Thompson

“ Thompson felt and evinced in his every word and act. Few home-born lovers of our country have done a tithe as much as he did to save her from the ruin she was bringing upon herself by her recreancy to the fundamental principles, upon which she professed to stand. Not a dozen names, of those who have lived within the last forty years, deserve to stand higher on the list of our public benefactors than the name of George Thompson. ”

“ Thompson said. "There is nothing here that is harmful to a human." There was comfort in the thought.
Kurkil brightened perceptibly. "But, what happened to the race that built this city?"
"I don't know," Thompson answered. A tinge of gruffness crept into his voice as he forced out of his mind the memories of what they had seen in this building they had entered and had climbed. This had once been an office building, a place where the unknown people who had worked here had handled their business transactions and had kept their records. ”

“ Thompson cleared his throat.—"For some weeks, Sir," he said, "I have been much worried with financial affairs. Like a fool I have invested all my savings in speculative shares, and the variations of the market have unduly depressed me. When I am depressed I take no food, and that depresses me even more."
You will be as surprised as we were that this was allowed to continue, but when a man of so few words as Thompson chooses to come out of his shell he is always master of the situation. "And so, Sir," he continued, "I have taken the liberty of telephoning to the mews for a cab." ”

“ Thompson could scarcely credit his senses when he heard that flogging had been abolished on board the Stinger.
"What!" he observed to the boatswain, "are we free, then?"
"I'm surprised at you, Thompson; as if you was not free afore!"
"Well, Mr. Shever, you don't mean to tell me that you really believes that a man thinks hisself free, when at any moment he may find the cat-o'-nine-tails flying across his back, do you?"
"You don't look at it in a proper light, Jerry. A commander on one of her Majesty's ships-of-war has got to be a big man, or no one thinks anything of him. ”

“ Thompson felt that he must certainly have been killed. After many days’ quest, and many uncertainties, he found the spot where his house had stood; it was a heap of rubbish. His servant and merchandise lay beneath it. He had money enough, or credit enough, to set to work men to clear away some of the fallen materials, and to explore whether any amount of property were recoverable. What’s that sound? A subterranean, or subruinan, voice? The workmen stop, and are ready to fly with fear. Thompson exhorts them, and they work on. But again that voice! No human creature can be living there. ”

“ Poets of this time will have much to gather from Thompson in point of sincerity. There is terrific [219] mastery of words, which is like Shakespeare in felicity we do not encounter so often it seems to me.
Thompson has scaled the white rainbow of the night, and sits in radiant company among the first planetary strummers of song. His diamond is pure, and the matrix that hid him so long from showing his glinted facets is chipped away of miseries carried down with death. They will soon be forgotten by the multitude as death itself made him forget them. ”

“ But not merely as critic did Francis Thompson realise the greatness of Thompson. The innermost chambers of his consciousness buzzed with the certainty of his poetic gravity and significance. He trusted the quality of the poetry within him as an ordinary man trusts the beat of his pulse and counts upon it. There were anxieties of composition and, of course, the ebb and flow of satisfaction in himself and a final despair. But before that he had known that he was, and he still knew that he had been, a poet. ”

“ Thompson forgot himself in a most unusual way, forgot that he was an old family servant, that the apron-string met round his middle with difficulty, that the Authorities were away and his responsibilities increased thereby; forgot too, that for twenty years he had been answering bells, over-hearing conversations without pretending to do so, and that visitors wanted hot water and early tea at "7:30 sharp." He remembered suddenly that he was a man—and that he was very fond of some one. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, the flowers were out upon the lawn, and it was Spring. ”

“ Thompson looked at Tommy not at all quizzically, not at all interestedly, not at all curiously, but steadily, without any suggestion of the imminence of either a smile or a frown.
Tommy returned the look neither nervously nor boldly. He was certain that Thompson knew men in overalls and men in evening clothes, old men and young men, equally well, equally understandingly.
“What makes you think,” asked Thompson, “that you have the makings of a man in you?” ”

“ Miss Thompson, in her fawn-coloured coat and skirt, feathered hat and spotted veil, was a tall, slim, graceful figure, ready now to adorn the hired landau from Mr. Young's livery stables. Her hair was dark and her complexion naturally pallid; with a long straight nose in a narrow face, she resembled her dead father, but what was sheep-like and stupid in him was rather pretty in the girl;—altogether, a decent-looking, fairly attractive young woman of twenty-two, but not likely to obtain from the world at large the gaze of admiring satisfaction with which an adoring mother regarded her. ”

“ In Francis Thompson, more, seemingly, than in any poet of the present time, has the ascetic ideal found a champion and an exponent.
Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive;
Die, for none other way canst live,
he bids us, in words which might echo those once spoken beside the Sea of Galilee. The world has never been willing to accept them without a struggle. Indeed, may it not be that only through struggle and conflict and defeat is their truth made manifest?
No really morbid heart has ever been able to delight in children: but Thompson loved them frankly and faithfully. ”

“ Thompson mixes his metaphors so wisely that they illumine each other, strange light shooting out of their weltering chaos, like the radiance of phosphorescent waves. He troubles you with sudden pictures that flash out against the blackness. This gift of dreadful vision is not found in Crashaw or in Patmore, in Donne or in Herbert, and therefore it seems to me that Thompson is essentially more akin to Blake, Coleridge and Rossetti than to the ecclesiastical mystics. ”

“ If Francis Thompson had been an Anglican or a Unitarian, his praises would have been sung unto the ends of the earth. He would have been the creator of a new school of poetry. Disciples would have knelt at his feet. But, being only a Catholic, he is allowed to retire, and bury in silence one of the noblest imaginations that have ever been given to Nature's select ones—her poets. ”

“ THE TWO THOMPSONS. By the wayside, not far from the town of Mansfield—on a high and heathy ground, which gives a far-off view of the minster of Lincoln—you may behold a little clump of trees, encircled by a wall. That is called Thompson’s Grave. But who is this Thompson; and why lies he so far from his fellows? In ground unconsecrated; in the desert, or on the verge of it—for cultivation now approaches it? The poor man and his wants spread themselves, and corn and potatoes crowd upon Thompson’s grave. But who is this Thompson ”

“ The meetings of the London societies, the conversaziones where the devotees of science, of literature, and of art mingle so happily together, had peculiar attractions to a refined and cultivated mind such as Thompson possessed, and which was not narrowed by a too exclusive attention to one pursuit. He took pleasure in every ennobling eff'ort of the intellect, in the fair creations of the artist — the bright imaginings of the poet, in every discovery within the wide domain of physical science, and in the applications of its laws to lessen the labour or minister to the happiness of man. ”

“ One of Thompson's sayings, ‘We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest among us,’ has become proverbial. It was a reply made incidentally at one of the college meetings held for the alteration of statutes in 1877 or 1878, to a junior fellow who had proposed to throw upon the senior members of the society a new and somewhat onerous responsibility. To the young, the diffident, the little known, the poor, Thompson was uniformly kind, helpful, and generous ”

“ George Thompson's love of freedom, his labours in behalf of the American slave, the negroes of the West Indies, and the wronged millions of India, are too well known to the people of both hemispheres, to need a word of comment from me. With the single exception of the illustrious Garrison, no individual is more loved and honoured by the coloured people of America, and their friends than Mr. Thompson.
A few days after my arrival in London, I received an invitation from John Lee, Esq., LL.D., whom I had met at the Peace Congress in Paris, to pay him a visit at his seat, near Aylesbury ”

“ Thompson, smiling pleasantly, "you're nothing of the sort. You are a very clever enterprising gentleman. But I'm not in the least afraid of you, Mr. Bence."
"That's right," said Bence delightedly. "And always remember this. I am not fighting you. Any attempt at a real fight is simply foreign from my nature—that is, where you are concerned."
"Never mind me," said Mrs. Thompson once. "But take care on your own account. Vaulting ambition sometimes o'erleaps itself."
"Ah," said Bence. "There you show your marvellous power. You put your finger on the sore spot in a moment. I am ambitious. ”

“ Her lips parted redly over white, even teeth, and as Thompson bent that moody somber gaze on her, her breath seemed to come suddenly a little faster, making her round breast flutter—and a faint tinge of pink stole up to color the soft whiteness of her neck, up into the smooth round of her cheeks.
Thompson's arm closed about her, his lips grazed her cheek as she twisted her head to evade him. That minor show of resistance stirred all the primitive instincts that active or dormant lurk in every strong man. ”

“ When Francis Thompson wrote these verses, he did not indulge a fitful or exalted hope; he expressed the quiet faith of his post-poetic years. Thompson knew that above the grey London tumult, in which he fared so ill, he had hung a golden bell whose tones would one day possess men's ears. He believed that his name would be symphonised on their lips with Milton and Dryden and Keats. ”

“ A man, of the name of Thompson, of the Success, is missing; has not been seen since three, P.M., yesterday."
"Sunday, July 22d.—A party, under the command of Lieutenant Belcher, of the Success, are gone out in search of Thompson; fears are entertained that he has strayed from the settlement, and fallen in with the natives. Uninterrupted by natives last night." ”

“ Having dealt with free trade, catholic emancipation, the House of Lords, the theory of rent, and the currency, Thompson in 1855 published his ‘Fallacies against the Ballot,’ which he afterwards (in 1864) republished in his favourite guise of a catechism. Even after his retirement from parliament (at the age of seventy-eight) he continued to write as ‘An old Reformer’ and ‘A Quondam M.P.’ on public matters, particularly concerning himself in defence of the threatened Irish church, which, however, he lived just long enough to see disestablished. ”

“ Thompson’s windows were all locked on the inside and the transom was bolted. Now if Jimmy didn't have the key, who did?"
"I don't know," said Godfrey. "But we'll never arrive anywhere if we keep tangling ourselves up this way. Who is Thompson? The first thing we've got to do is to establish his identity. ”

“ In 1824, then being forty years of age, Thompson commenced a literary career by contributing an article on the ‘Instrument of Exchange’ to the first number of the ‘Review.’ Being prompted by his sympathy with the Greeks, then struggling for independence, Thompson published in 1825 two pamphlets in modern Greek and French on ‘Outposts’ and on a system of telegraphing for service in the field. ”

“ Thompson, as he was then called, bought my father, and he was married to my mother by him. Mr. Thompson ministered to the people of Canaan in holy things; [5] his slaves worked his farm. For a short time things went on very well; but soon the North and the South, as now, fell out; the South must rule, and after a time the North would not be ruled. The minister’s wife told my father if she only had him South, where she could have at her call a half dozen men, she would have him stripped and flogged until he was cut in strings, and see if he would do as she bid him. ”

“ On October 8, 1915, this noted old pioneer was eighty-eight years old and still vigorous, mentally. His power of thinking is not much diminished, and he is still a reader and student. Constant reading and thinking, we are told, is conducive to longevity and Mr. Thompson has always been a great reader and student of history and philosophy. He is a man, self-made and self-taught, and is blessed with a keenness of intellect far above the average. ”

“ Give me your word that you’ll come peaceably along, and I don’t want to handcuff you.’ ‘I will,’ says Thompson, ‘but I’ll have a glass of brandy first.’ ‘I don’t care if I’ve another,’ said I. ‘We’ll have two more, Missis,’ said the friends, ‘and con-found you, Constable, you’ll give your man a drop, won’t you?’ I was agreeable to that, so we had it all round, and then my man and I took Tally-ho Thompson safe to the railroad, and I carried him to London that night. ”