United States or Kuwait ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ellen would have liked to keep Mene Tekel in her place and engage a smart town girl, whose hands were not the colour of beetroots and whose breathing could not be heard through a closed door; but Joanna stood firm Mene had been her faithful servant for more than seven years, and it wasn't right that she should have a girl from the town promoted over her.
It seemed, as it echoed from side to side, to come from every part of the house: "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin!"
A little while, the thought said, and all this will be no more; for we have not found out the secret of happiness, and all our toil and effort is misdirected; and those who are seeking for a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, and those who are going about doing good, are alike wasting their lives; and on all our hopes, beliefs, dreams, theories, and enthusiasms, 'Passing away' is written plainly as the Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin seen by Belshazzar on the wall of his palace in Babylon."
His vision was the light of Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, outside a booth. Here was the destruction of the edifice which made the existence of Josiana. A sudden earthquake. The lost child was found. There was a Lord Clancharlie; David Dirry-Moir was nobody. Peerage, riches, power, rank all these things left Lord David and entered Gwynplaine.
Meanwhile the silence was fitfully broken by an occasional spit of fire, while every preparation was being made for a last, supreme effort, which, it was expected, would decide the mighty contest. The scales were being poised for the last time, and upon the one side or the other was soon to be written the "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin."
To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea; but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God's burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage.
And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
She said but little to him, and he said still less to her, and what they did say was usually limited to the affairs of the Osierfield; nevertheless Elisabeth persistently weighed herself in Christopher's balances, and measured herself according to Christopher's measures; and, as she did so, wrote Tekel opposite her own name. And for this she refused to forgive him.
The management of the vowel sequences is truly wonderful and the rhymes carry the emotional words with a fine virtuosity. The Luck of Edenhall, a variation of a Scottish theme and also of the Biblical "Mene tekel," displays without sermonizing the greatest ethical vigor. It has far more dramatic energy than either Byron's or Heine's "Belshazzar" poems, with fully as much dismal foreboding.
"See, you've got new curtains eighteenpence a yard ... and that's mother's text 'Inasmuch.... and I've bought a new soap-dish at Godfrey's it doesn't quite go with the basin, but they've both got roses on 'em ... and you won't mind there being a few of my gowns in the wardrobe only the skirts I've got room for the bodies in my drawers ... that's the basket armchair out of the dining-room, with a new cover that Mene Tekel fixed for it ... the clock's out of the spare room it don't go, but it looks fine on the mantelpiece.... Say, duckie, are you pleased? are you pleased with your old Jo?"
Word Of The Day