Frederic Austin Ogg - "The Old Northwest, A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1595"

James De Mille - "Lost in the Fog"

Mary W. Shelley - "Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Jan of the Windmill

J >> Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill




"Then don't talk nonsense, my friend, but send me the boy, as soon
as is consistent with your rules and regulations."

The boy was Jan. The man of business gave his consent, but he
implored his "impulsive friend," as he termed the artist, not to
ruin the lad by indulgence, but to keep him in his proper place, and
give him plenty to do. In conformity with this sensible advice,
Jan's first duties in his new home were to clean the painter's boots
when he could find them, shake his velveteen coat when the pockets
were empty, sweep the studio, clean brushes, and go errands. The
artist was an old bachelor, infamously cheated by the rheumatic
widow he had paid to perform the domestic work of his rooms; and
when this afflicted lady gave warning on being asked for hot water
at a later hour than usual, Jan persuaded the artist to enforce her
departure, and took her place. So heavy is the iron weight of
custom--when it takes the form of an elderly and widowed domestic to
a single gentleman--that even Jan's growing influence would not have
secured her dismissal, had not the artist had a particular reason
for wishing the boy's practical talents to be displayed. He
suspected his business friend of distrusting them because of Jan's
artistic genius, and he was proud to boast that he had never known
the comfort of clean rooms and well-cooked food till "the boy
Giotto" became his housekeeper.

The work was play to Jan after his slavery to the hunchback, and on
his happiness in living with a painter it is needless to dwell. For
a week or two, the artist was busy with his "pot boiler," and did
not pay much attention to his new apprentice, and Jan watched
without disturbing him; so that when he offered to set the painter's
palette, his master regarded his success as an inspiration of
genius, rather than as a result of habits of observation.

The painter, though clever and ambitious, and with a very pure and
very elegant taste, was no mighty genius himself. The average of
public taste in art is low enough, but in refusing his "high art"
pictures, and buying his domestic ones, the public was not far
wrong. It must be confessed that he had also a vein of indolence in
his nature, and Jan soon painted most of the pot boilers. Another
of his duties was to sit as a model for the picture. The painter
sketched him again and again, and was never quite satisfied. What
the vision of the windmill had lit up in the depth of his black eyes
could not be recalled to order in the painter's studio.

"I tell you what it is," said the artist one day; "domestic
servitude is taking the poetry out of you. You're getting fat,
Giotto! Understand that from henceforth I forbid you to black boots
or grates, to brush, dust, wash, cook, or whatever disturbs the
peace or hinders the growth of the soul. I must get the widow
back!" and the painter heaved a deep sigh.

But Jan was resolute against the widow. He effected a compromise.
The bandy-legged boy from the Home was taken into the painter's
service, and Jan made himself responsible for his good conduct. He
began by warning his vivacious friend that no freemasonry of common
street-boyhood could hinder the duty he owed to his master of
protecting his property and insuring his comfort, and that he must
sooner tell tales of his friend than have the painter wronged. To
this homily the bandy-legged boy listened with his red cheeks
artificially distended, and occasional murmurs of "Crikey!" but he
took service on these terms, and did Jan no discredit. He was
incorruptibly honest, and when from time to time the street fever
seized him, and he left his work to play at post-leaping outside,
Jan would quietly take his place, and did not betray him. This
kindness invariably drew tears of penitence from the soft-hearted
young vagrant, his freaks grew rarer and rarer, and he finally
became as steady as he was quick-witted.

Jan's duties were now confined to the painting-room, and he soon
became familiar with the studios of other artists, where his
intelligent admiration of paintings which took his fancy, his
modesty, his willing good-nature, and his precocious talent made him
a general favorite.

He went regularly with his master to the early service in the sooty
little church, in the choir of which he was finally enrolled. And
the man of business kept a friendly eye on him, and gave him many a
piece of sensible and very practical advice, to balance the evils of
an artistic career.

With the Bohemianism of artist-life Jan was soon as familiar as with
the Bohemianism of the streets. A certain old-fashioned gravity,
which had always been amongst his characteristics, helped him to
preserve both his dignity and modesty in a manner which gave the man
of business great satisfaction. He might easily have been spoiled,
but he was not. He answered respectfully to about a dozen names
which the vagrant fancy of the young painters bestowed upon him:
Jan-of-all-work--Jan Steen--The Flying Dutchman--Crimson Lake--
Madder Lake--and Miller's Thumb.

But his master called him GIOTTO.

He was very happy, but the old home haunted him, and he longed
bitterly for some news of his foster-father and the schoolmaster.
Whilst the terror of the Cheap Jack was still oppressing him, he had
feared to open any communication with the past, for fear the
wretched couple who were supposed to be his parents should discover
and reclaim him. But as his nerves recovered their tone, as the
horrors of his life as a screever faded into softer tints, as that
boon of poor humanity--forgetfulness--healed his wounds, and he
began to go about the streets without thinking of the hunchback at
every corner, he felt more and more inclined to risk any thing to
know how his old friends fared. There also grew upon him a
conviction that the Cheap Jack's story was false. He knew enough of
art now, and of the value of his own powers, and of the struggle for
livelihoods in London, to see that it had been a very good
speculation to kidnap him. He had serious doubts whether the cart
had been driven round by the mill, and whether Master Lake had
refused to let him be awakened from his sleep, and had said it was,
"All right, and he hoped the lad would do his duty to his good
parents." He remembered, too, the hunchback's words when he lay
speechless from the drugged liquor, and these raised a puzzling
question: Why should "the nobs" recognize him? He had learned what
NOBS are. Spelt without a "k," they are grand people, and what had
grand people to do with Sal's son?

One cannot live without sympathy, and Jan confided the complexities
of his history to the bow-legged boy, and the interest they awakened
in this young gentleman could not but be gratifying to his friend.
He kept one eye closed during the story, as if he saw the whole
thing (TOO clearly) at a glance. He broke the thread of Jan's
narrative by comments which had no obvious bearing on the facts,
and, when it was ended, be gave it as his opinion that certain penny
romances which he named were a joke to it.

"Oh, my! what a pity we can't employ a detective!" he said.
"Whoever knowed a young projidy find his noble relations without a
detective? But never mind, Jan. I knows their ways. I'm up to
their dodges. Fust of all, you makes up your mind deep down in your
inside, and then you says nothing to nobody, but follows it up.
Fol-lows it up!"

"I don't know what to follow," said Jan; "and how can I make up my
mind, when I know nothing?"

"That's just where it is," said his friend; "if you knowed every
thing, wot 'ud be the use of coming the detective tip, and making it
up in your inside?"

The bow-legged boy had made it up in his. He had decided that Jan
was a nobleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a
"jook," as he called him. Jan's active imagination could not quite
resist the influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night
patching together the hunchback's reference to the nobs, and the
incredulous glance of the dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the
half pence, and who was certainly a nob himself. And never did he
leave the house on an errand for the painter that the bow-legged boy
did not burst forth, dish-cloth or dirty boots in hand, from some
unexpected quarter, and adjure him to "look out for the jook."

It was a lovely afternoon when, by his friend's advice, Jan betook
himself to the Park, that the nobs might have that opportunity of
recognizing him which the wide-mouthed woman had feared. He had
washed his face very clean, and brushed his old jacket with
trembling hands, and the bow-legged boy had tied a spotted scarf,
that had been given to himself by a stableman in the mews opposite,
round Jan's neck in what he called "a gent's knot," and the poor
child went to seek his fate with a beating heart.

There were nobs enough. Round and round they came, in all the
monotony of a not very exhilarating amusement. The crowd was so
great that the carriages crawled rather than drove, and Jan could
see the people well. Many a lovely face, set in a soft frame of
delicate hue, caught his artistic eye, and he watched for and
recognized it again. But only a passing glance of languid curiosity
met his eager gaze in return. Not a nob recognized him. But a
policeman looked at him as if he did, and Jan crept away.

When he got home, he found household matters at a standstill, for
the bow-legged boy had been tearfully employed in thinking how Jan
would despise his old friends when the "jook" had acknowledged him,
and he had become a nob. And as Jan set matters to rights, he
resolved that he would not go to the Park again to look for
relatives.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE MILLER'S LETTER.--A NEW POT BOILER SOLD.

Jan was very happy, and the brief dream of the "jook" was over, but
his heart clung to his old home. If love and care, if tenderness in
sickness and teaching in health, are parental qualities, why should
he seek another parent than Master Swift? And had he not a foster-
father to whom he was bound by all those filial ties of up-bringing
from infancy, and of a common life, a common trade, and common joys
and sorrows in the past, such as could bind him to no other father?

He begged a bit of paper from the painter, and wrote a letter to
Master Lake, which would have done more credit to the schoolmaster's
instructions had it been less blotted with tears. He besought his
foster-father not to betray him to the Cheap Jack, and he inquired
tenderly after the schoolmaster and Rufus.

The windmiller was no great scholar, as was shown by his reply: -

"MY DEAR JAN,

"Your welcome letter to hand, and I do hope, my dear Jan, It finds
you well as it leave me at present. I be mortal bad with a cough,
and your friends as searched everywhere, and dragged every place for
you, encluding the plains for twenty mile round and down by the
watermill. That Cheap John be no more your vather nor mine, an e'd
better not show his dirty vace yearabouts after all he stole. but
your poor mother, she was allus took in by him, but she said with
her own mouth, that woman be no more the child's mother, and never
wos a mother, and your mother knowed wots wot, poor zowl! And I'm
glad, my dear Jan, you be doing well in a genteel line, though I did
hope you'd take to the mill; but work is slack, and I'm not wot I
wos, and I do miss Master Swift. He had a stroke after you left,
and confined to the house, so I will conclude, my dear Jan, and go
down and rejoice his heart to hear you be alive. I'd main like to
see you, Jan, my dear, and so for sartin would he and all enquiring
friends; and I am till deth your loving vather, or as good, and I
shan't grudge you if so be you finds a better.

"ABEL LAKE."

"P.S. I'd main like to see your vace again, Jan, my dear."

Jan sobbed so bitterly in reading the postscript that, after vain
attempts to console him by chaff, the bow-legged boy wept from
sympathy.

As to the painter, the whole letter so caught his capricious fancy
that he was for ever questioning Jan as to the details of his life
in that out-of-the-world district where the purest breath of heaven
turned the sails of the windmill, and where the miller took payment
for his work "in kind."

"It must be a wonderful spot, Giotto," said he; "and, if I were
richer, just now we'd go down together, and paint sunsets, and see
your friends." And he walked up and down the studio, revolving his
new caprice, whilst Jan tried to think if any thing were likely to
bring money into his master's pocket before long. Suddenly the
artist seized a sketch that was lying near, and, turning it over,
began one on the other side, questioning Jan as he drew. "What do
old country wives dress in down yonder?--What did you wear in the
mill?--Where does the light come from in a round-house," etc.

Presently he flung it to Jan, and, in answer to the boy's cry of
admiration, growled, "Ay, ay. You must do what YOU can now, for
every after-touch of mine will spoil it. There are hundreds of men,
Giotto, whose sketches are good, and their paintings daubs. But it
is only the sketches of great men that sell. The public likes
canvas and linseed oil for its money, where small reputations are
concerned."

The sketch was of a peep into the round-house. Jan, toll-dish in
hand, with a quaint business gravity, was met by a dame who was just
raising her old back after letting down her sack of gleanings, with
garrulous good-humor in her blinking eyes and withered face.

"Chiaroscuro good," dictated the painter; "execution sketchy;
coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but
pure. You know the scene better than I, so work away, Giotto.
Motto--'Will ye pay or toll it, mother?' Price twenty-five guineas.
Take it to What's-his-name's, and if it sells we'll go to Arcadia,
Giotto mio! The very thought of those breezes is as quinine to my
languid faculties!"

Jan worked hard at the new "pot boiler." The artist painted the
boy's figure himself, and Jan did most of the rest. The bow-legged
boy stooped in a petticoat as a model for the old woman, murmuring
at intervals, "Oh, my, here IS a game!" and, when the painter had
left the room, his grave speculations as to whether the withered
face of the dame were a good likeness of his own chubby cheeks made
Jan laugh till he could hardly hold his palette. It was done at
last, and Jan took it to the picture-dealer's.

The poor boy could hardly keep out of the street where the picture-
dealer lived. One afternoon, as he was hanging about the window,
the business gentleman came by and asked kindly after his welfare.
Jan was half ashamed of the hope with which he told the tale of the
pot boiler.

"And you did some of it?" said the business gentleman, peering in
through his spectacles.

"Only the painting, sir, not the design," said Jan.

"And you want very much to go and see your old home?"

"I do, sir," said Jan.

The business gentleman put his gold spectacles into their case, and
laid his hand on Jan's shoulder. "I am not much of a judge of
genius," said he, "but if you have it, and if you live to make a
fortune by it, remember, my boy, that there is no luxury which money
puts in a man's power like the luxury of helping others." With
which he stepped briskly into the picture-dealer's.

And half an hour afterwards Jan burst into the painter's studio,
crying, "It's sold, sir!"

"Sold!" shouted the painter, in boyish glee. "Hooray! Where's that
rascal Bob? Oh, I know! I sent him for the beer. Giotto, my dear
fellow, I have some shooting-boots somewhere, if you can find them,
and a tourist's knapsack, and" -

But Jan had started to find the boots, and the bow-legged boy, who
had overheard the news as he left the house, rushed up the street,
with his head down, crying, "It's sold! it's sold!" and, as he ran,
he jostled against a man in a white apron, carrying a pot of green
paint to some area railings.

"Wot's sold?" said he, testily, as he recovered his balance.

"You a painter, and don't know?" said the rosy-cheeked boy. "Oh,
my! Wot's sold? Why, I'm sold, and IT'S sold. That walable picter
I wos about to purchase for my mansion in Piccadilly." And,
feigning to burst into a torrent of tears, he darted round the
corner and into the public-house.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

SUNSHINE AFTER STORM.

It had been a wet morning. The heavy rain-clouds rolled over the
plains, hanging on this side above the horizon as if in an instant
they must fall and crush the solid earth, and passing away on that
side in dark, slanting veils of shower; giving to the vast monotony
of the wide field of view that strange interchange of light and
shadow, gleam and gloom, which makes the poetry of the plains.

The rain had passed. The gray mud of the chalk roads dried up into
white dust almost beneath the travellers' feet as they came out
again after temporary shelter; and that brightest, tenderest smile,
with which, on such days, the sun makes evening atonement for his
absence, shone and sparkled, danced and glowed from the windmill to
the water-meads. It reopened the flowers, and drew fragrant answer
from the meadow-sweet and the bay-leaved willow. It made the birds
sing, and the ploughboy whistle, and the old folk toddle into their
gardens to smell the herbs. It cherished silent satisfaction on the
bronze face of Rufus resting on his paws, and lay over Master
Swift's wan brow like the aureole of some austere saint canonized,
just on this side the gates of Paradise.

The simile is not inapt, for the coarse and vigorous features of the
schoolmaster had been refined to that peculiar nobleness which,
perhaps, the sharp tool of suffering--used to its highest ends--can
alone produce. And the smile of patience, like a victor's wreath,
lay now where hot passions and imperious temper had once struggled
and been overcome.

The schoolmaster was paralyzed in his lower limbs, and he sat in a
wheel-chair of his own devising, which he could propel with his own
hands. The agonizing anxiety and suspense which followed Jan's
disappearance had broken him down, and this was the end. Rufus was
still his only housekeeper, but a woman from the village came in to
give him necessary help.

"And it be 'most like waiting upon a angel," said she.

This woman had gone for the night, and Master Swift sat in his
invalid chair in the little porch, where he could touch the
convolvulus bells with his hand, and see what some old pupil of his
had done towards "righting up" the garden. It was an instance of
that hardly earned grace of patience in him that he did not vex
himself to see how sorely the garden suffered by his helplessness.

Not without cause was the evening smile of sunlight reflected on
Master Swift's lips. Between the fingers of a hand lying on his lap
lay Jan's letter to announce that he and the artist were coming to
the cottage, and in intervals of reading and re-reading it the
schoolmaster spouted poetry, and Rufus wagged a sedately sympathetic
tail.

"How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing."

And, waving his hand after the old manner towards the glowing water-
meadows, he went on with increasing emphasis: -

"Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greennesse?"

Perhaps Rufus felt himself bound to answer what had a tone of appeal
in it, or perhaps some strange sympathy, not with Master Swift,
began already to disturb him. He rose and knocked up the hand in
which the letter lay with his long nose, and wandered restlessly
about, and then settled down again with his eyes towards the garden-
gate.

The old man sat still. The evening breeze stirred his white hair,
and he drank in the scents drawn freshly from field and flowers
after the rain, and they were like balm to him. As he sat up, his
voice seemed to recover its old power, and he clasped his hands
together over Jan's letter, and went on: -

"And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only Light!
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fell all night!"

So far Mr. George Herbert; but the poem was never finished, for
Rufus jumped up with a cry, and after standing for a moment with
stiffened limbs, and muffled whines, as if he could not believe his
own glaring yellow eyes, he burst away with tenfold impetus, and
dragged, and tore, and pulled, and all but carried Jan to the
schoolmaster's feet.

And the painter walked away down the garden, and stood looking long
over the water-meadows.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A PAINTER'S EDUCATION.--MASTER CHUTER'S PORT.--A FAREWELL FEAST.--
THE SLEEP OF THE JUST.

"I hope, Jan," said Master Swift, "that the gentleman will overlook
my want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was
to me to see your face again."

"Don't distress me by speaking of it, Mr. Swift," said the painter,
taking his hand, and sitting down beside him in the porch.

As he returned the artist's friendly grasp, the schoolmaster scanned
his face with some of the old sharpness. "Sir," said he, "I beg you
to forgive my freedom. I'm a rough man with a rough tongue, which I
could never teach to speak the feelings of my heart; but I humbly
thank you, sir, for your goodness to this boy."

"It's a very selfish kind of goodness at present, Mr. Swift, and I
fancy some day the obligation of the acquaintance will be on my
side."

"Jan," said the schoolmaster, "take Rufus wi' ye, and run that
errand I telled ye. Rufus'll carry your basket." When they had
gone, he turned earnestly to the painter.

"Sir, I'm speaking to ye out of my ignorance and my anxiety. Ye
want the lad to be a painter. Will he be a great painter? I'm
reminding you of what ye'll know better than me (though not by
yourself, for Jan tells me you're a grand artist), that a man may
have the ambition and the love, and some talent for an art, and yet
be just without that divine spark which the gods withhold. Sir, GOD
forbid that I should undervalue the pure pleasure of even that
little gift; but it's ill for a lad when he has just that much of an
art to keep him from a thrifty trade--and NO MORE."

The painter replied as earnestly as Master Swift had spoken, -

"Jan's estimate of me is weaker than his judgment in art is wont to
be. I speak to understanding ears, and you will know that I have
some true feeling for my art, when I tell you that I know enough to
know that I shall never be a great painter; and it will help you to
put confidence in my assurance that, if he lives, JAN WILL."

Deep emotion kept the old man silent. It was a mixed feeling,--
first, intense pride and pleasure, and then a pang of
disappointment. Had he not been the first to see genius in the
child? Had he not built upon him one more ambition for himself,--
the ambition of training the future great man? And now another had
taken his office.

"You look disappointed," said the artist.

"It is the vile selfishness in me, sir. I had hoped the boy's gifts
would have been what I could have trained at my own hearth. It is
only one more wilful fancy, once more thwarted."

"Selfish I am sure it is not!" said the painter, hotly; "and as to
such benevolence being thwarted as a sort of punishment for I don't
know what, I believe nothing of the kind."

"You don't know, sir," said the old man, firmly. "Not that I'm
speaking of the Lord's general dealings. There are tender, gentle
souls, I know well, who seem only to grow the purer and better for
having the desire of their eyes granted to them; but there are
others whom, for their own good, the Father of all sees needful to
chasten to the end."

"My experience lies in another direction," said the painter,
impetuously. "With what awe do you suppose indolent men, whose easy
years of self-indulgent life have been broken by no real calamity,
look upon others on whose heads blow falls after blow, though their
existence is an hourly struggle towards perfection? There are some
stagnant pools whose peace the Angel never disturbs. Does GOD, who
takes pleasure in perfecting the saint and pardoning the sinner,
forget some of us because we are not worth remembering?"

"He forgets none of us, my dear sir," said the schoolmaster, "and He
draws us to Himself at different times, and by different roads. I
wanted to be the child's teacher, but He has chosen you, and will
bless ye in the work."

The painter drove his hands through his bushy hair, and spoke more
vehemently than before.

"_I_ his teacher, and not you? My good friend, I at least am the
better judge of what makes a painter's education. Is the man who
shows a Giotto how to use this brush, or mix that paint, to be
called his teacher? No, not for teaching him, forsooth, what he
would have learned of anybody, everybody, nobody, somehow, anyhow,
or done just as well without. But the man who taught him to work as
a matter of principle, and apart from inclination (a lesson which
not all geniuses learn); the man who fostered the love of Nature in
him, and the spirit of poetry,--qualities without which
draughtsmanship and painting had better not be; the man who by
example and precept led him to find satisfaction in duty done, and
happiness in simple pleasures and domestic affections; the man who
so fixed these high and pure lessons in his mind, at its most
susceptible age, that the foulest dens of London could not corrupt
him; the man whose beloved and reverenced face would rise up in
judgment against him if he could ever hereafter degrade his art to
be a pander of vice, or a mere trick of the workshop;--this man,
Master Swift, has been the painter's schoolmaster!"