Book Description:
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 THIRD. ' Since Nero scorn'd not The publick Theatre, we in private may Disport ourselves.' Massinger's Roman Actor. ' Hurrah for the Bonnets of Blue!' Scotch Baliad. A little before Christmas, in 1780 remember, patient reader, this is the close of the year in which I have already detain'd you through the ninth and tenth Chapters, my father made a halt at Oxford, on his road to Wales, and took me with him from Christehurch to Wynnstay, that seat of festive opulence which so much delighted me; for, young as I was, the kindness and favouritism with which I was received there, independent of the courtesies shown to my father, were so mark'd, and unaffected, that I cannot recur to them, at this late day, without feelings of very grateful retrospection. But this my journey thither, for the third, and (as it happen'd) last time, was a mixture of the allegro and pensieroso. My joyous anticipation of the Wynnstay gaieties would have blazed out, upon the road, if they had not heen considerably damp'd by the constrain'd manner of my father ; who had not forgotten certain of my nights which had displeased him, during my visit to town, in the preceeding long vacation. He did not, it is true, expect me to elucidate his own definition of an ' Agreeable Companion in a Postchaise,' which is, a person who sleeps all the way, and defrays half the expenses ; but I was in disgrace with him, and we were, therefore, far from being pleasant fellow travellers. We talk'd little, and sometimes journey'd several miles without speaking ; but, whenever we changed horses, the bustle of procuring the relais, the crack of the postboys' whips, and the rapid whirl of the carriage, from the door of the Inn, gave a momentary stimulus to the spirits of my Sire ; and as constantly as we be...
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