Thomas Tanner

“ He was shown into the little front room, and after some inquiries about his relations Pauline asked him where was his abode in London.
“At the Independent College. I am studying for the ministry.”
Pauline was not quite sure what “the ministry” meant; but as Mr. Thomas had yesterday’s white tie round his neck—he always “dirtied out” the Sunday’s neckerchief on Monday, and wore a black one on the other week-days—she guessed his occupation.
“Dear me! you must be tired with walking so far.” ”

“ Once upon a time, a man, looking towards the celestial city, saw “The reflection of the sun upon the city (for the city was of pure gold) , so exceeding glorious that he could not as yet with open face behold it, save through an instrument made for that purpose;” but Mr. Thomas Broad and his hearers needed no smoked glass now to prevent injury to their eyes. Mr. Thomas had put on a white neckerchief, had mounted the desk, and had spoken for three-quarters of an hour from the text, “The carnal mind is at enmity with God.” ”

“ Tanner adduces arguments to show that there must have been two forms of Boston`s ‘Catalogue' -a longer one and a shorter. One of these appears to have been in the possession of Archbishop Ussher (Hist. Dogmatica, 124) , from whose hands it passed into those of Thomas Gale. Fragments of the same work are to be found in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 4787, ff 133-5) , and extracts in the Lambeth Library (No. 594) . The Catalogue itself has been printed, with some omissions, in Tanner’s ‘Bibliotheca' (ed. 1748) , pp. ”

“ Again, the greater number of the manuscripts of this work (cf. Martene, Anecdot. i. 84, and Tanner) are to be found abroad—a fact which tells strongly against its author's being an Englishman, though we need hardly go so far as Tanner, who suggests that he was a monk of St. ”

“ Meanwhile, in the few days left before the examination, he undertook to improve Thomas where he was weakest, that is to say, in Systematic Theology, and more particularly in the doctrine of the Comforter.
p. 182CHAPTER XIX
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto Leaven”
Mr. Isaac Allen, Fanny’s father, was an ardent Whig in politics—what in later years would have been called a Radical. He had been apprenticed in London, and had attended Mr. Bradshaw’s ministrations there. He was the chosen friend of Zachariah Coleman ”

“ Some time after the men had gone, Ais-kaw-ba-wis, who lived by himself in a little lodge, pretending to be too holy to go into a common house, or to mingle with men in their ordinary pursuits, sent for the wife of Gish-kau-ko, and when she came to him, he said, “The Great Spirit is not pleased that you should abandon and lose your property. Go, therefore, and get the kettle that you have left at the sugar camp.” The woman obeyed, and he, soon after she had left the camp, took his gun, and under the pretence of going to hunt, went out in a different direction. ”

“ Four men are coming this way, all well armed; their visit, I am sure, is for no good or friendly purpose.” Hearing this, I placed my packs in the middle of the floor, and taking a beaver trap in my hand, sat down on them. When the clerk came in, accompanied by three young men, he asked me for my packs. “What right have you,” said I, “to demand them?” “You are indebted to me,” said he. “When did I owe the North West any thing, that was not paid at the time agreed on?” “Ten years ago,” said he, “your brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew, had a credit from me, which he paid all but ten skins. ”

“ Kish-kau-ko and his father, and the two brothers, Kwo-ta-she and She-mung, were blood-thirsty and cruel, and those who remain of this family, continue, to this time, troublesome to the whites. Be-nais-sa, who came to see me when I was at Detroit, and who always treated me kindly, was a better man, but he is since dead. While I remained with them at Sau-ge-nong, I saw white men but once. Then a small boat passed, and the Indians took me out to it in a canoe, rightly supposing that my wretched appearance would excite the compassion of the traders, or whatever white men they were. ”

“ The wide reputation of his journal, outside of his own denomination, is probably the best test of his ability as a newspaper conductor. He has done much to build up Methodism among our people, and to inculcate the feeling for a better educated ministry, which is everywhere needed. Dr. Tanner’s efforts towards the elevation of his race have been of lasting good, and, as he is still a young man, we look forward to his accomplishing more in the large field before him. As a citizen of Philadelphia, he is enterprising, energetic, and works for the public good. ”

“ When she reached her bedroom her husband was still asleep, and although she feared to wake him, she could no longer contain herself, and falling on her knees with her face in the bedclothes, so that she might not be heard, she cried to her Maker to have mercy on her child. She was not a woman much given to religious exercises, but she prayed that night such a prayer as had not been prayed in Tanner’s Lane since its foundation was laid. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave to his wife? ”

“ Stan swung around and grabbed Tanner by the lapels, crossing his hands so the cloth was drawn tight around Tanner's throat and his knuckles dug into the flesh.
"I haven't been getting the answers," he said in a thin voice. "The girl's no ape—she knows too much, her weapons are too far advanced, her men are too well organized!" His voice started to shake with nervous reaction. "I'm supposed to be running the operation down here and I don't even know what's going on!"
"The answers should have occurred to you," Tanner said, his face a mask. "We're not the only ones who want this planet, Martin!" ”

“ Then some one builds a magic lodge, and prays to the Great Spirit. Tanner often did this, and he would then dream how the Great Spirit appeared to him as a beautiful young man, and told him where he would find game, and prophesied other events in his life. It is curious to see a white man taking to the Indian religion, and having exactly the same sort of visions as their red converts described to the Jesuit fathers nearly two hundred years before.
Tanner saw some Indian ghosts, too, when he grew up. ”

“ But things in immediate neighbourhood of Tanner been seething for some time. His topographical position a little trying. Faced by triumphant majority of anti-Home-Rulers, distinctly seeing on Treasury Bench two Balfours where formerly only one had sat, he was irritated by having on his flank the Redmond frères, Harrington, Clancy and other compatriots almost worse than Saxons, not to mention the pain to a man of peace of consciousness that between his friends and colleagues Tim Healy and John Dillon there was something lacking in the way of perfect loving-kindness. ”

“ He had two children, a son and a daughter, born in Kirtland. One of these, a lovely girl, died on this tedious journey, which was to Elder Tanner the greatest trial of that time.
On his arrival in Missouri, in conversation with a friend of his, after narrating the hardships, privations and many of the most trying circumstances of the journey, he said, "Well, if others have come up easier, they have not learned so much." This expression is characteristic of Elder Tanner's very happy faculty of drawing sunshine from the darkest cloud and honey from the most bitter herb. ”

“ On the bank of this lake was the small log hut of Pe-shau-ba, where he had lived, with the three men I have mentioned, for some years. He had left his wife at Lake Huron; and the other men, if they had ever been married, had no women with them. Immediately on his arrival, he opened his sun-je-gwun, and took out large quantities of beaver skins, dried meat, dressed skins, etc. etc. all of which he delivered to the women, saying, “We have long been our own squaws, but we must be so no longer. It must now be your business to dress our skins, dry our meat, make our moccasins, etc.” ”

“ When he had spoken, Pe-zhew-o-ste-gwon, (the wild cat’s head,) the orator of A-gus-ko-gaut, replied to him. “Now,” said he, “we see plainly why our brothers, the Ojibbeways and Crees were not willing to come with us from Red River. You are near your own country, and it is of little importance to you whether you see the Sioux now, or in the fall. But we have come a very great distance. We bear with us, as we have long borne, those that were our friends and children, but we cannot lay them down, except we come into the camp of our enemies. ”

“ A brother in Ohio answered the advertisement and came to Red River to meet the long lost boy. The restoration was fraught with just such disaster as usually attends the sudden transplanting of any wild thing. Tanner, the white [193] boy, had become Tanner the grown Indian. He left his Indian wife and married a Christian girl of Detroit. The union was agony to them both. Tanner was a man at war in his own nature—neither white man nor Indian. In a quarrel at the Sault some years later, he was accused of shooting a man and fled from arrest to the swamps. ”

“ A man rarely, if ever, mentions the [135] name of his father-in-law, and it is considered highly indecorous and disrespectful for him to do so. This custom does not exist in any shape among the Ojibbeways, and they look upon it as a very foolish and troublesome one.
The people of this lodge treated me with much kindness. Notwithstanding the great scarcity of corn in the country, they had a little reserved, which they cooked and gave me. The young man told them how much he had been frightened by me in the prairie, at which they all laughed heartily. ”

“ Waw-be-be-nais-sa, with one wife and several children; myself and wife, and the family of Net-no-kwa. We directed our course towards the Craneberry River, (Pembinah,) as we wished to select near that place a favourable spot where our women and children might remain encamped, it being our intention to join a war-party then preparing to go against the Sioux. When we had chosen a suitable place, we applied ourselves diligently to hunting, that we might leave dry meat enough to supply the wants of our families in our absence. ”

“ Twenty minutes earlier, when last division taken, over 330 Members filled House. Now the tide ebbed; only the thirty odd Members in their places jealously watching Speaker running through Orders of the Day. Tanner bobbing up and down on bench like parched pea. Heard it somewhere whispered that Duke of Cambridge, worn out with long campaign, about to unhelm, unbuckle his sword, hang up his dinted armour. Tanner feels he can't go to bed leaving unsettled the problem of truth or phantasy. ”

“ Early in the morning, Net-no-kwa called us up, saying, there was a large herd close by the lodge. Pe-shau-ba and Waus-so, with Wa-me-gon-a-biew, Sa-ning-wub, and Sag-git-to crept out, and took stations so as nearly to surround the herd. Me they would not suffer to go out, and they laughed at me when they saw me putting my gun in readiness; but old Net-no-kwa, who was ever ready to befriend me, after they were gone, led me to a stand not far from the lodge, near which, her sagacity taught her, the herd would probably run. The Indians fired, but all failed to kill ”

“ It happened that Ba-po-wash had dried the choice parts of a fat bear, intending in the spring to make a feast to his medicine, and a few days previous to this time, while we were absent at our hunting camp, Ais-kaw-ba-wis had said to the old woman, the mother of Ba-po-wash’s wife, “The Great Spirit has signified to me that all things are not as they should be. Send out and see, therefore, if the fat bear which your son has hung up for a feast to his medicine is all where it was left.” ”

“ He was sent to the traders to call men to bring in the meat, and again sold all three as his own, when he had not helped to kill even one of them. The old woman, when she became acquainted with this conduct, persecuted him so much that he was induced to leave us. Wa-me-gon-a-biew, also, who had married an Ojibbeway woman in the fall, now went to live with his father-in-law, and there remained in our family only the old woman and myself, the Bowwetig girl, Ke-zhik-o-weninne, the son of Taw-ga-we-ninne, now something of a boy, and the two small children. ”

“ Shortly after this Wa-me-gon-a-biew left me according to his previous determination, and I went to live by myself at a place on the Assinneboin River. I had been here but a few days when A-ke-wah-zains, a brother of Net-no-kwa, came to stay at our lodge. He had not been long with us when we one day discovered a very old man, in a small wooden canoe, coming up the river. A-ke-wah-zains immediately knew him to be the father of the men from whom I had so lately rescued Wa-me-gon-a-biew. ”

“ Tanner, at least, had no qualms about tempting Providence.
“Folks all say you’re the only person for it,” she repeated stoutly. “There’s a many wanted it, of course, but there’s nobody earned it same as you. You’d be fit to hide your face if you knew all the fine things I’ve heard tell of you these last few days, about you being that honest and straight-living and all that! What, I shouldn’t wonder if folks was that pleased they’d go sticking out flags!” she went on, her imagination running away with her,—“nay, but they won’t. They’ll be too put about over lossing your grand work.” ”