Greg

“ Why, that only shows that you don't know what Greg is. Lord, the man seems to have an absolute instinct for bones; he'll take a chance when not one of the rest will! No, you mark my words, Alice, Greg has let Magsie Clay make a fool of him; he's been overtired and nervous--we've all seen that--but he's as innocent of any actual harm in this thing as our Gogo!"
"Innocent!" sniffed Alice. "He'll break Rachael's heart with his innocence, and then he'll marry Magsie Clay--you'll see!" ”

“ To be so near, to have that hideous war of wind and water raging over the world, and not to come somehow--to swim or row or ride to her, to bring her delicious companionship and reassurance out of the storm! Why, had she known that Greg was so near no elements that ever raged could have held her--
But of course, she was reminding herself presently, Greg had never been to Quaker Bridge, he had no reason to suppose her in actual danger; indeed, perhaps the danger had always been more imagined than real. ”

“ Jerry and I thought of the pirate cave at the same moment, but we didn't see how we could possibly carry Greg to it in the dark. We thought that as it was n't his legs that were hurt he might be able to walk there, if we helped him. He was very brave and quite willing to try, though a little dazed about why we wanted him to, but when we stood him carefully on his feet, he said, "Chris—no—" and we had to lay him down again. By this time it was really raining, and I put the skirt over Greg, instead of under him, while we tried to think.
"It might work if we made a chair," Jerry suggested. ”

“ We do wrong to narrow our interests to those only of our contemporaries who figure with great lustre and éclat in the world. Some of the quiet characters away from the centre of great affairs are as well worth our attention as those who in high-heeled cothurnus stalk across the foreground.
Mr. Greg, it is not necessary to say, has a serious reputation in the literature of our time. In politics he was one of the best literary representatives of the fastidious or pedantocratic school of government. ”

“ Even the master whom he worshipped smiled at him.
"What have they been doing to you?" he said. "Why don't you take off those foolish things and go and enjoy yourself?"
But Greg shook his head—he was incapable of speech—and walked on his miserable course. Even his best friend told him privately, kindly, but firmly, that he was "an awful ass and a goat, you know." While his best enemy made life a thing to be loathed all the long hours of the afternoon.
And in the grand-stand, mortification, quick and complete, had come upon the promoter of his unhappiness. ”

“ I remember that he told me once how surprised and disappointed he was by the indifference of public men, even the giants like Peel, to anything like general views and abstract principles of politics or society. They listened to such views with reasonable interest, but only as matters lying quite apart from their own business in the world. The statesman who pleased him best, and with whom he found most common ground, was Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
Like most men of letters who happen to be blessed or cursed with a prudential conscience, Mr. Greg was haunted by the uncertainty of his vocation. ”

“ Just then the hemlock branches thrashed apart and Greg crawled under with pine-needles in his hair. He sat back on his heels and blinked at us, because he'd just come out of the sunlight.
"I thought somebody ought to write to the Bottle Man," he said, "so I did."
"Well, I never!" Jerry said.
Greg fished up a bent piece of paper from inside his jumper and handed it to me.
"You can see it," he said, "but not Jerry."
"As if I'd want to!" Jerry said; but he did, fearfully.
Greg is the most unexpected person I ever knew. He's always doing things like that, when everyone else has given up. ”

“ Greg said.
"We've all been looking for the same thing ... a Big Strike, a bonanza lode. Tawney's men have raked over every one of your Dad's claims, and they haven't turned up a thing." Johnny looked at Greg. "Makes you wonder a little, doesn't it? Your Dad was smart, but he was no magician. And how does a man go about hiding something like a vein of ore?" ”

“ GREG, ROBERT HYDE (1795–1875) , economist and antiquary, born in King Street, Manchester, on 24 Sept. 1795, was son of Samuel Greg, a millowner near Wilmslow, Cheshire, and brother of William Rathbone Greg [q. v.] and Samuel Greg [q. v.] His mother was Hannah, daughter and coheiress of Adam Lightbody of Liverpool, and a descendant of Philip Henry, the nonconformist [q. v.] He was educated at Edinburgh University, and before joining his father in business as a cotton manufacturer, travelled in Spain, Italy, and the East. ”

“ Capulet.
Sampson. Gregory: A my word wee'l not carry coales
Greg. No, for then we should be Colliars
Samp. I mean, if we be in choller, wee'l draw
Greg. I, While you liue, draw your necke out o'th Collar
Samp. I strike quickly, being mou'd
Greg. But thou art not quickly mou'd to strike
Samp. A dog of the house of Mountague, moues me
Greg. To moue, is to stir: and to be valiant, is to stand:
Therefore, if thou art mou'd, thou runst away
Samp. A dogge of that house shall moue me to stand.
I will take the wall of any Man or Maid of Mountagues
Greg. ”

“ Jerry did remember that you ought to cut people’s clothes and not try to take them off in the ordinary way, so he took out his knife and ripped up the sleeve of Greg’s jumper and the shoulder-seam of the white brocaded waistcoat. I don’t see how people can stand being Red Cross nurses in France, for I’m sure I never could be one. Greg’s shoulder was quite awful,—what we could see, for it was almost dark now. ”

“ But that was when he was three, and "Simpson" had been for ages on the top shelf where we keep the toys that we think we'll play with again sometime before we're really grown up. We never have done it yet, but there are certain ones that we could n't possibly give away, not even to the Deservingest poor children.
So when Greg said that, in a tired, faroff sort of way, it did frighten me, because I had heard of people dying when they were ravingly delirious. Greg was n't raving exactly, but it was almost worse, because his voice was so small and different from his own dear usual one. ”

“ But prehaps there is none. We hope there is some on Wecanicut. But it is hard to know sirtainly. Chris and Jerry are going to do a leter. But I thought I would first. I hope the saviges will be frendly allways.
Your respecfull comrade,
GREGORY HOLFORD.
P.S. None of us are Bones yet.
“Will it do?” Greg asked anxiously, when I folded it up. His eyes grow very dark when he’s anxious, and they were perfectly inky now. You never would have guessed that they were really blue.
“It’ll do splendidly,” I said, for I did think the Castaway man would like Greg’s letter tremendously. ”

“ They represent a reaction from the high hopes of the author’s youth, when wise legislation was assumed to be a remedy for every public ill. Greg was a man of deep moral earnestness of character and was interested in many philanthropic works. ”

“ No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite
my
thumb, sir.
Greg. Do you quarrel, sir?
Abr. Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
Samp. But if you do, sir, am for you. I serve as good a man as
you.
Abr. No better.
Samp. Well, sir.
Enter Benvolio.
Greg. [aside to Sampson] Say 'better.' Here comes one of my
master's kinsmen.
Samp. Yes, better, sir.
Abr. You lie.
Samp. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.
They fight.
Ben. Part, fools! [Beats down their swords.]
Put up your swords. You know not what you do.
Enter Tybalt. ”

“ We crept out from the cave and made off up the shore as fast as possible. Jerry went ahead and jumped up on a rock to reconnoiter. He did look quite piratical, with my black sailor tie bound tight over his head and two buttons of his shirt undone. Greg had his own necktie wrapped around his head, but several locks of hair had escaped from under it. He always manages to have something not quite right about his costumes. He has very nice hair—curly, and quite amberish colored—but it’s not at all like a pirate’s. ”

“ Greg asked.
"We thought you were a very old gentleman," I explained giddily.
"I am," said the Bottle Man. "Ancient."
"But what about your gray hairs?" Jerry demanded, tugging away at the oars.
"If you've more than one gray hair you've gray hairs," said our man. "I have eleven."
He ducked down his nice, dark, rumpled-up head for us to look, but I must say I could n't see more than one little one all buried among the black.
"You're grown up, but you're not old at all," I said. "We've been imagining you as an aged old man with a long white beard." ”

“ I knew everybody would be out to lunch between twelve and one, so I went to the laboratory with the intention of facing Greg there on his return. When I heard him and Mrs. Cordell coming along the corridor, I sort of lost my nerve and hid in a coat closet. ”

“ I was going to explain, but Jerry said, with his mouth full:
"Oh, just something we had," and stuffed it away in the kit-bag. He was quite red. Boys are funny sometimes.
"Now," said our man, "comes the embarkation, and I'm afraid I'll have to hurt you a little, Greg."
He picked Greg up in one swinging swoop, and I wished that Jerry and I had been strong enough to do that last night. Greg had only time for one gasp before he was quite comfortable against our man's shoulder. But he was brave,
"Ye be three Poore Mariners." ”

“ From these broodings the young man was rescued by a year of travel. It was one of the elements in the domestic scheme of education that the university should be followed by a year abroad, and in William Greg's case it had been postponed for a season by the exigences of business and the factory at Bury. He went first through France and Switzerland to Italy. At Florence he steeped himself in Italian, and read Beccaria and Machiavelli; but he had no dæmonic passion (like Macaulay's) for literature. ”

“ In Greg ardent philanthropy and disinterested love of truth were curiously allied to an almost epicurean fastidiousness, which made him unduly distrustful of the popular element in politics. He would have wished to see public affairs controlled by an enlightened oligarchy, and did not perceive that such an oligarchy was incompatible with the principles which he had himself admitted. ”

“ But the first ironmonger was out for the day, and at the second Uncle Spruson rang the bell till he was nearly blue in the face without receiving a reply.
"Try the blackthmith," said Greg.
Poor little Babs! her endurance utterly flown as the cramp and pains increased, was crying at the very top of her voice, and Greg was weeping in the same key out of sheer sympathy.
Poor Uncle Spruson! He was a bachelor of fastidious ways; conventionality was the god he worshipped, and Society at once his pleasure and his dearest pain. And lo! ”

“ It don't promise nothing and won't yield nothing. They bogs have swallowed a long sight more solid money than anybody will ever dig up out of 'em again; and 'twould be well for Greg's peace of mind if he could see it; but he won't. He goes messing about with his bottles and bellows, and gets gas and tar out of the stuff, and makes such a fuss, as though he'd found diamonds; but 'tis all one. Peat's good, but coal's better, and God A'mighty meant it to be. ”

“ Tradition has pronounced Gregory the Great to have been the destroyer of the Palatine library, and to have been especially zealous in burning the writings of Livy, because they described the achievements of the Pagan gods. For these charges, however (which I am sorry to find repeated by so eminent a writer as Dr. Draper) , there is no real evidence, for they are not found in any writer earlier than the twelfth century. (See Bayle, Dict. art. “Greg.”) ”

“ But as it is. . ."
"It must be gotten rid of," cried the sister; "That is the only way, father. You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we have believed for so long, that is truly our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago realized that a communal life among human beings is not possible with such an animal and would have gone away voluntarily. Then we would not have a brother, but we could go on living and honour his memory. ”

“ He was the most hardened man that had ever been in that prison. His temper was so violent and obstinate that no one could manage him. The keeper of the prison was afraid of him, and never liked to go near him. He was such a disagreeable-looking man that the name given to him in the prison was "Ugly Greg." A little rose bush was put on the bracket in Ugly Greg's yard, and the effect produced by it is told in these simple lines, which some one has written about it:
"Ugly Greg was the prisoner's name,
Ugly in face, and in nature the same ”

“ Mingle human weal and woe."
Grote is very friendly, and has propitiated J. S. Mill, who will write for us when we want him. We had quite a brilliant soirée yesterday evening. W. R. Greg, Forster (of Rawdon) , Francis Newman, the Ellises, and Louis Blanc, were the stars of greatest magnitude. I had a pleasant talk with Greg and Forster. Greg was "much pleased to have made my acquaintance." Forster, on the whole, appeared to think that people should be glad to make his acquaintance. Greg is a short man, but his brain is large, the anterior lobe very fine, and a moral region to correspond. ”