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    Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    Ebook257 pages3 hours

    Silas Marner

    By George Eliot

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    The classic novel. According to Wikipedia: "Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (1819 – 1880), better known by her pen name, George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeltzer Books
    Release dateMar 1, 2018
    ISBN9781455389230
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot (1819-80) was born Mary Ann Evans into the family of a Warwickshire land agent and did not escape provincial life until she was 30. But she was brilliantly self-educated and able at once to shine in London literary circles. It was, however, her novels of English rural life that brought her fame, starting with Adam Bede, published under her new pen name in 1859, and reaching a zenith with Middlemarch in 1871. Eliot was a devoutly moral woman but lived for 25 years with a man who already had a wife. It is indicative of the respect and love that she inspired in her most devoted readers that Queen Victoria was one of them.

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    Reviews for Silas Marner

    4/5

    1,498 ratings66 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A book that never registered in my brain beyond "I've heard of that" turned out to be one of the most amazing stories I have read in a long time. Beautiful, heart warming and richly written. I'm eager to read more of her work now. Some of the sentences in this book are so beautifully crafted that I had to read, then re-read, then read them to my wife. Amazing book
    • 4/5
      Silas Marner is a weaver who is thrown out of his village after being wrongly accused of stealing. He settles into life in a new town and becomes consumed with squirreling away every cent he earns. His obsession is only replaced when an orphaned toddler comes into his care. His priorities change completely as his love for his little girl, Eppie, grows. At the same time, Eppie's real father, Godfrey, is a rich man who hides his marriage with Eppie's poor mother from society and refuses to acknowledge that she is his daughter. The story was good and the moral is obvious. It's all about having the right priorities, realizing that all things come to light in the end and your past will inevitably haunt you. It was an interesting read and my first of Eliot's. I'll definitely be reading some more of her classics.
    • 4/5
      Is the story about fate or the fairness of a god who sees what is hidden and rewards or punishes accordingly? Maybe it's just a comment on the human condition.
    • 2/5
      I enjoyed this book. I believe it was the first e-book I had ever read—and maybe the first book that might be considered one of the classics (read all the way through, anyway).Anyway, it's about this lonely weaver and this girl that he raises or some such. There's some mystery behind the girl, and maybe even Silas himself. There are relationship issues.
    • 5/5
      I read somewhere that no-one reads George Eliot these days. Well, her writing can be a bit dense at times, but Silas Marner is well worth reading. The plot is almost fairytale-like. Silas, a weaver, has been driven from his home in a northern industrial city after (false) accusations of stealing money from the chapel sect he belonged to – and the guy he knows did it, his best friend, then stole his girlfriend! He now lives by an old quarry outside the close-knit English village of Raveloe. Not surprisingly, he’s now bitter and twisted, his faith in god and humanity gone. He has nothing left in life except his work – and the gold he accumulates from it. He’s grudgingly tolerated but not welcomed in the village, and has turned into a sad lonely miserable miser, suffering occasional fits, truly an outsider. One day, his hoard of gold is stolen, and on a snowy day soon after, a golden-haired toddler wanders into the open door of his cottage, the girl’s presumed mother found dead nearby. Silas sees the girl as a gift from providence in exchange for his gold, adopts the baby girl and things develop from there... The girl grows up... Silas changes... The plot is credible and realistic, despite some improbable coincidences. It’s fascinating to see how superstitious views still flourished, how people weighed and interpreted evidence about unusual happenings, weighing up rational against superstitious interpretations, echoing lively controversies in theology and philosophy at the time about the nature of evidence that George Eliot was herself very deeply involved in.What’s really wonderful is that this is a story of ordinary village life among the poorer classes, with all its characters, prejudices and superstitions, church, pub, all pictured just as they would have been in the early 19th century. This no doubt comes from George Eliot’s childhood recollections. No-one else was writing this sort of stuff in English literature at the time. Farm hands, farriers and the like were supposed to be just forelock-tuggers and cap-doffers with walk-on parts. Novel readers were upper class (the only ones who could afford books) and expected upper class people doing upper-class things in their books; they didn’t see ‘the common people’ as suitable central figures in their literature. The antagonistic reviews of the time – even her own publisher’s views – show how dangerous this was seen. One contemporary review refers to “...these dull clowns... whose ideas and imagery seldom rise above the level of their native dunghills”, another says “We see the people amid all their grovelling cares, with all their coarseness, ignorance and prejudice – poor, paltry, stupid, wretched, well-nigh despicable.” Perhaps, but fascinating too.No well-bred woman at the time would have ventured into the public bar of a village pub, but George Eliot gives us an extraordinary chapter of the bar talk and banter between the farrier, the butcher, etc. at The Rainbow. In the closing chapters, (spoilers warning) when Eppie (the golden-haired baby girl) has grown into a beauty, and her higher class origins (daughter of the village squire from a shameful marriage he kept secret) made public, she gets the offer of being accepted by the squire and his new wife as their daughter... but she and Silas Marner turn it down. This must have seemed revolutionary, and in very bad taste at the time. It’s the complete opposite of the popular plot of the time, where the waif discovers his upper crust origins, his rightful inheritance, reveals the skulduggery involved to disinherit him, and takes his ‘proper’ place in society. What a girl George Eliot was!After Silas Marner was published, ordinary people started appearing in more books, and literature was all the better for it... A short, important, memorable and heart-warming book with a good story, albeit a little difficult to get through the dense writing style at times.
    • 4/5
      I had been put off George Eliot by my English teacher at school, who had a strong dislike of 'Middlemarch' that soon communicated itself to me. In a way this was a good thing, as I soon found myself enjoying 'Silas Marner' much more than I had expected, having expected to hate it. It is a convincing illustration of parochial English country life, with the short-sightedness and inherent distrust in all things 'foreign' typical of society at that time. Eliot is easier to read than I thought she would be, and she is also a fine storyteller. Maybe it's time to take another look at 'Middlemarch.'
    • 4/5
      This book was a real-life Book Circle read that, well, got mixed reviews. Some people thought the writing was brilliant and others found it dated; some people thought it was too short, others too long for the short story they felt it truly was and not the novel it's pretending to be.I think it's a lovely book. I think Silas is about as honestly drawn and cannily observed a character as fiction offers. I think the village of Raveloe is as real as my own village of Hempstead. It's a delight to read about real people, presented without editorial snark, in a book from the 19th century.And therein the book's real achievement. When it was published in 1861, it was a revolutionary tract! The hoi polloi were not to be represented in Art, and novels were then most definitely considered Art, unless they were romanticized, made into prettier or uglier or in some way extreme examples of a Point of View. Simple, honest, direct portrayal of people that novel-readers employed but never conversed with?! Shocking!A book of great importance, then, for its groundbreaking treatment of The People. But also...and this is the reason it helped wreak the revolution whose Robespierres and Dantons were Hemingway and Company...it is a simple story of a man's journey down an ever-widening path that leads to enlightenment, told without A Message or A Moral, in prose that remains graceful 150 years later.If you read it in high school, don't blame IT for the hatred your English teacher left you feeling...blame the teacher. It's not fairly presented in English courses. Read it as an adult, and judge it for itself. Maybe it'll be to your personal taste, maybe not, but I think a grown-up read of a book this seminal to all the others we read today, never thinking about how improbable their existence is, isn't too much to ask.
    • 4/5
      A good book overall; though definitely not in the period of Eliot's ripe penmanship. The descriptions are beautiful, and the emotions are very real.
    • 4/5
      A memorable story and a good read. While some of the plot turns seem somewhat "too convenient", the overall effect adds to the book's Biblical and mythological overtones. The wrongs Marner endures and the evilness of the Cass brothers have you really pulling for him at the end. Eliot's descriptions of rural life and its people are what she's known for, but my favorite passage of Silas Marner was:"She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep - only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky - before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway".
    • 3/5
      I don't like my chances of being able to say anything new about something that has been around since 1861. The story is a simple one, and the themes are both eternal and easily discerned : redemption, the emptiness of money compared to love and the hypocrisy of those vested with wealth, prestige and power. For me, the novel sagged after the first few chapters, but picked up again, and then some, shortly after the half way mark. Even in a more leisurely age, Eliot must have had a purpose in introducing villagers that seem to spend a lot of time sitting around looking jolly, and taking many pages to do so. A couple of prominent characters, the pristine Eppie and her consort Aaron are less than interesting, but Silas and the tortured Godfrey Cass more than make up for it. The last couple of chapters really tugged at the heart, but it was honestly a bit of a slog to get there.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've ever read. Eliot has a great insight into the human mind. Very touching.
    • 5/5
      Heart-warming, touching story of how a little girl redeems the sad life of her adoptive father.
    • 4/5
      required reading in middle school. Pretty sentimental tale of a miser and his redemptive love of a child.
    • 5/5
      I love this book about a bitter man finding his happiness in a golden haired child rather than his gold.
    • 4/5
      Loved this story. Heartwarming. Examines the issues of parenting, real love, possessiveness and a good mystery to boot.
    • 3/5
      Read half. Just too laborious at the wrong time. Don't want to pick it back up now, nearly two years later.
    • 2/5
      Interesting writing, but extremely predictable story. The opening chapter or two were awful! It would have been so much entertaining (and would have given the reader a better sense of Marner's character) had Eliot fleshed out the exposition. It was so interminably dry that I dreaded reading the rest of the book. Fortunately, it picked up and there were some quite lovely passages to come (the water jug impressed me in particular). I couldn't help but think that had this been written by Dickens, it would have been much more enjoyable, but about 2-3 times longer.
    • 5/5
      Set in the early 19th century, Eliot's narrative accurately features the lifestyle, values and traditions of the period. Ethics, religion and the industrial revolution all play a part in this beautiful story. I realize it is not to everyone's taste but I find the old-fashioned language is a delight, describing the actions and feelings of the characters so beautifully.
    • 5/5
      This is a great story and a good introduction to George Eliot. She really captures the characters of the English countryside. She can capture their accent on the written page.
    • 3/5
      Dickenesque plot, lots of sentiment and melodrama. It contained a lot of social commentary that made it preachy and outdated. More relevant as a historical document; though I would think that the author's class background would make her "insights" into working class values and mores less valid.
    • 3/5
      Re-read 9/20/17. Still meh. Reads more like a church parable than a story with interesting characters. Compelling to read but unsatisfying in the end. One too many bows put on the mysteries. Maybe I should give it two stars instead of three.
    • 4/5
      Still wonderful, a grownup child's story.
    • 2/5
      Simplistic.
    • 4/5
      Silas Marner by George Eliot was originally published in 1861 and I think this book has withstood the march of time remarkably. Silas Marner is a weaver who comes to the village of Raveloe as an outsider never quite fitting in. He spends much of his time alone with his only comfort being the gold that he has saved and now hoards. When his money is stolen he is left anxious and confused. But he rescues an orphan child whose mother perished in a snowbank, and, with the help of the villagers he raises this child with care and love. Eppie, the child grows into a beautiful young woman but when the local quarry’s water levels go down, a body is revealed and alongside the body is Silas’ gold. This body is that of the local squire’s never-do-well brother who not only stole the gold but was also blackmailing his older brother who had entered into a marriage with a barmaid. The woman who perished in the snowbank was that lower class wife and the squire has known that Eppie is his daughter all this time. When he finally reveals this to his wife and they decide to claim Eppie for their own, they realize that they have left it too late as Eppie will have no parent but Silas.With his gold restored to him, and Eppie entering into a happy marriage, the book ends with Silas realizing that money is best used to improve life rather to to be hoarded and worshipped. While the squire sadly realizes that he has lost his chance at fatherhood by ignoring his daughter when she needed him. Overall an interesting morality tale that I thoroughly enjoyed. I read this book through installments from Daily Lit and the story certainly held my attention through all 70 segments.
    • 4/5

      This is a book which countless teenagers have been forced to read as part of the school syllabus. For some reason I didn't have to read it when I was at school. I'm glad that's the case, because I've a feeling this would not have appealed to me very much when I was a teenager.

      As has been the case when I've read other novels by George Eliot, it took a while for me to become fully engaged with the narrative. But once the links between the various characters became clear, listening to the audiobook (beautifully narrated by Nadia May) became a joy. Essentially a story about the redemption which can come through love, the novel has something of the fairytale about it. Eliot might be criticised for sentimentality, but this is ultimately a feel-good story with an important moral. Added to this are Eliot's deft characterisation, elegant prose and the sure manner in which she evokes Victorian village life. Overall, listening to this was a most enjoyable experience.

    • 4/5
      Not as good as I remember, but wonderful nonetheless. The earliest section of the book (Marner's setup by William) felt oddly out of place with the rest of the book, but once you get past that, it's a great story. Silas's relationship with Eppie reminds me of Jean Valjean's relationship with Cosette to the point where I question whether the father/adopted daughter was a common theme of the era?
    • 5/5
      This book was excellent! I loved the way the fairytale and social realist strains came together and mixed and wove and you weren't ever quite sure which world you were in. Silas Marner is expelled from the society of his fellows because their religion makes unsound claims for unsavoury reasons. He becomes a Rumpelstiltskin, a mountain gnome with his gold. The world intrudes again, and he is left bereft and thrown back on the people, but luckily this time back in the village, where their suspicion of this eldritch figure with his inhuman clack-clack-clackery is trumped by their need to help. The collective in all its complex glory, building up as it tears down--not only Silas, but the gentry--Godfrey, who loses his title, his child; Dunsey, who loses his life. Eliot's sensitive, sad but equanamitous observations on that which buds within us and before we even know it's there is half-grown. The absolutely exquisite balancing of fates that makes Godfrey and Nancy neither better nor worse than they should be but still so sympathetic; similarly, Silas's failure to go back to Lantern Yard and receive revenge or revelation, and how it doesn't matter at all because the best narrative arcs bend towards happiness, and youcantalwaysgetwhatyouwantbutifyoutrysometimesyou mightfindyougetwhatyouneed (or YCAGWYWBIYTSYMFYGWYN). Silas Marner literally ends with the words "I think nobody could be happier than we are" and sells it. Reminds me of Thomas Hardy at his most sunny (least cloudy?). (Weirdly, it was also the inspiration for Black Snake Moan, in which Samuel L. Jackson keeps Christina Ricci chained up in the basement so she won't have sex wth boys.)
    • 4/5
      I read this in high school, but somewhat haphazardly. I appreciated it more when I was in the process of reading all Eliot's books, which I eventually did--even Scenes from Clerical Life, which I managed to find, in two volumes, at a Library used books sale in 2012--acquried on the last day of the sale, when the books were free!
    • 4/5
      A short and appealing novel about the life and misfortunes of the title character, betrayed by his best friend and fiancee and finding new life elsewhere where he meets new challenges and joys. This has interesting things to say about the influence of religion over people's lives and how different people find fulfillment in different things in life. Early on there are also some good humourous scenes between two brothers, whose actions both before and during the action of the novel affect Silas's life in different ways. 4/5
    • 4/5
      I would have great difficulty justifying to my seventeen-year-old grandson why he should read George Eliot’s Victorian novel “Silas Marner,” a part of which he might be assigned to read in a summer high school English class. Elliot’s verbosity and frequent ultra complex sentence structure were not meant for today’s broad-based reading public and certainly not for most high school juniors.Example: “A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.”However, Eliot provides a heart-tugging story, compelling characters, and insightful commentaries about people true 200 years ago as they are today.At times Eliot is both perceptive and eloquent. Examples:“The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature …”“I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dulness of the gray hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good.”“Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.”The story is about the loss of trust in man and God and its rebirth. Silas Marner, a young man totally immersed in the beliefs of an unspecified strict religious sect burrowed away in a large 18th Century industrial city, is accused by sect leaders of stealing chapel money. They ex-communicate him. Silas’s love-interest rejects him and marries, instead, his closest friend, the actual thief. Silas leaves the religious community and settles far away in the “rich central plain” of England near the community of Raveloe, “never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion.” He begins a bleak life weaving fabric to be used for dress-making. The community views him with suspicion. He is an outsider. He is a near-sighted, peculiar-looking man given occasionally to cataleptic fits. Disillusioned by his former peers’ cruelty and God’s refusal to protect him, he shuns human contact.Silas’s life becomes one of incessant weaving and hoarding of gold coins. 15 years pass. One stormy winter night, while he is away delivering dress fabric to a client, Silas’s hoard of coins is stolen. Members of the community cannot determine who is the thief. On New Year’s Eve a two-year-old child crawls into Silas’s cottage to escape a freezing mist. Her mother lies dying unseen just off the path to his opened door. Silas, suffering a cataleptic fit, does not see her enter and notices her lying near the warming hearth only after he recovers. Because nobody in the village claims her, he takes ownership of her and proceeds to raise her. She changes his life.“The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web: but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.”Other characters have varying importance. The author displays here especially her acute perception of human strengths and weaknesses. Godfrey Cass, eldest son of the Squire of the community, is a significant character. Cass is a weak-willed man with a strong conscience. He has made a major mistake in his life and strives to conceal it in order to win the hand of a desirable, respectable young woman. His subsequent aspirations ultimately interfere with Silas’s rebirth. I enjoyed additionally the theme of the novel, expressed inarticulately by the selfless, illiterate community do-giver, Dolly Winthrop, who has become Silas’s advisor and confidant. “’… there’s trouble i’ the world, and there’s things as we can never make out the rights on. And all as we’ve got to do is to trusten, Master Marner—to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o’ good and rights, we may be sure as there’s a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know—I feel it i’ my own inside as it must be so.’”

    Book preview

    Silas Marner - George Eliot

    SILAS MARNER, THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE BY GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANNE EVANS)

    published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA

    established in 1974, offering over 14,000 books

    Novels by George Eliot

    Adam Bede

    The Mill on the Floss

    Silas Marner

    Romola

    Middlemarch

    Daniel Deronda

    feedback welcome: info@samizdat.com

    visit us at samizdat.com

    First published in 1861

      A child, more than all other gifts  That earth can offer to declining man,  Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts. --WORDSWORTH.

    PART ONE

    CHAPTER I

    CHAPTER II

    CHAPTER III

    CHAPTER IV

    CHAPTER V

    CHAPTER VI

    CHAPTER VII

    CHAPTER VIII

    CHAPTER IX

    CHAPTER X

    CHAPTER XI

    CHAPTER XII

    CHAPTER XIII

    CHAPTER XIV

    CHAPTER XV

    PART TWO

    CHAPTER XVI

    CHAPTER XVII

    CHAPTER XVIII

    CHAPTER XVIII

    CHAPTER XIX

    CHAPTER XX

    CHAPTER XXI

     PART ONE

    CHAPTER I

     In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses-- and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.  The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden.  The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One.  In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder.  No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft.  All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever--at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring.  In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers--emigrants from the town into the country--were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness.

    In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit.  The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver.  But sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legs in terror.  For how was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear?  They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor.  Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity.  A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith.  To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. Is there anything you can fancy that you would like to eat?  I once said to an old labouring man, who was in his last illness, and who had refused all the food his wife had offered him.  No, he answered, I've never been used to nothing but common victual, and I can't eat that.  Experience had bred no fancies in him that could raise the phantasm of appetite.

    And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices.  Not that it was one of those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilization--inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England, and held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point of view, paid highly-desirable tithes.  But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an hour's journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion.  It was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the churchyard:--a village which showed at once the summits of its social life, and told the practised eye that there was no great park and manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough money from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in a rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.

    It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent short-sighted brown eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange for people of average culture and experience, but for the villagers near whom he had come to settle it had mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation, and his advent from an unknown region called North'ard.  So had his way of life:--he invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheelwright's: he sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries; and it was soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them to accept him against her will--quite as if he had heard them declare that they would never marry a dead man come to life again.  This view of Marner's personality was not without another ground than his pale face and unexampled eyes; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred that one evening as he was returning homeward, he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the bag on the stile as a man in his senses would have done; and that, on coming up to him, he saw that Marner's eyes were set like a dead man's, and he spoke to him, and shook him, and his limbs were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as if they'd been made of iron; but just as he had made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came all right again, like, as you might say, in the winking of an eye, and said Good-night, and walked off.  All this Jem swore he had seen, more by token that it was the very day he had been mole-catching on Squire Cass's land, down by the old saw-pit.  Some said Marner must have been in a fit, a word which seemed to explain things otherwise incredible; but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of the parish, shook his head, and asked if anybody was ever known to go off in a fit and not fall down.  A fit was a stroke, wasn't it?  and it was in the nature of a stroke to partly take away the use of a man's limbs and throw him on the parish, if he'd got no children to look to.  No, no; it was no stroke that would let a man stand on his legs, like a horse between the shafts, and then walk off as soon as you can say Gee!  But there might be such a thing as a man's soul being loose from his body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back; and that was how folks got over-wise, for they went to school in this shell-less state to those who could teach them more than their neighbours could learn with their five senses and the parson.  And where did Master Marner get his knowledge of herbs from--and charms too, if he liked to give them away?  Jem Rodney's story was no more than what might have been expected by anybody who had seen how Marner had cured Sally Oates, and made her sleep like a baby, when her heart had been beating enough to burst her body, for two months and more, while she had been under the doctor's care.  He might cure more folks if he would; but he was worth speaking fair, if it was only to keep him from doing you a mischief.

    It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted for protecting him from the persecution that his singularities might have drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, the old linen-weaver in the neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, his handicraft made him a highly welcome settler to the richer housewives of the district, and even to the more provident cottagers, who had their little stock of yarn at the year's end. Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted any repugnance or suspicion which was not confirmed by a deficiency in the quality or the tale of the cloth he wove for them.  And the years had rolled on without producing any change in the impressions of the neighbours concerning Marner, except the change from novelty to habit.  At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things about Silas Marner as at the beginning: they did not say them quite so often, but they believed them much more strongly when they did say them.  There was only one important addition which the years had brought: it was, that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up bigger men than himself.

    But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and his daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude.  His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement, the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least, the weight of a silent voter in the government of his community.  Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death.  To have sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie therein.  Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and knowledge.  He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation--a little store of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest--but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a temptation.

    Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and Jonathan.  The real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too, was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though somewhat given to over-severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers.  But whatever blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean on contradiction.  The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inward triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of William Dane.  One of the most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words calling and election sure standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.  Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-faced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like young winged things, fluttering forsaken in the twilight.

    It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a closer kind.  For some months he had been engaged to a young servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to him that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in their Sunday interviews.  It was at this point in their history that Silas's cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred with the general sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings.  He observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within his soul.  Silas, feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office, felt no resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning him; and to this was soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike.  He asked her if she wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their engagement was known to the church, and had been recognized in the prayer-meetings; it could not be broken off without strict investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that would be sanctioned by the feeling of the community.  At this time the senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless widower, he was tended night and day by some of the younger brethren or sisters. Silas frequently took his turn in the night-watching with William, the one relieving the other at two in the morning.  The old man, contrary to expectation, seemed to be on the way to recovery, when one night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usual audible breathing had ceased.  The candle was burning low, and he had to lift it to see the patient's face distinctly.  Examination convinced him that the deacon was dead--had been dead some time, for the limbs were rigid.  Silas asked himself if he had been asleep, and looked at the clock: it was already four in the morning. How was it that William had not come?  In much anxiety he went to seek for help, and soon there were several friends assembled in the house, the minister among them, while Silas went away to his work, wishing he could have met William to know the reason of his non-appearance.  But at six o'clock, as he was thinking of going to seek his friend, William came, and with him the minister.  They came to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church members there; and to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only reply was, You will hear.  Nothing further was said until Silas was seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes of those who to him represented God's people fixed solemnly upon him. Then the minister, taking out a pocket-knife, showed it to Silas, and asked him if he knew where he had left that knife?  Silas said, he did not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket-- but he was trembling at this strange interrogation.  He was then exhorted not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent.  The knife had been found in the bureau by the departed deacon's bedside-- found in the place where the little bag of church money had lain, which the minister himself had seen the day before.  Some hand had removed that bag; and whose hand could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged?  For some time Silas was mute with astonishment: then he said, "God will clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money being gone.  Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but

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