The Life of William Cobbett: Intended as an Encouraging Example to All Young Men of Humble Fortune; Being a Proof of what Can be Effected by Steady Application and Honest Efforts

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B. McMillan, 1809 - 61 pagina's
 

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Pagina 6 - I have some faint recollection of going to school to an old woman, who, I believe, did not succeed in learning me my letters. In the winter evenings my father learnt us all to read and write, and gave us a pretty tolerable knowledge of arithmetic.
Pagina 3 - He was no almanackmaker, nor quack, nor chimney-doctor, nor soapboiler, nor ambassador, nor printer's devil: neither was he a deist, and all his children were born in wedlock. The legacies he left, were, his scythe, his reap-hook, and his flail ; he bequeathed no old and irrecoverable debts to an hospital : he never cheated the poor during his life, nor mocked them in his death.
Pagina 14 - I must undergo, and the punishment the least disobedience or neglect would subject me to; he persuaded me to return home; and I remember he concluded his advice with telling me, that it was better to be led to church in a halter, to be tied to a girl that I did not like, than to be tied to the gangway, or, as the sailors call it, married to Miss Roper. From the conclusion of this wholesome counsel, I perceived that the captain thought I had eloped on account of a bastard. I blushed, and that confirmed...
Pagina 19 - Gracious heaven ! if I am doomed to be wretched, bury me beneath Iceland snows, and let me feed on blubber; stretch me under the burning line, and deny me thy propitious dews ; nay, if it be thy will, suffocate me with the infected and pestilential air of a democratic club-room ; but save me from the desk of an attorney !
Pagina 22 - and you have had a narrow escape.' He told me that the regiment into which I had been so happy as to enlist, was one of the oldest and boldest in the whole army, and that it was at that moment serving in that fine, flourishing, and plentiful country, Nova Scotia! He dwelt...
Pagina 24 - I procured me a Lowth's Grammar, and applied myself to the study of it with unceasing assiduity, and not without some profit ; for though it was a considerable time before I fully comprehended all that I read, still I read and studied with such unremitted attention, that at last I could write without falling into any very gross errors. The pains I took cannot be described ; I wrote the whole grammar out two or three times...
Pagina 8 - My father was worsted without doubt, as he had for antagonist a shrewd and sensible old Scotchman, far his superior in political knowledge ; but he pleaded before a partial audience : we thought there was but one wise man in the world, and that that one was our father. He who pleaded...
Pagina 20 - Mr. Holland was but little in the chambers himself. He always went out to dinner, while I was left to be provided for by the laundress, as he called her. Those gentlemen of the law, who have resided in the Inns of Court in London, know very well what a laundress means. Ours was, I believe, the oldest and ugliest of the sisterhood.
Pagina 11 - Towards the autumn of 1782, I went to visit a relation who lived in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth. From the top of Portsdown, I, for the first time, beheld the sea, and no sooner did I behold it, than I wished to be a sailor. I could never account for this sudden impulse, nor can I now. Almost all English boys feel the same inclination : it would seem that, like young ducks, instinct leads them to rush on the bosom of the water.
Pagina 13 - My heart was inflated with national pride. The sailors were my countrymen ; the fleet belonged to my country, and surely I had my part in it, and in all its honours : yet, these honours I had not earned ; I took to myself a sort of reproach, for possessing what I had no right to, and resolved to have a just claim by sharing in the hardships and dangers.

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