John Thornton

“ For the last time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head. ”

“ Thornton’s place as mistress of the house, was only one of the rich consequences which decked out the supreme glory: all household plenty and comfort, all purple and fine linen, honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, would all come as naturally as jewels on a king’s robe, and be as little thought of for their separate value. To be chosen by John, would separate a kitchen-wench from the rest of the world. And Miss Hale was not so bad. If she had been a Milton lass, Mrs. Thornton would have positively liked her. She was pungent, and had taste, and spirit, and flavour in her. ”

“ It is surprising how soon, at least when we are young, the greater number of us get accustomed to things. The news of the sale of the Towers, and of Sir John Thornton's approaching marriage, had electrified the Lorrimers and the Thorntons on Thursday. ”

“ Just for a little time after Elizabeth Thornton's death I became human, or perhaps inhuman. I resented the wrong that had been done me; I wanted to fling John and the child away from me; but then a sense of power rallied me. ”

“ Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes’s scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom had dropped out of the trail.
John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.
“You poor devil,” said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand. ”

“ We 'n getten money laid by; and we're resolved to stand and fall together; not a man on us will go in for less wage than th' Union says is our due. So I say, 'hooray for the strike,' and let Thornton, and Slickson, and Hamper, and their set look to it!"
"Thornton!" said Margaret. "Mr. Thornton of Marlborough Street?"
"Aye! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him."
"He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? What sort of a master is he?"
"Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hind legs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton." ”

“ Will ye come with me and see how the cattle thrive?’ Honest, honest Thornton! there are few men so worthy as thyself in the world. Thou hast been wronged, vilely and shamefully wronged; yet not a shadow of discontent in that smooth, broad brow, with its dashing swirl of hair, intimates that thou art an ill-used man. Never did a word of complaint fall from those fresh-coloured, well-formed lips. Hearty execrations have often poured from them, but not a single whine. Thornton bears a resemblance to Prince John ”

“ Thornton brought to his work much patience and the spirit of calm, fair-minded moderation. But although some of the difficulties were settled, others persisted, and the irritation in the United States tended rather to augment than to diminish. Eventually a joint commission was instituted at Washington in February 1871 for the discussion and settlement of existing differences. Thornton's British colleagues were Earl de Grey (afterwards marquess of Ripon) , Sir Stafford H. Northcote (subsequently earl of Iddesleigh) , Sir John Alexander Macdonald [q. v.] , prime minister of Canada, and Dr. ”

“ Thornton's first work on economics, which appeared in 1845, was ‘Over-population and its Remedy.’ The project for the colonisation of Irish wastes by Irish peasants, contained in it, was referred to in laudatory terms by Mill in his ‘Principles of Political Economy’ (1st edit., p. 392) . Thornton attached little value to emigration, but strongly advocated the subdivision of the land and deprecated state interference. The work did much to confute the views of John Ramsay McCulloch [q. v.] ”

“ This is regarded by some as a reversal of Judge Thornton's position; but, as a matter of fact, in all his public utterances the judge has suspended judgment on the merits of the question. The outlook for a successful movement can not be regarded as bright to-day."
John Smith was looking at the paper as though it were some published blasphemy, some unspeakable profanation of all things good and holy, when Judge Thornton returned, whistling like a man at peace with the world and himself. ”

“ However, aware of Crestwood's importance to the Mahela, knowing that this violation would hurt and perhaps ruin Thornton, Al himself would not have reported it. But now that Thornton was leaving, was there any reason why he should be shielded?
There was another brief silence before John Wilson said quietly, "Don't do it, Ted."
"You mean let him get away with it?"
"Under any other circumstances," John Wilson said, "I'd say drive into Lorton and report him to the game warden. As things are with you now, if you do, you'll hate yourself. ”

“ John Smith was triumphant. The very might of Thornton's ability and power had brought the gas company to their knees! This crucial stage of the gas fight thrust entirely out of his mind the deep moral and ethical consideration of the relations of the Slattery person to the discussion of “Lear.” The law, as of old, was a great profession. Would any of the Boone County folks be able to believe that he, John Smith, was so near the heart of big things as to sit here while Judge Thornton won this great bloodless victory for the people? ”

“ Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair. ”

“ But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had "the sweetest face I have seen in my City of London." ”

“ Although Lady Jersey had admirers by the hundred among the most fascinating men in Europe, no breath of scandal ever touched her fair fame. Indeed, she carried her virtue to the verge of prudery, and repelled with a freezing coldness the slightest approach to familiarity. So prudish was she that on one occasion she declined to share a carriage alone with Lord John Russell, one of the least physically attractive of men, and begged General Alava to accompany them. ”

“ Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic—never has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.
But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man—even by a lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir, and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel. ”

“ It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings blossomed rapidly into young womanhood—little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character—an imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most inflexible will within the circle of the Court.
While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery, John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. ”

“ The Slattery person swept into the private office with a rustle of stiffest silks, reminding the youth of the corn-husks at home in shucking-time, leaving behind her a whiff of all the Orient. John Smith walked into her presence palpitating as at the approach to something terrible and daunting and mystically fateful to such as himself—as a sailor might draw warily near the black magnetic rocks, which, approached too closely, would draw the very nails from his ship and dissolve his craft in the billows. When Judge Thornton remarked by way of left-handed introduction that Mr. ”

“ Thornton spoke calmly and dispassionately.
“True. It is absurd in me; but I admire one who has for a moment forgotten his own interests or safety in thinking of others.”
“That does very well for poetry, but not in real life.”
“In real life, such as that on board the Tecumseh?” murmured Mrs. Thornton, with drooping eyelids.
“You are getting excited, my dear,” said Thornton, patiently, with the air of a wise father who overlooks the petulance of his child. “I will go on. I had business on the Continent when poor Brandon’s ruin occurred. ”

“ Almost at the outset of his career Thornton ruined himself by the lavish scale on which he published his ‘New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnæus.’ For this sumptuous work in imperial folio he engaged the services of Sir William Beechey, Opie, Raeburn, Russel, Reinagle, Harlow, Miss Burney, and others, as painters; Bartolozzi, Vendramini, Holl, Ward, and the Landseers as engravers; and Dr. George Shaw, George Dyer, Seward, and Maurice as poets. The work was advertised in 1797, and seems to have been issued in parts at twenty-five shillings each between 1799 and 1807. ”

“ James Thornton was not so young as he had been ten years ago—“What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all,” Mrs. Warren was fond of quoting—nor, in point of girth, did he assume less aldermanic proportions as time rolled on, but there was such a golden lining to these small clouds of affliction, that he was very generally looked upon as an altogether desirable parti.
It must be admitted that, among other minor idiosyncrasies, Mr. James Thornton would now and then slip into the vernacular. ”

“ They knew that when other men made light of sacred things, and were witty and philosophical upon very solemn subjects, Richard Thornton would leave the assembly gravely and quietly, how eloquent or lively soever he might have been before. People knew all this, and were respectful to the young scene-painter, in spite of the rainbow smears of paint upon his shabby coat, and the occasional fringe of mud upon the frayed edges of his trousers. ”

“ Thomas Thornton, born in London in 1757, was sent to the Charterhouse, where there is a Thornton on the records for 1766, and completed his education at Glasgow University. On entering into possession of his father's estate he became a zealous sportsman, and revived falconry. ”

“ Tom Thornton will do everything that mortal man can do to catch us."
"I'm afraid you are doing too much for me, Ernest Thornton. You will get yourself into trouble," she added, anxiously.
"Don't worry about me, Kate. I think Tom Thornton has a stronger desire to capture me now than he has you. We are both in the same boat in a double sense. I will tell you all about it by and by. I must keep my eyes wide open now. Of course Tom knows you have an uncle in New York." ”

“ Thornton—convinced by good reasons—that it is not a young man's duty to ruin his own prospects and his own influence by undertaking something as impracticable as though he tried to be a meteor by holding a candle in his hand and jumping off a roof. ”

“ But when he comes to dinner parties the right man is found for the right place. With what open arms his dear American cousins have received him! How they have crammed him with shad and canvas-back! Alas! alas! he must feel like a fat turkey at Thanksgiving time.
Sir Edward Thornton is well known in this country as the English minister resident, and no man connected with the foreign legations is more respected and beloved by our people. He came here an untitled man, having served for many years in various diplomatic positions in different parts of the world. ”

“ There are few men upon whom kindness and gentleness will not make more or less impression; but our unprepossessing hero is of that unfavored few.
CHAPTER XXV. THE AWAKENING.
After a few weeks, Thornton has something outside his house to engage him. Election is approaching. Although neither Thornton nor his rival are in the field as candidates, each has his favorite nominee to support. The fire that Thornton has kept raging within Vine Cottage is now transferred to hall, stump and settler's cabin. Sharp is not in the background. ”

“ Thornton nodded his head.
"That is so," he agreed; "but there is the time to consider—it would take a long time to raise that amount."
"No," said Madison. "A few months at the outside. Thornton"—he reached out and laid his hand impressively on the other's sleeve—we are not dealing with ordinary things here—we have witnessed this afternoon a sight that should teach us that. Here, in this very room, beside us now, your wife, that little boy, is evidence of power beyond anything we have ever known before. ”

“ This was apparently no city maiden, come out for a sentimental stroll, for down she went on her knees before a clump of wood violets growing about an old stump. Eagerly she seized her trowel, carefully loosened the earth about them, and lifted them almost reverently into her basket.
Mr. Thornton was a devout admirer of the beautiful in art and nature, but he had not lived thirty years without knowing that a fair face and form may hide a hollow heart. He had studied, in the galleries of Europe, perfect faces, painted by the old masters ”