The History of St. Giles and St. James (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. 1852 Excerpt: ...every corner of the house a cosy nook for swan-down Christianity. Then everything was so radiantly clean, it seemed no part of this dusty earth, but fresh from some brighter planet. Had Doctor Gilead been arrayed from head to heel in episcopal lawn, there was nought within the Hall of Lazarus to smudge it. The very flies, from habit, would have respected it. Saints and hermits would not have dared to sit upon the chair-covers. It was Saturday, about five in the afternoon. Doctor Gilead sat in his library, garnished about with his wife and three daughters. The doctor was black and glossy as a newly-bathed raven. As for the ladies, they might have been taken as specimens of Brobdignag china: so creamy and motionless were their faces, so prim and well-defined their flowing gowns. Not a word was said; not a sound was heard, save that the doctor's watch ticked feverishly in his fob, and a big, blundering blue fly kept bouncing and battering its head against a window-pane, doubtless puzzled to know why, with all so very clear before it, it could not get out. And now the doctor looked reproachfully at the noisy insect; and now subsided to his customary meekness. Once or twice, he strangled a sigh at his very lips. Haply--but who shall sound the depths of man's silent soul?--haply he thought of the turbot macerating in the kettle, haply of the haunch scorching on the spit. Say what we will, it tries the spirit of man, to think serenely of his boiled and roast, and of the late-coming guest perilling them both. Doctor Gilead breathed heavily; then, taking his watch from his fob, he said with a smile of ghastly resignation, "It's getting rather late." And what said the doctor's wife? Why precisely what every married daughter of Eve would say. She, in the nat...