomplishment of the time into the regions of pure genius; but, with very few exceptions, even they bear the stamp of the period. We have here no Milton, no Shakespeare, no Herbert, no Herrick even, to produce; but De Foe, Addison, Steele, Thomson, and Pope, if they do not lift us to the highest creative plane, give us glimpses and traits of what is found there. For the rest, however full of power, there hangs a tone of "town," of a vicious and sordid era, about them, of an artificial and by no means refined life, a flavour of the grovelling of the politics which distinguished the period, and of the low views and feelings which occupied and surrounded the throne during the greater portion of this term.
When Shorty returned to Headquarters, neatly shaven and brushed, and took the position of a soldier before the Chief Clerk, that functionary remarked approvingly: But the majority was anti-Bardon. There were grumblings about allotments, especially from copyholders. The commissioners had been off-hand in their treatment of claims, ignoring everyone except freeholders, of whom there were only two. Reuben did not answer; she knew by his attitude—chin in hand—that he was thinking.www.ywwxwk.com.cn dealman.com.cn www.jieshiba.com.cn www.xinlvjie.com.cn zzcs.net.cn shuikui.com.cn www.ashenone.com.cn www.hfjlw.com.cn www.752173.com.cn odaiji.com.cn