Brown family

“ The Bible was the final court of appeal in the Brown family, and the verdict of that court was that they two—the slave and the guest—were brothers, so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty drew young John to 'swear eternal war with slavery.' That vow, never recanted or forgotten, became the text of his life. ”

“ Through the open dining-room windows they could hear Bunker Blue and Uncle Tad moving the sideboard.
Out to the barn went Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue. In the barn was the ark—the big auto—as large as a moving van. In it the whole Brown family had made a tour the previous summer. It really was like an ark, for it had rooms in it [10] where the children and grown-ups could sleep, and a place to cook and eat meals. ”

“ The young man, feeling convinced that a serious mistake has happened, goes forth to search for his own family. He finds them at last, a cultivated circle of people, and they all seem to know that he belongs to them. Strangely enough, young Brown meets in this family with one of the sons, a young fellow of his own age—call him Jones. Jones laments to Brown that he is entirely out of sympathy with his family. ”

“ Hi Allen had shared his home with me when I was an orphan; I would share my home with his little granddaughters, alone in the world and in trouble,—for by this time I had heard about the mortgage and the battle being fought in the little brown house to keep the family together. Mothering this big brood is too great a task for Gail. She needs mothering herself. ”

“ The second year after his marriage, one night in the beginning of winter, John Brown had gone to a neighbour's house: the family at home were preparing the wool of their flocks for hodden grey cloth, to sell at Lowrie's fair in Hamilton. The shepherd carded the black and white wool together, for the women to spin; Janet and the herd-boy were teasing for the carder; the gudewife sat nursing her first-born son at one side of the fire; when the dog, which lay at full length at the other, started up, and ran to the door, barking at the approach of a stranger. ”

“ To soften my grief, my father consented to my living under the care of her whom I now call my mother. Mrs. Fielder was merely the intimate from childhood of my own mother, with whom, however, since her marriage, contracted against Mrs. Fielder's inclination and remonstrances, she had maintained but little intercourse. My mother's sudden death and my helpless age awakened all her early tenderness, and induced her to offer an asylum to me. Having a considerable fortune and no family, her offer, notwithstanding ancient jealousies, was readily accepted by my father. ”

“ Young also, wanting money, intimated to his young kinsman that he was about to sell him. This intimation determined William, in conjunction with his mother, to attempt their escape. For ten nights they travelled northwards, hiding themselves in the woods by day. The mother and son at length deemed themselves safe from re-capture, and, although weary and foot-sore, were laying down sanguine plans for the acquisition of a farm in Canada, the purchase of the freedom of the six other members of the family still in slavery, and rejoicing in the anticipated happiness of their free home in Canada. ”

“ I was a guest whose presence was borne with anger and impatience.
I was fully impressed with the necessity of removal, but I knew not whither to go, or what kind of subsistence to seek. My father had been a Scottish emigrant, and had no kindred on this side of the ocean. My mother's family lived in New Hampshire, and long separation had extinguished all the rights of relationship in her offspring. Tilling the earth was my only profession, and, to profit by my skill in it, it would be necessary to become a day-labourer in the service of strangers ”

“ But the world goes on its way, and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs, seem in a fair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover, having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile. ”

“ In consequence, within a reasonable time the dingy unattractive dwelling was transformed into a most homelike abode, in which the Holmes family, with Porter and Basil added, took almost as much interest as the Browns themselves.
“Oh, Persis,” said Annis, one Saturday afternoon, when Mrs. Brown’s boarding-house was a thing of the past, “you don’t know what a relief it is to have a home all to ourselves, and how delightful it is to have real, sure enough relations only two blocks away. Isn’t it funny for me to call your grandma Aunt Persis, and your mamma Cousin Mary?” ”

“ All were herded or separated and sold off in batches and re-herded with little or no regard to family relationships, though these poor, dark-minded slaves did form the most intimate and precious attachments. The slaves’ fervent hope was that massa would marry and have children, so that when he died they would not be sold up, but remain in the family.
Illegitimacy in sexual relationships raged. Almost every planter had besides his own family a dusky brood of colored women. No likely girl escaped the overseers. Poor whites and pinelanders broke into black quarters and ravished where they would. ”

“ In the autumn of ninety-seven, and when death had spent his shafts in my own family, I went to see how a family fared, the father and husband of which kept a shop in Front Street, where every thing a lady wanted was sold, and where I had always been served with great despatch and affability. ”

“ Not a bit of it: they love and respect one another ten times the more after a good set family arguing bout, and go back, one to his curacy, another to his chambers, and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and more than ever convinced that the Browns are the height of company. ”

“ We have conversed with poor Brown on many occasions, found him a very intelligent man, full of humour, and fond of relating incidents in the history of his family-even proud of his good credit in Charleston. He frequently speaks of his father and the gratifying hope of meeting him at some future day, when he can give vent to his feelings in bursts of affection. He wants his father to return and live with him, because he says he knows they would be more happy together. ”

“ Nevertheless we kept in excellent spirits; we considered ourselves as one family, allied to one another by the consciousness that it was our duty to undergo all these privations to further the good cause; had determined to share any danger with one another, that victory or death might find us together. We were united as a band of brothers by the love and affection toward the man who with tender words and wise counsel, in the depth of the wilderness of Ottawa Creek, prepared a handful of young men for the work of laying the foundation of a free commonwealth. ”

“ They had never relinquished the hopes of receiving some tidings of their kinsman.
I related what had just passed in the house of Mrs. Maurice, and requested to know from him the history and character of this family.
"They have treated you," he answered, "exactly as any one who knew them would have predicted. The mother is narrow, ignorant, bigoted, and avaricious. The eldest daughter, whom you saw, resembles the old lady in many things. Age, indeed, may render the similitude complete. At present, pride and ill-humour are her chief characteristics. ”

“ Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?' If ever man kept that chivalrous fast before the Lord it was John Brown.
The last stage in what we may call the long preparation of John Brown for the prominent labours of his life reveals still further how the passionate love of the cause of liberty burned as a fire in the bones of this family. ”

“ Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeoman's work. ”

“ As a school of brutality and human suffering, of female prostitution and male debauchery; as a mockery of marriage and defilement of family life; as a darkening of reason, and spiritual death, it had no parallel in its day. It took millions upon millions of men—human men and lovable, light and liberty-loving children of the sun, and threw them with no sparing of brutality into one rigid mold: humble, servile, dog-like devotion, surrender of body, mind and soul, and unaspiring animal content—toward this ideal the slave might strive, and did. ”

“ Leaving the money-raising to Sanborn and Smith, Brown turned to his Negro friends, saying to his eldest son, meantime: "I have been thinking that I would like to have you make a trip to Bedford, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, and Uniontown in Pennsylvania, traveling slowly along, and inquiring of every man on the way, or every family of the right stripe, and getting acquainted with them as much as you could. ”

“ Father Brown went on speaking in a level voice, sitting stolidly with his elbows on the table.
"I've been locking up the Musgrave family," he said. "They are vigorous and long-lived stock, and even in the ordinary way I should think you would wait a good time for your money."
"We're quite prepared for that," answered the solicitor; "but anyhow it can't last indefinitely. The old man is nearly eighty, though he still walks about, and the people at the inn here laugh and say they don't believe he will ever die." ”

“ When thus appealed to in the velvet tones of some “lady teacher,” the girls seemed to think it funny. His “front name” was Ethan, and he was an orphan with his own way to make, his nearest relative a none too loving “aunt by marriage,” which explains his appearance on the day of family reunions at Mother Brown’s hospitable table.
The present was not, as Grandpa Brown had more than once remarked [51] with apparently a distinct sense of personal injury, a “genoowine old-fashioned Thanksgivin’.” ”

“ Then Brown must be fetched to see them, and he must walk with Letty to the mission room for the loaf of bread that was to be given out at six o'clock.
Never was a family so elated, for, to crown their joy, instead of having to tramp to this new place of work as he had made up his mind to do, one of the men brought him the price of the railway fare from the strike committee, and a promise to look after his family until he could send up money to take them down to him, if he was likely to stay. ”

“ With them there is nothing like the Browns, to the third and fourth generation. "Blood is thicker than water," is one of their pet sayings. They can't be happy unless they are always meeting one [Pg 4] another. Never was such people for family gatherings, which, were you a stranger, or sensitive, you might think had better not have been gathered together. ”

“ Need more be said to prove that this great branch of the human family is truly associated with all that is wild, grand, and romantic? We think not; and we hope that the reader is now somewhat reconciled to the fact—which cannot be altered, and which we would not alter if we could—that our hero’s name is Tom Brown. ”

“ He declined, saying at the same time, 'I gave it to you keep it.' 'I do not want it,' I said. 'Now,' said he, 'you had better give your consent for me to purchase you, and you shall go with me to France.' 'But you cannot buy me now,' I replied, 'for my master is in New Orleans, and he purchased me not to sell, but to retain in his own family.' 'Would you rather remain with your present mistress than be free?' 'No,' said I. 'Then fly with me tonight; we shall be in Mobile in two hours from this, and when the passengers are going on shore, you can take my arm, and you can escape unobserved. ”

“ Brown knew of what was happening was when a woman near her screamed. Then this woman hurried down the sands to the edge of the water in which Bunny, Sue, and a number of other children were bathing.
Mrs. Brown had been talking to several women of the summer bungalow colony near Bark Lodge, and one of these ladies had just remarked that a new family had come to the hotel.
"It is Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Slater," Mrs. Brown was told. "They have a little boy named Harry, about as old as your Bunny." ”

“ His father was a drunkard, and very poor, with a family of five or six children. The father died, and left the mother to take care of and provide for the children as best she might. The eldest was a boy, named Burrill, about thirteen years of age. ”

“ She became the business head of the family, and he the spiritual. Only at rare intervals did he ever “backslide” during the twenty years of the new era, and Mrs. Brown herself used to say that the “sugar in his’n turned to gall before the backslide ended.” People who knew her never doubted it.
But Elder Brown’s sin during the remainder of the day contained an element of responsibility. As he moved majestically down toward where Balaam slept in the sunlight, he felt no fatigue. ”