saint francis and saint benedight
blesse this house from wicked wight;
from the night-mare and the goblin,
that is hight good fellow robin;
keep it from all evil spirits,
fairies, weezels, rats, as:
from curfew time
to the prime.
cartwright.
it was a brilliant moonlight night, but extremely cold; our chaise whirled rapidly over the frozen ground; the postboy smacked his whip incessantly, and a part of the time his horses were on a gallop. "he knows where he is going," said my panion, laughing, "and is eager to arrive in time for some of the merriment and good cheer of the servants hall. my father, you must know, is a bigoted devotee of the old school, and prides himself upon keeping up something of old english hospitality. he is a tolerable spe of what you will rarely meet with nowadays in its purity, the old english try gentleman; for our men of fortune spend so much of their time in town, and fashion is carried so muto the try, that the strong rich peculiarities of a rural life are almost polished away. my father, however, from early years, took ho peacham* for his textbook, instead of chester?eld; he determined in his own mind that there was no dition more truly honorable and enviable than that of a try gentleman on his paternal lands, and therefore passes the whole of his time on his estate. he is a strenuous advocate for the revival of the old rural games and holiday observances, and is deeply read in the writers, a and modern, who have treated on the subject. indeed, his favorite range of reading is among the authors who ?ourished at least two turies since, who, he insists, wrote and thought more like true englishmen than any of their successors. he eves sometimes that he had not been born a few turies earlier, when england was itself and had its peculiar manners and s. as he lives at some distance from the main road, in rather a lonely part of the try, without any rival gentry near him, he has that most enviable of all blessings to an englishman--an opportunity of indulging the bent of his own humor without molestation. being representative of the oldest family in the neighborhood, and a great part of the peasantry being his tenants, he is much looked up to, and in general is known simply by the appellation of `the squire--a title which has been accorded to the head of the family siime immemorial. i think it best to give you these hints about my worthy old father, to prepare you for any et
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