The Autobiography of a Stage-Coachman (Volume 2) (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 II. REVERSE Of FORTUNE. A Wet Season ? Beneficial Farming?A Racing Stud?A Commissary?Petworth?Duke of Somerset?Seymour the Painter?Scene in a Brook?An Alarming Purchase ? Contagion?Pathology ? Naval Captain ? Domestic Calamity?Alterations and Improvements?An Unblushing Villain?Driving Clubs?A Saturnalia?Comparison ?An Attraction?A Final Resolution. I Would willingly draw a veil over this part of my history, for it brings to my memory many circumstances of a sorrowful nature, as well as an accumulation of losses of no ordinary occurrence, though at the risk of being accused of possessing a mock or morbid 42 WET SEASON. sensibility; but as it is necessary to connect my former life with the character I have assumed in the title-page, I shall proceed, however reluctantly, to give it a place in this narrative. Some of my readers will be able to call to mind the disastrous year of 1816, more particularly those engaged in agricultural pursuits. This, it may be remembered, was a very wet season, so much so, that in some parts of the country the harvest was not gathered in till October or November, and I have since heard from undoubted authority that beans were standing in the field at Christmas. Now, I have before related that I had hired a farm, of not very large dimensions, certainly about 120 acres, to which was attached 200 acres of unbroke land, consisting chiefly of forest. The timber, with the expense of cutting it, was the landlord's, but clearing the land of the moors DISASTROUS WEATHER. 43 or roots and getting it in order for cultivation, was the tenant's. Thus, what with grubbing, clearing, chalking, and well manuring, I had laid out half the value of the fee - simple of the land, when my first crop of wheat, which bid fair to remunerate me...