The birthright, and other tales

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Page 183 - A drop of patience : but, alas, to make me A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at ! Yet could I bear that too ; well, very well : But there, where I have garner'd up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life ; The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up...
Page 99 - The charm dissolves apace ; And as the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness, so their rising senses Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason.
Page 270 - Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace ; four happy days bring in Another moon : but, oh, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes ! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame, or a dowager, Long withering out a young man's revenue.
Page 128 - This is some fellow, Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness ; and constrains the garb Quite from his nature : he cannot flatter, he ! — An honest mind and plain, — he must speak truth ! An they will take it, so ; if not, he's plain.
Page 255 - I do not remember ever before to have heard the saying, whether of Talleyrand or of any one else, That all the world is a wiser man than any man in the world. Had it been said even by the Devil, it would nevertheless be false. I have often indeed heard the saying, On pent etre plus FIN qu'un autre, mais pas plus FIN que tons les autres.
Page 246 - ... opposite neighbour — the shrug, the grimace, the sneer of contempt, while Dora raises her blue eyes from her work and utters a word or two, doubtless in extenuation ; for I have observed Sir Felix break out thereupon into a rage, and saw the air with his hand, in attestation of every ill-natured word uttered by his intended son-in-law. Yet surely it is only natural that Dora should do her utmost in vindication of her opposite neighbour ; for I remember that scarcely a day passed, two years...
Page 261 - ... public charities, or secretaries of national institutions. But the head of my informant was sarcastically shaken, as with a significant smile he informed me that — by an appropriate Orientalism, — these BEARERS were all TIGERS ; the two hundred guinea tiger wearing a noble crest on his button, — tiger £500, the coronet of a Marquis ; — and that concerning the thousand pound tiger, the less said, the better ! — These neat little sums were, in short, so many baits with which Leo had...
Page 264 - ... feelings that I have never once detected my favourite, Lord John, at Leo's levee. They are acquainted. Not to the point of slang salutations or insolent pantomime. But I am convinced that it is the cool tone in which my young neighbour exclaims, " How are you, St. Chads ? as Leo passes him on the box of his drag, which reduces the parvenu to the painful necessity of replying,
Page 227 - To paint with discretion the lighter follies of the times, the artist must be a man of the world, yet, ' dolphin-like, show above the element he moves in.' Inquire of the sun, which receives my morning salutation full five minutes before its rays gild the adjoining balconies of Berkeley Square, whether I rise not considerably above and before my fashionable neighbours. The first object I generally salute after the sun, on summer mornings, is my next door neighbour, Lord John Devereux, lounging home...
Page 257 - If a voung fellow, inheriting half a million, in addition to good health and spirits, be not a happy man, the deuce is in it,- — or in him ! To be sure, the half-million is the thing likeliest on earth to teach him to get rid of his health and spirits, unless the health and spirits teach him to get rid of his half-million ; for those three things have a most remarkable incompatibility for dwelling together in unity. Mr. St. Chads has got rid of a considerable portion of all three ; — thereby...

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