John Norton

“ Gordon, at his desk, was trying to add a long column of figures, while every now and then something fell upon the pages of the ledger before him that raised a round blister or blurred the ink.
That day marked the beginning of the change with John Norton. He felt that this new position of his was held at the expense of manhood and self-respect. This left its mark on his character. Alertness and energy seemed to leave him as the ambition faded out of his life. In his despair he became morbid. His was the uncertainty of a man who feels he has failed without knowing how or where. ”

“ John Norton! John Norton! Hillo!" The voice came sharp and clear, cutting keenly through the frosty air and the cabin walls. "John Norton!"
"Wild Bill!" exclaimed the Trapper. "I sartinly hope the vagabond hasn't been a-drinkin'. His voice sounds as ef he was sober; but the chances be ag'in the signs, fur, ef he isn't drunk, the marcy of the Lord or the scarcity of liquor has kept him from it. I'll go to the door, and see what he wants. It's sartinly too cold to let a man stand in the holler long, whether he be sober or drunk;" ”

“ I see no fault committed which I have not committed myself.” [122] This milder and more genial spirit increased constantly as Norton grew older, until it served at last only to make his high-bred nature more attractive.
He was born in Cambridge, November 16, 1827, and died in the very house where he was born, October 21, 1908. He was descended, like several other New England authors, from a line of Puritan clergymen. He was the son of Professor Andrews Norton, of Harvard University, who was descended from the Rev. John Norton, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1651. ”

“ Then her dark face it lighted, and she said, speaking quickly:
[Pg 105] "John Norton, I know you. I know you are honest.
You live in the woods. You are good. I can trust you.
All men, I have heard, come to you in their trouble.
Have you seen in the North, have you met in the woods,
Has there come to your cabin a man, tall as you,
Brave as you and as tender? A man like to this?"
And out of her gown, from the folds on her bosom,
She lifted a locket of pearl-colored velvet,
Touched a spring, and I saw, as the lid of it opened,
The face of the man I and Henry had buried! ”

“ Dan Maginnis (the Boston comedian) , and Mr. John W. Norton. The future St. Louis manager was then leading man, and the friendship we formed while working together through those summer weeks was never broken, never clouded, but lasted fair and strong up to that very day when, sitting in the train on his way to New York, John Norton had, in that flashing moment of time, put off mortality.
He had changed greatly from the John Norton of those early days. He had known cruel physical suffering, and while he had won friends and money, shame and bitter sorrow had been brought upon him by another. ”

“ His wife (presumably his second wife) at that time was reprieved, as being with child. Another John Norton received a pardon in December 1601 for harbouring Thomas Palliser, a seminary priest. The third son, Edmund Norton of Clowbeck, Yorkshire, is supposed to have died in 1610. ”

“ Those who criticised said that Norton was losing his nerve, or else that he was merely incompetent when measured by the yardstick of swift, incisive action wedded to capability.
"If he can't get Jim Galloway, let him step out of the way and give the chance to a man who can," was said many times and in many ways. Even John Engle, Julius Struve, Tom Cutter, and Brocky Lane came to Norton at one time or another, telling him what they had heard, urging him to give some heed to popular clamor, and to begin legal action. ”

“ And then relapsing into an angry silence, Mrs Norton drew her shawl about her shoulders.
One of a thousand quarrels. The basis of each nature was common sense—shrewd common sense—but such similarity of structure is in itself apt to lead to much violent shocking of opinion; and to this end an adjuvant was found in the dose of fantasy, mysticism, idealism which was inherent in John's character. "Why is he not like other people? Why will he waste his time with a lot of rubbishy Latin authors? Why will he not take up his position in the county?" ”

“ Norton to be known; which he justly considers as the deepest condemnation. All secresy—all forbearance—were over, with his false defence. Though I certainly did not anticipate, that, in addition to abuse of the dead and of all family ties, he would, in his reckless anger against Sir John Bayley, himself ruin his own cause by shewing the way in which it had been protected—and slur the very friends who had protected him, by such revelations. "What you state may be true; but, sixteen years ago, Lord Abinger decided that you should never make it known." ”

“ Spring came, indeed, before the Loner called on Horn.
“Goin' to buy some young stuff to run and fatten,” he explained.
“John, you can have your money any time you want it,” said Horn, “but have you heard about this bunch of rustlers called the Birch Gang? Well, they're a bad lot. It's pretty generally known that they're running whole herds of stock off the range, but so far, no one has been able to prove it on them—that is, if anyone has, he's turned his toes up before he got a chance. ”

“ John, to assist them in their defence of Rhodes against the Turks.
Thomas Norton, of Bristol, was the author of ‘The Ordinall of Alchemy’ (printed in London in 1652) . He is said to have been a pupil of Ripley, under whom (at the age of 28) he studied for forty days, and in that short time acquired a thorough knowledge of ‘the perfection of chemistry.’ Ripley, however, refused to instruct so young a man in the master-secret of the great science, and the process from ‘the white’ to ‘the red powder,’ so that Norton was compelled to rely on his own skill and industry. ”

“ Rogers dying two years later, the Ipswich church clamoured for Norton's return. He was, however, installed teacher of the Boston church, in conjunction with John Wilson, on 23 July 1656; on the same day he married his second wife, Mary Mason of Boston (d. January 1678) , and was given 200l. to buy a house.
Norton was chief instigator of the persecution of the quakers in New England [see under Leddra, William] . He was requested by the Massachusetts council on 19 Oct. 1658 to write a ‘tractate’ against their heresies (Records, iv. 348) ”

“ I did not put my husband to needless torment and expense by extravagance and actions from my tradespeople; on the contrary, he broke his solemn written pledge with his own referee. Sir John Bayley, and advertised me in the newspapers, as Sir John Bayley can prove. Sir W. Follett did not advise the trial, or the measures taken by Mr Norton; on the contrary, he publicly disavowed him as soon as the trial was over, as the letter of Messrs Currie and Woodgate is extant to prove. Mr Norton has not proved by his letter that he has been 'just in his private affairs' ”

“ For that, I can only appeal to Sir John Bayley, and to the evidence of Mr Norton's present conduct. If Mr Norton would not be bound by his written pledge given to Sir John Bayley in 1837, nor by the formal document drawn up by Mr Leman in 1848, is it credible that he would be bound by a mere assertion, that he would or would not place such and such sums?
I have done. There will always be those to whom a slander is precious ”

“ Immediately after the accession of Henry V Norton appears as one of the justices of the court of common pleas, and on 26 June 1413 was appointed chief justice (Cal. Pat. Rolls, John to Edw. IV, pp. 260, 261) . From November 1414 to December 1420 he appears regularly as a trier of petitions in parliament (Rolls of Parliament, iv. 35 a–123 b) . He died on 20 Dec. 1420. Norton married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Tempest of Studley, by whom he had several sons, the pedigree of whose descendants is given in Surtees's ‘History of Durham,’ vol. i. p. clx–clxi. ”

“ He came of honest stock and of people in comfortable circumstances, proud of their traditions and their respectability and rather regretful of the fortune old General Norton had somehow lost when he emigrated from Virginia to Ohio in 1814.
Perhaps John would not have felt called upon to make the plunge into business had his father kept his name off the notes of his neighbors; as a consequence of his indiscretions the broad acres he had inherited slipped away piecemeal.
John was the eldest of four boys and the first to leave home. At twenty he went East. ”

“ I'll go out and git Roney now.”
At one o'clock in the morning the lone agent at Manipa was aroused from sleep by the Loner, who carried in his cramped arms, as if it were an injured child, a half-conscious dog, while slung over his shoulder was a burnished rifle.
“Wh—wh—what the hell's this?” the sleepy agent demanded, opening his eyes and staring at the white-bearded old man who peered at him appealingly.
“It's me—John Barton. Sioux's been hurt bad. Shot! You can stop trains, cain't you? They'll stop if you ask 'em with that red light of your'n, wont they?” ”

“ Already the man hunters were showing signs of restlessness.
“That settles it,” declared one. “The feller we're after either kept up on the high places, or else he dropped over the divide the other way. I think some of us better keep on down the road, and the others go back up to the Deacon's Trail, cross the ridge, and take down the other cañon.”
“Good! That's right!” came a chorus of approval, as the party remounted.
“See you up at Shingle,” Specimen Jones bawled over his shoulder. “If you fellers get there before I do, Josh, make yourselves at home in my cabin. ”

“ The scholar who studies merely for himself, pursues but a selfish aim, scarcely worthy even of praise or of approval: nay, it may be that he is but unconsciously wasting his invaluable, irrevocable time in another form of laborious idleness. He is like a fountain, the waters of which fall back unproductive into the basin of its own reservoir; while the scholar who labours for his fellow-men is like an abounding river, which gladdens and fertilizes the country through which it runs. ”

“ He looked at me questioningly.
"Jimmy Martin," I said, with a swift and unaccountable faith that he was at least very honest, "you can trust me, and I'm going to trust you; but I do want to say that you put us in pretty big danger. One never can tell who is watching, in times like these. You know that. And I think you know that there are a lot of men looking for the Esperanza, all the time. You got that second cabin to use as a laboratory." ”

“ He flinched from any such attack on the shell he had built against the intrusion of Red Springs, for a second or two feeling once more the rasp across raw nerves. "We don't get much time for sleep when the General's on the prod. Horse stealin' and such keeps us a mite busy, accordin' to your Yankee friends. And we have to pay our respects to them, just to keep them reminded that this is Morgan country. I'll warn you again, Aunt Marianna, keep Lady Jane out of Lexington today—if you want to keep her." He gathered up his reins. "Boyd told me about Grandfather," he added in a rush. ”

“ The C.M.S. Children's Home at Limpsfield, the Royal Normal College for the Blind at Norwood, the County Courts at Williton, Dunster, and Long Ashton in Somerset, and the High Cross at Bristol were also Norton's work.
Norton died on 10 Nov. 1904, and was buried at Bournemouth. He married in 1857 Helen Mary, only daughter of Peter Le Neve Aldous Arnold, by whom he had eight daughters and two sons. The younger son, Mr. C. Harrold Norton, succeeded to his father's practice.
[The Builder, lxxxvii. 526; R.I.B.A. Journal, vol. xii. 3rd series, p. 63; information by Mr. C. Harrold Norton.] ”

“ One is enough; and I cannot help that; and I must."
"Must what?" said Norton. "Help them? You cannot, Pink. It is no use for you to try to lift all New York on your shoulders. It's no use to think about it."
"I am not going to try to lift all New York," said the little girl, making an effort to dry her eyes.
"And it is no good crying about it, you know."
"No, no good," said Matilda. "But I don't know, Norton; perhaps it is. If other people cried about it, the thing would get mended."
"Not so easy as lace work," said Norton, looking at the cobweb tracery tissue before him. ”

“ To the end of his life Norton wrote long letters to ‘The Times’ on his favourite themes of social reform, education, and colonial affairs. He was no brilliant writer nor speaker, and was reckoned by political colleagues to be tenacious and outspoken to the verge of obstinacy and bluntness, but his views were enlightened, generous, and far-seeing, and they influenced the progress of public opinion. A skilled musician and a competent art critic, Norton died at Hams Hall on 28 March 1905, and was buried in the family vault in Lea Marston Church. ”

“ The prospector rode with his head down, like one disgraced, declining to converse. Neither Barnes, his daughter, nor Tom ventured questions after the first rebuff. Behind them, gloating to himself, came Specimen Jones. The strain and anxiety were over for some of them; for others merely in abeyance. It was not until they came to the turn of the Lady Edith Trail that the prospector pulled his horse to a halt and handed Barnes the folded paper he took from his pocket. ”

“ And the question is, what ought we to do for them?"
"You can't do much," said Norton. "You can make yourself poor, easy enough. Then you'll expect Judy and me to take care of you."
"Are you afraid of that, Norton?" said Matilda laughingly.
"No, Pink, I am not," said Norton; "but you and Davy are just in the way to get into trouble. There's no bottom to New York mud."
"Norton," said David, "will you grant that we ought to do in this matter as the word of God says?"
"It don't say we are to make fools of ourselves," Norton responded.
"Yes it does," said Matilda quickly. ”