Rattlin the Reefer

Rattlin the Reefer

In the volume I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly to the truththis will be bon fide an autobiographyand, as the public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of it, will be the greatest novelty yet offered to its fastidiousness. As many of the events which will be my province to record, are singular and even startling, I may be permitted to sport a little moral philosophy, drawn from the kennel in Lower Thames Street, which may teach my readers to hesitate ere they condemn as invention mere matters of absolute, though uncommon fact. Let us stand with that old gentleman under the porch of Saint Magnuss Church, for the rain is thrashing the streets till they actually look white, and the kennel before us is swelled into a formidable, and hardly fordable brook. That kennel is the stream of lifeand a dirty and a weary one it is, if we may judge by the old gentlemans looks. All is hurried into that common sewer, the grave! What bubbles float down it! Everything that is fairly in the middle of the stream seems to sail with it, steadily and triumphantlyand many a filthy fragment enters the sewer with a pomp and dignity not unlike the funeral obsequies of a great lord. But my business is with that little chip; by some means it has been thrust out of the principal current, and, now that it is out, see what pranks it is playing. How erratic are its motions!into what strange holes and corners it is thrust! The same phenomenon will happen in life. Once start a being out of the usual course of existence, and many and strange will be his adventures ere he once more be allowed to regain the common stream, and be permitted to float down, in silent tranquillity, to the grave common to all. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 21578
Author: Howard, Edward
Release Date: May 22, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Marryat, Frederick, 1792-1848