Knowlton

“ Knowlton blushed. Perhaps his heart swelled for a second at the mere thought, for, like all young lawyers, he had his ambitions, with the dome of the Capitol at Washington in the perspective of his dreams.
But the Singed Cat was leaning over the judge’s desk again and his little eyes, out of his thin serious face, swept the circle of chairs before him. His gavel fell.
“The convention—will be—in order,” he said in his penetrating voice. And then he paused and looked solemnly about. ”

“ He made a noble stand at Harlem Heights for three weeks, where he had several encounters with the foe. In one of these, two of his most brilliant officers were killed, Colonel Knowlton and Major Leith. Knowlton's last words were, "Did we drive the enemy in?" Speaking of Colonel Knowlton reminds us of an incident.
Soon after the retreat from Brooklyn, Washington said to Knowlton:
"It is important for me to know the strength of the enemy on [373] Long Island. Can you name a trusty man who will find out?"
"I can," answered Knowlton. "If he will consent, he is just the man for such service." ”

“ Besides, I remembered his confidences to me that Christmas Eve out at the country club. He too was a sentimentalist—and such as we, who are sentimentalists, are apt to be dishonest only to ourselves or to those we love; the money form of dishonesty is abhorrent to an emotional man. Knowlton was of the common type who masked deep feeling by an outward hard glamour of efficiency. I must have gone on too long staring at him, for he suddenly turned around with a slight narrowing of the eyes.
"Wondering if I am big enough for the job, Ted?" ”

“ No wonder you know a lot about chemical experiments—your ideas tumble all over themselves. That's all right when you've got test tubes to pour 'em into, but you got to be careful how you spill 'em around Deep Harbor. What church do you attend?"
The suddeness with which this query came at me left me floundering once more.
"Church?" I queried, as if I had never heard of the institution.
"Hell, yes—church," Knowlton replied. "Nothing like being seen regularly at church when you hit a new town. You make friends that way, and it's good for business—makes people think you steady and dependable." ”

“ As for McKay, he had known Loring to fall once before, and he was not hopeful for the outcome.
“Knowlton,” continued Loring, “you had better stay here with me. It won’t do for the miners to think that you are hidden.”
“Well, I won’t be,” exclaimed Knowlton decisively. “There is only one thing in this world that I am afraid of, and that is a fool!”
The men hurried to their tents to procure their firearms. From the window of the mess Stephen watched them, as one by one they returned and slipped into the darkened office. ”

“ Rankin was there with an enormous fresh collar lying down about his neck. He had left off his waistcoat, and the white shirt his wife had packed in his little traveling-bag when he started from home was now at last donned in obedience to her parting mandate, and unhidden as it was, gave to the world a broad and convincing proof of his domestic discipline. Randolph, too, was immaculate, while young Knowlton was almost senatorial in freshly brushed black clothes and linen that had the metallic gloss of the laundry machine on it. ”

“ Knowlton almost snorted in his rage.
At supper every man was keyed to a high pitch of excitement. There were only about twenty white men in camp, and though they were well armed, the Mexicans outnumbered them more than fifteen to one. Stephen alone [245] refrained from joining in the flurry of question and conjecture which whirled about the table. Although he seemed unmoved, a close observer would have noticed that he gripped his knife and fork almost as if they had been weapons. Wah slid his plate of soup before him, at the same time patting him on the shoulder with affectionate interest. ”

“ Ted Jevons, of London, England," said Knowlton.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jevons," said Kane, looking at me with the same curiosity I studied him with. "They tell me London is some town," he added with a forced laugh and an attempt at hearty conversation. "I expect we seem a little out of it here by the lake, after them big cities, but Deep Harbor's pretty up-to-date at that. We have more miles of paved streets in proportion to our population than any city between Buffalo and Toledo. Have you seen the view from the Soldiers' Home, Mr. Jevons?" ”

“ Then Knowlton turned, and walked slowly into the office. As he entered, the volume of curses changed from a mutter to a roar. He found Loring on his knees, locking the combination of the safe.
“Well, Mr. Loring, I’ve done it now. I’ve killed Rigas. These damned automatics! You [243] can beat a man over the head for a week with a Colt without its going off.”
“Too bad!” said Stephen calmly, rising from his knees. “But the character of Rigas was not such that he will be a great loss to the world. He was always causing some sort of mischief.” ”

“ That is, the old man had a funny idea that wills didn’t hold very well in this country, and he had a great respect for the honor of the army officers. So he left 206$15,000 in cash with a Colonel Knowlton in trust for Harry Maidslow when he could be found. Harry had a way of changing his name when he felt like it, and old Max didn’t know him very well, anyway, so the only way he could be sure of Colonel Knowlton identifying him was by—well, by a certain mark he had on his body that Max happened to know about. ”

“ So you have the evils of prostitution substituted for the evils of over-population. Now, what says Dr. Knowlton? There being this choice of evils—there being this unquestioned evil of over-population which exists in a great part of the civilised world—is the remedy proposed by Malthus so doubtful that probably it would lead to greater evils than the one which it is intended to remedy? Dr. Knowlton suggests—and here we come to the critical point of this inquiry—he suggests that, instead of marriage being postponed, it shall be hastened. ”

“ THE BOY TRAMP.
(Continued from page 175.)
"There stood Captain Knowlton."
During the meal Mr. Westlake talked about cricket, asking whether I played, and I explained that there had not been enough of us at Castlemore to make a proper eleven. He inquired further about Mr. Turton and Mr. Windlesham, and gradually led the conversation round to the days when I used to live in Acacia Road with Aunt Marion. I told him that she had married Major Ruston, and gone to India, but that I did not know her address nor Major Ruston's regiment. ”

“ In keeping with the promise made to his electors, he became a resident of the County of Brome, returning to Knowlton in the fall of 1871. He has held successively the offices of school commissioner and chairman of that body for a number of years; and was also the Mayor of the Township of Brome, and Warden of the County. In May, 1874, he married Ellen Florence, eldest daughter of J. C. Pettes, a successful merchant of Knowlton, by whom he has two children. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and was some years since, deputy grand master for the District of Bedford. Mr. ”

“ Some agitator chap has been talking it up to them about the way the Company was stealing from them. I don’t jest know what we had better do,” he concluded, while he fingered his gun nervously, and looked to Loring for guidance.
“Rigas is dead, you said?” asked Stephen.
“Well, not exactly. He might as well be, though. A forty-five calibre hole through your head ain’t healthy. If he ain’t dead now, he won’t live more than a few hours. And when he does die—!” Knowlton broke off gloomily. ”

“ We must have been very young and inexperienced. Once in a while Knowlton had asked me, with his Harlequin's grin, how I was getting on; old Hemphill at the factory had stumbled his way through a clumsy joke aimed at me: neither followed the subject very far. Helen was not a topic I would allow discussed; there was something so far beyond the comprehension of the world in our attitude toward each other. Helen's own friends, I discovered, had passed from teasing to regard us as a fait accompli, and thereafter held their peace. ”

“ Knowlton is assailed, lies in the difference of the price at which the two are severally published. If Dr. Knowlton was sold at 10s. 6d. and Dr. Churchill at 6d., then the vials of legal wrath would have descended on the advocate of abortion and not on the teacher of prevention. The obscenity lies, to a great extent, in the price of the book sold. A vulgar little sixpence is obscene, a dainty half-sovereign is respectable. Poor people must be content to remain ignorant, or to buy the injurious quack treatises circulated in secret ”

“ The Knowlton pamphlet is either decent or indecent. If decent it ought to be defended; if indecent it should never have been published. To judge it indecent is to condemn, with the most severe condemnation, James Watson whom I respected, and Austin Holyoake with whom I worked. I hold the work to be defensible, and I deny the right of any one to interfere with the full and free discussion of social questions affecting the happiness of the nation. ”

“ Some, who have never read the Knowlton pamphlet, glibly denounce it as a filthy and obscene publication. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Mr. Justice Mellor, after reading it, decided to grant a writ which they had determined not to grant if the book had merely a veneer of science and was "calculated to arouse the passions". Christian bigotry has ever since 1877 striven to confound our action with the action of men who sell filth for gain, but only the shameless can persist in so doing when their falsehoods are plainly exposed, as they are exposed here. ”

“ Ritualists circulate a book beside which Knowlton is said to be purity itself, and the law does not touch them; no warrants are issued for their apprehension; no prosecution is paid for by a hidden enemy; no law-officer of the Crown is briefed against them. Why is this? because to attack Christians is to draw attention to the foundation of Christianity; because to attack the “Priest in Absolution” is to attack Moses. The Christian walls are made out of Bible-glass, and they fear to throw stones lest they should break their own house. ”

“ The Christians desire to make two laws, and show their hands too plainly: one law is to be strict, and is to apply wholly to Freethinkers; cheating Christians, who sell even Knowlton, are to be winked at by the authorities, and are to be let off scot free ”

“ As usual on pay day afternoon, in the road before the office, little groups of men were arguing excitedly among themselves, discussing the manner in which they were “cheated.” The dejected droop of their shoulders was accentuated by the quick, jerky movements of their arms as they gesticulated.
Knowlton, the deputy sheriff, who was assigned to Kay, sat on the steps before the office door. He was rolling a cigarette, seemingly unconscious of the noisy crowd. But pay day was always likely to cause trouble, and he was prepared for it. ”

“ Knowlton's work was written, the very important fact has been discovered that ova are periodically discharged from the ovaries in the human female and other animals, not in consequence of fruitful connection having taken place, as was formerly believed, but quite independently of intercourse with the male. Such a discharge of ova occurs in the lower animals at the time of heat or rut, and in women during menstruation. At each menstrual period, a Graafian vesicle becomes enlarged, bursts, and lets the ovum which it contains escape into the Fallopian tube, along which it passes to the uterus. ”

“ I mean, legally speaking, I'll have no special claims for anything I do. I have no financial interest at stake except the purely human one of making a good job a better one."
I got up and held out my hand. "I'm sorry, Knowlton."
His old grin returned, as he took my hand. "It's all right, kid," he said. "I'm glad you're learning."
Deep Harbor I suspected to be a difficult spot in which to do new financing. Probably our absentee ownership would be a handicap. I went first to Mr. Claybourne to ask his advice. He received me in his little office, which was upstairs in his own factory. ”

“ Truly, our prosecutors must feel delighted at the results of their labors.
"So much for the past: what as to the future? Some, fancying we should act as they themselves would do under the like circumstances, dream that we shall now give way. We have not the smallest intention of doing anything of the kind. We said, nearly a year ago, that so long as Knowlton was prosecuted we should persist in selling him; we repeated the same determination in Court, and received for it a heavy sentence; we repeat the same to-day, in spite of the injudicious threat of Lord Justice Brett. ”

“ Second—In a social point of view.—"Is it not notorious that the families of the married often increase beyond which a regard for the young beings coming into the world, and the happiness of those who give them birth, would dictate. In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family remain slave throughout their lives, tugging at the oar of incessant labor, toiling to live, and living to toil; when, if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence? ”

“ The grave consequences which it is asserted must arise in the future if the right to levy a progressive tax be recognized involves in its ultimate aspect the mere assertion that free and representative government is a failure, and that the grossest abuses of power are foreshadowed unless the courts usurp a purely legislative function. ”