The Good Companions

By the time they reached the hall, they were not so much friends as fellow-conspirators, for Youth, when it is exiled into the kingdoms of the old, at once turns itself into the strongest of secret societies.

Mrs Bevison-Burr, the commanding woman, came next. Her subject was Unbelief. She referred to Unbelief as if it were a very obnoxious person who was in the habit of insulting her every morning and evening. Mrs Bevison-Burr commanded them to do all manner of things to Unbelief.

Cathedral cities, market towns, ports forgotten by the sea, spas long out of fashion, all these can decay beautifully, and often their charm increases as the life ebbs out of them. Industrial towns, like steam-engines, are only even tolerable if they are in working order and puffing away.

She seemed to have had a sudden terrible glimpse of life as it really was, and was ready to weep at the thought of its strange dusty littleness.

To say that these men paid their shilling to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.

In this place, whether we call it Bruddersford or Pittford Falls, perfection is not to be found, neither in men nor in the lot they are offered, to say nothing of the tales we tell of them, these hints and guesses, words in the air and gesticulating shadows, these stumbling chronicles of a dream of life.

A man can afford to let himself go in a hen-house.