Marsden

“ Marsden did not laugh. He was full of kindly pity and regrets for the wretched object before him, and hurried me on to a cottage, where a good old woman took me in hand, and insisted on my undressing and getting into her bed, until a change of clothes came to me from the farm.
Shall I make a confession? Every other girl will feel that what I did was exactly what she would have done herself, under the circumstances. ”

“ Marsden's unromantic proposals jarred upon their old ideas, but in their perplexity they could not help feeling that at least here was a man who had had experience of real, not of imaginary, heathen; a man who did not despair, and who had a definite and carefully prepared plan. Gradually they yielded to his influence, and, especially as clerical missionaries were not to be found, they agreed to seek for the artisans. ”

“ Marsden, in the agitation caused by this statement, moved uneasily and woke the little girl. "You tear me to pieces when you ask me to help you. My own Enid, I can't help you. I can't help you now. You must be brave, and carry your burdens by yourself.... You say I am brave. Then be like me. I'm in the midst of perils and fears—my hands are tied; yet I go on fighting. I swear to you I am fighting hard. ”

“ She was thinking of what Dick Marsden had said to her in the dusk by the river. "I could not pose as the pensioner of a rich wife." It seemed to her a natural and yet a noble sentiment; and she contrasted the proper manly frame of mind that found expression in such an utterance with the mean-spirited readiness to depend on others that Mr. Kenion confessed so shamelessly. Marsden was perhaps not a gentleman in the snobbish, conventional sense, but how much more a man than this Kenion! ”

“ Philip Marsden felt distinctly annoyed. Here was fate once again meddling with his freedom. "I'm afraid I do. To begin with, I may be lying with a bullet through me before the week's out."
"So may I. Look on it as my last request, Major. I'd sooner trust you than any one in the wide world. You would be certain to do what I would like."
"Should I? I'm not so sure of myself. Look here, Dick! I didn't mean to tell you, but perhaps it is best to have it out, and be fair and square. The fact is we are rivals." He laughed cynically at his hearer's blank look of surprise. ”

“ They had laid the dead man on the floor, and the grey dawn falling on his face made it seem greyer still. The native servants huddled trembling at the door; the two Englishmen stood looking down upon the still figure.
"There is always the fear of an over-dose," said Philip Marsden slowly, "or of some rash mistake." ”

“ He allowed no memory of other notice, of other consideration which had been{318} given him, and in the light of which all this was mockery. That way lay hating his new self. And self-satisfaction had to win.
Marsden had been aware of his desire, exerted through all his youth, to erect idealities against life’s barrenness and to feed on these. Marsden seemed to assume that, of course, such a behavior was both bad and foolish; that life’s barrenness was the sole thing to acknowledge, that feeding on any ideality, or any ideality on which to feed, was adjunct to the name of “ninny.” ”

“ We were moving up the river, only a day's journey from Dunraven now, and with paddle in hand I pushed the little boat for all there was in her. But a few more hours and I would face my lord, and with sword in hand would end his troubles.
A low call floated out to me from the shore, and turning my head quickly, I saw standing upon the bank some fifty feet away, his face distorted by a ghastly smile, the apothecary, John Marsden. If I had seen a vision, I could not have been more surprised. I looked at him in amazement, as he raised his hands and beckoned me to approach him. ”

“ The Lâlâ, grinned a ghastly smile, and Philip Marsden turned impatiently, saying aside: "Get him home, do! He looks so helpless with his bald head; it seems a shame to laugh."
John Raby raised his eyebrows. "The General shall lend him his carriage. That will soothe his wounded vanity."
So the Lâlâ, with his head tied up in a red pocket-handkerchief, went home in the big man's barouche, and the spectators of his discomfiture laughed again at the recollection of it.
"You ought to be the editor of a native newspaper, Marsden," remarked John Raby. ”

“ William Marsden received a classical education in schools at Dublin, and was preparing to enter Trinity College there, with a view to the church, when, at the suggestion of his eldest brother, John Marsden, a writer in the East India Company's service at Fort Marlborough (Bencoolen) in Sumatra, he obtained an appointment from the company. He left Gravesend on 27 Dec. 1770, and reached Bencoolen on 30 May 1771. During an eight years' residence in Sumatra, Marsden did good official service as sub-secretary, and afterwards as principal secretary, to the government. ”

“ Great natural forces cannot be wiped out. Just when they seem gone, you get a fresh manifestation—the same force in another form. And so it was here. Mrs. Marsden, seemingly abolished, bursts out in another place, explodes the debris of ruin that was holding her down, changes direction, and rises in blazing triumph on the other side of the street. ”

“ He made a gesture to the waiter who advanced to help him on with his coat that Marsden was to be assisted first; but Marsden, with a grunted "All right," had already helped himself. A glimpse of the interior of the coat told Romarin why Marsden kept waiters at arm's-length. A little twinge of compunction took him that his own overcoat should be fur-collared and lined with silk. ”

“ CHAPTER X. "BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME."
Donald Morrison is back to the simple life of Marsden again. Five years had changed him enormously. His figure had always promise of athletic suppleness. It was now splendidly compact. He left the type of the conventional farmer. He returned the picturesque embodiment of the far West. Perhaps, in his long locks, wide sombrero, undressed leggings, and prodigal display of shooting irons, there may have been a theatrical suggestion of Buffalo Bill.
The village folk accepted him with intense admiration. ”

“ Returning to England in 1779 with a pension, he wrote his History of Sumatra, published in 1783. Marsden was appointed in 1795 second secretary and afterwards first secretary to the admiralty. In 1807 he retired and published in 1812 his Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, and in 1818 his translation of the Travels of Marco Polo. He was a member of many learned societies, and treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society. ”

“ Baxendell, less demonstrative, was no less kind, and the remainder of my holidays sped very happily, in spite of memories of the kitchen at Roundtree Farm, and those who gathered round its hearth.
Stop! I must be true. Was I quite happy? Did I rejoice in the thought that Mr. Marsden would have no means of tracing me if he wished to do so, and that under the circumstances I should soon be forgotten? Again, I must own that my happiness was not quite without alloy, and I wondered whether, if he cared so much for me, I had a right to risk his as well as my own. ”

“ Selected while still a student at Cambridge, [9] by no less a person than the philanthropist Wilberforce, for this difficult position, Marsden had brought to his work a heart full of evangelical fervour, a strong Yorkshire brain, and "the clearest head in Australia." During the eleven years which had passed since his arrival, he had been fighting a courageous fight against vice in high places and in low, but nothing had daunted his spirit nor soured his temper. His large heart had a place for all classes and for all races. When he met Te Pahi his sympathies were at once excited. ”

“ Marsden ain't such a big community she can afford to lose anybody. Where'd ye hail from, anyway?"
The hired man had grasped the situation promptly. Recognizing Nathan, he also recognized, as he supposed, the solution of the mysteries which had surrounded him of late. Eunice and Susanna had found the vagrant out, and had kept his identity secret, fearing the Squire. Now to Moses' intense satisfaction in his nomination—irregular though it was—was added the reflection that no harm could result, since at present there was no constable in Marsden, nor would be one until he himself was elected. ”

“ Marsden, after trying a spoonful—"the salt that was laid round the freezer has got into the cream (I suppose by Dixon's carelessness) , and it is not fit to eat."
"And now," said Albina, starting, "I will show you a far worse mortification than the failure of the ice-cream. Only look—there sits Aunt Quimby between Mr. Montague and Mrs. Washington Potts."
"How in the world did she get there?" exclaimed Mrs. Marsden. "I dare say she walked up, and asked them to make room for her between them. There is nothing now to be done but to pass her off as well as we can, and to make the best of her. ”

“ You haven't put it on since we got married, that's all."
"We can't scare the Earth people off with a lot of tunics and coveralls."
"Better get dressed," said Marsden, chuckling with grim amusement as Marie struggled with the unfamiliar garment. Marsden's own starched collar threatened to choke him, but the women of Earth would expect it.
"What's so funny, Harry?"
"There must be an easier way to climb into that thing. You look so funny."
Marie's back was toward him. She took the dress off and threw it across the bed. "All right, I won't wear it. I won't wear anything. I'm not going." ”

“ Marsden disliked me much more than he disliked any one else, as I had been the instigator of his ejection from our study, and so the silent and contemptuous enmity with which Louis eyed me wasn't very strange. Those two made common cause in their indifference to anything we three at the head of the table might say; and soon, things came to such a pass that we had to put lumps of salt into the potato dish before handing it down to them. And even that didn't seem to have much effect, for one tea-time I distinctly heard a murmur resembling "Armenian Jew" escape from Marsden's lips ”

“ Marsden all the time watching their movements, and expressive faces, as a kind nurse would the gambols and frolics of her playful charge, saying with restrained, but grateful emotion, ‘Yes, sir, nothing like bringing the gospel at once to the heathen. If “music charms the savage breast,” sir, why should not the sweetest sounds that ever met man’s ear do more? ”

“ Marsden confessed that she had not as yet ever seen the Kenions in their home.
"It isn't that there's the least bad blood between us," she hastened to add. "No, dear Enid and I are now the best of friends. Ever since her marriage she has been sweet to me. But life rushes on so fast—and married women are not free agents. When Richard is away, I consider myself responsible in the shop."
"Just so." And Mr. Prentice, puffing out some smoke, looked at the ceiling. "By the by, that's rather an awkward dispute that Mr. Marsden has let himself into with those German people." ”

“ Such is the account given by a Sydney periodical a few weeks after Mr. Marsden’s decease, which goes on to say: “Many an individual of a more plastic nature might have been moulded by the prevailing fashion of the age in which he lived, and instead of endeavouring to struggle against the tide of popular opinion, would have yielded in all probability to its seducing influence. ”

“ Long John gained little by the move.
It happened in this way: There came out from New York at one time a young fellow named Bertie Van Ness, a nephew of Marsden, the cattle man, some of whose stock we were feeding that winter. He arrived at Sulphide by coach one morning, and before going on to Marsden’s he stepped into Yetmore’s store to buy himself a pair of riding gauntlets. ”

“ Marsden by her people. Trixy has six hundred a year settled on her, and they were afraid of fortune-hunters. Mothers are apt to feel that a girl is safe with a man of the Marsden type, and that nothing more can be desired.”
“Perhaps they are not far wrong. Marsden is not a romantic figure, and he is scarcely what you would call a brilliant raconteur; but he serves his wife like a slave, and he will never give her a sore heart.”
“Do you think it nothing, John, that a woman with ideals should be tied to a bore all her days? What a contrast between her brother and her husband, for instance. ”

“ The chaplain of the Rattlesnake noted down an affecting conversation with the aged minister upon his voyage, which we are permitted to insert:—
“We enjoyed a most lovely evening. I had a long conversation with Mr. Marsden on deck. He spoke of almost all his old friends having preceded him to the eternal world; Romaine, Newton, the Milners, Scott, Atkinson, Robinson, Buchanan, Mason Good, Thomason, Rowland Hill, Legh Richmond, Simeon, and others. ”

“ Marsden, and could hardly believe that this lady, of whom every one seemed so fond, could possibly be the mother of whom the two friends talked on that moonlight night in the porch at Roundtree Farm. That she doted on her Lawrence there could be no doubt, and in my eyes he had never looked so attractive as when paying those little tender attentions to Mrs. Marsden that every mother delights to receive from a stalwart son.
We had yet two clear days before Christmas, and, to please Mary, Mrs. ”

“ Beverly Jones, severely. "If Harold Marsden's no worse than the general run of men, then we might as well give up the fight."
"What fight?" asked Dick Bloomfield, eagerly, but Mrs. Beverly Jones merely stared at him haughtily.
"Here comes Elinor. Hush!" cried somebody on the outskirts of the throng.
With my heart in my throat and a realization that my hands were like ice, I slipped through the doorway and hurried up-stairs, bent on a hasty exit from the house. ”