Title:  Rodney Stone

Author:  Arthur Conan Doyle

Release Date:  February, 2004 [EBook #5148] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 14, 2002] [Most recently updated:  May 14, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of the project gutenberg EBOOK, Rodney stone ***

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1921 Eveleigh Nash & Grayson edition.

RODNEY STONE

PREFACE

Amongst the books to which I am indebted for my material in my endeavour to draw various phases of life and character in England at the beginning of the century, I would particularly mention Ashton’s “Dawn of the Nineteenth Century;” Gronow’s “Reminiscences;” Fitzgerald’s “Life and Times of George IV.;” Jesse’s “Life of Brummell;” “Boxiana;” “Pugilistica;” Harper’s “Brighton Road;” Robinson’s “Last Earl of Barrymore” and “Old Q.;” Rice’s “History of the Turf;” Tristram’s “Coaching Days;” James’s “Naval History;” Clark Russell’s “Collingwood” and “Nelson.”

I am also much indebted to my friends Mr. J. C. Parkinson and Robert Barr for information upon the subject of the ring.

A. Conan Doyle. 
HASLEMERE,
September 1, 1896.

CHAPTER I—­FRIAR’S OAK

On this, the first of January of the year 1851, the nineteenth century has reached its midway term, and many of us who shared its youth have already warnings which tell us that it has outworn us.  We put our grizzled heads together, we older ones, and we talk of the great days that we have known; but we find that when it is with our children that we talk it is a hard matter to make them understand.  We and our fathers before us lived much the same life, but they with their railway trains and their steamboats belong to a different age.  It is true that we can put history-books into their hands, and they can read from them of our weary struggle of two and twenty years with that great and evil man.  They can learn how Freedom fled from the whole broad continent, and how Nelson’s blood was shed, and Pitt’s noble heart was broken in striving that she should not pass us for ever to take refuge with our brothers across the Atlantic.  All this they can read, with the date of this treaty or that battle, but I do not know where they are to read of ourselves, of the folk we were, and the lives we led, and how the world seemed to our eyes when they were young as theirs are now.