The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray Volume 15; With Illustrations by the Author, and with Introductory Notes Setting Forth the History of the Several Works in Twenty-Two Volumes (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. 1891 Excerpt: ... when her nephew made his bow to her. She introduced the young man to these personages as her nephew, the young Croesus out of Virginia, of whom they had heard. She talked about the immensity of his estate, which was as large as Kent; and, as she had read, infinitely more fruitful. She mentioned how her half-sister, Madam Esmond, was called Princess Pocahontas in her own country. She never tired in her praises of mother and son, of their riches and their good qualities. The beau shook the young man by the hand, and was delighted to have the honor to make his acquaintance. The ladies praised him to his aunt so loudly that the modest youth was fain to blush at their compliments. They went away to inform the Tunbridge society of the news of his arrival. The little place was soon buzzing with accounts of the wealth, the good breeding, and the good looks of the Virginian. "You could not have come at a better moment, my dear," the Baroness said to her nephew, as her visitors departed with many courtesies and congees. "Those three individuals have the most active tongues in the Wells. They will trumpet your good qualities in every company where they go. I have introduced you to a hundred people already, and, heaven help me have told all sorts of fibs about the geography of Virginia in order to describe your estate. It is a prodigious large one, but I am afraid I have magnified it. I have filled it with all sorts of wonderful animals, gold mines, spices; I am not sure I have not said diamonds. As for your negroes, I have given your mother armies of them; and, in fact, represented her as a sovereign princess reigning over a magnificent dominion. So she has a magnificent dominion: I cannot tell to a few hundred thousand pounds how much her yearly inco...