Dwight

“ Dwight, being a perfectly respectable woman, had centered all the accumulated forces of her being on the son whom she idealized after the fashion of her type; and as she had corrected his obvious faults when he was a boy, it was quite true that he was kind, amiable, honest, honorable, patriotic, industrious, clean, polite, and moral; if hardly as handsome as Apollo or as brilliant and gifted as she permitted herself to believe. ”

“ Then a slight rustle in the thatch attracted him, and, gazing up at it steadily again, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot! Dwight’s jaw dropped as he detected the head and its bright eyes in the very center of the folds.
“Good Lord, fellows!” he called out, jumping to his feet, “here’s a boa constrictor, a python!—up in our roof!”
The curator jumped up the steps of the veranda in a bound. “Where! Show me him!” he demanded.
“Right up there!” laughed Dwight, quivering with excitement. “And making himself at home just as nice as nice!” ”

“ And if not, what a donkey he had made of himself!
He tried to remember just what had passed, and grew silent and uncomfortable as he made the effort. How was it Dwight never mixed the two? He began to feel that keen, observing eyes were pretty good things to have. He should certainly cultivate his own, in future! As this undercurrent of musings reached definite conclusion, he broke out, boyishly,
"I'll know you apart after this, or know the reason why!"
"And how?" asked Dwight. ”

“ Their resolute, weather-tanned young faces bespoke the hardy outdoorsmen, [3] of the same breed, but younger, as the curator. Dwight was tall and spare, with a keen hatchet face and merry gray-green eyes that twinkled at one when he talked, yet they could grow hard and cold as ice in time of peril. Nicky was stout; habitually good-humored, habitually chuckling over the least joke, and always finding one and making himself the butt of it on every occasion. ”

“ Lawrence? Poor Dwight! It's all my fault. And he was so hungry. Can't we give it to somebody, or—or wring its neck, if it must be? It's too bad!"
"Well, it is a somewhat upsetting episode," he agreed, still shaking inwardly, "but it may serve one good purpose. Dwight will cease his teasing to own one of the pesky things, I imagine. And don't worry over his dinner, Miss Faith. He's eaten enough already to keep him from starvation, I'm sure, and I'll see that he returns to finish after the guests have thinned somewhat. Poor boy! He's had monkey enough for to-day, I'll warrant." ”

“ Dwight Herbert, on the other hand, did not even play her games when he knew perfectly what she meant, but pretended not to understand, made her repeat, made her explain. It was as if Ina had to please him for, say, a living; but as for that dentist, he had to please nobody. In the conversations of Dwight and Ina you saw the historical home forming in clots in the fluid wash of the community.
"He'll fall in love with Di," said Ina.
"And what of that? Little daughter will have many a man fall in love with her, I should say." ”

“ Dwight, President of Yale College. He became pastor of Park-st. church, in Boston, while we attended it in boyhood, and it is our pride to record that we were so fortunate as to secure his friendship at that time, and to retain it, in undiminished warmth and kindness, to the day of his death. Mr. Dwight was a man of qualities unusual in his profession. When he first came to Boston, in perfect health, he was, in personal appearance, the ideal of a high-souled and faultlessly elegant gentleman—with more of manly and refined beauty, indeed, than we remember to have combined in any other man. ”

“ Dwight and the captain join them? Several of the ladies from the transport were to be with them, and now it would be incomplete without Mrs. Dwight. Again the deep, dark, lustrous eyes sought the husband's face, as though she would say in this, as in everything, he must decide. The transport was to proceed at dawn. The Hohenzollern could not be going earlier. How she would shine, this bird of paradise, among those simply-garbed army women who perforce were limited to such toilets as could be evolved from the little steamer trunks. It was Dwight who negatived the project. ”

“ Thomas Dwight, son of Thomas and Mary Collins Warren Dwight, was born in Boston October 13, 1843. As a very young boy he was taken abroad by his parents, making his first voyage in a sailing ship, and spent some years in Paris, where he attended school. ”

“ It would have been a rather grinding experience to any one with less cheerfulness than Mrs. Child. She writes, June 9, 1838, "A month elapsed before I stepped into the woods which were all around me blooming with flowers. I did not go to Mr. Dwight's ordination, nor have I yet been to meeting. He has been to see me however, and though I left my work in the midst and sat down with a dirty gown and hands somewhat grimmed, we were high in the blue in fifteen minutes." Mr. Dwight was Rev. John S. Dwight, Brook Farmer, and editor of Dwight's Journal of Music. ”

“ I shall not last long, though I am resolved not to hasten matters as Dwight did. His grinning skull has just turned toward me, shifted by the groping of one of the efjeh-weeds that are devouring his leather suit. The ghoulish stare of those empty eye-sockets is worse than the staring of those lizard horrors. It lends a hideous meaning to that dead, white-toothed grin.
I shall lie very still in the mud and save all the strength I can. This record—which I hope may reach and warn those who come after me—will soon be done. After I stop writing I shall rest a long while. ”

“ They were coming like the wind, the undergrowth crackling under their hoofs, vines tearing and ripping and carrying away bush growth, and then the jungle floor fairly shook, as if locomotives were thundering down on him.
A swishing and waving in the undergrowth showed him that they would pass him about thirty yards off, between him and the creek. Dwight sternly repressed an impulse to hang back and let them go by. To see clearly to shoot, he would have to run forward and plant himself nearly in their path. ”

“ As it was, more than one mother had had reason to ask why her son wore such a moody brow after returning from a certain quarter of the town, and at one time gossip had not hesitated to declare that Dwight Pollard—the haughty Dwight Pollard—had not been ashamed to be seen entering her door, though every one knew that no one stepped under its wreath of vines except their intentions were as honorable as the beauty, if not the poverty, of its owner demanded. ”

“ Could Dwight and Ina come to her while she was still able to visit? If he was not too busy....
Nobody saw the pity and the terror of that postal card. They stuck it up by the kitchen clock to read over from time to time, and before they left, Dwight lifted the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned the postal card.
And before they left Lulu said: "Dwight—you can't tell how long you'll be gone?"
"Of course not. How should I tell?"
"No. And that letter might come while you're away."
"Conceivably. Letters do come while a man's away!" ”

“ From first to last Dwight has either no æsthetic standards or only the standards of cocksure provincialism. “Longitude from Yale College,” the legend upon the map prefixed to each of his volumes, might be their motto. His opinions upon Elizabethan writers, upon architecture, upon the drama, upon Greek and Roman literature, would be incredible if they did not stare us in the face from cold type. His genuine powers are rendered nugatory by his incompetence in the realms of taste and imagination. He is the complete Puritan, inhospitable to art but thoroughly efficient in dealing with things ”

“ How blind, indeed, we often are to the possibilities in human nature!
At the age of nineteen, Dwight removed to Chicago, secured another position as shoe-salesman, and offered his services to a mission school as a teacher. ”

“ Dwight in this Stamboul romance has invested his scenes with the languorous and mystical spirit of the orientalism in which his characters so naturally move. We are here far away from the O. Henry type of story, with its startling cleverness, crisp humor, and ingenious surprise. We share instead the leisure and luxury of this eastern way of living—felt all the more strongly because of the presence of the French wife whose independent customs and bearing offend the servants of the easy-going Pasha. ”

“ Dwight was a martyr to that great wrong of our country toward all clergymen—to express it by a common saying, "the working a free horse to death"—and we have only to look at the pale faces, the stooping chests, and the slender frames of most of our clerical men, to see how mind, patience, attention, needful leisure and more needful sleep, are cruelly overdrawn upon, by the service expected of them. ”

“ And I'm a good American. French marquis, indeed! Mr. Dwight comes of the best old American stock from New York. He told mother so, I'd spit on any old decadent European title."
"I wish your mother could hear you. So—he's been getting round her has he? Where on earth did he meet her?"
Alexina, with sulky triumph, reported Mr. Dwight's early visit and the favorable impression he had made.
Aileen groaned. "That's just the one thing she would fall for in a rank outsider—superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. ”

“ The curator dropped his microscope and [80] notebook and ran over, followed by Dwight, who had heard his startled exclamation.
“Man, animal, or reptile?” giggled Dwight, looking down at the odd huddle of wallaby, snake, and boy that was Nicky.
“Cut it, and call Sadok and Baderoon! Quick!” snapped the curator, sharply. “Something has happened to him. Nothing is ever trivial in this jungle, Dwight!” He pulled off the wallaby as he spoke, and his eyes fell at once on the red scar on the back of Nicky’s neck. ”

“ He died in 1703, and his business was carried on by his descendants for some time, but with gradually diminishing success. It has been claimed that Dwight made the first porcelain in England, but there is no proof of this, though magnificent specimens of stoneware from his hands are in existence. The British Museum contains a number of the best of Dwight’s pieces, of which the finest is the bust of Prince Rupert. Other specimens are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and they are sufficient to establish Dwight’s fame as a potter of the first rank. ”

“ So at last Dwight said tentatively at lunch:
"What if I brought that Neil Cornish up for supper, one of these nights?"
"Oh, Dwightie, do," said Ina. "If there's a man in town, let's know it."
"What if I brought him up to-night?"
Up went Ina's eyebrows. To-night?
"'Scalloped potatoes and meat loaf and sauce and bread and butter," Lulu contributed.
Cornish came to supper. He was what is known in Warbleton as dapper. This Ina saw as she emerged on the veranda in response to Dwight's informal halloo on his way upstairs. She herself was in white muslin, now much too snug, and a blue ribbon. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. A GAME OF GROMETS. "Who wants to pitch gromets?" cried Dwight. (He pronounced it as if spelled "gruments," as most sea-going men do spell it, we believe, but let us follow the dictionary!) "Mr. Malcolm's offered a prize for the one that lands it square in the bucket the most times, and Uncle Dwight says he'll give a consolation prize to the poor wretch who doesn't hit it once."
"What's gromets?" asked young Donelson, springing up. ”

“ Dwight shunned, she said, the sight of almost any face but the sweet and sympathetic one beside her. They had turned southward, after rounding Castle Butte, a bold, jagged upheaval among the nearest foothills, and were winding slowly down this narrow and crooked ravine toward the broad Minneconjou bottom, when, as the ponies reached a fairly level bit of road, and were swiftly turning a point of bluff, they suddenly and violently shied to the right, almost upsetting the dainty vehicle, and nearly pitching its helpless freight headlong into the road. ”

“ Then, turning on his heel, he almost knocked against Dwight Ransom, who had come slowly up behind him. “You had no business to drag me off for foolishness of this sort,” he said, in vexed tones. “Here are thousands of men waiting their turn who really need help, and I’ve been working twenty hours a day for a week, and couldn’t keep up with the work if every day had two hundred hours. It’s ridiculous!”
Dwight shrugged his unhurt shoulder. “I didn’t ask you for myself,” he replied. ”

“ Nature did not grow bushes in such dense shade! He was about to fire into it, when a long black arm struck out from behind the tree trunk and there was a flash of bright steel, while the bush writhed in convulsions and then lay still.
Baderoon! In spite of his religious taboo against steel, he had broken it for them. Dwight could appreciate that, and he began to have immense confidence in their two wild allies. In the jungle, where he and the curator and Nicky were helpless, these two were masters. They could beat the pygmies at their own game. ”

“ A rattle of boyish feet, and Dwight was among them.
"Most there, aren't we?" he cried with boyish eagerness. Then, growing sober, "But what's the reason nice things always have a bad side, too? It's just horrid to have to leave you all! Why, I felt like crying even to say good-by to Quint, Huri, and Tegeloo."
"But you're not to start the good-byes up here yet," put in Carnegie, hurriedly. "We shall not really separate for a day or two, and there's no use in prolonging the agony." ”