The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [226]
CHAPTER 15
Latin: [Celsus] I think the healing art ought to be based on reason to be sure, and too that it should be founded on unmistakable evidences, all uncertainties being rejected, not from the serious attention of a physician, but from the very profession itself.
CHAPTER 16
Egyptian (from the Book of the Dead), in Birch’s translation: “I have come.” “Make Road expresses what I am” (i.e., is my name).
CHAPTER 18
Tamachekh (Touareg): From an improvisation by a native poet, at Algiers; printed by Hanoteau, Essai de Grammaise de Langeu Tamachek, p. 207.
—If she should come to our country (the plains), there is not a man who would not run to see her.
Romance:
—“Enough! she cries, henceforth thou art
The friend and master of my heart.
No other covenant I require
Than this: ‘I take thee for my wife.’
That done, enjoy thy heart’s desire,
Of me and mine the lord for life.”
A. Bruce Whyte’s paraphrase.
CHAPTER 19
German: from the “Book of Songs” (Angelique, 4) of Heine.
“O how rapidly develop
From mere fugitive sensations
Passions that are fierce and boundless,
Tenderest associations!
Tow’rds this lady grows the bias
Of my heart on each occasion,
And that I’m enamoured of her
Has become my firm persuasion.”
CHAPTER 20
Old Irish: from the Annals of the Four Masters (vol. vi. p. 2298). O’Donovan translates:
—“A sweet-sounding trumpet; endowed with the gift of eloquence and address, of sense and counsel, and with the look of amiability in his countenance, which captivated every one who beheld him.”
CHAPTER 21, PAGE 152. [Let each one know how to follow his own path.]
CHAPTER 22
“Is there on earth such a transport as this,
When the look of the loved one avows her bliss?
Can life an equal joy impart
To the bliss that lives in a lover’s heart?
O! he, be assured, hath never proved
Life’s holiest joys who hath never loved!
Yet the joys of love, so heavenly fair,
Can exist but when honor and virtue are there.”
Translated by Richardson.
Hawaiian: Love is that which excels in attractiveness (is much better than) the dish of poi and the fish-bowl (the favorite dishes of the Islanders).
CHAPTER 24
Sioux-Dakota (from Riggs’s translation of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress).
“Christian. This town of Fair-Speech—I have heard of it; and as I remember, they say it’s a wealthy place.
By-Ends. Yes, I assure you that it is; and I have very many rich kindred there.”
CHAPTER 25
Assyrian:—“A place very difficult.”
Smith’s Assurbanipal, p. 269 (l. 90).
CHAPTER 26
Tamul: Money is very scarce.
CHAPTER 27
Egyptian: “Things prepare I. I prepare a road.”
Book of the Dead, xliv. 117. 1, 2.
Greek (post-classical):
“And when he saw his eyes were out,
With all his might and main,
He jumped into another bush,
And scratched them in again.”
CHAPTER 28
Danish proverb: “He who would buy sausage of a dog, must give him bacon in exchange.”
German: “Thrasyllus, with his unaided intellect, would not have succeeded; but such worthies can always find rogues who for money will lend brains, which is just as well as to have brains of their own.”
CHAPTER 29
Choctaw translation of Joshua xviii. 9: “And the men went and passed through the land, and described it [by cities, into seven parts] in a book.”
CHAPTER 30
Italian: in Wiffen’s translation:
“I nurse a mighty project: the design
But needs thy gentle guidance to commend
My hopes to sure success; the thread I twine;
Weave thou the web, the lively colors blend;
What cautious Age begins, let Dauntless Beauty end.”
Provençal: “Fair lady, your help is needful to me, if you please.”
CHAPTER 31
Italian: from the Jerusalem Delivered, c. vi. st. 76:
“It would be some humanity to stand
His dutiful physician! what delight
Would it not be to lay thy healing hand
Upon the young man’s breast!”
Wi fen.
CHAPTER 33
Sioux (Dakota) translation of the Pilgrim’s Progress. By-Ends names his distinguished friends, in the City of Fair-Speech:
—“My Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, my Lord Fair-speech, from whose ancestors