Mr. Warren

“ We will not venture to hint that there lives a human being better than himself, but perhaps there live a few nearly, if not quite as good.
Mr Warren does justice to the masses: but he is much too honest and too upright—being himself one of the masses—to uphold their privileges at the sacrifice of other men’s lawful and just rights. He does not do it; and the English people, who love fair play, will honour him for his work.
We honour him too, and cordially shake him by the hand! He has not done worse than Maga expected from his industry and genius. ”

“ VIVIE. Mr Praed: once for all, there is no beauty and no romance in life for me. Life is what it is; and I am prepared to take it as it is.
PRAED [enthusiastically] You will not say that if you come with me to Verona and on to Venice. You will cry with delight at living in such a beautiful world.
FRANK. This is most eloquent, Praddy. Keep it up.
PRAED. Oh, I assure you I have cried—I shall cry again, I hope—at fifty! At your age, Miss Warren, you would not need to go so far as Verona. Your spirits would absolutely fly up at the mere sight of Ostend. ”

“ I saw Mr. Hearn and Miss Warren entering the house, and thought that they had had a long afternoon together, but that time no doubt had passed more quickly with them than with me, even though I had slept for hours. When reaching the parlor door I saw Miss Warren at the piano; she turned so quickly as almost to give me the impression that she was waiting to intercept me.
"Would you not like to hear your favorite nocturne again?" she asked, with a friendly smile. ”

“ Graves said—”
“Oh, yes, I know. You swallowed every word Graves said, Caro, as if he was the whole book of Proverbs. By George, I don’t; I’m from Missouri.”
Mr. Warren, being in the Sophomore class at Yale, was of the age when one is constitutionally “from Missouri.” Probably King Solomon, at sixty, had doubts concerning the scope and depth of his wisdom; at eighteen he would have admitted its all-embracing infallibility without a blush.
“I tell you,” continued Stephen, “there’s no sense in it, Sis. You and I know plenty of people whose incomes are no larger than ours. ”

“ No. His name is Abijah Warren, [Pg 20] and—Wait! His middle name is Rodgers, though. Did ’Bije send you to me?”
“A moment, Captain. Was your brother a broker?”
“Yes. His office is—or used to be on Broad Street. What—”
“You have not heard from him for some time?”
“Not for eighteen years. He and I didn’t agree as well as we might. Maybe ’twas my fault, maybe ’twas his. I have my own ideas on that. If you’re lookin’ for ’Bije Warren’s brother, Mr. Graves, I guess you’ve come to the right place. ”

“ George Warren entered, in no little excitement.
“Is Mr. Atherton in?” asked the millionaire, eagerly.
“I believe he is,” replied Jack. “I will tell him you are here.”
Mr. Warren was admitted to the inner sanctum immediately.
In five minutes the boss’ bell rang, and Jack went to see what he wanted. ”

“ Warren,” (motioning to a seat at the table of the gods.) “It has long been my wish to know you better than my very limited time would allow—my pursuits” (glancing complacently around him,) “are a great bar to social intercourse. The muses, Mr. Warren, the muses I find are very jealous ladies—do you cultivate their acquaintance? No? Ah, I am surprised, for I assure you I have formed a very high opinion of your talents.”
Harry bowed, and said something about honor, &c., &c. ”

“ They will retire to their tap-rooms, and fill their little souls with gin in sheer envy and disgust. Mr Warren, in the delineation of the Ayliffe family, has beaten the bilious discontented democrats on their own ground. He has taken for his hero a man of the people, but he has sustained the heroism with ample justice to all the world besides. ”

“ He sank into an armchair and looked curiously about him.
“So you are the late Mr. Warren’s brother?” asked the lady, making her first lead in the game.
“Yes, ma’am. His older brother. ’Bije was ten year younger’n I am, Mrs.—er—”
“Dunn. I am an old friend of the family.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear they’ve got friends. When you’re in sickness or trouble or sorrer, friendship counts for consider’ble. How are the young folks—Caroline and Stephen—pretty smart, hey?”
“Smart? Why, they are intelligent, naturally. ”

“ My old Independent Theatre manager, Mr Grein, besides that reproach to me for shattering his ideals, complains that Mrs Warren is not wicked enough, and names several romancers who would have clothed her black soul with all the terrors of tragedy. I have no doubt they would; but if you please, my dear Grein, that is just what I did not want to do. Nothing would please our sanctimonious British public more than to throw the whole guilt of Mrs Warren's profession on Mrs Warren herself. Now the whole aim of my play is to throw that guilt on the British public itself. ”

“ He pulled up a chair and seated himself, after having first closed the door of the president's office.
“Mr. Warren”—his voice was steady and incisive, giving no hint of the emotional strain under which he labored—“I have just checked over the cash. I am precisely one hundred thousand dollars short.” ”

“ VIVIE [striding to the gate and opening it for him] Come in, Mr Praed. [He comes in] . Glad to see you. [She proffers her hand and takes his with a resolute and hearty grip. She is an attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman. Age 22. Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed. Plain business-like dress, but not dowdy. She wears a chatelaine at her belt, with a fountain pen and a paper knife among its pendants] .
PRAED. Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. ”

“ The housekeeper listened, fidgeting in her chair.
“’Lisha Warren,” she interrupted, “how you do talk! Rainin’ so hard you had to hold the reins taut to keep [Pg 18] the horse’s head out of water so he wouldn’t drown! The idea!”
“Fact,” asserted Captain Warren, with a wink at his guest. “And that wa’n’t the worst of it. ’Twas so dark I had to keep feelin’ the buggy with my foot to be sure I was in it. Ain’t that so, Mr. Graves?... Here! Abbie won’t like to have you set lookin’ at that empty plate. She’s always afraid folks’ll notice the gilt’s wearin’ off. ”

“ My name’s Elisha Warren.”
Mr. Pearson shook hands and laughed, good-humoredly.
[Pg 79] “Glad to meet you, Captain Warren,” he said. “And I’m glad you knew Uncle Jim. As a youngster, he was my idol. He could spin yarns that were worth listening to.”
“I bet you! He’d seen things wuth yarnin’ about. So you ain’t a sailor, hey? Livin’ in New York?”
The young man nodded. “Yes,” he said. Then, with a dry smile, “If you call occupying a hall bedroom and eating at a third-rate boarding-house table living. However, it’s my own fault. I’ve been a newspaper man since I left college. ”

“ Captain Warren, I think perhaps I ought to warn you that what my partners and I are about to say will shock and hurt you. I, personally, knew your brother well and respected him as an honorable business man. A lawyer learns not to put too much trust in human nature, but, I confess, this—this—”
He was evidently greatly disturbed. Captain Elisha, regarding him intently, nodded.
“I judge it’s sort of hard for you to go on, Mr. Sylvester,” he said. “I’ll help you all I can. You and Mr. Kuhn and Mr. Graves here have found out somethin’ that ain’t exactly straight in ’Bije’s doin’s? Am I right?” ”

“ There must be another Elisha Warren. Comforted by this thought, Mr. Graves opened his valise, extracted therefrom other and drier articles of wearing apparel, and proceeded to change his clothes.
Meanwhile, Miss Abigail had descended the stairs to the sitting room. Before a driftwood fire in a big brick fireplace sat Captain Warren in his shirt-sleeves, a pair of mammoth carpet slippers on his feet, and the said feet stretched luxuriously out toward the blaze.
“Abbie,” observed the captain, “this is solid comfort. Every time I go away from home I get into trouble, don’t I? ”

“ They’re young and—and, well, I ain’t the kind they’ve been used to. Caroline’s a nice girl. She is, sure. All she needs is to grow a little older and have the right kind of advice and—and friends.”
“How about the boy?” Mr. Sylvester had met young Warren, and his eyes twinkled as he spoke.
“Steve? Well,” there was an answering twinkle in Captain Elisha’s eye; “well, Steve needs to grow, too; though I wouldn’t presume to tell him so. When a feller’s undertakin’ to give advice to one of the seven wise men, he has to be diplomatic, as you might say.” ”

“ Captain Warren, my brother has hinted—he has said—What does he mean by holding someone to a promise? Answer me truthfully.”
“I shouldn’t answer you any other way, Caroline. Steve seems to be worried about—now you mustn’t mind my speakin’ plain, Caroline; the time’s come when I’ve got to—Steve seems to be worried about the young man you’re engaged to. He seems to cal’late that Mr. Dunn may want to slip out of that engagement.” ”

“ Of the higher qualities of imagination and passion Warren was destitute, but his sketches of character, especially farcical character—Tittlebat Titmouse, Oily Gammon, Mr Quicksilver (an open caricature of Lord Brougham) —are bold and strong, forcibly imprinted on the memory, and the interest of the story is made to run with a powerful current. For several years Warren was known as the author of Ten Thousand a Year, and many tales were told of his open pride in the achievement. In 1847 he made another venture, but Now and Then was not a success. ”

“ But the finest instance is the following: Mr. Warren, [641] in his well-wrought tale of the martyr-philosopher, was incautious enough to invent the symbols by which his savant satisfied himself Laplace [642] was right on a doubtful point. And this is what he put together—
√-3a2, y2 / z2 + 9 - n = 9, n × log e. ”

“ Mr. Wall. No, sir; not at all unless it was about football. I am a football fanatic. It was the day before. This would be Thursday, right?
Mr. Specter. Would it refresh your recollection if I said you had a telephone call with him at about 6:50 on that day?
Mr. Wall. No, sir; it wouldn’t because I call him quite frequently. I just made a telephone call to him day before yesterday. Unless it was just to say hello and everything. We did not decide to go down to Galveston until that afternoon, the day after the assassination.
Mr. Specter. How long have you known Edward Parker of Fort Worth? ”

“ I now come to those critics who, intellectually baffled by the problem in Mrs Warren’s Profession, have made a virtue of running away from it. I will illustrate their method by quotation from Dickens, taken from the fifth chapter of Our Mutual Friend:
“Hem!” began Wegg. “This, Mr Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off——” here he looked hard at the book, and stopped. ”

“ Lang invited me for the rest which she now considered necessary. Mr. Leopold had left Warren, and retaken a studio in town for the fall and winter; but many a memory of his kind deeds and pleasant manners lingered in the place. Every village must have its hero, its great man of past or present, looking down, like Hawthorne's great stone face, in supreme benignity upon it. Mr. Leopold had been the first occupant of this royal chair in Warren; for the enthusiasm which seeks a better than itself had just been called forth by the teaching and influence of Hillside. ”

“ Mr. Grey walked over to the desk. Pausing for a moment to eye the secretary, she blushed and left the room. When the door was closed, he took a badge out of his pocket and showed it to the chief.
“Oh!” exclaimed the chief. “I’m glad to meet you.”
“Who is he, Chief Bates?” demanded Jack.
“A government man,” was the snappy retort.
“Then why did we find him among the gang?” demanded Jack. “Anyone can get himself a badge. Let him really identify himself.”
They all eyed Mr. Grey. Paul and Ken felt horrified by Jack’s demand but they felt that he was right, reasonable. ”

“ Besides, you may be too bold. Your mother is not to be trifled with when she’s angry.
VIVIE. You can’t frighten me, Mr Praed. In that month at Chancery Lane I had opportunities of taking the measure of one or two women v e r y like my mother. You may back me to win. But if I hit harder in my ignorance than I need, remember it is you who refuse to enlighten me. Now, let us drop the subject. [She takes her chair and replaces it near the hammock with the same vigorous swing as before] .
PRAED [taking a desperate resolution] One word, Miss Warren. I had better tell you. It’s very difficult ”

“ The lawyer looked at him in astonishment.
“See here, Captain Warren,” he demanded, “what do you imagine I asked you to come here for?”
“Why, to talk about that miserable engagement, sartin. Poor girl! I’ve been awake ha’f the night thinkin’ of the mess she’s been led into. And she believes she’s happy, I suppose.”
Sylvester shook his head. “I see,” he said, slowly. “You would think it that, naturally. No, Captain, it isn’t the engagement. It’s more serious than that.”
“More serious than—more serious! Why, what on earth? Hey? Mr. ”

“ Mr. Griffin. Now, did anybody else telephone you before your brother Jack called you?
Mrs. Grant. Now, she may have called me—this girl’s name is Emma Collins, who worked for us as a waitress. I think she came in on weekends. I remember she wasn’t working for a couple of weeks, because I was in the hospital. It seems she may have called me during that afternoon. Whether she called me before Jack, or after, I wouldn’t put my life on that. But almost 1 o’clock I was listening the best I could to channel 8, and I heard this man say distinctly, “The President is dead.” ”