je ne sais quoi; thatched his rick
And so Mary fired little illustrations off;
Eustace planted himself in the corner of a sofa,
and applied himself to nautical science. ₁
If there is in this a something of melancholy,
it is the melancholy of dream-land, thin and bloodless...
So it was with Errington. ₂
there is a something of sentiment about him ₁
possibly a something great, possibly a something trivial;
but anyhow, a something of ₃
a dreamy expression as it were,
and a something of that peculiar je ne sais quoi; ₄
a something of reserve and singular unsociality
shut him out from the acquaintance and sympathy of his neighbours
and [but] as long as he was able to mount a ladder, thatched his rick ₅
able to make a “something” of his very own. ₆
sources
- James Hannay, Eustace Conyers. A Novel. (Cheap edition); (London, 1857) / more
- [Rev. Albert Eubule Evans], The Outcasts : Being Certain Strange Passages in the Life of a Clergyman (1888; this edition Leipzig, Tauchnitz Vol 2573, 1889) / more
- “The Religious Danger of the Continent,” in The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy (July 1869) / more
- Father and daughter : Portraiture from the Life. By Fredrika Bremer; translated by Mary Howitt. (London, 1859) / more
- Mary Botham Howitt, The Cost of Caergwyn (London, 1864) / more
- Emma Hodkinson Cyphers (1905-86), Flower Arrangement at the Crossroads (1953) / more