United States or Kiribati ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Back to this wilderness," she scoffed; "any one should thank God for being taken out of it." "I've always lived here, my father too, and his before him; and back of that we came from mountains. We're mountain blood; I don't know if we could get used to anything else, live down yonder." "I'd civilize you," she promised him. "Perhaps " he assented slowly.
An old Arabic proverb, "The earth is a peacock: Morocco is the tail of it," typifies the entire satisfaction of its inhabitants with their native land. What is, is good; why "civilize" and "progress"? As far as possible there shall no European enter therein.
Methought once, that could I obtain the grace of royalty, the ear of power, the command of wealth, my path to glory was made smooth and sure; I should become the grand inventor of my time and land; I should leave my lore a heritage and blessing wherever labour works to civilize the round globe.
The Mountain is the summer abode of Tangier, and shady houses and gardens civilize what was once a wild hill, in the days when our great British minister, Sir John Hay, did an unprecedented thing, and built himself a house there.
Somehow or other I had to get into their confidence. 'I have been for years up and down in Africa Uganda and the Congo and the Upper Nile. I know the ways of the Kaffir as no Englishman does. We Afrikanders see into the black man's heart, and though he may hate us he does our will. You Germans are like the English; you are too big folk to understand plain men. "Civilize," you cry.
Professing a desire to civilize and settle them, we have at the same time lost no opportunity to purchase their lands and thrust them farther into the wilderness. By this means they have not only been kept in a wandering state, but been led to look upon us as unjust and indifferent to their fate.
Whatever of material prosperity has grown up here is built on their work, and could not have existed but for their preceding labors; and you see in the spirit of the people, in their often quaint habits, in their universal education, in all that makes these islands peculiar and what they are, the marks of the Puritans who came here but fifty years ago to civilize a savage nation, and have done their work so thoroughly that, even though the Hawaiian people became extinct, it would require a century to obliterate the way-marks of that handful of determined New England men and women.
Attempts have long been made to civilize and Christianize these savages by the Catholic missions under Father de Smet, and the government has furthered these attempts by establishing a fine farm on Sun River.
"And civilize them, Allan? And bring them back and start a colony and make the world again? Oh, Allan, do you think we could?" she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "My plans include nothing less," he answered. "It's mighty well worth trying for, at any rate. Monday morning we start, then, little girl." "Sunday, if you say so." "Impatient, now?" he laughed.
But the sparrow and the rook are just as respectable in reality, though not in the eyes of the hen-wife, as the egg-laying fowl, or the dirt-gobbling duck; and, however Gibbie's habits might shock the ladies of Mr. Sclater's congregation who sought to civilize him, the boy was no more about mischief in the streets at midnight, than they were in their beds.
Word Of The Day