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It is as though some creeper that had enfolded and enringed a house with its tendrils, creeping under window-ledges and across mellow brickwork, had been suddenly cut off at the root, and hung faded and lustreless, not even daring to be torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, except that my heart seems hollow at the core. January 12, 1889.
The heat of London in the midsummer of 1857, even to my American apprehension, was intense. The noise of the streets oppressed me, and perhaps the sight now and again of freshly-watered flowers which beautify so many of the window-ledges, and which seem to flourish and bloom whatever the weather, filled me the more with a desire for the quiet of green fields and the refreshing shade of trees.
The last day of his stay in London arrived; he rose with a sense of some awful doom hanging over him that he could in nowise shake off. It was a strange day, too the world of London vaguely shining through a pale fog, the sun a globe of red fire. There was hoar-frost on the window-ledges; at last the winter seemed about to begin.
I'd much rather sweep a room myself than see a Shiksah pottering about for an hour and end by leaving all the dust on the window-ledges and the corners of the mantelpiece. As for beds, I don't believe Shiksahs ever shake them! If I had my way I'd wring all their necks." "What's the use of always complaining?" said Hannah, impatiently. "You know we must keep a Shiksah to attend to the Shabbos fire.
The warm glow from the torches outside fell on the window-ledges and illuminated them, but inside the only light was that visible through the crevices of his wife's tightly closed door: his beloved wife so aloof so strange. The rain had started, and its drip on the roof was like the sound of water- falls: he changed, washed, took up a newspaper. The maid entered and announced that tea was ready.
In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a Missionary there were many like her such as the world will do well never to breed again.
A furious snow-storm was raging, and, as the flaky crystals piled up in drifts on the window-ledges, he seemed to catch the inspiration of their law of structure, and drew sheet after sheet of crystalline shapes; some so delicate and filmy that it seemed as if a jar might obliterate them; some massive and strong, like those in which the earth keeps her mineral treasures; then, at last, on a round charcoal disk, he traced out a perfect rose, in a fragrant white powder, which piled up under his fingers, petal after petal, circle after circle, till the feathery stamens were buried out of sight.
Even the fascinations of a harvest festival failed to charm her; and the spectacle of fat roots, mighty marrows, yellow corn and red apples on the window-ledges, of grapes and tomatoes, flowers and loaves upon the altar, pulpit and font, did not appeal overmuch to Joana a fact perhaps surprising.
Along the stalls in Middle Row the grumbling shopmen were casting up their sales from tallies chalked upon their window-ledges, or cuffing their tardy apprentices with no light hand.
Like drops of water they seemed to fly up at the very walls themselves. They darted into any entry, any doorway. They sprang up the walls and clambered into the ground-floor windows. They sprang up the walls on to window-ledges, and then jumped down again, and ran clambering, wriggling, darting, running in every direction; some cut, blood on their faces, terror or frenzy of flight in their hearts.
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