The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving

Author:Washington Irving
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.) -- Fiction, Americans -- England -- History -- 19th century, 1783-1859 -- Travel -- England, Fantasy fiction, Washington, Irving, American, Catskill Mountains Region (N.Y.) -- Fiction, England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2018-02-12T06:10:18+00:00

Christmas Eve

Saint Fran­cis and Saint Benedight

Blesse this house from wicked wight;

From the night-mare and the gob­lin,

That is hight good fel­low Robin;

Keep it from all evil spir­its,

Fairies, weezels, rats, and fer­rets:

From cur­few time

To the next prime.

Cartwright

It was a bril­liant moon­light night, but ex­tremely cold; our chaise whirled rapidly over the frozen ground; the post­boy smacked his whip in­ces­santly, and a part of the time his horses were on a gal­lop. “He knows where he is go­ing,” said my com­pan­ion, laugh­ing, “and is ea­ger to ar­rive in time for some of the mer­ri­ment and good cheer of the ser­vants’ hall. My fa­ther, you must know, is a big­oted devo­tee of the old school, and prides him­self upon keep­ing up some­thing of old English hos­pi­tal­ity. He is a tol­er­a­ble spec­i­men of what you will rarely meet with nowa­days in its pu­rity, the old English coun­try gen­tle­man; for our men of for­tune spend so much of their time in town, and fash­ion is car­ried so much into the coun­try, that the strong rich pe­cu­liar­i­ties of an­cient ru­ral life are al­most pol­ished away. My fa­ther, how­ever, from early years, took hon­est Peacham28 for his text­book, in­stead of Ch­ester­field; he de­ter­mined in his own mind that there was no con­di­tion more truly hon­or­able and en­vi­able than that of a coun­try gen­tle­man on his pa­ter­nal lands, and there­fore passes the whole of his time on his es­tate. He is a stren­u­ous ad­vo­cate for the re­vival of the old ru­ral games and hol­i­day ob­ser­vances, and is deeply read in the writ­ers, an­cient and mod­ern, who have treated on the sub­ject. In­deed, his fa­vorite range of read­ing is among the au­thors who flour­ished at least two cen­turies since, who, he in­sists, wrote and thought more like true English­men than any of their suc­ces­sors. He even re­grets some­times that he had not been born a few cen­turies ear­lier, when Eng­land was it­self and had its pe­cu­liar man­ners and cus­toms. As he lives at some dis­tance from the main road, in rather a lonely part of the coun­try, with­out any ri­val gen­try near him, he has that most en­vi­able of all bless­ings to an English­man—an op­por­tu­nity of in­dulging the bent of his own hu­mor with­out mo­lesta­tion. Be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the old­est fam­ily in the neigh­bor­hood, and a great part of the peas­antry be­ing his ten­ants, he is much looked up to, and in gen­eral is known sim­ply by the ap­pel­la­tion of ‘The Squire’—a ti­tle which has been ac­corded to the head of the fam­ily since time im­memo­rial. I think it best to give you these hints about my wor­thy old fa­ther, to pre­pare you for any ec­cen­tric­i­ties that might oth­er­wise ap­pear ab­surd.”

We had passed for some time along the wall of a park, and at length the chaise stopped at the gate. It was in a heavy, mag­nif­i­cent old style, of iron bars fan­ci­fully wrought at top into flour­ishes and flow­ers. The huge square col­umns that sup­ported the gate were sur­mounted by the fam­ily crest. Close ad­join­ing was the porter’s lodge, shel­tered un­der dark fir trees and al­most buried in shrub­bery.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.