About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work.
Author: Stanley John Weyman
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 0484735128
Category:
Page: 458
View: 332
Excerpt from Shrewsbury; A Romance: With Illus, by Claude a Shepperson Suffice it, then, that I was born near Bishop's Stortford on the borders of Hertfordshire, in that year so truly called the Annus Mirabilis, 1666; my father, a small yeoman, my mother of no better stock, she being the daughter of a poor parson in that neighbourhood. In such a station she was not likely to boast much learning, yet she could read, and having served two years in a great man's still-room, had acquired notions of gentility that went as ill with her station as they were little calculated to increase her contentment. Our house lay not far from the' high road between Ware and Bishop's Stortford, which furnished us with frequent opportunities of view ing the King and Court, who were in the habit of passing that way two or three times in the year to Newmarket to see the horse-races. On these occasions we crowded with our neighbours to the side of the road, and gaped on the pageant, which lacked no show of ladies, both masked and unmasked, and gentlemen in all kinds of fripperies, and mettlesome horses that hit the taste of some among us better than either. On these excursions my mother was ever the foremost and the most ready; yet it was not long before I learned to beware of her hand for days after, and expect none but gloomy looks and fretfnl answers; while my father dared no more spell duty for as much as a week, than refuse the King's taxes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.