Longman

“ Longman, That all your honour’s old servants are now happy, but one. You mean John Arnold? said my master. I do, indeed, said he, if you’ll excuse me, sir. O, said I, I have had my prayer for poor John answered, as favourably as I could wish.—Why, said Mr. Longman, to be sure poor John has acted no very good part, take it altogether; but he so much honoured you, sir, and so much respected you, madam, that he would have been glad to have been obedient to both; and so was faithful to neither. But, indeed, the poor fellow’s heart is almost broke, and he won’t look out for any other place ”

“ Two of the former assistants, Mr. Dyer and Mr. Reader, have, on the good old system, been admitted to the firm, which now stands “Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer.” Mr. Roberts, as before stated, died in 1865.
Both the Messrs. Longman are well known for their literary talents—Mr. Thomas Longman as editor of a magnificent edition of the New Testament; and Mr. William as an historical author. The first of his works was, we believe, privately printed, A Tour in the Alps, by W. L. Mr. William Longman has always been an enthusiastic Alpine traveller. ”

“ As for behaving, just watch other people and behave as they do.”
“Now, that’s a first-rate idea o’ your’n, Longman—first-rate. And I’ll jist be guided by that. I’ll watch the gentry, and behave jist as they do, and thin I can’t do amiss!” exclaimed Dandy, brightening up.
A very dangerous rule, with many unsuspected exceptions.
“And now put on your overcoats and draw your woolen mittens over your white kids, and come along, you two, or we shall be late,” said Longman, who had already put on all his outer garments and stood ready to march. ”

“ I will remember to remind you of it,” replied Ran.
“Now will you please go on telling me about the family my niece married into?” said Dandy impatiently.
“Certainly!” smiled Longman, good-humoredly. “The son utterly ignores his father and hangs on the skirts of influential people; but as yet has had but little success. The daughter went out as a governess, less it seems to be of service to children than to seek her own fortune, through her beauty, among the rich and noble. She also ignores her father. ”

“ For the whole of the seventeenth century the Longman family occupied the position of thriving citizens in the busy seaport town of Bristol, then the Liverpool of the day, and acquired some considerable wealth in the manufacture of soap and sugar, achieving in many instances the highest honours in civic authority. Ezekiel Longman, who is described as “of Bristol, gentleman,” died in the year 1708, leaving, by a second marriage, a little boy only nine years of80 age, who, as Thomas Longman, is afterwards to be the founder of the great Paternoster Row firm. ”

“ After breakfast Longman went over to the Hall to see his friends.
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, standing together at the door, watched him walking down the walled road that led to the park gates.
“It is astonishing,” said the curate, “that so honest a man as Longman should have such a respect for that villain Montgomery as he appears to have.”
“I suppose the young fellow has never seen the villain’s cloven foot, and men have no intuitions to guide them as we have, you know,” replied Hetty. ”

“ She gave a delicious giggle to which Longman added a chuckle.
"That air good, brat," he replied. "There ain't nothin' like home comfort in this world."
"An' ye see, 'Satisfied,' I ain't lettin' my Daddy fish much now, only 'nough fer us an' fer Professor Young an' Ma Moll.... Daddy ain't very well."
"He air gettin' old," sighed Longman, taking up his pipe.
"No, he ain't," contradicted Tessibel, quickly. "He air got somethin' the matter with 'is heart. Mr. Young had a doctor fer him, an' he says he mustn't work. Now I got my singin' he don't have to.... ”

“ Longman. Who’s a-hindering on you? I myself am going into the town to send a telescope message 195to my niece,” replied the old man, and with a low bow, intended for all the company, he turned and left the room.
Ran hastily shook hands with Longman, then leaving him with the others, hurried out after his old friend, whom he found on the drive.
“Dandy! Dandy, I say! Please stop!” he called.
“Well, Mr. Hay, what’s your will, sir?” the old fellow demanded, turning to face his host.
“You must not walk into the village. Take the dogcart.”
“You are very kind, Mr. Hay, sir ”

“ Longman was himself indefatigable in business, for fifty years unremittingly he came from and returned to Hampstead on horseback; but as the rious branches of the trade clearly prove, the superintendence of so vast a business was altogether beyond the power of any single man; and perhaps nothing tended more to raise the firm to the eminent position it soon attained than the plan of introducing fresh blood from time to time;—the new members being often chosen on account of the zeal and talent they had displayed as servants of the house. ”

“ Miss Longman has expressed her as exultant, regal, young - far less matronly than as conventionally pictured - glorying in her power to bless the cooperative labors of man and nature. She holds as her sceptre the stalk of corn, and offers the crown of summer to the world. The central figure is not more lovely than the pedestal base on which she stands. A frieze of dancing maidens, wrought in cleancut low relief, Greek in manner, celebrate the Harvest feast. In the accompanying illustration, the groups on pylons, by Albert Jaegers, already described, may be seen in the background. ”

“ There was no answer, but just behind the invading 104 party the outlaw caught sight of Peter Longman, apparently trying to screen himself from observation.
“I need not ask,” he said. “There is the treacherous hound. He shall not live to profit by his baseness.”
Before anyone could interfere James Fox leveled his revolver at Longman, and a sharp scream showed that his aim was true. His treacherous follower fell to the ground, mortally wounded.
James Fox looked at him disdainfully, then threw the revolver upon the floor of the cave and held out his hands. “Now bind me if you will,” he said ”

“ The rector came over every day to inquire after Mike and to bring reports of Gentleman Geff, who was at death’s door with brain fever and not expected to recover. Longman, the colossus, was established in the sick-room as his constant attendant. Elspeth remained at the rectory for the present. She would not leave the family under present circumstances. Meanwhile Randolph Hay had given orders to his bailiff, Prowt, to have the gamekeeper’s cottage put in complete repair and refurnished for the Longmans. ”

“ First, after the Dedication, (which must march first) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface (which stood like a dead wall of prose between) to be the first poem—then comes "The Pixies," and the things most juvenile—then on "To Chatterton," &c.—on, lastly, to the "Ode on the Departing Year," and "Musings,"—which finish. Longman wanted the Ode first; but the arrangement I have made is precisely that marked out in the dedication, following the order of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit a good portion of the first edition. ”

“ What each was to do on the other side of the ocean was not very clear, even to themselves. Each had a little money saved up. Dandy thought he would sink his savings in a life annuity. Longman hoped to get a gamekeeper’s place on some estate. Mike wanted to go to school for a little while. He was really nineteen years old, but so small and slender that he might easily have passed for a schoolboy. But he meant to keep near his mining “pards,” so as not to “inthrude” on Ran and Judy and their fine friends. ”

“ When the speaker had finished his story Ran turned to him and said:
“Now, Longman, if you are ready you may tell me what you meant when you said that you had something to report in reference to that undutiful son of worthy John Legg,” said Ran.
“Yes, sir. He has taken ‘holy orders,’ the more effectually to serve the devil, I fear. And he has been appointed by his brother-in-law to the living of Haymore parish, worth six hundred pounds, besides the rectory and glebe—all of which is in your gift, Mr. Hay.” ”

“ Longman was at the rectory keeping guard over the dying man.
That evening Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay entertained at dinner the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Montgomery, Dr. Hobbs, Mr. Will Walling and Mr. Michael Man. And the festival passed off pleasantly, nor did Judy, nor even Mike, once fall into dialect.
When the Christmas holidays were over, Mr. Will Walling, having seen his friend and client, Mr. Randolph Hay, in quiet and undisputed possession of Haymore, prepared to take leave of the Hall and return to New York. ”

“ Scott and Byron had in succession entranced the world. They had now withdrawn, and no third king arose to demand recognition. It was in the calm that followed that Wordsworth obtained a hearing. In 1839, the University of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, amid the enthusiastic applause of a crowded theatre. Younger men were coming to the fore, and though his contemporaries were fast dying off, still Longman was as eager for business as ever, and as ready, when it was over, for his chief pleasure—the enjoyments of domestic life ”

“ First of the book business. I find a resistance which I did not expect to the anonymousness of the publication. Longman seems confident that a work on such a subject without a name would not do. Translations and perhaps Satires are, he says, the only works that booksellers now venture on without a name. He is very solicitous to have your “Thalaba,” and wonders (most wonderful!) that you do not write a novel. That would be the thing! and truly, if by no more pains than a “St. Leon” [226] requires you could get four hundred pounds!! ”

“ He was to call his book A Synthetic Philosophy. Hundreds of would-be sages had cut themselves off from all active communion with life, had retired to the seclusion of a study or cave, and had written solemn tomes on what Man ought to think. Longman was going to discover what his kind really [Pg 94] did think. He went about it in a systematic, almost statistical way.
He had reduced the more important of the various possible human beliefs to twenty-odd propositions and many subheads, all of which he had had printed on a double sheet of foolscap. It began boldly by raising the question of Deity. ”

“ The ould fort will be right on our road, and I can shtop there to see me swishter Judy, and then I’ll go back to Grizzly. Grizzly ain’t no great shakes; but for a steady-going old mining camp, that will nivir promise to mek a man a millingnaire, nor yet starve him to death, but sorter keep him a-going on fair hopes and fair profits, why, thin, give me ould Grizzly!”
“Good for you, Mike, my bold boy! We shall be glad to have your company, even as far as the fort, if no further,” said Longman, clapping his young comrade on the shoulder. ”

“ In 1863 the firm took over the business of Mr J. W. Parker, and with it Fraser’s Magazine, and the publication of the works of John Stuart Mill and J. A. Froude; while in 1890 they incorporated with their own all the publications of the old firm of Rivington, established in 1711. The family control of the firm (now Longmans, Green & Co.) was continued by Thomas Norton Longman (5) , son of Thomas Longman (4) . ”

“ Then he came to New York to take up the position of Instructor in Assyriology in Columbia. He had stipulated that he should be granted a great deal of leisure. It was not a hard matter for the University to arrange, as there was no great clamor among the students to learn Haktite. But Longman had insisted on the leisure, so that he would have opportunity to write his book on philosophy, which seemed to him very serious and infinitely more important than the dead lore of his department. ”

“ Ye was just out huntin' flies, wasn't ye, Frederick? Don't never stay long or ye'll git hit with a spear. Ezry Longman don't like ye nuther, 'cause I kisses ye, and 'cause, on my birthday, I hit his mug with a dishrag when he was tryin' to kiss me fifteen times, and was askin' me to marry him. ”

“ At present, I rate them at their true value; but, from natural temper and bile, am not able to keep quiet.
"Let me hear from you on your return from Ireland, which ought to be ashamed to see you, after her Brunswick blarney. I am of Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate the Bermuda claim. Why should you throw away the two thousand pounds (of the non-guinea Murray) upon that cursed piece of treacherous inveiglement? I think you carry the matter a little too far and scrupulously. ”

“ Again it soared up into the icy altitude of Pure Reason and the Erkenntniss Theorie. Again it swooped down to more practical questions of Ethics, what one considered the summum bonum and under what circumstances one conceded the right to suicide, and whether or not one believed that every man has his price. Whenever Longman found willing subjects he cross-questioned them by the hour. From the notes he took he tabulated the victim's credo on one of the printed questionnaires and filed it away. ”

“ Of these, Thomas Norton Longman (3) (1771–1842) succeeded to the business. In 1794 Owen Rees became a partner, and Thomas Brown, who was for many years after 1811 a partner, entered the house as an apprentice. ”

“ Longman,’ he proves beyond a doubt that ‘the Count D’Orsay is not the writer of the ‘Hints on Etiquette,’ but that he himself is ‘the real, true author,’ past all peradventure. ••• A friend lately returned from the west, relates among other matters the following anecdote: ‘On board of one of the steam-boats on the Mississippi, I encountered a deck-hand, who went by the name of Barney. Like many of his class, he was a drinking, reckless fellow, but warm-hearted, good-natured, and generous to a fault. In early life he was in easy circumstances ”