Excerpt from Joan CarisbrokeIr was the last day of a dreary December. The snow ¿akes were falling - falling thickly and ceaselessly from a low canopy of dense, grey clouds. Already fields and lawns and garden-paths were smoothly and whitely covered several inches deep, the high roof of the church, seen against a solemn, purplish background, might have been taken for an Alpine ridge the windward side of the great, square, ivied tower was powdered all over, like the wig of a courtier of the times of the Grand Monarque - buttress, battlement, crocket, and gurgoyle had each its own spot less, ever-swelling cushion, and under the shadow of the hoary walls the dead lay sleeping beneath their newly spread, colourless, cold pall.Mutely the pure ¿akes fell on the neglected hillocks where the paupers slept their last long sleep, heedless alike of penury and toil, silently they gathered on the flowery, grassy mounds that were duly tended by loving, reverent hands, softly they lay on crumbling headstones and mossy tablets and venerable, half-obliterated epitaphs, of a day fast fading into oblivion, and gently they descended on marble slab and sculptured tracery and gilt lettering - the proud In Memoriam of yesterday.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis 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.