Charles Reade

A Tale of the Middle Ages

The Cloister and the Hearth

Excerpt from Hard Cash: A Matter-of-Fact Romance

The lady was Mrs. Dodd her occasional visitor was her hus band; her friends were her son Edward, aged twenty, and her daughter Julia, nineteen, the fruit of a misalliance.

A Matter-Of-Fact Romance (Classic Reprint)

Hard Cash 

Excerpt from It Is Never to Late to Mend George Fielding cultivated a small farm in Berkshire. This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of the huge percentage it offered them. But now, I grieve to say, a farmer must be as sharp as his neighbors, or like his neighbors he will break. What do I say? There are soils and situations where, in spite of intelligence and sobriety, he is almost sure to break; just as there are shops where the lively, the severe, the industrious, the lazy, are fractured alike. This last fact I make mine by perambulating a certain great street every three months, and observing how name succeeds to name as wave to wave. Readers hardened by the Times will not perhaps go so far as to weep over a body of traders for being reduced to the average condition of all other traders. But the individual trader, who fights for existence against unfair odds, is to be pitied whether his shop has plate glass or a barn door to it; and he is the more to be pitied when he is sober, intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky. George Fielding was all these, who, a few years ago, assisted by his brother William, tilled "The Grove" - as nasty a little farm as any in Berkshire. Discontented as he was, the expression hereinbefore written would have seemed profane to young Fielding, for a farmer's farm and a sailor's ship have always something sacred in the sufferer's eyes, though one sends one to jail, and the other the other to Jones. It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor sour land. George's father had one hundred acres grass with it, but this had been separated six years ago. There was not a tree, nor even an old stump to show for this word "Grove." But in the country oral tradition still flourishes. There had been trees in "The Grove," only the title had outlived the timber a few centuries. On the morning of our tale George Fielding might have been seen near his own homestead, conversing with the Honorable Frank Winchester. This gentleman was a character that will be common some day, but was nearly unique at the date of our story. Ho had not an extraordinary intellect, but he had great natural gayety, and under that he had enormous good sense; his good sense was really brilliant, he had a sort of universal healthy mind that I can't understand how people get. He was deeply in love with a lady who returned his passion, but she was hopelessly out of his reach, because he had not much money or expectations; instead of sitting down railing, or sauntering about whining, what did me the Honorable Frank Winchester? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

It Is Never to Late to Mend (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Griffith Gaunt, Or Jealousy (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Works of Charles Reade, Vol. 2: Illustrated With One Hundred and Twelve Full-Page Wood Engravings, Hard Cash, Love Me Little, Love Me Long "Hard Cash," like "The Cloister and the Hearth," is a matter-of-fact romance; that is, a fiction built on truths; and these truths have been gathered by long, severe, systematic labor, from a multitude of volumes, pamphlets, journals, reports, blue-books, manuscript narratives, letters, and living people, whom I have sought out, examined, and cross-examined to get at the truth on each main topic I have striven to handle. The madhouse scenes have been picked out by certain disinterested gentlemen who keep private asylums, and periodicals to puff them; and have been met with bold denials of public facts and with timid personalities, and a little easy cant about sensation novelists; but in reality those passages have been written on the same system as the nautical, legal, and other scenes: the best evidence has been ransacked; and a large portion of this evidence I shall be happy to show at my house to any brother writer who is disinterested, and really cares enough for truth and humanity to walk or ride a mile in pursuit of them. Sir - When a writer of sensation romances makes a heroine push a superfluous husband into a well, or set a house on fire in order to get rid of disagreeable testimony, we smile over the highly seasoned dish, but do not think it necessary to apply the warning to ourselves, and for the future avoid sitting on the edge of a draw-well, or having any but fire-proof libraries. But when we read, as in the novel "Very Hard Cash," now publishing in All the Year Round, that any man may, at any moment, be consigned to a fate which to a sane man would be worse than death, and that not by the single act of any of our Lady Audleys, or other interesting criminals, but as part of a regular organized system, in all compliance with the laws of the land - when we read this, a thrill of terror goes through the public mind. If what Mr. Charles Reade says be possible, who is safe? Allow me, as one thoroughly conversant with the working of the law of lunacy, to reassure the minds of your readers by informing them that it is not possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Charles Reade

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