The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into his study, a so...

"Squills," said he, turning round from his books, and laying one finger on the surgeon's arm confidentially,--"Squills," said he, "I myself should be glad to know how I came to...

That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted; but nevertheless it was not of my own knowledge that I came into possession of the circumstances set down in my former cha...

"Why, then, Squills," said my father, familiarly, "you would know that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is defacing th...

When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious blessing of an only c...

"I hope," said my mother, "that they are doing Sisty justice. I do think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to school. I wish you would examine him, Aust...

When I had reached the age of twelve, I had got to the head of the preparatory school to which I had been sent. And having thus exhausted all the oxygen of learning in that litt...

I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I found my mother's brother settled among the household Lares. Uncle Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a...

At this time we were living in what may be called a very respectable style for people who made no pretence to ostentation. On the skirts of a large village stood a square red-br...

"Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not represented in parliament or out of it. The 'County Mercury' has ratted, and be hanged to it! and now we have...

I seemed to myself to have made a leap in life when I returned to school. I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle Jack, out of his own purse, had presented me with my first pair of Wel...

It was a beautiful summer afternoon when the coach set me down at my father's gate. Mrs. Primmins herself ran out to welcome me; and I had scarcely escaped from the warm clasp o...

"By the physical conditions of his body," said Mr. Squills. "He could not have made himself other than he was at first in the woods and wilds if he had fins like a fish, or coul...

"Yes, ma'am, because I would take a pinch of Uncle Roland's snuff, just to say that I had taken a pinch out of his box,--the honor of the thing, you know."

As soon as I was dressed I hastened downstairs, for I longed to revisit my old haunts,--the little plot of garden I had sown with anemones and cresses; the walk by the peach wal...

The Captain felt that this proposal was meant as the greatest peace-offering my father could think of; for, first, it was a very long walk, and my father detested long walks; se...

Indeed, a cold, drizzling rain had come on within the last two hours, and though it was July, it was as chilly as if it had been October. My mother whispered to me, and I went o...

"It was in Spain--no matter where or how--that it was my fortune to take prisoner a French officer of the same rank that I then held,--a lieutenant; and there was so much simila...

My father took three strides up and down the room, and then, halting on his hearth, and facing his brother, he thus spoke: "I condemn his deed, Roland! At best he was but a haug...

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning, day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and purity and freshness. The youth of Nature is contagiou...

Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all crowded round him as he stepped into his chai...

"Are the odds in favor of fame against failure so great? You do not speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father, as he stooped down to tickle the duck unde...

We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due complement of places--four in all, including one for Mrs. Primmins--in, or upon, the fast family coach cal...

I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience--to measure a young man's chance of what is termed practical success in life by what may seem at first two very...

Savoyard evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play un...

In setting off the next morning, the Boots, whose heart I had won by an extra sixpence for calling me betimes, good-naturedly informed me that I might save a mile of the journey...

And now behold us, three days after my arrival, settled in all the state and grandeur of our own house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury, the library of the Museum close at hand. My...

"Well, then, I must be off and find a room. Don't fret; you know I can breakfast and dine with you all the same,--that is, when my other friends will let me. I shall be dreadful...

Left to myself in the earlier part of the day, I wandered, wistful and lonely, through the vast wilderness of London. By degrees I familiarized myself with that populous solitud...

Reader, Mr. Trevanion has been half an hour seated in our little drawing-room. He has received two cups of tea from my mother's fair hand; he has made himself at home. With Mr....

"Mr friends," said my father, looking up from his book, and addressing himself to his two visitors, "I know of one thing, milder than calamity, that would do you both a great de...

Famous it was in our domestic circle, but as yet it has not gone beyond; and since the reader, I am sure, does not turn to the Caxton Memoirs with the expectation of finding ser...

For therewith arose, not conviction, but discussion; Trevanion was logical, Beaudesert sentimental. My father held firm to the saffron bag. When James the First dedicated to the...

Whether or not some joy at the incident of the previous night had served to rejuvenate my uncle, I know not, but he looked to me ten years younger when Lady Ellinor entered. How...

You may judge of the effect that my dinner at Mr. Trevanion's, with a long conversation after it with Lady Ellinor, made upon my mind when, on my return home, after having satis...

I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to decide my father; and the pith of it la...

I have not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone--abroad--to fetch his daughter. He has stayed longer than was expected. Does he seek his son still,--there as here? My father ha...

I wish I had copied that passage from "The Table Talk" in large round hand, and set it before my father at breakfast, the morn preceding that fatal eve in which Uncle Jack persu...

One day the Trevanions had all gone into the country on a visit to a retired minister distantly related to Lady Ellinor, and who was one of the few persons Trevanion himself con...

Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low, that she may not disturb my father, who seems in t...

I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and lady-like horror of earwigs (however motherly and fon...

"I lost my mother early; my father--a good man, but who was so indolent that he rarely stirred from his chair, and who often passed whole days without speaking, like an Indian d...

"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention for meanings abtruse, recondite, and incomprehensible which is not represented by the female gender," said...

"It is no use in the world," said my father, "to know all the languages expounded in grammars and splintered up into lexicons, if we don't learn the language of the world. It is...

"Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach; but that was no balm to my wound. So...

"With all the indignation of a proud, unreasonable man; more indignant, poor fellow, for me than himself. And so did he wound and gall me by what he said of Ellinor, and so did...

There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell Street, an Elf, clad in white,--small, delicate, with curls of jet over her shoulders; with eyes so larg...

All this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase,--for no other is so expressive,--it was like a dream. I felt an absolute, an imperious want of solitude, of the open a...

On my return to the Lamb, I found that my uncle was in a soft sleep; and after a morning visit from the surgeon, and his assurance that the fever was fast subsiding, and all cau...

I remember one morning, when a boy, loitering by an old wall to watch the operations of a garden spider whose web seemed to be in great request. When I first stopped, she was en...

O young reader, whoever thou art,--or reader at least who hast been young,--canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, th...

And my father pushed aside his books and rose hastily. He took off his spectacles and rubbed them mechanically, but he said nothing, and my uncle, staring at him for a moment, i...

I entered Trevanion's study. It was an hour in which he was rarely at home, but I had not thought of that; and I saw without surprise that, contrary to his custom, he was in his...

We came back to my father's house, and on the stairs we met my mother, whom Roland's grave looks and her Austin's strange absence had alarmed. My father quietly led the way to a...

"If," said my father,--and here his hand was deep in his waistcoat,--"if we accept the authority of Diodorus as to the inscription on the great Egyptian library--and I don't see...

After breakfast the next morning I took my hat to go out when my father, looking at me, and seeing by my countenance that I had not slept, said gently,--

I went out, and to see Francis Vivian; for on leaving Mr. Trevanion I was not without anxiety for my new friend's future provision. But Vivian was from home, and I strolled from...

My uncle's conjecture as to the parentage of Francis Vivian seemed to me a positive discovery. Nothing more likely than that this wilful boy had formed some headstrong attachmen...

When I got back, just in time for dinner, Roland had not returned, nor did he return till late in the evening. All our eyes were directed towards him, as we rose with one accord...

My uncle did not leave his room for three days; but he was much closeted with a lawyer, and my father dropped some words which seemed to imply that the deceased had incurred deb...

Our host regaled us with a hospitality that notably contrasted his economical thrifty habits in London. To be sure, Bolt had caught the great pike which headed the feast; and Bo...

But I ought to be hard at work preparing myself for Cambridge. The deuce! how can I? The point in academical education on which I require most preparation is Greek composition....

Alma Mater! Alma Mater! New-fashioned folks, with their large theories of education, may find fault with thee. But a true Spartan mother thou art: hard and stern as the old matr...

The next day, on the outside of the "Cambridge Telegraph," there was one passenger who ought to have impressed his fellow-travellers with a very respectful idea of his lore in t...

"Sir," continued Mr. Squills, biting off the end of a cigar which he pulled from his pocket, "you concede to me that it is a very important business on which you propose to go t...

Finally, my father yielded, and Squills; in high spirits, declared that he would go to supper with me, to see that I ate nothing that would tend to discredit his reliance on my...

The house-door had closed upon Mr. Squills,--that gentleman having promised to breakfast with me the next morning, so that we might take the coach from our gate,--and I remained...

Mr. Squills and I performed our journey without adventure, and as we were not alone on the coach, with little conversation. We put up at a small inn in the City, and the next mo...

"Indeed, brother, it must not," said my father, laying one pale, scholar-like hand mildly on Captain Roland's brown, bellicose, and bony fist, and with the other, outstretched,...

The Hegira is completed,--we have all taken roost in the old Tower. My father's books have arrived by the wagon, and have settled themselves quietly in their new abode,--filling...

Nothing has been heard of Uncle Jack. Before we left the brick house the Captain gave him an invitation to the Tower,--more, I suspect, out of compliment to my mother than from...

Blanche has contrived to associate herself, if not with my more active diversions,--in running over the country and making friends with the farmers,--still in all my more leisur...

My uncle sat on one side the fireplace, my mother on the other; and I, at a small table between them, prepared to note down the results of their conference; for they had met in...

"I think, Roland," said my mother, "that the establishment is settled,--Bolt, who is equal to three men at least; Primmins, cook and housekeeper; Molly, a good, stirring girl, a...

My Dear Mr. Trevanion,--I thank you cordially, and so we do all, for your reply to my letter informing you of the villanous traps through which we have passed,--not indeed with...

Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, and at certain periods of my life a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class,--wonder not that I should thus, in that tr...

Saint Chrysostom, in his work on "The Priesthood," defends deceit, if for a good purpose, by many Scriptural examples; ends his first book by asserting that it is often necessar...

This compact made, my father roused himself from all his studies, devoted his whole thoughts to me, sought with all his gentle wisdom to wean me imperceptibly from my one fixed,...

Then to my mother I opened the sluices of that deep I had concealed from scholar and soldier. To her I poured all the wild, restless thoughts which wandered through the ruins of...

Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most heroic of us all. So I began to prepare myself in good earnest, and I followed Trevanion's instructions with a perseverance wh...

I had not been in haste to conclude my arrangements, for, independently of my wish to render myself acquainted with the small useful crafts that might be necessary to me in a li...

And Blanche sat down beside me, nestled close to me, and leaned her head upon my shoulder. We were both long silent. It was an evening in the early spring, clear and serene; the...

There is a beautiful and singular passage in Dante (which has not perhaps attracted the attention it deserves), wherein the stern Florentine defends Fortune from the popular acc...

The House-Tops! What a soberizing effect that prospect produces on the mind. But a great many requisites go towards the selection of the right point of survey. It is not enough...

I was again foiled in seeing Trevanion. It was the Easter recess, and he was at the house of one of his brother ministers somewhere in the North of England. But Lady Ellinor was...

I had always felt a warm and almost filial affection for Lady Ellinor, independently of her relationship to Fanny, and of the gratitude with which her kindness inspired me; for...

Hours elapsed, and the Captain had not returned home. I began to feel uneasy, and went forth in search of him, though I knew not whither to direct my steps. I thought it, howeve...

On my way towards our lodgings I resolved to look in at a humble tavern, in the coffee-room of which the Captain and myself habitually dined. It was now about the usual hour in...

Amidst all that lacerated my heart or tormented my thoughts that eventful day, I felt at least one joyous emotion when, on entering our little drawing-room, I found my uncle sea...

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious interest in thi...

Reader, hast thou not, in the easy, careless sociability of youth, formed acquaintance with some one in whose more engaging or brilliant qualities thou hast,--not lost that disl...

I could not stay long with my unhappy cousin, but still I stayed long enough to make me think it probable that Lord Castleton's carriage would have left the inn; and when, as I...

At sunrise I went down into the sitting-room, having resolved to write to my father to join us; for I felt how much Roland needed his comfort and his counsel, and it was no grea...

Before nine o'clock Lady Ellinor arrived, and went straight into Miss Trevanion's room; I took refuge in my uncle's. Roland was awake and calm, but so feeble that he made no eff...

I did not recognize the handwriting, and yet the note was from one whose writing I had often seen. But formerly the writing was cramped, stiff, perpendicular (a feigned hand, th...

Vivian.--"Do you think I could remain where you left me? I wandered out, wandered hither. Passing at dawn through yon streets, I saw the hostlers loitering by the gates of the y...

It was during the war in Spain that a severe wound, and the fever which ensued, detained Roland at the house of a Spanish widow. His hostess had once been rich; but her fortune...

Roland removed to France, and fixed his abode in the environs of Paris. He placed Blanche at a convent in the immediate neighborhood, going to see her daily, and gave himself up...

And then, vainly grasping at every argument his blunt sense could suggest, then talked Roland much and grandly of the duties men owed,--even if they threw off all love to their...

"But," said Vivian, pursuing his tale, "but when you came to my aid, not knowing me; when you relieved me; when from your own lips, for the first time, I heard words that praise...

Vivian's schemes thus prospered. He had an income that permitted him the outward appearances of a gentleman,--an independence modest, indeed, but independence still. We were all...

On leaving Vivian I did not presume to promise him Roland's immediate pardon. I did not urge him to attempt to see his father. I felt the time was not come for either pardon or...

Some days have elapsed: we are in London, my father with us; and Roland has permitted Austin to tell me his tale, and received through Austin all that Vivian's narrative to me s...

Several days elapsed, and of each day my father spent a considerable part at Vivian's lodgings. But he maintained a reserve as to his success, begged me not to question him, and...

Two weeks since the date of the preceding chapter have passed; we have slept our last, for long years to come, on the English soil. It is night, and Vivian has been admitted to...

The stage-scene has dropped. Settle yourselves, my good audience; chat each with his neighbor. Dear madam in the boxes, take up your opera-glass and look about you. Treat Tom an...

It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia! How impossible to describe its beauty! Heaven seems, in that new world, so much nearer to earth! Every st...

The weeks and the months rolled on, and the replies to Vivian's letters came at last; I foreboded too well their purport. I knew that my father could not set himself in oppositi...

He is gone; he has left a void in my existence. I had grown to love him so well; I had been so proud when men praised him. My love was a sort of self-love,--I had looked upon hi...

A great change has occurred in our household. Guy's father is dead,--his latter years cheered by the accounts of his son's steadiness and prosperity, and by the touching proofs...

Uncle Jack.--"So you are positively going back to that smoky, fusty Old England, just when you are on your high road to a plum,--a plum, sir, at least! They all say there is not...

Adieu, thou beautiful land, Canaan of the exiles, and Ararat to many a shattered ark! Fair cradle of a race for whom the unbounded heritage of a future that no sage can conjectu...

London once more! How strange, lone, and savage I feel in the streets! I am ashamed to have so much health and strength when I look at those slim forms, stooping backs, and pale...

It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined court-yard, having left my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came to seek knew that I had arrived in Engl...

Roland is leaning against the wall, old armor suspended over the gray head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I give to the dark cheek and high brow: no change there for th...

From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,(1) and the war-whoop of the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine that Blanche herself has had trained r...

Agreeably to the usual custom in great houses, as soon as I arrived at Compton I was conducted to my room to adjust my toilet or compose my spirits by solitude,--it wanted an ho...

I rode home on a horse my host lent me; and Lord Castleton rode part of the way with me, accompanied by his two boys, who bestrode manfully their Shetland ponies and cantered on...

Some weeks now have passed since my return to the Tower; the Castletons are gone, and all Trevanion's gay guests. And since these departures, visits between the two houses have...