Lamar

“ The same profound revery would steal upon him, and abide until broken by the merry peals of Lamar's peculiarly loud and joyous laughter, at the new mood which seemed to have visited the former. When a young person first begins to experience these abstracted moods, there is nothing, perhaps, that sounds more harsh and startling to his senses, than the mirthful voice of his best friend. He looks up as one would naturally look at any unseemly or boisterous conduct at a funeral. He seems to gaze and wonder, for the first time, that all things and all men are jogging on at their usual gait. ”

“ I will acknowledge to you, Lamar, that my curiosity is most painfully excited with regard to that unhappy young lady, but nothing more, I assure you. Some facts have, without my seeking, come to my knowledge, with which you are entirely unacquainted, and which have tended greatly to increase that curiosity. ”

“ Alo Lamar walked back to the banks of Monte Carlo. He began playing cards madly. He lost every cent he had stolen from his wicked mistress. He reached over the table, took up a revolver and blew out his brains; blew his very soul into eternity, all because he lost money. We all felt the shock from the awful shot! We saw his dark soul go down, down! His astral form was much smaller now. Again we saw awful wicked fiends drag him down to Purgatory. His mind was absolutely insane now, and would be for years to come. If any one shoots their minds away it ruins the soul. ”

“ Lawrence told him he had been to visit Judge Lindsly, who had greatly befriended him when he was small.
"Are you the boy whose father was tarred and feathered, and the Judge took you both in?"
"I am."
Lamar chuckled. "Say, boy, do you know I was in that crowd?"
"No," answered Lawrence, more astonished than ever.
"Well, I was. But here is your horse and everything taken from you. You are at liberty to take them and ride away. Nay, more, I will send an escort with you to protect you until you are near the lines of your friends." ”

“ Lucy was close behind on the thundering Nagger, and he had no fear for her, only a wild joy in her, that she was a girl capable of riding this race with him. So, as the sage flashed by, and the wind bit sweet, and the quick, rhythmic music of Wildfire's hoofs rang in his ears, Lamar began to live the sweetest thing in a rider's career—the glory of the one running race wherein he staked pride in his horse, love of a girl, and life. ”

“ I was indeed very sad when I thought that years might elapse before I could see her who had given me being.
"I will make some inquiries, Phil, in regard to the Collingsbys," said Mr. Lamar.
"Are you satisfied, sir, that I am what I say I am?" I asked.
"I have no doubt you are, though perhaps your case is not absolutely beyond cavil. The old man who died might have found the body of the child, and taken the clothes and trinkets from it; but that is not probable."
"But I can produce a man who has known me from my childhood," I replied. ”

“ Wildfire and Nagger could run low, stretched out at length, in brush or in the open. It was evident, however, that Cordts preferred open running, and as he cut across the trail, Lamar gained. This trail was one long used by the rustlers in driving cattle, and it was a wide, hard-packed road. Lamar knew it for ten miles, until it turned into the rugged and broken passes. He believed the race would be ended before Cordts had a chance to take to the cañons. ”

“ It all comes back to me like a forgotten dream."
"Very well; but, Farringford, you have something to live for now," added Mr. Lamar.
"I have, indeed," replied the trembling sufferer, as he glanced fondly at me. "I will try to do better."
"When you feel able to do anything, we shall be glad to help you to a situation where you can do something to support your boy," said Mr. Gray.
"I can take care of myself, gentlemen. I am getting three dollars a week now, and I hope soon to obtain more," I interposed.
"Three dollars a week will hardly support you." ”

“ Lamar was one of the most absent-minded of men. A number of years ago, by invitation of the Faculty, he delivered an address to the graduating class of Centre College, Kentucky. The day was quite warm, the exercises somewhat protracted, and, at the close of his able and eloquent address, he was very much exhausted.
An excellent collation, prepared by the ladies connected with the College, was served in the chapel near by, at the close of the exercises. Seated upon the platform, with Mr. Lamar at the head of the table, were Doctor Young, the President, Justice Harlan, Governor Knott, the Rev. ”

“ A powerful work of fiction by a new author.
There can be no doubt that "Doctor Lamar" is a remarkable novel. It has originality in subject and treatment. The hero is drawn with a master hand. The picture of the heroine is a revelation of innocence and beauty of the most exquisite English type. The love story which runs through the book, like a golden thread, is an idyl. Few novels are so well calculated to appeal to a large class of readers, comprising, as it does, food both for thought and recreation. ”

“ In those border days every rider loved his horse as a part of himself. If there was a difference between any rider of the sage and Bostil, it was that, as Bostil had more horses, so he had more love.
If he had any unhappiness, it was because he could not buy Wildfire and Nagger, thoroughbreds belonging to one Lamar, a poor daredevil rider who would not have parted with them for all the gold in the uplands. And Lamar had dared to cast longing eyes at Lucy. ”

“ And if his plan did not fail, she would [68] work every day, side by side with him, in the interest of labor. If his deeper plan did not fail—— Lamar was not so fastidious as Barry Malleson had been about shutting out from his mind and contemplation the idea of making love to a woman who was at that moment sitting on one side of the coffined body of her husband while he sat on the other.
That afternoon, as the rector of Christ Church was returning from a service held by him in a mission chapel maintained by his church, he saw a funeral procession winding up a hill toward a suburban cemetery. ”

“ Lamar sprang to his feet at the sight of his friend, with volumes of smoke rolling over his head, and laying one hand on Chevillere's back and another on his breast, cried in the true mock heroic;—"'Be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou com'st in such a questionable shape, that I will speak to thee.' 'Revisit'st thou thus the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous, and us [Pg 94] fools of' liquor—'so horribly to shake our dispositions, with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ”

“ He next proceeded to pull out of his pocket a collar, and parts of two sleeves of a shirt, spreading them on the bed, as a milliner would do her finery; and holding out both his hands with the palms upward in the manner of an orator,——
"There!" said he, "that's what I call a pretty [Pg 61] tolerable neat job, to shirt a stranger the first night he comes to town."
Lamar, who by this time began to see a little into the affair, asked, "But, Damon, how did all this happen? you seem to have been discomfited." ”

“ Then the rector went to her, and laid a quieting hand on her shoulder.
“You mustn’t give way like this,” he said. “We need you. We need your courage, more now than ever before. I can’t understand this. You must have been misinformed. Lamar must be mistaken. If the men are willing to go back on Mr. Malleson’s terms he certainly can’t refuse them; he dare not; he must not!”
He was growing as excited and indignant over the situation as was Mary Bradley herself.
“Tell him so, Mr. Farrar!” exclaimed the woman. “Please go to him and tell him so. He won’t listen to the men. He won’t listen to Barry. ”

“ He's got no more fear among the Injins than a wild cat in a weasel's nest; O! it would have done your heart good to see him jist lie down behind an old log, and watch for one of the varmint's heads bobbin up and down like a muskovy drake in a barn yard, and as sure as you saw the fire at the muzzle of his gun, so sure he knocked the creter's hind sights out. You see he always took 'em on the bob, jist as you would shoot a divin bird, and that's what I always called taking the bread out of the creter's mouth, for he was watchin for the same chance."
"Did you scalp the slain?" said Lamar. ”

“ Here we crossed it, and following the base of these hills in the plain, we reached on the second evening a small stream, which flows for at least a hundred miles due east through this broad plain, which the Indians called Lamarie, to the Black Mountains bordering the plain, and, as Owl told us, winds through the latter till it falls into the Northern Platte to the east of Fort Lamarie. These mountains, which in height and shape exactly resemble the range from which the Bighorn rises, are to the north of that snow peak. ”

“ The misery of the young and the beautiful is at all times infectious. Few young persons can withhold sympathy in such a case,—especially if the person thus afflicted be unmarried—of the other sex—and near one's own age.
Victor Chevillere could not expel from his imagination the image of the fair stranger. Again and again did he essay to join Lamar in his light and sprightly conversation, as they, on the day after the one recorded in the last chapter, pursued their journey along the noble turnpike between Fredericktown and Baltimore. ”

“ Chevillere has not been surreptitiously avoided by me, nor will it ever be; but if he is wise, he will forget one who has already extended the influence of her unhappiness too far.'
"I read these lines over again and again. I walked round Baltimore as if it had been a hamlet. It seemed to me that every person whom I met could read in my countenance something strange and hurried. At length, however, I found my way to the breakfast table. Lamar, as my bad luck would have it, sat almost opposite to me. ”

“ Lamar understood her motive and sympathized with her. He even suffered her, without marked protest, to receive Barry’s open attentions. He knew that, in receiving them, the one thought in her mind was to harass the young man’s aristocratic father with the prospect of having for a daughter-in-law that queen of the proletarians, Mary Bradley. There was many a quip passed back and forth between them concerning Barry’s infatuation, and many an exchange of meaning glances, as together they instructed him in the elementary principles of socialism. ”

“ For if this sort of selection could turn an antelope into a giraffe, it could conceivably turn a pond full of amoebas into the French Academy. Though Lamarck's way, the way of life, will, aspiration, and achievement, remained still possible, this newly shewn way of hunger, death, stupidity, delusion, chance, and bare survival was also possible: was indeed most certainly the way in which many apparently intelligently designed transformations had actually come to pass. ”

“ During the next day our road again ran over a desolate, melancholy plain, but toward evening we saw a low wood in the distance, and reached another arm of the river which runs through the Black Mountains to Fort Lamarie. Here we had everything we could desire, a protected camp in the wood, and a splendid trout stream, in which we refreshed ourselves and our horses. We shot several fat buffaloes, and a few black-tailed stags. The wood above us sufficed to put us in good spirits, for we were very tired of the monotonous, desolate plains over which we had been marching for a long time. ”

“ FOR many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development, geologists were much occupied with the question whether the past changes in the animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously, by causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in operation. ”

“ From the time of Linnæus to the commencement of the present century, it seemed a sufficient definition of the term species to say, that 'a species consisted of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation.' But Lamarck, after having first studied botany with success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) ”

“ The only secondary cause, therefore, which has, as yet, been even conjecturally brought forward, to explain how, in the ordinary course of nature, a new specific form may be generated is, as Lamarck declared, 'variation,' and this has been rendered a far more probable hypothesis by the way in which Natural Selection is shown to give intensity and permanency to certain varieties. ”

“ But while horses and oxen were at work in the fields, the stable ram walked about in the barnyard. He was newly clipped and touchy, knocked over the small boys, chased the shepherd dog into his kennel, and then strutted about as though he alone were lord of the whole place. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your wool?" asked the wild geese, who rode by up in the air. "That I have sent to Drag's woollen mills in Norrköping," replied the ram with a long, drawn-out bleat. ”

“ The grant of authority to the Executive, as to other departments of the government, ought not to be amplified by judicial decisions. The Constitution is the legitimate source of authority of all who exercise power under its sanction, and its provisions are equally binding upon every officer of the government, from the highest to the lowest. ”

“ For while by statute in a few jurisdictions, and by decisions in others, the affidavit of a juror may be received to prove the misconduct of himself and his fellows, the weight of authority is that a juror cannot impeach his own verdict. ”