Weir of HermistonC. Scribner's Sons, 1896 - 231 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
admiration Archie's asked auld bairns began blush bonny Braxfield breath bright canna Cauldstaneslap child Christina Clem cried Archie Crossmichael Dand Dandie dear Deil's dinner Edinburgh Elliotts Erchie eyes face father Four Black Brothers Frank Innes girl Glasgow glaur Glenkindie God's grace haangit hand hanging head hear heart hill judge justice kirk Kirstie Kirstie's knew laird lass lassie LLOYD OSBOURNE looked Lord Braxfield Lord Glenalmond Lord Hermiston Lord Justice-Clerk lord's memory ment mind miston moorland naething nature ness never night passed perhaps puir replied ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON rose scarce Scots Scots law seemed sense smile stood story talk tell there's thing thought tion took Torrance turned uncon voice W. E. HENLEY Weaver's stone Weel Weir of Hermiston wife woman wonder words Ye'll ye're young youth
Popular passages
Page 256 - I HAVE a novel on the stocks to be called The Justice-Clerk. It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield — (Oh, by the by, send me Cockburn's Memorials} — and some of the story is — well — queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect The JusticeClerk to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone far my best character.
Page 105 - For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.
Page 255 - Unconscious thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in — and there your stuff is, good or bad.
Page 42 - Archie, but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken ; the attempt was so unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, or even his son's toleration, on he went up the great, bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed.
Page 94 - The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed ; heather and moorfowl had crossed the boundary wall and spread and roosted within ; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting ; many acres were accordingly set out with fir ; and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop...
Page 102 - And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the everlasting fountains of interest. Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots...
Page 258 - It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest; over which he would chuckle the more from observing that correct people were shocked. 1 Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness.
Page 148 - Eh ! " to the angrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic " Set her up ! " Her frock was of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at the ankle, so as to display her demi-broquins of Regency violet, crossing with many straps upon a yellow cobweb stocking. According to the pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour...
Page 36 - To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life; and perhaps only in law and the higher mathematics may this devotion be maintained, suffice to itself without reaction, and find continual rewards without excitement.