MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

“Dear Lorrequer,
The trial is over, and I am acquitted, but still in St. Pelagie; for as the government were determined to cut my head off if guilty, so the mob resolved to murder me if innocent. A pleasant place this: before the trial, I was the most popular man in Paris; my face was in every print shop; plaster busts of me, with a great organ behind the ear, in all the thoroughfares;”

“No mangez, no mangez cela."

"Ah," said I, detecting in my friend's French his English origin, "you are an Englishman I find."

"The devil a doubt of it, darlin'," said he half testily.

"An Irishman, too—still better," said I.

"Why then isn't it strange that my French always shows me to be English, and my English proves me Irish? It's lucky for me there's no going farther any how.”

“Why is she gone with him?" said I, reproachfully, turning towards my aunt.

"Why, my dear, a very sufficient reason. She was married this morning."

This was my first love.”

“Oh, my dear young friends of either sex, whatever your feelings be for one another, keep them to yourselves; I know of nothing half so hazardous as that "comparing of notes" which sometimes happens. Analysis is a beautiful thing in mathematics or chemistry, but it makes sad havoc when applied to the "functions of the heart.”

“Thus did I reason, and thus I believed; and I was really then unaware that at no time is a man so prone to fall in love as immediately after his being jilted. If common sense will teach us not to dance a bolero upon a sprained ancle, so might it also convey the equally important lesson, not to expose our more vital and inflammatory organ to the fire the day after its being singed.”

“Ah, mon cher, Sir Charles, ravi de vous voir. But why are you not dancing?"

"Ah, mi ladi, Je ne puis pas, c'est a dire, Ich kann es nicht; I am too old; Ich bin—"

"Oh, you horrid man; I understand you perfectly. You hate ladies, that is the real reason. You do—you know you do.”

Are you ill, sir? said I, in a voice of some anxiety

You might say that,replied he—if you knew who you were talking to—although maybe you've heard enough of me, though you never saw me till now

Without having that pleasure even yet,said I,it would grieve me to think you should be ill in the coach

May be it might,briefly replied the unknown, with a species of meaning in his words I could not then understand.

“My friend now left me to my own devices to while away the hours till time to dress for dinner. Heaven help the gentleman so left in Dublin, say I. It is, perhaps, the only city of its size in the world, where there is no lounge—no promenade. Very little experience of it will convince you that it abounds in pretty women, and has its fair share of agreeable men; but where are they in the morning?”

“I believe it is Coleridge who somewhere says, that to transmit the first bright and early impressions of our youth, fresh and uninjured to a remote period of life, constitutes one of the loftiest prerogatives of genius. If this be true, and I am not disposed to dispute it—what a gifted people must be the worthy inhabitants of Dublin;”

“Dear, dirty Dublin—"Io te salute"—how many excellent things might be said of thee, if, unfortunately, it did not happen that the theme is an old one, and has been much better sung than it can ever now be said. With thus much of apology for no more lengthened panegyric, let me beg of my reader, if he be conversant with that most moving melody—the Groves of Blarney—to hum the following lines,

for every morning for at least three or four hours I was obliged to sit opposite the colonel,engaged in the compilation of that narrative of his "res gestae,"which was to eclipse the career of Napoleon & leave Wellington's laurels but a very faded lustre in comparison.In this agreeable occupation did I pass the greater part of my day,listening to the insufferable prolixity of the most prolix of colonels,& at times,

I need say,that without falling in love with Mary Kamworth,I felt prodigiously disposed thereto;she was extremely pretty;had a foot & ancle to swear by,the most silvery toned voice I almost ever heard,& a certain witchery & archness of manner that by its very tantalizing uncertainty continually provoked attention,& by suggesting a difficulty in the road to success,imparted a more than common zest in the pursuit

“And so, Mr. Lorrequer, you heard of my affair at Cantantrabad, when I took the Rajah prisoner?"

"Yes," said I; "the governor-general mentioned the gallant business the very last time I dined at Government-House."

"Ah, did he? kind of him though. Well, sir, I received two millions of rupees on the morning after, and a promise of ten more if I would permit him to escape—but no—I refused flatly."

“Do you think you could get up a fit for the medical board," said Fitz., gravely.

"Why, if absolutely indispensable," said I, "and with good instruction—something this way. Eh, is it not?"

"Nothing of the kind: you are quite wrong."

"Is there not always a little laughing and crying," said I.”

“I reached the small flower-garden, sacred by a thousand endearing recollections. Oh! of how very little account are the many words of passing kindness, and moments of light-hearted pleasure, when spoken or felt, compared to the memory of them when hallowed by time or distance.”

“There is an old and not less true adage, that what we wish we readily believe; and so with me—I found myself an easy convert to my own hopes and desires,”

“With what a trembling hand and beating heart I broke it open, and yet feared to read it—so much of my destiny might be in that simple page. For once in my life my sanguine spirit failed me; my mind could take in but one casualty, that Lady Jane had divulged to her family the nature of my attentions, and that in the letter before me lay a cold mandate of dismissal from her presence for ever.”

“…and so might they have continued, had not prosperity, that in its blighting influence upon the heart, spares neither priests nor laymen, and is equally severe upon mice (see Aesop's fable) and moral philosophers, actually deprived them, for the "nonce" of reason, and tempted them to their ruin.”

“I could not but think, as I looked down from my lofty eyrie, upon that little group of boats, and that lone hut, how much of the "world" to the humble dweller beneath, lay in that secluded and narrow bay. There, the deep sea, where their days were passed in "storm or sunshine,"—there, the humble home, where at night they rested, and around whose hearth lay all their cares and all their joys.”

“I verily believe—for on such slight foundation our greatest resolves are built—that if the rain had continued a week longer, I should have become a misanthropist for life. I made many inquiries from my landlady as to the society of the place, but the answers I received only led to greater despondence.”

Such was our life in Cork—dining,drinking,dancing, riding steeple chases,pigeon shooting,& tandem driving—filling up any little interval that was found to exist between a late breakfast,& the time to dress for dinner;& here I hope I shall not be accused of a tendency to boasting, while I add, that among all ranks and degrees of men,& women too, there never was a regiment more highly in estimation than the 4_th.

“…we had been originally raised in Ireland, that land of punch, priests, and potatoes…”

“Why, soldiers, why
Should we be melancholy, boys?”

“Story! God bless you; I have none to tell, sir.”

We lawyers know what guesswork Medicine is: we see it in the witness-box. I hate suing opinions: it is like firing bullets at snipes in a wind.

“And this is the greatest stroke of art, to turn an evil into a good.”

“Now I see how wise the ancients were: yes, friendship is better than love; calmer, more constant, free from the heats and chills of that impetuous passion; its pure bosom is ruffled by none of love's jealousies and irritabilities. Solem e mundo tollunt qui tollunt amicitiam.”

She spoke a little sharply to him now and then. And that was new. It came from the nerves, not the heart. At last she advised him to go back to Oxford. "I shall be the ruin of your mind if we go on like this," said she sadly.

"What, leave the field to my rivals? No, thank you."

"What rivals, sir?" asked Julia, drawing up.”

He snorted like a spirited horse, and shouted cheerily, "Go ahead, messmate; I smell blue water."

"Come on, then," cried Alfred, half mad himself with excitement, and the pair ran furiously, and dashed through hedges and ditches, torn, bleeding, splashed, triumphant; behind them the burning madhouse, above them the spangled sky, the fresh free air of liberty blowing in their nostrils, and rushing past their ears.

No rest, no peace.When it was still,the place was like the grave;& ever and anon, loud, sharp, tremendous, burst a thunderclap of curses,& set those poor demented creatures all yelling again for half-an-hour, making the tombs ring.& at clock-like intervals a harmless but dirty idiot, who was allowed to roam the ward, came and chanted through the keyhole, "Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything."