Ralph Tyler

“ My father spoke to me of that, Sir Ralph, but told me that he would rather that I were with some simple knight than with a great noble, for that in the rivalries between these there might be troubles come upon the land, and maybe even civil strife; that one who might hold his head highest of all one day might on the morrow have it struck off with the executioner's axe, and that at any rate it were best at present to live quietly and see how matters went before taking any step that would bind me to the fortunes of one man more than another. ”

“ Albert exclaimed at last; "I am fairly spent, and can scarce lift my sword."
"My horse is spent, but not my strength," Edgar said, as he reined up. "Well, we have avenged the Flemings, and have done something towards paying these fellows for their insults to the princess. Now let us wend our way back; I must say good-bye to Sir Ralph and the sturdy alderman, and will then ride home and see how my father has fared. I have little fear that any harm has befallen him, for his magic would frighten the rioters even more than our swords. Well, our armour has stood us in good stead, Albert. ”

“ Sir Ralph said, grimly. "If the king had but taken my advice and ridden out to Blackheath with his knights and half the garrison of the Tower, and with such aid as the loyal citizens would have furnished him, he and the city would have been spared the humiliation that they have suffered. One blow struck in time will save the need of twenty struck afterwards. Had we but killed a thousand on Blackheath it would have spared us the trouble of slaying perhaps ten times that number now ”

“ The intimacy between the two houses became even closer than before, and Sir Ralph's report of Edgar's doings in London caused him to be frequently invited to the houses of all the well-to-do people in the neighbourhood. In the meantime the insurrection had been finally crushed. The commissioners in various parts of the country were trying and executing all who had taken any lead in the movement, and until a general amnesty was passed, two months later, every peasant lived in hourly dread of his life. ”

“ At Greenwich they heard many tales as to the damage committed by the peasants on their homeward way. Houses had been sacked and burnt, and many persons of substance killed.
"The king ought to have let us charge the fellows," Sir Ralph said, as they went forward again. "When men find that they get off without punishment for misdeeds, they will recommence them as soon as the danger is past. ”

“ Then Albert put on his helmet again, and the two lads followed the example of Sir Ralph and the alderman, and lowered their vizors, for, as the knight said, "Though some of the knaves threw away their bows at Smithfield, many of the others took them away." On reaching a field near the castle, they could see that a fierce fight was going on. The rioters had procured ladders, and were striving to climb the walls, while a small party of armed men were defending the battlement. ”

“ Put them over your own clothes. I charge you to take no part in any street fray; but if the better class of citizens make a stand, throw off your citizen clothes and join them and strike for the king and country, for assuredly England would be ruined were the rabble to have their way."
In a quarter of an hour the ladies were ready; and their Court suits and those of Albert and Edgar had been packed. The men-at-arms took up the valises, and, followed by them, Sir Ralph, his wife, and daughter made for the Tower. ”

“ On the Janes veranda he was nothing of the sort. As the son of the owner of the Coulton street-car line and the Tyler real estate, he was a young man of social importance in a home where the mother earned a living by teaching music and the daughter had only the prospect of doing the same. He was a man of the practical world, whose opinions were authoritative. ”

“ Robert Tyler does the honors of the White House. She is the grand-daughter of the late Major Fairlie, of New-York, a soldier of the revolution, and a distinguished citizen, who was well known to many of the oldest inhabitants of that city. Her mother was a celebrated belle, whom our present minister to Spain, Washington Irving, remembers vividly as his friend, and one of the most brilliant women of the day ”

“ Uncle Ed used to delight his young audiences with anecdotes of Tyler, and in his old age, when mind and memory began to fail, it was rather hard to hear him say, "Did I ever tell you about my dog Tyler?"
He must have been named for John Tyler. It was hard on a good dog to be named for John Tyler, one of the poorest presidents we ever had.
There seems to be a great deal of interest among our summer people in the old houses still left at Beverly Farms. I have mentioned the James Woodbury house now owned by Mr. J. S. Curtis; another very old house is the William Haskell house, owned by Mr. ”

“ TYLER, John (1790–1862) , tenth president of the United States, was accustomed with pride, but with the support of conjecture rather than evidence, to claim relationship with Wat Tyler of the reign of Richard II. The earliest of his American ancestors was Henry Tyler, a reputed native of Shropshire, England, who in 1652 settled at Middle Plantation, Va., on the outskirts of what is now the city of Williamsburg. ”

“ When Tyler came to New York on a very momentous occasion, as an official in the suppression of Shays's Rebellion, he had little thought of ever putting his pen to paper as a playwright, although he was noted from earliest days as a man of literary ambition, his tongue being sharp in its wit, and his disposition being brilliant in the parlour. It was while in what was even then considered to be the very gay and wicked city of New York, that Royall Tyler went to the theatre for the first time, and, on that auspicious occasion, witnessed Sheridan's "The School for Scandal." ”

“ Tyler, and of how nobody liked him, with all his money, which he hoarded like a miser. He was probably crossing the bridge now to take the train for the city from Marley, and save the additional five cents he might have to pay if he boarded it at Burdock, which was much nearer his home.
But he was human, he was an old man; he was helpless now, doubtless overcome by the heat. And there was nobody about but Roy to prevent what might be a tragedy. ”

“ And the poor commons, too, must go back again to be kicked and cuffed, and to bear the load heavier than before. Aye, father John—and did he not snatch you from the stripes and the bolt?—and were not his hands red with blood that blessed night?—and was he not forced to fly like a felon, and take this accursed name of Tyler?" Here his agitation increased, and his articulation became indistinct and husky; he started up, thrust the crucifix into his bosom, and paced the tent for a few minutes in silence ”

“ Tyler was a poor man. I never did like poor people. I didn't like his marrying into our family, who were considered very far Tyler's superiors." "On the plantation," he said, "Tyler was a very cross man, and treated the servants very cruelly; but the house servants were treated much better, owing to their having belonged to his wife, who protected them from persecution, as they had been favorite servants in her father's family." James estimated that "Tyler got about thirty-five thousand dollars and twenty-nine slaves, young and old, by his wife." ”

“ Robert Tyler, the eldest son of the President, is a young man of brilliant genius. As a poet, in high-wrought and vivid imagery, he resembles Shelley, whose likeness he personally resembles; and as an orator, there is not a speaker of his years in our country who has made a greater impression than he made in two extemporaneous efforts before the Irish Association. Bold, eloquent, and manly, he dashes into his subject with his whole soul, while comprehensiveness, energy, and point characterize every thing he says. ”

“ Tyler has been fortunate. His daughters, except the youngest, Alice, who is at school, are happily married, and his sons who are grown, Mr. Robert and Mr. John Tyler, are gentlemen of honor, manliness, and intellect; and Tazwell, his youngest son, is a lad of promise. Miss Elizabeth Tyler, [57] who is now Mrs. Waller, and living with her husband in Virginia, was much admired in her bellehood when in the White House. Her unpretending and gentle manners inspired with admiration all who approached her. ”

“ I believe that man is actually going to try to cross the trestle.”
Roy Pell pulled his sister Eva quickly toward him as he spoke, so that she could look up between the trees to the Burdock side of the railway bridge almost directly above their heads.
“Why, it’s Mr. Tyler!” exclaimed Jess, who had a better view from where she sat on the log that spanned Riddle Creek. “Oh, Roy, something’s sure to happen to him! He’s awfully feeble.” ”

“ The principal public buildings include the city hall, the county court-house, a Carnegie library and the post office and Federal Courts building. Sessions of the United States Circuit and District Courts, and of a state district court, as well as of the county court, are held in Tyler. Tyler is situated in a prosperous agricultural region, and has various manufactures. The St Louis South-Western railway maintains general offices and machine-shops here. Tyler, named in honour of President John Tyler, was settled in 1847, was incorporated as a town in 1870 and was chartered as a city in 1907. ”

“ On a memorable Tuesday evening Wat had "stopped in" at the Janeses' on his way down-town with his friend Webb, to let Webb return to Miss Janes some music that he had borrowed. And, by a determining accident of fate, as they approached the lamplit veranda of the Janes cottage, Alicia Janes was sitting behind the vine-hung lattice, reading a magazine, while her mother played the piano.
Observe: There was no veranda on the Tyler "residence"; no one ever sat outdoors there; and no one ever played anything but dance-music on the Tyler piano. ”

“ John Tyler had attempted to purchase the support of the Democrats with patronage, but received only ironical compliments. He had persuaded himself that the people believed him to be a very great man, and waited only for an opportunity to rise up for him en masse. This grand uprising of the American people for John Tyler had for a long time been the standing jest of the newspapers, but Tyler's faith could not be shaken. He therefore gravely posed as a candidate for the presidency, and assembled a convention consisting mainly of office-holders. ”

“ It was Tim Tyler, one of the hardest boys in Seamont, aged fifteen. Back of him was a smaller boy, but a competitor in vice, Bobby Landers. How many others might soon show themselves, no one could say, but the down-townies were clannish and loved to turn out in crowds, and to the club the probability appeared to be, that others would speedily rise up and charge along the railroad track. Sid Waters, who had urged freemen to stand for their rights, was now turning on his heel. He headed for a fence that separated the railroad lot from the woods. ”

“ It is pretty certain that, wherever the mace may have come from, the insolence of Tyler furnished the cue.
The fall of the Tyler had a most depressing influence on his followers, and Richard, riding up to them, offered his services as their leader. "Tyler was a traitor," cried the king: "I will be your captain and your guide," when several of the mob consented to transfer themselves, like so many tools, from the hands of Wat to those of Richard. Some of the rioters sneaked quietly away, while those that remained were paralysed ”

“ Tyler will step into the ring in a costume which we have prepared expressly for him; and thus, when he does himself honor by his performance and earns the applause of the multitude, he will be doing honor and earning applause for the work of our hands—my wife Lilly and myself. Take them, my boy; and when you array yourself in them to-morrow you [Pg 193] will remember that the only Living Skeleton, and the wonder of the nineteenth century in the shape of the Mammoth Lady, are present in their works if not in their persons. ”

“ President Tyler is a man of very unsuspicious nature, and there is no morbidity of feeling in him. He is always cheerful and natural. In the midst of great difficulties of state, when the Cabinet have held protracted meetings, and when, doubtless, there were differences of opinion among them; when the Secretary of State, with his beetling brows and cavernous eyes, passed by alone, absorbed in his own thoughts; when Mr. Spencer's quick step lost some of its elasticity, and the frank and firm Kentuckian, at the head of the Post Office Department, wore an anxious look ”

“ As a husband and a father, President Tyler is a model for any man; and particularly for public men, who too often neglect their families. For a very long time the lady of the President was in feeble health, which terminated in her death last summer. It was a beautiful moral spectacle to see the President, amidst all the cares and perplexities of his exalted station, beset by so many detractors, so devotedly watchful of Mrs. Tyler's declining condition. In the midst of the veto days, when engaged in the most animated political conversation, if Mrs. ”

“ Mr. Tyler dead so soon after making that will which left Mrs. Pell all his money. No more poverty for them. The stable need no longer be empty and—
Roy checked these thoughts with a half suppressed exclamation of disgust. It seemed sacrilegious to be speculating in this fashion on the gain from the death of the old man who had been so fond of life, for all he had made such poor use of it.
They were now close enough to the cottage to see that the doctor’s carriage stood there just behind the ominous vehicle belonging to Mr. Green. The doctor himself was coming out of the house. ”