Martin Harris

“ Harris through the square and up the steps a turnin round by the tobacker shop, 'Oh Sairey, Sairey, little do we know wot lays afore us!' 'Mrs. ”

“ He had shifted around the stock-yards in Baltimore, and had gone finally to New York, and was now a commission merchant, with an office in Jersey City. The relation between this man and the family had been somewhat strained, but now, in the face of this dreaded disaster, Harris felt that he was the only one to appeal to—not that he hoped that his brother could render him any assistance, but because he must consult with some one, and this man was after all the only human being whom he could trust.
He hastily scribbled a note, and, calling a messenger, sent it to his brother's hotel. ”

“ He found his voice in this overwhelming moment to some purpose; though the words he actually used, and whether they were in German or English, he could never remember. Their effect, nevertheless, was instantaneous. The Brothers understood, and that grey Figure of evil understood.
For a second the confusion was terrific. There came a great shattering sound. It seemed that the very earth trembled. But all Harris remembered afterwards was that voices rose about him in the clamour of terrified alarm—
"A man of power is among us! A man of God!" ”

“ Harris is described as a man of unaffected bearing, kindly disposition and simple manners, and an excellent officer. Though economical he was never penurious. He is said to have lent his prize-money to the Madras government when short of cash, at considerable personal loss; and the accumulations of the bazaar fund during his Madras command he distributed among various charities. He nevertheless acquired considerable wealth, his personalty at his death being sworn under 90,000l. ”

“ He was to have left tomorrow for Paris by the noon boat from Southampton to Havre. His name is George Harris—at least that’s the name he is going by. Do you remember that name?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘when I went up to London a week ago you asked me to book a cabin in that name on the boat that goes tomorrow. I gave you the ticket.’ ‘Here it is,’ he said, producing it from his pocket.
“‘Now,’ Manderson said to me, poking his cigar-butt at me with each sentence in a way he used to have, ‘George Harris cannot leave England tomorrow. I find I shall want him where he is. And I want Bunner where he is. ”

“ It is eleven o'clock, I am hungry, I have a little money in my pocket; I am going to take you to breakfast."
Harris was one of the most slender and most elegant men I have ever seen. He had a manly air, a fine forehead, a clear and proud eye.
Americans are never deformed nor mean-looking, and do you know why? Because they are not bound in the swaddling-clothes of a narrow civilization. Their minds and their bodies develop at will; their schoolroom is the open air; their master, exercise ”

“ The spring of 1891 thus saw him at the same time manager of Her Majesty's, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Olympic. He was the first member of the London County Council for the Strand division, and a member of the committee on theatres and music halls; was sheriff of London in 1890-1, and was knighted on the occasion of the visit of the German emperor. These manifold occupations overtaxed his strength, and he died at the Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone, on 22 June 1896. Harris had a genius for stage management, in which in his time he had no English equal. ”

“ Harris, too, was busy with his thoughts. He measured the obstacles ahead with the greater precision of the masculine mind. To him, love was not a magician's wand to dissolve his difficulties in thin air, but a mighty power which should enable him to uproot them from his path. No matter what stood in the way—what loneliness, what hardship, what disappointment and even disillusionment—he should fight his way out to ultimate victory for the sake of the dear girl at his side. ”

“ Wyche now, when you been callin’ ’im Dave Henry yever since he toted yo’ school bucket when you wa’n’t knee-high to a goslin’?’ Den she say it’s kaze dey done got older dan what dey useter wuz.
“We rid on, an’ rid on, an’ bimeby we come ter whar de big poplar grows dar in de woods. Right dar she w’o’d de filly, an’ tol’ me ter jump down, kaze right dar whar she gwine ter git some wil’ flowers. I hilt de hoss, I did, an’ she lipt down same ez a bird off’n de bush, an’ den she tuck de basket an’ went sa’nterin’ ’roun’. ”

“ I've seen it for some time, Dad, and you must 've seen it too. But you're not really goin' to let her go? Come back to the house with me—surely you two can get together on this thing, if you try."
"I have tried," said Harris, "and it's no use. She's got those notions like Beulah—quittin' work, and twilights and sunsets and all that kind o' thing. There's no use talkin' with her; reason don't count for anything. I gave her a good pocketful of money, and told her to write for more when she needed it. She'll get over her notions pretty soon when she gets among strangers. ”

“ If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris, and say:
"Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses, held by seaweed?" Harris would take you by the arm, and say:
"I know what it is, old man; you've got a chill. Now, you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted—put you right in less than no time."
Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line. ”

“ Born in Galway, Ireland, 1854, but came to the United States in 1870. Naturalized. Educated at the universities of Kansas, Paris, Heidelberg, Strassburg, Göttingen, Berlin, Vienna, and Athens (no degrees) . Admitted to the Kansas bar, 1875. Later, returned to Europe and became editor of the Evening News and Fortnightly Review and secured control of the Saturday Review.
Mr. Harris’s work belongs in a class by itself. It is valuable partly for its content, as in the case of his intimate portraits of famous men whom he has known, and partly for the force and brilliancy of the style. ”

“ We'se comin' over 'foh long, too; fer de doctor say he ain' gwine take no moh skin offen her." Then suddenly she exclaimed: "What, in de land sake, is de matter wid you-all's pants?"
But he had turned, and in deep thought started across the grass to the big house, leaving her in open-mouthed amazement.
"One doesn't see much handsomer things than that girl has showed us," he said to Brent, who was keeping somewhat in advance. ”

“ No man in his time at the Point had ever known Harris to flinch at the truth or dodge an issue. "He is square as they make 'em," was the verdict of his classmates, and square he had been through his subaltern days, and now to be square meant the dealing to this sweet and trusting girl a blow that, while it might down his rival, would wreck her happiness. ”

“ He is conscious of the weight of his knapsack, of the blisters on his feet, of the hunger in his stomach, and he drags all these [Pg 12] emotions into his tale. Yet Harris had, somehow, by gift of nature, an unusual literary faculty. He sees, and he makes you see. It is true the area of his vision is narrow. It is almost filled up, as we have said, by his right- and left-hand files. It never goes beyond the battalion. ”

“ Your mother did more work in one summer than you have in all your life, an' she's doin' more yet."
"Oh, Beulah's a good help," interposed Mary. "I hope she never has to work like I did."
"I guess the work never hurt us," said Harris, helping himself to preserved strawberries. "Just the same, I'm glad to see you gettin' it a bit easier. But this younger generation—it beats me what we're comin' to. Thinkin' about nothin' but fun and gaddin' to town every night or two. And clo'es—Beulah here's got more clo'es than there were in the whole Plainville settlement the first two or three years." ”

“ As Beulah said, his heart was all right, but a long way in. Twenty-five years of pitched battle with circumstances—sometimes in victory, sometimes in defeat, but never in despair; always with a load of expense about him, always with the problem of income and outlay to be solved—had made of Harris a man very different from the young idealist of '82. ”

“ And he'd simply hate this scout 'bus with the engine ahead to change into a 'pusher' two-seater in six paragraphs."
Harris was routed, absolutely demoralised. "They told me to put in lots of flying talk," he murmured abjectly, "and tons of local colour to make it lifelike."
"Yes," I said grimly, "but this colour's too local for words."
"Of course, if you think you could do it better yourself," Harris observed with heavy sarcasm, "well, then—"
"Certainly," I agreed heartily. "I don't mind showing you, Harris, seeing you're a pal of mine. Just pass the ink and let your uncle get to work." ”

“ You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris—no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never “weeps, he knows not why.” If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop. ”

“ I've been keeping my eye on Harris' room,' he pointed across the yard to the kitchen and store-building opposite—at the end of which Harris had installed himself—to the squat outline of the slab and back hide house. 'My ear, too,' he went on, 'for Harris' slumbers are neither silent nor peaceful. When he's not snoring, he groans and stirs, and the worst of it is that he's got his door wide open on to the veranda and his bed right across the window that looks straight at the door of the hide house. I thought I'd take advantage of the thunder, but it was no good. He was awake and looking out. ”

“ JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET
"On the quiet evening of October 14th, 1820, in a straw-thatched, boulder-built cottage, with bare rafters and clay floor, locally known as the 'six chimneys,' on the top of Bolennowe Hill, Camborne, Cornwall, as the leaves are falling from the trees, and the robin mourns in the thicket, a gentle mother gives birth to a babe; and that baby-boy is a poet."
So John Harris begins his account of his own life. It is not always safe for a composer of verses to be too sure that he is a poet, and that his lines will live. ”

“ Harris's face was flushed and that she kept smiling to herself in a vague way, restless and fidgety. Poor thing! Her boy was an only son, like mine, and she was one of those many love-blind mothers who mistake their geese for swans. I saw quite plainly that she had no suspicion of the truth, and was sorry for her. Some one ought to have given her a hint.
The headmaster read his annual report—every paragraph punctuated with vociferous cheers from the back benches—and the Exalted Personage made a speech, unnecessarily diffuse. ”

“ If the valour which raged at the great breach of Badajos, or swept up the slope of rugged stones at San Sebastian, was of almost incredible fire, so the brutality which plundered and ravished and slew after the city was carried, was of almost incredible fierceness. Harris had no education or almost none; yet he learned to write, and write well. His style, it is true, is that of the uneducated man. He is most sensitive to things that touch himself. ”

“ Harris was no more depraved than most of mankind, but when fighting for life, and choking to death in the hands of an unknown enemy, he was ready to seize any advantage, and with a great effort he brought his jaws together upon the intruder. ”

“ HARRIS, WALTER (1686–1761) , Irish historiographer, born in 1686, was son of Hopton Harris of Mountmellick in Queen's County, Ireland, who served as a lieutenant of the Williamite militia in the Irish wars of 1690–1. Walter Harris entered Kilkenny school in 1701, was admitted in 1704 to Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained a scholarship in 1707, but was soon after expelled for having joined with other students in a disturbance; afterwards, in 1753, he received the honorary degree of doctor of laws. ”

“ And Harris never sees what an ass he is making of himself, and how he is annoying a lot of people who never did him any harm. He honestly imagines that he has given them a treat, and says he will sing another comic song after supper. ”

“ These good people were mostly old, leisurely, and somnolent, and used to nod and doze for hours together, with the newspapers before them, ever and anon recovering themselves as far as to read a word or two of the politics of the day, sitting, as as it were, on the boundary of the Land of Dreams, and having little to do with this world, except through the newspapers which they so tenaciously grasped.
One of these worthies, whom I occasionally saw there, was the Reverend Doctor Harris, a Unitarian clergyman of considerable repute and eminence. ”

“ W'en I year Miss Sally gwine 'bout de house w'isslin' 'W'en I k'n read my titles cle'r—an' w'en I see de martins swawmin' atter sundown—an' w'en I year de peckerwoods confabbin' togedder dese moonshiny nights in my een er town—en I knows de hot wedder's a breakin' up, an' I know it's 'bout time fer po' fokes fer ter be rastlin' 'roun' and huntin' up dere rashuns. Dat's me, up an down."
"Well, we are satisfied. Better go and hire a hall," remarked the sporting editor, with a yawn. "If you are engaged in a talking match you have won the money. Blanket him somebody, and take him to the stable." ”

“ The Harris organization is now recognized as one of the indispensable factors in Canadian industry of the most diverse aspects. In building up this great industry Mr. Harris has for a considerable number of years been blessed with the active assistance of his son. By instinct a captain of industry his chief recreation in leisure hours is the study of the betterment of conditions relating to business in all its phases. Mr. Harris is a member of the A.F. & A.M., I.O.F., A.O.F., S.O.E., a Conservative in politics and a Methodist in religion. ”