Mary Barton quotes

It was an early May evening—the April of the poets; for heavy showers had fallen all the morning, and the round, soft, white clouds which were blown by a west wind over the dark blue sky, were sometimes varied by one blacker and more threatening.

The softness of the day tempted forth the young green leaves, which almost visibly fluttered into life; and the willows, which that morning had had only a brown reflection in the water below, were now of that tender gray-green which blends so delicately with the spring harmony of colours.

Groups of merry and somewhat loud-talking girls, whose ages might range from twelve to twenty, came by with a buoyant step. They were most of them factory girls, and wore the usual out-of-doors dress of that particular class of maidens;

You'll not see among the Manchester wenches such fresh rosy cheeks, or such black lashes to gray eyes (making them look like black), as my wife and Esther had. I never seed two such pretty women for sisters; never.

Not but what beauty is a sad snare.

Here was Esther so puffed up, that there was no holding her in. Her spirit was always up, if I spoke ever so little in the way of advice to her;

Alice first broke silence; holding her tea-cup with the manner of one proposing a toast, she said, "Here's to absent friends.

Friends may meet, but mountains never.

"

for the fire by this time was well-nigh out, and candle he had none. His groping hand fell on the piled-up tea things, which at his desire she had left unwashed till morning—they were all so tired.

He was reminded of one of the daily little actions, which acquire such power when they have been performed for the last time, by one we love.

He began to think over his wife's daily round of duties; and something in the remembrance that these would never more be done by her, touched the source of tears, and he cried aloud.

If their remarks had fallen on an unheeding ear, there were always young men enough, in a different rank from her own, who were willing to compliment the pretty weaver's daughter as they met her in the streets.

Besides, trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.

So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father's abuse; the rank to which she firmly believed her lost aunt Esther had arrived.

and now her sense of the duties of a hostess were almost too much for her. She made haste home, and lighted the unwilling fire, borrowing a pair of bellows to make it burn the faster.

For herself she was always patient; she let the coals take their time.

Then she put on her pattens, and went to fill her kettle at the pump in the next court, and on the way she borrowed a cup; of odd saucers she had plenty, serving as plates when occasion required.

whose judgment can tell what is best to be done; and who is so convinced of what is "wisest, best," that in consideration of the end, all difficulties in the way diminish.

People admire talent, and talk about their admiration. But they value common sense without talking about it, and often without knowing it.

So Mary and Margaret grew in love one toward the other; and Mary told many of her feelings in a way she had never done before to any one. Most of her foibles also were made known to Margaret, but not all.

She awoke, and perfectly understanding the thing, she said, "For shame of yourself, Jem! What would Mary say?"

Lightly said, lightly answered.

"She'd nobbut say, practice makes perfect." And they both laughed. But the words Margaret had said rankled in Jem's mind. Would Mary care? Would she care in the very least? They seemed to call for an answer by night, and by day;

I would not tell her no more than I would you, Mary; so she says, 'Well, dear, you must mind this, when you're going to fret and be low about any thing, "

An anxious mind is never a holy mind.

"' Oh, Mary, I have so often checked my grumbling sin' [9] she said that."

There was Faith such as the rich can never imagine on earth; there was "Love strong as death;" and self-denial, among rude, coarse men, akin to that of Sir Philip Sidney's most glorious deed.

The vices of the poor sometimes astound us here; but when the secrets of all hearts shall be made known, their virtues will astound us in far greater degree.

Of this I am certain.

They are the mysterious problem of life to more than him. He wondered if any in all the hurrying crowd had come from such a house of mourning. He thought they all looked joyous, and he was angry with them.

But he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are even now enduring, resisting, sinking under?

You may be elbowed one instant by the girl desperate in her abandonment, laughing in mad merriment with her outward gesture, while her soul is longing for the rest of the dead, and bringing itself to think of the cold-flowing river as the only mercy …

and yet I think again that surely, in a Christian land, it was not known even so feebly as words could tell it, or the more happy and fortunate would have thronged with their sympathy and their aid.

In many instances the sufferers wept first, and then they cursed.

Their vindictive feelings exhibited themselves in rabid politics.

This disparity between the amount of the earnings of the working classes and the price of their food, occasioned, in more cases than could well be imagined, disease and death.

Whole families went through a gradual starvation. They only wanted a Dante to record their sufferings.

And yet even his words would fall short of the awful truth; they could only present an outline of the tremendous facts of the destitution that surrounded thousands upon thousands in the terrible years 1839, 1840, and 1841.

never likely, one would have thought, to become a heroine on her own account. But what she lacked in beauty she tried to make up for by a kind of witty boldness, which gave her what her betters would have called piquancy.

Considerations of modesty or propriety never checked her utterance of a good thing.

She had just talent enough to corrupt others. Her very good-nature was an evil influence. They could not hate one who was so kind; they could not avoid one who was so willing to shield them from scrapes by any exertion of her own;

But what she lacked in beauty she tried to make up for by a kind of witty boldness, which gave her what her betters would have called piquancy. Considerations of modesty or propriety never checked her utterance of a good thing.

She had just talent enough to corrupt others.

Her very good-nature was an evil influence. They could not hate one who was so kind; they could not avoid one who was so willing to shield them from scrapes by any exertion of her own;

The next evening it was a warm, pattering, incessant rain, just the rain to waken up the flowers.

But in Manchester, where, alas! there are no flowers, the rain had only a disheartening and gloomy effect; the streets were wet and dirty, the drippings from the houses were wet and dirty, and the people were wet and dirty.

Indeed, most kept within-doors; and there was an unusual silence of footsteps in the little paved courts.

He would bear it all, he said to himself. And he did bear it, but not meekly; that was too much to expect.

Real meekness of character is called out by experience of kindness.

And few had been kind to him. Yet through it all, with stern determination he refused the assistance his Trades' Union would have given him.

It had not much to give, but with worldly wisdom, thought it better to propitiate an active, useful member, than to help those who were unenergetic, though they had large families to provide for. Not so thought John Barton.

With him need was right.

"Give it to Tom Darbyshire," he said. "He's more claim on it than me, for he's more need of it, with his seven children."

not insensible to the secret pleasure of knowing that he, whom so many admired, had often said he would give any thing for one of her sweet smiles.

Her love for him was a bubble, blown out of vanity; but it looked very real and very bright.

Sally Leadbitter, meanwhile, keenly observed the signs of the times;

will make us see the vanity or the criminality of the bye-gone, and so change the aspect of the coming time, that we look with loathing on the very thing we have most desired.

A few moments may change our character for life, by giving a totally different direction to our aims and energies.

To return to Mary. Her plan had been, as we well know, to marry Mr. Carson, and the occurrence an hour ago was only a preliminary step. True; but it had unveiled her heart to her;

She recalled the events of the night before, and still resolved to adhere to those determinations she had then formed.

But patience seemed a far more difficult virtue this morning.

She hastened down-stairs, and in her earnest sad desire to do right, now took much pains to secure a comfortable though scanty breakfast for her father;

to—she did not know what, but she had hoped he would have come on some excuse, just to see if she hadn't changed her mind. He never came. Then she grew weary and impatient, and her spirits sank.

The persecution of the one lover, and the neglect of the other, oppressed her sorely.

She could not now sit quietly through the evening at her work; or, if she kept, by a strong effort, from pacing up and down the room, she felt as if she must sing to keep off thought while she sewed.

"

Ay, dear; being patient is the hardest work we, any on us, have to do through life, I take it. Waiting is far more difficult than doing.

I've known that about my sight, and many a one has known it in watching the sick; but it's one of God's lessons we all must learn, one way or another." After a pause. "Have ye been to see his mother of late?"

"Some has one kind o' gifts, and some another. Many's the time when I could see, that I longed for your beauty, Mary!

We're like childer, ever wanting what we han not got.

But now I must say just one more word. Remember, if you're sore pressed for money, we shall take it very unkind if you donnot let us know. Good bye to ye."

Margaret's words came into Mary's mind.

Every one has their time and kind of waiting.

"If I but knew he were safe, and not drowned!" spoke Alice. "If I but knew he were drowned, I would ask grace to say, Thy will be done. It's the waiting."

She must speak; to that she was soul-compelled; but to whom? She dreaded addressing any of her former female acquaintance, even supposing they had sense, or spirit, or interest enough to undertake her mission.

To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in her day of need?

Hers is the leper-sin, and all stand aloof dreading to be counted unclean.

To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in her day of need?

Hers is the leper-sin, and all stand aloof dreading to be counted unclean.

In her wild night wanderings, she had noted the haunts and habits of many a one who little thought of a watcher in the poor forsaken woman.

She laughed strangely. "And do you think one sunk so low as I am has a home?

Decent, good people have homes. We have none.

No, if you want me, come at night, and look at the corners of the streets about here. The colder, the bleaker, the more stormy the night, the more certain you will be to find me.

The mind became soured and morose, and lost much of its equipoise. It was no longer elastic, as in the days of youth, or in times of comparative happiness; it ceased to hope.

And it is hard to live on when one can no longer hope.

The same state of feeling which John Barton entertained, if belonging to one who had had leisure to think of such things, and physicians to give names to them, would have been called monomania; so haunting, so incessant, were the thoughts that pressed upon him.

all around you telling (though they use no words or language), by their looks and feeble actions, that they are suffering and sinking under the pressure of want.

Would you not be glad to forget life, and its burdens? And opium gives forgetfulness for a time.

It is true they who thus purchase it pay dearly for their oblivion; but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle? Poor wretches! They pay a heavy price.

But what availed his sympathy?

No education had given him wisdom; and without wisdom, even love, with all its effects, too often works but harm.

He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a widely-erring judgment.

John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist, all that is commonly called wild and visionary.

Ay! but being visionary is something. It shows a soul, a being not altogether sensual; a creature who looks forward for others, if not for himself.

And with all his weakness he had a sort of practical power, which made him useful to the bodies of men to whom he belonged.

that his class, his order, was what he stood by, not the rights of his own paltry self.

For even in great and noble men, as soon as self comes into prominent existence, it becomes a mean and paltry thing.

A little time before this, there had come one of those occasions for deliberation among the employed, which deeply interested John Barton; and the discussions concerning which had caused his frequent absence from home of late.

It was clearly their interest to buy cotton as cheaply, and to beat down wages as low as possible. And in the long run the interests of the workmen would have been thereby benefited.

Distrust each other as they may, the employers and the employed must rise or fall together.

There may be some difference as to chronology, none as to fact.

No! they would fold their hands, and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined to let the employers know their power, by refusing to work.

So class distrusted class, and their want of mutual confidence wrought sorrow to both.

The masters would not be bullied, and compelled to reveal why they felt it wisest and best to offer only such low wages; they would not be made to tell that they were even sacrificing capital to obtain a decisive victory over the continental manufacturers.

Of course the feeling between the masters and workmen did not improve under these circumstances.

Combination is an awful power. It is like the equally mighty agency of steam; capable of almost unlimited good or evil.

But to obtain a blessing on its labours, it must work under the direction of a high and intelligent will; incapable of being misled by passion, or excitement. The will of the operatives had not been guided to the calmness of wisdom.

They forgot that the strike was in this instance the consequence of want and need, suffered unjustly, as the endurers believed; for, however insane, and without ground of reason, such was their belief, and such was the cause of their violence.

It is a great truth, that you cannot extinguish violence by violence. You may put it down for a time; but while you are crowing over your imaginary success, see if it does not return with seven devils worse than its former self!

No one thought of treating the workmen as brethren and friends, and openly, clearly, as appealing to reasonable men, stating the exact and full circumstances which led the masters to think it was the wise policy of the time to make sacrifices themselves, and to …

… had his taste educated to love reading, falls devouringly upon books after a long abstinence, so these poor fellows, whose tastes had been left to educate themselves into a liking for tobacco, beer, and similar gratifications, gleamed up at the proposal of the London delegate.

Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future.

They were now ready to listen to him with approbation. He felt it; and rising like a great orator, with his right arm outstretched, his left in the breast of his waistcoat, he began to declaim, with a forced theatrical voice.

and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi' hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage?

We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes, and so that we get 'em we'd not quarrel wi' what they're made on.

We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm;

One thing I do wish though, and I have often wished it when out alone on the deep sea, when even the most thoughtless can't choose but think on th' past and th' future; and that is, that I'd never grieved her.

Oh Mary! many a hasty word comes sorely back on the heart, when one thinks one shall never see the person whom one has grieved again!

"

"And I don't like to have to speak so, Amy, for I love him dearly.

He is a good, kind brother, but I do think him vain, and I think he hardly knows the misery, the crimes, to which indulged vanity may lead him.

"

Nobody thought of going to bed. It seemed strange to Sophy to hear nurse summoned from her mother's side to supper, in the middle of the night, and still stranger that she could go.

The necessity of eating and drinking seemed out of place in the house of death.

When night was passing into morning, the dining-room door opened, and two persons' steps were heard along the hall. The superintendent was leaving at last. Mr.

To avenge his child's death, the old man lived on; with the single purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge?

Are we worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto?

Oh! Orestes! you would have made a very tolerable Christian of the nineteenth century!

And that was the necessity for exertion on her part which this discovery enforced.

Oh! I do think that the necessity for exertion, for some kind of action (bodily or mental) in time of distress, is a most infinite blessing, although the first efforts at such seasons are painful.

Something to be done implies that there is yet hope of some good thing to be accomplished, or some additional evil that may be avoided; and by degrees the hope absorbs much of the sorrow.

Oh! I do think that the necessity for exertion, for some kind of action (bodily or mental) in time of distress, is a most infinite blessing, although the first efforts at such seasons are painful.

Something to be done implies that there is yet hope of some good thing to be accomplished, or some additional evil that may be avoided; and by degrees the hope absorbs much of the sorrow.

It is the woes that cannot in any earthly way be escaped that admit least earthly comforting.

Something to be done implies that there is yet hope of some good thing to be accomplished, or some additional evil that may be avoided; and by degrees the hope absorbs much of the sorrow.

It is the woes that cannot in any earthly way be escaped that admit least earthly comforting.

Of all trite, worn-out, hollow mockeries of comfort that were ever uttered by people who will not take the trouble of sympathising with others, the one I dislike the most is the exhortation not to grieve over an event, "for it cannot be helped."

Do you think if I could help it, I would sit still with folded hands, content to mourn? Do you not believe that as long as hope remained I would be up and doing? I mourn because what has occurred cannot be helped.

The reason you give me for not grieving, is the very and sole reason of my grief.

Give me nobler and higher reasons for enduring meekly what my Father sees fit to send, and I will try earnestly and faithfully to be patient; but mock me not, or any other mourner, with the speech, "Do not grieve, for it cannot be helped.

And you must remember, too, that never was so young a girl so friendless, or so penniless, as Mary was at this time.

But the lion accompanied Una through the wilderness and the danger; and so will a high, resolved purpose of right-doing ever guard and accompany the helpless.

It struck two; deep, mirk, night.

"Yes, Margaret, you have a right to judge; you cannot help it; only in your judgment remember mercy, as the Bible says.

You, who have been always good, cannot tell how easy it is at first to go a little wrong, and then how hard it is to go back.

Oh! I little thought when I was first pleased with Mr. Carson's speeches, how it would all end; perhaps in the death of him I love better than life."

… alone I may see, while yet I tarry here, the sweet looks of my dead child),—what if, in the horrors of her dreams, her brain should go still more astray, and she should waken crazy with her visions, and the terrible reality that begot them?

How much worse is anticipation sometimes than reality!

How Mary dreaded that night, and how calmly it passed by! Even more so than if Mary had not had such claims upon her care!

it was evident that the stunning effect of the subpœna, which had affected her so much last night in her weak, worn-out state, had passed away. Mary offered no opposition when she indicated by languid gesture and action that she wished to rise.

A sleepless bed is a haunted place.

When she was dressed with Mary's help, she stood by Alice for a minute or two, looking at the slumberer.

irrepressibly so, indeed, for in spite of her jerking efforts to keep awake she sank away to the bottom of the boat, and there lay couched on a rough heap of sails, rope, and tackle of various kinds.

The measured beat of the waters against the sides of the boat, and the musical boom of the more distant waves, were more lulling than silence, and she slept sound.

Once she opened her eyes heavily, and dimly saw the old gray, rough boatman (who had stood out the most obstinately for the full fare) covering her with his thick pea-jacket.

What's the use of watching? A watched pot never boils, and I see you are after watching that weather-cock. Why now, I try never to look at it, else I could do nought else.

My heart many a time goes sick when the wind rises, but I turn away and work away, and try never to think on the wind, but on what I ha' getten to do.

"

She was so still he thought she had fallen asleep, and he stepped forward and touched her. She started up in an instant, and followed him with a kind of rushing rapid motion into the court, into the witness-box.

And amid all that sea of faces, misty and swimming before her eyes, she saw but two clear bright spots, distinct and fixed: the judge, who might have to condemn; and the prisoner, who might have to die.

The mellow sunlight streamed down that high window on her head, and fell on the rich treasure of her golden hair, stuffed away in masses under her little bonnet-cap; and in those warm beams the motes kept dancing up and down.

He could not dwell on any thing but her words, telling of her passionate love; all else was indistinct, nor could he strive to make it otherwise. She loved him.

And Life, now full of tender images, suddenly bright with all exquisite promises, hung on a breath, the slenderest gossamer chance.

He tried to think that the knowledge of her love would soothe him even in his dying hours; but the phantoms of what life with her might be, would obtrude, and made him almost gasp and reel under the uncertainty he was enduring.

"Mary's not bad off for friends where she is," said he. "I call them friends, though a week ago we none of us knew there were such folks in the world.

But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people friends quicker than any thing, I think.

She's like a mother to Mary in her ways; and he bears a good character, as far as I could learn just in that hurry. We're drawing near home, and I've not said my say, Margaret. I want you to look after mother a bit.

"Mother! you know all this while, you know I can never forget any kindness you've ever done for me; and they've been many.

Why should you think I've only room for one love in my heart?

I can love you as dearly as ever, and Mary too, as much as man ever loved woman."

Or you remember them, without striving after it, and without thinking it's your duty to keep recalling them. And so it is with them that are hidden from our sight.

If they've been worthy to be heartily loved while alive, they'll not be forgotten when dead; it's against nature.

And we need no more be upbraiding ourselves for letting in God's rays of light upon our sorrow, and no more be fearful of forgetting them, because their memory is not always haunting and taking up our minds, than you need to trouble yourself about …

And then he repented, and felt as if he had done ill. Then again he felt as if she were the best judge, and knowing all (perhaps more than even he did) might be forming plans which his interference would mar.

One thing was certain! it was a miserable thing to have this awful forbidden ground of discourse; to guess at each other's thoughts, when eyes were averted, and cheeks blanched, and words stood still, arrested in their flow by some casual allusion.

At last a day, fine enough for Mary to travel on, arrived. She had wished to go, but now her courage failed her.

She would watch over him tenderly, as the Innocent should watch over the Guilty; awaiting the gracious seasons, wherein to pour oil and balm into the bitter wounds.

With the untroubled peace which the resolve to endure to the end gives, she approached the house that from habit she still called home, but which possessed the holiness of home no longer.

"Jem!" said she, as they stood at the entrance to the court, close by Job Legh's door, "you must go in there and wait half-an-hour. Not less. If in that time I don't come back, you go your ways to your mother.

"Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son's murder."

There are blasphemous actions as well as blasphemous words: all unloving, cruel deeds are acted blasphemy.

Mr. Carson left the house. And John Barton lay on the ground as one dead.

He shut the book, and thought deeply.

All night long, the Archangel combated with the Demon.

All night long, others watched by the bed of Death. John Barton had revived to fitful intelligence. He spoke at times with even something of his former energy; and in the racy Lancashire dialect he had always used when speaking freely.

When I was a little chap they taught me to read, and then they ne'er gave me no books; only I heard say the Bible was a good book. So when I grew thoughtful, and puzzled, I took to it.

But you'd never believe black was black, or night was night, when you saw all about you acting as if black was white, and night was day.

It's not much I can say for myself in t'other world, God forgive me; but I can say this, I would fain have gone after the Bible rules if I'd seen folk credit it;