William Shakespeare - "The Second Part of Henry the Fourth"

George MacDonald - "What's Mine's Mine V3"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): 1 Samuel"

Ulysses S. Grant - "State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant"

Arthur Goes Green in New Board Game - Arthur(TM) Saves the Planet
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Colasoft Packet Sniffer Software, a Smart Choice for Network Management
CHICAGO, Ill. -- Cameron McCandless, U.S. Marketing Director of FRED Distribution, Inc. announced this week that the popular book and public television character, Arthur, embarks on a mission to 'go green' in a new award-winning children's board game - Arthur(TM) Saves the Planet, One Step at a Time.

Backbone Announces Partnership with Perlustro L.P. for Digital Steganalysis Software
CD, China -- Choosing a network analyzer software is hard; choosing a network analyzer software under shrinking IT budget is even harder. Colasoft, a leader in the network analysis field, shows its good will. It recently launched its winter promotion campaign during which customers who purchased its flagship product - Capsa, can get one additional year free maintenance.

What\'s Mine\'s Mine

G >> George MacDonald >> What\'s Mine\'s Mine



Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



WHAT'S MINE'S MINE

By George MacDonald

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.






CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER

I. HOW COME THEY THERE?
II. A SHORT GLANCE OVER THE SHOULDER
III. THE GIRLS' FIRST WALK
IV. THE SHOP IN THE VILLAGE
V. THE CHIEF
VI. WORK AND WAGE
VII. MOTHER AND SON
VIII. A MORNING CALL
IX. MR. SERCOMBE
X. THE PLOUGH-BULLS
XI. THE FIR-GROVE
XII. AMONG THE HILLS
XIII. THE LAKE
XIV. THE WOLVES
XV. THE GULF THAT DIVIDED
XVI. THE CLAN CHRISTMAS
XVII. BETWEEN DANCING AND SUPPER






WHAT'S MINE'S MINE.

CHAPTER I.

HOW COME THEY THERE?





The room was handsomely furnished, but such as I would quarrel with
none for calling common, for it certainly was uninteresting. Not a
thing in it had to do with genuine individual choice, but merely
with the fashion and custom of the class to which its occupiers
belonged. It was a dining-room, of good size, appointed with all the
things a dining-room "ought" to have, mostly new, and entirely
expensive--mirrored sideboard in oak; heavy chairs, just the dozen,
in fawn-coloured morocco seats and backs--the dining-room, in short,
of a London-house inhabited by rich middle-class people. A big fire
blazed in the low round-backed grate, whose flashes were reflected
in the steel fender and the ugly fire-irons that were never used. A
snowy cloth of linen, finer than ordinary, for there was pride in
the housekeeping, covered the large dining-table, and a company,
evidently a family, was eating its breakfast. But how come these
people THERE?

For, supposing my reader one of the company, let him rise from the
well-appointed table--its silver, bright as the complex motions of
butler's elbows can make it; its china, ornate though not elegant;
its ham, huge, and neither too fat nor too lean; its game-pie, with
nothing to be desired in composition, or in flavour natural or
artificial;--let him rise from these and go to the left of the two
windows, for there are two opposite each other, the room having been
enlarged by being built out: if he be such a one as I would have for
a reader, might I choose--a reader whose heart, not merely his eye,
mirrors what he sees--one who not merely beholds the outward shows
of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them,
whose garment and revelation they are;--if he be such, I say, he
will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin
to that which made the morning stars sing together.

He finds himself gazing far over western seas, while yet the sun is
in the east. They lie clear and cold, pale and cold, broken with
islands scattering thinner to the horizon, which is jagged here and
there with yet another. The ocean looks a wild, yet peaceful
mingling of lake and land. Some of the islands are green from shore
to shore, of low yet broken surface; others are mere rocks, with a
bold front to the sea, one or two of them strange both in form and
character. Over the pale blue sea hangs the pale blue sky, flecked
with a few cold white clouds that look as if they disowned the earth
they had got so high--though none the less her children, and doomed
to descend again to her bosom. A keen little wind is out, crisping
the surface of the sea in patches--a pretty large crisping to be
seen from that height, for the window looks over hill above hill to
the sea. Life, quiet yet eager, is all about; the solitude itself is
alive, content to be a solitude because it is alive. Its life needs
nothing from beyond--is independent even of the few sails of fishing
boats that here and there with their red brown break the blue of the
water.

If my reader, gently obedient to my thaumaturgy, will now turn and
cross to the other window, let him as he does so beware of casting a
glance on his right towards the place he has left at the table, for
the room will now look to him tenfold commonplace, so that he too
will be inclined to ask, "How come these and their belongings HERE
--just HERE?"--let him first look from the window. There he sees
hills of heather rolling away eastward, at middle distance beginning
to rise into mountains, and farther yet, on the horizon, showing
snow on their crests--though that may disappear and return several
times before settling down for the winter. It is a solemn and very
still region--not a PRETTY country at all, but great--beautiful with
the beauties of colour and variety of surface; while, far in the
distance, where the mountains and the clouds have business together,
its aspect rises to grandeur. To his first glance probably not a
tree will be discoverable; the second will fall upon a solitary
clump of firs, like a mole on the cheek of one of the hills not far
off, a hill steeper than most of them, and green to the top.

Is my reader seized with that form of divine longing which wonders
what lies over the nearest hill? Does he fancy, ascending the other
side to its crest, some sweet face of highland girl, singing songs
of the old centuries while yet there was a people in these wastes?
Why should he imagine in the presence of the actual? why dream when
the eyes can see? He has but to return to the table to reseat
himself by the side of one of the prettiest of girls!

She is fair, yet with a glowing tinge under her fairness which
flames out only in her eyes, and seldom reddens her skin. She has
brown hair with just a suspicion of red and no more, and a waviness
that turns to curl at the ends. She has a good forehead, arched a
little, not without a look of habitation, though whence that comes
it might be hard to say. There are no great clouds on that sky of
the face, but there is a soft dimness that might turn to rain. She
has a straight nose, not too large for the imperfect yet decidedly
Greek contour; a doubtful, rather straight, thin-lipped mouth, which
seems to dissolve into a bewitching smile, and reveals perfect
teeth--and a good deal more to the eyes that can read it. When the
mouth smiles, the eyes light up, which is a good sign. Their shape
is long oval--and their colour when unlighted, much that of an
unpeeled almond; when she smiles, they grow red. She has an object
in life which can hardly be called a mission. She is rather tall,
and quite graceful, though not altogether natural in her movements.
Her dress gives a feathery impression to one who rather receives
than notes the look of ladies. She has a good hand--not the doll
hand so much admired of those who can judge only of quantity and
know nothing of quality, but a fine sensible hand,--the best thing
about her: a hand may be too small just as well as too large.

Poor mother earth! what a load of disappointing women, made fit for
fine things, and running all to self and show, she carries on her
weary old back! From all such, good Lord deliver us!--except it be
for our discipline or their awaking.

Near her at the breakfast table sits one of aspect so different,
that you could ill believe they belonged to the same family. She is
younger and taller--tall indeed, but not ungraceful, though by no
means beautiful. She has all the features that belong to a
face--among them not a good one. Stay! I am wrong: there were in
truth, dominant over the rest, TWO good features--her two eyes,
dark as eyes well could be without being all pupil, large, and
rather long like her sister's until she looked at you, and then they
opened wide. They did not flash or glow, but were full of the light
that tries to see--questioning eyes. They were simple eyes--I will
not say without arriere pensee, for there was no end of thinking
faculty, if not yet thought, behind them,--but honest eyes that
looked at you from the root of eyes, with neither attack nor defence
in them. If she was not so graceful as her sister, she was hardly
more than a girl, and had a remnant of that curiously lovely
mingling of grace and clumsiness which we see in long-legged growing
girls. I will give her the advantage of not being further described,
except so far as this--that her hair was long and black, that her
complexion was dark, with something of a freckly unevenness, and
that her hands were larger and yet better than her sister's.

There is one truth about a plain face, that may not have occurred to
many: its ugliness accompanies a condition of larger undevelopment,
for all ugliness that is not evil, is undevelopment; and so implies
the larger material and possibility of development. The idea of no
countenance is yet carried out, and this kind will take more
developing for the completion of its idea, and may result in a
greater beauty. I would therefore advise any young man of aspiration
in the matter of beauty, to choose a plain woman for wife--IF
THROUGH HER PLAINNESS SHE IS YET LOVELY IN HIS EYES; for the
loveliness is herself, victorious over the plainness, and her face,
so far from complete and yet serving her loveliness, has in it room
for completion on a grander scale than possibly most handsome faces.
In a handsome face one sees the lines of its coming perfection, and
has a glimpse of what it must be when finished: few are prophets
enough for a plain face. A keen surprise of beauty waits many a man,
if he be pure enough to come near the transfiguration of the homely
face he loved.

This plain face was a solemn one, and the solemnity suited the
plainness. It was not specially expressive--did not look specially
intelligent; there was more of latent than operative power in
it--while her sister's had more expression than power. Both were
lady-like; whether they were ladies, my reader may determine. There
are common ladies and there are rare ladies; the former MAY be
countesses; the latter MAY be peasants.

There were two younger girls at the table, of whom I will say
nothing more than that one of them looked awkward, promised to be
handsome, and was apparently a good soul; the other was pretty, and
looked pert.

The family possessed two young men, but they were not here; one was
a partner in the business from which his father had practically
retired; the other was that day expected from Oxford.

The mother, a woman with many autumnal reminders of spring about
her, sat at the head of the table, and regarded her queendom with a
smile a little set, perhaps, but bright. She had the look of a woman
on good terms with her motherhood, with society, with the
universe--yet had scarce a shadow of assumption on her countenance.
For if she felt as one who had a claim upon things to go pleasantly
with her, had she not put in her claim, and had it acknowledged? Her
smile was a sweet white-toothed smile, true if shallow, and a more
than tolerably happy one--often irradiating THE GOVERNOR
opposite--for so was the head styled by the whole family from mother
to chit.

He was the only one at the table on whose countenance a shadow--as
of some end unattained--was visible. He had tried to get into
parliament, and had not succeeded; but I will not presume to say
that was the source of the shadow. He did not look discontented, or
even peevish; there was indeed a certain radiance of success about
him-only above the cloudy horizon of his thick, dark eyebrows,
seemed to hang a thundery atmosphere. His forehead was large, but
his features rather small; he had, however, grown a trifle fat,
which tended to make up. In his youth he must have been very
nice-looking, probably too pretty to be handsome. In good health and
when things went well, as they had mostly done with him, he was
sweet-tempered; what he might be in other conditions was seldom
conjectured. But was that a sleeping thunder-cloud, or only the
shadow of his eyebrows?

He had a good opinion of himself-on what grounds I do not know; but
he was rich, and I know no better ground; I doubt if there is any
more certain soil for growing a good opinion of oneself. Certainly,
the more you try to raise one by doing what is right and worth
doing, the less you succeed.

Mr. Peregrine Palmer had finished his breakfast, and sat for a while
looking at nothing in particular, plunged in deep thought about
nothing at all, while the girls went on with theirs. He was a little
above the middle height, and looked not much older than his wife;
his black hair had but begun to be touched with silver; he seemed a
man without an atom of care more than humanity counts reasonable;
his speech was not unlike that of an Englishman, for, although born
in Glasgow, he had been to Oxford. He spoke respectfully to his
wife, and with a pleasant playfulness to his daughters; his manner
was nowise made to order, but natural enough; his grammar was as
good as conversation requires; everything was respectable about
him-and yet-he was one remove at least from a gentleman. Something
hard to define was lacking to that idea of perfection.

Mr. Peregrine Palmer's grandfather had begun to make the family
fortune by developing a little secret still in a remote highland
glen, which had acquired a reputation for its whisky, into a great
superterrene distillery. Both he and his son made money by it, and
it had "done well" for Mr. Peregrine also. With all three of them
the making of money had been the great calling of life. They were
diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving Mammon, and
founding claim to consideration on the fact. Neither Jacob nor John
Palmer's worst enemy had ever called him a hypocrite: neither had
been suspected of thinking to serve Mammon and God. Both had gone
regularly to church, but neither had taught in a Sunday school, or
once gone to a week-day sermon. Peregrine had built a church and a
school. He did not now take any active part in the distillery, but
worked mainly in money itself.

Jacob, the son of a ship-chandler in Greenock, had never thought
about gentleman or no gentleman; but his son John had entertained
the difference, and done his best to make a gentleman of Peregrine;
and neither Peregrine nor any of his family ever doubted his
father's success; and if he had not quite succeeded, I would have
the blame laid on Peregrine and not on either father or grandfather.
For a man to GROW a gentleman, it is of great consequence that his
grandfather should have been an honest man; but if a man BE a
gentleman, it matters little what his grandfather or grandmother
either was. Nay--if a man be a gentleman, it is of the smallest
consequence, except for its own sake, whether the world counts him
one or not.

Mr. Peregrine Palmer rose from the table with a merry remark on the
prolongation of the meal by his girls, and went towards the door.

"Are you going to shoot?" asked his wife.

"Not to-day. But I am going to look after my guns. I daresay they've
got them all right, but there's nothing like seeing to a thing
yourself!"

Mr. Palmer had this virtue, and this very gentlemanlike way--that he
always gave his wife as full an answer as he would another lady. He
was not given to marital brevity.

He was there for the grouse-shooting--not exactly, only "as it
were." He did not care VERY much about the sport, and had he cared
nothing, would have been there all the same. Other people, in what
he counted his social position, shot grouse, and he liked to do what
other people did, for then he felt all right: if ever he tried the
gate of heaven, it would be because other people did. But the
primary cause of his being so far in the north was the simple fact
that he had had the chance of buying a property very cheap--a fine
property of mist and cloud, heather and rock, mountain and moor, and
with no such reputation for grouse as to enhance its price. "My
estate" sounded well, and after a time of good preserving he would
be able to let it well, he trusted. No sooner was it bought than his
wife and daughters were eager to visit it; and the man of business,
perceiving it would cost him much less if they passed their autumns
there instead of on the continent, proceeded at once to enlarge the
house and make it comfortable. If they should never go a second
time, it would, with its perfect appointments, make the shooting
there more attractive!

They had arrived the day before. The journey had been fatiguing, for
a great part of it was by road; but they were all in splendid
health, and not too tired to get up at a reasonable hour the next
day.






CHAPTER II.

A SHORT GLANCE OVER THE SHOULDER.





Mr. Peregrine was the first of the Palmer family to learn that there
was a Palmer coat of arms. He learned it at college, and on this
wise.

One day a fellow-student, who pleased himself with what he called
philology, remarked that his father must have been a hit of a
humorist to name him Peregrine:--"except indeed it be a family
name!" he added.

"I never thought about it," said Peregrine. "I don't quite know what
you mean."

The fact was he had no glimmer of what he meant.

"Nothing profound," returned the other. "Only don't you see
Peregrine means pilgrim? It is the same as the Italian pellegrino,
from the Latin, peregrinus, which means one that goes about the
fields,--what in Scotland you call a LANDLOUPER."

"Well, but," returned Peregrine, hesitatingly, "I don't find myself
much wiser. Peregrine means a pilgrim, you say, but what of that?
All names mean something, I suppose! It don't matter much."

"What is your coat of arms?"

"I don't know."

"Why did your father call you Peregrine?"

"I don't know that either. I suppose because he liked the name."

"Why should he have liked it?" continued the other, who was given to
the Socratic method.

"I know no more than the man in the moon."

"What does your surname mean?"

"Something to do with palms, I suppose."

"Doubtless."

"You see I don't go in for that kind of thing like you!"

"Any man who cares about the cut of his coat, might have a little
curiosity about the cut of his name: it sits to him a good deal
closer!"

"That is true--so close that you can't do anything with it. I can't
pull mine off however you criticize it!"

"You can change it any day. Would you like to change it?"

"No, thank you, Mr. Stokes!" returned Peregrine dryly.

"I didn't mean with mine," growled the other. "My name is an
historical one too--but that is not in question.--Do you know your
crest ought to be a hairy worm?"

"Why?"

"Don't you know the palmer-worm? It got its name where you got
yours!"

"Well, we all come from Adam!"

"What! worms and all?"

"Surely. We're all worms, the parson says. Come, put me through;
it's time for lunch. Or, if you prefer, let me burst in ignorance. I
don't mind."

"Well, then, I will explain. The palmer was a pilgrim: when he came
home, he carried a palm-branch to show he had been to the holy
land."

"Did the hairy worm go to the holy land too?"

"He is called a palmer-worm because he has feet enough to go any
number of pilgrimages. But you are such a land-louper, you ought to
blazon two hairy worms saltier-wise."

"I don't understand."

"Why, your name, interpreted to half an ear, is just PILGRIM
PILGRIM!"

"I wonder if my father meant it!"

"That I cannot even guess at, not having the pleasure of knowing
your father. But it does look like a paternal joke!"

His friend sought out for him the coat and crest of the Palmers; but
for the latter, strongly recommended a departure: the fresh
family-branch would suit the worm so well!--his crest ought to be
two worms crossed, tufted, the tufts ouched in gold. It was not
heraldic language, but with Peregrine passed well enough. Still he
did not take to the worms, but contented himself with the ordinary
crest. He was henceforth, however, better pleased with his name, for
he fancied in it something of the dignity of a doubled surname.

His first glance at his wife was because she crossed the field of
his vision; his second glance was because of her beauty; his third
because her name was SHELLEY. It is marvellous how whimsically
sentimental commonplace people can be where their own interesting
personality is concerned: her name he instantly associated with
SCALLOP-SHELL, and began to make inquiry about her. Learning that
her other name was Miriam, one also of the holy land--

"A most remarkable coincidence!--a mere coincidence of course!" he
said to himself. "Evidently that is the woman destined to be the
companion of my pilgrimage!"

When their first child was born, the father was greatly exercised as
to a fitting name for him. He turned up an old botany book, and
sought out the scientific names of different palms. CHAMAEROPS would
not do, for it was a dwarf-palm; BORASSUS might do, seeing it was a
boy--only it stood for a FAN-PALM; CORYPHA would not be bad for a
girl, only it was the name of a heathen goddess, and would not go
well with the idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one
after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of
them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had
fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was
the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been
encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called
The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not
read it now, but accepting her suggestion, named the boy Christian.
When a daughter came, he would have had her Christiana, but his wife
persuaded him to be content with Christina. They named their second
son Valentine, after Mr. Valiant-for-truth. Their second daughter
was Mercy; and for the third and fourth, Hope and Grace seemed near
enough. So the family had a cool glow of puritanism about it, while
nothing was farther from the thoughts of any of them than what their
names signified. All, except the mother, associated them with the
crusades for the rescue of the sepulchre of the Lord from the
pagans; not a thought did one of them spend on the rescue of a live
soul from the sepulchre of low desires, mean thoughts, and crawling
selfishness.






CHAPTER III.

THE GIRLS' FIRST WALK.





The Governor, Peregrine and Palmer as he was, did not care about
walking at any time, not even when he HAD to do it because other
people did; the mother, of whom there would have been little left
had the sweetness in her moral, and the house-keeping in her
practical nature, been subtracted, had things to see to within
doors: the young people must go out by themselves! They put on their
hats, and issued.

The temperature was keen, though it was now nearly the middle of
August, by which time in those northern regions the earth has begun
to get a little warm: the house stood high, and the atmosphere was
thin. There was a certain sense of sadness in the pale sky and its
cold brightness; but these young people felt no cold, and perceived
no sadness. The air was exhilarating, and they breathed deep breaths
of a pleasure more akin to the spiritual than they were capable of
knowing. For as they gazed around them, they thought, like Hamlet's
mother in the presence of her invisible husband, that they saw all
there was to be seen. They did not know nature: in the school to
which they had gone they patronized instead of revering her. She
wrought upon them nevertheless after her own fashion with her
children, unheedful whether they knew what she was about or not. The
mere space, the mere height from which they looked, the rarity of
the air, the soft aspiration of earth towards heaven, made them all
more of children.

But not one of them being capable of enjoying anything by herself,
together they were unable to enjoy much; and, like the miser who,
when he cannot much enjoy his money, desires more, began to desire
more company to share in the already withering satisfaction of their
new possession--to help them, that is, to get pleasure out of it, as
out of a new dress. It is a good thing to desire to share a good
thing, but it is not well to be unable alone to enjoy a good thing.
It is our enjoyment that should make us desirous to share. What is
there to share if the thing be of no value in itself? To enjoy alone
is to be able to share. No participation can make that of value
which in itself is of none. It is not love alone but pride also, and
often only pride, that leads to the desire for another to be present
with us in possession.

The girls grew weary of the show around them because it was so
quiet, so regardless of their presence, so moveless, so monotonous.
Endless change was going on, but it was too slow for them to see;
had it been rapid, its motions were not of a kind to interest them.
Ere half an hour they had begun to think with regret of Piccadilly
and Regent street--for they had passed the season in London. There
is a good deal counted social which is merely gregarious. Doubtless
humanity is better company than a bare hill-side; but not a little
depends on how near we come to the humanity, and how near we come to
the hill. I doubt if one who could not enjoy a bare hill-side alone,
would enjoy that hill-side in any company; if he thought he did, I
suspect it would be that the company enabled him, not to forget
himself in what he saw, but to be more pleasantly aware of himself
than the lone hill would permit him to be;--for the mere hill has
its relation to that true self which the common self is so anxious
to avoid and forget. The girls, however, went on and on, led mainly
by the animal delight of motion, the two younger making many a
diversion up the hill on the one side, and down the hill on the
other, shrieking at everything fresh that pleased them.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.