Page:James Thomason (Temple).djvu/104

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96
JAMES THOMASON

equivalent to ministration, have won affectionate veneration from the people among whom they moved and had their being. These ways are calculated to evoke enthusiasm in various degrees; but they never were quite the ways of Thomason, nor were they akin to his natural temperament. His manner was the same with Natives as with his own countrymen; suave, bland, courteous, calm, somewhat undemonstrative and reserved. His fame among the people must have been great, and the better informed classes knew him to be their steadfast friend. Individual Natives, with lasting gratitude, looked upon him, in their own phrase, as the embodiment of benignity and justice. All nationalities were aware of his ceaseless and philanthropic efforts for the general welfare. But the Natives in the mass hardly had a vivid perception of him as a living personality, around which their regards could cluster, towards which their sensibilities could be drawn. They probably regarded him rather as a benevolent power placed up aloft to watch over the fortunes of the country. Nevertheless, beneath this placid exterior there glowed within him, like vestal fire pure and perpetual, a zeal for the welfare of the Native population. Some rulers have been more or less distracted by political anxieties, by grave emergencies, by events absorbing all available stores of energy; but fortunately he had time uninterrupted and leisure unbroken for cares and avocations purely civil. He was able to think daily from morn to eve on what could or should be done for improving and