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Nearly Lost but Dearly Won By: Theodore P. Wilson |
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by the Reverend T.P. Wilson, M.A.
Wilson wrote several books around the end of the 1880s. He had won a
prize some ten years previously for the best book assessed by The Band
of Hope, a Society devoted to helping the young never to take up
drinking. This present book gives you the impression that it might well
have been another one written to be entered into the competition.
Anyway, if it was, it didn't win. It's quite a good story, but I think its trouble is, that it is neither
a book that would appeal directly to teenagers, which one supposes was
its target audience, nor yet to young adults. There is nothing like the
amount of action we saw in "Frank Oldfield." it is rather a short book, but one of its crowning glories is the set of
ten line drawings by "MDH". These are really superb, full of action and
life, particularly where there are children or horses. I wish all
childrens' books were as well illustrated. NH
NEARLY LOST BUT DEARLY WON BY THE REVEREND T.P. WILSON, M.A. CHAPTER ONE. ESAU TANKARDEW. Certainly, Mr Tankardew was not a pattern of cleanliness, either in his
house or his person. Someone had said of him sarcastically, "that there
was nothing clean in his house but his towels ;" and there was a great
deal of truth in the remark. He seemed to dwell in an element of
cobwebs; the atmosphere in which he lived, rather than breathed, was
apparently a mixture of fog and dust. Everything he had on was faded
everything that he had about him was faded the only dew that seemed to
visit the jaded looking shrubs in the approach to his dwelling was
mil dew. Dilapidation and dinginess went hand in hand everywhere: the
railings round the house were dilapidated some had lost there points,
others came to an abrupt conclusion a few inches above the stone work
from which they sprang; the steps were dilapidated one of them rocked
as you set your foot upon it, and the others sloped inwards so as to
hold treacherous puddles in wet weather to entrap unwary visitors; the
entrance hall was dilapidated; if ever there had been a pattern to the
paper, it had now retired out of sight and given place to irregular
stains, which looked something like a vast map of a desolate country,
all moors and swamps; the doors were dilapidated, fitting so badly, that
when the front door opened a sympathetic clatter of all the lesser ones
rang through the house; the floors were dilapidated, and afforded ample
convenience for easy egress and ingress to the flourishing colonies of
rats and mice which had established themselves on the premises; and
above all, Mr Tankardew himself was dilapidated in his dress, and in
his whole appearance and habits his very voice was dilapidated, and his
words slipshod and slovenly. And yet Mr Tankardew was a man of education and a gentleman, and you
knew it before you had been five minutes in his company. He was the
owner of the house he lived in, on the outskirts of the small town of
Hopeworth, and also of considerable property in the neighbourhood.
Amongst other possessions, he was the landlord of two houses of some
pretensions, a little out in the country, which were prettily situated
in the midst of shrubberies and orchards. In one of these houses lived
a Mr Rothwell, a gentleman of independent means; in the other a Mrs
Franklin, the widow of an officer, with her daughter Mary, now about
fifteen years of age. Mr Tankardew had settled in his present residence some ten years since.
Why he bought it nobody knew, nor was likely to know; all that people
were sure of was that he had bought it, and pretty cheap too, for it
was not a house likely to attract any one who appreciated comfort or
liveliness; moreover, current report said that it was haunted. Still,
it was for sale, and it passed somehow or other into Mr Tankardew's
hands, and Mr Tankardew's hands and whole person passed into it ; and
here he was now with his one old servant, Molly Gilders, a shade more
dingy and dilapidated than himself... Continue reading book >>
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Fiction |
Literature |
Religion |
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