Arnold Baxter

“ After a discussion it was agreed to place the Flyaway in charge of Dick and Tom, who were also to carry Dora and Mumps. All of the others went aboard of the Searchlight, Arnold Baxter being carried by the police officers, who attended to his wound as well as the accommodations on board of the yacht permitted.
So far nothing had been said about the money and securities stolen by Baxter and Girk, but they were in a locker in the Flyaway's cabin, and easily brought to light.
"This is a big day for us," said Dick. "Won't folks at home be astonished when they hear of what we have done?" ”

“ They were trying to put down the first of their stakes when a pistol shot rang out, and Dick received a slight wound in the hand. Looking up the mountain side they saw Arnold Baxter's savage face gazing down at them. Behind the father was his son Dan, and close by stood Roebuck. Evidently their enemies meant to fight for the possession of the mine to the bitter end. ”

“ As there was now nothing to do but to let the yacht do her best, Tom left Sam at the wheel and turned his attention to Peterson. The lumberman was now able to sit up, although very weak.
"I discovered Arnold Baxter and tracked him to the schooner's dock," he said. "His son came to the dock, and from what they said I am sure your brother is on the craft. Then they discovered me, and the father struck me down with the butt of a pistol he carried. After that all was a blank until I found myself here."
"You can be thankful you weren't killed." ”

“ And then he fell to telling about his own life, and how he had become acquainted with Anderson Rover and his partner Kennedy, and of the various bad things Arnold Baxter had done in those days. "This man seems to be a chip of the old block," he concluded. ”

“ Rupert Baxter, as he stood before the barred door of Blandings Castle, was very far from imitating this admirable philosopher. To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-past two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men. ”

“ I'm sure it's the best picture you've painted."
"I honestly believe it is. Some parts of it," said Baxter, frankly, "are excellent.
"It's obvious. But either those very parts or others are singularly disagreeable. That word isn't criticism, I know; but I pay you for the right to be arbitrary. They are too hard, too strong, of too frank a reality. In a word, your picture frightens me, and if I were Marian I should feel as if you'd done me a certain violence." ”

“ Grasping his fecundity of publication with the engrossing ministry which occupied his chief energies, it must be manifest that Richard Baxter was an extraordinary man. In his physique naturally weak, and tainted from the outset with consumptive tendencies, and later worn and valetudinarian, he so conquered the body, that he did the work of a score of ordinary men as an author alone. Baxter had beyond all dispute a penetrative, almost morbidly acute brain. ”

“ Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night last summer?"
"You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. There's nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it." ”

“ It seems all amusing enough while it lasts, but it would make a poor show as an apology and a still poorer as a boast. I found Baxter in Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he grabbed me by the arm and brought me here. I was walking twenty miles a day in the Alps, drinking milk in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep, and thinking it was all very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never do, that the Alps were 'damned rot,' that Baden-Baden was 'the cheese,' and that if I knew what was good for me I would come along with him. ”

“ Baxter took no notice, but disappeared into the bookshop.
MR. PETTIGREW handed me my bottle. “One of our characters, that old fellow,” he said. “Quite a poor man, but possesses an extensive library, quite extensive. His learning is at the service of his fellow citizens. He likes to be called the Oracle. Supposing you want to know something about Shakspere, or Julius Cæsar, or Wireless Telegraphy, or Patagonia, you go to Baxter. You press the button and he does the rest. Lives a bit in the clouds, of course: and I wouldn't go so far as to say that his information is always infallible. ”

“ The folio edition of his works contains only his practical treatises. One of the most remarkable facts connected with the history of Baxter, is the prodigious amount of mechanical drudgery to which he must have patiently submitted in the production of his varied publications. He had a very delicate frame: he was continually unwell, and often greatly afflicted. ”

“ Straightening his spectacles on his nose, he girded up his pyjamas and galloped out into the night.
The smooth terrace slept under the stars. To a more poetic man than Baxter it would have seemed to wear that faintly reproachful air which a garden always assumes when invaded at unseemly hours by people who ought to be in bed. Baxter, never fanciful, was blind to this. He was thinking, thinking. That shaking-up on the stairs had churned into activity the very depths of his brain and he was at the fever-point of his reasoning powers. ”

“ He's made a dirty town and you're sweepin' it clean—do you think it likely that it makes him love you?"
"He's welcome to feel about me anyway he pleases, but do you know, Baxter," he added with his whimsical gravity, "I've a pretty strong conviction that I'd make a jolly good street sweeper."
"I reckon you're right!" roared Baxter, "and when you're done, we'll shoot off some sky-rockets over the job—so there you are, ain't you?"
"All right—but there's Jasper Trend also," retorted Ordway.
"Oh, he can afford to send off his own sky-rockets. We needn't bother about him. ”

“ She called up a faint symptom of a smile, in response to his adieux, and relapsed into taciturnity and the shadow of her screen, when he had departed. Mrs. Baxter flitted about the rooms like a perturbed guardian angel; poking the fire that her charge's feet might be warmer; dropping a curtain to shut out a draught from the back of her neck; pushing forward a brioche for her use, and giving her chair a gentle tug nearer the grate, before she essayed verbal consolation. ”

“ If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr. Baxter must set in there. ”

“ The peculiar thing about Baxter is that, though he will read or quote from any book in his library for your delectation, he practically never permits any one to take the book out of his hands. No human eye, for instance, has ever fallen upon the printed pages of Baxter's Homer. ”

“ Baxter rose to shake hands with the newcomer. He introduced him to Lorna, backing close against Burke's shoulder as he did so.
"This is my friend, Sam Shepard, the theatrical manager, Miss Lorna," began Baxter. "He's the man who can get you on the stage. You know I was telling you about him. This is Miss Barton, you've heard about, Sam. Sit down and tell her about your new comic opera that you're casting now." ”

“ In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men—and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter. Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare—he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans. ”

“ Here I narrated as much of my doings since we had last met as I thought would satisfy his curiosity. My meeting with that mysterious individual at the French restaurant and my suspicions of Baxter particularly amused him.
"What a rum beggar you are, to be sure," was his disconcerting criticism when I had finished. "What earthly reason have you for thinking that this chap, Baxter, has any designs upon your young swell, Beckenham, or whatever his name may be?"
"What makes you stand by to shorten sail when you see a suspicious look about the sky? ”

“ A similar tribute of general esteem was paid to him nearly two centuries later, when a statue was erected to his memory at Kidderminster in July 1875.
Baxter was possessed by an unconquerable belief in the power of persuasive argument. He thought every one was amenable to reason—bishops and levellers included. And yet he was as far as possible from being a quarrelsome man. He was at once a man of fixed belief and large appreciation, so that his dogmatism and his liberality sometimes came into collision. His popularity as a preacher was deservedly pre-eminent ”

“ It's our only chance.'
"We weren't long in getting the car upon the track. But we had barely sprung aboard when the mail head-light burst into sight less than half a mile away!
"'We are too late!' gasped Mr. Baxter; and, whether from fright, excitement or illness, he fell in a swoon.
"The car had started down the grade. Pulling Mr. Baxter on, so he would not fall off, I lent my strength to the car's momentum, and we shot down the track like lightning. ”

“ So also shall the praise.
The allegory is so good that one is absolutely sorry when it breaks down, and the poem says in plain words that which is the subject of the figures, bringing truths unmasked into the midst of the maskers who represent truths—thus interrupting the pleasure of the artistic sense in the transparent illusion.
The command of metrical form in Baxter is somewhat remarkable. He has not much melody, but he keeps good time in a variety of measures. ”

“ And almost simultaneously the Efficient Baxter entered the library, clothed and spatted for travel.
“I have come to say good-bye, Lady Constance,” said Baxter coldly and precisely, flashing at his late employer through his spectacles a look of stern reproach. “The car which is taking me to the station is at the door.”
“Oh, Mr. Baxter.” Lady Constance, strong woman though she was, fluttered with distress. “Oh, Mr. Baxter.”
“Good-bye.” He gripped her hand in brief farewell and directed his spectacles for another tense instant upon the sagging figure at the window. “Good-bye, Lord Emsworth.” ”

“ He was waiting for his omnibus and suddenly some one from nowhere had caught him by the throat, screamed at him, smacked his cheek. He was no coward; he responded nobly, and in a whirl of sky, omnibuses, women, shop-window and noise they were involved, until, slipping over the edge of the kerb, they fell both into the road.
Baxter, rising first, muttered: "Look here! What the devil . . ." then suddenly realized his opponent.
They had no opportunity for a further encounter. A crowd had instantly gathered and was pressing them in. A policeman had his hand on Henry's collar. ”

“ He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.
"Adieu, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appetite; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so—mill-stream or no mill-stream—mon oncle, I come."
He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging. ”

“ He was hunted about from one part of the country to another, and for several years he had no settled dwelling-place. "The women," he gently remarks in his 'Life,' "have most of that sort of trouble, but my wife easily bore it all." In the sixth year of his marriage Baxter was brought before the magistrates at Brentford, for holding a conventicle at Acton, and was sentenced by them to be imprisoned in Clerkenwell Gaol. There he was joined by his wife, who affectionately nursed him during his confinement. ”

“ John Baxter was a “Come-Outer,” and ever since the enterprising Mr. Saunders opened his billiard room, the old man's tirades of righteous wrath had been directed against this den of iniquity. Since it became known that “Web” had made application for the license, it was a regular amusement for the unregenerate to attend the gatherings of the “Come-Outers” and hear John Baxter call down fire from Heaven upon the billiard room, its proprietor, and its patrons. Orham people had begun to say that John Baxter was “billiard-saloon crazy.” ”

“ In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. ”