Gridley

“ Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of any stricken person that there was no hope. ”

“ Somebody told me, when I first came over here, that Gridley, our master-mechanic, was in with him; but Gridley says that is a mistake—that he thinks too much of his reputation to be Flemister's partner."
"Hank Gridley," mused the president; "Hank Gridley and 'his reputation'! It would certainly be a pity if that were to get corroded in any way. There is a man who properly belongs to the Stone Age—what you might call an elemental "scoundrel."
"You surprise me!" exclaimed Lidgerwood. ”

“ Mrs. Blinder is entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley’s room. “Gridley!” exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth repetition of this remark. “Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear physician! General George will help us out.”
It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with her reticule of documents. ”

“ I saw them both board the train at Angels as it was pulling out."
Dawson looked up quickly, and for once the reticence which was his customary shield was dropped.
"You're trusting me, now, Mr. Lidgerwood: who was the man? Gridley?"
"Gridley? No. Why, Dawson, he is the last man I should suspect!"
"All right; if you think so."
"Don't you think so?"
It was the draftsman's turn to hesitate.
"I'm prejudiced," he confessed at length. "I know Gridley; he is a worse man than a good many people think he is—and not so bad as some others believe him to be. ”

“ It was the merest incident, and he would not have remarked it if the door, closing behind Gridley's visitor, had not bisected a violent outburst of profanity, vocalizing itself in the harsh tones of the master-mechanic, as thus: "You —— —— chuckle-headed fool! Haven't you any better sense than to come—" At this point the closing door cut the sentence of objurgation, and Lidgerwood continued his round of inspection, trying vainly to recall the identity of the chance-met man whose face, half hidden under the drooping brim of a worn campaign-hat, was vaguely familiar. ”

“ Gridley was the man who stole the switch-engine and ran it over the old Wire-Silver spur to the mine to sell it to Flemister for his mine power-plant—they've got it boxed up and running there, right now. Gridley is the man who has made all this strike trouble, bossing the job to get you out and to get himself in, so he could cover up his thieveries. Gridley was the man who put up the job with Bart Rufford to kill you, and Judson mistook his voice for Hallock's that time, too. ”

“ That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for Gridley, Fred's boss and your peach of a master-mechanic."
"Why 'peach'? Gridley is a pretty decent sort of a man-driver, isn't he?" said Lidgerwood, doing premeditated and intentional violence to what he had come to call his unjust prejudice against the handsome master-mechanic.
"You won't believe it," said Benson hotly, "but he has actually got the nerve to make love to Dawson's sister! and he a widow-man, old enough to be her father!"
Lidgerwood smiled. It is the privilege of youth to be intolerant of age in its rival. ”

“ Mr. Gridley took off his outside coat and sat down. "He does look warm, doesn't he?" Mr. Penhallow thought. "Wonder what has heated up the old gentleman so. Find out quick enough, for he always goes straight to business."
"Mr. Penhallow," Mr. Gridley began at once, "I have come on a very grave matter, in which you are interested as well as myself, and I wish to lay the whole of it before you as explicitly as I can, so that we may settle this night before I go what is to be done. I am afraid the good standing of your partner, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, is concerned in the matter. ”

“ Gridley, as I early began to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural community? ”

“ Being a man of letters, Byles Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the importance they attached to their little local concerns. ”

“ Gridley had a frosty but kindly age before him, with a score or so of years to run, which it was after all not strange to fancy might be rendered more cheerful by the companionship of a well-conserved and amiably disposed woman,—if any such should happen to fall in his way. ”

“ We've got to stand for something, Mr. Gridley, you and I who know the difference between civilization and savagery."
Gridley's strong teeth came together with a little snap.
"Certainly," he agreed, without a shade of hesitation; adding, "I've never carried a gun and have never had to." Then he changed the subject abruptly, and when the train had swung around the last of the hills and was threading its tortuous way through the great canyon, he proposed a change of base to the rear platform from which Chandler's marvel of engineering skill could be better seen and appreciated. ”

“ Once again Lidgerwood was making tiny squares on his desk blotter.
"I'm thankful that the news of the strike got to Copah in time to bring Gridley over on 203," he said.
Benson's boyish eyes opened to their widest angle.
"Did he say he came in on Two-three?" he asked.
"He did."
"Well, that's odd—devilish odd! I was on that train, and I rambled it from one end to the other—which is a bad habit I have when I'm trying to kill travel-time. Gridley isn't a man to be easily overlooked. Reckon he was riding on the brake-beams? He was dirty enough to make the guess good. ”

“ Bernie Gridley’s father cared nothing about picnics, even though he was a deacon in the church. The Duchess expected to attend merely to chaperone Bernice. But at the last moment the 8:10 train pulled into the Paris station with Gridley relatives. So the Duchess had to consign Bernice-Theresa to the watchful care of a much harassed and overworked Sunday-school teacher who later had a beau herself. Nathan and the little Gridley girl became babes in the wood. They needed no encouragement to make the most of their opportunity. ”

“ Judge Gridley laughed softly to himself and stroked her head.
"When you are a grown-up woman I don't doubt you can make men do almost anything you please, but I don't think it would do any good for me to talk to General Lewis; and now, little Curly-wurly, don't bother your pretty head [136] about politics. Neither party will turn the world upside down. There's a good God above us all, my little girl, that takes care of our country, and he will bring good out of evil. So now don't you worry."
"I'm afraid, Judge Gridley, that Dolly is troubling you," said Mrs. Cushing, coming up. ”

“ V With the colder weather, Upworthy boasted a cleaner bill of health, although the more elderly villagers suffered abominably from rheumatism. Anxious to “spare” Lady Selina, but even more anxious to mitigate conditions which might be improved, Grimshaw tackled Gridley, the power behind the throne exercising a sly, persistent authority which few could measure, least of all the lady of the manor. Gridley had succeeded his father as bailiff of the Chandos domain. Thousands of just such men are to be found in our southern and western counties. ”

“ With the poor patience is a greater virtue than truthfulness; fidelity ranks above chastity; justice counts for nothing in comparison with generosity.
Gridley lived in a comfortable house at the Home Farm, with a wife whom he regarded as a general servant, and several children. After his day’s work, he befuddled himself with beer, but he prided himself upon rising each morning perfectly sober. He was reasonably abstemious in local taverns, and attended church, making the responses in a loud voice, conscious that the approving ear of Lady Selina heard him. ”

“ You're a kind of a grandfather, you know, to all the young folks, and they'd tell you pretty much everything about themselves. I calc'late she isn't at ease in her mind about somethin' or other, and I kind o' think, Mr. Gridley, you could coax it out of her."
"Was there ever anything like it?" said Master Byles Gridley to himself. "I shall have all the young folks in Oxbow Village to take care of at this rate! Susan Posey in trouble, too! Well, well, well, it's easier to get a birch-bark canoe off the shallows than a big ship off the rocks. ”

“ But the Red Butte Western reorganization asks for something more than a good railroad officer."
"I'm listening," said Lidgerwood.
Gridley laughed again.
"What will you do when a conductor or an engineer whom you have called on the carpet curses you out and invites you to go to hell?"
"I shall fire him," was the prompt rejoinder.
"Naturally and properly, but afterward? Four out of five men in this human scrap-heap you've inherited will lay for you with a gun to play even for the discharge. What then?" ”

“ Gridley, Ed Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. ”

“ Mr. Lidgerwood is a gentleman and a scholar."
"Ha!" said the man in the buckboard seat. "I believe I'm catching on, after so long a time. You mean he hasn't the sand."
Gridley neither denied nor affirmed. He had taken out his penknife again and was resharpening the match.
"Hallock is the man to look to," he said. "If we could get him interested ..."
"That's up to you, damn it; I've told you a hundred times that I can't touch him!"
"I know; he doesn't seem to love you very much. The last time I talked to him he mentioned something about shooting you off-hand, but I guess he didn't mean, it. ”

“ Gridley related the moving details of his son’s death and the futility of the campaign at the Dardanelles. The owner of the houses in front kept trying to interject bits of his personal history as carpenter, builder, land speculator, and the like. It was most entertaining.
“I was just saying to your friend here,” said the latter, who had never met me until this moment, “that if you’re in town long enough you must come and take dinner with me. We’re just plain people, but we can give you plenty to eat. ”

“ Gridley, I could arrange it with the other lodgers, and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent gruff—but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is proved."
" Have many people been kind to the children ? " asked Mr. Jamdyce.
" Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder, "but, certainly not so many as would have been, if their father's calling had been different. Mr. ”

“ He will growl, and swear that Gordon stole the chairs. And Mr. Gordon is too angry with Mose Waterman to take the chairs back. So it'll give us fun for a fortnight strolling by in the day time and noticing whether Waterman has his chairs back."
"Wow!" "Whoop!" "And you said, Dick"—reproachfully—"that you couldn't think up anything!" [179]
Half a dozen figures moved swiftly and stealthily. In a twinkling the transfer of porch chairs from Waterman's house to Gordon's had been made. The young mischief-makers passed on, looking for more nonsense. But that joke became almost classic in Gridley. ”

“ She was the orphan remnant of a family drowned in the bay, and was a burthen on her fisher kindred, who were rejoiced thus to dispose of her.
She sobbed the more at sight of the grisly lady, and almost screamed when Grisell smiled and tried to take her by the hand. Ridley fairly drove her upstairs, step by step, and then shut her in with his young lady, when she sank on the floor and hid her face under all her bleached hair.
“Poor little thing,” thought Grisell; “it is like having a fresh-caught sea-gull. She is as forlorn as I am, and more afraid!” ”

“ Upon a general appreciation of the dead man’s worth and virtue there burst the biography of Thomas Gridd, than which anything more sensational, outrageous and unexpected could not well be imagined. After a great parade of the necessity for Truth, of his own high motives in this matter, and of the abundant grief that his task had brought upon him, the unutterable Gridd set out upon his ruffianly way and exhibited before the amazed and incredulous vision of England the spectacle of a great reputation torn to ribbons. ”