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It is Rome that still regrets him in the low haunts of the Regola, on that miry bank of the Tiber, where secret societies swarm at this moment, like gnats on the shores of the Nile. If these deplorable fruits of a model education were pointed out to the philosopher Gavarni, he would probably exclaim, "Bring up nations, in order that they may hate and despise you!"
Macarius became angry because an insect bit him and in penitence flung himself into a marsh where he lived for weeks. He was so badly stung by gnats and flies that his friends hardly knew him. Hilarion, at twenty years of age, was more like a spectre than a living man. His cell was only five feet high, a little lower than his stature.
It is very unpleasant, on account of the heat and the gnats. Not only Tartars dwell there, but many people of all nations, Russians, Hindoos, and Armenians. The chief trade of Astracan is in the fish of the sea, and in the salt on the shores. This is a kingdom in the midst of Tartary. It lies at the south of the Caspian Sea. It is not like the rest of Tartary, for it is a sweet green spot.
I, not being a man of science, still continue to do what I said I did in Alps and Sanctuaries, and make it a rule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow a few of the smallest gnats I can find several times a day, as the best astringent for the throat I know of. The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee.
This is a charming example of simplicity in theological discussion that might perhaps be followed with advantage in graver questions; we might cease to strain at the gnats and swallow our pigs. I had an audience of a party of hunters whom I had long wished to meet.
There were two crows which were mowing a meadow, and I saw two gnats building a bridge, and two doves tore a wolf to pieces; two children brought forth two kids, and two frogs threshed corn together. There I saw two mice consecrating a bishop, and two cats scratching out a bear's tongue. Then a snail came running up and killed two furious lions.
They lose all sense of proportion and perspective in morals, and those who are always straining at gnats are often peculiarly apt to swallow camels. It is quite right that men who have formed for themselves an ideal of life of the kind that I have described should steadily pursue it, but it is another thing to impose it upon others, and to prescribe it as of general application.
So he determined on the near and straight path, through Long Stratton and Willingham, down the old bridle-way from Willingham ploughed field, every village there, and in the isle likewise, had and has still its "field," or ancient clearing of ploughed land, and then to try that terrible half-mile, with the courage and wit of a general to whom human lives were as those of the gnats under the hedge.
The frequency of gnats and mosquitos characterises unhealthy climates only so far as the development and multiplication of these insects depend on the same causes that give rise to miasmata.
Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking toward the mares.
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