United States or Mayotte ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The only new book which I remember to have read in those two or three years at Dayton, when I hardly remember to have read any old ones, was the novel of 'Jane Eyre, which I took in very imperfectly, and which I associate with the first rumor of the Rochester Knockings, then just beginning to reverberate through a world that they have not since left wholly at peace.
"Frequent knockings were now heard at the door, followed by the entrance of parties attired in the fashion of the period. These were the same dogs who had recently been engaged in the battle; but now all was peace, elegance, and ease. Different parties of dogs were introduced to each other with an appearance of the greatest decorum.
On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some finishing touches to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour, Adela Pingsford, assailed the outer door of his studio with loud peremptory knockings. "There is an ox in my garden," she announced, in explanation of the tempestuous intrusion. "An ox," said Eshley blankly, and rather fatuously; "what kind of ox?"
But now the keepers of the house had become uneasy; their periodical knockings still finding no response, they burst open the door. The jury of inquest found that death had resulted from heart disease, and was instant and painless. That was all. Merely heart disease.
The negresses, full of joy at the behests of their mistress, and promising themselves much pleasure from the society of the Gouls, went with an air of conquest, and began their knockings at the tombs; as their strokes were repeated a hollow noise was heard in the earth, the surface hove up into heaps, and the Gouls on all sides protruded their noses, to inhale the effluvia which the carcases of the wood-men began to emit.
Shall I hear raps and knockings when I return to my solitary chamber, and sit a powerless beholder of damaged furniture, which the spirits will never have the conscience to promise payment for, when my landlady's bill comes in? As I soliloquized thus, I was attracted by a low vibrating note among the leaves.
The next day or two saw no traceable developments in the situation, but Miss Mapp's trained sense told her that there was underground work of some kind going on: she seemed to hear faint hollow taps and muffled knockings, and, so to speak, the silence of some unusual pregnancy.
The knocking, however, was a fact which no one could dispute, and several ineffectual attempts were made by the proprietor to discover the cause. The rooms were sprinkled with holy water the evil spirits were commanded in due form, by a priest, to depart thence to the Red Sea; but the knockings still continued, in spite of all that could be done in that way.
"Next came loud knockings and ringings without, and the running of many feet within the house, one calling to another, to tell that the Mistresses Vaughan were come, and had asked to see our governess.
There and then the Millerite madness sent whole congregations into the cemeteries, in white gowns, to await the sounding of the trump of Gabriel. There and then arose the great spiritualistic movement that began in Wayne County with the Fox family, became famous as the Rochester Knockings, and blossomed into communities in which "Free Love" grew out of "Individual Sovereignty."
Word Of The Day