Fireside Stories Told by My Grandmother (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.1882 Excerpt: ... tN a pleasant suburb of London are the ruins of a mansion once celebrated for its grandeur. At. that remote period, the gay, the talented, and the beautiful held their revels within its walls. Its romances of those days are now well nigh forgotten, having slept their natural sleep within the tombs of the departed. Its capacious corridors and stately rooms are still intact, but their walls are moth-eaten and hastening to decay. The extensive grounds around have long worn the aspect of neglect and ruin. The fountains, whose opal sprays once glistened with brilliant hues, are now only memories of the past. The once luxuriant trees are denuded of their branches, and afford but scanty shelter to the birds as they chant a requiem over departed glories. The brook that now languishes in lazy indolence, and the pebbles that lie at its base are only lingering ghosts of the dead and gone who have left their lessons of mortality behind them. The once noble owner of this ancient mansion was one of the pioneers of scientific developments then in their infancy. His hard-earned discoveries brought him no worldly honours but were destined to be ultimately known and treasured as facts; and, after his life's tribute of mental toil, they became preliminary bases for the triumph of hitherto unrecognised natural laws. Pale and careworn, he was ever to be found pressing onward to the perfection of his purposes. No impossible was admitted by him. No lack of industry where logical deductions indicated success. Work was the motto which should have been engraved on his family crest; for, while claiming kinship with the possessors of lordly wealth, he was a true lover of the people, and a denouncer of everything that tended to deprave mankind, or to enslave their noblest instincts. Ri...