Jonathan Dennis

“ He longed, as he knew Dennis was doing, to let it run down his throat, yet he had sufficient strength of will to resist this deadly desire, his object being to tempt his comrade past all human endurance, and his ruse was successful, for at last, with a howl, awful to listen to, Dennis snatched the half-emptied bottle from his mouth, and put it to his own lips, doing exactly what the doctor had not done, drinking furiously. ”

“ Dennis Fleet! save my life! Oh, ye gods, what does it all mean?" and she passed her hand in bewilderment across her brow, as if to brush away the wild fancies of a dream.
"Miss Ludolph, as you love your life arouse yourself and escape! The city is burning!"
"I don't believe it!" she cried, in an agony of terror and anger. "Leave the room! How dare you! You are not Dennis Fleet; he is a white man, and you are black! You are an impostor! Leave quick, or my father will come and take your life! Father! father!" ”

“ Dennis hesitated. "And what does it make my own?"
"Exactly the one you came to take. You have taken it by your startling presence; you're up to your eyes in it, and there's nothing that will become you so as to wear it bravely and gallantly. If you don't like it," Rose added, "you should have thought of that before!"
"You like it so much on your side," Dennis retorted, "that you appear to have engaged in measures to create it even before the argument for it had acquired the force that you give such a fine account of." ”

“ Indeed, Mr Dennis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to banter himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do when they are in a waggish humour, sucked the head of his stick with a higher relish, and smiled as though he would say, ‘Dennis, you’re a rum dog; you’re a queer fellow ”

“ Dennis promised that he certainly would do so, and went away to cry over his first lie. He knew that lying was a grievous sin; and the preacher under whom the March family “sat” predicted a fiery doom for sinners. Dennis cried over his probable damnation; but the undying worm and quenchless fire of a vengeful God were far away, whereas Hugh March’s birch was horribly near; so Dennis risked eternity for the sake of comparative well-being in time. ”

“ He was happy too in having very powerful patrons, but what could be done for a man, who declared war against all the world? Dennis has given evidence against himself in the article of politeness; for in one of his letters he says, he would not retire to a certain place in the country, left he should be disturbed in his studies by the ladies in the house: for, says he, I am not over-fond of the conversation of women. But with all his foibles, we cannot but consider him as a good critic, and a man of genius. ”

“ And now, as it turned his empty gaze on Rhoda Kane, it was with a little more personal interest than before.
"What did Frank Corson tell you?"
"He said the man in the hospital with a broken leg was not a man. He was an android."
The term, grotesquely enough, meant nothing to the creature who called himself John Dennis. In the strange pattern of his consciousness there were no patterns of definitive difference. Though in many respects more able than the humans against whom he was pitted, he was no more aware of himself as different than a dog is aware of its differences from a man. ”

“ Hovering near her, a man, of a species Dennis had not seen before on the street corners of New York, seemed determined to intrude upon her attention.
Convinced of his purpose, the lady, for such she unmistakably appeared, rose from the seat as the fellow was about to raise his hat as a preliminary to further overtures, and sought another bench directly opposite the one from which Dennis had been a witness to her apparent persecution. ”

“ Soon he would have to fish these problems and perplexities up again, and discuss them with the priest; but for an hour or two, till Dennis departed, he would keep on the sunny surface of this windy morning. There lay the house that he loved more than anything or anyone in the world; he could almost fancy himself, if this April day were only eternal, being happy here, as the deer were happy, browsing on the fresh growth of spring time, and letting that love of hate and of evil in his heart sink into quiescence, even evaporate away. Would life lose all its effervescence without it? ”

“ He looked lazily at him for some half-dozen seconds without any aspect of surprise or recognition; then suddenly jumped up, and with a great oath pronounced his name.
‘Keep off, brother, keep off!’ cried Dennis, dodging behind the chair. ‘Don’t do me a mischief. I’m a prisoner like you. I haven’t the free use of my limbs. I’m quite an old man. Don’t hurt me!’
He whined out the last three words in such piteous accents, that Hugh, who had dragged away the chair, and aimed a blow at him with it, checked himself, and bade him get up. ”

“ The days and weeks that followed were to Dennis such as only come once in a lifetime, and not in every lifetime either. A true, pure love was growing up within his heart—growing as the little child develops in strength and pleasurable life, and yet unconsciously to itself. ”

“ Dennis's studio was on the south side, at the top of a tall building overlooking the lake. Even before the early summer sun rose above the shining waves he was at his easel, and so accomplished what is a fair day's work before many of his profession had left their beds. Though he worked hard and long, he still worked judiciously. Bent upon accomplishing what was almost impossible within the limited time remaining, he determined that, with all his labor, Dr. Arten should never charge him with suicidal tendencies again. ”

“ Love and he had nothing to do with each other. He did not desire to have any commerce with love, either in giving or receiving. He had chosen, and the reward of his choice was that he had everything else, as long as his life lasted, but that. He had always hated love, and never would he consciously or deliberately make terms with it. But it was as if some shadowy semblance of it in the shape of Dennis had come silently and burglariously up to his well-guarded house of hate, and opened the sash of some unbolted window. ”

“ Dennis was not a reflective man; perhaps he had never before meditated very deeply on the transitoriness of life, and the thousand ways in which oblivion is forever clutching at us, obliterating the few poor traces of our existence that are left when we depart from this world. But the conjunction of circumstances, bringing such a sight to him at that precise moment, wrought powerfully on his mind. "If I could only change!" he said to himself, as he plodded back to his boat. ”

“ Dennis accepts the Whole because he finds it a perfect logical system; I, because I find it a perfect work of art. His prophet is Hegel; mine is Walt Whitman."
"Walt Whitman! And you profess to be an artist!"
"So was he, not in words but in life. One thing to him was no better nor worse than another; small and great, high and low, good and bad, he accepts them all, with the instinctive delight of an actual physical contact. Listen to him!" And he began to quote:
"I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any. ”

“ To say that Mr Dennis’s modesty was not somewhat startled by these honours, or that he was altogether prepared for so flattering a reception, would be to claim for him a greater amount of stoical philosophy than even he possessed. Indeed this gentleman’s stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself. ”

“ He turned it off. "I do very well. Remember the places I've come from."
"I don't care in the least where you've come from! If Rose weren't here I could put you up so beautifully."
"Well, now that I know it," said Dennis after a moment, "I think I'm glad she's here. It's a fact the more to reckon with." ”

“ Poor Dennis could not know that he was only her unconscious instructor in painting, paid solely in the coin of false smiles and delusive hopes. At times, though, she would torture him dreadfully. Selecting one of her many admirers, she would seem to smile upon his suit, and poor Dennis would writhe in all the agonies of jealousy, for he was very human, and had all the normal feeling of a strong man. ”

“ Then he imparted his design concerning Dolly to Miss Miggs, who was taken more deaf than before, when he began; and so remained, all through.
The notable scheme was this. Mr Dennis was immediately to seek out from among the rioters, some daring young fellow (and he had one in his eye, he said) , who, terrified by the threats he could hold out to him, and alarmed by the capture of so many who were no better and no worse than he, would gladly avail himself of any help to get abroad, and out of harm’s way, with his plunder, even though his journey were incumbered by an unwilling companion ”

“ I’m as stiff as a dead body, and as full of ugly scratches as if I had been fighting all day yesterday with wild cats.’
‘You’ve so much enthusiasm, that’s it,’ said Dennis, looking with great admiration at the uncombed head, matted beard, and torn hands and face of the wild figure before him; ‘you’re such a devil of a fellow. You hurt yourself a hundred times more than you need, because you will be foremost in everything, and will do more than the rest.’
‘For the matter of that,’ returned Hugh, shaking back his ragged hair and glancing towards the door of the stable in which they lay ”

“ The more Dennis read the catalog and listened to the radio, the more he was convinced that out there somewhere in this big country of ours, there was something we had been missing. Then one day he said to me, "Daddy, let's go look at some of these places. All we are doing here is working ourselves to death and getting nowhere." ”

“ Mr Dauntsey saw how matters were drifting and was not ill-pleased. He knew Jim Dennis's worth, and also that he was a man of substance and well calculated to make a woman like Molly Corbold happy.
'Molly,' he said to her one day, when Jim Dennis had returned to Wanabeen. 'I think Dennis admires you. Do you like him?'
'Yes, I like him very much,' she replied openly. 'He is a very genuine man.'
'Precisely, that exactly describes him,' said her cousin. 'He is well off, and, although not well educated, he may be said to be one of Nature's best make. ”

“ I admire ye with all me heart,” said Dennis impetuously. “I never saw such an industrious, persevering fellow. If all Scotch lads take the tide of life at the flood as you do, small blame to ye for making your fortunes; and well ye deserve it.”
“There’s not a doubt about it,” replied Alister complacently. “And I’ll tell ye more. Find me arty grand work, if it’s at the other end of the airth, whether it’s digging a dyke in the desert, or bigging a mountain up to the moon, and I’ll find ye an Aberdeenshire man not far from the head of it.” ”

“ Dennis was usually busy with customers at that time, and, though conscious of her presence the moment she entered, found no excuse or encouragement to approach. The best he ever received from her was a slight smile and a cold bow of recognition, and in her haste and self-absorption she did not always give these. She evidently had something on her mind by which it was completely occupied.
"She does not even think of me," sighed Dennis; "she evidently imagines that there is an immeasurable distance between us yet." ”

“ For another three months, Florence Hathaway had stayed on with the Clarion—largely for love of Tom Dennis. Then had come the offer of a teacher's position in a private school in Chicago, and she had accepted the offer.
Not that Dennis wanted her to accept—far from it! They had argued it all out that night, under the willow trees by the river. Her hand in his, the girl had made Tom Dennis face a few hard facts. She was the rare kind who can make a man realize things.
"Tom, dear," she had said gently, "another year will see you firmly established here in Marshville. ”

“ He was advised to lay aside his dead-dress, now that he had so unexpectedly come among the living; but it was too valuable a piece of finery, and had cost Dennis too much oratory the preceding day, to be parted with so readily. He met nobody on the road; but if he had, his dress would have been his protection; for everyone would have run from him, as from a ghost. He might have gone in any dress, however, in security; few people, in any country, would be willing to lead to the gallows a man just escaped from it; few people in Ireland would refuse to run some risk to save him from it. ”

“ Even Mr Dennis, who was not at all particular on the score of gravity or dignity, and who had a great relish for his young friend’s eccentric humours, took occasion to remonstrate with him on this imprudent behaviour, which he held to be a species of suicide, tantamount to a man’s working himself off without being overtaken by the law, than which he could imagine nothing more ridiculous or impertinent. ”

“ Dennis imagined, was rather meant to affront him, than pay a compliment to his genius, as he could discover nothing excellent in the lines, and if there was, they being only a translation, in some measure abated the merit of them. Being fired with resentment at this affront, he immediately, in a spirit of fury, wrote a letter to the Spectator, in which he treated him with very little ceremony, and informed him, that if he had been sincere in paying a compliment to him, he should have chosen a quotation from his poem on the Battle of Ramellies ”