The Project Gutenberg eBook, Walter Harland, by Harriet S. Caswell

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Title: Walter Harland
Or, Memories of the Past

Author: Harriet S. Caswell

Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #15799]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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WALTER HARLAND

Or, Memories of the Past

by

H. S. CASWELL

Author of Clara Boscom; Earnest Harwood, etc.

1874

CHAPTER I.

Left entirely alone on a quiet afternoon, the unbroken stillness which
surrounded me, as well as the soft haze which floats upon the
atmosphere, in that most delightful of all seasons, the glorious "Indian
Summer" of Eastern Canada, caused my thoughts to wander far away into
the dreamy regions of the past, and many scenes long past, and almost
forgotten, passed in review before my mind's eye on that quiet
afternoon. While thus musing the idea occurred to me that there are few
individuals, however humble or obscure, whose life-history (if noted
down) would prove wholly without interest to others, in the form of a
book; and this thought caused me to form the idea of noting down some
passages from my own life--as they were on that day recalled to my mind.
Like the boy who dreamed a most remarkable dream and, when asked to
relate it, "didn't know where to begin," so was I puzzled as to how I
should make a beginning for my story. But the incidents of one
particular day when I was about thirteen years old were so vividly
brought back to my mind, that I have decided upon that day as a
starting-point; and now to my story.

"Where alive has that lazy, good-for-nothing boy taken, himself off to
now, I wonder, and the weeds I left him to pull in the garden not half
done yet; but it's just like him, as soon's my back'