aborious day, with the sun-rays turning the sickle to a
semi-circlet of silver, as the mice ran, and the crickets shouted, and
the larks soared on high: the merry supper when the day was done, with
the thrill and thrum of the mandolini, and the glisten of the unhoused
fire-flies, whose sanctuary had been broken when the bearded barley and
the amber corn fell prone: all these things rose to his memory: they had
made his youth and manhood glad and full of colour; they were here still
for his sons a little while, but when his sons should be all grown men,
then those things would have ceased to be, and even their very memory
would have perished, most likely, while the smoke of the accursed
engines would have sullied the pure blue sky, and the stench of their
foul vapours would have poisoned the golden air.

He roused himself and said wearily to Pippo,

"There is a tale I have heard somewhere of a man who sold his birthright
for gold, and when the gold was in his hands, then it changed to
withered leaves and brown moss: I was thinking, eh? that the world is
much like that man!"

* * *

When all your politics and policies are summed up in the one intention
to do well for yourself, great simplicity is given to your theories, if
not to your practice.

* * *

The ministerialists ... made florid and beautiful speeches full of
sesquipedalian phrases in which they spoke about the place of Italy
among the great powers, the dangers of jealousy and invasion from other
nations, the magnificence of the future, the blessings of education, the
delights of liberty, the wickedness of the opposition, the sovereign
rights of the people; and said it all so magnificently and so
bewilderingly that the people never remembered till it was too late that
they had said nothing about opposing the cow-tax--or indeed any taxes at
all, but listened and gaped, and shouted, and clapped; and being told
that they could sit at a European Congress to decide the fate of Epirus,
were for the moment oblivious that they had bad bread, dear wine, scant
meat, an army of conscripts, and a bureaucracy that devoured them as
maggots a cheese. What is political eloquence for, if not to make the
people forget such things as these?

* * *

To sell your grapes to foreigners and have none at all at home is a
spirited commerce, and fine free trade; that the poor souls around are
all poisoned with cheap chemica