Excerpt from Tales From "Blackwood": Being the Most Famous Series of Stories Ever Published, Especially Selected From That Celebrated English Publication

Old age, I say, when it follows a manhood dishon cured as ours has been. I declare, even now, though fifty years have passed, I can hardly look a young man in the face when I think I am one of those in whose youth happened this degradation of Old England one of those who betrayed the trust handed down to us unstained by our forefathers. What a proud and happy country was this fifty years ago! Free-trade had been working for more than a quarter of a century, and there seemed to be no end to the riches it was bringing us. London was growing bigger and bigger, you could not build houses fast enough for the rich people who wanted to live in them, the merchants who made the money and came from all parts of the world to settle there, and the lawyers and doctors and engineers and others, and tradespeople who got their share out of the profits. The streets reached down to Croydon and Wimbledon, which my father could remember quite country places, and people used to say that Kingston and Reigate would soon be joined to London. We thought we could go on building and multiplying for ever. 'tis true that even then there was no lack of poverty, the people who had no money went on increasing as fast as the rich, and pauperism was already beginning to be a difficulty, but if the rates were high, there was plenty of money to pay them with, and as for What were called the middle classes, there really.

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.