Project Gutenberg's Olla Podrida, by Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

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Title: Olla Podrida

Author: Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

Release Date: October 21, 2007 [EBook #23139]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLLA PODRIDA ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Olla Podrida, by Captain Marryat.

________________________________________________________________________
Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which
are among the very best of English literature, and some of which are
still in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.

"Olla Podrida" was published in 1840, the fifteenth book to flow from
Marryat's pen. It consists of short stories, articles, his Diary on the
Continent, (as opposed to his Diary in America), short plays. Except
for "The Modern Town House" there is very little of great importance in
the book.

________________________________________________________________________
OLLA PODRIDA, BY CAPTAIN MARRYAT.

CHAPTER ONE.

April 3, 1835.

Reader, did you ever feel in that peculiarly distressing state of mind
in which one oppressing idea displaces or colours every other,
absorbing, intermingling with, empoisoning, and, like the filth of the
harpy, turning every thing into disgust--when a certain incubus rides
upon the brain, as the Old Man of the Mountain did upon the shoulders of
Sinbad, burdening, irritating, and rendering existence a misery--when,
looking around, you see but one object perched everywhere and grinning
at you--when even what you put into your mouth tastes of but that one
something, and the fancied taste is so unpleasant as almost to prevent
deglutition--when every sound which vibrates in your ear appears to
strike the same discordant note, and all and every thing will re