United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
John Walton's funeral was no formal pageant, but an occasion of sincere and general mourning. Even those whose lives and characters were the opposite of his had the profoundest respect for him, and the entire community united in honoring his memory. Perhaps the most painful time of all to the stricken family was the evening after their slow, dreary ride to the village cemetery.
Yet such was the complex nature of the man that he honestly meant to fulfil all Mr. Walton's expectations, and become Annie's loving shield from every care and trial, and a faithful guardian of the household. Nay, more, as soon as he was securely intrenched, with all his coveted possessions, he purposed that Annie should help him to be a true, good man a Christian in reality.
Walton's unfailing recognition that his son was a responsible being; by the confidence he reposed in him; by the unequivocal manner in which he placed him upon a footing of equality, even while guiding him by his counsels, counsels offered as the results of a larger experience, yet never so compulsorily urged as to check his son's freedom of decision.
Then he went to the counter, pulled the register before him, and began to glance up and down its pages. He finally found the names he was searching for, then turning to the clerk, he requested that a boy might take a note from him to Mrs. J.M. Walton's room. "Mrs. Walton?" repeated the clerk, with some surprise. "Yes; I have a little matter of business with her," said Mr.
He felt sufficiently rested and revived, but was in no mood for commonplace talk to comparative strangers. His cosey chair, glowing fire, and listless ease were much better than noisy children, inquisitive ladies, and the unconscious reproach of Mr. Walton's face, as he would look in vain for the lineaments of his lost friend.
Not a scrap of paper remained in a single one of them. "My God!" he groaned, burying his face in his hands. He had no doubt at all as to the quality of the linen in Susan Walton's laundry bag. Meanwhile Prim was standing on the platform of the vestibule train tying his cravat. He had not taken the trouble to buy a ticket.
He swept down the cobwebs from windows and ceiling; turned out of doors a lot of miscellaneous lumber that had insensibly collected there during the last half century; lugged in a few comfortable broad-bottomed chairs and stanch old tables; set up a bookshelf containing Walton's "Complete Angler," "Dialogues of Devils," "Arabian Nights," Miss Burney's "Evelina," and other equally fashionable and ingenious works; kindled a great fire on the broad hearth; and, upon the whole, rendered the aspect of things more comfortable than would have been anticipated.
Walton's drawing-room; "long ago I became largely your debtor, but now you have placed me under an obligation which cannot be estimated. Oh, if I only had your energy and promptitude of action, I might some day" Ronald interrupted him: "Then my mother was right, and I did not give you bad advice in spite of my Quixotism?" Maurice related what had happened to sympathetic listeners.
I have been thinking, for instance, of Walton's life as well as of his angling: of the losses and sufferings that he, the firm Royalist, endured when the Commonwealth men came marching into London town; of the consoling days that were granted to him, in troublous times, on the banks of the Lea and the Dove and the New River, and the good friends that he made there, with whom he took sweet counsel in adversity; of the little children who played in his house for a few years, and then were called away into the silent land where he could hear their voices no longer.
Walton's fortune was moderate, not a penny had come to him stained. After these visits Hunting would go back to the city, resolved to quit everything illegitimate and become in his business and other relations just what he seemed to them. But some glittering temptation would assail him.
Word Of The Day