John Warner

“ John, that we could scarcely see our way through its dimly lighted streets, we found the ferry to Carleton, and a sleeping-car for Bangor. It was in the heart of the negro porter to cause us alarm by the intelligence that the customs officer would, search our baggage during the night. A search is a blow to one's self-respect, especially if one has anything dutiable. But as the porter might be an agent of our government in disguise, we preserved an appearance of philosophical indifference in his presence. It takes a sharp observer to tell innocence from assurance. ”

“ And his father weren't no wiser, so when, at five-and-twenty, he found himself an orphan and Wych Elm Farm his own, lock, stock, and barrel, young John Warner come to his kingdom with a steadfast determination to get the best he could for himself out of life and make it run to his own pattern so far as unsleeping wit of man could do.
He married a pretty woman with a bit of money and he altered a good few of his father's ways and used Jane Slowcombe's dowry to buy up a hundred acres alongside his own. The land had been neglected and wanted patience and cash ”

“ The fuel for the fire was the driftwood of the stream. John noted that it did not require to be sawed into stove-lengths; and, in short, that the "chores" about this establishment were reduced to the minimum. And an older person than John might envy the free life of these wanderers, who paid neither rent nor taxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature. It seemed to the boy that affairs would go more smoothly in the world if everybody would live in this simple manner. Nor did he then know, or ever after find out, why it is that the world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians. ”

“ Warner be taking a snack with Nelly this evening he'll make good every word I'm telling you. In fact I dare say what you have now got to pretend is bad news, Jane, be really very much the opposite. There's only one person is called to suffer to-night so far as I know, and that's John Warner. And even he may not suffer so much as he did ought. He put Mrs. Bascombe afore you, and so you ordained to keep your threat and leave him. ”

“ He would help a timid little girl to stand erect and slide; he would draw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff with cold, without a murmur; he would generously give her red apples into which he longed to set his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in two his lead-pencil for a girl, when he would not for a boy. Had he not some of the beautiful auburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate, spruce-gum, and wintergreen box at home? And yet the grand sentiment of life was little awakened in John. ”

“ By both John Forster and Thackeray he was selected as the type among the clergy or the easy-going hangers-on of the great, and to the ordinary reader the sentences in which these satirists have pilloried him are the sole recollections of his life which linger in the memory. Warner had a genius for making friends, and early in life attached himself to George Selwyn. For the sake of that wit and his associates poor Warner discharged many duties without receiving any reward for his labours. ”

“ What fun it might be if there were only another boy there to help. But even war, single handed, gets to be tiresome. It is dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is cow-time before John has made much impression on the garden.
This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hoe corn all day than work in it. Father seems to think that it is easy work that John can do, because it is near the house! John's continual plan in this life is to go fishing. When there comes a rainy day, he attempts to carry it out. But ten chances to one his father has different views. ”

“ It represents to John, somehow, authority, government, the right of way; the driver is an autocrat, everybody must make way for the stage-coach. It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal vehicle; one can go in it to the confines of the world,—to Boston and to Albany.
There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy's education. I think his imagination was stimulated by a band of gypsies who used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a little roadside patch of green turf by the river-bank not far from his house. ”

“ John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore more cheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant day, it is rubbing the sprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar. And the old gentleman mounts his wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the dog bounding along beside the wagon, and refusing to come back at John's call. John half wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part of farming that suits him. ”

“ He tells at home that he has seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has promised to lend it to him. "Is it a true book, John?" asks the grandmother; because, if it is n't true, it is the worst thing that a boy can read." (This happened years ago.) John cannot answer as to the truth of the book, and so does not bring it home; but he borrows it, nevertheless, and conceals it in the barn and, lying in the hay- mow, is lost in its enchantments many an odd hour when he is supposed to be doing chores. There were no chores in the Arabian Nights ”

“ He died without issue, and on his death his estates descended to his nephew John Lee, archdeacon of Rochester, who was the son of his sister, and who afterwards assumed the additional name of Warner in compliance with the terms of the bishop's will,
Warner was 'a man of decided character and cheerful and undaunted spirit, an accurate logician and philosopher, and well-versed in the fathers and schoolmen.' His charities were munificent. The net value of the see of Rochester was barely 500l. ”

“ I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New England farmhouse—rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the old wars did not aspire to. “John,” says the mother, “You'll burn your head to a crisp in that heat.” But John does not hear; he is storming the Plains of Abraham just now. “Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood.” How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind every tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.
The fire rests upon the broad hearth ”

“ In 1790 he went to Paris as chaplain to the English ambassador, and he there became somewhat imbued with revolutionary ideas. Warner was an excellent scholar, and the reputation for wit that he enjoyed among his contemporaries is fully borne out by his agreeable letters, several of which are printed in Jesse's ‘Selwyn and his Contemporaries’ (iii. 306–18) . He was an ardent admirer of John Howard, and it was principally owing to his exertions that the statue in St. Paul's Cathedral was erected to the memory of the philanthropist. Warner died in St. ”

“ As the Indian is honored in proportion to the scalps he can display, at John's school the boy was held in highest respect who could show the most hair trophies on his wrist. John himself had a variety that would have pleased a Mohawk, fine and coarse and of all colors. There were the flaxen, the faded straw, the glossy black, the lustrous brown, the dirty yellow, the undecided auburn, and the fiery red. Perhaps his pulse beat more quickly under the red hair of Cynthia Rudd than on account of all the other wristlets put together ”

“ And the prosaic life of the sweet home does not at all correspond to the boy's dreams of the world. In the good old days, I am told, the boys on the coast ran away and became sailors; the countryboys waited till they grew big enough to be missionaries, and then they sailed away, and met the coast boys in foreign ports. John used to spend hours in the top of a slender hickory-tree that a little detached itself from the forest which crowned the brow of the steep and lofty pasture behind his house. He was sent to make war on the bushes that constantly encroached upon the pastureland ”

“ If Smith had not been an author, his exploits would have occupied a small space in the literature of his times. But by his unwearied narrations he impressed his image in gigantic features on our plastic continent. If he had been silent, he would have had something less than justice; as it is, he has been permitted to greatly exaggerate his relations to the New World. ”

“ It was altogether a very serious business; there was no levity about the hot and hard marching, and as boys have no humor nothing ludicrous occurred. John was very proud of his office, and of his ability to keep the rear ranks closed up and ready to execute any manoeuvre when the captain "hollered," which he did continually. He carried a real sword, which his grandfather had worn in many a militia campaign on the village green, the rust upon which John fancied was Indian blood ”

“ The clamors became so loud that Smith punished the ringleader, one Dyer, a crafty fellow, and his ancient maligner, and then made one of his conciliatory addresses. Having shown them how impossible it was to get corn, and reminded them of his own exertions, and that he had always shared with them anything he had, he told them that he should stand their nonsense no longer; he should force the idle to work, and punish them if they railed; if any attempted to escape to Newfoundland in the pinnace they would arrive at the gallows; the sick should not starve ”

“ He married soon after his release a lady who had been herself a martyr for her politics, and Warner caught cold in carrying out his promise of officiating at the ceremony. After a few days' illness " and preserving his recollection and calmness to the last," he died at his house, 14 S c John's Square, Clerkenwell, on the 22nd of January 1800 and was buried F 2 in a vault under the church in the square on the 30th of that month. The date of the commencement of the new century was an amiable weakness of the Doctor. ”

“ In 1907 he returned to America, and played at the leading ‘vaudeville’ theatres in ‘At the Telephone,’ ‘Devil Montague,’ and a condensed version of ‘Drink.’ He committed suicide by hanging, whilst insane, at the Hotel Seymour, West 45th Street, New York, on 11 Feb. 1909, and was buried at Woodlawn cemetery, New York, on 13 Feb. 1909.
Warner was an effective actor in melodramatic parts which admitted of great nervous tension, but his high-strung nerves often found vent in a violence which proved alarming to his colleagues on the stage, and impaired his artistic control of voice and gesture. ”

“ Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had beene a monster, till Powhatan and his trayne had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, made of Rarowcun skinnes and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of sixteen or eighteen years, and along on each side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked with the white downe of Birds ”

“ Unfortunately for biographical purposes, Smith's life is pretty much a blank from 1609 to 1614. When he ceases to write about himself he passes out of sight. There are scarcely any contemporary allusions to his existence at this time. We may assume, however, from our knowledge of his restlessness, ambition, and love of adventure, that he was not idle. We may assume that he besieged the company with his plans for the proper conduct of the settlement of Virginia ”

“ Peters and Mr. Stowell have come over. So we are all here except the Kingsleys and Jim Freeman. I had to go back for Uncle's soap, and the little Tripp left his pajamas, so we went back together to get both, and poor Clara is delirious, screaming, "Yellow kids, yellow kids!" every minute. Every one thinks she is thinking of shopping in Paris, and I didn't explain; but while we were there, Mr. Brewer came back for their soap and heard Clara, and, as a result, he and his wife went on in their automobile, rain or no rain. They left one of their men named Scott McCarthy, and took Ellsworth Grimm. ”

“ For in over-toyling our weake and unskilfull bodies, to satisfy this desire of present profit, we can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another. And I humbly intreat you hereafter, let us have what we should receive, and not stand to the Saylers courtesie to leave us what they please, els you may charge us what you will, but we not you with anything. These are the causes that have kept us in Virginia from laying such a foundation that ere this might have given much better content and satisfaction, but as yet you must not look for any profitable returning. ”

“ For our factions, unless you would have me run away and leave the country, I cannot prevent them; because I do make many stay that would else fly away whither. For the Idle letter sent to my Lord of Salisbury, by the President and his confederates, for dividing the country, &c., what it was I know not, for you saw no hand of mine to it; nor ever dream't I of any such matter. That we feed you with hopes, &c. Though I be no scholar, I am past a schoolboy ”

“ Are you sure? What do you think, Peters? Yes, that's them. Brewer seems to be underneath the machine. Well, what shall we do? Wave and holler? We can't do anything else if we want to. But they are going to be a good deal surprised to see us perched aloft like this. Yes; there's Mrs. Brewer sitting on the [Pg 263] bank with McCarthy and the other man. I'd rather be the guests than the owner when it comes to an automobile any day.
"Well, why don't you holler, Lee? That's it—make a trumpet out of your hands and just give it to them. Gee! but they are surprised! ”