Beyond the Seas (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. Excerpt: ... me excused, on the ground that I write not for them alone but (as I have so often said) for the cursory crowd as well, and that too much fulness on abstruse points is a thing they will never forgive a poor author. However, to make amends for my shortness now, I will make this undertaking with the learned: if any of them find my arguments too light for their taste, or my information as to my Lord's doctrines to fail in fulness, let them address themselves to me (to the care of the putters forth of this book) with the matter stated on which they require fuller knowledge, and I will expound thereon to them to their heart's content. Note; if they be foreigners, let them address me in the Latin tongue, in a hand as nearly resembling print as they can make it (for my eyes, with age and troubles, arc weakening fast); if they be my countrymen, I pray them to write to me, as I will answer them, in the vulgar English tongue, which is, to my thinking (let the learned say what they will) as noble and lucid an exponent of thought as any language in the world, either dead or living. CHAPTER XVII. Ralph St. Keyne was now, as I have shown, set upon one thing, the preparation of himself for what may perhaps be called the moral conquest of mankind (though he himself in his modesty would have shrunk from such a fine phrase), though as yet he knew not clearly in what domain his campaign for this purpose would lie, but he guessed it might be in our distracted country, so soon as fit occasion should offer for his return thither. As he was thus, as I have said, set upon this great task of reaching the hearts and understandings of his fellow-men, so he left no stone unturned for its accomplishment; and he began to fear that he might be losing his right way too much...