Trowbridge

“ Later it passed to William de Longespée, son of Henry II., to the Lancasters, to the protector Somerset (by grant of Henry VIII.) and then to the Rutlands, and Trowbridge is now a non-corporate town. In 1200 John granted a weekly market on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday; also a yearly fair on the 24th, 25th and 26th of July, on which days it continued to be held until at the end of the 18th century it was changed to the 5th, 6th and 7th of August. The manufacture of woollen cloths has long been the staple trade of Trowbridge. ”

“ Trowbridge started from his chair in his excitement. After a pause, "So that was your quest, Mahbub, was it? I should have known."
The other nodded.
"There is a reward," Trowbridge began.
"Nay, oh my friend!" protested Mahbub. "The fire burn your money! What do I want with it? I am rich and I thought you were my friend, but behold! you are like all the rest—a sahib. Is a man sad? Give him silver, say the sahibs. Is he dishonored? Give him money, say the sahibs. Hath he a wrong upon his head? Then give him filthy gold, say the sahibs. Such are the sahibs and such art thou—even thou!. ”

“ When Trowbridge left Dorothy Purnell, promising to find his friend for her sake, he had assumed a confidence that he was far from feeling. No man knew the country thereabout any better than he did, and he realized that there was, at best, only a meager chance of trailing the miscreant who had succeeded in trapping his victim somewhere in the mountains. A weaker man would have paused in dismay at the hopelessness of the task he had undertaken, but Lem Trowbridge was neither weak nor capable of feeling dismay, or of acknowledging hopelessness. ”

“ We mounted the smart dogcart, and, leaving my baggage to the servant, drove out into the high-road which ran over the hills, looming purple in the golden sunset haze, to Trowbridge. Five miles through that picturesque, romantic district—one of the fairest in England—skirting the Monk’s Park, crossing the old Roman Road between Bath and London, and having ascended the ridge of the steep known as Corsham Side, we descended again through the little old-fashioned village of Atworth by a road which brought us, at last, to the lodge of the Hall. ”

“ It was the very weather that Trowbridge people needed on Good Friday for a walk to Farleigh Castle, for beer or tea and watercress at the “Hungerford Arms.” As I bicycled into Trowbridge at four o’clock the inhabitants were streaming out along the dry road westward.
I am not fond of crowds, but this holiday crowd caused no particular distaste. Away from their town and separated into small groups they had no cumulative effect. They were for the time being travellers as much as I was. ”

“ If there were no other reason for staying, I won't put it in the power of the Marquis of Trowbridge to say that he has turned me out of my parish, and so punished me because I have not submitted myself to him. I have not sought the quarrel. He has been overbearing and insolent, and now is meanly desirous to injure me because I will not suffer his insolence. No doubt, placed as he is, he can do much; but he cannot turn me out of Bullhampton. ”

“ Trowbridge impressed me, as numbers of other places have done where men of genius have lived, with the fleeting nature of human connections. Crabbe, so long associated with Trowbridge, was gone; his sons were gone; neither of them succeeding him in the living; and all trace of him, except his monument, seemed already wiped out from the place. Another pastor occupied his dwelling and his pulpit; and the population seemed to bear no marks of a great poet having been among them; but were rich subjects for such a pen as that of Crabbe. The character of the place may be judged of by its head inn. ”

“ Many times during the ride which followed Trowbridge looked admiringly at his [Pg 188] companion as she rode on, untiringly, side by side with him. A single man himself, he had come to feel very tenderly toward her, but he had no hope of winning her. She had never been more than good friends with him, and he realized her feeling for Wade, but this knowledge did not make him less keen in his admiration of her.
"Good luck to you, Lem," she said, giving him her hand, as they paused at the head of Crawling Water's main street. "Let me know what you do as soon as you can. I'll be anxious." ”

“ They go to the right spot every time. Trowbridge knows the heart of a boy like a book, and the heart of a man, too, and he has laid them both open in these books in a most successful manner. Apart from the qualities that render the series so attractive to all young readers, they have great value on account of their portraitures of American country life and character. ”

“ I have—which is to say:
"'Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig!'"
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John T. Trowbridge (1827-1916) is one of the important figures in modern literature for young folks. He wrote a popular series of books for them beginning with Cudjo's Cave, and many poems, the most famous of which are "The Vagabonds" and the one given below. Trowbridge's autobiography will interest children with its story of a literary life devoted to the problems of their entertainment. ”

“ Trowbridge is not the sort of place that you would imagine a poet as voluntarily choosing as a place of residence. It is a manufacturing town of about twelve thousand inhabitants, chiefly of the working class, with a sprinkling of shop-keepers and wealthy manufacturers. ”

“ Trumbull had been murdered. So great and wise a man as Lord Trowbridge would, no doubt, know very well, that in a free country, such as England, a man could not be specially protected from the hands of murderers, or others, by the fact of his being the tenant, or dependent,—by his being in some sort the possession of a great nobleman. The Marquis's people were all expected to vote for his candidates, and would soon have ceased to be the Marquis's people had they failed to do so. ”

“ The latter part of August, 1862, Captain C. T. Trowbridge, with his brother John and Lieutenant Walker, came to St. Simon’s Island from Hilton Head, by order of General Hunter, to get all the men possible to finish filling his regiment which he had organized in March, 1862. He had heard of the skirmish on this island, and was very much pleased at the bravery shown by these men. He found me at Gaston Bluff teaching my little school, and was much interested in it. When I knew him better I found him to be a thorough gentleman and a staunch friend to my race. ”

“ Let a man be ever such a fool, he can't believe a thing without some reason. I dislike Lord Trowbridge very much; and you might just as well say that because I dislike him I shall believe that he is a hard landlord. He is not a hard landlord; and were he to stick dissenting chapels all about the county, I should be a liar and a slanderer were I to say that he was."
"But then, you see, you are not a fool, Frank." ”

“ The epithet indeed might have been omitted; for a lie is not a lie unless it be wilful.
Lord Trowbridge passed the hours of this Tuesday morning under the frightful sense of the necessity for apologising;—and yet he remembered well the impudence of the man, how he had ventured to allude to the Ladies Stowte, likening them to—to—to—! It was terrible to be thought of. And his lordship remembered, too, how this man had written about the principal entrance to his own mansion as though it had been no more than the entrance to any other man's house! ”

“ Men in this world would have to go naked if they gave their coats to the robbers who took their cloaks; and going naked is manifestly inexpedient. His office of parish priest would be lowered in the world if he forgave, out of hand, such offences as these which had been committed against him by Lord Trowbridge. This he understood clearly. And now he might put down, not only the bell, but with the bell the ill-conditioned peer who had caused it to be put up—on glebe land. ”

“ Trowbridge has not lectured or moralized or remonstrated; he has simply shown boys what they are doing when they contemplate hazing. By a good artistic impulse we are not shown the hazing at all; when the story begins, the hazing is already over, and we are introduced immediately to the results. It is an artistic touch also that the boy injured is not hurt because he is a fellow of delicate nerves, but because of his very strength, and the power with which he resisted until overcome by numbers, and subjected to treatment which left him insane. ”

“ The pattering becomes a rushing in the tree-tops, a wild sibilation as of serpents in the fire, and a steady rattling and whizzing in the swamps.
"Well, well! this won't do, boy! Come with me!"
They run to the shelter of a huge leaning trunk and crouch beneath it.
"You're not so used to these things as I am," says the old man, shielding the boy with his arms.
"Let me bring some boughs to throw over you!" cries Frank.
"No—sit still! You have heaped boughs enough on me for one night!" ”

“ We are safe in assigning to Mr. Trowbridge a rank quite above that of our legion of washy novelists; he seems to have a definite purpose and an ambition for literary as well as popular success, and we hope that by study and observation he will be true to a very decided and peculiar talent. We violate no confidence in saying that the graceful poem, "At Sea," which first appeared in the "Atlantic," and which, under the name of now one, now another author, has been deservedly popular, was written by Mr. Trowbridge. ”

“ It will recall to many a man his experience in teaching pupils, and in managing their opinionated and self-willed parents. The story has the charm which is always found in Mr. Trowbridge's works.
"Many a teacher could profit by reading of this plucky little schoolmaster."—Journal of Education.
His One Fault. By J. T. Trowbridge. Illustrated. $1.25.
"As for the hero of this story, 'His One Fault' was absent-mindedness. He forgot to lock his uncle's stable door, and the horse was stolen. In seeking to recover the stolen horse, he unintentionally stole another. ”

“ Trowbridge has always a purpose in his writings, and this time he has undertaken to show how very near an innocent boy can come to the guilty edge and yet be able by fortunate circumstances to rid himself of all suspicion of evil. There is something winsome about the hero ”

“ Straightforward, honest stories, without cant, without moralizing, full of genuine fun and hard common sense, they are just the tales that are needed to make a young fellow fall in love with simple integrity and fair dealing. They are noble contributions to juvenile literature."—Woman's Journal.
"Mr. Trowbridge has a good perception of character, which he draws with skill; he has abundance of invention, which he never abuses ”

“ He has a fine vein of ironic humour. His Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers have had a wide circulation in England.
Timothy Titcomb. See Holland.
Trowbridge, John Townsend (1827) . The most popular writer of stories for boys in America. His work usually appears in the Youths’ Companion, Boston. His pathetically humorous poem, “The Vagabonds,” is a favourite with reciters in England as well as America.
Trowbridge, Robertson, a verse-writer whose work has appeared in the Century Magazine. ”

“ So I took him one side, and talked to him.
“'Jedwort,' says I, 'you're like a man raised from the grave. You was the same as buried to your neighbors, and now they come and look at you as they would at a dead man come to life. To you, it's like coming into a new world, and I'll leave it to you now, if you don't rather like the change from the old state of things to what you see around you to-day. You've seen how the family affairs go on—how pleasant everything is, and how we all enjoy ourselves. You hear the piano, and like it ”

“ Trowbridge can write, the better for the boys of this generation. Flooded as our country is with literature of a dime-novel order, we have need of just such safe and interesting books as 'The Little Master,' 'Phil and His Friends,' 'Bound in Honor,' etc., to put into the hands of our growing boys."—Living Church. ”

“ Not much comfort for the poor woman and the sick girl shone from these two indifferent faces. Indeed, the only ray of good cheer visible in that disorderly room gleamed from the bright eyes of a little girl not more than nine or ten years old,—so small, in truth, that she had to stand on a stool by the table, where she was washing a pan of dishes.
"O boys!" said the woman in a feeble, complaining tone, "do, one of you, go to the spring and bring some fresh water for your poor, sick sister."
"It's Rufe's turn to go for water," said the boy on the doorstep. ”

“ The horses threw themselves into a lazy trot. The wagon rattled down the lane, and went jolting over the rough ground at the entrance of the meadow. The men jumped out and took their rakes, followed by Chester; while Mr. Royden and James resumed their work of drawing.
The farmer pitched up the cocks, James shaped the load, and the clergyman "raked after," cheerful and spry as any of them. The smell of the hay-field had a fascination for the old man. He felt new strength since he had breathed its healthful odors. His cheek had browned, and he had learned to eat meat with the men. ”

“ When Link, who in the mean while had been dressing the prairie chickens behind the house, came round and saw his pompous papa sitting under an oak-tree, astride the "shave-horse," filing away at the saw held in its clumsy jaws, and Wad turning the grindstone close by, while Rufe held on the axe, he ran into the house laughing.
"Mother! just look out there! Father and Rufe and Wad all at work at once! Guess the world's coming to an end!"
"I hope some of our troubles are coming to an end," sighed poor Mrs. Betterson, who sat nursing her babe with a bottle. "It's all owing to her. ”