Mr. Fox

“ It may, perhaps, be said, that never was the pleasantry of a man of wit so perfectly natural, as that of Mr. Fox; it seemed more like the outpouring, than the creation, of his fancy. He had lived on terms of close intimacy with all those of his contemporaries most distinguished for talent, learning, and political eminence. For the space of thirty years, he maintained intercourse with almost every man in Europe whose conversation and correspondence were of a nature to fortify, enrich, or polish the intellectual faculties. ”

“ Fox; “is it not true? So brave, so honest, so modest, so faithful! Ready to die for his country; worthy of trust and worthy of reward!”
“Mais!” with amazement. Yes, such a sol-'ier lives here. But can it be that monsieur refers to our Fidèle?
Precisely so!
Whereupon Sorel, hard, hairless, but French, weeps, and embraces Mr. Fox as the representative of the great government at Washington; and, weeping and laughing, leads him downstairs and presents him to Fidèle and to the bear-leaders, and opens a bottle of weak vinegar. ”

“ Fox, I cast an appealing glance at the former and was greatly chagrined to find him already on his feet.
“Enjoy your dance,” he cried; “I have a word to say to Mrs. Fairbrother,” and was gone before my new partner had taken me on his arm.
Was Mrs. Fairbrother the lady with the diamond? Yes; as I turned to enter the parlor with my partner, I caught a glimpse of Mr. Durand’s tall figure just disappearing from the step behind the sage-green curtains.
“Who is Mrs. Fairbrother?” I inquired of Mr. Fox at the end of the dance.
Mr. Fox, who is one of society’s perennial beaux, knows everybody. ”

“ We have no doubt that Mr Fox is a very clever person, and also that he is fully imbued with the same gratifying impression; nevertheless, we are free to confess that we would rather see him on the outside, than in the interior of the hen-roost of Downing Street. There may be persons within it who might as well, on public considerations, be out; but there are also many without, who, notwithstanding their vaunted breadth of intellect, should be kept from getting in. ”

“ Fox.
"I rushed downstairs, just in time to hide myself behind a cask, when you, Mr. Fox, came in dragging the young lady by the arm. And, as you passed me, Mr. Fox, I thought I saw you try and get off her diamond ring, and when you could not, Mr. Fox, it seemed to me in my dream, that you out with your sword and hacked off the poor lady's hand to get the ring."
"It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so," said Mr. Fox, and was going to say something else as he rose from his seat, when Lady Mary cried out:
"But it is so, and it was so. ”

“ The cat answered,
"Bread so white, and milk so sweet,
Will it please you sit and eat?"
"Thank you very much, Miss Cat," answered the wolf; "but is Mrs. Fox at home?"
Then the cat said,
"She is sitting upstairs in her grief,
And her eyes with her weeping are sore,
From her sorrow she gets no relief,
Now poor old Mr. Fox is no more!"
The wolf answered,
"Won't she take another spouse,
To protect her and her house?"
Up went the cat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat.
She knocks at the door, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat!
"Mrs. Fox, are you there?" ”

“ Callan himself asked no more.
I was directed to seek Fox out—to find him immediately. The matter was growing urgent. Fox was not at the office—the brand new office that I afterward saw pass through the succeeding stages of business-like comfort and dusty neglect. I was directed to ask for him at the stage door of the Buckingham.
I waited in the doorkeeper's glass box at the Buckingham. I was eyed by the suspicious commissionaire with the contempt reserved for resting actors. Resting actors are hungry suppliants as a rule. Call-boys sought Mr. Fox. "Anybody seen Mr. Fox? He's gone to lunch." ”

“ Fox released a little screech of pleasure at this extremely witty sally.
You do say the funniest things, Mrs. Bierbauer!
Well, ain't it so? What else can he do? Foolin' round all day with that old maid school-teacher. He orter be spanked an' put to work.
That's where he belongs, Mrs. Fox agreed. Boys o' that age ain't got no business loafin'.
You speak the gospel, Mrs. Fox. When Eddie was five years old he was earnin' his livin'.
Mr. Fox begun at ten. First thing you know, that boy'll get it in the neck where the chicken got the ax. ”

“ Fox, settled as he seemed to be in his belief in the integrity of his cause and the rights of the prosecution.
Shaken or not, his attack was stern, swift, and to the point.
“Was the visit you made to the wine-vault on the evening of the second of December, the first one you had ever paid there?”
“No; I had been there once before. But I always paid for my depredations,” he added, proudly.
“The categorical answer, Mr. Cumberland. Anything else is superfluous.”
Arthur’s lip curled, but only for an instant; and nothing could have exceeded the impassiveness of his manner as Mr. Fox went on. ”

“ So he decided that Mr. Man would not need it as much as he would and that it would also make a nice addition to his home.
When he told Mr. Badger and Mr. Rabbit about the ladder they decided to come, and one night when the moon was shining the animals were all to go to Mr. Fox's house to dinner.
Mr. Fox thought it would be the cheapest way to fill his guests with soup, so he took all the bones that he had collected and put them in a pot on the stove to boil. ”

“ Mr. Fox kept nobody waiting. With a gentleness such as he seldom showed to any witness for the defence, he resumed his cross-examination by propounding the following question:
“Miss Cumberland, in your account of the final interview you had with your sister, you alluded to a story you had once read together. Will you tell us the name of this story?” ”

“ The wicked jailer, one Hunter, a young fellow, would come behind and give the horse a lash with his whip, and make him skip and leap; so that I, being weak, had much ado to sit on him; then he would come and look me in the face and say, "How do you, Mr. Fox?" I told him it was not civil in him to do so. The Lord cut him off soon after.
When we were come to Bentham, in Yorkshire, there met us many troopers and a marshal; and many [438] of the gentry of the country were come in, and abundance of people to take a view of me. ”

“ Fox put my manuscript under his empty tumbler.
“Yes,” he said, sharply. “He will do, I think. H’m, yes. Why, yes.”
“You’re a friend of Mr. Callan’s, aren’t you?” Mrs. Hartly asked, “What a dear, nice man he is! You should see him at rehearsals. You know I’m doing his ‘Boldero’; he’s given me a perfectly lovely part—perfectly lovely. And the trouble he takes. He tries every chair on the stage.”
“H’m; yes,” Fox interjected, “he likes to have his own way.” ”

“ Fox, as Mr. Schlosser rightly thinks, was all of a piece—simple in his manners, simple in his style, simple in his thoughts. No waters in him turbid with new crystalizations; everywhere the eye can see to the bottom. No music in him dark with Cassandra meanings. Fox, indeed, disturb decent gentlemen by 'allusions to all the sciences, from the integral calculus and metaphysics to navigation!' Fox would have seen you hanged first. Burke, on the other hand, did all that, and other wickedness besides, which fills an 8vo page in Schlosser ”

“ Fox. I think he'll even be a little relieved to be able to go on serenely with the Peppers and the Rogerses. He's having lovely times there!"
"Oh, if his mother had lived, of course I should have written to her; but I knew you were a very busy man, Mr. Fox. Tony hardly ever speaks of his Aunt Fanny. She's a great club woman, I know. ”

“ Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox
“Uncle Remus,” said the little boy one evening, when he had found the old man with little or nothing to do, “did the fox kill and eat the rabbit when he caught him with the Tar-Baby?” ”

“ LADY Mary was young, and Lady Mary was fair. She had two brothers, and more lovers than she could count. But of them all, the bravest and most gallant, was a Mr. Fox, whom she met when she was down at her father's country-house. No one knew who Mr. Fox was; but he was certainly brave, and surely rich, and of all her lovers, Lady Mary cared for him alone. At last it was agreed upon between them that they should be married. Lady Mary asked Mr. Fox where they should live, and he described to her his castle, and where it was; ”

“ He come to he senses. He know mighty well an’ good dat a pusson de size o’ Mr. Fox ain’t got no reason to ax ef he granny tough, less’n he want to git he teef in her. By dat he recomember what his mammy done told him. He look all ’bout. He ain’t see no he’p nowhars. Den hit come in Sonny Bunny Rabbit’ mind dat de boys on de farm done sot a trap down by de pastur’ fence. Ef he kin git Mr. Fox to jump inter dat trap, his life done save.
“‘Oh, my granny mighty big,’ he say; ‘but dat ’s ’ca’se she so fat she cain’t run. She hain’t so mighty old, but she sleep all de time ”

“ Kaze ef dey is, I ain’t got no time fer ter be tarryin’ ’roun’ yer.’
“Brer Fox say w’ich he don’t have no onfrennelness, en wid dat Brer Rabbit cut Brer Fox loose des in time fer ter hear Mr. Man w’isserlin up his dogs, en one went one way en de udder went nudder.” ”

“ A person. Hazlitt’s early friend, Joseph Fawcett, perhaps. See Table Talk, On Criticism. Character of Mr. Fox. From The Eloquence of the British Senate, where the ‘Character’ begins: ‘I have hitherto deferred giving any opinion on the talents of eminent speakers, till I could present the reader with something 461that might justify the encomiums passed upon them; as the following is one of the most memorable of Mr. Fox’s speeches, I shall prefix to it a sort of character, the best I can give, of this celebrated man.’ The speech referred to was on the War with France, delivered in 1794. Note. ”

“ After he had done with them, I was brought up to the table where he sat; and then the officers took off my hat. The mayor said mildly to me, "Mr. Fox, you are an eminent man amongst those of your profession; pray, will you be instrumental to dissuade them from meeting in such great numbers? for, seeing Christ hath promised that where two or three are met in His name, He will be in the midst of them, and the King and Parliament are graciously pleased to allow four to meet together to worship God ”

“ He takes the right view of the story-writer's function and the wholesale view of what the art of fiction can rightfully attempt.—Independent, N. Y.
"HELL FER SARTAIN," and Other Stories. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.00.
Mr. Fox has made a great success of his pictures of the rude life and primitive passions of the people of the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky. His sketches are short but graphic; he paints his scenes and his hill people in terse and simple phrases and makes them genuinely picturesque, giving us glimpses of life that are distinctively American.—Detroit Free Press. ”

“ He was the last man in the world to act on the worldly-wise maxim that an enemy should always be treated as if he may one day be a friend, and a friend as if he might become an enemy. On the 29th of November 1779 Fox was wounded in a duel with Mr William Adam, a supporter of Lord North’s whom he had savagely denounced. ”

“ It might be Fox himself . . . There might, after all, be some meaning in the farrago of nonsense that that fantastic girl had let off upon me. Fox really and in a figure of speech such as she allowed herself, might be running a team consisting of the Duc de Mersch and Mr. ”

“ Fox, and declares himself ready to perform the operation whenever the physicians shall judge it expedient, as he does not see any reason to think the result more formidable to Mr. F. than to any other person.
A SUCCESSOR TO FOX
Ld. Howick is full of plans for an Administration, in the event of Mr. Fox’s retirement, or worse. He takes for granted that neither the General or Ld. Fitzwilliam would choose to remain in office if F. were away. He would, in that case, make Whitbread Secretary at War, himself S. for the Home Department, Tom Grenville the Admiralty, Tierney the Board of Control, Ld. ”

“ One night an actor complained to Garrick that the new tragedy was interrupted and would get damned, as a Covent Garden man was in the pit laughing. ‘Never mind,’ said Garrick, ‘I shall be revenged, for I have a man fast asleep at their new comedy.’
Bedford House is pulling down, and the Duke is building a new square. [129] He has some idea of erecting a statue of Ld. Russell; I advised him to get Mr. Fox to write the prose inscription, Fitzpatrick the verse, and Dr. Parr the Latin. If he should raise the monument he will adopt my hint. ”

“ In the summer of 1671, George Fox and some other Friends visited the West Indies and the continent of [Pg 30] America, to push the work of evangelisation and of organising the societies there. They landed in Barbadoes, after a voyage enlivened by constant dangers from the leakiness of the vessel, and once by an almost miraculous escape from capture by a Sallee man-of-war. Fox's son-in-law, John Rous, was in the company, and on landing he was at once taken to the house of Mr. Rous, senior, who was a wealthy sugar planter. ”

“ Miss Jennie had called him "Mr. Buford." He wondered what Margaret would call him when he came to say good-by. She called him nothing. She only smiled at him.
"You must come to see us soon again," she said, graciously, and so said all the Deans.
The Major was quiet going home, and Miss Lucy drowsed. All evening the Major was quiet.
"If a fight does come," he said, when they were going to bed, "I reckon I'm not too old to take a hand."
"And I reckon I'm not too young," said Chad. ”