Project Gutenberg's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen Leacock

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Title: Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

Author: Stephen Leacock

Posting Date: February 25, 2009 [EBook #3533]
Release Date: November, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN

By Stephen Leacock, 1869-1944

Preface

I The Hostelry of Mr. Smith
II The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe
III The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias
IV The Ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Drone
V The Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa
VI The Beacon on the Hill
VII The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin
VIII The Fore-ordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin
IX The Mariposa Bank Mystery
X The Great Election in Missinaba County
XI The Candidacy of Mr. Smith
XII L'Envoi. The Train to Mariposa

Preface

I know no way in which a writer may more fittingly introduce his work to
the public than by giving a brief account of who and what he is. By this
means some of the blame for what he has done is very properly shifted to
the extenuating circumstances of his life.

I was born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I am not
aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at the
time, but should think it extremely likely. My parents migrated to
Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them. My father took up a farm
near Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was during the hard times of Canadian
farming, and my father was just able by great diligence to pay the hired
men and, in years of plenty, to raise enough grain to have seed for the
next year's crop without buying any. By this process my brothers and
I were inevitably driven off the land, and have become professors,
business men, and engineers, instead of being able to grow up as farm
labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming to speak exuberantly in political
addresses of the joy of early rising and the de