This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ...my uncle had hurried home from his counting-room to inform his wife of his suspicions, and to prepare for our reception. A carriage was waiting for us at the wharf, and in less than half an hour after reaching land we were at his hospitable mansion, and enjoying the attentions of his warm-hearted wife. ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ...my uncle had hurried home from his counting-room to inform his wife of his suspicions, and to prepare for our reception. A carriage was waiting for us at the wharf, and in less than half an hour after reaching land we were at his hospitable mansion, and enjoying the attentions of his warm-hearted wife. She was one of those transparent characters whose genial, loving souls are always peeping out of their eyes. I loved her from the first, and during the whole of my stay she made me feel so much at home by her motherly tenderness that for the time I almost forgot my other home beyond the watery waste. The four children of the family--two boys and two girls--combined, in a remarkable degree, the unlikenesses of both parents. They strongly reminded me of a brood of chickens I had seen just before leaving home--hybrids between the ordinary yard-fowl and the guineaMy Uncle's Family. 105 hen--so closely resembling both breeds that it was hard to tell which nature predominated. My cousin Lorenzo, the oldest of the groups was a bright-faced boy, three months my junior in time, but thrice three months my senior in a knowledge of the world and its ways. This was probably the result, not of any special aptitude on his part nor of any special defect on mine, for we seemed to be fair matches for each other, but of one being brought up in a city and the other in the country. For I have noticed that while country-reared boys acquire their knowledge of the world by slow, and sometimes costly degrees, those who live in the city enjoy a sort of floating capital of knowledge that comes to them apparently by contact. Lorenzo strongly resembled his father in manly independence and quiet daring, yet he partook quite as largely, in proportion, of his mother's...
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