Part 33 (1/2)
George sighed. ”I wish,” he said, ”that I could persuade him to bite all my generals.”_
_A rich man, formerly a cheesemonger, was discussing the Poor Law with Lamb, and boasted that he had got rid of all the sentimental stuff called the milk of human kindness.
”Yes,” said Lamb sadly, ”you turned it into cheese long ago_.”
_Jerrold said of some one who sent his wife effusive letters but not a farthing of money, that he was full of ”unremitting kindness_.”
_A Turkish proverb says, ”The devil tempts the busy man, but the idle man tempts the devil_.”
_Gladstone once asked, ”In what country except ours would (as I know to have happened) a Parish Ball have been got up in order to supply funds for a Parish Hea.r.s.e?_”
”_They're rising in Connaught,” shouted a scaremonger, das.h.i.+ng into Chesterfield's room. Quietly he drew out his watch. ”Nine o'clock,” he said gently. ”They ought to be_.”
”_He is one of those people,” said Jerrold of a mistaken philanthropist, ”who would vote for a supply of tooth-picks in a time of famine”; and of another--”He would hold an umbrella over a duck while it was raining_.”
”_Hark at Boswell,” muttered Wilkes, ”telling every one how he has had his handkerchief picked from his pocket--it's merely brag, to show us he had one_.”
”_Do you approve of clergymen riding?” Sydney Smith was asked. ”Well, it depends,” he replied thoughtfully; ”yes, if they turn their toes out_.”
”_The testator meant to keep a life interest in the estate himself,”
remarked the judge, who was trying a will case._
”_Surely, my lord,” said the barrister, ”you are taking the will for the deed_.”
_Sydney Smith said of an obstinate man, ”You might as well try to poultice the humps off a camel's back_.”
A MASTER WITH BRAINS [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]
At Bideford, died the only master I ever had who had any brains. When I was fourteen or fifteen he taught me to place my knowledge as it came, to have its proportion. He so kept me to the drawing of maps that the earth has ever since lain beneath me as if I could see it all from a great height, and he so taught me history that I see it now as a panorama, from the first days. In his time I could draw the coasts of all the world in very fair proportion, without looking at a map, and I think I could do it now, though not so well as then, perhaps; and always afterwards, if ever I heard or saw or read up a thing, I knew in what little pocket of the mind to put it. Right up to the end of Oxford days no one could compare with him. His name was Abraham Thompson, a doctor of divinity he was; black hair grew on the back of his hands which I used to marvel at, he was very handsome and dark. Funny little boys are--how they watch. He could be very angry and caned furiously; at times I caught it. I think he grew poor in his last years and had the school at Bideford. I never heard about him at the end. I wors.h.i.+pped him when I was little, and we used to look at each other in cla.s.s. I wonder what he thought when he looked; I used to think Abraham of Ur of the Chaldees was like him, and I am sure if he had bought a piece of land to bury his Sarah in, he would have been just as courteous as the first Abraham. I was always sorry that he was called Thompson, for I like lovely names--should have liked one myself and a handsome form--yes, I should. So that was Thompson. I have thought how far more needful with a lad is one year with a man of intellect than ten years of useless teaching. He taught us few facts, but spent all the time drilling us that we might know what to do with them when they came. Abraham Kerr Thompson, that was his name. I wonder if any one remembers him. A strange thing he would do, unlike any other I ever heard of; he would call up the cla.s.s, and open any book and make the head boy read out a chance sentence, and then he would set to work with every word--how it grew and came to mean this or that. With the flattest sentence in the world he would take us to ocean waters and the marshes of Babylon and the hills of Caucasus and wilds of Tartary and the constellations and abysses of s.p.a.ce. Yes, no one ever taught me anything but he only--I hope he made a good end. But how long ago it all was! It is forty-five years since I saw him.
A SPLENDID ADVENTURER [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]
When I was fifteen or sixteen he (Newman) taught me so much I do mind--things that will never be out of me. In an age of sofas and cus.h.i.+ons he taught me to be indifferent to comfort, and in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen, and this so early that it was well in me when life began, and I was equipped before I went to Oxford with a real good panoply, and it has never failed me. So if this world cannot tempt me with money or luxury--and it can't--or anything it has in its trumpery treasure-house, it is most of all because he said it in a way that touched me, not scolding nor forbidding, nor much leading--walking with me a step in front. So he stands to me as a great image or symbol of a man who never stooped, and who put all this world's life in one splendid venture, which he knew as well as you or I might fail, but with a glorious scorn of everything that was not his dream.
RED LION MARY [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]
The life in Red Lion Square was a very happy one in its freedom. Red Lion Mary's originality all but equalled that of the young men, and she understood them and their ways thoroughly. Their rough and ready hospitality was seconded by her with unfailing good temper; she cheerfully spread mattresses on the floor for friends who stayed there, and when the mattresses came to an end it was said that she built up beds with boots and portmanteaus. Cleanliness, beyond the limits of the tub, was impossible in Red Lion Square, and hers was not a nature to dash itself against impossibilities, so the subject was pretty much ignored, but she was ready to fulfil any mission or do anything for them at a moment's notice, which was much more important. Never did she dishonour their bills.