text:
Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter IV

Chapter IV.
Major Skerrett paused on the farm-house steps.

“Jierck Dewitt, I want,” he thought. “And there he is on guard, looking every inch a soldier again. My good word has quite set him up. Mem. A word of cheer costs little, and may help much. Now for Sergeant Lincoln and the negro!”

Just at the edge of the bank, in front of the farm-house, Skerrett perceived the Sergeant sitting.

His head was resting on his hands. The physiognomy of his back revealed despondency. An old well-sweep bent over him, and seemed to long to comfort him with a douse of balm from its bucket.

The landscape glowed, as before. The jolly pumpkins grinned, as before. The Major’s spirits were still at bubble and boil. “Every prospect was pleasing, and only man” — that is only Sergeant — seemed woe-begone.

“He is feeling his wound, — the ‘wownd’ Put talked of, — I fear,” thought Skerrett. “I must cheer him. Unhappy people are not allowed in the Skerrett precinct.”

“Why, Orderly!” says the Major, approaching, and laying his hand on the other’s shoulder; “you must not be down-hearted, man! What has happened? What can I do for you?”

The Sergeant raised his head, and shook it despairingly.

“Thank you,” said he. “Nothing! It is too late!”

“Too late! That is a point of time my timepiece has not learnt how to mark.”

Indeed, the Skerrett movement was too elastic in springs, and too regular with its balance-wheel, to strike any hour but “Just in time!”

The Sergeant thanked him, with a smile and manner of singular grace, and repeated, sorrowfully, “It is too late.”

“Too late is suicide,” says Peter. “We will not cut our throats till after Indian summer. Presently you shall tell me what is and is not too late. First, I have a question or two to ask. The General tells me you know this country thoroughly.”

“I do by heart, — by sad heart.”

“I have undertaken to cut in, and cut out, where the enemy is, twenty miles below on the river.”

The Orderly at once seemed greatly interested.

“Twenty miles below? No one can know that region better than I.”

“Was it there his heart was wounded?” thought the Major.

“Ah, then! you’re just my man,” Skerrett continued, ignoring the other’s depression. “I have volunteered on a wild-goose chase. I may need to know every fox-track through all the Highlands to get away safe with my goose, if I catch him.”

Major Skerrett, surprised at a sudden air of eager attention and almost excitement in the older man, paused a moment.

“Go on!” said the other authoritatively, with a voice and manner more of Commander-inChief than Sergeant.

Skerrett felt, as he had done before, the peculiar magnetism of this mysterious Orderly, who quoted Latin and bowed like a courtier.

“I have taken upon myself,” said he, “to cut out a British officer of distinction, now staying at a country house twenty miles below. I may want you of my party. General Putnam recommends you.”

The Orderly sprang up and grasped Major Skerrett’s arm with both his hands.

“Who is the man? Name! Name!” he gasped.

“Major Kerr,” replied Skerrett, coolly.

“Wait! wait a moment!” cried the other, in wild excitement.

He rushed to the edge of the bank, where a path plunged off, leading to the Highland road, and was lost among the glowing recesses of a wood skirting the base of the heights. He halted there, and screamed, in a frantic voice, “Voltaire! Voltaire!”

And neither the original destructive thinker thus entitled, nor any American namesake of his answering the call, the Orderly raced down the slope, with hat gone and gray cue bobbing against his coat-collar.

He disappeared in the grove, and the Major could hear his feet upon the dry leaves, and his voice still crying loudly, “Voltaire! Voltaire!”

“Has the old man gone mad?” thought Skerrett. “Voltaire the Great is getting too ancient to travel. It is hardly fair to disturb him. He is a soldier ‘emeritus’ of our Good Cause. He waked France up. We have to thank him largely that France has an appetite for freedom, and sends her sons over to help us fight for it. But he cannot hear this hullaballoo at Ferney; Lafayette, Radière, and the others, represent their master, with such heart and stomach as they can.

“I must not lose sight of my runaway,” continued he to himself. “The name of Kerr struck him like a shot. He may have a grudge there. Some private vendetta in the case. And yet this mild old man always seemed to me to have entirely merged his personality in patriotism. I fancied that he had forgotten all his likes, dislikes, loves, and hates, and given up all ties except his allegiance to an idea.”

Major Skerrett walked rapidly to the edge of the bank, where Sergeant Lincoln had first given tongue for an absent philosopher.

As he was about to follow the path, he heard steps again in the wood. In a moment the Orderly reappeared, and ran up the slope, panting. He was followed by a person who moved slower, and blew harder, the same old wiggy negro whom Major Skerrett had observed laying down the law to his companion.

“So that is Voltaire!” thought the Major. “Well, it is the first time I have ever found the devil blacker than he is painted.”

The Orderly sank, agitated and out of breath, on the ground.

Voltaire came up the hill, and, being hatless, pulled hard at his gray wig, by way of salute. The wig was rooted to the scalp. Voltaire left it in situ, and bowed as grandly as a black dignitary may when he is blown by a good run.

“I was in despair just now,” said Sergeant Lincoln. “In despair when I said it was too late to help me. Perhaps it is not so. I trust God sends you, Major Skerrett, to show us the way out of our troubles.”

“This is sound Gospel,” thought Skerrett. “This black Voltaire may be the Evangelist; but the Gospel is unimpeachable.”

“Come, Sergeant,” continued he aloud, “tell me what all this means, my friend. We must despatch. My bird down the river may take wing, if I waste time.”

“I am pained, my dear young friend,” said the senior, rising, “to acknowledge to you an unwilling deceit of mine. But I must do so. You have known me always under a false name. I am not Lincoln, but Brothertoft, — Edwin Brothertoft.”

“My father’s friend!” said Skerrett, taking the other’s hand. “Mr. Brothertoft, so missed, so desired by the Good Cause. Why ——”

Here Major Skerrett interrupted himself, and went to rummaging in his brain for the disconnected strips of record stamped, “Brothertofts, The family.” The strips pasted themselves together, and he ran his mind’s eye rapidly along, as one might read a mile or so of telegram in cipher.

As he read with one eye introverted and galloping over the record, while it whirled by like a belt on a drum making a million revolutions in a breath, he kept the other eye fixed upon Mr. Brothertoft, alias Lincoln, before him.

This sad, worn, patient, gentle face supplied a vivid flash of interpretation. It shed light upon all the dusky places in Major Skerrett’s knowledge of the family. The eye looking outward helped the eye looking inward. Instantly, by this new method of utilizing strabismus, he saw what he remembered faintly become distinct. He could now understand why this quiet gentleman had dropped his tools, — forceful mallet and keen chisel, — and let the syllables of his unfinished mark on the world wear out.

“I have heard and read of these blighting hurts,” thought Peter, “and I trifled with their existence, and was merry as before, — God forgive me! Now I touch the wounded man, and it chills me. I lose heart and hope. But strangely, too, this man who first teaches me to feel the pain, teaches me also that the sufferer needs my love. Seems to me I am more in earnest than I was two minutes ago. I feel older and gentler. I wish I was his son!”

“Why?” said Edwin Brothertoft, answering slowly and sadly, while the other’s brain read records and forged thoughts at this furious speed. “Would you ask me why my life is what it is, and not what men would say it might have been? Ah, my friend, the story is long and dreary, — too dreary to darken the heart of youth.”

Sadly as he spoke, there was no complaint in his tone. He seemed to regard his facts a little dreamily, as if he were mentioning some other man’s experience.

“But the past is dead,” he continued, “and here are present troubles alive and upon me.”

“Troubles alive!” says the Major, feeling brave, buoyant Peter Skerrett still stirring under the buff and blue. “Those I can help floor, perhaps. Name them!”

He looked so victorious, and the Moustache, albeit unknown to the pages of De Chastellux, so underscored his meaning nose, and so drew the cartouche of a hero about his firm mouth, that Brothertoft thrilled with admiration through his sadness.

Everybody has seen the phantasmagoric shop-sign. “,” you read upon it, as you approach down the street. You don’t want Vinegar, and you gaze reproachfully at the sign. But what is this? As you advance, a blur crosses your eyes. ’T was Vinegar surely! ’Tis now. And that you do want; and proceed to purchase a barrel of crushed, a keg of powdered, and a box of loaves wearing foolscaps of Tyrian purple on their conical bald pates.

Edwin Brothertoft had seen only written up before him. He advanced a step, at Skerrett’s words, lifted up his eyes, and Despair shifted to.

“When you named Major Kerr,” he said, “you named one who is devising evil to me and mine. Capture him and the harm is stayed. My faithful old friend Voltaire and I will try to tell you the story between us.”

Voltaire considered this his introduction, and bowed pompously.

“You are too juicy, Voltaire, and too shiny, and not sardonic enough, to bear the name of the weazened Headpiece of France,” the Major said. “When I made my pilgrimage to Ferney, I found that Atropos of Bigotry in a night-cap and dressing-gown, looking as wrinkled, leathery, and Great as one of Michael Angelo’s Sibyls. I hope you are as true to Freedom as he was, and a more wholesome man.”

Skerrett made this talk to give the old fellow time to blow, as well as to stir up a smile to the surface of Brothertoft’s sad face.

“Yes sir,” said the negro, bowing again. “Voltaire, sir, omnorum gotherum of Brothertoft Manor-House. Hannibal was my name; but I heard Mr. Ben Franklin say that Mr. Voltaire was the greatest man he knowed, so I married to that name, and tuk it.”

Here he paused and grinned. His white teeth gleamed athwart his face, as the white stocking flashes through, when one slits a varnished boot, too tight across the instep.

“I have been here at Fishkill some months,” said Brothertoft. “At first I did not allow myself to think of my family. Then neighborhood had its effect. I communicated my whereabouts to this trusty friend. He got my message, and comes to give me the first news I have had since I left home at the news of Lexington.”

“More than two years ago,” Skerrett said.

“And in those two years,” continued the other, “my daughter has passed from child to woman.”

“Oho!” thought Peter. “His daughter — Radière’s la plus belle — is in this business. My years in Europe had made me almost forget there was such a person. Is she like father, or mother, I wonder?”

“From child to woman, sir,” says Voltaire, “and there’s not such another young lady in the Province, — State, I mean.”

Bravo, Voltaire! You refuse to talk “nigger.” You still remember that Tombigbee is a dialect taboo to you. Continue to recollect that on these pages you are a type of a race on whose qualities the world is asking information. Christy’s Minstrels dance out their type negro, Jim Crow, an impossible buffoon. La Beecher Stowe presents hers, Uncle Tom, an exceptional saint. Mr. Frederick Douglass introduces himself with a courtier’s bow and an orator’s tongue. The ghost of John C. Calhoun rushes forward, and points to a stuffed Gorilla. Then souviens toi Voltaire of thy representative position, and don’t lapse into lingo!

“When I abandoned home,” Brothertoft resumed, “I believed that I could be of no further use to a daughter who had disowned me. But I have found that a man cannot cease to love his own flesh and blood.”

“Nor his flesh and blood him,” says the negro. “Other people may do the hating. Miss Lucy only knows how to love.”

Fort bien Voltaire! except the pronunciation “lub.”

“It was only a day or two before the capture of the forts that my tardy message of good-will reached my friend here,” said the ex-Patroon.

“And just in time,” that friend rejoined.

“I hope so,” sighed Putnam’s Orderly.

“Yes sir,” the negro said, turning to Skerrett. “It was now or never. So I left my great dinner-party. Sir Henry Clinton and his suite were to dine with us to-day!”

“Grand company!” the Major said, seeing that a tribute of respect was wanted.

“Sirr Henery Clinton!” repeated the butler with pride. “I didn’t like to leave. My wife Sappho can cook prime. My boy Plato can pass a plate prime. But where’s the style to come from when I’m away? Who’s to give the signals? ‘Ground dishes! Handle covers! Draw covers! Forrud march with covers to the pantry!’ Who’s to pull the corks and pour the Madeira so it won’t blob itself dreggy?”

He paused and sighed.

Edwin Brothertoft was silent. The thought of Red dinner-parties at the Manor was evidently not agreeable to him.

“We are not getting on at a gallop,” thought Skerrett. “But we are on the trail. My guides must take their own time. They know the way and the dangers, and I do not. The facts will all come out within five minutes.”

“Well, Voltaire,” he said, “a bad appetite to ’em all! Go on with your story. You make me hungry with your dinner-parties.”

“Ha, ha!” chuckled the butler, — his vision of himself as Ganymede, serving Sir Clinton Tonans with hypernectareous tipple, vanishing. “Ha, ha!” and with his triumph he lapsed for a moment into Tombigbee: “Dey tinks, down ter de Manor, dat I’se lyin’ sick abed wid de colored mobbus.”

And then the old fellow proceeded to relate how he had shammed sick yesterday, dodged away at evening, and tramped all night by bypaths through the Highlands; how British scouts had challenged his steps and fired at his rustle; how stumbling-blocks had affronted his shins, and many a stub had met his toes; and how at last, after manifold perils, he had found his old master under the guise of an Orderly, and announced to him a new wrong in the house of Brothertoft, — a new wrong, the climax of an old tyranny.

No wonder Mr. Brothertoft had been despondent so that even his back showed it, — so despondent, that the well-sweep longed to douse him with a bucket of balm. No wonder that he sadly said, “Too late!” and could see no better hour than that, marked by the Skerrett timepiece.

Now then for this new wrong! It shall be told condensed, so that indignation can have it, a tough nut to crack with its teeth.

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter IV


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Page:Story of the robins.djvu/59

 Rh and devoured him in an instant. I need not say that I felt the bitterest pangs for his loss; it is sufficient to inform you that I led a solitary life till I met with you, whose endearing behaviour has made society again agreeable to me."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/59


text:
Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter V

Chapter V.
“In short,” says Voltaire, winding up his story, “Madame Brothertoft is going to marry off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr, day after to-morrow evening.”

“To marry off! Then it is nilly the lady!” Skerrett said.

“Nilly, sir! Yes, the nilliest kind!”

There, Sir Peter, is a tough nut for your Indignation to bite on!

Peter was an undeveloped True Lover. The “vital spark of heavenly flame” was in him; but it lay latent under his uniform, as fire lurks in a quartz pebble, until the destined little boy strikes another quartz pebble against it. Now there is a little boy of Destiny whose trade it is to go about knocking hearts together and striking Love, — that pretty pink flash, that rosy flash, which makes cheeks blush sweeter and eyes gleam brighter than they knew how to blush and gleam before, — that potent flash which takes hold of proper hearts and carbonizes them into diamonds of gleam unquenchable, with myriad facets and a smile on every one, — that keen flash which commands bad hearts to burn away into ugly little heaps of gray ashes. There is such an urchin, and Cupid, alias Eros, is his name. He had tapped Peter Skerrett’s heart several times with hearts labelled, “Anna’s heart,” “Belinda’s heart,” “Clara’s heart,” “Delia’s heart,” and so on down the alphabet. No perceptible love had answered these taps. Perhaps the urchin made the female heart impinge upon the male, instead of clashing them together in mutual impact. Or perhaps he did not do his tapping in a dark place, — for shadow is needful to show light, — love wants sorrow for a background.

However this might be, Peter Skerrett was still an undeveloped true lover. He had made no mistakes in love, he had had no disappointments. His illusions were not gone. He still believed love was the one condition of marriage. Marriage without it this innocent youth deemed an outrage.

The latent love in his heart cried, “Shame!” when he heard Voltaire’s story. Indignant blood rushed to his cheeks, to his eyes indignant fire, and curl indignant to his moustache. He discharged a drop of ire by skimming a flat stone at a chattering chipmunk, enthroned on a pumpkin hard by. Then he began to put in trenchant queries.

“You are sure, Mr. Brothertoft, that your daughter does not love Kerr.”

“Sure. I have her word for it.”

“Does he love her?”

“He wants her.”

“Why?”

“She is a beauty and an heiress, — those are the patent charms.”

“Ah! But does she know that Kerr is a fanfaron and a rake, — selfish, certainly, probably base, and very likely cruel?”

“She knows only what her mother tells her. Friends are taboo in that house.”

“But does she divine nothing? Nothing to base a refusal on? Pardon me if my tone seems to express a doubt of this young lady, but——”

“But you have seen so many captivated by rank and a red coat. My friend, I have done her greater injustice than any you can imagine. I believed my own child spoiled by bad influences. We could not understand each other. An evil-omened figure held a black curtain between us. I was too sick at heart to see the truth. I had lost my faith. I thought that my daughter had taken in poison with her mother’s milk. I fancied that she was a willing pupil when her mother taught her to hate and despise me. I abandoned her. Miserable error, — miserable! And punished now! punished most cruelly! My spleen, my haste, my intemperate despair, are bitterly punished by my daughter’s danger. How fatally I misjudged her in my sore-wounded heart! I know her better at last. Better now, when I fear it is too late to save her. I know her at last through this faithful servant and friend. He stood by her when I forsook her. God forgive me! God forgive me!”

He poured out this confession with passion growing as he spoke. Then he turned and grasped Major Skerrett by the shoulder.

“What is to be done?” he cried.

“Much!” said Skerrett, quietly, commanding his own eagerness roused by the other’s agony. “Remember that this wedding is not to be before day after to-morrow. I have volunteered to present the intended bridegroom to General Putnam here, by that time. Do you suppose I intend to break my engagement, whether it forbids his banns or not?”

He assumed more confidence than he felt. The enterprise was growing complicated. While there was merely question of taking or not taking a prisoner, Skerrett could look at the matter coolly. Success was only another laurel in his corona triumphalis! Failure was but a bay the less. If he bagged his man, another canto of doggerel. No bag, no poem. The attempt even would keep Put and his paladins amused until their general decadence of tail was corrected, and their bosoms swelled with valor again, and that was enough.

But here was a new character behind the scenes. The hero’s pulse began to gallop and his heart to prance. A woman’s happiness at stake!

“Ah!” reflected the Major, “I was cool enough so long as I thought I was merely entertaining a circle of downcast braves, bushwhacking to steal an exchangeable Adjutant, and giving the enemy an unexpected dig in the ribs. But the new portion of the adventure makes me shaky. If I fail, I lose my laurel, all the same, and a lady has to be bonneted with a wreath of orange-flowers against her will. If I don’t bag, Beauty goes to the Kerrs; I miss my canto and the poem of her life becomes a dirge. I must not think of it, or I shall lose my spirits.”

“Prying into a maiden’s heart is new business to me,” he resumed to the father, who stood watching him anxiously. “I cannot quite comprehend this matter. She does not love this man. Her dislike has brought about a reconciliation between you. Where is her NO? I have heard that women carry such a weapon, — brandish it, too, and strike on much less provocation than she has.”

“She is not a free agent,” replied Brothertoft. “Her mother dominates her. She forced her to disown me. She will force her to this marriage. Lucy has been quelled all her life. I hope and believe that if she were released, or even supported for one moment in rebellion, her character might find it had vigor. But she is still willow in her mother’s hands. If the mother, for whatever reasons, has made up her mind to this marriage, she will crowd her daughter into it.”

“What reasons are sufficient for such tyranny?”

“I divine metaphysical reasons, that I cannot speak of. It pains me greatly, my dear young friend, to talk harshly of my daughter’s mother. Perhaps after all she may mean kindly now. She may be mistaken in Kerr.”

“No,” said Peter. “No woman of the world can mistake such a fellow.”

“Still, he is a strong friend to have on the other side.”

“Yes; and this is a moment when the other side is up and we are down. I can see how, with these great estates, a Patrooness may be willing to save herself a confiscation. She can pretend to be neutral, with a leaning to Liberty, and leave her son-in-law to rescue the acres if Liberty goes to the gallows.”

“Such considerations have brought matters to a crisis. Kerr is there on the spot. Clinton is victor. So the poor child is hurried off without giving her time to consider.”

“We must make time for her. I will go at my plans presently. But I should like to hear a little more of Voltaire’s story.”

“You are very kind to take this interest in the welfare of a desolate and disheartened man, and those who are dear to him.”

Peter’s cheeks were too brown to show blushes, and his cocked hat covered his white forehead; but he noticed that his heart was brewing a crimson blush, whether it burst through the valves and came to the surface or not. In fact he began to feel a lively sympathy for this weak girl, into whose orbit he was presently to fling himself, like a yellow-haired comet, with spoil-sport intent. The more he tried to cork in his blush, the more it wouldn’t be corked. And presently bang it came to the surface. His white forehead tingled at every pore, as the surface of a glass of Clicquot may tingle with its own bursting bubbles. No such rosy flash had ever showed on his countenance, when Anna’s or Belinda’s or Clara’s or Delia’s cheeks challenged him to kindle up. But the mere thought of a name much lower down in the alphabet now made his heart eager to do its share in striking fire and lighting this sorrowful scene about the Lucy in question.

The sad father was not in the way to observe blushes; nor was Voltaire, who now proceeded to finish his story.

For fear the worthy fellow might lapse into brogue, — whereupon the ghost of John C. Calhoun would hurroo with triumph, and ventriloquize derisive niggerisms through the larynx of his type negro, the stuffed Gorilla, — Voltaire’s tale shall be transposed into the third person. Then the hiatuses can be filled up, and we shall be able to peer a little into Lucy Brothertoft’s heart, and see whether the Heavenly Powers have guarded her, as Sappho the cook long ago prophesied they would.

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter V


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Page:Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison Vol. 1.djvu/645

Rh frosts will restore his regiment to perfect Health, and respectable medical men can be procured here if the Regiment should remain with us. Lt. Colonel [James] Miller has been very much indisposed but is better. He will not however I fear be able to march with us a circumstance infinitely to be regretted, for the experience which he has had. I have known no better officer and he is so much beloved by the officers and men of the 4th Regiment that I am persuaded that they would follow him to the Devil. Col. Boyd commands all the infantry as a Brigadier. There is not an officer of the regular troops (Col. Miller excepted) who cannot eat his rations as heartily as he ever could. The two that were left at Vincennes (one with an accidental hurt) are well and are coming up.

I have the Honor to be with the greatest respect. Sir, Your Humble. Servt.

The Honble. , Esqr. Secretary of War

 October 14, 1811 Executive Journal, 33 The Governor Issued his proclamation further postponing the meeting of the Legislature of the Territory until the Eleventh day of November next. [Abstract]

 , Oct. 16th, 1811 Burton, Historical Collection, 175

The officers commanding the different companies will be very particular in the execution of the General order of this day relative to the inspection of the arms, etc., as quick as possible it is to be understood that the examination of the arms and ammunition is to be thus particularly attended to every day, by the officer commanding the different companies and to make their report to the Commanding officer of the Regiment daily. Signed, G. R. C., Major 4th Infantry


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Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter VI

Chapter VI.
No hag is a houri to herfille de chambre.

Mrs. Brothertoft, handsome hag, was thoroughly comprehended by the Voltaire family. That was no doubt part of their compensation for being black, and below stairs.

Sweet Lucy was also well understood in the kitchen.

Many a pitiful colloquy went on about her between those three faithful souls.

Sappho’s conundrum, “What is de most importantest ’gredient in soup?” was often propounded. Voltaire always protested against such vulgar remarks. Plato always guessed “Faith!” and pretended he’d never heard the riddle before.

“Faith is all very well,” Voltaire would say, in studied phrase, as a model to his son. “But where is the Works? Where is the Works to help Miss Lucy?”

“Jess you keep yer grip onto de Faith,” his wife would respond, “an’ de Works will jussumfy, when de day of jussumfication comes.”

So Lucy grew up a grave, sad, lonely young girl. Her heart was undeveloped, for she had no one but her mother to love. She loved there, with little response. Her mother received, and did not repel, her love. That was enough for this affectionate nature. As to sympathy, they were strangers.

“She seems to me bitterly cold, when I love her so dearly,” Lucy would say to herself; “but how can I wonder? My father’s wrong-doing has broken her heart. Her life must be mere endurance. Mine would be, if I were so disappointed in one I loved. It is now.”

And the poor child’s heart would sink, and her eyes fill, and thick darkness come over her future.

She lived a sadly lonely life. She could never be merry as other girls. There was a miserable sense of guilt oppressing her soul. The supposed crimes of her father — those unknown enormities — weighed upon her. These, she thought, were what made many good people a little shy of the Brothertoft household. She could not fail to perceive a vague something in which her mother’s house was different from other houses she was permitted slightly to know. Why were so many odious men familiar there? When the family were in town, she could avoid them, day and evening, and spend long hours unnoticed and forgotten in her own chamber. She could escape to books or needlework. But why did her mother tolerate these coarse men from the barracks, with their Tom, Dick, and Harry talk? To be sure these were days of war, and Mrs. Brothertoft was loyal in her sympathies, though non-committal, and “She may think it right,” thought Lucy, “to show her loyalty in the only way a woman can, by hospitality. But I am glad she does not expect me to help her entertain her guests. I am glad I am a child still. I hope I shall never be a woman.”

Her life took a sombre cast. She sank into a groove, and moved through the hours of her days a forlorn and neglected creature.

“Queer!” Julia Peartree Smith would say of her. “A little weak here,” and Julia touched her forehead, just below her chestnut front. “She is a Brothertoft, and they were always feeble-minded folk, you know. But perhaps it’s just as well,” — and Julia sank her voice to a mean whisper, — “just as well she shouldn’t be too sharp-sighted in that house. I really believe the silly chit loves her mother, and thinks her as good as anybody. I tried to give her a half-hint once, but the little fool fired up red-hot and said, I was a shameful old gossip, — ‘old,’ indeed!”

So Lucy lived, utterly innocent of any dream of the evil she was escaping. There is something sadly beautiful and touching in this spectacle. A moonlit cloud flitting over the streets of a great wicked city, pausing above foul courts where vice slinks and crime cowers, reflected in the eddies of the tainted river, — the same eddy that was cleft at solemn moonrise by a suicide, — this weft of gentle cloud is not more unconscious of all the sin and shame beneath it, than Lucy of any wrong. The cloud beholds the pure moon, and drifts along unsullied; Lucy saw only her own white and virginal faith. It was not a warming, cheering luminary; but it shed over her world the gray, resigned light of patience.

A touching sight! the more so, because we know that the character will develop, and, when it is ripe enough to bear maturer sorrows and to perceive a darker shame, that the eyes will open and the sorrow and shame will be revealed, standing where they have so long stood unseen.

After this little glimpse of Lucy’s life, monotonously patient for the want of love, Voltaire takes up his narration again.

Voltaire thought Mrs. Brothertoft had determined to marry off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr as long ago as last spring, before they left town. She did not, however, announce her plans until they were in the country. She probably knew that this was a case where the betrothed had better not see too much of each other.

“I remember the day,” says the negro, “when Miss Lucy began to mope. Roses was comin’ in strong. She used to fill the house with ’em. Sometimes she’d sing a little, while she was fixin’ ’em. But from that day out, she’s never teched a flower nor sung a word. She’s just moped.”

By and by Voltaire had discovered the reason.

It was the wreath of mock orange-flowers dangled over Lucy’s head by a false Cupid, Anteros himself, that had taught her to hate roses and every summer bloom. Her faint songs were still because her heart was sick. The bridegroom was coming, and her mother had notified the bride to put on her prettiest smile. This command was given in Mrs. Brothertoft’s short, despotic way. Neither side argued. Lucy prepared to obey, just as she would have thrust a thorn in her foot, or swallowed a coal, upon order. She was not so very happy. She could be a little more unhappy without an unbearable shock. Major Kerr did not disgust her so much as some of her mother’s intimates. Still the prospect was not charming. The summer roses lost color to her eyes. Color left the cheeks that once rivalled the roses. The bride did not try to smile. Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wires. It takes practice to work the grimace out of a forced smile, so that it may pass for genuine.

When was the bridegroom coming? That information the bridegroom himself, though Sir Henry Clinton’s Adjutant, could not yet precisely give. “We are soon to make a blow at the Highlands, — then you will see me,” — so he wrote, and sent the message in a silver bullet. Silver bullets, walnuts split and glued together, and stuffed with pithy notes instead of kernels, and all manner of treacherous tokens, passed between Brothertoft Manor and the Red outposts. Whether facts leaked out from leaky old Put when glasses too many of the Brothertoft Yellowseal were under his belt; whatever true or false intelligence Scrammel paid for his post on Miss Lucy’s sofa, — every such fact was presently sneaking away southward in the pocket of young Bilsby, or some other Tory tenant on the Manor.

“I saw Miss Lucy mopin’ and mopin’ worse and worse,” says Voltaire, “but I couldn’t do nothin’, and there I sot in the pantry, like a dumb hoppertoad, watchin’ a child walkin’ up to a rattlesnake.”

Voltaire’s Faith without Works was almost dead.

Young Bilsby must have sneaked up to Brothertoft Manor with the news of Clinton’s expedition to the relief of Burgoyne, just at the time that Mr. Brothertoft’s announcement of his presence at Fishkill reached Voltaire.

“I did not dare tell Miss Lucy her father was so near,” says the major-domo, “until, all at once, on the fourth of this month, we saw King George’s ships lying off King’s Ferry; and by and by up the hill comes Major Kerr to the Manor-House, red as a beet.”

Upon this arrival, Lucy first fully comprehended what misery the maternal fiat was to bring upon her. Voltaire found her weeping and utterly desolate. At once his Faith worked out words. The dumb hoppertoad found voice to croak, “Ware rattlesnake!”

“You are going to be married, Miss Lucy?” he asked.

She wanted sympathy sadly, poor child! As soon as he spoke, she made a tableau and a scene, — both tragic. She laid her head on the old fellow’s shoulder, — Tableau. She burst into tears, — Scene.

Woolly wig and black phiz bent over fair hair and pale face. Delicate lips of a fine old Lincolnshire stock murmured a plaint. Thick lips of coarse old African stock muttered a vow of devotion. A little, high-bred hand, veined with sangre azul, yielded itself to the leathery pressure of a brown paw. Ah, poor child! she had need of a friend, and was not critical as to color.

“To be married?” Lucy responded, when sobs would let her speak. “Yes, Voltaire, in three or four days.”

“Time’s short as Sappho’s best pie-crust.”

“Mother says,” continued the young lady, “that I must have a protector. The Major is here now, and may be ordered up or down any day. Mother says it is providential, and we must take advantage of the opportunity, and be married at once.”

She looked very little like a bride, with her sad, shrinking face.

“Don’t you love Major Kerr?” asked Voltaire. “Lub” he always must pronounce this liquid verb.

“Do I love him, Voltaire? I hope to when we are married. Mother says I will. She says the ceremony and the ring will make another person of me. She says she has chosen me an excellent match, and I must be satisfied. O Voltaire! it seems a sin to say it, but my mother is cold and harsh with me. Perhaps I do not understand her. If I only had some other friend!”

“You have,” Voltaire announced.

“You — I know,” she said, kindly.

“Closer — miles closer ’n me!”

“Who? Do you mean any one of our loyalist neighbors?”

Lucy ran her thought over her short list of friends. All the valued names had been expunged by her mother’s strict censorship, or pushed back among mere acquaintance.

“Have you forgotten your father?” the butler asked.

“Forgotten! I go every day, when no one is by, and lift up the corner of the curtain over the Vandyck. Our ancestor is my father himself. I look at him, and pray God to forgive him for being so wicked, and breaking my mother’s heart.”

“Poh!”

Lucy drew back in astonishment, as if a Paixhan blow-gun had exploded at her side.

“Poh!” again burst out Voltaire’s double-corked indignation. “If there was a wicked one in that pair, it wasn’t him. If there’s a heart broke, it’s his.”

Lucy for a moment did not think of this as an assault upon her mother.

“What, Voltaire!” she cried. He is not dead! Not a bad man! Not a rebel!”

“Rebel!” says the French radical’s namesake. “Why shouldn’t he be a rebel for Freedom? Bad! he ain’t bad enough to marry off his daughter only to git shet of her. Dead! No, Miss Lucy; he’s up to Fishkill, and sends you his lub by me, if you want it.”

Love — even disguised as “Lub” — it was such a fair angel of light, that Lucy looked up and greeted it with a smile. But this was not a day for smiles. Storms were come after long gray weather. Only tears now, — bitter tears! They must flow, sweet sister! It is the old, old story.

“Does he really love me? Is this true? Was he true? Was I deceived? Why did he and my mother separate? Why did she drive him out? Whom can I trust? Is every one a liar? What does this mean? Answer me, Voltaire! Answer me, or I shall die.”

Voltaire looked, and did not answer. To answer was a terrible revelation to make to this innocent girl. Faith was putting the old fellow to very cruel Works.

“Speak!” said Lucy again, more passionately than before, and her voice expressed the birth of a new force within her. “Speak! What have you to say of my mother? I dread some new sorrow. Tell me what it is, or I shall die.”

Again these pages refuse to listen to the few deplorable words of his reply. He whispered the secret of her mother’s disloyal life.

“I will not believe it,” said the horror-stricken girl.

She did believe it.

She had touched the clew. From this moment she knew the past and the present, — vaguely, as a pure soul may know the mystery of sin.

For the moment she felt herself crushed to a deeper despair than before. She recognized the great overpowering urgency of Fate. She could not know that this recognition marks to the soul its first step into conscious immortality; and that the inevitable struggle to conquer Fate must now begin in her soul.

“What can I do?” she said; and she looked guiltily about the chamber, as if every object in that house were the accomplice of a sin.

“Run away with me to your father!” said Voltaire.

She shook her head weakly. She was a great, great way yet from any such exploit with her infant will.

“No,” she said; “I must obey my mother. That is my plain duty. She is pledged and I am pledged to this marriage. I must submit.” Tears again, poor child! The old habits are still too strong for her.

“But suppose your father should tell you to obey him, and not submit,” Voltaire propounded. “Suppose he should help to run you off.”

“How can he?”

“I will steal off to-night to Fishkill, and see him.”

“You risk your life.”

“Poh!”

“Poh!” is not a word to use to a young lady, Mr. Voltaire. Yet perhaps nothing could express so well as that explosive syllable how much and how little he valued life when the lady’s happiness was at stake.

“But I didn’t want Miss Lucy to be frightened, of course,” says he to Major Skerrett, “so I told her that I was safe enough in the Highlands, and when I got here I didn’t believe Major Scrammel would let me be shot for a spy.”

Here he gave a monstrous sly look.

Peter Skerrett again felt his cheeks burn, and his forehead tingle, and the stilled Muse of History reports that “he uttered a phrase indicative of reprehension and distrust.”

In short, he said to himself, “Scrammel! damn the fellow!”

Certainly! Why not? But it must not be forgotten, that it is Scrammel who suggested this expedition. Voltaire told Scrammel of the marriage. Scrammel, as our peep into friend Livingston’s brain informed us, would do one of his meanest tricks to be himself the bridegroom. And his scheme seems to be in a fair way to forbid the banns.

And so guileless Lucy Brothertoft had consented to her first plot. Her accomplice was to shift the burden of weakness from her shoulders, and throw it upon her father. Meantime she was to take her place at the great dinner-party, and be a hypocrite for the first time. How guilty felt that innocent heart! How she dreaded lest some chance word or look might betray her! What torture was the burning blush in her cheeks as she began to comprehend the woman she must name mother! How she trembled lest that woman’s cruel eyes should pierce her bosom, see the secret there, and consign her, without even the appointed delay, to the ardent bridegroom. She knew that she should yield and obey. Now that for the first time she was eager to have a will of her own, she saw how untrained and inefficient this will was. Horror of her mother, and loathing of her betrothed, each repelled her in turn. She seemed to see herself praying for mercy to the woman, and she coldly refusing to listen; then flying across the stage, and supplicating the man to spare her, and he, instead, triumphing with coarse fondness. Ah, unhappy lady! with no friend except that stout-hearted old squire, shinning by night through the Highlands, and dodging sentries at risk of a shot, — a shot, that startling trochee, sharp ictus, and faint whiz.

Except for the Majors, — Scrammel to plot, Skerrett to execute, — Voltaire’s evasion would have been in vain. Edwin Brothertoft was paralyzed by the news of his daughter’s danger.

“What can I do?” he said to the old servant, bitterly. “Nothing! Nothing! Is General Putnam, just defeated, likely to march down to rescue iny daughter? These are not the days of chivalry. Knights do not come at call, when damsels are in distress. No; I am impotent to help her. If she cannot help herself, her heart must break, as mine has broken. That base woman will crush her life, as she crushed mine. Why did you come to me? You have brought me news that I may love my daughter, only to make the new love a cause of deeper misery. Why did you tell me of this insult to her womanhood? I had enough to endure before. Go! What can I say to her? She will not care for a futile message, ‘that I love her, but can do nothing.’ Some stronger head than mine might devise a plan. Some stronger heart might dare. But I have given up. I am a defeated man, a broken-hearted man, living from day to day, and incompetent to vigor. I remember myself another person. I sometimes feel the old fire stir and go out. But I can do nothing. My fate and my daughter’s fate are one. Go, Voltaire, and leave me to my utter sorrow and despair!”

He had but just dismissed the negro, and turned a despondent back upon the world, — when lo! Peter Skerrett, as we saw him, comes forth. Here comes the Captor of Captives, the Hero of Ballads! Here come chivalry, youth, ardor, force, confidence, success, all in a body, — a regiment of victor traits in one man, and on that man’s lip, the best in the Continental army. Here comes a man whose timepiece has never learnt to mark “Too late.” Here he comes, and he has made it his business to eliminate Kerr from the problem of Brothertoft Manor; so that Kerr + Lucy = Bliss will be for a time an impossible equation.

Take courage, then, Edwin Brothertoft, tender of heart, sick at will, and thank Heaven that you married your gunstock to the brainpan of that British beggar with a baggonet at Bunker Hill, and so saved Skerrett to help you.

Voltaire’s story, with additions and improvements, now ends, and business proceeds.

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter VI


text:
Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter VII

Chapter VII.
“After this history, I want a little topography,” said Skerrett. “Can you sketch me a ground plan of the house?”

That skeleton, Brothertoft could draw without much feeling. The house, as it stood, complete in the background of memory, he would not allow himself to recall. Its walls and furniture were to him the unshifted scenes and properties of a tragedy. If he painted them before his mind’s eye, an evil-omened figure of a woman would step from behind the curtain, threatening some final horror, to close the drama of their lives.

“This wing to the right,” Skerrett said, “seems an addition.”

“It was built on by the present proprietress,” coldly rejoined the former heir.

“Stables here!” continued the Major, tracing the plan. “Dining-room windows open toward them. Shrubbery here, not too far off for an ambush. Now, Voltaire, if we could get Major Kerr alone in that dining-room in the dusk of the evening to-morrow, I could walk him off easily.”

“Ho!” exclaims the butler. “That’s all settled beforehand.”

“Kerr sometimes makes late sittings there, then? I fancied I knew his habits.”

“He’s a poor hand at courtin’,” says Voltaire, with contempt. “Ladies likes dewotion, — that’s my ’sperience. He’s only dewoted to fillin’ hisself full of wine.”

“A two-bottle man?”

“Every day, when the ladies leave table, he rubs his hands,” — Voltaire imitates, — “and says, ‘Now then, old boy, fresh bottle! Yellow-seal! Don’t shake him!’ He drinks that pretty slow, and gives me a glass and says, ‘Woolly-head, we’ll drink my pretty Lucy. Lucky Kerr’s pretty bride!’”

Peter Skerrett here looked ferocious.

“Then,” continued the old fellow, “he drops off asleep at the table till four o’clock. Then he wakes up, sour, and sings out,” — Voltaire imitates, — “‘Hullo, you dam nigger! Look sharp! Another bottle! If you shake him, I’ll cut your black heart out.’ He drinks him, and then byme-by he says, ‘Ole fel! Shmore wide, ole fel. Tuther boddle dow! I ashkitspussonle favor, ole fel!’ Then he sings a little, and gets generally accelerated.”

“I would rather have him slowed, than accelerated,” says Peter.

“Oho!” grinned the butler, and whispered to himself, “If the Major thinks he ought to be stupid-tipsy for the good of the cause and Miss Lucy, I can deteriorate him, into his Madeira, with a little drop of our French Gutter de Rosy brandy. That will take the starch out of his legs, and make him easy to handle. But that is my business. I won’t tell nobody my secrets. The pantry and I must keep dark.”

“I cannot help a grain of compunction in this matter,” Skerrett said. “A gentleman does not like to interfere in another man’s courtship.”

“Do you call this plot of a coarse man with an unmotherly woman by the fair name of courtship?” Brothertoft said.

“No. And fortunately the lady has no illusions. I should not like to be the one to tell Beauty she had loved Beast. But this Beauty, it seems, has kept her heart too pure to have lost her fine maidenly instinct of aversion to a blackguard. Well, no more metaphysics! Scruples be hanged. Kerr don’t deserve to be treated like a gentleman. England should have kept such fellows at home, if she wanted us to believe good manners were possible under a monarchy. Now, then, Mr. Brothertoft, suppose I do not get myself ‘hanged as one espy,’ and take my prisoner, — does his capture protect your daughter enough?”

“I could wish, if it were possible, to have her with me henceforth.”

“We must make it possible, though it complicates matters. I could rush in, snatch Kerr, and be off. The blow would be struck, the enemy annoyed, our people amused; but in a fortnight Clinton would offer some Yankee major and a brace of captains to boot for his Adjutant, the Honorable, &c. Then he would go down and play Beast to Beauty again.”

“Save my daughter, once for all; if it can be done.”

“I’ll try. Now, Voltaire, listen!”

Which he opened his mouth to do.

“What people, besides the two ladies and Major Kerr, will be at your house to-morrow evening, — the servants, I mean?”

“Oh! we live small at the Manor, now, ridiculous small. It’s war times now. Rents isn’t paid. When we want a proper lot of servants, we takes clodhoppers.”

“Lucky for my plans you do live small,” Skerrett said. “Never mind your family pride! Name the household!”

“Me and Sappho and Plato, all patriots; Jierck Dewitt’s wife and her sister, Sally Bilsby, both Tories, — that is, gals that likes redcoats more than is good for ’em.”

“Could you manage to have the girls out of the way to-morrow evening?”

“Easy enough. They’ll be glad to get away for a frolic.”

“Any horses in your stable, Voltaire?”

“Six, — all out of that Harriet Heriot mare stock. You remember, Master Edwin.”

Edwin Brothertoft did sadly remember the late old Sam Galsworthy’s generous offer. He remembered sadly that ride, so many years ago, and how the sweet south winds, laden with the rustle of tropic palms, met him with fair omen, — ah! long ago, when Faith was blind and Hope was young!

“Six white horses,” Voltaire continued; “the four carriage-horses, Madam’s horse, and Miss Lucy’s mare, — you ought to see Miss Lucy on her!”

“Perhaps I shall. Tell Plato to give the mare another oat to-morrow! Her mistress may want a canter in the evening, — eh, Voltaire?”

Grin in response.

“Tell Miss Brothertoft, with her father’s best love,” Skerrett resumed, “that he will be on the lawn by the dining-room window to-morrow evening at nine o’clock, waiting for her to ride with him to Fishkill. Tell her to be brave, prudent, and keep out of sight with a headache, until she is called to start. And you, Voltaire, as you love her, be cautious, be secret and be wide awake!”

At “be cautious,” the old fellow winked elaborately. At “be secret,” he locked all four eyelids tight. At “be wide awake,” — snap! eyelids flung open, and white of eye enough appeared to dazzle a sharpshooter.

“Now, listen, Voltaire!”

Mouth agape, again, as if he had a tympanum at each tonsil.

“Look at me, carefully!” continues Peter.

Pan shut and eyes à la saucer.

“Do you think you would know me disguised in a red coat?”

Pan opened to explode, “Certain sure, sir!”

“And without my moustache?” the major asked.

He gave that feature a tender twirl. His fingers wrapped the fair tendrils lovingly around them.

“Must it go?” he sighed. “O Chivalry! O Liberty! O my Country! what sacrifices you demand!”

Voltaire was sure that he would know the Hero, even with an emasculated lip.

“Well; about eight to-morrow evening, when Major Kerr is ‘accelerated’ with his second bottle, I shall knock at your loyal door, — moustache off, and red coat on — and ask a night’s lodging for a benighted British sergeant.”

“You shall have it,” says the major-domo, with a grand-seigneur manner.

“Nothing but apple-jack or Jersey champagne has passed these lips, since we lost the Brandywine. You will naturally give me my bottle of Yellow-seal, and my bite of supper, in the dining-room with the Major.”

“Oh!” cried Voltaire with sudden panic. “Don’t risk it! Major Kerr’s got a sword awful long and awful sharp, and two pistols with gold handles, plum full of bullets. Every day, when he drinks, he puts ’em on the sideboard, an’ he say, ‘Lookerheeyar, ole darkey! spose dam rebble cum, I stick him, so; an’ I shoot him, so.’ Don’t resk it, Mas’r Skerrett!”

(Ancient servitor, suppress thy terror and thy Tombigbee together!)

“Slip off with the weapons, and hide ’em in your bed,” says the Major.

“In my bed?” says Voltaire, in good Continental again. “In our feather bed? Suppose Sappho goes to lie down, and touches cold iron, wont she take on scollops, high?”

“The poetess must not be taught to strike a jangling lyre. Give the tools to Plato. Set him on guard at the dining-room door when I come. Tell him he is serving a model Republic, — such as his ancient namesake never dreamed.”

Brothertoft smiled at these classical allusions. Lively talk was encouraging him, as his junior meant it should.

Neither foresaw what a ghastly mischief was to follow this arming of Plato.

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter VII


text: Dramatis Personæ/A Likeness

title: Dramatis Personæ/A Likeness


text:
Page:Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison Vol. 1.djvu/641

 Rh  , 13th Octr. 1811 Har. Pa. 495-501

Your letter of the 18th ultimo I had the Honor to receive yesterday. My views have hitherto been limited to the erection of the Fort which we are now building and to a march by way of feint in the direction of the Prophet's Town as high perhaps as the Vermillion River. But the powers given me in your last letter and circumstances which have occurred here at the very moment on which it was received call for measures of a more energetic kind. I had always supposed that the Prophet was a rash and presumptuous man but he has exceeded by expectations. He has not contented himself with throwing the gauntlet but has absolutely commenced the war. His parties were in our neighbourhood for the first time on the night of the 10th inst. our Centinals were fired on and one of the best men of the 4th U. State Regiment badly tho not mortally wounded. The army was immediately turned out and formed in excellent order in a very few minutes. Patrols were dispatched in every direction but the darkness was such that pursuit of the enemy was impracticable. Other alarms took place in the course of the night probably without good cause but the Troops manifested an alertness in taking their positions which was highly gratifying to me. Previously to my leaving Vincennes I had sent to the Delaware Towns to request some of their Chiefs to meet me upon the march that I might employ them in Missions to the several Tribes which have a part of their warriors with the Prophet. All the Chiefs of this faithful tribe that were able to march set out from their Towns on the 6th Inst. They had proceeded but a few miles when they were met by a deputation from the Prophet's Town requiring from the Tribes a catagorical answer to the question "Whether they would or would not join them in the war against the United States—that they had taken up the Tomhawk and that they would lay it down only with their lives. They had however positive assurances of victory and when they had beaten the Americans, those Tribes who refused to join them would have cause to repent it". The Delaware Chiefs immediately dispatched the Interpreter Mr.


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{{Hoyt quote | num = 12 | text = Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me morel | author = Cowper | work = Task. Bk. II. L. 1. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Johnson}} under {{sc|Summer) | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 13 | text = O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place. | author = Cowper | work = Verses supposed to be, written by Alexander Selkirk. | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 14 | text = Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of genius. In all ages solitude has been called for—has been flown to. Isaac DTsraeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. X. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 15 | text = There is a society in the deepest solitude. Isaac D'Israeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. X. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 16 | text = So vain is the belief That the sequestered path has fewest flowers. | author = Thomas Doubleday | work = Sonnet. The Poet's Solitude. | place = | note = | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 17 | text = Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world; doth live his own; Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love. Drummond—Urania; or, Spiritual Poems. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Cicero}}) | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 18 | text = We enter the world alone, we leave it alone. | author = Froude | work = Short Studies on Great Subjects. Sea Studies | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 19 | text = I was never less alone than wheD by myself. GrBBON—Memoirs. Vol. I. P. 117. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Cicero}}) | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 20 | text = Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergiebt, Ach! der ist bald allein. Whoever gives himself up to solitude, Ah' he is soon alone. Goethe—WUhelm Meister. II. 13. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 21 | text = Nobody with me at sea but myself. | author = Goldsmith | work = The Haunch of Venison. | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 22 | text = Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. | author = Gray | work = Elegy in a Country Churchyard. | place = St. 19. | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 23 | text = O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,— Nature's observatory—whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion 'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell. Kelts*—Sonnet. Solitude' If I Must With Thee Dwell. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 24 | text = Why should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, Nor even the tenderest heart and next our own Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh. Keble—Christian Year. Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Solitude | page = 730 }}


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 SOLITUDE SOLITUDE


text:
Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter VIII

Chapter VIII.
“Now, Voltaire, the sooner you are on your way back, to warn and comfort your young lady, the better,” said Skerrett. “I’m sorry for your shins among the Highlands by night.”

“Never mind my shins,” Voltaire replied with a martyr air. “They belong to my country and Miss Lucy.”

He passed his hand tenderly along their curvilinear edges, as if he were feeling a scymitar, before a blow. They were sadly nicked, poor things! They would be lacerated anew, as he brandished them at the briers, and smote with them the stumps along his twenty-mile anabasis.

“Farewell, my trump of trumps,” said the Major. “Remember; be cautious, be secret, be wide awake!”

Same pantomime as before in reply.

“If Mrs. Brothertoft suspects anything, there will be tragedy,” Peter continued.

So all three knew, and shuddered to think.

“I will walk a little way with my friend,” said Brothertoft, “I have a more hopeful message now to send to my dear child.”

Peter watched the two contrasted figures until they disappeared in the glow of the many-colored forest.

“Lovely old gentleman!” he thought. “Yes; ‘lovely’ is the word. My first encounter with a broken heart. It has stopped my glee for a long time to come. I have felt tears in my eyes, all the while, and only kept them down by talking low comedy with the serio-comic black personage. Can a broken heart be mended? That is always woman’s work, I suppose. In this case, too, woman broke, woman must repair. The daughter must make over what the wife spoilt. She shall be saved for his sake and her own, even if I come out of the business an amputated torso. I don’t quite comprehend people that cannot help themselves. But here I see the fact, — there are such. And I suppose exuberant chaps, like myself, are put in the world to help them. I wonder whether any woman will break my heart! I wonder whether Miss Lucy liked any of our fellows, and had a hero in her eye to make Kerr look more caitiff than he is. Could not be Scrammel, — he is a sneak. Could not be Radière, — he is too dyspeptic. Nor Humphreys, — too pompous. Nor Livingston, — he is not sentimental enough. Nor Skerrett, — him she has never seen and will see with his moustache off. Ah! the Chief was right when he told me I should put my foot into some adventure up here. And now the thing is started, I must set it moving.”

He walked toward Jierck Dewitt, still on guard at the gate. His relief was just coming up, and the sentry was at liberty.

“Did you know those two men I was talking with, by the well, Jierck?” Peter asked.

“Yes, sir; Sergeant Lincoln and Lady Brothertoft’s factotum. I’d like to know what old Voltaire wanted here.”

“He does not recognize the ex-Patroon,” Skerrett thought. “Then no one will. Jierck’s eyes always saw a little lighter in the dark, and a little steadier in a glare, than the next man’s. Sorrow must have clapped a thick mask on my friend’s face.”

“I suppose you know the Brothertoft Manor country and the Manor-House thoroughly, Jierck,” the Major said.

“Know the Manor, sir! I should think so. I began with chasing tumble-bugs and crickets over it, and studied it inch by inch. Then I trailed black-snakes and ran rabbits, and got to know it rod by rod. I’ve fished in every brook, and clumb every nut-tree, and poked into every woodcock swamp or patridge brush from end to end of it. I know it, woodland and clearing, side-hill and swale, fields that grow stun and fields that grow corn. I’ve run horses over it, where horses is to be run, — and that’s not much, for its awful humpy country, and boulders won’t stay put anywheres. Deer, too, — there ain’t many pieces of woods on it where I haven’t routed out deers, and when they legged for the Highlands, I legged too, and come to know the Highlands just as well. I used to love, when I was a boy, to go along on the heights above the river, and pick out places where I was going to live; but I sha’n’t live in any of ’em now. What does a man care about home, or living at all, when his woman isn’t true?”

Major Skerrett did not interrupt this burst of remembrances. “Jierck suffers as much in his way,” he thought, “as the ex-Patroon.” “And the house,” he said, “you know that as thoroughly?”

“Ay, from garret to cellar. My father, Squire Dewitt, has been in England, and he says it’s more like an English house than any he knows, in small. From garret to cellar, says I. The cellar I ought to know pretty well. I dodged in there once, when I was a boy, hangin’ round the house; and got into the wine-room, and drank stuff that came near spoilin’ my taste for rum forever, — I wish it had. They caught me, and the Madam had me whipped till the blood come. Mr. Brothertoft tried to beg off for me. She’d got not to make much of him by that time, and the more he begged, the harder she had ’em lay it on me. But I’m talkin’ off, stiddy as the North River, and you’e got something to say to me, Major, I know, by the way you look. What’s up about Brothertoft Manor?”

“There’s a British officer staying there, who has never tasted pork and beans. I’ve promised General Putnam to bring him up here to dinner.”

“Hooray! that’s right. Give these militia something to think about, or they get to believe war’s like general trainin’-day, and they can cut for home when they’re tired. You want volunteers. I’m one.”

“I counted on you for my lieutenant. Sergeant Lincoln also goes. Now I want three men more, and you shall choose them. Each man must have the grit of a hundred; and they must know the country as well as they know the way to breakfast. Name three, Jierck!”

“That I’ll do, bang. There’s Ike Van Wart, for one. His junto, him and Jack Paulding and Dave Williams, would just make the three. But Jack’s nabbed, and down to York in a prison-ship. And Dave’s off on furlough, sowing his father’s winter wheat for the Cowboys to tromp next summer.”

Only Isaac Van Wart, therefore, of that famous trio, whom the Muse of Tradition shall fondly nickname

joined Skerrett on his perilous service.

“Ike for one,” continued Dewitt. “Well, Galsworthy, old Sam Galsworthy, for two. And for three, I don’t believe a better man lives than Hendrecus Canady, the root-doctor’s son. They’re all Brothertoft-Manor boys, built of the best cast-steel, and strung with the wiriest kind of wire. Shoot bullets into ’em, stick baggonets into ’em; they don’t mind the bullets any more than spit-balls at school, nor the baggonets more than witches do pins.”

“Well, Jierck, have them here in an hour. I will join you, and talk the trip over, and we will be ready to start at sunset.”

Skerrett found himself a horse, trotted back to Fishkill, wrote a farewell to his step-brother and his mother, and scratched a few irrepressible lines to Washington, such as the hero loved to get from his boys, and valued much more than lumbering despatches marked Official. The despatches only announced facts, good or bad. The brisk, gallant notes revealed spirits which black facts could not darken, nor heavy facts depress. “So long as I have lads like Peter Skerrett,” thought Our George, by the grace of God Pater Patriæ, when he received this note, a fortnight after that cup-lip-and-slip battle of German town, “while I have such lads with me, I can leave my red paint in my saddle-bags with my Tuscarora grammar.”

“Now,” thought Peter, “I have made my will and written my despatch, I must proceed to change myself into a redcoat.”

He unpacked a British sergeant’s uniform, which he had carried, if disguise should be needed in his late solitary journey.

“There is a garment,” said he, holding up the coat with an air of respect, “whose pockets have felt the King’s shilling. But thy pockets, old buff and blue!” — he stripped off his own coat, — “never knew bullion, though often stuffed with Continental paper at a pistareen the pound avoirdupois.”

His weather-beaten scarlets were much too small for the tall champion. By spasm and pause, and spasm again, however, he managed to squeeze into them at last.

Then he took Mrs. Birdsell’s little equilateral triangle of mirror, three inches to a side, and, holding it off at arm’s length, surveyed himself by sections.

“The color don’t suit my complexion,” he said, viewing his head and neck. “The coat will not button over my manly chest, and I shall have to make it fast with a lanyard,” here he took a view of the rib-region. “The tails are simply ridiculous,” — he twisted about to bring the glass to bear upon them. “In short,” — and he ran the bit of mirror up and down, — “I am a scarecrow, cap à pie. Liberty herself would not know me. Pretty costume to go and see a lady in! Confound women! Why will wives break husband’s hearts? Why will girls grow up beauties and heiresses, and become baits for brutes? Ah, Miss Lucy Brothertoft! You do not know what an inglorious rig Peter Skerrett is submitting to for your sake. And the worst is to come. Alas! the worst must come!”

He hoisted the looking-glass and gazed for a moment irresolutely at his face.

There, in its accustomed place, sat The Moustache, blonde in color, heroic in curl, underscoring his firm nose, pointing and adorning the handsome visage.

Skerrett gazed, sighed, and was silent.

Nerve him, Liberty! Steel him, Chivalry!

A hard look crept over his countenance.

He clutched a short blade, pointless; but with an edge trenchant as wit.

It was a razor.

Slash! And one wing of The Moustache was swept from the field.

Behold him, trophy in hand and miserable that he has won it!

Will resolution carry him through a second assault? Or will he go one-sided; under one nostril a golden wreath, under the other, bristles, for a six-month?

Slash! The assassination is complete.

His lip is scalped. All is bald between his nose and mouth. The emphasis is subtracted from his countenance. His upper lip, no longer kept in place by its appropriate back-load, now flies up and becomes seamed with wrinkles.

And there on the table lay The Moustache!

There they lay, — the right flank and the left flank, side by side in their old posture, — the mere exuviæ of a diminished hero.

Peter turned away weakly as a Samson shorn.

“Ah, Liberty! Ah, Chivalry!” he moaned. “Will the good time to come make a sacred relic of these yellow tufts?”

Tradition reports that his hostess found them, and buried them, in an old tinder-box, in the Fishkill village graveyard, where they sleep among other exuviæ, arms, legs, torsos, and bodies of the heroes of that time.

And now it may be divined why De Chastellux does not immortalize the Skerrett Moustache. Perhaps Peter kept his lip in mourning until after the surrender of Cornwallis. Perhaps, alas! they never grew again.

“It will take gallons on gallons of this October to put me in good spirits again,” says the Major, as he rode away.

The mellow air, all sweetness, all sparkle, and all perfume, flowed up to his lips, generously. He breathed, and breathed, and breathed again of that free tap, and by the time he reached the rendezvous was buoyant as ever.

The Orderly, Brothertoft, was awaiting him, and sat patient, but no longer despondent, looking through the bulky Highlands, as if they were the mountains of a dream.

Jierck Dewitt and his Three were skylarking in a pumpkin patch. Twenty years ago we saw the same three, straddling and spurring tombstones in the Brothertoft Manor graveyard, the day of the last Patroon’s funeral, — the day when Old Van Courtlandt made a Delphic Apollo of him, and foretold, amid general clink of glasses, that marriage of white promise and black performance.

“The child is father of the man”; and the four boys have grown up as their fathers’ children should.

Jierck Dewitt has already shown himself, and related why he is not fully up to his mark of manliness.

When he caught sight of Major Skerrett, he dropped a yellow bomb, charged with possible pumpkin-pies, which he was about to toss at the head of one of his men, and marched the file up to be reviewed by its leader.

“Number one is Ike Van Wart, Major,” says Jierck. “His eyes are peeled, if there’s any eyes got their bark off in the whole Thirteen.”

Ike touched his cocked hat — it was his only bit of uniform — and squared shoulders to be looked at.

He was a lank personage, of shrewd, but rather sanctimonious visage. War made him a scout. Fate appointed him one prong of Major André’s Bootjack. But Elder and Chorister were written on his face; and he died Elder and Chorister of the First Presbyterian Church of Greenburgh, in Westchester.

“Right about face, Ike!” says Jierck. “Forrud march, Old Sam Galsworthy! He’s grit, if grit grows. His only fault is he’s too good-natured to live.”

Old Sam stood forward, and laughed. As he laughed, the last button flew off his uniform coat. It was much too lean a coat for one of his increasing diameter, and the exit of that final button had long been merely a question of time. Hearty Old Sam may be best described by pointing to his descendants, who in our day are the identical Sam, repeated. Under thirty, they drive high-stepping bays in the wagons of the great Express Companies. They wear ruddy cheeks, chinny beards, natty clothes, blue caps with a gilt button; and rattle their drags through from Flatten Barrack, up Broadway and back, at 2 P. M., without hitting a hub or cursing a carter. Everybody says Old Sam is too good-natured to live! But he does live and thrive, and puts flesh on his flesh, and dollars on his pile. Over thirty, he marries, as becomes a Galsworthy, buys acres up the river, raises red-cheeked apples and children, breeds high-stepping bays, and when he takes his annual nag to the Bull’s Head for sale, the knowing men there make bets, and win them, that Old Squire Sam weighs at least two hundred and forty pounds with his coat off.

“Right about face, Sam!” says the fugleman. “Forrud march, Hendrecus Canady! He looks peaked, Major. His father’s a root and Injun doctor, and he never had much but pills to eat, until he ran off and joined the army. But I stump the whole Thirteen to show me a wirier boy, or a longer head. He’ll be in Congress before he says ‘Die’ through that nose of his’n.”

Hendrecus Canady in turn toed the mark for inspection. He had a sallow, potticary face. A meagre yellow down on his cheeks grew to a point at his chin. But he is neatly dressed in half-uniform. He has a keen look, which will say, “Stand and deliver your fact!” to every phenomenon. He will, indeed, talk through his nose, until his spirit passes by that exit to climes where there are no noses to twang by. But wiry men must be had when states need bracing. And the root-doctor’s runaway son was M. C. long before his beak intoned his Nunc dimittis.

“Now, boys,” said Skerrett, “I like your looks, and I like what Captain Jierck says of you. You know what we’ve got to do, and know it must be done. You’ll travel, scattering, according to Jierck’s orders, and rendezvous before moon-rise at his father’s barn on the Manor. Sergeant Lincoln goes with me. Jierck will name a place where he’ll meet me at sunrise. We shall have all day to-morrow to see how the land lies, and the night to do our job in. Now, then, shake hands round, and go ahead!”

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter VIII


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 SONG SORROW

SORROW

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Men die, but sorrow never dies; The crowding years divide in vain, And the wide world is knit with ties Of common brotherhood in pain. Susan Coolidge—The Cradle Tomb in Westminster Abbey,


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{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = But for you, it shall be forever Spring, And only you shall be forever fearless, And only you shall have white, straight, tireless limbs, And only you, where the water lily swims, Shall walk along pathways, thro' the willows Of your West. You who went West,


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Eurydice to Orpheus

But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow! Let them once more absorb me! One look now Will lap me round for ever, not to pass Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond: Hold me but safe again within the bond Of one immortal look! All woe that was, Forgotten, and all terror that may be, Defied,—no past is mine, no future: look at me!

title: Eurydice to Orpheus


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{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = The worlde bie diffraunce ys ynn orderr founde. | author = Rowley | work = The Tournament. | note = Same idea in {{sc|Pascal—Pensées. {{sc|Bernardin de St. Pierre—Etudes de la Nature. {{sc|Burke}}—Reflections on the French Revolution. {{sc|Horace}}—Epistle 12. {{sc|Lucan}}—Pharsalia. {{sc|Longinus}}—Remark on the Eloquence of Demosthenes. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Pope}}) | topic = World | page = 915 }}


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916

{{Hoyt quote | num = 22 | text = In this playhouse of infinite forms 1 have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless. Rabindranath Tagore—Gitanjali. 96. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Du Bartas) | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = World | page = 916 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 23 | text = A mad world, my masters. John Taylor—Western Voyage. First line. Middleton. Title of a play. (1608) Nicholas Breton. Title of a pamphlet. (1603) Mundus furiosus. (a mad world) Inscription of a book by Jansenius—Gallo-Belgicus. (1596) | seealso = (See also {{sc|King John}}) | topic = World | page = 916 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 24 | text = So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be. I | author = Tennyson | work = In Memoriam. Pt. LXXIII. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = World | page = 916 }}


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Edwin Brothertoft/Part III Chapter I

Chapter I.
For the first time in her life Lucy Brothertoft failed to kiss her mother on the morning of the dinner to Sir Henry Clinton.

A great pang went to the guilty woman’s heart.

She perceived that her daughter knew her at last.

Ah, miserable woman! She did not dare turn her great black eyes reproachfully upon Lucy, and demand the omitted caress.

She did not dare say tenderly, “What, my daughter, are you forgetting me?”

She did not dare go forward and press her own unworthy lips to those virgin lips.

For one instant a great tumult of love and remorse stirred within her. She longed to fling herself on her knees before her daughter, to bury her face in Lucy’s lap, and there, with tears and agony, cry out: —

“O my child! pity me, do not hate me, for the lie I have been. Ah! you do not know the misery of wearing an undetected falsehood in the heart! You do not know the torture of hypocrisy. You do not know how miserably base it is to be loved for what you are not, — to be trusted as a true and loyal heart, when every moment of such false pretence is another film of falsehood over the deep-seated lie. You cannot know how we tacit liars long for betrayal, while we shrink and shudder when it approaches!

“And you, my gentle daughter, have been my vengeance. Listen to me now! The old pride breaks. The old horror passes. I confess. Before you, the very image of my husband in his young and hopeful days, I confess my shameful sin. I have been a foul wife and a false mother. Do not scorn me, Lucy. I have suffered, and shall suffer till I die.

“Ah! thank Heaven, my child, that you do not feel and cannot divine half my degradation. My agony you see, — let it be the lesson of your life! Here I hide my face, and dare to recall that brave and noble lover, your father. So gentle he was, so tender, so utterly trustful! And I was mean enough to think he triumphed over me because his soul was fine, and mine was coarse. So I took my coarse revenge.

“O fool, fool! that I could not comprehend that pure and lofty nature. O base! that I must grovel and rank myself with the base. O cruel! that I must trample upon him. O dastardly! for the unwomanly sneers, for the studied insults, by which I bore him down, and broke at last that high, chivalric heart. It seems to me that I was not sane, but mad all those miserable years.

“But now, my daughter, see me weep! I repent. My soul repents and loathes this guilty woman here. I have spoken, I have told you fully what I am. I look up. I see your father’s patient, pitying glance upon your face. Speak, with his voice, and say I may be slowly pardoned, if my penitence endures. And kiss me, Lucy! not my tainted lips; but kiss my forehead with a kiss of peace!”

Such a wild agony of love and remorse stirred within this wretched woman’s heart.

But she battled it down, down, down.

The virago in her struck the woman to the earth, and throttled her. No yielding. No tears. No repentance. She scorned the medicine of shame.

Lucy’s presence cowed her. She did not dare look at that gentle, earnest face, except covertly, and as an assassin looks.

The Furies, her old companions, thickened about her, like a mist pregnant with forms. There was a whispering in the air. Did others see those shadowy images? Did others hear their words? To her they were loud and emphatic. “Stab the meek-faced girl! Be rid of this spy! Shall she sit there and shame you?” — so the Furies whispered and shouted. And the woman replied within herself: “Am I not stabbing her? See, here is my hired bravo, my future son-in-law, the very Honorable Major Kerr, — le bel homme! He will give the puny thing troubles of her own to mind. We will see whether she is always to stay so meek and patient. We will see whether these Brothertofts are so much better than other people. She has learnt to suspect me at last. I knew the time would come, and I have made ready for it. Day after to-morrow they are to be married, and then I shall be rid of Miss Monitress.”

With such passions at work, breakfast at Brothertoft, on the morning of Putnam’s Council, and the dinner to Clinton, was not a very cheerful meal. Mother and daughter were silent. Kerr took his cue, and played knife and fork.

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part III Chapter I


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{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too;


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WORTH


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920

WOUNDS


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{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Among the dwellings framed by birds In field or forest with nice care, Is none that with the little wren's In snugness may compare. Wordsworth—A Wren's Nest. WRITING (See Authorship Journalism, Pen) WRONGS

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = In the great right of an excessive wrong. Robert Browning—The Ring and the Book. The other Half—Rome. L. 1,055. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Brother, brother; we are both in the wrong. Gay—Beggar's Opera. Act II. Sc. 2. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Alas! how easily things go wrong! A sigh too deep, or a kiss too long, And then comes a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again. George Macdonald—Phantastes. A Fairy Story. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right. Stevenson—Crabbed Age. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Once I guessed right, And I got credit by't; Thrice I guessed wrong, And I kept my credit on. Saying quoted by Swift. (1710) | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Injuriarum remedium est oblivio. The remedy for wrongs is to forget them. Syrus—Maxims. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Higher than the perfect song For which love longeth, Is the tender fear of wrong, That never wrongeth. Bayard Taylor—Improvisations. Pt. V. u Wrongs unredressed, or insults unavenged. Wordsworth—The Excursion. Bk. III. L. 377. YESTERDAY (See Past) YEW Taxus Careless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell 'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms: Where light-heel'd ghosts and visionary shades, Beneath the wan, cold Moon (as Fame reports) Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds. No other merriment, dull tree! is thine. Blair—The Grave. L. 22. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = For there no yew nor cypress spread their gloom But roses blossom'd by each rustic tomb. Campbell—Theodric. L. 22. Slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse. Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 27. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Of vast circumference and gloom profound, This solitary Tree! A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed. Wordsworth—Yew-Trees. There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore. Wordsworth—Yew-Trees. YOUTH Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; Old age is slow in both. | author = Addison | work = Calo. Act II. Sc. 5. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Youth dreams a bliss on this side death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, More grateful than this marble sleep; It hears a voice within it tell: Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires. Matthew Arnold—Youth and Calm. L. 19. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 921 }}


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922


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{{Hoyt quote | num = 21 | text = that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet; He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live. | author = Swinburne | work = The Oblation | topic = Love | page = 481


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502


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MEDICINE


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 MONEY MONEY

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = No, let the monarch's bags and coffers hold The flattering, mighty, nay, aS-mighty gold. Wolcot—To Kieu Long. Ode IV. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Living)


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 Tetanus successfully treated;' 'Account of a Remarkable Displacement of the Stomach;' 'Observations on Jaundice;' 'Observations on the Situation and Structure of Malignant Diseases of the Liver.' Vol. ii.: 'Cases illustrative of Diagnosis where Tumours are situated at the Base of the Brain.' In 'Transactions of the Geological Society:' 'On the Strata in the Neighbourhood of Bristol,' 1811, and 'On the Hills of Badaeson, Szigliget, &c., in Hungary,' 1818.

 BRIGHT, TIMOTHY, M.D. (1551?–1615), the inventor of modern shorthand, was born in or about 1551, probably in the neighbourhood of Sheffield. He matriculated as a sizar at Trinity College, Cambridge, 'impubes, æt. 11,' on 21 May 1561, and graduated B.A. in 1567-8. In 1572 he was at Paris, probably pursuing his medical studies, when he narrowly escaped the St. Bartholomew massacre by taking refuge in the house of Sir Francis Walsingham, together with many other Englishmen who were 'free from the papistical superstition.' Bright refers to this memorable occasion in several of his writings. In dedicating to Sir Francis Walsingham his 'Abridgment of Fox' (1589) he mentions among the favours he had received from him 'that especiall protection from the bloudy massacre of Paris, nowe sixteene yeeres passed; yet (as euer it will bee) fresh with mee in memory.' He adds that Walsingham's house was at that time 'a very sanctuarie, not only for all of our nation, but euen to many strangers, then in perill, and vertuously disposed;' and he further says, 'As then you were the very hande of God to preserue my life, so haue you (ioyning constancie with kindnes) beene a principall means, whereby the same hath beene since the better sustained.' Again, in his dedication of his 'Animadversions on Scribonius' to Sir Philip Sidney (1584), Bright remarks that he had only seen him once, 'idque ilia Gallicis Ecclesiis funesta tempestate (cujus pars fui, et animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit) matutinibus Parisiensibus.'

He graduated M.B. at Cambridge in 1574, received a license to practise medicine in the following year, and was created M.D. in 1579. For some years after this he appears to have resided at Cambridge, but in 1584 he was living at Ipswich. He was one of those who were present on 1 Oct. 1585 when the statutes of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, were confirmed and signed by Sir Walter Mildmay, and delivered to Dr. Laurence Chaderton, the first master of the college (Documents relating to the Univ. and Colleges of Camb. iii. 523). The dedication to Peter Osborne of his 'Treatise on Melancholy' is dated from 'litle S. Bartlemewes by Smithfield,' 23 May 1586. He occupied the house then appropriated to the physician to the hospital. He succeeded Dr. Turner in that office about 1586, and must have resigned in 1590, as his successor was elected on 19 Sept. in that year (MS. Journals of St. Bartholomew's Hospital). His first medical work (dated 1584) seems to have been written at Cambridge, and is in two parts: 'Hygieina, on preserving health,' and 'Therapeutica, on restoring health.' The worth of the book is fairly exhibited in the part on poisons, where the flesh of the chameleon, that of the newt, and that of the crocodile are treated as three several varieties of poison, each requiring a peculiar remedy. Bright's preface implies that he lectured at Cambridge, for he asserts that he had been asked to publish the notes from which he taught. He dedicates both parts to Cecil, as chancellor of the university, and speaks as if he knew him and his family. He praises the learning of Lady Burghley, and says the 'domus Cæciliana' may be compared to a university. 'Cecil himself has paid,' he says, 'so much attention to medicine that in the knowledge of the faculty he may almost be compared to the professors of the art itself.' His 'Treatise of Melancholie' is as much metaphysical as medical. One of the best passages in it is a chapter in which he discusses the question 'how the soule by one simple faculty performeth so many and diverse actions,' and illustrates his argument by a description of the way in which the complicated movements of a watch proceed from 'one right and straight motion' (St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, xviii. 340).

Bright afterwards abandoned the medical profession and took holy orders. His famous treatise entitled 'Characterie' he dedicated in 1588 to Queen Elizabeth, who on 5 July 1591 presented him to the rectory of Methley in Yorkshire, then void by the death of Otho Hunt, and on 30 Dec. 1594 to the rectory of Berwick-in-Elmet, in the same county. He held both these livings till his death; the latter seems to have been his usual place of abode; there, at least, he made his will, on 9 Aug. 1615, in which he leaves his body to be buried where God pleases. It was proved at York on 13 Nov. 1615. No memorial is to be found of Bright in either of his churches.


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 He left a widow, whose name was Margaret, and two sons, Timothy Bright, barrister-at-law, of Melton-super-Montem in Yorkshire, and Titus Bright, who graduated M.D. at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1611, and practised at Beverley. He had also a daughter Elizabeth.

Subjoined is a list of his works:
 * 1) 'An Abridgment of John Foxe's "Booke of Acts and Monumentes of the Church,"' London, 1581, 1589, 4to; dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham.
 * 2) 'Hygieina, id est De Sanitate tuenda, Medicinæ pars prima,' London, 1581, 8vo; dedicated to Lord Burghley.
 * 3) 'Therapeutica; hoc est de Sanitate restituenda, Medicinæ pars altera;' also with the title 'Medicinæ Therapeuticæ pars: De Dyscrasia Corporis Humani,' London, 1583, 8vo; dedicated to Lord Burghley. Both parts reprinted at Frankfort, 1688-9, and at Mayence 1647.
 * 4) 'In Physicam Gvlielmi Adolphi Scribonii, post secundam editionem ab autore denuò copiosissimè adauctam, & in iii. Libros distinctam, Animaduersiones,' Cambridge, 1584, 8vo; Frankfort, 1593, 8vo; dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, dated from Ipswich.
 * 5) 'A Treatise of Melancholie, Containing the cavses thereof, & reasons of the strange effects it worketh in our minds and bodies: with the phisicke cure, and spirituall consolation for such as haue thereto adioyned an afflicted conscience,' London (Thomas Vautrollier), 1586, 8vo; another edition, printed the same year by John Windet. This is said to be the work which suggested Burton's well-known 'Anatomy of Melancholy.'
 * 6) 'Characterie. An Arte of shorte, swifte, and secrete writing by character. Inuented by Timothe Bright, Doctor of Phisicke. Imprinted at London by I. Windet, the Assigne of Tim. Bright, 1588. Cum priuilegio Regiæ maiestatis. Forbidding all others to print the same,' 24mo.
 * 7) 'Animadversiones de Traduce,' in Goclenius's Ψυχολογία, Marpurg, 1590, 1594, 1597.

Bright will ever be held in remembrance as the inventor of modern shorthand-writing. The art of writing by signs originated among the Greeks, who called it σημειογραφία. Few specimens of Greek shorthand are extant, and little is known on the subject. From the Greeks the knowledge of the art passed to the Romans, among whom it was introduced by Cicero, who devised many characters, which were termed notæ Tironianæ, from Cicero's freedman Tiro, a great proficient in the art. In the darkness which overwhelmed the world on the fall of the Roman empire the knowledge of the notæ was utterly lost, and therefore Bright may be justly regarded as an original inventor, inasmuch as the secret of the ancient shorthand was not unravelled until the beginning of the present century. Only one copy of Bright's 'Characterie' (1588) is known to be in existence. It formerly belonged to the Shakespearean scholar, Francis Douce, and is now preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is a small volume, in good preservation, but the shorthand signs are all written in ink which is rapidly fading. Transcripts of it in manuscript are possessed by Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A., Mr. Edward Pocknell, and Dr. Westby-Gibson. In the dedication of this rare, and now famous, book to Queen Elizabeth, the author thus describes the nature and objects of his invention: 'Cicero did account it worthie his labour, and no less profitable to the Roman common weale (Most gratious Soueraigne) to inuent a speedie kinde of wryting by Character, as Plutarch reporteth in the life of Cato the yonger. This invention was increased afterwards by Seneca; that the number of characters grue to 7000. Whether through iniurie of time, or that men gaue it over for tediousness of learning, nothing remaineth extant of Ciceros invention at this day. Upon consideration of the great vse of such a kinde of writing I haue inuented the like: of fewe Characters, short and easie, euery Character answering a word: My Inuention meere English, without precept or imitation of any. The uses are diuers: Short that a swifte hande may therewith write orations, or publike actions of speach, vttered as becometh the grauitie of such actions, verbatim. Secrete as no kinde of wryting like. And herein (besides other properties) excelling the wryting by letters and Alphabet, in that, Nations of strange languages, may hereby communicate their meaning together in writing, though of sundrie tongues.' Queen Elizabeth, by letters patent dated 26 July 1588, granted to Bright for a period of fifteen years the exclusive privilege of teaching and of printing books, 'in or by Character not before this tyme commonlye knowne and vsed by anye other oure subiects' (Patent Roll, 30 Eliz. part 12). An elaborate explanation of Bright's system is given by Mr. Edward Pocknell in the magazine 'Shorthand' for May 1884. The system has an alphabetical basis, but as the signs for the letters are not sufficiently simple to be capable of being readily joined to one another, the method is only alphabetical as regards the initial letter of each word, the remainder of the 'character' representing the word being purely arbitrary. In fact, the alphabet was too clumsy to be regularly applied to the whole of a word, as was done only fourteen years later by John Willis, whose scheme, explained in the 'Art of Stenographie' (1602), is the foundation of all the later systems of shorthand. Among the


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Author:Delana R. Eckels

Works

 * Bear River Expedition - Affidavits September 23, and October 25, 1859

title: Author:Delana R. Eckels


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524

MONTHS (unclassified)

MONTREAL

MONUMENTS


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 MSS. (No. 51, art. 57) is a copy of the book of Titus in 'characterie,' written by Bright himself in 1586. The signs in this specimen, which are written in vertical columns, like Chinese, appear to differ in some respects from the system published two years afterwards. The Additional MS. 10037 contains 'The Divine Prophecies of the ten Sibills, upon the birthe of our Saviour Christ,' in English verse, beautifully written on vellum by Jane Seager, in an Italian hand, and also in the shorthand invented by Bright, and presented by her to Queen Elizabeth. It may be added that 'A Treatise upon Shorthand, by Timothye Bright, Doctor of Physicke, together with a table of the characters,' was sold at the sale of Dawson Turner's manuscripts in 1859. It had formerly belonged to Sir Henry Spelman.

 BRIGHTMAN, THOMAS (1562–1607), biblical commentator, was born at Nottingham, admitted a pensioner at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1576, of which he became fellow in 1584. He graduated B.A. in 1580-1, M.A. in 1584, B.D. in 1591. In 1592. on the recommendation of Dr. Whitaker, Sir John Osborne gave him the rectory of Hawnes in Bedfordshire, with the profits of the benefice for the two preceding years, Brightman frequently discussed in his college church ceremonies with George Meriton, afterwards dean of York. As a preacher he was celebrated, though his disaffection to church establishment was no secret. It is said that he subscribed the 'Book of Discipline.' He persuaded himself and others that a work he wrote on the Apocalypse was written under divine inspiration. In it he makes the church of England the Laodicean church, and the angel that God loved the church of Geneva and the kirk of Scotland. The great object of this puritan's system of prophecy in a commentary on Daniel, as well as in his book on the Apocalypse, was to prove that the pope is that anti-Christ whose reign is limited to 1290 days or years, and who is then foredoomed by God to utter destruction. His life, says Fuller, was most angelical, by the confession of such as in judgment dissented from him. His manner was always to carry about a Greek testament, which he read over every fortnight, reading the Gospels and the Acts the first, the Epistles and the Apocalypse the second week. He was little of stature, and (though such are commonly choleric) yet never known to be moved with anger. His desire was to die a sudden death. Riding on a coach with Sir John Osborne, and reading a book (for he would lose no time), he fainted, and, though instantly taken out, died on the place on 24 Aug, 1607. He was buried, according to the parish register, on the day of his death at Hawnes. There is an inscription to him in the chancel. He was a constant student, much troubled before his death with obstructions of the liver and gall-duct, and is supposed by physicians to have died of the latter. He was never married. His funeral sermon was preached by Edward Bulkley, D.D,, sometime fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and rector of Odell in Bedfordshire, His works in their chronological order are:
 * 1) 'Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, idest Apocalypsis D. Joannis analysi et scholiis illustrata; ubi ex Scriptura sensus, rerumque predictarum ex historiis eventus discutiuntur. Huic Synopsis praefigitur universalis, et Refutatio Rob, Bellormini de anti-christo libro tertio de Romano Pontifice ad finem capitis decimi septimi inseritur,' Franc. 1609, 4to, Heidelb. 1612, 8vo.
 * 2) 'Anti-christum Pontificiorum monstrum fictitium esse,' Ambergae, 1610, 8vo.
 * 3) 'Scholia in Canticum Canticorum. Explicatio summi consolatoria partis ultimo et difficillimae prophetiae Danielis a vers. 36 cap. 11 ad finem cap. 12, qua  Judaeorum, tribus ultimis ipsorum hostibus funditus eversis, restitutio, et ad fidem in Christum vocatio, vivis coloribus depingitur,' Basil, 1614. At Leyden, 1616, and again at London, 1614, was printed a translation of the 'Apocalypsis,' 'with supply of many things formerly left out.' At London, 1635, 1644, 4to, a translation of his 'Explication of Daniel.'
 * 4) 'The Art of Self Denial, or a Christian's first lesson,' Lond. 1648.