Demijohn

“ This wine came ashore on Absecom Beach from a Spanish wreck, about 1770. Then it was brought to Trenton, and my great-uncle bought it. All but a demijohn was buried in his garden at the old house, not far from Princeton, to keep it out of British stomachs. The one demijohn kept for use made the mischief I shall tell you of.
"Try that grape-juice, Wilmington. No? Then let Francis have his cigar. My Cuban friend shocks me with the late rise of prices. Eighteen dollars a thousand makes one hesitate." ”

“ She wants to go to Querétero. If she gives her word of honor–never mind, she knows honor from a man’s standpoint–if she gives her word that she brings nothing that will help ’em inside, then you can escort the coach into the town after things quiet down some. All right? Good. Then we’re off!”
Demijohn’s hoofs pelted dust balls with each impact. The Grays were ready. They surged behind. The sound of them was a swishing roar. In the apex of the blinding tempest, Driscoll sat his saddle as unmoved as an engineer in his cab. He looked ahead placidly. Empire and a prince had just triumphed. ”

“ The well-known character in the service whose hoisting a demijohn for a flag I have before mentioned, and who found this great overplus above him, was credited with saying that those of them who did not drink themselves to death would strut themselves to death—a comment which testified rather to the warmth of his feelings than to the merits of the case. Of course, the greater the total, the more numerous the unworthy; and the unfortunate natural bias of mankind notices these more readily than it does the capable. ”

“ I shouldn't wonder if thar was a demijohn o' whiskey in the closet of your back office, kept thar by the feller you're relievin'—who was a white man and knew the ropes."
A few minutes later, when my brief installation was over, we DID find the demijohn in the place indicated. As Yuba Bill wiped his mouth with the back of his heavy buckskin glove, he turned to me not unkindly. "I don't like to set ye agin Gile-ad, which is a scrip-too-rural place, and a God-fearin' place, and a nice dry place, and a place ez I've heard tell whar they grow beans and pertatoes and garden sass ”

“ Jimmy was out of the house and at the first pair of bars; and, being in a terrible fright, he ran back to Johnny as fast as he could go.
Johnny was sitting there, hugging somebody. What body? Not a body of water is meant this time, but a lively, loving, frisking, barking little body, named Rover. And close behind came Mr. Plummer. When Ellis Payne came home without the Jimmyjohns, Mr. Plummer put the horse into the light wagon, and took Rover, and went to look after them. ”

“ If anybody goes, it will be me."
"Mary and I are going to be married right now! And we're going to live our own life, in our own heathen way!"
"You've been wonderful, Johnny! And when you fall in love some day—promise you won't forget me."
"Johnny, we're going to LIVE! We'll break all ten of your old Commandments, and we'll finish rich and powerful—with the world at our feet!"
"You'll keep your Ten Commandments, Johnny, and you'll finish just where you are—a poor carpenter!"
"I guess being a carpenter is just about all I'm good for!"
"John dear—some mighty fine men have been carpenters!" ”

“ And yet, warmed to the core by this praise, John counted it as nothing compared with his mother's smile and Desmond's fervent grip.
Fortune, however, comes to no man—or boy—with both hands full. Immediately after Speech Day, John's bubble of pride and happiness was pricked by Scaife. Midsummer madness seized the Demon. One may conceive that the innate recklessness of his nature, suppressed by an iron will, and smouldering throughout many months, burst at last into flame. Desmond told John that the Demon had spent a riotous night in town. ”

“ Desmond's frank blue eyes, Irish eyes, deeply blue, with black lashes encircling them, betrayed amazement and curiosity—so John thought—rather than anger. "You don't?" he continued. "Why not? The old Demon likes you; he says you got him out of a tight place. Why don't you like him, Verney?"
John's mind had to speculate vaguely whether or not Desmond knew the nature of the tight place—tight was such a very descriptive adjective—out of which he had pulled Scaife. ”

“ John promptly appeared, asking what his master desired.
"Johnny," said the preacher, "don't you think you might go down to the brook and catch a pike or something for supper? I have been sitting here the whole afternoon, thinking of fish."
"It's too late," replied the boy. "Pikes don't bite in the afternoon."
"Don't they?" exclaimed Father Jonas, greatly astonished. "Why, this morning I saw a large pike hanging at the back porch of Timmy Timmylim's—house such a big, fat one, too! Now, Johnny—Johnny, my boy—don't you think—I mean go and try, and do your best, and find something for me. ”

“ Desmond continued, "But I want you, too, old Jonathan, and if—if——"
"All right," said John, nobly. He perceived that Desmond's loyalty to Scaife made him hesitate and flush. "I understand, Cæsar, and if I can't be first, let me be second; only, remember, with me you're first, rain or shine."
Desmond looked uneasy. "Isn't that a case of 'heads I win, tails you lose'?"
John considered; then he smiled cheerfully, "You know you are a winner, Cæsar. You're cut out for a winner; you can win whatever you want to win." ”

“ She looked at him an instant, and then fell on her knees beside the chair and hid her face upon his shoulder.
“John, you forget; you make me ashamed when you speak thus; we women are not angels; we are quick, selfish, passionate things, though we may be unselfish when we love.”
“Dear, I forget nothing of that,” he said. “Do you think that I would choose to love a saint?”
“I am nothing of a saint, John.”
“Thank God,” said he.
John Gore told her nothing that night of her mother’s death, for the evening in that great warm kitchen seemed too goodly and dear a time to be marred by evil tidings. ”

“ All boys worth their salt are creatures of reserves; let us respect them. It is easy to surmise what passed between the friends—the gratitude, the self-reproach, the humiliation on one side; the sympathy, the encouragement and shy, restrained affection on the other. A bitter-sweet moment for John this, revealing, without disguise, the weakness of Desmond's character, but illuminating the triumph over Scaife, the all-powerful. John had been inhuman if this knowledge had not been as spikenard to him. ”

“ He descended the steep flight of steps after the boys had thanked him.
"Sad story," said John, staring at the distant Spire.
Desmond hesitated. At times he revealed (to John alone) a curious melancholy.
"Sad," he repeated. "I don't know about that. Sad for the father, of course, but perhaps the son is well out of it. Don't look so amazed, Jonathan. Most fellows seem to make awful muddles of their lives. You won't, of course. I see you on pinnacles, but I——" He broke off with a mirthless laugh.
John waited. ”

“ But the people, he said, were worthless; they added superstition to ignorance and fierceness, and obstinately opposed the bettering their condition. 'Without attempting to burden your credulity, Jonathan,' interpolated John, 'the truth is, we well understood the nature of this people, and having failed to conciliate them in one way betook ourselves to another, and in our characteristic style chastised them into submission.' John spoke with great seriousness, never for a moment lessening his air of dignity. ”

“ Do you know, John, there are times when I feel very queer—there are indeed. I catched myself a singing "Sweet Home" one night, among those savages in the wilderness. One wants consolation, John, sometimes one does, indeed; and, for my part, I do miss the family prayers and the home-brewed.'
No author has ever done better in portraying the characteristic feeling of the servants' hall; and at the other social extreme, Mr. Disraeli has had more practice than any other novelist. ”

“ John laughed in a short, hard way. “There is no right in a rule that assigns me to Elysium and her to Gehenna. I’ll find a way to prove that one man feels responsible for a woman’s fall. Son, I am going to bring her back with me.”
“If you could, John—if only you could!” Afraid, yet brave to believe in the power of his god of Earth, the boy-soul gazed into his father’s face. “You’ll look for me, John, first thing when you come back? A little way on there are bowers and villas that the shades build to live in while their eyes and minds are getting used to the Light. ”

“ Whom God has joined together ought not to be put asunder so long, with their own consent. We will bring master Johnny with us; you and he shall have the small-pox here, and we will be as happy as Mr. Hancock and his lady. Thank Abby and John for their letters, and kiss Charles and Tom for me. John writes like a hero, glowing with ardor for his country and burning with indignation against her enemies. ”

“ Did you see me go through the room just now with a tall gentleman—rather old.”
“Yes,” answered Jocelyn.
“That was Sir John Meredith, Jack's father,” said Lady Cantourne in a lowered voice. “They have quarrelled, you know. People say that Sir John does not care—that he is heartless, and all that sort of thing. The world never says the other sort of thing, one finds. But—but I think I know to the contrary. He feels it very deeply. ”

“ The fellows cooled down at once, and John Littlejohn said, 'Come, Smooth! if you really are a clever citizen then you are precisely the fellow we want!' And then he conversed feelingly with me, said how much he liked our country and our countrymen; persuaded himself to believe them the real go-ahead chaps—though he, at times, thought it quite necessary to keep their go-ahead a little slow. I proposed their taking a smoke in a rough and ready sort of way, and pulling out my pouch, in a friendly sort of way, they all seemed struck aback with astonishment. ”

“ OHNNY was not dead; Fortune had other adventures in store for Johnny. A farmer came out with his men, and carried him into the house, where he soon came to his senses. It was not very much in that way he had to come to; but if Johnny had not many brains, he had an extraordinarily thick skull. The blow with the hammer would have killed another man, but it only made a bump on the head of our Johnny.
The farmer asked him where he came from and what he wanted.
‘I’m going to Hergnies, to eat roast goose,’ said Johnny. ”

“ At last Johnny reached Hergnies, and where should he go to but to the parson’s, of course, to get married! Then it occurred to him that he had never asked the maid if she would have him! He put down the sack and opened it.
‘I say, maid,’ quoth he, ‘shall us get married, us two?’
‘G-r-r-r-r-r-r!’ says the maid.
Johnny, in a fright, let go his hold of the cord, the sack fell open, out jumped Rumble, and flew at his throat.
Johnny sprang into a willow-tree and climbed up it, but, lo and behold! the tree was rotten, and down came tree and Johnny and all on the back of Rumble! ”

“ With Jack Herring, in particular, Johnny was beginning to lose patience. That “Miss Bulstrode's” charms had evidently struck Jack Herring all of a heap, as the saying is, had in the beginning amused Master Johnny. Indeed, as in the seclusion of his bedchamber over the little grocer's shop he told himself with bitter self-reproach, he had undoubtedly encouraged the man. From admiration Jack had rapidly passed to infatuation, from infatuation to apparent imbecility. Had Johnny's mind been less intent upon his own troubles, he might have been suspicious. ”

“ John. No; it is a stronger enemy than you that keeps us from doing that, or else we should not have come hither.
Constable. Well, you may go any other way, then.
John. No, no; I suppose you see we are able to send you going, and all the people of your parish, and come through your town when we will; but since you have stopped us here, we are content. You see we have encamped here, and here we will live. We hope you will furnish us with victuals.
Constable. We furnish you! What mean you by that?
John. Why, you would not have us starve, would you? If you stop us here, you must keep us. ”

“ Devil-John himself lived to be past seventy, and at that age, when most men were stacking their sins and groaning with the gout, he was dicing and fox-hunting with the youngest of them. He always swore he would die with his boots on, and they say when the doctor told him he had only a few hours leeway, he made his slaves dress him completely and prop him on his horse. They galloped out so, a negro on either side of him. ”

“ But John says he’s going to keep it going through my lifetime at least. He’s funny that way. He never thinks of dying. Somehow, I don’t think anybody could make him die until he got ready.”
Once the child-man had opened up a hurt in his confidence: “I heard my mother tell John one day that my grandmother—his own mother, you know—might have called him ‘Jack,’ but she felt sure that nobody else had. She said he was the uncompromising kind of man that everybody just naturally called ‘John.’ Sometimes my mother talks as if she did not think much of John, any more than she does of me. ”

“ There was never the smallest chance of his being sacked, and he knew it."
"Yes," said John, calmly, "I knew it."
"Just so," said Scaife. He went out whistling.
Desmond had time to whisper to John before the fags called them to breakfast in John's room—
"I say, Jonathan, I'm glad you knew that I wouldn't fail you. As the
Demon says, you are clever; you are a sight cleverer than he is."
John shook his head. "I'm slow," he said. "As a matter of fact, the thought that you would come to the rescue never occurred to me till I was hiking back from town." ”