Thomas Hepplewhite

“ She was enveloped in a mantle, that flowed easily over her youthful person, giving to it roundness of outline, without obscuring its perfections.
“By St. Dennis, Assueton,” whispered Hepborne to his friend, “’tis the Lady Eleanore de Selby. The world lies not; she is beautiful.”
“Nay, then, thine eyes must be like those of an owl, if thou canst tell by this light,” replied Assueton.
“I tell thee I caught one glance of her face but now, as the moonbeam fell on it,” said Hepborne; “’twas beauteous as that of an angel. But hold, they come this way.” ”

“ Meseems,” continued she somewhat more playfully, “meseems as if the moon were thy favourite theme. Pray Heaven that head may be right furnished, the which hath the unstable planet so often at work within it.”
“And if I am mad, as thy words would imply,” said Hepborne, smiling, “’tis thou, lady, who must answer for my frenzy; for since I first saw thee last night, I have thought and dreamt of thee alone.”
“Nay, Sir Knight,” said the lady, blushing, “methinks it savours of a more constitutional madness to be so affected by so short a meeting. ”

“ The Wolfe fidgetted to and fro upon his horse, and displayed very great impatience until the knight had finished.
“Ha!” said he, the moment he had done speaking—“ha! ’tis well. By my trusty burly-brand, thou art welcome, Sir Patrick Hepborne. Thy name hath a sweet savour with it for stark doughtiness in stiff stour, since thou be’st, as I ween, the son of the bold Sir Patrick Hepborne of Hailes. By my beard, thou art welcome,” said he again, as he stretched out his hand to him. “As for the old man’s letter, we shall see that anon when better place and leisure serve. ”

“ He raised him up, upon which the boy burst into tears.
“Art thou hurt, Maurice?” demanded Hepborne, with alarm.
“Nay,” said the boy, “I am not hurt.”
“Fye on thee, then,” said Hepborne; “let not tears sully the glory thou has but now earned by thy manly attempt in so boldly riding to my rescue. Verily thou wilt be a brave lad [188] anon. Be assured, my beloved boy,” continued he, as he warmly embraced him, “I feel as grateful for thine affectionate exertions in my behalf as if I now owed my life to them. ”

“ Let reason come to thine aid, and let not ungovernable passion lead thee to lay impious hands on him to whom thou owest thine existence.”
“Nay, let him come on,” cried the Wolfe, his eyes glaring ferociously.
“Stand aside, Sir Patrick Hepborne,” cried Sir Alexander, “or, by all the fiends of perdition, thou shalt suffer for thine interference; stand back, I say, and leave us to——”
“Nay,” cried Hepborne, firmly, “I will not back; and by St. Baldrid I swear, that thou shalt do no injury to thy sire until thou shalt have stepped over my body.” ”

“ We must have him in it, or half the folk won't come."
"The King of Egypt is next," said Nathan, after he had been duly elected to Father Christmas. "I say Thomas Gollop here for the part."
"I don't play nought," answered Thomas firmly, "unless Vivian Baskerville do. He's promised."
"I'll be Giant, then, and say 'Fee-fo-fum!" answered the farmer. "'Twill be a terrible come-along-of-it for Ned here, and I warn him that if he don't fight properly valiant, I won't die."
"The very man—the only man for Giant," declared Dennis Masterman. "So that's settled. Now, who's for Doctor? ”

“ Philomel Whiffet was dim of eye and sparse of beard. A little white fringe framed his wrinkled face and numbered indeed were the hairs of his foretop. Trudging up the snow-covered mountain, he caught sight of the glowing stove through the window of Bethel church house whither he was bound this winter night to conduct singing school. He chuckled to himself, drawing the knitted muffler closer about his thin throat and making fast the earflaps of his coonskin cap. “Yes, they’re getting the place het up before the womenfolk come. Mathias or Jonathan, one or the other.” ”

“ White was a man of sane judgment and genuine piety; he has rarely, if ever, been surpassed among merchants as a benefactor to education and to civic bodies.
There are several portraits of Sir Thomas White, but it is doubtful if any were painted from life. A large picture in the hall of St. John's College is similar to those belonging to the Merchant Taylors' Company, to Leicester (see Coates, Reading, p. 410) , and to nearly all of the towns to which he left benefactions (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. Reading, p. 206, Lincoln, p. 88) . ”

“ Sir Patrick looked towards Sir Andrew Stewart for aid in his attempt to soften the Earl; but, cool and cautious, he had never stirred from his seat during the fray, and still sat there unmoved, turning a deaf ear to his father’s stormy threats, and averting his eye from Hepborne’s silent appeal.
“Come, come, the banquet, knaves,” cried the Wolfe. “Why stand ye all staring like gaze-hounds? The red fiend catch me, but I will hang up half-a-dozen of ye like a string of beads, an we have not our meal in the twinkling of an eye!” ”

“ There have been De Veres enow about the English Court since this King Richard began his reign, albeit that the day may be gone by with many of them, sith that their chief, the Duke of Ireland, hath been forced to flee into Zealand, where his race had its origin. But of all the De Veres, none doth answer the description of him whom the Lady Beatrice and I did see carry off the Lady Eleanore de Selby from Norham.”
“Strange, most strange,” said Sir Patrick Hepborne; “but knowest thou aught of this Lady de Vere? Men’s tongues do talk but lightly of her.” ”

“ What hath delayed his execution?”
“Silence, Sandy,” cried the Wolfe angrily; “the matter is already arranged without thine interference. The youth comes anon to be questioned. If he confesses, the popinjay shall straightway grace the gallows in the court-yard; if he denies, then is Sir Patrick Hepborne prepared to do battle in his cause against me, by to-morrow’s sun.”
“Let that glory be mine, then, I beseech thee, my noble father,” cried Sir Alexander eagerly; “I claim the right of doing battle in defence in my mother’s cause.” ”

“ In her usefulness, in Fanny's excellence, in William's continued good conduct and rising fame, and in the general well-doing and success of the other members of the family, all assisting to advance each other, and doing credit to his countenance and aid, Sir Thomas saw repeated, and for ever repeated, reason to rejoice in what he had done for them all, and acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure. ”

“ For they are like to have their house here, the earth, bound fast on their backs for ever, and not to walk with it where they will, as the snail creepeth about with hers, but to lie fast bound in the midst of it with the foul fire of hell about them. ”

“ "Thomas Davis was a great man where poetry is concerned, and a better than Thomas Moore. All over Ireland his poetry is, and he would have done other things but that he died young. ”

“ So Thomas was bold enough to do that, was he? Well, that was a serious offence; he'd get him for that, anyhow, if he could only catch him. But this wife—who was she? Thinking that the housekeeper, turned over to Gregson with Stainsby and the furniture, might know, he went down the road to the warehouse.
The door of the warehouse was open, and a tall, somewhat distracted-looking man, in a much-stained overall, was standing in the middle of the floor, glancing around at the various goods as if either estimating their worth or thinking that they needed more orderly arrangement. ”

“ They know not that the righteous blood they have shed upon the earth cries loudly for vengeance in the ears of God. Truth, justice, and equity their souls hate; and all that they I propose is to destroy the liberty and happiness of mankind ”

“ But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do any thing contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from evill intention, or from ignorance onely, it is punishable by the Common-wealth; because ignorance of the Law, is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the Lawes to which he is subject. ”

“ The sudden emergence from darkness to light seemed to fill the very soul of the caged bird with gladness, and even before we could conceal ourselves behind the blind it would break forth into the sweetest melodies, filling the woods with its songs, as though once again free in its erstwhile haunts. ”

“ And yet for the short while that we be upward and aloft—Lord, how lusty and how proud we be, buzzing above busily, as a bumblebee flieth about in summer, never aware that she shall die in winter! And so fare many of us, God help us. ”

“ Are generations of men, rebellious against God, and destroyers of the earth, to occupy it successively through an endless series of ages? Are men to repeat the history of the past for ever? Is the earth always to be cursed and sin and death to reign victorious? ”

“ They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man,—of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one,—will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber. ”

“ Sir Thomas, indeed, was, by this time, not very far from classing Mrs. Norris as one of those well-meaning people who are always doing mistaken and very disagreeable things. ”

“ I invited them to dine with me, and after dinner, sitting at our wine, having settled our question, other conversation came on, in which a collision of opinion arose between Mr. Adams and Colonel Hamilton, on the merits of the British Constitution, Mr. Adams giving it as his opinion, that, if some of its defects and abuses were corrected, it would be the most perfect constitution of government ever devised by man. Hamilton, on the contrary, asserted, that with its existing vices, it was the most perfect model of government that could be formed; ”

“ Being ignorant of God's knowledge they ran into the most absurd speculations. They thought that immortality was a sort of ghost inside of a man that went to the fields of Elysium when death dissolved its union with the body. ”

“ A little cream-colored butterfly just out of its winter garb is on the wing, floating gracefully in the air among the leafless trees. The titmouse, with his bright eye ever on the alert, spies the insect, makes a sprightly dart, and seldom misses his mark. ”

“ Its bright beam plays upon the stone walk, catching first in its lighted circle the feet of a man. The light plays upward quickly. It holds now in its bright orb the smiling face of a man. A middle-aged man with pleasant blue eyes. ”

“ Where the hills furnish a dark background the old tree stands out, weird and majestic, its limbs white and naked after shedding their cinnamon-like bark. It glistens in the sunlight almost as much as the ice-prisms. The high water is busy undermining the bank of the stream and an occasional cave-in appears, as though some muskrat surprised in his foraging were making a hasty departure for his tunnelled home. ”

“ Oh, Cousin Vincent, if the whole world were animated with a reasonable soul, as Plato thought it were, and if it had wit and understanding to mark and perceive everything, Lord God, how the ground on which a prince buildeth his palace would loud laugh its lord to scorn, when it saw him proud of his possession and heard him boast himself that he and his blood are for ever the very lords and owners of the land! ”

“ I wot, thou remembers thee of my son Robert? He is head forester now. Thy noble father, Heaven’s blessing and the Virgin’s be about him, did that for him; may long life and eternal joy be his guerdon for all his good deeds to me and mine! And Ralpho Proudfoot was but ill content to see my Rob get the place aboon him; so Ralpho yode his ways, and hath oft sithes threatened some malure to Rob; but as to that——”
“Nay, my good Gabriel,” said Hepborne, impatiently interrupting him, “but where, I entreat thee, is my mother?” ”

“ The dark vapours and thick clouds of the sky, curling in dense and lowering masses, suddenly hiss forth the forked lightning, and the heaven is rent by the deafening roar of the voice of God. Hail, and fire mingled with hail, pour down upon them, and they are destroyed from the face of the land. ”

“ Nay, nay, good cousin—to talk much, unless some other pain hinder me, is to me little grief. A foolish old man is often as full of words as a woman. It is, you know, as some poets paint us, all the joy of an old fool's life to sit well and warm with a cup and a roasted crabapple, and drivel and drink and talk!
But in earnest, cousin, our talking was to me great comfort, and nothing displeasing at all. For though we commoned of sorrow and heaviness, yet the thing we chiefly thought upon was not the tribulation itself but the comfort that may grow thereon. ”

“ And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, The tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them, their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ”

“ Nay, Sir Pilgrim, I care not an I taste with thee ere I go; I am but a poor drinker, yet hath honest Rhynwyn its charms.”
“Ha,” said Tom, after deeply returning the stranger’s pledge, “this is right wholesome stuff, I promise ye, my masters. ’Tis another guess-liquor than old Mother Rowlandson’s i’ the Castle.”
“Thou art of the Castle, then?” said he who had always spoken. “I drink to the health of thy gallant old captain, Sir Walter de Selby.”
“Thank ye, thank ye,” replied Tom, taking the flagon. “Well, here’s to old Wat. Many is the ride we have had over the Border together ”