The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and a Son

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Roberts Brothers, 1888 - England - 472 pages

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Page 1 - There was a half-sigh floating through his pages for those days of intellectual coxcombry, when ideas come to us affecting the embraces of virgins, and swear to us they are ours alone, and no one else have they ever visited: and we believe them. For an example of his ideas of the sex he said: 'I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.
Page 107 - ... her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld...
Page 155 - Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields and the waters. The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.
Page 30 - If immeasurable love were perfect wisdom, one human being might almost impersonate Providence to another. Alas! love, divine as it is, can do no more than lighten the house it inhabits — must take its shape, sometimes intensify its narrowness — can spiritualize, but not expel, the old lifelong lodgers above-stairs and below.
Page 116 - Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter of earth.
Page 118 - She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head — he, it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to the body's virtue ; and health and happy blood were in her bearing. Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels, that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System, would have...
Page 157 - Pipe no more, Love, for a time ! Pipe as you will you cannot express their first kiss ; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one, from, her you may hear it.
Page 125 - Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the morning. When he could get his voice it said, "Will you go? " But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her gentle wrist. "Then, farewell!" he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head,...
Page 123 - The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old churl! "Then what — what is your name?" said his mouth, while his eyes added, " O wonderful creature ! How came you to enrich the earth? " "Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?

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