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With such matters to ponder over, and arrange, and re-arrange, Edmund could not, on his own account, think very much of the evening which the rest of the family were looking forward to with a more equal degree of strong interest. Independent of his two cousins' enjoyment in it, the evening was to him of no higher value than any other appointed meeting of the two families might be. In every meeting there was a hope of receiving farther confirmation of Miss Crawford's attachment; but the whirl of a ballroom, perhaps, was not particularly favourable to the excitement or expression of serious feelings.
To engage her early for the two first dances was all the command of individual happiness which he felt in his power, and the only preparation for the ball which he could enter into, in spite of all that was passing around him on the subject, from morning till night.

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might take me back again), as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to which I belonged had sailed away and left me on a desert island; I shall make no fruitless effort to describe. If that sleepy old court could rouse itself, and present in any visible form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora, it would reveal my truth. ¡¡¡¡I don't mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day after day, from week to week, and term to term. I went there, not to attend to what was going on, but to think about Dora. If ever
bestowed a thought upon the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it was only to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering Dora), how it was that married people could ever be otherwise than happy; and, in the Prerogative cases, to consider, if the money in question had been left to me, what were the foremost steps I should immediately have taken in regard to Dora. Within the first week of my passion, I bought four sumptuous waistcoats

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She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in it; and she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the old house could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we should go upstairs and see my room. We all went together, she before us: and a glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes; and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it.
or when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards. ¡¡¡¡My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and we went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. As she would not hear

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not alone in this but in other ways, I flattered myself that I was able to deal delicately with it; and also I flattered myself that by look or sign I gave no advertisement of the love I felt for her. We were like good comrades, and we grew better comrades as the days went by. ¡¡¡¡One thing about her that surprised me was ,- seemed to make no impression upon her who had known life only in its most sheltered and consummately artificial aspects, and who was herself all fire and dew and mist, sublimated spirit- all that was soft and tender and clinging in woman. And yet I am wrong. She was timid and afraid, but she possessed courage. The flesh and the qualms of the flesh she was heir to, but the flesh bore heavily only on the flesh. And she was spirit, first and always spirit, etherealized essence of life, as calm as her calm eyes, and sure of permanence in the changing order of the universe.

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1894年甲午战争爆发，而马吉芬的雇佣合同也正好到期，他本可以不参加这场战争，但马吉芬并没有选择避开，二是主动请求参战，于是他被任命为镇远帮带（副舰长）；在那场异常惨烈的海战中这个白种人（单纯称雇员也有些不当，因为合同已到期，有没有及时再续合同也没有找到资料）的表现究竟如何呢？黄海海战结束后，有七名洋员因表现优异被清政府嘉奖，马吉芬被授予顶戴花翎和第一等宝星勋章；

马吉芬在作战中不幸受伤，需要回国治疗，所以他没能参加完整个甲午海战，他离开了他的战友和他服役的舰队回到美国；

1895年2月12日，北洋水师提督丁汝昌在拒绝了日本诱降之后自杀殉国，舰队全军覆灭；北洋舰队战败的消息传遍了全世界，马吉芬也得知了这个噩耗。当时西方舆论一致认为日本海军“训练有素，打得非常好非常勇敢”，还有一些评论认为说中国海军一无是处。作为一名亲身经历了这场海战的外国人，马吉芬对于那些不实之词非常愤慨，于是开始四处讲演，他要让全世界都知道中国海军不是他们想象的那样，以至于后来有人认为他精神不正常；

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1884年8月马尾海战失败，福建海军11艘兵舰伤亡殆尽；同年11月，大清海军衙门成立，李鸿章开始加快北洋舰队的建设，并大力招募海军人才；此时，远在大洋彼岸的美国刚刚通过海军控制法案，正在缩减海军规模，致使很多海军学院毕业生不能够进入海军服役；

在这种背景下，毕业于美国安纳波利斯海军学院的马吉芬带着1000美元来到中国，开始了为中国海军效力的历程；
初次拜访李鸿章，李鸿章并不热心，马吉芬随即表示：你们留下我，一定会看到我的价值；事实证明，马吉芬没有让李鸿章和中国海军失望；

1888年，为进一步加快海军人才的培养和建设，李鸿章在在威海开办水师学堂，马吉芬被聘为学堂的总教习，他在做总教习5年的时间里为大清培养了很多海军人才，参加甲午海战的很多指挥官都是出自这所学堂和这位总教习门下；

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else the pins carried away, for, while I pulled till I burst open the ends of all my fingers, the flying jib and staysail filled and fluttered with the wind, split their cloths apart, and thundered into nothingness. ¡¡¡¡Still I pulled, holding what I gained each time with a double turn until the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up the slack. ¡¡¡¡'Make fast,' he shouted, 'and come on!' ¡¡¡¡As I followed him, I noted that, in spite of wrack and ruin, a rough order obtained. The Ghost was hove to. She was still in working order, and she was still working. Though the rest of her sails were gone, the jib, backed to windward, and the mainsail, hauled down flat, were themselves holding, and holding her bow to the furious sea as well. ¡¡¡¡I looked for the boat, and, while Wolf Larsen cleared the boat-tackles, saw it lift to leeward on a big sea and not a score of feet away. And, so nicely had he made his calculation, we drifted fairly down upon it, so that nothing remained to do but hook the tackles to each end and hoist it aboard. But this was not done so easily as it is written.

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This loneliness was bad enough in itself, but, to make it worse, he was oppressed by the primal melancholy of the race. Knowing him, I reviewed the old Scandinavian myths with clearer understanding. The white-skinned, fair-haired savages who created that terrible pantheon were of the same fiber as he. The frivolity of the laughter-loving Latins was no part of him. When he laughed it was from a humor that was nothing else than ferocious. But he laughed rarely; he was too often sad. And it was a sadness as deep-reaching as the roots of the race. It was the race heritage, the sadness which had made the race sober-minded, clean-lived, and fanatically moral. ¡¡¡¡In point of fact, the chief vent to this primal melancholy has been religion in its more agonizing forms. But the compensations of such religion were denied Wolf Larsen. His brutal materialism would not permit it. So, when his blue moods came on, nothing remained for him but to be devilish. Had he not been so terrible a man, I

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took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time I was alone in the moist obscurity; yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the glass house above my head. ¡¡¡¡I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labor which made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea. It was good that men should be specialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge of the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no more of the sea and navigation than I knew. On the other hand, instead of having to devote my energy to the learning of a multitude

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To Tess's sense there was, just at first, a ghastly bizarrerie, a grim incongruity, in the march of these solemn words of Scripture out of such a mouth. This too familiar intonation, less than four years earlier, had brought to her ears expressions of such divergent purpose that her heart became quite sick at the irony of the contrast. ¡¡¡¡It was less a reform than a transfiguration. The former curves of sensuousness were now modulated to lines of devotional passion. The lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were now made to express supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday could be translated as riotousness was evangelized to-day into the splendour of pious rhetoric; animalism had become fanaticism; Paganism Paulinism; the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in the old time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy of a theolatry that was almost ferocious. Those black angularities which his face had used to put on when his wishes were thwarted now did duty in picturing the incorrigible backslider who would insist upon turning again to his wallowing in the

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¡¡¡¡`And I shall not stay here. Though I didn't like to initiate it, I have seen that it was advisable we should part - at least for a while, till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write to you.' ¡¡¡¡Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale, even tremulous; but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle being she had married - the will to subdue the grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the flesh to the spirit. Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency. ¡¡¡¡He may have observed her look, for he explained-- ¡¡¡¡`I think of people more kindly when I am away from them'; adding cynically, `God knows; perhaps we shall shake down together some day, for weariness; thousands have done it!'

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Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and we mean to send you a Hogshead of Cyder for your Wedding, knowing there is not much in your parts, and thin Sour Stuff what there is. So no more at present, and with kind love to your Young Man. - From your affectte. Mother, ¡¡¡¡J. DURBEYFIELD.`O mother, mother!' murmured Tess. ¡¡¡¡She was recognizing how light was the touch of events the most oppressive upon Mrs Durbeyfield's elastic spirit. Her mother did not see life as Tess saw it. That haunting episode of bygone days was to her mother but a passing accident. But perhaps her mother was right as to the course to be followed, whatever she might be in her reasons. Silence seemed, on the face of it, best for her adored one's happiness: silence it should be. Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her mother the very next day, and by the end of the week a response to her communication arrived in Joan Durbeyfield's wandering last-century hand.

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The incline was the same down which d'Urberville had driven with her so wildly on that day in June. Tess went up the remainder of its length without stopping, and on reaching the edge of the escarpment gazed over the familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist. It was always beautiful from here; it was terribly beautiful to Tess to day, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had been totally changed for her by the lesson. Verily another girl than the simple one she had been at home was she who, bowed by thought, stood still here, and turned to look behind her. She could not bear to look forward into the Vale. ¡¡¡¡Ascending by the long white road that Tess herself had just laboured up, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle, beside which walked a man, who held up his hand to attract her attention.

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between them.He could understand how for one moment in the fog he had taken Elvira Blake for BessSedgwick. But now, looking at them, he was more struck by the points of difference thanthe points of resemblance. They were not really alike save in colouring, yet theimpression persisted that here he had a positive and a negative version of the samepersonality. Everything about Bess Sedgwick was positive. Her vitality, her energy, hermagnetic attraction. He admired Lady Sedgwick. He always had admired her. He had admiredher courage and had always been excited over her exploits; had said, reading his Sundaypapers: "She'll never get awaywith that," and invariably she had got away with it! He hadnot thought it possible that she would reach journey's end andshe had reached journey's end. He admired particularly theindestructible quality of her. She had had one air crash, several car crashes, had beenthrown badly