Benjamin Fessenden

“ Fessenden's words caused a decided stir among his hearers, including the coroner and the two doctors.
Mr. Benson was truly anxious to learn what the young man had to say, but at the same time his professional jealousy was aroused by the implication that there was anything to be learned from the paper itself, outside of his own information concerning it.
"I was told," he said quickly, "that this paper is positively written in Miss Van Norman's own hand."
Robert Fessenden, while not exactly a handsome man, was of a type that impressed every one pleasantly. ”

“ He stood close to the wall, silent, inscrutable, watching with murderous eyes the young bloods of Baltimore as they eddied around Hildegarde Moncrief, passionate admiration in their faces. How obnoxious they seemed to Benjamin; how intolerably rosy! Their curling brown whiskers aroused in him a feeling equivalent to indigestion.
But when his own time came, and he drifted with her out upon the changing floor to the music of the latest waltz from Paris, his jealousies and anxieties melted from him like a mantle of snow. Blind with enchantment, he felt that life was just beginning. ”

“ He answered in a moment: “Our ideals, like our theories, are the best in the world. When you are launched out into the hustle, it will be time enough to know how they work. Meanwhile, don’t worry about your country—it has an amazing power of taking care of itself; but develop your intellect and your strength of character. Do you repeat that lesson of mine once a week?”
Mr. Abbott invariably asked this question, and Fessenden was usually able to nod satisfactorily. ”

“ And so as an outcome of Kitty’s suggestion, Fessenden determined to have a plain talk with Schuyler Carleton.
“Old man,” he said, the first time opportunity found him alone with Schuyler in the Carleton library, “I want to offer you my help. I know that sounds presumptuous, but we’re old friends, Carleton, and I think I may be allowed a little presumption on that score. And first, though it seems to me absurdly unnecessary, I want to assure you of my belief in your own innocence. Pshaw, belief is a weak word! ”

“ I’m Jimmy Jones.”
“Welcome, scion of an illustrious family!” said Fessenden. “What is your pleasure?”
“Ah, g’wan,” returned Master Jones. “I got a letter, that’s what. I got a letter here for——” He broke off to scan his questioner closely. “You’re the man, ain’t you? Tall, good-looker, wet pants. Say, Mister, ain’t your name Puddin’ Tame?”
“‘Puddin’ Tame’?” asked Miss Yarnell, smiling. “Is it a game you want to play, kiddy?”
“No, ma’am, ’tain’t a game. I want to see him. Say, ain’t you Puddin’ Tame?”
“I’ve been called so,” admitted Fessenden, surprised but greatly diverted. ”

“ He is calling the doves that have been fluttering about the apartment. They come at his bidding, and he places them upon Hatsu’s shoulders; and upon her outstretched arms.
Into her hand he has put a great bunch of heliotrope, and now he sprinkles a strong elixir of catnip over the hem of the Princess’ gown, and upon her sandalled feet.
“Go,” he says, “and stand before the people.” And opening the curtains a little way, he thrusts her forth! and as the silken folds fall back, behind her, the people hear the voice! that makes all men, high or low, rich, or poor, simple, or wise, tremble! ”

“ In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and more attracted by the gay side of life. It was typical of his growing enthusiasm for pleasure that he was the first man in the city of Baltimore to own and run an automobile. Meeting him on the street, his contemporaries would stare enviously at the picture he made of health and vitality.
"He seems to grow younger every year," they would remark. And if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give a proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what amounted to adulation. ”

“ She has prostrated herself upon the earth, and the priests forming in two lines, walk past her, swinging their golden censers right and left, and I can hear the voice of the Princess, joining in the petition, for the soul of her father—still on its journey to the kingdom that lies beyond the tomb. Now the sound of the singing grows fainter, the silence comes again, and Hatsu rises and goes on her way. She has reached a flight of broad stone steps. She is weary and the steps are many, but she presses on. ”

“ I mentally called the roll—wealth, respectability, honor, all on their knees before Dominick, each with his eye upon the branch of the plum tree that bore the kind of fruit he fancied. And I wondered how they felt25 inside,—for I was then ignorant of the great foundation truth of practical ethics, that a man's conscience is not the producer but the product of his career.
Fessenden accompanied me to the door. "The old man's in a hell of a humor to-night," said he. "His wife's caught on to a little game he's been up to, and she's the only human being he's afraid of. ”

“ It was in that same year that he began "going out socially"—that is, his father insisted on taking him to several fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and he and his son were more and more companionable—in fact, since Benjamin had ceased to dye his hair (which was still grayish) they appeared about the same age, and could have passed for brothers.
One night in August they got into the phaeton attired in their full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins' country house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a gorgeous evening. ”

“ Benson, "if it is not a suicide, Miss Van Norman must have been the victim of foul play, and it is our duty to investigate the matter, and attempt to discover whose hand it was that wielded the fatal dagger."
Mr. Benson was fond of high-sounding words and phrases, and, finding himself in charge of what promised to be a mysterious, if not a celebrated, case, he made the most of his authoritative position.
Robert Fessenden paid little attention to the coroner's speech. ”

“ Our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of this enormous life into which they fall. Fechner thinks, as any common man would think, that they are taken into it directly when they occur, and form part of it just as they are. They don't stay outside and get represented inside by their copies. It is only the memories and concepts of them that are copies; the sensible perceptions themselves are taken in or walled out in their own proper persons according as the eyes are open or shut.
Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many sense-organs of the earth's soul. ”

“ Even as the Princess spoke these words, there came a strong tap upon the door, and in an instant she had resumed her seat, and Miriam her place, behind her mistress’ chair.
Then, at the bidding of Hatsu, the door swung back, and two by two, there entered a company of youths, each bearing golden lamps.
Following the youths came a man, holding a golden salver, on which lay a small parchment scroll. Bowing low (not kneeling) , he presented it to the [Pg 16] Princess, who received it and read aloud the contents, in a clear, quiet voice. ”

“ Life must be accepted on those terms; we cannot be wrong if we follow nature; rather to accept them is to find peace—our great mother only reveals her secrets to those who take her as she is.” So, too, with Felsenburgh. “It is not for us to discriminate: His personality is of a kind that does not admit it. He is complete and sufficing for those who trust Him and are willing to suffer; an hostile and hateful enigma to those who are not. We must prepare ourselves for the logical outcome of this doctrine. Sentimentality must not be permitted to dominate reason.” ”

“ Fétis shook his head.
"I have no memory of such a person. Yes, my lord, I was in Venice forty years ago as a travelling secretary to Mr. Topsparkle. We were both young men in those days, and I was more of a student than I have ever been since that time. The world soon drew me from the study of science; but at three-and-twenty I was full of enthusiasm, hoped to discover the philosopher's stone, to make myself as powerful as Dr. Faustus. Idle dreams, my lord. The world is wiser nowadays. ”

“ Fechner himself indeed was a German Gelehrter of the ideal type, at once simple and shrewd, a mystic and an experimentalist, homely and daring, and as loyal to facts as to his theories. But it would be terrible if even such a dear old man as this could saddle our Science forever with his patient whimsies, and, in a world so full of more nutritious objects of attention, compel all future students to plough through the difficulties, not only of his own works, but of the still drier ones written in his refutation. ”

“ A frightened cat can run faster than a guilty little boy, and Seventoes had found his unusual number of claws of good service in climbing a well and retarding his progress towards the bottom.
They all looked.
"Is it—Seventoes?" gasped Benjamin, with wild eyes.
"Of course it's Seventoes," growled his grandfather. "I'd like to know what you've been cutting up so for. Pussy, pussy, pussy."
Benjamin's mother took him over to the sink, and put some water on his head, and made him drink some. "There's no such thing as a ghost, and you're acting very silly," said she ”

“ To Feversham her words were gracious as rain upon dry land. To hear her speak them uplifted him so that those six years of trial, of slinking into corners out of the sight of his fellows, of lonely endurance, of many heart-sinkings and much bodily pain, dwindled away into insignificance. They had indeed borne their fruit to him. For Ethne had spoken in a gentle voice just what his ears had so often longed to hear as he lay awake at night in the bazaar at Suakin, in the Nile villages, in the dim wide spaces of the desert, and what he had hardly dared to hope she ever would speak. ”

“ Ethne had unclenched her hands; the three feathers lay before his eyes upon the table. They could not be explained away; he wore "coward" like a blind man's label; besides, he could never make her understand. However, she wished for the explanation and had a right to it; she had been generous in asking for it, with a generosity not very common amongst women. So Feversham gathered his wits and explained:—
"All my life I have been afraid that some day I should play the coward, and from the very first I knew that I was destined for the army. I kept my fear to myself. ”

“ For I will keep you in entrancement through those days and safe hid from all eyes save Hatsu’s and my own, and when the time has been accomplished Hatsu shall take the child, and holding it before the people, proclaim it her son and heir!
“That Zelas is true to me, I now know, beyond all doubt. Zelas, Hatsu’s uncle! Of what sad comminglings are we made! my soul and heart are crying [Pg 47] out in pity, and yet my mortal mind, my scholar’s questioning, urges me on——”
But—he pauses—his quick ear detects a footstep—and looking up he sees coming slowly toward him the Princess. ”

“ Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal—with an effort he choked back the impulse. "You're just the romantic age," she continued—"fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly-wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is—oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty." ”

“ Harry Feversham had journeyed down to Broad Place in Surrey and made his confession no less unflinchingly to the old general. But Ethne knew enough. "It was the possibility of cowardice from which he shrank, not the possibility of hurt," she exclaimed. "If only one had been a little older, a little less sure about things, a little less narrow! I should have listened. I should have understood. At all events, I should not, I think, have been cruel."
Not for the first time did remorse for that fourth feather which she had added to the three, seize upon her. ”

“ Feversham caught his breath like a man in pain. But the girl's eyes were upon his face, and he sat still, staring in front of him without so much as a contraction of the forehead. But it seemed that he could not trust himself to answer. He kept his lips closed, and Ethne continued:—
"You see I can put up with the absence of the people I care about, a little better perhaps than most people. I do not feel that I have lost them at all," and she cast about for a while as if her thought was difficult to express. "You know how things happen," she resumed. ”

“ He had hardly finished speaking when Fitz caught him by the arm and sprang up, for there was a faint rustling, and the two lads felt more than saw that some one was approaching them. Relief came directly, for instead of a sudden attack, it was the skipper who spoke.
“Silence!” he said softly. “Here, if you two lads are as sleepy as that, lie down again till sunrise.”
“No, no, father,” said Poole; “I am all right now. You must be tired out. Burnett and I will go your rounds now.” ”

“ We have not yet given any favourable specimen of those more hardy and adventurous flights of imagination—those shadowy grandeurs—which may be said to be peculiarly characteristic of Festus. Selection is not easy. As, in illustrating the exaggerations and deformities of the work, it is difficult to quote many lines together without encountering something really fine, and which would be felt as such, if it could be removed from its unfortunate neighbourhood ”

“ Benjamin flushed. “Say! Never mind what I want!” he retorted angrily. “My name’s Button and I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so you know I’m good for it.”
“Well,” admitted the clerk hesitantly, “if you’re not, I guess your daddy is, all right.”
Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was completed. He had difficulty in obtaining the proper general’s insignia because the dealer kept insisting to Benjamin that a nice V.W.C.A. badge would look just as well and be much more fun to play with. ”