'(>oy.£m<. i^C'^-^ ^.i mm- -•^*-^ (vT/Ci ^^^ r^>i ray:^ p^J M^ ^n| >>'t''jF >IKV i ^1 '%?*>"■ * M^i. ^Vjh-.^, S ^■^ ^^^' ^^ W^^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSID :?/ ¥ I " < ,Ai rt* FLASHES FROM " O U I DA." COMPILED BY J.'L. S^Yyy^j^A*' ^M0» NEW YORK: G. tV, Carleton & Co.. Publishers. LOi^"DON : S. LOW & CO. MDCCCLXXXIV. *~^f ■^ ^^<^' ^^\^. Copyright, 1883, BY Josephine L. Snow. Stereotyped by Samuel Stoddeb, 42 Dey Street, N. Y. DEDICA TION. " Tkey who can 710 1 weave an 1 mi form web, may, at least, produce a piece of patch- work^ ivJiich may be useful, and not zuithout a charm of its own,'' J. L. S. Haktpord, Conn., Dec, 18^. FLASHES FROM "OUIDA." u '-y^HE sea Is not free," he said. It -L obeys the laws that govern it, and cannot evade them. Its flux and reflux are not Hberty, but obedience — ^just such obedience to natural law as our life shows when It springs into being, and slowly wears itself out, and then perishes in its human form, to live again in the motes of the air and the blades of the grass. There Is no such thing as liberty ; men have dreamed of It, but nature has never accorded It. Folle-Farine. 7 8 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THERE is no knife that cuts so sharply, and with such poisoned blade, as treachery. In Maremma, THE influence of a woman's intelli- gence on the male intellects about her is as the churn to the cream ; it can either enrich and utilize it, or impoverish and waste.it. Puck, WHEN she smiled, her smile was soft and sudden, like the smile of one who hears fair tidings in her heart unspoken. Folle-Farine, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 9 I BELIEVE, with the Persians, that ten measures of talk were sent down from heaven, and the ladies took nine. Granville De Vigne, PRAYER, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to tranquillize and fortify the heart which is lifted up, ever so vaguely, in searcho f superhuman aid. ' Wanda, ALL the memories of the past were thronging about him like brothers and sisters giving welcome from long absence. In Maremma, lo FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr ROME is still beautiful ; and the Past is all about you in it. It is like an intaglio that has been lying in the sand for a score of centuries. You may rub the dust away ; then the fine and noble lines of the classic face show clearly still. Rome will not give her secrets up at the first glance ; only wait a little while, and see the moon shine on it all a night or two, and you will learn to love her better in her colossal ruin than even you have loved the marble and ivory cities of your dreams, for there is nothing mean or narrow here : the vaults, the domes, the stairs, the courts, the waters, the hills, the plains, the sculp- ture, the very light itself — they are all wide, and vast and noble, and man himself dilates in them, gains stature and soul, as it were — one scarce knows how — and, some way, FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." ii looks nearer God in Rome than ever else- where. Ariadne, THE normal state of man is to want money. Under Two Flags, THE only way to gain confidence is never to excite suspicion. Beatrice Boville. TH E world is like whist ; reading can't teach it. Moths. 12 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDA: TH E water is a mirror. I can see my own soul in it, and nature's ; per- haps one hopes even, sometimes, to see God's. Wanda, DEATH, like night, can be welcome only to the weary. Under Two Flags, TO keep one's own opinion is a cheap pleasure, and a sweet one. Ariadne, SUPERSTITION is a sort of parody of faith. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr i^ THE aged will never remember that the youth which they love will escape from them — will die out of their sight into its own cell-absorbed ego. Tricotrin, " T HARDLY think marriage so en- A joyable an institution as some writers do, but, perhaps, a little like a pipe of opium, of which the dreams are better than the awakening." Beatrice Boville, FAIR faiths are the blossoms of life. When the faith drops, Spring is over. Szgna, 14 FLASHES FROM ''OUlDAr ALL greatest gifts that have enriched the modern world have come from Italy. Take those gifts from the world, and it would lie in darkness, a dumb, bar- baric, joyless thing. PascaraL BOREDOM Is the Ill-natured pebble that always will get in the golden slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure. In a Winter City, HER eyes were left her, and with them women speak in a universal tongue. Sir Galahad^ s Raid, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 15 THE deepest charm of those old gar- dens, as of their country, Is, after all, that in them it is impossible to forget the present age. In the full, drowsy, volup- tuous noon, when they are a gorgeous blaze of color, and a very intoxication of fragrance, as in the ethereal white moon- light of midnight ; when, with the silver beams and the white blossoms and the pale marbles, they are like a world of snow, their charm is one of rest, silence, leisure, dreams, and passion, all in one ; they be- long to the days when art was a living power, when love was a thing of heaven or of hell, and when men had the faith of children and the force of gods. Signa, s UCCESS never sins. Signa, i6 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr H ER instincts were all true, but to reason on them was beyond her. In Maremma, SHE had no disappointment because she had no hope. Folle-Farine, w HAT false step is ever to be re- trieved ? Strathmore, ENJOYMENT is not to be gained by reflecting that to enjoy is our duty. Moths. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 17 WHERE passion enters, all worlds have the same law ! You have made me learn the same madness as an Israelite learnt from Mariamne a thousand years ago, as twice a thousand a Spartan learnt from Cleonice. Stratkmore. LIVING death is worse than the death of the grave — that living death when the voice speaks still to all others and is only silent to you. Pascarel, H ER picture kept me silent company. A Provence Rose. i8 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr TO youth belongs Ineffable graces all Its own, and charms never to be counterfeited when youth has passed away ; hope and faith and the freshness of un- broken Illusions are with It ; It has the bloom as of the untouched fruit, the charm as of the half-open flower ; It Is rich In the treasures of untried years, and strong In the Insolence of Its beauty and strength ; It Is without suspicion and without fear, but also It Is without sympathy ; It Is glo- rious as the glory of the morning ; but he who seeks its pity finds It hard, from pure joyousness of soul and Ignorance of sor- row : Its selfishness is only ignorance, but It is selfish. When youth is gone the character which has gained, from living, any profit, will have softened and mellowed under the suns and storms of many days ; with wide experience it will have wide tol- FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 19 erations and comprehension ; Its sympa- thies will be unfading, because it will be aware that to understand is to pardon, since for all evil there Is excuse, could all influ- ences and motives and accidents of circum- stance be traced : Its own past lies behind It, a land forever lost, and its onward path Is dark ; it looks back so often because It has not heart to look forward, since all it sees Is death : many are the graves of its desires and Its friends : It is full of pity for all things that breathe, because It has learned that nearly every breath Is pain : there is nothing In which It can have much belief, but there Is little to which it can refuse compassion, since all creation suf- fers : the unutterable mystery and sadness of all forms of life oppress It, and It hears the children and the lovers say '' forever," knowing Itself, too well, that the mortal's 20 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr ''forever" is but the gnat's day upon a ray of sun and breath of vapor. As thus with the individual character of man, so it is with the character of the world, and of those acts in which the voice of the world's soul speaks. Ariadne, THE world in which we live knows nothing of us in our best horse as it knows nothing of us in our worst. Strathmore, AN age is like a climate ; the hardier may escape its influence in much, but the hardiest will not escape its influ- ence entirely. Ariadne. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 21 EPIGRAMS are the salts of life; but they wither up the grasses of foolishness, and naturally the grasses hate to be sprinkled therewith. Puck. HUMAN in its sadness, more than human in its eloquence, now mel- ancholy as the Miserere that sighs through the gloom of a cathedral mid- night, now rich as the glory of the after- glow in Egypt, a poem beyond words, a prayer grand as that which seems to breathe from the hush of mountain soli- tudes when the eternal snows are lighted by the rising of the sun — the melody of the violin filled the silence of the closing day. Tricotrin, 22 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr HAD Israel no courtesans in her camps, that in the parables of her Scriptures she made the chief leader of Hell a male creature ? Tricotrtn. WE are always unamusing to one woman, if we are talking at all about another. Beatrice Boville, THE most impenetrable cynicism will yield and melt, and seem but a poor armor, when it is brought amidst the solemnity and solitude of the high hills. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 23 ALL women are allured by the shad- ows and suggestions of what is but imperfectly revealed. Wanda, TO carry all that store of melody safe in your memory — it is like having sunlight and moonlight ever at command. Wanda, THE boy choristers and little children put their white linen and their scarlet robes in cupboards and presses, with heads of lavender and sprigs of rosemary, to keep the moth and the Devil away. Folle-Farine, 24 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE treasures of scholarship are sweet to all who open them, but they are, perhaps, sweetest of all to a girl that has been led both by habit and nature to seek them. The soul of a girl, whilst passions sleep, desires are unknown, and self-con- sciousness lies unawakened, can lose itself in the impersonal as no male student can. The mightiness and beauty of past ages become wonderful and all-sufficient to it, as they can never do to a youth beset by the stinging fires of impending manhood. The very element of faith and imagina- tion, hereafter its weakness, becomes the strength of the girl-scholar. The very abandonment of self, which later on will fling her to Sappho's death or mure her in the cell of Heloi'se, will make her find a cloudless and all-absorbing happi- ness in the meditations of great minds, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 25 •with myths of heroic ages, in the delicate intricacies of language, and In the im- measurable majesties of thought. The evil inseparable from all knowledge will pass by her unfelt ; the greatness only at- tainable by knowledge will lend her per- fect and abiding joys. Friendship, YOU have taught her to scorn a He — you could not arm her with a better shield. Tricotrin, L OVE is sympathy, and sympathy is intelligence in a strong degree. Signa, 26 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr W ERE we all what we are in our holiest moments, we were God- like. Tricotrin, /^^HILDREN take good and evil as the birds take rain and sunshine. Signa, L IKING does not go by reason nor follow after merit. Signa, THE charm of perfect silence fell on the grand old garden. Signa. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 27 W E pardon sin ; we do not pardon baseness. Wanda, EVERYBODY has ambition. Lady Marabout's TroiMes, IF we all published our memoirs, the world would have a droll book. Under Two Flags. SEPARATION Is a sort of death. Do not let us tempt death by it. Wanda, 28 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr IF you loved, would you talk of obe- dience ? In love two wills move to- gether, inspired by one soul, as the two wings of a bird move ever apart, yet ever in union. Tricotrin, SHE was arrayed in white, with a tender blending about it of all the blues In creation, from that of a summer day to that of a lapis lazuli ring. Moths, THE alpenstock of the tourist is to the everlasting hills what railway metals are to the plains. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 29 THERE is nothing so vain as the azalea — except, indeed, a cameUia, which is the most conceited flower in the world, though, to do it justice, it is also the most industrious, for it is busy getting ready its next winter's buds whilst the summer is still hot and broad on the land, which is much to be commended. The Ambitious Rose-tree, G RAY and opal hues were cast over the land by passing clouds. In Maremma, NOTHING kills young creatures like the bitterness of waiting. BMe. 30 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr FOR the song that we hear with our ears is only the song that is sung in our hearts. Ariadne- *' T F you loved her that was, forever ; i just because she is dead, is that a reason to change '^ " In Maremma. FOR she dreamed of her Father's kingdom, a kingdom which no man denies to the creature that has beauty and youth, and is poor and yet proud, and is of the sex of its mother. Folle-Farine. SELECTIONS FROM ''OUIDA,' 31 THE pity which Is not born from experience is always cold. It can- not help being so ; it does not understand. Friendship. M AYBE those women are happiest who easily deceive themselves. Puck, MEN barter their good blood nowa= days ; soiling the scutcheon don't matter, if they gild over the dirt. We don't sell our souls to the Devil in this age, we're too Christian ; we sell them to the dollar ! Strathmore, 32 SELECTIONS FROM '' OUIDA." IN nature there are millions of gorgeous hues to a scarcity of neutral tints, yet the pictures that are painted in sombre semi-tones and have no one positive color in them, are always pronounced the near- est to nature. When a painter sets his palette he does not approach the gold of the sunset and dawn of the flame of the pomegranate and poppy. M USIC is the very voice of God himself amidst men. PascareL NAMELESS melodious sounds ech. oed from tree to tree. Signa, SELECTIONS FROM ''OUIDAr 33 THE true art is, know how to hold truth and how to withhold it, but never to deal with anything else. Straikmore, A CONSCIENCE that is sluggish, fitful, sleepy, and feeble, but not wholly dead, is a terrible drawback to comfort and an impediment to success. Moths. WE seat our foes at our board, and welcome what we hate to our hospi- tality, and eat salt with those who betray us and those whom we betray. Strathmore, 34 SELECTIONS FROM '' OUlDAr CITY of PLEASURE you have called Paris, and with truth; but why not also City of the Poor? For what city, like herself, has remembered the poor in her pleasure, and given to them, no less than to the richest, the treasures of her laugh- ing sunlight, of her melodious music, of her gracious hues, of her million flowers, of her shady leaves, of her divine ideals ? Oh, world ! when you let Paris die, you let your last youth die with her ! Your rich will mourn a paradise deserted, but your poor will have need to weep with tears of blood for the ruin of the sole Eden whose sunlight sought them in their shadow, whose music found them in their loneli- ness, whose glad green ways were open to their tired feet, whose radiance smiled the sorrow from their aching eyes, and in whose wildest errors and whose vainest FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 35 dreams their woes and needs were unfor- gotten. A Provence Rose, w HEN we hold the chisel ourselves, are we not secure to have no error in the work ? Strathmore, SIGN A laughed all over his little face as a brook does when the sun and wind together please it. Szgna, A SIN confessed Is half atoned. Trent-et-un, 2,6 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr THE humility of a proud nature has in it an homage the most sincere and the most exquisite in flattery that human nature holds. In Maremma, THE quaint old houses seemed all asleep, with the shutters closed like eyelids over their little, dim, aged orbs of windows. Folle-Farine, ALL things must suffer, and must think, 1~\. since all things dread and trust. Can there be fear without mental torture ? Can there be trust without emotional power ? Puck. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 37 THE robins have a pretty air of bold- ness with which they veil their real shyness and timidity. Folle-Farine. PERHAPS he can take better care of his own soul because he cannot lend one to a spinet. Wanda, , WITH all the love one has, one never loves anything like one's self! What a supreme joy it is — that knowing one's self fair ! But there is still greater joy than that : it is to hear the world say so. Tricotrin. 38 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr F EMI NINE natures are things so mutable ! Tricotrin. F OR want of a word, lives often drift apart. In Maremma, H ABIT Is nothing better than a har- ness, even when It Is silvered. In a Winter City, I THINK when one loves any other very much, one becomes for him altogether unlike what one Is to the world. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 39 ALL lands are soulless where the olive does not lift its consecrated boughs to Heaven. For the olive is always mournful ; it is, amidst trees, as the opal among jewels ; its foliage, and its flowers, and its fruits, are all colorless ; it shivers softly as though it were cold even on those sun-bathed hills ; it seems forever to say '' peace, peace," when there is no peace ; and to be weary because that whereof it is the emblem has been ban- ished from earth, because men's souls delight in war. The landscape that has the olive is spiritual, as no landscape can ever be from which the olive is absent ; for where is there spirituality without some hue of sadness ? Pascarel. 40 FLASHES FROM '' OUJDAr PLEASURE is but labor to those who do not know, also, that labor, in its turn, is pleasure. Tricotrin, G RANTED wishes are sometimes self-sown curses. Tricotrin, PHILOSOPHY is the pomegranate of life, ever cool and most fragrant ; and the deeper you cut in it, the richer only will the core grow. Power is the Dead-sea apple, golden and fair to sight while the hand strives to reach it ; dry gray ashes between dry fevered lips when once it is grasped and eaten. Tricotrin, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 41 W HAT a disagreeable obligation dining is ! Wanda, IT Is wonderful how few are the actual wants of a human life that Is far away from all artificial stimulus and ne- cessities. In Maremma, THE world likes talent which serves it — It hates genius, which rules it. Folle-Farine. ALL that was evil in him had leaped up like a lion from his lair, and now could never more be drugged to sleep. Stratkmore, 42 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." IF a person's epigram or argument be pointless or involved, you shouldn't show him that you think so by asking him what he means. Puck, " 1\ TEN and women are just like -L V A sheep." A crack of the whip, and they scatter. They never stay by one that falls on the road. A Village Commune, HIS eyes had a great darkness and yet a great fire in them, as the skies have when, behind the purple rain- clouds, flash the lightnings. A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 43 FOR his character was one of those in which cruelty is twin-born with suffering, which, having tasted of crime as the tiger of blood, sucks more, and blots out sin by sin. Strathmore, M ONEY runs away so fast, when it has no companion in your drawer. A Village Commune, THERE are moments in human life which transform men to fiends, leaving them no likeness of themselves ; moments in which the bond-slave goaded to insanity, turns and rends his tyrant. Strathmore, 44 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr MEN strike at what they hate; women, more subtle, and more merciless, strike at what is best beloved by the life they would destroy. Strathmore, ■'A RE you mad?" is an inevitable question addressed to genius. Under Two Flags, WHATEVER the future may say of Gounod, this it will never be able to deny, that he is the supreme mas- ter of the utterance of Love. Moths, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 45 SHE saw the sea! Before her dazzled sight all its beauty stretched, the blueness of the waters meeting the blue- ness of the skies : radiant, with all the marvels of its countless hues; softly- stirred by a low wind that sighed across it ; bathed in a glow of gold that streamed on it from the westward ; rolling from north to south in slow, sonorous measures, fill- ing the silent air with melody. The lustre of the sunset beamed upon it ; the cool fresh smell of its water shot like new life through all the scorch and stupor of the day ; its white foam curled and broke on the brown curving rocks and wooded inlets of the shores ; — innumerable birds, that gleamed like silver, floated or flew above its surface ; — all was still, still as death, save only for the endless move- ment of those white swift wings and the 46 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr susurrus of the waves, In which all meaner and harsher sounds of earth seemed lost and hushed to slumber and to silence. The sea alone reigned, as it reigned in the sweet young years of the earth, when men were not ; as maybe it will, in its turn, reign again in the years to come, when men and all their works shall have passed away, and be no more seen nor any more remembered. Folle-Farine, SHE found God in all things, and found poems In all things, from the lowliest flower to the darkest storm. Strathmore. w INE openeth the heart of man. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 47 ^y^OU can describe a picture, but not a J- statue. Marble is like music : it can never be measured or told in words. Ariadne, "A RE the angels all dead, that tend the stars ?" In Maremma, T T ER influence not genuine if not destined to be very enduring. Pttck, H ER world was narrowed to one human life. In Maremma, 48 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE future is something that one never has, and that never comes, muttered the old man — something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes, and yet a thing that one sees always — sees even when one lies a-dying, they say, for men are fools. Folle-Farine, TH E dust of death is always the breath of life. F olle-F arine. ALL love, if it be worth anything, is higher than the nature that be- gets it. Pascarel. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 49 THE green corn uncurling underneath the blossoming vines. The vine foliage that tosses, climbs and coils in league on league of verdure. The breast- high grasses, full of gold, red, and purple, from the countless flowers growing with it. The millet filled with crimson gladlola and great scarlet popples. The hill-sides that look a sheet of rose-color where the lupinelli is in bloom. The tall plumes of the canes, new-born, by the side of every stream and rivulet. The ocean spray of Arbutus Acacia shedding its snow against the cypress darkness. The dreamy blue of the iris lilies rising underneath the olives, and aloEJg the edges of the fields. The soft, pretty, quiet pictures, where mowers sweep down with their scythes the reedy grasses on the river banks : where the gates of the villas stand wide open with 50 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." the sun aslant upon the grassy paths be- neath the vines : where in the gloom of the house archways the women stand plaiting their straw, with the broad shining fields before them, all alive with the song of the grill : where the gray, savage walls of a fortress tower on the spur of the moun- tains, above the delicate green of the young oaks and the wind-stirred fans of the fig-trees : Where, deep in that fresh, glad tumult of leaf and blossom and bough, the children and the goats lie to- gether, while the wild thyme and the tre- foil are in flower, and the little dog-rose is white among the maize : where the beaks of the galley-like boats cut dark against the yellow current, and the great filmy square nets are cast outward where the poplar shadows tremble in the stream — all these, and a thousand like them, are yours FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." 51 in the sweet May season among the Tuscan hills and vines. PascareL A ND what is oblivion, if it be not age ? PascareL I SHOULD hardly care for a fealty which was only to be retained by con- stant presence. Wanda. THERE is something quaint, pathetic, touching, in the lives that begin and end in solitary places. In Maremma, 52 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr NOTHING on earth is so pleasant as being a little in love ; nothing on earth is so destructive as being too much so. Under Two Flags, ONE weeps for the death of children ; but perhaps the change of them in- to callous men and worldly women is a sadder thing to see, after all. Moths, VERSE, to the Italian, is as natural as laughter to the child or tears to the woman. PascareL FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 53 WHO did, indeed, first name the flow- ers ? Who first gave them, not their Latin titles, but the old, familiar, fanciful, poetic, rustic ones, that run so curiously alike in all the different vulgar tongues ? Who first called the lilies of the valley the Madonna's tears ? the wild hyacinth St. Dorothy's flowers? Who first called the red clusters of the olean- der St. Joseph's nosegays? and the cle- matis by her many lovely titles — consola- tion, traveler's joy, virgin's bower? Who first made dedication of the narcissus to remembrance ? the amaranthus to wound- ed, bleeding love ? the scabious to the desolation of widowhood? It is stranQ^e that most of these tender old appellatives are the same in meaning in all European tongues. Milton, Spenser and Shelley — Tasso, Schiller and Camoens — all the 54 FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." poets that ever the world has known, might have been summoned together for the baptism of the flowers, and have failed to name them half so well as popular tra- dition has done, long ago in the dim, lost ages, with names that still make all the world akin. It is a fancy that St. John had named them all one day, out of glad- ness of heart, when Christ had kissed him. Szgna, \ SHE was a woman who lived upon vanity and adored but herself, a creature like a Japan lilac, lovely to look upon, but to those v/ho lingered near, who touch or who play with her, certain de- struction. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 55 THE greatness of a poet lies in the universality of his sympathies; and women are not sympathetic, because they are intensely self-centred. Puck, A GREAT purpose nerves the life it lives in, so that no personal terrors can assail, nor any minor woes afflict it. Folle-Farine, THE river was all golden and green in the late afternoon; here and there was the red flame of a knot of tulips ; a lovely silence and radiance were over all the scene as the sun sank to its setting. A Village Commune, 56 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr T HE poet should use the suffering of others for his lamp. Ariadne. FREINDSHIP, when it is not a bully, is very commonly a coward. Puck, BEFORE her was the maze of the poppy-fields. In the moonlight their blossoms, so gorgeous at sunset or at noon, lost all their scarlet gaud and pur- ple pomp, and drooped like discrowned kings stripped bare in the midnight of calamity. Folle-Farine, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 57 WHEN sorrow has once been upon us, we have no longer faith in life — ^we have but Hope ; and Hope, God- given as she is, is but fearful, flattering, evanescent, at best. Granville De Vigne, CHANCE and circumstance may be controlled or altered, but the fates which men make for themselves always abide with them, for good or ill. Wanda, WHEN one loves art, it is the love of the creator and of the offspring both in one. 'Ariadne. 58 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: C ONTENT is Ignorance. Ariadne, HE is a man who has the capacity for great things, but he seemed to me to be his worst enemy ; if he had fewer gifts, he might probably have more achievement. A waste of power is always a melancholy sight. Wanda, ART, if it be anything is the perpetual /j^ uplifting of what is beautiful in the sight of the multitudes — the perpetual adoration of that loveliness, material and moral, which men in the haste and greed of their lives are everlastingly forgetting. Ariadne, s FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 59 HE was a creature half divine, from strength and innocence combined. In Maremma, o H, if we could be sure that unceas- ing regret consoled the dead ! Wanda, THE highest trust, to my thinking, that one human life can show in another, is to believe in it. Under Two Flags, THE beatitude of confessed and mutual love was there. Puck, 6o FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr I T is for the rich '' to intend ;" the poor must take what chances. Fo lie-Far tne. WITHOUT Rubens, what is Ant- werp ? A dirty, dusky, bustling mart, which no man should ever care to look upon, save the traders who do busi- ness on its wharves. With Rubens, to the whole world of men it is a sacred name, a sacred soil, a Bethlehem where a god of art saw light, a Golgotha where a god of art lies dead. A Dog of Flanders, N IGHT is the noon of poets — it is for rest, dream, and love. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 6i VIRTUOUS women love to take In hand the conversion of a sinner when the penitent can give them a coronet. Strathmore, KEEP Innocent — innocence does not come back, and repentance is a poor thing beside it. Signa. MISERY in a lovely land like Italy ^ looks more sad than it does in sadder cllnes, where it is like a home- born thing and not an alien tyrant. A Village Commune, 62 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA.\ MAN was created a dishonest animal, and policy and civilization have raised the instinct to a science. Strathmore, w HAT duller atmosphere possible than contentment ! Strathmore, CAN you inform me how it is that women possess tenacity of will in precise proportion to the frivolity of their lives ? Wanda, SLAVES cannot have a future. Folle-Farine, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 6^, SHE was a small, slender, beautiful old woman, who bound the coif about her head, and did her homely service for herself, and never stirred across her threshold except when early mass was ringing over the orange thickets ; but her country folk sought her far and near for consolation and for counsel ; in her the dove's gentleness and the serpent's wisdom were blended ; peace-making was her office, and none sought her who did not leave her simpler, purer, better, for her words of solace. So she dwelt for near half a cen- tury, the sanctity of the cloister about her, yet in her the warmth of human sympathy, the sweetness of widowed fidelity, and the passion of maternal love ; so she dwelt where the palms of the Riviera rose against the blue-sea skies ; and when she died, ten thousand Italians followed her to 64 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr the grave ; and to this day the country names her with its hoHest names, for Santa Signa Rosa was the mother of Garibaldi. PascareL I DO not believe that happiness makes us selfish ; it is a treason to the sweetest gift of life. It is when it is has deserted us that it grows hard to keep all the better things in us from dying in the flight. Men shut out happiness from their schemes for the world's virtue ; they might as well seek to bring flowers to bloom without the sun. Ckandos. E VERY error of love is lovable. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 65 SIN added yet again to sin is but barrier piled on barrier betwixt a soul and its atonement. Strathmore, o BLIVION cannot be hired. Strathmore, THERE are plenty of women who know too much of their own sex ever to wonder that a man doesn't marry. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, N O incident on earth could ever have found him unready. Moths. 66 FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." HIS curse had been born of his ven- geance ; yet, but to crush out his agony, he craved vengeance yet again. Strathmore, WE live too little time to do any- thing, even for the art we give our life to. When we die, our work dies with us ; our better self must perish with our bodies ; the first change of fashion will sweep it into oblivion. Yet some- thing may last of it ; none the less does the cathedral enrich Cologne because the name of the man who begot its beauty has passed unrecorded ; none the less is the world aided by the efforts of every true and daring mind because the thinker himself has been crushed down in the rush of unthinking crowds. Chandos. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 67 LANDSCAPE painters are happy, I think ; they have a future ; there is much to be done, that has never .been done in their art. Ariadne, A PIPE is a pocket philosopher, a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Ariadne, WHEN we are intimate with any person, it is needful to know them well ; what one's mere acquaintances are matters little; one can no more count them than count the gnats on a summer day ; but about our friends we cannot be too careful. Moths, 68 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr WHAT could she do? Ah, nothing! only wait, and wait, and wait, with that sublime patience which is the heroism of some women. Puck, BE a maiden ever so innocent, she feels the approach of a coarse pas- sion, and trembles at it, though uncon- sciously. A Village Commune, LIFE is clay to be moulded just at -' our will ; it is a fool or an unskilful workman, indeed, who lets it fall of itself into a shape he does not like, or lets it break in his hands. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '^OUIDAr 69 A SATISFIED man has nothing to desire, gain or content. He is a mould-grown carp in stagnant waters. Strathmore, SHE prayed for them half the night in her oratory, till her prayer seemed to beat against the very gates of heaven. Wanda. I WONDER to hear them say that Rome is sad, with all that mirth and music of its water laughing through all its streets, till the steepest and stoniest ways are murmurous with it as any brook-fed and forest depths. Ariadne, 70 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr FOR faith is as the white, pure crown of the century aloe, which, once cut down, can bloom no more within the space of the same lives that first rejoiced in it. Tricotrin, WHEN the heart is fullest of pain, and the mouth purest with truth, there is a cruel destiny in things which often makes the words worst chosen and surest to defeat the end they seek. Signa, ANGELS stand aloof so many years, and then they put their fingers in the dough. Signa, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 71 AT the time of the creation, when ajl except man had been made, the Angel of Life, who had been bidden to summon the world out of chaos, moving over the fresh and yet innocent earth, thought to himself, '' I have created so much that is doomed to suffer forever, and forever be mute! I will now create an animal that shall be compensated for all suffering by listening to the sound of his own voluble chatter." Whereon the angel called Man into being, and cut the fraenum of his tongue, which has clacked incessantly ever since, all through the silence of the centuries. Puck. N O one can have too much candor. Beatrice Boville, 72 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr ONE grows to love the water that fills Rome with an unchanging mel- ody all through the year. Ariadne, LOVE freedom as we will, we are sure to bind ourselves with some unwel- come tie. Trtcotrzn, THERE is more courage needed often-times, to accept the onward flow of existence, bitter as the waters of Marah, black and narrow as the channel of Jordan, than is needed to bow down the neck to the sweep of the death-an- gel's sword. Chandos, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 73 " T LOVE you." The words were A uttered which, old as the hills eternal, have been on every human lip, and cursed more lives than they have ever blessed. Strathmore. A RETENTIVE memory is of great use to a man, no doubt ; but the talent of oblivion is, on the whole, more useful. A Village Commune, " T LIKE her with my intelligence in- A fmitely," he said; ''with my heart, or what does duty for it, I abhor her." Moths. 74 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr NOTHING loses by anticipation. Chandos, I WOULD be loved as I love — only so. Chandos, D I STANCE is favorable to those loves of the soul. Moths. THERE are four orders of creatures that always know everything — they are journalists, ladies' maids, priests, and toy-terriers. Puck, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 75 THE greatness of a great race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Wanda. IF you wait for a woman who has no artifices, I am afraid you will have to forswear the sex in toto, and come growl- ing back to your Diogenes tub in the Albany, with your lantern still lit every day of your lives. Lady Marabouf s Troubles. IS not the roughness or the sarcasm of a friend more welcome than the suave insincerity of foes ? Puck, 76 FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." REIGNING beauties are like reign- ing fashions — one must obey them. Stratkmore, WHO can once have laughed in the light of the sun of Italy and not feel the world dark elsewhere ever after- wards ? It is only in Italy that the eyes of the people always, though they know it not, speak of God. Ariadne, WHEN a merciful Creator has ap- pointed our appetites for our consolation and support, it is only an ingrate who is not thankful lawfully to indulge them. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 77 MEN He to women out of mistaken tenderness or ill-judged compas- sion, or that curious fear of recrimination from which the highest courage is not exempt. A man deceives a woman with untruth, not because he is base, but he fears to hurt her with the truth. PascareL T HERE is nothing so cruel in life as Faith. Folle-Farine, IS there aught that we love that does not stab us, soon or late ? There is no serpent without that can sting half so hard as the tenderness in us. Tricotrin, 78 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE sweet Spring came; and so sweet is It here, that It Is joy enough to live only to go out Into the fields all ladened with blossom and feel your heart dance with the daffodils in the full sense of Wordsworth's words. A Village Comryiune, THE little stone of truth rolling through the many ages of the world has gathered and grown gray with the thick mosses of romance and super- stition. Ariadne, T HE joy of a strong nature is as cloudless as its suffering Is desolate. In Maremma, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 79 LIFE is governed by chance, and each of us, at best, is but a leaf that drifts on a hazardous wind ; now in the sunHght, now in the shadow, the wind blows the leaves hap-hazard together — for evil, for good, whichever it be. Strathmore, s HE had the fairest charm of youth, unconsciousness. Strathmore. WHEN we suffer very much our- selves, anything that smiles in the sun seems cruel — a child, a bird, a dragon- fly; nay, even a fluttering ribbon, or a spear-grass that waves in the wind. Bdbde. 8o FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr FORBIDDEN intrusion In the press of the world, trodden down in the path of power, dashed aside by the mailed hand of a successful and unscrupulous am- bition, they coiled about him, and would not be appeased. Strathmore, CUT your throat, blow out your brains, drown yourself — any one of these — that is a conceivable impulse ; but yawn ! What a confession of internal nothing- ness ! What a vapid and vacant wind-bag must be the man who collapses into a yawn ! Moths, A S little dogs always imitate big ones, so villages love to copy great cities. A Village Commune. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 8i IT is easy to bear the contempt and censure of the world when we are happy, and defiance of its laws brings fame or rapture ; but its fears and its supercilious smiles may be hard even to a brave man to bear when the world has cause to call him a fool, when it can triumph in vaunting its own superior penetration, in recalling its own wise prophesies of his fall, and in compelling him to make the most difficult of all con- fession to a proud heart, '' I was wrong." Granville De Vigne, O NATIONS! closely should you treasure your great men, for by them alone will the future know of you. A Dog of Flanders, 82 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THERE had been shadows all da.y^ and In the west there were masses of cloud, purple and blue-black, spreading away into a million of soft, scarlet cirri, that drifted before a low wind from the southward, tender and yet rich in tone as any scattered showers of carnation leaves. Through that vast pomp of dusky splen- dor and that radiance of rose, the sun itself still shone — shone full upon the city. Leaning on the broken edge of the watch- tower, and gazing down below, all Flor- ence seemed like the seer's dream of the new Jerusalem ; every stone of her seemed_ transmuted ; she was as though paven and built of gold. Straightway across the whole valley stretched alchemy of that wondrous fire-glow, and all the broad, level lands of the Cosentino were trans- figured likewise Into one vast sheet of FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 83 gold on which the silver olives and the dim white villages and villas floated like frail white sails upon a summer sea. Far- ther, still farther yet, upon that burnished ocean, the mountains and the clouds met and mingled, golden likewise, broken here and there into some tenderest rose-leaf flush. Miraculously lovely as a poet's dreams of nameless things of God ! PascareL DIVINE? Well! *'A woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not," Shakspeare says ; but I think the devil generally has the dressing, and serves up sauce with it so very pi- quant that it is all but poisonous ; it's a dish like mushrooms — dainty but dangerous. Strat'hmore, 84 FLASHES FROM *' OUlDAr ENVY is a quick match, easily light- ed, and needs no spirit added to the wick to make it strike fire and flare into flame. Stratkmore. GENIUS has its supremacy wher- ever it may dwell. A Village Commune, THERE is cold love where there is no jealousy. Stratkmore. I T would be a wretched friendship that shirked the truth when its telling were needed, Stratkmore, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 85 PEOPLE hate you if they think they bore you. It isn't that they care about you, but they fancy you find them stupid. Moths, *' ^^HE looked like a Greek poet's >^ dream dressed by Worth.'* How could poor Worth dress a dream ? That would tax even his power. MotAs. FOR a man may be negligent of all sympathy for himself, yet never, if he be poet or artist, will he be able utterly to teach himself indifference to all sympathy for his works. Folle-Farine, 86 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr IF one is disposed to be sad, surely, of all sad things, an old spinet is the saddest ! To think of the hands that have touched it ; or of the children that have danced to it, of the tender old bal- lads that have been sung to the notes that to us seem so hoarse and so faulty ! All the musicians dead, dead so long ago, and the old spinet still answering when any one calls ! Wanda, THE world is topsy-turvey, and the scum is all atop. A Village Commune, M USIC is an Impulse or it is nothing. In a Winter City, FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 87 THE burden she had bound upon her shoulders none could lift off from them against her will. In Maremma, WE all sin, but some of us walk on, not looking back, and some of us do look back, and thus do go again over the ill-trodden path, and so, perchance, meet angels on the way — to mend it. Ariadne, THERE is no poor-rate and no work- house and nothing for the honest poor except a metre or so of ground in the cemeteries. A Village Commune, 88 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDA." A WO MAN guilty for the sake of gold would be guilty without gold, for the sheer love of guilt. Puck, SOCIETY is a plant that must be fed and watered, and dug and matted scrupulously. If you do not take endless trouble with it, it will never blossom for you. Friendship. LOVE waits for no reason In its acts ; it only knows that it hates those who rob it of the simplest word, and is jealous of the very brute that wins a touch or smile. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 89 THE soul of the poet Is like the mirror of the astrologer : it bears the re- fleetion of the Past and Future, and can show the secrets of men and gods, but, all the same, it is dimmed by the breath of those who stand by and gaze into it. Ariadne, HOW little women understand men^ and how poorly they love them, when they do not leave them alone. Wanda, DISCONTENT creeps into happy households, and under her hood says, '' Let me in : I am Progress." Signa, 90 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr M USIC creates from a spirit-world of its own. Granville De Vigne, f A GE iS. is is nothing else but death that conscious. Under Two Flags, p RINCES are never so happy as when they have a little bit of nature. Lady Marabout' s Troubles. I F pity be akin to love, believe me, passion is as often allied to hate. Slratkmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 91 WOMEN are like kaleidoscopes, and have a thousand phases, all pretty for the time, but never to be caught, and always changed when a new eye is on them. Strathmore, CAN Evil ever be outweighed? We may strive to atone, but we can never efface. The Past spreads like a river broken from its banks ; and all the coffer-dams we arise in our atonement cannot stay the rushing of the waters we have once let loose. Ah ! if, when Evil is begun, we know where it would end, men's hands would be kept pure from very dread of their own awful omnipotence for ruin. Chandos. 92 FLASHES FROM ^'OUlDAr THERE was an accent in her words which told of a childhood perished in a night — of an innocence and a faith stabbed, stricken, and buried forevermore. Moths. H UMAN hearts are good in the main. A Village Commune, THERE are people about whom the world will sometimes deign to read if George Sand or George Eliot write about them, but who, outside of a story- book, are absolutely uninteresting and in- significant. , A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 93 BOYS' sorrows vent themselves in words, but men's griefs are voice- less ; for it comes only to destroy the fierce and far-rooted passion of vital suffering : you will find that It may sear, wither, wear out life and light, but It will never seek solace In confidence, never lament itself, but rather hug Its tortures closer. You will find a difference between fictitious sorrow, which runs abroad proclaiming its own wrongs, and the grief which lies next the heart night and day : like the iron cross of the Romish priest, eats It slowly but none the less surely away. Granville De Vigne, L OVE, to be perfect, must be a relig- ion as well as a passion. 94 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr A YOUNG girl's name Is like a peach — the down once brushed off, the fruit bears the trace of rough handling forever. Tricotrin, 1ETTERS written in the morning -' never compromise you ; mots made in the morning never amuse you. Strathmore, Y OU keep your memory about you like a knotted cord of penitence. In Maremma, DEATH is the key-note of creation. Folle-Farine, FLASHES FROM ''QUI DA." 95 LOVE art alone, forsaking all other loves, and she will make you happy with a happiness that shall defy the sea- sons and the sorrows of time, the pains of the vulgar and the changes of fortune, and be with you day and night, a light that is never dim. But mingle with it any human love, and art will look forever at you with the eyes of Christ when he looked at the faithless follower as the cock crew. Ariadne, WHEN fame stands by us all alone, she is an angel clad in light and strength, but when love touches her, she drops her sword and fades away, ghost- like and ashamed. Moths. 96 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr PLEASURE alone cannot content , any one whose character has any force or mind, any high intelligence. In a Winter City. THE shadow of that unknown future which lay awaiting them, coiled in the folded leaves of yet unopened years. Stratkmore. I DON'T think it is for a young girl's happiness to begin womanhood, co- quetry, heart-burnings, and late hours, too soon. Stratkmore. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 97 IN the human face, as in a picture, with time the shadows deepen and the lights grow fainter. ' Strathmore, YOUTH without pleasure is like a flower that comes up too early in the year, and is frozen half-blown. Ariadne. ALL women talk discursively ; in stu- pid ones it is an awful bore, but in clever ones it is charming. Puck. A PARTICULARLY happy man is not given at any time to retrospec- tion. Wanda. 7 98 FLASHES FROM '^ OUIDAr HE shall tell me where he comes from — I doubt that it is from Eng- land ; see here — why not ? First, he never says God-damn ; second, he doesn't eat his meat raw ; third, he speaks very soft ; fourth, he waltzes so light ; fifth he never grumbles in his throat, like any angry bear ; sixth, there is no fog in him. Under Two Flags, WITHOUT coquetry or ambition it is impossible to enjoy society much. Every pretty woman should be a flirt, every clever woman a politician ; the aim, the animus, the intrigue, the rivalry, that accompany each of these pursuits, are the salt without which the great dinner were tasteless. Moths, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 99 THE first violets were carried In mil- lions through the streets — the only innocent Imperialists the world has ever seen. A Provence Rose, OF all strange things In human life, there Is none stranger than the dominance of Chance. Strathmore. THERE Is a torture of the spirit that Is more devilish and more terrible to endure than the shorter, coarser torture of the body. Strathmore. loo FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THIS man, who had held himself his own God, to mold his destiny at will ; who had deemed he ruled his desires un- der iron curb, and who had looked on in cold disdain while others suffered or re- joiced, indifferent to joy as he was steeled to pain, endured tortures such as weaker, gentler natures never know — let them thank Heaven for their exemption. Strathmore. ** A A /'^ women are the best detectives V V in the world, only we can't hold our tongues ; we can't keep the secrets when we have learned them. We are so proud of our stolen nuts, that we crack them en plein jour, instead of keeping them to enjoy in the darkness of the night, as you wise men do." Stratkmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr loi FIDELITY alone can give to Love the grandeur and the promise of Eternity. Ariadne, A GREAT love does not of necessity imply a great intelligence, but it must spring out of a great nature. Ariadne, THE shame of one man is the shame of his race, and the evil that is shielded is shared. Idalia, THERE is no pleasure in doing what one pleases, unless there is some opposition to the doing. Moths. I02 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: IN these old noble places life should be ''set to music" — Love, in its highest passion and its fairest form; art as the gift of God to man ; day-dreams, in which the hours unfold, beautiful and un- counted like the leaves of the oleander flowers; night, when "the plighted hands are softly locked in sweet unsevered sleep ;" gay laughter here and there, glad charity with all things ; meditation now and then to deepen the well-spring of the mind ; the open air always ; limbs bathed in the warmth as in the summer sea ; the opal skies of the evening watched with fancies of the poets, and everywhere perpetual sense of a delicious rest, and of desire and of hope crowned to fruition ; — this was the life for Italy. Friendship, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 103 THE desire to be great! when that insatiate passion enters a living soul, be it the soul of a woman-child dreaming of a coquette's conquests, or a crowned heir craving for a new world, it becomes blind to all else. Moral death falls on it ; and any sin looks sweet that takes it to its goal ; it is a passion that generates at once all the loftiest and all the vilest things which, between them, ennobles and corrupts the world ; even as heat generates at once the harvest and the maggot, the purpling vine and the lice that devour it. It is a passion without which the world would decay in darkness as it would do without heat ; yet to which, as to heat, all its filthiest corruption is due. Tricotrin, I04 FLASHES FROM ^'OUFDAr IN youth we have hope ; later on we know that of all the gifts of Pandora's box none are so treacherous and delusive as the one that Pandora left at the bottom. Beatrice Boville, ANEW acquaintance Is like a new novel ; you open It with expecta- tion, but what you find there seldom makes you care to take it off the shelf a second time. Friendship, EVEN the discreetest friends will, like the closest packed hold of a ship, leak occasionally. Salt water and secrets are alike apt to ooze. Friendship, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 105 A WOMAN who thinks for herself is weak, but the woman who thinks for another is strong. Friendship. MINDS like hers resemble running brooks ; they reflect what they pass through — they are still or sparkling, dark or radiant, according as they flow over sand or moss, under black clouds or sunny skies — the brook is always the same ; it is what it mirrors that varies. Friendship, CALUMNY can only lower us when it has power to make us what it calls us. Chandos, io6 FLASHES FROM '' QUID AT IN a great love the eyes are blinded, the lips are closed, the ears are deaf, the will is paralyzed — only beholding, only breathing for, only hearing, only obeying one other life out of all the millions upon earth ; and nothing short of this is love. Friendship, THERE are things one is bound to forget, or, at least, that binds one to love as if they were wholly forgotten. PascareL COWS seem so stupid, chewing grass and whisking the flies away, but in their eyes there is the soul of lo. Signa, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 107 PEOPLE with fine brains and gener- ous souls will never learn that life, after all, is only a game ; a game which will go to the shrewdest player and the coolest. They never see this, not they ; they are caught on the edge of great pas- sions, and swept away by them. They cling to this affection like commanders to sinking ships, and go down with them. They put their whole heart into the hands of others who only laugh and wring out their life-blood ; they take all things too vitally earnest. Life, is to them a wonder- ful, passionate, pathetic, terrible thing, that the gods of Love and of Death shape for them. They do not see that coolness and craft, and the tact to seize accident, and the wariness to obtain advantage, do, in reality, far more in hewing out a suc- cessful future than all the gods of Greek io8 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr or Gentile. They are very unwise. It is of no use to break their hearts for the world ; they will not change it. La culte de I'humanite is one, of all others, which will leave despair in its harvest. Laugh like Rabelais, smile like Montaigu ; that is the way to take the world. It only puts to death its Sebastians, and makes its Philips not sorrowful to see the boat is filling. Friendship, THE boat flew fast over the water. When boats leave you, and drag your heart with them, they always go like that ; and when they come, and your heart darts out to meet them, then they are so slow 1 Puck, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 109 SOONER or later — though they may lie to it long, half a life time, per- haps, I believe that men and women are all true to their physiognomies ; that they prove, sooner or later, that the index Na- ture has writ (though writ in crabbed, uncertain characters) upon their features is not a wrong or a careless one. Men lie, but Nature does not. They dissemble, but she speaks out. They conceal, but she tells the truth. What is carried on the features will develop, sometime or other, in the nature. Stratkmore, WHOSOEVER owns a secret, ever suspects that the world has un- earthed it. Strathmore, no FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE red and green of the tufa land, the deep shadows of the pine woods, the pale aloe-dotted shores, the distant mountains, amethyst and purple as the mists cleared from them, flew by her rap- idly, a ball of seething, wind-blown, sunny water, flashing and heaving between her- self and them. In Maremma, LOVE loses its loveliness made public ; It is like the grape, once handled — the bloom is gone. Frieiidship, w HAT Is allegiance worth, unless it be voluntary? Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr iii IT may be doubted if a man is ever really happy with a woman with whom he cannot be candid. Friendship, IN Spain, when a lovely woman has had an adventure, her friends say she has eaten a lily. Friendship, OPPORTUNITY is a little angel; some catch him as he goes, some let him pass by forever. Under Two Flags, T O be temperate is to be stupid. Moths, 112 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr IF a man imagines an angel he must paint from the face that he loves best. Granville De Vigne, THAT sunny smile of Italy ! it has in it all the youth of the earth's golden ages — all the faith of man's first dreams of God. PascareL TO be a great artist one must be a student, and a sincere and humble one at the foot of every greatness — ay, and every weakness — which has preceded us. PascareL FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 113 TO the art of the stage, as to every other art, there are two sides : the truth of it, which comes by inspiration — that is, by instincts subtler, deeper, and stronger than those of most minds — and the artifice of it, in which it must clothe itself to get understood by the people. PascareL WHAT use is it to keep the person of a man beside you, if his soul be truant from you ? Wanda, A FURIOUS woman is more savage in her wrath than any beast of prey, Granville De Vigns^ 114 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr D ID private pique ever fail to carry the day over public charity ? Lady Marabout' s Troubles, THINGS must be very rose-colored with us when we can smile sincerely on our enemies, and defeat their stings simply because we feel them not. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, MONEY is like a mill, no good stand- ing still. Let it turn, turn, turn, as fast as ever it can, and the more bread will come from it for the people to eat. Under Two Flags, FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 115 THE cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must drink long afterwards. Wanda, HERE is a gold-piece that carries Paradise in it ; or at least men think so ; but I am afraid, myself, that by the time we have found the gold-pieces, we have most of us forgotten the way to Paradise. Moths, THE love she had borne him stirred at times beneath the gravestones of scorn and wrath. Wanda, ii6 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr THAT ill weeds grow apace Is a true old saw, never truer than of vindic- tive and envious passions. Wanda, SOME people go through life with their eyes shut, and then grumble there is nothing to see. Under Two Flags, AN explanation that had its root In honor, a reticence that sprang from conscience, was so welcome, and appeared so natural, that they consoled at once and healed the wounds of pride. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 117 THERE are few things more spiteful that one can do to anybody than to take them at their word. Moths, IT is not always definite motives that have the most influence ; the subtlest poisons are those which enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware. Wanda, INNOCENT unhappiness soon finds rest ; it is the sinful sorrow of later years that stares with eyes unclosed into the hateful emptiness-of night. Moths. ii8 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE sunset hour, when the busy day still lingers on the earth, bowed down with the weight of sin and sorrow with w^hich, in one brief twelve hours, the sons of men have ladened her, and the night falls down with noiseless wings from heaven, to lay her soft hands on weary human eyes and lead them into dreamland, to rest awhile from toil and care, is ever full of Nature's deepest poetry. Granville De Vigne. WHEN you can solace a mother for her first-born's death, then, and then only, shall you solace an artist for the death in him of his art. PascareL FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 119 THEY were wise in their generation, and praised no woman before an- other. Moths. T HE sunny daylight seemed to go round her in an amber mist. Moths. '' I "O rifle a caravan is a crime, though to steal a continent is a glory. Under Two Flags. T HERE is no solitude like that of a crowd. Beatrice Boville, I20 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr HE was a man in whom some vein of superstition had outHved the cold reason and cynical mockeries of the wordly experiences and opinions in which it was steeped. Wanda. CAN a man ever be certain of his philosophy ? Brutus had served her faithfully all his life, and broke down in the very last hour. Tricotrin. A SHREWD woman can always make men forget she sprang from the gutter. Granville De Vigne. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 121 ITALIAN children have the whole In- ferno and Paradise in their wonder- ful eyes : why is it ? They have no soul in them ; or at least they will sell any they have for a copper centime, to buy salt fish or a tomato. But the look is there, and it is not here. Is it because we have so much tragedy in our blood, in our soil ? or is it because the Italian mothers still croon strophes over the sleeping babies ? Frescoes, FORGIVENESS is abstinence from vengeance. Wanda, SHRE reci REWD intuition bears one into the region of Truth. Wanda, 122 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr IN the steeple-chase of life there is no time to look back at the failures who have broken down over a ''double and drops," and fallen out of the pace. Under Two Flags, . A FRAGMENT of the Pantheon is worth a whole spotless and un- broken modern building. Granville De Vzgne, THE most truthful men will make the most consummate actors when spurred up to it. Lady Marabout' s Troifbles, H FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 123 OUSES take their atmosphere from those who live in them. Moths. EVERY flower, even the fairest, has its shadow beneath it, as it swings in the sunlight. Strathmore. POOR old widowed Pisa! she always seems to be lamenting, Dido-like, her last lover, the sea. She is inutterably sad ; and yet, I am never abroad on a moonlit night without wanting to watch it shine on her wonderful palaces, on her empty desolate squares, on her perfection of desolation. Pascarel. 124 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr ROSES have been the flowers of si- lence ever since the world began. A Provence Rose, F OR honor makes a lie our social life's chief necessity. Moths, THE great, golden, silent waste was all alive with glorious-colored insects, and waving various-hued grasses, shrill grasshoppers trilling under leaves, wise-faced bearded goats straying under broken arches and gazing down from vine- wreathed ruins, but yet withal so still — so strange — so death-like. Puck, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 125 A WISE man never lies ; I don't mean because he is moral, but because he is judicious ; somebody always finds out a falsehood ; and once found out, your credit is gone. Strathmore, THE man who turns his back on the world has generally seen the world's back ere he does so. Tricotrin. TO insult an inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory ; whom you offend t you raise for the hour to a level with your- self. Remember to choose your foes not less carefully than you choose your friends. Wanda. 126 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr A WOMAN'S reputation— a thing so lightly thrown away with an idler s word. Under Two Flags. TRUTH, Innocence and serenity Is a triad without which no woman Is truly beautiful, and without which no man's love for her can be pure. Moths, A TURKISH lily, when all Its pomp of color and of blossom has been shaken down in the wind and withered, is not more rapidly forgotten than the royalty of a fashionable fame when once reverse has overtaken it. Ckandos. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 127 VENGEANCE is a good Madeira- it grows mellower by keeping. There is nothing on earth so sweet, except its twin, success. Chandos, G" EN I US is nobility, and like nobility is obligation. Ariadne, VERONA is not like my Florence; indeed, it is not given to every city to be born out of fields of lilies, and keep their sweetness with her forever, as Florence does ; a wood-land fragrance always amidst the marble and the gold. PascareL 128 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr IN morals as In metals, you cannot work gold without supporting It by alloy. Wanda. T NTENSELY selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. Wanda, I T is the trifles of life that are its hours. Under Two Flags, COSTLY wedding-presents are very like Judas^s kisses. Granville De Vigne, FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 129 THE wild-rose fragrance breathes of the hill-side and the wood-lands, and brings back to us soft touches of memory- of youth, of a fairer life, and a purer air than that in which we are living now. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, SOMETIMES I think Love Is the darkest mystery of life : mere desire will not explain It ; nor will the passions of affection. You pass years amidst the crowds, and know naught of it ; then all at once you meet a stranger s eyes, and never again are you free. That Is love. Who shall say whence It comes ? It Is a bolt from the gods, that descended from Heaven, and strikes us down Into Hell. Pipistrello, I30 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: E OVE was the law of her life, the gift, the glory of her nature. In Maremma, THE hours went away; the golden day died ; the grayness of evening stole the glow from the gladioli, and shut up the buds of the uses ; the great lilies gleamed but the whiter in the dimness of twilight ; the vesper chimes were rung from the cathedral two leagues away, over the fields. Folle-Farine, *' ^ I " H E dead do not hurt us," said Musa, J- with a grave tenderness. ** They have but gone before where soon we go." In Maremma» FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 131 THE sun sank entirely, leaving only a trail of flame across the heavens ; the waters grew gray and purple In the shadows ; one boat, black against the crim- son reflections of the West, swept on swiftly with the Inrushing tide ; the wind rose and blew long curls of sea-weed on the rocks ; the shores of the bay were dimmed In a mist through which the lights of the little hamlets dimly glowed ; and the distant voices of fishermen calling to each other as they drew in their deep- sea nets came faint and weird-like. Folle-Farzne, FOR whatever suffers very much has always so much strength to con- tinue to exist. Lampblack, 132 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr A GREAT genius can never altogether rest without creation. Moths. WOMEN, like flies, know all thM goes on behind them. Strathmore, AN old proverb has settled long ago that pride feels no pain ; and per- haps the more foolish the pride, the less is the pain that is felt. The Ambitious Rose-Tre^. I T needs a pure soul to love the dead. In Maremma. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 133 WHEN we tell the poor that when they have worked and starved long enough, they will perish like bits of candle that have burnt themselves out ; that they are mere machines, made of carbon and hydrogen, which, when they have had due friction, will then crumble back into dust ; and call this the spread of education, will they be patient ? A Village Commune, T HERE is no sin that shuts out Hope. Tricotin, N OTHING stings so sharply and is so hard to forgive as injustice. Beatrice Bovzlle, 134 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." I READ, the other day, somewhere, that Madame Recamier, who was al- ■ways called the greatest beauty of our great-grandmothers' times, was really nothing at all to look at — quite ordinary ; but she did smile so in everybody's face, and listen so to all the bores, that the world pronounced her a second Helen. Moths, WHEN we are very young, all our sorrow is despair ; but it does not kill us, and we like to be consoled. Moths. ACCIDENT IS chiefly dreaded by women; by men rarely. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 135 I SAY I do honor to those who can be coquettes and are not ; but I despise all who would be so, and, In despair of arriving at it themselves, hate and vilify- all those who can. Cecil Castlemaine s Gage, SHE knew that the sympathy of so- ciety is chiefly curiosity, and that when it has any title to pity it is quite sure to sneer. Moths, T H E beauty of woman is the passion- flower of our lives. Tricotrin, 136 FLASHES FROM '' OUlDAr AFTER the glare and asphalt of Paris, these deep shadows, these cool, fresh greens, these cloud-bathed mountains, seem to have the very calm of eternity in them. They seem to say to me in reproach, ''Why will you wonder?" *' What can you find nobler and gladder than we are T Wanda, T HE bitterest words spoken by hu- man lips are, ''We must part !" Granville de Vigne, " ^^HE did not like women much, and ^^ there is nothing that looks so un- amiable." MolAs. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 137 AMBITIOUS men are all alike. Strathmore, A N indiscreet woman is never frank, for she has the memory of silly things said and done which require con- cealment. Beatrice Boville, T H E faith of men can only live by the purity of women. Moths. POPPIES are the flowers of death. Ariadne, 138 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: LEAVE formularies aside, and open your eyes, good world ! women, from Eve downwards, have been first tempters, and the tempters make up half the ranks of their sex. Strathmore. WHEN money is due to a man, it changes the honey of the human heart to gall. A Village Commune, I DO not think there is much destiny in this life beyond that which men's hands fashion for themselves. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 139 WE are straws on the wind of the hour, too frail and too brittle to float into the future. Our little day of greatness is a mere child's puff-ball, in- flated by men's laughter, floated by women's tears ; what breeze so changeful as the one, what water so shallow as the other ? The bladder dances a little while ; then sinks : and who remembers ? PascareL HE sang the '' Salve Dinora " of that living master who, whatever his weakness or his fault, has in his music that echo of human passion and of mor- tal pain which more faultless composers, with their purer science, have missed. Moths. 140 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr A MAN may rise with an admirable per- severance and dauntlessness ; but the hatchets with which he carves his way up the steep, shelving ice-slope may, nev- ertheless, be blood-stained steel and stolen goods. We are too apt, in our wonder and our applause at the height to which he has attained against all odds, to forget to note whether his steps up the incline have been clean, and justly taken. When the white block of marble shines so solid and so costly, who remembers that it was once made up of decaying shells and rotting bones, and millions of dying insects' lives, pressed to ashes ere the rare stone was ? Chandos, s USPICION degrades two people. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 141 THESE are the fountain-springs of all the world's happiness : heedless- ness, possession, love. Ariadne, WHAT fools men look to themselves when they see themselves in the mirror of their old dead loves. PascareL TO a very proud woman, in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of self-respect, in the first impulses of love. Wanda, 142 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA. A STATESMAN dying, asks, ''Is the treaty signed ? " A woman dying, asks, '' Am I bien colffee?" Strathmore, BE able to dine en prince at home, and you will be invited out every night of your life — be hungry au troisieme, and you must not lick the crumbs from under your sworn allies' table. Granville De Vigne, HE was a man in whose life incidents followed each other too rapidly for remembrance to have any abiding- place or regret any home in his mind. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUlDAr 143 SHE has killed her conscience ; there is no murder more awful. It is to slay what touch of God we have in us. Tricotrin, W" ERE truth is not, how shall there be peace ? Tricotrin, I LOVE all beautiful things, and pity all lonely ones. In Maremma, THE first step to wisdom, the sages say, is to feel that you know noth- ing. Granville De Vigne, 144 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." HEARTS don't break. I don't know whether they used to be Sevres, to make the poet's experience correct ; but they are all stone-china now, and won't even crack. Randolph Gordon, YOU are right " — " I was wrong " — The noblest words that can be ut- tered by human lips. Tricotrim WHAT has vulgar love of eating in common with the exquisite delica- cies of gastronomical discrimination ? The palate requires education from birth up- wards. Puck FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 145 IS there anything so humanizing as a perfect dinner? When a man eats exquisitely, he feels harmoniously and ' thinks placidly. Puck, THE gold of the necklace hung five fathoms down, upon a branch of coral, among the gliding, incurious fish and the strange foliage of the deep-water weeds. In Maremma. WHEN grief has sat long by one's . hearth, it is impossible to warm the ashes of joy again — they are cold and dead forever. Pipistrello, 10 146 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr O ATHS are necessary for people who don't know their own minds. Wanda, THE instinct of enmity is quicker than that of friendship, or of love, the world through. Strathmore, WHEN all the habits of life are sud- denly rent asunder, they are like a rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or may be thrown al- together aside, and a new strand woven, but they will never be the same again. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 147 OTHER men dreaded the sea, and cursed it ; but he, In his way, loved It almost with passion ; and could he have chosen the manner of his death, would have desired that it should be by the sea, and through the sea ; a death cold, serene, and dreamily voluptuous ; a death on which no woman should look and in which no man should have share. Folle-Farine. B IG brains do not easily hold trifles. Moths, M EN can avenge themselves: wo- men can only die. Chandos, 148 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr TH E past, however bright when it v/as *' present," is ever dark with vain de sire when it lies behind us. Truotrzn. IF the Venus de Medici could be ani- mated into life, women would only remark that her waist was large. Wanda. " T3 LIND ?" The word always strikes a -LI chill to those who hear it ; it is not a very rare calamity, but it is one, of all others which most touches by-standers and is most quickly realized. Moths. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 149 THE instrument on which we his- torians play is that thing, the hu man heart. It looks a little matter to strike chords of laughter or of sorrow; but, indeed, to do that aright, and rouse a melody which shall leave all who hear it the better and the braver for the hearing, this may well take a man's lifetime, and, perhaps, may well repay it. PascareL YOUTH is genius : it makes every dawn a new world, every breath a delight. We weave philosophies as life slips from us ; but when we were young our mere life was a poem. Ckandos. C50 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr LET the world abandon you, but to yourself be true. Chandos. ROMANCE has been the germ and nurse of all great writers. Granville de Vigne, UNTIL the vine-leaves of youth are faded, who knows their value or sweetness ? Tricotrin, IT is always good to be loyal, and ready to endure to the end. Wurnberg Store, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 151 THE noonday sun fell golden all around ; the deep, sweet peace of the silent country reigned everywhere ; the pigeons fled to and fro in and out of their little arched homes ; the mill-stream flowed on, singing a pleasant song ; now and then a ripe apricot dropped with a low sound on the turf ; close about was all the radiance of summer flowers ; of heavy rich roses, of yellow lime tufts, of sheaves of old-fashioned, comely phlox, and all the delicate shafts of the graceful lilies. Folle-Farine, WHEN we woo death, he comes not ; but when we bar the chamber door, then he enters with his chill breath and stealthy step. Granville De Vigne, 152 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr M EN don't change their natures, only their faces. Strathmore, THE village lay along a river green as the Adige; with low mountains in sight across a green table-land of vine and chestnut, olive and earn ; with tall poplars by the water, and a church with a red-brick bell-tower, and the bell swinging behind its wooden cage. A Village Commune, JUSTICE is blind — I never under- stand very well, how, being so, she can see her own scales. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 153 THE coldest will feel on occasion, and all have some tender place that can wince at the touch. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, A WOMAN'S violence Is a mighty power; before it reason recoils un- nerved, justice quails appalled, and peace perishes like a burnt-up scroll ; it Is a sand- storm, before which courage can do but little ; the bravest man can but fall on his face and let it rage on about him. Friendship, N OTHING In all the world is so cold as is contempt. Ariadne, 154 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr IF unfortunate, go talk with the ladies ; they always gild the bitter pill of adversity. Chandos, THERE is only one lamp which we can carry in our hand, and which will burn through the darkest night, and make the light of a home for us in a desert place : it is sympathy with every thing that breathes. Ariadne, TO be called clever is the last resource of mediocrity when it can find nothing more to cast against excellence. Chandos, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 155 LOVE Is no more eternal than the roses ; but, like the roses, it renews with every summer sun in as fair a fra- grance as it bloomed before. Women only rebel against this truth because their sea- son of the roses — their youth — is so short. Chandos, T O think evil unjustly Is to create evil. Chandos, WE realize the temptation of others ; we feel how little right we, with so much sin among us, have to dare to judge another. If human nature lasted, what it is in its best moments poets would have no need to fable of an Eden. Granville De Vigne, 156 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr A TEMPERAMENT that is never earnest is at times well-nigh as wearisome as a temperament that is never gay ; there comes a time when, if you can never touch to any depth, the ceaseless froth and brightness of the surface will create a certain sense of impatience, a cer- tain sense of want. Chandos. REVIEWERS puff bad books as ladies praise plain women. Chandos. D O what wise men never do ; see yourself as you are. Chandos, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 157 PIETY and reverence of age are twin blossoms on one stem of a tree that grows at the right hand of God in Para- dise. Folle-Farine, THERE is a charm and a charm. There is that of the accessible, and of the inaccessible ; of the rosebud, and of the edelweiss. Moths. A STOVE can no more speak without the fire than a man can see without light. Give it fire, and it will sing to you, tell tales to you, offer you in return all the sympathy you ask. The Nurenb erg Store, 158 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr SHE was a child with the beauty of a woman ; there could be no greater praise for her. Chandos, HE fights well — it is often a black- guard's virtue." Under Two Flags, A WOMAN has intuition, but no power of argument. Chandos, GATHER a lily in its whiteness and steep it In the sunset, and you will see something like her. In Maremma, FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 159 TO touch art without a right to touch it, merely as a means to find bread ! No ! unless art be adored for its own sake, and purely, it must be left alone. Philip of Macedon had every free man's child taught art ; I would have every boy and girl taught its sacredness : so, we might in time get back some accuracy of taste in the public, some conscientiousness of pro- duction in the artist. If artistic creation be not a joy, an imperious necessity, an instinct of all the forces of the mind, let the boy go and plov^, and the girl go and spin. Ariadne, SIN ever comes obedient to man's bid- ding ; expiation, fugitive and fleet- ing, mocking him, eludes his grasp. Strathmore, i6o FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr TH E dawn was red and very cold, the geranium hue of the sky glowing through the whiteness of the mist as it had done the previous day : nothing is more beautiful than these winter dawns, so rosy, so luminous, yet so vaporous, v/ith the morning star shining clear and lustrous in the red of the easterly heavens, and the clouds drifting like smoke along the faces of the hills. In Maremma, THEY say there is no love more tender than the love of an artist for his work, whether he is author, painter or musician ; for the fruit of his talent he bears a love that none save those who feel it can attempt to understand. Granville De Vigne, FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." i6i MEN are like snow-balls ; to begin with, it is a piece of snow, soft pure and malleable, and easily enough melted ; but the snow-ball gets kicked about and mixed up with other snow, and knocked against stones and angles, and hurried, shoved, and pushed along, until in sheer self-defense, it hardens itself into a solid, impenetrable, immovable block of ice. Granville De Vigne. *^T^ ROMAN'S wit" can do anything V V if given free run and free scope; and with that indescribable yet priceless quality of her sex she was richly endowed. Strathmore, i62 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr GENIUS should be wide as the heaven and deep as the sea in in- finite comprehension. To understand intuitively — that is the breath of life. Whose understanding was ever as bound- less as Shakespeare's ? From the woes of the mind diseased to the coy joys of the yielding virgin, from the ambition of the king and the conqueror, to the clumsy glee of the clown and the milkmaid, from the highest heights of human life to the lowest follies of it, he comprehended all. That is the wonder of Shakespeare. No other vv^riter was ever so miraculously impersonal. And if one thinks of his manner of life, it is the more utterly sur- prising. With everything in his birth and his career, and his temper, to make him a cynic and revolutionist, he has never a taint of either pessimism or revolt. Ariadne, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 163 EXPERIENCE IS an excellent spy- glass, but it has this drawback, that Prejudice very often clouds the lens. Puck, H E could not keep a gift he had no power to return in kind. In Maremma, A MAN can be a passable actor if Nature has given him the trick of it ; but he will not be a great one unless he studies the literature of his own and other nations ; unless he knows something of the intricacies of color and of melody ; above all, unless he can probe and analyze human nature, alike in its health and its disease. Pascarel, i64 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr PERFECT love casts out fear," runs the tradition ; rather, surely, does the perfect love of a woman break the courage which no other thing could even daunt, and set foot on the neck which no other yoke could even touch. F olle-Farine, H E is the best of all actors — one who believes in himself. Wanda, AS a maiden, she would have been - called lovely, but too cold, and passed over. Married, she had that posi- tion which adorns as diamonds adorn, and that charm of forbidden fruit which piques the sated palate of mankind. Moths, V FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 165 ANITY is the sole passion that knows no satiety. Tricotrin, AH! that is all the poor ever do know of what there is on earth — that there is pain and cold and death. Puck. HE had the hand of a painter, but he had the heart of a mountaineer. What he loved best was the rush of ice- fed waters, the stillness of the great gla- ciers, the rarefied air of the peaks and domes that towered above the earth- hiding clouds. In Maremma, n i66 FLASHES FROM " OUJDAr RETICENCE is a fine quality: It is the marble of human nature. But sometimes It provokes the Impatience that the marble awoke in Pygmalion. Wanda, ASSOCIATION, you know, is like the burr off the hedges ; it clings ere you know It, and we can scarcely free ourselves of it without losing something — be it only a shred. Pascarel. A DRUM is no pleasure to a boy after he has broken It and found the music Is empty wind, with no mystery about it whatever. Granville de Vzgne, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 167 HONESTY does not prosper, and truth is at a miserable discount ; straightforward frankness makes a myriad of foes, and adroit diplomacy as many foes. If you make a prettily-turned compliment, who cares if it is sincere ? If you hold your tongue where you cannot praise, be- cause you will not tell a conventional falseht)od, the world thinks you very ill- natured, or odiously satirical. Society is entirely built upon insincerity and con- ventionalities, from the wording of an ac- ceptance of a dinner invitation, where we write, ''with much pleasure," thinking to ourselves, ''What a bore !" to the giant hypocrisies daily spoken without a blush from pulpit and lecture, and legitimatized both as permissible and praiseworthy. To truth and unconventionalities society, of course, is averse ; and whoever dares to i68 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: uphold them must expect to be hissed as Paul by the Ephesians because he shiv- ered the silver shrines and destroyed the craft by which they got their wealth. Beatrice Boville, BE the reason what it may; lie as it will in climate, race or breeding ; it is a fact that the Italian physiognomy re- tains, as no other nation does, the im- pression of the Past upon it. PascareL THE boy had something girlish in him, as men of genius have ever some- thing of the woman. Signa: FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 169 G O ENIUS is fanaticism. Stgna, NE can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. Wanda. HERALDRY may lie, but voices do not. Low people make money, drive in haste, throng to palaces, receive kings at their tables, by force of gold ; but their antecedents always croak out In their voices. They either screech or purr. They have no clear undulation ; besides, their women always tumble over their trains, and their men bow worse than their servants. Tricotrin. I70 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr COMMONLY it is the woman on whom the remembranc of love has an enthralling power when love itself is traitor ; commonly it is the man on whom the past has little influence, and to whom its appeal is vainly made. Wanda, T O be liked nowadays you must make yourself cheap. Moths, THERE is something oddly touching, pathetic, and majestic, almost sacred, in the sight of the surging sea of human life. Taken individually, the units of each are unimpressive, grotesque, and common- place. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM ''OUlDAr 171 EW acquaintances are much pleas- anter than familiar ones ; the varnish is fresh and the gilding is bright, and the polish is smooth, and you onl}^ touch the surface with friends an hour old. Strathmore, WHOM one trusts with one's self, one may well trust with every thing else. Wanda. WHEN life is still a coin unspent, it looks the purest gold, and bears on it, under a bough of laurel, the figures of victory and of love. Signa, 172 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr ON the long, low, sandy lines of the coast, and on the blue waters, the moonlight was still shining. In the East, the great arc of the sky, the distant moun- tains, and the plains with their scattered cities, were all rose-colored with the flush of the rising day. Night and morning met, kissed and parted. In some vague way the strange beauty of it moved the be- holder. The vast breadth of water, that was so new to him, sparkling under the moon, with white sails motionless here and there, and islands like clouds, and in face of it the sunrise, awed him with its wonder, as the familiar loveliness of his own hills and valleys had no power to do. Signa, I FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 173 T is not fear of death, it is not desire oflife. Signa, LANDSCAPE painting is the only original form of painting that modern times can boast. Ariadne, HAD study and wise companionship been given to her, she might have found utterance for all the thoughts and the fancies, the dreams and the affections, that thronged on her amidst the woods and on the sea, but left her dumb and moved to a mute joy, keen almost to pain. In Maremma, 174 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDA: BETTER to know the secrets of the gods, even though with pain, than to lead the dull, brute life, though painless. It is only in our dark hours that we sell our souls to a dreamless ease. Idalia, FLORENCE never can be very sad. Her tears and smiles lie close to- gether. If she draws the saintly cowl above her, her fair eyes laugh from be- neath the folds, so that one half shall swear the robe of penance is a masker's domino. She tells her beads with one hand, but she touches her lute with the other. PastareL K FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 175 INDER than treachery is the knife that severs the chord of life. In Maremnta, " '^ I "HERE is no merit in virt -L sin would disgust one. I virtue when ;gust one. I suppose the world is right to be capricious in its award. Since it is only a matter of tem- perament, it is nothing very great to be guiltless. If one likes one's soul clean like one's hands, it is only a question of personal taste. There is no right and no wrong — so they say." Moths. WOMEN'S eyes are the pleasantest mirrors there are. Strathmore, 176 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: W OMEN always can, when they choose, find out anything. Moths, NEITHER benefit nor wrong would have ever been written in sand with her. In Maremma, CONSCIENCE is God! and hide us where we will, it tracks us out ; and we must look whither it bids; we must lis- ten to that which it utters ; we must be- hold that which it brings ; from its pursuit there is no escape, from its tribunal there is no appeal. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 177 THE world is like wine — there are heads it does not affect ; there are palates that do not like it. Wanda, THE desires and the delights of love die swiftly, but the knowledge of honor abides always. Under Two Flags, I OFTEN think that the doctrine of immortality has no better plea than the vague yearning for something unseen and unconceived, the unuttered desire which rises in us at the sound of true music. Granville De Vign£, 178 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: M EN do not like their religion spoken lightly of. Wanda, A MAN'S later loves are sure to be utterly different, and a distinct style, from his earlier. In his youth he only asks for what charms his eyes and senses ; in manhood — if he be a man of taste or intellect at all — he will go further, and re- quire interest for his mind and response for his heart. Granville De Vigne, T HE sea is fellow-reaper with death. Strathmore, c FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 179 RIME lies In Intent. Strathmore, REMORSE Is holy to God, sacred In men. Strathmore, I S crime ever burled? It sleeps, but is never dead. Strathmore, LOVE and marriage are two totally different things ; they ought never to be named together ; they are cat and dog ; one kills the other. Moths, i8o FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr HER high hopes were all dead, like last year's leaves. Lampblack, T HE proof of love is to endure in pain. Strathmore, T F the jealousy of a lover be poetic, the jealousy of a wife is only ridiculous. Wanda, w HEN will the truth be written of hospitals anywhere? If ever it were written, the faculty would swear it all a lie. A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr i8i W HEN a thing becomes personal, philosophy becomes difficult. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, WHEN people laugh in our own house, we must let them do it, even if it be at ourselves. Wanda, NATURE is a shocking socialist; that is why she is shut out from forum, school, and pulpit. She Is a white- robed Hypatia, whom the saints stoned lest her teachings should unseat them — and there is no renown like the Cyrils of the creeds. Tricotrin, i82 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr YOU should never have a woman to dinner ; they shouldn't come until the olives. You cannot appreciate the delicate flavor if you are obliged to turn a compliment while you are eating it ; you never can tell whether a thing is done to a second if, as you discuss it, you are pondering on the handsome flesh-tints of a living picture beside you. The presence of a woman disturbs that cool, critical acumen that serene, divine beatitude that should attend your dinner. Chandos. PHYSICAL beauty, even when it is a little soulless, is an admirable weap- on for instantaneous slaughter. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 183 FIDELITY is no fidelity unless it has opportunity to swerve if it choose. Granville De Vigne. I NSTINCT is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an enemy. Wanda. THERE are many losses that are bit- ter enough, but there is not one so bitter as the loss of the right to resent. Under Two Flags, WOMEN are the mischief that casts us adrift to chance. Under Two Flags, i84 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr NEVER say '' No " rashly, nor ''Yes" either ; but when you have said them, stand to them as a soldier to his guns. Moths, A WOMAN who has good conversa- tion is as rare as one who does not care for scandal. Granville De Vigne, THE Cross before which the fiend shrinks cowering in " Faust " is but a symbol of the power of a noble life to force even hatred to its knees. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 185 CALUMNY is the parasite of .char- acter ; the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler. Wanda, TO the mind of a child gigantic and utterable terrors rise up under the visitation of a vague alarm. Wanda, WE do our original maker credit; nothing good in this world is without a dash of diablerie. Samples are the wet blankets, proprieties are the bla.nk walls, principles are the quickset hedges of life ; but devilry is its champagne. Under Two Flags, i86 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr IF a man breaks his leg, he thinks it a sad accident, a great affliction ; if he sees his friend break his, he has no hesi- tation in pronouncing it a judgment. Granville De Vigne, T O those who are courageous, all things are possible. Under Two Flags, THE ocean, in her spiritual, poetic creed, was, as the mighty servant of God, moved by his voice, and ruled by his will ; eternal power spoke to her in the rushing of the storm, as eternal mercy smiled on her in the sunlight of the seas. Slratkmore, A FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 187 MAN'S faithfulness has always such a different ending from a woman's. Wanda, SOLITUDE ! sweet to the youth who first suffers ; to the poet who finds in his thorn-crown his aureole ; to the lover who is half enamored and half proud of the fangs that devour him ; sweet to those. But to the man of the world, to the man past his youth, to the man whose last hope is dead with his last joy and last passion — solitude would be but the gate of the mad-house. Puck, o NE learns never to hope for the miracle of a charitable judgment. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, i88 FLASHES FROM ^'OUIDAr FIDELITY Is the marriage bond of God, the laws of man cannot com- mand it, the laws of man are void with- out it. Granville De Vi^ne, HYPOCRITES weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet. Moths, ART is the divining-rod that will blossom like the almond-tree ; but it will be bare and barren if the magician himself half scoffs, and wholly doubts. PascareL o FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 189 PALS are the jewels of calamity. Cecil Castlemaine s Gage. THERE can never be too much cere- mony. It preserves amiability, self-respect, and good manners. It Is the distinguishing mark between the gentle- man and the poor. Wanda, PARIS is the Aspasia of cities, but Florence is the HeloTse ; upon the brilliancy of her genius and her beauty there lies always the shadow of the clois- ter, and always the divinity of a great sac- rifice. PascareL I90 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr I HAVE always heard that Genius is something that they beat to death first with sticks and stones, and set upon a great rock to worship afterwards. Puck, BEFORE the presence of a threaten- ing death, life grows real, love grows precious, to the coldest and most careless. Under Two Flags, FRIENDSHIP is a sturdy plant, a sweet herb and a savory ; but when it touches the purse-strings, somehow it shrivels. Artadfie, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 191 A GREAT teacher has said, ''The Humanities must outweigh the Science at all times." Wanda. A'' MASTERLY inactivity" is never so masterly as when it glues you fast to a good berth, no matter whether you're fit or unfit for it. Puck. AFTER all, there is virtue in content- ment, since contentment is satisfac- tion with one's lot ; there is far more vir- tue in endurance — strong, manful, steady, endurance — of a fate that is adverse, and one admitted to be such, but against which one fights hard. Granville de Vigne, 192 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE dawn awoke, the pine boughs were sun-bathed in the light ; the snowy surf was tossed upon the beach, the waves swept up with stately measure and broke in melodious murmur on the shore, and curlews flew through the fresh air. Earth, sky and ocean kept no record of their work, and over the sunken reef where the ship had found her grave the wild, blue waters, rearing in the sunbeam, broke in joyous, idle mirth, crested with snow- white foam. Strathmore, SO things pulseless and passionless en- dure, and human life passes away as swiftly as a song dies off from the air. Cecil Castlemaine s Gage, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 193 IT needs a great nature to bear the weight of a great gratitude. In Maremma, ^ I GIVE thee the only thing without payment In this world — advice. Folle-Farine. COURAGE is a mere gift of God. Wanda. T HE Devil Is never so brutal as when he comes In a woman's form. Tricotrin, 13 194 FLASHES FROM '' OUJDAr THE snow upon the Apennines' crest looked like battlements of ivory around the citadel of God. Ill Maremma, HE was avaricious ; but many will honor a miser quicker than a spendthrift. Folle-Farine, IT ought to be difficult to make artifi- cial flowers. I wish it were impossible ; it is a blasphemy. Moths, T HE woman makes or mars the man ; the man the woman. Signa, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 195 THE long, tedious, sickly, friendless days, that drop one by one in their eternal sameness into the weary past, these kill slowly but surely, as the slow dropping of water frets away rock. HE had the easy scorn of a modern student, yet for the old faith that moved the simple hearts of the women of his family he kept a reverent indulgence. In Maremma, HUMILIATION is a guest that only comes to those who have made ready his resting-place and will give him a fair welcome. Puck, 196 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr ONCE In prison, you are forever down In the books of the police, and sub- ject to examinations and Interrogation at , any word or act that seems to them to be suspicious. You never wholly escape. You are as a bird let loose, and flying with a recall thread tied to its foot. Hu- man justice is a sadly deficient thing. A Village Commune, THERE is something In the silence of an empty room that sometimes has a terrible eloquence : it is like the look of coming death In the eyes of a dumb animal ; it beggars words, and makes them needless. Ariadne, FLASHES FROM '^ OUIDAr 197 H E who likes nothing but books and pictures win never be alone. Wanda, HE held that a man's chief passion is his destiny, and will shape his fate, rough-hew his fate as circumstance or hazard may. Folle-Farine, ADVENTURESS! Adventurer ! That Is the name the Avorld gives any man or woman who dares to be clever, brilliant, or successful out of the old routine. Strathmore, ipS FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr WHEN the mildew Is on the grain, who shall make it fair wheat again ? A Village Commune, « T^OREVER" IS a word for fools; A even forbearance will not last '' for- ever " if it is tried too far. Strathmore, A MAN, be he bramble or vine, likes to grow in the open air in his own fashion ; but a woman, be she flower or weed, always thinks she would be better under glass. When she gets the glass, she breaks it — generally ; but until she gets it, she pines. Pascarel, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 199 GENIUS gives Immortality in another sense than in the vulgar one of being praised by others after death ; it gives elasticity, unwearied sympathy, and that sense of some essence stronger than death, of some spirit higher than the tomb which nothing can destroy. It is in this sense that genius walks with the immortals. Moths, H UMANITY was born with weak nesses. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, o NLY life had taught him that love is the brother of death. Signa, 200 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr TAKE to your bosom that flower alone which Hves In the fullness of light, and folds no leaves unopened from your gaze. Idalm, HE knew that to those who go, for- getfulness is easy ; to those who stay, impossible. Signa, FAME has only the span of a day, they say ; but to live in the hearts of the people — that is worth something. Signa, T T IS wife was his religion. Wanda, ' FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 201 THEY had now come into the fragrant gloom of the forest, where the trees stood thick as bowmen in a fight in olden days, and the mountains rose behind them stern and blue, like tempest-clouds, while the silence was full of the fresh sound of rushing waters. Moths. WOMEN will not often see widely, but they see microscopically; they can not analyze, but they have in- valuable, rapid intentions. Strathmore, I THINK those who make war on women are no longer lit to fight with men. Under Tzvo Flags, 202 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr WE labor for the ideal, said the Florentines of old, lifting to heaven their red flower-de-luce, and to this day Europe bows before what they did, and cannot equal it. Pascarel. SOME people believe they have a conscience as they know they have a liver; but the liver troubles them some- times, the conscience is only a word. Moths, THE obligation of forgiveness is to pardon offenses, infidelity, unkind- ness, cruelty, but not dishonor. To pardon dishonor is to be dishonored. Wanda, I FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 203 F you have nothing to assume or to conceal, what cause have you to fear ? Beatrice Boville, WHY is It, I wonder, that a gloomy past often looks brighter than a brilliant present? What is there in the charm of Distance to give such a golden chiaro-oscuro ? Strathmore, I NEVER judge a man by his life, but by his heart ; circumstances make the one, but nature has formed the other ; and if it be the right metal it will always ring true. Belles and Blackcock, 204 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr POETS are but men — men a little nearer to God and the truth than are others. Tricotrin, ** ^ f ^HE loveliest things in all creation -L are the sunrise and the moonlight ; and who has time in our stupid life, that is called pleasure, to see either of them ? " FOR in the latter years we throb all over with so many wounds that we have learned to value the hand that plucks a dockleaf for our nettle sting, though we know well no balm can heal the jagged rent in the breast no man sees. PascareL FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 205 THE nights, perfect as they are, have scarcely more loveliness than the birth of light. The first rippling laughter of the early day. PascareL THERE were shadowed out in her the twin foes of all genius — the woman and the world. Signa. THE river ran by with a sweet song of its own ; the tranquil town seemed to sleep; the people, gathered below, were hushed and reverent; the fresh glad wind that lives in Alpine forests swept by, bringing the scent of the pine- wood with it. Moths. 2o6 FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." THERE is no coldness so unchanging, so unyielding, so absolute, as the coldness of one who loves what is lost. In Maremma, IT has been written that there is not one man without some gleam of tenderness and pity — it is not written there is not one woman. Puck. A WORD that needs compelling is broken by the heart before the lips gave it. It is to plant a tree without a root, to put faith in a man that needs a bond. Folle-Farine, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 207 CREATURES that take out their grief in crape and mortuary tablets can't feel very much. Puck. I WONDER they choose early death as the gentlest fate ; to die in youth, to leave all the warmth of life for the loneliness of the grave, to grow blind to the light of the sun, and deaf to the voices we love, and to lie alone there dead, while the birds awaking and the wind is blowing over the flowers and the day is dawned for all but us ! Oh, who would choose it ? Strathmore. L OVE is a destiny. Wanda, 2o8 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE secret of being happy yourself lies in the capacity to be intensely disagreeable to other people. Puck, SHE knew nothing of transmitted taint and hereditary influence, but her experience told her that what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. In Maremma. THE indifference to fortune of a man of genius is, to a man of the world, the stupor of idiocy ; from such a stupor he will some day be shaken to find him- self face to face with beggary. Folle-Farine. JRLASHES FROM ''QUID A." 209 TILL you cease to enjoy, you are ignorant how to endure. The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fullest stature : the waters of bitterness are the debatable food through which they reach the shores of wisdom : the ashes boldly grasped and eaten without faltering are the price that must be paid for the golden fruit of knowledge. The swimmer cannot tell his strength till he has gone through the wild force of the opposing waves, the great man cannot tell the might of his hand and the power of his resistance till he has wrestled with the angel of adver- sity and held it close till it has blessed him. Ckandos, U 2IO FLASHES FROM ''OUIDA." T~^EEP feeling is rare, but it does not ^^ follow that on that account it is unreal. Granville De Vigne, LOVE — past or present — is like a Jack-in-a-box, always jumping up when you think it screwed down. It is like dandelion seed for lightness, blowing away with a breath, and yet is like nettles for obstinacy ; there is no knowing when it is plucked up. Chandos, NEVER forget that the greatest men of all nations sprang from the people. Chandos. A FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 211 ND is not the gold of the rich their own, as well as the crust of the poor ? In Maremma, NEITHER before nor after marriage would any man, who respected his wife, suffer curiosity or suspicion to enter into him. If he do he has no right to expect happiness, and he will certainly not go the way to get it. Beatrice Boville, IT takes a wise and a long head to have a secret ! It is as dangerous as a packet of dynamite to most persons. Moths, 212 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: THE hills lie quiet and know no change ; the winds wander among the arbutus-bells and shake the odors from the clustering herbs ; the stone-pines scent the storm ; the plain outspreads its golden glory to the morning light ; the sweet chimes ring ; the days glide on ; the splendors of the sunsets burn across the sky, and make the mountains as the jeweled thrones of gods. Signa, THE cursing envy of the Irish or French poor is not in the Italian : if he can sit in the sun and cut a slice of melon in the Summer, a slice of sausage in Winter, he is content, and ready to laugh and be merry with you. A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 213 I NEVER knew a man who could not support with most philosophic indiffer- ence the cruelty of one woman if he had another to turn to, provided she had not left him for another man. Granville De Vigne, WHERE doubt has once come, faith is dishonored. Ckandos, AIR is the king of physicians ; he who stands often with nothing between him and the open heavens will gain from them health, both moral and physical. In Maremma. 214 FLASHES FROM ''OUFDAr THERE is no cruelty with which pas- sion has not been allied ; there is no vengeance so remorseless as that which has its birth in love that has turned to hate. Strathmore, COUNTRY folks believe in fair words as a panacea for all evils and ills, and a talisman against all peril and en- mity. A Village Co^nmune, HE would do a kindness : not a very great virtue, perhaps ; but it is a rare one. Under Two Flags, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 215 TRUTH is a gem that loves the deep, applies to truth metaphysical his- torical and philosophical ; but truth per- sonal is rather a flower like the brier- rose, too homely, too simple, and too thorny for men to care to gather it. Friendship, THE only time when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that one single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming seems to that single soul to be Past, Present and Future, and to be at once the creation and the end of all things. Bdbde. CONTENT slays ambition. Wanda, 2i6 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA," THE imagination of man may be great, but it can never be at its greatest until one serpent, with merciless fangs, has bitten it through and through, and Impregnated It with passion and with poison — that one deathless serpent which is memory. Folle-Farine, SHE despised herself; and there Is no shame more bitter to endure. Moths, DISCUSSION may be the salt of life to a few, but listeners and echoes are the bon-bons and cigarettes that no woman can do without. In a Winter City, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 217 FEW men can meet the eyes of a woman who loves them purely and faithfully, after a long absence, without some pangs of conscience, without some contrast of the quality of her fidelity and their own. Stratkmore, ASLLCCESSFUL man always ap- proves the world because the world has approved him. Stratkmore. WHEN a woman sees anything out of her window that makes her eager to look again, she always shuts the shutter. Why, I wonder ? A Provence Rose, 2i8 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr RAGGI — perhaps with that divine pity which dogs have — divined the sad destiny of the cripple. A Village Commune, w HAT Is death that it should give us leave to be unfaithful ? In Maremma, SHE was brave, self-reliant, and tender to all those creatures whom the human race, because it understands not their language, chooses to call dumb. Of the human beast she had not fear, but a great mistrust. In Maremma, A FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 219 WOMAN faithful will not even think that any can feel love for her, -save one : it is almost infidelity. Ariadne, L EARN to be silent. It is a woman's first duty, though her hardest. Bebde, T3AST follies have present obligations, and old sins have long shadows. Ariad^ie. E VERY woman is, at heart, a Bohe- mian. Malta, 220 FLASHES FROM " OUlDAr I MUST keep my word to her; she is not living to release me." In Maremma, HER eyes were filled and shadowed with many altering thoughts. Under Two Flags, INDUSTRY and talent can never fail long to obtain recognition. A Village Commune, THERE is a wild and wayward des- tiny in life which ever loads fruition with satiety. Tricotrin, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 221 AMILIARITY is no courtier, and time is always cruel. Wanda, M USIC is meant for silence. In a Winter City, A MOMENT is enough for love to be born. Wanda, HE was dead, like the child Itys, for whom his mother mourns through all the ages with every summer's eve. In Maremma, 222 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr I HATE silence myself ! Thoughts are very good grain ; but if they are not whirled round, round, round, and winnowed in the millstones of talk, they keep little hard, useless kernels, that not a soul can digest. Under Two Flags, SHE needed to be alone — alone with the shadows, and the leaves, and wide waters and the green, wet plain, and all the things that told her she was free. In Maremma, c OINCIDENCE is a god that greatly influences mortal affairs. Puck. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 223 TRAGEDIES drift out of the memo- ries of men as wrecked ships sink from sight under a rising tide. "' Violent delights have violent endings ; " passion is not always love, nor even love always remembrance. In Maremma, ONE may be queen of all the world but not sovereign of one's self; and our hearts are like Ben Johnson's blow- balls — now here, now there, wherever the winds of chance and caprice like to float them. Strathmore, A SECRET, once disclosed, is like a bird once loosed. In Maremma. 224 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." INSECURITY is to the passion as wind to the flame : without the cold breeze wafted to it, the embers will have faded fast and never flared up into life ; with the rush of the cooler air, the fire leaps into flame, and its lust is not sated until it has destroyed all before it. Strathmore, D feet. O not take what you cannot pay — that is the way to walk with pure Bibde IT is harder to live well than to die well ; but that is because dying is over so soon. Wanda, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 225 THE Incessant talk about dress is so tiresome and vulgar. The women who want their costumes praised are ^ women who have only just begun to dress tolerably, and are still not quite sure of the effects. In a Winter City. LADIES always wipe their pens as religiously as they bolt their bed- room doors, believe in comestics, and go to church on Sunday. Lady Marabout' s Troubles. O NLY cowards write to save them- selves from pain. Wanda. 15 226 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr HE enjoyed ! Oh, golden sun of this world, sweet content ! Supreme truth of Faust ! When he should "To the passing moment say, Stay ! thou art so fair !" then the philosopher knew that he could claim to have tasted happiness. When once we look back or look forward, then has the trail of the serpent been over our Eden. To enjoy, we must live the in- stant we grasp. It is so easy for the preacher, when he has entered the days of darkness, to tell us to find no flavor in the golden fruit, no music in the song of the charmer, no spell in the eyes that look love, no delirium in the soft dreams of the lotus ; so easy, when these things are dead and barren for himself, to say they are forbidden ! But men must be far FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 227 more, or far less, than mortal, ere they can bind their eyes and dull their senses, and forswear their natures and obey the dreariness of the commandment ; and there is little need to force the sackcloth and serge upon us. The roses wither long before the wassail is over, and there is no magic that will make them bloom again, for there is none that will renew us — Youth. Ckandos, IT may be that a life led In atonement, is the life nearest to God, and most blessed by men. Tricotrin, OPPOSITION to a man in love, Is like oil to fire. Granville De Vigne, 228 FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." THE evening had just followed on the glow of the day — evening, more lus- trous than ever, for the houses were all a-glitter with endless lines of colored lamps and strings of sparkling Illumina- tions, a very sea of bright-hued fire. Under Two Flags, DO your own business before noon, but don't be bored by your friends until after. Stratkmore, HE knew the force of hereditary in- stincts, the strange and subtile influence of descent. In Maremma. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 229 THE fatal desire of fame, which is to art the corroding element, as the de- sire of the senses is to love — bearing with it the seeds of satiety and morality — has entered into him without his knowing what it was that ailed him. Szgna, T O the young everything is possible, to the old, nothing. Folle-Farine, NEVER combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon — unselfishness ! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort. Wanda, 230 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr MEN sought him, houses opened to him, friends came around him; he was known ; and in that one word there lies for genius all the width that yawns be- tween heaven and hell. Puck, NO true artist ever yet worked for ambition. He does the thing which is in him to do by a force far stronger than himself. PascareL PATIENCE ! the lowliest stone may serve to bring to earth the loftiest bird that soars. Stratkmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 231 IT was a picture, Rembrandt in color Oriental in composition, with the darkness surrounding it stretching out into endless distance, that led to the mystic silence of the great desert, and above the intense blue of the gorgeous night, with the stars burning through white transparent mists of slowly drifting clouds. Under Two Flogs. PURE accident has the ruling of most of our lives; but in concession to our weakness and our pride, we call it destiny, and we like to think its caprices are commands. Moths. 232 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr I BELIEVE that the knowledge of the world and of humanity, the extent of sympathy, and elasticity of pardon, are underrated. Wanda, NOW life is brutal ; and to none so brutal as to the aged, who remem- ber so well, and yet are forgotten as though already they were amid the dead. Under Two Flags, PUT your second frock on for the queen, if you like," she would say to the child, '* but to the poor go in your best clothes, or they will feel hurt." Moths. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 233 THE day smiles on us, but the night always seems fullest of God's love and pity. Strathmore, THAT which is jest to the well-born, can sting like a serpent what is desolate and dependent. Tricotrin, PASSING the open door of church or cathedral, his thoughts pursued him, for the hot sun seemed streaming down upon the written law which guards the sanctity of life, and forbids its golden cord to be cut asunder by the hand of man. Strathmore, 234 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA, A LL great men are happiest in stormy waters. A Village Commune, M EN are always what some woman or other makes them. Moths, LADIES are the exact antipodes of olives ; the one begins In salt, and leaves us blest with the delicious aroma ; the other, with all due deference, Is nectar to commence with (but how soon, though our own fault, entirely, of course), they turn Into gall! Granville De Vigne, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 235 W" ERE two love, one is always selfish. Tricotrin. GENIUS possesses the power of spon- taneous and exquisite production without effort and with delight. The Child of Urbino. NO book is so eagerly read as the one you forbid us. Strathmore, FRIENDSHIP needs to be rooted in respect. In Maremma, 236 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE man who puts chains upon another's limbs is only one shade worse than he who puts fetters on another's free thoughts, and on another's free con- science. Chandos, WE may lavish what we will — kindly thoughts, royal service, untiring aid, and generous deed — and they are all but as oil to the burning, as fuel to the flame, when spent upon those who are jealous of us. Chandos, I THINK adventure is like calamity: some people are born to it. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 237 AN Englishman Is always boxing or -^~~^ grumbling ; the two make up his life. Under Two Flags, A PASSIONATE sorrow for a human sorrow possessed her. Folle-Farine, SHE was a gentle-looking woman, with a very soft voice, which she never raised under any provocation. She had a will of steel, but she made It look like a blossoming and pliant reed ; she was very religious and strongly ritualistic. Moths. 238 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr GREAT gifts need slight praise. Puck, A FULL moon made the narrow sea a sheet of silver ; a high tide had carried the beach up to the edge of the black rocks ; in the white luminous space one little dark sail was slowly drifting be- fore the wind, the sail of a fishing or dredging boat. The calmness, the silence, the lustre, the sweet, fresh, strong sea- scent, so familiar to her in her childhood, filled her with an infinite melancholy. Moths. T I ME tempers every thing, and there are always consolations. Moths. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 239 THE only thing in life whose sweet- ness never fails and cannot die is vengeance. Strathmore, A MAN must talk, even when he is a holy one : that stands to reason. In Maremma, OTHER arts earth still mingles with and profanes ; passion is in the poet's words, the senses wake with the painter's voluptuous hues, and the sculptor dreams but of divine beauty of woman's form ; but with music the soul escapes all bondage, and rises where the world has no share, unclogged and unaccompanied. Tricotrin, 240 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." ] T WOMAN is never too old to be averse to the thought that she can charm. Wanda, PEOPLE must make themselves agreeable to be agreeable to the world ; yea, and eat a good deal of dust, too ; if they are very high and mighty by birth, of course they can be as disagree- able as they choose. Friendship A JUST chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does ; but an unjust one turns all his blood to gall. A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM '' OUTDAr 241 THEY who labor justly for the sheer sake of truth find no present re- ward ; will they hereafter find it ? A weary question, one to which men have never gained an answer. Ckandos, FROM Paradise downward, feminine interference was never productive but of a losing game for man. Strathmore. THERE is no ghost whose breath is so cold, as the ghost of a love that is dead. PascareL 16 242 FLASHES FROM '' OUlDAr THERE are natures which in their anguish seek the fellowship of their kind as a wounded deer will seek his herd ; there are others which shun it as the stricken eagle soars aloft to die alone, howsoever the blood be dropping from his broken wings. Strathmore, FOR mothers never forget. That I am very sure. No, not though they sit on the right hand of God with His angels. PascareL H E stood silent, also unconscious that he was cruel, as men mostly are. In Maremma, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 243 THERE is a silence of the mountains that is beautiful beyond all other beauty. There is another silence of the mountains that is lonely beyond all other loneliness. Signa, LYING is gossip ; debt is momentary embarrassment ; immorality is a little slip, and so forth ; and when we have arranged this pretty little dictionary of convenient pseudonyms, it is not agreeable to have it sent flying. Friendship, TO greet a new fear with a smile and not a sigh, one must be tranquil at least, if not happy. A Provence Rose, 244 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr SOCIETY — that smooth and sparkling sea — is excessively difficult to navi- gate ; Its surf looks no more than cham- pagne foam, but a thousand quicksands and shoals He beneath ; there are breakers ahead for more than half the dainty pleas- ure-boats that skim their hours upon It, and the foundered He by millions, for- gotten, five fathoms deep below. Ckandos, WOMAN always runs away to be run after, and If you do not pursue her, she comes back — always. BMe. w HEN the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt. Wanda. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 245 THERE is nothing in after-times^ however radiant with pleasure or success those latter times may be, so per- fectly happy as the buoyant and fearless ignorance of the creature who has just left childhood for youth, just thrust out its hand from the shell of dependence and ventured alone to survey with dazzled and delighted eyes the illimitable domain that lies in the mere possible. Pascarel, IF there were only a single rose, here and there upon earth, men and women would pass their years on their knees be- fore its beauty. I wonder sometimes if human ingratitude for beauty ever hurts God ? One might fancy even Deity wounded by neglected gifts. Moths. 246 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr W HEN a woman is handsome, she is never denied. Under Two Flags, ALL things fall into the grave of time, which, ever full, yet ever yawns for more. Strathmore, FEW are so deeply lost that an Infi- nite mercy cannot do something to restore them. Strathmore, F OR an instant remembrance held her in its thrall. Puck. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 247 A WELL-KNOWN writer has said, " Genius is the power of taking pains." The Child of Urbino, GENIUS cannot escape the taint of its time, more than a child the influence of its begetting. Ariadne, FEAR took the place of that exalta- tion which had sustained her sinking limbs so far — the nameless fear which comes on all free forest things when they are driven to approach a city. In Maremma, 248 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr "• "X/OU must await the Peruvian Para- i dise. Meanwhile, there is a day- spring that represents the sun not ill ; we call it wealth." Folle-Farine. SOME persons are always looking for a four-leaved shamrock. In that sort of search, life slips away unperceived ; one is very soon left alone with one's dead leaves. Wanda. HER eyes were blinded with the celestial beauty of a love that asked for itself nothing more on earth or heaven than this life it had. In Maremma, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 249 i TO wait for happiness is a living death ; to hope for it is a dreamer s phan- tasy. Granville De Vigne, NINE-TENTHS of creatures in this world don't know how to put on a glove. It's an art, and an art that requires long study. Under Two Flags, TELL a man wine is good for him, and forbid him water, he will for- swear his cellar and run to the pump im- mediately. Granville De Vigne. 250 FLASHES FROM ^'OUIDAr BUT painters, if one chance to please them at all, always see so many types in one's face, all more or less contra- dictory of each other, that one comes to the irresistible conclusion that it must after all be typical of the poor human nature which makes us all akin — when it does not set us all at strife. PascareL WHEN a man's eyes meet yours, and his faith trusts you, and his heart upon a vague impulse is laid bare to you, it always has seemed to me the basest treachery the world can hold, to pass the gold of confidence which he pours out to you from hand to hand as common coin for common circulation. PascareL FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 251 CIRCUMSTANCE is so odd and so cruel a thing. It is wholly apart from talent. PascareL DEATH appalls at all ages the Latin temperament. In Maremma, ICTURES, like beauties, kill each other. Puck. COUNT art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged. PascareL 252 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE philosopher stands at his desk In the lecture-hall, and demonstrates away the soul of man, and, with exact thought, measures out his atoms and resolves him back to gas and air. The revolutionary below in the crowd, hears, and only translates what he hears thus to his brethren : '' Let us drink while we may ; property is robbery, this life is all ; let us kill and eat ; there is no God." A Village Commune, SCANDALS are like dandelion-seeds : a breath scatters them to the four winds of heaven ; but they are arrow- headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold. Chandos, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr '253 SHE liked best to be alone and to be always in movement ; she never cared to be still, except in the church where there was a requiem or a choral mass, and the sounds went floating away into the dark dimly-lit place and mingled with the sounds of the seas and the winds without. In Maremma, T HE recovery of existence always en- hances its savor. Wanda. E OVE is born as much of scenic effects as of the senses. Wanda, 254 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE strings were touched by an artist hand, and all that duller ears heard, but dimly, in the splash and surge of the brown fern-covered stream, he heard in marvelous poems and translated with clearer tongue, the universal tongue which has no country and no limit, and which the musician speaks alike to sovereign and to savage. Tricotrin. WHERE there Is hatred of one or of the other, true judgment is possible of neither. Ariadne, T O slander his neighbor Is indirectly to flatter your listener. Ckandos. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 255 GREECE cannot die! No matter what the land be now, Greece — our Greece^must live forever. Her language lives : the children of Europe learn it, even If they halt it in imperfect numbers. The ei*eater the scholar the humbler he still bends to learn the words of wisdom from her schools. The poet comes to her for all his fairest myths, his noblest mys- teries, his greatest masters. The sculp- tor looks at broken fragments of her statues, and throws aside his calliope in despair before these matchless wrecks. From her, soldiers learn how to die, and nations how to conquer and keep their liberties. No deed of heroism is done but, to crown it, it is named parallel to hers. They write of Love, and who for- gets the Lesbian ? They dream of free- dom, and to reach it, they remember Salamis. They talk of progress, and 256 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr while they talk, they sigh for all they have lost in Academus. They seek truth, and while they seek wearily along, as little children, to hear the golden speech of Socrates, that slave, fisherman, sailor, stone-mason and date-seller were all once free to hear in her Agora. But for the light that shone from Greece in the break- ing of the Renaissance, Europe would have perished in its Gothic darkness. They call her dead ; she can never die while her life, her soul, her genius, breathe fire into the new nations, and give their youth all of greatness and of grace that they can claim. Greece dead ! She reigns in every poem written, in every art pursued, in every liberty won, in every godlike life, and godlike death, in your fresh lands, which, but for her, would be barbarian now. Idalia. FLASHES FROM ^'OUIDAr 257 FAME ! It Is the flower of a day, that dies when the next sun rises. But to do something, however little, to free men from their chains, to aid something, however faintly, the rights of reason and of truth, to be unvanqulshed through all and against all, — these may bring one nearer the pure ambition of youth. Ckandos, NO weapon, not even the anointed one can turn aside the devilish hate of envy. Wanda, I GAVE you ten-fold more than love: I gave you trust." Tricotrifu 258 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr EVERY woman has a heart, even the worst women, though to be sure, we forget it sometimes, until we've broken them. Chandos, THE loveHest thing in all the world is courage that goes hand in hand with mercy ; and these two together can work miracles like magicians. The Little Earl, I HOPE earth is but an antechamber which we pass through, and fill with beautiful things, or befoul with dust and blood at our own will. Wanda, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 259 THE gleam of the dawn spread In one golden glow of morning, and the day rose radiant over the world. Under Two Flags, THERE is no more disastrous destiny under the sun than to be made ridiculous. Moths. MEN are very much in society as women will them to be. Let a woman's society be composed of men gently-born and bred, and if she find them either coarse or stupid, make answer to her : '* You must have been coarse or stupid yourself." Puck, 26o FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr SOCIETY is a crucible In which all gold melts. Out of It is drawn only- one or two prizes — vanity or disgust. Ariadne, E VERY woman becomes half a clair- voyant when she is In love. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, BECAUSE the flax and the laleza blossom for use, and the garden- flowers grow trained and pruned, must there be no bud that opens for mere love of the sun, and swings free in the wind in its fearless, fair fa3hion ? Believe me, it is the lives which follow no previous rule, which do the most good. Under Two Flags, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 261 IS it true that a great love must be as exhaustless as the ocean in its mercy and as profound in its comprehension ? Wanda, A SINGLE word ill said is often the little rift within the lute which makes the music dumb. Wanda, L OVERS are like husbands, they con- done. Moths. AME is capricious, but failure is seldom inconstant. Fame, 262 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr WITH a book, like a man, the lack of pedigree matters nothing, if the pages within be writ fair. Tricotrin, A SPANISH blonde is the greatest marvel of beauty that the world ever sees. Strathmore, A STATESMAN rules for a life-time, but it is only the poet whose sceptre stretches over generations unborn. Tricotrin, A HERO or a king grows as helpless as a lame beggar when he is ill. Wanda. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 263 THERE is a vast error in which the world believes — that gamesters are moved by the lust of gain only, by the desire of greed, by the longing of avarice. It is not so ; the money won they toss back without an instant's pause, to risk its loss at venture. Avarice is no part of the delirium that- allures them with so ex- haustless a fascination ; the spell that binds them is the hazard. Give a game- ster thousands, he cares for the gold only to purchase with it that delicious, feverish, intoxicating charm of chance. There is a delight in its agony, a sweetness in its in- sanity, a drunken, glorious intensity of sensation in its limitless swing between a prince's treasures and a beggar's death, which lends life a sense never known before. Chandos, 264 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr WOMEN scorn a timid lover ; though slyness is the best tribute to their own power, you never can get them to appreciate it. Tricotrin, I LIKE people with weaknesses ; those without them do look so dreadfully scornfully and unsympathizingly upon one from the altitude of their superiority. Lady Marabouf s Troiibles, A FIRM will sheathed in soft phrases is a power never resisted in a little household, or in the world of men. Szgna. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 265 THERE Is think, like nothing upon earth, I ike the smile of Italy as she awakes when the winter has dozed itself avv^ay in the odors of its oak-wood fires. The whole land seems to laugh. The spring-tide of the north is green and beau- tiful, but it has nothing of the radiance, the dreamfulness, the ecstasy of spring in the southern countries. The spring-tide of the north, with the gentle, colorless sweetness of its world of primroses : the spring-tide of Italy is rainbow-hued like the profusion of anemones that laugh with it in every hue of glory under every ancient wall and beside every hill-fed stream. Spring in the north Is a child that wakes from dreams of Death ; spring in the south is a child that wakes from dreams of Love. One is rescued and 266 FLASHES FROM ''QUID A." welcomed from the grave ; but the other comes smiling on a sunbeam from heaven. Pascarel. THERE is a chord in every human heart that has a sigh in it if touched aright. When the artist finds the key- note which that chord will answer to, in the dullest as in the highest, then he is great. Szgna, TO die when life can be lived no longer with honor, is greatness indeed ; but to die because it galls, and wearies and is hard to pursue — there is no greatness in that ! it is the suicide's plea for self-pity. Trzcolrzn. T FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 267 HE swan must suffer before he sings. Granville De Vigne. M OZART loved his wife, but it was not of his wife he thought when he was dying. It was of his requiem. Szgna, HER eyes had a blind, unconscious look in them, like those of eyes that have recently lost their sight and are not yet used to the eternal darkness. Moths. WAITING heightened the imagina- tion and spurred expectancy. Szgna, 268 FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr T HOSE who are happy, die before their dreams. Signa, -L' itself OVE kills everything and then dies Signa. I N men and women Love waking wakes with himself the soul. Signa, SINCERE love can be no insult to whomsoever proffered. Cecil Castlemaine s Gage, T FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 269 HE night is perfect, all the hillside is hushed in an intense stillness, Pascm^eL H UMAN life seems so small beside the vast life of universal creation. Granville De Vigne, A HOUSE has its moral atmosphere as a city has. Frescoes, A S there is love without dominion, so there is dominion without love. Moths, 270 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr I HAVE heard much of the acute vis- ion of love ; but love has alv/ays seemed to me to be as blind as ten thou- sand bats. Frescoes, IN life there are so many histories which are like broken boughs that strew the ground, snapped short at either end, so that none knew the crown of them, nor the root. Folle-Farine, A N angel comes once in their lives to F\. most men : seldom do they know their visitants, often do they thrust the door against it. Ariadne, FLASH'ES FROM '' OUIDAr 271 COULD we foresee one step before another, would the lives of any of us be blasted, blundered, full of bitterness and of evil as they are ? Is not the mis- ery of every life due to the band that is bound fast on our eyes, which the wisest can do little to lift, which makes us feel our way blindly, uncertainly, erringly, stumbling at every step, which is never lifted save when our faces are turned backward and we are bidden t© look behind us at the land we have quitted, which is sown thick with graves ; and at the gates which are closed upon us on which is written, '' Too Late." Strathmore, F ALSE sentiment is almost worse than none at all. Wanda. 272 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr. I NEVER do favor saying things to a woman that a man would knock you down for. Frescoes, NOTHING looks so sweet to us as a lost home in which a stranger is installed. Puck, THE exquisite and mysterious music of that human voice seemed to bring with it the echo of a heaven forever lost. Moths. E CCENTRIC! I am not genius enough for that." Under Two Flags, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 273 A WOMAN who knows her power can always tax any negligence to her as heavily as she likes. Strathmore. MYSTERY is to the tongue of the story-teller as butter to the hungry mongrel; but what is simple is passed over by human mouths as daisies by the grazing horse. Signa. IF one be a man and has a shred of honor, one must lie so often ; so sel- dom is there any other way that serves a woman. PascareL 274 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr MARRIAGE Is a disagreeable legal necessity for a man with titles and entails, and the best color for a wife Is a discreet plainness. Strathmore, IS there a more pitiable spectacle than that of a wife contending with others for that charm In her husband's sight which no philters and no prayers can re- new when once It has fled ? Love Is a bird's song — beautiful and eloquent — when heard In forest-freedom, harsh and worthless In repetition, when sung from behind prison-bars. You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by cap- tivity. Wanda. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 275 ALL sound things are simple. It Is the sham and rotten ones that want an Intricate scaffolding to keep them from falling. Idalia, THEN swiftly, suddenly, the sun sank ; the twilight passed like a gray, glid- ing shade, an Instant, over earth and sea and night, the balmy, sultry, star-studded night of Africa fell over the thirsty leaf- age longing for its dews ; the closed flowers that slumbered at its touch ; the seared and blackened plains to which Its coolness could bring no herbage, the mas- sive hills that seemed to lie so calmly In its rest. Under Two Flags, 276 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr POOR candor! It is never right. If agreeable, It Is denounced as flattery, if distasteful, it is slighted as censure. Tricotrin, MEN are always inclined to be piti- ful to the woes of a woman when they are not woes which they themselves have caused. They will stone away with- out mercy a woman whom they themselves have wounded, but for the victim of an- other man they are quick to be moved to tenderness and indignation. Friendship. SOCIETY is a soil you cannot weed too vigorously. Chandos. FLASHES FROM " OUlDAr 277 WHAT she wanted was to live. Live as the great moor bird did that she had seen float one day over these pale, pure, blue skies, with its mighty- wings outstretched in the calm gray weather ; which came none knew whence, and which went none knew whither : which poised silent and stirless against the clouds ; then called with a sweet wild love-note to its mate, and waited for him as he sailed in from the misty shadows where the sea lay ; and then with him rose yet higher and higher in the air ; and passed westward clearing the fields of light, and so vanished : a queen of the wind, a daughter of the sun ; a creature of freedom, of victory, of tireless move- ment and of boundless space ; a thing of heaven and of liberty. Folle-Fari7ie, 278 FLASHES FROM " OUlDAr THE philosopher may cry to the winds, " Love Virtue for its own sake." A Village Commune, LOVE has turned to crime in its agony more than once since the world began. Strathmore, c ONTENT is the secret of health. Wanda, I T is a face that tells a story, but a story whose leaves are uncut. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." 279 TO be wise In this world one should be blind to the sunset, but never to the people that bow. The sun, neglected, will not freckle us any more than if Ave had penned him a thousand sonnets as the lord of light. A man or a woman, slighted, will burn us brown all over with blistering spots of censure, indelible as stains of iodine and deep as wounds of vitriol. Friendship, ACTIVE persecution and fierce chas- tisement are tonics to the nerves; but the most weary conviction that no one cares, that no one notices, that there is no humanity that honors, and no duty that pities, is more destructive of all higher effort than any conflict with tyranny or with barbarism. Moths, 28o FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr NIGHT holds dreams and passions that fade and flee before the lucid noon ; and who at noon-day wishes not for night ? Wanda, THE poor can understand criminal law and its justice and its necessity easy enough, and respect its severities : but they cannot understand the petty tyrannies of civil law, and It wears their lives out and breaks their spirits. When it does not break their spirits It curdles their blood and they become Socialists, Nihil- ists, Internationalists, anything that will promise them riddance of their spectre and give them vengeance. A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 281 THE little pleasant courtesies, affa- bilities, generosities and kindnesses that rub the edge off the flint-stones of the Via Doloroso, are quite beneath the attention of Mary the Saint. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, HIS yearning to work out expiation through the living to the dead, was holy in its remorse ; such may well claim to wash away and to atone for the dead- liest sin that can rest upon the soul of man ; but — this is the greatest evil which lies in evil, that the ashes of past guilt are too often the lava of fresh guilt, and one crime begets a brood, which, brought to birth, will strangle the life in which they were conceived. Strathmore. 282 FLASHES FROM "QUID A." I WOULD rather have any one I did not respect for an enemy than for a friend. Moths. '' I "O quarrel with happiness is to quarrel with God. Signa, A MAN is never great in public life until he has ceased to care for a woman. Strathmore. MEN are tender to women for remem* brance' sake long after all love has died out of them. Pascarel, I FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 283 NDIFFERENCE is always strength. Moths, AS passion yet unknown thrills the adolescent, as maternity yet un- dreamed-of stirs in the maiden, so the love of art comes to the artist before he can give a voice to his thoughts or a name to his desire. Szgna, ^ ' ^ ^ '^HAT have you seen?" she w asked, at last. " I have seen Death, and it is beautiful," the child an- swered, wearily. '* Beautiful ! " said J aeon- da. " Child, you have not seen what you love die." In Maremma, 284 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr WOMEN shall honor great ability, shall behold true manliness, shall be worshipped with knightly reverence, shall be assailed by all the splendor of intellect, shall be wooed by all daring and all humility, and yet shall remain cold, and as untouched as marble in a quarry. And then there shall come one who has this magic gift — this wand that wakes the sleeping senses, this rose that slipped into the bosom, banishes all peace, this power of love incarnated, and though the magi- cian be faithless as the wind, and rootless as the wind-born flower, yet in him alone- forever shall be her heaven and her hell. Friendship, N O one likes to be twitted with turn- ing theories into actions. Chandos. FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 285 PLEASANTNESS Is the soft note of this generation, just as scientific assassination is the harsh note of it. The age is compounded of the two. Half of it is chloroform. The other half is dyna- mite. We are neither brilliant, powerful nor original. Friendship, YOU are children, all of you, nothing but children, and if the toy that pleases you best is death, why — you must have it. Under Two Flags, R OME is the Mater Dolorosa, the Mother of Consolation. Frescoes, 286 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr TO a rich man you may refuse what you like, but to a poor man you must leave the pleasure of giving what he can. Idalza. I ''IMPLY" nothing; it is the most cowardly word in the language. Idalza, I NEVER knew any use that monarchs were yet, save in some form or another to tax their subjects. Idalza, lOLITICS is the hospital for broken scoundrels. Idalza. FLASHES FROM '' OULDAr 287 FANCY the barbarism of crystallizing a violet ! The flower of Clemence Isaure and all the poets after her, con- demned to the degradation of becoming a bon-bon ! Can anything be more typical of the prosaic atrocity of the age ? Im- possible ! Idalia, AH ! how wicked It is that a mere earthly beauty of form can touch us and win us, as never can all the spiritual beauty of the saints. Idalia, FOLLY ! Fidelity ! synonyms for love. Idalia, 288 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THERE are few lives without pain, and none without reproach. Idalia. WHEN the light of love is faded, and its joys are over, its duties and its mercies remain. Because one of the twain has failed in these, the other is not acquitted of obligation. Wanda, KEEP only such pride as shall ever rise above all taint of falsehood or of meanness, and gain you that true dig- nity — a stainless name. Tricotrin, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 289 /^~\NE pays for glory The Ambitious Rose-Tree, WERE there any entanglements before people took to writing letters ? Friendship, SOME people would rather be insult- ed than unperceived. Friendship, NOTHING wears so badly and stands the microscope as humanity. Strathmore, l-) 290 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr IT is one of the privileges of celebrity that the person celebrated can never wash his hands or open an umbrella with- out being accredited with some occult reason for his proceedings. Friendship, HALF the world mar their own lives, and the other half are marred by life. Strathmore, ** A ND perhaps God will let me die l\ soon," she thought, with her child- ish fancy that God was near and Death an angel. Moths, FLASHES FROM '' OUlDAr 291 SO rashly do men judge who draw in- ferences from the surface, so erringly do they condemn who see not the soHtude wherein the soul is laid bare. Stratkmore. HER love was her religion. Fools may say what they will, there is none holier. In Maremma, HE who plants a green tree in a city way, plants a thought of God in many a human heart, arid with the dust of travail, and clogged with the greeds of gold. A Provence Rose, 292 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: A CERTAIN peace and light fell on the people at their toil. Signa, GOLD must be power always, and without power what is life ? Folle-Farine, IT is the noblest natures that tyranny drives to frenzy. A Village Commune. ACRE AT wrong is to the nature as a cancer is to the body — there is no health. A Village Commune.. FLASHES FROM ''OUIDAr 293 TO-DAY succeeds to yesterday, and the dead are supplanted and forgot- ten ! Where the viaticum last night was administered to the dying, the laugh of the living echoes gayly this morning, and in its turn the laugh will die off the air, and the chant of the tomb will come round again. Such is life and such is death, and the two are ever fused together and twisted in one inseparable cord, the white line running with the black, side by side, crossed and re-crossed, following each other as the night the day. Strathmore, PITILESS himself, he abhorred pity, and, if he yielded little mercy to misery, he asked none for his own. Strathmore. 294 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr THE state should never quarrel with the churches, they alone can bind a band on the eyes of the poor, and, like the lying watchman, cry above the strife and storm of the sad earth, ''All Is well," ''AH is well." ^ Signa, Y OUTH flattered Into vanity Is ruined. Strathmore, T HE ocean Is a music that Is never silent, a poem that' Is never ex- hausted. Strathmore, TRIFLES play the deuce with us. Strathmore, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA." 295 IN love there Is always one that can hurt the other : it is the one that loves least. Ariadne. THE sea was near enough to give the sweet sense of its companionship, and If she climbed the sandstone only a little way and overlooked the darksome stretch of myrtle and oak-shrub, she could, at any moonlit hour, see It sparkling underneath the stars, flowing away Into the infinite space of the clouds, and the night, phosphorescent, radiant, hushed. In Mare7n7na, -A COMMON teacher, madame — Necessity." Under Two Flags. 296 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr NEITHER priest nor judge can efface a past as you clean a slate with a sponge. Wanda. EVERY tender-hearted woman feels regret for affection she is obliged to repulse, even when she does not return it. Lady Marabout' s Troubles, " "XT EVER swear, Seraph, not ever so -L ^ mildly," yawned Cecil ; " it's gone out, you know ; only the cads and the clergy can damn one now-a-days ; it s such bad style to be so impulsive." Under Two Flags, FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 297 BE calm and strong were words of wisdom, but life cannot always be guided by wisdom. A Village Commune, T HE world, great liar though it be, is often-times deceived. Strathmore, MEN are children: thwart them and they pine. Wanda. I HAVE many to love me — in a way. But none to pray, that I know of; that is another affair. Moths. 298 FLASHES FROM " QUID A." "^ ONE desert truth without seeing that she would have been their noblest friend. Only often It Is too late when they do see it. Once driven away with the scourge of lies, she is very hard to call back. Szgna. w OMEN and dogs may forgive ; not men. Szgna. ARE we ever truly read, save by the one that loves us best ? Love Is blind, the phrase runs ; nay, I would rather say, Love sees as God sees, and with in- finite wisdom has infinite pardon. PascareL FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 299 A CHILD'S feet are bruised and stumble on the sharp stones of a hard, physical, unintelligible fact. Signa, CORALS, pink and delicate, rivet the continents together ; joy tendrils, that a child may break, hold Norman walls with bonds of iron ; a little ring, a toy of gold, a jeweller's bagatelle, forges chains heavier than the galley-slave's ; so a look may fetter a lifetime, Ckandos. POSSESSION Is the murderer of human love ; but of artistic love, it is the very crown and chaplet, unfading and life-renewing. Ariadne. 300 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr PLIANT temper, according to the temperature in which it dwells, becomes either harmless or worthless. Moths. AS the wheat ripened but to meet the ^ sickle ; as the nuts grew but to fall ; as the leaves turn to gold but to wither; so the sanguine hope, the fond ambition of men, strengthened and matured only to fade into disappointment and destruction. Cecil Castlemaine s Gage, VICE is very common, and wit is very scarce ; fifty men make mischief to one that makes mots. Strathmore. Y FLASHES FROM '' OUIDAr 301 OU never influence people if you don't like the things they like. Moths, A GREAT deal of the sin in this world, which is not at all like Lady Macbeth's, comes from the want of excite- ment, felt by persons only too numerous, who have exhausted excitement in its usual shapes. Wanda. THE noblest spirits are always the quickest ones to rebel against injus- tice and resent false accusations. Beatrice Boville, 302 FLASHES FROM '' OUIDA: WHERE you are content it were folly to seek a change. Cecil Castlemaines Gage. w, E all have a million of friends as long as we are happily ignorant of what they say of us. Strathmore, THE first-fruits of a man's genius are pure of greed. PascareL NO great talker ever did any great thing. A Village Commune, FLASHES FROM " OUIDAr 303 MUSIC has nothing to do with earth, but sighs always for the lands be- yond the sun. PascareL T HE woodland had that beauty amidst which idle speech seems profanation. Moths, THERE are no eyes that speak more truly, none on earth that are more beautiful, than the eyes of a horse. They sadly put to shame the million human eyes that so fast learn the lie of the world. Under Two Flags, ■• ■^*is-■J^■ ;l' . . • •• '* "A^^^V '\"- ' ^'^^^ -» •>■■. _ .*. '. ,,1-^ ■ » •" •" ■ * ' *• ■ ", ■' •■^:' \ ' i fl ' • • -' ■ ' .' .-. V.' ■^•?::f; •- ' '. .-'•;'-■ ;'■• •■•f>^ ^■\ ;¥;. '•'ff '■'i'^i 1 V ■ ' '' *■' • - * *«^i* ' ;-^p , -> . ■ 1 ' ' '■ 'r •■■^v- ' '^Wi >>. . . -• !r.- ^;..-^ '^ ''Hwi