Proctor

“ Few persons think more highly of British valour than the Carolinians. Father, you, I know, think extravagantly of it; and cousin Robert, too: I have heard you both speak in terms which fully sustain you, Major Proctor, in what might be called the self-complaisance which just now assigned the cause of your success."
Colouring somewhat, and with a grave tone of voice that was not his wont, Proctor replied—
"There is truth in what I have told you, Miss Walton; the British soldier fights with a perfect faith in his invincibility, and this faith enables him to realize it. ”

“ Penfield!" he called. "Captain Tracy! Captain Brown! Major Proctor! Mr. Lane! Captain Dexter!"
"So," said Major Proctor, "you still have your damned party manners."
They had entered the room, and stood in a group before my father. Their faces were set grimly. Their manner was stern and uncompromising, as befitted men of unimpeachable position and integrity. As I watched them, I still was wondering at their errand. Why should they, of all people have paid this call? There was not one who did not own his ships and counting house, not one who was not a leading trader in our seaport. ”

“ There was a tremulous lightness in Singleton's tone as he spoke to this in oblique language—
"And yet Proctor has attractions, has he not? I have somewhere heard so—a fine person, good features, even handsome. He is young, too."
"Few better-looking men, sir, and making due allowance for an enemy, a clever sort of fellow enough. A good officer, too, that knows what he's about, and quite a polite, fair-spoken gentleman." ”

“ Proctor approaches, with Colonel Walton and another. Our hope is in lying close."
The ladies turned to meet the gentlemen. The two British officers seemed already acquainted with them, since they now advanced without any introduction. Proctor, with the ease of a well bred gentleman, placed himself beside the fair heiress of the alace, to whom he tendered his arm; while his companion, Captain Dickson of the Guards, made a similar tender to Emily. The latter quietly took the arm of Dickson, releasing that of her cousin at the same moment. ”

“ The proctor, enraged at what he considered contumely, insisted on accompanying him to Maudlin, and demanded of the porter, "whether he knew the gentleman."—"Know [Pg 36] him, sir," said the porter, "yes, it is Mr. Nott of this college." The proctor now perceived his error in not understanding the gentleman, and wished him a good night.
CLXI.—A COCKNEY EPIGRAM.
In Parliament, it's plain enough,
No reverence for age appears;
For they who hear each speaker's stuff,
Find there is no respect for (y) ears. ”

“ Meanwhile, sir, let us not again speak of the subject until that period."
"A painful subject, sir, which I shall gladly forbear," said Proctor, rising; "and I will hope, at the same time, that Colonel Walton thinks not unkindly of the bearer of troublesome intelligence."
"God forbid, sir! I am no malignant. You have done your duty with all tenderness, and I thank you for it. Our enemies are not always so considerate."
"No enemies, I trust, sir. I am in hopes that, upon reflection, you will not find it so difficult to reconcile yourself to what, at the first blush, may seem so unpleasant." ”

“ Next he related how I had such great strength that I could do feats no other man could attempt. I had taken a gun, Proctor said, with a seven-foot barrel, of so great weight that strong men could not with both hands hold it out steadily. Yet he had seen me make nothing of taking the weapon up and, by grasping it near the lock, hold it out as easily as a man would a pistol, discharging it at a mark. ”

“ Set off by daypeep to the fort, and see Proctor yourself. Tell him of your loyalty, and how you love the king; and you can cry a little all the time, if it comes easy to you. I don't want you to strain much about it. Tell him that you have an unworthy son, that's not of your way of thinking. Say he's been misguided by the rebels, and how they've inveigled him, till he's turned rebel himself ”

“ Fold upon fold, like so many variously shaded wreaths, the dim curtain of the night was drawn gradually up into heave, and once more the vast panorama of forest, river, and green valley came out upon the sight, rising, by little and little, into life, in the slowly illumined distance. The moment old Humphries saw the approach of daylight, he finished his tumbler of punch, and, with a sad heart, he set out for Proctor's quarters. Some little delay preceded his introduction to the commandant of the garrison, who received him graciously, and civilly desired to know his business. ”

“ This Proctor knew, but no other hope presented itself, and glad to use the troop of Huck, he contented himself with the consciousness of having done all that could be done by him, under existing circumstances. Civilly dismissing Humphries, he would have rewarded him, but the old man urged his simple and sincere loyalty, and naturally shrank back at the idea of receiving gold as the reward of his son's betrayal. ”

“ They had (p. 286) fought gallantly, and it mattered not to them the victory or defeat, for they had gone to that still land where human strifes are forgotten, and the clangor of battle never comes.
This impressive scene occurred off the shore where the massacre of Raisin was committed, and what a striking contrast does it present to the day that succeeded the victory of Proctor. By his noble and generous conduct Perry won the esteem and love of his enemies, while Proctor by his unfeeling neglect and barbarity received the curse of all honorable men. ”

“ A chief constable of police, accompanied by a body of forty men well armed, started from near the proctor's house, in order to execute a decree of the Court of Chancery, or rather to protect those who were about to do so, by first holding an auction, and serving a process from the same court afterwards, in another place. ”

“ For a time their [94] strength seemed equal, but Estill's broken arm giving way, the savage instantly plunged a knife into his breast and a moment later, pierced by a bullet from Joseph Proctor's unerring gun, fell dead across his victim's body.
There the battle ended, the pioneers taking their wounded comrades and leaving the dead upon the field. Proctor carried one, a Mr. Irvine, a great distance of forty miles upon his back, while the faithful Monk carried another. A few days later a party of whites visited the scene and buried their dead. ”

“ Their costume is a full dress gown, with velvet sleeves, and band-encircled neck. They are assisted by two deputies, or pro-proctors, who have a strip of velvet on each side of the gown front, and wear bands. The proctors have certain legislative powers; but are most conspicuous as a detective police force, supported by “bulldogs,” i.e., constables. A proctor is regarded by an undergraduate, especially by a fast man, with the same affection that a costermonger looks on a policeman. ”

“ Captain Proctor applied for a court-martial in consequence of the commander-in-chief having expressed himself dissatisfied with his conduct. – Every officer belonging to la Dédaigneuse gave strong evidence in his favor – all the rest of Mr. ”

“ As for the continentals, they haven't got any but their ragged currency, and that nobody wants. We must keep the watch for a good chance, for that and other reasons. I took it from a prisoner by sleight of hand, and it must not be known that I have it, on either side. Proctor would punish, and the young fellow Singleton, who has an eye like a hawk, he would not stop to give me a swinging bough if he thought I took it from one of his prisoners. ”

“ In using the machine for the purpose of correspondence, the metal strips are removed from the cylinder and sent to the person with whom the speaker desires to correspond, who must possess a machine similar to that used by the sender. The person receiving the strips places them in turn on the cylinder of his apparatus, applies the transmitter, and puts the cylinder in motion, when he hears his friend’s voice speaking to him from the indented metal. And he can repeat the contents of the missive as often as he pleases, until he has worn the metal through. ”

“ The perforating machines are calculated to work best when the resistance is uniform; and it has often happened that the unequal resistance offered to the perforators has resulted in injury to the chisels. ”

“ He dwelt first on a certain characteristic of Captain M’Quhæ’s letter which no student of science could fail to notice—the definite statement that the creature was so and so, where a scientific observer would simply have said that the creature presented such and such characteristics. “No sooner was the captain’s attention called to the object,” says Professor Owen, “than ‘it was discovered219 to be an enormous serpent,’” though in reality the true nature of the creature could not be determined even from the observations made during the whole time that it remained visible. ”

“ Deluged by high explosives, shrapnel and gas shells, seeing their comrades mowed down by machine gun fire, bombed from the sky, alternately in pouring rain and burning sun, hungry half the time, their eyes burning from want of sleep, half suffocated from long intervals in gas masks, undergoing all the hardships of a bitter campaign against a determined, vigorous and unscrupulous enemy, yet their only thought was to push on—and on—and on. ”

“ Prockter and her stepson, Emanuel Prockter, up Duck Bank as James and Helen were passing down Duck Bank.
Mrs. Prockter (who by reason of the rare "k" in her name regarded herself as the sole genuine in a district full of Proctors) may be described as the dowager of Bursley, the custodian of its respectability, and the summit of its social ladder. You could not climb higher than Mrs. Prockter. She lived at Hillport, and even in that haughty suburb there was none who dared palter with an invitation from Mrs. Prockter. ”

“ The hero, who, being a clergyman and a university man, is, of course, a master of every branch of science, is about to distinguish himself before the heroine by working out the position of the ship Proserpine, whose captain is senselessly drunk. After ten days' murky weather, "the sky suddenly cleared, and a rare opportunity occurred to take an observation. Hazel suggested to Wylie, the mate, the propriety of taking advantage of the moment, as the fog-bank out of which they had just emerged would soon envelop them again, and they had not more than an hour or so of such observation available. ”

“ Of all this, of course, the men in the ranks knew nothing. To them came only [Pg 30] the command to "fall in," which had always presaged the same weary routine of drill and hike. This time, however, when they found lines of motor trucks stretching along the road seemingly for miles, they knew there was "something doing" and word swept through the ranks that they were off for the front at last. ”

“ Taking, for instance, the five hundred rowing men of Cambridge and dividing them into two sets—one of three hundred men, corresponding to the three hundred rowing men of Oxford, and the other of two hundred men—we see that the first set ought to supply a crew strong enough to meet Oxford, and the second a crew nearly as strong. Now, if the best men of the two Cambridge crews thus supposed to be formed are combined—say five taken from the first and three from the second, all the inferior men being struck out—a far stronger crew than either of the others would undoubtedly be formed. ”

“ American scientific officials have assured me that it is, or rather (for they have not worded the matter precisely in that way) they hold that official science is properly (as they consider) paramount in their country. I was gravely assured in Washington, for instance, that the course which I had pursued in England, with reference to the suggested official schemes for observing the transit of Venus in 1874, would never have been tolerated in America, despite the fact that the course actually followed by American official science was precisely that which I had advised. ”

“ But in Great Britain there are several offices which would seem to have been specially designed to afford means and leisure for original scientific research. Yet, if we consider the total number of men holding such offices, their abilities, and their opportunities, we must admit that the results they achieve are not collectively so great as might be expected. ”

“ If the thrower is sauntering down-stream, then, between throwing any cork and the next, he has walked a certain way down, and the tenth cork, instead of having to travel the same distance as the first before reaching the observer, has a shorter distance to travel, and so reaches that observer sooner. ”

“ Only when men began to lag behind was the return to regular "quick-time" ordered. Officers and non-coms busied themselves with urging on would-be stragglers, keeping the ranks closed up and encouraging the men.
Hours passed thus. The thrumming of a motor was heard ahead and the column [Pg 35] halted. A sidecar motorcycle appeared. Riding in the "tin bathtub" was a staff officer. He talked aside briefly with Colonel Millard D. Brown, of Philadelphia. His message was that the regiment would not be needed at that time and that it was to return to billets. ”

“ Working swiftly and unconcernedly in the midst of a tornado of almost every conceivable kind and size of shell, most of the time sustaining the discomfort of their gas masks, the engineers conducted themselves like veterans of years of service, instead of the tyros they actually were. Officers and men of the other organizations, watching the performance, thrilled with pride at the outstanding bravery of these heroic young [Pg 197] Americans. Their own officers were too absorbed in their task to appreciate the work of the men until afterward, when they had also to mourn their losses. ”