Thomas Baxter

“ Rupert Baxter, as he stood before the barred door of Blandings Castle, was very far from imitating this admirable philosopher. To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-past two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men. ”

“ Born 3 Dec. 1617, Thomas actively pursued the iron industry of his native place, and amassed a large fortune, which was increased by a wealthy marriage. He acquired much landed property in the neighbourhood of Stourbridge and Old Swinford, and secured valuable church patronage at Kidderminster and elsewhere. His association with Kidderminster brought him the acquaintance of Richard Baxter [q. v.] , with many of whose opinions he strongly sympathised. Baxter describes Foley as ‘a truly honest man ... who from almost nothing did get about 5,000l. per ann. ”

“ The French-Canadian made a remark to Selwyn, but it was not until the second repetition that he heard him.
III. About three o'clock that afternoon a little stream of visitors began to arrive, and Thomas Atkins, with his extraordinary adaptability, gravely, if somewhat inaccurately, answered the catechism of well-meaning old ladies, and flirted heartily and openly with giggling 'flappers.'
To the visitors, however, Austin Selwyn paid no heed. He was enduring the lassitude which follows a fever. He knew that the crisis had come, the hour when he must face fairly the crash and ruin of his work ”

“ I'm sure it's the best picture you've painted."
"I honestly believe it is. Some parts of it," said Baxter, frankly, "are excellent.
"It's obvious. But either those very parts or others are singularly disagreeable. That word isn't criticism, I know; but I pay you for the right to be arbitrary. They are too hard, too strong, of too frank a reality. In a word, your picture frightens me, and if I were Marian I should feel as if you'd done me a certain violence." ”

“ Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night last summer?"
"You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. There's nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it." ”

“ Grasping his fecundity of publication with the engrossing ministry which occupied his chief energies, it must be manifest that Richard Baxter was an extraordinary man. In his physique naturally weak, and tainted from the outset with consumptive tendencies, and later worn and valetudinarian, he so conquered the body, that he did the work of a score of ordinary men as an author alone. Baxter had beyond all dispute a penetrative, almost morbidly acute brain. ”

“ The folio edition of his works contains only his practical treatises. One of the most remarkable facts connected with the history of Baxter, is the prodigious amount of mechanical drudgery to which he must have patiently submitted in the production of his varied publications. He had a very delicate frame: he was continually unwell, and often greatly afflicted. ”

“ In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men—and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter. Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare—he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans. ”

“ It seems all amusing enough while it lasts, but it would make a poor show as an apology and a still poorer as a boast. I found Baxter in Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he grabbed me by the arm and brought me here. I was walking twenty miles a day in the Alps, drinking milk in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep, and thinking it was all very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never do, that the Alps were 'damned rot,' that Baden-Baden was 'the cheese,' and that if I knew what was good for me I would come along with him. ”

“ The peculiar thing about Baxter is that though he will read or quote from any book in his library for your delectation, he practically never permits anyone to take the book out of his hands. No human eye, for instance has ever fallen upon the printed pages of Baxter's Homer. ”

“ They were about to start on the return when Tom suddenly plucked his brother by the sleeve.
"Somebody is coming," he whispered. "Let us hide."
They had scarcely time to get behind some brushwood when the Baxters came into view, moving very slowly and gazing sharply around them.
"I don't see a thing, dad," came from Dan Baxter in disgusted tones. "I don't believe they came this way."
"They certainly didn't go back to that old boat," replied Arnold Baxter. "Let us take a walk along the beach."
"I am tired to death. Let us rest first." ”

“ If immense popularity, if the possession of a spell which can hold fast minds of all orders, be a test of genius, then Baxter must be allowed to have possessed it in a high degree. In activity of thought and in keenness of perception, in the grasp of his knowledge and in the retentiveness of his memory, in dialectic skill and in logical fencing, Baxter is acknowledged to have had no superior, if any equal, in his own day, and he would have been worthy of a lot amongst the mediæval schoolmen, to whose list of doctors his might have added another characteristic name. ”

“ Straightening his spectacles on his nose, he girded up his pyjamas and galloped out into the night.
The smooth terrace slept under the stars. To a more poetic man than Baxter it would have seemed to wear that faintly reproachful air which a garden always assumes when invaded at unseemly hours by people who ought to be in bed. Baxter, never fanciful, was blind to this. He was thinking, thinking. That shaking-up on the stairs had churned into activity the very depths of his brain and he was at the fever-point of his reasoning powers. ”

“ Baxter took no notice, but disappeared into the bookshop.
MR. PETTIGREW handed me my bottle. “One of our characters, that old fellow,” he said. “Quite a poor man, but possesses an extensive library, quite extensive. His learning is at the service of his fellow citizens. He likes to be called the Oracle. Supposing you want to know something about Shakspere, or Julius Cæsar, or Wireless Telegraphy, or Patagonia, you go to Baxter. You press the button and he does the rest. Lives a bit in the clouds, of course: and I wouldn't go so far as to say that his information is always infallible. ”

“ In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. ”

“ I certainly don't think he's fit to call on nice people. The next think we know father will have firemen and cab-drivers and street cleaners, I suppose. They're all in the same class to me—just servants."
"What precinct did he come from?"
Baxter's tone was more earnest than it had been.
Burke's face reddened at the girl's slur, but he continued his waiting game.
"Precinct? What's that? I don't know where he came from. He's a New York policeman, that's all I found out. It didn't interest me, why should it you? Oh, Mr. Baxter, look at that beautiful willow plume on that girl's hat. ”

“ The ring contained an opal of which Tom was very proud, and to part with the article made the young cadet feel pretty bad.
"You will rue this night's work," he muttered. "I'll see you in prison for it."
"Don't waste your breath in threatening," cried Baxter.
"All right, Baxter, wait and see. I'll put you where your father is."
The bully's face reddened. "Will you shut up, or do you want another crack on the mouth?"
"It's only a coward who would strike a person when he is helpless." ”

“ One of the disadvantages of being a man of action, impervious to the softer emotions, is that in moments of trial the beauties of Nature are powerless to soothe the anguished heart. Had Baxter been of a dreamy and poetic temperament he might now have been drawing all sorts of balm from the loveliness of his surroundings. The air was full of the scent of growing things; strange, shy creatures came and went about him as he walked; down in the woods a nightingale had begun to sing; and there was something grandly majestic in the huge bulk of the castle as it towered against the sky. ”

“ He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.
"Adieu, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appetite; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so—mill-stream or no mill-stream—mon oncle, I come."
He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging. ”

“ But for all this there reigns in Baxter's writings, and not least in "The Saint's Rest," a robust and masculine eloquence; nor do these want from time to time rare and unsought felicity of language, which once heard can scarcely be forgotten. In regard, indeed, of the choice of words, the book might have been written yesterday. There is hardly one which has become obsolete, hardly one which has drifted away from the meaning which it has in his writings. ”

“ We can have it all to ourselves, for the others are either in the gymnasium or on the lake."
"Well, I was going up to our dormitory anyway," answered Baxter, and stalked off, leaving Tom to follow him. Once they were in the dormitory occupied by the bully and his set, Baxter locked the door.
"Now out with what you have got to say, and be quick about it," he growled.
"I want to know who that man was, you met in the tavern in
Cedarville."
"Didn't meet any man in particular. Met half a dozen in general."
"You know the man I mean—the tall fellow, with a scar on his chin." ”

“ He should have fallen over a cliff, or been shot, or something like that."
"And we should have married the three girls," put in fun-loving Tom.
"That would make the story even more complete."
"Well, things do not happen in real life as they do in story books," said the parent. "It is likely you will never hear of Dan Baxter again. But we may hear from his father."
"His father!" exclaimed the three youths in concert.
"Why, Arnold Baxter is in prison," added Sam. ”

“ He must be got up to his room, he couldn’t have the doctor come in there and see all that mess—they must throw a cloth over it—anything—the table-cloth out of the parlour; well, so they did. But that must have been poisonous [129] stuff in that pot, for it was pretty near on two months afore Baxter were about agin. Beg pardon, Master Henry, was you going to say something?”
“Yes, I was,” said the Squire. “I wonder you haven’t told me all this before. However, I was going to say I remember old Lawrence telling me he’d attended Baxter. He was a queer card, he said. ”

“ A similar tribute of general esteem was paid to him nearly two centuries later, when a statue was erected to his memory at Kidderminster in July 1875.
Baxter was possessed by an unconquerable belief in the power of persuasive argument. He thought every one was amenable to reason—bishops and levellers included. And yet he was as far as possible from being a quarrelsome man. He was at once a man of fixed belief and large appreciation, so that his dogmatism and his liberality sometimes came into collision. His popularity as a preacher was deservedly pre-eminent ”

“ His only companions were an aged cook-housekeeper and Adam Baxter. During Baxter's period of service he contrived to amass an enormous quantity of more or less useless book learning. He is regarded hereabouts as quite a savant. His erudition makes him respected by those who have none, and his library of miscellaneous rubbish gives him the status of a man of property. ”

“ It was going at a furious rate, the scarred man driving, and lashing his mettlesome horse at the same time.
"There goes the man!"
"That's so. Where is Baxter?"
"I don't know."
They ran after the buggy, but soon gave up the chase, as man and turnout disappeared around a bend leading to the woods back of Cedarville.
"We've lost him!" murmured Tom, when he could get back his breath. "Now, who in the name of Old Nick can he be?"
"Evidently a friend to Baxter. Perhaps he's Baxter's father?" suggested Sam.
"Baxter's father—— Gracious! He is!" ”

“ Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) , whose Intellectual System of the Universe dealt a stunning blow to the atheism of his day, and Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) , the learned vice-chancellor of Cambridge, wit, mathematician, and theologian all in one, who left a rich legacy in his Sermons.
Of the Non-conforming authors deserving notice Richard Baxter (1615-1691) is the most voluminous, if not also the most luminous. Controversy engaged his pen almost constantly, but his most permanent works were his Call to the Unconverted and The Saints' Everlasting Rest. ”