Wharton

“ By William, Lord Wharton was made comptroller of the household, an office far below his ambition, and, as far as ability should be taken into account, his deserts.
Wharton was an associate, but not a friend, of Marlborough and Godolphin. He was, in truth, a brier in their path; a dangerous friend, more dreaded than a foe; a man whose elevation they feared even more than his open enmity. He was an able debater, bold, and therefore likely to be, to a certain extent, powerful; for irresolute characters are governed by those of a decisive and fearless temper. ”

“ The world grew too clever, and leadership was more difficult every day.
Meanwhile Wharton found his progress through these stately rooms extremely pleasant. He was astonished at the multitude of people he knew, at the numbers of faces that smiled upon him. Presently, after half an hour of hard small talk, he found himself for a moment without an acquaintance, leaning against an archway between two rooms, and free to watch the throng. Self-love, "that froward presence, like a chattering child within us," was all alert and happy. ”

“ In congratulating himself upon the probable success of his pension plans Wharton found another pleasure and perhaps a keener one. All New England turned toward Senator Felt as its hope in the struggle against the Wharton bill. If Felt failed to thwart Wharton, the East and his State and his party would have none of him. So Tom Wharton changed his tobacco quid from one jaw to the other and exhaled a curse upon Felt from the worm-eaten caverns of his soul.
The god of business is an exacting god, and he puts all sorts of warning signs at the mile-posts of the years in men's lives. ”

“ But what had originally sprung from the impulse to retain a hold over a woman, became in the end the instrument of a new and quite other situation. Wharton had no sooner entered the House of Commons than he felt himself strangely at home there. He had the instinct for debate, the instinct for management, together with a sensitive and contriving ambition. He found himself possessed for the moment of powers of nervous endurance that astonished him—a patience of boredom besides, a capacity for drudgery, and for making the best of dull men. ”

“ It had occurred when Wharton was a lad of twenty-one, and during an interval of some months when Aldous Raeburn, who had left Cambridge some three years before, and was already the man of importance, had shown a decided disposition to take up the brilliant, unmanageable boy, whom the Levens, among other relations, had already washed their hands of.
"What did he do it for?" thought Wharton. "Philanthropic motives of course. He is one of the men who must always be saving their souls, and the black sheep of the world come in handy for the purpose. ”

“ According to the biographer of his son, Wharton was in his younger days one of the handsomest men and the greatest beau of his times; he had particularly fine legs, and took great delight to show them in dancing (Life of Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, 1715, p. 5) . In spite of these temptations he became a strong puritan, and came forward as one of the opponents of the court in the parliament of May 1640. He signed the Yorkshire petition against billeting soldiers on the county, and his name is appended to some copies of the petition of the twelve peers presented on 28 Aug. ”

“ Wharton stared at Williams and asked: "My collateral is good, A No. 1 school- bonds—why do you hold this club over me? Call off your dog! How much does he want?" A silence fell. Then Wharton turned to Felt and spoke in a calmer voice, but with his face still twitching: "Lookee here, Felt, let's you and me fix this thing up. If you want anything, ask for it like a man." Felt did not answer, and Wharton walked around the room with his hands behind him for nearly a minute. He took a cigar from the desk in front of Williams and lighted it mechanically, striking the match on the side of his leg. ”

“ Clinch gave herself a kind of canine shake, as though to free her ample shoulders from any drop of the element she was supposed to have traversed.
"Oh, call them muddy rather than deep," she returned; "and you'll find, my dear, that women who've had any wading to do are rather shy of stirring up mud. It sticks--especially on white clothes."
Mrs. Fetherel lifted an undaunted brow. "I'm not afraid," she proclaimed; and at the same instant she dropped her tea-spoon with a clatter and shrank back into her seat. "There's the bell," she exclaimed, "and I know it's the Bishop!" ”

“ Neither had he the least tincture of a haughty superiority, arising from the nobleness of his birth, and the lustre of his abilities. His conversation was easy, pleasant, and instructive, always suited to his company, of whatever quality, humour, or capacity they were.
As it was the earl of Wharton’s view, to qualify his son to fill that high station, in which his birth would one day place him with advantage to his country; his great care was to form him a compleat orator. ”

“ Foreboding and a sense of danger mingled in him until he sickened, as the look down the sheer drop of the ladder makes a man's knees tremble before he starts down. Wharton mumbled through his preliminary speech. Then he saw his private secretary sitting by Curt shake a dubious head, and with a rush of courage Wharton fell to his subject. And soon the old electric company was withering in the hot wind of his oratory. He kept his eyes on Curt and Dunning in the gallery. ”

“ Felt removed his glasses and wiped them, looking fairly at Wharton, who bawled on: "This is your size! Just about your size! To get a man in a rat-trap and then bleed him. Oh, you ——, cowardly, psalm-singing cur! You're in on the rake off, are you? How much do you want?"
Felt put on his glasses, lighted a match for his cigar on his shoe-sole, and smiled, showing a set of beautiful white teeth of unusual size. When Wharton lost breath and finished, Felt spoke to Williams gayly:
"The Senator's vocabulary seems to be well spiced up this evening—at any rate." ”

“ Russell went out of the room, and Wharton went into the vault and filled his little valise with school bonds. Wharton had no trouble in floating them. He deposited them with a Washington bank where he had done all his business for twenty years. The money he realized went into the wheat pit in New York, and he glorified Tom Wharton and prepared to enjoy him forever. For it is the chief end of some self-made men to confuse their deities. ”

“ The state exists for the people; if they do not need it, it has ceased to serve its purpose."
She clasped her hands in an ecstasy of wonder. "Oh, fool, madman--but it is not of the state I speak! It is you who are in danger--you--you--you--"
He raised his head with an impatient gesture.
"I?" he said. "I had thought you meant a graver peril."
She looked at him in silence. Her pride met his and thrilled with it; and for a moment the two were one.
"Odo!" she cried. She sank into a chair, and he went to her and took her hand.
"Such fears are worthy neither of us," he said gravely. ”

“ On the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, Wharton sold his land in the north and raised a troop of horse for the royalists. He was defeated by parliamentary troops at Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire in 1643, and next year joined the king's headquarters at Oxford. He was soon appointed paymaster to the magazine and artillery, and on 8 Oct. 1645 a captain of horse (Ashmole, Life, p. 299) . He pursued his astrological studies at Oxford with much industry. ”

“ The governor is a woman-hater; but, just the same, I'm glad you drew Merkle instead of him to-night, or there'd surely be a scandal in the Wharton family. No man is safe in range of your liquid orbs, Miss Knight, unless he has his marriage license sewed into his clothes. Mother keeps hers framed. Wouldn't she enjoy reading the list of Hammon's guests at this party? 'Among those present were Mr. Hannibal C. Wharton, the well-known rolling-mill man; Miss Lorelei Knight, Principal First-Act Fairy of the Bergman Revue; and Mlle. Adoree Demorest, the friend of a king. ”

“ He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding blood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to go to Washington for a few days—soon; next week perhaps."
Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly. The heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it paled as she looked up.
"On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could be no other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question automatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence. ”

“ Hazard especially perplexed Catherine's struggling attention by making fun of Wharton's lecture.
"Your idea of a picture," said he, "must seem to Miss Brooke like my Cincinnati parishioner's idea of a corn-field. I was one day admiring his field of Indian corn, which stretched out into the distance like Lake Erie in a yellow sunset, when the owner, looking at his harvest as solemnly as Wharton is looking at his picture, said that what he liked most was the hogs he could see out of it."
"Well," said Wharton, "the Dutch made a good school out of men like him. Art is equal to any thing. ”

“ Old Wharton noticed it, and put his hand on his arm, kindly, but firmly:'
'I knows what you're thinking, lad; but mind, I'm boss to-night. If they should come, you keep inside here and pot away until I give the word. This sort of fighting isn't like "the ring." If someone hits you once from behind a tree, the best plucked one in the world can't hit him back.'
But they did not come, and, when daylight lit up all the long glades of Bull Pine Park, Wharton gave the boys leave to get up from their impromptu fort. ”

“ Wharton, stepping out of the pew, and putting himself at the side of Charlotte Hay.
Sir John Slingsby was darting forward towards him with wrath in his countenance, but Doctor Miles held him by the arm, and Widow Lamb replied boldly,
"What I said, Mr. Wharton, was that this lady's pretended marriage with Lord Lenham, then Mr. St. Leger, was no marriage at all."
"But why? were you present? what can you know about it? are you one of the judges of the ecclesiastical court?" asked Mr. Wharton, with amazing volubility. ”

“ Although Catherine pleaded guilty to this shocking heresy, she did it with so much innocence of manner that, in a few minutes, Wharton was captured by her sweet face, and tried to make her understand his theory that the merit of a painting was not so much in what it explained as in what it suggested. ”

“ Never has Mrs Wharton done anything more delicate, more exquisite, than the pen pictures of the New England countryside with which this book abounds. Of the sure and delicate analysis of Charity’s changing and developing emotions, as of the chiseled beauty of the style, it is unnecessary to speak; these are things which in connection with Mrs Wharton’s work may be taken for granted. ‘Summer’ is not in any way a big book ”

“ Socialist workman doesn't care twopence for facts—that don't suit him.
It's superb the way he treats them!"
"I should like to know who does care!" said Wharton, with a shrug. Then he turned with his back to the parapet, the better to command her. He had taken off his hat for coolness, and the wind played with the crisp curls of hair. "But tell me"—he went on—"who has been tampering with you? Is it Hallin? You told me you saw him often."
"Perhaps. But what if it's everything?—living?—saving your presence! A year ago at any rate the world was all black—or white—to me. ”

“ Another amusing passage of compliments, this time with Sir William Draper, is related by Graydon: “Sir William, observing that [Pg 31] Mr. Wharton entered the room hat in hand, and remained uncovered, begged, as it was contrary to the custom of his Society to do so, that the Quaker gentleman would dispense with this unnecessary mark of respect. ”

“ At the same moment a guest entered by the same door, a tall grave man in the prime of life, but already grey haired. Wharton, to his surprise, recognised Aldous Raeburn, and saw also that the master of the house had him by the arm. They came towards him, talking. The crowd prevented him from getting effectually out of their way, but he turned aside and took up a magazine lying on a bookcase near. ”

“ Duke, over the imposing presence of Ripperda, stung him to the quick; and, for a moment he laid open the wound, by the impatient scorn with which he glanced on the resistless speaker. The Portuguese minister, who sat next him, remarked on the powerful consequences of the last argument of Wharton. Ripperda contemptuously replied.—
"Wind is sometimes mistaken for thunder."
Wharton caught the words, and with a gay but pointed laugh, looked towards the top of the table.
"Jove wields both in his rod; and the lighter the stroke, the quicker the smart." ”

“ Wharton, who had checked his ad [70] vancing step, on the first word from his antagonist, now leaned towards him; and whispered:
"The lion may be chafed beyond its bearing! It is possible for the father of Louis de Montemar to go too far with the Duke of Wharton!"
This assumption of forbearance to him, Ripperda felt as the climax of insult ”

“ Don't be a Shylock—be a man. I'll pay this outfit their notes all right, and I'll give 'em good collateral. What's more, I'll let you in with me in a little Western Pacific deal I've got, that there's a hundred thousand in—if you'll let up."
There was a whine in Wharton's voice that maddened Felt. He walked up to Wharton and bent over him. "Tom Wharton, I wasn't in the civil war because I was not old enough," began Felt in his musketry voice, which filled the room, but was so well controlled that it did not slip through the door-cracks. ”