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"I don't," and yet the very question proved that she did not wholly disbelieve it. "No, I don't," added Barbara, stoutly, as she approached the sofa vacated by William, and sat down upon it, thus bringing herself opposite and near to Madame Vine. "Are you aware that it was Francis Levison who brought the evil to this house?" "The evil " stammered Madame Vine.
Where was I before I was born? I was part of my ancestors. Very well. 'But where shall I go when I die? What shall I be? "I nearly learned to disbelieve in religion. You must know I began to go to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals.
In that way I have come to know a little of our religion, and the history of our people, besides piecing together what I read in plays and other books about Jews and Jewesses; because I was sure my mother obeyed her religion. I had left off asking my father about her. It is very dreadful to say it, but I began to disbelieve him.
I am not unmindful of the remarks which a reference to a past age of intellectual and moral greatness will call forth; indeed, I can almost hear some devotee of the present time remark: "So we are asked to regard as a sober fact the existence in the past of a golden age; also to believe that man was created pure and holy, and that he has since fallen from his high estate; in other words, we are to have faith in the ancient tradition of the 'fall of man." If by the fall of man we are to understand that a great and universal people, who in a remote age of the world's history had reached a high stage of civilization, gradually passed out of human existence, and that a lower race, which was incapable of attaining to their estate, and which, by the over-stimulation of the lower propensities, sank into a state of barbarism, in which the original sublime conceptions of a Deity were obscured and the great learning of the past was lost, I can see no reason to disbelieve it, especially as all the facts, both of tradition and history, bearing upon this subject unite in proclaiming its truth.
That predisposition did not find its sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind.
Nothing was heard of Willy; that is, nothing beyond the reports of Mrs. Gum to her gossips when letters arrived: he was well, and getting on well. It was only the lull that precedes a storm; and a storm indeed burst on quiet Calne. Willy Gum had robbed the bank and disappeared. In the first dreadful moment, perhaps the only one who did not disbelieve it was Clerk Gum.
'It is so impossible for Laura, and for him too. 'I cannot tell, said Guy; 'there was a reality in his manner of speaking that refuses to let me disbelieve him. Surely it cannot be one of the horrors of death that we should be left to reproach ourselves with the fancied sins we have been prone to, as well as with our real ones.
Having no reason to disbelieve Wiggleswick's circumstantial though entirely fictitious story, and having by the smile put herself at a disadvantage, she felt uncomfortably routed. "Your master never told you where he was going or how long he was likely to be away?" she asked. "My master, ma'am," replied Wiggleswick, "never knows where he is going. That's why he wants a wife who can tell him."
By faith we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer, who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and will should appear to us not only as a progressive existence in space and time, but as a scheme of good and evil.
The previous night had been superb, and the autumn till then promised to be fine and late. I proceeded, as I always did, at seven o'clock in the morning, to the General's chamber. I woke him, and told him what I had seen. He feigned at first to disbelieve me, then leaped from his bed, ran to the window, and, convinced of the sudden change, he calmly said, "What! before the middle of October!
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