Tanner

“ Twenty minutes earlier, when last division taken, over 330 Members filled House. Now the tide ebbed; only the thirty odd Members in their places jealously watching Speaker running through Orders of the Day. Tanner bobbing up and down on bench like parched pea. Heard it somewhere whispered that Duke of Cambridge, worn out with long campaign, about to unhelm, unbuckle his sword, hang up his dinted armour. Tanner feels he can't go to bed leaving unsettled the problem of truth or phantasy. ”

“ Tanner, if it don’t mean nothin’?
Tanner. I’ll do anything I can to help you, within reason, Mrs. Ransome, but how can I save her?
Mrs. Ransome (Eagerly pleading) . Mr. Tanner, if she has a child, as she expects, you know that respectable people won’t look at us any more. We’ll have to move away from here. We’ll be the laughing stock of the place. It’ll break her father’s heart, as sure as can be. But if you could fill in the marriage register as though they’d bin married, Mr. Tanner, why, nobody’s to know that it isn’t all respectable and proper. ”

“ Tanner’s neat little figure hopped briskly towards the door. “You’ll have your work cut out, keeping me off t’ step!” she added, turning for a last laugh, and again was struck by the thought that had met her when she came in. “Eh, but I wonder if you’ll like yon dream o’ yours when it comes to getting it!” she exclaimed, looking up at the big woman almost seriously. “I doubt you’ll not take kindly to living so soft. Somebody’ll be wanting a bit o’ help, one o’ these days, and you’ll be out o’ yon almshouse afore you can say knife!” ”

“ Tanner was a Negro painter, a French painter, or a German painter. They simply knew that he was able to produce something which the world wanted—a great painting—and the matter of his colour did not enter into their minds. ”

“ When the tanner curries his own leather, he of course aims at putting in as little bloom as possible, thus economising both tanning material and labour. In addition, the leather goes direct from the tan-house to the currying-shops, thus saving both drying and soaking again, and, it is said, giving better weight and quality. The tanner, too, is enabled to shave his hides or skins more completely, utilising the material for glue-stuff, which, had the leather been for sale in the rough, must have been left on to obtain a profitable weight. ”

“ Tanner, at least, had no qualms about tempting Providence.
“Folks all say you’re the only person for it,” she repeated stoutly. “There’s a many wanted it, of course, but there’s nobody earned it same as you. You’d be fit to hide your face if you knew all the fine things I’ve heard tell of you these last few days, about you being that honest and straight-living and all that! What, I shouldn’t wonder if folks was that pleased they’d go sticking out flags!” she went on, her imagination running away with her,—“nay, but they won’t. They’ll be too put about over lossing your grand work.” ”

“ Tanner has given a furlough, and that the young man shot his father just to keep peace in the family, and to save his own life, and that there were four quarts of raw whisky in the old man's panjandrum when he turned up his toes, we feel like apologizing to the young man and telling him that he did his country a great service in wiping out his sire, baby mine. ”

“ Tanner was as nearly excited as his dignity would allow. There could be little doubt, he felt, that this Douglas was indeed the man of whom he was in search. The man’s size—a small man would take short steps—the little, hobnailed boots, the wet and muddy trousers, the goatee beard—these points considered cumulatively, made the evidence of identity almost overwhelming. And in addition he had been out all the night of the tragedy, and had returned in the morning shaken and clamouring for brandy. Enough evidence to hang a man, Tanner thought with satisfaction. He turned again to the porter. ”

“ Even in her excitement Mrs. Tanner had time for a spasm of admiration. “Eh, but it seems a shame to put the likes of her in an almshouse!” she said to herself; and then forgot the impression in her eagerness for a reply.
“Nay, I’ve heard nowt yet!” Mrs. Clapham was one broad smile. “I doubt it’s hardly time. Folks as sit on committees and suchlike don’t get up as soon as us!”
Mrs. Tanner gave the nod of pained but tolerant comprehension with which one class salutes the idiosyncrasies of another. ”

“ No one may be a tanner unless that person has apprenticed as such for seven years, or is the son or wife of a tanner who has tanned for four years, or is a son or daughter of a tanner who inherits his tanhouse. ”

“ Tanner replied absently. He was thinking that a man who departed on foot from an hotel without leaving an address might not be so easy to trace. And the best description of his appearance he could get was too vague to be of much use. The porter had not noticed the colour of the man’s eyes, if there was any scar or mark on his face or hands, the shape of his ears, any peculiarity in his gait—none of the matters on which identification depends. Tanner could only remind himself that a general hazy notion was better than no notion at all. ”

“ Now supposing brother Tanner goes into the shop, to make a scythe, and he takes the materials necessary for the formation of that scythe, is he dictated to by it, as to how he shall mould it and fashion it? Would you have the scythe rise up and say—Brother Tanner, what do you do so for? Why do you strike me on the back? Well, it is just as ridiculous for you to undertake to dictate to President Young, or those whom he sets to work. it is not for you to dictate to them. ”

“ One of the scholars is Mrs. Tanner's son, and I like him. He's crude, of course, but he has a brain, and he's been helping me this afternoon. We made a bookcase for my books, and it looks fine. I wish you could see it. I covered it with the green burlap, and the books look real happy in smiling rows over on the other side of the room. Bud Tanner got me some wonderful cactus blossoms for my brass bowl. I wish I could send you some. They are gorgeous! ”

“ Tanner. "Well, now, I didn't go to leave you by your lonesome all this time," she apologized, wiping her hands on her apron, "but them beans boiled clean over, and I hed to put 'em in a bigger kettle. You see, I put in more beans 'count o' you bein' here, an' I ain't uset to calca'latin' on two extry." She looked happily from the man to the girl and back again.
"Mr. West, I 'spose, o' course, you interjuced yerself? Bein' a preacher, you don't hev to stan' on ceremony like the rest of mankind. You 'ain't? Well, let me hev the pleasure of interjucin' our new school-teacher, Miss Margaret Earle. ”

“ Tanner was caught when a boy, and lived as an Indian, even in religion. The Great Spirit constantly appears in his story as a moral and protecting deity, whose favour and help may be won by "prayers, which are aided by magical ceremonies and dances. Tanner accepted and acted on this part of the Indian belief, while generally rejecting the medicine men, who gave themselves out for messengers or avaters of the Great Spirit. Tanner had frequent visions of the Great Spirit in the form of a handsome young man, who gave him information about the future. ”

“ Tanner,” she contradicted her coldly. “Mr. Baines is a gentleman, and he’ll do the right thing. Speaking as one as has had personal experience of Mr. Baines, it seems to me a deal more likely that he’ll come himself.”
“Nay, it’ll be t’ post!” Mrs. Tanner persisted, shaking an obstinate head. “You haven’t been here that long, Mrs. James, and you don’t know Baines as well as us. He’s not like to do for himself what he can shape to get done for him by somebody else. ”

“ Thus it was with Simon Peter and his visit to Simon the tanner of Joppa. Tanners as a class were despised and comparatively outcast among the Jews. Tanning was counted an unclean trade because of the necessary contact with dead bodies which it involved. A tanyard must, according to Jewish law, be separated by fifty yards at least from human dwellings. If a man married a woman without informing her of his trade as a tanner, she was granted a divorce. ”

“ And yet, when the minister had finished shaking hands with the worshipful women and a few men and children, and came with Mr. Tanner to the door of the school-house, those eight men stood in a solemn row, four on each side of the walk, each holding his chin in his right hand, his right elbow in his left hand, and all eyes on Jasper Kemp, who kept his eyes thoughtfully up in the sky.
"H'w aire yeh, Tanner? Pleasant 'casion. Mind steppin' on a bit? We men wanta have a word with the parson." ”

“ It is hardly a secret that the processes of tanning and currying infuse the surrounding air with a symphony of odors—a circumstance that helps to explain why a tannery was generally located on the far edge of a town, and usually on the downwind side. As if hides and skins were themselves not fragrant enough, eighteenth-century tanners, curriers, and leather dressers made use at various stages or for special purposes of such delectable commodities as fish oil, sour beer, urine, barley mash, and the fermented dung of chickens, pigeons, and dogs. ”

“ Second, anything connected with Indians was looked on with deep suspicion by whites on the frontier; John Tanner was not only feared but also mistrusted. It would seem the public attitude toward him softened a great deal in retrospect, for in after years the citizens of Sault Ste. Marie refused to give Tilden a clean bill of health over the Schoolcraft killing.
It is, however, inescapable that Tanner’s attempt to live among the people of his blood was a tragic experience. He was not only a man without a country but a man without a race. ”

“ Peter Tanner endeavored to impress upon me the idea that he was quite severe, though I could perceive there was a vein of good humor in the old fellow, after all.
"You're the nigger," he said to me on my arrival—"You're the nigger that flogged your master, eh? You're the nigger that kicks, and holds carpenter Tibeats by the leg, and wallops him, are ye? I'd like to see you hold me by the leg—I should. You're a 'portant character—you're a great nigger—very remarkable nigger, ain't ye? ”

“ This is meant—the absolute submission of the will to commandments and providences, the making of that obstinate part of our nature meek and obedient and plastic as the clay in the potter's hands. The tanner takes a stiff hide, and soaks it in bitter waters, and dresses it with sharp tools, and lubricates it with unguents, and his work is not done till all the stiffness is out of it and it is flexible. ”

“ Then some one builds a magic lodge, and prays to the Great Spirit. Tanner often did this, and he would then dream how the Great Spirit appeared to him as a beautiful young man, and told him where he would find game, and prophesied other events in his life. It is curious to see a white man taking to the Indian religion, and having exactly the same sort of visions as their red converts described to the Jesuit fathers nearly two hundred years before.
Tanner saw some Indian ghosts, too, when he grew up. ”

“ Four men are coming this way, all well armed; their visit, I am sure, is for no good or friendly purpose.” Hearing this, I placed my packs in the middle of the floor, and taking a beaver trap in my hand, sat down on them. When the clerk came in, accompanied by three young men, he asked me for my packs. “What right have you,” said I, “to demand them?” “You are indebted to me,” said he. “When did I owe the North West any thing, that was not paid at the time agreed on?” “Ten years ago,” said he, “your brother, Wa-me-gon-a-biew, had a credit from me, which he paid all but ten skins. ”

“ He was also author of a life of John Tanner, a strange character who was stolen when a child from his home on the Ohio river by Indians, among whom he was brought up, developing in his future eventful history a strange mixture of the different traits pertaining to his early life and savage education. ”

“ He never disagrees with Mrs. Tanner, and I really believe he's in love with her yet, though they must have been married a good while. He calls her "Ma," and seems restless unless she's in the room. When she goes out to the kitchen to get some more soup or hash or bring in the pie, he shouts remarks at her all the time she's gone, and she answers, utterly regardless of the conversation the rest of the family are carrying on. It's like a phonograph wound up for the day.
Bud Tanner is about fourteen, and I like him. He's well developed, strong, and almost handsome ”

“ Tanner about her home town and her father and mother. When the meal was finished the minister had no excuse to think that the new teacher was careless about her friends and associates, and he was well informed about the high principles of her family.
But West had retired into a sulky mood and uttered not a word except to ask for more chicken and coffee and a second helping of pie. It was, perhaps, during that dinner that he decided it would be best for him to preach in Ashland on the following Sunday. The young lady could be properly impressed with his dignity in no other way. ”

“ Mrs. Ransome (Takes the marriage register) . Oh, Mr. Tanner, I don’t know how to thank you.
Tanner. Well, Mrs. Ransome—I shall expect your husband to send us something for our new mission to spread Christianity amongst the Chinese.
(Exit Tanner and Mrs. Ransome. Janet closes the door. She walks towards the couch, looks at the prayer-book, then at the couch. She flings the prayer-book to the other end of the room, smashing some of the ornaments on the mantle-shelf, and throws herself upon the side of the couch, sobbing wildly.) ”