The Project Gutenberg EBook of Warwick Woodlands, by
Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

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Title: Warwick Woodlands
Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago

Author: Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

Release Date: November 6, 2006 [EBook #19730]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARWICK WOODLANDS ***

Produced by Jerry Kuntz

THE WARWICK WOODLANDS; or Things as They Were Twenty Years Ago

By Frank Forester

MY FIRST VISIT, DAY THE FIRST

It was a fine October evening when I was sitting on the back stoop of
his cheerful little bachelor's establishment in Mercer street, with my
old friend and comrade, Henry Archer. Many a frown of fortune had we two
weathered out together; in many of her brightest smiles had we two
reveled--never was there a stauncher friend, a merrier companion, a
keener sportsman, or a better fellow, than this said Harry; and here had
we two met, three thousand miles from home, after almost ten years of
separation, just the same careless, happy, dare-all do-no-goods that we
were when we parted in St. James's street,--he for the West, I for the
Eastern World--he to fell trees, and build log huts in the backwoods of
Canada,--I to shoot tigers and drink arrack punch in the Carnatic. The
world had wagged with us as with most others: now up, now down, and laid
us to, at last, far enough from the goal for which we started--so that,
as I have said already, on landing in New York, having heard nothing of
him for ten years, whom the deuce should I tumble on but that same
worthy, snugly housed, with a neat bachelor's menage, and every thing
ship-shape about him?--So, in the natural course of things, we were at
once inseparables.

Well--as I said before, it was a bright October evening, with the clear
sky, rich sunshine, and brisk breezy freshness, which indicate that
loveliest of the American months,--dinner was over, and with a pitcher
of the liquid ruby of Latour, a brace of half-pint beakers, and a score
--my contribution--of those most exquisite of smokables, the true old
Manila cheroots, we were consoling the inward man in a way that would
have open