Amelia E. Barr

“ And deep below the deeps of conscious being,
Thy splendor shineth! There O God! Thou art.
When John reached London it was in the gray misty dawning. The streets were nearly deserted, and an air of melancholy hung over the long rows of low dwellings. At Harlow House he saw at once that every window was shrouded, and he turned heartsick with the fear that he was too late. A porter, whose eyes were red with weeping, admitted him, and there was an intolerable smell of drugs, the odor of which he recollected all the days of his future life. ”

“ Often I have met Him on the great deep, for 'His path is on the waters.' I don't believe I would have found Him as easy and as often, in a cotton-spinning factory—no, I don't!"
"A good man like you, Captain, ought to have a wife and a home."
"I'm not sure of that, Mr. Hatton. On my ship at sea I am lord and master, and my word is law as long as I stop at sea. If any man does not like my word and way, he can leave my ship at the first land we touch, and I see that he does so. But it is different with a wife. She is in your house to stay, whether you like it or not. ”

“ Be ashamed of yourself, John Hatton."
"You are right, mother. My life and death are by the will of God, but I can say that my happiness or wretchedness is in Jane Harlow's power."
"Your happiness is in your own power. Her 'no' might be a disappointment in hours you weren't busy among your looms and cotton bales, or talking of discounts and the money market, but its echo would grow fainter every hour of your life, and then you would meet the other girl, whose 'yes' would put the 'no' forever out of your memory." ”

“ John Wesley had preached in its great dining-room, and Charles Wesley filled all its spaces and corridors with the lyrical cry of his wonderful hymns. There were harmless ghosts in its silent chambers, or walking in the pale moonlight up the stairs or about the flower garden. No one was afraid of them; they only gave a tender and romantic character to the surroundings. If Mrs. Hatton felt them in a room, she curtsied and softly withdrew, and John, on more than one occasion, had asked, "Why depart, dear ghosts? There is room enough for us all in the old house." ”

“ Towards dusk John rode slowly down the hill. Somehow he had missed the usual tonic of his mother's company, and Harry's unexpected expenses troubled him, for it is the petty details of life rather than its great sorrows which fret and irritate the soul. Indeed, to face simple daily duties and trials bravely and cheerfully is the most heroic struggle and the greatest victory the soul can win. That it is generally unwitnessed and unapplauded, that it seldom gains either honor or gratitude, that it is frequently despised and blamed, is not to be regarded. ”

“ You must stay away a year. I want you to realize above all things that to live to amuse yourself is the hardest work the devil can set you to do."
"I promised Fred Naylor I would rent him my share."
"How dared you make such a promise? Did you think that I, standing as I do, for my father, Stephen Hatton, would ever lower the Hatton name to Hatton and Naylor? I am ashamed of you, Harry! I am that!"
"John, I am so unhappy in the mill. You don't understand—"
"Your duty is in the mill. If a man does his duty, he cannot be unhappy. No, he can not." ”

“ It drew Harry close to every heart. It made his mother the proudest woman in Yorkshire. It caused John to smile at his brother and to clasp his hand as he passed him. It charmed Jane and Lucy and they glanced at each other with wondering pleasure and delight.
After the songs some of the elder guests sat down to a game of whist, the younger ones danced Money Musk, Squire Beverly and Mrs. Stephen Hatton leading, while Harry played the old country dance with a snap and movement that made hearts bound and feet forget that age or rheumatism were in existence. ”

“ In the meantime John had reached the Hatton mill, and after his long absence he looked up at it with conscious pride. It was built of brick; it was ten stories high; every story was full of windows, every story airy as a bird-cage. Certainly it was not a thing of architectural beauty, but it was a grandly organized machine where brains and hands, iron and steel worked together for a common end. As John entered its big iron gates, he saw bales of cotton going into the mill by one door, and he knew the other door at which they would come out in the form of woven calico. ”

“ You are a good brother, and you know how to heal a slight."
So John's marriage took place without his brother's presence, and John missed him and had a heartache about it. Subsequently he told his mother so, upon which the Lady of Hatton Manor answered,
"Harry managed very well to do without either mother or brother at his own wedding. You know that, John; and I was none sorry to miss him at yours. When you have to take a person you love with a person you don't love, it is like taking a spoonful of bitterness with a spoonful of jelly after it. ”

“ Some put knowledge and progress—always progress—before everything else."
"My dear Jane, think of this—all we call 'progress' ends with death. What is that progress worth which is bounded by the grave? If progress in men and women is not united with faith in God, and hope in His eternal life and love, I would not lift my hand or speak one word to help either man or woman to such blank misery."
"Do not put yourself out of the way, John. There will be no change in the women of today that will affect you. ”

“ O Harry, how dared you disgrace your family by keeping such company?"
"No one but a Methodist preacher is respectable in your eyes, John. Everyone in Hatton knew the Naylors, yet you gave them the same bad names."
"And they deserved all and more than they got. They gambled with horses instead of cards. They ran nobler animals than themselves to death for money—and money for which neither labor nor its equivalent is given is dishonest money and the man who puts it in his pocket is a thief and puts hell in his pocket with it." ”

“ I'm more than a bit ashamed of him. I am that! You can't respect people who amuse you, like you do men who put their hands to the world's daily work. No, you can not, John. I would have been better suited if Harry had stuck to his painting business. He could have done that in his own house, shut up and quiet like; but when I was in London I saw pictures of Henry Hatton, of our Harry, mind ye, singing in all makes and manners of fool dresses. I hope to goodness his father does not know a Hatton man is exhibiting himself to gentle and simple in such disreputable clothes. ”

“ If her canvas had been spread, she would have gone to the bottom; but under bare masts she came quickly and beautifully to her bearings, shook herself like a gull, and sped southward.
All night they were beating about in a fierce wind and heavy sea; and Hatton, lying awake, listened to the mysterious hungering voice of the waves, till he was strangely sad and lonely. And there was no Captain to talk with, though he could hear his hoarse, strong voice above the roar of wind and waters. For the sea was rising like the gable of a house, but the yacht was in no trouble ”

“ Her little feet, John! I never let them wander alone or stray even in Hatton streets without a helper and guide. O John, what hand will lead them upward and back to God? Those little feet!"
"Her angel would be with her and she would know the way through the constellations. Together they would pass swift as thought from earth to heaven. Martha loved God. They who love God will find their way back to Him, dear Jane." ”

“ It is the fine tooling or graving on the soul capable of bearing it, of that supreme grace we call character; that grace that makes all the difference between one human being and another that there is between a block of granite and a reach of shifting sand. Every person we meet, has more or less of this quality, and not to be influenced by it is to belong to those hard blocks of humanity whom Carlyle calls formulas and phantoms.
Well, this little incident of Harry's unexpected extravagance was a line of character-tooling on John's soul. ”

“ I should have spoken long ago, but I knew not whether you—you—forgive me, Hatton, but there are such men. If I have slandered you in my thought, if I have done you this great wrong——"
"Oh Doctor, the hope and despair of my married life has been—the longing for my sons and daughters."
"Poor lad! And thee so good and kind to every little one, that comes in thy way. It is too bad, it is that. By heaven, I am thankful to be an old bachelor! Thou must try and understand, John, that women are never the same, and yet that in some great matters, what creation saw them, they are today. ”

“ I am trying to make friends and votes for you, when you decide to take your father's place in the House."
"Then, my dear, you are sacrificing yourself uselessly. I don't know a Yorkshire man who would vote for any candidate for any office because he liked him personally. I would not do so. My father never did such a thing, and Harry, though so thoughtless and emotional, would be equally stubborn."
"But why? Such nonsense, John!"
"No. You do not vote for yourself only; your interest is bound up with the interests of many others. You may be voting for a generation yet unborn. ”

“ Harry takes no trouble and Medway, the new preacher, says, Henry Hatton lifts up your heart, if he only smiles at you."
"So he does, mother—God bless him!"
"Well, John, I can't stop and talk with thee all day, it isn't likely; but thou art such a one to tempt talk. I must be off to do something. Good-bye, dear lad, and if thy trouble gets hard on thee and thou wants a word of human love, thy mother always has it ready and waiting for you—so she has!" ”

“ I love our little Martha as well as, perhaps better than, you do, but I remember clearly that for nearly a whole year I endured the solitude, sickness, and acute suffering of maternity. And whatever else you do, you will never persuade me to like having children. And pray what kind of children will women bear when they don't want them?"
"Well, Jane, your question would stagger me, if I did not know that Nature often skips a generation, and produces some older and finer type."
"Highly civilized men don't want children. Lady Harlow told me so, John." ”

“ The improvements I have made at Yoden were not carelessly chosen. Harry loves beautiful surroundings. They may mean little to you or to me, but to him they are almost necessary. He is easily persuaded, but you cannot reason with him. As a general thing you cannot reason with youth. You may as well try to beat a cloud with a stick. Youth moves in the sublime region of its own aspirations."
John laughed softly as he answered, "That is the difficult point with Harry. He cannot find a reality that fills his ideals."
"Well then, Hatton, that is a sign of a rich and varied nature. ”

“ The various societies and civic brotherhood meetings never had been so crowded and so cordial. Old quarrels and grudges had died out and had been forgotten forever while men and women broke their last crust of bread together or perhaps clemmed themselves to help feed the children of the very man that had wronged them. Consequent on these pleasant surroundings, Hatton Chapel was crowded, the singing-pew held the finest voices in the countryside, and there was such a renewal of religious interest that Greenwood chose the most jubilant hymn tunes he could find in all Methodist Psalmody. ”

“ Well, John, our fire isn't out of counting, like some of the old hearth fires in Yorkshire. But Hatton fire will never go out, John. It was lit by a man that will not die, nor his name perish forever. ”

“ Greenwood's joyful enthusiasm was more than John could encounter at that hour. He did not stop to speak with him, but rode swiftly home. He saw and felt the brooding trouble and knew the question of more wage and shorter hours, though now a smoldering one, might at any hour become a burning one, only there was the coming war. If the men went on strike, he could then reasonably lock his factory gates. No, he could not. The inner John Hatton would not permit the outer man to do such a thing. His looms must work while he had a pound of cotton to feed them. ”

“ Harry says they are going to call him John. Harry is very fond of thee."
"To be sure he is and I am fond of him. I wonder how they manage for cash? Do you think they need it? Have they asked you for any?"
"Not a farthing. Lucy makes the income meet the outgo. The farm feeds the family and Harry earns more than a little out of the music and song God put into him."
"A deal depends on a man's wife, mother."
"Everything depends on her. A man must ask his wife whether he is to do well with his life or make a failure of it. What wilt thou do with thyself while Jane is in London?" ”

“ There is no use attempting to explain by any human reason facts of such majesty and mystery, for how can natural reason explain what is supernatural?
In a rapture of joy Jane walked swiftly home. She was not conscious of her movements, the solid earth might have been a road of some buoyant atmosphere. All the world looked grandly different, and she herself was as one born again. Her servants looked at her in amazement and talked about "the change in Missis," while the work of the household dropped from their hands until old Adam Boothby, the gardener, came in for his dinner. ”

“ I'm sure, John, it puzzles me."
"I can only say, Jane, that the 'old woman' has filled her position for millenniums with honor and affection, almost with adoration. I would not like to say what will be the result of her taking to men's ways and men's work."
"You know, John, you cannot judge one kind of woman from the other kind. They are so entirely different. Women have been kept so ignorant. Now they place culture and knowledge before everything." ”