قراءة كتاب The Yellow Book, An Illustrated Quarterly, Vol. 2, July 1894

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‏اللغة: English
The Yellow Book, An Illustrated Quarterly, Vol. 2, July 1894

The Yellow Book, An Illustrated Quarterly, Vol. 2, July 1894

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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education in simplicity, dignity, happiness, and yet more an education of heart and spirit. For nothing that a man can do in this world works so powerfully for his own spiritual good as the habit of sacrifice to kindness. It is so like a miracle that it is, I am sure, the one way—the one way appointed by the laws of our spiritual growth.

Yes, and what about preaching the gospel of content to Poverty? Well, there we must be careful to discriminate—careful to disentangle poverty from some other things which are the same thing in the common idea. Say but this, that there must be no content with squalor, none with any sort of uncleanness, and poverty takes its own separate place and its own unsmirched aspect. An honourable poverty, clear of squalor, any man should be able to endure with a tranquil mind. To attain to that tranquillity is to attain to nobleness; and persistence in it, though effort fail and desert go quite without reward, ennobles. Contentment in poverty does not mean crouching to it or under it. Contentment is not cowardice, but fortitude. There is no truer assertion of manliness, and none with more grace and sweetness. Before it can have an established place in the breast of any man, envy must depart from it—envy, jealousy, greed, readiness to take half-honest gains, a horde of small ignoble sentiments not only disturbing but poisonous to the ground they grow in. Ah, believe me! if a man had eloquence enough, fire enough, and that command of sympathy that your Gordon seems to have had (not to speak of a man like Mahomet or to touch on more sacred names), he might do wonders for mankind in a single generation by preaching to rich and poor the several doctrines of the Gospel of Content. A curse on the mean strivings, stealings, and hoardings that survive from our animal ancestry, and another curse (by your permission) on the gaudy vanities that we have set up for objects in life since we became reasoning creatures.

* * * * *

In effect, here the conversation ended. More was said, but nothing worth recalling. Drifting back to less serious talk, we gossiped till midnight, and then parted with the heartiest desire (I speak for myself) of meeting soon again. But on our way back to town Vernet recurred for a moment to the subject of his discourse, saying:

I don't make out exactly what you think now of the prospect we were talking of.

My answer pleased him. I incline to think, said I, what I have long thought: that if there is any such future for us, and I believe there is, we of the older European nations will be nowhere when it comes. In existence—yes, perhaps; but gone down. You see we are becoming greybeards already; while you in Russia are boys, with every mark of boyhood on you. You, you are a new race—the only new race in the world; and it is plain that you swarm with ideas of precisely the kind that, when you come to maturity, may re-invigorate the world. But first, who knows what deadly wars?

He pressed his hand upon my knee in a way that spoke a great deal. We parted, and two months afterwards the Vernet whose real name ended in ieff was happed in lead.


Poor Cousin Louis

By Ella D'Arcy

There stands in the Islands a house known as Les Calais. It has stood there already some three hundred years, and to judge from its stout walls and weather-tight appearance, promises to stand some three hundred more. Built of brown home-quarried stone, with solid stone chimney-stacks and roof of red tiles, its door is set in the centre beneath a semi-circular arch of dressed granite, on the keystone of which is deeply cut the date of construction:

J V N I
1 6 0 3

Above the date straggle the letters, L G M M, initials of the forgotten names of the builder of the house and of the woman he married. In the summer weather of 1603 that inscription was cut, and the man and woman doubtless read it with pride and pleasure as they stood looking up at their fine new homestead. They believed it would carry their names down to posterity when they themselves should be gone; yet there stand the initials to-day, while the personalities they represent are as lost to memory as are the builders' graves.

At the moment when this little sketch opens, Les Calais had belonged for three generations to the family of Renouf (pronounced Rennuf), and it is with the closing days of Mr. Louis Renouf that it purposes to deal. But first to complete the description of the house, which is typical of the Islands: hundreds of such homesteads placed singly, or in groups—then sharing in one common name—may be found there in a day's walk, although it must be added that a day's walk almost suffices to explore any one of the Islands from end to end.

Les Calais shares its name with none. It stands alone, completely hidden, save at one point only, by its ancient elms. On either side of the doorway are two windows, each of twelve small panes, and there is a row of five similar windows above. Around the back and sides of the house cluster all sorts of outbuildings, necessary dependencies of a time when men made their own cider and candles, baked their own bread, cut and stacked their own wood, and dried the dung of their herds for extra winter fuel. Beyond these lie its vegetable and fruit gardens, which again are surrounded on every side by its many rich vergées of pasture land.

Would you find Les Calais, take the high road from Jacques-le-Port to the village of St. Gilles, then keep to the left of the schools along a narrow lane cut between high hedges. It is a cart track only, as the deep sun-baked ruts testify, leading direct from St. Gilles to Vauvert, and, likely enough, during the whole of that distance you will not meet with a solitary person. You will see nothing but the green running hedgerows on either hand, the blue-domed sky above, from whence the lark, a black pin-point in the blue, flings down a gush of song; while the thrush you have disturbed lunching off that succulent snail, takes short ground flights before you, at every pause turning back an ireful eye to judge how much farther you intend to pursue him. He is happy if you branch off midway to the left down the lane leading straight to Les Calais.

A gable end of the house faces this lane, and its one window in the days of Louis Renouf looked down upon a dilapidated farm- and stable-yard, the gate of which, turned back upon its hinges, stood wide open to the world. Within might be seen granaries empty of grain, stables where no horses fed, a long cow-house crumbling into ruin, and the broken stone sections of a cider trough dismantled more than half a century back. Cushions of emerald moss studded the thatches, and lilliputian forests of grass blades sprang thick between the cobble stones. The place might have been mistaken for some deserted grange, but for the contradiction conveyed in a bright pewter full-bellied water-can standing near the well, in a pile of firewood, with chopper still stuck in the topmost billet, and in a tatterdemalion troop of barn-door fowl lagging meditatively across the yard.

On a certain day, when summer warmth and unbroken silence brooded over all, and the broad sunshine blent the yellows, reds, and greys of tile and stone, the greens of grass and foliage, into one harmonious whole, a visitor entered the open gate. This was a tall, large young woman, with a fair,

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