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"After Murkison left us me and Andy sat a while prepondering over our silent meditations and heresies of reason. In our idle hours we always improved our higher selves by ratiocination and mental thought. "'Jeff, says Andy after a long time, 'quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business.
Not unseldom, the number is reversed: 47, for instance, becomes 74; but he puts it right without demur when asked. I am manifestly dumbfounded; but perhaps these problems are prepared beforehand? If they were, it would be very extraordinary, but yet less surprising than their actual solution.
Alas! the sensibility which is one of the most invariable characteristics of Genius, and by which its most glorious efforts are achieved, if excited into unhealthy action by over-exercise, not unseldom renders its possessor unreasonable and wretched, while his works are benefiting or delighting others, and while the very persons who most highly appreciate them are often the least disposed to pardon the errors of their author.
And this would be the case even if we had in use his luscious vehicle; but with an inferior one, too often with a bad one, the case of weakness is aggravated, and not unseldom the presumption and the failure of an attempt the more conspicuous.
But the vivid imagination with which I was credited by my friends, and which not unseldom did cause me many a needless foreboding, was rampant now; and visions arose before me of disgrace to the family, if those dreadful newspaper people did, as they threatened, "give further particulars," and perhaps go to greater lengths, and even print my name in their horrible sheet.
The traveller in France will not unseldom liken his fortunes to those of Saul the son of Kish, who, setting forth in search of his father's asses, found a kingdom; or, to use a homelier parable, will compare his case to that of the donkey between two equally-tempting bundles of hay. Such, at least, was my luck when starting for my annual French tour in 1887.
Not unseldom sorrow is sent for no other purpose than to compel us to take cognizance of our possessions. Many a fabric of manufacture, many an article of diet, many an ingenious process has been suggested in days of scarcity and famine. So, old words and truths come back in our sore need.
For as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troubled themselves about such things; it strove little to impress people either by pomp or ingenuity: not unseldom it fell into commonplace, rarely it rose into majesty; yet was it never oppressive, never a slave's nightmare nor an insolent boast: and at its best it had an inventiveness, an individuality that grander styles have never overpassed: its best too, and that was in its very heart, was given as freely to the yeoman's house, and the humble village church, as to the lord's palace or the mighty cathedral: never coarse, though often rude enough, sweet, natural and unaffected, an art of peasants rather than of merchant-princes or courtiers, it must be a hard heart, I think, that does not love it: whether a man has been born among it like ourselves, or has come wonderingly on its simplicity from all the grandeur over-seas.
You'll excuse me, now, Jeff, for I smell a pervasion of ham frying in the distance, and my legs are crying out to stampede in that direction. "'A hearty meal to you, Ed Collier, I says to him, 'and no hard feelings. For myself, I am projected to be an unseldom eater, and I have condolence for your predicaments.
All the four parties which the twentieth century saw established in parliament are equally surrounded by their camp followers, who each differ from each other only superficially, and, not unseldom, transfer their allegiance in pursuit of fatter game. The differences do impress one at first, but, as I say, they are mainly superficial.
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