John Howe

“ John Howe." St. John's Square had an odor of the milliner's shop.
The baby slept as quietly as if it were not the heroine of the day; as if all the novels, and poems, and newspaper stories had not been ransacked for fitting appellations; as if its mother had not nudged its father in the ribs for fourteen consecutive nights, to know if "he had thought of any thing."
Mr. John Howe! who had married on purpose to get rid of thinking; who had no more sentiment than a stove funnel; who would not have cared had his baby been named Zerubbabel or Kerenhappuch ”

“ We returned to the city very slowly, of necessity, for the troops nearly filled the road. My dear minister was in the carriage with me, as were several other friends. To beguile the rather tedious drive, we sang from time to time snatches of the army songs so popular at that time, concluding, I think, with
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground;
His soul is marching on."
The soldiers seemed to like this, and answered back, "Good for you!" Mr. Clarke said, "Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for [p. 275] that stirring tune?" ”

“ John Howe felt more difficulties than one; he had not received Episcopal orders, but had been ordained at Winwick, in Lancashire, by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery; on which account, he used to say, that few had so primitive an ordination as himself. After the Act had passed, Dr. Wilkins expressed his surprise that a man of Howe's latitude should have stood out; to which he replied, that he would gladly have remained in the Establishment, but his latitude was the very thing that made him and kept him a Nonconformist. ”

“ America never produced a more daring and benevolent man than Doctor Howe.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic had its birth-throes amid the storms of war. In December, 1861, Mrs. Howe, in company with her husband, Governor and Mrs. John A. Andrew, Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and other friends, made a journey to Washington. They arrived in the night. As their train sped on through the darkness, they saw in vivid contrast the camp fires of the pickets set to guard the line of the railroad. The troops lay encamped around the Capital City, their lines extending to a considerable distance. ”

“ In answer to this speech Howe wrote to Lord John Russell four open letters, which were republished in almost every Canadian newspaper, and which, issued in pamphlet {58} form, were sent to every British newspaper and member of parliament. Never did he reach a higher level. Vigorous, sparkling, full of apt illustration and sound political thought, they grip 'little Johnny Russell's' speech and shake it to tatters. 'By the beard of the prophet!'—to use one of Howe's favourite oaths—here is a big man, a man with a gift of expression and a grip of principle. ”

“ The history of Joseph Howe from that day was a history of the triumph of Liberal principles and of responsible government in Nova Scotia. As a versatile writer, he has had no superior in Canada, for he brought to the political controversies of his time the aid of powerful invective and cutting satire; whilst, on occasions when party strife was hushed, he could exhibit all the evidences of his cultivated intellect and sprightly humour. ”

“ If he should gain a victory and maintain possession of the field, he would lose so many men killed and wounded that he would scarcely have enough left to march to Philadelphia, surrounded as he would be with militia and the broken remains of the Continental army. But if there should be no general battle, and the two armies should lounge away the remainder of the campaign in silent inactivity, gazing at each other, Howe's reputation would be ruined in his own country and in all Europe, and the dread of him would cease in all America. ”

“ Martin Howe was stretched on the grass of a hillside a little above a cross-roads. Beside him squatted a ruddy-faced youth with a smudge of grease on his faintly-hooked nose. A champagne bottle rested against his knees.
"Yes. I've never been happier in my life. It's a coarse boozing sort of a life, but I like it."
They looked over the landscape of greyish rolling hills scarred everywhere by new roads and ranks of wooden shacks. Along the road beneath them crawled like beetles convoy after convoy of motor-trucks. The wind came to them full of a stench of latrines and of the exhaust of motors. ”

“ Many of his descendants were men of great prominence. His son William Howe, Assistant Commissary-General, who died at Halifax, January, 1843, aged fifty-seven. John Howe, Queen's Printer, and Deputy Postmaster-General, who died at the same place the same year, and David Howe, who published a paper at St. Andrew, N. B., Joseph, born December 13, 1804, became Hon. Joseph Howe, Governor of Nova Scotia in May, 1873.
SAMUEL QUINCY. Solicitor-General.
Edmund Quincy, the first of the name in New England, landed at Boston on the 4th of September, 1633. ”

“ Martin Howe glances round and sees advancing down the road ranks and ranks of strange grey men whose mushroom-shaped helmets give an eerie look as of men from the moon in a fairy tale.
"Why, they're Germans," he says to himself; "I'd quite forgotten they existed."
"Ah, they're prisoners." The doctor gets [93] to his feet and glances down the road and then turns to his work again.
The tramp of feet marching in unison on the rough shell-pitted road, and piles and piles of grey men clotted with dried mud, from whom comes the new smell, the sordid, miserable smell of the enemy. ”

“ Happily for mankind, the association of evil men is but transient. Howe, often absent from his party, without assigning reasons, awakened a suspicion: he retreated with a native girl, Mary, but was shortly after followed by soldiers. His companion was taken, and he lost his dogs, his knapsack, and arms: it is said, that he fired at the girl, because she encumbered his flight; but it was asserted by himself, that he only intended to alarm, and not destroy her. She became useful to the government, by discovering the resort of the robbers, and a flock of sheep they had stolen. ”

“ Next day the minister, hearing the sound of the flail, entered the barn to see what progress was being made with the work, when, to his astonishment and anger, he found his beadle "flailing" away with might and main, and a candle burning brightly on each side of the threshing-floor.
"What's this I see? What's the meaning of this?" demanded his master. "Candles burning in broad daylight!"
"Oh, contain yersel', sir—contain yersel'," replied John with provoking coolness. "I'm daein' nae mair [32] than ye bade me, for I'm daein' the job baith by day-licht and by can'le-licht." ”

“ Looking at the choir, I see some forlorn women who seem, from the way in which they open their mouths, to mistake the congregation for a dentist." He did not care for music. At a party devoted to classical performances, he turned to me: "Mrs. Howe, are you going to give us something from the symphony in P?"
He was much of an amateur in art, literature, and life, never appearing to take serious hold of matters either social or political. Wendell Phillips had been his schoolmate, and the two, in company with John Lothrop Motley, had fought many battles with wooden swords in the Appleton garret. ”

“ That very night Tupper wrote to Sir John Macdonald that he thought Howe would join the Dominion Cabinet.
On his return to Nova Scotia, Howe found that the extreme repealers in the local legislature were talking secession and hinting at annexation to the United States. He could countenance neither. The son of the Loyalist was loyal at the last. The whole province was like tinder. A spark would have kindled a fire that would have ruined it, or thrown it back ten or twenty years. Howe trampled the spark under his feet. ”

“ No single event in Sir John Macdonald's career affords a more admirable illustration of his strategic ability, delicate finesse, and subtle power over men than his negotiations with Joseph Howe. Howe's opposition to Confederation was of no ordinary kind. He {80} had long been a conspicuous figure in Nova Scotia, and was passionately devoted to the interests of the province. He was incomparably the greatest natural orator that British North America has ever produced. ”

“ Howe, by the last advices, was manœuvering his fleet and army in such a manner as to give us expectations of an expedition somewhere; but whether to Rhode Island, Halifax, up the North River, or the Delaware, is left to conjecture. I am much in doubt whether he knows his own intentions. A faculty of penetrating into the designs of an [283] enemy is said to be the first quality of a General, but it is impossible to discover the designs of an enemy who has no design at all. An intention that has no existence, a plan that is not laid, cannot be divined. ”

“ In 1782, when Howe again hoisted his flag, Hunter was appointed third lieutenant of the Victory, and was first lieutenant of her at the relief of Gibraltar and the skirmish off Cape Spartel. On 12 Nov. 1782 he was promoted to the command of the Marquis de Seignelay, and on 15 Dec. 1786, Howe being then first lord of the admiralty, was advanced to post rank and appointed captain of the Sirius, under Commodore Arthur Phillip [q. v.] , who was going out as governor of the settlement in New South Wales. ”

“ On the arrival of Admiral John Byron from England with reinforcements, Howe left the station in September. Until the fall of Lord North’s ministry in 1782 he refused to serve, assigning as his reason that he could not trust Lord Sandwich. He considered that he had not been properly supported in America, and was embittered both by the supersession of himself and his brother as peace commissioners, and by attacks made on him by the ministerial writers in the press. ”

“ Robert Howe, * of North Carolina, now promoted to the rank of major general, was in the chief command of the Southern army, and favored the yet cherished design to march into Florida and disperse the Loyalists. In fact, this measure had become a chief desideratum, for the gathering storm on the frontier of that state was pregnant with evil omens for the whole South. The Loyalists were gaining strength on the St. Mary's, St. John's, and at Pensacola, and re-enforcements of British troops were expected at St. Augustine.April, 1778 Howe moved his head-quarters from Charleston to Savannah. ”

“ Here he ordered a general rendezvous of all the troops, and of the galleys, under Commodore Bowen, preparatory to making an assault upon St. Augustine.
On the day of his arrival at Fort Tonyn, Howe was informed that twelve hundred men had marched from St. Augustine for the St. John's, and that two galleys, laden with twenty-four pounders, had been sent to the mouth of that river, to co-operate with the land force in opposing the Americans. He was also informed by a deserter that the whole force of the enemy was about fifteen hundred men fit for duty. ”

“ Success be ever with you.” This letter, which was written on very narrow strips of thin paper, and conveyed in a quill, did not reach Burgoyne till the middle of September, when things wore a very different aspect from that which they wore in the middle of July. Nothing could better illustrate the rash, overconfident spirit in which Howe proceeded to carry out his southern scheme. A few days afterward he put to sea with the fleet of 228 sail, carrying an army of 18,000 men, while 7,000 were left in New York, under Sir Henry Clinton, to garrison the city and act according to circumstances. ”

“ The state and the individual, the influence of Christ and the value of money; in fact all social factors are, in Howe’s mind, viewed as elements in that solid mesh and transparent unity of suffering force—humanity. When he deals with an institution, or a theory of criminal reform, he deals with it as an agent of the invisible. It is to him no more than a device or a symbol.120 Now, when we remember that he was, above all things, a practical man, a man of means to ends, a man of experience and of the counting house, we are prepared to realize the magnitude of his intellect. ”

“ The fleet and army were in peril, and the loyal inhabitants, greatly terrified, demanded that sure protection which Howe had March 1776 so often confidently promised. He called a council of officers on the 7th, when it was resolved to save the army by evacuating the town. This resolution spread great consternation among the Tories in the city, for they dreaded the just indignation of the patriots when they should return. They saw the power on which they had leaned as almost invincible growing weak, and quailing before those whom it had affected to despise. ”

“ America will lose nothing by Howe's gaining this town. No such panic will be spread by it now as was spread by the expectation of it in December. However, if we can get together twenty thousand men by the first of April Mr. Howe will scarcely cross Delaware River this year. New Jersey may yet be his tomb, where he will have a monument very different from his brother's [164] in Westminster Abbey.
I am very uneasy that no attempt is made at Rhode Island. There is but a handful left there, who might be made an easy prey. ”

“ Howe!"
And John wheeled round again, "didn't he upset that old squirrel-eyed Miss Price, by repeating a common-place remark of hers which she made him two [Pg 355] or three years ago, and which he had the brass to say struck him so forcibly at the time that he never forgot it? Didn't she go home in the full belief that she had up to that time been terribly underrated by her folks at home? Certainly;—now do you suppose he does all that for nothing, Mrs. Howe? No—he gets his pay out of you all by an invitation to a good dinner. ”