Edwin M. Stanton

“ Mr. Edwin M. Stanton had previously been appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court through the exertions of Senator Wade, of Ohio. "The War Secretary" had left the department over which he had energetically presided, and was suffering from heart disease. He deemed himself a neglected man and rapidly sunk into a listless condition, with no action in it, but with occasional spells of energetic sickness. Mr. Wade came on from Ohio about this time, and went to see his friend. Just then there was considerable talk that Associate Justice Grier was about to retire from the Supreme Court. Mr. ”

“ STANTON, EDWIN M'MASTERS (1814-1869) , American statesman, was born at Steubenville, Ohio, on the 19th of December 1814. He attended Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio, from 1831 to 1833, was admitted to the bar in 1836, was prosecuting attorney of Harrison county in 1837-1839, and practised in Cadiz, O., until 1839, when he returned to Steu- benville. ”

“ We are endowed with intelligence to choose carefully our paths and companions; and I cannot help thinking that the majority might choose wisely enough to make life an agreeable journey in the main."
"Look here, Van; I'm no casuist," said Stanton with a shrug; "but I can detect a flaw in your philosophy at once. Suppose one wanted good company and could not get it."
"He had better jog on alone, in that case, than take bad company."
"And heavy jogging it might be too," muttered Stanton, with a frown.
Ida's head dropped low and her face became very pale. ”

“ Our circular distinctly states, etc."
"Sent you a printed slip?" cried the Doctor scoffingly. "The love-letter business must be thriving. Very evidently you are by no means the only importunate subscriber."
"Oh, Thunder!" growled Stanton. The idea seemed to be new to him and not altogether to his taste. Then suddenly his face began to brighten. "No, I'm lying," he said. ”

“ Move a scrap," pleaded Ulyth Stanton plaintively. "We only get fields and woods on our side. I can't see anything at all for your heads. You might move. What selfish pigs you are! Well, I don't care; I'm going to talk." [Pg 14]
"You have been talking already. You've never stopped, in fact," remarked Beth Broadway, proffering a swiftly disappearing packet of pear drops with a generosity born of the knowledge that all sweets would be confiscated on arrival at The Woodlands. ”

“ Stanton said, "it seems incredible that the combined intelligence and organizational ability of the UN Government is incapable of finding anything out about one single alien, no matter how competent he may be. Somehow, somewhere, someone must have gotten a line on the Nipe. He must have a base for his operations, and someone should have found it by this time.
"I may be faster and stronger and more sensitive than any other living human being, but that doesn't mean I have superhuman powers, or that I'm a magician. And I'm quite certain that you, Colonel, don't credit me with such abilities. ”

“ The crescent moon had dropped behind the horizon, like a bracelet in the sea, before they came in sight of the oasis where they were to spend the wedding night; but the sky glittered with encrusting stars that spread a silver background for the tall, dark palms. As the caravan descended into a wide valley between dunes, Max heard Stanton's voice shouting to him. He rode forward to the side of the "Chief," as the explorer was called by his men.
"Like a good chap, gallop ahead with my fellows and see that our tent is set up in the best place," said Stanton in his deep, pleasant voice. ”

“ Stanton said, "that you know the question as well as the answer."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. But there are some things that every man must find out for himself. You were right to do as you did. If you had asked Colonel Mannheim for permission, he would have let you go. He would not have asked you to go to Government City with him. We—"
"That's the whole damned trouble!" Stanton snapped. "I'm the star boarder around here, the indispensable man. So I'm babied and I'm coddled, and when I goof off I'm patted on the back."
"And just how did you goof off?" Yoritomo asked. ”

“ Stanton lowered the paper and stood staring out of the window at the falling snow and the cheery lights and bustling energy of the avenue.
“Poor fellow,” he said, “he wanted so much to help them. And he didn’t accomplish anything, did he?”
Livingstone stared at the older man and laughed shortly.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “He died. Some of us only live.”
THE VAGRANT
His Excellency Sir Charles Greville, K. C. M. G., Governor of the Windless Islands, stood upon the veranda of Government House surveying the new day with critical and searching eyes. ”

“ Stanton, I wasn't fit to be out this morning, especially alone, and I didn't come simply from sheer bravado, as you might think, and for the sake of doing what I'd been told not to do. I–I felt as though I must be out in the air, and in motion. I didn't sleep last night, and I didn't eat any breakfast this morning, which may partly account for this silliness of mine, perhaps. I thought I should feel better out of doors, but it seems that nothing in the world can do me any good. Everything I attempt must always end in disaster, and–oh, Mr. Stanton, I am so very, very unhappy and miserable! ”

“ Treat ma’m’selle decently, and follow Stanton’s lead in everything. He is your employer. He doesn’t love you overmuch, but he’ll not be a hard one. Good-bye.” And gently pulling his coat from her quivering hand, he sauntered from the room, muttering to himself, “Medicine’s bitter, but it’s better for her to take it.”
Going on his way down the staircase he crossed the lower hall and looked into the drawing room. 149Its only occupant was Valentine, who lay stretched out at length on a sofa reading a book which he closed when he saw Camperdown. ”

“ Stanton. I told him my story, and begged him to "help me, to help my poor countrymen."
"I'll give you Alvary!" he exclaimed. "Nothing is too good for your cause!" "Oh," I faltered,—for I was astounded,—"I'm sure Alvary will not condescend to sing with a company of amateurs, to the accompaniment of one piano." "Will not?" said Mr. Stanton; "it is my impression Alvary will do what I order him to do." He continued, however, as Colonel Mapleson had done with Patti, to say that, although this was all true, it would be 434wise for me to request Alvary to sing. ”

“ Stanton was allowing some of his head men to travel with their wives, it being their concern, not his, if the women died and rotted in the desert. It was his concern only to be popular as a leader on this expedition for which it had been hard to get recruits. It was fair that he, too, should have a wife if he wanted one, and the men cared as little what became of the white girl they had not seen as Stanton cared about the fate of their strapping females.
The mad music of the tomtoms and räitas played as Max, with his own hands, set up Sanda's little tent. ”

“ Instead of tracts on hell-fire and an angry God, she read aloud to them from Dickens' most touching stories. In every way, assisted by Mariana Johnson and Georgiana Bruce, she treated them as women, and not as criminals. ↑ Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline H. Dall, Caroline M. Severance, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Thomas W. Higginson, Susan B. Anthony. ↑ Resolved, That while every newspaper in the land carries on its face the record of woman's dishonor, the women who seek to elevate their sex are bound to inquire into its causes and save from its paralysis. ”

“ It was night, and Touggourt miles away. Still the two were talking, and the darkness had closed around them like the curtains of a tent. They had halted not only the little caravan returning from the south, but the great caravan starting for the far southeast. Nothing was of importance to Stanton and Sanda except each other and themselves. Max hated Stanton, yet was fascinated by the thought of him: virile, magnetic, compelling; a man among men; greater than his fellows, as the great stars above, flaming into life, were brighter than their dim brothers. ”

“ They will offer themselves to her man, when we come to the place where the known way ends, if he will promise to lead them straight to Egypt, without wandering across the open desert to seek thy Lost Oasis."
"Her man!" echoed Stanton, the blood suffusing his already bloodshot eyes as in an instant it reddens those of an angry St. Bernard. "What do you mean?"
"Thou knowest without my telling, my Chief. The man whose idol she is. There is but one man—the man who watches over her by day and night, and makes himself her slave."
"You're a fool, Ahmara," Stanton said roughly. ”

“ In that eventuality, and that only, Max intended to interfere. One side of his nature, the violent and uncontrolled side, which every real man has in him, wanted to "smash" Stanton; yearned for an excuse perhaps even to kill him and rid Sanda forever of a brute, no matter what the consequences to himself. But the side of him where common sense had taken refuge wished to keep neutral for Sanda's sake, in order to watch over her and protect her through everything. When he heard Stanton's call he was not far from the tent he had lent Sanda. ”

“ Stanton, and Colonel DeLisle's daughter's a French subject, though she is half British. You may find difficulties."
"Damn difficulties!" exclaimed Stanton, all his savage impatience of opposition breaking out at last. "Don't you say so, Sanda? When a man and woman need each other's companionship in lonely places outside the world, is the world's red tape going to make a barrier between them? My God, no! Sanda, if your church will give you to me, and send us into the desert with its blessing, is it, or is it not, enough for you? If not, you're not the girl I want. You're not my woman." ”

“ The conviction grew within me that if Carson Wildred had not successfully altered his face and each characteristic of his personality, I should at once be able not only to remember, but to prove that my haunting half-recollection was intimately connected with some criminal deed done by him.
"Ah, then! But it is wrong to wish that he should have been guilty of any wickedness. I think, Mr. Stanton, that as I have promised to be his wife we must talk no more of this–you and I. I have always had a horror of disloyalty." ”

“ How could the man let some wretched engagement, with a few French officers, keep him from this poor little girl who adored him? How could Stanton let her go alone to meet her unnatural father (it was thus that Max thought of Colonel DeLisle) when as her one-time guardian he might have taken her to Sidi-bel-Abbés himself, and persuaded his old friend, DeLisle, to be lenient. All that Max had heard against the explorer came back to him, and he was ready to believe Stanton the cruel and selfish egoist that gossip sketched him. Poor Sanda! ”

“ Why not sit down calmly and talk it over?" pleaded Stanton.
"Ah, you were always a polite man, the kind women like; a man born with kid gloves and no soul. Now we take off the gloves; we show you as you are," and Von Barwig shook his finger at the man opposite him.
There were echoes of laughter out in the hallway; Stanton heard them and trembled. He recognised the voices of Mrs. Cruger's nieces. If these gossips, ever found out the truth, he thought, not a family in New York but would be acquainted with the facts in twenty-four hours. ”

“ The priest shall consecrate a tent, or a bit of the desert," Stanton answered with decision, which, she must have realized, would be useless to combat. "He'll do it all right! Marriage ceremonies are performed by Catholic priests in houses, you know, if the man or the woman is ill; deathbed marriages, and—but don't let us talk of such things! I know I can make him do this when I show him how impossible it would be for us to go back to Touggourt. Why, the men I've got together, mostly blacks, would take it for a bad omen if I left the escort stranded here in the desert the first day out! ”

“ Max was greatly surprised and deeply touched by Sanda's care for him at such a time. And he was almost bewildered by the strange answer that had come to his self-questioning. He had felt a passionate reluctance to leave her with Stanton, not only because he himself loved and wanted her, but because her marriage was to be only half a marriage, and because Stanton was what he was. If the man tired of her, if he found her too delicate for the trials she would have to endure, the girl's life in the desert would be terribly hard. ”

“ If Richard Stanton had not been a magnificent man, celebrated for his successes with women, and having the added attraction of fame as an explorer, people might have suggested that the widow's remaining in Cairo to nurse St. ”

“ He did not know or care what happened; though sometimes, in intervals of seeing marvellous mirages of the Lost Oasis, and fighting robbers, or prescribing for sick camels, he appeared vaguely to recognize the face of his nurse; not the professional, but the amateur. "Sanda, Sanda!" he would mutter, or cry out aloud; but as fortunately no one knew that Mrs. Stanton, née Corisande DeLisle, was called "Sanda" by those who loved her, the doctor and the professional nurse supposed he was babbling about the sand of the desert. ”

“ But shouldn't I be more—or less—than a man, if I could let such a stroke of luck pass by me? You see, she wants to go."
"He knows I love you, and have loved you all my life," said Sanda. "I told him in Algiers when I was so miserable, thinking that I should never see you again, and that you didn't care."
"Of course I cared," Stanton contradicted her warmly; yet there was a difference in his tone. To Max's ears, it did not ring true. "Seeing a grown-up Sanda, when I'd always kept in my mind's eye a little girl, bowled me over. ”