H. R. Haldeman

“ The morning of the following day was quite well advanced when Haldane awoke from his long oblivion, and, after regaining consciousness, he lay a full hour longer trying to realize his situation, and to think of some plan by which he might best recover his lost position. As he recalled all that had occurred he began to understand the extreme difficulty of his task, and he even queried whether it were possible for him to succeed. If the respectable would not even give him shelter, how could he hope that they would employ and trust him? ”

“ Growther's passion for a wood fire upon the hearth was an indulgence to which Haldane no longer objected. The frugal supper was over, and the two oddly diverse occupants of the quaint old kitchen glowered at the red coals in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. At last Haldane gave a long deep sigh, which drew to him at once Mr. Growther's small twinkling eyes.
"Tough old world, isn't it, for sinners like us?" ”

“ But this time the pioneer will not remain unknown. I have been to the Moon; I have reached out into space—but I followed another's trail.
"Frithjof Haldgren!" he shouted, and extended a hand toward the gentle giant whose face was aflame as he came to Chet's side. "Frithjof Haldgren, I present you to the world. Only one can be the first; and yours is the honor and glory. This medal is yours alone; I place it where it belongs!"
And Frithjof Haldgren, white of face and lips now instead of fiery red, stood silent and trembling while Chet fastened a jewel upon his grimy tattered blouse ”

“ Why don't you let some one saw it that knows how? Tryin' to save a half dollar; when you know it'll give you the rheumatiz, and cost ten in doctor bills! 'Nother thing; it's mean—mean as dirt. You know there's poor devils who need the work, and you're cheatin' 'em out of it. But it's just like yer! A-a-h!" and then the saw began again.
Haldane was inclined to believe that this irascible stranger was as providential as the croaking ravens that fed the prophet, and he promptly sought the gate and entered. An old man looked up in some surprise. ”

“ Did the pathos of his voice, his strongly manifested sympathy, combine with all that had gone before to melt the young man's heart? Or, in answer to the prayer, was there present One whose province it is to give life? Like the wind that mysteriously rises and comes toward one with its viewless, yet distinctly felt power. Haldane was conscious of influences at work in his heart that were as potent as they were incomprehensible. ”

“ But the problem of poor Haldane's future was not clear by any means. It is true a desire to live a noble life had been kindled in his heart, but as yet it was little more than a good impulse, an aspiration. In the fact that his eyes had been turned questioningly and hopefully toward the only One who has ever been able to cope with the mystery of evil, there was rich promise; but just what this divine Friend could do for him he understood as little as did the fishermen of Galilee. They looked for temporal change and glory; he was looking for some vague and marvellous change and exaltation. ”

“ There is a chivalry that inspires a man to spurn with contempt the fortune not fraught with all honor, and gives him the graces of a gentleman through all the glooms and burdens of honest poverty. But in that grander Chivalry native to the soul, which raises the tenderness of our best humanity far above the highest point all enmity can reach, and lets it fall, like God's own dew, upon the other side, none, none more fairly ever won a knighthood, than that poor Mackerel picket-guard on last Thanksgiving Day. ”

“ There he slumbered on that rude lounge, with his head upon his hands and his hands under his head. A man, like you—or me—or any other man. Did you ever notice how you always keep your eyes shut when you are asleep? The lids come down over your orbs, your soul's windows, like night over the sun. ”

“ I honor and respect you for making the attempt upon which you are bent, but I fear that pride rather than wisdom is your counsellor in carrying out your resolution; and both God's word and human experience prove that pride goes but a little way before a fall."
"I have reached a depth," replied Haldane, bitterly, "from whence I cannot fall; and it will be hereafter some consolation to remember that I was not lifted out of the mire, but that I got out. If I cannot climb up again it were better I perished in the gutter of my shame." ”

“ Having cleared the table, Haldane lighted a candle—kerosene lamps were an abomination that Mr. Growther Would not abide—and began reading aloud the "Evening Spy." The old gentleman half listened and half dozed, pricking up his ears at some tale of trouble or crime, and almost snoring through politics and finance. At last he was half startled out of his chair by a loud, wrathful oath from Haldane.
"Look here, young man," he said; "the devil isn't so far off from either of us that you need shout for him."
"True, indeed! he isn't far off, and he has everything his own way in this world. ”

“ HALDANE, ROBERT (1764–1842) , Scottish divine, elder brother of J. A. Haldane (q.v.) , was born in London on the 28th of February 1764. After attending classes in the Dundee grammar school and in the high school and university of Edinburgh in 1780, he joined H.M.S. “Monarch,” of which his uncle Lord Duncan was at that time in command, and in the following year was transferred to the “Foudroyant,” on board of which, during the night engagement with the “Pegase,” he greatly distinguished himself. ”

“ She saw me, and with a cry of joy, cast her white arms about my neck, as on our marriage; they were like chains of searing, glowing iron to me, and I dashed her from me, howling in the delirium of my torments. She marked the wild fire that flashed from my eye, the dark flush that burned upon my cheek, my breast heaving with the struggles of the fiend within, my hair hanging in disordered masses over my throbbing brow, the cowardly trembling of the hand concealed in my bosom; she beheld a fiend incarnate in the form of one who had sworn to love and cherish her forever ”

“ A short time elapsing, before any fresh rap occurred, Haldane went to look at her patient.
“Well, my dear, and how are you getting on? Not asleep, I see. Look at them rabbits! I can make you broth enough now. Get my living this way, look you. And it’s fair too, for I gives ’em good herbs. Fine cures I make by times, I can tell you.”
“I wondered what you gave the last,” said Ermine.
The old woman set her arms akimbo and laughed.
“Eh, I get lots o’ that sort. It’s a good wash they want, both for health and comeliness; and I make ’em take it that way. ”

“ Haldane was silent. His fingers were itching for a stout malacca and for a scoundrel's back upon which to exercise it. He would have given so much to focus the malignant slander that had followed the woman he loved, and had made even him, her adoring lover, begin to doubt her, with a wavering faith of which he was now so deeply ashamed.
Oh, to have some one to punish with sharp physical pain, some craven hound to offer up as a sacrifice to his own remorse! ”

“ At others and most of the time, he uses that ungainly mode of expression, which in itself, is laughable. At any rate, whoever he may be, he is a friend, and the interest which in takes in the safety of Haverland and his family, is as efficient as it is singular."
"Maybe the interest is in Ina," said Haldidge with a sly look.
"I understand you, but you are mistaken. He has assured me as much. No; there seems nothing of that feeling at all in him. He loves her as he would a child, but no more." ”

“ Haldane's pre-eminence consisted only in his lack of respectability; and after the brave visions of the past week, based on his literary toil, this cool, sharp-cut statement of society's opinion quenched about all hope of ever rising by first gaining recognition and employment among those whose position was similar to what his own had been. As he plodded his way back to the miserable little foreign restaurant, his mind began to dwell on this question:
"Is there any place in the world for one who has committed a crime, save a prison?" ”

“ Growther," said Haldane, huskily, "you have found that poor misshapen, dwarfed creature that I fear will never attain the proportions of a true man. Of course you see through Mrs. Arnot's imagery. In befriending me you are caring for one who is weak and puny indeed." ”

“ Arnot the old man's face softened, and he rubbed his hands together as he chuckled, "How Satan must hate that woman!"
"I was in hopes that her words might lead you to be a little juster to yourself," continued Haldane, "and it has seemed to me that you, as well as I, have been in a better mood of late."
"I don't take no stock in myself at all," said Mr. Growther emphatically. "I'm a crooked stick and allers will be—a reg'lar old gnarled knotty stick, with not 'nuff good timber in it to make a penny whistle. ”

“ His 'buddie,' the Italian who fires in the other part of the mine at the same time, told Harry Brown, the nightman, and he told Frank, himself. Why, they say if he'd have moved the least bit it would have fanned the fire downward and he'd have been in a fine mess. Sooner or later all shot-firers meet a tragic end. You want to put your foot down, Rose, and put it down hard—for once in your life—if you can,” she added, half under her breath.
“It isn't altogether Martin's fault,” began Rose, but Nellie cut her off with a short: “Now, don't you tell me a word about that precious brother of mine! ”

“ To the youthful soul, still steeped in those romantic dreams, of which a supper of pig's feet is the best artificial provocative I know, this war is a vast phantasmagoria of almighty giants struggling together in the clouds. ”

“ During the whole of this brief but exciting scene, the heart of Charles de Haldimar beat audibly. A thousand hopes and fears rushed confusedly on his mind, and he was as one bewildered by, and scarcely crediting what he saw. Could Clara,--could his cousin--could his brother--could his friend be on board? He scarcely dared to ask himself these questions; still it was with a fluttering heart, in which hope, however, predominated, that he hastened to execute an order of his captain, that bore immediate reference to his duty as subaltern of the guard. ”

“ Instead, he heard the noises that civilized people make when they make money. Also, whenever he ceased to look upward, in the place of the free sunlight and the azure liberty of God's sky, he beheld the senseless scurrying of thousands of human ants bent on the same golden errand. ”

“ That I may write, in words of thunder born, such deeds as strengthen while they shake the world; that I may write, in lines to trumpets tuned, such acts as make men brothers to the gods; that I may write, in notes to mock the lute, such feats of cunning as lull Fate to sleep; that I may dip th' immortalizing pen in bright Pactolus' ever golden stream, and write, in language sweeter to the ear than Hymet's honey to soft Dion's lips, glories of arms to first make Nature crouch—then leap to something higher than herself! ”

“ Yet I doubt if you could live here for five years with all your big oxygen supply. Now, how could he have done it with his little outfit?
"And what has he eaten? Does this look like a likely place for shootin' rabbits, I ask you? Can a man catch a mess of fish in that empty Lake of Death? Or did Haldgren bring a sandwich with him, it may be?"
Chet Bullard shook his head doubtfully.
"Don't get sarcastic!" he grinned. "You can't think of any wilder questions than I have asked myself.
"He couldn't have lived here, Spud; that's the only answer. It just isn't humanly possible. ”

“ And all this was Haldin, always Haldin--nothing but Haldin--everywhere Haldin: a moral spectre infinitely more effective than any visible apparition of the dead. It was only the room through which that man had blundered on his way from crime to death that his spectre did not seem to be able to haunt. Not, to be exact, that he was ever completely absent from it, but that there he had no sort of power. There it was Razumov who had the upper hand, in a composed sense of his own superiority. ”

“ But as Haldin could not be slightingly dismissed Razumov adopted the tone of hospitality, asking him to sit down and smoke.
“Kirylo Sidorovitch,” said the other, flinging off his cap, “we are not perhaps in exactly the same camp. Your judgment is more philosophical. You are a man of few words, but I haven’t met anybody who dared to doubt the generosity of your sentiments. There is a solidity about your character which cannot exist without courage.”
Razumov felt flattered and began to murmur shyly something about being very glad of his good opinion, when Haldin raised his hand. ”

“ Haldin, reclining on his elbow, did not stir. Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude. “What move is he meditating over so quietly?” he thought. “He must be prevented. I must keep on talking to him.”
He raised his voice.
“You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin—I don’t know what—to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a mind. ”

“ Growther, overcome by the picture of his own wretchedness. "Let's have no more words. Come back every night till you can do better. Open an account with me. Charge what you please for board and lodgin', and pay all back with lawful interest, if it'll make you sleep better." And so it was finally arranged.
Haldane started out into the sun-lighted streets of the city as a man might sally forth in an enemy's country, fearing the danger that lurked on every side, and feeling that his best hope was that he might be unnoted and unknown. ”