Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Celt and Saxon — Volume 1 by George Meredith
page 62 of 109 (56%)
I'm one with my people about evictions. We Irish take strong root. And
honest rent paid over to absentees, through an agent, if you think of it,
seems like flinging the money that's the sweat of the brow into a stone
conduit to roll away to a giant maw hungry as the sea. It's the bleeding
to death of our land! Transactions from hand to hand of warm human
flesh-nothing else will do: I mean, for men of our blood. Ah! she would
have kept my brother temperate in his notions and his plans. And why
absentees, Miss Adister? Because we've no centre of home life: the core
has been taken out of us; our country has no hearth-fire. I'm for union;
only there should be justice, and a little knowledge to make allowance
for the natural cravings of a different kind of people. Well, then, and
I suppose that inter-marriages are good for both. But here comes a man,
the boldest and handsomest of his race, and he offers himself to the
handsomest and sweetest of yours, and she leans to him, and the family
won't have him. For he's an Irishman and a Catholic. Who is it then
opposed the proper union of the two islands? Not Philip. He did his
best; and if he does worse now he's not entirely to blame. The
misfortune is, that when he learns the total loss of her on that rock-
promontory, he'll be dashing himself upon rocks sure to shiver him.
There's my fear. If I might take him this . . . ?' Patrick pleaded
with the miniature raised like the figure of his interrogation.

Caroline's inward smile threw a soft light of humour over her features at
the simple cunning of his wind-up to the lecture on his country's case,
which led her to perceive a similar cunning simplicity in his
identification of it with Philip's. It startled her to surprise, for the
reason that she'd been reviewing his freakish hops from Philip to Ireland
and to Adiante, and wondering in a different kind of surprise, how and by
what profitless ingenuity he contrived to weave them together. Nor
was she unmoved, notwithstanding her fancied perception of his Jesuitry:
DigitalOcean Referral Badge