Ben Hur, Lew Wallace [top 10 novels txt] 📗

Ben Hur

By Lew Wallace.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Epigraph Ben Hur Book I I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV Book II I II III IV V VI VII Book III I II III IV V VI Book IV I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII Book V I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI Book VI I II III IV V VI Book VII I II III IV V Book VIII I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X Endnotes List of Illustrations Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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“But this repetition of the old story is just the fairest charm of domestic discourse. If we can often repeat to ourselves sweet thoughts without ennui, why shall not another be suffered to awaken them within us still oftener.”

Jean Paul F. Richter, Hesperus

“See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet
⋮
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean⁠—
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.”

Milton, “The Hymn” from “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” Ben Hur A Tale of the Christ Book I I

The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their playgrounds since the beginning. Its feet are well covered by sands tossed from the Euphrates, there to lie, for the mountain is a wall to the pasture-lands of Moab and Ammon on the west⁠—lands which else had been of the desert a part.

The Arab has impressed his language upon everything south and east of Judea, so, in his tongue, the old Jebel is the parent of numberless wadies which, intersecting the Roman road⁠—now a dim suggestion of what once it was, a dusty path for Syrian pilgrims to and from Mecca⁠—run their furrows, deepening as they go, to pass the torrents of the rainy season into the Jordan, or their last receptacle, the Dead Sea. Out of one of these wadies⁠—or, more particularly, out of that one which rises at the extreme end of the Jebel, and, extending east of north, becomes at length the bed of the Jabbok River⁠—a traveller passed, going to the tablelands of the desert. To this person the attention of the reader is first besought.

Judged by his appearance, he was quite forty-five years old. His beard, once of the deepest black, flowing broadly over his breast, was streaked with white. His face was brown as a parched coffee-berry, and so hidden by a red kufiyeh (as the kerchief of the head is at this day called by the children of the desert) as to be but in part visible. Now and then he raised his eyes, and they were large and dark. He was clad in the flowing garments so universal in the East; but their style may not be described more particularly, for he sat under a miniature tent, and rode a great white dromedary.

It may be doubted if the people of the West ever overcome the impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert. Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little. At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the Bedouin, the Western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen. As is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so that of the desert to its creature. It clothes him with all its mysteries; in such manner, too, that while we are looking at him we are thinking of them: therein is the wonder.