The Uncommercial Traveller and Additional Christmas Stories (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. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... wet upon the dress I wear, was a galleyslave in the North of Italy. He was a political offender, having been concerned in the then last rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. That he would have died in his chains is certain, but for the circumstance that the Englishman happened to visit his prison. It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was below the waters of the harbor. The place of his confinement was an arched underground and underwater gallery, with a grill-gate at the entrance, through which it received such light and air as it got. Its condition was insufferably foul; and a stranger could hardly breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch. At the upper end of this dungeon, and consequently in the worst oosition, as being the farthest removed from light and air, the Englishman first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead, to which he was chained by a heavy chain. His countenance impressed the Englishman as having nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors witb whom he was associated, and he talked with him, and learned how he came to be there. When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the light of day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the jail, why Giovanni Carlavero was put into the worst place. "Because he is particularly recommended," was the stringent answer. "Recommended, that is to say, for death?" "Excuse me; particularly recommended," was again the answer. "He has a bad tumor in his neck, n) doubt occasioned by the hardship of his miserable life. If it continues to be neglected, and he remains where he is, it will kill him." "Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly recommended." The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to his home there;...