Mr. Beebe

“ Beebe began to laugh again.
“That was th’ funniest of all,” said Mrs. Beebe, and she began to laugh, too.
“What was it?” cried the big woman impatiently. “You do so much laughin’, you an’ Mr. Beebe, it’s kinder slow work gettin’ along.”
“I know it, an’ you must ’xcuse me, Mis Goodsell,” said Mrs. Beebe, “but them childern—well, you see Phronsie always takes it to heart when she hears anybody’s sick, so she made a gingerbread boy an’ made ’em send it to Jasper’s father.”
[454] “My goodness!—to a rich man—a gingerbread boy!” gasped Mrs. Goodsell. ”

“ Beebe, in a tone of great surprise, not having been [174] able to see much else beside Phronsie’s face since she had perched on his knees.
“And I must wipe them off,” said Phronsie, regarding with great disfavor the dust from her long walk that had clung to them, and trying to slip down from his knee.
“No, no—you set still,” said old Mr. Beebe. “I’ll clean ’em, child.” With that he whipped out his big bandanna and softly patted and rubbed the little shoes quite bright again. “There—they’re as good as new. How nice you keep ’em, child!” ”

“ The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them. It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master's horses up the stony hill. Mr. Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. ”

“ Beebe reappeared, looking extremely pleasant. "Miss Bartlett," he cried, "it's all right about the rooms. I'm so glad. Mr. Emerson was talking about it in the smoking-room, and knowing what I did, I encouraged him to make the offer again. He has let me come and ask you. He would be so pleased." "Oh, Charlotte," cried Lucy to her cousin, "we must have the rooms now. The old man is just as nice and kind as he can be." Miss Bartlett was silent. "I fear," said Mr. Beebe, after a pause, "that I have been officious. ”

“ Beebe, please let me in!”
[192] “Open the door, and go in, child,” said a good-natured woman coming along; “folks don’t knock when they’re going to th’ shop. Th’ knocker’s for Sundays, when you’re goin’ to call.” With that she reached over Barby, and threw wide the door. “Mr. Beebe,” she called, “here’s somebody wants to see you.”
“Oh, let me tell ’em first!” screamed Elyot, running past her, and precipitating himself into a fat old lady in a white cap with a good deal of pink ribbon. ”

“ Little Mr. Beebe kept slapping his thigh, and declaring, “I do b’lieve Davie guessed it,” then he suddenly waddled over to the corner, got out a box of dilapidated shoes, picked out a pair, and sat down to work, “Yes, I verily b’lieve he guessed it.”
Mrs. Goodsell heaved a long sigh. It was no use to ask him to begin, for she knew he wouldn’t do it till he was ready—so she folded her large hands over the shawl-ends.
“You see,” said little Mr. Beebe, holding up a man’s shoe to thumb it critically, “it’s just this way, about David—O dear me! it beats all how th’ parson does wear out his shoes. ”

“ Mrs. Phipps eyed Phronsie curiously, dividing her interest between her and the shoes, Marianna doing the same, so that when the little shopkeeper advanced to them, there wasn’t much [184] progress made toward a trade, and old Mrs. Beebe, smothering a sigh, waddled out to see if by chance the stewed beef set back on the stove could have caught.
“It’s good leather,” said Mr. Beebe. “You needn’t pinch it so hard, Mis’ Phipps; that shoe’ll wear like iron.” ”

“ That amiable hostelry possesses a verandah, in which the young and the unwise do dearly love to sit, while guests of more mature years seek a pleasant sanded room, and have tea at a table comfortably. Mr. Beebe saw that Miss Bartlett would be cold if she sat out, and that Minnie would be dull if she sat in, so he proposed a division of forces. They would hand the child her food through the window. Thus he was incidentally enabled to discuss the fortunes of Lucy. ”

“ Such men are rare; and it is not always easy for them to command an audience.
In his own much larger field Mr. Beebe is just such a man; and he has such marked ability that he can make and command his audience. Exactly as John Burroughs is the man who has carried to its highest point of development the school in which Gilbert White was the first scholar, so Beebe is the man who has turned into a new type of higher literature the kind of work first produced by Waterton. ”

“ Now, what’ll we do, Mr. Beebe?” he cried.
“Well now, I tell you,” said the old gentleman, wrinkling up his forehead in thought; “you’ve got to stretch your legs outdoors else you’ll be sick. S’posin’ you run down to th’ butcher’s shop an’ tell Mr. Hanks I may want, in th’ mornin’, a slice o’ ham. Don’t say as I will, remember, but I may. An’ then come right back, an’ you can set in th’ window, an’ see th’ passin’, an’ watch fer Polly an’ Ben.”
“All right,” shouted Joel, and seizing Davie’s hand, he bore him off, and the two little figures clattered off over the cobblestones. ”

“ Mebbe ’tain’t true.” He held the shoes aloft, the long strings dangling down.
“There ain’t no morsel o’ doubt about it,” said Mrs. Brown decidedly. “I’ve jest come from the store, an’ Mr. Atkins himself told me. I can’t wait all day, Mr. Beebe; an’ I said gaiters. I don’t want no shoes.”
“You said shoes,” said Mr. Beebe. “However did I git up here, ef you hadn’t asked for ’em.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about th’ workin’ o’ your mind, Mr. Beebe,” said Mrs. Brown, “I said gaiters as plain as day—and do hurry!” She whipped the ends of her shawl impatiently around her gaunt figure. ”

“ Phipps, in great alarm lest the price of shoes should go up. “’Tain’t no easy matter when all is counted up, to make much out o’ a few hens that do nothin’ all day but eat fit to burst.”
“Well, here’s a pair, now.” Mr. Beebe took the two little shoes out from the box, turned them over several times in his big hands, felt of the leather of each upper, then finally placed them in Phronsie’s hands. “You run over and show ’em to that lady,” he said, nodding over to the settee. ”

“ Beebe. So just think what those children must have to do, who don’t ever have anybody to tell them about it as we have.” She folded her hands in her lap and was lost in thought.
“Whoop-la! Whoopity-la! G’lang!” cried Joel with an awful noise, making his steeds put forth all their best paces, around the little old kitchen. “And I’m so glad,” Polly was saying, “that Mr. and Mrs. Beebe did see a Circus when they went down to Rockport; it’s the greatest comfort. Now, if you don’t stop, Joel, I can’t tell the rest of the story;” “and you make so much noise we can’t hear anything,” said Ben. ”

“ Beebe lives? I’ll be switched, if I don’t b’lieve it’s Badgertown.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it; of course he lives there,” said Elyot, nodding furiously. “And please, aren’t we most there? I like your wagon; but we ought to hurry, ’cause Mr. and Mrs. Beebe will ask us to dinner, and”—
“Land o’ Goshen, I am in a scrape!” exclaimed the old farmer, slapping his knee with a dingy hand. “Here I be with two young ones on my [185] hands, an’ don’t know no more’n one o’ them what to do. An’ I can’t go clear back to them shoe-shop Beebes, an’ I don’t durst go forrards. ”

“ But George Dewey did not play all the time. His father was a good and wise man, and believed that a thorough education was one of the most important things of life. He obliged George to go to school regularly and conduct himself becomingly.
George had an experience in his first school which he never forgot. The scholars were an unruly set, and they had proved too much for several teachers. When, one day, a new master, Mr. Pangborn, arrived, the boys began as usual to make trouble. George was directed to perform some task and he flatly refused. ”

“ Beebe’s books.
“I taught him,” he quavered, “to trust in love. I said: ‘When love comes, that is reality.’ I said: ‘Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.’” He sighed: “True, everlastingly true, though my day is over, and though there is the result. Poor boy! He is so sorry! He said he knew it was madness when you brought your cousin in; that whatever you felt you did not mean. Yet”—his voice gathered strength: he spoke out to make certain—“Miss Honeychurch, do you remember Italy?” ”

“ A stuffed bird in a case may resist disintegration for a century. But when we go to look for the bluebirds which nest in the orchard, they may have flown a half mile away in their search for food. The plover which scurries before us today on the beach may tonight be far away on the first lap of his seven thousand mile flight to the southward.
The hoatzin's status lies rather with the caged bird. In November in New York City an Englishman from British Guiana said to me, "Go to the Berbice River, and at the north end of the town of New Amsterdam, in front of Mr. ”

“ He was utterly helpless now. Beebe had the drop on him and could kill him twice over before he could draw his own gun. Moreover, it was certain Beebe intended doing that very thing.
Ross was filled with a sense of futility, impotency. That he was about to die he did not consider. He was merely disgusted with himself for allowing himself to be checkmated when the game was practically won.
“So you thought you could get away?” Beebe was going on. It was obvious that he, too, was nearly insane. “Thought I was asleep, eh? I knew what was up as soon as I saw the kites. ”

“ But to-night I think that we both had put all our worries and sorrows far away, and I memory as well; and I felt sympathy in the quiet, pliant gait which carried him so swiftly over the sandy trail. I knew Nupee now for what he was—the one for whom I am always on the lookout, the exceptional one, the super-servant, worthy of friendship as an equal. I had seen his uncle and his cousins. They were Indians, nothing more. ”

“ Beebe began to work briskly on the minister’s shoe. As long as Ma was coming back, it wouldn’t pay to get flustered. Meantime the big woman plied him with questions till she had a pretty fair idea of the little-brown-house people, and all their ages and names.
Then she drew out her big hands again from the shawl-ends and held them up, “They’ll tell the story. I’ve worked some in my life,” she said, “an’ I never got no time to do for other folks.” ”

“ Beebe, every bit as much excited. “Yes, indeed, Mis’ Phipps, I’ve got a splendid fit. Walk right in an’ set down.” He waved her over toward the settee and the little wooden chair close to it. “An’ you come along with me, Phronsie, an’ we’ll pick out some to suit this little girl.”
Everything now settling down to business, old Mrs. Beebe turned to Dave. “Well, well, an’ what has Pa set you to doin’?” she cried, bending over him and his snarl of shoe-strings. “I declare, I never see sech a boy; you’re pickin’ out those dreadful things jest splendid. ”

“ She danced alone—a dance of change, of happenings of tremendous import, of symbolism as majestic as it was age-old. Here in this little glass aquarium the tadpole Guinevere had just freed her arms—she, with waving scarlet fins, watching me with lidless white and staring eyes, still with fish-like, fin-bound body. She danced upright, with new-born arms folded across her breast, tail-tip flagellating frenziedly, stretching long fingers with disks like cymbals, reaching out for the land she had never trod, limbs flexed for leaps she had never made. ”

“ Mrs. Beebe’s head appeared in the doorway between the little shop and the sitting-room. She had been frying doughnuts and she carried one in now on a blue plate, as she always did while they were nice and hot. “What’s th’ matter with th’ little brown house folks? Oh, how do you do, Mis Brown?” ”

“ Stevens, Richard,imprisoned, 202.
Strickland, Mr., debate over case of, 192-195-
Strode, Richard, case of, 1 72 and notes, 236, 238.
Strode, Sir WilHam, speech in the Commons, 213.
Suspending power, see Dispens- ing.
Taxation, 37, 78, 81, 162-163; App., 397-399, 402, 404, 406.
Thirty Years' War, 210.
Thorpe, Thomas, speaker of the House, 194, note 4.
Tonnage and poundage, 234-235.
Tories, see Conservatives.
Tories (American) , 296.
Town-meeting, the New Eng- land, see Problem VI.
Townshend's Historical Collec- tions, 178; excerpts from, 200- 202. ”

“ At that moment a light rustle through the bushes was heard and Bee joined them, saying:
"Papa, if I were to tell you the dew is falling heavily and the grass is wet, and it is not good for you or Ishmael to be out here, you might not heed me. But when I say that uncle has gone with General Tourneysee to a political pow-wow, and mamma and myself are quite alone and would like to amuse ourselves with a game of whist, perhaps you will come in and be our partners."
"Why, certainly, Busy Bee; for if anyone in this world deserves play after work it is you," replied Mr. Middleton. ”

“ Beebe thoughtfully; “well, how’ll we do it, Sarah. I can’t get down there, an’ now we don’t keep no horse—well, I d’no what to do.”
“We must get some one to go for us,” said Mrs. Beebe determinedly; and going to the door, she peered anxiously up and down the street. “Now, there’s them two old ladies who come over from Hingham every week or so,—the Scrannages,—I see their gig in front o’ Simons’s shop. I wonder if they’d go for us. I mean to ask ’em.” ”