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There was no wakeful reflection of the fire there, as in your modern chambers, which upon the darkest nights have a watchful consciousness of French polish; the old Spanish mahogany winked at it now and then, as a dozing cat or dog might, nothing more.
For when silently beneath the moon the sentry is pacing the narrow rounds of the krepost, suspecting no enemy within a dozen leagues, but thinking rather of the hut on Polish plains or shores of Finnish lake fondly called a home, some Adighé or Lesghian who, unable to rest until he has slaked his thirst for vengeance in the blood of an infidel, has stolen down from the mountains and lain hid a day in the reeds of the river bank, creeps at nightfall like a wild beast out of his lair, glides unseen by the guard-post of the Cossack as the latter is taking perhaps a final pull at his bottle of schnapps, and crawling up within sight of the very beard of the sentinel, picks him off.
At Anchialus in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied him with horses and money: he passed the river, traversed with speed the desert of Moldavia and the Carpathian hills, and had almost reached the town of Halicz, in the Polish Russia, when he was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who resolved to convey their important captive to Constantinople.
I got up from the table and greeted him in Polish, with, I hope, the right shade of consideration demanded by his noble blood and his confidential position. His face cleared up in a wonderful way. It appeared that, notwithstanding my uncle's earnest assurances, the good fellow had remained in doubt of our understanding each other. He imagined I would talk to him in some foreign language.
Nevertheless, it would be unjust to call him affected; he was a big man, in all senses of the term, and his instinct of independence led him to repudiate all external polish and ear-marks of social culture, and to say, as it were, "You see, a plain Vermont countryman can live half a lifetime in the centre of artificial refinement and rival by the works of his native genius the foremost living artists, and yet remain the same simple, honest old sixpence that he was at home!"
His manners and whole aspect are very particularly plain, though not affectedly so; but it seems as if in the decline of life, and the security of his position, he had put off whatever artificial polish he may have heretofore had, and resumed the simpler habits and deportment of his early New England breeding.
"I don't think he can help being so tall," observed Sydney. "But he buttons up, and makes the most of it," replied Sophia. "He stalks in like a Polish count." The sisters could not help smiling at this proof that the incursions of the Poles into this place were confined to the book club. They happened to be well acquainted with a Polish count, who was short of stature and did not stalk.
Arnold wished to bestow on them, but at any rate they have a certain rough generosity, and they have also a share of that self-forgetfulness which alone forms the basis of friendship. Having that, they can do without Carlyle's learning and Wilberforce's polish, and they can certainly do without the sour malice of the historian and the prelate. July, 1887.
Walter Rysam Cotton, a younger woman than either of the others, had the polish of Vassar life about her, and was "above" many things. Somehow she half suspected the Cowperwoods might not do, but they were making strides, and might possibly surpass all other aspirants. It behooved her to be pleasant.
Throughout the whole range of Sanskrit literature from the simple lessons of Hitopadesha to the most elaborate polish of Naishadha from the terse vigour of Sankaracharjya to the studied majesty of Magha from the harmonious grace of Kalidasa to the ornate picturesqueness of Kadambari, there is probably no writer who can come up to Bhavabhuti in his wonderful command of Sanskrit language and surprising fluency and elevation of diction.
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