The Defective Can Be More Than The

Christmas Eve, And Twelve Of The Clock. "now They Are All On Their Knees," An Elder Said As We Sat In A Flock By The Embers In Hearth-side Ease. We Pictured The Meek Mild Creatures Where They Dwelt In Their Strawy Pen, Nor Did It Occur To One Of Us There To Doubt They Were Kneeling Then. So Fair A Fancy Few Would Weave In These Years! Yet, I Feel If Someone Said On Christmas Eve, "come; See The Oxen Kneel, In The Lonely Barton By Yonder Coomb Our Childhood Used To Know," I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So.

Her Affection For Him Was Now The Breath And Life Of Tess's Being; It Enveloped Her As A Photosphere, Irradiated Her Into Forgetfulness Of Her Past Sorrows, Keeping Back The Gloomy Spectres That Would Persist In Their Attempts To Touch Her—doubt, Fear, Moodiness, Care, Shame. She Knew That They Were Waiting Like Wolves Just Outside The Circumscribing Light, But She Had Long Spells Of Power To Keep Them In Hungry Subjection There.

To Dance With A Man Is To Concentrate A Twelvemonth's Regulation Fire Upon Him In The Fragment Of An Hour. To Pass To Courtship Without Acquaintance, To Pass To Marriage Without Courtship, Is A Skipping Of Terms Reserved For Those Alone Who Tread This Royal Road.

Their Position Was Perhaps The Happiest Of All Positions In The Social Scale, Being Above The Line At Which Neediness Ends, And Below The Line At Which The Convenances Begin To Cramp Natural Feeling, And The Stress Of Threadbare Modishness Makes Too Little Of Enough.

I Am The Family Face; Flesh Perishes, I Live On.