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The king, although an unscrupulous, self-seeking despot and the coarsest of voluptuaries, was at least a man of genius. He had also too much shrewd mother-wit to pursue such schemes as experience had shown to possess no reality. The talisman "Espoir," emblazoned on his shield, had led him to so much that it was natural for him at times to think all things possible.
The soldier, whose youth had been inured to hardships, and to the conquests which our mother-wit wrings from the stepdame Nature, had made a fire by the friction of two pieces of dry wood; such wood was hard to be found, for the snow whitened the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows; and when it was discovered, the fuel was slow to burn; however, the fire blazed red at last.
Leopold was one of those men, not uncommon perhaps in England, who, with great mental energies, have little book-knowledge, and when they come in contact with a book-reader who is not a pedant feel a pleasant excitement in his society, a source of interest in comparing notes with him, a constant surprise in finding by what venerable authorities the deductions which their own mother-wit has drawn from life are supported, or by what cogent arguments derived from books those deductions are contravened or upset.
Count Saxe called the room his study; but rather, it should have been called his armory, for, instead of books, he had in it all manner of arms and everything pertaining to a soldier's life. He needed not books, being already instructed by his own mother-wit in all that was of any real value to know. This matter of reading is vastly overrated.
Last of all, the treasures of the politics will by this means be so opened, rifled, and dispersed, that this nation will as soon dote, like the Indians, upon glass beads, as disturb your government with whimsies and freaks of mother-wit, or suffer themselves to be stuttered out of their liberties.
We see, at once, a man of moderate stature, light, sinewy, and strong; a face browned with continual exposure; small, mirthful, yet commanding blue eyes, glittering from beneath an arching brow, and prominent cheekbones; a long hawk's nose, almost resting upon a salient chin, a pendent moustache, and a thick, brown, curly beard, prematurely grizzled; we see the mien of frank authority and magnificent good humour, we hear the ready sallies of the shrewd Gascon mother-wit, we feel the electricity which flashes out of him, and sets all hearts around him on fire, when the trumpet sounds to battle.
His accomplices laid hold of him and pulled; then, with good mother-wit, the women pulled away from each other, and so made of his legs a wedge. Clare came back with a piece of clothes-line, one end of which he slipped with a running knot round one ankle, and the other in like fashion round the other.
If she smiles, for instance, one seems to think one must find out the meaning of that. 'Who has taught you all this, Jill? asked Lesbia, bewildered by this sarcasm. 'My mother-wit, returned Jill, utterly unabashed. 'Well, then there is Gladys. Ah, now we are coming to the saddest part.
Dear Nonotte! You should have seen her dancing at the school ball, as graceful and maidenly as the smallest shrimp of them all. What gaieté de cœur! What good humor! What mother-wit! And such a faithful chum. Ah, the French women are wonderful. We have been married fifteen years, and still, when I hear her laugh come through that door, my soul turns from the gates of death and remembers the sun.
She couldn't spell and she loved beer, but she had two or three "points," and practice, and a knack, and mother-wit, and a whimsical sensibility, and a love of the theatre, and seven sisters, and not an ounce of respect, especially for the H. The first thing my visitors saw was that her umbrella was wet, and in their spotless perfection they visibly winced at it.
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