Domestic fiction; Sisters -- Fiction; Women -- England -- Fiction
The Chief Constable was not the only individual enlisted by Mr.
Critchlow in the service of his friend's fame. Mr. Critchlow spent
hours in recalling the principal citizens to a due sense of John
Baines's past greatness. He was determined that his treasured toy
should vanish underground with due pomp, and he left nothing undone to
that end. He went over to Hanbridge on the still wonderful horse-car,
and saw the editor-proprietor of the Staffordshire Signal (then a
two-penny weekly with no thought of Football editions), and on the very
day of the funeral the Signal came out with a long and eloquent
biography of John Baines. This biography, giving details of his public
life, definitely restored him to his legitimate position in the civic
memory as an ex-chief bailiff, an ex-chairman of the Burial Board, and
of the Five Towns Association for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge,
and also as a "prime mover" in the local Turnpike Act, in the
negotiations for the new Town Hall, and in the Corinthian facade of the
Wesleyan Chapel; it narrated the anecdote of his courageous speech from
the portico of the Shambles during the riots of 1848, and it did not
omit a eulogy of his steady adherence to the wise old English maxims of
commerce and his avoidance of dangerous modern methods. Even in the
sixties the modern had reared its shameless head. The panegyric closed
with an appreciation of the dead man's fortitude in the terrible
affliction with which a divine providence had seen fit to try him; and
finally the Signal uttered its absolute conviction that his native town
would raise a cenotaph to his honour. Mr. Critchlow, being unfamiliar
with the word "cenotaph," consulted Worcester's Dictionary, and when he
found that it meant "a sepulchral monument to one who is buried
elsewhere," he was as pleased with the Signal's language as with the
idea, and decided that a cenotaph should come to pass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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