Thomas Neale

“ I know financiers, commissioners, Congressmen, and Senators—and I told you before the directors are all in on this U. P. R. pickings. You’re a fool!”
“Maybe. But I’m no thief,” retorted Neale.
“Shut up, will you?” shouted Coffee, who plainly did not take kindly to that epithet before the gathering crowd. “I’m no thief... Men get shot out here for saying less than that.”
Neale laughed. He read Coffee’s mind. That worthy, responding to the wildness of the time and place, meant to cover his tracks one way or another. And Neale had not lived long with Larry Red King for nothing. ”

“ They had arrived at some momentous decision.
“But this message reads at my discretion,” said Neale. “It’s a plain surprise to me. I’ve no intention of making you lose your back pay, or of firing you, either.”
“You’ll probably do both—unless we can get together,” asserted Coffee.
“Well, can’t we get together?”
“That remains to be seen,” was the enigmatic reply.
“Ill need you both,” went on Neale, thoughtfully. “We’ve a big job. We’ve got to put a force of men on the piers while we’re building the trestle... Maybe I’ll fall down myself. Heavens! I’ve made blunders myself. ”

“ Coffee spread wide his arms. “Ask me something easy. Why was the bottom dry and solid? Why did it rain? Why did solid earth turn into quicksand?”
Neale slapped the note-book shut and rose to his feet. “Gentlemen, that is not the talk of engineers,” he said, deliberately.
“The hell you say! What is it, then?” burst out Coffee, his face flushing redder.
“I’ll inform you later,” replied Neale, turning to the lineman. “Somers, tell this gang boss, Colohan, I want him.”
Neale left the tent. He had started to walk away when he heard Blake speak up in a fierce undertone. ”

“ It was so absolutely new to Neale to consider that question—any abstract question indeed—that for some months after he had shut down his desk in the office of the Gates Lumber Company, he felt his head whirl at the notion of trying to find an answer—an answer to any question, let alone so compendious a one as what it was that men wanted to do with their lives. The cogs and wheels of disinterested impersonal thought which had started to work in college, were stiff with disuse and refused to turn. ”

“ Neale believed they must go hand in hand. He did not see how it would be possible for a place like this to last long. It could not. The life of the place brought out the worst in men. It created opportunities. Neale watched them pass, seeing the truth in the red eyes, the heavy lids, the open mouths, the look and gait and gesture. A wild frenzy had fastened upon their minds. He found an added curiosity in studying the faces of Ancliffe and Hough. The Englishman had run his race. Any place would suit him for the end. Neale saw this and marveled at the man’s ease and grace and amiability. ”

“ Caswall's translation, unshackled by rhyme, is nearest; "Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail."
The great crux of the translator is the fourth verse. I give all the translations. 1. "God the Word by one word maketh Very Bread His Flesh to be: And whoso that Cup partaketh, Tastes the Fount of Calvary: While the carnal mind forsaketh, Faith receives the Mystery." Here the incarnation of the Word, so necessary to the antithesis, is omitted; and so exact a writer as S. Thomas would never have used the expression by one word. ”

“ But that Livingstone was fully justified in his estimate of Kidd’s character is clear from the evidence of the four most reputable witnesses (it may almost be said the only reputable witnesses) at Kidd’s subsequent trials,—Colonel Hewson, Captain Bond, Captain Humphreys, and Mr. Thomas Cooper,—who happened to be in London, when the trial came on. Colonel Hewson then testified that Kidd was a mighty man in the French war in the West Indies ”

“ Caswall, following up the hint given by the last version, and substituting the apposite pronoun for the vocative, has given, as from his freedom of rhyme might be expected, the best version. "Word made Flesh, the Bread of nature By a word to Flesh He turns: Wine into His Blood He changes: What though sense no change discerns, Only be the heart in earnest, Faith the lesson quickly learns." In both these last translations, however, the panem verum of S. Thomas is not given; and Mr. Caswall brings in the worse than unnecessary article—By a word. ”

“ According to another, he had gone to Darien, where the Scots had received him, and all his riches. At one time he was reported to have offered the Dutch Governor of St. Thomas, forty-five thousand pieces of eight in gold and a great present in goods, if he would protect him for a month. At another he was said to have proffered twenty thousand pounds for his pardon. In the popular imagination he had in fact figured as the Prince of Pirates for some three years before his trial. See Appendix E.
[13] Bellamont’s hypocritical letter to Kidd of the nineteenth of June, 1699 (see Chapter III) . ”

“ She motioned him down beside her. "Oh, Neale, I'm so glad! How'd you happen to be so early? Maybe if we stay right out here, where the children won't know where we are, we can have a few minutes quite to ourselves. Touclé is going to get tea tonight. Neale, sit down a minute. I want to tell you something. I'm awfully upset. I went over to help Mr. Welles transplant his Brussels sprouts, and we got to talking. Neale, what do you suppose has been in his mind all this time we've been thinking him so happy and contented here?"
"Doesn't he like Crittenden's? Find it dull?" ”

“ Her voice was low, almost faltering, rich with sweetness, and full of some unutterable emotion.
Neale sustained a shock. He never could have told how that affected him, except in his sudden fury at himself. Then he stole a glance at her. Her eyes were downcast, hidden under long lashes; her face was soft and sweet, dreaming and spiritual, singularly pure; her breast heaved under the beaded buckskin. Neale divined she had never dreamed of owing him anything except the maiden love which quivered on her tremulous lips and hovered in the exquisite light of her countenance. ”

“ You haven't looked a bit well lately, anyhow. And I'm not surprised. The way those children take it out of you!"
"Damn that woman!" thought Neale. That sterile life of hers had starved out from her even the capacity to understand a really human existence when she saw it. Not that she had ever seemed to have any considerable seed-bed of human possibilities to be starved, even in youth, if he could judge from his memory, now very dim, of how she had seemed to him in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise. ”

“ Marise thought, "Neale is as natural in his life as a very great actor is in his art. Whatever he does, even to the most trifling gesture, is done with so great a simplicity that it makes people like me feel fussy and paltry." ”

“ So is any man worth a damn,” replied the director.
“Mr. Neale, you look cool enough now,” observed Rogers, smiling. “Wish I was as wet and cool as you are. It’s hot—in this desert.”
Warburton took off his frock-coat. “You gentlemen aren’t going to have any the best of me... And now, Neale, tell us things.”
Neale looked at his papers and then at his chief. “For instance,” said Lodge, “tell us about Blake and Coffee.”
“Haven’t you seen them—heard from them?” inquired Neale.
“No. Henney has not, either. And they were his men.” ”

“ Howbridge. “I’ve been going to answer your letters, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time. One of the elephants got loose and wrecked a farmer’s barn, and I’ve had a damage suit to settle. But I am glad to see you both.”
“Tell me!” exclaimed Neale eagerly. “Have you any news from father? Is he back from the Klondike? Where can I find him?”
“My! you’re as bad as ever for asking questions,” chuckled Mr. Bill Sorber. “But there! I know how it is! Yes, Neale, I have some real news, though there isn’t much of it. ”

“ Mebbe we can find Slingerland.” Then began a search—frantic, desperate, and forlorn on the part of Neale; faithful and dogged and keen on the part of King. Neale was like a wild man. He heeded no advice or caution. Only the cowboy’s iron arm saved Neale and his horse. It was imperative to find water and grass, and to eat, necessary things which Neale seemed to have forgotten. He seldom slept or rested or ate. They risked meeting the Sioux in every valley and on every ridge. Neale would have welcomed the sight of Indians ”

“ In that walk of five blocks he saw thousands of persons, but they were not the soldiers who protected the line, nor the laborers who made the road. These were the travelers, the business people, the stragglers, the nondescripts, the parasites, the criminals, the desperadoes, and the idlers—all who must by hook or crook live off the builders.
Neale was conscious of a sudden exhilaration. The spirit was still in him. After all, his defeated ambition counted for nothing in the great sum of this work. How many had failed! ”

“ There was nothing surprising about that, thought Neale, applauding with all his might. Heavens, how beautifully she made music, how beautifully, how intelligently, with such a clear, sure certainty of her own powers! Of course everybody there admired her, paid court to her, made her the center of one group after another—always except the group where he stood! He felt heart-sick to be so cut off from her. As a matter of fact he was not in the least literally cut off from her. She kept relentlessly introducing him to one person after another whom he did not wish to meet. ”

“ He might have been entirely alone in his shop at the mill.
Marise noted with envy how he gave all of himself to that momentary examination, entirely escaped from any awareness of that tyrannical self which in her own heart always clamored like a spoiled child for attention. The impersonal concentration of his look as he turned the metal about between those strong dusty hands, gave to his face the calm, freed expression not to be bought for any less price than a greater interest in one's work than in one's self. "They'll do," pronounced Neale. ”

“ For the first time Neale began to wonder about himself, to wonder what sort of a human being he was anyway, that he didn't seem to fit in really, with any crowd. There was always so much of himself left over, shut out from companionship, left in the dark, alone and silent, while with a little corner of himself he danced and talked to girls, and drank and played poker, and talked to Gregg; for there was an immense lot of which he never spoke even to Gregg. For instance they never talked about girls, and Neale was thinking a good deal about girls. ”

“ What men had left behind them looked from the outside like a heaped-up pile of heterogeneous junk, some good and some bad, and no way of guessing how any of it came to be. But Neale hung fast to that guess of his that there might be some meaning for him in it all, if he could only be patient enough and clear-headed enough to pick it out. ”

“ He was too amazed to do anything but answer her literally and baldly.
"Why, how in the world...?" she began to ask, and then as a bell from one of the innumerable church belfries outside began clangorously to strike the hour, she glanced at her wrist-watch, and shook her head. "It's breakfast-time," she said. She nodded, smiled and turned away, stepping down the corridor with a light, supple gait. Neale had never seen any one walk like that, as though every step were in time to music. ”

“ Neale's three companions had always worked in the woods as regularly as his father worked in his office. Rain and heat and cold and insect-plagues were nothing to them. The main business of every day was work: and camp-life was organized sketchily (without much regard for comfort) , not to interfere with work. Neale found that his gymnasium-practice, athletic-sports, college-life had left him as soft as dough beside these lean, iron-like men. ”

“ Neale considered. It hadn't struck him before, but it was a fact that after school and athletic practice, all the boys vanished to their various homes. Never having known any other than this city relation with school-mates it seemed to him [Pg 91] obvious and natural. "Visit me?" he said, trying to imagine one of his classmates sitting at the Crittenden dinner-table, and then, "No, I don't believe I do. There wouldn't be anything special to do at home, would there?"
His father drew on his cigar thoughtfully, and walked on in silence. ”

“ Thomas he set sail for Moona, an island between Hispaniola and Porto Rico, where they met with a sloop, called the St. Anthony, bound for Antigua from Curaso. The men on board then swore that they would bring the ship no further.” By this time some commanders would have hesitated. Not so Kidd. He held to his purpose to remain true to his employers whatever the cost to himself might be. He tells us, and his evidence is not contradicted, that he “then sent the said sloop, St. ”

“ NEALE, WALTER (fl. 1639) , New England explorer, was son of William Neale, one of the auditors to Queen Elizabeth, of Warnford, Hampshire, by his first wife, Agnes, daughter of Robert Bowyer of Chichester (Berry. In 1618 he fought under Count Ernest of Mansfeld on behalf of the elector palatine, both in Bohemia and in the Rhine country, and rose to be captain. His difficulties compelled him in February 1625 to petition for a grant of two thousand decayed trees in the New Forest in lieu of a month's pay (460l.) ”

“ Neale was in despair at his dumb helplessness before the inert resistance of social relations. A man with any adroitness would not submit passively to this sprung-up-from-nowhere tradition that he and Livingstone and Marise Allen and Eugenia Mills formed an indissoluble foursome, never to advance or retreat save in a solid bloc, like a French family, with all the uncles and cousins and aunts. ”