Saxton

“ A Major-General, in full uniform, occupied the desk and was addressing the crammed audience of negroes in a plain, nervous, forcible manner. It was an odd sight, but General Saxton certainly adorns the pulpit. Ladies would call him a handsome man; and his black hair and luxurious English whiskers and mustache would be their especial admiration. He looks—to judge of his intellect by his face and head—narrow, but intense; not very profound in seeing the right, but energetic in doing it when seen; given to practice, rather than theory ”

“ The bishop, who was pouring seltzer on his lemon juice, smiled tolerantly at Raridan's chatter, with whose temper and quality he had long been familiar, and addressed himself to Saxton. He liked young men, and had an agreeable way of drawing them out and making them talk about themselves. When it was disclosed that Saxton had been in the cattle business, the bishop showed an intimate knowledge of the range and its ways. ”

“ All the same, his natural gifts got him a job to play in concerts. The boss of the affair was a German, the kind of a man who had a soul to realize that Saxton made music, but had a head to go crazy over his slam-dashery. Now, Saxton grew excited whilst playing, and cut loose on his own hook, letting the poor perspiring Dutchman and the rest of the orchestra keep up to his trail the best they could. At these opportunities the Dutchman went home in a cab, frothing at the mouth. ”

“ Philip began, stammering, "but—but there is certainly some mistake. You are surely not the gentleman we met on the train to-day—and—"
"Train? Of course not!" laughed the irrepressible stranger. "I've been laid up in the house with malaria since I wrote Marcy. But you're you, Philip Touchtone; and you are Gerald Saxton; and I am myself, Frederick Hilliard, the only and actual, at your service. If any body has been playing me, he's some oddity—doing a poor copy of an indifferent original. ”

“ Saxton—Miss D’Arcy,” I said, and he shook hands with her. Immediately his manner became ironic, for he had seen his hand big and coarse and inflamed with the snaith clasping the lady’s hand.
“We thought you looked so fine,” she said to him, “and men are so embarrassing when they make love to somebody else—aren’t they? Save us those foxgloves, will you—they are splendid—like savage soldiers drawn up against the hedge—don’t cut them down—and those campanulas—bell-flowers, ah, yes! They are spinning idylls up there. I don’t care for idylls, do you? ”

“ There never lived a man who so had his life in his own hand as Arthur Saxton. Would you have me marry him to reform him? Have I no right to feel proud, on my side?"
"No, to the first," says I, "and yes, to the second. He has waked up at last, I feel sure—if only you could believe in him a little more."
"Oh, Will!" she said, "that is what I fear the most. I don't care if he demands much, for so do I, but to be dependent that way—I cannot trust him, till he trusts himself."
"Yes, Mary," I agreed; "but at the same time, he's lots more of a man than the average, handicap him with all his faults!" ”

“ Fire [Pg 33] them! fire them whenever you find they're no good!" He looked to Saxton for corroboration, with a severe air, as if this were something that masculine minds understood but which was beyond the reach of women.
When all were served he grew abstracted as he ate, and Saxton appealed to his hostess, as one college graduate may appeal to another, along the line of their college experiences. They had, it appeared, several acquaintances in common, and Saxon recalled that some of his classmates had often visited the college in which Miss Porter had been a student ”

“ There was something very boyish about John Saxton. The curves of his face were still those of youth; he had never dared to encourage a mustache or beard, owing to a disinclination to produce more than was necessary of the soft, silky hair which covered his head abundantly. He had a straight nose, a firm chin and a brave showing of square, white teeth. His mouth was his best feature, for it expressed his good nature and a wish to be pleased,—a wish that shone also in his blue eyes. John Saxton was determined to like life and people ”

“ General Saxton was a man of fine military bearing and a most kindly and agreeable face. Social in his habits, he was able to go about freely for the rest of his life in the pleasant circle of retired military men and their families in Washington. He and his wife had always the dream of retiring from the greater gayety of the national metropolis to his birthplace at Deerfield, Massachusetts. ”

“ He was born to it, and his forebears centuries before him. Yet instead of breeding out the man in him, it had only taken off the scum.
At last he spoke. "Give me more time, campañero. I shall consider this further. To meddle with other lives is always a dangerous business, just as not to meddle may be a shameful one. As it stands, if he gets not the lady for a wife, Saxton is a lost man—I know him. On his word, on your word and on my word, she is not indifferent to him. We know Belknap is a rascal, and for her unfit. And so, action—yet I am a man of peace." ”

“ Porter tells me that you're to be one of us. Let me congratulate us,—and you!"
"I'm not so sure about you," rejoined Saxton. "At [Pg 15] my last stopping place in the West they had a way of getting rid of undesirable members of the community, and I've never got over being nervous. But that was Wyoming. I'm sure you're more civilized here."
"Not merely civilized; we are civilization! You see I'm a native, and devoted to the home sod. My father was one of the first settlers. ”

“ It is not strange that his judicious kindness, ready sympathy, and rare fascination of manner should attach them to him strongly. He is one's ideal of an officer. There is in him much of the grand, knightly spirit of the olden time,—scorn of all that is mean and ignoble, pity for the weak, chivalrous devotion to the cause of the oppressed.
General Saxton spoke also, and was received with great enthusiasm. Throughout the morning, repeated cheers were given for him by the regiment, and joined in heartily by all the people. They know him to be one of the best and noblest men in the world. ”

“ A man may introduce the green grocer at the corner, and all that kind of ruck, to his wife and daughter, but what's the good of it?"
"Well, what's the good of a democracy anyhow?" demanded Saxton. "I used to have those ideas, too, when I was younger, but I thought it all over when I was herding cattle up in Wyoming and I renounced such notions for all time, even before I went broke. I found when I got back East that I carried my new convictions with me, and the sight of civilized people and good food did not change me." ”

“ Marcy and Mr. Saxton—came on?"
"Yes; got here the day after. Mr. Saxton was almost distracted, I believe. I didn't see much of either of 'em. They only stayed until the folks on the steamer that came off safe were all in. Mr. Saxton's boy was a little fellow—about as big as you," he added, pointing to Gerald. "It's been a bad thing for his father, I understand—broke him all up."
Philip laid a hand on Gerald's trembling arm to warn him not to give way to the emotions almost ready to burst out. Gerald bit his lips and looked down at the register. ”

“ Right in the middle of a piece by a gentleman whose name I don't recall, as it's spelt with all the tail-end of the alphabet, and sounds like rip-sawing a board, Saxton throws dull care away and wanders into regions of beautiful sounds hitherto unexplored. Now and then the tall and melancholy gent with the bull-fiddle would scratch out a note or two, and the drummer got in a lick here and there, while the flute man toodle-oodled around to head off Saxy; but, on the whole, that orchestra was worse lost than so many West Pointers trying to catch an Apache who ain't longing for home. ”

“ Saxton to the old Howard Athenæum, in Boston, Mass., where he remained four years; at the end of this period, with this same Saxton at the Grand Central Theatre in Philadelphia, he commenced an engagement that lasted three years.
Now comes the “Slim Jim” we all know. From 1887 to 1889 he was with Thatcher, Primrose and West’s Minstrels; following season with Primrose and West. In 1890 he was with George Thatcher’s Minstrels, and the following year with Thatcher in “Tuxedo” (here “slender James” enacted a “rube”) . In 1892 he was with Hughey Dougherty’s “Tuxedo” and Minstrel Company. ”

“ Afterward I knew it sounded like Injun chants and coyotes howling, but Saxton asked if we didn't notice how much it was like the songs the children sing in play. He said those songs must have been handed down from far-off days—when we whites were savages, hopping around hollering hye-ee yah, hye-ee yah, and calling on the ladies, dressed in a streak of red paint. I don't know about that, though. No child in this world can be as mournful enjoying himself as a cow-puncher with all night before him and seven hundred verses to get through ”

“ Saxton is a parish containing the townships of Towton and Saxton-cum-Scarthingwell; the living is a perpetual curacy; and Saxton Church is dedicated to “All Saints.”
A great number of the slain were interred, as has been before mentioned, in a large trench or pit, on the north side of, and close to, the church. In June, 1848, a short time prior to my first visit to Towton, their bones were exposed to view, when making a vault for the interment of a son of John Kendall, Esq., of Towton Hall. [122c] The trench runs from east to west. ”

“ I never see such a man to stamp himself on anything he put his hand to. And when he was working, if you said the least thing against the job, he wanted trouble with you; but the next day he'd smoke his pipe and tear it apart worse than you possibly could. That was Saxy: first crack, spoiled kid; second thought, clear-headed man.
The three of us, Mary and him and me, walked the deck day after day, talking of everything, from what fine weather it was to religion. Once Saxton called our attention to the wind in the rigging. ”

“ It took me some years to understand Saxton's saying, that it was better for a rascal to escape, than for an honest man to turn rascal in catching him. Plain enough when you think of it. If you work low down on the other feller, to trip him, there's two rascals, that's all. It comes medium hard to see it in that light, though, when before your eyes the rascal is having it all his own way. And, while I disapprove of my own methods, the results was great. No use talking, the wicked sometimes prosper and your Uncle William played in a full-jeweled streak of luck. ”

“ Warry was often lonely these days. Saxton was too much engrossed to find time for frivolity, and Mr. Porter's illness cut sharply in on Warry's visits to the Hill. The widow's clothes lines were tied in a hard knot in the federal court, to which he had removed them, and he was resting while he waited for the Transcontinental to exhaust its usual tactics of delay and come to trial. On Fenton's suggestion Saxton had intrusted to Raridan some matters pertaining to the receivership, and these served to carry Warry over an interval of idleness and restlessness. ”

“ The syphon gurgled harshly and sputtered, and the general put it down sadly.
"Now that you've solved the riddle in your own mind, how are you going to proceed? You'd better not try army tactics on a civilian job. Saxton isn't a second lieutenant, to be regulated by the commandant's wife."
"He's a dear!" declared Mrs. Whipple irrelevantly. "If Evelyn Porter wants him, she's going to have him."
"Oh, Lord!" The general took up his syphon to carry it back to the case in the pantry. "He's 'a dear,' is he? Amelia, John Saxton weighs at least one hundred and eighty pounds. ”

“ Saxton was a handsome youth; tall and finely formed, he looked well in his uniform, and knew it. Captain Newell was not so tall—a gray-eyed, quiet young man. "Commonplace," said Miss Gardis. The bugle still gave forth its silvery summons. "It is insupportable," said the little mistress daily; and daily Cousin Copeland replied, "Certainly." But the bugle sounded on all the same.
One day a deeper wrath came. Miss Duke discovered Dinah in the act of taking cakes to the camp to sell to the soldiers! ”

“ Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater.
Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy—some university student—whom she seems to like?" ”

“ Ryther was associated with Saxton in engraving some of the famous maps of the counties of England published by Saxton in 1579. His name appears as the engraver of the maps of Durham and Westmoreland (1576) , Gloucester and York (1577) , and that of the whole of England, signed ‘Augustinus Ryther Anglus Sculpsit Ano Dñi 1579.’ His name appears in 1588 with those of Jodocus Hondius [q. v.] , Theodore de Bry, and others, among the engravers of the charts to ‘The Mariner's Mirrour ... ”

“ I don't know how I should accomplish Saxton's wishes without you. I shall miss you. One word more. This journey, as long as it lasts, and until Gerald leaves your hands, commits this little fellow to your care. So far as any one can be responsible for him, of course you are. I have spoken to Gerald and drawn his attention to the fact that he must now really obey you, not merely as his friend, but his 'guardian' in every sense of the word. The boy seems already oddly fond of you. I don't think you will need to use a bit of authority. He will hardly attempt to differ with you foolishly. ”