Boggart

“ Still the boggart did his work well, and so Farmer Griggs put up with his evil ways as long as he could. At last the time came when he could bear it no longer. "Look'ee, now, Mally," said he to his dame, "it's all along o' thee that this trouble's coome intull th' house. I'd never let the boggart in with my own good-will!" So spoke Farmer Griggs, for even nowadays there are men here and there who will now and then lay their own bundle of faults on their wives' shoulders. ”

“ Now, though more pleasant stories were told on that night beside the hearth than had been told there for the three preceding months, though the fire flickered brightly, though all the faces around it were full of mirth and happiness, and though everything, it might seem, was there which could make even a Boggart enjoy himself, yet the small shrill laugh was heard no more that night after little Bob's remark.
Robert, who was a short stout fellow for his age, slept in the same bed with his elder brother John, who was reckoned an uncommonly fine and tall lad for his years. ”

“ It struck him, however, that he had come a long distance; that if he did go back to the Patten Arms the company would be dispersed, and the inmates asleep, and, what was more effective than all, that if he could only cross the bridge he would be safe, the Greenies, Boggarts, and Feorin not having power over any one who had passed over the water. ”

“ Bogart whose gossipy good opinion was so valuable to a doctor.
Though the Bogart house was next door she had entered it but three times. Now she put on her new moleskin cap, which made her face small and innocent, she rubbed off the traces of a lip-stick--and fled across the alley before her admirable resolution should sneak away.
The age of houses, like the age of men, has small relation to their years. The dull-green cottage of the good Widow Bogart was twenty years old, but it had the antiquity of Cheops, and the smell of mummy-dust. ”

“ Fortunately, however, Bogart’s prolixity of evil words gave Peter pause enough for reflection; and when he spoke again, he had himself well in hand, though his eyes were flashing and his voice was stern.
“Bogart,” he said, “you are a member of the Dutch Reformed Church; and you have doubtless a Bible somewhere in your house. Go home and read, ‘With the froward, Thou wilt show Thyself forward.’ That is a dreadful Scripture for an ill-tongued man, Bogart. ”

“ Bogart was calling upon Carol, protected by Aunt Bessie Smail.
“Have you heard about this awful woman that's supposed to have come here to do dressmaking—a Mrs. Swiftwaite—awful peroxide blonde?” moaned Mrs. Bogart. “They say there's some of the awfullest goings-on at her house—mere boys and old gray-headed rips sneaking in there evenings and drinking licker and every kind of goings-on. We women can't never realize the carnal thoughts in the hearts of men. I tell you, even though I been acquainted with Will Kennicott almost since he was a mere boy, seems like, I wouldn't trust even him! ”

“ Dave Dyer at the drug store, Harry Haydock and Raymie Wutherspoon at the Bon Ton, repeated daily, "How's the good work coming? I hear the house is getting to be real classy."
Even Mrs. Bogart.
Mrs. Bogart lived across the alley from the rear of Carol's house. She was a widow, and a Prominent Baptist, and a Good Influence. She had so painfully reared three sons to be Christian gentlemen that one of them had become an Omaha bartender, one a professor of Greek, and one, Cyrus N. Bogart, a boy of fourteen who was still at home, the most brazen member of the toughest gang in Boytown. ”

“ His influence consists of his roommate. 'The deuce you will!' says Frank, with sarcasm. All wasted though, for Boggsie fairly chapped at the compliment of having surprised him. 'Yes,' said Boggs, 'that's what I like to see, the office seeking the man; you know, a fellow ought to wait and go about his business until people recognize him. I don't like to see a man going around with his hand out, raking the Freshmen in.' Then he looks around for applause and slopes out, smoking the last of Lyman's Durham. ”

“ She was the soft, damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging, melancholy, depressingly hopeful kind. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of old and indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Bogart, and when they are served at Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they keep up the resemblance.
Carol had noted that Mrs. Bogart from her side window kept an eye upon the house. The Kennicotts and Mrs. Bogart did not move in the same sets—which meant precisely the same in Gopher Prairie as it did on Fifth Avenue or in Mayfair. But the good widow came calling. ”

“ Bogart rose from her pitifulness, recovered her pace, “then I go and bring into my own house a woman that's worse, when all's said and done, than any bad woman he could have met. You say this Mullins woman is too young and inexperienced to corrupt Cy. Well then, she's too young and inexperienced to teach him, too, one or t'other, you can't have your cake and eat it! So it don't make no difference which reason they fire her for, and that's practically almost what I said to the school-board.” ”

“ This was Sard Bogart, the Judge's daughter, who had been back from college only a few months. It was understood in the villages of Morris and Willow Roads that Miss Bogart was a "queer," lonely girl, impatient of many things, apt to be impulsive and to do impolitic and "unpopular" things. This was one of the things—pulling a muddy gutter-snipe out of the gutter. Yet the light in the girl's clear brown eyes was a new and grateful thing to the young bank officer. Somehow he felt as if he had never looked into a fine woman's eyes before. ”

“ What more can a man want? He has no voice in municipal and State matters, which are conducted entirely by a Manchurian general, representing China, and by a Mongolian prince. There is, however, just one little drawback to being so august a personage. If the Bogdor conducts himself as his numerous Lamas consider he ought to do, all goes well; but unfortunately youth will have, or tries to have, its fling, and even a Bogdor is, after all, only an ordinary mortal ”

“ On the 24th of October, Captain Bogart, a Methodist priest, marched a company of men towards Far West with the avowed intention, to use his language, of giving our city "thunder and lightning" before noon of the next day. On receipt of this information from Brother Parson, who had watched the movements of Bogart, and seen him camp on Crooked river, a company of seventy-five volunteers went out to disperse the mob, and retake three prisoners, whom the mob had kidnapped from their homes, and to prevent the descent upon Far West. ”

“ Miss Bogart is a member of one of the oldest families in the state. An interesting sketch of her progenitors is to be found in Thompson's "History of Long Island." She is about the medium height, straight and slender; black hair and eyes; countenance full of vivacity and intelligence. She converses with fluency and spirit, enunciates distinctly, and exhibits interest in whatever is addressed to her — a rare quality in good talkers; has a keen appreciation of genius and of natural scenery; is cheerful and fond of society. ”

“ I CAROL was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on the baby's go-cart, this Sunday afternoon. Through an open window of the Bogart house she heard a screeching, heard Mrs. Bogart's haggish voice:
" . . . did too, and there's no use your denying it no you don't, you march yourself right straight out of the house . . . never in my life heard of such . . . never had nobody talk to me like . . . walk in the ways of sin and nastiness . . . leave your clothes here, and heaven knows that's more than you deserve . ”

“ I find myself saying the most detestable things about people. Oblivious of the beam in my own eye, I stare fixedly and reprovingly at the mote in my neighbour's. Could anything be more unlovable?
I get no encouragement to be a cat from Boggley. Everyone is his very good friend.
"Mrs. Wright called to-day," I remark at tea.
"Did she?" says Boggley. "She's a nice little woman; you'll like her."
"She makes up," I say, "and she had on a most ridiculous hat. Mrs. Brodie says she's a dreadful flirt."
"Rubbish!" says Boggley; "she's a very good sort and devoted to her husband." ”

“ The king of Boghar hath no great power or riches, his reuenues are but small, and he is most meinteined by the Citie: for he taketh the tenth penie of all things that are there solde, as well by the craftsmen as by the marchants, to the great impouerishment of the people, whom he keepeth in great subiection, and when he lacketh money, he sendeth his officers to the shops of the sayd Marchants to take their wares to pay his debts, and will haue credit of force, as the like he did to pay me certaine money that he owed me for 19 pieces of Kersey. ”

“ Miss Bogart was particularly fond of these little literary mysteries. They amused and interested her, and gave her both subject and occupation. In the country she had always leisure, as well as love for the Muses. “Without this love,” says she, “my life would have been divested of half its pleasures; and without the leisure to indulge it, I think I should have felt as if time, however otherwise employed, were only wasted.” Her fugitive poems have now accumulated to a number sufficient to fill a large volume, although they have never been collected and prepared for publication in that form. ”

“ Bogart's questioning?
All next day she was too restless to stay home, yet as she walked the streets on fictitious errands she was afraid of every person she met. She waited for them to speak; waited with foreboding. She repeated, “I mustn't ever see Erik again.” But the words did not register. She had no ecstatic indulgence in the sense of guilt which is, to the women of Main Street, the surest escape from blank tediousness. ”

“ Then I went outside to read a book and watch for Boggley. My book was one of those American novels where every woman is—to judge from the illustrations—of more than earthly beauty. I got so disheartened after a little when everyone I met had a complexion of rose and snow (besides, I didn't believe it) that I shut it up. I found it was nearly twelve o'clock, and Boggley hadn't arrived. I waited another quarter of an hour, and then went in and ate some ham and eggs. One o'clock, and the train came and went, but still no trace of the laggard. Outside the station the blinding white road lay empty. ”

“ In the entry I looked for Mr. Bogart, in order to report progress to him; but I did not see him. The ladder was still standing at the skylight, but the detective was not in sight upon the roof, and though I called his name as loud as I dared to speak he did not respond.
I descended the stairs to the next floor, where I had understood the room of the invalid was located. The door of his apartment was open, and I discovered Mr. Gracewood in the act of [281] ransacking his bed. He was very nervous and excited, and I saw that the hand he was able to use trembled violently.
The Lost Money. ”

“ EDITOR’S TABLE. Alexander Hamilton Bogart.—Our attention was not long ago called to this name by the number of elegiac verses and eloquent obituary paragraphs upon “the admired and lamented young Bogart,” which we found in an old file of Albany papers, while referring to them for other matters connected with some researches in which we were at the time engaged. On inquiring in his native city for the productions of one whose early death had caused so general a sensation in the community of which he was a member, we found that he was still remembered, and still deplored. ”

“ A [395] legend in the Bhogakaritra supplies some. A hermit had been rather severely judged by King Bhoga for a misdemeanour, and condemned to ride through the streets of the capital on an ass. To punish the king for this scandal he went into Cashmere till he had acquired the power of making the soul of a man pass into another body. Then he came back and constrained the soul of the king to pass into the body of a parrot while he made his own soul pass into the king’s body; then he issued a decree commanding the slaughter of all the parrots in the kingdom. ”

“ They were so written by Bogart, Hoffman, and himself. “Now,” he continued, “I will open the poem at random; and for the ends of the lines in Miss Lydia’s Acrostic shall be used the words ending those of the verse on which my finger may rest.” The stanza thus selected was this:—
And must they fall, the young, the proud, the brave,
To swell one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign?
No step between submission and a grave?
The rise of rapine and the fall of Spain?
And doth the Power that man adores ordain
Their doom, nor heed the suppliant’s appeal? ”

“ Let them go."
"That's well enough to talk about," replied Boggs, gruffly. "How would you like to follow your own advice?"
Weil uttered an exclamation.
"I? I have precious little to do with them, I assure you. For a man of my correct habits I have the worst name of any one I know. Everybody insinuates things about me, and they can prove nothing."
"We'll ask Isaac Leveson about that," sneered Boggs. "By-the-way, that wouldn't be a bad place to take young Roseleaf to, when you get to instructing him in earnest. ”

“ But up-stairs she remembered that Mrs. Bogart had seen her walking with Erik from the railroad track into town, and she was chilly with disquietude.
At the Jolly Seventeen, two days after, she was effusive to Maud Dyer, to Juanita Haydock. She fancied that every one was watching her, but she could not be sure, and in rare strong moments she did not care. She could rebel against the town's prying now that she had something, however indistinct, for which to rebel.
In a passionate escape there must be not only a place from which to flee but a place to which to flee. ”