Thomas Willis

“ Years afterward we both recalled that fatal defiance, when the speaker lay helpless, at the mercy of the Omnipotence whose might he challenged. Just then his servant, who was busily preparing for departure, entered the room.
Willis was a slight, under-sized man, of about fifty; his complexion was muddy and indefinite; his small whiskers, of a grayish red, were trimmed and pruned as accurately as a box border-edging, and the partial absence of eyebrows and eyelashes gave his face a sort of unfinished look. The expression natural to it was, I think, a low, vicious cunning ”

“ Awoke and startled by the explosion, Becker's wife and Mrs. Wolston came running towards them. As for the girls, their guardian angel had too closely enveloped them in its wings to admit of their sleep being disturbed.
"The sloop on the coast!" said Frank; "for the sound is too distinct to come from a distance."
"Unless Willis has got upon Shark's Island," objected Fritz, running towards the terrace, armed with a telescope. "Just so; he is there, I see him distinctly; he is recharging our four-pounder." ”

“ I have watched them grow up from infancy to adolescence, and from adolescence to manhood; they have always been dutiful and obedient, and with gratitude I have blessed them every night of their lives. But stern are the decrees of Fate; I must command them to depart from me—perhaps for ever!"
"There are evils that lead to good," said Willis, "even though these evils be the Straits of Magellan or the storms of the Indian Ocean."
Here the pinnace reached the offing of Shark's Island, where Fritz and Jack, leaning on the battery, watched the progress of the boat. ”

“ In all other respects, Willis was perfectly sane. He himself searched every corner of the ship, but without other result than a confirmation of his own impression that there were no officers on board other than those of the corvette; and yet, notwithstanding his own conviction in daylight, he still continued to assert the reality of his interviews with Captain Littlestone during the night. The Italians say, La speranza è il sogno d'an uomo svegliato. Was Willis also dreaming with his eyes open? Might not the wish be father to the thought, and the thought produce the fancy? ”

“ Wolston."
"And what is that, Willis?"
"It is to be side by side with your comrades in the hour of calamity, to aid them if you can, and to perish with them if such be the will of Fate. At this moment, poor Littlestone may be on the point of taking up his winter quarters in the body of a shark. But there, if the sloop is lost while I am here on shore, I will not survive her; all that you can say or do will not prevent me doing myself justice." ”

“ Jack told the prime minister that the great Rono would be prepared to receive their majesties whenever they chose to visit him. This done, Willis and his companion seated themselves in the canoe, and rowed out to the pinnace.
"God be thanked, you have returned in safety!" cried Fritz; "I never was so uneasy in the whole course of my life."
"Well, brother, we have not been without our anxieties as well, and had we not happened to have had a divinity amongst us, we might not have come off scathless." ”

“ There was a festival in the sky that night; the firmament brought out, one by one, her circlet of diamonds, till the whole were sparkling like a blaze of light; the pinnace also left a fiery train in her wake, caused partly by electricity and partly by the phosphorescent animalculae that people the ocean.
"Willis," said Becker, "I leave it entirely to you to decide the instant of our return." ”

“ There is no doubt of its being the finest that can be exercised on the ocean, since it is the only one. If it is the best, Willis, it is also the worst."
"It has also produced great men," continued Willis; "there are Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Captain Cook, to whom you are indebted for a new world."
"No thanks to them for that," said Jack; "if they had not discovered a new world we should have been in an old one."
"That does not follow," remarked Ernest; "the new world would have existed even if it had not been discovered, and you might have found your way there all the same." ”

“ In every foreign capital nowadays one finds his simple republican compatriots grumbling at the absence of American conveniences, cursing the steamboats, the railway carriages, the hotels, the luggage system, the portable baths and bed-room candles, and proclaiming loudly that the Americans are the most luxurious people on the face of the earth. In Europe, and especially in England, circumstances threw Willis into a new world. He shared for a time in the life of the titled aristocracy and the idle rich, and he took to it like one to the manner born. ”

“ This homage rendered to Becker, he hastened to let a reef out of the sheet, and the pinnace, for a moment at rest, redoubled its speed, like post-horses starting from the inn-door under the combined influence of a cheer from the postillion and a flourish of the whip.
"There is a cockle-shell that skips along pretty fairly," said Willis; "but it wants two very important things."
"What things?"
"A caboose and a nigger."
"A caboose and a nigger?"
"Yes, I mean a pantry and a cook; a gale for breakfast is all very well, one gets used to it, it is light and easily digested ”

“ That Willis is a man of genius and an admirable writer both in prose and verse, will not be questioned we think by a large majority of those who are at all familiar with his productions. There are some it is true, who affect a sneer at his pretensions,—and there are others doubtless, who without affectation, do not admire him. The world is infinitely diversified ”

“ The poet’s father was for several years publisher and editor of the Easton “Argus,” a political paper established at Portland, Maine, in 1803. He founded a religious paper, the Boston “Recorder,” in 1816, which he conducted for twenty years, and he was also the founder of the first child’s newspaper in the world, which is the now famous and widely circulated “Youth’s Companion.” Willis was six years old when his father removed to Boston. He had the best educational facilities from private tutors and select schools, completing his course at Yale College, where he graduated in 1827. ”

“ Willis, however, to do him justice, seemed trying to smother his grief; and, in the meanwhile, the two girls had been spreading a pure white cloth on a neighboring rock, cutting fruit plates out of the thick mangoe leaves, cooling the Rockhouse malaga in the brook, and giving to the repast an air of elegance and refinement which had the effect of augmenting the appetite of the company. The viands were not better than they had been on many similar occasions, but they were now more artistically displayed, and consequently more inviting. ”

“ We believe that the high powers of Mr. Willis are properly estimated by the judicious among his countrymen. His foibles, his faults, and his deficiencies—let us not forget to say, his merits—are quite as well known to himself as to us. His intellect, if not of the loftiest order, very closely approaches it—and he has stepped upon the threshhold of nearly every species of literary excellence. ”

“ The great characteristic of high society in England, Mr. Willis assures us, is admiration of literary talent. As some captain of free lancers of former days elbowed his way through royal palaces with the eyes of all womankind after him, so in the present time, a man by being a famous Free Pencil may achieve a similar distinction. ”

“ Becker laughing, "I hope when you conquer half the world, you will find an occupation for your mother more in consonance with your dignity than mending your stockings."
"Then, again," continued Wolston, "war cannot be waged by a single individual."
"There must be an enemy somewhere," suggested Willis.
"The difficulty does not, however, lie there," observed Jack; "for, if we have no enemies, it is easy enough to make them."
"There must, at all events, be armies, magazines, and a treasury—or eggs, as the great commander in question hinted."
"True," replied Fritz ”

“ What say you, minister?"
"As for myself," replied the missionary, "a little additional hardship may do me good, for the Scriptures say: Suffering purifieth the soul."
"We shall, therefore, resign our paroles, Willis; but bear in mind that it is much easier to get into prison than to get out."
"Leave the getting out to me, captain; where there's a will there's always a way."
"Do you think," whispered the captain to Fritz, "that Willis is all right in his upper story?" ”

“ During each of his last two years Willis spent about six hundred. Life in college was not only plain, but decidedly rough. It was the era of “Bully Clubs,” town and gown rows, “Bread and Butter Rebellions,” etc. It was the thing to paint the president’s horse red, white, and blue, and to put a cow in the belfry. In 1824 a mob threatened the Medical School because a body had been dug up by resurrectionists. The Southerners, then a large element at Yale, were particularly wild and turbulent. Christmas, which the Puritan college refused to make a holiday of, was their recognized Saturnalia. ”

“ A recollection of this talk came to Willis as he re-entered his studio. He had not thought of it all the way home. He had been absorbed by other things—things which seemed to be creating a new atmosphere about him, things which were making a revolution in his soul. He had seen courage, fearless courage, cheerfulness, and resignation.
He thought of the limbless man, a mere torso of humanity. What was before him all the years of his now young life? Yet he smoked a cigarette and winked. On the pivot of his disturbed emotions Willis swung round and faced himself. ”

“ Serve them right to discharge the contents of the four-pounder amongst them."
"No, no," cried Willis; "the worthy people are, perhaps, fond of their king and queen."
"Worthy people or not," said Fritz, drawing out an arrow that had sunk into the capstan, "it is very likely that if this dart had hit one of us, there would only have been two instead of three in the crew of the pinnace."
"Well," said Willis, "Master Jack thought the voyage rather dull; now something has turned up to relieve the monotony of his log." ”

“ There is a delicate suggestion of Lady Blessington in the heroine; but Willis’s English acquaintances could hardly [271] have felt pleased at being served up by name in the picture of a London soirée, as “Savage Landor, wanting soap and sand,” as “frisky Bowring, London’s wisest bore,” or even as “calm, old, lily-white Joanna Baillie.” Willis was now in considerable request for lectures and occasional poems. On August 17, 1841, he delivered a poem before the Linonian Society of Yale College, extracts from which appear in his collected poems as “The Elms of New Haven.” ”

“ Willis was an extremely agreeable young man in society, somewhat overdressed and a little too demonstratif, but abounding in good spirits, pleasing reminiscences of Eastern and Continental travel and of his residence there for some time as attaché to a foreign legation. He was observant and communicative, lively and clever in conversation, having the peculiar art of making himself agreeable to ladies, old as well as young, dégagé in his manner, and on exceedingly good terms with himself and with the élite of the best society, wherever he went. ”

“ Whatever may have been the effect of Willis’s career in Europe upon his character, its influence on his literary fortunes was most propitious. Foreign travel furnished just the stimulus that he wanted. As a writer he was at all times very dependent on his supplies. If they were fresh and abundant his writing was correspondingly so; if life stagnated with him his writing wore thin. Place is comparatively indifferent to men of deep or intense genius, to a philosopher like Emerson or a brooding idealist like Hawthorne. ”

“ Willis’s introductions. It seemed ungrateful to be so suspicious: but we could not see any good reason for such prodigious efforts on my behalf, nor for his naming any countrywomen of his to me in a way so spontaneously slanderous. So I resolved to use that packet of letters very cautiously, and to begin with one which [145] should be well accompanied. In New York harbor newspapers were brought on board, in one of which was an extract from an article transmitted by Mr. Willis to the ‘New York Mirror,’ containing a most audacious account of me as an intimate friend of the writer. ”

“ Wolston, and you, Mrs. Becker, to talk in that way; your business in life is that of wives and mothers. But what will the Lords of the Admiralty say, when they hear that the sloop Nelson was wrecked whilst Master Willis, the boatswain, was skulking on shore like a land-rat?"
"Oh, they would only say there was one useful man more, and a victim the less," replied Fritz. ”

“ Becker, who was leaning upon the arms of Mary and Sophia Wolston.
"God be thanked, we are still in time," cried Fritz and Jack.
A loud cheer, led by Willis, then rent the air. Half an hour after, the two young men leaped on shore; they did not stay to shake hands with their father and brothers, but ran on to where their mother stood. It was a long time before they could utter a syllable; the greeting of the mother and her children was too affectionate to be expressed in words.
Next morning, at daybreak, preparations for a serious operation were made in Mrs. Becker's room. ”

“ Wolston not prevented me. There is work to be done, I admit; and it is not impossible to cross even the Indian Ocean in the pinnace. But we may find a doctor, perhaps, at some of the settlements—for instance, at Manilla, in the Philippines."
"That is not to be hoped for, Willis; there is, probably, only one skilful medical man in each colony, and he will be prevented leaving by Government engagements."
"True; then we had better hoist sail for Europe direct, and trust to falling in with a ship now and then." ”