Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
Such as he, are, by those who love them not, misjudged as shallow. Depth
to some is indicated by gloom, and affection by a persistent
brooding--as if there were no homage to the past of love save sighs and
tears. When they meet a man whose eyes shine, whose step is light, on
whose lips hovers a smile, they shake their heads and say, 'There goes
one who has never loved, and who therefore knows not sorrow.' And the
man is one of those over whom death has no power; whom time nor space
can part from those he loves; who lives in the future more than in the
past! Has not his being ever been for the sake of that which was yet to
come? Is not his being now for the sake of that which it shall be? Has
he not infinitely more to do with the great future than the little past?
The Past has descended into hell, is even now ascending glorified, and
will, in returning cycle, ever and again greet our faith as the more and
yet more radiant Future.
But even lord Herbert had his moments of sad longing after his dainty
Molly. Such moments, however, came to him, not when he was at home with
his wife, but when he rode alone by his troops on a night march, or
when, upon the eve of an expected battle, he sought sleep that he might
fight the better on the morrow.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE GREAT MOGUL.
One evening, Tom Fool, and a groom, his particular friend, were taking
their pastime after a somewhat selfish fashion, by no means newly
discovered in the castle--that of teasing the wild beasts. There was one
in particular, a panther, which, in a special dislike to grimaces, had
discovered a special capacity for being teased. Betwixt two of the bars
of his cage, therefore, Tom was busy presenting him with one hideous
puritanical face after another, in full expectation of a satisfactory
outburst of feline rancour. But to their disappointment, the panther on
this occasion seemed to have resolved upon a dignified resistance to
temptation, and had withdrawn in sultry displeasure to the back of his
cage, where he lay sideways, deigning to turn neither his back nor his
face towards the inferior animal, at whom to cast but one glance, he
knew, would be to ruin his grand Oriental sulks, and fly at the hideous
ape-visage insulting him in his prison. It was tiresome of the brute.
Tom Fool grew more daring and threw little stones at him, but the
panther seemed only to grow the more imperturbable, and to heed his
missiles as little as his grimaces.
At length, proceeding from bad to worse, as is always the way with
fools, born or made, Tom betook himself to stronger measures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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