The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of HimFord, Paul Leicester
General
The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him
Ford, Paul Leicester
Labor movement -- Fiction; Love stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Political fiction; Tenement houses -- Fiction
“Because it’s one of those cases of a man of really good intentions,
merely gone wrong. He was a horse-car driver, who got inflammatory
rheumatism by the exposure, and was discharged. He suffered fearful
pain, and saw his family suffer for bread. He grew bitter, and took up
with these wild theories, not having enough original brain force, or
education, to see their folly. He believed firmly in them. So firmly,
that when I tried to reason him out of them many years ago he came to
despise me and ordered me out of his rooms. I had once done him a
service, and felt angered at what I thought ungrateful conduct, so I
made no attempt to keep up the friendliness. He knew yesterday that
dynamite was in the hands of some of those men, and tried to warn me
away. When I refused to go, he threw himself upon me, to protect me
from the explosion. Nothing else saved my life.”
“Peter, will your regiment have to do anything more?”
“I don’t think so. The dynamite has caused a reaction, and has driven
off the soberer part of the mob. The pendulum, when it swings too far,
always swings correspondingly far the other way. I must stay here for a
couple of days, but then if I’m asked, I’ll go back to Newport.”
“Papa and mamma want you, I’m sure,” said Leonore, glancing at the door
again, after an entire forgetfulness.
“Then I shall go,” said Peter, though longing to say something else.
Leonore looked at him and said in the frankest way; “And I want you
too.” That was the way she paid Peter for his forbearance.
Then they all went up on the roof, where in one corner there were pots
of flowers about a little table, over which was spread an awning. Over
that table, too, Jenifer had spread himself. How good that breakfast
was! What a glorious September day it was! How beautiful the view of
the city and the bay was! It was all so thoroughly satisfactory, that
the three nearly missed the “limited.” Of course Peter went to the
station with them, and, short as was the time, he succeeded in
obtaining for one of the party, “all the comic papers,” “the latest
novel,” a small basket of fruit, and a bunch of flowers, not one of
which, with the exception of the latter, the real object of these
attentions wanted in the least.
Just here it is of value to record an interesting scientific discovery
of Leonore’s, because women so rarely have made them. It was, that the
distance from New York to Newport is very much less than the distance
from Newport to New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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