CHAPTER IX. DAVIT LUNAN'S POLITICAL REMINISCENCESWhen an election-day comes round now, it takes me back to the time of 1832. I would be eight or ten year old at the time. James Strachan was at the door by five o'clock in the morning in his Sabbath clothes, by arrangement. We was to go up to the hill to see them building the bonfire. Moreover, there was word that Mr. Scrimgour was to be there tossing pennies, just like at a marriage. I was wakened before that by my mother at the pans and bowls. I...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 936
CHAPTER VIII. THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELLFor two years it had been notorious in the square that Sam'l Dickie was thinking of courting T'nowhead's Bell, and that if little Sanders Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation of Alexander Alexander) went in for her he might prove a formidable rival. Sam'l was a weaver in the Tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter whose trade mark was a bell on his horse's neck that told when coals were coming. Being something of a public man, Sanders had not perhaps so high a social position as Sam'l, but he had succeeded his father...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 2200
CHAPTER VII. CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLYThe children used to fling stones at Grinder Queery because he loved his mother. I never heard the Grinder's real name. He and his mother were Queery and Drolly, contemptuously so called, and they answered to these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened to the...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 2429
CHAPTER VI. THE OLD DOMINIEFrom the new cemetery, which is the highest point in Thrums, you just fail to catch sight of the red schoolhouse that nestles between two bare trees, some five miles up the glen of Quharity. This was proved by Davit Lunan, tinsmith, whom I have heard tell the story. It was in the time when the cemetery gates were locked to keep the bodies of suicides out, but men who cared to risk the consequences could get the coffin over the high dyke and bury it themselves. Peter Lundy's coffin broke, as one might...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 2941
CHAPTER V. THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMSArms and men I sing: douce Jeemsy Todd, rushing from his loom, armed with a bed-post; Lisbeth Whamond, an avenging whirlwind; Neil Haggart, pausing in his thanks-offerings to smite and slay; the impious foe scudding up the bleeding Brae-head with Nemesis at their flashing heels; the minister holding it a nice question whether the carnage was not justified. Then came the two hours' sermons of the following Sabbath, when Mr. Dishart, revolving like a teetotum in the pulpit, damned every bandaged person present, individually and collectively; and Lang Tammas, in the precentor's box with...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 1474
CHAPTER IV. LADS AND LASSESWith the severe Auld Lichts the Sabbath began at six o'clock on Saturday evening. By that time the gleaming shuttle was at rest, Davie Haggart had strolled into the village from his pile of stones on the Whunny road; Hendry Robb, the "dummy," had sold his last barrowful of "rozetty (resiny) roots" for firewood; and the people, having tranquilly supped and soused their faces in their water-pails, slowly donned their Sunday clothes. This ceremony was common to all; but here divergence set in. The grey Auld Licht, to whom love was not even a...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 3653
CHAPTER III. THE AULD LICHT KIRKOne Sabbath day in the beginning of the century the Auld Licht minister at Thrums walked out of his battered, ramshackle, earthen-floored kirk with a following and never returned. The last words he uttered in it were: "Follow me to the commonty, all you persons who want to hear the Word of God properly preached; and James Duphie and his two sons will answer for this on the Day of Judgment." The congregation, which belonged to the body who seceded from the Established Church a hundred and fifty years ago, had split, and as...
Long Stories - Post by : BigBurt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 1905
PART II CHAPTER XXXV. THE PERFECT LOVERTommy has not lasted. More than once since it became known that I was writing his life I have been asked whether there ever really was such a person, and I am afraid to inquire for his books at the library lest they are no longer there. A recent project to bring out a new edition, with introductions by some other Tommy, received so little support that it fell to the ground. It must be admitted that, so far as the great public is concerned, Thomas Sandys is done for.They have even forgotten the manner...
Long Stories - Post by : Jezza - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 1563
PART II CHAPTER XXXIV. A WAY IS FOUND FOR TOMMYThe moment for which he had tried to prepare himself was come, and Tommy gulped down his courage, which had risen suddenly to his mouth, leaving his chest in a panic. Outwardly he seemed unmoved, but within he was beating to arms. "This is the test of us!" all that was good in him cried as it answered his summons.They began by shaking hands, as is always the custom in the ring. Then, without any preliminary sparring, Lady Pippinworth immediately knocked him down; that is to say, she remarked, with a little...
Long Stories - Post by : Eric_Stewart - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 1259
PART II CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LITTLE GODS RETURN WITH A LADYGrizel's clear, searching eyes, that were always asking for the truth, came back to her, and I seem to see them on me now, watching lest I shirk the end.Thus I can make no pretence (to please you) that it was a new Tommy at last. We have seen how he gave his life to her during those eighteen months, but he could not make himself anew. They say we can do it, so I suppose he did not try hard enough; but God knows how hard he tried.He went on...
Long Stories - Post by : jardo - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 1687
PART II CHAPTER XXXII. TOMMY'S BEST WORKAnd thus was begun a year and a half of as great devotion as remorseful man ever gave to woman. When she was asleep and he could not write, his mind would sometimes roam after abandoned things; it sought them in the night as a savage beast steals forth for water to slake the thirst of many days. But if she stirred in her sleep they were all dispelled; there was not a moment in that eighteen months when he was twenty yards from Grizel's side.He would not let himself lose hope. All the others...
Long Stories - Post by : pcmatt - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 3508
PART II CHAPTER XXXI. "THE MAN WITH THE GREETIN' EYES"For many days she lay in a fever at the doctor's house, seeming sometimes to know where she was, but more often not, and night after night a man with a drawn face sat watching her. They entreated, they forced him to let them take his place; but from his room he heard her moan or speak, or he thought he heard her, or he heard a terrible stillness, and he stole back to listen; they might send him away, but when they opened the door he was there, with his drawn...
Long Stories - Post by : bargain_hunter - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 3172
PART II CHAPTER XXX. THE LITTLE GODS DESERT HIMAnd all next day he searched like a man whose eyes would never close again. She had not passed the night in any inn or village house of St. Gian; of that he made certain by inquiries from door to door. None of the guides had seen her, though they are astir so late and so early, patiently waiting at the hotel doors to be hired, that there seems to be no night for them--darkness only, that blots them out for a time as they stand waiting. At all hours there is in...
Long Stories - Post by : adept - Date : May 2012 - Author : James Matthew Barrie - Read : 1180
PART II CHAPTER XXIX. THE RED LIGHTIt was an evening without stars, but fair, sufficient wind to make her Ladyship cling haughtily to his arm as they turned corners. Many of the visitors were in the garden, some grouped round a quartet of gaily attired minstrels, but more sitting in little arbours or prowling in search of an arbour to sit in; the night was so dark that when our two passed beyond the light of the hotel windows they could scarce see the shrubs they brushed against; cigars without faces behind them sauntered past; several times they thought they had...
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PART II CHAPTER XXVIII. TWO OF THEMWhen Tommy started impulsively on what proved to be his only Continental trip he had expected to join Mrs. Jerry and her stepdaughter at Bad-Platten. They had been there for a fortnight, and "the place is a dream," Mrs. Jerry had said in the letter pressing him to come; but it was at St. Gian that she met the diligence and told him to descend. Bad-Platten, she explained, was a horror.Her fuller explanation was that she was becoming known there as the round lady."Now, am I as round as all that?" she said plaintively to...
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PART II CHAPTER XXVII. GRIZEL'S JOURNEYNothing could have been less expected. In the beginning of May its leaves had lost something of their greenness. The plant seemed to be hesitating, but she coaxed it over the hill, and since then it had scarcely needed her hand; almost light-headedly it hurried into its summer clothes, and new buds broke out on it, like smiles, at the fascinating thought that there was to be a to-morrow. Grizel's plant had never been so brave in its little life when suddenly it turned back.That was the day on which Elspeth and David were leaving for...
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PART II CHAPTER XXVI. GRIZEL ALL ALONEIt was Tommy who was the favoured of the gods, you remember, not Grizel.Elspeth wondered to see her, after the publication of that book, looking much as usual. "You know how he loved you now," she said, perhaps a little reproachfully."Yes," Grizel answered, "I know; I knew before the book came out.""You must be sorry for him?"Grizel nodded."But proud of him also," Elspeth said. "You have a right to be proud.""I am as proud," Grizel replied, "as I have a right to be."Something in her voice touched Elspeth, who was so happy that she wanted...
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PART II CHAPTER XXV. MR. T. SANDYS HAS RETURNED TO TOWNIt is disquieting to reflect that we have devoted so much paper (this is the third shilling's worth) to telling what a real biographer would almost certainly have summed up in a few pages. "Caring nothing for glory, engrossed in his work alone, Mr. Sandys, soon after the publication of the 'Letters,' sought the peace of his mother's native village, and there, alike undisturbing and undisturbed, he gave his life, as ever, to laborious days and quiet contemplation. The one vital fact in these six months of lofty endeavour is that...
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PART II CHAPTER XXIV. THE MONSTERTommy's new character was that of a monster. He always liked the big parts.Concealed, as usual, in the garments that clung so oddly to him, modesty, generosity, indifference to applause and all the nobler impulses, he could not strip himself of them, try as he would, and so he found, to his scornful amusement, that he still escaped the public fury. In the two months that preceded Elspeth's marriage there was positively scarce a soul in Thrums who did not think rather well of him. "If they knew what I really am," he cried with splendid...
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PART II CHAPTER XXIII. TOMMY LOSES GRIZELIt was not Aaron's good fortune to find Tommy. He should have looked for him in the Den.In that haunt of happier lovers than he, Tommy walked slowly, pondering. He scarce noticed that he had the Den to himself, or that, since he was last here, autumn had slipped away, leaving all her garments on the ground. By this time, undoubtedly, Elspeth had said her gentle No; but he was not railing against Fate, not even for striking the final blow at him through that innocent medium. He had still too much to do for...
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Auld Licht Idylls - Chapter 9. Davit Lunan's Political Reminiscences
