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We perceive here and there indeed the "torn members of the poet" disjecta membra poetae; but the whole is so constrained, disfigured, and, from the simple fulness of the original, tortured and twisted into such miserable intricacy, that even when the language is retained word for word, it ceases to convey its genuine meaning.
Of lesser magnitude and importance, there are certain natural dust-heaps, sinks, and cesspools, where the elements have collected the cast-off, broken, and frayed disjecta of wood and field the sweepings of the sylvan household.
We caught a glimpse of the reception-saloons and the trying-on-rooms, all strewn with fragments of dresses, disjecta membra, mountains of silk, and peopled with automatic human mannequins, essayeuses, who, as the moralists will tell you, are all "vicieuses qui ne manquent de rien," and who are destined sooner or later to reinforce the demi-monde.
"And they have a few statesmen also." "But they are curt, plain-spoken, practical-in everything antipodal to the knot of hapless men, who, unable from some defect or morbidity to help on the real movement of their nation, are fain to get their bread with tongue and pen, by retailing to 'silly women, 'ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, second-hand German eclecticisms, now exploded even in the country where they arose, and the very froth and scum of the Medea's caldron, in which the disjecta membra of old Calvinism are pitiably seething."
The man is George Horace Lorimer, and his book is called, "Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son." Lorimer was a department-manager for Armour and busied himself, it seems, a good deal of the time, in taking down disjecta, or the by-product of business. Armour was always sincere, but seldom serious. There is a lot of quiet fun yet among the Armour folks.
But enough, there are others, and those not few, even far less veniable; ye priers into family secrets fawning, false guests at the great man's open house, eagerly jotting down with paricidal pen the unguarded conversation of the hospitable board shame on your treason, on its wages, and its fame! ye countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; chiels amang us takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, without mitigation or remorse; ye men of paste and scissors, who so often falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a Harlequin whole the disjecta membra of some great hacked-up reputation; can such as ye are tell me what it is to write?
But it formed part of a consistent scheme for holding those who followed useful callings up to the mark. Another part was the liability of persons exercising a public employment for loss or damage, enhanced in cases of bailment by what remained of the rule in Southcote's Case. The scheme has given way to more liberal notions; but the disjecta membra still move.
Orme's fragmentary story, for it was the merest disjecta membra which she entrusted to me, and my credulity declined to honour her heavy drafts.
In our folly and blindness, we fancy ourselves secure, while the ground is mined under our guilty feet, and the explosion is even now preparing, from which only our disjecta membra will emerge. Of course, some cold-hearted caviler will begin to quote instances of carefully-planned and promising conspiracies, which miscarried solely because the details reached a feminine ear.
Would it not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings with sordid cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this heaven-sent boon?" The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled manuscript opera disjecta and turned their pages. "Yes yes give us life!" they seemed to cry to him. "We are dead drops of ink, wake us to life and beauty.
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