Surprise

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Of our actual getaway, I have little to report. My memory retains a glimpse of her obediently putting on rope-soled canvas shoes, on the lee side of a flapping tent, while I stuffed a folding butterfly net into a brown-paper bag. The next glimpse is of our evading pursuit by entering a pitch-dark cinéma near the Casino (which, of course, was absolutely out of bounds). There we sat, holding hands across the dog, which now and then gently jingled in Colette's lap, and were shown a jerky, drizzly, but highly exciting bullfight at San Sebastián. My final glimpse is of myself being led along the promenade by Linderovski. His long legs move with a kind of ominous briskness and I can see the muscles of his grimly set jaw working under the tight skin.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  (which must have meant my staying late after school to talk with my girlfriends, because I did not even know any boys); and, “Now remember too, don’t leave your soiled napkins wrapped up in newspaper hanging around on the bathroom floor where your father has to see them, not that it’s anything shameful but all the same remember . . .” Along with all of these admonitions, there was something else coming from my mother that I almost could not define. It was the lurking of that amused/annoyed brow-furrowed half-smile that passed as an intimate moment between my mother and me, and I really felt—all her nagging words to the contrary, or the more confusing—that something very good and satisfactory and pleasing to her had just happened, and that we were both pretending otherwise for some very wise and secret reasons which I would come to understand later as a reward if I handled myself properly. And then at the end of it all, my mother thrust the box of Kotex in its plain wrapper which I had fetched back from the drugstore with a sanitary belt at me, and said, “But look now what time it is already, I wonder what we’re going to eat for supper tonight?” She waited. At first I didn’t understand, but I quickly picked up the cue. I had seen the beef ends in the icebox that morning. “Mommy, please let’s have some souse—I’ll pound the garlic.” I dropped the box onto a kitchen chair and started to wash my hands in anticipation. “Well, go put your business away first. What did I tell you about leaving that lying around?” She wiped her hands from the washtub where she had been working and handed the plain wrapped box of Kotex back to me. “I have to go out, I forgot to pick up tea at the store. Now make sure you rub the meat good.” When I came back into the kitchen, my mother had left. I moved toward the kitchen cabinet to fetch down the mortar and pestle. My body felt new and special and unfamiliar and suspect all at the same time. I could feel bands of tension sweeping across my body back and forth like lunar winds across the moon’s face. I felt the slight rubbing bulge of the cotton pad between my legs, and I smelled the warm delicate breadfruit smell rising up from the front of my print blouse that was my own womansmell, erotic, shameful, but secretly utterly delicious.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " There was a married lady who lived on very credit- able terms with her husband, though he was old and she young. A gentleman in her neighbourho^)d, seeing she had married this old man, fell in love with her, and solicited her for several years, but she only replied to him as became a virtuous woman. One day it occurred to the gentleman that if he could come upon her at a moment advantageous to himself, she would perhaps not be so cruel. After he had long weighed the danger to which he exposed himself, love smoothed overall difficul- ties, dissipated his fear, and determined him to seek time and opportunity. Keeping good watch for intelligence, he learned that the lady's husband was going away to another of his houses, and intended to set out at day- break to avoid the heat, whereupon he repaired to the lady and found her asleep in bed. Seeing that the maid- servants were not in the chamber, he got into the lady's bed, booted and spurred as he was, without having had the wit to lock the door. She awoke, and was very much vexed to see him there ; but in spite of all her re- monstrances there was no stopping him — he violated her, and threatened, if she made a noise, to tell everybody she had sent for him ; which frightened her so much that she durst not cry out. One of the servants came back some moments afterwards into the chamber. The gentleman jumped up with such celerity that she would have noticed nothing, if his spur had not stuck in the L.,.:'. The lady here could not help saying: " Never was woman more^^ astonished than myself." Sez-e?tt/i Jay.] QUEEN' OF NAVARRE. 401 top sheet, and carried it clean off the bed, leaving the lady quite naked." So far the lady had told her story as if of another : but here she could not help saying : " Never was wopan more astonished than I when I found myself thus naked." The princess, who had listened to the whole tale without a smile, could not then restrain her laughter, and said, " I see you were quite right in saying you knew the story to be true.'' The poor lady tried hard to mend the matter ; but there was no possibility of finding a good plaister for it. I assure you, ladies, if the act had given her real pain she would have been glad to have lost the recollection of it ; but as I have already said, sin is sure to discover itself unless it be covered by the mantle which, as David says, makes man blessed. " Truly, of all the fools I ever heard of this was the greatest, to set others laughing at her own expense," said Ennasuite.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  This went on for some time ; but as God has pity on those who honestly err, it came to pass that the mother and daughter had a mind to go hear mass at the church of the Cordeliers, and to pay a visit at the same time to the good father confessor through whose instru- mentality they thought themselves so well provided, the one with a son-in-law, the other with a husband. Chance so ordained that, not finding the confessor there, nor anyone else they knew, they were content to hear high mass, which was just beginning, whilst they awaited the confessor's arrival. The young wife, attending closely to the divine service, was greatly surprised when the priest turned to say dominus vobisciiui, for she fancied she beheld her husband, or some one singularly resem- bling him. She said not a word, however, but waited till he appeared again, when she had a still better view of him than before, and no longer doubting that it was he, " Oh, mother ! " she exclaimed, " what do I see .? " "What is it } " said the mother. Sixt/idciy.] QUEEX OF NAVAKKE. 4^5 " My husband saying mass, or somebody the most like him in the world." " Pray, my dear," said the mother, who had not taken much notice of the priest, "don't let such a notion into your head. It is absolutely impossible that such pious men should practise such a cheat. It would be a great sin in you to believe any such thing." For all that, the mother did not fail to use her eyes, and when it came to saying Ite viissa est, she saw foi certain that no twin brothers were ever more like each other. Nevertheless, so simple was she that she would fain have said, " God preserve me from believing m}^ eyes." However, as the matter was one which so deeply concerned her daughter, she determined to sift it to the bottom and know the truth. The husband, who had not perceived them, having returned home, she said to her daughter, " We shall now know the truth about your husband if you choose. When he is in bed I will come in, and you will pull off his coif from behind before he is aware of it. We shall see then if he is tonsured like the one who said mass."

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  You are under no obligation to stay in a relationship that is unhealthy for you, and if you ever feel you are in danger of harm, you should get to a safe place. INTRODUCTION Dealing with Angry People The Moment I Knew We Were in Trouble One afternoon in late 2021, I got an unexpected call that revealed how angry people out there really were. She was a librarian who told me she had heard about my work from a friend and was wondering if I might be able to train her staff on dealing with unruly customers. “Can you tell me more about what’s going on?” I asked. “We’re dealing with real problems from our clients,” she responded. “Our staff has been overwhelmed by angry and even aggressive people, and we are trying to learn some strategies for how to deal with it.” She went on to describe how her team was facing a lot of hostility from people coming to the library. She said she was hoping for strategies to help them depersonalize some of these interactions but also to help them de-escalate situations like these. This was the moment I knew we were in trouble. I had already received a lot of media requests to talk about things like road rage, unruly people on flights, and school fights. We were still in the middle of the Covid-19 health crisis, being asked to wear masks in many public spaces and to physically distance when possible. These requirements were definitely leading to a lot of anger from people who didn’t want to wear masks and/or didn’t consider the pandemic a significant issue anymore. Accounts of flight attendants being yelled at or even punched* were widespread, so much so that the airlines were implementing new policies and consequences in the hope of minimizing these instances of anger and aggression. For some reason, though, this library situation seemed different to me. I’ve never once been mad at a librarian. Quite the opposite, in fact. My experiences with librarians have consistently been positive. I work with quite a few at the university and they are some of my best colleagues. When my kids were young, we would spend weekends at the library and never once had an issue. Frankly, and forgive me for stereotyping, but the librarians I’ve worked with strike me as some of the kindest and most helpful people around. So when I got that call, my first thought was… yikes! How is it possible that we got to a place where people are yelling at librarians?* Now, I never want to rely on my own perceptions of things, so I decided to look and see if I was an outlier when it came to my position on the kindness of librarians. It turns out, no, I’m not.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  My earliest recollection is being danced on the foot of my father’s brother James, the Captain of an Indiaman, who paid us a visit in the south of Kerry when I was about two. I distinctly remember repeating a hymn by heart for him, my mother on the other side of the fireplace, prompting: then I got him to dance me a little more, which was all I wanted. I remember my mother telling him I could read, and his surprise. The next memory must have been about the same time: I was seated on the floor screaming when my father came in and asked: “What’s the matter?” “It’s only Master Jim”, replied the nurse crossly, “he’s just screaming out of sheer temper, Sir, look, there’s not a tear in his eye.” A year or so later, it must have been, I was proud of walking up and down a long room while my mother rested her hand on my head, and called me her walking stick. Later still I remember coming to her room at night: I whispered to her and then kissed her, but her cheek was cold and she didn’t answer, and I woke the house with my shrieking: she was dead. I felt no grief, but something gloomy and terrible in the sudden cessation of the usual household activities. A couple of days later I saw her coffin carried out, and when the nurse told my sister and me that we would never see our mother again, I was surprised merely and wondered why. My mother died when I was nearly four, and soon after we moved to Kingstown near Dublin. I used to get up in the night with my sister Annie, four years my senior and go foraging for bread and jam or sugar. One morning about daybreak I stole into the nurse’s room, and saw a man beside her in bed, a man with a red moustache. I drew my sister in and she too saw him. We crept out again without waking them. My only emotion was surprise, but next day the nurse denied me sugar on my bread and butter and I said: “I’ll tell”—I don’t know why: I had then no inkling of modern journalism. “Tell what?” she asked. “There was a man in your bed”, I replied, “last night.” “Hush, hush!” she said, and gave me the sugar. After that I found all I had to do was to say “I’ll tell!” to get whatever I wanted. My sister even wished to know one day what I had to tell, but I would not say. I distinctly remember my feeling of superiority over her because she had not had sense enough to exploit the sugar mine.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (ap. Aug. non occ. sed ap. Bed. ubi sup.) If however He, as one Who knew the present and the future wills of men, knew that they would proclaim Him the more in proportion as He forbade them, why did He give them this command? If it were not that He wished to prove to men who are idle, how much more joyfully, with how much greater obedience, they whom He commands to proclaim Him should preach, when they who were forbidden could not hold their peace. GLOSS. (non occ.) From the preaching however of those who were healed by Christ, the wonder of the multitude, and their praise of the benefits of Christ, increased. Wherefore it goes on, And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; he maketh the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. PSEUDO-JEROME. Mystically, Tyre is interpreted narrowness, and signifies Judæa, to which the Lord said, (v. Isa. 28:20) “For the bed is grown too narrow,” and from which he turns himself to the Gentiles. Sidon means ‘hunting,’ for our race is like an untamed beast, and ‘sea,’ which means a wavering inconstancy. Again, the Saviour comes to save the Gentiles in the midst of the coasts of Decapolis, which may be interpreted, as the commands of the Decalogue. Further, the human race throughout its many members is reckoned as one man, eaten up by varying pestilence, in the first created man; it is blinded, that is, its eye is evil; it becomes deaf, when it listens to, and dumb when it speaks, evil. And they prayed Him to lay His hand upon him, because many just men, and patriarchs, wished and longed for the time when the Lord should come in the flesh. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Or he is deaf and dumb, who neither has ears to hear the words of God, nor opens his mouth to speak them, and such must be presented to the Lord for healing, by men who have already learned to hear and speak the divine oracles.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I was thunderstruck and this amazement has always illumined for me the abyss of Protestant bigotry, but I wouldn’t break with Howard who was two years older than I and who taught me many things. He taught me to like Fenians, though I hardly knew what the word meant. One day I remember he showed me posted on the Court House a notice offering 5000 Pounds sterling as reward to anyone who would tell the whereabouts of James Stephen, the Fenian Head-Centre. “He’s travelling all over Ireland”, Howard whispered, “everybody knows him”, adding with gusto, “but no one would give the Head-Centre away to the dirty English.” I remember thrilling to the mystery and chivalry of the story. From that moment Head-Centre was a sacred symbol to me as to Howard. One day we met Strangways and somehow or other began talking of sex. Howard knew all about it and took pleasure in enlightening us both. It was Cecil Howard who first initiated Strangways and me too in self-abuse. In spite of my Novel reading, I was still at eleven too young to get much pleasure from the practice; but I was delighted to know how children were made and a lot of new facts about sex. Strangways had hair about his private parts, as indeed Howard had, also, and when he rubbed himself and the orgasm came, a sticky milky fluid spirted from Strangway’s cock which Howard told us was the man’s seed, which must go right into the woman’s womb to make a child. A week later, Strangways astonished us both by telling how he had made up to the nursemaid of his younger sisters and got into her bed at night. The first time she wouldn’t let him do anything, it appeared, but after a night or two he managed to touch her sex and assured us it was all covered with silky hairs. A little later he told us how she had locked her door and how the next day he had taken off the lock and got into bed with her again. At first she was cross, or pretended to be, he said, but he kept on kissing her and begging her, and bit by bit she yielded, and he touched her sex again: “it was a slit”, he said. A few nights later, he told us he had put his prick into her and “Oh! by gum, it was wonderful, wonderful!”

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  But certain things are to be noted. (a) Eusebius cites certain quotations from earlier writers to prove his contention that i Peter was universally accepted. This he never does in connection with the gospels or the letters of Paul; and the very fact that he feels called upon to produce his evidence in the case of i Peter might be held to indicate that in it he felt the need to prove his point, a need which did not exist in connection with the other books. Was there a doubt in Eusebius' own mind? Or were there people who had to be convinced? Was the universal acceptance of i Peter not so unanimous after all? (b) In his book, The Canon of the New Testament, B. F. Westcott noted that, although no one in the early Church questions the right of i Peter to be part of the New Testament, surprisingly few of the early fathers quote it and, still more surprising, very few of the early fathers in the west and in Rome quote it. Tertullian is a frequent quoter of Scripture. In his writings, there are 7,258 quotations from the New Testament, but only two of them are from i Peter. If Peter wrote this letter and wrote it in Rome, we would expect it to be well known and largely used in the Church of the west. (c) The earliest known official list of New Testament books is the Muratorian Canon, so called after Cardinal Muratori who discovered it. It is the official list of New Testament books as accepted in the church at Rome about the year AD 170. It is an extraordinary fact that i Peter does not appear at all. It can be fairly argued that the Muratorian Canon, as we possess it, is defective and that it may originally have contained a reference to i Peter. But that argument is seriously weakened by the next consideration. (d) It is a fact that i Peter was still not in the New Testament of the Syrian church as late as AD 373. It did not get in until the Syriac version of the New Testament known as the Peshitto was made about AD 400. We know that it was the Christian scholar Tatian who brought the New Testament books to the Syriac-speaking church, and he brought them to Syria from Rome when he went to Edessa and founded the church there in AD 172.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Tradition has it that he went down to Egypt and founded the church of Alexandria there. Whether or not that is true we do not know, but we do know that when Mark re-emerges it is in the most surprising way. We learn to our surprise that when Paul writes the letter to the Colossians from prison in Rome Mark is there with him (Colossians 4:10). In another prison letter, to Philemon, Paul numbers Mark among his fellow workers (verse 24). And, when Paul is waiting for death and very near the end, he writes to Timothy, his right-hand man, and says, `Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry' (2 Timothy 4:10. It is a far cry from the time when Paul contemptuously dismissed Mark as a quitter. Whatever had happened, Mark had redeemed himself. He was the one man Paul wanted at the end. Mark's Sources of Information The value of any story will depend on the writer's sources of information. Where, then, did Mark get his information about the life and work of Jesus? We have seen that his home was from the beginning a Christian centre in Jerusalem. Often he must have heard people tell of their personal memories of Jesus. But it is most likely that he had a source of information without a superior. Towards the end of the second century there was a man called Papias who liked to obtain and transmit such information as he could glean about the early days of the Church. He tells us that Mark's gospel is nothing other than a record of the preaching material of Peter, the greatest of the apostles. Certainly Mark stood so close to Peter, and so near to his heart, that Peter could call him `my son Mark' (i Peter 5:13). Here is what Papias says: Mark, who was Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or done. For he was not a hearer of the Lord or a follower of his. He followed Peter, as I have said, at a later date, and Peter adapted his instruction to practical needs, without any attempt to give the Lord's words systematically. So that Mark was not wrong in writing down some things in this way from memory, for his one concern was neither to omit nor to falsify anything that he had heard. We may then take it that in his gospel we have what Mark remembered of the preaching material of Peter himself. So, then, we have two great reasons why Mark is a book of supreme importance. First, it is the earliest of all the gospels; if it was written just shortly after Peter died, its date will be about AD 65. Second, it embodies the record of what Peter preached and taught about Jesus.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  There is no reference at all to his resurrection. We know well that the early Church was built on faith in the risen Christ. If this letter is the work of James, it is contemporary with the events of Acts in which the resurrection is mentioned no fewer than twenty-five times. What makes it still more surprising is that James had a personal reason for writing about the appearance of Jesus which may well have been what changed the direction of his life. It is surprising that anyone writing at such a time in the Church's history should write without reference to the resurrection of Jesus, and it is doubly surprising if the writer should be James, the brother of our Lord. Further, there is no reference to Jesus as Messiah. If James, the leader of the Jewish church, was writing to Jewish Christians in these very early days, one would have thought his main aim would have been to present Jesus as Messiah, or that at least he would have made his belief in that fact plain; but the letter does not mention it. (4) It is plain that the writer of this letter is steeped in the Old Testament. It is also plain that he is intimately acquainted with the Wisdom Literature; and that in James is only to be expected. There are in his letter twenty-three apparent quotations from the Sermon on the Mount; that too is easy to understand, because from the very beginning, long before the gospels were written, compendiums of Jesus' teaching must have circulated. It is argued by some that he must have known Paul's letters to the Romans and to the Galatians in order to write as he does about faith and works, and it is argued rightly that a Jew who had never been outside Palestine and who died in AD 62 could not have known these letters. As we have seen, this argument will not stand, because the criticism of Paul's teaching in James is criticism which could have been offered only by someone who had not read the letters of Paul at first hand and who is dealing with a misunderstanding or a distortion of Pauline doctrine. But the phrase in r:17, `Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift', is a hexameter line (a line with six accented beats) and clearly a quotation from some Greek poet; and the phrase in 3:6: `the cycle of nature', may be an Orphic phrase from the mystery religions. How could James of Palestine pick up quotations like these? There are things which are difficult to account for on the assumption that James, the brother of our Lord, was the author of this letter. The evidence for and against James' authorship of this letter is extraordinarily evenly balanced. For the moment, we must leave the matter unresolved and turn to certain other questions. The Date of the Letter

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  The process of bathing took place on another part of the beach. Professional bathers, burly Basques in black bathing suits, were there to help ladies and children enjoy the terrors of the surf. Such a baigneur would place the client with his back to the incoming wave and hold him by the hand as the rising, rotating mass of foamy, green water violently descended from behind, knocking one off one’s feet with a mighty wallop. After a dozen of these tumbles, the baigneur, glistening like a seal, would lead his panting, shivering, moistly snuffling charge landward, to the flat foreshore, where an unforgettable old woman with gray hairs on her chin promptly chose a bathing robe from several hanging on a clothesline. In the security of a little cabin, one would be helped by yet another attendant to peel off one’s soggy, sand-heavy bathing suit. It would plop onto the boards, and, still shivering, one would step out of it and trample on its bluish, diffuse stripes. The cabin smelled of pine. The attendant, a hunchback with beaming wrinkles, brought a basin of steaming-hot water, in which one immersed one’s feet. From him I learned, and have preserved ever since in a glass cell of my memory, that “butterfly” in the Basque language is misericoletea—or at least it sounded so (among the seven words I have found in dictionaries the closest approach is micheletea). 3On the browner and wetter part of the plage, that part which at low tide yielded the best mud for castles, I found myself digging, one day, side by side with a little French girl called Colette. She would be ten in November, I had been ten in April. Attention was drawn to a jagged bit of violet mussel shell upon which she had stepped with the bare sole of her narrow long-toed foot. No, I was not English. Her greenish eyes seemed flecked with the overflow of the freckles that covered her sharp-featured face. She wore what might now be termed a playsuit, consisting of a blue jersey with rolled-up sleeves and blue knitted shorts. I had taken her at first for a boy and then had been puzzled by the bracelet on her thin wrist and the corkscrew brown curls dangling from under her sailor cap.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  ‘I’m your friend and your doctor and anything but a fool: I’m sure I can cure you in double-quick time and you prefer to suffer. It’s stupid of you and worse—Come up now at once and think of me only as your doctor’, and I half lifted, half helped her to the door: I supported her up the stairs and at the door of her room, she said: ‘Give me ten minutes, Doctor, and I’ll be ready. I promise you I won’t lock the door again.’ “With that assurance I waited and in ten minutes knocked and went in. “Mrs. Carlyle was lying on the bed with a woolly-white shawl round her head and face. I thought it absurd affectation in an old married woman, so I resolved on drastic measures: I turned the light full on, then I put my hand under her dress and with one toss threw it right over her head. I pulled her legs apart, dragged her to the edge of the bed and began inserting the speculum in her vulva: I met an obstacle: I looked—and immediately sprang up: ‘Why, you’re a virgo intacta’ (an untouched virgin!) I exclaimed. She pulled the shawl from her head and said: ‘What did you expect?’ ‘Anything but that’, I cried, ‘in a woman married these five and twenty years!’ “I soon found the cause of her trouble and cured it or rather did away with it: that night she rested well and was her old gay, mutinous self when I called next day. “A little later she told me her story. “After the marriage”, she said, “Carlyle was strange and out of sorts, very nervous, he seemed, and irritable. When we reached the house we had supper and about eleven o’clock I said I would go to bed, being rather tired: he nodded and grunted something. I put my hands on his shoulders as I passed him and said “Dear, do you know that you haven’t kissed me once, all day—this day of days!” and I bent down and laid my cheek against his. He kissed me; but said: “You, women are always kissing—I’ll be up soon!” Forced to be content with that I went upstairs, undressed and got into bed: he hadn’t even kissed me of his own accord, the whole day! “A little later he came up, undressed and got into bed beside me. I expected him to take me in his arms and kiss and caress me.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  A GIRL having been married in a village in Perigord, the wedding was celebrated at an inn, where all the re- lations and friends made merry with the best cheer. Two Cordeliers arrived on the wedding-da), and as it was not in accordance with propriety that they should be present at the marriage-feast, they had their suppers served up to them in their chamber. That one of the pair who had the most authority, and also the most vil- lany, conceived that since he was not allowed to partake with the rest at board he ought to have his share in bed, and resolved to show them a trick of his trade. When evening came, and the dance was begun, the Cordelier gazed long on the bride from the window, and found her handsome and much to his taste. He inquired of the servant girls which was the bridal-chamber, and le irned, to his great satisfaction, that it was close to his own ; and then, in order to arrive at his ends, he took care to watch well till he saw the old women steal off with the bride, as usual on such occasions. As it was still early, the husband would not quit the dance, on which he was so intent that he seemed to have forgotten his bride, which the Cordelier had not done ; for as soon as his ears informed him that she had been put to bed, he threw off his grey robe, and went and took the bride- groom's place. The fear of being surprised did not al- low him to remain there long. He rose, therefore, and went to the end of the alley, where his companion, whom Fifth day :\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 41I he had left on the watch, signalled to him that the bride- groom was still dancing. The Cordelier, who had not satisfied his wicked lust, then went back to the bride, and stayed with her until his companion made the sig- nal that it was time to go away. The bridegroom went to bed, and th« bride, who had been so briskly plied by the Cordelier, and wanted nothing but rest, could not help saying to her husband, " Have you made up your mi .d never to go to sleep, but to worry me all night long ? " The poor husband, who had but just lain down, asked her in great amazement how he had worried her, seeing that he had been dancing all the evening. " Fine dancing, indeed," said the poor woman ; " this is the third time you have come to bed. You had better go to sleep, I think."

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  A quarter of a century later, I learned two things: that Burness, by then dead, had been well known in Edinburgh as a scholarly translator of the Russian romantic poems that had been the altar and frenzy of my boyhood; and that my humble drawing master, whose age I used to synchronize with that of granduncles and old family servants, had married a young Estonian girl about the time I myself married. When I learned these later developments, I experienced a queer shock; it was as if life had impinged upon my creative rights by wriggling on beyond the subjective limits so elegantly and economically set by childhood memories that I thought I had signed and sealed. “And what about Yaremich?” I asked M. V. Dobuzhinski, one summer afternoon in the nineteen forties, as we strolled through a beech forest in Vermont. “Is he remembered?” “Indeed, he is,” replied Mstislav Valerianovich. “He was exceptionally gifted. I don’t know what kind of teacher he was, but I do know that you were the most hopeless pupil I ever had.” 51IHAVE often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist. Houses have crumbled in my memory as soundlessly as they did in the mute films of yore, and the portrait of my old French governess, whom I once lent to a boy in one of my books, is fading fast, now that it is engulfed in the description of a childhood entirely unrelated to my own. The man in me revolts against the fictionist, and here is my desperate attempt to save what is left of poor Mademoiselle. A large woman, a very stout woman, Mademoiselle rolled into our existence in December 1905 when I was six and my brother five. There she is. I see so plainly her abundant dark hair, brushed up high and covertly graying; the three wrinkles on her austere forehead; her beetling brows; the steely eyes behind the black-rimmed pince-nez; that vestigial mustache; that blotchy complexion, which in moments of wrath develops an additional flush in the region of the third, and amplest, chin so regally spread over the frilled mountain of her blouse. And now she sits down, or rather she tackles the job of sitting down, the jelly of her jowl quaking, her prodigious posterior, with the three buttons on the side, lowering itself warily; then, at the last second, she surrenders her bulk to the wicker armchair, which, out of sheer fright, bursts into a salvo of crackling.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  All languages whatever, even the most barbarous, as far as hath yet appeared, are of a regular and analogical make. The consequence is that similar relations in things will be expressed similarly; that is, by similar inflections, derivations, compositions, arrangement of words, or juxtaposition of particles, according to the genius or grammatical form of the particular tongue. Now as, by the habitual use of a language (even though it were quite irregular), the signs would insensibly become connected in the imagination wherever the things signified are connected in nature, so, by the regular structure of a language, this connection among the signs is conceived as analogous to that which subsisteth among their archetypes." If we know English and French and begin a sentence in French, all the later words that come are French; we hardly ever drop into English. And this affinity of the French words for each other is not something merely operating mechanically as a brain-law, it is something we feel at the time. Our understanding of a French sentence heard never falls to so low an ebb that we are not aware that the words linguistically belong together. Our attention can hardly so wander that if an English word be suddenly introduced we shall not start at the change. Such a vague sense as this of the words belonging together is the very minimum of fringe that can accompany them, if 'thought' at all. Usually the vague perception that all the words we hear belong to the same language and to the same special vocabulary in that language, and that the grammatical sequence is familiar, is practically equivalent to an admission that what we hear is sense. But if an unusual foreign word be introduced, if the grammar trip, or if a term from an incongruous vocabulary suddenly appear, such as 'rat-trap' or 'plumber's bill' in a philosophical discourse, the sentence detonates, as it were, we receive a shock from the incongruity, and the drowsy assent is gone. The feeling of rationality in these cases seems rather a negative than a positive thing, being the mere absence of shock, or sense of discord, between the terms of thought. So delicate and incessant is this recognition by the mind of the mere fitness of words to be mentioned together that the slightest misreading, such as 'casualty' for 'causality,' or 'perpetual' for 'perceptual,' will be corrected by a listener whose attention is so relaxed that he gets no idea of the meaning of the sentence at all.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  And during this time we always find in ourselves the peculiar feeling of attention. . . . The phenomena show that an adaptation of attention to the impression takes place. The surprise which unexpected impressions give us is due essentially to the fact that our attention, at the moment when the impression occurs, is not accommodated for it. The accommodation itself is of the double sort, relating as it does to the intensity as well as to the quality of the stimulus. Different qualities of impression require disparate adaptations. And we remark that our feeling of the strain of our inward attentiveness increases with every increase in the strength of the impressions of whose perceptions we are intent." [362] The natural way of conceiving all this is under the symbolic form of a brain-cell played upon from two directions. Whilst the object excites it from without, other brain-cells, or perhaps spiritual forces, arouse it from within. The latter influence is the 'adaptation of the attention.' The plenary energy of the brain-cell demands the co-operation of both factors: not when merely present, but when both present and attended to, is the object fully perceived. A few additional experiences will now be perfectly clear. Helmholtz, for instance, adds this observation to the passage we quoted a while ago concerning the stereoscopic pictures lit by the electric spark. "These experiments," he says, "are interesting as regards the part which attention plays in the matter of double images. . . . For in pictures so simple that it is relatively difficult for me to see them double, I can succeed in seeing them double, even when the illumination is only instantaneous, the moment I strive to imagine in a lively way how they ought then to look. The influence of attention is here pure; for all eye movements are shut out." [363] In another place [364] the same writer says: "When I have before my eyes a pair of stereoscopic drawings which are hard to combine, it is difficult to bring the lines and points that correspond, to cover each other, and with every little motion of the eyes they glide apart. But if I chance to gain a lively mental image (Anschauungsbild) of the represented solid form (a thing that often occurs by lucky chance), I then move my two eyes with perfect certainty over the figure without the picture separating again." Again, writing of retinal rivalry, Helmholtz says: "It is not a trial of strength between two sensations, but depends on our fixing or failing to fix the attention.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The sciences furnish examples, in the way in which men are led, by noticing differences in effects, to assume new hypothetical causes, differing from any known heretofore. But no matter how many may be the steps by which such inferential discriminations are made, they all end in a direct intuition of difference somewhere. The last ground for inferring that A and B differ must be that, whilst A is an m, B is an n, and that m and n are seen to differ. Let us then neglect the complex cases, the A's and the B's, and go back to the study of the unanalyzable perception of difference between their signs, the m's and the n's, when these are seemingly simple terms. I said that in their immediate succession the shock of their difference was felt. It is felt repeatedly when we go back and forth from m to n; and we make a point of getting it thus repeatedly (by alternating our attention at least) whenever the shock is so slight as to be with difficulty perceived. But in addition to being felt at the brief instant of transition, the difference also feels as if incorporated and taken up into the second term, which feels 'different-from-the-first' even while it lasts. It is obvious that the 'second term' of the mind in this case is not bald n, but a very complex object; and that the sequence is not simply first 'm,' then 'difference,' then 'n'; but first 'm,' then 'difference,' then 'n-different-from-m.' The several thoughts, however, to which these three several objects are revealed, are three ordinary 'segments' of the mental 'stream.' As our brains and minds are actually made, it is impossible to get certain m's and n's in immediate sequence and to keep them pure. If kept pure, it would mean that they remained uncompared. With us, inevitably, by a mechanism which we as yet fail to understand, the shock of difference is felt between them, and the second object is not n pure, but n-as-different-from-m. [415] It is no more a paradox that under these conditions this cognition of m and n in mutual relation should occur, than that under other conditions the cognition of m's or n's simple quality should occur. But as it has been treated as a paradox, and as a spiritual agent, not itself a portion of the stream, has been invoked to account for it, a word of further remark seems desirable. My account, it will be noted, is merely a description of the facts as they occur: feelings (or thoughts) each knowing something, but the later one knowing, if preceded by a certain earlier one, a more complicated object than it would have known had the earlier one not been there. I offer no explanation of such a sequence of cognitions. The explanation (I devoutly expect) will be found some day to depend on cerebral conditions.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Duracier, who hitherto had said nothing, shrewdly suspected that the prison in question was that in which he had been confined, as well as the other two. " Tell me," said he to Valbenon, " what sort of food did they give you in that same prison you praise so highly ? " " Food ? The king has not better, or more nutri- tive," was the reply. " But I should like to know, too," returned Duracier, " did not the person who kept you prisoner make you earn your bread .<*" " Hah ! ventrebleu ! " cried Valbenon, who saw that the mark was hit. " Have I had comrades t I thought myself the only one." " Well," said Astillon, laughing, " we are all com- panions and friends from our youth, and all serve the same master. If we all share alike in the same bonne fortune, we may well laugh in company. But in order to know if what I imagine is true, pray let me interro- gate you, and all of you tell me the truth. If what I suppose has happened to us, it is the oddest and most amusing adventure that ever could be imagined." All swore they would speak the truth, at least if 41 6 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \N(wel i,<^ matters were so that they could not help doing so. " I will relate my adventure to you," said Astillon, " and you will each answer me yes or no, if yours is like it or not." Everyone having agreed to this, " In the first place," said Astillon, " I asked leave of absence of the king, under pretence of a journey." " So did we," said the others, " When I was two leagues from the court, I left my retinue, and went and surrendered myself a prisoner." " And so did we." " I remained for seven or eight days hid m a garde- robe, where I was fed upon nothing but restoratives, and the best viands I ever tasted. At the end of eight days my keepers let me go, much weaker than I had come." They all swore that they had been served just the same way. " My imprisonment ended such a day," continued Astillon. " Mine began the very day yours ended," said Dura cier, " and lasted until such a day." Valbenon now lost patience, and began to swear. "By the Lord," said he, " I find 1 was the third, though I thought myself the first and the only one, for I entered such a day, and left such another." The other three who were at table swore that they had entered and departed successively in the same order. " Since that is the case," said Astillon, " I will de- scribe our gaoler. She is married, and her husband is away." " The very same," said all the others.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  But, as a given point of the system may belong, actually or potentially, to many different paths, and, as the play of nutrition is subject to accidental changes, blocks may from time to time occur, and make currents shoot through unwonted lines. Such an unwonted line would be a new-created path, which if traversed repeatedly, would become the beginning of a new reflex arc. All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter. [140] It must be noticed that the growth of structural modification in living matter may be more rapid than in any lifeless mass, because the incessant nutritive renovation of which the living matter is the seat tends often to corroborate and fix the impressed modification, rather than to counteract it by renewing the original constitution of the tissue that has been impressed. Thus, we notice after exercising our muscles or our brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that time; but after a day or two of rest, when we resume the discipline, our increase in skill not seldom surprises us. I have often noticed this in learning a tune; and it has led a German author to say that we learn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer. Dr. Carpenter writes: [141] "It is a matter of universal experience that every kind of training for special aptitudes is both far more effective, and leaves a more permanent impress, when exerted on the growing organism than when brought to bear on the adult. The effect of such training is shown in the tendency of the organ to 'grow to' the mode in which it is habitually exercised; as is evidenced by the increased size and power of particular sets of muscles, and the extraordinary flexibility of joints, which are acquired by such as have been early exercised in gymnastic performances . . . There is no part of the organism of man in which the reconstructive activity is so great, during the whole period of life, as it is in the ganglionic substance of the brain. This is indicated by the enormous supply of blood which it receives. . . . It is, moreover, a fact of great significance that the nerve-substance is specially distinguished by its reparative power.