John William Waterhouse

“ A Frenchman always tried to please, while many Americans seemed to take an equal delight in letting the Nova Scotians know that they longed to be at liberty to fight them again. I confess I do not wonder that the submissive, smiling Frenchmen made more friends at Halifax than the ordinary run of American seamen, who seemed too often to look and speak as if they longed to try again the tug of war with John Bull. ”

“ The burning of the public buildings and the library of books at Washington has been execrated by all the civilized world. The British are famous, or rather infamous for this barbarous mode of warfare. We find this passage in Captain John Knox's historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America in 1758—"Brigadier Wolfe has been also successful at Gaspe, and the N. N. E. parts of this province, (Nova Scotia) he has burned, among other settlements a most valuable one called Mount St. ”

“ It was no doubt due to the keenness of mind of the late Judge Greene, that John T. Waterhouse in an early day came to Cedar Rapids and invested much money in choice corner lots on which he erected, for that time, modern business blocks. But outside of a few men, most of the early pioneers came to the county without any means. ”

“ On granting the crew half a pint of rum a day, they gave three cheers, and went to work with the greatest cheerfulness and alacrity.
The Americans, I believe, drink more spirits than the same class of people in England. The labouring people, and sailors, cannot get it in Britain. A soldier whose regiment was quartered in Boston, just before the revolution, held up his bottle to one of the new comers, and exclaimed, "Here is a country for you, by J—s ”

“ The newspapers we take, are enough to confound any man; but these creatures are worse than the London news-writers. Sometimes we are told that Baltimore is burnt; and then that New York is taken; and we have been positively assured that old New England has declared for the British; and that the governor of Massachusetts and his council had dined on board a British man of war in Boston harbor; and that President Madison had been hanged in effigy in Boston, Newburyport and Portsmouth. ”

“ Waterhouse was an Englishman and it was not of his own desire that he was an officer in the Hibernian light Infantry. He felt himself out of place among Irishmen whom he never quite understood. He was particularly distrustful of Captain Power. Power was an expert in the art of “pulling the legs” of innocent people. Waterhouse had several times found himself looking like a fool without knowing exactly why.
“What I call a civilized war,” said Power, “is waged in fine weather for one thing, and men have a chance of keeping clean. ”

“ The American Seamen on board the Crown Prince, were chiefly men who had been impressed into the British Navy previous to the war; but who, on hearing of the Declaration of War against Great Britain by the people of the United States, gave themselves up as prisoners of war ”

“ Several of these impressed men have declared, that in looking back on their past sufferings, on board English men of war, and comparing it with their present confinement at Chatham, they feel themselves in a Paradise. The ocean, the mirror of heaven, is as much the element of an American as an Englishman. The great Creator has given it to us, as well as to them; and we will guard its honor accordingly, by chasing cruelty from its surface, whether it shall appear in the habit of a Briton or an Algerine. ”

“ After conversing with this worthy Englishman, about the education of the common people in America, I could not but say to myself, little do you, good sir, and your haughty, and unfeeling captain imagine, that there are those among the hundred miserable men whom you keep confined in the hold of your ship, like so many Gallipago turtles, and who you allow to suffer for want of sufficient food; little do you think that there are among them those who have sufficient learning to lay the whole story of their sufferings before the [Pg 41] American and English people ”

“ This was enough, we devoured it with our eyes, clinched it fast in our fists, laughed, capered, jumped, screamed, and kicked up the dirt like so many mad men; and away we started for Princetown, looking back as we ran, every minute, to see if our cerœbrus, with his bloody jaws, was not at our heels. At every step we took from the hateful prison, our enlarged souls expanded our lately cramped bodies. At length we attained a rising ground; and O, how our hearts did swell within us at the sight of the OCEAN! that ocean that washed the shores of our dear America, as well as those of England! ”

“ Besides being famous for the best bacon in the United Kingdom, Waterford is the ancestral home of Field Marshal Lord Roberts and that intrepid sailor, Lord Charles Beresford, who was annexed to the United States at a Gridiron dinner during a visit to Washington several years ago. It has a population of about thirty thousand, was founded by the Danish King Sigtryg of the Silken Beard, and for centuries was the seat of the McIvors, the Danish kings, who arrived in 870 and ruled until Strongbow and the other Norman adventurers came over from England in 1169. ”

“ It is a happy circumstance that America wants neither. She had rather have one English manufacturer than an hundred English sailors. We labor under the inconvenience of speaking the same language with the enemies of our rising greatness. I know by my own personal experience, that English books, published since our revolutionary war, have a pernicious tendency in anglifying the American character. I have been amused in listening to the wrangling conversation of an English, Irish and American sailor, when all three were half drunk ”

“ Nothing but the advanced age of a man, (who was sixty years old) prevented him from being whipped for informing Captain Shortland of what the old man considered an injury, and for which he put the man accused, into the black hole. An informer, a traitor, and an avowed federalist, were objects of detestation at Dartmoor.
During the time that passed between the news of peace, and that of its ratification, an uneasy and mob-like disposition, more than once betrayed itself. Three impressed American seamen had been sent in here from a British ship of war, since the peace. ”

“ All those things have conspired in mak [Pg 10] ing a wall of separation between us and that lively people. But it is not so with the English. Our language, religion, customs, habits, manners, institutions: and above all, books have united to make us feel as if we were but children of the same great family, only divided by the Atlantic ocean. All these things have a natural and habitual tendency to unite us; and nothing but the unfeeling and contemptuous treatment of us by the British military generally, could have separated us. ”

“ This man would often keep the prisoners out for many hours, in the severest weather, when the mercury was ten and fifteen degrees below zero, under a pretext that the prison had been washed, and was not sufficiently dry for their reception: when in fact every drop of water used was in a moment ice. People in the southern states, and the inhabitants of England and Ireland, can form no adequate idea of the frightful climate of Nova Scotia. ”

“ Some one, a person to whom one replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of heroes can be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something more than a cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by.
In the second, Victor Hugo contrasts the two leaders, the conqueror and the conquered, of that momentous day:
Waterloo is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and Wellington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God, who is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison. ”

“ The sailors often tried to spirit up the soldiers, and to encourage them to cleanliness; but it was in vain, as most of them were depressed below the elasticity of their brave souls; yet amidst their distress, not a man of them would listen to proposals to enter the British service. Every one preferred death, and even wished for it. The Americans are a clean people in their persons, as well as in their houses. None of them are so poor as to live in cabins, like the Irish; or in cottages, like the Scotch ”

“ He rested it on the edge of the hatch-way, while he was adjusting the rope ladder to descend with his "swill." The thing attracted the attention of the general, who asked the man, how many of his comrades eat of that quantity for their breakfast? "Six Sir," said the man, "but it is fit food only for hogs." This answer affronted the captain, who asked the man, in an angry tone, "what part of America he came from?" "near to Bunker Hill, Sir—if you ever heard of that place." They looked at each other and smiled, turned about and continued their walk. This is what the English call impudence. ”

“ The shadow of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls surrendering their swords. Those who have conquered Europe have fallen prone on the earth, with nothing left to say or to do, feeling the present shadow of a terrible presence. Hoc erat in fatis. That day the perspective of the human race underwent a change. Waterloo is the hinge of the nineteenth century. ”

“ This imprudent, meddling old commander, of the Bellauxcean, was forever informing the officer of the deck of every little pickadillo of the American prisoners; and he, of course, got the hearty ill will of all the Americans in the ship Bahama. He once saw a marine connive at the passing a couple of bottles of liquor through the lower ports, and he hailed the commander, and informed him of it; and the marine was immediately punished for it. This roused the Americans to revenge; for the British soldier, or marine, is so much of a slave, that revenge never dare enter his head. ”

“ Presently every one could see their engine-fires glowing like fireflies in the distant, and hear through the breathless night the sighing of the steam, the moaning of the machinery, and at last the swash of water against the bows. ”

“ We are totally tired of the monotonous flow of the muddy river, and the interminable parallel curves of its natural levees and the glassy stretches of ocean which seem to slope upwards toward the eastern and western horizon. We pass our time in playing cards, smoking, grumbling at our wretched fare, exchanging dull gossip and wishing that we might be allowed to do something. ”

“ The light continued to descend and work miracles. Isolated turrets, domes, and pinnacles came out in gleaming relief against the dark-blue background of the heavens. The opposite crest of the cañon shone with a broad illumination. All the uncouth demons and monsters of the rocks awoke, glaring and blinking, to menace the voyagers in the depths below. The contrast between this supereminent brilliancy and the sullen obscurity of the subterranean river made the latter seem more than ever like Styx or Acheron.
The travellers were awakened in the morning by the trumpetings of the cataract. ”

“ Well, the summer wore away, that summer of sombre preparation and preluding skirmishes, whose scattering musketry and thin cannonade faintly prophecied the orchestral thunders of Gettysburg and the Wilderness, and whose few dead preceded like skirmishers the massive columns which for years should firmly follow them into the dark valley. Its forereaching shadows fell upon many homes far away from the battlefield, and chilled to death many sensitive natures. ”

“ I cannot help remarking here, that the plan of retaliation determined by President Madison, merits the respect and gratitude of the present and future generations of men. It was this energetic step that saved the lives, and insured the usual treatment of ordinary prisoners of war to these American soldiers of Irish birth. This firm determination of the American executive arrested the bloody hand of the British. They remembered Major Andre, and they recollected Sir James Asgill, under the administration of the great Washington, and they trembled for the fate of their own officers. ”

“ When he had heard it all, he called the American sailor a d—d coward for striking a wounded man. "I am no coward, Sir," said the high spirited Yankee; "I was captain of a gun on board the Constitution when she captured the Guerriere, and afterwards when she took the Java. Had I been a coward I should not have been there." The [Pg 42] captain called him an insolent scoundrel, and ordered him to his hole again. What the British naval commanders call insolence, is no more than the undaunted expression of their natural and habitual independence. ”

“ I have not the least doubt but they will meet their reward; that is, they will be spurned at by those very people that laid the bait for them. Such characters will forever be condemned, and held in detestation by both parties. Therefore all you who feel the tide of true American blood flow through your hearts, I hope never will attempt to flee from the allegiance of your country. ”

“ As the travellers gazed on this wilderness of scorched summits, glittering in the blazing sunlight, and yet drawing from it no life—as stark, still, unsympathizing, and cruel as death—they seemed to themselves to be out of the sweet world of God, and to be in the power of malignant genii and demons. The imagination cannot realize the feeling of depression which comes upon one who finds himself imprisoned in such a landscape. ”

“ Edric's won't fit any of you but Harold."
"Don't you fret, auntie," said Jack, who had been capering about, and leaving little rivulets of water wherever he went. "We don't think anything of wet clothes, we just run about till they are dry."
"But where's your box?" said father.
"It's the other side of the water," said Rupert, laughing; "I know now what King John felt like when he lost all his luggage in the Wash. We lost half our things in the wash at school, and now we've lost the other half in your Wash. My word, hasn't the tide gone down quick! The old fellow was right after all. ”