Bill Brown

“ I don't care how you raise it. Sell your car. Sell your wife. Rob a bank."
"Joe, I can't—"
"I said shut up. Bill, if he opens that yakker of his again put a fist in it. Ray-boy, I almost hope you can't. Because I'll get a four-eighty kick outa what I'm going to do if you don't."
He looked at his wrist watch. "Just twenty-four hours from right now I start putting out the word that you're marked lousy, that you're a cheap crook and a welsher besides. I start with all the tavern and liquor store owners I know—and I know plenty. Chuck Connolly will be on top of the list. ”

“ He slowly got to his feet, climbed back through the wires without further thought as to their being charged, and stood with his companions, quite submissive and mute.
As usual on all occasions demanding words, Bill’s tongue was loosened: 30
“Look here, fellows, we want to give you the right dope on this thing: You see we are here to study—to try and go through if our money holds out. Our people are not rich and, like Tom Edison when he was a boy, we’ve got to hustle on short allowance. And we really can’t afford to be hazed, as you did that new chap yesterday. ”

“ Watch all landing places around Lower Point. Be prepared for trouble. Kidnapers armed and will shoot. Anthony Sabaste in small cabin in pine woods about one mile north of inlet. Hard place to find. Guarded by three men.
“This is William Brown speaking, at Oysterman Dan’s cottage—for Augustus Grier, also. Have situation well in hand. Please radio reply at once.”
Bill switched off his batteries and clamped the ’phones of the receiver to his ears. ”

“ Bill got on his feet and there was an instant 23 hush. There was something to expect from the daring and apparently successful gunman. He laughed, and that also charged the atmosphere. When he spoke he had undivided attention:
“You would have run like any other scared puppy,” Bill said to Siebold. “We would have listened to you ki-yi-ing for about a mile. Say, look here, you hazers: You’re a bunch of muts! Hear me? ”

“ We who know the story of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery think of John Brown as a hero. We forget the outlaw and remember the martyr. If he was setting the laws of men at defiance he was also following the law that he felt was given him by God. His faith and his simplicity have made him a great figure in history. A man who met him riding across the plains of Kansas in the days of the border warfare drew a vivid picture of him. He said that a tall man on horseback stopped and asked him a question. ”

“ The eyes of Basil closed as in a trance, after his habit, and the eyes of Rupert and myself getting rounder and rounder as we listened to one of the most astounding stories in the world from the lips of the little man in black, sitting bolt upright in his chair and talking like a telegram.
Major Brown was, I have said, a successful soldier, but by no means an enthusiastic one. So far from regretting his retirement on half-pay, it was with delight that he took a small, neat villa, very like a doll's house, and devoted the rest of his life to pansies and weak tea. ”

“ With this deep conviction, then, in our hearts is it not meet that we should keep ever green the memory of the man who more than any other, appreciated the exigencies of the hour, who first fell in his devotion to the cause? In these twenty-five years his spirit has been joined by those of Sumner, Greeley, Garrison, Giddings, Phillips, Foster and the many, many thousands who toiled for the wronged of whatever color. Truth, though for a time crushed to earth, has risen again. Freedom reigns indeed in the land of John Brown. ”

“ We all went up to the schoolhouse and got ourselves ready to fight.
"The crowd came and hung around the schoolhouse a few days, but they didn't try to capture us. The governor of Kansas, he telegraphed to the United States marshal at Springdale: 'Capture John Brown, dead or alive.' The marshal he answered: 'If I try to capture John Brown it'll be dead, and I'll be the one that'll be dead.' Finally those Kansas people went home, and then that same marshal put us in a car and sent us to Chicago. It took us over three months to get to Canada. . . . What kind of a man was Captain Brown? ”

“ When Father Brown first stepped off an Atlantic liner on to American soil he discovered, as many another Englishman has done, that he was a much more important person than he had ever supposed. His short figure, his short-sighted and undistinguished countenance, his rather rusty black clerical clothes, could pass through any crowd in his own country without being noticed as anything unusual, except perhaps unusually insignificant. But America has a genius for the encouragement of fame ”

“ Of the Boston committee only Stearns stood up and out in the public glare and said unequivocally, then and there: "I believe John Brown to be the representative man of this century, as Washington was of the last—the Harper's Ferry affair, and the capacity shown by the Italians for self-government, the great events of this age. One will free Europe and the other America." [1]
The attitude of the black man toward John Brown is typified by Frederick Douglass and Shields Green. ”

“ Thus far Brown has not by any means played the game he is capable of. He has met no opponents of his own weight. He is fairly quick, and has a good knowledge of the game. With these conditions his work should be of the brilliant order, but, on the contrary, it has been even at the best mediocre, and at times lamentably weak.
White is probably the best end on any school team about New York. Very seldom is a gain made around his end, and an attempt usually results in a loss. ”

“ John Brown had repeatedly led parties of slaves from Missouri to Kansas, and made of them free men. He contemplated other and grander strokes against the peculiar institution. In his singleness of purposes, he saw not the power of the Government intervening, and perhaps, in his intensity, it would have made no difference if he had. Certain, however, is the statement, that the one grand idea over-towering all others in his mind, was that of liberty for the slaves; and for that idea men of his own and subsequent days have done him reverence. ”

“ He was a great miracle-worker, in his day, but time has worked for him a greater miracle than all his miracles, for now his name stands for all that is desirable in government, noble in life, orderly and beautiful in society. That which time has done for other great men of his class, that will time certainly do for John Brown. The brightest gems shine at first with subdued light, and the strongest characters are subject to the same limitations. Under the influence of adverse education and hereditary bias, few things are more difficult than to render impartial justice. ”

“ John Brown was great because he was good, and good because he was great, with the bravery of a warrior and the tenderness of a child, loving liberty as a mother her first born, he scorned to compromise with slavery. Virginia demanded his blood and he gave it, making the spot on which he fell sacred for all time, upon which posterity will see a monument in commemoration of an effort, grand in its magnanimity, to which the devotees of liberty from every clime can repair to breathe anew an inspiration from its shrine ”

“ Otherwise he is unchanged—except, perhaps, there are moments when, alert and full of feminine unselfishness as the major is by nature, he falls into a trance of abstraction. Then his wife recognizes with a concealed smile, by the blind look in his blue eyes, that he is wondering what were the title-deeds, and why he was not allowed to mention jackals. But, like so many old soldiers, Brown is religious, and believes that he will realize the rest of those purple adventures in a better world. ”

“ There never was more need for a good life of any man than there was for one of John Brown.... Those who thought best of him, and those who thought the worst, were alike desirous to know more of him than the newspapers had furnished, and to become acquainted with the course of his life, and the training which had prepared him for Kansas and brought him to Harper's Ferry. ”

“ Brown was in a sense the most remarkable figure of the time in {341} his province. Fierce in his opinions, a vehement speaker, an agitator whose best qualities unfitted him for the steadier work of government, he committed just those mistakes which make the true agitator's public life something of a tragedy, or at least a disappointment. But Brown's work was done out of office. His passionate advocacy of the policy of Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery kept relations with the United States calm through a diplomatic crisis. ”

“ Mr. Brown consented to occupy a place on the platform, and at the urgent request of the audience, spoke briefly. It is one of the curious facts, that many men who do it are utterly unable to tell about it. John Brown, a flame of fire in action, was dull in speech." [16]
Later in the same month Brown accompanied Sanborn and Conway to ex-Governor Reeder's home in Pennsylvania to induce him to return to Kansas, but he declined. April 1st found Brown back in Massachusetts, where for a week or more he was again in hiding from United States officers, probably among his Negro friends in Springfield. ”

“ We'll lie in wait, Bangs, and have a word with them. A coil of rope and a sack—those shall be our only tools. While Brown is talking we'll try to slip the sack over his head and tie him up. I don't think the lady will scream, for it seems to me that there's a kind of counterplot afoot—either against Billy, the Turkish government, or Miss Arkwright. (I still feel sure she is not Miss Arkwright, but a maid of sorts.) Now, if I'm right in my conjectures she won't be keen on advertising Brown's presence to her mistress. ”

“ Setting aside all legal rights in the matter, he divided that portion equally among his brothers and sister. He followed mercantile pursuits, and thereby acquired a very ample fortune. His success was largely due to habits of industry and punctuality which he assiduously observed throughout his career. Mr. Brown was a believer in the Baptist faith, and a careful observer of its forms, although he never made a public profession of that religion. He was liberal with his wealth, and a constant benefactor of the college and other public buildings devoted to religion or science in Providence. ”

“ Look at the company he keeps—John Brown, who hasn't even decency enough to keep away from the place he disgraced. Billy is always with him. You ruined John Brown, with your dissipation and your sneers at religion and your- 'I-wonder-nows!' Of what use have you been, Charley? Of what use to anyone in the world? You think of nothing but eating, and drinking, and playing the fop. ”

“ Wise said soon afterward in a public speech at Richmond, "who take Brown to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw,—cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man of clear heady of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and indomitable. ”

“ Love bent with a tender wing, Taught them a joy so deep, so true, it seemed that the whole-world fabric shook, Thrilled and dissolved in radiant dew; then Brown made him a golden book, Full of the faith that Life is good, that the earth is a dream divinely fair, Lauding his gem of womanhood in many a lyric rich and rare ”

“ I--I want to show you something pretty and nice."
"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.
"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."
"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion. "Look, Smithy! That is the car!"
"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a red water line?"
"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket! The summer gown! ”

“ These two men, and others their countrymen, who had resided or sojourned upon the edge of the great wilderness near his birthplace, had been his ideals from childhood. He had often visited Lake Bonaparte, and had frequently seen the home formerly occupied by Le Ray. While he had understood that he himself was only plain Anthony C. Brown, the son of Thomas Brown (a white man who had died some two months before his son's birth) , he had yet an impression that his mother was in some vague way connected with the great personages whom he mentioned. ”

“ To the outward eye of men, John Brown was a criminal, but to their inward eye he was a just man and true. His deeds might be disowned, but the spirit which made those deeds possible was worthy highest honor. It has been often asked, why did not Virginia spare the life of this man? why did she not avail herself of this grand opportunity to add to her other glory that of a lofty magnanimity? Had they spared the good old man's life—had they said to him, "You see we have you in our power, and could easily take your life, but we have no desire to hurt you in any way ”

“ Brian realized he could never learn how Brown had actually died. Even if he had the strength and courage to go back north—no, at seventy-six (eighty-six?) , one can hardly make a fresh start in the study of history. Not without the patience of Abraham Brown himself, who had probably been doing just that when the wheel—
An awed question from the girl pulled Brian from a black pit of abstraction: "What is that?" She was pointing to the clay image in its dusty sunlight.
Brian spoke vaguely, almost deaf to his own words until they were past recovering: "That? It is very old. ”