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The conversation, as was natural where the company and the guest were strangers to each other, turned upon the topics of the day, and the objects in the room, some of which, as we know, were sufficiently remarkable. At Charley's request Mrs. Basil once more narrated the story of the skull; and then epitomized, with caustic tongue, the biography of poor Joanna.
What he did in the nineteen years of his residence at Windsor and Fairfield is epitomized in a brief summary of the duties and honors to which he was called by his fellowmen: Chief of the Massachusetts commission and the first Governor, de facto; organizer and chief magistrate of the first court; writer of the earliest laws; president of the court which declared war against the Pequots; framer of the Fundamental Orders the Constitution of 1639 which embodied the great principles of government by the people propounded and elucidated by the illustrious Thomas Hooker, in his letter to Governor Winthrop, and in his famous sermon; compiler, at the request of the General Court, of the Body of Lawes, the Code of 1650; commissioner on important state matters; commissioner for the United Colonies; founder and defender of Fairfield; patriot, jurist, statesman.
I have faced alike the bourrans of the steppes and the Samieli of Shamo, and the result of my vandal life is best epitomized in those grand but grim words of Bossuet: 'On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le neant. Nineteen years ago, to satisfy my hunger, I set out to hunt the daintiest food this world could furnish, and, like other fools, have learned finally, that life is but a huge, mellow, golden Osher, that mockingly sifts its bitter dust upon our eager lips.
And that for the best of reasons: it is not only a book, but a book full of books; not merely a new book, but a little-library of new books; thirty books in one, a very harvest of epitomized authorship, the cream of a whole fairy dairy of quiescent post-octavos.
A mere outline of the controversy would fill a volume; yet the essential facts with which Lyell at last established his proposition, in its bearings on the organic world, may be epitomized in a few words. The evidence which seems to tell of past revolutions is the apparently sudden change of fossils from one stratum to another of the rocks. But Lyell showed that this change is not always complete.
It epitomized for him not merely the commonwealth of the present, huge as it was, but the whole historic past since the September day when Hendrik Hudson's Half Moon dropped anchor down yonder in the stream. He felt himself no more the successor of these frock-coated moderns whose oil presentments covered panelling and frieze than of the periwigs who ruled before them.
In our approach towards the present times, the multitude of particular Voyages and Travels increases prodigiously; and, in employing these, it becomes peculiarly necessary to make a selection of the best in every period, and especially of those best adapted for conveying just ideas of each geographical division and subdivision of the world; while those of less merit, but which contain useful notices of the regions and countries of which they treat, shall be carefully epitomized in illustration of the different subjects.
This conclusion of course was the result of many things, perhaps epitomized in my graduating essay on "Cassandra" and her tragic fate "always to be in the right, and always to be disbelieved and rejected."
Through this time of being chased by this desperate canine mob with its ineluctable barking of mute voices that howled the essence of the void which epitomized the planet, there was a background wall of a standing rack or trellis on which used shoes hung like vines for pedestrian purchasers; an occasional bloody limb dangled from one of the ragged sports shoes, and a gecko hung on one of the shoes' tongues.
'Yes, lovey, said Mrs. Knight. 'You've told me, time and again. But, oh Henry! Your name's just Henry Knight, and I want his to be just Henry Knight, too! I want him to be called after you. And the mother, buxom, simple, and adoring, glanced appealingly with bright eyes at the man who for her epitomized the majesty and perfections of his sex.
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