Struck Gold Quotes

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

...as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things.

If you've struck gold, why go in search of brass?

She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold.

But its the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Matthew sighed as he set the bottle on the mantel. “You know what they say,” he said, as he and James left the room and began to wend their way back toward the party. “Drink, and you will sleep; sleep, and you will not sin; do not sin, and you will be saved; therefore, drink and be saved.” “Matthew, you could sin in your sleep,” said a languorous voice. “Anna,” said Matthew, sagging against James’s shoulder. “Have you been sent to fetch us?” Lounging against the wall was James’s cousin Anna Lightwood, gorgeously dressed in fitted trousers and a pin-striped shirt. She had the Herondale blue eyes, always disconcerting for James to see, as it felt a bit as if his father were looking at him. “If by ‘fetch,’ you mean ‘drag you back to the ballroom by any means possible,’  ” Anna said. “There are girls who need someone to dance with them and tell them they look pretty, and I cannot do it all on my own.” The musicians in the ballroom suddenly struck up a tune—a lively waltz. “Crikey, not waltzing,” said Matthew, in despair. “I loathe waltzing.” He began to back away. Anna seized him by the back of the coat. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, and firmly herded both of them toward the ballroom.

She stands in the doorway to our room, blue sundress rumpled, the rosy light of sunset slanting through the wide widows and illuminating the gold of her hair. I’m struck speechless, my breath cutting short. I am not a poetic man, but I want to be one now. I want to do justice to her beauty and the way she fills me with a strange mixture of utter peace and demanding need.

Beauty was all around them. Unsuspected tintings glimmered in the dark demesnes of the woods and glowed in their alluring by-ways. The spring sunshine sifted through the young green leaves. Gay trills of song were everywhere. There were little hollows where you felt as if you were bathing in a pool of liquid gold. At every turn some fresh spring scent struck their faces: Spice ferns...fir balsam...the wholesome odour of newly ploughed fields. There was a lane curtained with wild-cherry blossoms; a grassy old field full of tiny spruce trees just starting in life and looking like elvish things that had sat down among the grasses; brooks not yet "too broad for leaping"; starflowers under the firs; sheets of curly young ferns; and a birch tree whence someone had torn away the white-skin wrapper in several places, exposing the tints of the bark below-tints ranging from purest creamy white, through exquisite golden tones, growing deeper and deeper until the inmost layer revealed the deepest, richest brown as if to tell tha all birches, so maiden-like and cool exteriorly, had yet warm-hued feelings; "the primeval fire of earth at their hearts.

Dragons,” I said. “They’re hoarders. They keep the things they think are pretty. Gold and jewels. In this case, Justin. To each his own, I guess.

A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the gardener to keep watch all night under the tree. The gardener set his eldest son to watch; but about twelve o'clock he fell asleep, and in the morning another of the apples was missing. Then the second son was ordered to watch; and at midnight he too fell asleep, and in the morning another apple was gone. Then the third son offered to keep watch; but the gardener at first would not let him, for fear some harm should come to him: however, at last he consented, and the young man laid himself under the tree to watch. As the clock struck twelve he heard a rustling noise in the air, and a bird came flying that was of pure gold; and as it was snapping at one of the apples with its beak, the gardener's son jumped up and shot an arrow at it. But the arrow did the bird no harm; only it dropped a golden feather from its tail, and then flew away. The golden feather was brought to the king in the morning, and all the council was called together. Everyone agreed that it was worth more than all the wealth of the kingdom: but the king said, 'One feather is of no use to me, I must have the whole bird.

I do not believe in the government of the lash, if any one of you ever expects to whip your children again, I want you to have a photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth—and sit down upon the grave and look at that photograph, and think of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is wrong; it is no way to raise children! Make your home happy. Be honest with them. Divide fairly with them in everything.

The garden has wrapped itself in autumn haze. An unusual autumn, lacking that thrill of vegetal warmth when the sap is still alive and holds up the trees, drunk on solar gold. It is the sorrowful climax of a summer's drought. Never before was I so struck by the cancerous emaciation in a garden. The leaves started turning yellow in July and began falling, like a dance of prematurely withered bodies.

She felt happy and wondered if she'd ever felt this happy before. The gold light, the falling seeds, the dancing bees... it was all one thing. This was the opposite of the dark desert. Here, light was everywhere and filled her up inside. She could feel herself here but see herself from above, twirling with a buzzing shadow that sparkled golden as the light struck the bees. Moments like this paid for it all.

It was astounding how a woman, when she struck marital gold, procured not just a new wardrobe and new friends but a new voice straight out of a 1930s gramophone (brittle, mono-stereo) and a vocabulary that reliably included laze, season, and terribly sorry.

With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away…the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene’s absolute silence.

Sapphique strapped the wings to his arms and flew, over oceans and plains, over glass cities and mountains of gold. Animals fled; people pointed up. He flew so far, he saw the sky above him and the sky said, "Turn back, my son, for you have climbed too high." Sapphique laughed, as he rarely did. "Not this time. This time I beat on you until you open." But Incarceron was angered, and struck him down.

Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the cab. Every now and then her thinly daubed, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as if she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation that I was feeling could be. It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had come to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlor, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red—my hand, the plate, the table, the world—as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained—and would forever remain—unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, all-but-seared-in longing: forgotten for years to remember what such feelings had ever existed inside of me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something—anything—to save her. But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in her life and decided—almost on the spur of the moment—to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: “Hatsumi’s death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.” I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again.

Followin’ the trail on the old treasure map, I came to the spot that said “Dig right here.” And four feet down my spade struck wood Just where the map said a chest would appear. But carved in the side were written these words: “A curse upon he who disturbs this gold.” Signed, Morgan the Pirate, Scourge of the Seas. I read these words and my blood ran cold. So here I sit upon untold wealth Tryin’ to figure which is worse: How much do I need this gold? And how much do I need this curse?

She was practically an invalid ever after I could remember her, but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister, who was three years younger. There was a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars. Whatever was grand and beautiful in form and color attracted her. It seemed as though the rich green tints of the foliage and the blossoms of the flowers came for her in the springtime, and in the autumn it was for her that the mountain sides were struck with crimson and with gold.

Winter dark, five o'clock in the morning by the little gold carriage clock on the bedroom mantelpiece. The clock, an English one ('Better than a French one', her mother had instructed), had been one of her parents' wedding presents. When the creditors came to call after the society portraitist's death his widow hid the clock beneath her skirts, bemoaning the passing of the crinoline. Lottie appeared to chime on the quarter, disconcerting the creditors. Luckily they were not in the room when she struck the hour.

On the day I ruin my mortal life, I think I’ve struck gold.

Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you looked, instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs or the black prickly branches of bare oaks and beeches and elms. Then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down on to the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree tops. Soon there were more wonderful things happening. Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers- celandines. The noise of water grew louder. Presently they actually crossed a stream. Beyond it they found snowdrops growing.

After swinging the child easily from his shoulders to the ground, Lord St. Vincent opened the carriage door on Pandora's side. The full blaze of midday gilded his perfect features and struck brilliant lights in his bronze-gold hair. Fact #13 she wanted to write. Lord St. Vincent walks around with his own personal halo. The man had too much of everything. Looks, wealth, intelligence, breeding, and virile good health. Fact #14 Some people are living proof of an unjust universe.

Mom took me off the BiPAP, I tethered myself to a portable tank, and stumbled into my bathroom to brush my teeth. Appraising myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were Peter Van Houtens - miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around. Neither of these futures struck me as particularly desirable. It seemed to me that I had already seen everything pure and good in the world, and I was beginning to suspect that even if death didn't get in the way, the kind of love Augustus and I share could never last. So dawn goes down to day, the poet wrote. Nothing gold can stay.

The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone.

We are all mysteries, to those who love us and also to ourselves. When you find someone who embraces you, loves and desires you every moment, accepts your mysteries and flaws without judgement, you’ve struck gold. How delicious is the thought that this mysterious complex creature, chooses to share a life with you? Too many of us undervalue ourselves by digging too deep into the mistakes we have made or dwelling on when we failed at something like relationships, responsibilities, careers, whatever it might be. All those experiences make up the mystery and story of who we are. We are complex beings, all together in this fucked up but beautiful world. Whatever the mistakes or failures of someone’s murky past that leads them to your door should be experiences you are grateful for and that is cause for celebration. All of us have had experiences, good and bad, and those make up the intricate tapestry of who we are. I often feel insecure in so many ways, fragile and easily broken even when I know that is only a self-defeating perception that sometimes rears its ugly head. I am doing what I love, and deeply in love with someone with whom I want to share my future and write our own magical mystery story. I guess what I am trying to say is don’t dig so deep that you end up cutting your roots and the lifeblood that feeds and makes you. Match your energy and vibration with what you envision. Believe. You deserve love and success, so go for it.

I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's conversation?" "Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." "All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day

Oliver Twist had found his Artful Dodger … in this instance, a young lout who had been born, quite literally, into a life of crime – slumbering in a pram that had been stolen from John Lewis. Wayne must have thought he had struck gold when he first set foot in Moxham Hall.

Leave-Taking" I do not know where either of us can turn Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other. I do not know how we can bear The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon, Or many trees shaken together in the darkness. We shall wish not to be alone And that love were not dispersed and set free— Though you defeat me, And I be heavy upon you. But like earth heaped over the heart Is love grown perfect. Like a shell over the beat of life Is love perfect to the last. So let it be the same Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another; Let us know this for leavetaking, That I may not be heavy upon you, That you may blind me no more. Originally published in Poetry, August 1922.

To see the heart of a lover is the most splendid gift to posses. Cherish those moments of love while they last.

Ed Lim’s daughter, Monique, was a junior now, but as she’d grown up, he and his wife had noted with dismay that there were no dolls that looked like her. At ten, Monique had begun poring over a mail-order doll catalog as if it were a book–expensive dolls, with n ames and stories and historical outfits, absurdly detailed and even more absurdly expensive. ‘Jenny Cohen has this one,’ she’d told them, her finger tracing the outline of a blond doll that did indeed resemble Jenny Cohen: sweet faced with heavy bangs, slightly stocky. 'And they just made a new one with red hair. Her mom’s getting it for her sister Sarah for Hannukkah.’ Sarah Cohen had flaming red hair, the color of a penny in the summer sun. But there was no doll with black hair, let alone a face that looked anything like Monique’s. Ed Lim had gone to four different toy stores searching for a Chinese doll; he would have bought it for his daughter, whatever the price, but no such thing existed. He’d gone so far as to write to Mattel, asking them if there was a Chinese Barbie doll, and they’d replied that yes, they offered 'Oriental Barbie’ and sent him a pamphlet. He had looked at that pamphlet for a long time, at the Barbie’s strange mishmash of a costume, all red and gold satin and like nothing he’d ever seen on a Chinese or Japanese or Korean woman, at her waist-length black hair and slanted eyes. I am from Hong Kong, the pamphlet ran. It is in the Orient, or Far East. Throughout the Orient, people shop at outdoor marketplaces where goods such as fish, vegetables, silk, and spices are openly displayed. The year before, he and his wife and Monique had gone on a trip to Hong Kong, which struck him, mostly, as a pincushion of gleaming skyscrapers. In a giant, glassed-in shopping mall, he’d bought a dove-gray cashmere sweater that he wore under his suit jacket on chilly days. Come visit the Orient. I know you will find it exotic and interesting. In the end he’d thrown the pamphlet away. He’d heard, from friends with younger children, that the expensive doll line now had one Asian doll for sale – and a few black ones, too – but he’d never seen it. Monique was seventeen now, and had long outgrown dolls.

[Bus ride through The Strand]: A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew a thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand. The faces faded; the omnibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were of mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens, on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations assembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a perpetual movement among them. Signs were interchanged, when, as if to fulfil some scheme arranged already, now a summit dwindled, now a whole block of pyramidal size which had kept its station inalterably advanced into the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage. Fixed though they seemed at their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity, nothing could be fresher, freer, more sensitive superficially than the snow-white or gold-kindled surface; to change, to go, to dismantle the solemn assemblage was immediately possible; and in spite of the grave fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light to the earth, now darkness. Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster omnibus.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day.’ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Instead she was struck by the thought that she’d never felt worthy. That was the reason she was always rescuing the world. She was trying to earn her way into heaven. Barring that, she was trying to earn her way into happiness.

It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men.

He’d found her, one rainy night, in an arcade. Under bright ghosts burning through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, holograms of Wizard’s Castle, Tank War Europa, the New York skyline . . . And now he remembered her that way, her face bathed in restless laser light, features reduced to a code: her cheekbones flaring scarlet as Wizard’s Castle burned, forehead drenched with azure when Munich fell to the Tank War, mouth touched with hot gold as a gliding cursor struck sparks from the wall of a skyscraper canyon.

That evening, the monuments of the city were made known by the movements of the bodies. Each had the dignity of her movements Each sat at rest as pure and massy gold. Care weighs so heavily. Cloth is by nature heavy and falls to earth. I wanted to describe the difference in sensation. With grace the curtains when struck with the wind showed the citizens. I designed all these movements for painting. The rooms felt patient, like concepts. I disliked solitude and I also craved it. I have given thought to making my words clear rather than ornate.

When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done." But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny. "Stand up," said the teacher. He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again. "Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man.

Imagine one selected struck out of it, and think how different it's course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns and flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Gold when first struck is crowded with ‘dirt’, uncertain, might not be flashy enough to be noticed. However, if you are alert in your senses, you’d see that little glitter; if you’re persistent enough, it’ll be polished to be one of the finest ‘possessions’ you could ever acquire. The beauty about gold, though, is that in all states from uncertainty to conviction, it never for once gives up its lustre. We’re sometimes too hasty and ‘fly searching’ that we miss the little uncertain glitters that sparkle in the corners of our eyes. In such rare moments, stop for a while, and hold on to it with the best grip you could muster.

This was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its coarse would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron and gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explosion; and Hornwrack, dazzled mistaking the light for the smile, suddenly imagined an incandescence which would melt all those old streets! Rue Sepile; the Avenue of Children; Margery Fry Court: all melted down! All the shabby dependencies of the Plaza of Unrealized Time! All slumped, sank into themselves, eroded away until nothing was left in his field of vision but an unbearable white sky above and the bright clustered points of the chestnut leaves below - and then only a depthless opacity, behind which he could detect the beat of his own blood, the vitreous humour of the eye. He imagined the old encrusted brick flowing, the glass cracking and melting from its frames even as they shrivelled awake, the sheds of paints flaring green and gold, the geraniums toppling in flames to nothing, not even white ash, under this weight of light! All had winked away like reflections in a jar of water glass, and only the medium remained, bright, viscid, vacant. He had a sense of the intolerable briefness of matter, its desperate signalling and touching, its fall; and simultaneously one of its unendurable durability He thought, Something lies behind all the realities of the universe and is replacing them here, something less solid and more permanent. Then the world stopped haunting him forever.

Eccles had reached for him, it felt like, out of the ground. The minister’s voice had sounded tinny and buried. Ruth’s bedroom is dim; the streetlamp like a low moon burns shadows into the inner planes of the armchair, the burdened bed, the twisted sheet he tossed back finally when he realized the phone would never stop. The bright rose window of the church opposite is still lit: purple red blue gold like the notes of different bells struck. His body, his whole frame of nerves and bone, tingles, as if with the shaking of small bells hung up and down his silver skin. His spent groin tingles. He wonders if he had been asleep, and how long, ten minutes or five hours. He finds his underclothes and trousers draped on a chair and fumbles with them; his white shirt seems to crawl, like a cluster of glowworms in grass. He hesitates a second before poking

The first coins in history were struck around 640 BC by King Alyattes of Lydia, in western Anatolia. These coins had a standardised weight of gold or silver, and were imprinted with an identification mark. The mark testified to two things. First, it indicated how much precious metal the coin contained. Second, it identified the authority that issued the coin and that guaranteed its contents. Almost all coins in use today are descendants of the Lydian coins.

Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself—there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." "All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

That book of [Melancthon], to my mind, deserves not merely to live as long as books are read, but to take its place in the Church canon; whereas your book, by comparison, struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.

When Dad wasn’t telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase. The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances. It would even have its own water-purification system. Dad had worked out the architecture and the floor plans and most of the mathematical calculations. He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he’d pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms. All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge of that. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our Glass Castle.

She stole surreptitious glances at Christopher, as she had been doing all evening, mesmerized by the sight of him. He was tawny and sun glazed, the candlelight finding threads of gold in his hair. The yellow glow struck sparkling glints in the new growth of bristle on his face. She was fascinated by the raw, restless masculinity beneath his quietness. She wanted to revel in him as one might dash out-of-doors in a storm, letting the elements have their way. Most of all she longed to talk with him... to pry each other open with words, share every thought and secret.

The black-haired man she had seen in the courtyard was indeed McKenna. He was even larger and more imposing than he had seemed at a distance. His features were blunt and strong, his bold, wide-bridged nose set with perfect symmetry between the distinct planes of his cheekbones. He was too masculine to be considered truly handsome- a sculptor would have tried to soften those uncompromising features. But somehow his hard face was the perfect setting for those lavish eyes, the clear blue-green brilliance shadowed by thick black lashes. No one else on earth had eyes like that. "McKenna," she said huskily, searching for any resemblance he might bear to the lanky, love-struck boy she had known. There was none. McKenna was a stranger now, a man with no trace of boyishness. He was sleek and elegant in well-tailored clothes, his glossy black hair cut in short layers that tamed its inherent tendency to curl. As he drew closer, she gathered more details... the shadow of bristle beneath his close-shaven skin, the glitter of a gold watch chain in his waistcoat, the brutal swell of muscle in his shoulders and thighs as he sat on a rock nearby.

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience. When I think of the past, - when I think of the future of almost invincible difficulties, of much and difficult work, which I do not like, which I, or rather my evil self, would like to shirk; when I think the eyes of so many are fixed on me, - who will know where the fault is, if I do not succeed, who will not make me trivial reproaches, but as they are well tried and trained in everything that is right and virtuous and fine gold, they will say, as it were by the expression of their faces: we have helped you and have been a light unto you, - we have done for you what we could, have you tried honestly? what is now our reward and the fruit of our labour? See! when I think of all this, and of so many other things like it, too numerous to name them all, of all the difficulties and cares that do not grow less when we advance in life, of sorrow, of disappointment, of the fear of failure, of disgrace, - then I also have the longing - I wish I were far away from everything

RISE UP AND SALUTE THE SUN Rise up! RISE UP everyone! Rise up and salute the sun! Rise up and synergize as ONE. And division there shall be none. Yes! And division there shall be none! Wise up! Wise up and salute the sun! So what is right will always be won - And so what is wrong will be never be done. Yes! So what is wrong will never be done, And justice will always be won! Rise up! Wise up and salute the sun! Because what is turning Can never be undone, And what is churning Has already been spun. Yes, The lies are distorting the sum. And they're quickly earning The minds of our young. Rise Up! Wise up and vibrate knowledge and peace Throughout the streets and UNIVERSAL KINGDOM! Spread light to replace all the hatred And ignorance in the world - With Truth and amplified WISDOM! Rise up! Rise up and salute the sun. Get wise and join lights as ONE. Because the journey has just begun. Yes, The REVOLUTION has just begun. So wise up! Wise up and free all your minds. Rise up and stand up for all mankind! Put on your gold crowns and SHINE! Because the sun symbolizes what's lit inside. Illumination frees us and gives us eyes. It's what heals us and gives us life. It's also the symbol of the Most High -- -- THE LIGHT, The light in all its MIGHT! So RISE UP. Rise up and salute the sun! Wise up because the hour HAS COME And they've already sent us More than one drum! Hurry up! Hurry up before the last chime is STRUCK! RISE UP before the TIME IS UP! Rise up before they kill our dove! Wise up and fight with LIGHT and LOVE! RISE UP! Rise up EVERYONE. Rise up and salute the sun. Rise up and salute the sun! RISE UP AND SALUTE THE SUN - Poetry by Suzy Kassem

The sun is on its descent as I watch it, its lustrous red-gold colors making the blue water beneath it look as if it is on fire. The sound of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 drifts across the terrace, reaching a zenith as the sun plunges gracefully into the sea. This is my favorite moment of the day here, when nature itself seems to be still, watching the spectacle of the King of the Day, the force it relies upon to grow and flourish, make its journey into sleep. We are able to be here together far less than I'd like, so the moment is even more precious. The sun has gone now, so I can close my eyes and listen to Xavier playing. I have performed this concerto a hundred times, and I'm struck by the subtle differences, the nuances that make his rendition his own. Its stronger, more masculine, which is, of course, how it should be.

The school regime refused to make it easy for us on the dress side of things, and it dictated that even if we wanted to walk into the neighboring town of Windsor, then we had to wear a blazer and tie. This made us prime targets for the many locals who seemed to enjoy an afternoon of beating up the Eton “toffs.” On one occasion, I was having a pee in the loos of the Windsor McDonald’s, which were tucked away downstairs at the back of the fast-food joint. I was just leaving the Gents when the door swung open, and in walked three aggressive-looking lads. They looked as if they had struck gold on discovering this weedy, blazer-wearing Eton squirt, and I knew deep down that I was in trouble and alone. (Meanwhile, my friends were waiting for me upstairs. Some use they were being.) I tried to squeeze past these hoodies, but they threw me back against the wall and laughed. They then proceeded to debate what they were going to do to me. “Flush his head down the toilet,” was an early suggestion. (Well, I had had that done to me many times already at Eton, I thought to myself.) I was okay so far. Then they suggested defecating in the loo first. Now I was getting worried. Then came the killer blow: “Let’s shave his pubes!” Now, there is no greater embarrassment for a young teenager than being discovered to not have any pubes. And I didn’t. That was it. I charged at them, threw one of them against the wall, barged the other aside, squeezed through the door, and bolted. They chased after me, but once I reached the main floor of the McDonald’s I knew I was safe. I waited with my friends inside until we were sure the thugs had all left, then cautiously slunk back across the bridge to school. (I think we actually waited more than two hours, to be safe. Fear teaches great patience.)

It has struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty, and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men. And just as this one filled the smoking-room where my uncle was entertaining her in his alpaca coat, with her charming person, her dress of pink silk, her pearls, and the refinement suggested by intimacy with a Grand Duke, so, in the same way, she had taken some casual remark by my father, had worked it up delicately, given it a 'turn', a precious title, set it in the gem of a glance from her own eyes, a gem of the first water, blended of humility and gratitude; and so had given it back transformed into a jewel, a work of art, into something altogether charming.

You don't wear jewelry, do you? Besides your wedding ring, I mean?' 'Now often. If is not that I disapprove. I simply don't take the time to bother with it. I've been given a few trinkets over the years, but rarely wear them.' Thora looked down at her hand, the plain thin wedding band, the unadorned wrist, and a memory struck her. She said, 'Frank gave me a gift once - a find gold bracelet with a blue enamel heart dangling from it. He said it was to remind me that I was more than his helpmeet and housekeeper, but also an attractive woman. I was sure I'd break the delicate chain, and the heart clacked against the desk whenever I wrote in the ledger. So I put it back in its box, and there it has remained ever since.' Nan said gently, 'We've all been given gifts, Thors, and ought not to hide them away. They remind us that we are blessed and loved. They give pleasure to those who see them - especially to the one who bestowed the gift in the first place.

He paused and eyed her as if she were an agate discovered in gravel. "But what a very sharp tongue you have for a housekeeper." Bridget's heart sank- she knew better than to speak so frankly. It was never good for a servant to be noticed by a master- particularly this master. "Come." He beckoned her closer with his forefinger and she saw the flash of a jeweled gold ring on his left thumb. She swallowed and opened her right hand, silently dropping the miniature to the lush carpet. As she walked toward him she nudged the little painting under the enormous bed with the side of her foot. She stopped a pace away from him. His lips curved, sly and sensual. "Closer." She stepped nearer until her plain, practical black linsey-woolsey skirts were crushed against his purple velvet knees. Her heart beat hard and swift, but she was confident her expression didn't show her fear. Still smiling, he held out his hands, palms upward. His hands were long-fingered and elegant. The hands of a musician- or a swordsman. She stared down at them a moment, confused. He quirked an eyebrow and nodded. Bridget placed her hands on top of his. Palm to palm. She expected searing heat or deathly cold and was a little surprised to instead feel human warmth. She'd been hired little more than a fortnight before the duke had supposedly been banished. In that time he had never struck her as human- or humane. "Ah," His Grace murmured, cocking his head with interest. "What feminine hands you have, despite your station in life." His blue eyes flashed at her from under dark eyelashes, a secretive smile playing about his mouth. She met his gaze stonily. His lips quirked and he looked down again. "Small, plump, with neat, round nails." He turned her hands over so that they now rested palms-up in his. "I once knew a Greek girl who swore she could read a man's life story from the lines on his hands." He dropped her left hand to trace the lines on her right palm with a forefinger. His touch sent a frisson along her nerves and Bridget couldn't hold back a shudder.

THE sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow, spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp reused it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold. The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue fingerprint of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

Both men and women of the race were extremely handsome; the former tall and strong, with fine features, curly hair, and a clear bronze complexion. They wore long tunics and turbans, and carried lances, bucklers, or round shields, and large swords slung across their shoulders, the latter, also very tall and well formed, were dressed in becoming bodices with full skirts, a loose mantle enveloping the whole form in graceful drapery. They wore jewels in their ears, and necklaces, bracelets, bangles, and anklets, made of gold, ivory, or shells.   Thousands of oxen paced quietly along with these men, women, old men, and children. They had neither harness nor halter, only bells or red tassels on their heads, and double packs thrown across their backs, which contained wheat and other grains.   A whole tribe journeyed in this manner, under the directions of an elected chief, called the “naik,” whose power is despotic while it lasts. He controls the movements of the caravan, fixes the hours for the start and the halt, and arranges the dispositions of the camp.   I was struck by the magnificent appearance of a large bull, who with superb and imperial step led the van. He was covered with a bright coloured cloth, ornamented with bells and shell embroidery, and I asked Banks if he knew what was the special office of this splendid animal.   “Kâlagani will of course be able to tell us,” answered he. “Where is the fellow?”   He was called, but did not make his appearance, and search being made, it was found he had left Steam House.   “No doubt he has gone to renew acquaintance with some old comrade,” said Colonel Munro. “He will return before we resume our journey.”   This seemed very natural. There was nothing in the temporary absence of the man to occasion uneasiness, but somehow it haunted me uncomfortably.   “Well,” said Banks, “to the best of my belief this bull represents, or is an emblem of, their deity. Where he goes they follow; where he stops, there they encamp; but of course we are to suppose he is in reality under the secret control of the ‘naik.’ Anyhow, he is to these wanderers an embodiment of their religion.”   The cortege seemed interminable, and for two hours there was no sign of an approaching end.

Afterward, when Trump had phone calls with the families of others from the military who had been killed, the White House staff noticed how hard and tough it seemed for him. “He’s not that guy,” Bannon said. “He’s never really been around the military. He’s never been around military family. Never been around death.” The deaths of “parents of small kids” struck him particularly hard. “That had a big impact on him, and it’s seen throughout everything.” A staffer who sat in on several calls that Trump made to Gold Star families was struck with how much time and emotional energy Trump devoted to them. He had a copy of material from the deceased service member’s personnel file. “I’m looking at his picture—such a beautiful boy,” Trump said in one call to family members. Where did he grow up? Where did he go to school? Why did he join the service? “I’ve got the record here,” Trump said. “There are reports here that say how much he was loved. He was a great leader.” Some in the Oval Office had copies of the service records. None of what Trump cited was there. He was just making it up. He knew what the families wanted to hear.

Mollie’s brother-in-law, Bill Smith, was one of the first to wonder if there was something curious about Lizzie’s death, coming so soon after the murders of Anna and Whitehorn. A bruising bulldog of a man, Bill had also expressed deep frustration over the authorities’ investigation, and he had begun looking into the matter himself. Like Mollie, he was struck by the peculiar vagueness of Lizzie’s sickness; no doctor had ever pinpointed what was causing it. Indeed, no one had uncovered any natural cause for her death. The more Bill delved, conferring with doctors and local investigators, the more he was certain that Lizzie had died of something dreadfully unnatural: she’d been poisoned. And Bill was sure that all three deaths were connected—somehow—to the Osage’s subterranean reservoir of black gold. 4  UNDERGROUND RESERVATION The money had come suddenly, swiftly, madly. Mollie had been ten years old when the oil was first discovered, had witnessed, firsthand, the ensuing frenzy. But, as the elders in the tribe had relayed to Mollie, the tangled history of how their people had gotten hold of this oil-rich land went back to the seventeenth century, when the Osage had laid claim to much of the central part of the country—a territory that stretched from what is now Missouri and Kansas to Oklahoma, and still farther west, all the way to the Rockies. In

Air swirled over her shoulders leaving a wake of chilled skin. To her left something stirred in the shadows. She blinked. The swordsman stood by the fire, as clear and solid as day. Her heart thundered in her ears so loud he must surely hear. She started to sit up, then remembered her naked state. Water sloshed in the tub. "I beg your pardon." He inclined his head. Steam from the water swirled, but Olivia saw his dark hair. He was tall and wore a tunic worked with red and gold. A leather strap crossed from right shoulder to left waist and held the scabbard fastened across his back. A jeweled belt circled his waist. His eyes matched the blue of the sky. The way he stood struck her as familiar. She closed her eyes. He was still there when she opened them again. "I am not mad," she said. "Is that you? Edith?" Even with the distance between them and the mist swirling in the air, she saw his blue eyes, the arrogant set to his shoulders that came of years of wealth and breeding. His grin sent a flare of alarm up her spine. He took a step toward her, and for one dreadful moment, she was convinced he was as real as she was. He tipped his head and spread his arms wide, as if to prove himself harmless. "Go away." She wasn't afraid of him precisely. She was afraid of being mad. "Please, just go away." He shook his head. "I am not mad," she whispered. He shook his head again. "I wish you were real.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get the village blacksmith to “jump” it; but I jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true. A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous years I had often gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth.

From the Desire Field” I don’t call it sleep anymore.         I’ll risk losing something new instead— like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose. But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing— a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined         fruit to unfasten from, despite my trembling. Let me call my anxiety, desire, then Let me call it, a garden. Maybe this is what Lorca meant         when he said, verde que te quiero verde— because when the shade of night comes, I am a field of it, of any ready to flower in my chest. My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,         hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion beneath the hip and plow of my lover, then I am another night wandering the desire field— bewildered in its low green glow, belling the meadow between midnight and morning. Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising         and many petaled. the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow. I am struck in the witched hours of want— I want her green life. Her inside me in a green hour I can’t stop.         Green vein in her throat green wind in my mouth green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending. Green moving green, moving. Fast as that, this is how it happens—         soy una sonámbula. And even though you said today you felt better, and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear,         to say, I don’t feel good, until I can smell its sweet smoke,         leave this thrashed field, and be smooth. Natalie Diaz, poets.org (5 June 2017)

She stole surreptitious glances at Christopher, as she had been doing all evening, mesmerized by the sight of him. He was tawny and sun glazed, the candlelight finding threads of gold in his hair. The yellow glow struck sparkling glints in the new growth of bristle on his face. She was fascinated by the raw, restless masculinity beneath his quietness. She wanted to revel in him as one might dash out-of-doors in a storm, letting the elements have their way. Most of all she longed to talk with him…to pry each other open with words, share every thought and secret. “My sincere thanks for your hospitality,” Christopher finally said at the conclusion of the meal. “It was much needed.” “You must return soon,” Cam said, “especially to view the timber yard in operation. We have installed some innovations that you may want to use at Riverton someday.” “Thank you. I would like to see them.” Christopher looked directly at Beatrix. “Before I depart, Miss Hathaway, I wonder if you would introduce me to this notorious mule of yours?” His manner was relaxed…but his eyes were those of a predator. Beatrix’s mouth went dry. There would be no escaping him. That much was clear. He wanted answers. He would have them either now or later. “Now?” she asked wanly. “Tonight?” “If you don’t mind,” he said in a far too pleasant tone. “The barn is but a short walk from the house, is it not?” “Yes,” Beatrix said, rising from her chair. The men at the table stood obligingly. “Excuse us, please. I won’t be long.” “May I go with you?” Rye asked eagerly. “No, darling,” Amelia said, “it’s time for your bath.” “But why must I wash if I can’t see any dirt?” “Those of us who have a difficult time with godliness,” Amelia replied with a grin, “must settle for cleanliness.

What is that?” Morgan asked, coming out of her shock and pointing at the “wagon” they had procured for the journey. “What do you mean?” Ladon asked. “It’s a wagon. For Melisande and the supplies.” Melly cleared her throat and tried not to laugh. “Generally wagons in the human world are made of wood. Not gold and precious gems.” She didn’t want to even think about how strong those fire beasts had to be to pull a solid gold wagon. Morgan laughed beside her while Melly continued, trying to be diplomatic, “If we are trying to remain unnoticed, we” “ will need to be a little less ... ostentatious.” The dragons looked around at each other. It was Eben who spoke. “We decided since there was no way for our dragons to pass as human, we would give a display of wealth and violence, so that the humans would be impressed enough to keep their distance.” Melly looked at Morgan, who rolled her eyes, her lips twitching. “I believe that the Dragon Knights and flaming horses will be a sufficient sight to strike fear in the populace,” Melly said, trying to keep the smile out of her voice. “Perhaps excessive even. But it would be best not to advertise quite so strongly the wealth of the dragon lands. Humans have been known to act foolishly when wealth is at stake.” All the dragons looked to the wagon again. “Perhaps you are right,” Eben finally said. The big blue dragon male shrugged his massive shoulders and nodded. “Humans can be greedy things.” Coming from a people that surrounded themselves with treasure and had made a solid gold wagon, this struck Melly as ironic. Morgan must have thought so too. Her voice was dry when she spoke. “Yes, If only they had the fortitude of dragons to be able to resist acquiring shiny baubles.” The dragons turned as one and looked at them, blinking big exotic eyes, and glinting like jewels in the sun. Melly cleared her throat. “So, a wooden wagon?

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woolen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold. The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

Men traveling alone develop a romantic vertigo. Bech had already fallen in love with a freckled embassy wife in Russia, a buck-toothed chanteuse in Rumania, a stolid Mongolian sculptress in Kazakhstan. In the Tretyakov Gallery he had fallen in love with a recumbent statue, and at the Moscow Ballet School with an entire roomful of girls. Entering the room, he had been struck by the aroma, tenderly acrid, of young female sweat. Sixteen and seventeen, wearing patchy practice suits, the girls were twirling so strenuously their slippers were unraveling. Demure student faces crowned the unconscious insolence of their bodies. The room was doubled in depth by a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Bech was seated on a bench at its base. Staring above his head, each girl watched herself with frowning eyes frozen, for an instant in the turn, by the imperious delay and snap of her head. Bech tried to remember the lines of Rilke that expressed it, this snap and delay: did not the drawing remain/that the dark stroke of your eyebrow/swiftly wrote on the wall of its own turning? At one point the teacher, a shapeless old Ukrainian lady with gold canines, a prima of the thirties, had arisen and cried something translated to Bech as, “No, no, the arms free, free!” And in demonstration she had executed a rapid series of pirouettes with such proud effortlessness that all the girls, standing this way and that like deer along the wall, had applauded. Bech had loved them for that. In all his loves, there was an urge to rescue—to rescue the girls from the slavery of their exertions, the statue from the cold grip of its own marble, the embassy wife from her boring and unctuous husband, the chanteuse from her nightly humiliation (she could not sing), the Mongolian from her stolid race. But the Bulgarian poetess presented herself to him as needing nothing, as being complete, poised, satisfied, achieved. He was aroused and curious and, the next day, inquired about her of the man with the vaguely contemptuous mouth of a hare—a novelist turned playwright and scenarist, who accompanied him to the Rila Monastery. “She lives to write,” the playwright said. “I do not think it is healthy.

In contemporary Western society, buying a magazine on astrology - at a newsstand, say - is easy; it is much harder to find one on astronomy. Virtually every newspaper in America has a daily column on astrology; there are hardly any that have even a weekly column on astronomy. There are ten times more astrologers in the United States than astronomers. At parties, when I meet people that do not know I’m a scientist, I am sometimes asked “Are you a Gemini?” (chances of success, one in twelve), or “What sign are you?” Much more rarely am I asked “Have you heard that gold is made in supernova explosions?” or “When do you think Congress will approve a Mars Rover?” (...) And personal astrology is with us still: consider two different newspaper astrology columns published in the same city on the same day. For example, we can examine The New York Post and the New York Daily News on September 21, 1979. Suppose you are a Libra - that is, born between September 23 and October 22. According to the astrologer for the Post, ‘a compromise will help ease tension’; useful, perhaps, but somewhat vague. According to the Daily News’ astrologer, you must ‘demand more of yourself’, an admonition that is also vague but also different. These ‘predictions’ are not predictions; rather they are pieces of advice - they tell you what to do, not what will happen. Deliberately, they are phrased so generally that they could apply to anyone. And they display major mutual inconsistencies. Why are they published as unapologetically as sport statistics and stock market reports? Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one twin is killed in childhood, in a riding accident, say, or is struck by lightning, while the other lives to a prosperous old age. Each was born in precisely the same place and within minutes of the other. Exactly the same planets were rising at their births. If astrology were valid, how could two such twins have such profoundly different fates? It also turns out that astrologers cannot even agree among themselves on what a given horoscope means. In careful tests, they are unable to predict the character and future of people they knew nothing about except their time and place of birth.

They killed everyone in the camps. The whole world was dying there. Not only Jews. Even a black woman. Not gypsy. Not African. American like you, Mrs. Clara. They said she was a dancer and could play any instrument. Said she could line up shoes from many countries and hop from one pair to the next, performing the dances of the world. They said the Queen of Denmark honored her with a gold trumpet. But she was there, in hell with the rest of us. A woman like you. Many years ago. A lifetime ago. Young then as you would have been. And beautiful. As I believe you must have been, Mrs. Clara. Yes. Before America entered the war. Already camps had begun devouring people. All kinds of people. Yet she was rare. Only woman like her I saw until I came here, to this country, this city. And she saved my life. Poor thing. I was just a boy. Thirteen years old. The guards were beating me. I did not know why. Why? They didn't need a why. They just beat. And sometimes the beating ended in death because there was no reason to stop, just as there was no reason to begin. A boy. But I'd seen it many times. In the camp long enough to forget why I was alive, why anyone would want to live for long. They were hurting me, beating the life out of me but I was not surprised, expected no explanation. I remember curling up as I had seen a dog once cowering from the blows of a rolled newspaper. In the old country lifetimes ago. A boy in my village staring at a dog curled and rolling on its back in the dust outside a baker's shop and our baker in his white apron and tall white hat striking this mutt again and again. I didn't know what mischief this dog had done. I didn't understand why the fat man with flour on his apron was whipping it unmercifully. I simply saw it and hated the man, felt sorry for the animal, but already the child in me understood it could be no other way so I rolled and curled myself against the blows as I'd remembered the spotted dog in the dusty village street because that's the way it had to be. Then a woman's voice in a language I did not comprehend reached me. A woman angry, screeching. I heard her before I saw her. She must have been screaming at them to stop. She must have decided it was better to risk dying than watch the guards pound a boy to death. First I heard her voice, then she rushed in, fell on me, wrapped herself around me. The guards shouted at her. One tried to snatch her away. She wouldn't let go of me and they began to beat her too. I heard the thud of clubs on her back, felt her shudder each time a blow was struck. She fought to her feet, dragging me with her. Shielding me as we stumbled and slammed into a wall. My head was buried in her smock. In the smell of her, the smell of dust, of blood. I was surprised how tiny she was, barely my size, but strong, very strong. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, squeezing, gripping hard enough to hurt me if I hadn't been past the point of feeling pain. Her hands were strong, her legs alive and warm, churning, churning as she pressed me against herself, into her. Somehow she'd pulled me up and back to the barracks wall, propping herself, supporting me, sheltering me. Then she screamed at them in this language I use now but did not know one word of then, cursing them, I'm sure, in her mother tongue, a stream of spit and sputtering sounds as if she could build a wall of words they could not cross. The kapos hesitated, astounded by what she'd dared. Was this black one a madwoman, a witch? Then they tore me from her grasp, pushed me down and I crumpled there in the stinking mud of the compound. One more kick, a numbing, blinding smash that took my breath away. Blood flooded my eyes. I lost consciousness. Last I saw of her she was still fighting, slim, beautiful legs kicking at them as they dragged and punched her across the yard. You say she was colored? Yes. Yes. A dark angel who fell from the sky and saved me.

History records that there was only one Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo — and that he was too small for his job. The fact is there were two Napoleons at Waterloo, and the second one was big enough for his job, with some to spare. The second Napoleon was Nathan Rothschild — the emperor of finance. During the trying months that came before the crash Nathan Rothschild had plunged on England until his own fortunes, no less than those of the warring nations, were staked on the issue. He had lent money direct. He had discounted Wellington's paper. He had risked millions by sending chests of gold through war-swept territory where the slightest failure of plans might have caused its capture. He was extended to the limit when the fateful hour struck, and the future seemed none too certain. The English, in characteristic fashion, believed that all had been lost before anything was lost -— before the first gun bellowed out its challenge over the Belgian plains. The London stock market was in a panic. Consols were falling, slipping, sliding, tumbling. If the telegraph had been invented, the suspense would have been less, even if the wires had told that all was lost. But there was no telegraph. There were only rumors and fears. As the armies drew toward Waterloo Nathan Rothschild was like a man aflame. All of his instincts were crying out for news — good news, bad news, any kind of news, but news — something to end his suspense. News could be had immediately only by going to the front. He did not want to go to the front. A biographer of the family, Mr. Ignatius Balla, 1 declares that Nathan had " always shrunk from the sight of blood." From this it may be presumed that, to put it delicately, he was not a martial figure. But, as events came to a focus, his mingled hopes and fears overcame his inborn instincts. He must know the best or the worst and that at once. So he posted off for Belgium. He drew near to the gathering armies. From a safe post on a hill he saw the puffs of smoke from the opening guns. He saw Napoleon hurl his human missiles at Wellington's advancing walls of red. He did not see the final crash of the French, because he saw enough to convince him that it was coming, and therefore did not wait to witness the actual event. He had no time to wait. He hungered and thirsted for London as a few days before he had hungered and thirsted for the sight of Waterloo. Wellington having saved the day for him as well as for England, Nathan Rothschild saw an opportunity to reap colossal gains by beating the news of Napoleon's 1 The Romance of the Rothschilds, p. 88. 126 OUR DISHONEST CONSTITUTION defeat to London and buying the depressed securities of his adopted country before the news of victory should send them skyward with the hats of those whose brains were still whirling with fear. So he left the field of Waterloo while the guns were still booming out the requiem of all of Napoleon's great hopes of empire. He raced to Brussels upon the back of a horse whose sides were dripping with spur-drawn blood. At Brussels he paid an exorbitant price to be whirled in a carriage to Ostend. At Ostend he found the sea in the grip of a storm that shook the shores even as Wellington was still shaking the luck-worn hope of France. " He was certainly no hero," says Balla, " but at the present moment he feared nothing." Who would take him in a boat and row him to England? Not a boatman spoke. No one likes to speak when Death calls his name, and Rothschild's words were like words from Death. But Rothschild continued to speak. He must have a boatman and a boat. He must beat the news of Waterloo to England. Who would make the trip for 500 francs? Who would go for 800, 1,000? Who would go for 2,000? A courageous sailor would go. His name should be here if it had not been lost to the world. His name should be here and wherever this story is printed, because he said he would go if Rothschild would pay the 2,000 francs to the sailor's wife before

Sir Graham walked to the window, very aware of two worshipful pairs of young eyes on his back. He knew well how to make himself noticed; he knew well how to draw a lady’s eye, and with this in mind—and despite the heat—he had purposely and cunningly exchanged his seagoing frock coat for his finest full-dress uniform. The dark blue coat was carefully brushed, with bright gold bars of lace at sleeve and lapel, more lace at collar, cuffs, and pockets, and the epaulets with the single star winking proudly from each shoulder; the waistcoat and breeches were snowy white, and a cocked hat was framed with even more gold trim. Uniforms—especially full-dress ones usually reserved for formal occasions—were a sure bet for winning female hearts and with this in mind, the admiral turned just so, knowing that the sunlight would—move a little more to starboard, Gray—he heard one of the girls gasp—yes, that's it—touch upon the gold fringe of his epaulets with blinding brilliance. With a private, wicked smile, he struck a deliberate pose, relaxed yet commanding all at once;

Before we could approach the child, we were momentarily blinded by a flash of blue light; there standing before us was my son Raphael with his rod of gold held up before him. “Greeting’s Patuar, Mater. Fear not, what has come to pass must occur. The Almighty One has provided their way. Watch, listen, and then go your way.” Mariah wished to tarry longer to plead for the boy but in a loud voice Raphael shouted, “What troubles you Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift up the boy and take him by the hand, for he will be a great nation.” After saying this Raphael took his staff and struck the ground. Where the ground had been struck, a wide hole opened up in the ground and water poured up from the depths of Gar. Hagar could not see Raphael, us, or the well. Iam opened her eyes and she saw the well. Raphael led us away and kissed us both on the forehead before sending us home.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold of thorns or flowers, that never would have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Before the two days of exams, I slept just a few hours nightly, for the number of books to be read was insane and I made a maximum effort. After all, how could I dare disappoint my family? How could I disappoint Max, who paid my tuition? Yet, I don't know how I accomplished it. I was like caught in a whirlpool and kept going, going. I remember, one night, my Mother woke up at 4 a.m. and asked me why I was up so early, yet I had not gone to sleep yet. I had to finish a novel every day, no matter how long it took. Some impressions about Columbia. The dean, who advised me what courses to take, was none other than Prof. Oscar Hamilton, a famous Shakespearean scholar. He took time to talk to me about my interests and my former studies. I told him about my abiding interest in the theater and thus he recommended me to take the Drama course taught by Joseph Wood Krutch. He was, by that time, an influential drama critic and a most admired professor. At the first lecture I realized what a gold mine I had struck. A big lecture hall was completely filled, half were probably not his students. People just flocked to hear him.

Well, Libby, I have been thinking about our problem,” he finally said. “My boys enjoy your visits, and ever since I met you I have trouble getting the thought of your smile out of my head.” Her eyes widened and her mouth went dry. He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he stared across the field, but he wasn’t finished speaking and Libby would not stop him for all the gold in the world. “I have always thought you very pretty. A man would be blind not to think so, but when you smile! Well, your smile fills half of your face, and it makes the other half beautiful.” Libby was struck speechless. Had he been suffering from the same irrational infatuation she had been battling these past six weeks? A sense of joy started to bloom inside and she beamed a smile directly at him. “Don’t show it to me!” he said with a nervous laugh and turned away from her. “Your smile will distract me, and this is serious business I wish to discuss.” He shifted his weight and stared off into the distance again. “You have a love of the outdoors and for plants, just as I have. You get along well with my children and it is obvious to anyone that you would be an excellent mother. I think we would be a good match. Perhaps you would consider marrying me?

Back in 1933, during the height of the populist backlash against Wall Street, the son of J. Pierpont Morgan—J. P. “Jack” Morgan, Jr.—had been grilled by Congress about his ethos. He declared that the aim of his bank was to conduct “first-class business…in a first-class way.” Fifty years later, that mantra of Jack Morgan struck much of the banking world as quaint. Years of bold innovation had made high-risk trading and aggressive deal making the gold standard of the street, and a “kill or be killed” ethic prevailed. At

Len’s arm brushed against mine. I pulled the cream and gold comforter over my shoulders and cuddled closer, wishing I could stay in bed all day and snuggle. But Cupid’s minions didn’t get sick days or holidays or time off for good behavior. Instead, I got a demanding boss, no pay, and chained to a man-whore till death do us part. I’d complain, but I didn’t think Cupid’s minions had a union.

SINKING UNDER TREASURES Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. Luke 12:15 One of the worst nautical disasters in British history was the 1859 wreck of the Royal Charter steam clipper. Hammered by hurricane winds and thrown upon the rocks, an estimated 450 people were killed. There were only thirty-nine survivors. Among the passengers were gold miners who had struck it rich in Australia and were now returning to England. Many of them died weighed down by belts loaded with gold. Their gold, far from ensuring their future, might actually have contributed to their deaths. Even worse, their greed likely prevented them from helping others. Not a single woman or child was saved from the ship. Greed is a terrible thing, a corrupting thing, that can blind us to our real needs and certainly to the needs of others. If there is no truer love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends, how much truer is it that we should lay down belts of gold in order to save the lives of women and children? SWEET FREEDOM IN Action We should not put our trust in riches, but in our faith, which promises a brighter future than gold can ever deliver. Today, take stock of your possessions and take note of those things that might be dragging you down or distracting you from living a more abundant spiritual life. Remember that your real life jacket is your faith.

Yuguo fell apart, into a thousand little pieces. He felt it happen, fragments of his mind detaching from the rest, splitting off, becoming their own, being mapped by Nexus. Here was Yuguo’s knowledge of coding, his comprehension of data structures, of objects and methods, of intents and game players, of threads and loops and conditions. Here was football Yuguo, the precise way his left foot grounded into the grass and his hips swiveled and his arm balanced as his right foot shot forward to kick the checked ball at the goal. Here was Yuguo’s shy lust for girls, the patterns his eyes drew over their curves when he saw them, the anxiety that struck him dumb when they were near. Here was Yuguo’s despair that had led him to this room, his quiet dread that his country and the world were getting worse instead of better, that the future was one of slow strangulation at the electronic hands of smiling tame AIs with famous faces, their forked tongues lapping out of the viewscreens to feed saccharine to the masses, the old men who’d always ruled China laughing and holding their leashes. Here were the words a young woman had said to him just minutes ago. “Critical mass. Weak apart, strong together.” Here were her eyes, fiery eyes, hanging in space. Here was her name: Lifen. Then those pieces fell apart, into smaller pieces, which fell apart into fragments even smaller: Yuguo’s sensation of red. Yuguo’s concept of 1 and 0. Yuguo’s left thumb. The sound in Yuguo’s head when he heard the third note of his favorite pop song. Yuguo’s yes. Yuguo’s no. Yuguo’s and. Yuguo’s or. Yuguo’s xor. Yuguo’s now. Yuguo’s future. Yuguo’s past. He could see himself now. He was a golden statue of Yuguo, immobile, one foot in front of the other, standing in a space of white light. But the statue wasn’t solid, it was made of grains, millions of grains, flecks of gold dust, millions of parts of him. And as he watched they were separating, pulling gradually apart, so that he was no longer a single entity but a cloud, a fog, a fog of Yuguo, and if a strong wind came, he would just blow away, and if the pieces split any more he knew there wouldn’t be any such thing as Yuguo left at all. Yuguo’s fear. Yuguo’s end. And then the pieces rushed together, and he was inside that statue, he was that statue, and he was all of it, 1 and 0, yes and no, future and past, sound and sight, football and coding. He was all of it. He was whole. He was a mind. I’m Yuguo, he realized. I’m him. I’m me. I’m Yuguo! His eyes snapped open. He was in his body. His body made of molten gold. No, not gold, flesh and blood.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

I take it, Professor, this is not only a social visit?" he asked, his voice almost normal. "No, of course not. I've come to ask why on earth you haven't called on me before now?" Ramil took a step back. "Er . . . well, we've been a bit busy, Professor." "I can see that for myself. I had a terrible job getting here: they've ringed you off with troops five men deep. I had to crawl through the tunnels and some of them are in a disgusting state." Norling sniffed his robe with a doubtful look. "But why you did not think to ask the resistance for aid is beyond me. We can be immensely helpful to you." Ramil struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Stupid! I should have been drowned at birth," he muttered. "Oh, I wouldn't go that far," said Norling generously. "I don't think it's too late. In fact, I'd say that you've managed very well without me.

As far as nanny work goes, I struck gold. Yet I was uncomfortable with being a college graduate and working as a less-cool version of Mary Poppins.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. GREAT EXPECTATIONS CHARLES DICKENS

Daylight slanted in through the bars making his eyes glint like polished steel. Motes of dust frenzied in his atmosphere as if drawing energy from the electric force of his presence. A thin ring of gold glinted in his left ear, and sharp cheekbones underscored an arrogant brow. He’d look stern but for his mouth, which was not so severe. It bowed with a fullness she might have called feminine if the rest of his face wasn’t so brutally cast. Mercy hadn’t realized she’d been staring at his lips, gripped with a queer sort of fascination until they parted and he spoke. “You were quite impressive back there.” “What?” Mercy shook her head dumbly. Had he just complimented her? Had they just been through the same scene? She’d never been less impressed with herself in her entire life. Would that she could have been like him. Smooth and unaffected. Infuriatingly self-assured. And yet…he’d only been that way after breaking the nose of the officer who'd struck her, and possibly his jaw. Lord but she’d never seen a man move like that before. “I listened to your deductions,” he explained. “From where you were hiding in the closet?” she quipped, rather unwisely. Something flickered in his eyes, and yet again she was left to guess if she’d angered or amused him. “From where I was hiding in the closet,” he said with a droll sigh as he shifted, seeming to find a more comfortable position for his bound hands. “You’re obviously cleverer than the detectives. How do you know so much about murder scenes?” Mercy warned herself not to preen. She stomped on the lush warmth threatening to spread from her chest at his encouragement, and thrust her nose in the air, perhaps a little too high. “I am one of only three female members of the Investigator Eddard Sharpe Society of Homicidal Mystery Analysis. As penned by the noted novelist, J. Francis Morgan, whom I suspect is a woman.” “Why do you suspect that?” His lip twitched, as if he also battled to suppress his own expression. “Because men tend to write women characters terribly, don’t they? But J. Francis Morgan is a master of character and often, the mystery is even solved by a woman rather than Detective Sharpe. His heroines are not needlessly weak or stupid or simpering. They’re strong. Dangerous. Powerful. Sometimes even villainous and complicated. That is good literature, I say. Because it’s true to life.” He’d ceased fighting his smile and allowed his lip to quirk up in a half-smile as he regarded her from beneath his dark brow. “Mathilde’s murderer now has one more person they’d do well to fear in you.” She leveled him a sour look. “Does that mean you fear me?” He tilted toward her. Suddenly—distressingly—grave. “You terrify me, Mercy Goode.

There once lived an old man who had a wish. He prayed to God that before he died he would get the chance to see the difference between heaven and hell. One night an angel appeared before the old man’s bed and granted his wish. The angel blindfolded the man and spoke: “First you shall see hell.” The old man felt a momentary weightlessness and then the angel removed the blindfold. The old man found himself standing in a boundless dining hall filled with large, rounded tables, ornate with gold. Each table was piled high with the most delicious of foods: fruits, vegetables, breads, cheeses, meats, desserts—everything you can imagine was there and exquisitely prepared. The man salivated at the sight as the intoxicating aromas filled his nose. However, the old man noticed everyone seated at the dining tables was sickly with gaunt, morose faces seared with frustration. Each diner held a long spoon. These spoons must have been over three feet long. While the people cursed to hell could reach with their spoons any delectable food they wanted, they could not get the food into their mouths. The hell-dwellers were in a constant state of torment, starved and desperate to taste what was just inches away. Sickened, the old man cried, “Please stop—take me to heaven!” And so the man was blindfolded again. “Now you will see heaven,” the angel said. After a familiar weightlessness, the blindfold was removed. The old man was confused. It was like he never left. He was once again in a great dining hall with the same round tables piled high with the same culinary lavishness. And just like hell, he saw these people also had long spoons preventing them from feeding themselves. However, as the old man looked closer, he noticed that the people in this dining hall were plumply vivacious and smiling; laughter and cheer filled the air. As he panned through the hall and processed the joyous sounds, the difference between heaven and hell finally struck him: The people in heaven were using those long spoons to feed each other.

John jumped to the side as an entire keg came flying at his head. Fortunately, Vishous was able to grab it before the thing hit the mosaic floor out in the foyer—which would have been a bitch to fix. “We gotta keep him contained,” someone muttered. “Amen,” somebody else replied. “He gets free in the house, and it’ll be shit even Fritz won’t know how to clean up.” “I’ll take care of it.” Everyone turned and stared at Lassiter. The fallen angel with the bad attitude and even worse taste in just about everything had appeared from out of nowhere—and was looking serious, for once. “What the fuck is that?” V demanded as the angel put a thin gold pen up to his own mouth. Turned out it wasn’t a fancy Bic. With a quick puff, Lassiter discharged a tiny dart across the room—and when it hit Wrath in the shoulder, the impact was as if the King had been struck by a bullet in the chest. He went down hard, his body stiffening and then falling like an oak. “What the fuck did you do!” V pulled a Wrath and went for the angel. But Lassiter got right back in the Brother’s face. “He was going to hurt himself, the house, or one of you assholes! And don’t get your fucking panties in a wad. He’s just going to have a little nap—” Wrath let out a soft snore. Moving carefully, the Brotherhood closed in like they were checking out a grizzly and John went with them. As a circle formed around Sleeping Beauty, there was a lot of cursing under breaths. “If you’ve killed him—” Lassiter put his gold whacker away. “Does he look dead.” No, actually, the poor bastard looked like he was at peace with himself and the world, his coloring strong, his body so relaxed his shitkickers were lolling to the sides.

Manon dug her legs into Abraxos’s scarred, leathery side, and his Spidersilk-reinforced wings glittered like gold in the light of the fires far below. “Fly, Abraxos,” she breathed. Abraxos sucked in a great breath, tucked his wings in tight, and fell off the side of the post. He liked to do that—just tumble off as though he’d been struck dead. Her wyvern, it seemed, had a wicked sense of humor. The first time he’d done it, she’d roared at him. Now he did it just to show off, as the wyverns of the rest of the Thirteen had to jump up and out and then plunge, their bodies too big to nimbly navigate the narrow drop.

As a professional speaker, Susanne travels all over the country and practically lives on airplanes. One day as she entered security to board yet another flight, she was struck by the poise, posture, and gestures of the man in front of her in line. As a communications expert, she observed his excellent presentation with appreciation and awe. The gentleman was dressed impeccably in a crisp white shirt and well-fitted suit and he sported a new haircut. She watched him as he removed his flawless leather belt, his gold money clip, and well-polished shoes. (And of course, he had Listerine in a baggie to ensure fresh breath!) The care with which he dismantled was impressive. His poised and fluid movements were deliberate and respectful of his personal possessions. As he regrouped and proceeded down the concourse, she was struck by how his stance and carriage intrigued and impressed her. His projection of elegance created a presence of pride and dignity. He left a remarkable impression.

But for all that tending, it’s the Archi’s scars I love the most. Little beauty marks that make her our home. A dent under the kitchen’s oven where Cassius fell and struck his head when drinking long ago—after news reached us of Darrow and Virginia’s wedding.

Why do you think that I care to prove anything to you?" she asked. "Want me to answer?" "No, " she whispered, her eyes fixed upon the other shore of the river in the distance. She heard him chuckling, and after a while he said, "Dagny, there's nothing of any importance in life— except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean . " "I know it now. But . . . Francisco, why are you and I the only ones who seem to know it?" "Why should you care about the others?" "Because I like to understand things, and there's something about people that I can't understand." "What?" "Well, I've always been unpopular in school and it didn't bother me, but now I've discovered the reason. It's an impossible kind of reason. They dislike me, not because I do things badly, but because I do them well. They dislike me because I've always had the best grades in the class. I don't even have to study. I always get A's. Do you suppose I should try to get D's for a change and become the most popular girl in school?" Francisco stopped, looked at her and slapped her face. What she felt was contained in a single instant, while the ground rocked under her feet, in a single blast of emotion within her. She knew that she would have killed any other person who struck her; she felt the violent fury which would have given her the strength for it— and as violent a pleasure that Francisco had done it. She felt pleasure from the dull, hot pain in her cheek and from the taste of blood in the corner of her mouth. She felt pleasure in what she suddenly grasped about him, about herself and about his motive. She braced her feet to stop the dizziness, she held her head straight and stood facing him in the consciousness of a new power, feeling herself his equal for the first time, looking at him with a mocking smile of triumph. "Did I hurt you as much as that?" she asked. He looked astonished; the question and the smile were not those of a child. He answered, "Yes— if it pleases you." "It does." "Don't ever do that again. Don't crack jokes of that kind." "Don't be a fool. Whatever made you think that I cared about being popular? " "When you grow up, you'll understand what sort of unspeakable thing you said. " "I understand it now." He turned abruptly, took out his handkerchief and dipped it in the water of the river. "Come here," he ordered. She laughed, stepping back, "Oh no. I want to keep it as it is. I hope it swells terribly. I like it." He looked at her for a long moment. He said slowly, very earnestly, "Dagny, you're wonderful.

When next Eve woke, the sun was shining through the windows. She blinked and realized a large male arm was thrown across her stomach, pinning her in place. Oddly, she didn't panic. Instead she gingerly removed the arm and slowly, carefully levered herself up to peer at her sleeping bedmate. Asa Makepeace was on his back, his arms and legs spread wide and taking up most of the bed. A sunbeam struck his hair, making gold and red strands glint in the brown. Dark reddish brown hair stubbled his jaw. His lips were slightly parted and on each exhalation was the faintest suggestion of a snore. Eve smiled at the sound and reached for the small sketchbook and pencil that always sat on the table beside her bed. She settled back against the pillows and began drawing him: the slightly overlarge nose, the eyes unlined in sleep, the slack, beautiful mouth. How was it possible that this man she'd at first found merely irritating, overwhelmingly male- 'frightening'- should turn out to have so many sides to him? A lover of opera. A fighter of highwaymen. A shouter of arguments. A savior of stray dogs. Stubborn, cynical, violent, and sometimes mean. And yet a man who had tenderly shown her how to love. No one had ever cared so much for her.

It struck her as odd and faintly sinister, this lonely city creeping north in silence.

In all these years, he said, he was yet to come across a single gold nugget that brought any real happiness to the person who held it. Long coat bob said his family had found one large nugget long ago, centuries back, that resembled a human hand. And it became so coveted by members of his family that out caused fights between brother and sister, sister and mother, father and son. During one dispute an old woman struck her nephew with the gold hand. The nephew was struck dumb and his mental capacity was like a water hole that could never be more than half full after that. And the old woman was so ashamed by her actions that she begged Long Coat Bob's grandfather, the oldest living member of the family, to hide the gold away in a place where no one else could find it. And any other gold nuggets that were found from that moment on Long Coat Bob's grandfather reasoned, were best hidden away with it too.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day.

The cellar was spattered with blood, with bodies that showed death in a dozen horrid ways. Wine-racks stood by the walls, looted empty, but the floor was black with Spanish blood, strewn with mutilations obscene as nightmare. Young, old, men and women, all killed horribly. It struck Sharpe that these people must have died the day before, as he watched from the hilltop, killed as the French pretended the village was empty.