The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, "the great sea" of the Hebrews, "the sea" of the Greeks, the "mare nostrum" of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees,
aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto still dispute the empire of the world!
Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine
aloes and valerianate of ammonia.
I am off, to cultivate the field of public indigestion with the triple plowshare of
aloes, scammony and gamboge." He stopped and turned round at the door.
Might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and
aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavoured.
Ay, as willingly as when, in the Gulf of Lyons, I flung over my merchandise to lighten the ship, while she laboured in the tempest robed the seething billows in my choice silks perfumed their briny foam with myrrh and
aloes enriched their caverns with gold and silver work!
Ye love-smitten host, know that to Dulcinea only I am dough and sugar-paste, flint to all others; for her I am honey, for you
aloes. For me Dulcinea alone is beautiful, wise, virtuous, graceful, and high-bred, and all others are ill-favoured, foolish, light, and low-born.
‡ There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a species of serpentine
aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short.
I saw large plants of
aloes, but did not understand them.
I found myself in a large, vaulted room, lighted by tapers, scented with
aloes and ambergris, standing in golden candle-sticks, whilst gold and silver lamps hung from the ceiling.
In mercy I put a bullet through his skull, and he fell sprawling among the
aloes. But this was the only shot fired, for the attack had been on the center of the line, and the Indians there had needed no help of ours in repulsing it.
He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden flowers; of aromatic balms and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that sickens; of hovenia, that makes men mad; and of
aloes, that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul.
They will not thank me for reminding them of a tune so lately epidemic in that land of
aloes and blue skies; but at least it is unlikely to run in their heads as the ribald accompaniment to a tragedy; and it does in mine.