John Jones

“ Here is John Jones, a stout stalwart labourer in rags, who has not had one square meal for a month, who has been hunting for work that will enable him to keep body and soul together, and hunting in vain. There he is in his hungry raggedness, asking for work that he may live, and not die of sheer starvation in the midst of the wealthiest city in the world. ”

“ I told my wife and daughter what he had said, and finding that they wished to see the figure, I bade John Jones lead us to it. He led us down an avenue just below the eastern side of the castle; noble oaks and other trees composed it, some of them probably near a hundred feet high; John Jones observing me looking at them with admiration, said:
“They would make fine chests for the dead, sir.”
What an observation! how calculated, amidst the most bounding joy and bliss, to remind man of his doom! ”

“ In a country inn you might hear, “Have you heard that John Jones, Ty Gwyn, is dead? I met William Roberts, the Gas, and he told me. John Jones’ daughter, you know, married the son of Evan Davies, the Bank, that used to live at Tyn-y-mynydd, and they built a house at Cwm-tir-Mynach, which used to belong to Mrs. Captain Roberts, Garth; and William Roberts, the Gas, is her son.”
Then the company identified John Jones.
Once, when I was inspecting a Welsh school, being disturbed by the hum of conversation, I called out to a ringleader, “John Jones, don’t make such a noise.” ”

“ Jones they called him. If there is such a disease as scraptomania then John Jones had it, good and hard. He began at the bottom as helper in the machine shops and industriously fought his way up the ladder until he became a full-fledged locomotive engineer. There is scarcely a flag station on the entire system that has not at some time or another been his battlefield.
The most interesting feature in the history of Jones is the fact that he never sought a fight, or fought for the "fun of it," as most fighting characters do. ”

“ Jones loved France and France loved him, and with him and France we were able to gain our liberty from the British yoke. He loved America because he loved liberty, and he put all his grand titles aside when making his last will and testament to sign himself, "I, John Paul Jones, an American citizen." Such men as Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and LaFayette, were his staunch friends. Kings and Queens delighted to do him favor. Louis XVI knighted him and presented him with a sword of honor. ”

“ In the twinkling of an eye almost, we reached the true socialistic and democratic condition for which man had futilely hoped throughout the ages.
"That is all today, gentlemen. Class is dismissed."
One by one, the faces faded from the Visaphone.
For a moment, the professor stood ruminating.
"A wonderful man, that old socialist, John Jones the first," he said softly to himself, "a farseeing man, a bright man, considering that he lived in such a dark era as the twentieth century. But how nearly his well-contrived scheme went wrong. Suppose that fortieth descendant had been born?" ”

“ And neither world thought the other world's thought, save with a vague unrest.
Up in Johnstown, at the Institute, we were long puzzled at the case of John Jones. For a long time the clay seemed unfit for any sort of moulding. He was loud and boisterous, always laughing and singing, and never able to work consecutively at anything. ”

“ In the early days, before the present scientific registration of human beings was instituted by the National Eugenics Society, man went around under a crude multi-reduplicative system of nomenclature. Under this system there were actually more John Joneses than there are calories in a British Thermal Unit. But there was one John Jones, in particular, living in the twentieth century, to whom I shall refer in my lecture. Not much is known of his personal life except that he was an ardent socialist—a bitter enemy, in fact, of the private ownership of wealth. ”

“ JONES, GEORGE (1786–1869) , painter, born on 6 Jan. 1786, was only son of John Jones (1745–1797) [q. v.] the mezzotint engraver. George Steevens, the Shakespearean commentator, was his godfather. He became a student at the Royal Academy in 1801, and from 1803 to 1811 was an annual exhibitor of portraits, views, and domestic subjects. The Peninsular war, however, attracted him to a military life, and he entered the militia and volunteered for active service. He joined the army of occupation in Paris after Waterloo. ”

“ John Jones of the same place, one of the earliest nonconformist ministers in that part of Wales. He was educated at a school conducted by an elder brother, Samuel, near Richmond, Middlesex. According to Dunton, he was ‘designed for the ministry, but began to teach school, and from that employment turned author and corrector for the press’ (Life and Errors, ed. Nichols, i. 181) . ”

“ JONES, JOHN PIKE (1790–1857) , politician and antiquary, eldest son of John Jones, a tradesman at Chudleigh, Devonshire, was born at Chudleigh in 1790. On 4 July 1809 he was admitted as sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, when his name was entered as John Jones only, and in 1813 he graduated B.A. Next year he took holy orders, and was curate of North Bovey in Devonshire from 1816 until 1831. ”

“ By the combined efforts of crew and prisoners, the fire in both ships was extinguished. Then all bent their efforts to removing the wounded and prisoners from the Richard to the Serapis, together with ammunition and other valuables.
All the rest of that night the heroic old craft kept afloat, with the Stars-and-Stripes—the same flag the Colonial maids of Portsmouth had given Paul Jones upon his departure in the Ranger—flying proudly at her peak. Then, as if waiting for daylight to illuminate her last action before man, she slowly sank just as the sun came up across the waters in the east. ”

“ With simple ceremony but eloquent suggestion the splendid banner, under the impulse of Paul Jones's own hands, went up to the Ranger's peak. As it spread out to the breeze under the star-lit sky, the Scotch captain said, with a deep feeling none could help noticing: "That flag and I are twins. Born the same hour from the same womb of destiny, we cannot be parted in life or in death. So long as we can float we shall float together. If we must sink, we shall go down as one!"
To the courier who had brought the dispatches, Paul Jones now turned. ”

“ With the sailors he was always a favorite. Before the vessel reached American waters he could climb a mast or yardarm with the most nimble of them, and was as fearless as the captain himself when the waves were running high.
At last the green shores of America were sighted one morning by the lookout at the masthead. Near sunset the Friendship dropped anchor in the quiet waters of the Rappahannock River, not far from the plantation where Willie Paul lived with William Jones, the cousin who had adopted him years ago. ”

“ John Jones, of Holywell, in Flintshire, was one of the most renowned ministers in the Principality; he was a man of extraordinary zeal and fervour as a preacher, and his life and character were, in unblemished reputation, equal to his gifts and zeal. He used to recite, with peculiar solemnity, a story of a mysterious horseman, by whom he believed he had been delivered from a position of extreme danger, when he was travelling, alone, from Bala, in Merionethshire, to Machynlleth, p. ”

“ They landed at Newburyport, settling, a little later, at Amesbury. This immigrant ancestor met a tragic death at the hands of the Indians. John Jones, who came to St. John, was the youngest of his father’s children. He learned the ship-carpenter’s trade, and came to St. John with William Hazen in 1775 as a master workman to build ships for the firm of Hazen, Simonds and White. The first vessel he was employed in constructing was on the stocks and partly planked when she was burned by a party of marauders from Machias. Mr. ”

“ When quite a young man, John's father, a Lowlander, had also found employment on the Craik estate as gardener, and later by reason of his faithful work and popularity in the community, he had been made game-warden. The young gardener and the young lady's-maid soon fell in love with each other, were married, and in due course of time were blessed with five children, of whom Johnnie was the youngest. He was born in the year 1747. William, the brother, had gone to live with a cousin, William Jones, a childless planter in Virginia, before John was born. Willie had never been back since that day. ”

“ JONES, RHYS (1713–1801) , Welsh poet and compiler, born in 1713, son and heir of John Jones of Blaenau, Llanfachraeth, Merionethshire, was educated at Dolgelley and Shrewsbury, and on leaving school settled as a country gentleman on his own freehold for the remainder of his long life. He wrote poetry, and was described as the greatest living poet in 1770. ”

“ Among the things that he knew, and therefore never cared to speak or speculate about, one was that he plainly saw himself as the inheritor of a long series of past lives, the net result of painful evolution, always as himself, of course, but in numerous different bodies each determined by the behaviour of the preceding one. The present John Jones was the last result to date of all the previous thinking, feeling, and doing of John Jones in earlier bodies and in other centuries. ”

“ To his previous acquaintance with the Duc and Duchesse De Chartres there is no doubt that Paul Jones owed his introduction at this time into French society. The Duchesse herself had been, before her marriage, the richest heiress in France. While her husband was a spendthrift, and a man of lax morals generally, she was highly respected in all communities. This noble family lived in a charming chateau, with even more charming gardens, on the outskirts of Paris, and as soon as they heard of the arrival of the already famous Scotch captain they sent him an urgent invitation to call. ”

“ The modern civilization of the West, with its humanizing laws, its exaltation of the individual, its religious freedom, its new and broadening education and culture, its equal rights to every man, its many institutions through every one of which there breathes the Anglo-Saxon's blessed love of liberty, the home with its sanctified affection and its glorified womanhood, philanthropy which carries with an even hand its sweet services to the high and the low—to Pariah as to the Brahman,—all these institutions and influences are at work like a mighty leaven in the mind and heart of India. ”

“ A few nights since his lordship, in a motion touching prison discipline, stated that “a man had been confined for ten weeks, having been fined a shilling, and fourteen shillings costs, which he did not pay, because he was absent one Sunday from church!”
Who can doubt, that from the moment John Jones— (the reader may christen the offender as he pleases) —was discharged, he became a most pious, church-going Christian? He had been ten Sundays in prison, be it remembered; and had therefore heard at least ten sermons. He crossed the prison threshold a new-made man ”

“ By this exploit Jones became a great hero in the eyes of the French, just beginning a war with Great Britain. With the rank of commodore he was now put at the head of a squadron of five ships. His flagship, the “Duras,” a re-fitted East Indiaman, was re-named by him the “Bonhomme Richard,” as a compliment to Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard’s Almanac was then popular in France. On the 14th of August the five ships sailed from L’Orient, accompanied by two French privateers. ”

“ He was not a quarrelsome man; but he was the easiest person in the world for a quarrelsome man to pick a quarrel with. Good men all liked him; sneaks and tyrants hated him bitterly."
We may add that all records go to show that Paul Jones was as much a father to his crew as he was a commander. He interested the sailors in the smallest details of their work, gave them lessons in rope-splicing, or reproved a young chap for his "lubberly walk" with a personal demonstration of the correct swagger to be kept in mind by Jack afloat. ”

“ Reader, when you die, it will be, we trust, in the Sabbath calm of your hushed chamber; but the poor sailor dies at sea, between the narrow decks of his rolling home. The last accents that reach your ear will be those of love and affection, such as alone flow from a mother’s heart and a sister dear; the last sounds that reach the dying sailor’s ear are the hoarse murmur of that wave which seems impatient to grasp its victim. You will be buried beneath the green tree, where love and grief may go to strew their flowers and cherish your virtues ”

“ In 1774, Paul Jones, then twenty-seven years of age, returning from Edmonton, stopped over in Norfolk to visit some friends. Several British ships lay at anchor in the harbor. The Colonists forgot their grievances under the impulse of their natural hospitality. Wishing to show kindness to the king's sailors rather than loyalty to his empire, the Americans entertained the officers at an elaborate ball. ”

“ John's rise in the merchant service was rapid. When he was sixteen, a sturdy youth with the nimbleness of a cat and almost the strength of a man, Mr. Younger retired from business, and as a reward to the capability and faithfulness of his charge, the ship-owner returned him the indentures which made him his own master. In addition to this he presented him to the captain of the King George of Whitehaven, a slaver, with recommendation that the lad be given an appointment as first-mate. ”

“ Isn't it curious, John, to think what different ideas of right and wrong prevail amongst the peoples of the world? Here, you say, there are some tribes in Africa which eat their own relations. Well, I daresay it is thought quite a right and proper thing to do—out there—just as we in England think the old folk ought to be cherished and taken care of, and kept alive as long as possible. Only fancy how funny it would sound to us to be told that Mr. Jones showed very bad feeling because he wouldn't join his brother and sister in eating up old Aunt Brown! ”