The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

Money: she had never felt its value before.

What???

instead of men aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate how to retreat out of it without shame.

It was a lovely May sunset, and the birch trees which grew on this margin of the vast Egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies’ wings, and diaphanous as amber.

“Still I don’t know much what feelings are nowadays. I have got so mixed up with business of one sort and t’other that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour like. Yes, I am given up body and soul to the making of money. Money is all my dream.”

Lol!!!

And it might have been observed that she did not in future walk that way less often from having met Venn there now. Whether or not Venn abstained from riding thither because he had met Thomasin in the same place might easily have been guessed from her proceedings about two months later in the same year.

as honest and persevering a young fellow as any on Egdon, since he had turned over a new leaf.

But was not Venn honest and persevering as a reddleman?

“In common conscience every man ought either to marry, or go for a soldier. ’Tis a scandal to the nation to do neither one nor t’other. I did both, thank God. Neither to raise men nor to lay ’em low—that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed.”

I guess that will give Christian something to thi k about!

The ticking of the clock was the only sound that greeted him,

His mother’s old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers. But to Clym she was almost a presence there, now as always. Whatever she was in other people’s memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness for Eustacia could not obscure. But his heart was heavy: that mother had not crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.* And events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of her care. He should have heeded her—for Eustacia’s sake even more than for his own. “It was all my fault,” he whispered. “O my mother, my mother: would to God that I could live my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me!”

Poor Clym never listened to anyone's advice. Not his mother's, not Eustacia's, not anyone who lived upon Egdon. He stubbornly thought he knew best. But, in his defense, no one listened to Clym. Not his mother. Not Eustacia. He told them he wanted a quiet life on Egdon Heath educating the workers, but his mother urged him to continue with his previous work and Eustacia believed she could influence him to return to Paris. No one was really listening to anyone.

And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother: and she sat on his right hand. Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee: I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay.’”

Poor Clym