Browne

“ Then Browne spoke up, as if coming from a dream:
"I say, Deppingham, you can take her out walking and pick up a crownful of fresh rubies every day or so."
"Hang it all, Browne, I'm afraid to pluck a violet these days. Every time I stoop over I feel that somebody's going to take a shot at me. I wonder why the beggars select me to shoot at. They're not always popping away at you, Browne. Why is it? I'm not looking for rubies every time I stoop over. ”

“ Here General Browne stopped and wiped from his brow the cold perspiration with which the recollection of this horrible vision had covered it.
"My lord," he said, "I am no coward. I have been in all the mortal dangers incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast that no man ever knew Richard Browne dishonor the sword he wears; but in these horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the grasp of an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood melted from me like wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair individually bristle. ”

“ With a strong curiosity and a real love of truth, Browne is a striking instance of a merely empirical mind; he is at sea with sails and a rudder, but without a compass or log-book; and has so little notion of any laws of nature, or of any inductive reasoning either as to efficient or final causes, that he never seems to judge anything to be true or false except by experiment. ”

“ Browne, old man, I have been through a good deal for you to-night. I like the young lady very much, but Madame Bernstein is—well, she is Madame Bernstein. I can say no more."
"Never mind, old chap," said Browne, patting his companion on the shoulder. "You have the satisfaction of knowing that your martyrdom is appreciated; the time may come when you will want me to do the same thing for you. ”

“ Two minutes to eleven found Browne standing upon the platform at Charing Cross Station. It was not until he was comfortably installed in the carriage and the train was rolling out of the station, that the full meaning of what he was doing struck him. Why was he leaving England? To follow this girl. And why? For one very good reason—because he loved her! But why should he have loved her, when, with his wealth, he could have married the daughter of almost any peer in England; when, had he so desired, he could have chosen his wife from among the most beautiful or most talented women in Europe? ”

“ Browne grows lost in thought. "Fleshpots—pots—hot pots; hot potting! Hah!" He draws himself together with all the manner of one who has gone down deep into a thing, and comes up from it full of knowledge. ”

“ Before doing so, however, they turned and looked up and down the street, as if they were afraid they might be observed. Seeing Browne watching the house, they hastened their steps, and presently disappeared down a side thoroughfare. For an ordinary observer this small event might have had little or no significance; but to Browne, in whose mind indefinable suspicions were already shaping themselves, it seemed more than a little disquieting. ”

“ It is after all in such a passage as this that we see the true William Browne, with all his high-handedness and worthy enthusiasm, the poet who not only loves his country with a lover's passion and cannot tolerate that any should be compared to her in fairness of feature, in stateliness of stature, or in virtue of mind ”

“ Browne’s regards and she’ll be at home to-night.”
The clock struck ten, the carriages drew up before the gate,
The ton display their quality by coming rather late.
A crowd it was, you may be sure, of opulence and fashion,
For Mrs. Browne had for high life what one would call a passion.
There were satins, muslin, taffetas and laces, and illusion
Like all the rainbows since the flood crushed in one grand confusion,{57}
And as her guests the parlor thronged, delighted Mrs. Browne
Felt just a notch or two above all rival Mas in town.
O feminine, O masculine embarrassment of riches! ”

“ Nobody need care if they are doing right. Browne has had a good deal of mystery about him, and I have come to the bottom of it. One among us who lives where Browne does, knows the truth. I will not name him; but he had his head slapped by Browne the day before yesterday, though it is well known Dr. Dunstan won't allow our heads to be slapped, owing to the danger of hurting the brain. At any rate Browne slapped his, and in a moment of natural anger, my dear friends, that boy told me the truth. Browne is a tailor's son! ”

“ People who have been through such an experience will require no description. To others none can be given. In the bedlam chaos and jumble, and chorus of shrieks and smashing glass, Professor Browne, struggling up through the bodies which had been hurled upon him, was conscious of a pain almost intolerably sharp in his leg, and then of a sort of striped whirlwind which seemed to be everywhere at once, extricating, calming, ordering, comforting—and swearing. ”

“ Sir Thomas Browne is neither more nor less than the very prose-laureate of death. He writes as no other man has ever written about death. Death is everywhere in all Sir Thomas Browne’s books. And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heaven itself, there is no death there. Death is swallowed up in Sir Thomas Browne’s defiant faith that cannot, even in death, get difficulties and impossibilities enough to exercise itself upon. ”

“ When all this has been said, I fear that Mr. Browne will not appear in these pages with the equipment proper for a young man of whom anything is expected in the nature of modern fiction. Perhaps this, however, is not so important as it looks, which will be more evident when we reflect that in marrying Miss Helen Frances Peachey Mr. Browne performed considerably the greater part of what will be required of him in this history.
That Young Browne’s tulub [10] was only five hundred rupees a month is, however, a fact of serious importance both to the Brownes and to the readers of these chapters. ”

“ Browne was brought out before the American World. This is quite incorrect. Mr. Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had ever seen him. But it is very true that I aided him to write, and suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing in life better than success. ”

“ Browne passes his whole life in observation and inquiry: he is a genuine investigator, with every opportunity: the mind of the age all around him seems passively yielding to an almost foregone intellectual result, to a philosophy of disillusion. ”

“ Browne admires the gallant firemen as they step along bravely, winking at the pretty girls on either side—at the machine which glistens in the sun, and maintains a lively jingling of bells and brass-work as it joggles over the pavement. "Ah," thinks Browne, "this is gorgeous!" It is. Browne's instincts are generally correct.
The man who assists in carrying the bass drum has a sore thumb, a sensitively sore thumb. Nothing more natural, when Sherman goes "marching through Georgia," than that this thumb should come in for a share of attention. ”

“ Not I."
"Circumstances alter cases," returned Browne. "If you were in my place you would want to be out of England. You should just have seen London as we left. Fogs, sleet, snow, drizzle, day after day, while here you are wrapped in continual sunshine. I don't see that you have much to grumble at."
"Don't you?" said his friend. "Well, I do. Let us take my own case again. I am just up from a baddish attack of Rock-fever. I feel as weak as a cat—not fit for anything. And what good does it do me? I don't even have the luck to be properly ill, so that I could compel them to invalid me. ”

“ But Richmond minimus shook his head.
He said—
"Not at all. A word in season often does good, as in the case of Stopford. I want to warn the fellows against the mean nature of Browne. I want to show them what Browne is and how a master may use his power like a beast, as Browne does."
"If it gets back to him, you're cooked," I said. "And you know how you work yourself up when you're preaching. I don't think it's at all wise."
"I've promised," answered Richmond minimus. "I'm going to preach to-morrow evening in the time after tea before prep.; and all Browne's house is coming to hear me." ”

“ Browne blankly, “are not Rajahs, dear!”
“No, thank the Lord,” said Mr. Browne, with what struck his wife as unnecessary piety; “and we’ll make ourselves jolly comfortable notwithstanding. Nellums—you’ll see!” George Browne was always over-optimistic. If those two young people had come to me—but it goes without saying that they went to nobody.
Helen desired a garden, a tennis-court, and, if possible, a cocoanut palm-tree in the garden. ”

“ Browne replied. "I leave for London to-morrow afternoon, and immediately upon my arrival there I shall commence my preparations. You will see for yourself, if the man is so ill, there is no time to waste."
"In that case I think I can introduce you to a person who will prove of the utmost assistance to you; a man without whom, indeed, it would be quite impossible for you to succeed in your undertaking." ”

“ Rowley, Rester, ‘old Browne’, Ned Browne, ‘the red fast fellow’ and several boys, described, perhaps in some cases twice over, as Jack Jones, ‘little Will’, ‘little Will Barne’, who do not seem to be identical, ‘Gils his boy’, ‘Mr. Denyghtens little boy’, perhaps the same already recorded in 1600, and ‘the other little boy’. ‘Old Browne’ can hardly be Robert Browne, who seems to have been in Germany; but Ned Browne may be the Edward Browne who, like Robert, was a member of Worcester’s company in 1583. Little is added by the only other extant ‘plot’, the fragmentary one of 2 Fortune’s Tennis. ”

“ Thomas Browne, best known as Sir Thomas Browne, came of a Cheshire family. He was born in London on 19 October, 1605. Early left fatherless, "he was, according to the common fate of orphans," says Dr. Johnson, "defrauded by one of his guardians," who seems to have lacked opportunity to strip the orphan absolutely bare. Browne was educated at Winchester, [Pg 307] went on to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, graduated (1629) , travelled in Ireland, took a doctor's degree at Leyden; is said to have practised medicine at Halifax, and about 1637 settled at Norwich for the fifty remaining years of his life. ”

“ He could see the violet eyes, tear laden, the lithe, slender, figure of his wife in the glory of her perfect womanhood—the sturdy little body of his child, barelegged, browned, hair tumbled, waving frantically a tiny little square of muslin and shouting farewells at the highest pitch of childish treble. ”

“ Browne, opening the door in his own delightfully breezy fashion that generally plays old Harry with the hinges and blows the ornaments off the nearest tables, advances towards her with arms outspread, and the liveliest admiration writ upon his features, which, to say the truth, are of goodly proportions. ”

“ The writer presents a fac-simile of an admission ticket which was presented to him in Natchez by Mr. Browne:—
ADMIT THE BEARER AND ONE WIFE. YOURS TROOLY, A. WARD. In the spring of 1866, Charles Browne first timidly thought of going to Europe. Turning to Mr. Hingston one day he asked: "What sort of a man is Albert Smith? Do you think the Mormons would be as good a subject to the Londoners as Mont Blanc was?" Then he said: "I should like to go to London and give my lecture in the same place. Can't it be done?"
Mr. Browne sailed for England soon after, taking with him his Panorama. ”

“ But when young Browne stopped the chuprassie and the coolies, and called him “old fellow” and asked him where he was going and how he had stood the journey, he gave young Browne a paw and a depreciating turn of his head over the dandy which distinctly said, “Liver complications. We all come to it. Your turn next hot weather. This country isn’t fit for a Christian to live in!” and one more homesick alien passed on to look for his lost well-being in the Hills. Mrs. Browne hoped he would find it, he was such a dear dog. ”

“ At an hotel on the South Coast I met a Miss Browne, which is not her name, and I rather hope this sketch will not be read by anyone nearly related to her, as they might identify her from the description. A middle-aged lady with a brown skin, black hair and dark eyes, an oval face, fairly good-looking, her manner lively and attractive, her movements quick without being abrupt or jerky. She was highly intelligent and a good talker, with more to say than most women, and better able than most to express herself. ”

“ William Browne, born about 1590-91, of a Devonshire family, went to Exeter College, Oxford, and to the Inns of Court. In 1613 he published the first part of his "Britannia's Pastorals," with commendatory verses, including some, more cautious than usual, by Ben Jonson. The pastorals have the usual defects of the obsolete kind of composition and of Browne's own age of conceits. They are extremely prolix, very artificial, rich in classical allusions, and occasionally in puns. The rhymed decasyllabic couplets carry on the sense, as was usual before Waller and Pope. ”

“ In his rare imagination, Sir Thomas Browne had the original root of a truly refining, ennobling, and sanctifying faith planted in his heart by the hand of Nature herself. No man, indeed, in the nature of things, can be a believing Christian man without imagination. A believing and a heavenly-minded man may have a fine imagination without knowing that he has it. ”