Curt

“ LILY— [Indignantly.] She probably realizes what we are too mean to remember—that the baby, at least, is innocent. Wait, Esther. I'll come with you.
JAYSON—Yes, hurry, she shouldn't be left alone. [ESTHER and LILY follow the old lady out, rear.]
DICK— [After a pause—impatiently.] Well, what next? I don't see what good we are accomplishing. May I run along? [He gets up restlessly as he is speaking and goes to the window.]
JAYSON— [Severely.] You will stay, if you please. There's to be no shirking on anyone's part. It may take all of us to induce Curt—
SHEFFIELD—I wouldn't worry. ”

“ Then, his father having again married happily, the boys were brought home to Providence, where they stayed till, in 1839, their father removed to New York. Three years later, Curtis, being allowed to determine for himself his course of life, and being in sympathy with the spirit of the so-called Transcendental movement, became a boarder at the community of Brook Farm. He was accompanied by his brother, James Burrill Curtis, whose influence upon him was strong and helpful. He remained there for two years, brought into stimulating and serviceable relations with many interesting men and women. ”

“ The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as does yours and yours. The history of one—the history of all. There is at once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will hold our life!"
"I don't know anyone like you," said Curtin.
"No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from us and yet who belong in the order—the order of those who are aware that present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and know in a larger existence." ”

“ The adherents of Curthose, generally gay and thoughtless young men, exercised all their art to stimulate his ambition; and he yielded somewhat too readily to their suggestions.
"Noble son of a king," said they, "thy father's people must take good care of his treasure, since thou hast not a penny to bestow on thy followers. Why endurest thou to remain so poor when thy father is so rich?"
"But what can I do?" asked Curthose.
"Ask him for a portion of his England," they answered; "or, at least, for the duchy of Normandy, which he promised thee before all his barons." ”

“ Curtis called to his party just before sunrise to get up and see Old Faithful, the greatest geyser of them all, throw its stream of water into the air as high as a fourteen-story skyscraper while the morning sunrise on the enormous clouds of steam made reds and greens and all the colors of the rainbow, and the rainbow itself.
"How did you know when to call us, Dr. Curtis?"
"Old Faithful works on schedule time, every sixty-three minutes, night and day, summer and winter. It's very handy for travellers." ”

“ Although Curtis was a most exemplary officer, a botanist and hydrographer, with a penchant for meteorology, he was the reverse of proud. One doesn’t look for, nor expect, pride in a true gentleman, and although Arnold Curtis came of a very ancient English family, and had blue blood in his veins, and though he had reached the very advanced age of twenty and five, he was out-and-out a boy at heart, and had never been much more happy than when in the cricket-field or making one in a game of footer. ”

“ Curtis, because of the singular combination of qualities with which he has been blest, and because of his extraordinary success in making and using his opportunities, has been able to do what no other man ever has done; what, as far as we can see, no other man could do. ”

“ I MEET SIR HENRY CURTIS
It is a curious thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since. ”

“ Every woman who is able should have children. Don't you believe that, Martha Jayson? [She accentuates the full name.]
MARTHA— [Taken aback for a moment but restraining her resentment—gently.] Yes, I do, Mrs. Davidson.
MRS. DAVIDSON— [Seemingly placated by this reply—in a milder tone.] You must call me aunt, my dear. [Meaningly.] All the Jaysons do.
MARTHA— [Simply.] Thank you, aunt.
LILY— [As if all of this aroused her irritation—in a nervous fuming.] Why don't the others come, darn 'em? I'm dying for my tea. [The door from the study is opened and CURT appears. They all greet him.] ”

“ Mind and goodness, and spirit that is power, and a body that you love to look at! They're the kind of folk that ought to be. Yes, sir, I was thinking when you came along of Marget sitting there, a little thing, and saying, 'Now tell me about the children of Israel'—or 'about Bethlehem,' as it might be."
With distinctness Curtin felt that which the old man also seemed to feel, for he turned his head, lowering it and his eyes a little, and smiling. The movement was precisely that of turning and smiling into a child's eyes. Again through Curtin poured that thrill of a freshness of knowledge. ”

“ HIS LIFE Henry Curtis, who sailed for New England from the port of London on May 6, 1635, was the founder of the Curtis family in America. His grandson, John Curtis of Worcester, was ‘a sturdy and open loyalist’ of Revolutionary times whose personal character was as heartily esteemed as his political principles were detested. ”

“ The last of the Transcendental group worthy of mention here is George William Curtis, a versatile and charming personality, not a genius in any sense, but a writer of pleasant and amusing prose, an orator of no small ability, and one of the truest patriots who ever loved and labored for his country. ”

“ Curtis continued, "never lights that pipe you have put in his hands without blowing a whiff to the great spirits seated at the cardinal points of the compass. He makes offerings for the health of his children—he hears voices in the noon-day haze. He sits on the hill-top at dawn to commune with the spirits over his head. As a beggar he is picturesque; as a man, he is bewildered by the changes in his world, and sad with the shadow of his children's future. All these things, and many more, you must learn before you can represent the soul of the redman. You can't afford to be unjust." ”

“ Without injustice to others, whose part in the work cannot be overlooked, it may well be said that Curtis, by his wide knowledge and experience, his ripe and calm judgment, his gentle temper and his scarcely asserted but easily acknowledged authority, was most perfectly fitted for that essential task of leadership in such a cause—the task of reconciling the diversities of opinion, and of harmonizing, stimulating and directing the zeal and the efforts of others laboring for the same object. ”

“ Curtis, folding his arms and surveying his three companions in haughty disgust, "that they can raise as good-looking people in any other quarter of the world as they can in these here blessed United States. ”

“ My dear boys,—Only a week before you come back to your old daddy again, but Leon’s letter, with its good news of his promotion and of your seeing Captain Curtis, makes me write to you once more. Captain Curtis is a good man, and if either of you could be as true a soldier as he, I would gladly give my consent, though I had never thought of that life for my sons. ”

“ As he entered the library with his armful of papers a half-hour later Curtis exclaimed: "Well, now, here is a feast! The commotion on the outside is prodigious. Here are the Copper City and Alta papers, and a dozen lesser 'lights and signals of progress' in the State. Help yourselves." ”

“ As Curtis ceased speaking the foreman of the jury leaned forward and, with a deprecatory look at Penfield, asked:
“Was the hall lighted, Doctor Curtis?”
Curtis’ hesitation was hardly perceptible. “I could not see,” he said simply, and the foreman, intent on the scene, flushed; he had forgotten, in his interest, that he was addressing a blind man. “But on feeling my way along the hall to the bedroom, my hand came in contact with an electric fixture. As the bulb was hot I concluded the corridor was lighted.” ”

“ The oration on ‘The Duty of the American Scholar to Politics and the Times,’ delivered when Curtis was thirty-two years of age, is an extraordinary performance. Few addresses hold one in the reading like this. What it must have been in the delivery we can but faintly imagine. It is another splendid proof that literature and oratory may occupy a common ground, neither usurping the other’s place. With the amplest use of oratorical arts the speaker makes rhetoric subordinate to thought. It shows fully (does this oration) one marked virtue of Curtis’s public discourse, its perfect urbanity. ”

“ Insignificant as was this incident in itself, it was the origin of very grave consequences. Curtis was one of those men who are unforgiving to anything like ridicule; and the sense of injury, added to the poignant suffering of a ruined estate and a fallen condition, by no means improved a temper irascible beyond everything. He entered the house swearing every species of vengeance on the innocent cause of his misadventure. ”

“ There is a companionable element in misfortune, however, stronger than what we discover in prosperity; and partly from this cause, and partly from a sense of compassion, MacNaghten followed him quickly, and hailed him by his name.
“Joe Curtis!” repeated the old man, stopping suddenly. “I submit, my Lord, that this is an insufficient designation. I am Joseph Curtis, Esquire, of Meagh-valley House.” ”

“ No man of his time was ever the subject of so much ridicule, of which Peter Pindar's ‘The Fat Knight and the Petition’ is a good example. The Rev. Charles Curtis, his brother, rector of Solihull and of St. Martin's, Birmingham, who died only six days before him, was also a well-known man in his day, and is chiefly famous for his controversy with Dr. Parr, who had attacked and, as he asserted, insulted Sir William. There is a well-known portrait of Curtis by Sir Thomas Lawrence, which was engraved by W. Sharpe. ”

“ At this moment Mr. Curtis entered the room in company with two ladies. Jemima immediately gave him an incorrect account of the cause of my tears, and he refused to hear my explanation, and expressed his impatience in seeing a governess giving herself such airs about a valueless piece of music. His companions nodded an assent to his remarks, and sympathized with Miss Curtis for the annoyance, they were sure, I occasioned her. ”

“ Rudds conduct that he silenced him by saying ‘I wish Curtis were here to speak for himself’ and it was curious enough that I entered the room before the party broke up, I am the last Man in the World to embarass science by petty factions or to dictate to my friends but as men behave so will I speak of them. ”

“ When we think of the men whom we would point out as models to our youth at home, or whom we would like to have looked upon as representative American gentlemen by the world abroad, George William Curtis will surely be selected as one of the first. ”

“ Curtis is an invalid and a great sufferer, being unable to visit among the homes, it seemed at first an unfortunate topic for her consideration; [174] but when we listened to her paper and saw how she had been directed of the Lord to reach the mothers and help them by bringing them to her own home, and there giving them the perfect illustration of what a true Christian home may be, and of counseling and instructing them, we were led to say, “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. Man deviseth his ways, but God directeth his steps.” ”

“ Curtin shook his head. "You have powers that are not mine."
"If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have, as it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great temple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all vigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you also, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter where you move you take possession of yourself—"
[Pg 86]
He rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon Curtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. ”

“ But do not judge these men wholly by those acts. I am by no means stingy of commendation, and would rather praise than blame. The two elder Messrs. Curtis have many estimable and honorable qualities,—in private relations it is said—and I believe it—they are uncommonly tender and delicate and refined in the elegant courtesies of common life. I know that they have often been open-handed and generous in many a charity. In the ordinary intercourse of society, where no great moral principle is concerned, they appear as decorous and worthy men. ”

“ She wrote also to Joe Curtis, but in her letter she did not refer to her meeting with his mother and lame brother or to her visit to his home. Afterwards she went out and sat in the hammock. Swinging gently, she gazed with serious eyes at the landscape; but her thoughts gave but little heed to the beautiful scenery which lay before her. ”

“ You will therefore recognise that all your plotting, so well matured and so carefully planned that your demoniacal [Pg 317] ingenuity almost surpasses the comprehension of man, has been in vain. By the neglect of one small detail, namely to sufficiently disguise your identity when dealing with Curtis, I have been enabled, after a long and tedious search, to fix you as the man who on several occasions was made up to present in the night the appearance of the dead Courtenay. ”