Richard Parker

“ He held up a warning palm, as though commanding silence, while he listened intently. “Yes, it’s the Delegates. Now look at that crowd of seamen!” He swung his hand towards the bowels of the ship. Scores of men were springing to their feet. Presently there came a great shouting and cheers, and then four new faces appeared on deck. They were faces of intelligence, but one of them had the enlightened look of leadership.
“By Judas, it’s our leader, Richard Parker!” declared Ferens.
What Dyck now saw was good evidence of the progress of the agitation. ”

“ Truth to say, Richard Armour was not so young as he seemed a few months before. His shoulders were a little stooped, he was greyer about the temples. The little bit of cynicism which had appeared in that remark about the care of the child showed also in the lines of his mouth; yet his eyes had the same old true, honest look. But a man cannot be hit in mortal places once or twice in his life without its being etched on his face or dropped like a pinch of aloe from his tongue.
Still they sat and talked much longer, Frank showing better than when his brother came, Richard gone grey and tired. ”

“ She had a considerable store of vanity; she was not very philosophical. Besides, she was not married; and what Captain Vidall, her devoted admirer and possible husband, would think of this heathenish alliance was not a cheer ful thought to her. She choked down a sob, and waved her hand towards Richard to answer for her. He was pale too, but cool. He understood the case instantly; he made up his mind instantly also as to what ought to be—must be—done.
"Well, mother," he said, "it is about Frank. But he is all right; that is, he is alive and well-in body. ”

“ Richard, the wiseacre, the inexhaustible Richard, was caring for his cottagers and cutting the leaves of new books—his chiefest pleasure—at Greyhope. They felt it was a matter they ought to be able to decide for themselves, but still it was the last evening of Lali's stay in town, and they did not care to take any risk. Strange to say, they had come to take pride in their son's wife; for even General and Mrs. Armour, high-minded and of serene social status as they were, seemed not quite insensible to the pleasure of being an axle on which a system of social notoriety revolved. ”

“ By this time all were at the window, Richard arriving last, and the Indian girl turned on them, her body all quivering with excitement, laughed a low, bird-like laugh, and then, clapping her hands above her head, she swung round and ran like a deer towards the lake, shaking her head back as an animal does when fleeing from his pursuers. She would scarcely have been recognised as the same placid, speechless woman in a blanket who sat with folded hands day after day on the Aphrodite. ”

“ But Richard said to her: "Mother, I fancy you don't quite grasp the position. The girl is the daughter of a chief, and the descendant of a family of chiefs, perhaps through many generations. In her own land she has been used to respect, and has been looked up to pretty generally. Her garments are, I fancy, considered very smart in the Hudson's Bay country; and a finely decorated blanket like hers is expensive up there. You see, we have to take the thing by comparison; so please give the girl a chance."
And Mrs. Armour answered wearily, "I suppose you are right, Richard ”

“ When he left for Canada they were inwardly glad (they imagined that something might occur to end the engagement) —all except Richard, the wiseacre of the family, the book- man, the drone, who preferred living at Greyhope, their Hertfordshire home, the year through, to spending half the time in Cavendish Square. Richard was very fond of Frank, admiring him immensely for his buxom strength and cleverness, and not a little, too, for that very rashness which had brought him such havoc at last. ”

“ If Richard had been accounted eccentric before, there was far greater cause for the term now. Life dragged. Too much had been taken out of his life all at once; for, in the first place, the family had been drawn together more during the trouble which Lali's advent had brought; then the child and its mother, his pupil, were gone also. He wandered about in a kind of vague unrest. The hardest thing in this world to get used to is the absence of a familiar footstep and the cheerful greeting of a familiar eye. ”

“ All at once the child's face altered; he stood perfectly still, and waited for his mother to come to him. Lali had not spoken, and she did not speak until, lifting the child, she came the length of the billiard-table and faced them.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "for intruding; but Richard has led us a dance, and I suppose the mother may go where her child goes."
"The mother and the child are always welcome wherever they go," said
General Armour quietly. ”

“ Richard’s prophecy was likely to come true: she would defeat very perfectly indeed Frank’s intentions. After the child was born, so soon as she was able, she renewed her studies with Richard and Mrs. Armour. She read every morning for hours; she rode; she practised all those graceful arts of the toilet which belong to the social convention; she showed an unexpected faculty for singing, and practised it faithfully; and she begged Mrs. Armour and Marion to correct her at every point where correction seemed necessary. ”

“ It had originally been Richard's idea, appropriated by General Armour, and accepted by Mrs. Armour and Marion with what grace was possible. The publication of the event prepared their friends, and precluded the necessity for reserve. What the friends did not know was whether they ought or ought not to commiserate the Armours. It was a difficult position. A death, an accident, a lost reputation, would have been easy to them; concerning these there could be no doubt. But an Indian daughter-in-law, a person in moccasins, was scarcely a thing to be congratulated upon ”

“ He was assisted in his flight to Gravesend by a certain Richard Brown, a waterman, who subsequently became a separatist elder in the congregation of Watertown, New England (cf. Massachusetts Hist. Soc. 3rd ser. v. 187; Clarke, Lives, i. 22-3) . Parker crossed to Holland, and subsequently settled in Leyden. ”

“ Blue wreaths of smoke ascend through the trees, and betray the half-hidden cottage: the eye contemplates well-thatched ricks, and barns bursting with plenty: the peasant laughs at the approach of winter. ”

“ Parker, "that's the most perfect echo I ever heard. I've no doubt the holy fathers of the Middle Ages knew of it, and used it in some shape to keep the superstitious people in awe."
"It is awesome," said his wife, "here in the moonlight, with the old castle so near: if I were alone, positively I should feel eerie."
"Are you dull at home, Mr. Forrester?" was sent out from the depths of Will's chest, and sent back again just as Bessie came out and joined the party.
"Boys! boys!" she said, "don't be foolish."
"Why, it was what you said yourself," her sister remarked.
"Are you ever dull?" ”

“ He was a Liberal in politics, though not partisan. He took an active part in suppressing the rebellion of 1837, and served as quartermaster-sergeant. After his children left home he sold his farm, and lived retired in Bradford, where he died on the 7th July, 1881, in the 84th year of his age, and was interred in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. Dr. Parker’s mother, Sarah Sutherland, still surviving, and resident in Bradford, was a most intelligent and hearty sympathizer and co-operator with her husband in all his business plans, his home hospitality and religious duties. ”

“ Back again in New York, he wrote: "It just raises my hair to feel I'm not where a Dad ought to be. My blessed, precious family! I tell you there isn't anything in this world like a wife and babies and I'm for that life that puts me close. I'm near smart enough to last a heap of years. Though when I see how my trip makes me feel alive in my head and enthusiastic, I know it has been worth while. . . ." Along in January he worked his thesis up in writing. "Last night I read my paper to the Robinsons after the dinner and they had Mr. ”

“ Usually he was laden with bundles—provisions, shoes from the cobbler, a tennis-racket restrung, and an armful of books. After greetings, always the question, "How's my June-Bug?" and a family procession upstairs to peer over a crib at a fat gurgler. And "Mother, there never really was such a baby, was there?" No, nor such a father.
It was that first summer back in Berkeley, the year before the June-Bug was born, when Carl was teaching in Summer School, that we had our definite enthusiasm over labor-psychology aroused. ”

“ His wife, however, who was at the time of her marriage a zealous member of the church of England, laboured hard to convert her husband, while he as strenuously endeavoured to bring her over to his own views. In the result each was convinced by the other. Parker became a high churchman and a Jacobite, while his wife turned rigid quaker. But his rival, John Partridge (1644-1715) [q. v.] , asserts that Mrs. Parker was the quaker, and that Parker merely passed for one in order to secure her fortune of 300l. ”

“ In 1832 Joseph Parker retired from business, retaining, however, his share in the Bible Press until his death in 1850.
Mr. John Henry Parker, his nephew, was the son of John Parker, merchant, of the City of London, and was born in the year 1806. After receiving a good education at Dr. Harris’s school at Chiswick, he entered the bookselling trade in 1821, and was consequently fully prepared, eleven years later, to occupy the position just vacated by his uncle.
Mr. John Henry Parker is known almost as well as an antiquarian, and as a writer on architecture, as a publisher. ”

“ Parker to his wife as they drove to the railway-station in the moonlight.
"Very," said Mrs. Parker; "and Mr. Forrester is a nice lad. I hope he and Miss Ormiston will make it out: I did my best for them."
"They'll be quite able to do the best for themselves: it is always better to let things of that kind alone."
"I don't know that," said Mrs. Parker: "if a little shove is all that is needed, it is a pity not to give it."
"But what if your shove sends people separate? That's not what you intended, I fancy?"
"No fear: people are not so easily separated as all that." ”

“ His father was a baker in that parish, and had his shop near the turnstile. It was afterwards burnt down. He rented it of the dean and chapter, from 1761 to 1793, and acquired a little land near to Exeter as his own. Young Parker received a good education, and at the age of twelve went to sea. He served in the Royal Navy as midshipman and master’s mate. But he threw up his profession on his marriage with Anne McHardy, a young woman resident in Exeter, but of Scottish origin, a member of a respectable family in Aberdeen. ”

“ His letters are to Senators, Shakers, Professors, Doctors, Slaveholders, Abolitionists, morbid girls, and heroic women: they are all equally rich in spontaneity, simplicity, and point. Keen criticisms of noted men, speculations upon society, homely wisdom of the household, estimates of the arts, and consolations of religion, all packed in plain and precise English, seem to have been ever ready for delivery. If Mr. Parker had not chosen the unpopularity of a great man, he could have had the abundant popularity of a clever one. ”

“ My head is not more natural to my body, has not more grown with it, than my religion out of my soul and with it. With me religion was not carpentry, something built up of dry wood, from without; but it was growth,—growth of a germ in my soul." Thus we see that Parker was not singular in his sources of goodness and nobility: here also have the strong and worthy men of all time received their inspiration. ”

“ Not far from her sat an old man, his hands clasping a chair-arm, a book in his lap, his chin sunk on his breast. The figure, drooping helplessly, had still a distinguished look, an air of honourable pride. Presently he raised his head, his drowsy eyes lighted as they rested on her, and he said: "The fleet has not returned, my dear? Quebec is not yet taken?"
"No, father," she replied, "not yet."
"Phips is a great man—a great man!" he said, chuckling. "Ah, the treasure!"
Jessica did not reply. Her fingers went up to her eyes; they seemed to cool the hot lids. ”

“ Parker heard me with much kindness and seriousness, and conceded various things, conceded among others the reasonableness of miracles, when regarded as produced by a power in nature, but not out of it,—the law of nature on a larger scale.
As I said before, Parker has a Socratic head; he has a pure and strongly moral mind; he is like Waldo Emerson, captivated by the moral ideal; and this he places before his hearers in words full of a strong vitality, and produces by them a higher love for truth and justice in the human breast. Parker, however, as a theologist is not powerful ”

“ Any good citizen will say the same. I believe Parker to be a brave man; and all you colored people should look at it as we white people look at our brave men, and do as we do. You see Parker was not fighting for a country, nor for praise. He was fighting for freedom: he only wanted liberty, as other men do. You colored people should protect him, and remember him as long as you live. We are coming near our parting-place, and I do not know if we shall ever meet again. I shall be in Rochester some two or three days before I return home ”