Miss Sterling

“ Sterling was a true good woman; loyal-hearted, willing to do well, and struggling wonderfully to do it amid her languors and infirmities; rescuing, in many ways, with beautiful female heroism and adroitness, what of fertility their uncertain, wandering, unfertile way of life still left possible, and cheerily making the most of it. A genial, pious and harmonious fund of character was in her; and withal an indolent, half-unconscious force of intellect, and justness and delicacy of perception, which the casual acquaintance scarcely gave her credit for. ”

“ Sir John. Who has obtained the most absolute dominion over my heart. I have already declared my passion to her; nay, Miss Sterling herself is also apprized of it, and if you will but give a sanction to my present addresses, the uncommon merit of Miss Sterling will no doubt recommend her to a person of equal, if not superior rank to myself, and our families may still be allied by my union with Miss Fanny. ”

“ When Miss Sterling go to American home I surely cry to death; many other girls in the College say same thing.
Each girl in College have one duty for every day, mine very nice kind, must to look all about mails, what time come, what time go, when Steamers close, carry mail to rooms, keep care stamps and all writing materials.
All this make for me very great interest, when big mail come in, every body so much excitement, every body snatch letters then run away and read - read like hungry dog bite bone. Miss Sterling all time get very big letter, very large character on cover, color blue ”

“ We will forget and forgive."
"Forgive, rogue! you struck him that was feebler than a child; and you——By heaven! if you have touched that girl but rudely, you were better fling you into the river, than await the thanks in store for you."
"A pest upon girls, and the devil take the whole sex!" said Sterling, devoutly.
"Peace! and get you to your horse."
"Ay, presently," replied Sterling; and as Oran leaped on his own black steed, Catherine having been already lifted to the saddle, he pulled a pistol from his bosom, and aimed it at the unsuspecting outlaw. ”

“ Mrs. Sterling came and talked to her; divining a sympathy, the good mother had much to say of her son, of her hopes and fears for him: so many dangers beset young men, especially if they were attractive, like Harry: there were debts, idleness, fast men, and—worst of all—there were designing- women, ready to impose on and ruin the innocence of youth.
“He’s been such a good boy till now,” said Mrs. Sterling, “but of course his father and I feel anxious. If we could only keep him here, out of harm’s way, under our own eyes!”
Mrs. Mortimer murmured consolation. ”

“ Sterling. O God! to have your love back!
Blanche. You can't breathe life back into a dead thing; how different the world would be if one could!
Sterling. You can bring back life to the drowned; perhaps your love is only drowned in the sorrow I've caused.
Blanche. [Smiles sadly and shakes her head; the smile dies away.] Life to me then was like a glorious staircase, and I mounted happy step after step led by your hand till everything seemed to culminate on the day of our wedding. You men don't, can't realize, what that service means to a girl. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXIV A MIDNIGHT ANNOUNCEMENT JUANITA STERLING was forced to hear much bantering in regard to her prolonged ride with the Home president; but she received it with the utmost good humor. Not even to Mrs. Albright did she hint of the happiness that had come to her. It would be known soon enough; to-day the joy was hers and hers alone.
"What would Blanche Puddicombe have said to see you go gallivant'n' off to Bryston with her lover!" cried Miss Crilly. "I wish she could have, I just wish she could have! 'T would have been a picnic, sure! Are you goin' again, Miss Sterling?" ”

“ Miss Sterling gave a smiling nod across the bed. She and Polly were putting on the covers.
"I think you've been growing stronger since the picnic. Maybe it was the outdoors. Father says there's nothing like it for nerves. I wish we could have another, now your ankle is all well; but it is too late for to-day. Why can't we go to walk, you and Mrs. Adlerfeld and Mrs. Albright and I? I know a lovely road out Brookside Avenue way."
"Well," agreed Miss Sterling, "if it isn't too far. I feel equal to a good deal this morning."
"Oh, that's jolly! We needn't go any farther than we choose, you know. ”

“ Sterling never could make up his mind to become a suitor for the hand of Miss Millicent, nor get rid of the notion that he was to bless and be blessed by some woman of positive character and a taste for working out her own salvation in her own way,—some woman who, not being made by her wealth, could not be unmade by the loss of it. ”

“ It isn't as if we were grown up!"
Miss Sterling gave a little laugh.
"I don't care, it isn't!" insisted Polly. "If I were eighteen and engaged to him, of course, I shouldn't expect to go around with other boys—'t wouldn't be right: but now—!" Polly's face finished it.
Juanita Sterling looked gravely at nothing.
"And such a boy as Doodles!" Polly went on. "To start with, he is younger than I am, and that ought to be enough to give David some sense! Mother says she didn't see me do anything out of the way—did you. Miss Sterling?" ”

“ Better, far better, had it been for you, John Sterling, to be instructed by a simple parish priest bred among the mountains, and ministering in that church which is the pillar and ground of the truth, than be handed over as you were by Coleridge, Maurice, and Hare, to Strauss, Mill, and Carlyle—from unbelief in the bud to unbelief in full, gaudy, flaunting blossom.
We cannot discover anything imposing in Sterling's talents. Even in secular learning he was a reed shaken by the wind. His essays and poems want definite view and bold outline. ”

“ It certainly has always struck me as singular that Sterling, who in his life accomplished so little and left so little of the work by which men are generally pronounced to be gifted with exceptional ability, should have been the subject of two such interesting biographies as those written of him by Julius Hare and Carlyle. I [186] think he must have been one of those persons in whom genius makes itself felt and acknowledged chiefly through the medium of personal intercourse; a not infrequent thing, I think, with women, and perhaps men, wanting the full vigor of normal health. ”

“ No profession could, in any case, have well gained the early love of Sterling. And perhaps withal the most tragic element of his life is even this, That there now was none to which he could fitly, by those wiser than himself, have been bound and constrained, that he might learn to love it. So swift, light-limbed and fiery an Arab courser ought, for all manner of reasons, to have been trained to saddle and harness. ”

“ Barrows the warning of which he has spoken. My brother—I cannot speak of him with calmness—is a man to be feared, Miss Sterling. Not that I would not be a match for him in all matters of open enmity; but in ways of secrecy and deep dealing, he is master, and all the more to be dreaded that he makes it impossible for one to understand him or measure the depths of turpitude to which he would descend. When, therefore I heard him say he should have that will back before it could pass into the hands of Mr. Nicholls, I trembled ”

“ How are poor mortals whirled hither and thither in the tumultuous chaos of our era; and, under the thick smoke-canopy which has eclipsed all stars, how do they fly now after this poor meteor, now after that!—Sterling abandoned his clerical office in February, 1835; having held it, and ardently followed it, so long as we say,—eight calendar months in all.
It was on this his February expedition to London that I first saw Sterling,—at the India House incidentally, one afternoon, where I found him in company with John Mill, whom I happened like himself to be visiting for a few minutes. ”

“ Poor Sterling, he was by nature appointed for a Poet, then,—a Poet after his sort, or recognizer and delineator of the Beautiful; and not for a Priest at all? Striving towards the sunny heights, out of such a level and through such an element as ours in these days is, he had strange aberrations appointed him, and painful wanderings amid the miserable gaslights, bog-fires, dancing meteors and putrid phosphorescences which form the guidance of a young human soul at present! ”

“ He moved to the far West about 1895 and has lived in California ever since.
Of Sterling’s ten volumes of poetry, The Testimony of the Suns (1903) , A Wine of Wizardry (1908) and The House of Orchids and Other Poems (1911) are the most characteristic. As their titles indicate, this is poetry of a flamboyant and rhetorical type; of luxuriant sentences and emotions decorated in “the grand manner.” Yet Sterling has added a definite vigor to his ornate tropes and verbal prodigality. Nor is he always extravagant. His simpler verses, though not in his most familiar vein, are among his best. ”

“ A pale sickly shadow in torn surplice is presented to us here; weltering bewildered amid heaps of what you call 'Hebrew Old-clothes;' wrestling, with impotent impetuosity, to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would recognize the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations ”

“ He is a very intelligent, accomplished person. We had also there the Dean; a certain Dr. —— of Corpus College, Cambridge (a booby) ; and a clever fellow, a Mr. Fisher, one of the Tutors of Trinity in my days. We had a very pleasant evening."—
At London we were in the habit of expecting Sterling pretty often; his presence, in this house as in others, was looked for, once in the month or two, and came always as sunshine in the gray weather to me and mine. ”

“ Sterling, dryly, “and so is he. Young people are apt to be fools in their honeymoon, but time cures them.”
There was a very dry method in the madness of Mrs. Sterling.
127The housekeeper took possession of her old rooms, but as they too had been re-papered, painted and furnished, she scarcely recognized them again.
Drusilla had the little chamber that had been given her by Mrs. Lyon, and was now renovated, as a spare room.
Alexander had his own superb suit of apartments.
Mr. Lyon called in the best medical science and skill to the aid of Mrs. Sterling. ”

“ Miss Godesby. I have nothing to do with any one in this matter but Sterling himself, who has robbed me, and I'll gladly see him suffer for it!
Warden. Now look here, Miss Godesby, you belong to a pretty tough crowd in society, but I know at heart you're not a bad sort! What good will it do you? Granted even that you don't care for Mrs. Sterling, still don't tell me you're the kind of woman to take a cruel pleasure in seeing another woman suffer! I wouldn't believe it! You're not one of those catty creatures! You're a clever woman, and I don't doubt you can be a pretty hard one, too, at times ”

“ Sterling affectionately refused to see me; which also was kind and wise. And four days before his death, there are some stanzas of verse for me, written as if in star-fire and immortal tears; which are among my sacred possessions, to be kept for myself alone.
His business with the world was done; the one business now to await silently what may lie in other grander worlds. "God is great," he was wont to say: "God is great." The Maurices were now constantly near him; Mrs. Maurice assiduously watching over him. ”

“ But withal there was ever a fine element of natural courtesy in Sterling; his deliberate demeanor to acknowledged superiors was fine and graceful; his apologies and the like, when in a fit of repentance he felt commanded to apologize, were full of naivete, and very pretty and ingenuous.
His circle of friends was wide enough; chiefly men of his own standing, old College friends many of them; some of whom have now become universally known. ”

“ Being hopelessly gone in pulmonary disorder, he now moved about among friendly climates and places, seeking what alleviation there might be; often spending his summers in the house of a sister in the environs of London; an insatiable rider on his little brown pony; always, wherever you might meet him, one of the cheeriest of men. He had plenty of speculation too, clear glances of all kinds into religious, social, moral concerns; and pleasantly incited Sterling's outpourings on such subjects. ”

“ During those ten years which might be defined as the culminating period of Edward Sterling's life, his house at South Place, Knights bridge, had worn a gay and solid aspect, as if built at last on the high table-land of sunshine and success, the region of storms and dark weather now all victoriously traversed and lying safe below. Health, work, wages, whatever is needful to a man, he had, in rich measure ”

“ Here are the miraculous Three Days; heralding, in thunder, great things to Torrijos and others; filling with babblement and vaticination the mouths and hearts of all democratic men.
So rolled along, in tumult of chaotic remembrance and uncertain hope, in manifold emotion, and the confused struggle (for Sterling as for the world) to extricate the New from the falling ruins of the Old, the summer and autumn of 1830. ”

“ Once, I still remember,—it was some years before, probably in May, on his return from Madeira,—he undertook a day's riding with me; once and never again. We coursed extensively, over the Hampstead and Highgate regions, and the country beyond, sauntering or galloping through many leafy lanes and pleasant places, in ever-flowing, ever-changing talk; and returned down Regent Street at nightfall: one of the cheerfulest days I ever had;—not to be repeated, said the Fates. Sterling was charming on such occasions: at once a child and a gifted man. ”