Ack, say you so

The Danish musket-balls fell thick around them as the Danish troops sought from their trenches to repel the invaders.

"What strange whizzing noise is this in the air?" asked the young king, now for the first time in action.

"'Tis the noise of the musket-balls they fire upon you," was the reply.

"Ack, say you so," said Charles: "good, good; from this time forward that shall he my music."

In the face of this "music" the shore was gained, the trenches were carried by fierce assault and King Charles's first battle was won. Two days later, Copenhagen submitted to its young conqueror, and King Frederick of Denmark hastened to the defence of his capital, only to find it in the possession of the enemy, and to sign a humiliating treaty of peace.

The boy conqueror's first campaign was over, and, as his biographer says, he had "at the age of eighteen begun and finished a war in less than six weeks." Accepting nothing for himself from this conquest, he spared the land from which his dearly remembered mother had come from the horrors of war and pillage which in those days were not only allowable but expected.

E. S. Brooks: The Boy Conqueror--Charles XII of Sweden

Piles of rock, and fir trees and water

The passage up to Helsingfors from Åbo is full of charm to an imaginative mind and fancy, although, it is very possible that a plain John Bull, like one at my elbow as I write, may say, ' Why there is nothing that I can see but piles of rock, and fir trees and water.' That is very true, but still some eyes are not tired, for there is always some new shape, some curious appearance, some changing effect ; like the coast at Båhuslän, the sea is sometimes a stilly lake inside the granite wall, and without that wall it is beating and roaring as though it would fain break its bounds.

And so we very comfortably, and in the judgment of some of our party, I should say, happily, reach Helsingfors, the present capital of Finland.

Selina Bunbury:A Summer in Northern Europe: Including Sketches in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Åland islands,Gothland &c. (1856)

When the spinning-wheels hummed busily

In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses-- and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.

George Eliot: Silas Marner

Adam Bede
Brother Jacob
Daniel Deronda
How Lisa Loved the King
Impressions of Theophrastus Such
The Lifted Veil
Middlemarch
The Mill on the Floss
O May I Join the Choir Invisible!and Other Favorite Poems
Romola
Scenes of Clerical Life
Silas Marner

In the present day of rush and hurry

In the present day of rush and hurry, there is little time for “home” example. To the over-busy or gaily fashionable, “home” might as well be a railroad station, and members of a family passengers who see each other only for a few hurried minutes before taking trains in opposite directions. The days are gone when the family sat in the evening around the fire, or a “table with a lamp,” when it was customary to read aloud or to talk. Few people “talk well” in these days; fewer read aloud, and fewer still endure listening to any book literally word by word.

Railroad station reading is as much in vogue as railroad station bolting of meals. Magazines—“picture” ones—are all that the hurried have time for, and even those who profess to “love reading” dart tourist-fashion from page to page only pausing at attractive paragraphs; and family relationships are followed somewhat in the same way.

Emily Post: Etiquette (1922)

Etiquette

The Title Market

The real truth, I am very sure, lies deeper

"I think I see the connection," said the priest. "This Glengyle was mad against the French Revolution. He was an enthusiast for the ancien regime, and was trying to re-enact literally the family life of the last Bourbons. He had snuff because it was the eighteenth century luxury; wax candles, because they were the eighteenth century lighting; the mechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI; the diamonds are for the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette."

Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. "What a perfectly extraordinary notion!" cried Flambeau. "Do you really think that is the truth?"

"I am perfectly sure it isn't," answered Father Brown, "only you said that nobody could connect snuff and diamonds and clockwork and candles. I give you that connection off-hand. The real truth, I am very sure, lies deeper."

G. K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown

Alarms and Discursions
All Things Considered
The Appetite of TyrannyIncluding Letters to an Old Garibaldian
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
The Ballad of the White Horse
The Ball and the Cross
The Barbarism of Berlin
The Club of Queer Trades
The Crimes of England
The Defendant
George Bernard Shaw
Greybeards at Play
Heretics
The Innocence of Father Brown
MagicA Fantastic Comedy
Manalive
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Was Thursday, a nightmare
A Miscellany of Men
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The New Jerusalem
Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy
Robert Browning
A Short History of England
The Trees of Pride
Tremendous Trifles
Twelve Types
Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays
Varied Types
The Victorian Age in Literature
What's Wrong with the World
The Wild Knight and Other Poems
The Wisdom of Father Brown

Konsti elää kauwwan

Konsti elää kauwwan : eli Tarpeellisia ja hyödyllisiä neuwoja ja Ojjennus-nuoria terweyden warjelemisexi ja saada elää isohon ikähän (1786)

Junisolen lyser öfver staden.

Junisolen lyser öfver staden. På det stora sandtorget växa präktiga grupper af frodiga kardborrar i blom. Lugn som ett isfält ligger sjön Jyväsjärvi och speglar i sin släta yta den kala stranden. Från fjerran svedjerök, tät, oljig. Det är vindstilla och mattblå himmel.

Gatorna med sina dels nya, dels halfförfallna hus stå nästan öde; kritade fönster och igenbommade dörrar tillkännagifva att egarne äro borta. Det är Jyväskylä i sommarskrud.

Här och der står en boddörr på glänt. I fönstren hänga prof på varorna: mörka dukar, randiga klädningstyger, ullgarn doftande af får, blanka knappar, speglar i messingsramar, lådor med russin och sviskon, stearinljus i blå omslag samt tuggtobak i rullar -- med ett ord allt hvad en rättskaffens Jyväskylä-medborgare nödtorfteligen behöfver för sitt dagliga uppehälle.

Daniel Sten: Bland ödebygder och skär. Berättelser från Finland (1884)

Hårda sinnen. (Östra Finland.) I ödemarken. (Vid Päjäne.) »Han kommer.» (Jyväskylä.) Lycka. (Helsingfors skär.)Vid Hirsala. (Esbo skär.) Lyx. (Helsingfors.)Svaga själar. (Saarijärvi.) Ett godt samvete. (Borgå skär.) Frost. (Rautalampi.)