F. Marion Crawford pdf KATHARINE LAUDERDALE, Volumes 1 and 2, F. MARION CRAWFORD: KATHARINE LAUDERDALE, new edition

“I prefer the dark style, myself—like my cousin,” said John Ralston, thoughtfully. “And you will therefore naturally marry a fair woman,” answered his companion, Hamilton Bright, stopping to look at the display in a florist’s window. Ralston stood still beside him. “Queer things—orchids,” he observed. “Why?” Nothing in the world seemed queer or unnatural to Bright, who was normally constituted in all respects, and had accepted the universe without comment. “I am not sure why. I think the soul must look like an orchid.” “You are as bad as a Boston girl,” laughed Bright. “Always thinking of your soul! Why should the soul be like an orchid, any more than like a banana or a turnip?” “It must be like something,” said Ralston, in explanation. “If it’s anything, it’s faith in a gaseous state, my dear man, and therefore even less visible and less like anything than the common or market faith, so to say—the kind you get at from ten cents to a dollar the seat’s worth, on Sundays, according to the charge at the particular place of worship your craving for salvation leads you to frequent.” “I prefer to take mine in a more portable shape,” answered Ralston, grimly. “By the bottle—not by the seat—and very dry.” “Yes—if you go on, you’ll get one sort of faith—the lively evidence of things unseen—snakes, for instance.” Bright laughed again as he spoke, but he glanced at his friend with a look of interest which had some anxiety in it. John Ralston was said to drink, and Bright was his good angel, ever striving to be entertained unawares, and laughing when he was found out in his good intentions. But if Bright was a very normal being, Ralston was a very abnormal one, and was, to some extent, a weak man, though not easily influenced by strong men. A glance at his face would have convinced any one of that—a keen, nervous, dark face, with those deep lines from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth which denote uncertain, and even dangerous tempers—a square, bony jaw, aggressive rather than firm, but not coarse—the nose, aquiline but delicate—the eyes, brown, restless, and bright, the prominence of the temples concealing the eyelids entirely when raised—the forehead, broad, high, and visibly lean like all the features—the hair, black and straight—the cheek bones, moderately prominent. Possibly John Ralston had a dash of the Indian in his physical inheritance, which showed itself, as it almost always does, in a melancholic disposition, great endurance and an unnatural love of excitement in almost any shape, together with an inborn idleness which it was hard to overcome. Nothing is more difficult than to convey by words what should be understood by actual seeing. There are about fif hundred million human beings alive to-day, no two of whom are exactly alike, and we have really but a few hundreds of words with which to describe any human being at all. The argument that a few octaves of notes furnish all the music there is, cannot be brought against us as a reproach. We cannot speak a dozen words at once and produce a single impression, any more than we can put the noun before the article as we may strike any one note before or after another. So I have made acknowledgment of inability to do the impossible, and apology for not being superhuman. John Ralston was dark, good-looking, nervous, excitable, enduring, and decidedly dissipated, at the age of five and twenty years, which he had lately attained at the time of the present tale. Of his other gifts, peculiarities and failings, his speech, conversation and actions will give an account. As for his position in life, he was the only son of Katharine Ralston, widow of Admiral Ralston of the United States Navy, who had been dead several years.