George H. Thomas

“ A meeting of a score or so residents, nearly all there were, was held, and three aldermen were selected (not elected) to represent the ward in the city council. They were Mr. Thomas Nixon, a well-known citizen, strong with the church-going community, Mr. Stewart Mulvey, a prominent Orangeman and brewer, and myself, without any particular pedigree. We three attended the first council meeting held after our selection, and got a mighty cool reception. Mayor McMicken, while sympathizing with us, followed legal advice and would not recognize us any more than he could help. ”

“ Those who needed his protection, found in him an ever ready unfaltering friend, and even those who feared him could not deny him their esteem. The voice of criticism never accused him of an unjust distribution of favor or a willful abuse of power. ”

“ No man in the nation gained more genuine affection or inspired more unbounded confidence, for none deserved more. Thus he lives in the hearts of the American people as a model citizen of the Republic. ”

“ Thomas was born of poor parentage in Ireland in 1756, deserted from the British Navy in Madras, and made his way north to Delhi, where he took service under the begum Samru of Sardhana. Supplanted in her favour by a Frenchman, he transferred his allegiance to Appa Rao, a Mahratta chieftain, and subsequently set up an independent kingdom of his own in Hariana with his capital at Hansi. Thomas was a man of great personal strength and daring, and considerable military genius. ”

“ For fifteen years he had walked to and fro over Blackfriars Bridge, leaving his home in Camberwell at eight o'clock and reaching it again at seven. Fate made him a commercial clerk as his father before him; he earned more than enough for his necessities, but seemed to have reached the limit of promotion, for he had no influential friends, and he lacked the capacity to rise by his own efforts. There may have been some calling for which Thomas was exactly suited, but he did not know of it; in the office he proved himself a trustworthy machine, with no opportunity of becoming anything else. ”

“ When I recall Thomas's whole bearing and conduct I cannot for a moment accept the conclusions arrived at by him, whatever may be the present appearance of the facts he goes upon. Facts are like faces—capable of a thousand expressions and meanings. Were you satisfied entirely with Thomas's behavior in the talk you had with him? ”

“ Thomas's condition of mind was such that it was not only unnecessary, but might have done harm. He had now only to be met with the same simplicity which he had himself shown. The help must match the confession.
"Well, we must get you out of this scrape, somehow," he said, heartily.
"I don't see how you can, sir."
"It rests with yourself chiefly. Another can only help. The feet that walked into the mire must turn and walk out of it again. I don't mean to reproach you—only to encourage you to effort."
"What effort?" said Tom. "I have scarcely heart for anything. I have disgraced myself forever. ”

“ He became a prosperous shopkeeper, acquired a small estate, and is entered as ‘gentleman’ in the record of his burial (15 March 1693) . The family name is still preserved in Emblyn's Fields, Stamford.
Thomas, the only son who reached manhood, was sent in his twelfth year (August 1674) to a boarding-school at Walcot, Lincolnshire, kept by an ejected minister of foreign birth, George Boheme, younger brother of Mauritius Bohemus [q. v.] ”

“ There is a vivid sense of style in Mr Thomas’s work, and sometimes a search for beauty in subjects which to the common eye may suggest the ugly. But Mr Thomas must be recognized as an artist of great power and originality and to the last degree conscientious. Sculptural subtleties he loves, and he works in a low key, quiet and unobtrusive, and severe though he is, he is a poet in sentiment with extreme refinement of taste. His reliefs are fine in rhythm, and by their accentuated definition, allied with delicacy, extremely telling. ”

“ The dark river caught the light, and threw it shimmering up on the great black hulls, which shone again in the water below; and the Thames, with all its dirt and all its dead, looked radiant. But Thomas felt nothing of its beauty. If Nature had ever had a right of way in his heart, she was now shut out. ”

“ Thomas was a man of keen intellect and independent outlook, who was wont to talk freely with his children about books and men and movements of the day, and whose conversation was an educative influence of major importance. ”

“ Charles Emerson's beautiful phrase in his epitaph upon Professor Ashmun, "Books were his helpers, never his masters," was most aptly applied to Thomas. If he had any foible which affected at all his usefulness or success in life it was an impatience of authority, whether it were the authority of a great reputation, or of party, or of public sentiment, or of the established and settled opinions of mankind. He went on the Supreme Bench in 1853. Dissenting opinions were rare in the Massachusetts Supreme Court in those days. In this I think the early Judges were extremely wise. ”

“ Thomas was upon his knees by the fire-side, with his plaid over his head. Startled by the weaver's entrance, he raised his head, and his rugged leonine face, red with wrath, glared out of the thicket of his plaid upon the intruder. He did not rise, for that would have been a task requiring time and caution. But he cried aloud in a hoarse voice, with his two hands leaning on the chair, like the paws of some fierce rampant animal:
"Jeames, ye're takin' the pairt o' Sawton upo' ye, drivin' a man frae his prayers!" ”

“ What Thomas would have done or said if he had not had this safety-valve of bodily exertion, I cannot even imagine.
“Thomas,” I said, at length, laying my hand on his shoulder, “you are not going to part company with me, I hope?”
“You drive a man too far, sir. I’ve given in more to you than ever I did to man, sir; and I don’t know that I oughtn’t to be ashamed of it. But you don’t know where to stop. If we lived a thousand years you would be driving a man on to the last. And there’s no good in that, sir. A man must be at peace somewhen.” ”

“ But a smile frae the servan'-lass that opens the door's something till a man that gangs to ony hoose for the first time, ye ken," returned Thomas, who, like many men of rough address, was instantly put upon his good behaviour by the exhibition of like roughness in another. ”

“ She saw more and more clearly than ever that things must not go on between her and Thomas as they were now going on. The very scent of the sea that came in at her bed-room window when she opened it in the morning, protested against it; the wind said it was no longer endurable; and the clear, blue autumn sky said it was a shame for his sake, if not for her own. She must not do evil that good might come; she must not allow Thomas to go on thus for the sake even of keeping a hold of him for his good. ”

“ Any man outside might have seen the blade gloaming, and, not observing distinctly why it had been drawn, might have suspected treachery, and called out "To the rescue", when we should all have been cut down—the lady, child, and all.' Thomas was not only satisfied with the Sarīmant's apology, but was so much delighted with him, that he has ever since been longing to get his portrait ”

“ When the deed is bad, the day makes it worse," said Tom, with a mixture of reproof and "high sentence," which was just pure nonsense.
How much of Thomas's depression was real, and how much was put on—I do not mean outwardly put on without being inwardly assumed—in order that he might flatter himself with being in close sympathy and harmony with Lord Byron, a volume of whose poems was at the time affecting the symmetry of his handsome blue frock-coat, by pulling down one tail more than the other, and bumping against his leg every step he took—I cannot exactly tell. ”

“ At the dinner given to the Electoral College after the election, where Mr. Webster was present, Judge Thomas shocked the meeting by saying: "Some persons have spoken of our candidate as their second choice. I am proud to say that General Taylor was not only my last, but my first choice." So, when Judge Thomas was in Congress, while he was as thoroughly loyal, patriotic, and brave a man as ever lived, he opposed the policies of the Republican Party for carrying on the war and putting down the Rebellion. ”

“ And Tom is as much a gentleman as I have any claim to be.”
Thomas Weir held out his hand.
“Now, sir, I do believe you mean in my shop what you say in your pulpit; and there is ONE Christian in the world at least.—But what will your good lady say? She’s higher-born than you—no offence, sir.”
“Ah, Thomas, you shame me. I am not so good as you think me. ”

“ He had been the promoter and agent in the downfall of another man, and although the fall was a just one, and it was better too for the man to be down than standing on a false pedestal, Thomas could not help feeling the reaction of a fellow-creature's humiliation. ”

“ When Tom and Mary arrived at the pines, I have said they found that the rest of their party had gone.
"Oh, never mind," said Mary, merrily; "let us run down into the hollow, and wait till they come back. I dare say they are not far off. They will never go without us."
Partly from false gallantry, partly from inclination, Thomas agreed. They descended the bank of sand in a quite opposite direction from that taken by Jane and her companions, and wandered along down the heath. By this time the sky was all gray and white. Long masses of vapor were driving overhead with jagged upper edges. ”

“ Thomas was the only apostle who got it.” I asked him what he meant. He answered that he had not merely been able to establish the existence in the sixteenth century of a boy-actor of the name of Willie Hughes, but to prove by the most conclusive evidence that he was the Mr. W. H. of the Sonnets. He would not tell me anything more at the time; but after dinner he solemnly produced the picture I showed you, and told me that he had discovered it by the merest chance nailed to the side of an old chest that he had bought at a farmhouse in Warwickshire. ”

“ The more he feels, the less fit is he, and the less fitting it is, to prolong the expression of his devotion. I believe this is greatly mistaken in all public services that I know anything about, which involve, in their length, an entire departure from good old custom, not good because old, but so good that it ought to have been older, and needs now to be raised from the dead that it may be custom once more. Thomas did not enjoy his dinner less, and did his work far more thoroughly and happily because of this daily worship and doctrine—a word which, I think, is never used by St. ”

“ A few words just here about this "beloved brother Thomas," who was always held in reverence by every member of his family, will not be out of place. As before stated, he was a graduate of Yale College, and rose to eminence at the bar and in the politics of his State. But he was a man of peculiar views on many subjects, and while his intellectual ability was everywhere acknowledged, his judgment was often impugned and his opinions severely criticised. He gained a wide reputation on account of his brilliant addresses, especially those of Peace, Temperance, and Education. ”

“ With him Thomas chiefly consorted when their day's work was over. With a growing hope that by some means he might rise at last into another kind of company, he made the best he could of what he had, knowing well that it was far better than he deserved, and far better than what of late he had been voluntarily choosing. His hope, however, alternated with such fits of misery and despair, that if it had not been for the bodily work he had to do, he thought he would have lost his reason. I believe not a few keep hold of their senses in virtue of doing hard work. ”

“ Thomas said this with some bitterness as he rose to take his leave. He had no right to say so. Men as good as he, with teaching as good as Mr. Fuller's, have yet fallen. He forgot that he had had the schooling of sin and misery to prepare the soil of his heart before Mr. Fuller's words were sown in it. Even Mr. Simon could have done a little for him in that condition, if he had only been capable of showing him a little pure human sympathy. ”

“ Notable among the names of the donors are those of M. Gustave Masson, French Master at Harrow, Miss Thomas’s uncle by marriage with her mother’s sister; and the Rev. William Brock, minister of Heath Street, Hampstead, whose church Miss Thomas had attended during her stay in the district, and from whom she had received much of that discerning, [38] sympathetic kindness which still endears him to all who come within its scope.
Miss Thomas spent the last fortnight with her friends, the Hartlands, at 34, Falkland Road, and on the morning of March 4th, she and Miss Comber left St. ”

“ Stopper's habit of being first at the counting-house, Thomas was anxious about the time, and Mr. Fuller hastened breakfast. That and prayers over, he put twelve pounds into Thomas's hand, which he had been out that morning already to borrow from a friend. Then, with a quaking heart, but determined will, Thomas set out and walked straight to Bagot Street. Finding no one there but the man sweeping out the place, he went a little farther, and there was [Pg 334] the bookseller arranging his stall outside the window. Mr. ”

“ Sir Thomas tells a story of a childe who was a servant in his house, and had by his father been set to attend upon George [O 18] Jaye or Gee otherwise called Clarke, that this George Jaye taught this childe his ungraciouse heresie against the blessed sacrament of the Aulter: and that into his house at Antwerpe the two nunnes were broughte which Jhon Byrt, otherwise called Adrian, stale out of their cloyster. But to these stories Joye, so he wrote his name, in his answer to Sir Thomas published by him next year [O 19] , makes the following reply, which I shall set downe in his owne words. ”