8
" I cannot go through all my thoughts, so as to make them clear to you, nor have I ever dwelt on things, to shape a story of them. I know not where the beginning was, nor where the middle ought to be, nor even how at the present time I feel, or think, or ought to think. If I look for help to those around me, who should tell me right and wrong (being older and much wiser), I meet sometimes with laughter, and at other times with anger...
...I think; and nothing ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp, and have with any surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering...
...Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as I am, and fond of peace, and reading), the heiress of this mad domain...
...You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and the weariness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little variance. Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch for- I mean none more than any other- and indeed there seems no risk... "
― R.D. Blackmore , Lorna Doone
12
" On the right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Betty threatened to bake us; and on the left, long sides of bacon, made of favoured pigs, and growing very brown and comely. Annie knew the names of all, and ran up through the wood-smoke, every now and then, when a gentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were getting on, and when they would like to be eaten. Then she came back with foolish tears, at thinking of that necessity; and I, being soft in a different way, would make up my mind against bacon. But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came to breakfast-time, after three hours upon the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paid good heed to the rashers. "
― R.D. Blackmore , Lorna Doone
13
" Be-or, be-or, be-or, all day long, with you Englishmen!' 'Nay,' I replied, 'not all day long, if madam will excuse me. Only a pint at breakfast-time, and a pint and a half at eleven o'clock, and a quart or so at dinner. And then no more till the afternoon; and half a gallon at supper-time. No one can object to that. "
― R.D. Blackmore , Lorna Doone
20
" The lanes and fields between Charing Cross and the village of Kensington, are, or were at that time, more than reasonably infested with footpads and with highwaymen. However, my stature and holly club kept these fellows from doing more than casting sheep's eyes at me. For it was still broad daylight, and the view of the distant villages, Chelsea, Battersea, Tyburn, and others, as well as a few large houses, "
― R.D. Blackmore , Lorna Doone
