Various

“ Yet, I repeat, he was bubbling over with a grim sort of humor in real life, like that which Shakespeare sprinkles over his tragedies. Behind the scenes he would mock and gibe at himself, had odd remarks to make about his face or his costume, and was alive with waggeries and witticisms. I once pulled aside his robes in Richelieu as he sat smoking between the acts, and he shrank back and screamed, “How dare you, sir?” in a shrill tone, exactly like a woman. The next moment he was the stately cardinal again.
I was very anxious that Booth should receive a social recognition. ”

“ Their crews clustered thickly into them—bare-footed sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in the sheets of each the senior officers with their stern, schoolmaster faces. The captain, his elbows on the binnacle, still watched the distant brig. Her crew were tricing up the boarding netting, dragging round the starboard guns, knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a huge man, bearded to the eyes, with a red night-cap upon his head, was straining and stooping and hauling. ”

“ I tell you, brother Garland, the West is the coming country. We ought to have a big magazine to develop the West. It’s absurd to suppose we’re going on always being tributary to the East!”
Garland laid down his pad and lifted his big fist in the air like a maul. His enthusiasm rose like a flood.
“Now you touch a great theme. You’re right, Field. The next ten years will see literary horizons change mightily. The West is dead sure to be in the game from this time on. A man can’t be out here a week without feeling the thrill of latent powers. The West is coming to its manhood. ”

“ Captain de Milon had done his part for one day, and presently the “Gloire” was drawing off swiftly to the north, while the “Dido” was bowling along at her skirts, rattling away with her bowchasers, until a headland hid them both from view.
But the “Leda” lay sorely stricken, with her mainmast gone, her bulwarks 212 shattered, her mizzen topmast and gaff shot away, her sails like a beggar’s rags, and a hundred of her crew dead and wounded. Close beside her a mass of wreckage floated upon the waves. ”

“ Intrinsically these little pins 252 are worth nothing; but those who have them value them as they value few things, and they are right.
The cruise which marked the end of the summer’s camp life was one of the most picturesque things imaginable. An ox-cart with four oxen carried the blankets, dishes, and stores; Porgus, the great, slobbering bloodhound, was fastened to the rear axle, the Infant—the youngest boy in camp—mounted the donkey, and with faculty and boys on foot, the camp set out. The routes taken during the nine cruises included all the best known roads in the White Mountains. ”

“ Under its curious double government by faculty and boys, Camp Chocorua prospered and grew. The personal and routine work was done, the boys played baseball or tennis, they swam and dived, and went sailing, rowing and paddling. No ambition was greater in the mind of a camp boy than that of owning a canoe, and as many of them were not rich enough to buy, the boat-yard was established in the cove. ”

“ In no land has attachment to home so firm a grip of the heart as in Ireland. Year followed year in slow procession, but Hugh grew up in solitariness, and his heart never ceased to yearn for the lost friends of his old home. His corduroy suit soon grew too small for him, and when his boots became unwearable, he was obliged to go bare-footed. His highest enjoyment was to be away with his dog somewhere, remote from the espionage of Gallagher, and the violent blasphemy of Welsh. ”

“ From the island itself the view is exquisitely beautiful. To the north the White Mountains rest like a mighty barrier, walling in the valley at their feet. The lake itself lies smiling under the sunlight of the perfect day, or darkening under the shadow of the drifting cloud. ”

“ In point of fact, the stroke and sub-stroke were generally the two most efficient boys in a crew. But in such a system as this, that a member of a crew might be disobedient, or a stroke might be tyrannical, was not lost sight of. The stroke had no power to punish, but he could, were his orders disobeyed, direct a boy to report to the faculty. On the other hand, although the presence of a member of the faculty prevented any open bullying, it was within the power of a stroke to “work” a boy, and that boy had an appeal to the faculty. ”

“ Junius Brutus Booth must have been an extraordinary person off the stage; erratic almost to insanity, gloomy, given to fits of passion, but full of warm affections; a man with a temper almost uncontrollable, yet more often morose than violent, who refused to play, even when announced, unless he was in the vein, and walked the streets for hours after acting, and sometimes before. His wife for years accompanied him to the theatre, acting as dresser, and Edwin was taken with them. ”

“ The strange brig lay at anchor in the throat of a curving estuary, and it was already obvious that she could not get out without passing under the guns of the frigate. A long rocky point to the north of her held her in.
“Keep her as she goes, Mr. Wharton,” said the captain. “Hardly worth while clearing for action, Mr. Smeaton, but the men can stand by the guns in case she tries to pass us. Cast loose the bowchasers, and send the small arm men on to the forecastle.”
A British crew went to its quarters in those days with the quiet serenity of men on their daily routine. ”

“ I sit there nights trying to read by a vile-smelling old kerosene lamp, the flies trooping in so that you can’t keep the window down, you know, and those boys lying there all the time on a hot husk bed, faces spattered with mosquito bites and sweating like pigs—and happy as angels. The roar of the flies and mosquitoes is sweetest lullaby to a tired boy. ”

“ He was not so wildly passionate on the stage, and his temper was never so uncontrollable, but his brooding melancholy, the sensitiveness of his nature, the depth of his affections, the quaint humor so strange in a tragic actor, his vivid imagination—many, indeed, of his especial gifts and faults—were unquestionably transmitted with his blood by him who was at once the author of his physical being and the begetter of his genius. The likeness extended to feature and gesture. I have a picture of the father given me by the son, which might easily be taken for one of Edwin in Richard III. ”

“ Gladstone gives the girls who are in service an annual treat every summer down at the Convalescent Home at Woodsford. About a year ago a party of them enjoyed luncheon and tea on the lawn there, under the shadow of a rare kind of sycamore which their hostess had brought in a flower-pot, as a little seedling, from an old tree which spreads its ample branches close to her orphanage at Hawarden. Mrs. Gladstone told the girls that, when she planted it, she never thought to live so long as to see it large enough to shelter a party of forty in the shadow of its foliage. ”

“ From time to time one of them, who while working as hard as any, keeps his eye on the others, gives a short order which is instantly obeyed. Other boys are sitting on the porch, polishing lantern and lamps, while yet others are sweeping up the litter which disfigures the open space. There are buildings to the right and left, there are canvas canoes and boats floating near the wharf, and a great flat boat—somewhat rudely made—is moored in front of the sea wall. With each group of boys is a young man, busily employed in the same work, but it is noticeable that he gives no orders. ”

“ There is an island in Big Asquam Lake, New Hampshire, lying almost under the shadow of Mount Chocorua, and on it there are many buildings, rough but weather-tight; paths which have been carefully built to grade; a boat-yard, with ways leading to the water; a long wharf projecting out toward a swimming raft which is floating where there is depth for diving; a sea wall of heavy stone, against which the ice is powerless. Down by the water’s edge, and squatting on a wooden stage within easy reach, a group of boys are washing dishes. ”

“ They took a house in Boston, and the next year, in February, 1863, Booth was playing in New York, having left his wife at home because of her delicate health. During a performance at the Winter Garden a despatch was handed him, summoning him to her side. He left at the close of the play, but before he could reach her the dearest thing on earth to him was gone forever. The shock almost unbalanced his mind. His wife had been all that a perfect wife could be to a man of his peculiar temperament and needs. ”

“ His father lifted him in his arms, carried him out into the darkness, and placed him gently between his uncle and aunt, on a seat with a raised back, which was laid across a cart from side to side. Sitting aloft, on this prototype of the Irish gig, little Hugh Brontë, with a heart full of childish anticipations, began his rough journey out into the big world. ”

“ Everything is ready for them; they have but to hang up the great Chinese gong on which the hours were struck, and the camp is open. They can sail, row, and swim, and at night, sitting before the “camp fire,” they can bring back the days when they were boys; they can tell their stories of the contracts and the trials, the sports and the cruises; they can laugh over half-forgotten jokes, or speak in lower tones of the boys who are now dead. For although Camp Chocorua has ceased to be, Camp Chocorua lives in the memories of the camp boys.
THE HAPPY LIFE. ”

“ Hugh found Gallagher’s cunning malignity harder to endure than the harsh cruelty of his uncle. The boy’s clear instinct told him that Gallagher was a bad man, but sometimes his pent-up heart would overflow to the one human being near him in his working hours. When Gallagher had got all the secrets of the boy from him, he would denounce him to Welsh in such a way as to best stir up his cruelty ”

“ Gladstone had at Clapton, but in 1868 a freehold property, known as Woodsford Hall, most healthily situated in Essex, was bought by the committee. Here this good work has been carried on ever since. It is a charming house close to the forest, surrounded by lawns and trees and flowers. In fine weather the house is nearly empty all day long. The invalids from the squalid city lanes spend their time in the forest, gathering wild flowers, and drinking in the perfumed air which pours rich draughts of health and strength into their wasted bodies. ”

“ More than this, an Incapable was forbidden to refuse assistance from any member of a crew, and as it speedily became the fashion to help an Incapable, he had no lack of such assistance. Any one who can remember the scorn a boy feels for another who, he thinks, is less manly than himself will understand the sort of blistering sore applied to an Incapable. ”

“ Nothing in Ireland is supposed to test a man’s honesty so severely as a bog lying contiguous to his own land. “If a man escape with honor as a trustee, try him with a bit of bog,” is an Irish proverb. This temptation had come in Welsh’s way when a sub-agent. He had robbed the Brontës of their farm, why should he hesitate to add a slice of bog to it? ”