John Godfrey's Fortunes: Related by Himself. A Story of American Life

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G.P. Putnam, Hurd and Houghton, 1864 - 511 pages
 

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Page 149 - With golden key Wealth thought To pass — but 'twould not do : While Wit a diamond brought, Which cut his bright way through. So here's to her who long Hath waked the poet's sigh, The girl who gave to song What gold could never buy.
Page 321 - Choate — continued to be given, but I did not often attend them. I had been fortunate enough to obtain entrance to the literary soirees of another lady whom I will not name, but whose tact, true refinement of character, and admirable culture drew around her all that was best in letters and in the arts. In her salons I saw the possessors of honored and illustrious names ; I heard books and pictures discussed with the calm discrimination of intelligent criticism ; the petty vanities and jealousies...
Page 6 - Few of them ever traveled farther than to the Philadelphia market, at the beginning of winter, to dispose of their pigs and poultry. A mixture of the German element, dating from the first emigration, tended still further to conserve the habits and modes of thought of the community. My maternal grandfather Hatzfeld was of this stock, and many of his peculiarities, passing over my mother, have reappeared in me, to play their part in the shaping of my fortunes.
Page 227 - All these notices I cut out and carefully preserved in a separate pocket of my portfolio. I have them still. The other day, as I took them out and read them over with an objective scrutiny in which no shadow of my former interest remained, I was struck with the vague, mechanical stamp by which they are all characterized. I sought in vain for a single line which showed the discrimination of an enlightened critic. The fact is, we had no criticism, worthy of the name, at that time.
Page 172 - She smiled, but without looking at me. " Well, then," said Rand, " I must get something out of my memory. How will this do ? " ' My pen is bad, my ink is pale, My love to you shall never fail.
Page 194 - The house was two or three blocks removed from the noise of the Bowery, and its neighborhood wore an aspect both of quiet and decay. The street was rarely cleaned, and its atmosphere was generally flavored with the smells arising from boxes of ashes and o kitchen-refuse which stood on the sidewalks awaiting reC?
Page 45 - To make th' uncircumcised tribes confess There is a God in Israel. I will give thee, Spite of thy vaunted strength and giant bulk, ; To glut the carrion kites. Nor thee alone ; The mangled carcasses of your thick hosts Shall spread the plains of Elah, till Philistia, Through all her trembling tents and flying bands, Shall own that Judah's God is God indeed ! — I dare thee to the trial.
Page 321 - In her salons 1 saw the possessors of honored and illustrious names ; I heard books and pictures discussed with the calm discrimination of intelligent criticism : the petty vanities and jealousies I had hitherto encountered might still exist, but they had no voice ; and I soon perceived the difference between those who aspire and those who achieve. Art, I saw, has its own peculiar microcosm, — its born nobles, its plodding, conscientious, respectable middle-class, and its clamorous, fighting rabble.
Page 96 - The latter discovered, in an incredibly short time, from what neighborhood a new customer came, and immediately gave an account of the relief which somebody, living in an opposite direction, had derived from the use of certain pills or plasters. " Weakness o' the back, eh ? " he would say to some melancholy-faced countrywoman ; " our Balm of Gilead 's the stuff for that.
Page 328 - ... are . . . relics." (329) As Godfrey draws near to the underlying center of the archetype, toward experiential abandon, the meaning attached to cash, one of the society's most cherished beliefs, begins to shift. Money becomes significant only as a means of realizing psychological fulfillment: "Money is an empty form — a means of transfer, being nothing in itself — like the red flame, which is no substance, only representing the change of one substance into another. . . . They only who turn...

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