Percy Blake (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Gage D'amour. Foil a long time the whole country rang with the exploit of the brave O'Flaherty: he was deified by the mob, courted by the middle- classes, and even visited by the gentry, and feasted at their houses; being himself of gentle blood, though a wild scion of an ancient race. It was actually proposed to get up a subscription to purchase him au ensigncy; but he disdained the idea of acquiring the silver epaulette through the medium of filthy lucre, exclaiming that " he'd win it on the breach, or not at all." For my part, I became wild to " follow to the field," so renowned a leader; and day and night worried my poor brains to accomplish this first and only wish of my heart. Fortune at length, whether for good or evil, seemed disposed to favour my juvenile aspirations; and an opportunity was afforded me, when I least expected it, of escaping from the loathed drudgery of civil life. My brother, who was in business, and evidently on the high road to fortune, having occasion to go to London, offered to take me with him, and procure me a commission; while I was so delighted with the idea, that I never gave my father a moment's feace till he consented to let me go?with the proviso, however, that should limit my ambition to the militia; and thus, as the phrase is, he abandoned the last prop of his declining age, to gratify my boyish propensity. Behold me, then, scarcely in my fifteenth year, about to launch on the great unknown world, in a profession the difficulties of which I had no possible means of ascertaining, and whose splendour alone occupied my thoughts. Great, indeed, was the envy of my schoolfellows at the fame and fortune that awaited me, in that ever- glorious career which first enlists the sympathies of the youthful heart; and greater...