Johnstone

“ For some minutes they walked on in silence.
“I think you probably saved my life at the risk of yours, Miss Bowring,” said Johnstone, at last, looking up. “Thank you very much.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the young girl, and she tried to laugh.
“But you were telling me that you were not combative—that you always avoided a fight, you know, and that you were so mild, and all that. For a very mild man, Mr. Johnstone, who hates fighting, you are a good ‘man of your hands,’ as they say in the Morte d’Arthur.” ”

“ In England, unless it were in London, Johnstone seldom felt at home; in Scotland, still less. He liked to wander from one easy variegated foreign city to another, where good music and good plays are quickly accessible, and British convention is a mere figure in the comic papers. He valued his friends in Edinburgh, but the place displeased him. He would sit on Arthur's seat and hate the modern Athens steaming there below him. ”

“ Lady Johnstone was one of those perfectly frank and honest persons who take no trouble to conceal their anxieties. From the fact that when she had met him on the way up to the hotel Brook had been walking alone with Clare Bowring, she had at once argued that a considerable intimacy existed between the two. ”

“ Brook was as frank as herself. He charged her with trying to keep him from Clare, and she did not deny that he was right. This led to a discussion on the third day after the Johnstones’ arrival.
“You mustn’t make a fool of yourself, Brook, dear,” said Lady Johnstone. “You are not old enough to marry. Oh, I know, you are five-and-twenty, and ought to have come to years of discretion. But you haven’t, dear boy. Don’t forget that you are Adam Johnstone’s son, and that you may be expected to do all the things that he did before I married him. ”

“ After this, the Indiamen, transports, and several ships of the squadron under orders for the East Indies parted company; the rest with the prizes were sent home from St. Helena. Johnstone himself, hoisting his broad pennant on board the Diana frigate, went to Lisbon, where he married. On his return to England he was placed on half-pay, and resumed his seat in parliament, this time as member for Lostwithiel, for which he had been elected in 1781. ”

“ It is the most beautiful road in the world, in its infinite variety, in the grandeur above and the breadth below, and the marvellous rich sweetness of the deep gardens—passing as it does out of wilderness into splendour, out of splendour into wealth of colour and light and odour, and again out to the rugged strength of the loneliness beyond.
Clare and Johnstone had exchanged idle phrases for a while, until they had passed Atrani and the turn where the new way leads up to Ravello, and were fairly out on the road. ”

“ Brook Johnstone had gone to his room when he had left his father, and was hastily packing his belongings, for he had made up his mind to leave Amalfi at once without consulting anybody. It is a special advantage of places where there is no railway that one can go away at a moment’s notice, without waiting tedious hours for a train. Brook did not hesitate, for it seemed to him the only right thing to do, after Clare’s refusal, and after what his father had told him. If she had loved him, he would have stayed in spite of every opposition. ”

“ Johnstone, now fully dressed, stood in silence looking out at the window, while the valet busied himself about his master’s effects with unruffled brow.
“She has such a high-bred and refined air, and such a soft and musical voice, and her eyes, what wonderful color and expression! And then the figure, so graceful, and yet so rounded. She ought to be a queen, and there I’m only a common Australian squatter and digger.” ”

“ Johnstone having delivered my orders to Poularies, he quitted him an instant to give some instructions to my servants at my lodgings; returning to rejoin me, he found Poularies in the Ravine with M. de Sennezergue, Brigadier-General and Lieutenant-Colonel of the Regiment of La Sarre, and de Lotbinière, Captain of the Colony troops and aide-de-camp to M. de Vaudreuil. ”

“ Two bands of mercenaries, commanded by Captains Cranstoun and Lammie, who were sent from Edinburgh to support Johnstone, were attacked and cut to pieces at Crawford-muir, by Robert Maxwell, natural brother to the chieftain; who, following up his advantage, burned Johnstone's [Pg 163] Castle of Lochwood, observing, with savage glee, that he would give Lady Johnstone light enough by which 'to set her hood.' In a subsequent conflict, Johnstone himself was defeated, and made prisoner, and is said to have died of grief at the disgrace which he sustained. ”

“ In June his intentions became more manifest, when he ascended the Susquehanna, from Oghkwaga to Unadilla, with about eighty of his warriors, and requested an interview with the Rev. Mr. Johnstone, of the "Johnstone Settlement." He declared that his object was to procure food for his famished people, and gave the whites to understand that, if provisions were not furnished, the Indians would take them by force. Mr. Johnstone sounded Brant concerning his future intentions, and the chief, without reserve, told him that he had made a covenant with the king, and was not inclined to break it. ”

“ Mr John Henry Johnstone was born at Tipperary in 1750, and was the son of a small but respectable farmer, having a large family. At the early age of 18 he enlisted into a regiment of Irish dragoons, then stationed at Clonmel, commanded by Colonel Brown. Being smitten with the charms of a neighbouring farmer's daughter, Johnstone used to scale the barrack-wall after his comrades had retired to their quarters, for the purpose of serenading his mistress, having a remarkably sweet and flexible voice. ”

“ No woman in India was as happy, at that particular moment, as the Genevese, who merely bowed in silence, and glided softly away, having escaped the levin-bolt of Hugh Johnstone’s wrath, ever ready, lurking under his bushy, white eyebrows. ”

“ Johnstone was three or four years older than her husband. She was a plain, homely, thoroughly good-hearted woman, incapable of an ill-natured thought; one of those few people who are content to be as God made them. During my mother’s brief married life with her second husband I was constantly with my aunt, and I believe I should have lived with her wholly but for my determination that my stepfather, the doctor, should not flatter himself he had sickened me out of my own home. ”

“ I didn't look at it in that light,” said Lord Ipsden. He then demanded paper and ink; Christie Johnstone, who had come out of her house, supplied it from her treasures, and this cool hand actually began to convey a hundred and fifty thousand pounds away, upon a sheet of paper blowing in the wind; when he had named his residuary legatee, and disposed of certain large bequests, he came to the point—
“Christie Johnstone, what can these people live on? two hundred a year? living is cheap here—confound the wind!” ”

“ Johnstone immediately dismounted from his horse, (upon seeing the figure of a man by the stream-side,) and, with two dragoons to assist him, [Pg 135] proceeded to descend into the hollow where poor Archy Elliot was seated.
"Hollo!" vociferated Johnstone, in a loud and harsh tone of voice—"hollo! brother brush-the-heather, what have we here? A Bible, no doubt, and a psalm-tune, and Covenanting dirge, made up of profanity and high treason in equal proportions. Stir your stumps, old Gibby! Ye're wanted, man, by the guidwife. She can get nae rest without you ”

“ Johnstone became the editress, and Tait gave her in addition to a salary one half of the property in the magazine. On the sale of ‘Tait's Magazine’ in 1846 Mrs. Johnstone ceased to write. She died at Edinburgh on 26 Aug. 1857, aged 76, and her husband on 3 Nov. following, aged 78. They were buried in the Grange cemetery, where an obelisk was erected to their memory. They had no children.
Mrs. Johnstone is described as extremely retiring, amiable, and accomplished, and ever ready to befriend young authors. ”

“ Every experience, in truth, whether moral, sensuous, or intellectual, that is, of real worth, contributes to the artist's dream. Johnstone posed so little and lived by this principle so naturally and unwittingly that he could not be called a doctrinairè. But few men save up their vital impressions about everything so carefully, engraving them patiently on the memory, and dismissing the vast mass of experience that tells us nothing. Hence Johnstone was never quite naturalised in any abode, though he managed to be sociable and festive when the chances came. ”

“ Escaping from Edinburgh, he hastened to Duncrub, the seat of Lord Rollo, near Perth. Here he awaited the arrival of the young Chevalier; and here he was introduced by his cousins, the daughters of Lord Rollo, to the Duke of Perth and to Lord George Murray. The Chevalier Johnstone was one of the first Low-countrymen that joined the standard of Charles Edward.
Lord George Murray very soon discovered that the requisites for forming a good soldier and an active partizan were centred in young Johnstone. ”

“ Poularies then showed Johnstone a written order​—​signed “Montreuil”​—​which Lotbinière had brought to him from M. de Vaudreuil, “That not a man of the left should stir from the camp!” Johnstone declared to them, upon his honour, that it was word for word my orders and my intentions; and he entreated Poularies, in the most pressing manner, to have no regard for that order signed “Montreuil,” as the want of two thousand men, which formed the left of our camp, must be of the greatest consequence in the battle. ”

“ Instead, however, of this, who should return, to disturb the equilibrium of truth, but this Christina Johnstone? She came thoughtfully in, and said:
“I've been taking a thoucht, and this is no what yon gude physeecian meaned; ye are no to fling your chaerity like a bane till a doeg; ye'll gang yoursel to Jess Rutherford; Flucker Johnstone, that's my brother, will convoy ye.”
“But how is your brother to know me?”
“How? Because I'll gie him a sair sair hiding, if he lets ye gang by.” ”

“ I suppose you mean little Mr Johnstone at the other end of the town?”—“Yes, Sir.”—“Well, as you have been so short a time in the stables, I am not surprised he should turn you away: he would have every body about him as clever as himself, they must all know their business thoroughly. However they must learn it somewhere. I will venture to give you a trial, but I must first inquire your character of my good friends, Woodcock and Johnstone. ”

“ Clare’s gentle mouth hardened suddenly as she thought of Lady Fan. Johnstone had been thoroughly tired of her. That was what he meant when he spoke of “those good people. ”
“You get tired of people easily, don’t you?” ”

“ In October, 1880, Johnstone came up to Keble College, Oxford, and he quickly had a small circle round him. Among his friends were R. A. Farrar, son of the well-known Dean, and G. H. Fowler, the biologist, of his own College; Winter, of St. John's, the [vi] best musician among undergraduates; his biographers; and, later, Prof. York Powell, who instantly detected his ability and force of nature. Amongst the dons of Keble, Johnstone cared for two. ”

“ A girl is brought up in a cage, like a turtle dove, with nothing to do except to be good, while a boy is sent to a public school when he is eleven or twelve, which is exactly the same as sending him to hell, except that he has the certainty of getting away.”
“But boys don’t learn to flirt at Eton,” observed the young girl.
“Well—no,” answered Johnstone. “But they learn everything else, except Latin and Greek, and they go to a private tutor to learn those things before they go to the university.”
“You mean that they learn to drink and gamble, and all that?” asked Clare. ”

“ He was slain on 7 Dec. following at Dryfe Sands, in an encounter with the forces of the laird of Johnstone. Having a commission of lieutenancy for Johnstone's apprehension, he was proceeding at the head of two thousand men to lay siege to Johnstone's house of Lochwood, when he was caught in an ambush and put to flight. He is said to have been struck from his horse by Johnstone himself, and killed as he lay helpless on the ground (Moysie, p. 110; Calderwood, v. 290) . ”

“ Elsie looked at him as he stood, gravely quiet, studying her.
"Well," she said, "Appleyard is Dick's. His father was a true Johnstone, his mother a Jardine, but you [Pg 33] make one feel that you're more at home here than he is. ”

“ He never slept, in barn or kiln, with any of his people. Johnstone travelled all day in the midst of a crowd of women and children, mounted on asses. Baillie travelled always by himself, mounted on the best horse he could get for money. ”

“ It is hard to keep out of a groove in which all the town is running; and the Johnstone had possessed, as mere property—a lad!
She was so wealthy that few of them could pretend to aspire to her, so she selected for her chattel a young man called Willy Liston; a youth of an unhappy turn—he contributed nothing to hilarity, his face was a kill-joy—nobody liked him; for this female reason Christie distinguished him.
He found a divine supper every Saturday night in her house; he ate, and sighed! Christie fed him, and laughed at him.
Flucker ditto. ”

“ The conclusion was perfectly correct, and Lady Johnstone soon grew very nervous. Brook was too young to marry, and even if he had been old enough his mother thought that he might have made a better choice. At all events he should not entangle himself in an engagement with the girl ”

“ WARRISTON, ARCHIBALD JOHNSTON, Lord (1611–1663) , Scottish judge and statesman, son of James Johnstone (d. 1617) , a merchant burgess of Edinburgh, was baptized on the 28th of March 1611, educated at Glasgow, and passed advocate at the Scottish bar in 1633. He first came into public notice in 1637, during the attempt of Charles I. to force the English liturgy upon Scotland, when as the chief adviser of the Covenanting leaders he drew up their remonstrances. ”