"Far From the Madding Crowd"

[fiefoe]

Hardy's value judgment is clear - 'Every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town.'

• Calling one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.
• The assemblage -- belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotion -- set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose.
• "No -- not at all," said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of considerateness. "I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and when I know what sort it is." <> "Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson! -- his grandfer were just such a nice unparticular man!" said the maltster.
• "-- And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the time I got there I were as dry as a lime- basket -- so thorough dry that that ale would slip down -- ah, 'twould slip down sweet! Happy times! heavenly times! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house!
• "Dear, dear, when I think o' it, I sorrows like a man in travel!"
• "And you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle of the place? That's turned into a solid iron pump with a large stone trough, and all complete." <> "Dear, dear -- how the face of nations alter, and what we live to see nowadays! 
• "He'll smell and taste that -- or I'm a Dutchman."
• "Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift. "

Lucina, Siddim, Ixion, Ashtoreth, Hylas

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