Our old home, and English notebooksHoughton-Mifflin, 1891 |
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Common terms and phrases
American ancient antique appeared arch aspect beautiful beneath better Blenheim built castle Cathedral centuries character chief mate church churchyard Consulate cottage delightful dinner Doctor of Divinity door edifice England English Englishman eyes face fancy feel feet garden gentleman girls grave gray Greenwich Park Hall hand Hawthorne heart honor hospital hundred impression inscription kind lady Leigh Hunt lived Liverpool London looked Lord marble Mauchline Mayor ment Michael Johnson NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE never old English once passed perhaps person pleasant poet poor Queen Rhyl river Rock Ferry roof round scene seemed seen Shakespeare side standing steamer stone stood strange Stratford-on-Avon street sunshine suppose talk things Thomas Birch tion tomb tombstones took tower town trees Uttoxeter venerable village walk wall Westminster Abbey Whitnash whole woman wonder young
Popular passages
Page 66 - ... massive, with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can...
Page 362 - Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any home whatever? One day or another, safe as they deem themselves, and safe as the hereditary temper of the people really tends to make them, the gentlemen of England will be compelled to face this question.
Page 11 - I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence without his kindness; and if he is so exceedingly unpopular that his name ought to sink the volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him.
Page 68 - American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride...
Page 90 - ... immemorial foundations, though with such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with...
Page 33 - After all these bloody wars and vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable yearning towards England. When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed along with them others, which were never snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by the edge of the sword.
Page 18 - ... me say, that, with the record of your life in my memory, and with a sense of your character in my deeper consciousness, as among the few things that time has left as it found them, I need no assurance that you continue faithful forever to that grand idea of an irrevocable Union which, as you once told me, was the earliest that your brave father taught you. For other men there may be a choice of paths — for you but one ; and it rests among my certainties that no man's loyalty is more steadfast,...
Page 465 - He seems to have fallen into fits of insensibility previous to uttering his prophecies. The family of Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering), of Bromborough, had an ass's head for a crest. "Richard Dawson, being sick of the plague, and perceiving he must die, rose out of his bed and made his grave, and caused his nephew to cast straw into the grave, which was not far from the house, and went and laid him down in the said grave, and caused clothes to be laid upon him, and so departed out of this world....
Page 68 - English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment.
Page 518 - The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennae of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in ; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you ; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you.