Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (kiss me liar novel english txt) 📖
- Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Book online «The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (kiss me liar novel english txt) 📖». Author William Makepeace Thackeray
“The night was so rainy that the sentries preferred their boxes, and did not disturb me in my work. The log-house was built with upright posts, deeply fixed in the ground, and horizontal logs laid upon it. I had to dig under these, and work a hole sufficient to admit my body to pass. I began in the dark, soon after tattoo. It was some while after midnight before my work was done, when I lifted my hand up under the log and felt the rain from without falling upon it. I had to work very cautiously for two hours after that, and then crept through to the parapet and silently flung my rope over the gun; not without a little tremor of heart, lest the sentry should see me and send a charge of lead into my body.
“The wall was but twelve feet, and my fall into the ditch easy enough. I waited a while there, looking steadily under the gun, and trying to see the river and the island. I heard the sentry pacing up above and humming a tune. The darkness became more clear to me ere long, and the moon rose, and I saw the river shining before me, and the dark rocks and trees of the island rising in the waters.
“I made for this mark as swiftly as I could, and for the clump of trees to which I had been directed. Oh, what a relief I had when I heard a low voice humming there, 'Over the hills and far away'!”
When Mr. George came to this part of his narrative, Miss Theo, who was seated by a harpsichord, turned round and dashed off the tune on the instrument, whilst all the little company broke out into the merry chorus.
“Our way,” the speaker went on, “lay through a level tract of forest with which my guide was familiar, upon the right bank of the Monongahela. By daylight we came to a clearer country, and my trapper asked me—Silverheels was the name by which he went—had I ever seen the spot before? It was the fatal field where Braddock had fallen, and whence I had been wonderfully rescued in the summer of the previous year. Now, the leaves were beginning to be tinted with the magnificent hues of our autumn.”
“Ah, brother!” cries Harry, seizing his brother's hand. “I was gambling and making a fool of myself at the Wells and in London, when my George was flying for his life in the wilderness! Oh, what a miserable spendthrift I have been!”
“But I think thou art not unworthy to be called thy mother's son,” said Mrs. Lambert, very softly, and with moistened eyes. Indeed, if Harry had erred, to mark his repentance, his love, his unselfish joy and generosity, was to feel that there was hope for the humbled and kind young sinner.
“We presently crossed the river” George resumed, “taking our course along the base of the western slopes of the Alleghanies; and through a grand forest region of oaks and maple, and enormous poplars that grow a hundred feet high without a branch. It was the Indians whom we had to avoid, besides the outlying parties of French. Always of doubtful loyalty, the savages have been specially against us, since our ill-treatment of them, and the French triumph over us two years ago.
“I was but weak still, and our journey through the wilderness lasted a fortnight or more. As we advanced, the woods became redder and redder. The frost nipped sharply of nights. We lighted fires at our feet, and slept in our blankets as best we might. At this time of year the hunters who live in the mountains get their sugar from the maples. We came upon more than one such family, camping near their trees by the mountain streams; and they welcomed us at their fires, and gave us of their venison. So we passed over the two ranges of the Laurel Hills and the Alleghanies. The last day's march of my trusty guide and myself took us down that wild, magnificent pass of Will's Creek, a valley lying between cliffs near a thousand feet high—bald, white, and broken into towers like huge fortifications, with eagles wheeling round the summits of the rocks, and watching their nests among the crags.
“And hence we descended to Cumberland, whence we had marched in the year before, and where there was now a considerable garrison of our people. Oh! you may think it was a welcome day when I saw English colours again on the banks of our native Potomac!”
CHAPTER LIII. Where we remain at the Court End of the Town
George Warrington had related the same story, which we have just heard, to Madame de Bernstein on the previous evening—a portion, that is, of the history; for the old lady nodded off to sleep many times during the narration, only waking up when George paused, saying it was most interesting, and ordering him to continue. The young gentleman hem'd and ha'd, and stuttered, and blushed, and went on, much against his will, and did not speak half so well as he did to his friendly little auditory in Hill Street, where Hetty's eyes of wonder and Theo's sympathising looks, and mamma's kind face, and papa's funny looks, were applause sufficient to cheer any modest youth who required encouragement for his eloquence. As for mamma's behaviour, the General said, 'twas as good as Mr. Addison's trunk-maker, and she would make the fortune of any tragedy by simply being engaged to cry in the front boxes. That is why we chose my Lord Wrotham's house as the theatre where George's first piece should be performed, wishing that he should speak to advantage, and not as when he was heard by that sleepy, cynical old lady, to whom he had to narrate his adventures.
“Very good and most interesting, I am sure, my dear sir,” says Madame Bernstein, putting up three pretty little fingers covered with a lace mitten, to hide a convulsive movement of her mouth. “And your mother must have been delighted to see you.”
George shrugged his shoulders ever so little, and made a low bow, as his aunt looked up at him for a moment with her keen old eyes.
“Have been delighted to see you” she continued drily, “and killed the fatted calf, and—and that kind of thing. Though why I say calf, I don't know, nephew George, for you never were the prodigal. I may say calf to thee, my poor Harry! Thou hast been amongst the swine sure enough. And evil companions have robbed the money out of thy pocket and the coat off thy back.
“He came to his family in England, madam,” says George, with some heat, “and his friends were your ladyship's.”
“He could not have come to worse advisers, nephew Warrington, and so I should have told my sister earlier, had she condescended to write to me by him, as she has done by you,” said the old lady, tossing up her head. “Hey! hey!” she said, at night, as she arranged herself for the rout to which she was going, to her waiting-maid: “this young gentleman's mother is half sorry that he has come to life again, I could see that in his face. She is half sorry, and I am perfectly furious! Why didn't he lie still when he dropped there under the tree, and why did that young Florac carry him to the fort? I knew those Floracs when I was at Paris, in the time of Monsieur le Regent. They were of the Floracs of Ivry. No great
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