United States or Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"To the town?" repeated Plushkin. "But why? Moreover, how could I leave the house, seeing that every one of my servants is either a thief or a rogue? Day by day they pilfer things, until soon I shall have not a single coat to hang on my back." "Then you possess acquaintances in the town?" "Acquaintances? No. Every acquaintance whom I ever possessed has either left me or is dead. But stop a moment.
Laws are necessary; but laws which are not necessary are more and worse than unnecessary; they pilfer power from the soul; they intercept the absolute uses of life; they incarcerate men, and make Caspar Hausers of them.
The higher dignitaries have at least larger aims and a certain consciousness of the dignity of their position; but the lower officials, who have no such healthy restraints and receive ridiculously small salaries, grossly misuse the little authority which they possess, and habitually pilfer and extort in the most shameless manner.
I give this information to the friends who pilfer from old manuscripts to manufacture new ones, and I show thereby how learned these Tales really are, without appearing to be so.
"In the morning we were sent out to pilfer, to deceive the credulous, and to decoy others to the den. Some were instructed by Hag Zogbaum to affect deaf and dumb, to plead the starving condition of our parents, to, in a word, enlist the sympathies of the credulous with an hundred different stories. We were all stimulated by a premium being held out to the most successful.
The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to the Reading Room for such knowledge as might lie in my capacity. The Reading Room is used chiefly by authors, gray fellows mostly, dried and wrinkled scholars who come here to pilfer innocently from antiquity. Among these musty memorial shelves, if anywhere, it would seem that the dusty padding feet of the lost digamma might be heard.
If the rose ape his cheek, "Now God forfend," I say, "That of my portion aught to pilfer thou shouldst try." Lo, in his mouth are springs of limpid water sweet, Refreshment that would bring to those in flames who lie. How shall I one forget who is my heart and soul, My malady and he that healing can apply?
True, his method of creating a fund is not the discreetest he could have chosen; for while teaching his people new modes of financiering, he has forgotten that he is also teaching them to pilfer their own gods. What an outcry would be raised in Christendom, if the Jew should plunder his own synagogue.
After the excitement was over, too, he would begin to make excuses for the man, thinking that perhaps he was poor, and his children were suffering for bread, and it was on their account that he was tempted to steal, and this, though it would not justify, might in some degree palliate the act for which he was slain; or that he had been badly brought up, having never received any proper instruction, but had been trained and taught from his boyhood to pilfer and steal.
"You are not a church-goer, sir?" he questioned sourly. Villon answered him sweetly. "No, old Queernabs, unless there's an alms-box to open or a matter of gold plate to pilfer." Guy Tabarie hurriedly interrupted him with a warning cry of "Cave!" and a significant glance at the strangers, but Villon derided his fears.
Word Of The Day