United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If Fortune passes by without seeing us, and pours her favors on others, let us console ourselves, like the friend of Parmenio, by saying, "Those, too, are Alexanders." While making these reflections, I was going on as chance took me. I crossed from one pavement to another, I retraced my steps, I stopped before the shops or to read the handbills.
I don't exaggerate none when I asserts that the moment our village gets its eye on these three-sheets it comes to a dead halt. "'Old Squar' Alexanders is the war chief of the hamlet, an' him an' the two other selectmen c'llects themse'fs over their toddies an' canvasses whether they permits this wizard to give his fiendish exhibitions in our midst.
"I don't savey no more about Satan than I does about you." ""Look at them bills," says Squar' Alexanders, an' he p'ints to where one is hangin' on the barroom wall. It gives a picture of the foul fiend, with pitchfork, spear-head tail an' all. "Whatever do you call that?" ""That's a bluff," says the wizard.
After the crude housekeeping, the lack of comforts that made the simplest nursing a grinding struggle with circumstance, it was a blessed relief to get back to a sphere where minor details were all in order as a matter of course. The Alexanders, with their three children, kept only one maid now; but even that restriction did not prevent the unlimited flow of hot and cold water!
Afterwards succeeded Pope Julius, and found the Church great, having all Romania, and all the Barons of Rome being quite rooted out, and by Alexanders persecutions, all their factions worne down; he found also the way open for the heaping up of moneys, never practised before Alexanders time; which things Julius not only follow'd, but augmented; and thought to make himself master of Bolonia, and extinguish the Venetians, and chase the French men out of Italy: and these designes of his prov'd all lucky to him, and so much the more to his praise in that he did all for the good of the Church, and in no private regard: he kept also the factions of the Orsins and Colonnesi, in the same State he found them: and though there were among them some head whereby to cause an alteration; yet two things have held them quiet; the one the power of the Church, which somewhat affrights them; the other because they have no Cardinals of their factions, who are the primary causes of all the troubles amongst them: nor shall these parties ever be at rest, while they have Cardinals; because they nourish the factions both in Rome, and abroad; and the Barons then are forced to undertake the defence of them: and thus from the Prelates ambitions arise the discords and tumults among the Barons.
But although the machinery of war varies so steadily from age to age that a commonplace commander of to-day, rich in the spoils of preceding time, might vanquish the Alexanders, and Caesars, and Frederics, with their antiquated enginery, yet the moral stuff out of which great captains, great armies, great victories are created, is the simple material it was in the days of Sesostris or Cyrus.
From the Alexanders and Caesars I turn with loathing their fierce, rude, outre life, their selfish, grasping ambition, suggest to me the vision of snarling wild beasts, battling over the torn and palpitating limbs of nations. These men could never have touched my soul; they could never have dispelled the darkness of my mind; they could not be friends.
It's going to take generations perhaps before they're reoriented. There's plenty you Alexanders should answer for." "If there's any fault, it's yours," Douglas snarled. "We were doing all right until you came here. We'd still be doing all right if I had shot you both." His shoulders sagged. "I should have killed you when I had the chance," he said bitterly.
There was the little case of coins, with the gold Alexanders he had handled with so much covetous reverence at eighteen. Outside, the irregular quadrangle with its dripping trees stretched before him; the steps of the new Hall, now the shower was over, were crowded with gowned figures. It might have been yesterday that he had stood in that room, blushing with awkward pleasure under Mr.
Chet gets up, hangs the barn-door back on its hinges, an' sa'nters after. Squar' Alexanders has posted Chet as to his dooties an' his orders is to prounce on the necromancer if he offers to enter the hall. That's how the cavalcade lines up: first, the wizard; twenty foot behind is Chet; an' twenty foot behind our constable comes the public in a body.
Word Of The Day