The Socialist (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. 1909. Excerpt: ... EPILOGUE UPON the Chelsea Embankment there is a house which, for some months after its new occupants had taken possession of it, was an object of considerable interest to those who passed by. People used to point there, at that time, and tell each other that "That's where the Socialist duke and his actress wife have gone to live. The Duke of Paddington--you know --gave up all his possessions, or nearly all, to be held in trust for the Socialists. They say that he 's half mad, never recovered from being captured by those burglars on the night of the big railway smash on the G.E.R." "Silly Juggins " would be the reply. "Wish / 'd have had it. You would n't see me giving it all up--not half " But for several years the house has been just like any ordinary house and few people point to it or talk about it any more. There have been hundreds of sensations since the duke and his wife settled down in Chelsea. It was about one o'clock in the afternoon. The duke sat in his library in Cheyne Walk. It was a large and comfortable room, surrounded by books, with a picture here and there which the discerning eye would have immediately seen to be of unusual excellence, and, indeed, surprising in such a house as this. A barrister earning his two thousand a year, a successful doctor not quite in the first rank, a county court Judge or a Clerk in the Houses of Parliament would have had just such a room--save only for the three pictures. The duke had changed considerably in appearance during the past five years. The boyishness had departed. The serenity and impassivity of a great prince who had never known anything but a smooth seat high upon Olympus had gone also. The face, now strong with a new kind of strength, showed the marks and gashes of Experience. It was the mask of...