Tess of the D'Urbervilles; A Pure Woman Faithfully Prsented Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... EXPLANA TOR Y NOTE The main portion of the following story appeared --with slight modifications -- in the Graphic newspaper; other chapters, more especially addressed to adult readers, in the Fortnightly Review and the National Observer, as episodic sketches. My thanks are tendered to the editors and proprietors of those periodicals for enabling me now to piece the trunk and limbs of the novel together, and print it complete, as originally written two years ago. I will just add that the story is sent out in all sincerity of purpose, as representing on the whole a true sequence of things; and I would ask any too genteel reader who cannot endure to have said what everybody thinks and feels, to remember a well-worn sentence of St. Jerome's: If an offence come out of the truth, better is it that the offence come than that the truth be concealed. T. H. November, 1891. PHASE THE FIRST THE MAIDEN I o N an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He .occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune. 'Good night t'ye, ' said the man with the basket. 'Good night, Sir John, ' said the parson. The pedestrian, after another pace or two, halted, and turne