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Kipps made stockish noises, and the young lady suddenly became the nucleus of a party of excited friends who were forming a syndicate to guess, and barred his escape.

To a man of my slow disposition, whose very passions have a certain œconomy which delays their growth, the rapid transitions of a woman's humours have ever been confusing, and now I stood stockish and dumb, gazing at the Countess open-mouthed, and vainly endeavouring, like a fool, to reduce the various emotions she had expressed into a logical continuity.

"By the sweet power of music: therefore, the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods: Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature."

For the worship of crowds goes to power rather than to distinction, to the recognised functionary of the State, to him whose power can give power, to all the evanescent things, and seldom to those stockish things, the milestones on the road to eternity.

The pilgrim is throughout a pale and stockish figure; but the devil covers a multitude of defects.