Butler family

“ They had a family of their own fast coming on and the children seemed to thrive; both father and mother indeed were comfortable well grown folks, in whose hands young people would be likely to have as fair a chance of coming to a good development as in those of any whom he knew.
We went down to see this couple, and as I thought no less well of them than Ernest did, we offered them a pound a week to take the children and bring them up as though they were their own. ”

“ I guess one funny cat like that is enough in one family. Uncle Peter has to keep his eye out to watch if the ice is going to move this morning. He can't make cats.”
“Make a funny dog,” said Buddy promptly. “Well, Buddy, if I make you a funny dog,” said Peter, “will you be a good boy and play with it and let Uncle Peter get some stove wood aboard the boat?”
“Yes, Uncle Peter,” said Buddy. He had the smile of a cherub and the splendid mendacity of youth. He would promise anything. Only the most unreasonable expect a boy to keep such promises, but it does the heart good to hear them. ”

“ Now a man who attacks the family because his father does not die as promptly as could be desired is not likely to propose a happy substitute: his mood is not reconstructive, funny though it may be in two old boys of fifty, like Butler and Jones, living along like spoiled children on allowances, Butler from his father, Jones from his mother. ”

“ Butler's efforts were ably seconded by her husband, William S. Butler, one of the successful merchants of Boston. Mr. Butler died in 1898, and many a poor family felt they had lost a friend.
Mrs. Butler is a Spiritualist, and is one of the most successful clairvoyant physicians in the country, but has not permitted herself to become in any way bigoted or narrow-minded. When her attention has been called to persons needing assistance, she has not considered whether they were Protestant or Catholic, Jew or Gentile, but has ever been ready to help. ”

“ So there!”
“Ye’ll marry him, will you?” asked Butler, nonplussed and further astounded. “So ye’ll wait for him and marry him? Ye’ll take him away from his wife and children, where, if he were half a man, he’d be stayin’ this minute instead of gallivantin’ around with you. And marry him? Ye’d disgrace your father and yer mother and yer family? Ye’ll stand here and say this to me, I that have raised ye, cared for ye, and made somethin’ of ye? Where would you be if it weren’t for me and your poor, hard-workin’ mother, schemin’ and plannin’ for you year in and year out? ”

“ The man of law entered into a minute description of the property to which Tony was to succeed. There was a small family estate in Ireland, and a large one in England; there was a considerable funded fortune, and some scattered moneys in foreign securities; the whole only charged with eight hundred a-year on the life of a lady no longer young, whom scandal called not the widow of Sir Omerod Butler. ”

“ All these excellent reasons for letting her nephew alone occurred to her, and many more, but against them there pleaded a woman’s love for children, and her desire to find someone among the younger branches of her own family to whom she could become warmly attached, and whom she could attach warmly to herself. ”

“ Who will be man’s successor? To which the answer is: We are ourselves creating our own successors. Man will become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man; the conclusion being that machines are, or are becoming, animate.
In 1863 Butler’s family published in his name A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, which, as the preface states, was compiled from his letters home, his journal and extracts from two papers contributed to the Eagle. ”

“ That the hand of God directed the footsteps of Pardee Butler to Kansas just at the time he went there, and to the place where he took a homestead and improved it, and lived on it with his family for a third of a century, no one who believes in an overruling providence can for a moment doubt. ”

“ Bella also said, 'Tony might have had some chance with Alice had he remained poor; the opposition of her family would have had its weight in influencing her in his favor; but now that he is a prize in the matrimonial lottery, she is quite ready to see any defects he may have, and set them against all that would be said in his behalf. Last of all, she likes her independence as a widow. I half suspected that Maitland had been before you in her favor; but Bella says not. By the way, it was the fortune that has fallen to you Maitland had always expected ”

“ In the same chapter he also claims that “the wife of an elder brother is considered as mother-in-law to the younger, and the wife of the younger as daughter-in-law to the elder.” This implies, what is generally a fact, that it is seldom that a young couple in India have the luxury of a separate home. The bride is generally taken to her father-in-law's residence, and receives her apartment within the inclosure surrounding the general home. The outer rooms are occupied by the males of the family, the inner or secluded ones by the women—hence called the Zenana. ”

“ Here was the old Butler pride and independence manifesting itself; the spirit which had [Pg 42] made the family prosperous and prominent. He was not ill-pleased. Nevertheless he leaned back in his chair and spoke impressively:
"Now let us consider the situation. You received from your teacher a copy of the same subscription blank which was handed to your fellow-pupil. Had you met your engagement at the station, and called the matter to my attention, you would doubtless have received my subscription, or been the bearer of my offer, in preference to any one else. ”

“ He found every one knew of his having come into a fortune. The fact was that Theobald had immediately told two or three of the greatest gossips in the village, and the story was not long in spreading. “It simplified matters,” he had said to himself, “a good deal.” Ernest was civil to Mrs Goodhew for her husband’s sake, but he gave Miss Wright the cut direct, for he knew that she was only Charlotte in disguise.
A week passed slowly away. Two or three times the family took the sacrament together round Christina’s death-bed. ”

“ We ought to consult the doctor, too; he's a warm friend, Tony, and bears you a sincere affection.”
“He's a good fellow; I like him anywhere but in the pulpit,” muttered he, below his breath. “And he 'd like to write to his daughter; she's a governess in some family near Putney, I think. I 'll go and see her; Dolly and I are old playfellows. I don't know,” added he, with a laugh, “whether hockey and football are part of a polite female education; but if they be, the pupils that have got Dolly Stewart for their governess are in rare luck.” ”

“ I had known these people all their lives, as none can know each other but those who have played together as children; I knew how they had all of them—perhaps Theobald least, but all of them more or less—made her life a burden to her until the death of her father had made her her own mistress, and I was displeased at their coming one after the other to Roughborough, and inquiring whether their sister had recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. ”

“ My first attempt at a drawing in pencil and ink of Butler’s Homestead, Mesopotamia, New Zealand.
I did it in 1910 or thereabouts from a faded photograph taken about 1863 and lent to Butler by J. D. Enys. Also Emery Walker’s reproduction of my first attempt which was not used in the Memoir.
4. My second attempt, which was reproduced in the Memoir.
SAMUEL BUTLER
5. Water-colour: A view in Cambridge.
Probably done when Butler was an undergraduate, and given to St. John’s some years ago. I found it in the book wherein I found Blakiston’s drawing (no. 2) .
6. Oil Painting: Family Prayers. ”

“ I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other—I mean from the attempt to prolong family connection unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so. ”

“ Ernest began to chafe at this, for he had heard it so often, but he said nothing.
"You know, my dear, a brother can do so much for his sister if he lays himself out to do it. A mother can do very little—indeed, it is hardly a mother's place to seek out young men; it is a brother's place to find a suitable partner for his sister; all that I can do is to try to make Battersby as attractive as possible to any of your friends whom you may invite. ”

“ A moral residuum will therefore prefer to see the remainder of his life in his own person, than in that of his descendants, and will act accordingly. Hence we, in common with most other living beings, ignore the offspring as forming part of the personality of the parent, except in so far as that we make the father liable for its support and for its extravagances (than which no greater proof need be wished that the law is at heart a philosopher, and perceives the completeness of the personal identity between father and son) for twenty-one years from birth. ”

“ I do not suppose I shall see him before Sunday.”
“That will do,” thought my father, who at that moment deemed that nothing would matter to him much when Sunday was over. Then, turning to the Ranger, he said, “I gather, then, that your mother does not think so badly of the Sunchild after all?”
“She laughs at him sometimes, but if any of us boys and girls say a word against him we get snapped up directly. My mother turns every one round her finger. Her word is law in Sunch’ston; every one obeys her; she has faced more than one mob, and quelled them when my father could not do so.” ”

“ This did not meet the full approbation of the step-father; but love seldom yields to the discouragement of obstacles; and the lover's perseverance was crowned with success. The marriage took place in 1784. The young people took possession of a small farm which Captain Butler had inherited from his father, near Mount Willing. Fourteen years afterwards they removed to an estate on one of the branches of Saluda River, where they continued to live till the husband's death in 1821. ”

“ My husband and my only child are gone, and when you follow, life, I feel, will be insupportable, and the opportunity of closing it with honor will then have passed.” Nothing could alter her purpose; and the royal mother, finding she could not prevail on her child to consent to live, resolved to witness her beloved daughter's suttee. She joined the cruel procession and stood close to the pile: two Brahmins held her by the arms. She bore it all till the flames rose round her beautiful child, when she lost all her self-control ”

“ Butler saw her son in such favor at the great house,—that princely place to which the company came from remote parts of the kingdom, and to mix with which the neighboring gentry were only admitted sparingly and at rare intervals; for Sir Arthur's wealth was to society a sort of crushing power, a kind of social Nasmyth hammer, that smashed and ground down whatever came beneath it. No small distinction was it, therefore, for the widow's son to be there; not merely admitted and on sufferance, but encouraged, liked, and made much of. Sir Arthur had known Tony's father in India, long long years ago ”

“ It was his pious custom to give a very large alms to the first poor man he met every morning, without being asked. He rose at midnight, and assisted at matins in the church, as then the more devout part of the laity used to do, together with all the clergy. At the age of fifteen he lost his father, who left him heir to a great estate: and he remained at home under the government of his pious mother, who brought him up in extraordinary sentiments and practices of virtue. Being solicited to marry, he betook himself to the serious consideration of the vanity of all earthly things ”

“ They made her life miserable."
"Her nose was uppish, like Dotty's," said Bobby, in extenuation of his sins.
"She winked at Uncle Jack," remarked Dotty to complete the vindication.
Uncle Jack blushed.
"If she winked," he said hotly, "it was because she was perfectly well-bred and wished to spare my feelings."
Mrs. Morgan smiled and laid her hand on his arm.
"Jack," she said, "there is not the least need for you to defend her. I can quite understand that winking at a strange young man in a public car is a proof of perfect breeding in a lady." ”

“ Bobby was of the opinion that it was "down where the or'nges come from, near to the torrig zome," and Dotty was so sure the climate was warm that she had packed a snowball in her own private satchel, just to surprise the little Floridians, for she had heard that they had never seen snow where papa and mama were spending the winter.
The last injunction to Uncle Jack as the parents of the twins were leaving was: "Don't let them worry the life out of you, and bring them down when we telegraph;" and to the twins: "Take good care of Uncle Jack, and be careful he don't run away and get married." ”

“ I asked.
"Even women know the poets in these days," he said, smiling. "You would not wish to know less than your own wife, would you?"
"My wife!" I exclaimed, scornfully.
"Why, yes," said Sir William, much amused; "you will marry one day, I suppose."
After a moment I said:
"Is Silver Heels going to marry Mr. Butler?"
"I hope so," replied Sir William, a little surprised. "Mr. Butler is a gentleman of culture and wealth. Felicity has no large dower, and I can leave but little if I provide for all my children. I deem it most fortunate that Captain Butler has spoken to me." ”