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Their tale so inflamed the sober portion of our crew, who had remained on board the schooner, that at one moment it looked very much as though they were about to throw off all the trammels of discipline and obedience, and proceed forthwith on board the Spaniard, to participate in the saturnalia still in progress there; and it was only by the production of a lavish allowance of rum, and a promise from the carpenter that they should all have their turn on board the doomed ship, that they could be restrained from heaving the cutter's cargo overboard instead of hoisting it out and passing it down the hatchway, seizing the boat, and proceeding on board the Spaniard en masse.
It seemed to me that the right treatment of the episode was rather to insist that those great qualities, won by brave experience and unselfish effort, were only temporarily obscured, and belonged actually and essentially to the spirit of the man; and that if heaven is indeed, as we may thankfully believe, a place of work and progress, those qualities would be actively and energetically employed as soon as the soul was freed from the trammels of the failing body.
In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in 1849, it be found again through invectives against the republic and the Constitution; through the malediction of all future, present and past revolutions, that one included which its own leaders had made; and, finally, in laws by which the press was gagged, the right of association destroyed, and the stage of siege regulated as an organic institution.
But the prejudice is discernible in every class of society, even in the very highest. We have also arrayed against us in our crusade for right and justice the dying but still formidable power of clericalism. Society is but half emancipated from its medieval trammels, and the priest, that Eternal Enemy of Liberty, can still put in his evil word against the rights of the Simian. Let us not despair!
It is difficult to account for the behaviour of this Englishman, the Hon. by name. The only explanation of his conduct one can arrive at is, to believe that his weak mind was fast confined by the trammels of that absurd, but often too convenient, theory of international non-interference, the most dangerous kind of red-tape that ever tethered the squeamish conscience of an official imbecile.
'Perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat. I wonder if you are right! Well, I will think again of it to-night. Do not let us speak more about it now. She did think of it that night, very long and painfully. The arguments of her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequent longing for escape from galling trammels.
They attempt to be merry without being wise, and have theories about truth and honesty with which they desire to shackle others, thinking that freedom from such trammels may be good for themselves. And in that matter of love, though love is very potent, treachery will sometimes seem to be prudence, and a hankering after new delights will often interfere with real devotion.
The thick veil of clouds stretched over them, cut them off from the rest of the universe. At times Mrs. Travers had in the darkness the impression of dizzy speed, and again it seemed to her that the boat was standing still, that everything in the world was standing still and only her fancy roamed free from all trammels.
Some glimmering ghost of a notion lurked in his mind that perhaps, during his self-imposed solitary ramblings, he might find some new and unexplored channel wherein his vast wealth might flow to good purpose after his death, without the trammels of Committee-ism and Red-Tape-ism.
I reasoned that in those unsophisticated regions, in the shadow of the virgin forest, the trammels of long courtship and other fashionable follies are unknown: heart meets heart as the pure woodland streams meet each other and become one. Before I set out I gave a dinner-party at The Beauties to announce to my gentleman friends the joyful event.
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