Mill on the Floss - first edition, 1860
Mill on the Floss (MOTF), is a novel by the leading woman novelist of Victorian Britain, George Eliot. She had high intellect and wide learning that came through in her writing, yet, she had to change her birth name of Mary Anne Evans and assume a man’s persona to make headway in the literary world and be considered a serious writer. She was led to her profession accidentally, only after she made the bold decision to partner with a married man, George Lewes. He encouraged her to try her hand at fiction.
Kavita, Hemjit, Zakia, KumKum, Madhulika
Middlemarch is considered her greatest novel and is required reading in advanced literature courses. MOTF reflects her own history partly, and people see the author identifying with Maggie, even in her growing up struggles.
Thommo, Saras, Kavita, Hemjit
The novel is long, and the story-telling is interspersed with descriptions of rural life and insights into the lives of ordinary folk. George Eliot unravels the events of the novel slowly, pausing every now and again to comment on the inner thoughts of the characters, no less than on their outward mannerisms. Many of the readers had trouble finishing the novel on this account. Furthermore her sentences are longer than the retention span of modern readers.
Thommo, Geetha, Saras
There is a 1997 TV Movie by BBC with sub-titles that renders the essential story in 2 hours. There is also a Compact Edition of the print novel that enables a faster read without much loss. But one should not miss the lyrical notes which stand out, such as this 62-word sentence about the experience of nature during childhood:
These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness. these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows — such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them.
Refreshments
For the first time here is a group picture with all the men graciously invited to sit as the women stood:
(standing) Geetha, Kavita, Shoba, Saras, KumKum, Zakia, Madhulika (sitting) Joe, Hemjit, Thommo)
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot - Full Account and Record of the Reading on July 13, 2018
George Eliot - Portrait by Frederick William Burton, 1864
There is a magisterial biography of George Eliot by Ruby Redinger which traces her growth as an artist of great power. A review of the biography in the NY Times gives insights about her life.
George Eliot Biography by Redinger - cover
Biography (compiled by Zakia)
George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, one of the leading English novelists of the 19th century. Her novels, most famously Middlemarch, are celebrated for their realism and psychological insights. Middlemarch has been described as the greatest novel in English.
George Eliot was born on 22 November 1819 in rural Warwickshire. When her mother died in 1836, Eliot left school to help run her father's household. In 1841, she moved with her father to Coventry and lived with him until his death in 1849. Eliot then travelled in Europe, eventually settling in London.
In 1850, Eliot began contributing to the Westminster Review, a leading journal for philosophical radicals, and later became its editor. She was now at the centre of a literary circle through which she met George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived until his death in 1878. Lewes was married and their relationship caused a scandal. Eliot was shunned by friends and family.
Lewes encouraged Eliot to write. In 1856, she began Scenes of Clerical Life, stories about the people of her native Warwickshire, which were published in Blackwood's Magazine. Her first novel, Adam Bede, followed in 1859 and was a great success. She used a male pen name to ensure her works were taken seriously in an era when female authors were usually associated with romantic novels.
Her other novels include The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), Middlemarch (1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). The popularity of Eliot's novels brought social acceptance, and Lewes and Eliot's home became a meeting place for writers and intellectuals. These biographical notes are taken from a BBC website.
After Lewes' death Eliot married a friend, John Cross, who was 20 years her junior. She died on 22 December 1880 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in north London.
Grave of George Eliot - on her death centenary a memorial stone was erected in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey
George Henry Lewes (1817 – 1878) was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He was also an amateur physiologist. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious skepticism. However, he is perhaps best known today for having openly lived with Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen name George Eliot, as soulmates whose lives and writings were enriched by their relationship, though they never married each other.
Eliot's novel, The Mill on the Floss (1860), shows even stronger traces of her childhood and youth in small-town and rural England. The final pages of the novel show the heroine reaching toward a "religion of humanity" (the belief in human beings and their individual moral and intellectual abilities to work toward a better society), which was Eliot's aim to instil in her readers.
Mary Ann completed her schooling when she was sixteen years old. In her twenties she came into contact with a circle of people whose thinking did not coincide with the opinions of most people and underwent an extreme change of her beliefs. Influenced by the so-called Higher Criticism—a largely German school that studied the Bible and that attempted to treat sacred writings as human and historical documents—she devoted herself to translating these works from the German language to English for the English public. She published her translation of David Strauss's Life of Jesus in 1846 and her translation of Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity in 1854.
Famous Quotes:
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
MOTF spans a period of 10 to 15 years and details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, siblings growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. The river and the village are fictional.
Maggie Tulliver is the protagonist and the story begins when she is 9 years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem (a hunchbacked, sensitive and intellectual friend) and with Stephen Guest (a vivacious young socialite in St Ogg's and affianced to Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane) constitute the most significant narrative threads.
Maggie's brief exile ends when the river floods. Having struggled through the waters in a boat to find Tom at the old mill, she sets out with him to rescue Lucy Deane and her family. In a brief tender moment, the brother and sister are reconciled from all past differences. When their boat capsizes, the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical epigraph: In their death they were not divided.
Loss of innocence is a major theme in MOTF. From the beginning of the novel, the narrator makes it clear that there is a strong demarcation between living in childhood, as Maggie and Tom are doing, and looking back on it, as she is doing.
Maggie Tulliver is the protagonist and the story begins when she is 9 years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem (a hunchbacked, sensitive and intellectual friend) and with Stephen Guest (a vivacious young socialite in St Ogg's and affianced to Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane) constitute the most significant narrative threads.
Maggie's brief exile ends when the river floods. Having struggled through the waters in a boat to find Tom at the old mill, she sets out with him to rescue Lucy Deane and her family. In a brief tender moment, the brother and sister are reconciled from all past differences. When their boat capsizes, the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical epigraph: In their death they were not divided.
Loss of innocence is a major theme in MOTF. From the beginning of the novel, the narrator makes it clear that there is a strong demarcation between living in childhood, as Maggie and Tom are doing, and looking back on it, as she is doing.
Present: Geetha, Kavita, Shoba, Saras, KumKum, Zakia, Joe, Hemjit, Thommo
Virtually Present: Priya, Pamela
Absent: Preeti, Sunil, Devika
The dates for the next two readings were set:
Sat Aug 11, 2018 Poetry Session devoted to Women Poets
Thu Sep 20, 2018 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Preeti sent in a recording, but it was too late to get it downloaded onto the computer for playing at the session.
At the end of the reading it became clear that passages which go much beyond five or six minutes of reading time exceed our ability to accommodate in 90 minutes of total session time (reading plus discussion), if the attendance is near full strength. A typical page of this book has about 450 words; a page and a half would have been fine.
We had a guest of Zakia attending our reading, Madhulika. Kavita put in a great effort to finish the novel with whole days of reading to finish the book. Thommo’s advice for a book such as this is to resort to speed-reading, skipping whole paragraphs, such as this 180-word piece consisting of just three long sentences on page 40 at the end of Book 1, Chapter 5:
The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows,–such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.
Joe thought reading this novel was like moving through pitch. Indeed, much of the writing is not aimed at taking the story forward. We suspect at times they are not even the author’s description of the feelings of the characters; rather it is her commentary as an outsider on what is happening. Even in dialogue situations she is not content to let the dialogue spin out the story and display the emotions of the characters: George Eliot feels compelled to step in and commentate as though a cricket match was going on and unless she as the expert teased out the fine points of the game, the reader would miss out on the real story, which is not what is apparent and outwardly visible, but what is hidden and inward.
To put it another way, she distrusts the reader’s intelligence. A modern novel such as Albert Camus’ The Stranger would be at the opposite pole. Joe argued that prolixity in Dickens is also evident, but he at least had the excuse that he was being paid by the number of words he wrote in serialising his novels for popular magazines. For inexperienced speed-readers, authors of large novels should leave indications (say a dot in the margin beside a paragraph) to indicate parts that could be overleaped without a hiccup.
There is a CompactEdition which trims about 40% of the fat from the original novel, which is itself available free online at Gutenberg.
Virtually Present: Priya, Pamela
Absent: Preeti, Sunil, Devika
The dates for the next two readings were set:
Sat Aug 11, 2018 Poetry Session devoted to Women Poets
Thu Sep 20, 2018 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Preeti sent in a recording, but it was too late to get it downloaded onto the computer for playing at the session.
At the end of the reading it became clear that passages which go much beyond five or six minutes of reading time exceed our ability to accommodate in 90 minutes of total session time (reading plus discussion), if the attendance is near full strength. A typical page of this book has about 450 words; a page and a half would have been fine.
We had a guest of Zakia attending our reading, Madhulika. Kavita put in a great effort to finish the novel with whole days of reading to finish the book. Thommo’s advice for a book such as this is to resort to speed-reading, skipping whole paragraphs, such as this 180-word piece consisting of just three long sentences on page 40 at the end of Book 1, Chapter 5:
The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows,–such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.
Joe thought reading this novel was like moving through pitch. Indeed, much of the writing is not aimed at taking the story forward. We suspect at times they are not even the author’s description of the feelings of the characters; rather it is her commentary as an outsider on what is happening. Even in dialogue situations she is not content to let the dialogue spin out the story and display the emotions of the characters: George Eliot feels compelled to step in and commentate as though a cricket match was going on and unless she as the expert teased out the fine points of the game, the reader would miss out on the real story, which is not what is apparent and outwardly visible, but what is hidden and inward.
To put it another way, she distrusts the reader’s intelligence. A modern novel such as Albert Camus’ The Stranger would be at the opposite pole. Joe argued that prolixity in Dickens is also evident, but he at least had the excuse that he was being paid by the number of words he wrote in serialising his novels for popular magazines. For inexperienced speed-readers, authors of large novels should leave indications (say a dot in the margin beside a paragraph) to indicate parts that could be overleaped without a hiccup.
There is a CompactEdition which trims about 40% of the fat from the original novel, which is itself available free online at Gutenberg.
1. Priya
Priya thoroughly enjoyed reading MOTF. She said by way of introduction, “George Eliot was as good as the better known writers of her time. The novel traverses a long period and captures Victorian society in all its colours — its fibres, its rules of morality, justice, spirituality and all — how society was at the time, in great detail. I’ve selected a rather innocuous passage, but I like it for its humour.”
2. Pamela
“I chose this passage because I felt all her [Maggies’s] romantic illusions were wiped off when it was a question of survival. The flood made her think of what she should do to be safe, and that became more important to her. This makes one wonder: is romanticism only applicable to those who are living comfortably? Does it not apply to people who are struggling to survive? This was the question that came to my mind and the sudden change of Maggie’s focus comes out in this part.”
It was George Henry Lewes who encouraged George Eliot to write.
It was George Henry Lewes who encouraged George Eliot to write.
3. Zakia
Zakia was one of those who chose the novel and therefore supplied the introduction at the head of this piece. Joe asked why Maggie (as Tom complains) was always setting herself up as cleverer than others, her brother in particular? She wanted affection and could only get it demonstratively from her father, who referred to her as ‘little wench’, a term of endearment not met with before, as Zakia pointed out. But fond as he was of bright bookish Maggie, he states in denigration of all women:
“an over-'cute woman's no better nor a long-tailed sheep – she'll fetch non the bigger price for that.”
“an over-'cute woman's no better nor a long-tailed sheep – she'll fetch non the bigger price for that.”
4. Thommo
In Thommo’s passage Maggie shows off her reading ability by making short work of a passage out of Daniel Defoe’s A Political History of the Devil. The comment is made that one cannot judge a book by its cover. (‘But it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside.’) This is the first time the expression occurs, and was the reason for Thommo’s choice. Joe said in contrast with modern books, where the cover artwork is an important matter in selling the book, in those times the cover was nothing but the name of the title and author and publisher in large font — so there was nothing on the cover by which to judge the contents!
Thommo researched the origin. The phrase is attributed to a 1944 edition of the African journal American Speech: “You can’t judge a book by its binding.” It was popularised even more when it appeared in the 1946 murder mystery Murder in the Glass Room by Lester Fuller and Edwin Rolfe: “You can never tell a book by its cover.”
Thommo referred to books of the type called fore-edge books whose unique feature was that if you riffled through the pages you could see paintings. Thommo said such books came to be used by Catholics in England after Queen Mary (Mary I of England) to hide their religious persuasion. In the Victorian era erotic books were the subject of fore-edge painting. Thommo has a cousin by the name of Thomas Kuryan in Switzerland who claims to have the largest such collection in the world.
Thommo researched the origin. The phrase is attributed to a 1944 edition of the African journal American Speech: “You can’t judge a book by its binding.” It was popularised even more when it appeared in the 1946 murder mystery Murder in the Glass Room by Lester Fuller and Edwin Rolfe: “You can never tell a book by its cover.”
Thommo referred to books of the type called fore-edge books whose unique feature was that if you riffled through the pages you could see paintings. Thommo said such books came to be used by Catholics in England after Queen Mary (Mary I of England) to hide their religious persuasion. In the Victorian era erotic books were the subject of fore-edge painting. Thommo has a cousin by the name of Thomas Kuryan in Switzerland who claims to have the largest such collection in the world.
5. Geetha
Geetha read another love scene. Maggie and Philip Wakem have a heart-to-heart talk and it becomes clear she never could think of him as being her lover. Poor gentle soul, he got the unsought label of ‘brother.’ Stephen on the other hand instantly attracted Maggie.
6. Saras
Saras confessed she did not read the book in its entirety. She chose this passage because it reminded her of how in every family people keep rattling each other. In this passage Mrs Glegg has decided for no good reason to take it out on Mr Glegg, who is puzzled at her morning onslaught while he is breakfasting. ‘People who seem to enjoy their ill temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves.’
7. Kavita
The passage is a romantic one. Stephen compliments Maggie and it is plain he is taken with her by the time of this second meeting. They go boating and it brings colour to her cheeks, and roses bloom in his heart. Kavita said Maggie’s cousin Lucy to whom Stephen was betrothed was just a pretty face, whereas Maggie had that bright individuality and sparkle that made him fall in love. Absorbing this clarification, Joe said: ‘Ippa manasilai, akkalathum lappu ondarinnu.’
8. Hemjit
Hemjit noted the distinction this reading makes among women of two kinds: those who are always wearing the latest fashions they buy, and those who may buy new things but are so thrifty that they will wear out old clothes before trying on new stuff. It speaks to a minute observation of society by the author, said Hemjit. Mrs Ogg being of the first kind, looked down on her sister, of the second kind.
9. KumKum
In her passage KumKum recognised a situation she had been in when she tried to get a job in Darjeeling teaching Bengali, through the good offices of her mother’s cousin’s husband. She was interviewed and rejected because she did not have a B.T., though she had an M.A. in Bengali. In the novel Tom visits his uncle in his office to get a job and cites his attainments in Latin, Greek and Roman history, Euclid, Algebra and Rhetoric. None of this impressed his uncle Deane who comments ‘you're a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular.’ In the end Tom’s protestations are in vain and he goes home jobless, much as KumKum did.
Joe said the usual education of those times emphasised the Classics — for example, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Latin, ancient Greek and philosophy were the content of the Oxford Greats course. In modern times the standard education of future prime ministers in UK is an Oxford degree in PPE - Philosophy, Politics and Economics, as one notes from the picture on the Oxford web site of the course below:
Thommo said the book should have been half its length. Joe agreed with the comment heartily.
10. Shoba
Shoba read the passage where Maggie cuts off her long hair in pique after being harassed by her mother; she was assisted by Tom. The passage ends with ‘I can smell the dinner going in.’
This goaded Thommo to complain that English dinner has never been delicious. Cooking is a lost art in Britain, he said. Nowadays chicken-tikka-masala has taken the place of the traditional fish and chips as the most popular take-out item. Perhaps tandoori chicken is another popular dish in Britain.
Someone mentioned Shepherd’s Pie which is a casserole with a layer of cooked meat and vegetables, topped with mashed potatoes.
This goaded Thommo to complain that English dinner has never been delicious. Cooking is a lost art in Britain, he said. Nowadays chicken-tikka-masala has taken the place of the traditional fish and chips as the most popular take-out item. Perhaps tandoori chicken is another popular dish in Britain.
Someone mentioned Shepherd’s Pie which is a casserole with a layer of cooked meat and vegetables, topped with mashed potatoes.
11. Joe
Joe read a passage in which Maggie and Stephen Guest discuss what it means to love one another, if it also means sacrificing the affections of third parties. For Maggie it may be Philip, for whom she had a soft, but not romantic, corner in her heart; for Stephen, Lucy to whom he was engaged. It is a philosophical discussion of the kind that lovers never have, but that George Eliot has foisted on the pair. They in fact have no duties whatsoever to be discharged that prevents their mutual love from flowering.
Joe remarked that he was a bit amused reading some of the descriptions:
‘Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.’
Has the reader ever come across a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses?
Joe remarked that he was a bit amused reading some of the descriptions:
‘Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.’
Has the reader ever come across a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses?
Readings
Note: page numbers are from the Maple Press edition of 2017 (www.maplepress.co.in)
1. Priya
Book 1, Ch 9, p.82
Trying on a Bonnet (926 words - 8min to read)
"Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy," said Mrs. Pullet, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Tulliver adjusted her cap.
"Has she, sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver, with an air of much interest. "And how do you like it?"
"It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em out and putting 'em in again," said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, "but it 'ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it. There's no knowing what may happen."
Mrs. Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration, which determined her to single out a particular key.
"I'm afraid it'll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister," said Mrs. Tulliver; "but I should like to see what sort of a crown she's made you."
Mrs. Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too-superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs. Pullet was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of linen,–it was a door-key.
"You must come with me into the best room," said Mrs. Pullet.
"May the children come too, sister?" inquired Mrs. Tulliver, who saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.
"Well," said aunt Pullet, reflectively, "it'll perhaps be safer for 'em to come; they'll be touching something if we leave 'em behind."
So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window which rose above the closed shutter; it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage,–a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid hold of Maggie's frock, and Maggie's heart beat rapidly.
Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs. Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, "Well, sister, I'll never speak against the full crowns again!"
It was a great concession, and Mrs. Pullet felt it; she felt something was due to it.
"You'd like to see it on, sister?" she said sadly. "I'll open the shutter a bit further."
"Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap, sister," said Mrs. Tulliver.
Mrs. Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-figure, that Mrs. Tulliver might miss no point of view.
"I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much o' ribbon on this left side, sister; what do you think?" said Mrs. Pullet.
Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her head on one side. "Well, I think it's best as it is; if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent."
"That's true," said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.
"How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this chef-d'œuvre made from a piece of silk she had at home.
Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered, "Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best be whose it would."
She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.
"Ah," she said at last, "I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?"
"Don't talk o' that sister," answered Mrs. Tulliver. "I hope you'll have your health this summer."
"Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can't think o' wearing crape less nor half a year for him."
"That would be unlucky," said Mrs. Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. "There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy,–never two summers alike."
"Ah, it's the way i' this world," said Mrs. Pullet, returning the bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence characterized by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry, she said, "Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I'm dead and gone, you'll remember I showed it you this day."
2. Pamela
Book 7 Ch 5 p.464 - 7m32s to read (913 words)
Maggie is unable to make up her mind about Stephen; the flood comes.
Maggie is unable to make up her mind about Stephen; the flood comes.
"Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is like mine? Who besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt itself into my soul, so that no other image can come there? Maggie, call me back to you! Call me back to life and goodness! I am banished from both now. I have no motives; I am indifferent to everything. Two months have only deepened the certainty that I can never care for life without you. Write me one word; say 'Come!' In two days I should be with you. Maggie, have you forgotten what it was to be together,–to be within reach of a look, to be within hearing of each other's voice?"
When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to the life-nourishing day? The leap of natural longing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, that all less immediate motives are likely to be forgotten–till the pain has been escaped from.
For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the image of Stephen waiting for the single word that would bring him to her. She did not read the letter: she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old strange power. All the day before she had been filled with the vision of a lonely future through which she must carry the burthen of regret, upheld only by clinging faith. And here, close within her reach, urging itself upon her even as a claim, was another future, in which hard endurance and effort were to be exchanged for easy, delicious leaning on another's loving strength! And yet that promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force of the temptation to Maggie.
It was Stephen's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write "Come!"
But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious degradation. No, she must wait; she must pray; the light that had forsaken her would come again; she should feel again what she had felt when she had fled away, under an inspiration strong enough to conquer agony,–to conquer love; she should feel again what she had felt when Lucy stood by her, when Philip's letter had stirred all the fibres that bound her to the calmer past.
She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse to change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer; only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It came with the memories that no passion could long quench; the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the window and the loud moan and roar of the wind. "I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me."
But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob,–"Forgive me, Stephen! It will pass away. You will come back to her."
She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of parting.
"I will bear it, and bear it till death. But how long it will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall and repent again? Has life other trials as hard for me still?"
With that cry of self-despair, Maggie fell on her knees against the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know? "O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort — "
At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under her. She started up; the stream was flowing under the door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an instant; she knew it was the flood!
3. Zakia
Book 3 Ch 4 p.212 - (913 words)
Tom thinks Maggie is always setting herself above him. Maggie finds her home claustrophobic, offering nothing for her bright mind.
Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distant future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.
"What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?" said Maggie, putting her arm through Tom's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen fire. "Did he say he would give you a situation?"
"No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; he seemed to think I couldn't have a very good situation. I'm too young."
"But didn't he speak kindly, Tom?"
"Kindly? Pooh! what's the use of talking about that? I wouldn't care about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such a nuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latin and things,–not a bit of good to me,–and now my uncle says I must set about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He seems to make out I'm good for nothing."
Tom's mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the fire.
"Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!" said Maggie, who couldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. "If he had taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method, as he did Lucy Bertram, I could teach you, Tom."
"You teach! Yes, I dare say. That's always the tone you take," said Tom.
"Dear Tom, I was only joking," said Maggie, putting her cheek against his coat-sleeve.
"But it's always the same, Maggie," said Tom, with the little frown he put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. "You're always setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted to tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know better than any one, but you're almost always wrong. I can judge much better than you can."
Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show himself dominant. Maggie's cheek flushed and her lip quivered with conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as admiration of Tom's firmer and more effective character. She did not answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were driven back again, and she said at last:
"You often think I'm conceited, Tom, when I don't mean what I say at all in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know you behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me, Tom."
With the last words the resentment was rising again.
"No, I'm not harsh," said Tom, with severe decision. "I'm always kind to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you must mind what I say."
Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present.
Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it.
No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it.
Tom thinks Maggie is always setting herself above him. Maggie finds her home claustrophobic, offering nothing for her bright mind.
Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distant future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.
"What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?" said Maggie, putting her arm through Tom's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen fire. "Did he say he would give you a situation?"
"No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; he seemed to think I couldn't have a very good situation. I'm too young."
"But didn't he speak kindly, Tom?"
"Kindly? Pooh! what's the use of talking about that? I wouldn't care about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such a nuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latin and things,–not a bit of good to me,–and now my uncle says I must set about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He seems to make out I'm good for nothing."
Tom's mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the fire.
"Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!" said Maggie, who couldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. "If he had taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method, as he did Lucy Bertram, I could teach you, Tom."
"You teach! Yes, I dare say. That's always the tone you take," said Tom.
"Dear Tom, I was only joking," said Maggie, putting her cheek against his coat-sleeve.
"But it's always the same, Maggie," said Tom, with the little frown he put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. "You're always setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted to tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know better than any one, but you're almost always wrong. I can judge much better than you can."
Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show himself dominant. Maggie's cheek flushed and her lip quivered with conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as admiration of Tom's firmer and more effective character. She did not answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were driven back again, and she said at last:
"You often think I'm conceited, Tom, when I don't mean what I say at all in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know you behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me, Tom."
With the last words the resentment was rising again.
"No, I'm not harsh," said Tom, with severe decision. "I'm always kind to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you must mind what I say."
Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present.
Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it.
No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it.
4. Thommo
Book 1 Ch 3 p.18 - (658 words)
Maggie shows off her reading ability.
Maggie shows off her reading ability.
Mrs. Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish, and Mr. Tulliver's heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about the book. Mr. Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept her between his knees.
"What! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" said Mr. Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, "She understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,–straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But it's bad–it's bad," Mr. Tulliver added sadly, checking this blamable exultation. "A woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless you!"–here the exultation was clearly recovering the mastery,–"she'll read the books and understand 'em better nor half the folks as are growed up."
Maggie's cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought Mr. Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he thought nothing of her before.
Mr. Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently looked at her, and said,–
"Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some pictures,–I want to know what they mean."
Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Riley's elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing back her mane, while she said,–
"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture, isn't it? But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the water's a witch,–they've put her in to find out whether she's a witch or no; and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned–and killed, you know–she's innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing,–oh, isn't he ugly?–I'll tell you what he is. He's the Devil really" (here Maggie's voice became louder and more emphatic), "and not a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away, and he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased."
Mr. Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie's with petrifying wonder.
"Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?" he burst out at last.
"The 'History of the Devil,' by Daniel Defoe,–not quite the right book for a little girl," said Mr. Riley. "How came it among your books, Mr. Tulliver?"
Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,–
"Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They was all bound alike,–it's a good binding, you see,–and I thought they'd be all good books. There's Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among 'em. I read in it often of a Sunday" (Mr. Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer, because his name was Jeremy); "and there's a lot more of 'em,–sermons mostly, I think,–but they've all got the same covers, and I thought they were all o' one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is a puzzlin' world.
"What! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" said Mr. Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, "She understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,–straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But it's bad–it's bad," Mr. Tulliver added sadly, checking this blamable exultation. "A woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless you!"–here the exultation was clearly recovering the mastery,–"she'll read the books and understand 'em better nor half the folks as are growed up."
Maggie's cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought Mr. Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he thought nothing of her before.
Mr. Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently looked at her, and said,–
"Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some pictures,–I want to know what they mean."
Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Riley's elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing back her mane, while she said,–
"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture, isn't it? But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the water's a witch,–they've put her in to find out whether she's a witch or no; and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned–and killed, you know–she's innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing,–oh, isn't he ugly?–I'll tell you what he is. He's the Devil really" (here Maggie's voice became louder and more emphatic), "and not a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away, and he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased."
Mr. Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie's with petrifying wonder.
"Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?" he burst out at last.
"The 'History of the Devil,' by Daniel Defoe,–not quite the right book for a little girl," said Mr. Riley. "How came it among your books, Mr. Tulliver?"
Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,–
"Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They was all bound alike,–it's a good binding, you see,–and I thought they'd be all good books. There's Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among 'em. I read in it often of a Sunday" (Mr. Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer, because his name was Jeremy); "and there's a lot more of 'em,–sermons mostly, I think,–but they've all got the same covers, and I thought they were all o' one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is a puzzlin' world.
5. Geetha
Book 5 Ch 4 p.300 - (1,370 words)
Maggie and Philip Wakem have a heart-to-heart talk and it becomes clear she never thought of him as her lover.
Maggie and Philip Wakem have a heart-to-heart talk and it becomes clear she never thought of him as her lover.
"Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Maggie entering the Red Deeps through the group of Scotch firs. But it is early afternoon and not evening, and the edge of sharpness in the spring air makes her draw her large shawl close about her and trip along rather quickly; though she looks round, as usual, that she may take in the sight of her beloved trees. There is a more eager, inquiring look in her eyes than there was last June, and a smile is hovering about her lips, as if some playful speech were awaiting the right hearer. The hearer was not long in appearing.
"Take back your Corinne," said Maggie, drawing a book from under her shawl. "You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her."
"Wouldn't you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?" said Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.
"Not at all," said Maggie, laughing. "The Muses were uncomfortable goddesses, I think,–obliged always to carry rolls and musical instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to leave it behind me by mistake."
"You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?"
"I didn't finish the book," said Maggie. "As soon as I came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable. I'm determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice against them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca and Flora MacIvor and Minna, and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones. Since you are my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from prejudices; you are always arguing against prejudices."
"Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and carry away all the love from your cousin Lucy. She is sure to have some handsome young man of St. Ogg's at her feet now; and you have only to shine upon him–your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in your beams."
"Philip, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything real," said Maggie, looking hurt. "As if I, with my old gowns and want of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lucy,–who knows and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I am,–even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her rival. Besides, I never go to aunt Deane's when any one is there; it is only because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, that she comes to see me, and will have me go to see her sometimes."
"Maggie," said Philip, with surprise, "it is not like you to take playfulness literally. You must have been in St. Ogg's this morning, and brought away a slight infection of dulness."
"Well," said Maggie, smiling, "if you meant that for a joke, it was a poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me most. But it isn't for that that I'm jealous for the dark women,–not because I'm dark myself; it's because I always care the most about the unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I should like her best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories."
"Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should you, Maggie?" said Philip, flushing a little.
"I don't know," said Maggie, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile, "I think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent."
"I've often wondered, Maggie," Philip said, with some effort, "whether you wouldn't really be more likely to love a man that other women were not likely to love."
"That would depend on what they didn't like him for," said Maggie, laughing. "He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never felt any pity for young Torry. I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them."
"But suppose, Maggie,–suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that he felt it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at rare moments––"
Philip paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,–a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Maggie's manner this morning had been as unconstrained and indifferent as ever.
But she was not looking indifferent now. Struck with the unusual emotion in Philip's tone, she had turned quickly to look at him; and as he went on speaking, a great change came over her face,–a flush and slight spasm of the features, such as we see in people who hear some news that will require them to readjust their conceptions of the past. She was quite silent, and walking on toward the trunk of a fallen tree, she sat down, as if she had no strength to spare for her muscles. She was trembling.
"Maggie," said Philip, getting more and more alarmed in every fresh moment of silence, "I was a fool to say it; forget that I've said it. I shall be contented if things can be as they were."
The distress with which he spoke urged Maggie to say something. "I am so surprised, Philip; I had not thought of it." And the effort to say this brought the tears down too.
"Has it made you hate me, Maggie?" said Philip, impetuously. "Do you think I'm a presumptuous fool?"
"Oh, Philip!" said Maggie, "how can you think I have such feelings? As if I were not grateful for any love. But–but I had never thought of your being my lover. It seemed so far off–like a dream–only like one of the stories one imagines–that I should ever have a lover."
"Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Maggie?" said Philip, seating himself by her, and taking her hand, in the elation of a sudden hope. "Do you love me?"
Maggie turned rather pale; this direct question seemed not easy to answer. But her eyes met Philip's, which were in this moment liquid and beautiful with beseeching love. She spoke with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness.
"I think I could hardly love any one better; there is nothing but what I love you for." She paused a little while, and then added: "But it will be better for us not to say any more about it, won't it, dear Philip? You know we couldn't even be friends, if our friendship were discovered. I have never felt that I was right in giving way about seeing you, though it has been so precious to me in some ways; and now the fear comes upon me strongly again, that it will lead to evil.
"Take back your Corinne," said Maggie, drawing a book from under her shawl. "You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her."
"Wouldn't you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?" said Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.
"Not at all," said Maggie, laughing. "The Muses were uncomfortable goddesses, I think,–obliged always to carry rolls and musical instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to leave it behind me by mistake."
"You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?"
"I didn't finish the book," said Maggie. "As soon as I came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable. I'm determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice against them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca and Flora MacIvor and Minna, and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones. Since you are my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from prejudices; you are always arguing against prejudices."
"Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and carry away all the love from your cousin Lucy. She is sure to have some handsome young man of St. Ogg's at her feet now; and you have only to shine upon him–your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in your beams."
"Philip, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything real," said Maggie, looking hurt. "As if I, with my old gowns and want of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lucy,–who knows and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I am,–even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her rival. Besides, I never go to aunt Deane's when any one is there; it is only because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, that she comes to see me, and will have me go to see her sometimes."
"Maggie," said Philip, with surprise, "it is not like you to take playfulness literally. You must have been in St. Ogg's this morning, and brought away a slight infection of dulness."
"Well," said Maggie, smiling, "if you meant that for a joke, it was a poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me most. But it isn't for that that I'm jealous for the dark women,–not because I'm dark myself; it's because I always care the most about the unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I should like her best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories."
"Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should you, Maggie?" said Philip, flushing a little.
"I don't know," said Maggie, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile, "I think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent."
"I've often wondered, Maggie," Philip said, with some effort, "whether you wouldn't really be more likely to love a man that other women were not likely to love."
"That would depend on what they didn't like him for," said Maggie, laughing. "He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never felt any pity for young Torry. I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them."
"But suppose, Maggie,–suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that he felt it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at rare moments––"
Philip paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,–a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Maggie's manner this morning had been as unconstrained and indifferent as ever.
But she was not looking indifferent now. Struck with the unusual emotion in Philip's tone, she had turned quickly to look at him; and as he went on speaking, a great change came over her face,–a flush and slight spasm of the features, such as we see in people who hear some news that will require them to readjust their conceptions of the past. She was quite silent, and walking on toward the trunk of a fallen tree, she sat down, as if she had no strength to spare for her muscles. She was trembling.
"Maggie," said Philip, getting more and more alarmed in every fresh moment of silence, "I was a fool to say it; forget that I've said it. I shall be contented if things can be as they were."
The distress with which he spoke urged Maggie to say something. "I am so surprised, Philip; I had not thought of it." And the effort to say this brought the tears down too.
"Has it made you hate me, Maggie?" said Philip, impetuously. "Do you think I'm a presumptuous fool?"
"Oh, Philip!" said Maggie, "how can you think I have such feelings? As if I were not grateful for any love. But–but I had never thought of your being my lover. It seemed so far off–like a dream–only like one of the stories one imagines–that I should ever have a lover."
"Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Maggie?" said Philip, seating himself by her, and taking her hand, in the elation of a sudden hope. "Do you love me?"
Maggie turned rather pale; this direct question seemed not easy to answer. But her eyes met Philip's, which were in this moment liquid and beautiful with beseeching love. She spoke with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness.
"I think I could hardly love any one better; there is nothing but what I love you for." She paused a little while, and then added: "But it will be better for us not to say any more about it, won't it, dear Philip? You know we couldn't even be friends, if our friendship were discovered. I have never felt that I was right in giving way about seeing you, though it has been so precious to me in some ways; and now the fear comes upon me strongly again, that it will lead to evil.
6. Saras
Book 1 Ch 7 p.300 - (721 words)
Mrs Glegg decides for no reason to take it out on Mr Glegg who is puzzled at her morning onslaught at breakfast.
Mrs Glegg decides for no reason to take it out on Mr Glegg who is puzzled at her morning onslaught at breakfast.
"There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from Mrs. Glegg's brow when she sat at the breakfast-table. It was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the morning it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled front. By half-past ten decorum demanded the front; until then Mrs. Glegg could economize it, and society would never be any the wiser. But the absence of that cloud only left it more apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and Mr. Glegg, perceiving this, as he sat down to his milkporridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morning hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs. Glegg, lest, to so delicate an article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should do mischief. People who seem to enjoy their ill temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. That was Mrs. Glegg's way. She made her tea weaker than usual this morning, and declined butter. It was a hard case that a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using an opportunity, should not meet with a single remark from Mr. Glegg on which to exercise itself. But by and by it appeared that his silence would answer the purpose, for he heard himself apostrophized at last in that tone peculiar to the wife of one's bosom.
"Well, Mr. Glegg! it's a poor return I get for making you the wife I've made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd better ha' known it before my poor father died, and then, when I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere, as the choice was offered me."
Mr. Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries.
"Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?"
"Done now, Mr. Glegg? done now?–I'm sorry for you."
Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Glegg reverted to his porridge.
"There's husbands in the world," continued Mrs. Glegg, after a pause, "as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong and you can teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the husband's place to stand by the wife, instead o' rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult her."
"Now, what call have you to say that?" said Mr. Glegg, rather warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. "When did I rejoice or triumph over you?"
"There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr. Glegg. I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet."
"Sulk at you?" said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness. "You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but himself."
"Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to me, Mr. Glegg! It makes you look very small, though you can't see yourself," said Mrs. Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. "A man in your place should set an example, and talk more sensible."
"Yes; but will you listen to sense?" retorted Mr. Glegg, sharply. "The best sense I can talk to you is what I said last night,–as you're i' the wrong to think o' calling in your money, when it's safe enough if you'd let it alone, all because of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you'd ha' altered your mind this morning. But if you'd like to call it in, don't do it in a hurry now, and breed more enmity in the family, but wait till there's a pretty mortgage to be had without any trouble. You'd have to set the lawyer to work now to find an investment, and make no end o' expense."
"Well, Mr. Glegg! it's a poor return I get for making you the wife I've made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd better ha' known it before my poor father died, and then, when I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere, as the choice was offered me."
Mr. Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries.
"Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?"
"Done now, Mr. Glegg? done now?–I'm sorry for you."
Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Glegg reverted to his porridge.
"There's husbands in the world," continued Mrs. Glegg, after a pause, "as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong and you can teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the husband's place to stand by the wife, instead o' rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult her."
"Now, what call have you to say that?" said Mr. Glegg, rather warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. "When did I rejoice or triumph over you?"
"There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr. Glegg. I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet."
"Sulk at you?" said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness. "You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but himself."
"Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to me, Mr. Glegg! It makes you look very small, though you can't see yourself," said Mrs. Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. "A man in your place should set an example, and talk more sensible."
"Yes; but will you listen to sense?" retorted Mr. Glegg, sharply. "The best sense I can talk to you is what I said last night,–as you're i' the wrong to think o' calling in your money, when it's safe enough if you'd let it alone, all because of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you'd ha' altered your mind this morning. But if you'd like to call it in, don't do it in a hurry now, and breed more enmity in the family, but wait till there's a pretty mortgage to be had without any trouble. You'd have to set the lawyer to work now to find an investment, and make no end o' expense."
7. Kavita
Book 6 Ch 2 p.341 - (1,126 words)
Stephen compliments Maggie and it is plain he is taken with her. Stephen & Maggie go boating; it brings colour to her cheeks and roses bloom in his heart.
Stephen compliments Maggie and it is plain he is taken with her. Stephen & Maggie go boating; it brings colour to her cheeks and roses bloom in his heart.
"Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Tulliver," said Lucy, turning with wicked enjoyment toward Maggie, who now approached from the farther window. "This is Mr. Stephen Guest."
For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the sight of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Maggie felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a person toward whom she herself was conscious of timidity.
This new experience was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it almost effaced her previous emotion about Philip. There was a new brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, as she seated herself.
"I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before yesterday," said Lucy, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her lover's confusion; the advantage was usually on his side.
"This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Tulliver," said Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stooping to play with Minny, only looking at Maggie furtively. "She said you had light hair and blue eyes."
"Nay, it was you who said so," remonstrated Lucy. "I only refrained from destroying your confidence in your own second-sight."
"I wish I could always err in the same way," said Stephen, "and find reality so much more beautiful than my preconceptions."
"Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion," said Maggie, "and said what it was incumbent on you to say under the circumstances."
She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear to her that he had been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lucy had said he was inclined to be satirical, and Maggie had mentally supplied the addition, "and rather conceited."
"An alarming amount of devil there," was Stephen's first thought. The second, when she had bent over her work, was, "I wish she would look at me again." The next was to answer,–
"I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says 'Thank you.' It's rather hard upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable invitation, don't you think so, Miss Tulliver?"
"No," said Maggie, looking at him with her direct glance; "if we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place."
"Then my compliment ought to be eloquent," said Stephen, really not quite knowing what he said while Maggie looked at him, "seeing that the words were so far beneath the occasion."
"No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference," said Maggie, flushing a little.
Lucy was rather alarmed; she thought Stephen and Maggie were not going to like each other. She had always feared lest Maggie should appear too old and clever to please that critical gentleman. "Why, dear Maggie," she interposed, "you have always pretended that you are too fond of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some one ventures to admire you."
…
"Oh yes, pray bring him," said Lucy. "And you will like Maggie, sha'n't you?" she added, in a beseeching tone. "Isn't she a dear, noble-looking creature?"
"Too tall," said Stephen, smiling down upon her, "and a little too fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know."
Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable opinion of sister fair ones. That is why so many women have the advantage of knowing that they are secretly repulsive to men who have self-denyingly made ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctively characteristic of Lucy than that she both implicitly believed what Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should not know it. But you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have already foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavorable opinion of Stephen's, that he walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the aid of a vivid imagination, that Maggie must give him her hand at least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and that a gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is advantageously situated when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he fallen in love with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight? Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire beauty and enjoy looking at it,–at least under such circumstances as the present. And there was really something very interesting about this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in social intercourse.
Maggie did not fulfil Stephen's hope by looking at him during the first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full of the old banks that she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut off from Philip,–the only person who had ever seemed to love her devotedly, as she had always longed to be loved. But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row. This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might take an oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and made her inclined to take her lesson merrily.
"I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you and Lucy," she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the boat. Maggie, we know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and she had chosen an inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped, but happily Mr. Stephen Guest held her hand, and kept her up with a firm grasp.
For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the sight of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Maggie felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a person toward whom she herself was conscious of timidity.
This new experience was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it almost effaced her previous emotion about Philip. There was a new brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, as she seated herself.
"I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before yesterday," said Lucy, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her lover's confusion; the advantage was usually on his side.
"This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Tulliver," said Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stooping to play with Minny, only looking at Maggie furtively. "She said you had light hair and blue eyes."
"Nay, it was you who said so," remonstrated Lucy. "I only refrained from destroying your confidence in your own second-sight."
"I wish I could always err in the same way," said Stephen, "and find reality so much more beautiful than my preconceptions."
"Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion," said Maggie, "and said what it was incumbent on you to say under the circumstances."
She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear to her that he had been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lucy had said he was inclined to be satirical, and Maggie had mentally supplied the addition, "and rather conceited."
"An alarming amount of devil there," was Stephen's first thought. The second, when she had bent over her work, was, "I wish she would look at me again." The next was to answer,–
"I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says 'Thank you.' It's rather hard upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable invitation, don't you think so, Miss Tulliver?"
"No," said Maggie, looking at him with her direct glance; "if we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place."
"Then my compliment ought to be eloquent," said Stephen, really not quite knowing what he said while Maggie looked at him, "seeing that the words were so far beneath the occasion."
"No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference," said Maggie, flushing a little.
Lucy was rather alarmed; she thought Stephen and Maggie were not going to like each other. She had always feared lest Maggie should appear too old and clever to please that critical gentleman. "Why, dear Maggie," she interposed, "you have always pretended that you are too fond of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some one ventures to admire you."
…
"Oh yes, pray bring him," said Lucy. "And you will like Maggie, sha'n't you?" she added, in a beseeching tone. "Isn't she a dear, noble-looking creature?"
"Too tall," said Stephen, smiling down upon her, "and a little too fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know."
Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable opinion of sister fair ones. That is why so many women have the advantage of knowing that they are secretly repulsive to men who have self-denyingly made ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctively characteristic of Lucy than that she both implicitly believed what Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should not know it. But you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have already foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavorable opinion of Stephen's, that he walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the aid of a vivid imagination, that Maggie must give him her hand at least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and that a gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is advantageously situated when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he fallen in love with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight? Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire beauty and enjoy looking at it,–at least under such circumstances as the present. And there was really something very interesting about this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in social intercourse.
Maggie did not fulfil Stephen's hope by looking at him during the first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full of the old banks that she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut off from Philip,–the only person who had ever seemed to love her devotedly, as she had always longed to be loved. But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row. This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might take an oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and made her inclined to take her lesson merrily.
"I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you and Lucy," she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the boat. Maggie, we know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and she had chosen an inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped, but happily Mr. Stephen Guest held her hand, and kept her up with a firm grasp.
8. Hemjit
Book 1 Ch 7 p.51 - (537 words)
Aunt Glegg had fine clothes but she would only wear her old clothes until they were worn out before she put on new clothes.
Aunt Glegg had fine clothes but she would only wear her old clothes until they were worn out before she put on new clothes.
The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver's arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of fifty she had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things out before her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best thread-lace in every wash; but when Mrs. Glegg died, it would be found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her wardrobe in the Spotted Chamber than ever Mrs. Wooll of St. Ogg's had bought in her life, although Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her curled fronts: Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dreamlike and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular. Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on a week-day visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at Mrs. Tulliver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister's feelings greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs. Glegg observed to Mrs. Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always going to law, might have been expected to know better. But Bessy was always weak!
So if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day,–untied and tilted slightly, of course–a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor: she didn't know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a chevaux-de-frise of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's slate-colored silk gown must have been; but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear.
So if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day,–untied and tilted slightly, of course–a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor: she didn't know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a chevaux-de-frise of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's slate-colored silk gown must have been; but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear.
9. KumKum
Book 3 Ch 5 p.206 - (1,491 words)
Tom looks up his uncle Dean to get a job.
Tom looks up his uncle Dean to get a job.
"I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money," said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution.
"A situation?" said Mr. Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff with elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a most provoking habit.
"Why, let me see, how old are you?" said Mr. Deane, as he threw himself backward again.
"Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen," said Tom, hoping his uncle noticed how much beard he had.
"Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I think?"
"But I don't think I could get any money at that for a long while, could I?"
"That's true; but people don't get much money at anything, my boy, when they're only sixteen. You've had a good deal of schooling, however; I suppose you're pretty well up in accounts, eh? You understand book keeping?"
"No," said Tom, rather falteringly. "I was in Practice. But Mr. Stelling says I write a good hand, uncle. That's my writing," added Tom, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday.
"Ah! that's good, that's good. But, you see, the best hand in the world'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if you know nothing of book-keeping,–nothing of accounts. And a copying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning at school, then?"
Mr. Deane had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had no precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.
"We learned Latin," said Tom, pausing a little between each item, as if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his memory,–"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had one day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons; and there were several other books we either read or learned out of,–English Poetry, and Horæ Paulinæ and Blair's Rhetoric, the last half."
Mr. Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. But the presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so successful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.
About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But, for what he knew, the Horæ Paulinæ might be something less neutral. On the whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion toward poor Tom.
"Well," he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've had three years at these things,–you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't you better take up some line where they'll come in handy?"
Tom colored, and burst out, with new energy:
"I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don't like Latin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them unless I went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough for that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don't want to be that sort of person. I should like to enter into some business where I can get on,–a manly business, where I should have to look after things, and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keep my mother and sister."
"Ah, young gentleman," said Mr. Deane, with that tendency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, "that's sooner said than done,–sooner said than done."
…
…
"You want me to help you to a situation," Mr. Deane went on; "well, I've no fault to find with that. I'm willing to do something for you. But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get horseback. Now, you must remember what you are,–you're a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There's heaps of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might be apprenticed to some business,–a chemist's and druggist's perhaps; your Latin might come in a bit there––"
Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand and said:
"Stop! hear what I've got to say. You don't want to be a 'prentice,–I know, I know,–you want to make more haste, and you don't want to stand behind a counter. But if you're a copying-clerk, you'll have to stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn't much out-look there, and you won't be much wiser at the end of the year than at the beginning. The world isn't made of pen, ink, and paper, and if you're to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the world's made of. Now the best chance for you 'ud be to have a place on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell of things, but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound; you'd have to stand cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You're too fine a gentleman for that."
Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply.
"I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would put up with what was disagreeable."
"That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn't only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the mistake you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way I started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the heads of the best firms in St. Ogg's."
Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.
"Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I should do for? I should like to set to work at once," said Tom, with a slight tremor in his voice.
"Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You must bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, because you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it remains to be seen whether you're good for anything."
"I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle," said Tom, hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel no ground for trusting them. "I care about my own credit too much for that."
"Well done, Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice. There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then, you see, he's made good use of his time,–a first-rate calculator,–can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonly knowing in manufactures, that young fellow."
"I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?" said Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.
"Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But–Ah, Spence, you're back again. Well Tom, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think, and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother."
10. Shoba
Book 1 Ch 7 p.206 - (597 words)
In a pique Maggie cuts off her long hair, assisted by Tom, before going down to dinner.
In a pique Maggie cuts off her long hair, assisted by Tom, before going down to dinner.
"Maggie," said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering in her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy's staying was settled, "go and get your hair brushed, do, for shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first, you know I did."
"Tom come out with me," whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.
"Come upstairs with me, Tom," she whispered, when they were outside the door. "There's something I want to do before dinner."
"There's no time to play at anything before dinner," said Tom, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.
"Oh yes, there is time for this; do come, Tom."
Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.
"What are they for, Maggie?" said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.
Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead.
"Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you'll catch it!" exclaimed Tom; "you'd better not cut any more off."
Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so queer.
"Here, Tom, cut it behind for me," said Maggie, excited by her own daring, and anxious to finish the deed.
"You'll catch it, you know," said Tom, nodding his head in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.
"Never mind, make haste!" said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.
The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony's mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of scissors meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain.
"Oh, Maggie," said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he laughed, "Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at school."
Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn't want her hair to look pretty,–that was out of the question,–she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, and say she was like an idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie's cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.
"Oh, Maggie, you'll have to go down to dinner directly," said Tom. "Oh, my!"
"Don't laugh at me, Tom," said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving him a push.
"Now, then, spitfire!" said Tom. "What did you cut it off for, then? I shall go down: I can smell the dinner going in.
11. Joe
Book 6 Ch 11 p.406 - (819 words)
Maggie and Stephen Guest discuss what it means to love one another if it means sacrificing others.
"It darted through Maggie's mind that here was a mode of releasing herself from outward struggle,–to tell Stephen that her whole heart was Philip's. But her lips would not utter that, and she was silent.
"If you do love me, dearest," said Stephen, gently, taking her hand again and laying it within his arm, "it is better–it is right that we should marry each other. We can't help the pain it will give. It is come upon us without our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of me in spite of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I've been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I've only made things worse; I'd better have given way at first."
Maggie was silent. If it were not wrong–if she were once convinced of that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current, soft and yet strong as the summer stream!
"Say 'yes,' dearest," said Stephen, leaning to look entreatingly in her face. "What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we belonged to each other?"
Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, but there was a great dread dwelling in his love for her.
Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.
"And after all," he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat his own scruples as well as hers, "I am breaking no positive engagement; if Lucy's affections had been withdrawn from me and given to some one else, I should have felt no right to assert a claim on her. If you are not absolutely pledged to Philip, we are neither of us bound."
"You don't believe that; it is not your real feeling," said Maggie, earnestly. "You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might be broken, when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such thing as faithfulness."
Stephen was silent; he could not pursue that argument; the opposite conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time of struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.
"The pledge can't be fulfilled," he said, with impetuous insistence. "It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one else. There is wrong in that too; there may be misery in it for them as well as for us. Maggie, you must see that; you do see that."
He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance; his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a few moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness,–
"Oh, it is difficult,–life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,–the ties that have made others dependent on us,–and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward whom–I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I see–I feel it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly,–that I must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don't urge me; help me,–help me, because I love you."
Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love. Stephen had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal; but in the same moment–how could it be otherwise?–that pleading beauty gained new power over him.
"Dearest," he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm stole round her, "I'll do, I'll bear anything you wish. But–one kiss–one–the last–before we part."
One kiss, and then a long look, until Maggie said tremulously, "Let me go,–let me make haste back."
"If you do love me, dearest," said Stephen, gently, taking her hand again and laying it within his arm, "it is better–it is right that we should marry each other. We can't help the pain it will give. It is come upon us without our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of me in spite of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I've been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I've only made things worse; I'd better have given way at first."
Maggie was silent. If it were not wrong–if she were once convinced of that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current, soft and yet strong as the summer stream!
"Say 'yes,' dearest," said Stephen, leaning to look entreatingly in her face. "What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we belonged to each other?"
Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, but there was a great dread dwelling in his love for her.
Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.
"And after all," he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat his own scruples as well as hers, "I am breaking no positive engagement; if Lucy's affections had been withdrawn from me and given to some one else, I should have felt no right to assert a claim on her. If you are not absolutely pledged to Philip, we are neither of us bound."
"You don't believe that; it is not your real feeling," said Maggie, earnestly. "You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might be broken, when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such thing as faithfulness."
Stephen was silent; he could not pursue that argument; the opposite conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time of struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.
"The pledge can't be fulfilled," he said, with impetuous insistence. "It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one else. There is wrong in that too; there may be misery in it for them as well as for us. Maggie, you must see that; you do see that."
He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance; his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a few moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness,–
"Oh, it is difficult,–life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,–the ties that have made others dependent on us,–and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward whom–I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I see–I feel it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly,–that I must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don't urge me; help me,–help me, because I love you."
Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love. Stephen had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal; but in the same moment–how could it be otherwise?–that pleading beauty gained new power over him.
"Dearest," he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm stole round her, "I'll do, I'll bear anything you wish. But–one kiss–one–the last–before we part."
One kiss, and then a long look, until Maggie said tremulously, "Let me go,–let me make haste back."
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