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Read Ebook: Peter Prim's Profitable Present To the little misses and masters of the United States by Unknown
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Ebook has 24 lines and 4250 words, and 1 pages
PART ONE
I I AM BORN 3
II BEAR LAWN 14
V I GO TO SCHOOL 55
VI CHEESE, LUMPS, CREWJOE, THE SCARLET WOMAN AND THE GREAT GOD BENAMUCKEE 73
X OLD LETTERS 120
XX DIARY 243
PART TWO
XXX CARDBOARD 356
XL END OF THREE VISIONS: NAPOLEON'S 420
XLI END OF THREE VISIONS: MINE 424
XLII TWIN DEATHBEDS 427
XLIV CHRISTMAS NIGHT 434
XLV WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID 439
PART ONE
I was born at Tawborough on March the Second, 1848.
It seems to have been a great year in the history books. Fires of revolution sweeping over Europe; half the capitals aflame. From Prague to Palermo, from Paris to Pesth, the peoples rising against their rulers. Wars and rumours of wars; civil strife everywhere. Radicals in Prussia, revolutionaries in Italy, rebels in Austria, republicans in France. Even in old England we had our chartists.
All such troubles failed to touch Tawborough. What did she know of it all, or care if she knew? She was a good old peaceful English country town, with her own day's work to do. The great world might go its way for all she cared--a wild and noisy way it seemed. She would go hers.
Not that Tawborough had always been without a say in England's affairs. She had indeed a long and honourable history. At the dawn of time there was a settlement in the marshes where the little stream of Yeo empties itself into the Taw: a primitive village of wattled huts, known to the Britons as Artavia. The Phoenicians record the name for us, and describe the place as a great mart for their commerce. Here the tin of the western mines was bartered against the rich products of the East: camphire and calamus, spikenard and saffron, fine linen and purple silk. This was the origin of Tawborough market, which is the first in Devonshire to this day. Artavia seems to have been an important seat of the old British worship. The see of the Arch-Druid of the West was near at hand in the Valley of the Rocks at Lynton; from the sacred oak-groves above the Taw on a clear day the Druids could see the fires of the great altar on the Promontory of Hercules--Hartland Point they call it now.
Religion, indeed, in one way or another, seems to have coloured most of the big events of the town's history. The next great fight was between pagans and Christian men.
It was the foeman from the North, threatening the men of Wessex with desolation. One day the terrified townsfolk heard clanging in their ears the great ivory horns of the Northmen, and beheld the blood-red banners sailing up the Taw. One of the standards had upon it a Raven. Then the Englishmen knew their foe for the wild Hubba, King of the Vikings; since the Raven floated always at his mast. The banner was of crimson. It had been worked by the King's three sisters in a noontide and blessed by a strange Icelandic wizard, who endowed the Raven sewn upon it with this magical gift: that she clapped her wings to announce success to the Viking arms, and drooped them to presage failure. Never till this day had the black wings drooped; they drooped this winter's morning. So the English took heart. Odin, Earl of Devon, sallied forth from Kenwith Castle, defeated and slew King Hubba, and captured the magic banner. Then came peace for a while. King Alfred, full of piety, came to Tawborough and set up the great Mound by the Castle. King Athelstan gave the town a charter, and housed himself in a magnificent palace at Umberleigh hard by.
In the wake of the Normans came the religious orders. The Cluniacs built a monastery in the town, the Benedictines another at Pilton just outside. With the monks came light and learning, better lives and milder ways. Tawborough became rich and prosperous. Her trade excelled that of Bristol. Her fair and market were famous "tyme out of mynde." For many years the Taw--that "greate, hugy, mighty, perylous and dredful water"--became a highway for the ships of all nations.
When the New World was found, Englishmen sailed west for glory. Devon led the way, Tawborough men among the foremost, and Tawborough ships did valiant deeds against the Invincible Armada. Those were the great days of England. The townsfolk were all for the new religion. Spaniard and Papist were twin-children of the devil. A murrain on both! They favoured the Puritan party in the civil wars, stood out against the rest of the county, and shouted for the Parliament. Though when the Royalists took the town and gay Prince Charles made it his headquarters, the townspeople were charmed with His Merry Highness; and he, as he told Lord Clarendon, with them. All the courtiers were of the same mind. Lord Clarendon himself declared that Tawborough was "a very fine sweet town as ever I saw," while Lady Fanshawe thought that the cherry pies they made there "with their sort of cream" were the best things that man, or woman, could eat. Gay John Gay, who wrote the Beggar's Opera, showed to the world the fair and likeable character of his native town, which at heart, however, was always of the godly serious-minded quality, Puritan to the core. No town in England gave a warmer welcome to the poor Huguenots, who were flying from King Lewis. One Sunday morning as the townsfolk were coming forth from Church they saw against the sky--not this time the scarlet banners of the North--the brown sails of an old French schooner, bearing up the Taw a band of exiled French Puritans, weary and wretched after their voyage. Tawborough found every one of them a home. In return the grateful Frenchmen taught the natives new ways of cloth-weaving, which sent the fame of Tawborough Bays through all the land.
Later came a change, a new century, the reign of King Coal; and Tawborough, like many another historic Western town, sank into comparative decay. What did the new industrial cities know of such as her, or care if they knew? For her part, she was indifferent to their ignorance or their indifference alike. She was a good old English country town with her own day's work to do. Troubles, invasions, vicissitudes had assailed her before. New blood, Saxon, Danish, Norman, Huguenot had coursed through her veins. Her dead had buried their dead. The people pass, the place alone is abiding.... Abiding, yet not eternal; for there comes the day when the old earth will fall into the sun.... Meanwhile, Town Tawborough had her daily life to live, her townsfolk had theirs.
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