Theodore Winthrop

“ I could get nothing to do. There is not much that a broken-down gentleman can do; but no one would trust me. I grew poorer than you can conceive. I lost all heart. Men are poor creatures, — as a desolate man finds. ”

“ You should have seen the white horse, sir, in that picture, — full of gentleness and spirit, and worthy the handsome cavalier just ready to mount him.”
As the old gentleman talked of his heroic ancestor, a name not unknown to history, he revived a little, and I saw an evanescent look of his daughter’s vigor in his eye. It faded instantly; he sighed, and went on.
“I should almost have liked to live in those days. It is easier to die for a holy cause than to find one’s way along through life. I have found it pretty hard, sir, — pretty hard, — and I hope my day of peace is nearly come.” ”

“ I cannot find complete compensation for the lack of a father’s love in my premature manhood and my toughening against the world too young. I yearned greatly toward the feeble old man, my companion in that night walk on the plain of Fort Bridger. I longed to do by him the duties of sonship; as, indeed, having no such duties, I have often longed when I found age weak and weary. ”

“ I used to think rather carelessly of religion in those times. I suppose it is only the contact with sin and sorrow that teaches a man to look from the transitory to the eternal. Shade makes light precious, as an artist would say. I was brought up, you know, sir, in the Church of England; but when I began to think, its formalism wearied me. I could not understand what seemed to me then the complex machinery of its theology. I thought, sir, as no doubt many people of the poetic temperament and little experience think, that God deals with men without go-betweens ”

“ I prompted the communicative old gentleman to renew his story.
“I have seen the interior of some of the Lancashire mines; I have read the Blue Book upon them,” I said. “You must have been in a rough place, with company as rough.”
“It was hard for a man of delicate nurture. But the men liked me. They were not brutes, — not all, — if they were roughs. Brutes get away from places where hard work is done. My mates down in the mine made it easy for me. They called me Gentleman Hugh. I was rather proud, sir, I confess, to find myself liked and respected for what I was, not for what I had. ”

“ He had been a free-thinker; never industrious or self-possessed enough to become a fundamental thinker. No man can stand long on nothing, — he must think out a religion, or accept a theology. Now that busy days were over, and careless youth gone by, Mr. Clitheroe began to be uneasy, and was ready to listen to any scheme which promised peace. ”

“ And as I began to feel son-like toward the father, a sentiment simply brotherly took its place in my heart for the daughter, whose love my friend, I believe, was seeking.
A sad history was Mr. Clitheroe’s. He was a prosperous gentleman once, of one of the ancient families of his country.
“We belong,” he said, “to the oldest gentry of England. We have been living at Clitheroe Hall, and where the Hall now stands, for centuries. Our family history goes back into the pre-historic times. We have never been very famous; we have always sustained our dignity. ”

“ But the friends of prosperity are birds that come to be fed, and fly away when the crumbs give out. All are not base and time-serving; but men are busy and careless, and fancy that others can always take care of themselves. I could not beg, sir; but it came near starvation to me in Christian England, — to me and my young daughter, within a year after my misfortunes. ”

“ I really think most of us began to like smoke better than blue sky; certainly it tasted sweeter to us than our good old English fog.
“Well, sir,” continued he, “I was like my neighbors. I must dabble in milling and mining. I was willing to be richer. Indeed, as soon as I began to speculate, I thought myself richer. I spent more money. I went deeper into my operations. One can throw a great treasure into a coal-mine without seeing any return, and can send a great volume of smoke up a chimney before the mill begins to pay. It is an old story. ”

“ They have never disdained the mean and the lowly. I tell you, sir, that we in our coal-pit, and our brothers in the factories, listened to apostles who came across seas and labored among us as if they loved our souls. The false religions and outgrown religions left us in the dark; but the true light came to us. My mates in the Lancashire mine joined the church by hundreds. ”

“ It is a lovely region, sir, where the town, of Clitheroe and the old manor-house of my family stand, — the fairest part of Lancashire. If you have only seen, as you say, the flat country about Liverpool and Manchester, you do not know at all what Lancashire can do in scenery. Why, there is Pendle Hill, — it might better be called a mountain, — Pendle Hill rises almost at my door-step, at the door of Clitheroe Hall. Pendle Hill, sir, is eighteen hundred and odd feet high. And a beautiful hill it is. I talked of the Wind River Mountains this afternoon; they are very fine ”