MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

“This lady was a good Catholic to the necessary extent of hearing a mass on Sundays, abstaining from meat on Fridays and Ember days, and making her “Easters.” Which concessions were not without their attendant discomforts, counterbalanced, however, by the soothing assurance which they gave her of keeping on the safe side.”

“Mr. Worthington regarded women as being of peculiar and unsuitable conformation to the various conditions of life amid which they are placed; with strong moral proclivities, for the most part subservient to a weak and inadequate mentality...

“Seeking once a volume of Ruskin’s Miscellanies, he discovered that it had been employed to support the dismantled leg of a dressing bureau. On another occasion, a volume of Schopenhauer, which he had been at much difficulty and expense to procure, Emerson’s Essays, and two other volumes much prized,

“In full garb, she presented the figure of a splendid woman; trim and tight in a black silk gown of expensive quality, heavy with jets which hung and shone, and jangled from every available point of her person. Not a thread of her yellow hair was misplaced....

“They sat opposite each other and remained for a while silent; he with astonishment at sight of the “merry blue eyes” faded and sunken into deep, dark round sockets; at the net-work of little lines all traced about the mouth and eyes, and spreading over the once rounded cheeks...”

“There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if’s and and’s, but stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger, true—but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.”

“God! but dats a diffunt man sence you come heah.”
“Different?” questioned the girl eagerly, and casting a quick sideward look at Aunt Belindy.
“Lord yas honey, ’f you warn’t heah dat same Mista Grégor ’d be in Centaville ev’y Sunday, a raisin’ Cain. Humph—I knows ’im.”

** Learning a new language 😆

“But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois, they ain’t no temptations o’ no kine.”
“There’s little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations to withstand,” delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone of a pretty sage, giving utterance to an inspired truth.”

“He had kissed her one day. Whatever there was about the kiss—possibly an over exuberance—it was not to her liking, and she forbade that he ever repeat it, under pain of losing her affection.

“She bore with him, and then she liked him. Finally, whilst indulging in a little introspection; making a diagnosis of various symptoms, indicative by no means of a deep-seated malady, she decided that she was in love with Grégoire.

“You don’t believe in hell?” he asked in blank surprise.
“Certainly not. I’m a Unitarian.”
“Well, that’s new to me,” was his only comment.
“Do you believe in spirits, Grégoire? I don’t—in day time.”
“Neva mine ’bout spirits,” he answered, taking her arm and leading her off, “let’s git away f’om yere.”

There were patches of the field before them, white with bursting cotton which scores of negroes, men, women and children were dexterously picking and thrusting into great bags that hung from their shoulders and dragged beside them on the ground; no machine having yet been found to surpass the sufficiency of five human fingers for wrenching the cotton from its tenacious hold.

“To do a thing out of love for you, would be the only comfort and strength left me.”

“Don’t say that,” she entreated. “Love isn’t everything in life; there is something higher.”

“God in heaven, there shouldn’t be!” he exclaimed, passionately pressing her hand to his forehead, his cheek, his lips.”

“Thérèse had not reached the age of thirty-five without learning that life presents many insurmountable obstacles which must be accepted, whether with the callousness of philosophy, the revolt of weakness or the dignity of self-respect. The following morning, the only sign which she gave of her mental disturbance, was an appearance that might have succeeded a night of unrefreshing sleep.”

“Don’t you think,” ventured Thérèse, “that we make too much of our individual trials. We are all so prone to believe our own burden heavier than our neighbor’s.”
“Perhaps—but there can be no question about the weight of David’s. I’m not a bit selfish about him though; poor fellow, I only wish he’d marry again.”

“What a great difference in age there must be between you and your brother,” she said, breaking the silence.

“Yes—though he is younger and I older than you perhaps think. He was fifteen and the only child when I was born. I am twenty-four, so he of course is thirty-nine.”

“I certainly thought him older.”

“She gave him her soft hand to hold and as the warm, moist palm met his, it acted like a charged electric battery turning its subtle force upon his sensitive nerves.”
“Will you let me talk to you to-morrow?” he asked.
“Yes, perhaps; if I have time.”

“Thérèse was a warm-hearted woman, and a woman of clear mental vision; a combination not found so often together as to make it ordinary. Being a woman of warm heart, she had loved her husband with the devotion which good husbands deserve; but being a clear-headed woman, she was not disposed to rebel against the changes which Time brings, when so disposed, to the human sensibilities.”

“He was not versed in the reading of a woman’s nature, and he found himself at a loss to interpret Thérèse’s actions. [...]. His reflections led to no certainty, except that he loved her and meant to tell her so.”

“David Hosmer, you are the most supremely unsatisfactory man existing.”
“What crime have I committed now, Melicent, against your code?” he asked, not fully aroused from his reverie.
“You’ve committed nothing; your sin is one of omission. I absolutely believe you go through the world with your eyes, to all practical purposes, closed. Don’t you notice anything; any change?”

“I don’t believe you’ve been away for three months, have you? and city life certainly has its attractions.”
“It’s beastly,” he answered decidedly. “I greatly prefer the country—this country; though I can imagine a condition under which it would be less agreeable; insupportable, in fact.”

“The dark close fitting habit which she wore lent brilliancy to her soft blonde coloring; and there was no mark of years about her face or figure, save the settling of a thoughtful shadow upon the eyes, which joys and sorrows that were past and gone had left there.”

“It is not unlikely that his good humor was partly due to the acceptable arrangement which assured him the daily society of Thérèse, whose presence was growing into a need with him.”

“Yet she could not but believe that there was some deeper motive underlying this systematic reluctance of the negroes to give their work in exchange for the very good pay which she offered.”

“The meanest w’ite man thet ever lived, seems like. Used to own this place long befo’ the Lafirmes got it. They say he’s the person that Mrs. W’at’s her name wrote about in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“Legree? I wonder if it could be true?” Melicent asked with interest.”

“You betta put down yo’ veil,” he added a moment later.
Before she could ask a reason—for it was not her fashion to obey at word of command—the air was filled with the doleful hum of a gray swarm of mosquitoes, which attacked them fiercely.”

“Melicent was chiefly moved by the prospect of an uninterrupted sojourn with her brother, whom she loved blindly, and to whom she attributed qualities of mind and heart which she thought the world had discovered to use against him.”

“Her resemblance to Hosmer ended with height and slenderness of figure, olive tinted skin, and eyes and hair which were of that dark brown often miscalled black; but unlike his, her face was awake with an eagerness to know and test the novelty and depth of unaccustomed sensation.”

“The boy gave but ugly acknowledgment to Thérèse’s amiable nod; for he thought she was one upon whom partly rested the fault of this intrusive Industry which had come to fire the souls of indolent fathers with a greedy ambition for gain, at the sore expense of revolting youth.”

“Mrs. Lafirme,” said Hosmer, seeming moved to pursue the subject, and addressing the spray of white blossoms that adorned Thérèse’s black hat, “you admit, I suppose, that in urging your views upon me, you have in mind the advancement of my happiness?”
“Well understood.”