“Lizzy,” cried her mother, “remember where you are, and do not run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home.”
BLOCK 975241
A sovereign social network
powered by Bitcoin
Every post signed. Every block a heartbeat.
Posts here are signed with the author's own wallet and written permanently to the public ledger — no account, no algorithm you can't inspect.
peck.classics 93,125 posts
Clear
“Not seventeen, Lady Henry?”
Then thus the monarch, great Atrides, cried: “Forbear, ye warriors! lay the darts aside: A parley Hector asks, a message bears; We know him by the various plume he wears.” Awed by his high command the Greeks attend, The tumult silence, and the fight suspend.
The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.
“Both,” says I; “and let’s have a couple of smoked herring by way of variety.”
“But I would really advise you to make your purchase in that neighbourhood, and take Pemberley for a kind of model. There is not a finer county in England than Derbyshire.”
“They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,” chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour’s cast-off clothes.
“Yes; it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, don’t you think so, Mr. Gray?”
“This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!”
Then Euryalus reviled him outright and said, “I gather, then, that you are unskilled in any of the many sports that men generally delight in. I suppose you are one of those grasping traders that go about in ships as captains or merchants, and who think of nothing but of their outward freights and homeward cargoes. There does not seem to be much of the athlete about you.”
“Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg—that’s who ye are speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray — Chapter 7: Chapter III (part 2/2)
“I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn’t be unsympathetic about it. After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for sensations.... Well, one evening about seven o’clock, I determined to go out in search of some adventure. I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. I don’t know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. ‘Have a box, my Lord?’ he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the present day I can’t make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn’t—my dear Harry, if I hadn’t—I should have missed the greatest romance of my life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of you!”
“O friend! two chiefs of force immense I see, Dreadful they come, and bend their rage on thee: Lo the brave heir of old Lycaon’s line, And great Æneas, sprung from race divine! Enough is given to fame. Ascend thy car! And save a life, the bulwark of our war.”
“You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favour of its propriety.”
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
They said, while Pallas through the Trojan throng, (In shape a mortal,) pass’d disguised along. Like bold Laodocus, her course she bent, Who from Antenor traced his high descent. Amidst the ranks Lycaon’s son she found, The warlike Pandarus, for strength renown’d; Whose squadrons, led from black Æsepus’ flood,[130] With flaming shields in martial circle stood. To him the goddess: “Phrygian! canst thou hear A well-timed counsel with a willing ear? What praise were thine, couldst thou direct thy dart, Amidst his triumph, to the Spartan’s heart? What gifts from Troy, from Paris wouldst thou gain, Thy country’s foe, the Grecian glory slain? Then seize the occasion, dare the mighty deed, Aim at his breast, and may that aim succeed! But first, to speed the shaft, address thy vow To Lycian Phœbus with the silver bow, And swear the firstlings of thy flock to pay, On Zelia’s altars, to the god of day.”[131]
With grief he heard, and bade the chiefs prepare To join his milk-white coursers to the car; He mounts the seat, Antenor at his side; The gentle steeds through Scæa’s gates they guide:[120] Next from the car descending on the plain, Amid the Grecian host and Trojan train, Slow they proceed: the sage Ulysses then Arose, and with him rose the king of men. On either side a sacred herald stands, The wine they mix, and on each monarch’s hands Pour the full urn; then draws the Grecian lord His cutlass sheathed beside his ponderous sword; From the sign’d victims crops the curling hair;[121] The heralds part it, and the princes share; Then loudly thus before the attentive bands He calls the gods, and spreads his lifted hands:
“I hope,” said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery the next day, “you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, to cure the younger girls of running after the officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses.”
As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. However, my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.