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My diary tells of several books I read during the winter and what the authors say of women; one the "Religio Medici," by Sir Thomas Browne, M.D., in which the author discourses on many high themes, God, Creation, Heaven, Hell, and vouchsafes one sentence on woman.

If great Neptune vouchsafes me a fair passage, in three days I shall be in Phthia. I have much there that I left behind me when I came here to my sorrow, and I shall bring back still further store of gold, of red copper, of fair women, and of iron, my share of the spoils that we have taken; but one prize, he who gave has insolently taken away.

There is not one deed in those days to be compared with it, and to whoever may undertake so praiseworthy and so devoted a task, I wish that success, which Heaven sometimes vouchsafes to those who are actuated by the first of motives the public good; and the best of principles a reliance on Providence. I would I myself could undertake such a task, but fear that may not be.

The coldest welcome that a threadbare curate ever got at the door of a bishop's palace, the most icy reception that a country cousin ever received at the city mansion of a mushroom millionaire, is agreeably tepid, compared to that which the Rhadamanthus who dooms you to the more or less elevated circle of his inverted Inferno vouchsafes, as you step up to enter your name on his dog's-eared register.

A particular religion, revealed by Heaven to this or that people, carries with it the belief in a special providence, which the Divine Being vouchsafes to certain favored men, families, races, and people. This faith seems to develop itself with difficulty from man's inward nature. It requires tradition, usage, and the warrant of a primitive time.

We understand each other and he is the only man on whose disposition I can build, on whose fidelity I can count as securely as if he were my favorite son." "And on what facts is this confidence based?" "You will understand me, for you are not blind to the signs which Fate vouchsafes to us. Have you time to listen to a short story?" "The night is yet young." "Then I will tell you.

Then he stood up and said among the Argives, "Son of Atreus, and all other Achaeans, I invite our two champion boxers to lay about them lustily and compete for these prizes. He to whom Apollo vouchsafes the greater endurance, and whom the Achaeans acknowledge as victor, shall take the mule back with him to his own tent, while he that is vanquished shall have the double cup."

That is one of the penalties which Nature exacts when she vouchsafes a great man to earth all others are condemned to insipidity. They are whipped, dispirited and undone, and spontaneity dies a-borning. No man should try to do another man's work. In this "rushing-in" business, keep out, or you may count as one more fool.

But this decision, on which I firmly and resolutely insist, as lady and princess, in the name of my whole sex and of all knightly men who, with me, prize the reverence and inviolable fidelity due a lady, is: Sir Heinz Schorlin must ask the honourable gentleman who, with full justice, brought this complaint to your imperial Majesty, for his daughter's hand and, if the sorely injured maiden vouchsafes to accept it, lead her to the marriage altar before God and the world."

If the poet exalts memory to this station, he may indeed claim that he is not furtively adoring his own petty powers, when he reverences the visions which Mnemosyne vouchsafes to him. And indeed Plato's account of memory is congenial to many poets. As an explanation for inspiration, the theory recurs in verse of other poets. One writer inquires,