Dowie

“ One of the chief difficulties Dowie often found she was called upon to brace herself to bear was that in these days she looked so pathetically like a child. Her small heart-shaped face had always been rather like a baby's, but in these months of her tragedy, her youngness at times seemed almost cruel. If she had been ten years old she could scarcely have presented herself to the mature vision as a more touching thing. It seemed incredible to Dowie that she should have so much of life and suffering behind and before her and yet look like that. ”

“ Dowie answered. "If she would. But it seems as if her mind has stopped thinking about things that are to come. You see it in her face. She can only remember. The days are nothing but dreams to her."
Dowie had written weekly letters to Lord Coombe in accordance with his request. She wrote a good clear hand and her method was as clear as her calligraphy. He invariably gathered from her what he most desired to know and learned that her courageous good sense was plainly to be counted upon. ”

“ The girl leaned forward and her own light breath came a shade more quickly, and the faint colour on her cheek flickered into a sweeter warm tone.
"Are they very soft, Dowie?" she asked—and the asking was actually a wistful thing. "When you hold them do they feel very light—and soft—and warm? When you kiss them isn't it something like kissing a little flower?"
"That's what it is," said Dowie firmly as one who knows. "A baby that's loved and taken care of is just nothing but fine soft lawns and white downiness with the scent of fresh violets under leaves in the rain." ”

“ Robin went to Dowie’s room the next evening and stood a moment in silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious and even pale.
“Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,” she said. “She wishes me to be present. I—I don’t know what to do.”
“What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock and go downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people will. Her grace wants you to see someone your own age,” was Dowie’s answer.
“But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living as a companion. ”

“ Thank you, Dowie dear. I—must let people take care of me. I know that. I am like Henrietta."
And that was all.
"She's very much changed, your grace," Dowie said breathlessly when she went to the Duchess afterwards. There had been no explanation or going into detail but she knew that she might allow herself to be breathless when she stood face to face with her grace. "Does she cough? Has she night sweats? Has she any appetite?"
"She does not cough yet," the Duchess answered, but her grave eyes were as troubled as Dowie's own. "Doctor Redcliff will tell you everything. He will see you alone. ”

“ And she had stood the test—that real test of earthly egg and buttered toast. Dowie was a sensible and experienced creature and had been prepared before the doctor's suggestion to lose no advantage. If the child began to sleep and eat her food, and the fits of crying could be controlled, why should she not be allowed to believe what supported her? When her baby came she'd forget [Pg 237] less natural things. Dowie knew how her eyes would look as she bent over it—how they would melt and glow and brood and how her childish mouth would quiver with wonder and love. ”

“ But after the sewing began there grew up within her a sort of courage. A girl whose material embodiment has melted away until she has worn the aspect of a wraith is not restored to normal bloom in a week. But what Dowie seemed to see was the lamp of life relighted and the first flickering flame strengthening to a glow. The hands which fitted together on the table in the Tower room delicate puzzles in bits of lawn and paper, did not in these days tremble with weakness. Instead of the lost look there had returned to the young doe's eyes the pretty trusting smile. ”

“ I shall always be thinking."
"That's right, my dear," Dowie answered her with sane kindliness.
"I will do everything you tell me, Dowie. I will not cry any more and I will eat what you ask me to eat. I will sleep as much as I can and I will walk every day. Then I shall get strong."
"That's the way to look at things. It's a brave way," Dowie answered. "What we want most is strength and good spirits, my dear."
"That was one of the things Donal said," Robin went on quite naturally and simply. "He told me I need not be ill. He said a rose was not ill when a new bud was blooming on it. ”

“ James the housekeeper in her simplest communication with Dowie quite touched that respectable person’s heart.
“She’s a young lady,” Mrs. James remarked to Dowie. “And a credit to you and her governess, Mrs. Dowson. Young ladies have gone almost out of fashion.”
“Mademoiselle Vallé had spent her governessing days among the highest. My own places were always with gentle-people. Nothing ever came near her that could spoil her manners. A good heart she was born with,” was the civil reply of Dowie. ”

“ He came to see Henrietta and he had the good sense to treat Dowie as if she were her mother. He explained himself and his circumstances to her and his previous friendship for her nephew. He asked Dowie if she objected to his coming to see her niece and bringing toys to the children.
"I'm fond of young ones. I wanted 'em myself. I never had any," he said bluntly. "There's plenty of room in my house. It's a cheerful place with good solid furniture in it from top to bottom. There's one room we used to call 'the Nursery' sometimes just for a joke—not often. ”

“ But I have an old mother who still lives, thank God;236 and as long as a woman has a mother she can never grow old or feel lonely.”
Another remarkable figure in America, when I was over there in 1904, was Dowie the prophet, or as some on this side of the Atlantic more correctly termed him—the “Profit”; perhaps the biggest humbug that even his own vast country of adoption has produced.
Of course I went to see Dowie and Zion City; everybody did. The place lay within an hour’s railway journey of Chicago. ”

“ Knowing his gross life, the horrible language he used, knowing also that he was hounded out of England for his vituperation against King Edward—his King, for Dowie was born in Edinburgh and had lived only sixteen years in the States—I was surprised to find such a charming, kindly old gentleman. A man nearly seventy years of age, short and stout like Ibsen, with a large strong head and a grey beard ”

“ He was not on her plane, but, as he heard her, he for the time believed in its existence and felt a remote nostalgia.
"Dowie is very brave and tries not to be frightened," she went on; "but she is really afraid that something may happen to my mind. She thinks it is only a queer dream which may turn out unhealthy. ”

“ As she walked up yon high, high hill, And down the glen so narrow, Twas there she found her true love John, Lying cold and dead on Yarrow. She washed his face, she combed his hair, As she had done before o, And she kissed the blood from off his wounds, On the dowie dens of Yarrow. Her hair it being three quarters long, The colour it was yellow, She wrapped it round his middle so small, And carried him home to Yarrow. "O daughter dear, dry up your tears, And weep no more for sorrow. I'll wed you to a better man Than the ploughboy lad of Yarrow." ”

“ As he gaed up the Tennies bank, I wot he gaed wi' sorrow, Till, down in a den, he spied nine arm'd men, On the dowie houms of Yarrow. "Oh, come ye here to part your land, The bonnie Forest thorough? Or come ye here to wield your brand, On the dowie houms of Yarrow?" "I come not here to part my land, And neither to beg nor borrow; I come to wield my noble brand, On the bonnie banks of Yarrow. "If I see all, ye're nine to ane; An that's an unequal marrow: Yet will I fight, while lasts my brand, On the bonnie banks of Yarrow." Four has he hurt, and five has slain, On the bloody braes of Yarrow ”

“ Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name, that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. ”

“ Dowie bustled about with inward trembling. Whatsoever strange thing had happened perhaps it had awakened the stunned instinct in the girl—perhaps some change had begun to take place and she would eat the bit of food. That would be sane and healthy enough in any case. The test would be the egg and the crisp toast—the real test. Sometimes a patient had a moment of uplift and then it died out too quickly to do good.
[Pg 231]
But when she had been made ready and the tray was brought Robin ate the small breakfast without shrinking from it, and the slight colour did not die away from her cheek. ”

“ The girl's thinness, her sometimes panting breath and the hollow eyes made larger by the black ring of her lashes startled him on first sight of her. He found that the smallness of her appetite presented to Dowie a grave problem.
"I'm trying to coax good milk into her by degrees. She does her best. But she can't eat." When they were alone she said, "I shall keep her windows open and make her rest on her sofa near them. I shall try to get her to walk out with me if her strength will let her. ”

“ There were two large hotels in Chicago which were continually filled to overflowing with pilgrims from all parts who came to seek "divine healing." These left behind them sums of money—often considerable—in token of their gratitude to God; not to the prophet, who would accept nothing.
It is obvious that if none of his cures had been effectual, Dowie, in spite of his power over credulous minds, could not have succeeded. Thaumaturgy must perform its miracles. If it fails to do so, it is a fraud, and its incapacity proves its ruin. But if it accomplishes them, its fame becomes widespread. ”

“ Dowie, of the Chicago "Zion," a place where faith cure fools who have cirrhosis of the liver are allowed to die for a consideration, has written a circular and sent out a million or two of copies. He wants every adult person in the United States to send him 50 cents, so that he can have money to send out more literature with which to catch more fools. The people of Chicago can confer a favor upon themselves and humanity at large by taking Dowie five miles out into Lake Michigan, tying three hundred pounds of scrap iron to his heels and dumping him overboard. ”

“ The winds that sweep the hillsides and bend ‘the birks a’ bowing’ whisper still of the wail of the ‘winsome marrow’, and have an undernote of sadness on the brightest day of summer; while with the fall of the red and yellow leaf the very spirit of ‘pastoral melancholy’ broods and sleeps in the enchanted valley. Always, by Yarrow, the comely youth goes forth only to fall by the sword, fighting against odds in the Dowie Dens, or to be caught and drowned in the treacherous pools of this fateful river; always the woman is left to weep over her lost and lealful lord. ”

“ The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Dowie's whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? ”

“ Dowie was made general overseer; his wife, Jane Dowie, was the only woman overseer; the wives of overseers were usually made elders; no unmarried man could be more than deacon. Zion City, on Lake Michigan, forty-two miles north of Chicago, was projected on 22 Feb. 1899; on 1 Jan. 1900, 6500 acres of land were secured, the title-deeds being held by Dowie as 'proprietor' and 'general overseer.' If Dowie is to be believed, his following had by 29 April 1900 increased from 500 to 50,000 ”

“ Variant 214A Variant 214B Variant 214C Variant 214D Variant 214E Variant 214F Variant 214G Variant 214H Variant 214I Variant 214J Variant 214K Variant 214L Variant 214M Variant 214N Variant 214O Variant 214P Variant 214Q Variant 214R Variant 214S "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow" as sung by Ewan MacColl in the album The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume III (1956) . ”

“ There are passages in which, in the light and heat of battle, or in agony of terror or sorrow, we are made to see something of the minstrel as well as his theme. But by no research are we likely at this late date to recover any clew to the birthplace or to the lineaments of the life and face of the grand old poet who wrote the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens; nor do towns contend for the honour of having produced the sweet singer of Kirkconnel Lea, the blithe minstrel of Glenlogie, or the first of all the bards who made the Dowie Dens of Yarrow vocal with the song of unavailing sorrow. ”

“ DOBY WHIPPED OUT HIS KNIFE AND CUT THE THONGS
[117]
With immense nervous energy, even while they stood staring, he retrieved his horse, which had been stampeded farther into the wood. Then he fixed his rummaged saddle-bags, mounted, and galloped off, singing a hymn so loudly and triumphantly that it echoed in their ears like a battle-call.
"His name is Lorenzo Dow. He is not afraid of man or devil," said the mother, half in praise, half in criticism of this great Methodist preacher. "His manner is strange beyond belief; yet he sways all hearts toward righteousness." ”