McArthur

“ McArthur has jogged on, in the good old way but his worldly store seems not to increase. The time, nevertheless, is arrived when he is expected to return the little amount borrowed of Keepum, through the agency of Mr. Snivel. Again and again has he been notified that he must pay or go to that place in which we lock up all our very estimable "first families," whose money has taken wings and flown away. Not content with this, the two worthy gentlemen have more than once invaded the Antiquary's back parlor, and offered, as we have described in a former chapter, improper advances to his daughter. ”

“ There were many, many trails and wire fences to bewilder one, and people—hundreds of people—people who were not always kind. His answers filled her with vague fears. To be only sixteen, and alone, is cause enough for tears, and Susie shed them now.
McArthur, with a radiant face, was riding toward the ranch to which he had become singularly attached. His saddle-pockets bulged with mail, and his elbows flapped joyously as he urged his horse to greater speed. ”

“ And as the young man thus muses, there recurs to his mind the picture of old Absalom McArthur, a curious old man, but excessively kind, and always ready to do "a bit of a good turn for one in need," as he would say when a needy friend sought his assistance. McArthur is a dealer in curiosities, is a venerable curiosity himself, and has always something on hand to meet the wants of a community much given to antiquity and broken reputations. ”

“ McArthur personally. But I feel that I know him well through his works. They hold up his character as worthy of all respect and admiration. In prosecut- ing his labors on the Pacific shore he exhibited a constancy, an energy, and a rare force of command which enabled him to triumph over almost insuperable difficulties. These qualities would have made him conspicuous in any career. He possessed all the ele- ments of the heroic spirit. Trials which bowed down the strength of strong men gave his feeble frame almost superhuman strength ”

“ In the dingy little back parlor of the old antiquary, grim poverty looking in through every crevasse, sits the artless and pure-minded Maria McArthur. How different are the thoughts, the hopes, the emotions of these two women. Comfort would seem smiling on the one, while destitution threatens the other. To the eye that looks only upon the surface, how deceptive is the picture. ”

“ In another vein is the humor of Peter McArthur, who has been sometimes called ‘The Sage of Ekfrid.’ McArthur writes as one who, living a pastoral and serious life, actually looks around upon his neighbors in other spheres of life and on their striving after wealth and material goods, and who freshly reflects the thought, as old as the ancient hills, that a serious and contented mind, satisfied with the gifts of nature and of God, with pure friendships and sufficient sustenance for body, possesses the only permanent satisfactions of life. ”

“ In all McArthur’s studious, lonely life, no person ever had put his hand upon his shoulder and called him “old man.” The quick tears filled his eyes, and a glow, tingling in its warmth, rushed over him. The simple, manly act made him Ralston’s slave for life, but he answered in his quiet voice:
“The mistake was natural, my dear sir.”
“Smith will be gettin’ restless,” Susie suggested, “for his breakfast must have been pretty slim. We’d better be startin’.
“Now, I’ll take straight across the hills in a bee-line, and the rest of you keep me in sight, but follow the draws. ”

“ Brigadier-General McArthur's Brigade was promptly started across, but mistaking the way, and bearing too much on the right, it speedily found itself in the midst of the Rebel forces, that had poured in after Prentiss. General McArthur could thus render Stuart's Brigade no assistance, but he vigorously engaged the Rebels to his front and flanks, fell back to a good position, and held these troops in bay till the rest of his division came up to his aid. ”

“ Of a summer morning you will see McArthur, the old Provincialist, as he is called, arranging in his great bow windows an innumerable variety of antique relics, none but a Mrs. Toodles could conceive a want for—such as broken pots, dog-irons, fenders, saws, toasters, stew-pans, old muskets, boxing-gloves and foils, and sundry other odds and ends too numerous to mention. At evening he sits in his door, a clever picture of a by-gone age, on a venerable old sofa, supported on legs tapering into feet of lion's paws, and carved in mahogany, all tacked over with brass-headed nails. ”

“ While the earth of Potter's Field is closing over all that remains of Anna Bonard, Maria McArthur may be seen, snatching a moment of rest, as it were, seated under the shade of a tree on the Battery, musing, as is her wont. The ships sail by cheerily, there is a touching beauty about the landscape before her, all nature seems glad. Even the heavens smile serenely; and a genial warmth breathes through the soft air. ”

“ McArthur asked in a shocked voice.
“Sure they mean to kill him. Do you think that’s target practice? But look where the dust flies up—they’re striking all around him—behind him—beside him—everywhere but in him! They’re so anxious that they’re shootin’ wild. Runnin’ Rabbit ought to get him—he’s a good shot! He did! No, he stumbled. He’s charmed—that Smith. He’s got a strong medicine.”
“He’s not too brave to run,” said McArthur, but added: “I ran, myself, when they were after me.”
“He’d better run,” Susie replied. “But he’s after his gun; he means to fight.”
“He’ll make it!” McArthur cried. ”

“ Susie, who had entered, saw McArthur’s embarrassment, and refused to join in the shout of laughter, though her eyes danced.
“Don’t mind him,” she said comfortingly, as she eyed Meeteetse, sprawled on his back with his eyes closed. “He’s afraid he’ll learn something. He used to be a sheep-herder, and I don’t reckon he’s got more’n two hundred and fifty words in his whole vocabulary. Why, I’ll bet he never heard a word of more’n three syllables before. Get up, Meeteetse. Go out in the fresh air and build yourself a couple of them sheep-herder’s monuments. It’ll make you feel better.” ”

“ After McArthur had gone to his pneumatic mattress in the patent tent pitched near the bunk-house, Ralston said to Susie:
“You and the bug-hunter are great friends, aren’t you?”
“You bet! We’re pardners. Anybody that gets funny with him has got me to fight.” ”

“ Ervin McArthur, bearing the nickname of “Satan” on account of his ungovernable temper, learns printing at the office of the Dunvegan (N. C.) Democrat and loves Colonel Preston’s daughter. The colonel, objecting to a love affair between his aristocratic daughter and a son of “poor whites,” shifts the youth to a place on the Charleston Chronicle. Here, the Civil War coming on, he distinguishes himself by his journalistic ability and by his inventions of war-engines. In these last he is ably assisted by Helen Brooks, a Boston girl visiting Charleston relatives. ”

“ From the description, Ralston recognized McArthur’s English riding-breeches, which had added zest to life for the bunk-house crowd when he had appeared in them. The deputy-sheriff was bewildered. It seemed incredible, yet there, still in sight, was the flying band of horses, and Bear Chief’s positiveness seemed to leave no room for doubt.
“Oh, him one heap good thief,” panted Bear Chief, in unwilling admiration, as their horses ran side by side. “He work fast. No ’fraid. Cut ’em out—head ’em off—turn ’em—ride through big brush—jump de gulch—yell and swing de quirt, and do him all ’lone! ”

“ She now has one of the finest farms in the state of Washington. All of the trees upon the place have been planted since it came into possession of Mrs. McArthur, who is a most capable business woman, readily recognizing and utilizing opportunities and discriminating quickly between the essential and the non-essential in all business affairs.
It was in 1886 that Mr. McArthur was united in marriage to Miss Jennie Abel Gee, who was born in Cuba, New York, daughter of Mr. ”

“ He eyed them one by one. “Why, you don’t know straight up, you women warriors! I’ve a notion to tell you who killed White Antelope—just for fun—just because I want to laugh, me—Smith!”
The Indians drew closer.
“You think you’re scouts,” he went on tauntingly, “and you never saw White Antelope’s blanket right under your nose! Put it back, feller”—he nodded at McArthur. “I don’t aim to sleep on dead men’s clothes!”
The Indians looked at the blanket, and at McArthur, whom they had grown to like and trust. ”

“ I’ll do my best to separate Smith from his gun, but if I can’t, I’ll throw you the sign to jump him.”
“I shall arm myself with a pistol, and, if the occasion demands, I shall not hesitate to use it,” said McArthur, closing his lips with great firmness.
Bear Chief was given a rifle, and then there was a scurrying about for cartridges. When they were saddled, each rode in a different direction, to meet again when out of sight of the ranch. With varied emotions, they soon were following Susie’s lead, and it was no easy task to keep the flying figure in sight. ”

“ He often thought that he never had seen a more heterogeneous gathering than that which assembled at times around the table. And with Longfellow in the dining-room, ethnological dissertations in one end of the bunk-house, and personal reminiscences and experiences in gun-fights and affairs of the heart in the other end, there was afforded a sufficient variety of mental diversion to suit nearly any taste.
McArthur in the rôle of desperado seemed preposterous to Ralston ”

“ As they had no family to divide cares and means, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities that distinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed we must fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admit even in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, a man can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailty will permit."
CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRST LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF VICTORIA. "However God or fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies... ”

“ An eldest son is rarely called by his father's Christian name, and when he is, usually there is a little grave down in the kirkyard or a name that is seldom spoken in the house—a dead Abel or a wandering Cain, at any rate a first-born that was—and is not.
Now I am called Alexander McQuhirr. My father also is Alexander McQuhirr. And the reason is that a link has dropped out. I remember the day I found out that you could make my mother jump by coming quietly behind her and calling "Willie." It was Willie McArthur I was after—he had come over from Whinnyliggate to play with me. ”

“ I think it can be asserted that for the supreme act of governing men Sir John Macdonald was gifted as few men in any land or in any age were gifted—gifted with the highest of all qualities, qualities which would have made him famous wherever exercised, and which would have shone all the more conspicuously the larger the theatre. ”

“ She was far too stout to please his taste, but he liked her square shoulders and the thickness of them; also her hair, which was long for an Indian woman’s. She was too short in the body. He wondered if she rode. He had a peculiar aversion for women short in the body who rode on horseback. This woman could love—all Indian women can do that, as Smith well knew—love to the end, faithfully, like dogs.
In the general analysis of his surroundings, Smith looked at Tubbs, openly sneering as he eyed him. He was like a sheep-dog that never had been trained. And McArthur? ”

“ The guests exchanged incredulous glances, but it was Meeteetse Ed who laughed explosively and said:
“Why, Mister, they ain’t been a sixteenth of an inch of standin’ water on this hull reserve in twenty year.”
“Better haul in your horns, feller, when you’re talkin’ to a real prairie man.” Smith’s contemptuous tone nettled McArthur, but Susie retorted for him.
“Feller,” mocked Susie, “looks like you’re mixed. You mean when he’s talkin’ to a Yellow-back. No real prairie man packs a chip on his shoulder all the time. ”

“ It is by this great work that he is most generally known—a work, great not only in size, but in conception, but which loses much of the value it should have had from the lax way in which it is written; official as well as private letters and documents having been garbled to suit the editor's ideas of elegance, and hearsay anecdotes mixed up indiscriminately with more authentic matter. Of this faulty execution Clarke must bear the blame, for it was understood that while McArthur supplied the material, Clarke supplied the literary style. ”

“ When a white man is onery, he’s meaner than an Injun, and that’s the kind of a white man you are. I’ll never forget this. I’ll never forget that I’ve crawled to you, and you listened like a stone.”
Smith answered in a voice that was not unkind—as he would have warned her of a sink-hole or a bad crossing:
“You can’t buck me, Susie, and you’d better not try. You’re game, but you’re just a kid.”
“Kids grow up sometimes;” and she turned away.
McArthur, strolling, while he enjoyed his pipe, came upon Susie lying face downward, her head pillowed on her arm, on a sand dune not far from the house. ”

“ In the work of reconciliation of race and country he had but one motive and that was the exaltation of Canada and the development of our national and Canadian spirit and the subversion of all petty and sectional antagonisms. He was the true imperialist, who saw this Empire as a voluntary confederation of free nations. Anything different and more centralized he regarded as a menace to this country and to the Empire as a free system. He left every man to his opinion. ”

“ It is beyond question that there is a growing bitterness between the United States and Great Britain—including the Dominions Overseas. On both sides of the borderline between Canada and the United States there are constant bitter expressions of opinion, and un [Pg 35] less something can be done to check the evil the results may be disastrous. On the platform and in the press dislike and contempt are finding daily expression. ”