| | 241 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The clipper-yacht, or, Moloch, the money-lender!  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | On a mid-summer's evening so long ago as the year 1803, a King's Yacht
was laying at anchor in the river Thames, a cable's length below the tower of
London. The twilight was still early, the glow of sunset yet diffusing a rich
blush over the warm, hazy skies. The confused hum of the vast city rolled
over the water mingled with the deep tones of a bell from some distant tower.
A thin, dreamy-looking mist enveloped like a veil of gauze the thousand masts
that densely crowded the piers, and half-obscured the spires and turrets
scarce less numerous. Above the place where the yacht lay, there stretched,
in majestic arches, the series of noble bridges that span the Thames, their
avenues thronged with multitudes passing and repassing on foot and in carriges.
The sound of feet and wheels in their ceaseless passage fell upon the
ear louder than the roar of the opposed current of the river, as it rushed like
the rapids of a mountain stream between the strong arches beneath. `May it please your majesty, it is with regret I have to inform your majesty
that in consequence of an accident which last night occurred to the yacht
by the carelessness of a coal-barge skipper, whereby my bowsprit was carried
away and other damage done which it will take three or four days to repair,
it is out of my power to render obedience to your majesty's commands last
night received. I await your majesty's further pleasure. I shall depart in one hour for the Tower
and go on board, or rather, be taken, en masque as the prisoner of state, on
board the yacht with my party of Police-men! Sir John informs me that the
repairs are already completed, and that the schooner will be ready to sail, down
the river with the first turn of the tide. Then getting Tudor to anchor under
the guns of the frigate at the mouth, we can dictate our own terms to him!—
Tudor has not yet been on board; but I have ascertained that he made his appearance
at the Bank at noon and called for the draft holding the amount in
notes in his open pocket-book. The cashier who suspects nothing, voluntarily
informed me as I entered the banking-house, that he had come to take up the
draft, not knowing that it was paid already. `When I told him that your grace
had taken it up in person,' said the banker to me, `he said that it was all very
well; that you had given him the funds to take it up, as he was coming into
town, not expecting to be in London yourself!' The writer has positive evidence that the plot you have arranged
for the purpose of banishing your son from England, is known to him through
means of a letter taken from your table to-day. In a word, the person who
returned the letter to you was no other than your son, lord Tudor, disguised
as a peasant. He returned the letter to lull all suspicions of his having learned
the contents. His object in being in disguise near your palace was to get
early intelligence respecting the fate of the forged draft your grace held! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 242 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The cruiser of the mist | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | On one of those brilliant mornings peculiar
to the early autumnal days, when
the atmosphere is like chrystal in transparency,
and the skies are turgid with their
leepest blue, two persons stood together
upon an eminence that commanded the
Bay of Raritan and a wide expanse of the
ocean horizon to the eastward. “The pirate schooner known as
`The Cruiser of the Mist,' is at this moment
off Sandy Hook laying to! Ride to
the head of the island with all haste, and
take a boat to the sloop-of-war Franklin.
Tell the captain, if he gets underweigh at
once, he may capture her! Delay not a
moment, if you love your country or your
brother, | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 243 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The knights of seven lands | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | At the close of a summer's day, sometime near the end of the fourteenth
century, a party of young knights, seven in number, were returning to their
several countries from attending a great tournament held in the lists of the
Moorish palace of the Alhambra, then occupied by John, king of Castile.
This tournament was held in honor of the nuptials of the Prince with the
Infanta, and from its magnificence had drawn together the flower of the
chivalry of many lands. The company of knights alluded to, consisted of
one of Spain, whose castle lay northward, near the Pyrennees; one of
France; one of England; one of Germany; one of Rome; of a Scottish
knight, and a knight of Venice, all journeying homeward from the jousts,
with their esquires and retinues. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 244 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The seven knights, or, Tales of many lands | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | At the close of a summer's day, sometime near the end of the fourteenth
century, a party of young knights, seven in number, were returning to their several
countries from attending a great tournament held in the lists of the Moorish
palace of the Alhambra, then occupied by John, king of Castile. This tournament
was held in honor of the nuptials of the Prince with the Infanta, and from
its magnificence had drawn together the flower of the chivalry of many lands.
The company of knights alluded to, consisted of one of Spain, whose castle lay
northward, near the Pyrennees; one of France; one of England; one of Germany;
one of Rome; of a Scottish knight, and a knight of Venice, all journeying
homeward from the jousts, with their esquires and retinues. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 247 | Author: | Flint
Timothy
1780-1840 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Francis Berrian, or, The Mexican patriot | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | In the autumn of this year I set out from Massachusetts
for the remote regions of the southwest on the
Spanish frontier, where I reside. When I entered the
steam-boat from Philadelphia to Baltimore, having taken
a general survey of the motley group, which is usually
seen in such places, my eye finally rested on a young
gentleman, apparently between twenty-five and thirty,
remarkable for his beauty of face, the symmetry of his
fine form, and for that uncommon union of interest,
benevolence, modesty, and manly thought, which are
so seldom seen united in a male countenance of great
beauty. The idea of animal magnetism, I know, is
exploded. I, however, retain my secret belief in the
invisible communication between minds, of something
like animal magnetism and repulsion. I admit that this
electric attraction of kindred minds at first sight, and
antecedent to acquaintance, is inexplicable. The world
may laugh at the impression, if it pleases. I have,
through life, found myself attracted, or repelled at first
sight, and oftentimes without being able to find in the
objects of these feelings any assignable reason, either
for the one or the other. I have experienced, too,
that, on after acquaintance, I have very seldom had
occasion to find these first impressions deceptive. It is
of no use to inquire, if these likes and dislikes be the
result of blind and unreasonable prejudice. I feel that
they are like to follow me through my course. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 248 | Author: | Flint
Timothy
1780-1840 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Shoshonee Valley | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | At Length the south breeze began once more to
whisper along the valley, bringing bland airs, spring
birds, sea fowls, the deep trembling roar of unchained
mountain streams, a clear blue sky, magpies and orioles,
cutting the ethereal space, as they sped with
their peculiar business note, on the great instinct errand
of their Creator to the budding groves. The
snipe whistled. The pheasant drummed on the fallen
trunks in the deep forest. The thrasher and the
robin sang; and every thing, wild and tame, that had
life, felt the renovating power, and rejoiced in the retraced
footsteps of the great Parent of nature. The
inmates of William Weldon's dwelling once more
walked forth, in the brightness of a spring morning,
choosing their path where the returning warmth had
already dried the ground on the south slopes of the
hills. The blue and the white violet had already
raised their fair faces under the shelter of the fallen
tree, or beneath the covert of rocks. The red bud
and the cornel decked the wilderness in blossoms; and
in the meadows, from which the ice had scarcely disappeared,
the cowslips threw up their yellow cups
from the water. As they remarked upon the beauty
of the day, the cheering notes of the birds, the deep
hum of a hundred mountain water-falls, and the exhilarating
influence of the renovation of spring, William
Weldon observed in a voice, that showed awakened
remembrances—`dear friends, you have, perhaps,
none of you such associations with this season,
as now press upon my thoughts, in remembrances
partly of joy and sadness. Hear you those million
mingled sounds of the undescribed dwellers in the
spring-formed waters? How keenly they call up the
fresh recollections of the spring of my youth, and my
own country! The winter there, too, is long and severe.
What a train of remembrances press upon me!
I have walked abroad in the first days of spring.—
When yet a child, I was sent to gather the earliest
cowslips. I remember my thoughts, when I first dipped
my feet in the water, and heard these numberless
peeps, croaks, and cries; and thought of the countless
millions of living things in the water, which seemed
to have been germinated by spring; and which appeared
to be emulating each other in the chatter of
their ceaseless song. How ye return upon my
thoughts, ye bright morning visions! What a fairy
creation was life, in such a spring prospect! How
changed is the picture, and the hue of the dark brown
years, as my eye now traces them in retrospect.—
These mingled sounds, this beautiful morning, these
starting cowslips, the whole present scene brings back
1*
the entire past. Ah! there must be happier worlds
beyond the grave, where it is always spring, or the
thoughts, that now spring in my bosom, had not been
planted there.' Minister of Jesus—A wretch in agony implores you
by Him, who suffered for mankind, to have mercy
upon him. He extenuates nothing. The vilest outrage
and abandonment were his purpose. He confesses,
that he deserves the worst. His only plea is,
that he was ruined by the doting indulgence of his
parents. Luxury and pleasure have enervated him,
and he has not the courage to bear pain. Death is
horror to him, and Oh, God! Oh, God!—the terrible
death of a slow fire. Christ pitied his tormentors.
Oh! let Jessy pity me. The agony is greater, than
human nature can bear. Oh! Elder Wood, come,
and pray with, and for `They have unbound my hands, and furnished me
with the means of writing this. They are dancing
round the pile, on which I am to suffer by fire. My
oath, that I would possess thee, at the expense of
death and hell, rings in my ears, as a knell, that would
awaken the dead. Oh God! have mercy. Every
thing whirls before my eyes, and I can only pray, that
you may forget, if you cannot forgive | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 257 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The American lounger, or, Tales, sketches, and legends, gathered in sundry journeyings | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | I am a bachelor, dear reader! This I deem necessary
to premise, lest, peradventure, regarding me as
one of that class whose fate is sealed,
— “As if the genius of their stars had writ it,”
you should deem me traitor to my sworn alliance.
For what has a Benedict to do with things out of the
window, when his gentle wife—(what sweet phraseology
this last! How prettily it looks printed!) his
“gentle wife” with her quiet eye, her sewing and
rocking chair on one side, and his duplicates or triplicates,
in the shape of a round chunk of a baby, fat as
a butter-ball; two or three roguish urchins with tops
and wooden horses, and a fawn-like, pretty daughter
of some nine years, with her tresses adown her neck,
and a volume of Miss Edgworth's “Harry and Lucy”
in her hand, which she is reading by the fading
twilight—demand and invite his attention on the
other. “How I yearn to be once more folded in your sisterly
embrace, to lean my aching head upon your bosom,
and pour my heart into yours. It is near midnight.
Edward has gone out to seek some means of earning
the pittance which is now our daily support. Poor
Edward! How he exists under such an accumulation
of misery, I know not. His trials have nearly broken
his proud and sensitive spirit. Since his cruel arrest,
his heart is crushed. He will never hold up his head
again. He sits with me all day long, gloomy and desponding,
and never speaks. Oh how thankful I feel
that he has never yet been tempted to embrace the
dreadful alternative to which young men in his circumstances
too often fly! May he never fly to the
oblivious wine cup to fly from himself. In this, dear
Isabel, God has been, indeed, merciful to me. Last
night Edward came home, after offering himself even
as a day laborer, and yet no man would hire him, and
threw himself upon the floor and wept long and bitterly.
When he became calmer, he spoke of my sufferings
and his own, in the most hopeless manner, and
prayed that he might be taken from the world, for Pa
would then forgive me. But this will never be. One
grave will hold us both. I have not a great while to
live, Isabel! But I do not fear to die! Edward! 'tis
for Edward my heart is wrung. Alas his heart is hardened
to every religious impression—the Bible he
never opens, family prayers are neglected, and affliction
has so changed him altogether, that you can no
longer recognise the handsome, agreeable and fascinating
Edward you once knew. Oh, if pa would relent,
how happy we might all be again. If dear Edward's
debts were paid, and they do not amount to
nine hundred dollars altogether, accumulated during
the three years of our marriage, he might become an
ornament to society, which none are better fitted to
adorn. Do, dearest Isabel, use your influence with pa,
for we are really very wretched, and Edward has been
so often defeated in the most mortifying efforts to obtain
employment—for no one would assist him because
he is in debt—(the very reason why they should) that
he has not the resolution to subject himself again to
refusals, not unfrequently accompanied with insult,
and always with contempt. My situation at this time,
dearest sister, is one also of peculiar delicacy, and I
need your sisterly support and sympathy. Come and
see me, if only for one day. Do not refuse me this,
perhaps the last request I shall ever make of you.
Plead eloquently with pa, perhaps he will not persevere
longer in his cruel system of severity. Edward
is not guilty—he is unfortunate. But alas, in this
world, there is little distinction between guilt and misery!
Come, dearest Isabel—I cannot be said “No.”
I hear Edward's footstep on the stair. God bless and
make you happier than your wretched sister, “I have learned the extremity of your anger against
Edward. Your vindictive cruelty has cast him friendless
upon the world, and I fly to share his fortune. I
must ask your forgiveness for the step I am about to
take. I am betrothed to Edward by vows that are
registered in Heaven.—Alas! it is his poverty alone that
renders him so hateful to you—for once you thought
there was no one like Edward. God bless you, my
dear father, and make you happy here and hereafter. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 258 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Morris Græme, or, The cruise of the Sea-Slipper | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | It was the original intention of the author of the “Dancing Feather”
to have extended that work to fifty chapters, or the usual length of a novel
of two volumes. But the editor of the paper to whom it was communicated
in weekly numbers, requested, after six chapters had been published,
that it should be limited to ten chapters. This desire of the publisher the
author complied with, though with injury both to the plot and the harmonious
construction of the Romance. The favorable reception of “The
Dancing Feather,” even in this abridged character, induced its publisher to
reprint and re-issue it in a cheap octavo form. Its unlooked for popularity
in this shape, and the frequent calls for it even now, has induced the writer
to carry out, in some degree, his first intention, and to present the public
with a Sequel, commencing with the night of the mysterious departure
from her anchoring ground of the schooner “The Dancing Feather”—to
the story with which title the reader is referred. I am now near my end—but, as I believe death to be an
everlasting sleep, I feel no alarm. The grave is rest. I envy the
clod and the rock which are dead and feel not; and rejoice that
I shall soon be their fellow! But I would say a word to you before
I am annihilated. I wish you to know what you are ignorant of
respecting me. I am an Englishman descended of a noble family.
My grand-father was an Earl, my mother a Countess. A step-mother
made my parental roof a hell, and at the age of sixteen I fled
from it. I shipped as a common seaman; and having a naturedly
vicious turn, (I conceal nothing now) I soon contracted the worst
vices. In my twentieth year, enraged by a blow inflicted by the
Captain, Iconspired, and heading a mutiny took possession of the
brig, killing the Captain with my own hands and so wiping out the
foul stain he had blackened me with. We steered for the coast
of Africa; and, tempted by the great wealth realized by slave-stealing,
we engaged in the traffic and took a cargo to the West Indies.
The immense returns by the way of profit, with the absence of all
principle, led me to engage in it for a long period, till at length,
after several years, my name was known throughout the West Indies
and inspired terror all along the African coast. The wealth
I accumulated was enormous; and the guilt with which it was obtained
was equally vast. But what is guilt but a name? The
grave hides alike evil and good: at least this is my belief, and at
this hour it is a consoling one. If there were a God I know
there would be a hell for me. But my conscience is calm and
gives me no warning of a hereafter; and so I die without fear. A
peaceful state, my son! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 259 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Caroline Archer, or, The miliner's apprentice | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | CAROLINE ARCHER Was the most beautiful
milliner's apprentice that tripped along
the streets of Philadelphia. She was just
seventeen; with the softest brown hair, that
would burst into a thousand ringlets over the
neck and shoulders, all she could do to teach
it to lay demurely on her cheek, as a milliner's
apprentice should do. Her eyes were of
the deepest blue of the June sky after a fine
shower, not that showers often visited her
brilliant orbs, for she was as happy-hearted
as a child, and to sing all day long was as
natural to her as to the robin red-breast—at
least it was until she became a milliner's apprentice,
when she was forbid to sing by her
austere mistress, as if a maiden's fingers
would not move as nimbly with a cheerful
carol on her tongue. Her smile was like
light, it was so beaming; and then it was so
full of sweetness, and gentle-heartedness!
It was delightful to watch her fine face with
a smile mantling its classical features, and
her coral lips just parted showing the most
beautiful teeth in the world. One could not
but fall in love with her outright at sight—
yet there was a certain elevated purity and
dignity about her that checked lightness or
thought of evil in relation to her. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 260 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Herman de Ruyter | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | It was a few minutes past nine o'clock
three evenings previous to the sudden disappearance
of the beautiful `Cigar-Vender,'
whose adventurous life, up to that time, has
afforded us the subject of a former Tale, when
the keeper of a miserable book-stall situated
in a narrow thoroughfare leading from Pearl
into Chatham street, prepared to close his
stall for the night. His stall consisted of
some rude shelfs placed against the wall of a
low and wretched habitation, with a sunken
door on one side of the shelves by which he
had ingress from the side-walk into a dark
narrow apartment that served him as a dwelling-place.
There were shelves against the
street wall on both sides of his door, a board
placed in front of which, encroaching about
two feet upon the pavement formed a sort of
counter. It was supported at each end by
rough empty boxes, in the cavity of one of
which, upon a bundle of straw as it stood on end,
facing inward, lay a small, ugly shock-dog with
a black turn-up nose, and most fiery little gray
eyes. In the opposite box, vis-a-vis to the
little spiteful dog crouched a monstrous white
Tom cat, with great green eyes, and a visage
quite as savage as that of a panther. Thus
with the counter and the boxes supporting it,
the keeper was enclosed in a sort of ingeniously
constructed shop, which he had contrived
to cover by a strip of canvass, which
served as a shade from the sun as well as a
shelter from the storms. The contents of his
shelves presented to the passer-by a singular
assemblage of old books, pamphlets, songs,
pictures of pirates and buccaneers hung in
yellow-painted frames; two-penny portraits
of murderers and other distinguished characters
in this line, with ferocious full lengths of
General Jackson, and Col. Johnson killing
Tecumseh! Rolls of ballads, piles of sailor's
songs of the last war, last dying speeches and
lives of celebrated criminals, were strewn
upon the counter, to which was added a goodly
assortment of children's picture books and
toys. Cigars and even candy were displayed
to tempt the various tastes of the passers-by,
and even gay ribbons, something faded, exposed
in a pasteboard box were offered as a
net to catch the fancy of the females who
might glance that way. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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