United States or Côte d'Ivoire ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As we look back to the beginnings of the Rebellion, we are struck with the thoughtlessness with which both parties entered upon a war of whose vast proportions and results neither was even dimly conscious. But a manifest difference is to be remarked. In the South this thoughtlessness was the result of an ignorant self-confidence, in the North of inexperience and good humor.
There were so many puzzling things about the woods that, in spite of his self-confidence, he was often embarrassed. This conclusion was further impressed upon him very forcibly a few hours later.
He summoned up his courage, crossed his legs, as was his wont, and, negligently playing with his pince-nez, he sat with an air of self-confidence on the second chair of the front row. Meanwhile he already felt in the depth of his soul all the cruelty, dastardliness and baseness not only of that act of his, but of his whole idle, dissolute, cruel and wayward life.
With this was mingled contempt for neighbouring peoples who either could not or would not gain a similar independence and prestige. Everything helped to feed this self-confidence and contempt for others.
A lack of self-confidence, a strange shyness, embarrassed him as often as he would give play to his feelings. They were intensified by suppression, and goaded him to constant restlessness. When at most a day or two remained before Adela's return, he could no longer resist the desire to surprise her in London.
But while he spoke, the general enemy, mad with arrogance and self-confidence, and not believing in any power or boldness which could stop him in his career, forestalled the necessity.
"M. le Marquis!" she exclaimed. "Oh! but you are ill." "Only very tired and weak, Jeanne," he said. "It has been an awful day." "Ah! but M. le Comte will be pleased!" "And Mademoiselle Crystal?" asked Maurice with a smile which had in it all the self-confidence of the accepted lover. "Mademoiselle Crystal will be happy too," said Jeanne. "She has been so unhappy, so desperately anxious all day."
Suppose he were sued by some vicious shrieking woman for malpractice. He tried to get witnesses; Westlake spread lies; his friends doubted him; his self-confidence was so broken that it was horrible to see the indecision of the decisive man; he was convicted, handcuffed, taken on a train She ran to his room. At her nervous push the door swung sharply in, struck a chair.
He possessed a splendid self-confidence, and scornfully threw aside any idea that he would be defeated, while he utterly refused to be daunted by the rumors of the formidable nature of the defenses against which he was to act. "I mean to be whipped or to whip my enemy, and not to be scared to death," he remarked in speaking of these rumors.
All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the world for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chichester did I ever succeed? Could I ever succeed with such an one as he had become? It seemed to me, it seems to me far more terribly now, that nothing I did, or was, escaped him.
Word Of The Day