Appear to be very active, and yet not do much
As they forgot they were a party, they began to enjoy themselves
As you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else
Boys have a great power of helping each other to do nothing
Conversation ran aground again
Expected nothing that he did not earn
Fed the poor boy's vanity, the weakness by which women govern
Felt wronged, and worked himself up to pass a wretched evening
Girls have a great deal more good sense in such matters than boys
Gladly do all the work if somebody else would do the chores
He is, like a barrel of beer, always on draft
Law will not permit men to shoot each other in plain clothes
Natural genius for combining pleasure with business
Not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play
People hardly ever do know where to be born until it is too late
Spider-web is stronger than a cable
Undemonstrative affection
Very busy about nothing
Wearisome part is the waiting on the people who do the work
Why did n't the people who were sleepy go to bed?
Willing to do any amount of work if it is called play
Willing to repent if he could think of anything to repent of
SAUNTERINGS
Bane of travel is the destruction of illusions
Discontent of those who travel to enjoy themselves
Excellent but somewhat scattered woman
Inability to stand still for one second is the plague of it
Leaves it with mingled feelings about Columbus
One ought not to subject his faith to too great a strain
POCAHONTAS
According to the long-accepted story of Pocahontas, she did something more than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death a stranger and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting those who opposed his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribes and in civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity by the sight of a prisoner, and risked life to save him—the impulse was as natural to a Highland lass as to an African maid. Pocahontas went further than efforts to make peace between the superior race and her own. When the whites forced the Indians to contribute from their scanty stores to the support of the invaders, and burned their dwellings and shot them on sight if they refused, the Indian maid sympathized with the exposed whites and warned them of stratagems against them; captured herself by a base violation of the laws of hospitality, she was easily reconciled to her situation, adopted the habits of the foreigners, married one of her captors, and in peace and in war cast in her lot with the strangers. History has not preserved for us the Indian view of her conduct.
This savage was the Tomocomo spoken of above, who had been sent by Powhatan to take a census of the people of England, and report what they and their state were. At Plymouth he got a long stick and began to make notches in it for the people he saw. But he was quickly weary of that task. He told Smith that Powhatan bade him seek him out, and get him to show him his God, and the King, Queen, and Prince, of whom Smith had told so much. Smith put him off about showing his God, but said he had heard that he had seen the King. This the Indian denied, James probably not coming up to his idea of a king, till by circumstances he was convinced he had seen him. Then he replied very sadly: "You gave Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan fed as himself, but your king gave me nothing, and I am better than your white dog."
Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreet Governor the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubt the change in the charter. By the first charter everything had been held in common by the company, and there had been no division of property or allotment of land among the colonists. Under the new regime land was held in severalty, and the spur of individual interest began at once to improve the condition of the settlement. The character of the colonists was also gradually improving. They had not been of a sort to fulfill the earnest desire of the London promoter's to spread vital piety in the New World. A zealous defense of Virginia and Maryland, against "scandalous imputation," entitled "Leah and Rachel; or, The Two Fruitful Sisters," by Mr John Hammond, London, considers the charges that Virginia "is an unhealthy place, a nest of rogues, abandoned women, dissolute and rookery persons; a place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet"; and admits that "at the first settling, and for many years after, it deserved most of these aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but truths. There were jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous women drilled in, the provision all brought out of England, and that embezzled by the Trustees."
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
After fifteen years Smith is able to remember more details
Assertion in an insecure position
Cheaper credited than confuted
Entertaining if one did not see too much of him
Knew not the secret of having his own way
Long stick and began to make notches in it for the people he saw
Making religion their color
Peculiarly subject to such coincidences
Prince's mind imprisoned in a poor man's purse
Progressive memory
Somewhat damaging to an estimate of his originality
Thames had no bridges
Those that did not work should not eat
Tobacco-selling
Wanted advancement but were unwilling to adventure their ease
Would if he could
Writ too much, and done too little
SPRING IN NEW ENGLAND
Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open the morning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the color of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts contrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover and herd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we might think the dandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen-bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky. There is a red tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With Nature, color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a few days—is it not so?—through the green masses of the trees will flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhaps tomorrow.
But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clear overhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden; they threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain, or snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon drives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from the west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds of New England), from all points of the compass. The fine snow becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene.
During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens. Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. This is a sign of colder weather.
The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take no pleasure in biting in such weather.
Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years. Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.
And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink, the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; the world, of color.
In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed with the white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day the mercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.
There was no Spring.
The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the Revolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost his head after that.
When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbers have four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north and kills them in a night.
That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninety degrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful. Many people survive it.