The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Twins, by Martin Farquhar Tupper

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Title: The Twins
A Domestic Novel

Author: Martin Farquhar Tupper

Release Date: August 21, 2005 [EBook #16574]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE TWINS;

A DOMESTIC NOVEL.

BY

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, A.M., F.R.S.

AUTHOR OF

PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

HARTFORD:

PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON

1851.

THE TWINS.

CHAPTER I.

PLACE: TIME: CIRCUMSTANCE.

BURLEIGH-SINGLETON is a pleasant little watering-place on the southern
coast of England, entirely suitable for those who have small incomes and
good consciences. The latter, to residents especially, are at least as
indispensable as the former: seeing that, however just the reputation of
their growing little town for superior cheapness in matters of meat and
drink, its character in things regarding men and manners is quite as
undeniable for preeminent dullness.

Not but that it has its varieties of scene, and more or less of
circumstances too: there are, on one flank, the breezy Heights, with
flag-staff and panorama; on the other, broad and level water-meadows,
skirted by the dark-flowing Mullet, running to the sea between its
tortuous banks: for neighbourhood, Pacton Park is one great
attraction--the pretty market-town of Eyemouth another--the everlasting,
never-tiring sea a third; and, at high-summer, when the Devonshire lanes
are not knee-deep in mire, the nevertheless immeasurably filthy, though
picturesque, mud-built village of Oxton.

Then again (and really as I enumerate these multitudinous advantages, I
begin to relent for having called it dull), you may pick up curious
agate pebbles on the beach, as well as corallines and scarce sea-weeds,
good for gumming on front-parlour windows; you may fish _for_ whitings
in the bay, and occasionally catch them; you may wade in huge caoutchouc
boots among the muddy shallows of the Mullet, and shoot _at_ cormorants
and curlews; you may walk to satiety