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Bowen, Sue Petigru, 1824-1875

"The Actress in High Life An Episode in Winter Quarters"

should not _have
taken_ Constantinople? Or of a Roman of to-day besieging heaven with
prayers that Rome should not _have been_ taken by the Goths, or sacked
by the army of the Constable Bourbon? Yet what is commonly called
Calvinist is nothing less than this; praying against past events, or
the decrees of fate. Is the papist so absurd in offering his masses
for the dead?"
The ladies were still complimenting L'Isle on his refutation of
Moodie's tenets, so obnoxious to their own convictions, when they met
a peasant trudging along, _cujado_ in hand, with the small end of
which he occasionally enlivened the motions of an ass toiling under a
heavy sack of grain. The muleteer stopped him to enquire where they
might find water for their animals in this thirsty land. The peasant
pointed back to a thicket near the road, and said: "I would have
watered my own beast there, but for the would have watered my own
beast there, but for the company I would have fallen among." He then
went on his way, and they rode to the spot pointed out, where among
the oleander and buckthorn bushes they found a puddle rather than a
spring, so well had it been lately stirred up.


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