United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the first thing he had ever ventured to give her the first thing of the kind would, perhaps, be more accurate; for when he had first begun to teach her any lessons, he had given her Mavor's Spelling-book, but that he might have done, out of zeal for knowledge, to any dunce of a little girl of his acquaintance.
Mavor's she is a saint, of course and that fellow Craig's. What a trump he is! and without his religion he'd be pretty much like the rest of us. It is too much for me. His mystery was not mine. The Black Rock varieties of religion were certainly startling; but there was undoubtedly the streak of reality though them all, and that discovery I felt to be a distinct gain.
But there were those who knew how much of what most men consider worth while he had given up, and they loved him no less for it. Mrs. Mavor's call was not so easily disposed of. It came close upon the other, and stirred Black Rock as nothing else had ever stirred it before.
Mavor's large storeroom, which had been fitted up with seats, was crowded with miners when Mr. Craig and I entered. After a glance over the crowd, Craig said, 'There's the manager; that means war. And I saw a tall man, very fair, whose chin fell away to the vanishing point, and whose hair was parted in the middle, talking to Mrs. Mavor.
Mavor's letter told me of the death of the old lady, who had been her care for the past two years, and of her intention to spend some months in her old home in Edinburgh.
Craig appeared hopeful; but on Mrs. Mavor's face there was a look of wistful, tender pity, for she knew how much the words had cost the lad. Then up rose a sturdy, hard-featured man, with a burr in his voice that proclaimed his birth. His name was George Crawford, I afterwards learned, but every one called him Geordie.
The advantages which the youth of Ontario to-day possess in acquiring an education over the time when I was first sent to school with dinner basket in hand, trudging along through mud or snow, to the old school- house by the road side, where I was perched upon a high pine bench without a back, with a Mavor's spelling book in hand, to begin the foundation of my education, are so many and great that it is difficult to realize the state of things that existed, or that men of intelligence should have selected such a dry and unattractive method of imparting instruction to children of tender years.
Mrs. Mavor's evenings were given to the miners, but her afternoons mostly to Graeme and to me, and then it was I saw another side of her character. We would sit in her little dining-room, where the pictures on the walls, the quaint old silver, and bits of curiously cut glass, all spoke of other and different days, and thence we would roam the world of literature and art.
And were it not that the contributions were strictly limited to one dollar, the purse that Slavin handed her when Shaw read the address at the farewell supper would have been many times filled with the gold that was pressed upon the committee. There were no speeches at the supper, except one by myself in reply on Mrs. Mavor's behalf.
What's come to me I know not, nor how it's come. But I'll do my best for yez. And then the yelling broke out again. I did not yell myself. I was too busy watching the varying lights in Mrs. Mavor's eyes as she looked from Craig to the yelling men on the benches and tables, and then to Slavin, and I found myself wondering if she knew what it was that came to Slavin. With the call to Mr.
Word Of The Day