Bursley

“ A certain Mayor of Longshaw, years before, had driven a sow to market, and derived a tremendous advertisement therefrom, but Bursley had no wish to rival Longshaw in any particular. Bursley regarded Longshaw as the Inferno of the Five Towns. In Bursley you were bidden to go to Longshaw as you were bidden to go to ... Certain acute people in Hillport saw nothing but a paralyzing insult in the opinion of the Signal (first and foremost a Hanbridge organ) , that Bursley could find no better civic head than Josiah Curtenty. ”

“ The most active person at the funeral was the chemist's only nephew, Clive Timmis, 122 partner in a small but prosperous firm of majolica manufacturers at Bursley. Clive, who was seldom seen in Hanbridge, made a favourable impression on everyone by his pleasing, unaffected manner and his air of discretion and success. He was a bachelor of thirty-two, and lived in lodgings at Bursley. On the return of the funeral-party from the cemetery, Clive Timmis found Brunt's daughter Eva in his uncle's house. ”

“ There's only one thing the matter with first-class football in Bursley," he concluded, "and it isn't the players. It's the public—it's yourselves. You're the most craven lot of tom-fools that ever a big football club had to do with. When we lose a match, what do you do? Do you come and encourage us next time? No, you stop away, and leave us fifty or sixty pound out of pocket on a match, just to teach us better! Do you expect us to win every match? ”

“ Nellie protested. "Anyhow, I do think you might be youngest mayor. Who settles it?"
"The Council, of course."
"Nobody likes Councillor Barlow."
"He'll be still less liked when he's wound up the Bursley Football Club."
"Well, urge him on to wind it up, then. But I don't see what football has got to do with being mayor."
She endeavoured to look like a serious politician.
"You are nothing but a cuckoo," Denry pleasantly informed her. "Football has got to do with everything. And it's been a disastrous mistake in my career that I've never taken any interest in football. ”

“ Some may ask: If Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a mere trifle of no 030 importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to imagine that goosedriving, though reprehensible in a Mayor about to succeed an Earl, is an act of which official notice can be taken. ”

“ But now they had seen Buster Bear and Farmer Brown's boy meet face to face; and while it was true that Farmer Brown's boy had run away as fast as ever he could, it was also true that Buster Bear had done the same thing. He had run even faster than Farmer Brown's boy, and had hidden in the most lonely place he could find in the very deepest part of the Green Forest. It was hard to believe, but it was true. And right away everybody lost a great deal of the respect for Buster which they had felt. It is always that way. ”

“ He felt humiliated. That is just another way of saying shamed. Yes, Sir, Buster felt that he was shamed in the eyes of his neighbors, and he wanted nothing so much as to get away by himself, where no one could see him, and [Pg 107] try to get rid of that dreadful pail. But Buster is so big that it is not easy for him to find a hiding place. So, when he reached the Green Forest, he kept right on to the deepest, darkest, most lonesome part and crept under the thickest hemlock-tree he could find.
But it was of no use. The sharp eyes of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow saw him. ”

“ With brave and cheerful hearts, which the pioneer must maintain, or sink, they had gone to work, and cutting out a broad green patch from the vine-inwoven forest, had erelong, in the midst of the sunshine thus let in, built them a rustic home. Here, in the due course of nature, a playful little pioneer made his appearance, whom they bundled up in red flannel and christened Bushrod, and called Bushie—Burl's household idol.
Now, as a hunter and Indian fighter, Bushrod Reynolds had few equals, even in the Paradise—a land prolific beyond precedence of the heroic in that line. ”

“ On my first visit he led me to a hilltop and pointed off toward a deep gorge where the Pepacton, although it is a placid stream near Roxbury, rises amid scenery wild and rugged. It drains this high pastoral country, where the farms hang upon the mountainsides or lie across the long, sloping hills. The look of those farms impressed me as the fields of England impressed Mr. Burroughs—"as though upon them had settled an atmosphere of ripe and loving husbandry." I was often reminded in looking upon them of that line of Emerson's: "The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the wide, warm fields." ”

“ Burke comes and shows all the melting tenderness of a woman; Boswell, too—before he goes north—bounces in and out, his conceit and assurance mollified and decently draped by the sorrow that hung over him. Little Miss Burney rushes in to the ante-room and stays there hours, hoping some shortest last interview with the great man who had said kindly things to her—never thinking that he could not relish her gossippy prattle about the court, and the royal George, now that a great, swift tide was lifting him into the presence of another king. ”

“ ANCESTRY AND FAMILY LIFE
I am, as you know, the son of a farmer. My father was the son of a farmer, as was his father, and his. There is no break, so far as I know, in the line of farmers back into the seventeenth century. There was a Rev. George Burroughs who was hanged (in 1692) for a witch in Salem. He was a Harvard graduate. I know of no other Harvard graduate by our name until Julian (Mr. Burroughs's son) graduated in 1901 from Harvard. My father's cousin, the Rev. John C. Burroughs, the first president of Chicago University, was graduated from Yale sometime in the early forties. ”

“ John Burley begins to warm. A yet quicker light begins to break from his Eye; his voice has a mellow luscious roll in it.
“He will be grand to-night,” whispered a thin man, who looked like a tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard. Time flies,—an hour. Look again at the Dutch clock. John Burley is grand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent drollery! what luxuriant humour! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy-chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun (what word else shall describe it?) the man’s intellect is as clear as gold sand under a river. ”

“ From beneath a live oak, on the summit of a low bluff, a man discovered them. He had been sitting there talking with a girl. Suddenly he looked up.
“Why, there’s Guy,” he said. “Who’s that with—why, it’s that fellow Allen! What’s he doing up here?” He rose to his feet. “You stay here a minute, Grace. I’m going down to see what that fellow wants. I can’t understand Guy.”
He untied the Apache and mounted, while below, just beyond the pasture fence, the boy turned sullenly toward Allen. ”

“ We are upon our way from London to my castle. What would you of us? Name your price, if it can be paid with honor, it shall be paid; only let us go our way in peace. We cannot hope to resist the Devil of Torn, for we be but ten lances. If ye must have blood, at least let the women go unharmed.”
“My Lady Mary is an old friend,” said the outlaw. “I called at her father’s home but little more than a year since. We are neighbors, and the lady can tell you that women are safer at the hands of Norman of Torn than they might be in the King’s palace.” ”

“ I told my men to look out for him, but he hasn't been seen since. He's a slim old man,--lively as a youngster. Runs like an Indian, with his knees up and his head down."
"Then I believe I have seen him, myself," said Burton. "Twice. Once the first day I was here, talking to Mrs. Bussey back of your house, Doctor, and again up at the Reservation. That explains. He had been hanging around High Ridge long enough to know me by sight, and he guessed that I was of the other party, and so he warned his friends simply to tell me nothing that I wanted to know. ”

“ You can’t tell, sir, with all them pictur’ people up the cañon, what might be goin’ on. We’ll be lucky if we have any horses or tack left if they’re here long!”
“Miss Eva’s in bed,” said the colonel; “but we’ll have to look into this at once. Custer’s sick to-night, so he can’t go along with us; but if you will saddle up my horse, and one for yourself, I’ll dress and be right down. It can’t be the motion-picture people—they’re not horse thieves.” ”

“ I wish you then to think well of the Bursche, and forgive the eccentricities into which a college life and a most absurd doctrine of its ordinances will now and then lead him. That wild-looking youth, for all that he has a sabre-wound across his cheek, and wears his neck bare like a Malay, despite his savage moustache and his lowering look, has a soft heart, though it beats behind that mass of nonsensical braiding. He could recite you for hours long the ballads of Schiller and the lyrics of Uhland ”

“ THE RETREAT OF A POET-NATURALIST
We are coming more and more to like the savor of the wild and the unconventional. Perhaps it is just this savor or suggestion of free fields and woods, both in his life and in his books, that causes so many persons to seek out John Burroughs in his retreat among the trees and rocks on the hills that skirt the western bank of the Hudson. ”

“ The major looked at him sternly. "See here, sir! If you attempt for a moment to hint that—"
"My dear Major Burbank," Astro replied amiably, "I hint at nothing. All I wish is to be able to distinguish between the astral emanations of those who frequent your place. It is possible that Mrs. Burbank was most affected by a woman; but it is not likely."
The major, still frowning, replied: "We lead a very quiet life. My friend Colonel Trevellian is the only close friend of the family. But I must tell you, sir, that my wife has of late confessed to me that she did not like him. ”

“ Hurrying to the tower, I looked at the compass. It showed that we were holding steadily upon our westward course. Either the sun was rising in the south, or the compass had been tampered with. The conclusion was obvious.
I went back to Bradley and told him what I had discovered. "And," I concluded, "we can't make another five hundred knots without oil; our provisions are running low and so is our water. God only knows how far south we have run."
"There is nothing to do," he replied, "other than to alter our course once more toward the west; we must raise land soon or we shall all be lost." ”

“ Burton returned her look with keen interest. Had she been listening at the window?
"How do you do, Mrs. Bussey? And how's Ben? I'm coming up to see him in a minute. I have a little present from an old Indian who used to know him."
Mrs. Bussey relaxed into a smile, and hurried away, and Burton went on to the surgery to find the doctor.
"I don't dare say that my soul is my own in this house without first making sure that Mrs. Bussey won't overhear me and betray the damaging secret to my dearest enemy," he said, as he shook hands. "She is always at hand when I am indiscreet. ”

“ Then Miss Burney had the honor of entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages, which formed the royal procession, of walking after the Queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of standing half dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation. At Magdalen College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, where she sank down on a chair. A good natured equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which he had wisely put in his pockets. ”

“ But what interested me most was the slender figure of a dainty girl, clad only in a thin bit of muslin which scarce covered her knees—a bit of muslin torn and ragged about the lower hem. It was Lys, and she was alive and so far as I could see, unharmed. A huge brute with thick lips and prognathous jaw stood at her shoulder. He was talking loudly and gesticulating wildly. I was close enough to hear his words, which were similar to the language of Ahm, though much fuller, for there were many words I could not understand. ”

“ He would turn them up toward the ridge. He could not be thinking of trying to drive them across the steep, shelving side of the ravine!
But he was. They slipped and caught themselves. Directly below them the burning brush had become a fiery furnace. If ever they failed to catch themselves, nothing could save them from that hell of heat.
Jake, clinging to the plow handles, stumbled and slid, but the plow steadied him, and the furrow saved his footing a dozen times in as many yards. Custer, driving, walked just below the plow. How he kept the team going was a miracle to the girl. ”

“ And though already twenty-two he flung himself into the college life with boyish ardor. He became a member of the Burschenschaft, joined the Round Table of a young literary coterie, and participated in the students’ pastimes, such as fencing and dueling, and only refrained from smoking and drinking because of his precarious health. Save for his narrowed dreamy eyes and peculiar restlessness, he appeared as a typical “flotter Bursch”. He wore a black coat, a red cap, and across his breast shone the colors of the Burschenschaft, a band of black, red and gold. ”