Mr. Wright

“ In 1837 he moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts, to prosecute a similar work in Boston.
Nothing is more remarkable in Mr. Wright's life than his perfect self- poise and peace of mind during such a long period of external agitation. It is doubtful, in spite of his highly nervous temperament, if he ever lost a night's sleep. When he was editing the Chronotype, and waiting for the telegraphic news to arrive, he would sometimes lie down on a pile of newspapers and go to sleep in less than half a minute. For mental relaxation he studied the higher mathematics and wrote poetry— much of it very good. ”

“ Patton, who thus denounced the cabmen and 'busmen of New York, had at the very time the "Negro Pew" in his own church!
While on this subject, let me tell you another fact respecting poor Mr. Wright. The life of his first wife was sacrificed to this heartless and unmanly feeling. He was travelling with her by steam-boat between New York and Boston. They had to be out all night, and a bitter cold winter's night it was. Being coloured people, their only accommodation was the "hurricane-deck." Mrs. Wright was delicate. ”

“ Wright. "He hasn't a lazy bone in his body."
"There aren't many of us that have at his age," remarked Mr. Wright. "Are there, Pluto?"
The cat had run to meet him like a dog. For him the scent of Mr. Wright's fishing trousers was as the perfume of Araby; and he followed him to the room in the shed where his friend changed them for habiliments more generally agreeable.
At last Phil returned to the boulder cottage where he found Mrs. Fabian and Kathleen in the wind-break. The latter was working at the table, sorting the moss specimens for her slides. ”

“ An attorney of Derby, speaking of “Equity Wright,” some years after his death, said, “he might have died very rich, had he acted like the generality of his profession.” There can be no doubt that he was a thoroughly good lawyer, for on more than one occasion, when he waited on the celebrated Sir Eardley Wilmot, of Osmaston, for an opinion, Sir Eardley said to him, “You are come to throw away a guinea with me, Mr. Wright, for you know the law as well as I do.” ”

“ Mr. Wright was one of the characters of the Gallery. Like most of the officials of the House in those days, he was a protégé of the Sergeant-at-Arms, Lord Charles Russell. Rumour declared that he had originally been a boat-builder on the Thames, and had secured the favour of Lord Charles by his services in teaching his sons to row. He certainly looked more like a boat-builder, or the captain of a barge, than the keeper of the vestibule to the Reporters' Gallery. He was permitted to purvey refreshments of a modest kind to the reporters. ”

“ Mr. Wright delivered a sermon entitled “Sculptors of Life” that was so impressive that I sought him out with entreaties to repeat his sermon as a lecture to a certain company of young people.
The acquaintance thus begun very quickly became one of friendship, without any knowledge or thought that it would in time lead to a co-operative life work, and when the author later offered his book for publication it was without request or thought of financial remuneration. Mr. Wright, however, was given a contract paying him the highest royalty that was being paid for any author's first book. ”

“ I asked.
"Somebody you like to have with you."
Always when we were together after that hour the great man called me "partner."
We neared camp in the last light of the day. Mr. Wright stopped to clean our fish at a little murmuring brook and I ran on ahead for I could hear the crackling of the camp-fire and the voice of Bill Seaver. I thought in whispers what I should say to my Uncle Peabody and they were brave words. ”

“ George Newenham Wright, a gentleman who was almost as free with the birch as Mr Ford had been. His suffering pupils eventually discovered a weak point in his armour—namely, that he had broken down sadly in his examination in the Greek Testament when seeking for holy orders. When Wright was made aware that his pupils had heard of his deficiency in classical knowledge he grew tamer. But though he was a bad Greek scholar and a tyrant, the Rev. Mr Wright was by no means a bad teacher. ”

“ The mind's the standard of the man."
"Mr. Dunkelberg came this morning and wanted to buy me some new clothes and boots," I said.
"Good Lord! What wilt thou give me when I grow childless?"
The Senator stopped work and stood looking at me with his hands upon his hips.
"I wouldn't let him do it if I were you," he said thoughtfully.
Just then I saw a young man come running toward us in the distant field.
Mr. Wright took out his compass.
"Look here," he said, "you see the needle points due north."
He took a lodestone out of his pocket and holding it near the compass moved it back and forth. ”

“ That same inherent love for mental cleanliness and spiritual truths that has so distinguished the works of the man kept the boy unstained in his unfortunate environment.
Mr. Wright resigned his charge at Pierce City for the larger work at Pittsburg, Kansas. In the second year of his pastorate—1899—he married Frances E. Long in Buffalo, New York. This union of love had its beginning back in the school days at Hiram. Unto them have been born three sons, Gilbert Munger, 1901, Paul Williams, 1902, and Norman Hall, 1910. ”

“ To count age by the almanack is not always to count truly: Mr. Wright claims that he was really born on the steamer that brought him to the Far East in 1902. Till then, he discovered, he had merely existed in chrysalis form. His advent in Japan, and meteoric career there, is still spoken of with bated breath by those confreres who managed to survive his mordant humour. At the outbreak of the war he achieved special distinction by declining to accept the chance of glory, and dysentery, by going to Korea as the Daily Mail's war correspondent. ”

“ He helped me with my boots, which were rather tight, and I flew down-stairs with my coat half on and ran for the wash-basin just outside the kitchen door.
"Hello, Bart! If the fish don't bite to-day they ought to be ashamed o' themselves," said Mr. Wright, who stood in the dooryard in an old suit of clothes which belonged to Uncle Peabody. ”

“ Sikes from this honest though uncourteous intruder, was strongly reproved by Mr. Wright, as the most unprecedented and unflattering respect he could have received; adding, that if the finish of the painting was as perfect as the compliment of the dog, his highest ambition must be exceeded, and if anyone took the trouble to write his life, that anecdote would necessarily form a prominent place. ”

“ The status of the Press is changed indeed.
One of Mr. Wright's characteristics was his love of talking Johnsonese. I can see him in my mind's eye now, as I emerged from the Gallery after a heavy "turn," reclining on the wooden bench which was his favourite place of rest. His head half covered with the famous red bandana; his boots off, and a pair of dirty worsted stockings exposed to view, he twiddled his thumbs, and through half-closed eyes cast a disparaging glance at the young member of the Gallery who had not yet patronised either his whisky or his ham ”

“ In one word, you have been so happy in your figure of the lover, that almost any other must appear to disadvantage in so near a comparison. Make her to please yourself, and I shall be perfectly satisfied.”
“Six years previously Wright had painted for Mr. Wedgwood one of his most celebrated pictures. Writing to Bentley the latter says:—‘I am glad to hear that Mr. Wright is in the land of the living. ”

“ In the morning he said that he could come the next Tuesday night, if we needed him, and set out right after breakfast, in the dim dawn light, to walk to Canton.
"Peabody Baynes," said my Aunt Deel as she stood looking out of the window at Mr. Wright, "that is one of the grandest, splendidest men that I ever see or heard of. He's an awful smart man, an' a day o' his time is worth more'n a month of our'n, but he comes away off here to set up with a sick young one and walks back. Does beat all—don't it?—ayes!"
"If any one needs help Sile Wright is always on hand," said Uncle Peabody. ”

“ If there is any shortcoming it arises from Wright’s personal strength. The man who can do what he has done, persistently fighting tuberculosis, risking public opinion in several matters and adhering to his method in spite of a great change of personal attitude and a personal revolution in ideas—that [Pg 131] man is no weakling. It would be interesting to survey the personal change in Mr. Wright but as it nowhere extrudes in his work, there is no justification for an inquest. But the very circumstance has its positive value in establishing him for what he is not, namely, an artist. ”

“ Poor Wright awaited with some dread the end of school; and many an angry kick and blow he got, though he disarmed malice by the spirit and heroism with which he endured them. The news of his impudence spread like wildfire, and not five boys in the school approved of what he had done, while most of them were furious at his ill-judged threat of informing Mr Gordon. ”

“ Many men of celebrity, not only local, he painted—Arkwright and Whitehurst, Darwin and Strutt; but the charm of his portraits does not depend on the fame of the sitter, but on the power of the artist to seize a distinct individuality, and to make each likeness for ever interesting as an authentic image of a fellow-man. Unsophisticated by fashion or affectation, Wright’s portraits are history in its simplest and truest form.
Of the pure charm of his children, some of the illustrations to this volume, especially Mr. Seymour Haden’s painter-like etching of the “Twins,” will speak. ”

“ He stopped his wheelbarrow by the steps and we sat down together on the edge of the stoop as he added:
"I got mad—they kep' pickin' on me so—I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. We'll start up ag'in somewheres if we have to. There's a good many days' work in me yet."
As we carried the bags to the attic room I thought of the lodestone and the compass and knew that Mr. Wright had foreseen what was likely to happen. When we came down Uncle Peabody said to me:
"Do you remember what you read out of a book one night about a man sellin' his honor?" ”

“ And moonlight sleeps upon its hoary brink.” From the “Memoirs of the life of Dr. Darwin.” By Anna Seward.
“In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture [41] to Mr. Wright, of Derby. A strong likeness, and a dignified portrait were the result. Drawn as in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous, lurid, and dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a [80] column inscribed to Hampden. Mr. Day looks upward as enthusiastically meditating on the contents of a book, held in his dropped right hand. ”

“ Now that flights had been made, neighbors didn’t doubt the truth of the reports—though one of them had115 his own explanation. Mr. Webbert, father of the man from whom the Wrights rented their shop, said:
“I have known those boys ever since they were small children, and if they say they flew I know they did; but I think there must be special conditions down in North Carolina that would enable them to fly by the power of a motor. There is only one thing that could lift a machine like that in this part of the country—spirit power.” Webbert was a spiritualist. ”

“ The Doctor followed. They found their guide crouching in a small opening in the wall of rock. Mr. Howitt uttered an exclamation, "The lost cave! Old man Dewey!"
The boy laughed, "Pete knows. Come, Dad. Come, other man. Ain't nothin' can get you here." He scrambled ahead of them into the low tunnel. Some twenty feet from the entrance, the passage turned sharply to the left and opened suddenly into a hallway along which the shepherd could easily walk erect. Pete went briskly forward as one on very familiar ground, his lantern lighting up the way clearly for his two companions. ”

“ The errors you have corrected in the Magazine are considerable, and make the production more valuable.
“RICHD WRIGHT.”
Prefixed to this notice of Wright, by Mr. Philips, was an engraved portrait of the artist by Blake.
JOSEPH WRIGHT. Etched by himself.
Amongst the effects of the late Mr. Geo. Cumberland, who was an intimate friend of Blake’s, was found an etching, evidently the one that served Blake as his copy, on which is written, “Wright, of Derby; etched by himself.” This is the only instance known of Wright having used the etching point. ”

“ Wright records also a very striking answer to long-continued prayer, and a most impressive instance of the tender care of the Lord, in the providing of an associate, every way like-minded, and well fitted to share the responsibility falling upon his shoulders at the decease of his father-in-law.
Feeling the burden too great for him, his one resource was to cast his burden on the Lord. He and Mr. Müller had asked of God such a companion in labour for three years before his departure, and Mr. Wright and his dear wife had, for twenty-five years before that—from the time when Mr. ”

“ But, really dear, we have talked enough about Mr. Lawrence Knight. I'm going to have another look at the cowboy. He looks like a real man, doesn't he? What is it the Dean called him?"
"Patches."
"Oh, yes; what a funny name—Patches."
"Honorable Patches," said Kitty.
"How odd!" mused Helen. "Oh, Stan, come here a minute. Take the glasses and look at that cowboy down there."
Stanford trained the field glasses as she directed.
"Doesn't he remind you of Larry Knight?"
"Larry Knight!" Stanford looked at her in amazement. "That cow-puncher? Larry Knight? I should say not. Lord! ”