John Howard

“ In a note about the name of Howard, the author says: “Poor John Howard’s friends gave him an unfortunate epitaph—one, too, that reflected unkindly upon his wife. It may still be seen in the churchyard.—Here lyeth the body of John Howard, who died Jan. 2, 1800, aged 84 years; fifty years a respectable grocer, and [Pg 23] an honest man. As it is further stated that his wife died in 1749, fifty years before, it would seem that her husband’s honesty dated from the day of her decease. Mrs. Malaprop herself, in her happiest moments, could not have beaten this inscription.” ”

“ PRISONERS AND CAPTIVES
I am afraid you will think this a sad story, and so it is, but things would have been sadder still but for the man I am going to tell you about. His name was John Howard, and if you were to ask, 'Which John Howard?' the answer would be, 'John Howard the Philanthropist,' which means 'a lover of men.'
It is a great title for anyone to win, and no one ever earned it more truly than this son of the rich upholsterer of Smithfield, born in Clapton, then a country village of the parish of Hackney, in 1727. ”

“ I sat alone in John Gordon's apartments and laughed mirthlessly. In spite of the elixir's stimulus, the strain of the previous night, with its loss of sleep and its heartrending actions, was telling on me. My mind was a chaotic whirl wherein the faces of Gordon, Kathulos and Zuleika shifted with numbing swiftness. All the mass of information Gordon had given to me seemed jumbled and incoherent.
Through this state of being, one fact stood out boldly. I must find the latest hiding-place of the Egyptian and get Zuleika out of his hands--if indeed she still lived. ”

“ Hassim has not returned with my ticket——" I hesitated suddenly, remembering the command of silence.
"Yes, I know, I know!" she whispered swiftly, her eyes widening. "And John Gordon has been here! He saw you!"
"Yes!"
She came close to me with a quick lithe movement.
"You are to impersonate some man! Listen, while you are doing this, you must not ever let Gordon see you! He would know you, no matter what your disguise! He is a terrible man!"
"I don't understand," I said, completely bewildered. "How did the Master break me of my hashish-craving? ”

“ John Howard (1726?–1790) [q. v.] the philanthropist was a member of his congregation. He was assisted by his son Joseph, the fifth in a succession of ministers from father to son. He died at Muswell Hill on 25 (not 24) Aug. 1795, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. His works, chiefly sermons, were collected in 1824, 3 vols. 8vo, with ‘Memoir’ by William Jones (a few tracts are not included) ; his hymns are in vol. iii. (the earliest were printed in 1778) , and thirty-eight are in the collection (1787) of John Rippon [q. v.] ; they are not equal in merit to those of his grandfather. ”

“ A revolver knocked at Howard's side. It was there because John Carr had shown him its need.
Howard's impulse was to stay away from Last Ridge for a little longer. He reasoned that Carr would be invited to stay overnight and would naturally accept the invitation. Why should he not? There is always room in camp for one more, and no doubt both Helen and her father would be glad of company to break their monotony and loneliness. But before Howard had had time for more than an impulse there came the second episode of the night to set him thinking upon other matters. ”

“ Henry Howard, earl of Northampton (1540—1614) , was the second son of Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, the poet, and of Lady Frances Vere, daughter of the 15th earl of Oxford, and younger brother of Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk. He was educated first by Foxe the martyrologist, afterwards by John White, bishop of Lincoln, with whom he acquired Romanist opinions, and finally at the charge of Queen Elizabeth at King's College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he obtained his M.A. degree in 1564, subsequently in 1568 being incorporated M.A. at Oxford. ”

“ I was out in the blacksmith shop by the corral beating out some shoes for Cap'n Kidd, when my brother John come sa'ntering in. He'd been away for a few weeks up in the Cougar Paw country, and he'd evidently done well, whatever he'd been doing, because he was in a first class humor with hisself, and plumb spilling over with high spirits and conceit. When he feels prime like that he wants to rawhide everybody he meets, especially me. John thinks he's a wit, but I figger he's just half right. ”

“ Popular feeling ran high against him, and he sought an asylum at Bornhem, where he arrived in September 1674, and resumed his duties as prior. On 27 May 1675 he was created a cardinal-priest by Clement X, mainly owing to the influence of his old friend John Baptist Hacket, now the pope's confessor. Soon afterwards Howard left for Rome. Among the distinguished company who attended him were his uncle William Howard, viscount Stafford [q.v.] , Lord Thomas Howard, his nephew, and John Leyburn, president of the English College of Douay, his secretary and auditor. ”

“ In 1773 the characteristic work of his life may be said to have begun by his acceptance of the office of high sheriff of Bedford. When the assizes were held he did not content himself with sitting out the trials in open court, his inquisitiveness and his benevolence alike impelled him to visit the gaol. Howard found it, like all the prisons of the time, wretchedly defective in its arrangements; but what chiefly shocked him was the circumstance that neither the gaoler nor his subordinates were salaried officers, but were dependent for their livelihood on fees from the prisoners. ”

“ Come down on the beach, back of the Kago Tong warehouses and fight it out where you can't bust nothin' but each others' noses."
"A jolly good idea," put in Wells. "You fellows don't want to make a spectacle of yourselves here, in a respectable district, and have the police on you. If you must fight, why don't you do as Ladeau says?"
Big John folded his mighty arms and glared at me, as he growled: "Fair enough. I ain't the man to do useless damage. I'll be at the beach as quick as I can get there. Get some of your crew, Costigan, so as to have fair play all around. ”

“ As soon as Howard's wounds were healed, so he could sit a horse, he came to my home, at Draper, and got a team to help the Spencer family, with their summer's work. At that period there were no houses, on the road from the Cottonwood to Draper, on the dry creek bench, Howard met General Lyon with a company of U. S. Dragoons. They were enroute to Bear River, with the announced purpose of protecting the Morrisites in their anticipated move to California. When he met the troop he stopped them, and asked if Sergeant Pike was with them. They answered, "No, but what do you want?" ”

“ Stephen K. Howard. Three, William, Charles, and John, died when young men. Oliver now resides in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the place of residence of the other, Darius, is to us unknown. Of the daughters, one was the wife of Mr. Rufus H. Moulton, a master ship-carpenter, who lived for many years in Brooklin, and afterward removed to Massachusetts; the other was the wife of a Mr. Pettingill, in Newburyport. Captain Joshua C. Howard, the second son, married Lydia, the daughter of J 0seph Tyler, Esq., by whom he had two sons, one of whom was drowned when a child. ”

“ But I was watching for that and my right-hand .45 banged jest as his muzzle cleared leather.
The barkeep stuck his head up from behind the bar.
"Heck," he says wild-eyed, "you beat Moose Harrison to the draw, and him with the aidge! I wouldn't of believed it was possible if I hadn't saw it! But his friends will ride yore trail for this!"
"Warn't it self-defence?" I demanded.
"A clear case," says he. "But that won't mean nothin' to them wild and woolly buffalo-skinners. You better git back to Goshen where yuh got friends."
"I got business in War Whoop," I says. "Dang it, my coffee's cold. ”

“ Debtors and felons were huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the legislation of the day. No separation was preserved between different sexes, no criminal discipline was enforced. Every gaol was a chaos of cruelty and the foulest immorality, from which the prisoner could only escape by sheer starvation or through the gaol-fever that festered without ceasing in these haunts of misery. Howard saw everything with his own eyes, he tested every suffering by his own experience. ”

“ He could make more racket about nothing then any Elkins I ever knowed.
I went on and made the shoes and put 'em on Cap'n Kidd, which is a job about like roping and hawg-tying a mountain cyclone, and by the time I got through and went up to the cabin to eat, John seemed to have got over his mad spell. He was laying on his bunk with his foot up on it all bandaged up, and he says: "Breckinridge, they ain't no use in grown men holdin' a grudge. ”

“ I says. "I'll probably stay here all fall."
"Oh!" says he dejectedly, and went off looking like somebody had kicked him in the pants. I wondered why he should git so down-in-the-mouth jest because I warn't goin' home. But them tenderfoots ain't got no sense and they ain't no use wasting time trying to figger out why they does things, because they don't generally know theirselves.
For instance, why should a object like Rudwell Shapley Jr. come to Goshen, I want to know? I ast him once p'int blank and he says it was a primitive urge so see life in the raw, whatever that means. ”

“ I said. "I'll hitch the hoss up myself."
He then drawed a bowie so I clinched with him, and as we was rasseling around he sort of knocked his head agen a swingletree I happen to have in my hand at the time, and collapses with a low gurgle. So I tied him up and rolled him under a oats bin. I also rolled out a buckboard and hitched the best-looking harness hoss I could find to it, but them folks is liars which is going around saying I stole that there outfit. ”

“ In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly-contested social and religious issues, it might perhaps be thought difficult to find a single question having a vital bearing upon national life and well-being on which all persons, no matter of what political party, or of what shade of sociological opinion, would be found to be fully and entirely agreed. Discuss the temperance cause, and you will hear from Mr. John Morley that it is "the greatest moral movement since the movement for the abolition of slavery"; ”

“ In my judgment, there can be no more effectual abandonment of the legal rights of a master over his slave, than by the consent of the master that the slave should enter into a contract of marriage, in a free State, attended by all the civil rights and obligations which belong to that condition. ”

“ Nothing can be more conclusive to show the equality of this with every other right in all the citizens of the United States, and the iniquity and absurdity of the pretension to exclude or to disfranchise a portion of them because they are the owners of slaves, than the fact that the same instrument, which imparts to Congress its very existence and its every function, guaranties to the slaveholder the title to his property, and gives him the right to its reclamation throughout the entire extent of the nation ”

“ In all cases, therefore, in which a nation has the right of judging what her duty requires, no other nation can compel her to act in such or such a particular manner, for any attempt at such compulsion would be an infringement on the liberty of nations. ”

“ Illinois has declared in the most solemn and impressive form that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in that State, and that any slave brought into it, with a view of becoming a resident, shall be emancipated. ”

“ Does the Constitution of the United States act upon him whenever he shall be made free under the laws of a State, and raised there to the rank of a citizen, and immediately clothe him with all the privileges of a citizen in every other State, and in its own courts? ”

“ And if, in the language of the Supreme Court of Missouri, the master, by taking his slave to Illinois, and employing him there as a slave, emancipates him as effectually as by a deed of emancipation, is it possible that such an act is not matter for adjudication in any slave State where the master may take him? Does not the master assent to the law, when he places himself under it in a free State? ”

“ In giving the opinion of the court, Lord Mansfield said:
"The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself, from whence it was created, is erased from the memory; it is of a nature that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." ”

“ And if slavery be limited to the range of the territorial laws, how can the slave be coerced to serve in a State or Territory, not only without the authority of law, but against its express provisions? What gives the master the right to control the will of his slave? The local law, which exists in some form. But where there is no such law, can the master control the will of the slave by force? Where no slavery exists, the presumption, without regard to color, is in favor of freedom. Under such a jurisdiction, may the colored man be levied on as the property of his master by a creditor? ”

“ Thus Vattel, in the preliminary chapter to his Treatise on the Law of Nations, says: "Nations or States are bodies politic; societies of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage, by the joint efforts of their mutual strength. Such a society has her affairs and her interests; she deliberates and takes resolutions in common; thus becoming a moral person, who possesses an understanding and a will peculiar to herself." ”