Kennedy

“ To the People of the United States:
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, has been taken from us by an act which outrages decent men everywhere.
He upheld the faith of our fathers, which is freedom for all men. He broadened the frontiers of that faith, and backed it with the energy and the courage which are the mark of the Nation he led.
A man of wisdom, strength, and peace, he moulded and moved the power of our Nation in the service of a world of growing liberty and order. All who love freedom will mourn his death. ”

“ Yes, Robert Kennedy's legacy is alive today in the work of his family in public service, in the work of those of us he inspired, in the hearts of his fellow Americans. The distance of three decades cannot silence the strength of his words or lessen the impact of his actions. ”

“ I like to think as President Kennedy did—that the emerald thread runs into the cloth you weave today, that these polices in which he believe so strongly and which President Johnson is advancing, are the current flowering of the Irish tradition. They are directed toward freedom for all Americans here and for all peoples throughout the world. ”

“ His manner was one of rude frankness, and folk held him for a bluff, blunt, genial soul, who made up in generosity what he lacked of truth.
And yet I have thought folk mistaken in Big Kennedy. For all his loud openness and friendly roar, which would seem to tell his every thought, the man could be the soul of cunning and turn secret as a mole. He was for his own interest; he came and went a cold calculating trader of politics; he never wasted his favors, but must get as much as he gave, and indulged in no revenges except when revenge was needed for a lesson. ”

“ I had begun to wonder whether Kennedy might not have made a mistake when, suddenly, from behind the shadow of another rock, ahead of me, but toward Brownlee Avenue, I saw a tall, gaunt figure of a man rise in the moonlight, almost as if it had sprung from the very earth. ”

“ As when in a hostile country one has laid aside his armour, and from unregarded ambush the enemy leaps on him, and, though he be strong and noble, stabs him with a festering wound, so this temptation to a base act sprang on poor Kennedy when he was unarmed and unprepared. In the gaieties of life, and the brightnesses of hope, and the securities of unbroken enjoyment, he had long been trusting in himself only, in his own high principle, his own generous impulses, his own unstained honour. ”

“ Two generations later President Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic, and the first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation's progress because they were Catholic or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in the slums — untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans? ”

“ Kennedy whispered, ‘Your license, fair Cousin,’ and passed on with the free step of lordly birth, while a few paces behind the seeming scholar humbly followed, and Malcolm, putting on his soldier’s tread and the careless free-and-easy bearing he had affected before Meaux, brought up the rear with Master Kennedy’s mails. ”

“ Robert Kennedy lived his life with courage and conviction, never afraid to challenge a divided nation to face its moral failings. Bobby challenged us all to take a step back from the stale, cheap politics of the moment and to do better by each other. ”

“ In the passing of Major Kennedy the Church and Nation have lost a man who could ill be spared. [viii] So simple in his faith, so fearless and powerful in his preaching, he was a man who wielded an influence almost unique in this country. Those who have been benefited by his ministry are not counted by hundreds but by tens of hundreds. His influence with the men at the Front was extraordinary. A soldier writes, 'I was awfully sorry to hear of Mr. Kennedy's death. ”

“ The landlord of the Jungfrau treated them with the utmost consideration, and amused Kennedy by paying him as much deference as if he had been Tell or Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped, Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to keep as a trophy in his rooms at Camford.
There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as though they were all brothers and sisters of a common home. ”

“ Kennedy's teeth crunched in the brown throat, crushed gullet and windpipe together, held fast. The great muscles knotted and slid and heaved under the copper skin, the hands struck and wrenched and tore, the great body thrashed and floundered, twisted and leaped and writhed in horrible convulsion of death agony; the terrible steel-trap at his throat was unbroken, unshaken, crushing out his life. ”

“ Kennedy arrived at Camford at mid-day, and as but few men had yet come up, he beguiled the time by going out to make the usual formal call on his tutor. As he passed the door of the room where temptation had brought on him so many heavy hours, he could hardly repress an involuntary shudder; but on the whole, he was in high spirits, and Mr Grayson received him with something almost approaching to cordiality.
“You did very well in the examination, Mr Kennedy; very well indeed. With diligence you might have been head of your year—as it was, you were in the first ten.” ”

“ Resting her chin on one palm, listening half consciously for her call to interrupt the ceaseless clicking of the sounder, she gazed across the marble counter and the vaulted room; the gesticulating brokers, the scurrying messengers, faded into a background against which she saw again the light and color and movement of the night when she had met Mr. Kennedy. She heard his voice. "What's the use of living if you don't hit the high spots?" ”

“ Kennedy, with a quaint simplicity and wisdom, was perfectly aware of his own reputation as one of the boldest adventurers in new fields of discovery, and told himself that people made much of him for their own sake, and because he carried his restless energy with him into society as well as into his work. For energy is, as a rule, a godsend to fin-de-siècle men and women. ”

“ There was a horse with a shapeless burden; they cast off ropes and threw a bundle at his feet. A man, fast bound; his head touched Otis' foot, his face was in the dust, his sunny hair dabbled and dank with blood. He rolled over silently.
"God! Dolly?"
"Safe!" said Kennedy. "Safe!" The man was beautiful; the glory of strength and courage and manhood glowed through flesh and stain. ”

“ She hesitated. “It’s really C. K. Kennedy’s secret. He confided it to me because he hoped he could trust me.”
“And he can.”
“Yes, that’s right. He is a wonderful man. There is nothing I would not do for him.” ”

“ Kennedy, at the lodge, was considerably astonished to be awakened by a shower of gravel against his window, and to perceive, on looking out, the young master in full fishing order standing below, “Kennedy, Appleby’s going to leave some things here for me about twelve o’clock. Mind you’re in, and wait till I come for them. And if Raby comes, tell her I’ll be up about then; tell her not to go away.” ”

“ Kennedy never acted much from reason; impulse was generally his guiding-star. He had, moreover, been an absolute monarch, and a commander of men, for many years past in his capacity of fur-trader. Being, as we have said, a powerful, fiery man, he had ruled very much by means of brute force—a species of suasion, by the way, which is too common among many of the gentlemen (?) in the employment of the Hudson’s Bay Company. On hearing, therefore, that the men were fighting in front of the fort, Mr. Kennedy rushed out in a towering rage. ”

“ Kennedy had a tendency to idleness, which was developed by the freedom with which he plunged into society of all kinds. His company was so agreeable, and his bright young face was so happy an addition to all parties, that he was in a round of constant engagements—breakfast parties, wines, supper parties, and dinners—that encroached far too much on the hours of work. ”

“ Kennedy’s papers planted in a tree by Jacky, were afterwards recovered by him. When the nature of the country through which Kennedy travelled is understood and its difficulties known, it is no wonder that mishaps occurred to him. Stony mountainous country, thick dark scrubs, long dense grass, with tribes of fierce blacks ready to throw a spear on every occasion, were enough to tax the capacity of any leader, without the accompaniment of sickness, want of rations and disorganisation.
E. KENNEDY.
His task is ended, his journeying o’er. ”

“ Kennedy, shortly before his death:—
"I can not conceive why people will always mix up my own character and opinions, with those of the imaginary beings which, as a poet, I have the right and liberty to draw."
"They certainly do not spare your lordship in that respect," replied Kennedy; "and in 'Childe Harold,' 'Lara,' the [Pg 22] 'Giaour,' and 'Don Juan,' they are too much disposed to think that you paint in many instances yourself, and that these characters are only the vehicles for the expression of your own sentiments and feelings." ”

“ George,” and he laid his hand on his host's shoulder.
“There was no need of stretching it, Latrobe,” remarked Richard Horn in his low, incisive voice, his eyes on Kennedy's face, although he was speaking to the counsellor. “You and Kennedy did the world a great service at the right moment. Many a man of brains—one with something new to say—has gone to the wall and left his fellow men that much poorer because no one helped him into the Pool of Healing at the right moment.” (Dear Richard!—he was already beginning to understand something of this in his own experience.) ”

“ Thus it happened that at such a crisis as Kennedy had brought about for him Wu had suddenly been called out of the city and had received an order from a group of powerful foreign agents known secretly as the Intelligence Office to meet an emissary at a certain rocky promontory on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound the very day after Kennedy's little affair with him in the laboratory and the day before the letter from Washington arrived. ”

“ His success was as rapid as Richard Kennedy's had been, although it would be difficult to find two men more unlike than these, who were perhaps the most intelligent and able of all Mrs. Glover's practising students. Kennedy was cheerful, impulsive, practical, and blessed with a warm enjoyment of the world as it is. ”

“ As for myself, I don't seem to mind any, Miss Kennedy. It's for him that I mind. Once in his own place, he will show the world what he is [Pg 244] capable of. You only think of him as a sleepy old man, who likes to put up his feet and shut his eyes. So he is—so he is. But wait till he gets his own. Then you will see. As for eloquence, now, I remember one Fourth of July—but of course we were Americans then."
"Indeed, Lady Davenant, we shall all be rejoiced if you succeed. But do not forget Miss Messenger's warning. There is a moral success, and there is a legal success. ”

“ But when Mr Baer’s letter confirmed the fact that Kennedy had not been reading with a tutor either in classics or mathematics during the previous quarter, it seemed impossible for any one any longer to shut his eyes to the truth.
When the real state of the case forced itself on Mr Kennedy’s conviction, his affliction was so deep that no language can adequately describe what he suffered. In a few days his countenance became sensibly older-looking, and his hair more grey. His favourite and only surviving son had proved unworthy and base. ”

“ Mr. Kennedy’s writings were very popular during his life-time and deserve to be so still, for his three novels give graphic and excellent pictures of their times, and are true in their historical details, while his Memoirs of Wirt are quite as interesting. His “Cousin Lucretia’s” remedy for chills was actually used by his grandmother, Mrs. Pendleton of Virginia (see Tuckerman’s Life of Kennedy) ; and Horse-Shoe Robinson was a real hero of the Revolution whom Kennedy met in upper South Carolina, 1818. ”

“ Horses watered, Kennedy built into a monument of loose stones the tin can containing his remarkable location papers. Hiram unreeled and coiled the windlass rope, now needed for tying up the bed. This done, he looked thoughtfully into the well. "Don't you reckon we'd better cut some poles and cover this up? Something might come along and fall in." ”

“ He's supposed to know something about all that money and stuff that the Kennedy outfit got away with. What made you ask about him, doc?"
"I don't know. My recollection is very hazy, but it seems to me I saw the name in a newspaper somewhere. Don't recall where it was. What was the Kennedy outfit? A bunch of pickpockets?" ”

“ They were more afraid of being found out than we were. The cold sweat would break out on Mr. Kennedy’s brow when the conversation edged up toward the subject of previous meetings, and Mrs. Kennedy would begin to talk feverishly about other things. She was the kind of woman who hates to be unequal to any social emergency; and I am bound to confess, considering how unprepared she was, she held her own this time with tact and spirit. She had the copious flow of small talk so many Americans [84] seem to have at command, and it rippled fluently and untiringly on from the soup to the savory. ”

“ Mr Kennedy's opinions touching the British government—
"Cannibal-like, it fed one part of its subjects upon the other. She drinks the blood and sweat, and tears the sinews of its labouring millions to feed a miserable aristocracy. England is now seen standing in the twilight of her glory; but a sharp vision may see written upon her walls, the warning that Daniel interpreted for the Babylonish king—'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin!'"
We cannot help the confusion of genders. ”